Water quality concerns are not new to the Great Lakes. They emerged early in the 20th century, in 1909, and matured in 1972 and 1978. They remain a prominent part of today's conflicted politics and advancing industrial growth. The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, under the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909, became a model to the world for environmental management across an international boundary. Evolution of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement recounts this historic binational relationship, an agreement intended to protect the fragile Great Lakes. One strength of the agreement is its flexibility, which includes a requirement for periodic review that allows modification as problems are solved, conditions change, or scientific research reveals new problems. The first progress was made in the 1970s in the area of eutrophication, the process by which lakes gradually age, which normally takes thousands of years to progress, but is accelerated by modern water pollution. The binational agreement led to the successful lowering of phosphorus levels that saved Lake Erie and prevented accelerated eutrophication in the rest of the Great Lakes ecosystem. Another major success at the time was the identification and lowering of the levels of toxic contaminants that cause major threats to human and wildlife health, from accumulating PCBs and other persistent organic pollutants

The important new 1999 Supplement to this widely-used sourcebook contains the text of 48 major treaties and other legal instruments completed between 1991 and 1998. These instruments represent the important developments in international environmental law since the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development. Both volumes are ideally suited for adoption in international environmental law courses. Special classroom prices are available. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.

The International Joint Commission is required to report to the governments of Canada and the United Sates ate least biennially on its findings with respect to the implementation of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Normally the Commission's Biennial Reports made after each biennial Meeting reflect primarily the results of the Commission's consideration of the reports of its Great Lakes Water Quality and Great Lakes Science Advisory Boards for the two years since the preceding Biennial Report. This Biennial Report is also prepared with the benefit of having available to us the substantial and useful reports of these Boards. (...)on this occasion, the Report should also discuss specifically the input we have received from the public, and particularly the public input at the Biennial Meeting itself.