Disturbing Photographs Show Pollution in the Great Lakes Before the Clean Water Act.
"Lake Erie, the smallest and shallowest of the five lakes, is also the filthiest; if every sewage pipe were turned off today, it would take 10 years for nature to purify Erie.
Ontario is a repository for Buffalo-area filth.
Michigan, where 16 billion small fish, called seawives, mysteriously died last year, is a cul-de-sac without an overflow pipe, and if Michigan becomes further polluted, the damage may take 1,000 years to repair," the magazine explained.
"Huron and Superior are still relatively clean, but they are in danger."
And, statistics aside, the photographs Eisenstaedt produced told the story in lurid browns, oranges and grays, punctuated by the vivid iridescence of the occasional oil slick.
From that, there was some hope.
"For selfish as well as civic reasons, more has been done in the past three years to clean the lakes than in the preceding 30," the article reported.
Though federal water-protection laws did exist already (the Federal Water Pollution Control Act was 20 years old at that point) they were only just starting to get teeth, and technology that would facilitate a clean-up was improving.
They still are, just as they are still under threat from a variety of sources.