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In: Featured, Fish, Birds and Animals, Michigan, Science, Technology, Research, whitefish

By Anna Barnes, Michigan Public

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan; Circle of Blue; Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS; Michigan Public, Michigan’s NPR News Leader; and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work HERE.

Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Division received one-time funding of $350,000 for whitefish recovery from the state budget. The ailing species has undergone a rapid population decline in recent years, and for the first time, recovery efforts have a specific line in the state budget.

But officials said while the funding will help rescue some of the most vulnerable lake whitefish populations, it’s not enough to address the systemic ecosystem issues causing the decline.

Randy Claramunt, the state’s fisheries chief, said whitefish have struggled against several different invasive species introductions through the years.

“Populations were very strong until the 50’s and 60’s but when the sea lamprey invasion really hit hard, most populations declined,” he said. “They rebounded up until the time when the next big invasive introduction happened in the Great Lakes.”

Now, invasive zebra and quagga mussels have caused another decline in the population, but this time it’s a crisis, Claramunt said. He said the one-time funding shows legislators recognize the importance of the whitefish.

“It was driven by concerned lawmakers that recognized the problem and wanted to see some action,” he said.

But the funding is limited, and Claramunt said there are at least a dozen vulnerable whitefish stocks across the Great Lakes, many of which will not receive help this time around because others are even more sensitive.

“It’s a drop in the bucket when you look at the scale of the problem,” he said.

Nichole Keway Biber of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians works for Clean Water Action. She said whitefish are a culturally important species to the Anishinaabe tribes in Michigan.

Oral histories of the Anishinaabe and whitefish tell of a deep relationship, Biber said: “At a time of starvation, they decided to sacrifice themselves with the agreement that we’d survive as long as we make sure that they did.”

She said human activities and invasive species have damaged the natural systems that kept whitefish alive until now and while the funding is necessary, the systemic causes of population decline needs to be funded and addressed.

“I think of it as kind of like seed saving,” she said. “Doing what we can to have enough whitefish to survive as we look toward the time where necessarily we’ll be collectively putting our focus on how the ecosystems become restored.”

Keway Biber said the one-time funding is also coming at a time when human activities are threatening the whitefish’s ability to re-populate. She said a project to move an oil and natural gas pipeline from the lakebed on the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac, to a tunnel under the straits, would strain the population.

Permits for the project were issued this week by state agencies, although it still needs further approvals to start construction.

“The tunnel project would put massive amounts of wastewater into the Great Lakes, right into the sensitive ecosystems where whitefish are already struggling and on the brink of collapse,” Keway Biber said.

The decline of whitefish in Michigan is largely attributed to rising populations of invasive mussels.

Claramunt said there is a bill proposed int the state Legislature that would supply the Great Lakes Fishery Commission with $500 million dollars over 10 years to combat the invasive mussels, but he is not counting on it passing any time soon.

Dan O’Keefe, Michigan Sea Grant southwest district extension educator, said research on mussel populations in western Lake Erie has shown a decrease in the species. This is likely due to predation by freshwater drum fish in the region.

The freshwater drum have crushing teeth in the back of their throat which makes eating shelled prey, like the invasive mussels, comparatively easy for them, he said.

There are other native fish in the Great Lakes that can eat mussels, but either their populations are too low to make a difference or the caloric benefit is not sustainable for them, O’Keefe said. (The shell gets in the way, he said.)

The freshwater drum can eat enough of the mussels to sustain itself and the biomass of mussels in western Lake Erie has decreased with populations on a downward trajectory, said O’Keefe. However, the freshwater drum only lives in shallow areas of the Great Lakes, limiting their ability to clear mussels.

Quagga mussels can live in deep water and have spread further into the Great Lakes where fish like the drum will not go.

Sturgeon also eat mussels and in certain cases, they can make up a significant amount of their diet, he said, but sturgeon prefer most other prey to the mussels. Their population is also not large enough to have a great impact on the mussel population.

Ashley Elgin, a research ecologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said mussel control is not possible in the Great Lakes region right now but agencies are focusing on the targeted removal in high value locations.

One strategy, pioneered by the Great Lakes Spawning Whitefish and Invasive Mussels Project, is to infuse carbon dioxide underneath a heavy mat on the lake bottom to smother the mussels, she said.

“We’re also looking at the use of underwater vehicles to be moving custom-designed implements on the bottom that are designed to remove mussels from the sediment and destroy them,” Elgin said.

Elgin said while native fish predation on mussels may not be a complete solution, it should be encouraged.

“If you can take advantage of natural native populations as being part of the control strategy, that makes a lot of sense and we could make it more effective,” she said.

The post Michigan fisheries get one-time funding for whitefish restoration appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/07/23/michigan-fisheries-get-one-time-funding-for-whitefish-restoration/

Michigan Public

On:
In: Energy, energy sovereignty, Featured, Minnesota, nibi chronicles, ojibwe country, solar commons, solar energy, Tribal Governments and First Nations

It takes a lot of energy to power 1,800 slot machines. The Fond du Lac Band of Ojibwe’s Black Bear Casino is located near Cloquet, Minnesota about 20 miles from Duluth. In 2016 the Band took steps to offset the energy and environmental costs of running their casino and hotel complex by installing a 1 megawatt, 5 acre solar array. According to the Band’s Strategic Energy Plan, adding solar as a power source has saved the community about $772,403[SD1]  per year in energy costs. It is just one part of their long-term plan to “develop energy resources in ways that will sustain current and future generations.”

Fond du Lac is not an anomaly in Ojibwe country when it comes to energy reform. In 2017, the Leech Lake Band launched the first community solar garden in the U.S., selling power to the grid and using the savings to subsidize low-income winter heating bills and create workforce training for tribal college students.  

In 2022, the Mille Lacs Band commissioned a 3-megawatt solar array in Hinckley, Minnesota. The system offsets the electric demand needed to run their two casinos — Grand Casino Mille Lacs and Grand Casino Hinckley.

Further north, the Red Lake Nation added a 70-kW rooftop system at the Government Center and a 240-kW system at the Oshkiimaajitahdah workforce center. Red Lake Nation has plans to build 20 more commercial-building systems, plus a 13-MW solar farm.

And, the White Earth Ojibwe Nation is installing a 500-kW solar array with a storage microgrid at the Pine Point Resilience Hub, a new energy outlet expected to come online in 2026.

100-acre organic farm at Bois Forte. (Photo by Marlise Riffel and courtesy of Iron Range Partnership for Sustainability)

Solar Sovereignty

There are seven Ojibwe Nations in Minnesota and five of these communities have embraced alternative energy sources over the last ten years. And now, there are six. The Bois Forte Ojibwe Nation is far away from the sunbelt and winter days are six-to-eight hours long. As Rebecca Gawboy of the Bois Forte community confirmed, “we have shorter days [in winter], but they’re clear. We have really sunny winters for the most part.”

Gawboy is the co-director of Waawaate, a non-profit group that works on food sovereignty projects.

“We established Waawaate because we wanted to do training, information presentations and assistance with people in the community interested in the food sovereignty movement,” she said. “We were always involved in the food sovereignty thing, because growing food and caring for the land are, you know, inherent values for us.”

Bois Forte has made the leap between food sovereignty to energy sovereignty through a program called The Solar Commons. An initiative of the University of Minnesota Duluth, the project was founded by Kathryn Milun, associate professor of Anthropology and the Department of Studies in Justice, Culture and Social Change. Bois Forte is the second “living lab” in the United States. The first lab is located in Tucson, Arizona.

With the help of community partners and a mix of funding, the Solar Commons at Bois Forte has completed one of the short-term goals of the project — building a 500kW solar array in rural, northern Minnesota. The array of solar panels is situated on the roof of the Vermilion Country School in Tower, Minnesota.

According to the project website, the longer-term goal of the Solar Commons project is “to reduce Co2 emissions by 6,500 metric tons and create around $70,000 a year” [RL2] [SD3] in energy savings. Prof. Mulin and Gawboy met through the work of Dani Pieratos, a food sovereignty activist from Bois Forte who “changed worlds” in 2025. In a jointly-written article Milun and Gawboy honored Pieratos’s legacy, stating that, “we have worked together to realize Dani’s plan to demonstrate the healing power and gift economy that are at the heart of both solar energy and traditional Anishinaabe foodways.”

Gawboy explained more about how utilizing the gift of sunshine will benefit the people of Bois Forte:

“The foundational value of the solar commons is that the sun’s energy belongs to all of us, and no utility company should profit. And so, the way to get around that is by establishing a solar project and then using the solar saving — minus maintenance and expenses — in a Solar Commons trust fund. Our focus was using that trust fund money to benefit the food sovereignty movement at Bois Forte.”

Gawboy has a lot of experience with the land and feeding people.

“I have 100-acre farm right outside of Tower — an organic farm, and we do workshops on the farm, we teach butchering, slaughtering, we teach gardening, we teach canning, food preservation, all those kinds of things, right there,” she said.

I asked her about the connection between food sovereignty and renewable energy and she explained that food sovereignty and energy sovereignty are “part of our guardianship responsibility of the earth. When we’re looking at energy and sovereignty, we’re not looking at drilling more oil wells, we’re not looking at digging coal, we’re not looking at digging uranium.”

“What we’re saying is that the sun and wind have offered us their energy, they have this as a gift to us, a sacred gift, and not utilizing it is ignoring the gift. So, we should utilize those gifts, because what they create is, first of all, a relationship to the land, and that intimate relationship with the land and the water is what feeds our community,“ she said.

Repairing the World

The funds collected in the Solar Commons trust fund will be stewarded by students at the Vermilion Country School, an arrangement built into the Solar Commons formula that is designed to teach regenerative economy principles using a digital dashboard of tools. This process is called “participatory budgeting,” and is intended to be a transparent way for community members to decide what to invest in, in their community with their annual distribution from the Solar Commons trust.

“When the kids [at Bois Forte] decide how to spend the accumulation of common wealth trust funds after one year of solar commoning, they will use participatory budgeting and two guiding principles about commons: mutual aid and repairing the world,” said Milun.

The element of reparative justice is stirred into the soup of solar commoning — the idea that the gift of sunlight can power food systems’ vitality, local economic regeneration and help repair the effects of rural isolation, cultural assimilation, economic inequity and other forms of harm.

Building the first solar commons project in Minnesota required buy-in from a network of partners, including a strong commitment from Heliene, Inc., a solar manufacturing plant on Minnesota’s Iron Range. The company agreed to supply the solar panels for the Vermilion Country School at cost, and pass on the solar savings (minus expenses) of a proposed 500kW array on top of the factory in Mountain Iron, Minnesota. This “social wealth trust” between Heliene and the Bois Forte community will extend through the 20-year warranty of the solar panels.

Indigenizing Community Change

Waawaate and the other Solar Commons partners hope to kick-start work on a more extensive Solar Commons project that “indigenizes community change” by installing solar projects at multiple locations. The project seeks to build a 2MW solar microgrid, and two 500kW solar plus storage microgrids at the Bois Forte and Fond du Lac Ojibwe reservations, adding to what both tribal communities have already built.

Peak sun on a cold winter day (Photo by Staci Drouillard)

“They didn’t need solar panels in Fond du Lac, what they needed was storage,” said Gawboy. “And there again, the Solar Commons idea was presented and accepted by both reservations, as a very good way to do things.”

Gawboy believes that building micro-grids to serve rural communities, solar or otherwise, is the way forward, because the mainstream approach to energy sourcing and distribution hasn’t served the people well.

“The replacement of traditional cultures has been such a disaster,” said Gawboy. “If we believe that man has dominion over the earth, we end up with where we’re at now. If instead we believe what the seven teachings say, which is — man is here and man is beholden to the earth and we are dependent in all of creation being in balance — to keep ourselves in balance — that’s the overarching lesson of the food sovereignty movement, the energy sovereignty movement, the cultural sovereignty movement, all of those things.”

One of the benefits of being the first living lab in Minnesota is being able to help other communities take steps toward energy sovereignty and food sovereignty.

“The whole food sovereignty movement is due to the activism of Indian people on reservations, because almost all of them live in food deserts,” said Gawboy. “This is a really great combination. You can’t have sovereignty unless you control your energy and your food, and if you don’t have control of those two things, sovereignty is illusory.”

The Bois Forte community will come together at the end of July, 2026 to celebrate the Solar Commons installation at the Vermilion Country School. Waawaate and their community partners also have plans to produce a documentary film about the project, work with Anishinaabe artists to create a mural at the school, and create a step-by-step guide to solar commoning for other tribal communities. And if it’s a clear day, the whole community will benefit from the many gifts of the sun.

The post No One Owns the Sun appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/07/23/no-one-owns-the-sun/

Staci Lola Drouillard, Great Lakes Now

On:
In: animals, Climate, Featured, Fish, Birds and Animals, great lakes news collaborative, health, wildfire smoke, wildfires

While health officials urge people to stay indoors due to the smoke draping the Midwest, experts say we should remember that the same polluted air affecting humans is also threatening animals. 

On July 16, Detroit ranked as the worst air quality in the world with a 724 index– climbing past the 300-point threshold on the Air Quality Index, where air quality is considered hazardous. In second sat Toronto, Canada, then Minneapolis Minnesota and in fourth was Chicago, Illinois.  

According to Dr. Jack Harkema, a Veterinary Pathologist at Michigan State University, said the effects of wildfire smoke on animals isn’t just a single symptom. 

“It doesn’t affect just the lungs, but also the cardiovascular system and the metabolic system,” Harkema said. “We’ve actually even looked at the effects on the brain, and there’s increased inflammation in the brain as well.”

Wildfire smoke may be even more harmful to animals than the everyday air pollution found in cities, Harkema said. 

“Wildfire smoke is probably even more toxic than our regular urban particulate matter,” Harkema said. “These particles create a lot of oxidants, they damage tissue, and they cause inflammation locally in the lung, but then that inflammation can spread to other organs.”

Wildfire smoke contains a mixture of pollutants, including fine particles known as PM2.5. Those microparticles are small enough to go deep into the lungs and, sometimes, enter the bloodstream.

“PM2.5 particles are inhalable,” Mayra Oyola, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin Madison. “They can get into the lungs and, just like in humans, they stay there. They can damage respiratory and cardiovascular tissue in anything that breathes. So it’s not just us.”

The fires that are impacting the midwest are mainly contained towards the lower part of Ontario, Canada.  The smoke from these fires have migrated from wind paths to reach the midwest. 

“Animals close to the fires, that’s the biggest concern, because they will be displaced,” Oyola said. “More often than not, they move into human-populated areas. That creates risk for both humans and the animals.”

Birds are especially vulnerable to wildfire smoke because their respiratory system is more efficient than other mammals, according to research scientist at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology Olivia Sanderfoot. While that helps them get more oxygen, it also means they breathe in more harmful particles from polluted air.

“Birds are able to take up twice as much oxygen with each breath compared to mammals, which also means they’re getting an extra-heavy dose of anything toxic in the air,” Sanderfoot said.

“We’ve known for a long time that birds are more vulnerable,” Sanderfoot said. “So I’m especially worried about them in this smoke.”

Other outdoor animals can also suffer, like horses. Because of respiratory diseases, like heaves, livestock that spend their time outdoors are exposed for days or weeks to smoky conditions which heighten risks, Harkema said.

“If this continues, you’re going to see more illness in humans and animals,” Harkema said.

For pet-owners, Dr. Jennifer Henderson, a veterinarian at Vetco Total Care in Chicago said taking the same precautions you would take for yourself is ideal. 

“The same concerns apply to our pets that apply to humans,” Henderson said. “You just want to keep them inside or limit their activity outside so it doesn’t cause any flare-up.”

Owners should also watch closely for signs that smoke may be affecting their animals.

“I think respiratory symptoms,  with the coughing and the lethargy, are the main things to watch for,” Henderson said. 

She also recommends monitoring for bloodshot eyes, squinting or other signs of eye irritation.The guidance is ultimately simple, Henderson said, if the air isn’t healthy for people, it probably isn’t healthy for pets either.

“Similar to how they’re dealing with it for themselves, apply the same concerns and strategies to their pets,” she said. “You can’t put a mask on a dog, so it’s really just keeping them out of the environment or limiting their time.”

Harkema recommends limiting walks to brief bathroom breaks and avoiding strenuous exercise.

“You don’t want to exercise them because more of these particulate matter and other air toxicants can get into the lung and cause inflammation,” Harkema said.

Sanderfoot said keeping pets in cool, air-conditioned spaces with clean, filtered air whenever possible is best. 

As wildfire seasons grow longer and more intense, Sanderfoot says she expects poor air quality events to become a more frequent occurrence across North America.

“The issue is that climate change is supercharging these fires and lengthening our fire season,” Sanderfoot said. “The bigger the fire, the more smoke.”

According to Oyola, research shows wildfire smoke will become a persistent problem.

“It’s very clear that climate change is real and that it’s not slowing down,” she said. “With drier conditions and warmer conditions, we should expect more events like this.”

The post How wildfire smoke impacts pets and wildlife appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

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Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/07/21/how-wildfire-smoke-impacts-pets-and-wildlife/

Julia Roeder

On:
In: detroit river, Feature Detroit, Featured, Habitat Restoration, Michigan, Region, Water quality

By Isabelle Tavares, Planet Detroit

This article was republished with permission from Planet Detroit. Sign up for Planet Detroit’s weekly newsletter here.

A person standing on the Detroit River shoreline 50 years ago would hesitate to touch the water, according to the Friends of the Detroit River’s McKenzi Waliczek.

The progress made since that era — from industrial dumping ground to a beloved recreational and tourist attraction — framed a boat tour led by the nonprofit that departed from the Detroit Wayne County Port Authority, circled Belle Isle, and highlighted river restoration projects.

An estimated 3.6 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment remains on the U.S. side of the Detroit River, or enough sediment to fill thousands of dump trucks lined up for miles, said Waliczek, director of programs for Friends of the Detroit River.

The price tag for the cleanup is about $1 billion, she said. 

The Great Lakes Legacy Act provides a 65% federal match for nonfederal restoration funding, but the incentive depends on reauthorization of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. 

Friends of the Detroit River needs about $350 million in nonfederal matching funds to reach the $1-billion funding goal for the Detroit River cleanup.

The effort secured $10 million last month from an EPA and EGLE partnership.

Detroit River: Critical Great Lakes waterway

As the Samuel D. Buchanan, a boat operated by a second-generation captain, cruised down the Detroit River, passengers took in the views of Milliken State Park, Belle Isle’s Lake Okonoka, the island’s south fishing pier, and Blue Heron Lagoon.

The tour also visited Lakewood East Park and the Harbortown and Harbortown Upstream sediment remediation sites.

“The Detroit River isn’t just water, it’s where people fish to feed their families, where folks learn to kayak and boat, where entire ecosystems depend on what’s happening beneath the surface,” Waliczek said. 

“For over a century, industry powered this region, but it also left behind contaminated sediments, damaged habitats, and shorelines that no longer function naturally.” 

The U.S. shoreline of the Detroit River has lost approximately 97% of its coastal wetlands to human development, according to a 2017 study by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey. 

“The Detroit River is one of the most biologically important waterways in the Great Lakes,” Waliczek said. 

“Every spring millions of fish move up through this river to spawn, countless birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals depend on the small amount of habitat that remains and the habitat that we are restoring.” 

The challenge of Detroit River contamination

Contaminants including PCBs, PAHs, and mercury were identified from more than 1,000 sediment samples from the Detroit River, said Sam Noffke, aquatic biology specialist with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. 

The contaminants persist in the environment and accumulate in the food chain, he said.

As the self-described “contaminated sediment guy,” Noffke has worked on Detroit River remediation “nonstop” for more than a decade, he said. 

Noffke started by examining 40 years of sediment data to get an idea of areas to prioritize for cleanup, he said. 

Members of the boat tour recalled a long list of shoreline industries, such as the Superfund site McLouth Steel in Trenton, and the Uniroyal Tire plant once located west of the MacArthur Bridge to Belle Isle. 

Noffke said disposing of contaminated sediment remains a challenge, as the Pointe Mouillee confined disposal facility is nearing capacity. The facility, located on a small island at the mouth of the Huron River, is expected to run out of space in four years, according to a September 2025 Detroit News report. 

EGLE, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Environmental Protection Agency are discussing alternatives, such as raising dikes at Pointe Mouillee to increase capacity, creating new confined disposal facility cells, or possibly reusing clean material, Noffke said. 

“That’s a major hurdle we are trying to deal with.”

The 700-acre Detroit River Area of Concern extends the length of the river, from Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie.

Detroit River group kicks off final priority habitat restoration project

The habitat restoration effort spearheaded by Friends of the Detroit River includes 13 completed projects.

The EPA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association are some of the Detroit organization’s partners on the restoration projects. 

The habitat projects will be removed from the Area of Concern list within three to four years by addressing two beneficial use impairments related to fish and wildlife habitat, Waliczek said.

Detroit’s Lakewood East Park is the 14th and final priority habitat restoration project in the Detroit River Area of Concern.

The project includes nearly 1 mile of Detroit River shoreline and adjacent canals where the river meets Lake St. Clair. The plans call for removing much of the seawall and restoring the natural shoreline, Waliczek said.

Although surrounded by neighborhoods and hardened shorelines, the Detroit park’s canals, wetlands, and open shoreline provide significant restoration potential, Waliczek said, benefiting fish that migrate between Lake Erie, Lake St. Clair, and the broader Great Lakes system.

Friends of the Detroit River Executive Director Tricia Blicharski said the Lakewood East Park project is scheduled to begin this month, with a three-year timeline. Community engagement and plan review will begin immediately, and construction is expected to start in spring 2027, she said.

‘We all have a role to play’

At Belle Isle, restoration projects at Blue Heron Lagoon and Lake Okonoka are improving fish and wildlife habitat by deepening the lake, creating fish nursery areas and opening previously enclosed water to the Detroit River, said Terry Heatlie, a habitat restoration specialist under contract with NOAA.

One of the tour attendees, Terry Campbell, recalled fishing on Belle Isle with her father. The pier near Blue Heron Lagoon was “always” filled with anglers, she said.

“You ate the fish, and arguably it was more contaminated back then than it is now, but it was a part of how you fed the family in the summertime,” she said.

Detroiter Erma Leaphart, a retired Sierra Club organizer in the Great Lakes program, said she would spend time by the river before the riverwalk was built, chatting with fishermen along the river. 

“I loved just sitting on the river, watching the freighters, waves, the breeze, these guys who were like family, even though I didn’t know them, but I knew them as fishermen,” she said.

Everyone has a stewardship responsibility, Leaphart said.

“We all have a role to play, whether it’s teaching young people about it, whether it’s the stewardship part,” she said. “You have an ongoing responsibility to protect the asset, protect what you’ve done, and protect it for future generations.”

The post Detroit River tour highlights restoration successes, $1-billion cleanup hurdle: ‘We all have a role to play’ appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/07/10/detroit-river-tour-highlights-restoration-successes-1-billion-cleanup-hurdle-we-all-have-a-role-to-play/

Planet Detroit

On:
In: data centers, Featured, industry, Michigan

By Vivian La, IPR

This story is made possible through a partnership between Interlochen Public Radio and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

More than 100 people packed Wednesday’s meeting of the Garfield Township Planning Commission to show support for a possible data center moratorium.

The commission made an official recommendation to the township board to amend the zoning ordinance to allow moratoriums broadly — and it isn’t specific to data centers.

