Fans of Lake St. Clair's 420 square miles of water connecting
Lake Erie and Lake Huron want to make it the sixth Great Lake.
They should forget it. At 26 miles long and 14 miles wide at its
widest, this lake is important as a link and an established part
of the Great Lakes waterway system. But a Great Lake? The notion
makes no more sense than an effort four years ago to designate
Lake Champlain, which lies between Vermont and New York, a Great
Lake. Leading the campaign to promote Lake St. Clair, a puddle
in comparison with Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and
Ontario, are two members of the Macomb Water Quality Board.
Their aims are as economic as ecological, as connected to sport
fishing as to shipping, and to clean water as to biodiversity.
What's behind their petition to the Great Lakes Commission is
money. Lake St. Clair's characterization as a “Great,” though it
flies in the face of common sense, would entitle it to federal
dollars allocated to the real Great Lakes for pollution and weed
control,