Livelihoods and economies in the Great Lakes region always centered on water. From the manoomin, or wild rice, grown and revered by the Ojibwe people to the whitefish catch in Lake Michigan, to the water-dependent ports, steel mills, and manufacturers that dot thousands of miles of Fresh Coast lakeshore. The area’s liquid assets and the industries that developed around them form a “blue economy.”
The treasure trove of clean fresh water is seen as a competitive edge in a region hungry for growth and whose leaders boast about exporting the scientific breakthroughs and infrastructure hardware to solve the world’s water challenges.
The moment is ripe for a new approach to appraising a regional asset as the warming climate desiccates the Southwest and deep fries the Deep South. Great Lakes officials are promoting their ecologically stable and water-rich region as a sensible place to do business in the 21st century and beyond.
The collaborative’s five newsrooms — Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now, Michigan Public and The Narwhal — are funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.
This is the first in a series of articles and broadcasts that investigate the blue economy in the Great Lakes region. Produced by the five partners of the Great Lakes News Collaborative — Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now, Michigan Public, and The Narwhal — the articles pose a question central to the region’s future: how can the states, provinces, and tribal nations steward their water to provide jobs and attract businesses without inflicting the severe ecological damage that was a ruinous hallmark of earlier periods of development?
“The supply of fresh water is essential to our quality of life and creates a competitive advantage for our region,” said Howard Learner, executive director of the Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center. “Midwesterners understand the importance of the Great Lakes. It’s where we live, where we work, and where we play. The key is cleaning it up.”
Following decades of environmental degradation that produced burning rivers, fish kills, and a large concentration of highly contaminated Superfund sites, the U.S. and Canadian governments passed legislation and signed landmark pacts in the latter half of the 20th century to protect the lakes against pollution and exploitation from interests outside the basin that were eyeing one of the world’s largest sources of surface fresh water. The transformation promised by those agreements is not complete — agricultural runoff remains a pervasive pollutant and non-native species jeopardize local fisheries — but handsome shoreline real estate developments even in the rustiest of cities like Muskegon (four active Superfund sites) show the investments in ecological remediation are paying dividends.
The goal for the Great Lakes today, amid a suddenly frosty relationship between Washington and Ottawa, is to maintain stringent environmental safeguards while using that water within the basin, luring innovative companies and new residents with the vow that reliable, clean water will fuel not only a multitrillion-dollar regional economy but also enable recreation, tourism, and public enjoyment.
Promoted in regional councils and city halls, the blue economy is many things to many people. Our project found noteworthy successes and gathering headwinds:
- Government funding to clean up polluted lakeshore sites — in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and elsewhere — has rejuvenated formerly industrialized waterfronts and generated tourism dollars to boost local economies.
- Research collectives that unite industry and academia and provide startups with a path to market are positioning the region as a Silicon Valley for water technology and know-how.
- Agriculture, the largest water consumer, is confronting changes in herbicide use that would deliver public health benefits but increase the cost of operations.
- An economic lynchpin for the Great Lakes is the completion of a $3 billion lock expansion, allowing ships to carry iron ore from Lake Superior to steel mills throughout the region.
- Taxpayer-funded cleanups have made formerly polluted industrial waterfronts ripe for redevelopment with condos and private marinas. But the influx of wealthy newcomers has raised concerns that blue collar residents could be priced out.
- A proposed $3 billion data center in Benton Harbor, Michigan reflects growing investment in the Great Lakes basin, raising both economic hopes and environmental concerns.
The project tracks today’s geopolitical pulse. For the U.S. government, economic arguments are ascendant when it comes to environmental matters. In the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, which was founded five decades ago to clean up and prevent pollution, has placed its idea of economic growth on equal or higher standing as ecosystem renewal. Lee Zeldin, soon after his confirmation as EPA administrator, announced his Powering the Great American Comeback initiative, a move to support energy developers, AI companies, and the U.S. auto industry, all of which have a foothold in the Great Lakes region or expect to.
Across the border, Canadian leaders are starting to view water as a strategic economic asset. The Liberal Party, which took the most seats in Parliament in the April 28 federal election, pledged $100 million for a water security technology fund to invest in water research and development.
“This is a real watershed moment for Canadian water innovation,” said Soula Chronopoulos, president of AquaAction, an organization that assists water tech startups and lobbied for the fund. AquaAction was founded in Montreal and is opening an office in Detroit. “In a new era of geopolitical tension, we need to put water security first,” Chronopoulos added. “The U.S. has already done this. Canada must follow suit.”
Defining the Blue Economy
In some ways, it is silly to speak of a blue economy. Water creates economies, noted Dean Amhaus, founding president and chief executive of The Water Council, a Milwaukee-based water tech hub. Without water, there is no economic activity. No jobs. No life. Even arid Phoenix could be considered to have a blue economy, he said.
But when Great Lakes leaders use the phrase, they generally have two meanings in mind. The first is broader: water as an economic input. Manufacturers need it. Real estate developers crave a view of it. Farmers can’t grow corn or soybeans or blueberries without it. Toronto, located on Lake Ontario, uses it to cool more than 100 buildings in its downtown core.
