Related Stories

ACT NOW! Support Clean Coastal Environment and Public Health Act

Healthy Beaches Action Guide

Great Lakes Initiative

Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement

Protecting Water Quality Around Your Home

Everyone and everything needs clean water to live and thrive. Yet pollution still threatens the Great Lakes. The Alliance for the Great Lakes's Water Quality Program is dedicated to:

• Keeping our beaches healthy by cutting pollution that contributes to lake contamination, beach closings and swimming bans.
• Attacking toxic pollutants like mercury, PCBs, pharmaceuticals and nanotechnology in the Great Lakes that threaten the health of children, women and other sensitive populations.
• Ensuring cleanup of key contaminated sediment sites that poison the watershed of the Great Lakes.
• Monitoring expansion of petroleum refineries around the Great Lakes.

We need to ensure that local, state and federal agencies use their authority to restore and protect water quality. You, as a citizen, however, have the most important role to play in ensuring the protection of public and ecological health. The Alliance helps in these efforts by:

• Collaborating with agencies, municipalities and businesses wherever possible in developing strong policies, standards, laws and other actions.
• Demanding accountability through agency oversight and legal enforcement wherever necessary.
• Educating the public to participate in these and other important water quality decisions affecting its health.