At least there’s a plan—and a pretty good one, at that. The Obama administration has unveiled a five-year, $2.2 billion plan to rescue the Great Lakes from toxic contamination, shrinking wildlife habitat and invasive species such as the Asian carp.

The work is urgent, and not just from the perspective of an Illinoisan president or a region that perches on two of the lakes. The ecosystem of the Great Lakes is unique. It holds 20 percent of the world’s fresh water supply, yet it has been treated with disregard for a century. President Obama, as he pledged during his election campaign, is at last doing what has long been needed.

The plan has several goals to achieve by 2014, including finishing the cleanup of five toxic hot spots, reducing the rate at which invasive species are discovered in the lakes, decreasing phosphorus runoff and protecting nearly 100,000 acres of wetlands.

There are, of course, parochial concerns. The lakes form a critical part of Western New York’s economy and its history. Lake Erie provides Buffalo’s water. Fishing, boating and other water-based recreation are tied to the region’s livelihood. Water from the lakes powers the generation of electricity in the Lower Niagara River. Our lives are tied to the lakes and the Niagara River in ways we don’t always even recognize.

Beyond the economic and environmental issues, though, is that of uniqueness. The Great Lakes are to North America as the Sahara Desert is to Africa—an unimagineably large and influential geographic phenomenon. They deserve our care and attention.

There was a time when we poorly understood the damage we were inflicting on the lakes with sewage, agricultural runoff and industrial pollution. But that excuse is long gone. We know now what we have done and what we need to do to save the lakes.

With growing budget deficits linked largely to efforts to ease the recession, the recently proposed budget cuts the initially planned allocation for Great Lakes cleanup efforts. That’s an unfortunate necessity, although future funding is intended to make up for it.

Obama has made a good start on this—good enough that Great Lakes governors praised it as the plan they would have come up with themselves. The trick now will be to ensure that the project wins the funding it needs to proceed and the continued attention it needs to succeed.