Dan Egan (1)
Author of The Death and Life of the Great Lakes
For other authors named Dan Egan, see the disambiguation page.
About the Author
Dan Egan is a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and a senior water policy fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with his wife and children.
Image credit: via author's website
Works by Dan Egan
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Michigan
Columbia School of Journalism - Occupations
- journalist (Brico Fund Journalist in Residence|University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences Center for Water Policy)
reporter (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) - Awards and honors
- Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award
John B. Oakes Award
AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award
Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award - Short biography
- A native of Green Bay, Wisconsin, he grew to love Lake Michigan by spending summer weekends and vacations on the Door Peninsula, where both sets of his grandparents had summer homes. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in history in 1989, Egan moved out West and worked as an assistant park historian at Yellowstone National Park. In 1992 he began his newspaper career at the Idaho Mountain Express in Sun Valley Idaho. From there he moved on to newspapers in Idaho Falls, Idaho and Salt Lake City, Utah. During his decade out West Egan covered a range of environmental issues, including efforts to restore threatened and endangered species like wolves, salmon and grizzly bears. He also covered the Alpine skiing for the Salt Lake Tribune during the 2002 Winter Games. Egan moved back to Wisconsin in 2002, and lives with his wife and four children in the Milwaukee suburb of Whitefish Bay.
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA
- Places of residence
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- Wisconsin, USA
Members
Reviews
In this age of political polarization, it's refreshing to find an author who can tackle a big environmental subject without frothing at the mouth. Dan Egan takes on one of the biggest--the transformation of the world's largest reserve of fresh water through the multiple assaults of industrial pollution, invasive species, and fertilizer run-off, and he does so with due regard to both the scientific facts and the people who have tried, with mixed results, to manage an ever-changing system.
The show more Great Lakes hold one-quarter of the liquid fresh water on the surface of the Earth, and for most of their existence they have been an isolated system. Their isolation allowed the evolution of a diverse, unique ecosystem. That isolation was breached by the construction of canals, the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. Wave after wave of invasive species decimated the native life of the lakes while pollution set the rivers that fed the lakes on fire--time after time after time. (You thought it was just once on the Cuyahoga River in 1969? Wrong!)
Perhaps the most amazing thing about this tale is how it illustrates humanity's overall approach to our relationship with the environment. In the story of the Lakes, we see human beings turning a blind eye time and again until some disaster--sometimes a relatively minor one--finally gets enough attention for people to do something about it. And then complacency sneaks back in, and the story repeats. Over . . . and . . . over. We can see this pattern in relation to any number of local and global issues. It's not just the Lakes. It's everything. But the story of the Lakes is bigger than we might have thought, because their invasion by zebra and quagga mussels, which can literally suck the life out of a body of water, presaged something even larger: these creatures escaped into the Mississipi River system and then, on recreational boats, to other river systems throughout the country. Very few U.S. rivers remain where they have not established a hold, and probably they cannot be stopped from getting into the rest of them.
Egan lays out the human costs of these environmental disasters, both in soft terms and in hard dollar terms. Often the cost to business is cited as a reason to avoid environmental regulation, but the costs to the fishing and recreation industries, and the exorbitant amounts involved in keeping invasive mussels from clogging water intakes and shutting down the water supplies to entire communities, is staggering. The cost to commercial ships found harboring invasive species as they come into the Great Lakes? A rarely-applied $3000 fine. Never applied, actually. That's the maximum. The few fines levied have been on the order of $300.
Egan doesn't point too many fingers, though. He seems to understand that people are complex, that the decisions that led to our modern predicament were made by people dealing with what they knew at the time and trying to balance a variety of needs. If there is any blame here, it is directed only at the federal bureaucracy, which has stubbornly refused to act on solid scientific information to protect the Great Lakes from further assaults. Otherwise, this is more about offering people information on what has happened and what is happening now, so that they can make informed decisions. Couple that with one of the most engaging styles I have read in a nonfiction book recently, and this is an absolutely fantastic book. It's hard to put it down. I recommend that you pick it up. Soon. show less
The show more Great Lakes hold one-quarter of the liquid fresh water on the surface of the Earth, and for most of their existence they have been an isolated system. Their isolation allowed the evolution of a diverse, unique ecosystem. That isolation was breached by the construction of canals, the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. Wave after wave of invasive species decimated the native life of the lakes while pollution set the rivers that fed the lakes on fire--time after time after time. (You thought it was just once on the Cuyahoga River in 1969? Wrong!)
Perhaps the most amazing thing about this tale is how it illustrates humanity's overall approach to our relationship with the environment. In the story of the Lakes, we see human beings turning a blind eye time and again until some disaster--sometimes a relatively minor one--finally gets enough attention for people to do something about it. And then complacency sneaks back in, and the story repeats. Over . . . and . . . over. We can see this pattern in relation to any number of local and global issues. It's not just the Lakes. It's everything. But the story of the Lakes is bigger than we might have thought, because their invasion by zebra and quagga mussels, which can literally suck the life out of a body of water, presaged something even larger: these creatures escaped into the Mississipi River system and then, on recreational boats, to other river systems throughout the country. Very few U.S. rivers remain where they have not established a hold, and probably they cannot be stopped from getting into the rest of them.