Under the township’s current zoning ordinance, data centers are considered “permitted by right” and only require administrative approval.

There are no proposals for data centers in the township, according to commission chair Chris DeGood who made the clarification at the beginning of the meeting. An Illinois-based developer brought up a possible plan for one at a previous township board meeting and sparked social media attention ahead of Wednesday’s commission meeting.

Public comment lasted nearly two hours. All comments related to the moratorium were in opposition to data centers, including concerns about their environmental impact, economic value and energy use.

Water was a concern for many residents, as data centers can use large amounts to cool down servers.

“When you grow up close to freshwater, you don’t take it for granted. You understand in your bones that what we have here is rare, and that it requires protection,” said Nancy Smith from Traverse City.

Some said a temporary moratorium isn’t enough, and called for an outright ban.

“Limiting the data center in our township isn’t going to cause world collapse, and AI goes away, but it’s one voice that we can have,” said Shannon DeBruyn from Peninsula Township. “We have an opportunity to raise our hand to say no by enacting the moratorium and by seeking ways to ban it entirely.”

Garfield Township is the latest community in northern Michigan to wade into growing conversations around temporary bans on data centers.

The state is already home to about 75 of such centers, which house computer servers underpinning the internet.

None of those are large “hyperscale” data centers which power artificial intelligence models. But such a center is under development in southeast Michigan, and the specter of more has prompted local officials across the state to issue temporary bans on any development.

Moratoriums aren’t included in the state law that regulates local zoning, said John Sych, township planning director. That’s why making moratoriums part of the zoning ordinance is stronger than enacting them through a standalone ordinance or resolution, as other townships have done.

“We want to ensure that we have not just a quick reaction to put something on the books, but we want to make sure that it is enforceable going forward,” Sych said.

The crowd at Wednesday’s Garfield Township Planning Commission meeting. At least 100 people were in attendance, mostly to support a possible moratorium on data centers. (Photo: Vivian La/IPR News)

This amendment isn’t just about data centers, and requires imagining “the things we don’t know in the future,” Commissioner Cara Eule said after public comment.

And she was pleased to see the community turn out for the meeting.

“Somebody mentioned this is not a partisan issue, everyone is kind of on the same page. That’s rare in this day and age,” she said. “So thank you for validating the work we’re doing and we’re gonna stick with this.”

Traverse City resident Asa Woodruff agreed.

“Issues like this can unify people who are on different ends of the spectrum,” Woodruff told IPR. “And something like this is core to humanity, we can put these things aside and say ‘This is an issue.’”

The amendment now goes to the Garfield Township Board for vote, which is likely at the end of August, Sych said.

A specific moratorium on data centers could be introduced at a later planning commission meeting.

The post Garfield Township inches closer to a possible data center moratorium appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

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https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/07/09/garfield-township-inches-closer-to-a-possible-data-center-moratorium/

Interlochen Public Radio and Grist

On:
In: epa, Featured, Latest News, Politics, Research, Data and Technology, Science, Technology, Research, Wisconsin

By Danielle Kaeding, Wisconsin Public Radio

This article was republished here with permission from Wisconsin Public Radio.

A Wisconsin man is one of seven former Environmental Protection Agency staffers suing federal regulators for their firings, alleging the agency violated their First Amendment rights.

The seven were among hundreds of current and former EPA staff who signed a letter in June 2025 opposing the Trump administration’s policies. The letter states those policies “undermine the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment” amid the rollback of dozens of environmental regulations.

Former EPA staff members filed two lawsuits last week that allege the agency ignored internal legal advice and illegally dismissed employees in retaliation for signing the letter. They’re represented by attorneys with Washington, D.C.-based law firm James & Hoffman and nonprofit legal group Democracy Forward.

Superior resident Alexander Cole is one of two former biologists who signed the letter and were fired from the EPA’s Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division Lab in Duluth.

“I didn’t do anything wrong, and … the First Amendment is just so foundational to maintaining democracy,” Cole said. “Firing us sets a very dangerous precedent, so seeing that reversed would be incredibly important.”

An EPA spokesperson declined to comment due to pending litigation.

The lawsuit states Cole and Stephanie Eytcheson, who were probationary employees, signed the letter with their personal cellphones outside of work hours. Attorneys want their jobs reinstated with back pay.

“Probationary federal government employees, like all people in America, have the constitutional right to participate in public discussion and debate in their personal capacities, even when their speech is critical of the government, and the government has no right to retaliate against these  civil servants because of a protected opinion they expressed while off the clock,” said Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman in a news release.

On July 3, 2025 the EPA placed Cole, Eytcheson and more than 140 employees on administrative leave as it opened an investigation into the letter. Two days earlier, EPA records show that Justina Fugh, the director of the EPA’s Ethics Office, found no ethics concerns or violations of the Hatch Act, which bars employees from engaging in political activity on the job. Fugh wrote that employees were “simply exercising their First Amendment rights.”

One day before employees were placed on leave, Nathanael Nichols, EPA’s assistant general counsel, made similar findings and said “the agency should not take personnel actions against employees who signed the letter.”

On Aug. 28, he reiterated that the agency shouldn’t remove employees because they could argue that their termination “constituted illegal retaliation for their protected First Amendment speech.” One day later, the EPA terminated Cole and Eytcheson.

Attorneys for former EPA staff argue probationary employees were targeted because they had no right to appeal their firings to the Merit Systems Protection Board. They said most employees who had stronger protections received only a two-week suspension or a letter of reprimand.

Last year, the EPA said in a statement that the letter signed by employees contained “inaccurate information designed to mislead the public about agency business.” But the agency didn’t expand on what details were wrong.

Nearly two dozen U.S. Senate Democrats, including Democratic Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, wrote a letter last week that called on EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to reinstate fired employees.

The EPA’s investigation found Cole and Eytcheson didn’t use work resources to sign the letter and that their signing of the letter didn’t interfere with their jobs, according to the lawsuit.

In December, the two filed complaints with the EPA’s Office of Special Counsel about their firings, and an investigation is still ongoing.

About six months before her termination, Eytcheson’s acting branch chief had praised her performance, saying the agency was “extremely lucky” to have Eytcheson.

In April last year, Cole’s review stated he was an “extremely skilled” and “valuable” employee, and he received a performance award for his work. He worked at the lab on the EPA’s ECOTOX Knowledgebase, a database that’s used to complete risk assessments for thousands of chemicals of concern.

“I felt like my work was meaningful, and (I) would like to really continue to do what I was doing before,” Cole said, “which was just upholding the EPA mission statement — protecting human health and the environment.”

Wisconsin Public Radio, © Copyright 2026, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.

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In: Energy, Clean Energy, Ethanol and Fracking, Featured, industry

By Theodore J. Kury, University of Florida

The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.

Many major tech companies have pledged to pay their fair share of the costs associated with generating and transmitting more electricity to serve large data centers. But ratepayers across the United States are worried about the potential costs they might have to bear. That’s because it’s not immediately clear how the cost of data centers’ energy will be calculated. The effects of price increases are likely just beginning, and their full effects may not be felt for years.

For example, a recent report by the organization that monitors the PJM market, an area that encompasses all or part of 14 mid-Atlantic and Midwest states, concluded that expected power demand from data centers was a primary reason for US$23 billion in customer price increases that will last until at least the end of 2028.

I have studied the programs states have launched to address the needs of these large electricity customers. Prices are set by state utility commissions, who determine which customers’ rates will increase by how much to pay for new investments in electricity infrastructure. It’s not simple.

The complexity of setting prices

Setting a price for electricity is straightforward in principle but complicated in execution. Regulators identify the costs to provide service, allocate the costs to customers and design prices to recover those costs.

First, regulators identify the costs that a utility company incurs to provide service. Regulators look at the value of the assets the utility company invests in, such as power plants, transmission lines and substations, as well as its day-to-day operating expenses, such as salaries, fuel, replacement parts and electricity it purchases from other sources. Then these costs are allocated to categories of customers, such as residential, commercial and industrial.

Ideally, costs are allocated to the customers who cause them, but that can be complicated to determine. For example, imagine a data center is built in an area that lacks existing power lines and is located 50 yards from a nearby electric substation. It’s clear that the data center should pay to run a 50-yard power line from the substation to the data center.

But what if the power company needs to upgrade the substation to handle the increased needs of the data center? Or secure additional sources of electricity? In these cases, the investments are part of the electricity grid that everyone uses. These costs will likely be shared among all customers.

Cost analysts review each line of a utility company’s costs, often thousands of items, and determine how each cost will be allocated. Each decision incorporates one basic idea: What’s your share?

For instance, if a group of customers uses 20% of the electricity delivered by the utility, they would be allocated 20% of the costs associated with energy delivery. Other cost items may be allocated based on the number of customers or how much electricity customers use at particular points in time, but the idea is the same.

Finally, the analysts set prices that are designed to recover the costs allocated to each customer group. So, the costs that are allocated to you are directly reflected in the electricity prices that you pay.

Flexibility and a potential loophole

One common criterion for figuring out how much a customer should pay is based on what is called “coincident peak demand” – the amount a customer group uses at the moment when all customers are collectively using the largest amount of electricity. Costs associated with overall peak usage are typically split proportionally – but this opens an opportunity for data centers to exploit the system.

Data centers often are able to fine-tune their electricity consumption, using more one minute and less another, in ways that residential users can’t easily replicate. Computerized systems can automatically adjust the amount of work a data center is doing, while a homeowner would either have to race around shutting off appliances to meaningfully reduce the amount of power their home was using or invest in a device that does.

Their flexibility means data centers may be able to learn to predict when system loads will peak and consume little to no power in just the right period to avoid contributing to peak loads, as has happened with cryptocurrency-mining operations in Texas. So when regulators look at their usage to determine prices, data centers may be able to avoid paying any costs allocated through coincident peak demand, even if they use large amounts of electricity at other times.

Who speaks for you?

When utility regulators decide how costs should be allocated to each customer group, they solicit input from different groups. The utility company initially submits its own proposal for how it thinks costs should be allocated across its system.

Large industrial customer groups representing customers such as factories will also submit their own proposals for how to allocate costs and set rates. Retail customer groups representing large and small stores will submit theirs. And large data centers, with the resources to hire experts in cost allocation, will submit theirs as well. Some states have specific state-government agencies to do some of this work on behalf of particular commercial groups, such as Pennsylvania’s Office of Small Business Advocate.

Regulators don’t always get a good sense of residential customers’ voices, though. Every state except Georgia, Idaho and Louisiana has an office of the consumer advocate that represents customer interests in proceedings before the state utility regulator. But they are often charged with representing all customers in the state without bias, meaning they cannot advocate for outcomes that would impose costs on one group of customers in favor of another.

So while every state’s consumer advocate is concerned with keeping the utility’s costs as low as possible, they may be barred by law from adopting a position on how those costs should be allocated. This lack of representation in this aspect of rate-setting for average households may lead to situations where the data centers’ advocates argue for minimal costs to be allocated to them – but nobody advocates on behalf of residents to examine or refute that argument.

Citizens left holding the bag

There are other risks for residential customers, too. Utilities’ investments in electricity infrastructure last for many years. But not every proposed data center will get built, and some may use less energy than originally projected. Technology may even change, making some data centers obsolete after a year or two of operations.

If those events happen, then any costs the utility company incurred to provide enough electricity will be spread among all the other customers.

The allocation process may be even more complicated for municipal utilities regulated by city councils or independent boards, or cooperative utilities regulated by elected boards in rural communities. These groups may not have full-time staff who are utility or regulatory experts, yet they face the same decision-making challenges as trained professionals and might have to retain outside experts to aid in the process.

Consumers need to be aware of the importance of cost allocation and how it affects their electricity rates. I believe they should provide public comments to the regulators and speak during open hearings, as there may not be anyone else effectively advocating for their interests.

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In: culture, Featured, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan

By Ronia Cabansag and Adam Yahya Rayes, Michigan Public

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan; Circle of Blue; Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS; Michigan Public, Michigan’s NPR News Leader; and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work HERE.

It feels natural to say that there are five Great Lakes. It’s the kind of fact that feels as old and real as the lakes themselves.

But what if it isn’t true?

There may actually be four Great Lakes: “Lake” Huron and “Lake” Michigan could actually be considered “lobes” of one big lake — big enough to unseat Lake Superior as the world’s largest freshwater lake by surface area.

“They share a lake level. When the wind’s not blowing, they tend to be at the same level,” said Eric Anderson, director of hydrologic science and engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. “So if one goes up, the other one goes up. If one goes down, the other one does as well.”

The idea that Michigan’s mitten is hugged by one big U-shaped lake is not some new concept that you’ll only find buried in niche scientific studies.

It’s not very well known, but you don’t have to scroll far on Wikipedia, Michigan.gov or other very-public facing sources to find references to Lake Michigan-Huron.

The oldest scientific record of it we found was from 1911.

This official U.S. Lake Survey document, dated 1911, references a combined “Lake Michigan and Huron” in measurements of the lake’s water levels. (Document: Library of Congress, accessed via HathiTrust. GIF: Adam Yahya Rayes | Michigan Public)

It’s not just the lake level that leads hydrologists to describe Huron and Michigan as one lake. The two bodies of water have another special connection: the straits of Mackinac.

At about five miles wide, the straits are a large body of water that flows in both directions between the Huron and Michigan lobes. This creates unique conditions for what Anderson called a “bi-lake seiche.” Seiches are standing waves that go back and forth across a body of water.

“Think about them as maybe like two water beds connected by some weird piece of material,” he said. “If you were to jump on the one water bed, right, you would create a giant wave that moves into the other one.”

That also means that any contaminants that spill into one body could easily end up in the other, Anderson said, especially if the spill happens near the straits.

But, Anderson said Michigan and Huron also have their own separate seiches. Plus, they each have their own circulation, water quality, and weather patterns. When he’s creating models to give people warnings about dangerous conditions, Anderson said it’s usually limited to one side or the other.

“In almost every other way, these lakes behave like two separate lakes,” he said. “Also just culturally and personally, because these lakes are so big, it’s really hard to think you’re experiencing the same thing in Chicago that you are in Georgian Bay.”

“Odawa Lake” and other names

The earliest maps of the Great Lakes we know of are several hundred years old. Those maps, made by French explorers, refer to Michigan and Huron as separate lakes.

This map was created by French Jesuit missionaries in the 1600’s. It shows what are now known as Lake Huron and Lake Michigan (which they called “Lake of the Illinois” at the time) as separate lakes. The straits of Mackinac are not labeled. (Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec)

“I think it’s important to note that there are different names for these lakes that predate European contact,” said Eric Hemenway, humanities program manager for the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability. “And there’s a different view of the lakes that is still with us.”

Hemenway is Anishinaabe — the collective name for indigenous peoples who lived in the Great Lakes region — and Odawa (also called “Ottawa”). His Odawa name is Gaanaybik (Ge-na-bik).

“So in my mind, as the singular Odawa guy from living on Lake Michigan, to me [Huron and Michigan] are one body of water,” he said. “And all of our villages historically were right on both sides.”

Hemenway used to do archival work for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians. Historically, he said, the tribe called Huron and Michigan “Odawa Lake.”

“There’s no wall, there’s no giant barrier,” he said. “The important part is who lived where … I can’t say it’s exclusively ours. You know, we named the lake after us, but there were other tribes that lived on the lake.”

Hemenway said Anishinaabe peoples had many different ways of naming and categorizing the lakes. Some did consider Huron and Michigan to be separate lakes or bodies.

This map contains hand written notes from 1956 that are likely traditional Anishinaabe names and descriptions for areas around northern Lake Michigan, including a name for the lake itself. Hemenway said it’s not clear to him if that is a translation of the lake’s modern name or if it is “one of the old names for Lake Michigan.” (Bentley Historical Library)

“We live in these boundaries all the time. And so, trying to pull back and not look at the boundaries is really difficult,” he said. “But if you start seeing it as one, I think you start seeing the effort and responsibility shifts. We all have a part in this.”

Guests:

  • Eric Anderson, director of hydrologic science and engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.
  • Eric Hemenway, humanities program manager for the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability.

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Michigan Public

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In: Featured, Research, Data and Technology, Wisconsin

By Katie Thoresen, WXPR

This story was originally published by WXPR. WXPR is a community-licensed public radio station serving north central Wisconsin and adjacent areas of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Listen to their stories here.

Greg Sass steers a boat out towards four bright orange, round buoys floating off the shore of Escanaba Lake.

Two graduate students on the boat hold onto a wrapped PVC piping that gets hooked up to the buoys.

Katie Thoresen/WXPR

Back on shore, those pipes are connected to a water heater you might find at an aquarium or zoon.

“Like for the whale shark tank at the Georgia Aquarium to heat millions of gallons of water,” Sass said.

The set up is for a research project to learn how climate change will impact the lake and the fish within.

Sass is the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Research Team Leader.

“That’s one of the many great aspects of the research areas, we have the capabilities to do these sorts of things, because these lakes have been set aside for experimental fisheries and research purposes,” said Sass.

Eighty years ago, the DNR, which was the Wisconsin Conservation Commission at the time, set aside five lakes creating the Northern Highland Fishery Research Area.

That means any angler that’s fished on these lakes in the last eight decades has reported back things like what they were fishing for, the lure they use, and catch rates.

“I think it lends some to just kind of the Wisconsin idea and the foresight that researchers have had in Wisconsin to do things like this, to think about the long term, to be collecting long term data,” said Sass.

Katie Thoresen/WXPR

The five lakes are in the Boulder Junction area of western Vilas County.

Sass calls Escanaba the characteristic drainage lake with an inlet running through wetland.

Pallette and Nebish are true kettle lakes created by ice blocks left in the landscape from the last glaciation 10,000 years ago.

Mystery and Spruce are two sphagnum bog lakes which are abundant in Vilas County.

All of them are undeveloped except for boat landings on Nebish and Escanaba.

“To have that foresight at that time, too. It’s within a state forest, it’s set aside, and we’ve got these five lakes that represent the lake types and the various fish species that we have in northern Wisconsin to set aside. Really incredible,” said Sass.

The types of research conducted in the area ranges from fish habitat to testing new technologies like forward-facing sonar to water level impact on walleye.

They’ll work with researchers from other organizations like universities and the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission.

Katie Thoresen/WXPR

The only fishing regulations on the lakes are the ones researchers put in place. This helps the DNR determine how different bag limits and length restrictions can impact a population.

Sass says with all the years of data, the lakes can serve as a good baseline for research on other lakes too.

“We’re a statewide entity, and we’re trying to address fisheries research questions that help our Bureau of Fisheries Management and help our anglers and the quality of fisheries statewide,” said Sass.

All this work can have an impact on anglers on Wisconsin waters.

Sass says those anglers are also the most critical part of the research.

“We have a lot of repeat people that love coming back here. We have anglers that only fish these lakes because they love them so much,” said Sass. “What we find is they’re truly, genuinely interested in the research that we’re doing and taking part of it. We have the opportunity through the creel desk to talk to every one of these anglers individually on a personal level to answer their questions, to tell them about the research that we’re doing, and so it sets up a really exciting partnership that, again, is incredibly unique for anywhere in the world.”

Katie Thoresen/WXPR

The Escanaba Lake Check Station is open every day of year expect when snow makes it impossible to access.

All anglers need to check in and check out each day they fish the lakes.

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In: Featured, Forests and Plants, great lakes echo, Illinois, Lake Michigan, ravine restoration

By Samantha Ku, Great Lakes Echo

This article was republished here with permission from Great Lakes Echo.

A $5.75 million federal grant has been awarded to the Lake Forest Open Lands Association (LFOLA) to support a preservation project along the Lake Michigan shoreline in Illinois.

The 61-acre Jean and John Greene Nature Preserve at McCormick Ravine is part of Lake Michigan’s 57 unique ravine systems stretching 22 miles along the shoreline of Lake Michigan, according to Ryan London, the association’s president and CEO.

According to London, LFOLA has been working in the region on a voluntary basis since 1977, removing invasive species and monitoring rare plants. LFOLA then acquired the property rights from the city of Lake Forest, which had been developing the site until 2019 and turned the site into a nature preserve open to the public in 2023.

There is a common misconception that ravines are carved by glaciers, said London.

“When the glaciers most recently came through about 12,000 to 14,000 years ago, they left unique landforms along Lake Michigan called moraines,” London said.

Moirane soil consists of large particles of gravel, sand and sometimes layers of clay, a mixture known as “unconsolidated till,” according to London.

“These moraines are not really stable soils because they’re the large materials, the sand and the gravel. They erode very easily with water, and that’s what actually creates ravines, which can be up to 75 to 90 feet deep,” said London.

London said that the microclimate in the ravine bluff ecosystem features lower average temperatures and higher humidity than surrounding areas. That means natural fires occur far less frequently in the region than on prairies and savannas.

Since fire is less common in the region, species are able to persist without risking exposure to fire threats, said London.

The LFOLA said the wooded corridors formed in the ravine-bluff ecosystem create a unique microclimate, providing habitats for 48 rare plant species and over 100 animal species.

According to London, unique flower species in the area include starflower (Lysimachia borealis), shinleaf (Pyrola elliptica) and rare orchids. He said the McCormick Ravine is the only ravine where the starflower is known to grow.

“Starflowers are short in stature with whorled leaves that have white star-shaped flowers with seven petals,” said Heather Decker, the managing ecologist of the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Decker said that ravines are an ideal habitat for starflower because it grows through rhizomes, which are horizontal growths that establish new roots and shoots, to form large colonies in moist, shaded forests.

According to Decker, starflowers and other northern species in the ravine are gifts of glaciers. 

Approximately 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, as the glaciers advanced, these plants hitched a ride southward. When the glaciers retreated, the plants were left behind.

Starflowers prefer shady, moist habitats. (Photo credit: Steve Janke/U.S. Forest Service)

The ravine-bluff ecosystem represents one of Illinois’ rarest and most fragile landscapes, as its river channels are formed from highly erodible soils, according to London.

LFOLA said that decades of urbanization and shoreline modification accelerated erosion and destabilized the ravines, leading to widespread vegetation loss and habitat degradation.

“As the surrounding areas have become developed and urbanized, these ravines are accepting water at a much higher volume and a much higher rate than they were before pre-European settlement conditions,” said London.

Climate change has led to an increase in the frequency and intensity of storms, pushing landscapes beyond their natural limits, according to London.

Stormwater is “scouring through the ravine, and when you have all that erosion taking place, all that sediment gets pushed out into a big plume in Lake Michigan and many municipalities,” said London.

The ravine-bluff wooded corridors also serve as natural infrastructure, filtering stormwater and protecting water quality, according to LFOLA.

London said the plants prevent erosion, so less sediment washes into Lake Michigan. 

According to London, this project will stabilize the slope in the ravines using nature-based solutions. Natural materials such as tree trunks will be woven into the slope surface, and vegetation will be replanted in areas where it is absent.

The preservation is considered the third phase of the “Advancing Innovative Great Lakes Habitat Solutions” project, according to London. It’s expected to last 2.5 years, with restoration work scheduled to begin in March.

“Portions of the site will be hazardous during the construction phase,” said London. “We might close some trails here or there, but we’re trying to keep most of the site open.”

Southward view of Lake Michigan shoreline and Greene preserve bluff and erosion. (Photo credit: Lake Forest Open Lands Association)

London said that in addition to federal partners such as NOAA, LFOLA also works with partners in Northern Illinois.

