Researchers at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee have discovered that plastic pollution makes yellow perch less nutritious. While this study was of juvenile yellow perch, other studies suggest that the nutritional value of other species could also be harmed by plastic. Read the full story by Great Lakes Echo.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221031-plastic
The Port of Monroe, Michigan has been awarded $11,051,586 through the Port Infrastructure Development Program, which will go toward the port’s Lake Erie Renewable Energy Resilience Project, funding four components: riverfront work, turning basin work, maritime readiness slip construction and shore power infrastructure. Read the full story by The Monroe News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221031-port-monroe
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers is backing an effort that would add Green Bay’s estuary to a national network of estuaries focused on conservation. This week, Governor Evers announced that there will be a formal request of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to add Green Bay to the National Estuarine Research Reserve, or NERR, System, a network of nearly 1.4 million protected acres. Read and listen to the full story by Wisconsin Public Radio.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221031-green-bay
Republican and Democratic state legislators, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, Ducks Unlimited, and Audubon-Great Lakes all gathered this past week to discuss the use of $30 million in American Rescue Plan Act money for wetlands in areas that drain into Lake Erie and the Saginaw Bay of Lake Huron. Read and listen to the full story by Michigan Radio.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221031-wetlands
The nonprofit WATERshed Program of Southeast Wisconsin recently received grants to support its award-winning, hands-on environmental education program for Racine students during the 2022-2023 school year. The grants will be used to help educate students about the value of living in a coastal community with freshwater resources, and to demonstrate how human activities impact local watersheds. Read the full story by The Journal Times.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221031-wisconsin-water
Saturday, the Niagara Coastal organization in Fort Erie, Ontario was joined by representatives from Niagara College, Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority, Town of Fort Erie and others for a coastal day of action, planting and transplanting native beach grass along the shore at Bay Beach. Read the full story by the St. Catharines Standard.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221031-niagara
Now is the time for a new CWA, call it the Clean Water Alliance, a pervasive grassroots initiative in support of responsible lakefront living, wise use of lake resource and protection of inland lakes which face the threat of severe decline. A Clean Water Alliance would become a potent grassroots force to influence lake-protective laws and regulations where necessary. Read the full story by Wisconsin Examiner.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221031-inland-lakes
The idea of utilizing wind energy above the waters of Lake Erie is again a focus of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority in their second feasibility study. The first report by NYSERDA lists many concerns about placing wind turbines and their infrastructure in one of the world’s largest freshwater ecosystems and drinking water sources. Read the full story by Buffalo News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221031-wind
Two fishermen accused of conspiring to cheat in a lucrative Lake Erie walleye tournament pleaded not guilty before a grand jury this past week in Cleveland, Ohio to felony charges of cheating, attempted grand theft, possession of criminal tools and alleged misdemeanors. Read the full story by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221031-fishing
The Medina County (Ohio) Park District is creating the Little Killbuck Creek Wetlands project on a 173-acre site it acquired through a $900,000 H2Ohio grant. At least 55 acres of wetland will be restored at the Little Killbuck Creek Wetlands site. Read the full story by Akron Beacon Journal.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221031-h2ohio
This past week marked the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act passed by Congress to protect U.S. waterways from abuses. Decades later, progress has been made but many waterways are still in peril and a new challenge has emerged; the fallout of thousands of sites potentially contaminated with perfluorooctanoic acid and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid substances known as PFAS. Read the full story by Macomb Daily.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221024-cwa-pfas
The history of Cleveland, Ohio is intertwined with the story of its water. Jeff Opperman retells the history of Cleveland and its relationship with Great Lakes water through beer labels focused on the history of the region. Read the full story by Cleveland.com.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221024-cleveland-history
Algal blooms are wreaking havoc in Lake Erie, but the Michigan Department of Natural Resources has a plan: swamps. Since blooms commonly occur when runoff from farmland carrying fertilizer enters a body of water, like Lake Erie, a wetland that can intercept runoff from farms would act as a barrier, slowing down the flow of the water and giving the phosphorus time to absorb into the soil. Read the full story by Capital News Service.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221024-algae-bloom
Graphic Packaging spilled roughly 1,500 gallons of industrial wastewater into the Kalamazoo River this past week, sparking a no-contact order along a nearly six mile stretch of the river north of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221024-kalamazoo-river
Community member conflict and criticism increase over limited involvement and PFAS cleanup efforts and plans at Wurtsmith Air Force Base Oscoda, Michigan. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221024-pfas
Coastal port congestion is sparking interest in short-sea shipping on the Great Lakes, in U.S. ports like the Port of Cleveland and in Canadian ports. Read the full story by WKYC-TV – Cleveland, OH.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221024-short-shipping