Egan lays out the human costs of these environmental disasters, both in soft terms and in hard dollar terms. Often the cost to business is cited as a reason to avoid environmental regulation, but the costs to the fishing and recreation industries, and the exorbitant amounts involved in keeping invasive mussels from clogging water intakes and shutting down the water supplies to entire communities, is staggering. The cost to commercial ships found harboring invasive species as they come into the Great Lakes? A rarely-applied $3000 fine. Never applied, actually. That's the maximum. The few fines levied have been on the order of $300.
Egan doesn't point too many fingers, though. He seems to understand that people are complex, that the decisions that led to our modern predicament were made by people dealing with what they knew at the time and trying to balance a variety of needs. If there is any blame here, it is directed only at the federal bureaucracy, which has stubbornly refused to act on solid scientific information to protect the Great Lakes from further assaults. Otherwise, this is more about offering people information on what has happened and what is happening now, so that they can make informed decisions. Couple that with one of the most engaging styles I have read in a nonfiction book recently, and this is an absolutely fantastic book. It's hard to put it down. I recommend that you pick it up. Soon. show less
Okay, what do Asian carp, sea lamprey, homo sapiens, zebra mussels and climate change have in common? They are all destroying the mighty Great Lakes. Ouch! The five Great Lakes are one of the true wonders of the world, but we are continuously throwing wicked curve balls at this amazing water system. A system we all take for granted, much like our great oceans.
Dan Egan, a prize winning journalist, lays it all out here: the history, the canal systems, the invasive species, the various show more battles, which include the losses and recoveries and finally what can be done to restore and revitalize these national treasures.
Egan is a fine writer and his narrative flow, is smart and informative. At first, I thought this might be just a grim, painful look at the destruction of the Great Lakes, but Egan balances it out with some humor and a surprising amount of hope. Highly recommended. show less
Dan Egan, a prize winning journalist, lays it all out here: the history, the canal systems, the invasive species, the various show more battles, which include the losses and recoveries and finally what can be done to restore and revitalize these national treasures.
Egan is a fine writer and his narrative flow, is smart and informative. At first, I thought this might be just a grim, painful look at the destruction of the Great Lakes, but Egan balances it out with some humor and a surprising amount of hope. Highly recommended. show less
The (mis)management of the Great Lakes has been so terrible that they might actually be better off if we'd just stuck to not managing them at all.
If you think I am exaggerating, read this book. If you want to get so angry at some of the players in this tragicomedy, so angry that you will wish you could go back in time and beat them within an inch of their life (or just find them in the present -- some are still alive; handy, eh?), read this. However, after reading this, you might be so show more depressed by the whole thing you find you lack the energy to beat anyone to within an inch of anything.
At the same time, we have so grossly, evilly, and selfishly mismanaged and polluted all the Earth's waters, you might, as you are reading this, just nod and say, "Par for the course," to yourself.
Better though would be that if you care about the Great Lakes and you read this and it does indeed make you angry, channel that anger into contacting your state legislator(s) and governor and tell them that perhaps, just maybe, the primary goal of managing the Lakes ought not to be stocking them with the most exciting fish to catch (something only 10% of Americans do) and hiding behind wildly overblown, decades old estimates of what it would take re-isolate the Lakes from the oceans. show less
If you think I am exaggerating, read this book. If you want to get so angry at some of the players in this tragicomedy, so angry that you will wish you could go back in time and beat them within an inch of their life (or just find them in the present -- some are still alive; handy, eh?), read this. However, after reading this, you might be so show more depressed by the whole thing you find you lack the energy to beat anyone to within an inch of anything.
At the same time, we have so grossly, evilly, and selfishly mismanaged and polluted all the Earth's waters, you might, as you are reading this, just nod and say, "Par for the course," to yourself.
Better though would be that if you care about the Great Lakes and you read this and it does indeed make you angry, channel that anger into contacting your state legislator(s) and governor and tell them that perhaps, just maybe, the primary goal of managing the Lakes ought not to be stocking them with the most exciting fish to catch (something only 10% of Americans do) and hiding behind wildly overblown, decades old estimates of what it would take re-isolate the Lakes from the oceans. show less
A solid, detailed and often depressing history of the use (or misuse) of our Great Lakes, with a surprisingly simple prescription for assuring their survival--cut off the routes invasive species use to get into the lakes, mostly commercial shipping, and let the lakes recover on their own. He compares not doing this to treating a lung cancer patient with chemo but not getting him to stop smoking. The book is full of detailed instances of ignorance and willful stupidity, but still rings with show more an unmistakable love for this unique ecosystem. I grew up in Michigan, in the very midst of these lakes, and was chagrined to find I didn't know much about them, which of course is a large part of the problem. The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer, and it's easy to see why. show less
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