The Chicago Botanic Garden’s Plants of Concern program has continuously monitored rare plant species within the Jean and John Greene Nature Preserve since 2008, said the program manager Gretel Kiefer.

Kiefer said that the botanic garden also partnered with LFOLA in 2024 to collect seeds from multiple species in the nature preserve for use in the restoration project.

“We’ll collect the seeds and we’ll grow the rare plants at the Chicago Botanic Garden,” said London.

According to Decker, the garden’s natural areas team will collaborate with LFOLA during seed collection because timing and communication are crucial.

“We use this as a learning opportunity for our Stewardship and Ecology of Natural Areas restoration technicians to bag developing seeds to assist in our collection efforts,” said Decker.

London said, “We’ve been working out there for nearly 50 years. It’s a long-term commitment to coastal resilience through adaptive management.”

“I do think that there will be unexpected surprises along the way, and we’ll continue to grow our knowledge with this work as we go through this project,” said London.

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In: Featured, Food, Grist, ipr, PFAS, University of Notre Dame, Water quality

By Vivian La, IPR

This story is made possible through a partnership between Interlochen Public Radio and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

Researchers from the University of Notre Dame have developed the most comprehensive look yet at how PFAS moves through the food web in the Great Lakes.

The study published this spring in the Journal of Environmental Quality analyzed 42 years of studies and combined nearly 2,500 samples of algae, fish, birds and other organisms — in what’s called a meta-analysis — to identify trends.

PFAS refers to a group of man-made and long-lasting compounds linked to a range of human health issues. It can enter waterways through landfills, wastewater and industrial facilities.

“What we’re finding is that the food web itself is a vehicle for transferring these chemicals from one organism to another,” said Gary Lamberti, aquatic science professor at Notre Dame and a study co-author. “So it’s a more holistic view than we’ve known before.”

The study identified a dramatic decrease over the last two decades of one PFAS chemical known as PFOS, following a voluntary phase out by industries in the early 2000s.

“If we stop manufacturing these chemicals, they will eventually reduce in concentration in the food web,” Lamberti said. “That’s kind of good news for how we can manage these chemicals.”

Those declines were seen in the lower Great Lakes — Ontario and Erie — likely because these areas are home to the heavy industries that used the chemical.

But there was little to no decline in PFOS in the upper Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron, most likely because the water bodies are larger that the lower lakes. In contrast to the shallower Lakes Erie and Ontario, water can stay in the upper lakes anywhere from about 60 to 170 years.

The study also confirmed that these chemicals increase in concentration as they travel up the food chain. Algae and plants have the lowest concentration, according to the study, because they grow and die quickly.

A map showing where samples included in the study were taken from the Great Lakes. (Image courtesy of the Journal of Environmental Quality)

But predators like salmon and eagles had the highest concentration because they’re eating a large amount of prey that have a lot of accumulated PFAS.

Potentially dangerous levels of these chemicals in fish have prompted warnings across the state on how much is safe to eat. Michigan has been testing fish for PFAS since 2012.

“If we can understand what the PFAS levels are in the food web, we can better communicate the risk of consuming those potentially toxic food sources,” said Katherine Manz, an environmental health professor at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study.

But because PFAS chemicals are in everyday products and they’re very hard to avoid, Manz said her best advice is to use less. Online databases can help consumers avoid certain chemicals.

Manz said the study also pointed out some interesting gaps in research on PFAS dynamics, like a lack of data on certain species.

It was easy to find PFAS data on salmon, trout, and some birds, Lamberti said. But information on the “less glamorous” smaller fish, invertebrates or algae was harder.

The study only focused on six of the PFAS chemicals most commonly tested for, but there are more than 15,000 types out there, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Tools to analyze the range of these chemicals are still evolving, said Vernon Lalone, CEO of Traverse City-based startup Wave Lumina that’s developing a rapid testing kit for PFAS in water and soil.

“It’s like a chicken and an egg situation,” said Lalone, who wasn’t involved in the study. “You’ve got to have an analytical method that’s robust and reliable enough to measure these things before you can regulate them at certain limits.”

Lamberti said there’s still plenty of questions about how these chemicals will shift in the lakes as temperatures rise due to climate change, ice formation shifts and as industries introduce new chemicals.

“Anything we put into the Great Lakes will be there for an extremely long time, not only the water, but all the chemicals that it has, so we have to be very cognizant of how we treat the lakes and what we put into them,” Lamberti said.

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In: culture, Featured, History and Culture, ideastream, Ohio, Tree climbing

By Zaria Johnson

This story was originally published by Ideastream Public Media.

Dana Brelowski is a tree climber and professional arborist with Davey Tree based in Naperville, Illinois. In May, she visited the Davey Seed campus in Kent for the first time.

“So far I’ve only done aerial rescue, but I feel pretty good about it,” she said.

But on this day, she was not there to work. She was there to compete.

“My plan of attack [is to] basically make it so that I’m doing the least amount of climbing up and the most efficient climbing down,” she said.

Brelwoski was at Davey for three days in mid-May with more than 70 other professional climbers across the U.S., Canada and Mexico for the North American Tree Climbing Championship.

It was three days of competitive tree climbing with six events modeled after different scenarios arborists like Brelowski might face in the field, like climbing and pruning a tree or rescuing an injured colleague.

Davey Tree Arborist Dana Berlowski in a tree during the North American Tree Climbing Championship on Friday, May 15th, 2026. Berlowski is one of 22 women who competed in the annual competition organized by the International Society of Arboriculture and hosted at the Davey Seed Campus in Kent. (Photo credit: Josh Reuck / The Davey Tree Expert Company)

Of the 50 men and 22 women who competed, only one of each advanced to the international championship this fall.

But 25 years ago, women wouldn’t have been eligible to participate in the annual competition organized by the International Society of Arboriculture. So, these women would’ve missed out on what CEO Caitlyn Pollihan calls key benefits of the competition.

“It makes them better at their job that they go back to do,” she said. “They are taking things that they learned here, some of those tips from their peers, to go back and to be able to tell all of their coworkers and other people about what they learned.”

A female arborists competes in arial rescue on at the North American Tree Climbing Championship organized by the International Society of Arboriculture and hosted at the Davey Seed Campus in Kent on Friday, May 15th, 2026. During arial rescue, the climber is given a scenario to simulate rescuing an injured colleague while on the job. (Photo credit: Josh Reuck / The Davey Tree Expert Company)

So the ISA and Davey alike have pushed to increase representation for women in the field.

“It’s a very male-dominated industry,” said Davey’s Vice President of Health and Safety Don Roppolo. “So to me, it’s really important and we’re all better the more diverse that we are.”

By hosting the championship for the first time, Roppolo said he hoped to spread awareness about arboriculture to everyone – women included.

And once they get to the championship, Pollihan said they see the fruits of their labor.

“It’s a really exciting opportunity for us to celebrate the fact that we do have a really active group of women who have been climbing and competing within not only the chapter and associate organization events,” Pollihan said, “but then also our ISA regional and international tree climbing competitions.”

17-year-old climber Alexis McLeod from Raynham, Massachusetts symbolizes the value of representation in the industry.

Though she’s still in high school, and not yet a certified arborist, it was her second time at the North American championship. At this level, she said she’s able to learn directly from climbers who look like her.

“My group has five girls and two guys like that wouldn’t be a thing at my regional competition” McLeod said. “Now it’s like wow! I’m in a group with mostly girls so I get to see them compete and I get, like, to compare myself against that instead of, like, only seeing men compete and having that be my benchmarker.”

Collaboration comes with North American Tree Climbing Competition each year. Competitors and judges support each other so that each climbers return to the job with skills to share with colleagues. (Photo credit: Josh Reuck / The Davey Tree Expert Company)

Often times, McLeod said other climbers push past their drive for victory to give her a few pointers.

“Every single time I go to one of these competitions, whether I’m volunteering or competing, I always learn something new … that will help me be a better employee once I go out into the field and start working,” McLeod said.

It’s that cooperative spirit of the competition that keeps McLeod coming back for more.

“Everybody here is just trying to help everybody else be a better climber whether it’s, like, cheering from the ground or, like, giving advice, sharing gear,” she said. “It’s just one big family.”

For Pollihan, that’s the spirit of the competition: climbers supporting climbers to be better and safer on the job. And, if they’re able to inspire new arborists along the way, that’s even better.

The post Women find community at tree climbing competition in Ohio appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/07/01/women-find-community-at-tree-climbing-competition-in-ohio/

Ideastream Public Media

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In: Featured, invasive species, Lake Superior, Minnesota, red shrimp, University of Minnesota Duluth, Wisconsin, wisconsin public radio

By Danielle Kaeding, Wisconsin Public Radio

This article was republished here with permission from Wisconsin Public Radio.

After the sun goes down, Donn Branstrator and his team get to work.

For the past couple years, they’ve been using nets and setting light traps at several locations in a Lake Superior harbor on a quest to find an invader: the bloody red shrimp. The freshwater shrimp is known for its red pigment and translucent or ivory-yellow appearance.

Branstrator, a biology professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, said the organism that grows up to a half-inch in length tends to come out at night because they’re vulnerable to fish.

“They hide on the bottom within the cracks and crevices of the break wall and bouldered environments during the day,” Branstrator said. “You can go out there during the day and sample all you want, and you’re going to be hard-pressed to find them.”

Bloody red shrimp are a type of zooplankton native to the Black Sea and Caspian Sea between Europe and Asia. The invader likely hitched a ride aboard the ballast water of oceangoing vessels. They were first detected 20 years ago in the Great Lakes. But evidence was lacking that they had become established in Lake Superior.

Until now.

Last year, Branstrator and others collected 81 bloody red shrimp in light traps and nets at Wisconsin Point and Montreal Pier in Superior. He said they found enough individuals at various life stages, including pregnant adult females, for them to be confident that a self-sustaining population is living in the lake. Findings from their study were recently published in the Journal of Great Lakes Research.

“It is there, in perpetuity one would think, if they can continue to grow and reproduce,” Branstrator said.

A researcher is processing a sample from a net used to collect bloody red shrimp in the Duluth-Superior Harbor. (Photo credit: Donn Branstrator/University of Minnesota-Duluth)

The findings make Lake Superior the final of the five Great Lakes to see an established population of the invasive species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service first detected a single specimen from the Duluth-Superior harbor in 2017.

Researchers found more the following year at Wisconsin Point, and they published a study showing that Great Lakes ships were moving bloody red shrimp and other invaders from the lower lakes to Lake Superior.

Matt TenEyck is director of the Lake Superior Research Institute and co-authored the study with Branstrator. Now that bloody red shrimp are here to stay, he said their effects remain unclear.

“It’s just too soon to tell if and when they will cause problems with our local communities, if they’ll disrupt the food web,” TenEcyk said. “We just won’t know yet.”

As juveniles, Branstrator said bloody red shrimp feed more on algae. As they grow, they eat more zooplankton and could become a potential competitor to small fish. But they could also become a potential new food source for fish.

Research has found that the introduction of bloody red shrimp can cause the collapse of zooplankton abundances in European reservoirs. Even so, Branstrator said there have been no reports of adverse or positive effects since their introduction to the Great Lakes. But swarms of thousands of bloody red shrimp have been found in waters connected to Lake Michigan in Muskegon, Michigan.

“We haven’t seen a single swarm yet in our work,” Branstrator said.

However, both he and TenEyck are concerned about what their establishment could mean for inland lakes.

“What happens if someone picks that up in their bait bucket or their live well and goes to an inland lake?” TenEyck said. “This is the classic example of likely how (other invasive species like) zebra mussels and spiny water fleas have made this slow migration inland. This could be the next concern.”

So far, they haven’t been found in any inland lakes in Wisconsin or Minnesota.

While progress has been made, TenEyck stressed that the spread of invasive species has not stopped and work must continue. He and others have been working on the Great Waters Research Collaborative at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. The project aims to prevent the spread of invasive species through ballast water by testing ballast water treatment systems for ships. 

Meanwhile, Branstrator said his team has expanded sampling for bloody red shrimp to other areas of the Duluth-Superior harbor and Two Harbors to find out more about how they’re spreading in Lake Superior.

The post In Lake Superior, researchers find invasive bloody red shrimp are here to stay appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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In: Chicago, Featured, Grist, Illinois, Inside Climate News, Lead, lead pipes, Water quality, wbez

By Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco, Keerti Gopal, and Clayton Aldern

This story is a partnership between Grist, Inside Climate News and WBEZ.

No city dealing with a lot of lead pipes spends as much as Chicago does to replace them.

With more than 400,000 lead water service lines, Chicago has the largest known inventory of lead pipes of any city in the country. Officials say replacing each one costs about $31,000 on average — more than six times the Environmental Protection Agency’s national estimate of $4,700 a line.

WBEZ, Grist and Inside Climate News surveyed other cities with the most lead service lines in the country, including Detroit, Milwaukee and New York, about the cost of fully replacing a lead service line. The 18 that responded provided averages between $6,000 and $25,000, with most spending less than half what Chicago does. Engineering firm CDM Smith, which works with cities across the country, pegs the national average at $12,500 per line.

Now, with a federal mandate to remove every lead pipe within roughly 20 years, Chicago is facing a daunting timeline and an astronomical price tag. Replacing the city’s inventory at the current rate will cost more than $12 billion.

“It is absurd,” said Cyndi Roper, a senior policy advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s safe water initiative. “You can’t play victim to your own policies. … You actually can make changes to bring the cost down.”

A review over seven months of hundreds of pages of program documents and contracts, plus dozens of interviews with city officials, policy experts, contractors and homeowners, found several key contributors. The most significant include inefficient early contracts, cumbersome permitting requirements, and the city’s reliance on one-off replacements rather than undertaking whole blocks at once.

A glaring lack of clarity from the Department of Water Management, which oversees the city’s replacement program, has also made it difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons for the high cost. Its officials were unable to provide WBEZ, Grist and Inside Climate News with consistent figures for replacement costs and the number of lines replaced or to make clear whether the water department is tracking these costs systematically.

“It seems like the story here is how hard you have to work to get information that’s needed in order to figure out why the costs are so high,” Roper added.

A spokesperson for Mayor Brandon Johnson said in an emailed statement that he is committed to accelerating replacements and minimizing the burden to residents but did not respond to specific questions about the city’s unusually high costs.

“The Johnson administration is working across departments in coordination with local, state, and federal partners to accelerate replacements, streamline processes, and maximize every available dollar so more residents can access safe, reliable drinking water,” the statement said.

Officials with the water department said they see some room to bring expenses down as work ramps up. But they’ve also disagreed with outside experts who say Chicago’s high costs are unreasonable, and they don’t appear to be treating the drastic cost differential with other cities as a high priority to address.

“There’s a lot of people that claim they know lead service line replacement,” said a senior official with the water department who spoke with WBEZ, Grist and Inside Climate News on the condition of not being named. “They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Illinois U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who has been working to secure federal funding for lead service line replacements across the state, said she wasn’t aware of the cost discrepancy but hoped the city would be transparent with the public about why costs are so high.

“Cities just need to get their act together and get this done, and we’ve been slow to do this in Chicago,” Duckworth said. “Other cities have moved much faster than us.”

Replacing pipes on an entire block

Chicago replaces lead service lines through several programs, including emergency repairs, capital improvement projects and equity initiatives targeting low-income neighborhoods and daycares.

The city also replaces entire blocks of lead pipes at once. But that program accounted for just 3 percent of the approximately 15,000 lines swapped out between 2021 and the end of 2025, according to an analysis of city replacement data by WBEZ, Grist and Inside Climate News. Instead, nearly all of those lines were fixed piecemeal, mostly when crews were sent out to fix leaks and breaks.

Both city officials and experts agree that replacing lead pipes a full block at a time is cheaper. In Milwaukee, per-line costs dropped by nearly $2,000 since implementing a block level program. Chicago officials say they want to ramp up blockwide replacements, but there have been legal and logistical barriers to expanding that program.

In Illinois, property owners control half the service line, and the municipality is responsible for the other. State law forbids partial line replacement because the process can flush more lead into drinking water, and municipalities willing to replace private lines must first get the property owners’ permission. That’s harder and more time-consuming than it may seem, a key reason for the city’s low number of block replacements, according to officials.

Earlier this year, state lawmakers introduced a new bill at the water department’s request to fix that, granting city plumbers access to private lines without the owner’s permission. It passed in May and now awaits Gov. JB Pritzker’s signature.

“We need to accelerate, as much as humanly possible, this process,” said state Sen. Ram Villivalam of Chicago, a co-sponsor of the bill.

Still, it’s not clear how much block-level replacements will actually decrease Chicago’s costs. Water department officials pegged the average per-line cost for block-level work, which they have said is their cheapest program, at approximately $34,000, and the average for one-off replacements at $39,000. Both figures are well above the $31,000 overall average that department officials have cited.

Asked to explain how that could be, the water department did not respond. In her last email to the news organizations in May, water department spokesperson Megan Vidis said she would not answer any more questions on the topic.

Workers replace lead service lines in Chicago’s West Ridge neighborhood. (Photo credit: Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times)

The toll on homeowners

Any lead pipe a property owner replaces on their own is one the city doesn’t have to pay for. But some homeowners are finding that far harder than they imagined, in part because of the city’s prohibitively expensive and complex permitting process.

Craig Hines and his wife, homeowners in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood, discovered they had a lead service line last summer when they received a letter from the city. They were immediately alarmed: They cook regularly for young nieces and nephews, and Hines knows there’s no safe level of lead exposure.

They called 14 plumbers looking for a quote. Some refused to take them on or seemed to be trying to dissuade them from doing the work altogether, saying the job would be too expensive. One preliminary quote totaled $25,000. The couple were told permits alone could cost between $5,000 and $7,000.

“These fees seem so exorbitant when it’s like, this was a city screw-up,” Hines said, referring to Chicago’s history of installing lead lines long after the health consequences came to light. “I just cannot believe that the permitting fees are so high to help fix a problem that the city created.”

Replacing a single line can require permits from the water and transportation departments, as well as inspection-related charges, according to the city’s Department of Buildings. The fees vary based on the type of street and size of pipe.

The water department said it waives all its permit fees when the city pays for replacements. But it’s not so simple when property owners want to shoulder the cost. Some qualify for a city program waiving up to $5,000 in fees; others don’t. Water department officials could not provide an average cost for permits, saying it varies by project site.

After more than six months of research — including contacting their alderman, district commissioner and multiple city departments to track down answers about costs — Hines and his wife finally settled on a plumber who knew how to navigate the city’s permit waivers. He quoted them $22,000 for the job, which he said will include permits. They hope their replacement will take place in July.

Ryan Wilson (left) and Alaina Harkness stand next to their new water meter that was installed when they replaced lead water pipes in their home. (Photo credit: Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times)

Several miles south, Ryan Wilson and his wife, Alaina Harkness, said they didn’t qualify for the fee waiver. They paid nearly $25,000 to replace the lead line at their Hyde Park home last year, but because they also upsized their service line while replacing it, they weren’t eligible for the waiver.

Wilson has worked in urban planning for decades, and even so, he said he found navigating the city’s permitting requirements extremely confusing. They never were able to figure out how much of their final bill was allotted to permits. If Chicago wants to improve citywide replacement efforts, Wilson said, improving the permitting process should be high on the list.

“There’s not a single person to talk to about this,” he said.

Inefficient contracts and funding woes

Water department officials pointed to two key reasons for the high costs. First, they said that the city lacked a firm grasp of costs when launching its replacement program in 2021 and also that its first round of contracts was inefficient. The early contracts also bundled jobs poorly, tasking contractors with work outside their specialization, like having plumbers work on restoration or outreach.

“Early on, the issue was … a lot of unknowns in our contracts,” the water department’s deputy commissioner, Michael Grillo, said in a webinar last fall. “We are trying to be smarter with our contracts that go out, be more specific, eliminate those unknowns.”

Plumbing companies overbid to cover worst-case scenarios in those early contracts, Grillo said. The water department’s Vidis confirmed via email that the city has implemented four new contracts this year focused on improving equitable access for small businesses to replace lead service lines but said the goal of those contracts was not to reduce per-line prices.

Grillo also blamed labor costs for part of the city’s high price tag, but that explanation doesn’t appear to pan out.

The base prevailing wage for a union plumber in the Chicago area is $99.52 per hour. By contrast, it’s about $97 in Minneapolis and roughly $121 in New York City, both of which replace their lead pipes for less than half of Chicago’s costs.

“I have a hard time believing that the prevailing wage would be the cost factor,” said Betony Jones, a senior researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and former director of energy jobs under the Biden administration.

The city says a lack of robust, flexible funding is compounding the problem. Chicago has to cobble together funding from a patchwork of local and federal sources in the form of grants and low-interest loans, which brings red tape and restrictions.

The Biden-era Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act delivered a historic $15 billion for lead pipe removal, with Illinois getting about $1.2 billion, according to Duckworth’s office. This month, Duckworth’s office announced a separate $22 million federal grant earmarked for Chicago’s majority-Black Austin neighborhood — where 92 percent of service lines require replacement, according to last year’s lead service line inventory. At Chicago’s price point, the state estimates that $22 million will only replace about 650 lines out of the nearly 17,000 reported in city data for Austin last year.

“Chicago needs to explain where the money is going and justify the cost,” wrote Elin Betanzo, a national drinking water expert who helped uncover the water crisis caused by lead pipes in Flint, Michigan, in an email.

Betanzo, who has done extensive research on cost-saving tactics, said she has not seen a realistic cost breakdown that demonstrates why Chicago is paying as much as it is.

“They need to figure out how to complete the most cost-efficient lead service line replacements in the country, not the most expensive,” she added.

With funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act set to run out this year, public health experts have been calling for more local, federal and state dollars to fund replacements, especially in overburdened cities like Chicago.

“It’s a critical part of the infrastructure,” Betanzo said. “It’s that final piece of public health protection.”

Amy Qin and Cam Rodriguez contributed data analysis for this story.

The post Why Is It So Expensive to Replace Lead Pipes in Chicago? appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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WBEZ, Inside Climate News and Grist

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In: DOJ, Enbridge Line 5 and Other Pipelines, Featured, Industry, Energy, Economic Development, Latest News, line 5, settlement, Wisconsin, wisconsin public radio

By Danielle Kaeding, Wisconsin Public Radio

This article was republished here with permission from Wisconsin Public Radio.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice announced a $275,000 settlement Thursday with energy firm Enbridge in a 2019 spill in Jefferson County.

The state alleged Enbridge violated the spills law by failing to report a release from a faulty valve that occurred on its Line 13 pipeline in Fort Atkinson on April 26, 2019. The company didn’t report the spill to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources until July 31, 2020 — more than a year later.

State law requires immediately reporting a hazardous substance spill by calling the DNR’s 24-hour hotline.

WPR previously reported that up to 1,386 gallons of diluent liquids leaked from the pipeline, contaminating groundwater and soil in the area. The DOJ said the petroleum substance is an extremely flammable mixture used to thin out heavy crude oil carried through its pipelines.

“Wisconsin’s Spills Law is a critical protection for our environment,” Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a statement. “Those who are responsible for the discharge of a hazardous substance must comply with its requirements.”

In a statement, Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said the company is pleased to reach an agreement with the DNR and the Department of Justice. She said the leak was discovered and repaired in the spring of 2019.

“Ongoing monitoring continues to confirm product released remains confined to Enbridge-owned property. Regular sampling has found no impact to nearby drinking water wells,” Kellner said. “Enbridge is committed to ongoing restoration of this site. We will work with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources as monitoring continues.”

