Bob Marini has grown up with Lake Michigan.

As a kid, he fished with his dad in South Chicago, pulling in perch and salmon from Lake Michigan.

In all his years, the Highland resident said he has avoided eating his catch.

Marini is among the countless people from the region who flock to the lake for recreation. He also is among the many whose experiences have been influenced by a legacy of pollution.

But even as battles wage over industrial wastewater permits in the Calumet Region and around the great lake, some environmentalists concede that the level of pollution and its regulation have improved in recent years.

Marini called it "unacceptable" when he heard BP had wanted to increase its discharges and takes the position that no pollution is acceptable.

"You shouldn't be polluting the lake at all," Marini said. "It's amazing that there's any fish there at all."

But there are fish, and Marini has taught all of his kids -- four daughters and one son -- how to hook them.

Meanwhile, some environmental experts believe the lake is safer than some have come to believe.

Lee Botts' house in Gary's Miller neighborhood is a short trek from the lake, the purity of which she has been advocating for more than three decades.

"In many ways, it's enormously improved, and people need to understand that," Botts said of the lake's quality.

Botts said she is confident that during most days of the year, the water in Lake Michigan is safe for fishing, swimming or surfing its modest waves.

Botts spent her childhood in the Dust Bowl plains of western Oklahoma, shuffling to and from school wearing a dust-repellant face mask. She longed for a natural, aquatic wonder like Lake Michigan.

She fights to get it clean with the same wonderment of the lake she's had for years.

Of people who say they won't go into the water, for fear that it's dirty, Botts says, "They're missing out on a good time."

In the beginning, environmentalists and lakefront industries seemed like enemies, Botts said. But those relationships and their effects have evolved, she said. It can be seen in beautification efforts of lakefront industry and industrial support of the Indiana Dunes.

"I don't always agree with them now," Botts said. "And they don't always agree with me, heaven knows."

But they hash out their issues, she said, hopefully to the betterment of the lake.

Behind the gates and desks of those once "enemies" sit people who say they also appreciate the lake.

"I grew up in Michigan, fished the streams," said Dan Sajkowski, manager of the BP Whiting plant. "The people here, they enjoy the lake."

The BP Whiting plant is as much invested in the lake's future as anyone, he said.