For decades, researchers have been trying to bring back the arctic grayling to Michigan without success. Now, more than 50 collaborators think bringing back the arctic grayling has a shot at success. Read the full story by WUOM – Ann Arbor, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20210106-arctic-grayling
Ohio Sea Grant, The Ohio State University and The University of Toledo are requesting pre-proposals for one- to two-year research projects from Ohio colleges and universities as part of the Ohio Department of Higher Education’s Harmful Algal Bloom Research Initiative. Read the full story by The Bryan Times.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20210106-algal-bloom-research
A northern Michigan Native American community is refusing to assist Enbridge on a cultural resource survey of the Straits of Mackinac. Read the full story by WPBN-TV – Traverse City, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20210106-michigan-tribe
The Adopt-A-Nest Osprey Monitoring Program enables citizen scientist volunteers to monitor osprey nests in their area. This marked the third phase of the osprey reintroduction program in Michigan. Read the full story by The News-Herald.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20210106-osprey
The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Act has been signed into law, delivering a “major increase” in funding for the Great Lakes. Read the full story by Niagara Frontier Publications.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20210106-glri
Generous donors are helping the Lake Superior Research Institute and the University of Wisconsin Superior inch closer to making a floating classroom a reality. Read the full story by KQDS-TV – Duluth, MN.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20210106-floating-classroom
The endangered piping plovers have chosen a sliver of Montrose Beach as their yearly nesting ground. The space should be added to the nearby dunes natural area, conservationists say. Read the full story by Block Club Chicago.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20210106-piping-plovers
The few commercial fishing businesses that remain in Michigan are suing the state’s Department of Natural Resources over changes to industry rules, stating that the new provisions will make commercial fishing all but impossible. Read the full story by WKAR – East Lansing, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20210106-commercial-fishing
The federal government built lighthouses to protect life and property at risk on stormy seas and their survival requires urgent congressional action. Read the full story by the Kenosha News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20210106-lighthouses
All the Great Lakes saw water levels drop in 2020. Lakes Michigan, Huron and Superior all saw the water level drop 6″ during the year, Lake Erie fell one inch, but the biggest drop was on Lake Ontario, with a year-to-year drop of 14″. Read the full story by WOOD-TV – Grand Rapids, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20210106-water-level
Ten months after being approved in U.S. House with heavy bipartisan support, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Act has passed the Senate and is headed for President Donald Trump’s desk. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201221-glri
Scientists recently reported pronounced reductions in both cladophora algae and quagga mussel density in Lake Michigan’s offshore waters near Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore after an underwater project by the Invasive Mussel Collaborative. Read the full story by the Traverse City Record Eagle.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201221-invasive-mussels-removed
Shorelines across Lake Michigan are eroding, costing Great Lakes states millions of dollars in temporary solutions to protect shorelines and near-shore areas. Read the full story by the Star Tribune.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201221-beach-erosion
Work has finally started on a new shipping lock in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, more than 30 years after the project was first proposed. Read the the full story by WDET – Detroit, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201221-soo-locks
This is the second year in a row cyanobacteria has appeared on several popular northern Michigan lakes, including Au Sable, Black, and Cadillac, causing health problems for people and their pets. Read the full story by The Detroit News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201221-michigan-algae
An Ontario company pleaded guilty to a negligent violation of the Clean Water Act for dumping waste water into Lake Ontario. Read the full story by WKBW-TV – Buffalo, NY.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201221-dumping-waste-water
In the State of Michigan’s next fiscal year, there’s about $500 million available for fixing up sewer pipes and updating wastewater plants to prevent raw sewage flowing into streams and rivers. So far, municipalities have applied for $200 million. Read the full story by WUOM – Ann Arbor, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201221-sewer-loans
Google Earth imagery shows the dramatic change in Chicago beaches from 2013, when the lake was at a record low point, to this year when Lake Michigan continues to remain at historically high levels. Read the full story by WLS-TV – Detroit, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201221-chicago-beaches
When it comes to New York’s world-class fisheries across the state, the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Bureau of Fisheries has performed admirably well in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic; fish were stocked, eggs were collected, and surveys were still conducted. Read the full story by The Buffalo News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201221-fisheries-management
Michigan-native Dusty Klifman dives below their surfaces to photograph and share the stories and histories of some of the six-thousand Great Lakes shipwrecks. Read the full story by WOOD-TV – Grand Rapids, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201221-shipwrecks
Ducks Unlimited has joined with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and more than 40 other organizations to implement H2Ohio, a data-driven water quality plan to reduce harmful algal blooms, improve wastewater infrastructure and prevent lead contamination across Ohio. Read the full story by Richland Source.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201210-h2ohio
The Ohio Senate voted unanimously this week to strip away a House-approved, long-term funding plan for cleanup of Lake Erie and other waterways. Read the full story by the Toledo Blade.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201210-ohio-senate-bill
The small Michigan regulatory panel charged with deciding whether to let Enbridge build a tunnel-encased pipeline under the Mackinac Straits is shifting gears, announcing that it has ordered a rehearing for Enbridge’s application now that the company’s 1953 easement has been revoked by the state. Read the full story by Michigan Advance.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201210-enbridge-permit
Michigan lawmakers planned to begin swiftly passing a plan to borrow $600 million to fund the state’s proposed settlement with the residents of Flint, who sued after their municipal water supply was contaminated with elevated levels of lead for 18 months. Read the full story by The Associated Press.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201210-flint-water-settlement
The U.S. House voted to authorize the Brandon Road Lock & Dam project in Illinois as part of the final Water Resources and Development Act, an infrastructure bill that’s among several major year-end pieces of legislation moving right now through Congress. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201210-carp
