The EconomistFebruary 10th 2018 United States 372
T
HE abundant fresh water of the Great
Lakes helped turn America’s Midwest
into an industrial powerhouse. Carmakers
in Detroit, steelmakers in Cleveland, brew-
ers in Milwaukee and makers of furniture
in Grand Rapids used huge quantities of
water to produce their wares. They also
abused it. For almost a century they
poured wastewater contaminated with
metals, oils, paint and other toxins back
into the lakes.
Midwesterners woke up to the damage
done when the Chicago, Rouge and Detroit
rivers caught fire in the 1960s, fuelled by the
oily sludge in the lakes and their arteries. In
2010 the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative
was born to improve water quality, clean
up shorelines and restore habitats and spe-
cies. These days, new factories on the
lakes’ shores are viewed with suspicion.
On March 7th Wisconsin’s Department of
Natural Resources will stage a public hear-
ing about the controversial plans of Fox-
conn, a Taiwanese maker of electronics, to
draw 7m gallons of water a day out of Lake
Michigan. Yet those who live near the
Great Lakes are also inadvertently pollut-
ing the water.
When people take antidepressant
drugs or hormonal medicines such as the
contraceptive pill, or even use some
grooming products, traces end up in the
Great Lakes. Diana Aga, a chemist at the
University at Buffalo, has found high con-
centrations of the active ingredients of
antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, Ce-
lexa and Sarafem in the brains of fish taken
from the Niagara river, which connectsLake Erie to Lake Ontario.
According to national health surveys,
the proportion of Americans aged 12 and
over who take antidepressants rose from
7.7% to 12.7% between 1999-2002 and
2011-14. The drugs accumulate in fish. In
some cases the levels of antidepressants
within brain tissue are atleast20 times
higher than in the water. This does not
pose a danger to humans, who seldom eat
fish brain, says Ms Aga. But it could well
damage the ecosystem of the lakes.
Fish respond similarly to humans on
antidepressants. They are less risk-averse
and, it appears, happier. That seems to
make them more likely to be eaten. Victo-
ria Braithwaite, of Penn State University,
worries that these sorts of changes could
trigger the collapse of an entire fish popula-
tion, or even seriously disrupt the biodi-
versity of the lakes—the largest freshwater
ecosystem in the world.
A new study from McMaster University
raises more concerns. It finds that bluegill
sunfish, common in North America, have
to burn much more energy to cope with
the array of toxins that they typically en-
counter. They have less energy left for
growth, reproduction and survival. Efflu-
ent from wastewater treatmentplants does
not kill the fish immediately, but its effect is
insidious, says Graham Scott, one of the
authors of the study.
What can be done? The molecules of
antidepressants and other contaminants
are too small for treatment plants to catch.
Yet Ms Aga says that advanced oxidation
processes can filter out many drugs and
beauty products. It would be hard to up-
date or replace more than 1,400 wastewa-
ter treatment plants around the lakes. But
pressure for change could grow, especially
if local industries begin to suffer. Last sum-
mer tourists visiting Niagara Falls spotted a
large amount ofblack sludge in the river. A
few months later, Andrew Cuomo, the go-
vernor of New York state, proposed to in-
vest $20m in the wastewater system. 7The Great LakesMind-bending
CHICAGO
Antidepressants are finding their way
into fish brainsLooking good. Feeling great!the world. In 2007, as he was preparing for
the National Finals Rodeo—the year’s most
prestigious competition—his horse flipped
over, pinning him against the chute. He
was paralysed from the waist down.
“I was very independent, and focused
on my rodeo career,” says Mr Sutton. “But I
was raised to never give up, never quit, no
matter the situation.” Following rehabilita-
tion, Mr Sutton returned to Burke, first get-
ting a job at a local bank and then winning
a state-senate seat in 2010, when he was 26
years old. He is one ofjust sixDemocrats in
the chamber.
Ryan Maher, a Republican senator, be-
lieves Mr Sutton will give Republicans “the
biggest challenge they’ve had in 30 years.”
The main divide in South Dakota politics,
he posits, isnot between Democrats and
Republicans but between urban and rural
regions. That works to Mr Sutton’s advan-
tage. As a country politician, he under-
stands rural issues and voters. As a Demo-
crat, he stands to do well in the state’s more
liberal urban areas. His personal story
should resonate with South Dakotans of
all stripes.Roping them in
In the general election Mr Sutton will prob-
ably face either Kristi Noem—who has
spent the lastseven years in Washington as
the state’s sole House of Representatives
member—or Marty Jackley, who has spent
nearly a decade as the state’s attorney gen-
eral. For someone running a campaign fo-
cused on making government work for or-
dinary people, as Mr Sutton is, these are
dream opponents, especially if their prim-
ary turnsnasty. “If he can just getthe state
party to lay low,” says Mr Maher, “he has a
fighting chance.”
The Democratic brand is often toxic in
rural America, where it is seen as a party of
coastal elites. But Western voters seem
willing to pull the lever for the right kind of
Democratic candidate. Although Mr
Trump easily won Montana, for instance,
that state hasa Democraticsenator and go-
vernor. For a brief spell last decade, South
Dakota’s two US senators were both
Democrats, as wasits sole congresswom-
an. South Dakotans recently voted to raise
the minimum wage. They also approved
some sweeping campaign-finance re-
forms, of the kind that liberals adore—al-
though the legislature balked at that.
Mr Sutton is a pro-life, pro-gun, church-
going Democrat, just as Heidi Heitkamp—a
Democratic senator from North Dakota—
supports fracking and the Keystone oil
pipeline. They are less prairie populists
than prairie pragmatists, focused on kitch-
en-table issues and connecting to individ-
ual voters rather than joining the partisan
vanguard. Their positions may be anathe-
ma in Brooklyn and San Francisco. But
what works near the oceans does not al-
ways play in the plains. 7