CCGS Vincent Massey and her two sister ships, CCGS Jean Goodwill and CCGS Captain Molly Kool, were purchased in 2018 to keep icebreaking services running in Atlantic Canada, the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. Read the full story by Maritime Executive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221024-icebreaker
This past week the Western New York Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management hosted its Invasive Species Symposium at SUNY Buffalo State, which is home to the Great Lakes Center. Over the course of the day, partners spoke about some of the many different adaptive management approaches that are in use across the region on both land and water, and what can be learned from their successes and failures. Read the full story by The Post-Journal.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221024-new-york-invasive
Lake Ontario’s levels are currently just below the historical average, and just about a foot lower than at this time last year. Officials state that this is above the record lows, and within a normal range. Read the full story by WRVO-TV – Oswego, NY.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221024-lake-ontario
Shipments of limestone on the Great Lakes totaled 3.5 million tons in September, a decrease of 3.7 percent compared to a year ago. Limestone cargos were below the month’s 5-year average by 2.7 percent. Read the full story by Lake Superior News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20221024-limestone-shipping
Momentum continues to build in the Green Bay area for the National Estuarine Research Reserve, a federal designation to help protect and study coastal wetlands and natural estuaries. Land set aside for the reserve is designated through a six-step process that usually takes about four to six years to finish. Read the full story by Press Times.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220926-national-reserve
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between Canada and the United States, which is happening without the prime minister or the president planning to come together as Richard Nixon and Pierre Trudeau did in 1972. Water communities, led by Indigenous leaders are coming together to renew our commitments and celebrate the Great Lakes, but will our leaders be listening? Read the full story by Toronto Star.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220926-glwqa
A dugout canoe used by indigenous people 3,000 years ago recently recovered from Wisconsin’s Lake Mendota is the oldest canoe ever found in the Great Lakes region. The canoe, which was carved from a single piece of white oak and is 14.5 feet long, was discovered near where a 1,200-year-old fully intact canoe was found last November. Read the full story by CNN.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220926-canoe
A local group in Chicago is launching a campaign this fall that asks Wolf Lake fishers that catch mudpuppies, a threatened population of aquatic salamanders, to immediately release the threatened and endangered animal. Read the full story by Block Club Chicago.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220926-mudpuppies
A lifetime of taking in Michigan’s pristine wilderness coupled with a calling to protect it has led Colleen Linn into the research field, analyzing the division in why some people care about environmental issues and others don’t. Read the full story by WOOD-TV – Grand Rapids, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220926-michigan
Avoiding Coast Guard regulations, potential damage and a horrific cost atop the $1 million already spent and the bucketloads to come, the Ste. Claire will not sail. Essentially, it will be an ornate barge, but the owners figure the memories are more important than the motion. Read the full story by the Detroit Free Press.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220926-steamer
This weekend, three cruise ships made their way into the city of Milwaukee’s port, one being the Viking Octantis cruise ship. It marked one of the final ships of the 2022 season and the last Viking cruise of the season. Read the full story by Spectrum News 1.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220926-cruise
A water spout was spotted in Lake Erie this weekend near Lake County, Ohio. Read the full story by WJW-TV – Cleveland, OH.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220926-waterspout
The Great Lakes Water Authority is asking communities that were affected by a 120-inch water main break August 13th in St. Clair County, Michigan to continue to limit outdoor water use until the authority completes a flushing and disinfection process at the main. The advisory was lifted in less than two days for most communities, and all were relieved of the boil order within a week. Read the full story by The Oakland Press.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220926-water-main
The sixth year of Harbor Fest drew hundreds out to the riverfront this past weekend to celebrate Milwaukee’s waterways. Read and view the full story by WITI-TV – Milwaukee, WI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220926-harbor-fest
Milwaukee will host three prominent Great Lakes summits this fall, drawing in 1,200 attendees and over $1.2 million projected in total estimated economic impact. The US Water Alliance’s One Water Summit, The Water Council’s Water Leaders Summit, and Healing Our Waters Great Lakes Conference will be heading to Milwaukee in the next few weeks. Read the full story by WTMJ-TV – Milwaukee, WI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220914-milwaukee-summits
Project partners including NOAA, the Great Lakes Commission and the Ohio Public Works Commission celebrated the completion of a 200-acre renaturalized area at the Valley View Area of Cascade Valley Metro Park in Ohio, located near the confluence of Cuyahoga and Little Cuyahoga rivers that flow into Lake Erie. Read the full story by the Akron Beacon Journal.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220914-restoration
As a part of a water trail network called the Great Lakes Way, officials in Michigan and Canada signed a memorandum of understanding last week to connect pedestrian trails on either side of the border of a new bridge over the Detroit River. The bridge is scheduled to open by the end of 2024. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220914-international-path