The settlement requires Enbridge to pay $275,000 in fines and other fees, and an order was signed Monday by Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge William V. Gruber.

The release is not the company’s only spill in Jefferson County. In 2024, a valve leak caused by a degraded gasket at a pump station for Enbridge’s Line 6 pipeline spilled 1,650 barrels or roughly 69,000 gallons of oil. Enbridge cited the more than 50-year-old valve as a contributing factor in the spill to federal regulators.

The settlement comes as Enbridge is rerouting its Line 5 pipeline in northern Wisconsin around the Bad River Tribe’s reservation. Opponents of the project have cited the company’s track record of spills in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan.

Enbridge has said it’s spent billions of dollars on improving the safety and integrity of its pipelines.

The company previously violated permits and water quality standards when it built parallel pipelines across 14 counties in 2007 and 2008. In 2008, the Wisconsin Department of Justice reached a $1.1 million settlement for more than 100 environmental violations that caused harm to wetlands and waterways. 

The post Enbridge to Pay $275K Settlement for 2019 Wisconsin Spill After DOJ Action appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/06/26/enbridge-to-pay-275k-settlement-for-2019-wisconsin-spill-after-doj-action/

Wisconsin Public Radio

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In: Advocacy, Featured, Minnesota, Politics, Policy, Environmental Justice, U.S. and Canadian Federal Governments

For more than a decade, conservation groups have fought to protect Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness from proposed copper-nickel mining projects. Now, following actions by the Trump administration to remove federal protections from the area, advocates’ fight for the region has entered a new phase.

Local environmental groups, as well as national legal organizations, have spent years working together to protect the 1.1 million acre outdoor space. Broadly, they argue mining near the Boundary Waters threatens clean water, wildlife and a regional economy built around outdoor recreation. 

In April, the Trump administration rolled back on a 20-year federal mining ban for the region, opening the Boundary Waters up to a mining from Twin Metals, the subsidiary of a Chilean mining company. 

“We’re facing an all-out assault on northern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters from the mining industry’s allies in Congress,” said Blaine Miller-McFeeley, a senior legislative representative for Earthjustice.

The Boundary Waters region, located in northeastern Minnesota along the Canadian border, contains over 1,000 lakes and traditionally is one of the most visited wilderness areas in the country, with over 149,000 visitors in 2024 alone, according to the Quetico Superior Wilderness News. 

“The Boundary Waters is really a unique place in our landscape,” said Pete Marshall, communications director for Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness. “It’s over a thousand lakes and rocky shorelines. It’s really unlike any other place in the United States.”

The Boundary Waters region offers camping grounds, cross country skiing and hiking for its visitors. 

“People who go there quite easily fall in love with it,” Marshall said. “Today we live our lives through screens. It’s probably more valuable than ever as a way to escape, to get away from the busyness and the noise and the distraction of modern living.”

This attachment to wilderness has propelled groups, like Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, to work together to oppose the mining proposals in the area. 

Building a movement

Although the area has been under fire in recent years, this is far from a new fight.  

Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The group was founded to help create the protections that eventually shaped the area as it exists today, according to Marshall. 

“We were founded 50 years ago to help pass the legislation that made the Boundary Waters what it is today,” Marshall said.

In 2012, nearby residents of the city Ely started mobilizing to protect the area after proposed mining developments— forming Save the Boundary Waters, Executive Director Ingrid Lyons said. 

“A small group of people based in Ely, Minnesota, were made aware that there were two federal mineral leases in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness,” Lyons said. “This group of people kind of paused and said, ‘Why does the federal government even allow mineral leasing in this area?'”

That small effort quickly evolved into a larger campaign when organizers realized they would need to engage federal agencies and lawmakers in Washington to stop proposed mining development.

“We started going to Washington, D.C. every single month beginning in 2013,” she said.

In recent months, Miller-McFeeley said that when defending federal protections, he said environmental organizations were joined by not just advocacy groups but people who frequent the Boundary Waters. 

“It was environmentalists, fishers, hunters, outdoor recreationists,” Miller-McFeeley said. “It was an extraordinarily diverse set of voices and groups and communities that came together because of this threat.”

A changing political landscape

The fight over mining near the Boundary Waters has intensified through multiple presidential administrations, but most intensely in the last 18 months. 

Groups pushed for studies on the impact of mining in the Boundary Waters under the Obama administration. Later, under the Biden administration, a 20-year mining withdrawal was put in place which affected 225,504 acres near the wilderness.

But, these efforts were halted when the political environment shifted following President Donald Trump’s return to office.

“We knew we were going to come under a lot of different forms of attack,” Lyons said.

Marshall said this did not come as a surprise. 

“The Trump administration has been unabashedly a very pro-extractive industry,” Marshall said. “There’s a big hunger out there for some kind of permanent legislative solution.”

Steve Shultz, government relations director for Save the Boundary Waters, said the administration’s priorities have made advocacy work more difficult.

“Our job is a lot more difficult with the Trump administration in place and the priorities that they’ve got at the forefront of their agenda,” he said.

Shultz said that the state’s efforts going forward could still play a significant role in determining whether mining projects move forward.

“There are many opportunities,” he said. “People keep asking me, ‘Is it over? Have we lost?’ But there are a lot of other opportunities.”

Earlier this year, Congress passed House Joint Resolution 140, using the Congressional Review Act to overturn a federal mineral withdrawal that had protected the Boundary Waters from new mineral leasing. This marked one of the most significant victories for mining advocates and one of the largest setbacks for conservation groups in recent years.

“This was a novel and likely illegal move,” Miller-McFeeley said.

According to Miller-McFeeley, Congress had never previously used the Congressional Review Act to overturn a public lands mineral withdrawal.

“It’s a powerful tool that they’re abusing to bypass normal democratic processes,” he said.

The resolution passed the Senate by a single vote. 

“They were stripping protections for the Boundary Waters because they were blatantly ignoring the voices of the American people and prioritizing the profits of a foreign mining company over the interests of the nation’s people,” Miller-McFeeley said.

“Protecting the Boundary Waters is not a partisan issue,” Lyons said. “Seventy percent of Minnesotans across partisan divides want the Boundary Waters protected.”

What’s next

Despite the loss of federal protections, advocates say the fight is far from over.

Earthjustice and its partners continue to work with conservation groups to pressure Minnesota officials to use state authority to block future mining projects.

The current focus is on Twin Metals’ state mineral leases.

“We’re trying to pressure the Minnesota DNR to exercise its authority and cancel this lease,” Marshall said. “To do something to protect Minnesota’s water.”

Miller-McFeeley said efforts remain energized despite recent setbacks.

“The CRA [congressional review act] vote was not the end of the line. It was not the end of the story,” he said. “We will continue to fight because there are lots of different places to fight from.”

For many advocates, the fight ultimately comes down to preserving a place they believe is irreplaceable. But Marshall argues the choice is clear.

“It’s a very short-term economic gain for potentially hundreds of years of pollution,” Marshall said. 

The post After federal protections fall, Boundary Waters advocates prepare for next phase of mining fight appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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Julia Roeder

On:
In: Climate change, Featured, Food, Michigan, Politics, Policy, Environmental Justice, Recreation and Tourism, Science, Technology, Research

By Isabella Figueroa Nogueira, Bridge Michigan

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan; Circle of Blue; Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS; Michigan Public, Michigan’s NPR News Leader; and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work HERE.

Unlike most fourth-graders, AJ Beaudion likes to leave recess five minutes early.

It’s part of his job.

At 9 years old, Beaudion is the composting manager at Hayes Elementary School in Livonia. His responsibilities include arriving on time during kindergarten through fourth-grade lunch to help sort the food waste, stacking compostable trays and placing them into bins destined for an offsite facility where they’ll be turned into rich soil.

“It’s important to help the Earth,” said Beaudion.

An unknown number of schools across Michigan have, like Hayes, taken up composting initiatives. But coalitions of education and anti-food waste groups, including Make Food Not Waste and the Detroit Food Policy Council, want to see more.

They’ve begun lobbying state legislators in hopes of securing $3 million for a pilot grant program that would allow schools across the state to replicate the program at Hayes Elementary. 

After an unsuccessful attempt to secure funding for the fiscal year that starts in October, they’re starting conversations early in hopes of succeeding next year. 

“If you get kids young learning about these things and thinking about what happens when they are done with the food on their plate, you’re teaching them to reduce waste and think about how things can be repurposed instead of going to a landfill,” said Amy Kuras, the program manager at Food Policy Council.

According to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, Michiganders landfill up to 2 million tons of food waste each year — nearly a fifth of all waste sent to municipal landfills. 

Michigan’s K-12 schools, which dole out millions of meals each day, contributed 17,200 tons in 2024.

Beyond taking up limited space, landfilled food contributes to climate change by breaking down to produce methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. 

Nationwide, food waste sent to landfills emits 270 million metric tons of greenhouse gases — an impact equivalent to putting 24 million more gas-powered cars on the road, according to EGLE.  

The Michigan Healthy Climate Plan calls for the state to cut food waste in half by 2030, with strategies ranging from reducing school cafeteria waste to promoting curbside compost pickup programs, drop-off locations and collection sites for businesses. 

A nascent effort

In school cafeterias across the state, uneaten meals and discarded packaging fill trash cans quickly, turning lunch periods into an environmental liability. 

Lunchtime at Hayes Elementary looks different.

There, students end their lunch period with a stop at waste disposal stations overseen by student volunteers like Beaudion. 

The volunteers act as traffic directors, helping their peers sort each waste item into the correct bin: A banana peel is placed into a composting bucket while the sticker on the peel becomes trash.

“We get to save our Mother Nature, and there is a lot of plastic,” fourth-grader Mustafa Yakliftin told Bridge Michigan as he was finishing up his lunch. “Composting saves all our waste. Plastic takes more than 300 years to go away.”

Hayes is one of several Michigan schools, from metro Detroit to Genesee County, that have begun compost cafeteria scraps.

But with $3 million, Kuras said, the state could help more schools pay for compost bins, educational materials, staff training and infrastructure needed to set up their own composting programs.

She acknowledged the idea may be a tough sell as lawmakers contend with shrinking state revenue.

“Funds are tight and there are a lot of competing priorities in the Legislature,” she said. 

State Budget Office spokesperson Lauren Leeds said none of the draft budgets proposed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or the state House or state Senate include funding for food waste diversion initiatives.

Spokespeople for state Sen. Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, the Senate budget chair, declined to comment, while House Republicans spokesperson Gideon D’Assandro and state Rep. Ann Bollin, R-Brighton, the House budget chair, did not respond to questions from Bridge Michigan. Spokespeople for Whitmer redirected Bridge to the State Budget Office.

Composting in action

Hayes Elementary’s composting program began with a waste audit in 2016.

“We analyzed only one bag of trash and the small group of kids that I got together to do this waste audit could see that one bite was taken out of the middle of a grilled cheese sandwich and they just thought that was ridiculous,” said Christine Lakatos, an art teacher and Green Team leader at Hayes Elementary.

So Lakatos and her students sought to do something about it. The school contracted with a company called My Green Michigan to build a composting program that now diverts nearly 10,000 pounds of cafeteria food scraps annually.

Sixty miles north, Davison Community School District runs a similar program in four of the district’s nine schools, said Food Services Director Jennifer Lutze.  

Davison administrators used excess money in the district’s food service fund to purchase stainless steel trays and reusable sporks, a change that reduced waste and saved roughly $11,000. 

James Emmerling, the district’s science and health coordinator, said the district used the savings to fund its composting program, which has diverted an estimated 23 tons of food waste from landfills this year.

“If you can eat it, it can go in there,” Lutze said of the bins that have become a staple in participating cafeterias.

Sold as a soil amendment to landscape supply companies Hammond Farms and Spurt, the composted material improves overall soil properties and creates a better environment for root growth.

Implementing those systems is not always straightforward, said Lakatos. Schools must balance waste reduction goals with operational realities like busy lunch schedules and limited staffing and funds.

But it’s worth the effort, Lakatos said, because it reduces waste while instilling sustainable habits that students carry into adulthood.

The post In school cafeterias, kids fight Michigan’s food waste problems appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/06/17/in-school-cafeterias-kids-fight-michigans-food-waste-problems/

Bridge Michigan

On:
In: Climate change, Featured, Food, Michigan, Politics, Policy, Environmental Justice, Recreation and Tourism, Science, Technology, Research

By Isabella Figueroa Nogueira, Bridge Michigan

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan; Circle of Blue; Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS; Michigan Public, Michigan’s NPR News Leader; and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work HERE.

Unlike most fourth-graders, AJ Beaudion likes to leave recess five minutes early.

It’s part of his job.

At 9 years old, Beaudion is the composting manager at Hayes Elementary School in Livonia. His responsibilities include arriving on time during kindergarten through fourth-grade lunch to help sort the food waste, stacking compostable trays and placing them into bins destined for an offsite facility where they’ll be turned into rich soil.

“It’s important to help the Earth,” said Beaudion.

An unknown number of schools across Michigan have, like Hayes, taken up composting initiatives. But coalitions of education and anti-food waste groups, including Make Food Not Waste and the Detroit Food Policy Council, want to see more.

They’ve begun lobbying state legislators in hopes of securing $3 million for a pilot grant program that would allow schools across the state to replicate the program at Hayes Elementary. 

After an unsuccessful attempt to secure funding for the fiscal year that starts in October, they’re starting conversations early in hopes of succeeding next year. 

“If you get kids young learning about these things and thinking about what happens when they are done with the food on their plate, you’re teaching them to reduce waste and think about how things can be repurposed instead of going to a landfill,” said Amy Kuras, the program manager at Food Policy Council.

According to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, Michiganders landfill up to 2 million tons of food waste each year — nearly a fifth of all waste sent to municipal landfills. 

Michigan’s K-12 schools, which dole out millions of meals each day, contributed 17,200 tons in 2024.

Beyond taking up limited space, landfilled food contributes to climate change by breaking down to produce methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. 

Nationwide, food waste sent to landfills emits 270 million metric tons of greenhouse gases — an impact equivalent to putting 24 million more gas-powered cars on the road, according to EGLE.  

The Michigan Healthy Climate Plan calls for the state to cut food waste in half by 2030, with strategies ranging from reducing school cafeteria waste to promoting curbside compost pickup programs, drop-off locations and collection sites for businesses. 

A nascent effort

In school cafeterias across the state, uneaten meals and discarded packaging fill trash cans quickly, turning lunch periods into an environmental liability. 

Lunchtime at Hayes Elementary looks different.

There, students end their lunch period with a stop at waste disposal stations overseen by student volunteers like Beaudion. 

The volunteers act as traffic directors, helping their peers sort each waste item into the correct bin: A banana peel is placed into a composting bucket while the sticker on the peel becomes trash.

“We get to save our Mother Nature, and there is a lot of plastic,” fourth-grader Mustafa Yakliftin told Bridge Michigan as he was finishing up his lunch. “Composting saves all our waste. Plastic takes more than 300 years to go away.”

Hayes is one of several Michigan schools, from metro Detroit to Genesee County, that have begun compost cafeteria scraps.

But with $3 million, Kuras said, the state could help more schools pay for compost bins, educational materials, staff training and infrastructure needed to set up their own composting programs.

She acknowledged the idea may be a tough sell as lawmakers contend with shrinking state revenue.

“Funds are tight and there are a lot of competing priorities in the Legislature,” she said. 

State Budget Office spokesperson Lauren Leeds said none of the draft budgets proposed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or the state House or state Senate include funding for food waste diversion initiatives.

Spokespeople for state Sen. Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, the Senate budget chair, declined to comment, while House Republicans spokesperson Gideon D’Assandro and state Rep. Ann Bollin, R-Brighton, the House budget chair, did not respond to questions from Bridge Michigan. Spokespeople for Whitmer redirected Bridge to the State Budget Office.

Composting in action

Hayes Elementary’s composting program began with a waste audit in 2016.

“We analyzed only one bag of trash and the small group of kids that I got together to do this waste audit could see that one bite was taken out of the middle of a grilled cheese sandwich and they just thought that was ridiculous,” said Christine Lakatos, an art teacher and Green Team leader at Hayes Elementary.

So Lakatos and her students sought to do something about it. The school contracted with a company called My Green Michigan to build a composting program that now diverts nearly 10,000 pounds of cafeteria food scraps annually.

Sixty miles north, Davison Community School District runs a similar program in four of the district’s nine schools, said Food Services Director Jennifer Lutze.  

Davison administrators used excess money in the district’s food service fund to purchase stainless steel trays and reusable sporks, a change that reduced waste and saved roughly $11,000. 

James Emmerling, the district’s science and health coordinator, said the district used the savings to fund its composting program, which has diverted an estimated 23 tons of food waste from landfills this year.

“If you can eat it, it can go in there,” Lutze said of the bins that have become a staple in participating cafeterias.

Sold as a soil amendment to landscape supply companies Hammond Farms and Spurt, the composted material improves overall soil properties and creates a better environment for root growth.

Implementing those systems is not always straightforward, said Lakatos. Schools must balance waste reduction goals with operational realities like busy lunch schedules and limited staffing and funds.

But it’s worth the effort, Lakatos said, because it reduces waste while instilling sustainable habits that students carry into adulthood.

The post In school cafeterias, kids fight Michigan’s food waste problems appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/06/17/in-school-cafeterias-kids-fight-michigans-food-waste-problems/

Bridge Michigan

On:
In: Climate change, Featured, Food, Michigan, Politics, Policy, Environmental Justice, Recreation and Tourism, Science, Technology, Research

By Isabella Figueroa Nogueira, Bridge Michigan

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan; Circle of Blue; Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS; Michigan Public, Michigan’s NPR News Leader; and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work HERE.

Unlike most fourth-graders, AJ Beaudion likes to leave recess five minutes early.

It’s part of his job.

At 9 years old, Beaudion is the composting manager at Hayes Elementary School in Livonia. His responsibilities include arriving on time during kindergarten through fourth-grade lunch to help sort the food waste, stacking compostable trays and placing them into bins destined for an offsite facility where they’ll be turned into rich soil.

“It’s important to help the Earth,” said Beaudion.

An unknown number of schools across Michigan have, like Hayes, taken up composting initiatives. But coalitions of education and anti-food waste groups, including Make Food Not Waste and the Detroit Food Policy Council, want to see more.

They’ve begun lobbying state legislators in hopes of securing $3 million for a pilot grant program that would allow schools across the state to replicate the program at Hayes Elementary. 

After an unsuccessful attempt to secure funding for the fiscal year that starts in October, they’re starting conversations early in hopes of succeeding next year. 

“If you get kids young learning about these things and thinking about what happens when they are done with the food on their plate, you’re teaching them to reduce waste and think about how things can be repurposed instead of going to a landfill,” said Amy Kuras, the program manager at Food Policy Council.

According to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, Michiganders landfill up to 2 million tons of food waste each year — nearly a fifth of all waste sent to municipal landfills. 

Michigan’s K-12 schools, which dole out millions of meals each day, contributed 17,200 tons in 2024.

Beyond taking up limited space, landfilled food contributes to climate change by breaking down to produce methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. 

Nationwide, food waste sent to landfills emits 270 million metric tons of greenhouse gases — an impact equivalent to putting 24 million more gas-powered cars on the road, according to EGLE.  

The Michigan Healthy Climate Plan calls for the state to cut food waste in half by 2030, with strategies ranging from reducing school cafeteria waste to promoting curbside compost pickup programs, drop-off locations and collection sites for businesses. 

A nascent effort

In school cafeterias across the state, uneaten meals and discarded packaging fill trash cans quickly, turning lunch periods into an environmental liability. 

Lunchtime at Hayes Elementary looks different.

There, students end their lunch period with a stop at waste disposal stations overseen by student volunteers like Beaudion. 

The volunteers act as traffic directors, helping their peers sort each waste item into the correct bin: A banana peel is placed into a composting bucket while the sticker on the peel becomes trash.

“We get to save our Mother Nature, and there is a lot of plastic,” fourth-grader Mustafa Yakliftin told Bridge Michigan as he was finishing up his lunch. “Composting saves all our waste. Plastic takes more than 300 years to go away.”

Hayes is one of several Michigan schools, from metro Detroit to Genesee County, that have begun compost cafeteria scraps.

But with $3 million, Kuras said, the state could help more schools pay for compost bins, educational materials, staff training and infrastructure needed to set up their own composting programs.

She acknowledged the idea may be a tough sell as lawmakers contend with shrinking state revenue.

“Funds are tight and there are a lot of competing priorities in the Legislature,” she said. 

State Budget Office spokesperson Lauren Leeds said none of the draft budgets proposed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or the state House or state Senate include funding for food waste diversion initiatives.

Spokespeople for state Sen. Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, the Senate budget chair, declined to comment, while House Republicans spokesperson Gideon D’Assandro and state Rep. Ann Bollin, R-Brighton, the House budget chair, did not respond to questions from Bridge Michigan. Spokespeople for Whitmer redirected Bridge to the State Budget Office.

Composting in action

Hayes Elementary’s composting program began with a waste audit in 2016.

“We analyzed only one bag of trash and the small group of kids that I got together to do this waste audit could see that one bite was taken out of the middle of a grilled cheese sandwich and they just thought that was ridiculous,” said Christine Lakatos, an art teacher and Green Team leader at Hayes Elementary.

So Lakatos and her students sought to do something about it. The school contracted with a company called My Green Michigan to build a composting program that now diverts nearly 10,000 pounds of cafeteria food scraps annually.

Sixty miles north, Davison Community School District runs a similar program in four of the district’s nine schools, said Food Services Director Jennifer Lutze.  

Davison administrators used excess money in the district’s food service fund to purchase stainless steel trays and reusable sporks, a change that reduced waste and saved roughly $11,000. 

James Emmerling, the district’s science and health coordinator, said the district used the savings to fund its composting program, which has diverted an estimated 23 tons of food waste from landfills this year.

“If you can eat it, it can go in there,” Lutze said of the bins that have become a staple in participating cafeterias.

Sold as a soil amendment to landscape supply companies Hammond Farms and Spurt, the composted material improves overall soil properties and creates a better environment for root growth.

Implementing those systems is not always straightforward, said Lakatos. Schools must balance waste reduction goals with operational realities like busy lunch schedules and limited staffing and funds.

But it’s worth the effort, Lakatos said, because it reduces waste while instilling sustainable habits that students carry into adulthood.

The post In school cafeterias, kids fight Michigan’s food waste problems appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/06/17/in-school-cafeterias-kids-fight-michigans-food-waste-problems/

Bridge Michigan

On:
In: Climate change, Featured, Food, Michigan, Politics, Policy, Environmental Justice, Recreation and Tourism, Science, Technology, Research

By Isabella Figueroa Nogueira, Bridge Michigan

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan; Circle of Blue; Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS; Michigan Public, Michigan’s NPR News Leader; and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work HERE.

Unlike most fourth-graders, AJ Beaudion likes to leave recess five minutes early.

It’s part of his job.

At 9 years old, Beaudion is the composting manager at Hayes Elementary School in Livonia. His responsibilities include arriving on time during kindergarten through fourth-grade lunch to help sort the food waste, stacking compostable trays and placing them into bins destined for an offsite facility where they’ll be turned into rich soil.

“It’s important to help the Earth,” said Beaudion.

An unknown number of schools across Michigan have, like Hayes, taken up composting initiatives. But coalitions of education and anti-food waste groups, including Make Food Not Waste and the Detroit Food Policy Council, want to see more.

