My Watermark is the Wisconsin River, Wisconsin.

I am an advisor to the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative. For 14 years I served as Executive Director of that organization. And prior to that, I worked for thirty years with the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes office here in Chicago.

I grew up on the Wisconsin River in the central part of the state, so my initial orientation was to river water. Then I spent a lot of time small inland lakes in Northern Wisconsin, so that was my second experience. When I was a kid, I came down to Chicago and Michigan City, Indiana to visit my aunt and uncle, and they took me out to the beach in Michigan City. I saw Lake Michigan and it was totally astounding; I didn’t know there were bodies of water that big. That was what really woke me up to the Great Lakes.

If I had to pick a favorite place or two, I think the first would be the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior. Primarily, I spent some time camping out there way back in the ‘70’s and have fond memories of that. The other place is that last summer I just had a chance to get to Tobermory in Ontario, which is right between Georgian Bay and the main body of Lake Huron. Absolutely gorgeous up there. If I had to pick, those two are probably my favorites.

What got me interested in environmental work was spending a lot of time on inland lakes in Northern Wisconsin. I majored in English in undergraduate school and thought I’d be a teacher, tried it, practiced teaching in school, didn’t really like it. In December of 1969, I opened up a Time Magazine and saw a picture of the Cuyahoga River on fire, and I thought: that really shouldn’t be. So, because I really didn’t have a technical at that time I decided to go into law and pursue environmental law, which didn’t really exist at the time, but nevertheless, I pursued it at the University of Wisconsin. I graduated on a Saturday afternoon in May of 1973 and two days later I was working for the US Environmental Protection Agency. And forty-four years later, I’m still at it!

The Great Lakes are one of the wonders of creation and I think we just have to have a tremendous amount of respect for that which is created for us. Things like the Great Barrier Reef, the Great Lakes, the Grand Canyon; these are things that we are incredibly fortunate to have. They have a lot of practical value as well in terms of drinking water and water for ships and industry and stuff like that, but it’s basically a part of the creation that we’re blessed with. I think we need a much higher degree of respect of it than we’ve had in the past.