Michigan legislators in 2021 approved a five-year, $25 million budget for the state Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to target farms in five 20,000-acre sub-watersheds in southeast Michigan for intensive analysis of nutrient runoff. Read the full story by Great Lakes Now.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220914-nutrient-runoff
A resolution for flooding at Sheba’s Island causeway and general improvement and protection are the focus areas for the West Lake Community Association, located East of Toronto along Lake Ontario, to help sustaining a healthy lake and wetlands. Read the full story by County Live.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220914-community-wetland
Federal officials announced plans this week to list the tricolored bat as endangered, the second U.S. bat species recommended for the designation this year as a fungal disease ravages their populations. The northern long-eared and the tricolored are among a dozen North American bats afflicted by white-nose syndrome, which disrupts their crucial winter hibernation. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220914-bats
After 25 years of discussions, the Port of Oswego Authority and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have agreed to fund and conduct a study to deepen Oswego Harbor in Lake Ontario. Once complete, Seawaymax Class freighters, the largest to travel the Great Lakes, U.S. Navy ships and Great Lakes cruise ships could use the Port of Oswego. Read the full story by Spectrum News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220914-harbor
It has been more than two years since the collapse of the Sanford and Edenville Dams in mid-Michigan, which drained the lakes the dams once held back. While the lakes have remained dry, the beds of the drained lakes are now teeming with vegetation. Read the full story by WNEM-TV – Sanford, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220914-dams
As Great Lakes cruising picks up, the town of Bayfield, Wisconsin, weighs the pros and cons of more ships and their impact on the town and the environment. Read the full story by The New York Times.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220914-cruising
The public is invited to tour the sturgeon passage facility at the Menominee Dam in Menominee, Wisconsin, on Sept. 20. Attendees will learn how Lake Michigan’s sturgeon population can now navigate around two hydroelectric dams on the Menominee River to spawn. Read the full story by the EagleHerald.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220914-sturgeon
Nearly a dozen waterspouts have been spotted over Lake Erie and Lake Michigan this past week. Several Northeast Ohio residents witnessed the phenomenon, as at least one waterspout was seen over Lake Erie west of Cleveland. Read the full story by WEWS-TV – Cleveland, OH.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220914-waterspout
In the year since its designation, the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary has been busy laying the groundwork for future tourism and research, including sonar mapping of the lakebed in the entire sanctuary, installing weather buoys and searching for undiscovered shipwrecks. Read the full story by Manitowoc Herald Times.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220829-shipwreck-sanctuary
The annual fall migration of monarch butterflies is about to be underway, when scores of the iconic black-and-orange winged insects, recently categorized as endangered, travel thousands of miles to their wintering grounds in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico. As monarchs navigate through the Great Lakes, the migration is viewable in Michigan’s hotspots: Stonington Peninsula and Tawas Point State Park. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220829-monarch-butterflies
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the Ohio Power Siting had obtained enough information about the potential impacts of Icebreaker on birds and bats before issuing a permit for the project. Now that legal obstacles to the Icebreaker project have been removed, efforts to construct the demonstration wind farm in Lake Erie have started up again. Read the full story by The Plain Dealer.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220829-wind
Nearly $500,000 in Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding was awarded to Muskegon County Water Resources for additional restoration work for Mona Lake. The Great Lakes fish habitat funding will pay for long-contemplated restoration of former celery fields that previously were wetlands along Black Creek and Mona Lake (located inland along Lake Michigan, northwest of Grand Rapids, Michigan). Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220829-restoration
A pair of eco-friendly drones or “litter bots” made their Michigan debut in Muskegon on this week along the shores of Lake Michigan, where the drones whimsically named “PixieDrone” and “BeBot” trundled through the water and the sand gathering plastic debris that has become endemic in the Great Lakes. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220829-drone
Ongoing consideration of remediation and excavation efforts for coal ash ponds in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina may have implications and serve as an example for coal ash units in Indiana and Ohio. Read the full story by Great Lakes Now.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220829-coal-ash
Staff and volunteers at the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority in Southern Ontario are working to restore eroding riverbanks along the Nottawasaga River to improve habitat for two species at risk, lake sturgeon and northern brook lamprey. Read the full story by Collingwood Today.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220829-ontario-fish
Shannon Orr, a professor of political science at Bowling Green State University, is being recognized by Case Studies in the Environment with its top prize article for 2021 for her award-winning research into the various competing interests for keeping Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. Read the full story by Sentinel-Tribune.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220829-carp
On a beautiful and sunny Sunday in Kingston, Ontario, a group of local divers strapped on their gear and hit the water in the name of sustainability. At Gord Downie Pier the divers convened toting along their gear in preparation for the first-ever trash dive for Sustainable Kingston’s “Underwater Pitch-IN” event. Read the full story by Global News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20220829-trash-dive