Farmers use underground systems to manage rainwater, including many located where a massive swamp once made up the Ohio landscape. All those farms face challenges managing fertilizers and water in their fields with drainage systems. The level of success at managing those challenges can be seen in the size and severity of the yearly harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie. Read the full story by Great Lakes Now.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201210-field-tiles
The Great Lakes Water Authority will unveil a long-range, 40-year plan aimed at keeping more of the unmentionable stuff we flush out of our waterways while also keeping a lid on water and sewer rates. Read the full story by the Detroit Free Press.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201210-detroit-sewage
Flint has taken important steps toward resolving the lead contamination crisis that made the impoverished Michigan city a symbol of the drinking water problems that plague many U.S. communities, officials said earlier this week. Read the full story by The Associated Press.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201210-flint-water-crisis
A decision is near on whether the monarch butterfly, an iconic and beloved pollinator that migrates through the Great Lakes region each year, warrants listing as an endangered species in the U.S. as its population counts dwindle due to habitat loss. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201210-monarch-butterfly
If the permitting and development go just right, the site of a former iron ore mine closed in 1981 could be generating enough solar power by 2023 to power 4,000 homes. Read and listen to the full story by WXPR Rhinelander.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201210-redeveloped-mine
With the announcement earlier this fall that Ontario’s Prince Edward County’s South Shore could be designated as a conservation reserve, the South Shore Joint Initiative (SSJI) hosted the first of a new webinar series where people learned not only what a conservation reserve is, but also what it’s not, and how it differs to a conservation area and a nature reserve. Read the full story by Countylive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20201210-convservation-webinar
For years Minnesota biologists stocked remote lakes with trout by dropping them out of planes in sometimes risky conditions from about 100 feet. With better equipment, they began using safer and more gentle helicopters in 2020. Read the full story by the Star Tribune.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020130-helicopter-fish-stocking
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office assailed Enbridge Inc. for filing a lawsuit last week in an effort to reverse the state’s order to shut down controversial pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac, saying the oil giant was endangering the Great Lakes. Read the full story by the Detroit Metro Times.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020130-enbridge-lawsuit
After a troublesome nesting season for some Great Lakes piping plovers, one little bird’s big trip this fall is being celebrated as a victory. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020130-piping-plover
The cold-weather dredging at Grand Traverse Harbor in Lake Superior, on Upper Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, is ongoing and being funded by the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community. Read the full story by WXPR – Ironwood, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020130-dredging
After making a real comeback after near extinction in the 1930s from loss of habitat and overhunting, the sandhill crane is now facing a new threat in the Great Lakes: climate change. Read the full story by WTTW – Chicago, IL.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020130-sandhill-cranes
The Michigan departments of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy and Health and Human Services have announced more than $6.5 million in grant funding, and more than $3 million in laboratory equipment purchases, for universities across the state and other partners to run 20 three-month pilot programs to test for the COVID-19 virus in wastewater. Read the full story by the Detroit Free Press.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020130-wastewater-grants
Nearly $2 million in recreation grants will go to local park and trail improvements and developments across eighteen communities, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Read the full story by WDIV-TV – Detroit, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020130-recreation-grants
A famous view of Lake Michigan graces the cover of December’s National Geographic. The image features Empire Bluff, part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Leelanau County. Read the full story by the Manistee News Advocate.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020130-national-geographic
The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw will be angling west toward Chicago, carrying a load of more than 1,000 Christmas trees as it recreates the holiday spirit of Michigan’s ill-fated Christmas Tree Ship, which sank in late November 1912. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020130-christmas-tree-ship
As winter sets in, Great Lakes water levels’ seasonal decline is well underway. But the threat of more shoreline erosion and flooding from unusually high water remains for summer 2021. Read the full story by the Toledo Blade.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020130-water-levels
The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy on Friday rejected a case challenging Nestle Waters North America’s permit to increase their water withdrawals from its facility in Osceola County. Read the full story by WDIV-TV – Detroit, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020123-nestle-case-dismissed
Michigan environmental officials are turning to radio telemetry and modified shower loofas in their fight to contain a tasty invader in the state: the red swamp crayfish. Read the full story by WOOD-TV – Grand Rapids, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020123-michigan-invader
A power outage at a pump station led to raw sewage being dumped over the weekend into mid-Michigan’s Flint River. Water quality tests on the Flint River will be performed, with the results posted on the State of Michigan website. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020123-flint-river-sewage
A long-awaited renovation of a Lake Michigan trout and salmon hatchery, promised by state officials since 2013, is getting closer to completion but is still not ready to take fish. Read the full story by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020123-hatchery-renovation
The director of the environmental law clinic at University of Detroit Mercy updates viewers about the latest legal actions on Line 5 and provides a refresher about what the pipeline is all about. Read the full story by Great Lakes Now.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020123-line-5-news
After a successful fundraising effort to purchase loads of big riprap rock to protect the iconic Round Island Lighthouse from damaging ice and wave action, contractors shipped out 1,500 tons of big rock on barges to the island. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020123-michigan-lighthouse
Three days of court hearings are expected to take place in January in the legal case against polluter Gelman Sciences, whose toxic chemical plume of dioxane continues to spread through Ann Arbor’s groundwater in southeast Michigan. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020123-dioxane-pollution
With a La Niña in place this winter, what does that mean for the Great Lakes? Will they freeze over? Read the full story by WZZM-TV – Grand Rapids, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020123-ice-forecast
With a La Niña in place this winter, what does that mean for the Great Lakes? Will they freeze over? Read the full story by WZZM-TV – Grand Rapids, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/2020123-ice-forecast