The second meaning is more focused: water as an industrial cluster. The model here is Silicon Valley, where the assembly of technical expertise, research funding, and equipment suppliers birthed a world-changing computing industry. A similar conglomeration of water innovation exists in the Great Lakes with century-old water infrastructure stalwarts Kohler, Badger Meter, A.O. Smith, and Sloan joined by younger entrants like RHST, a Canadian firm intent on conserving water in agriculture, and CLEANR, the Cleveland-based company that produces a microplastics filter for washing machines.
To facilitate those opportunities, the region boasts an abundance of councils and initiatives to marry environmental protection with economic possibility.
The Great Lakes Commission, in 2021, published an Action Plan for Growing the Great Lakes Blue Economy. The plan, developed in consultation with regional organizations and universities, listed eight priority areas — among them education, infrastructure, environmental protection, workforce development, and investment — as foundations of the blue economy. The commission declined an interview request to discuss the plan’s implementation.
The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a cross-border partnership of municipal officials, is thinking along the same lines. It is working with 80 other organizations, from industries to nonprofits, to release a plan this fall for a blue economic corridor. Part of that planning exercise means ensuring that supporting infrastructure — energy grids, ports, water supply lines — are in place and communities are prepared.
“We want to bring new types of industry to our region that are going to protect our waters and bring prosperity,” said Jon Altenberg, the initiative’s president and CEO.
Current, a Chicago-based outfit, was awarded a National Science Foundation grant in 2024 worth up to $160 million over 10 years. The organization is working with universities in six states, as well as with the private sector, venture capital, and Argonne National Laboratory, to develop “waste-to-wealth” technologies that purify water while also extracting useful minerals and chemicals from industrial and municipal wastewater.
The list of players goes on: Cleveland Water Alliance, Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin, Council of the Great Lakes Region. This burst of activity has not gone unnoticed.
“Because there's a regional knitting together of all of these [initiatives] I think it really adds to the potential and the dynamism of the blue economy across the Great Lakes,” said Sam Rikkers, deputy secretary and chief operating officer at the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, a state body dedicated to promoting economic growth.
The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation collaborates with The Water Council on trade missions globally to attract international water-related businesses to the region. One notable catch, Rikkers said, is the German company Wilo. The water pump manufacturer located its North American headquarters in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and struck a partnership with the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team. The company’s logo adorns the team’s warmup jackets.
More than water
Businesses that need a reliable water supply might look at the blue expanse of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron and salivate. Businesses that produce water-supply hardware will be energized by the cluster of suppliers and expertise. But the blue economy, in its full flourishing, relies on much more than water. Research universities, political leadership, drivable roads that connect ports to markets, and a reliable energy grid all contribute.
All of that is being challenged in numerous and novel ways, from local and state levels to the federal government. When looking at the region’s blue economic potential, these supporting functions also need to be considered.
When asked how his organization pitches water-using businesses to relocate to Wisconsin, water was not Rikkers’ first response. He mentioned instead the strength of the state’s university system.
“That’s number one,” he said. “If businesses don't have the tremendously talented people that we think we offer, then that's tough.”
Yet the Trump administration and Republican allies are hacking away at the foundations of federally funded research by using research grants as political leverage. The administration froze $790 million in research grants for Northwestern University earlier this year.
On top of the perils to the U.S. research system, the Trump administration has imposed or threatened daunting barriers to global trade. For a region that wants to export the hardware to solve the world’s water problems, Trump’s punishing tariffs are raising the blood pressure of company executives.
Rikkers said uncertainty around tariffs — What will they be today? Tomorrow? A month from now? — is damaging for business. “It's not helpful,” Rikkers said.
Laws and policies could also use a refresh. Some think the landmark Great Lakes Compact, signed in 2008 to prevent water from being siphoned out of the basin, requires strengthening to close loopholes. Same with the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, which ordered a 40% cut in phosphorus flows into Lake Erie. That has not happened, and harmful cyanobacterial blooms spoil the lake and smaller inland waterways every summer.
“We need political will, and the courts to require action,” said Learner, of the Environmental Law and Policy Center.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the capitalist blue economy exacted a high cost on the region’s environment. Agricultural and urban expansion drained wetlands. Tanneries, chemical plants, breweries, and mills set up shop along rivers and lakes, using the soil and water as dumping grounds. Tires bobbed in lakes, rivers caught fire.
The Love Canal scandal revealed the brazen evasion of environmental responsibility. No wonder that Earth Day was born in the region, an outgrowth of Wisconsin’s political leadership and the protest movements that defined the 1960s, or that the appalling decay of the Cleveland waterfront helped birth the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The challenges posed by a changing climate today are no less worrisome. Bigger rainstorms that dump several inches in a few hours have overwhelmed the region’s creaky flood-protection infrastructure. The lakes themselves have witnessed sharp swings from record highs five years ago to water levels today that are below the long-term average. Winter ice cover last year was also the lowest on record. The region may be more temperate than Arizona, but a blissful climate haven it is not.
Amid these political and environmental headwinds, policies to protect the resource will continue to be paramount, Altenberg said. Municipal codes, state mandates, and binational restrictions on water exploitation are constraints from which innovation springs.
Water “is going to become so restricted and so expensive that the companies that are going to be able to be ready to win in the next 30 years are going to be the ones that are thinking that way anyways, right?” Altenberg said. “So we need to incentivize that now for them to prepare.”