They’ve begun lobbying state legislators in hopes of securing $3 million for a pilot grant program that would allow schools across the state to replicate the program at Hayes Elementary. 

After an unsuccessful attempt to secure funding for the fiscal year that starts in October, they’re starting conversations early in hopes of succeeding next year. 

“If you get kids young learning about these things and thinking about what happens when they are done with the food on their plate, you’re teaching them to reduce waste and think about how things can be repurposed instead of going to a landfill,” said Amy Kuras, the program manager at Food Policy Council.

According to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, Michiganders landfill up to 2 million tons of food waste each year — nearly a fifth of all waste sent to municipal landfills. 

Michigan’s K-12 schools, which dole out millions of meals each day, contributed 17,200 tons in 2024.

Beyond taking up limited space, landfilled food contributes to climate change by breaking down to produce methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. 

Nationwide, food waste sent to landfills emits 270 million metric tons of greenhouse gases — an impact equivalent to putting 24 million more gas-powered cars on the road, according to EGLE.  

The Michigan Healthy Climate Plan calls for the state to cut food waste in half by 2030, with strategies ranging from reducing school cafeteria waste to promoting curbside compost pickup programs, drop-off locations and collection sites for businesses. 

A nascent effort

In school cafeterias across the state, uneaten meals and discarded packaging fill trash cans quickly, turning lunch periods into an environmental liability. 

Lunchtime at Hayes Elementary looks different.

There, students end their lunch period with a stop at waste disposal stations overseen by student volunteers like Beaudion. 

The volunteers act as traffic directors, helping their peers sort each waste item into the correct bin: A banana peel is placed into a composting bucket while the sticker on the peel becomes trash.

“We get to save our Mother Nature, and there is a lot of plastic,” fourth-grader Mustafa Yakliftin told Bridge Michigan as he was finishing up his lunch. “Composting saves all our waste. Plastic takes more than 300 years to go away.”

Hayes is one of several Michigan schools, from metro Detroit to Genesee County, that have begun compost cafeteria scraps.

But with $3 million, Kuras said, the state could help more schools pay for compost bins, educational materials, staff training and infrastructure needed to set up their own composting programs.

She acknowledged the idea may be a tough sell as lawmakers contend with shrinking state revenue.

“Funds are tight and there are a lot of competing priorities in the Legislature,” she said. 

State Budget Office spokesperson Lauren Leeds said none of the draft budgets proposed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or the state House or state Senate include funding for food waste diversion initiatives.

Spokespeople for state Sen. Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, the Senate budget chair, declined to comment, while House Republicans spokesperson Gideon D’Assandro and state Rep. Ann Bollin, R-Brighton, the House budget chair, did not respond to questions from Bridge Michigan. Spokespeople for Whitmer redirected Bridge to the State Budget Office.

Composting in action

Hayes Elementary’s composting program began with a waste audit in 2016.

“We analyzed only one bag of trash and the small group of kids that I got together to do this waste audit could see that one bite was taken out of the middle of a grilled cheese sandwich and they just thought that was ridiculous,” said Christine Lakatos, an art teacher and Green Team leader at Hayes Elementary.

So Lakatos and her students sought to do something about it. The school contracted with a company called My Green Michigan to build a composting program that now diverts nearly 10,000 pounds of cafeteria food scraps annually.

Sixty miles north, Davison Community School District runs a similar program in four of the district’s nine schools, said Food Services Director Jennifer Lutze.  

Davison administrators used excess money in the district’s food service fund to purchase stainless steel trays and reusable sporks, a change that reduced waste and saved roughly $11,000. 

James Emmerling, the district’s science and health coordinator, said the district used the savings to fund its composting program, which has diverted an estimated 23 tons of food waste from landfills this year.

“If you can eat it, it can go in there,” Lutze said of the bins that have become a staple in participating cafeterias.

Sold as a soil amendment to landscape supply companies Hammond Farms and Spurt, the composted material improves overall soil properties and creates a better environment for root growth.

Implementing those systems is not always straightforward, said Lakatos. Schools must balance waste reduction goals with operational realities like busy lunch schedules and limited staffing and funds.

But it’s worth the effort, Lakatos said, because it reduces waste while instilling sustainable habits that students carry into adulthood.

The post In school cafeterias, kids fight Michigan’s food waste problems appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/06/17/in-school-cafeterias-kids-fight-michigans-food-waste-problems/

Bridge Michigan

On:
In: Featured, Fish, Birds and Animals, Research, Data and Technology, Science, Technology, Research

A walk through the woods is no longer the only place Midwesterners should watch for ticks. Researchers say the tiny parasites are spreading to communities across the region and they show no signs of slowing down.   

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), emergency room visits attributed to ticks are at the highest levels in nearly 10 years. The Midwest is the region with the second most likely emergency room visits due to  tick bites. 

In 2023, state health departments reported more than 89,000 cases of Lyme disease in humans to the CDC, the most recent year numbers have been published.  

Experts like Edward Walker, a Michigan State University entomologist who has tracked changes in tick populations across Michigan and the Great Lakes region, warn the increase of ticks may not go away anytime soon.  

“This is a long-term process of expansion in the range of ticks,” Walker said. “It’s not just that there is more this year than last year. It’s a much bigger, longer-term thing.” 

In places where ticks were once rare, expansion of the species continues. Walker says ticks are being found in backyards and parks rather than just forests.  

“People will say things like, ‘We never had ticks here and now we do.’ I accept that as a real observation. It’s not imaginary,” Walker said.  

The most common ticks in the Midwest are the deer tick, lone star tick and the wood tick, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

The deer tick, best known for transmitting Lyme disease, has been one of the most closely watched species. Their population has grown significantly over the past 20 to 30 years, William Miller, an associate professor at Calvin University who studies tick populations in Michigan, said.  

 “Populations were showing up pretty much everywhere within our sampling region,” he said, noting that areas once considered low risk are now seeing consistent tick presence. 

Traveling ticks 

How are tick populations traveling? Deer.   

The white-tailed deer population plays a critical role in that expansion. Walker described them as fuel for growing tick populations. 

“Deer is really an all-you-can-eat buffet for ticks,” he said.  

Deer populations have continued to rebound across the Midwest, especially after near elimination in the past century in some Midwestern states. Their return, combined with warming temperatures, has created conditions for ticks to thrive. 

That includes both deer ticks and lone star ticks, which are moving north away from historically warmer climates. 

Rising temperatures are a major factor that allow ticks to survive farther north, according to Jonathan Oliver, a professor at the University of Minnesota and public health entomologist specializing in vector-borne diseases.  

 “They were previously limited by minimum winter temperature,” Oliver said. “As the minimum winter temperature has risen, they are able to survive.” 

Gilbert Kersh, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expert who specializes in tick borne diseases, echoed this statement.  

“If you have weather warming up earlier in the springtime, this is going to give ticks a longer time period to grow and breed during the year,” Kersh said.  

The result is a compounding effect, with a mix of more suitable habitats, more hosts and longer warm seasons. 

“Increased temperatures as well as increased deer populations are two big drivers of the increased number of ticks,” Kersh said.  

How to protect yourself 

As tick populations expand across the Midwest and beyond, researchers say that many tick-borne illnesses can be prevented with a simple precaution before and after spending time outdoors. 

“Prevention is definitely the best mode of avoiding getting a tick-borne disease,” said Oliver.  

He recommends repellents and protective clothing as first-line defenses. 

“Insect repellents tend to be effective with ticks,” he said. “Permethrin-treated clothing-those are both going to be effective for keeping ticks, mosquitoes and black flies off of you.” 

Kersh also recommends practical steps like showering. 

“A good way to do this is by showering right after coming in from outdoors,” he said. “You can also put your clothes in the dryer on high heat for 10 minutes or longer, and this will kill ticks.” 

Time matters when a tick attaches to human skin. The longer it remains on the skin, the higher the chance of disease transmission. 

“If you do find a tick embedded in your skin, it’s important to remove it as soon as possible,” Kersh said. “Removing the tick can prevent transmission of disease.” 

Daily tick checks are another simple but powerful habit, Oliver said. He emphasized that Lyme disease transmission often requires time. 

“If you’re doing daily tick checks, then you can greatly reduce disease risk,” he said. 

Miller also stressed the importance of awareness. 

“Fear of ticks can sometimes be paralyzing,” he said. “The important thing is being tick aware but not tick afraid.”

The post Protect Yourself: Why Ticks Are Spreading in the Great Lakes region appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/06/11/protect-yourself-why-ticks-are-spreading-in-the-great-lakes-region/

Julia Roeder

On:
In: Energy News Roundup, Featured, Wisconsin

Catch the latest energy news from around the region. Check back for these monthly Energy News Roundups.

Coal plants in Indiana and Wisconsin hit the jackpot last week: They’re getting close to $50 million of the $425 million the Trump administration announced for modernization projects at a dozen coal plants across the country. Hallador Power Company’s Merom Generating Station south of Terre Haute is expected to get $27.2 million to improve water treatment measures. Alliant Energy’s Columbia Energy Center north of Madison is in line to receive $19 million for reliability and efficiency upgrades. Both plants have already been kept in operation well past their original closure dates.

The Trump administration staved off the closure of another Indiana coal plant last year by ordering it to stay open. There’s just one problem: NIPSCO’s R.M. Schahfer plant has been offline for repairs since the end of February. It’s expected to stay offline until at least October, NIPSCO told grid operators last month. One of the plant’s two coal units had been out of service for months before the emergency order due to mechanical failures, while the other went offline Feb. 28 for planned maintenance.

And state and federal lawyers clashed in a Washington courtroom over whether the Trump administration’s order to keep Michigan utility Consumers Energy’s J.H. Campbell coal plant operating past its retirement date was needed to avert a power shortage. The plant on Lake Michigan was scheduled to close last May until Energy Secretary Chris Wright intervened. The U.S. Department of Energy has said the order is in accordance with a national energy emergency that President Donald Trump declared on his first day back in office. Attorneys for Michigan and other states say there is no emergency.

Two former Ohio utility executives have been indicted — again — on bribery, fraud and corruption charges after their last trial ended with a hung jury. In a statement announcing the reindictment, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said FirstEnergy was “hijacked by two scheming executives who sought to control the regulator that influenced the company’s stock prices.” Jurors in the last trial couldn’t decide whether former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and senior vice president Mike Dowling paid a $4.3 million bribe to the state’s top utility regulator -– partly to bail out a pair of unprofitable coal plants.

Meanwhile, Ohio’s tax break for data centers cost the state 11 times more than expected last year. Data centers in Ohio are exempted from sales taxes, and the exemption was originally estimated to cost $136 million. In 2024, it cost about $555 million; in 2025, it cost nearly $1.6 billion. Companies benefitting from the exemption include Meta, Alphabet and Amazon. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced a pause on new exemptions days after Signal Ohio reported on the cost to the state.

More energy news, in case you missed it:

  • Energy company Enbridge can continue building a new stretch of its Line 5 pipeline in northern Wisconsin but must halt work in waterways where it needs additional permits, a Wisconsin judge ruled.
  • Lawmakers in Minnesota — where a moratorium on new nuclear generation remains in place — approved $500,000 in funding to study the possibility of building new nuclear plants in the state.
  • A Michigan campaign to ban utility companies and large government contractors from donating to political causes said it turned in over 562,000 signatures to get on the November ballot.
  • “This could very well turn into the site where cancer gets cured,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at the groundbreaking of a $16 billion data center campus outside Ann Arbor.
  • Frito-Lay is not refusing to buy potatoes grown on farmland that’s hosted solar installations, the snack food manufacturer said after Michigan and Pennsylvania lawmakers spread the false claim on social media.

The post Trump announces nearly $50 million for coal plants in Indiana, Wisconsin as others in Great Lakes region remain on life support appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/06/10/trump-announces-nearly-50-million-for-coal-plants-in-indiana-wisconsin-as-others-in-great-lakes-region-remain-on-life-support/

Nicole Pollack, Great Lakes Now

On:
In: Featured, Politics, Policy, Environmental Justice, Science, Technology, Research

By Vivian La, IPR

This coverage is made possible in part through a partnership between IPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

Some groups that do research and collect data on the Great Lakes face existential threats as the federal budgeting process for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gets underway.

A proposed budget request from President Trump would zero out programs that scientists say are the foundation of weather observations, water quality, maritime safety and recreation on the Great Lakes. The President wants to cut NOAA’s budget by $1.3 billion, or one-third of current funding levels to better match priorities related to halting climate research.

“The investment that we make pays off in terms of safer water, public safety, public health, as well as economic activity,” said Gregory Dick, director of the Cooperative Institute Lakes Research (CIGLR), a partnership between the University of Michigan and NOAA.

Researchers at CIGLR work closely with NOAA to conduct work on lake water levels, ice dynamics and harmful algal blooms on Lake Erie. Data is used by state managers, fishermen, boaters and the regional shipping industry.

“That’s the kind of data that you want at your fingertips,” Dick said. “That’s what’s at risk with cuts like the ones we’re talking about.”

Beyond this data, Dick is worried about long-term research on how climate change is affecting the Great Lakes. Water levels are fluctuating and Dick said understanding those dynamics is important for future planning around development and the economy.

Another at-risk program is the Great Lakes Observing System (GLOS), a regional network collecting data on wave heights, water temperatures, ice, wind and more. The network makes real-time data available to the public, and it’s often used by boaters, fishermen and people who recreate on the lakes.

“If you want to visit a beach, if you want to take your dog and let it run in the lake, it’s really important to know beforehand if there’s a bloom there or dangerous surf conditions,” said Jennifer Boehme, CEO of GLOS.

In a memo released with the budget proposal, the White House stated that “President Trump is committed to eliminating funding for the globalist climate agenda while unleashing American energy production.” The proposed NOAA budget will cut climate research and save taxpayer money, according to the memo.

NOAA programs in the Great Lakes are already adapting to cuts from the previous year. The Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab (which houses CIGLR), for example, lost about 40% of its staff last year after rounds of layoffs and early retirements, according to Dick.

GLOS is also in a more vulnerable position this year, Boehme said. The program is up for a contract renewal with NOAA, which happens every five years. And the system hasn’t received all of its appropriated funds from last year.

“Each lapse makes the next one worse, and rebuilding isn’t just a matter of writing another check. The relationships and the seasonal schedules that make the network function can take years to reconstruct,” she said.

Still, the President’s budget is more a signal of priorities than binding, said Alex Eastman, the Great Lakes program manager at the Northeast-Midwest Institute, a nonprofit policy research group. Appropriations are ultimately decided by Congress, which is in the middle of that process.

This year, the House Appropriations Committee has passed a bill that would fund NOAA at levels similar to last year, largely ignoring the President’s budget proposal. But the bill is $300 million short of last year’s funding. The Senate hasn’t passed their version of the appropriations bill yet.

Congress funded these Great Lakes programs last year after the President proposed similar cuts, likely because they know the value they provide for the region and country, Eastman said.

“I do think that the more that Congress pushes back, I think the more the executive branch and the President will see that they’re not gaining anything by continuing to try to impose draconian cuts,” he said.

The post Great Lakes scientists worry about federal cuts to NOAA appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/06/02/great-lakes-scientists-worry-about-federal-cuts-to-noaa/

Interlochen Public Radio and Grist

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In: bridge michigan, Featured, Latest News, Michigan, monsanto, PCBs, Politics, Policy, Environmental Justice, pollution, Water Quality and Restoration Efforts

By Isabella Figueroa Nogueira, Bridge Michigan

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan; Circle of Blue; Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS; Michigan Public, Michigan’s NPR News Leader; and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work HERE.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has announced a $108 million settlement with Monsanto Co. to address longstanding environmental contamination from polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) across the state.

States, including Michigan, filed lawsuits against Monsanto over long-term environmental contamination caused by PCBs, a toxic industrial chemical the company manufactured for decades before it was banned in the United States in 1979. The states allege that PCBs persist in waterways, soil, and wildlife and continue to pose risks to public health through environmental exposure and fish consumption. 

The cases seek to hold the company financially responsible for cleanup costs and damage to natural resources.

The settlement funds will support cleanup and restoration of PCB-impacted sites across Michigan, with oversight shared by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Officials said the money will be used to reduce contamination risks, improve water quality, and restore damaged natural resources.

Under the agreement, Monsanto will pay Michigan $32 million in June and another $32 million in March 2027. Additional contingency payments tied to related litigation could range from $44 million to $176 million, bringing the total potential value of the settlement to as much as $240 million.

EGLE officials said no specific cleanup projects have been selected yet, but the agencies will work together to determine where funding can remediate PCB-contaminated sites and restore impacted natural resources. The agencies plan to consult with local governments, tribes, and environmental organizations, and may distribute some funds through grants and matching programs.

Nessel said the settlement ensures accountability for longstanding pollution tied to the chemicals. 

“Despite being banned for years in the United States, PCBs leave a toxic legacy that continues to threaten our health and environment,” she said in a statement.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has announced a $108 million settlement with Monsanto Co. to address longstanding environmental contamination from polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) across the state.

States, including Michigan, filed lawsuits against Monsanto over long-term environmental contamination caused by PCBs, a toxic industrial chemical the company manufactured for decades before it was banned in the United States in 1979. The states allege that PCBs persist in waterways, soil, and wildlife and continue to pose risks to public health through environmental exposure and fish consumption. 

The cases seek to hold the company financially responsible for cleanup costs and damage to natural resources.

The settlement funds will support cleanup and restoration of PCB-impacted sites across Michigan, with oversight shared by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Officials said the money will be used to reduce contamination risks, improve water quality, and restore damaged natural resources.

Under the agreement, Monsanto will pay Michigan $32 million in June and another $32 million in March 2027. Additional contingency payments tied to related litigation could range from $44 million to $176 million, bringing the total potential value of the settlement to as much as $240 million.

EGLE officials said no specific cleanup projects have been selected yet, but the agencies will work together to determine where funding can remediate PCB-contaminated sites and restore impacted natural resources. The agencies plan to consult with local governments, tribes, and environmental organizations, and may distribute some funds through grants and matching programs.

Nessel said the settlement ensures accountability for longstanding pollution tied to the chemicals. 

“Despite being banned for years in the United States, PCBs leave a toxic legacy that continues to threaten our health and environment,” she said in a statement.

Officials with Monsanto, now owned by Bayer AG, said the settlement resolves PCB-related claims without any admission of liability or wrongdoing. The company said PCBs were a legacy product it stopped producing in 1977 and noted that additional payments are tied to a separate lawsuit over whether former industrial customers must help cover PCB-related legal and cleanup costs.

Michigan is among a growing number of states that have reached settlements with Monsanto over PCB-related claims. According to the company’s litigation update, it has settled with 12 states, including Michigan and Rhode Island.

The post Michigan gets $108M in Monsanto settlement to clean up PCB contamination appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/05/20/michigan-gets-108m-in-monsanto-settlement-to-clean-up-pcb-contamination/

Bridge Michigan

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In: Agriculture, Featured, Industry, Energy, Economic Development, Latest News, Michigan, Policy, Politics, Policy, Environmental Justice, Traverse City

When Brain Neff retired from the Air Force, he had his eyes on a farm on the outskirts of Traverse City, Michigan. 

The land was once operated by his wife’s grandparents before it was leased out for years after her grandparents stopped tending to it. In 2021, the Neffs bought the property back with plans to transform it in retirement. 

“We had it in mind that we were going to turn it into more of a destination farm akin to the types of things that we saw when we were in the military, out in California and other places in the country,” Neff said.  

Neff says he was anticipating 2026 to be their first profitable year, but because of the financial issues they, and many other farmers are facing, he no longer thinks so.  

“My projection would be that we will not turn a profit this year,” Neff said. 

Neff’s story is not an isolated one.  

An April survey from the American Farm Bureau Federation found nearly 70% of American farmers say they cannot afford fertilizer. It also found almost half of Midwestern farmers report they cannot afford all the supplies they need.  

Credit: American Farm Bureau Federation

The survey drew from 5,400 farmers in each state and Puerto Rico. According to the responses, 94% of respondents reported their financial situation has worsened or remained the same since last year, while only 6% reported improvement. 

The survey shows Midwestern farmers reported slightly stronger purchasing plans, but nearly half still said they could not afford all the supplies they needed. While farmers in the other parts of the country are less likely to purchase fertilizer ahead of planting season, this could sharpen stress on America’s “breadbasket” which a 2026 report from the Future of Food Coalition described as “one of the most intensively farmed agricultural regions globally.”  

For many farmers across the Great Lakes region, those numbers are not abstract statistics but are shaping what gets planted, harvested and what is profitable. 

Neff says the cost of urea, a chemical used as a fertilizer, went up from $612 to $892 from April 2025 to April 2026, changing the decisions he is making this year.  

“I chose to forego putting urea down on our grass hayfields this spring,” he said. “Any additional growth I expected to see from the hay would have just been eaten up in cost.” 

The decision to forego the urea will likely impact the outcome of production, Neff said he will “have a reduced first cutting because of it.” 

“We’re continuing to put our own equity into this farm to establish it and hope that things turn around next year,” he said.   

Causes  

National policy decisions have continued to impact farmers.  

Bob Thompson, president of the Michigan Farmers Union, said the first ”hammer” to farmers was “the implementation of tariffs” that “has had a real detrimental effect at the local farm level.”  

Credit: American Farm Bureau Federation

As part of a larger implementation of sweeping tariffs, in February 2025, the Trump administration announced a 25% tariff on all imported steel and aluminum products. Economists warned the tariffs could raise costs for farm equipment, replacement parts and transportation. 

As these tariffs are still in effect, the Iran conflict has only exacerbated these issues, with the Strait of Hormuz being closed. 

In the survey, Farm Bureau wrote: “The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is keeping critical fertilizer supplies and crude oil from reaching global markets, putting a squeeze on supplies around the world.” 

Roughly 25% of the world’s oil supply travels through the Strait of Hormuz.  

As gas and oil prices continue to rise, the blockade has been felt immediately by farmers.  

“I was spending below $3 for agricultural diesel, and I just called to get my tanks filled, and I was told it was going to be $5.98 a gallon,” Neff said.

Credit: American Farm Bureau Federation

And the effects of the Strait of Hormuz being closed will not just be felt by farmers but “consumers are going to continually feel the pinch because virtually all goods move by truck in this country,” Thompson said.   

Farmers are stuck playing the waiting game, Dennis Kellogg, who sits on the Michigan Farmer’s Union Board of Directors, said. 

“It’s very difficult to plan for a future with these unknowns,” Kellogg said.   

For organizations looking to help farmers, like employees at Michigan State University’s Extension program, they are also seeing these effects.  

“This is heightening what’s already a bad situation for many farms,” Jon LaPorte, a Farm Business Management Educator at MSU Extension, said. 

LaPorte said that many farmers are still experiencing loss from the previous years, “Everyone’s worried about it because 2024 and 2025 weren’t the most profitable years either” which is forcing farmers to ask the question of “What’s the bare minimum that we would have to put out (money) to ensure a crop?”  

Outcomes  

Through these difficulties, farmers are forced to make short-term decisions that may have long-term consequences.  

Thompson warned the long-term consequences could extend beyond one growing season. 

“The outlook is pretty bleak right now, right across the board,” Thompson said and later added. “The end result is that there will be fewer farmers. There will be bankruptcies.”  

Though farmers may be resilient, Thompson warned of the mental stress these families are going through, which can include increased drug use and in the worst cases, suicide.  

