America’s ‘Most Polluted’ Lake Finally Comes Clean

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Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, N.Y., has often been called the most
polluted lake in America. It was hammered by a one-two punch: raw and
partially treated sewage from the city and its suburbs, and a century’s
worth of industrial dumping. But now the final stage in a $1 billion
cleanup is about to begin.

Standing in his office amid stacks of reports, scientist Steve Effler glances at an old front-page headline of the Syracuse Herald-Journal: “Divers find goo in Onondaga Lake.”

Goo
was just part of the lake’s problem. Effler, who created the Upstate
Freshwater Institute, knows more about the 4.5-square-mile lake than
anyone. But back in the 1950s, before he began studying the lake, he was
a kid riding by in the backseat of his parents’ car.

“The lake [smelled] so bad [from the pollution] that you had to roll the windows up,” he recalls.

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