Lake Erie - Learn More

The Great Lakes are a natural wonder of the world and are a resource for us to use and protect. This natural wonder contains nearly 20% of the world’s fresh surface water and 95% of the U.S. fresh surface water.

The Great Lakes basin is the only freshwater system of its kind in size and ecological diversity. The Great Lakes are essential to humans and wildlife alike, providing homes, food, recreation, and economic sustainability. While the Great Lakes are a vast and valuable resource, they are not unlimited. Each year groundwater recharge, rainfall, and snowmelt replenish only about 1% in the basin. The other 99% is finite and non-renewable.

Lake Erie, Ohio's Great Lake, is the shallowest, warmest, and most biologically productive of all the Great Lakes and produces more fish for human consumption than all the other Great Lakes combined.

Lake Erie & Ohio's Economy

Lake Erie is vitally important to Ohio’s environment and economy. The Lake is a center of commerce and industry, supporting agriculture, shipping, heavy manufacturing, and electricity generation.

It supplies drinking water to 11 million people, 3 million of whom live in Ohio, and supports more than a quarter of a million Ohio jobs. Lake Erie generates $10.7 billion a year to the Ohio economy in tourism and travel revenue. Roughly $3.7 billion of that revenue is generated from hunting, fishing, and wildlife watching.

A Diverse Home

The 11,649 square miles that make up Ohio’s Lake Erie basin are comprised of beech-maple, oak, hemlock, and hardwood forests, as well as marshes, vernal pools and bogs, rare oak savannas, lakeshore grasslands, sand dunes, and more.

These habitats sustain more than 1,500 species of plants and animals. Threatened, endangered and rare species located within these extraordinary and unparalleled ecosystems include the bald eagle, wild lupine, Showy Lady’s Slipper orchid, four-toed salamander, Lake Erie water snake and the Karner blue butterfly.

It is clear that Lake Erie’s natural wonders are essential to humans and wildlife alike; providing homes, food, drinking water, recreation and economic stability.

Threats to Lake Erie

Unfortunately, Lake Erie is facing multiple threats from local overuse to misguided water export schemes. Unregulated water use has stressed some Great Lakes basin groundwater sources to the point that nearby wells have failed.

In addition, private companies and others have proposed selling and shipping Great Lakes water out of the bain, where it can no longer replenish the fragile ecosystem.

The Great Lakes "Compact"

Luckily, protection for the Great Lakes, including Ohio's Lake Erie, has been formalized in a bi-national agreement between all the Great Lakes U.S. states and Canadian territories.

To read more about the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact, click here.