“We need to try to be aware that our friends and neighbors might look good on the outside, but be torn up on the inside, and we need to try to be friends,” Thompson said.  

The post ‘The outlook is pretty bleak’: Farmers brace for a difficult season appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/05/15/the-outlook-is-pretty-bleak-farmers-brace-for-a-difficult-season/

Julia Roeder

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In: Energy News Roundup, Featured

Catch the latest energy news from around the region. Check back for these monthly Energy News Roundups.

Ontario is moving ahead with big plans for new nuclear. Expansion of the eight-reactor Bruce nuclear site in Kincardine, on the shores of Lake Huron, would be the province’s first large nuclear power project in decades. As proposed, the project could add 4,800 megawatts of nuclear generation capacity, contribute about $238 billion to Canada’s GDP and create 6,700 permanent jobs, the province said. Pre-construction work is set to get underway, though several approvals from the Canadian government will be required before construction can begin.

Mining can proceed near northern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness after President Donald Trump lifted a ban imposed by the Biden administration. That’s welcome news for Twin Metals, a subsidiary of a Chilean mining company that for years has been looking to mine copper and nickel just outside the Boundary Waters. It’s less welcome news for conservation groups worried mining operations will contaminate the fragile wilderness. The resolution, the latest reversal in a yearslong political struggle over mining in the region, passed the Senate in a 50–49 vote last month before heading to Trump for his signature.

A rural, deep-red Ohio county came close last week to overturning its ban on utility-scale solar and wind. Richland County residents voted 53% to 47% to preserve the restrictions the county adopted last July. The referendum was spearheaded by a local property rights group and opposed by farmland preservation advocates. Election results show that turnout was 30%. Recent reporting from Canary Media looks into how confusing wording on the ballot may have played a role. 

Environmental groups say the Trump administration’s proposed rollback of federal coal ash cleanup requirements would be especially damaging in Indiana, which has a long history of coal ash pollution and is often in the top five for states with the most coal ash sites. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency imposed the first federal regulations on coal ash disposal under the Obama administration in 2015 and expanded them in 2024 under the Biden administration. Trump’s EPA wants to loosen them again.

A western Pennsylvania natural gas well is set to become a geothermal system in a first-of-a-kind pilot project for the eastern United States. The $14 million project will convert an existing Indiana County well owned by natural gas company CNX into an enhanced geothermal well that can extract heat from deep underground and bring it up to the surface, where it will be used to heat nearby buildings and generate electricity.

More energy news, in case you missed it:

  • A lawsuit by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel seeking to shut down the Line 5 pipeline through the Straits of Mackinac can stay in state court, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously.
  • The Michigan Court of Appeals largely upheld state rules limiting local governments’ authority over renewable energy projects in accordance with a controversial 2023 law.
  • Wisconsin regulators approved special rates for data centers to protect customers served by the state’s largest utility, while a separate rate proposal was approved with criticism for a Meta data center campus.
  • A major Ohio utility doesn’t have to refund customers the nearly $75 million it charged them to support a pair of coal plants tied to the largest energy bribery scheme in state history, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court declined to reconsider the convictions of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges for their roles in the same bribery scheme.

The post Major nuclear plant expansion envisioned on the far side of Lake Huron appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/05/13/major-nuclear-plant-expansion-envisioned-on-the-far-side-of-lake-huron/

Nicole Pollack, Great Lakes Now

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In: Featured, Recreation and Tourism, Recreational Hunting and Fishing

By Laura Herberg, Bridge Michigan

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan; Circle of Blue; Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS; Michigan Public, Michigan’s NPR News Leader; and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work HERE.

Elliot Hubbard and his wife own a small hobby farm in Michigan’s Thumb region where Hubbard said “it’s not uncommon to see 30 to 40 does in our fields and a handful of bucks.”

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources doesn’t know the ratio of does to bucks in the state’s white-tailed deer herd, but officials suspect females outnumber males. 

Many people believe that’s because Michigan hunters prefer to kill bucks because state policy told them to do so for decades. As a result, the state’s herd is likely unbalanced, which some worry hurts the population and the quality of hunting because it means fewer big bucks left to target. 

To try to reverse that trend, advocates have since the 1990s tried to get state regulators to limit hunters to one buck per huntingseason, but had been told it was nearly impossible because of state legislation. Countless hours of research and advocacy proved fruitless for years, even as someother states with one buck rules saw more balanced kills and balanced herds.

This year, however, the DNR reversed course and recommended the Michigan Natural Resources commission enact a one buck rule that also puts doe tags at the forefront.

A vote could happen as soon as Wednesday, which some hunters feel would be historic for the state. 

In reality, today’s issues with the herd likely exist because a version of the rule first passed about 100 years ago.

‘They didn’t want to harvest any does’

After logging, development, fires and a period of unregulated commercial venison sales took its toll on Michigan’s deer herd, the state passed a law in 1921 requiring hunters to kill just one deer — and it had to be a buck.

“It is expected this provision will re-populate the forest of Michigan with deer,” an article published in the St. Joseph Herald-Press said at the time.

“They didn’t want to harvest any does because, in their mind, does make the babies,” explained Baraga County hunter Jordan Hoover, who grew up with a father involved in deer conservation. “So, if we don’t take any does, we’ll have more deer.” 

In practice, the “one buck only” policy appears to have not only helped the deer population grow in Michigan but also affected sex ratios and the psyche of hunters.

By the 1930s, Michigan reported 2.4 does for every buck statewide, though many hunters believed the imbalance was even greater. In the 1940s, the state began holding antlerless deer seasons to control growing deer populations that were damaging farms. By 1965, hunters could use an archery license to take a deer of either sex, though many hunters still sought that trophy buck.

“As the herd grew, the mentality didn’t evolve with the changes of the environment and the population as a whole,” said Todd Johnson, the director of policy and advocacy for the state council of the National Deer Association in Michigan.

Buck was still king. In fact, starting in 1977, hunters could shoot two bucks in one year if they took one with a firearm and another with a bow. Then the bag limit doubled to four in 1986. 

Some hunters started to feel that encouraging antlerless deer harvests and limiting hunters to one buck could increase the health of the herd and grow the number of big bucks in the future by letting more young bucks mature. 

In 1998, the combination license was created and hunters were limited to two buck tags.

“Conscientious hunters everywhere rejoiced,” read an article in the Lansing State Journal published that year.

‘The countless phone calls’

Hoover, the Baraga County hunter, said it was around that time when his father, David Hoover, “started standing on the gas pedal” in lobbying for a one buck rule.

The younger Hoover recalled his dad driving back and forth between their home in Calumet and Lansing. 

“And just the hundreds if not thousands of hours that I saw him put into studies, sitting at his desk, the countless phone calls, the emails, pouring over all the data,” he said. “It made a big impression on me.”

By the early 2000s, the idea of a one buck rule seemed at a fever pitch. In 2005, one sportswriter opened a story this way: “State wildlife officials say they’re hearing a mantra about deer hunting across the state: one buck, one buck, one buck.” 

But the DNR said that a one buck rule couldn’t be implemented without new legislation. Officials also worried a one buck rule would likely result in the loss of more than $5 million for the department because second buck tags could not be purchased. 

In 2007, the Natural Resources Commission looked at two proposals for a one buck rule, but both were unanimously opposed, with commissioners citing preliminarysurveys showing “a strong majority of hunters” were not interested in being limited to one buck.

‘An overdue correction’

Today’s hunters are divided. In 2020, a DNR survey found nearly half of them — 48% — would support limiting the combination license to allow for only one antlered deer to be killed.

Meanwhile, a highly vocal contingent has emerged to push the one buck rule. They swap studies in Facebook groups, talk on podcasts and are involved in advisory groups created by the DNR.

They point to other Midwestern states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, that have had a one buck rule for more than a hundred years and have more balanced hunts.

In 2025, Ohio hunters reported killing 1.42 antlerless deer for every antlered deer. In Pennsylvania, hunters reported killing 1.73 antlerless deer for every antlered deer. In Michigan, hunters reported killing 0.92 antlerless deer for every one antlered deer.

“In this state, we’re buck-centric in the fact that people just want to shoot their buck,” said Lincoln Rohn, a hunter based in Comstock Park. “A lot of them don’t care how big it is, and they want to shoot two of them.”

Rohn, Hoover, Hubbard, Hubbard’s wife, Rashel, and others had been pushing for the one buck rule but running into similar obstacles as past advocates.

“We’ve always been told that we could not do one buck,” said Rohn. “We were told, because the Legislature needed a combination license, that we could not do it. It had to be two bucks.”

But the advocates noted the law called for a combination license allowing for two deer, but didn’t say two bucks. At their urging, the DNR asked for a legal review and determined the advocates were right. That allowed the department to support a one buck rule. 

“This change is an overdue correction due to the evolution of the deer herd in Michigan,” Johnson, of the National Deer Association Michigan, said. “We’re at a point where we need to manage the herd for sustainable health.”

The post Michigan created a buck-centric culture regulators now want to change appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/05/11/michigan-created-a-buck-centric-culture-regulators-now-want-to-change/

Bridge Michigan

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In: Agriculture, Featured, Industry, Energy, Economic Development

By Christian Thorsberg, Circle of Blue

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS, Michigan Public and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work HERE.

More than two years have passed since the Agriculture Improvement Act — better known as the Farm Bill — expired, leaving the nation’s primary agricultural policy framework in a state of prolonged uncertainty.

The bill, which steers the economics, logistics, and environmental priorities of America’s food production and land and water use, is one of the largest pieces of legislation authored by Congress. The 2018 package, which lapsed in 2023, is more than 500 pages long. 

Two full legislative sessions have come and gone without the approval of a new five-year Farm Bill, and this year is unlikely to yield more productive results. The U.S. House Agriculture Committee passed a new version of the bill out of committee earlier this month, but its chances of gaining Senate approval, policy experts tell Circle of Blue, are slim.

The absence of a new Farm Bill has been temporarily stop-gapped with consecutive one-year extensions of the 2018 bill, in 2024 and 2025. But these interim fixes have been vulnerable to cuts, with environmental protections and funding taking acute hits. 

Last year, hundreds of Farm Bill-supported conservation programs and grants administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) were paused or cancelled by the Trump administration. Many were stalled or eliminated on grounds of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Some of these grants include those administered by Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), a USDA effort that subsidizes farmers who address “natural resource challenges” on their lands, including water pollution, invasive species, and flooding.

Responding to a September FOIA request from Circle of Blue, the agency in February declined to release records identifying specific projects affected by cancellations, but acknowledged that at least 69 RCPP projects tied to those decisions are under legal review.

Each passing year without a new bill, environmental advocates say, is a missed opportunity to enshrine reliable funding for programs, including the RCPP, that prioritize healthy watersheds. 

Conservation-Minded Farmers Absorb Losses

Many farmers around the Great Lakes, still reeling from the financial impact of last year’s sudden changes, have testified to their positive impact on local watersheds. 

Ross Bishop, a farmer in the town of Jackson, Wisconsin, has used no-till practices for nearly 30 years on his 700-acre plot to manage flooding, drought, and water contamination. This proved especially effective in August, when more than nine inches of rain fell on his property in the span of 24 hours. The sheets of water that ran through his land and cover crops carried no sediment, according to the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District — a far cry from the two millimeters of soil that erode off the average midwestern field every year, often carrying fertilizers that pollute water sources. 

Frozen USDA grant programs that support Bishop’s no-till work cost him $44,000 last growing season, he estimates. 

“The healthy farming practices that we do here are definitely keeping soil in the field,” Bishop told Circle of Blue. “If it erodes, you’re losing organic matter, so there’s a lot of value in these practices, and you need to show you’re making money by doing it. We’re all in trouble right now with economics.”

In northwest Indiana, Tom Eich has slowly been expanding his farming acreage since he began running Kankakee Valley Homestead in 2017. His vegetable plots grew from a quarter-acre to three acres, then 45 acres in 2024.  Before last growing season, supported by two USDA-funded programs — Local Food Purchase Assistance and Local Food for Schools — he made the decision to expand his farm to 150 acres for 2025.

The ink wasn’t even dry on the lease for these new plots when Eich received word that those grants had been canceled. Of the roughly 100 extra acres he acquired, he could only afford to grow vegetables on roughly one-fifth of this land.

“The beginning of the year left us with debt that we’re still kind of finishing paying up and unfortunately, that minimal cash flow throughout the year had ripple effects,” Eich said. “I wasn’t able to afford the normal help that we had on the farm. I wasn’t able to grow as much this year. Then we weren’t able to bring as much to the market.”

The Kankakee River, which is one of the most-polluted rivers in Indiana, runs through Eich’s farm. He says he’s the only one of his neighbors who doesn’t plant his crops right up to its banks, and instead has a line of trees and native plants that help combat flooding and preserve water quality. It’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make even without reimbursement from the USDA, but it’s not a luxury every farmer can afford. 

“Instead of putting into the program, they could potentially make more money farming it. So they still do that,” Eich says. “For the most part, a lot of the people that were doing it were doing it out of a mind of conservation, rather than necessarily the payback. But there are people for whom [grants] did make a real difference, and they are going to have to adapt.”

Further south, near Culver, Indiana, the impact and timing of grant cancellations added up quickly. A USDA cost-sharing cover crop research grant that was cancelled last February put Chad Gard, a farmer at Hole in the Wood Farms, in an $8,000 hole to start the spring. That snowballed, Gard said, into about $160,000 worth of losses over the year. Roughly 80 percent of his farm “went to weeds” instead of crops.

This meant that Gard wasn’t able to focus as closely on efforts to improve watershed quality and biodiversity.

“We work really hard to make sure that we’ve got buffer areas so we don’t have runoff from our fields,” Gard said. “We don’t use any synthetic chemicals at all, we’re careful not to use excess compost or leave our manure, you know, where it would run into the waterways, because that’s all ending up in the groundwater and in the river.”

Since he started implementing these practices several years ago, Gard said he has noticed the waters in the wetland woods adjacent to his land containing fewer algae, a sign of decreased nitrogen. The population of singing frogs has increased. Clearing invasive species like honeysuckle and silver maple from the outskirts of his land has brought birds back to the landscape. 

“The environment has been responding,” he said. “But if I spend 100 hours clearing out honeysuckle, I’m not spending that producing lettuce that I could sell and make income from. With a grant paying a portion of it, it’s a little easier to justify the expense.”

Even programs whose grants have remained untouched are dealing with the ramifications of defunded farmer outreach and education programs. Many of these rural efforts rely on word-of-mouth communication and trust. A year of instability has ruptured this grassroots momentum. 

In 2023, Ducks Unlimited was awarded $8.8 million through the USDA’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program to “restore and protect 800 acres of wetlands and associated upland areas” in priority watershed areas in Wisconsin.

But getting this program off the ground, even years later, has been difficult. “Finding agronomists to deliver these programs can be challenging,” Joe Genzel, the organization’s regional communications coordinator, told Circle of Blue in September. “It’s a very specialized position. Finding a biologist who can talk the talk to farmers is extremely niche.”

The post Stalled Farm Bill, slashed grants undercut farmers’ water protection efforts appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/05/06/stalled-farm-bill-slashed-grants-undercut-farmers-water-protection-efforts/

Circle of Blue

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In: Climate change, Featured, Michigan

By Vivian La, IPR

This story is made possible through a partnership between Interlochen Public Radio and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

As waters recede across northern Michigan waterways from last week’s historic flooding, local leaders, advocates and experts are renewing calls to bolster safety regulations, upgrade or remove some of the state’s aging dams.

The record-high rainfall for some parts of northern Michigan — combined with melt from March’s above-average snow — pushed infrastructure to the brink across the region in Cheboygan, Bellaire and other cities.

For some, the flooding was a reminder of our vulnerabilities in the face of extreme weather, which is expected to worsen as our climate continues to shift.

“This needs to be considered not the worst we can experience. This needs to be considered as typical of the future,” said Richard Rood, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan who studies climate change.

More than half of Michigan’s 2,500 dams have reached the end of their 50-year design life, according to state data. And an estimated $1 billion is needed to pay for all the upgrades needed in the state.

‘Would have been far worse’

Bob Stuber, executive director of the Michigan Hydro Relicensing Commission, peers at the swollen Boardman-Ottaway River in downtown Traverse City. The river saw record-breaking levels from the flood, which came shy of a 500-year flood, according to the city.

“It’s really remarkable how quickly it’s recovered here,” he said.

That recovery is largely thanks to the 2024 removal of the old Union Street Dam, said engineers at the Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC). The old dam was upgraded to a different structure for FishPass, the final part of a river restoration project on the Boardman.

“Upstream would have been under two more feet of water, which would have been quite devastating,” said Daniel Zielinski, a principal engineer for GLFC. “We actually had a really great stress test of the system. It functioned really well.”

Dan Zielinski, a principal engineer for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, points at the FishPass construction site in downtown Traverse City late April. The Boardman-Ottaway River saw record-breaking water levels from April flooding. (Photo: Vivian La/IPR News)

Stuber said the flooding at Boardman-Ottaway River signals what needs to happen across the state: more dam upgrades and dam removals where it makes sense.

“I think every opportunity we have to remove an aging dam, we should take advantage of it because it’s not going to get better. It’s just going to get worse,” he said.

Dam removals

Conservation organizations like Huron Pines help dam owners in northern Michigan remove small dams on their property. They’ve managed nine removals in the last 13 years.

The organization has seen more interest from dam owners in removals after the recent flooding, said Josh Leisen, senior project manager for Huron Pines.

“There are costs associated with repair, and there are risks associated with having a dam,” Leisen said. “Even if it seems to be in good condition, you get extreme weather events like we just had.”

Removal is often a win-win for waterways and dam owners, he said. Ecosystems get reconnected and owners don’t have to pay for expensive upkeep of aging dams.

But some dams are easier to remove than others. People are often reluctant to give up the lakefront access that dams often create.

“A lot of other industries are sustained by the fact that we have built dams in our systems,” said Heather Huffstutler, executive director for the environmental organization Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council.

Some dams also provide electricity, drinking water or are used for transportation. But Huffstutler sees a growing momentum around small dam removal, which could help mitigate future flood impacts.

“When a river is allowed to use its floodplain and then use those associated wetlands and headwater streams, the less flooding we will see,” she said.

A proposed legislative solution 

Upgrading or removing dams is also expensive. The Boardman-Ottway River dam removal — considered the largest removal effort in the state’s history — cost $25 million for three dams. Huron Pines is managing the removal of Sanback Dam in Rose City next month, with an estimated cost of $4 million.

Funding for half of the Sanback removal comes from a grant program through the Michigan Department of Environment, Energy and Great Lakes (EGLE) — as a response to the 2020 Edenville dam failure. The $44 million state program funded several dam removals, upgrades and engineering studies before it ended last year.

Now, local and state officials are renewing calls for more money and stronger safety regulations.

“Dam safety may be an issue that isn’t partisan,” said Phil Roos, director of EGLE.

Proposed legislation would bolster rules around inspections, private ownership, design standards, and create more funding opportunities for upgrades or dam removals.

“It’s so important to our state that we can come together, and whether it’s passing the legislation that was proposed, or improving procedures or ultimately funding,” Roos said.

State Sen. John Damoose, R-Harbor Springs, said at a Traverse City roundtable discussion on dam safety that he’s concerned about private dam ownership after the close call at Cheboygan Dam. Michigan owns about 1,000 dams in the state, others are privately owned.

“Somebody made a point, ‘Well, we can’t have private companies owning these things.’ I tend to believe in private ownership but they might be right,” Damooose said.

Flooding in a warming world

Climate change is likely to bring more frequent and intense storms capable of similar floods.

As the climate warms, more water is evaporating. And an atmosphere with increased moisture can fuel intense precipitation, according Rood at the University of Michigan.

Recent flooding “has shown an incredible vulnerability,” he said. “(Dams) are either going to have to be removed or reengineered. Or they’re going to become a set of slowly unfolding failures.”

Luke Trumble, chief of dam safety for Michigan, agrees we’re living in a different climate than when most dams in the state were built. But flooding will still happen, he said.

“It’s a little bit of a misconception that if we fix the dam issue, there’ll be no more flooding,” Trumble said. “There’s still going to be flooding on rivers whenever we get rain like this, or rain on snow.”

There’s still a solution, though.

“What we can do with dam safety legislation is help ensure that flooding is not made worse by a dam failure,” he said.

The post How do we adapt Michigan’s dams to climate change? appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/05/05/how-do-we-adapt-michigans-dams-to-climate-change/

Interlochen Public Radio and Grist

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In: Featured, Michigan, whitefish

As lake whitefish teeter on the brink of collapse in the lower Great Lakes, Michigan lawmakers are considering investing in a last-ditch effort to save the iconic species before it’s too late.

An appropriations bill under consideration in the Democrat-controlled state Senate would allocate money to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources for a rearing and stocking program aimed at “supporting lake whitefish stock recovery.”

The line item includes a $100 allocation, which state Sen. John Cherry, D-Flint, described as a placeholder number pending further deliberations about how much money — if any — to devote to the effort.

“It could potentially be now or never for some of those genetic stocks,” Cherry said, noting that some whitefish bloodlines in lakes Michigan and Huron could vanish within years.

Budget deliberations are in their early phases and proposals from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the Republican-led House of Representatives do not include funding for whitefish.

State Reps. Ken Borton and Ann Bollin, who lead committees overseeing the DNR budget in the House, did not return calls from Bridge Michigan seeking comment.

The House approved a $76 billion budget last week that would cut DNR funding by $36.3 million. Whitmer’s budget proposal would increase DNR funding by $63.5 million.

The Senate could pass its version as soon as this week, setting up further negotiations as the two chambers face a September deadline to pass a unified budget.

The funding effort follows extensive reporting on the whitefish collapse in Bridge Michigan over the past year. 

“Quite frankly, your guys’s reporting was helpful in highlighting the issue,” Cherry told Bridge. “Otherwise, I think a lot of folks wouldn’t be aware of it.”

The fish are a revered symbol of the Great Lakes and the No. 1 commercial catch for what remains of the region’s once-robust commercial fishery.

Ecosystem changes wrought by invasive quagga and zebra mussels have transformed the Great Lakes, devastating whitefish populations and prompting fears that the species could virtually disappear from lakes Michigan and Huron. 

The mussel invasion is considered among the biggest threats to the Great Lakes in history. 

Yet Bridge found that, while the US government has spent mightily to combat other threats, the fight against mussels has received a comparative pittance: less than $1 million annually, or about a penny for every dollar devoted to guarding the Great Lakes against invasive carp.

In the wake of that reporting, US Reps. Debbie Dingell and Tim Walberg cosponsored legislation that aims to devote $500 million to mussel control research over the next decade.

State funding for whitefish recovery is likewise limited amid budget constraints and a DNR funding structure that prioritizes game species like salmon and trout ahead of primarily commercial species like whitefish.

At current funding levels, mussel control research may take decades to achieve a breakthrough. The lower lakes’ whitefish “don’t have the time to wait,” said DNR fisheries chief Randy Claramunt.

So tribal, state, federal and university officials have been discussing ways to raise whitefish in captivity until the Great Lakes are hospitable enough for them to thrive again. 

The effort likely would involve both a hatchery stocking program and an effort to establish captive whitefish populations for future breeding efforts.

“Who has facility space? Who can do something if funding is available? What could we do without having to build a new facility?” Claramunt said. “That’s what we’re all looking at right now as a stopgap measure to buy us time before we lose some of these stocks.”

There are 18 genetically distinct whitefish populations in lakes Michigan and Huron, 14 of which are considered imperiled. 

“The other four that were considered stable are now at risk of declining,” Claramunt said. 

That includes stocks in Green Bay, which was once considered a rare stronghold for Great Lakes whitefish.

So far, most recovery efforts have been small-scale, led by tribal natural resources agencies with limited budgets and staff. But as stocks have dwindled, whitefish advocates have increasingly pushed for bigger, bolder rescue efforts.

For each population rescued, Claramunt said, it would cost between $200,000 and $300,000 annually to collect spawning fish from the lakes, raise their offspring for stocking efforts, and hold some adults in captivity for future breeding.

The DNR may have space in its hatchery facilities to rescue up to three populations, Claramunt said. It’s possible other tribal, government or university agencies could lend more space.

“We’re concerned that a genetic rescue is necessary, and if we don’t do it as soon as possible … that these stocks will be lost,” Claramunt said.

Michigan has a long history of rescuing species under threat, Cherry said, from wild turkeys to moose. It has also had failures, such allowing the passenger pigeon to be hunted to extinction.

“We have an opportunity right now to figure out which direction we want to go,” Cherry said. “The direction of the passenger pigeon, or do we want to go the direction of the turkey?”

The post Michigan lawmakers may fund last-ditch effort to save whitefish appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

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Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/05/05/michigan-lawmakers-may-fund-last-ditch-effort-to-save-whitefish/

Kelly House, Bridge Michigan

On:
In: Cleveland, Energy, Clean Energy, Ethanol and Fracking, Featured, Industry, Energy, Economic Development, lake erie, Latest News, Ohio, wind

Covering an area the size of the United Kingdom and surrounded by half a dozen large, energy-hungry metropolitan regions, the Great Lakes, surprisingly, boasts not a single offshore wind energy project.

We know that the resource and the demand are there. But no offshore wind effort has ever taken off.

Past efforts at a demonstration project called Icebreaker, slated for Lake Erie off the coast of Cleveland, fizzled out in 2023. In Ontario, which boasts 5,200 miles of Great Lakes coastline, a moratorium on offshore wind has been in place since 2011, with the provincial government having to fork out millions of dollars in damages to one wind energy company for doing so.

But today, with electricity prices surging around the region, is it finally time for offshore wind to take its place? Do communities even want them?

Here, we speak to advocates for and opponents to offshore wind and investigate the myriad challenges such projects in the Great Lakes face.

What’s changing now?

A perfect storm of events has combined to push electricity prices to record levels for thousands of communities around the region.

Utility companies such as Consumers Energy in Michigan, We Energies, which operates in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and a host of others have embarked on system upgrades that are set to add up to 14% to the cost of monthly electricity bills for consumers, with further rate hikes likely in the years ahead.

On top of that, the federal government has mandated that coal-fired electricity plants in Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania and elsewhere that were scheduled to be retired now remain open. That means that federal subsidies that are essential for keeping these loss-making plants running are likely to cost ratepayers billions more dollars.

Then there’s the contentious wave of data centers opening across the region, creating a huge new demand for utility-scale electricity.

All the while, recent years have seen a drive in Great Lakes states and provinces to reach net zero carbon emissions. Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota plan to reach that goal by 2050.

Ontario aims to get to 80% below its 1990 level of carbon emissions in the same time. New York state has declared an even more ambitious plan, to reach net zero by 2040.

On top of that, with the federal government banning offshore wind projects in oceans surrounding the U.S., there’s been a renewed push to see the Great Lakes — controlled by eight U.S. states and the Canadian province of Ontario, rather than authorities in Washington D.C. and Ottawa — become a new front in the development of the technology.

What is the energy potential for offshore wind on the Great Lakes?

Experts say offshore wind generated from the lakes could provide three times the amount of the electricity used by the eight U.S. Great Lakes states in 2023. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data from 2021 crunched by the Woodwell Climate Research Center found that Great Lakes water generates more wind than anywhere else east of the Mississippi River.

“According to reports done for Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources, Great Lakes offshore wind can be implemented with minimal aquatic impacts. If the turbines are 10 to 15 km offshore, they will be almost invisible,” said Jack Gibbons of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.

“Offshore wind in the Canadian section of the Great Lakes has the potential to supply more than 100% of Ontario’s electricity needs.”

The Port of Cleveland is one of the main backers of offshore wind on the Great Lakes. (Photo Credit: Stephen Starr)

Icebreaker, the Cleveland project, got as far as securing a 50-year lakebed lease from the state of Ohio in 2014. Predicted to provide 20 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 7,000 homes, its main goal was to function as a trial project.

But Icebreaker is not completely dead, yet. Last year, a Maryland-based company called Mighty Waves Energy acquired the project, raising hopes among Cleveland leaders and many residents around the region that the first steps towards a lake-based wind energy future remain in place.

Mark Hessels, CEO of Mighty Waves Energy, spoke with Great Lakes Now over the phone, but declined to go on the record to discuss the company’s proposed new offshore wind project, and failed to provide a statement when asked.

What are the big challenges?

And yet, the barriers appear immense.

John Lipaj has been sailing and boating on Lake Erie ever since he was a child.

“I spent every summer out there on a boat. In July and August, when the temperatures rise, the wind would die,” he said, illustrating one of several reasons he and others think offshore wind isn’t suitable for Lake Erie.

“If there’s no wind at exactly the time of year when electricity is needed most, for air conditioning, then what’s the point of building offshore wind?”

As a board member of the Lake Erie Foundation, a nonprofit, that’s not the main reason he and the organization he represents opposes offshore wind on Lake Erie.

“One of the things we were most concerned about is that bald eagles were almost extinct, and they’ve really come back along the Lake Erie shore. Now, they’re thriving,” he said.

“If there’s no wind at exactly the time of year when electricity is needed most for air conditioning then what’s the point of building offshore wind,” says John Lipaj of Lake Erie Foundation. (Photo Credit: Stephen Starr)

“In the winter, they’ll fly out a couple of miles [offshore] looking for fish, especially if there’s ice [on the shoreline]. We’ve got real concerns about the bald eagle population being hurt by the wind turbine out on the lake, because that’s their feeding ground.”

In 2022, a wind energy company was fined $8 million and sentenced to probation after its wind turbines were found to have killed more than 150 eagles over the course of a decade across ten U.S. states, including Michigan and Illinois.

Some conservation organizations opposing offshore wind have even come under fire. A report by Grist in 2021 alleged that the American Bird Conservancy, a $30-million non-profit, has been one of the most powerful environment-focused opponents to wind turbine projects across the country, having received around $1 million from fossil fuel interests.

A request by Great Lakes Now for comment from the American Bird Conservancy was not received by the time of publication.

All the while, others believe the potential threat to wildlife can be mitigated.

“Some people are unaware that the National Audubon Society supports Great Lakes offshore wind power. The good news is that offshore wind can be done in a bird-friendly way,” said Gibbons of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.

“We are recommending that the turbines should be turned off from dusk to dawn during the migratory bat seasons (late April and May and mid-July to the end of September) when wind speeds are less than seven meters per second, since bats fly more when wind speeds are low.”

Threats to wildlife aside, for Professor Melissa Scanlan, director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for Water Policy, five leading factors have combined to stall progress in offshore wind: 

  • Jurisdictional fragmentation that prevents states and provinces from combining their efforts; 
  • Inadequate planning;
  • Policy instability at the federal government level; 
  • Protracted litigation in the case of Ohio; 
  • And a lack of sustained political will. 

And there are other challenges.

“There’s definitely misinformation that circulates about offshore wind,” she said.

“From the research we’ve done, we think you can address that through transparent, science-based planning processes,” said Scanlan. “Without doing a more rigorous science-based planning process, if there’s a vacuum of reliable information, that can allow misinformation to be circulated more freely.”

On top of that, there are reservations around the economic return of such projects. Estimates suggest the cost of offshore wind on the Great Lakes could range from 7.5 to 12.9 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s more than double the cost of onshore wind or utility-scale solar.

But while the costs of delivering offshore wind are not inconsiderable, experts such as Scanlon say there’s also both a dollar and environmental cost of continuing to deploy fossil fuels for electricity generation.

Moreover, interest groups have allegedly been at work to make such efforts difficult to bring to fruition.

The former proprietor of the Icebreaker project, the Lake Erie Energy Development Corp., has claimed that corruption within Ohio’s energy regulatory body and state leaders’ close ties to energy giant FirstEnergy made the project unworkable, and has sued FirstEnergy for up to $10 million. Restrictions that the project faced, including calling for turbines to be shut down at night for eight months of the year, essentially torpedoed the project.

What would facilitate off-shore wind?

Industry innovators say that an easing of regulations at the state level would make a huge difference to the emergence of offshore wind in the Great Lakes. Investment in the form of tax breaks from state governments, which handle the leases and permits for any offshore wind projects in the Great Lakes, are another way. 

And while the cost of producing offshore wind is higher than its onshore equivalent, higher winds offshore combined with technological advances mean that energy production capacity from offshore could be up to 60% more than onshore.

Scanlon of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for Water Policy is among the researchers who say offshore wind projects could play a significant role in meeting our rapidly growing energy needs.

“As a society, we need to develop energy resources that are not in conflict with protecting the environment,” she said.

“Offshore wind is no different from that.”

The post As affordability issues surge, is it finally time for offshore wind? appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/04/30/as-affordability-issues-surge-is-it-finally-time-for-offshore-wind/

Stephen Starr, Great Lakes Now

On:
In: Featured, Fish, Birds and Animals, Illinois, Latest News, Science, Technology, Research

By Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between WBEZ and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

In the creeks and rivers of southern Illinois, a school of bigeye shiners darting along the edge of a stream is a sign of healthy water.

The freshwater fish, which is on the state’s endangered species list, has managed to survive despite habitat loss driven by decades of construction and industrial farm runoff. But an ongoing dispute between two state agencies over state species protections is testing how the tiny fish will endure.

Last summer, the state’s top wildlife regulators faced resistance from the Illinois Department of Transportation when trying to protect the shiner. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources recommended that IDOT crews mapping out construction at a site in Union County should first survey the area and find out if the shiner was present. If so, IDNR would ask them to apply for a permit to minimize impacts to the paper clip-sized fish before proceeding.

IDOT declined. The department’s reason, among others, was simple: “Fish swim away.”

The standoff between IDOT and IDNR, outlined in internal state documents obtained by WBEZ and Grist, is at the center of an ongoing clash that broke out last year after IDOT repeatedly ignored recommendations from state experts to pursue permits designed to protect imperiled species during road, bridge and other transportation work.

The widening rift between the state’s largest public landowner and its top wildlife conservation agency shows how state-funded transportation projects may have overridden Illinois’ Endangered Species Protection Act in 11 cases in the past year.

In response to IDOT’s handling of species protections, IDNR ended a decade-old agreement with the agency last fall that allowed IDOT to fast track through environmental reviews.

IDNR impact assessment manager Bradley Hayes pointed to “IDOT’s apparent automatic response to decline ITA recommendations” in his cancellation letter obtained by WBEZ and Grist.

An ITA, or incidental take authorization, is a permit that allows for the accidental harm of a protected species during the construction of an approved project, like building a road or fixing a bridge. These permits involve lengthy reviews in which applicants must outline potential impacts to listed species, require a public comment period and feedback from conservation specialists. The entire process can take at least five to six months.

Still, experts say these permits are crucial because they minimize harm to protected species and provide legal cover from criminal charges that can accompany the unintentional killing of a state-listed species.

IDOT’s Jack Elston responded to the termination letter at the end of last year disputing the initial allegations from the environmental regulators, saying that “IDOT does not make automatic responses regarding the IDNR recommendation for an ITA.”

In a joint statement from IDOT and IDNR to WBEZ and Grist, IDOT spokeswoman Maria Castaneda said, “IDOT continues to consult with IDNR and considers recommendations from IDNR along with multiple other factors, including known information about the species, other environmental surveys, engineering, costs and public safety.”

Castaneda added that the agencies are currently drafting a new agreement and that the agreement on file was outdated. “Updated language was needed,” she said.

Despite the agreement expiring at the beginning of 2019, IDOT continued to conduct environmental reviews until lDNR stepped in to stop them last fall.

Email exchanges between IDNR officials obtained by WBEZ and Grist show concern about how IDOT was conducting its environmental reviews.

Last December, IDOT’s Elston wrote that “fish swim away from construction noise” as justification for several projects that could harm fish and mollusks, like the harlequin darter and the American brook lamprey. In another instance, Elston wrote that the relocation of state-endangered mussels in White County was unnecessary and would delay a project by at least a construction season and add about $2 million in costs.

But emails obtained from IDNR officials showed increasing concerns with that rationale.

The American brook lamprey, for example, is unlikely to “swim away” from construction noise. It spends much of its life burrowed in sediment and dies not long after spawning.

“We are the experts,” wrote Todd Strole, IDNR assistant director, in an email earlier this year preparing for a meeting with IDOT. “Fish are not the same, some don’t swim away.”

In another email, Ann Holtrop, head of IDNR’s division of natural heritage, wrote: “We are open to professional dialog with IDOT but planning and engineering needs don’t negate or override the recommendations by scientists.”

The Illinois dispute reflects a broader erosion of species protections nationwide, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Rebecca Riley. Despite massive popularity, the Endangered Species Act, credited with resuscitating the bald eagle, grizzly bear and gray wolf, is once again under attack by the Trump administration.

During his first term, President Donald Trump advanced new guidance under the ESA which undercut species protection, at least until the the Biden administration undid the Trump-era rules. The Trump administration has submitted a new set of rules currently under consideration.

WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times reached out to Gov. JB Pritzker’s office for comment on how the state’s internal dispute fits into the Trump administration’s ongoing rollback of federal species protections; however, the Governor’s office offered no comments beyond what IDOT and IDNR provided.

The post Illinois state agencies at odds over endangered species protections appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/04/29/illinois-state-agencies-at-odds-over-endangered-species-protections/

WBEZ

On:
In: Featured, Fish, Birds and Animals, Latest News, Ontario, Science, Technology, Research, U.S. and Canadian Federal Governments


By Fatima Syed and Will Pearson, The Narwhal

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now, Michigan Public and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

Any day now, a piping plover will make its seasonal return to Wasaga Beach, as it has done every spring for nearly 20 years. This time, its beachfront home could be a little less secure, which is why a new court case is pressuring the federal government to ensure the plover is kept safe. 

The world’s longest freshwater beach provides the perfect habitat for the tiny endangered birds, offering natural sand dunes and shrubbery for nesting and growing their population. 

For decades, both the Georgian Bay beach and the plover have been protected by the Ontario government through two main tools. First, the designation of Wasaga Beach as a provincial park, which meant  development and disruption of the sandy shore was off-limits. Second, the plover was offered extra protection under the provincial Endangered Species Act. 

Neither of those protections stand anymore.

Piping plovers were considered extinct in Ontario by the 1980s, but the species has been making a tentative comeback in the Great Lakes region in recent decades. Photo: Supplied by Birds Canada

Last fall, the Doug Ford government removed a majority of the beachfront from Wasaga Beach Provincial Park and transferred it to the local municipality in an effort to boost tourism development. And just last month, the government officially repealed the Endangered Species Act and replaced it with much weaker legislation that no longer recognizes the plover on its list of protected species.

The town has promised it will protect the plover after the transfer — and has begun working with Birds Canada on its habitat protection — but residents are not convinced. Two local officials agreed to speak to The Narwhal on the condition their names be kept confidential, for fear of retribution. They said on Apr. 13, a tractor owned by the municipality was seen raking more beachfront than was previously permitted — an action that could damage habitat and destroy plover nests. Though the raking hasn’t been repeated, many are concerned the beach is unprotected. The town did not respond to The Narwhal’s request for comment by the time of publication. 

As a result, environmental groups are taking the matter to federal court. 

In January, Ecojustice, on behalf of Environmental Defence and Ontario Nature, petitioned the federal government for an emergency order to offer protections for the piping plover by March, before machines are brought in to clear the beach after winter, and the birds begin migrating back. The federal government did not respond by that deadline.

In response, the groups have asked for a judicial review by the Federal Court of Canada into the delay and to compel Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin to make a recommendation to cabinet to issue the emergency protection.

At Wasaga Beach, the endangered piping plover is forced to share space with an increasing number of vacationing beachgoers. Until recently, Ontario Parks staff were responsible for managing that tension. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

The groups have also asked the court for an urgent, temporary order — or an injunction — to prohibit any raking or harmful development on the beach, which is federally recognized as a critical habitat. 

Here’s what you need to know about the tiny bird and its fate in Wasaga Beach.

What are piping plovers? And why are they endangered?

Piping plovers are sprightly shorebirds, each no bigger than a cotton ball, that can sometimes be seen bounding over Great Lakes beaches in the summertime. But seeing them isn’t easy — their sandy colour blends into their surroundings and they’ve become extremely rare in Ontario due to human encroachment.

“The main threat to the piping plover is human disturbance,” according to the Government of Ontario, “since the sandy beaches where plovers live are also popular for human recreation which can destroy nests.”

Plovers generally spend winters in the United States and Mexico, but return to more northern climates to nest for the summer.

For a long time, the Great Lakes were a prime destination for would-be plover parents. It’s been estimated that the region was once home to up to 800 breeding pairs. But the Great Lakes plover population cratered in the 1960s and ’70s, and the bird was considered extinct in Ontario by 1986.

But in recent decades, plovers have been staging a tentative comeback in the Great Lakes. A breeding pair returned to Sauble Beach (now Saugeen Beach) in 2007, sparking hope and enthusiasm among bird watchers and conservationists in the area. The birds have been spotted in the region annually since then.

But plovers’ hold is anything but secure. Some years pass with only a handful of breeding pairs observed, and other years come and go with no fledglings reaching maturity.

Why is Wasaga Beach important to plovers? And what do they like about it?

“Wasaga Beach is the most important and most productive nesting site for piping plovers in our province.”

That’s what Sydney Shepherd, the Ontario piping plover coordinator for Birds Canada, told The Narwhal last summer. The beach has been home to 59 nests and 87 fledglings since the birds returned about two decades ago, according to Birds Canada, a national conservation group. 

While plovers have been observed on other beaches in the Great Lakes region, none are anywhere near as popular with plovers as Wasaga Beach. The plovers that have been born on Wasaga Beach make up nearly 50 per cent of all fledglings in Ontario, and many of them have gone on to establish their own nests elsewhere in the region. 

Plovers tend to value Wasaga Beach for different reasons than human beachgoers. While tourists might prefer a well-groomed beach for lounging, plovers require naturalized shorelines: shrubbery and sand dunes offer cover from predators. That means of all the 14 kilometres of beachfront at Wasaga, only a small fraction near the northeastern tip of the park is suitable plover habitat.

What’s happening at Wasaga Beach?

The fortunes of the Town of Wasaga Beach have long been tied to the sandy shoreline that gives the town its name. Tourism to the area is the main economic driver, drawing more than 1.6 million visitors a year according to the municipality’s website.

But while tourism brings opportunity to the residents of Wasaga Beach, it also puts pressure on plover habitat. Until recently, that tension was managed by staff at Wasaga Beach Provincial Park, who were mandated to preserve and protect the sand dunes and other beach areas that plovers frequent.

The vast majority of the beachfront had long been within the boundaries of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park, and some in the town believed the park hindered efforts to spruce it up and develop new amenities and attractions to boost tourism revenue.

The Town of Wasaga Beach is moving ahead with a plan to redevelop a portion of its beachfront. To facilitate the process, the Government of Ontario has removed 60 hectares of beachfront from Wasaga Beach Provincial Park, limiting provincial protections of piping plover habitat in the process. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

The Doug Ford government heard those concerns and acted on them. Ontario would sever more than half of the beachfront from the park and hand it over to the town to manage, Ford announced in 2025. Earlier this year, the province confirmed its intention to move forward with that plan, despite 98 per cent of formal citizen feedback on the plan being negative.

The Narwhal confirmed that transfer has now happened. 

All of the suitable plover habitat on Wasaga Beach is within the land set to be removed from the provincial park, meaning the habitat will no longer be protected by a provincial park designation.

The town, for its part, says it’s committed to protecting piping plovers. But it has yet to release its full redevelopment plans, and that leaves conservationists worried that the beach’s plover habitat is threatened.

Shepherd told The Narwhal this week that Birds Canada is in the process of formalizing their role with the Town of Wasaga Beach. The group is “seeking a committed partnership” to support the long-term protection and recovery of piping plovers that would enable them to monitor and protect the nests and the birds, and also increase education and awareness of the species. 

“So far, we have collaborated for one training session for [town] staff to begin to introduce what piping plover conservation entails,” she said in an email.

Are piping plovers otherwise protected?

The removal of provincial park designation from plover habitat on Wasaga Beach comes on the heels of other policy changes that weaken species protection in Ontario.

In 2025, Ontario repealed its Endangered Species Act and replaced it with new legislation called the Species Conservation Act, a weaker set of rules that drops some key protections.

One difference between the two acts is the newer one adopts a more narrow definition of “habitat” than the former act. When it comes to legal protections for the habitats of endangered species, the new legislation’s scope is limited to the specific area an animal nests or dens in, rather than the larger area it uses to travel or find food.

But even that limited protection doesn’t stand for piping plovers, which have been removed from Ontario’s list of protected species. With the loss of provincial park status, the plover habitat has been stripped of another protection that could have restricted the beach grooming activities that render Wasaga Beach unsuitable for plovers — and appear to have already begun.

That’s why environmental groups are now turning to the federal government to fill the gap. Nationally, there is a species-at-risk law that can be invoked for the protection of an endangered species and the broader habitat it needs to survive. The question is whether the federal government will use it to save the piping plover’s favourite Ontario beach.

Updated on April 22, 2026, at 2:55 p.m. ET: this story has been corrected to note that piping plovers have been removed from the Government of Ontario’s list of protected species, meaning even the individual and its nest are not provincially protected.

The post Will Canada protect the piping plover before it returns to Wasaga Beach? appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/04/29/will-canada-protect-the-piping-plover-before-it-returns-to-wasaga-beach/

The Narwhal

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On Kelleys Island, Tom and Paula Bartlett are on a mission to band 100,000 birds. When winter hits, it’s up to icebreakers and tugboats to keep the lakes moving. Can your yard become a national park?

For years, scientists believed that many migrating birds would avoid crossing the Great Lakes. But thanks to bird banders like Tom and Paula Bartlett, we know know that many birds do cross the lakes, stopping on small islands. On Kelley’s Island in Ohio, Tom and Paula are on a mission to band 100,000 birds.

When winter descends, traveling the lakes becomes a dangerous proposition for freighters. Ice can trap even the largest ships in place, and it’s up to a small fleet of U.S. and Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers and tugboats working in tandem to keep vital shipping routes moving.

What if your yard were part of a national park? That’s the idea behind the Homegrown National Park Movement, an effort to get property owners to see their land as part of a larger ecosystem. GLN’s Lisa John Rogers spoke with the movement’s co-founder Doug Tallamy to find out more.

The post Banding Birds and Breaking Ice appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/04/27/banding-birds-and-breaking-ice/

Great Lakes Now

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This Earth Day, Detroit PBS programming is focusing on turning land back into something wild. Better known as “rewilding,” a large-scale conservation effort that usually involves reintroducing keystone plant or animal species to reestablish the health of a local ecosystem. 

In the Great Lakes region, Illinois recently made history by being the first state in the nation to make rewilding part of its official strategy. As of January 1, 2026, the “Illinois Rewilding Law” is now in effect. According to the Chicago Tribune, the law empowers the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to go after projects that restore land to its natural state.

“The law could encompass the reintroduction of keystone species that improve ecosystems, like beavers and bison. But officials and environmentalists say closing the federal gaps in wetland protection is their focus right now,” wrote Christiana Freitag at the Chicago Tribune. 

After the Supreme Court case Sackett v. EPA rolled back federal wetland protections, Illinois became especially vulnerable considering it already lost 90% of its swamps. Chicago was built on wetlands, which are important when considering water quality and flood prevention — this is especially significant, as Chicago has dealt with severe flooding. 

An international effort

British author and conservationist Isabella Tree joins our Detroit PBS colleagues to discuss her non-fiction book “Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm.” On April 29, be sure to check out their live event with PBS Books Readers Club, from 8 to 9 p.m. ET. 

Tree’s book details her process of rewilding her 3,500 acre estate in Sussex, England. After visiting an arborculturist to save their oak trees, Tree and her husband were inspired to change everything they were doing with their land. After it was depleted by centuries of farming, they transformed it into a healthy haven for the littlest bugs and grazing animals, all by planting native flora and fauna. 

“I think the only answer to eco anxiety is to get your hands dirty and do something,” said Tree. “And the joy that can come from even transforming a window box… so that you’re now attracting night flying moths and hoverflies and all the forgotten pollinators, you’re making a difference. And that feels just so fantastic.”

Be sure to also check out the upcoming documentary, Wilding (inspired by the book) that premieres on PBS, on April 22. 

What you can do

For those who would like to feel more involved in helping our ecosystem, Doug Tallamy wants private property owners to know they have a role in the conservation movement. Tallamy calls this the Homegrown National Park movement. 

“Most people have too much lawn,” said Tallamy. 

According to the author, entomologist, biologist and conservationist we have 44 million acres of lawn in this country. When there’s a storm event, most of those pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides run off into the watershed. He said, if we’re going to put plants in our yards, why not use ones that do everything we need to conserve and protect our environment? Native plant alternatives to grass help guard our watershed, help the food web, support pollinators and are often better at sequestering carbon.

(Credit: National Wildlife Federation)

 “The point is, what you’re doing is creating connectivity,” said Tallamy. “If you and a bunch of other people do it, then outside of the parks and preserves it’s not no man’s land, there is some habitat.”

For more information, watch Great Lakes Now’s latest interview: 

The post Rewilding, a new way to heal the land this Earth Day appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/04/22/rewilding-a-new-way-to-heal-the-land-this-earth-day/

Lisa John Rogers, Great Lakes Now

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In: Featured, Latest News, Michigan

By Vivian La and Lyndsey Gilpin

This was originally published on Grist and has been adapted to include up-to-date information for northern Michigan. Find the full toolkit here.

With waters rising around Northern Michigan, the risk of flooding and dam failure is affecting people across the region. That’s why it’s critical to know where to find accurate information and have a plan. Here’s a resource guide with updated information. We will continue to update this and add more response and recovery resources.

How to pack an emergency kit

As you prepare for a disaster, it’s important to have an emergency kit ready in case you lose power or need to leave your home. Review this checklist from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for what to pack so you can stay safe, hydrated, and healthy. (FEMA has these resources available in multiple languages here.)

Here are some of the most important things to have in your kit:

  • A list of phone numbers for your city or county emergency services, police departments, local hospitals, and health departments
  • Water (one gallon per person per day for several days)
  • Food (at least a several-day supply of non-perishable food) and a can opener
  • Medicines and documentation of your medical needs
  • Identification and proof of residency documents (see a more detailed list below)
  • A flashlight 
  • A battery-powered or hand crank radio
  • Backup batteries
  • Blanket(s) and sleeping bags
  • Change of clothes and closed-toed shoes
  • First aid kit (The Red Cross has a list of what to include)
  • N-95 masks, hand sanitizer, and trash bags 
  • Wrench or pliers 
  • Cell phone with chargers and a backup battery
  • If you have babies or children: diapers, wipes, and food or formula
  • If you have pets: food, collar, leash, and any medicines needed

FEMA has activities for kids to make this process more fun; the ASPCA also has useful guidelines for people with pets.

Don’t forget: Documents

One of the most important things to have in your emergency kit is documents you may need to prove your residence, demonstrate extent of damage, and to vote. FEMA often requires you to provide these documents in order to receive financial assistance after a disaster. Keep these items in a water- and fire-proof folder or container. You can find more details about why you may need these documents here.

  • Government-issued ID, such as a drivers’ license, for each member of your household
  • Proof of citizenship or legal residency for each member of your household (passport, green card, etc.)
  • Social Security card for each member of your household
  • Documentation of your medical needs, including medications or special equipment (oxygen tanks, wheelchairs, etc.)
  • Health insurance card
  • Car title and registration documents
  • Pre-disaster photos of the inside and outside of your house and belongings
  • For homeowners: copies of your deed, mortgage information, and home insurance policy, if applicable
  • For renters: a copy of your lease and renters insurance policy
  • Financial documents such as a checkbook or voided check

Planning for people with disabilities

Disabled people have a right to all disaster alerts in a format that is accessible. The Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies, a disability-led nonprofit focused on disasters, has a list of these rights. The organization also runs a hotline for any questions: (800) 626-4959 or hotline@disasterstrategies.org.

FEMA has a list of specific planning steps for people with disabilities. Some of these recommendations include:

  • Contact your local emergency management office to ask about voluntary registries for people with disabilities to self-identify so they can access targeted assistance during emergencies and disasters. 
  • If you use medical equipment that requires electricity, ask your health care provider about what you may be able to do to keep it running during a power outage.
  • Wear medical alert tags or bracelets. Also add pertinent medical information to your electronic devices.
  • In your emergency kit, have your prescription information and medicines, as well as contact information for people who can help care for you or answer questions.

Finding shelter and staying safe

Shelter

If flooding risk forces you from your home, there are several ways to find a shelter.

Floodwater safety

  • Never wade in floodwaters. They often contain contaminated runoff from sewer systems, animal waste, physical objects, and downed power lines. 
  • If a road is flooded, turn around. According to NWS, it takes just 12 inches of water to carry away most cars. 
  • When you come in contact with flood water, be sure to wash exposed skin immediately. Wear rubber boots, gloves, and goggles. Here are more tips on floodwater safety from the CDC, including emergency wound care.

Power outages

You may experience a power outage before or during a disaster. Here are some ways to prepare and stay safe:

  • Your utility company may alert you of changes, so sign up for texts or calls from them. You can also usually report outages to your utility company by calling or filling out forms online.  
  • Stay away from downed power lines, stray wires, and debris in contact with them, as they can deliver fatal shocks.
  • If your power does go out, keep your refrigerator closed as much as possible and eat perishable food first. Get some coolers with ice if possible, and if you’re in doubt about any food, throw it out. 
  • Unplug appliances and electronics, and use flashlights instead of candles to reduce the risk of fire.
  • If you use a generator, make sure you know the best practices. Find more information about types of generators here, and learn how to use them safely. 
  • Carbon monoxide poisoning is one of the leading causes of death after a storm that knocks out power. Do not use a gas stove to heat your home and do not use barbecues, grills, or other outdoor cooking equipment inside, because they can generate carbon monoxide. If you have a generator, keep it outside in a well ventilated area away from windows. The Red Cross has more generator safety tips. 

You can find more power outage safety tips here, from the Energy Education Council.

Water rushing through the spillway at the Bellaire Dam on Monday, April 13, 2026. (Photo: Austin Rowlader/IPR News)

Signs and symptoms of illness

Carbon monoxide poisoning: It can take just minutes to get carbon monoxide poisoning. Be on the lookout for nausea, a mild headache, and shortness of breath. More severe cases can cause confusion, chest pain, dizziness, severe headaches, and loss of coordination. The Mayo Clinic has more information on what to look out for, and FEMA has information on how to prevent carbon monoxide leaks.

Tetanus: This is an infection caused by bacteria. It’s rare, but can be more common after disasters because it’s more likely people come into contact with rusty nails, needles, or contaminated dirt. The most common symptom, which can occur anywhere from three to 21 days after exposure, is lockjaw. Tetanus is easily prevented with a vaccine. Read more here from the CDC.

Mutual aid
Mutual aid is a voluntary, collaborative exchange of resources, money, and services among community members. These groups are often local or regional, and they are more nimble and quick to respond in emergency situations because of their decentralized nature. Depending on how much funding comes in after a disaster, mutual aid groups can directly send money to those in need, purchase supplies, set up distribution sites, and more.

Planning an evacuation route

It is important to have a plan in case there’s an evacuation order in your area, or if you decide you want to evacuate on your own.

FEMA also has a list of key things to know when making an evacuation plan.

  • Choose several places you could go in an emergency — maybe a friend or family member’s house in another city, or a hotel. Choose destinations in different directions so you have options. If you have pets, make sure the place you choose allows them, as shelters usually only allow service animals.  
  • Make sure you know several routes and other means of transportation out of your area, in case roads are closed.
  • Keep a full tank of gas in your car if you know a disaster may be coming, and keep your emergency kit in your car or in an easily accessible place.
  • Come up with a plan to stay in touch with members of your household in case you are separated. Check with your neighbors as well. 
  • Unplug electrical equipment, except for freezers and refrigerators, before you evacuate. If there’s already damage to your home in any way, shut off water, gas, and electricity. 

Always heed the advice of local officials when it comes to evacuations. Your state or county may have specific routes and plans in case there are mandatory evacuations.

Protecting and preparing your home

It’s impossible to know what might happen to your home during a disaster, but there are many best practices to keep your belongings and property as safe as possible.

Below is a list of ways to protect your home from water and wind damage, gathered from the National Flood Insurance Program and local government sources.

  • Take photos of your home and property so you have evidence of what it looked like before any damage occurs, in case you need to file an insurance claim or apply for federal aid.
  • Move your most valued belongings to a high, safe place, such as an attic. 
  • Clear your gutters and downspouts when you know a big rain is coming, and make sure they’re pointed downhill, away from your home.
  • Clear storm drains and drainage ditches of debris.
  • Elevate your utilities, including electrical panels, propane tanks, sockets, wiring, appliances, and heating systems, if possible, and anchor them in place.
  • Get a sump pump if you are a homeowner. A working sump pump and a water alarm can minimize flood damage in your basement. Install a battery-operated backup pump in case the power goes out. 
  • Seal any cracks in your foundation with mortar, caulk, or hydraulic cement. 
  • Secure outdoor items so they don’t blow or wash away.
  • If you’re in a hurricane-prone area, install storm shutters. There are many products for every budget; some are temporary and some are permanent. 
  • Secure loose roof shingles, which can create a domino effect if wind starts to take them off. 

How to document flood damage

Fred Chacon, Bellaire resident of 12 years, places sandbags between his house and the Intermediate River, just downstream of the Bellaire Dam. (Photo: Claire Keenan-Kurgan/IPR News)

If you’ve already seen damage from flooding and it’s safe to return home, it’s critical that you photograph everything that was damaged and gather any documents you can salvage for insurance claims and government aid applications.

Before you begin:

  • Turn off your electricity and gas (here’s how).
  • Have a first aid kit handy.
  • Make sure your tetanus shot is up to date (your state or county health department may offer free tetanus vaccines if you need one; it’s best to call them to find out).
  • Look at the structural integrity of the building before entering, and do not go inside if it looks like there is any potential for something to collapse. Do not touch anything electrical if in doubt about the state it’s in. 
  • Wear protective clothing: long sleeves and pants, goggles, leather, rubber or plastic gloves, closed-toed and/or sturdy boots or shoes, a respirator or N95 mask, and a Tyvek suit if you can find one. Check with your aid distribution sites for tools, personal protective equipment, and cleaning materials. 
  • Do not attempt to drive or wade through floodwaters, which can sweep you away even if it doesn’t seem deep, and can be contaminated or contain dangerous debris. Do not touch any debris or materials that may be contaminated by toxic chemicals (you may need special equipment or PPE to handle burned or flooded debris). 

Take photos and videos

Whether you have insurance and are filing a claim, or you do not have flood insurance and you’re applying for federal assistance from FEMA, you’ll need a lot of evidence to prove the damage was caused by a disaster. 

  • Gather any photos of your house or apartment from before the crisis so you can more easily document your losses. 
  • Take photos of the outside and inside of your home or apartment, including damaged personal property, and label them by room before you remove anything. 

If you have insurance, take photos of the make, model, and serial number for appliances and anything else of value. Provide receipts to your adjuster to document damage for your claim.

This was originally published on Grist and has been adapted to include up-to-date information for northern Michigan. Find the full toolkit here.

The post Here’s how to prepare, as more rain falls on northern Michigan appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

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Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/04/20/heres-how-to-prepare-as-more-rain-falls-on-northern-michigan/

Grist and Interlochen Public Radio

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In: Equity and Environmental Justice, Featured, Industry, Energy, Economic Development, Michigan, Politics, Policy, Environmental Justice, The States, U.S. and Canadian Federal Governments

By Paula Gardner, Kelly House and Ron French, Bridge Michigan

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan; Circle of Blue; Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS; Michigan Public, Michigan’s NPR News Leader; and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work HERE.

CHEBOYGAN — Local, state and federal officials were aware of the dangers posed by the Cheboygan Lock and Dam for years before floodwaters pushed it to the brink of collapse, records show.

Yet they failed to compel private owners to repair the nonfunctional hydro plant connected to the publicly-owned dam —  a critical piece of its ability to pass floodwaters downstream. 

The facility that houses the plant, once a Charmin toilet paper mill, changed hands repeatedly over decades as it fell into disrepair. 

Now taxpayers are helping bankroll a desperate effort to bring the plant back online before the dam fails and sends a wall of water toward downtown Cheboygan.

“I’m very concerned that this was not handled properly,” said Richard Sangster, a Cheboygan County commissioner and former Cheboygan mayor, about federal regulatory actions over several years.

The property is now owned by Hom Paper XI, LLC, a business controlled by former NFL linebacker Thomas Homco. He did not return voicemails left by Bridge Michigan. 

State and local officials did what they could, Cheboygan County Sheriff Todd Ross said Thursday.

“We didn’t wait ‘til the last minute,” Ross said. “It’s privately owned. There’s only so much we can do.”

A public tally of taxpayer costs associated with the round-the-clock repair wasn’t available Thursday, but estimates from a few years ago indicated the plant needed at least $1 million in repairs.

‘Safety concerns have been raised many times’

Records show the agency that primarily regulates hydropower dams, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, sent warning letters for years to a shifting cast of owners while granting multiple extensions.

Among the issues they cited: missing inspection records and malfunctioning equipment that was crucial to passing water in the event of a flood.  

As far back as 2019, regulars warned about cracked concrete and damaged retaining walls and gates that could help the dam manage flooding, records show.

In 2021, FERC told the plant’s then owners that “multiple items are overdue and completion dates are rapidly approaching.”

The plant was cited 16 times in 10 months for safety violations by Occupational Safety and Health Administration before a fire closed it altogether in September 2023, records indicate.

That prompted more orders for repairs and more extensions from FERC. Records indicate state officials said they were aware of the issues but had no role in enforcement.

“Safety concerns have been raised many times,” Sangster said, adding “you wouldn’t even be able to measure how detrimental” a dam failure would be. 

“In my eyes, it appears like total neglect on their behalf,” he added about FERC.

‘No simple answer’

FERC spokesperson Celeste Miller did not respond to detailed questions from Bridge about oversight of the hydro plant property and instead put out a statement noting the agency’s role in the ongoing emergency response in Cheboygan.

“Above all, our priority is to coordinate with all involved partners to safeguard both the community and the environment,” Miller wrote.

The crisis comes six years after the privately-owned Midland dams failed following a similar pattern of regulatory delay. Michigan legislators vowed to make dam safety a priority after Midland, but ultimately didn’t act on proposed reforms.

A solution “keeps getting kicked down the road …  now we’ve got a whole community in peril because it was mismanaged by (private owners),” state Sen. John Damoose, R-Harbor Springs, said after touring the dam with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

“This is a problem that could happen all over the state,” Damoose said. “‘It got our attention a few years ago in Midland, but now we’re seeing that it was not an isolated thing and we need to take some serious looks at how we allow this to go on.”

Whitmer said “there’s no simple answer” due to a “complicated web of privately owned and publicly owned (dams.)”

“We have made some long overdue investments in some of our infrastructure,” she said.

Complicated history

Like many dams in Michigan, the Cheboygan complex was once owned by utilities to generate power for the region. 

By 1967, when Consumers Energy sold it to the state of Michigan for $1, it was no longer generating power but the deeper Cheboygan River created by the dam had become a valued link between Lake Huron and the Inland Waterway, a 40-mile-long network of popular rivers and lakes.

In 1983, Procter & Gamble took over the hydroelectric side of the facility, securing a licensing exemption from FERC and striking a deal to give the state some continued say over water flows through the now-privatized portion of the complex. 

But soon after pouring millions into upgrading the hydro facility, the company shuttered its Cheboygan operation in 1990, eliminating 300 jobs and commencing the slow decline of the historic mill. 

Eventually, a company named Great Lakes Tissue bought the plant and was urged by FERC for years to make repairs.

It sold the business before a June 2022 deadline to ensure the gates that allowed water to flow through the hydro plant were functioning properly.

It’s not clear whether the work was ever completed. Nor is it clear whether federal regulators were aware of subsequent ownership changes.

Great Lakes Tissue Company was still the listed owner on FERC’s license exemption well into 2025.

Tug-of-war

While the hydro side of the dam complex sat idle following the fire, state Department of Natural Resources officials in charge of the rest of the dam publicly warned its closure would make it hard to manage water levels in the Cheboygan River.

The plant had accounted for about 30% of the river’s flow to Lake Huron, they said.

“Boaters and residents … may experience larger water level fluctuations,” stated a 2024 agency announcement.

Bridge Michigan was not able to discern what steps, if any, DNR officials took to try to compel action.

Agency spokesperson Ed Golder said he was not able to immediately answer related questions from Bridge Michigan while the agency deals with emergency response in Cheboygan.

Josef Greenberg, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, which regulates dams in the state that are not regulated by FERC, said state officials had communicated with federal counterparts about the issues at the dam, but did not play a regulatory role.

In the fire’s aftermath, federal officials continued issuing letters flagging unresolved safety issues at the hydro plant, some of them dating back years.

They pressed current and past owners for clarity about who was in charge, a process complicated by a flurry of legal disputes between parties with a stake in the floundering business.

Eventually, Hom Paper emerged as the rightful owner in FERC’s eyes, and the agency ordered the company to either restore the hydro plant to working condition or risk losing the license exemption that allows it to generate hydropower.

Company lawyer Tyler Tennent initially responded that doing so was no longer economically feasible: “Hom Paper XI, LLC no longer intends or desires to operate the hydroelectric machinery,” Tennent wrote in August 2025.

Then Hom Paper found a potential buyer, asking FERC for repeated extensions of time to repower the plant while it worked to finalize the deal.

The would-be buyer: HydroMine Cheboygan LLC, a Wyoming-based corporation spearheaded by Roy Davis, a self-proclaimed  “blue-collar mechanic that fixes things,” who has restarted power operations at other aging dams in Eaton Rapids and Hubbardston.

“Hom Paper and HydroMine are very near to having a signed agreement,” Hom’s lawyer, Tyler Tennent, wrote to FERC in January.

Tennent told regulators HydroMine was negotiating water management agreements with the DNR and working with Consumers Energy to repower the site.

“We appreciate FERC’s continued patience,” he wrote.

Three months later, the plant remained nonfunctional Thursday night, reducing the Cheboygan dam’s ability to pass floodwater that had climbed within five inches of its crest.

Residents in the floodzone have been urged to prepare for evacuation in case of dam failure.

Looking ahead

An estimated 75 Consumers Energy workers have been at the dam to get the privately owned hydroelectric power plant running, Michigan State Police said Thursday. 

By Thursday evening, signs pointed that restoration would be imminent, said Bruce Straub, Consumers’ incident commander.

Preserving dam integrity across northern Michigan will be important to the region once the crisis abates, said Sharen Lange, a Cheboygan business owner active in economic development, including on Cheboygan Commons.

Many in the area keep talking about who should own the hydro plant, Lange said. Others are saying that the city or county could take action. 

“We know that it being in private hands has produced a really bad result,” Lange said. 

The post Michigan feared Cheboygan Dam danger for years before rains pushed it to brink appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

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Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/04/17/michigan-feared-cheboygan-dam-danger-for-years-before-rains-pushed-it-to-brink/

Bridge Michigan

On:
In: Agriculture, Climate change, Featured, Fish, Birds and Animals, Forests and Plants, Industry, Energy, Economic Development, Latest News, Science, Technology, Research

By Héctor Alejandro Arzate

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.

As a row crop farmer in St. Joseph, Missouri, Joe Lau said he’s noticing more extreme weather these days. 

Warmer seasons throughout the year. Quarter-inch predictions of rain stamped out by storms that bring 3 inches. Increased pressure from pests on his corn. He’s also noticed that spring is coming earlier. 

The USA National Phenology Network shows that this year spring arrived three to five weeks earlier than the average between 1991 to 2020 in much of the central U.S. and two to three weeks earlier in southern Midwest states. 

“I have allergies bad,” said Lau, who also grows soybeans. “And this year in particular, it’s hit me hard. It’s wild that we are talking about allergy issues in winter, but that’s technically the reality of it.”

Last month, Climate Central, a nonprofit specializing in communicating climate science, published an analysis that found that spring is trending to an earlier arrival from 1981 to 2025 in most of the United States.

On average, leaves now emerge six days earlier than they did in 1981 in 88 percent, or 212 out of 242, of major U.S. cities. For example, in Lau’s city of St. Joseph, Missouri, the spring leaves tend to arrive two days earlier. 

An earlier spring could have consequences for the agriculture industry, ecology, and more.

Where are spring leaves arriving earlier?

Climate Central used open-access data that was collected by the USA National Phenology Network, a group of volunteers and researchers who study seasonal events — like when migratory birds arrive, leaves emerge, and fruit ripens —  among plants and animals to determine ecosystem health. 

The analysis is based on the NPN’s first leaf index maps, which use models to predict the start of spring. To work, the models are fed data like temperature and the start date of the annual “leaf-out” — when leaves first emerge —  for the early spring plants of lilacs and honeysuckle, which are found throughout the U.S.

“That very leading edge of spring is drifting earlier and has drifted, in some cases, a whole lot earlier in just that last few decades,” said Theresa Crimmins, the NPN’s director, in a briefing last month.

Climate Central’s analysis found that many Mississippi River basin cities are seeing earlier spring, including Hazard, Kentucky, which is seeing leaves arrive 11 days earlier. Both Memphis, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri, are leafing out seven days earlier. New Orleans, Louisiana, is two days earlier.

While most of the lower 48 states are experiencing an earlier spring, the report did find an exception in the Northern Rockies and Plains region. There, spring temperatures have either cooled or warmed “relatively slowly” since 1970, according to the report.

Kaitlyn Trudeau, a climatologist with Climate Central, said the differences in how much earlier spring is coming from place to place are likely due to what she calls “climate controls” — such as latitude, elevation, wind patterns, proximity to bodies of water, ocean currents, and topography. 

“All of those different factors really dictate what your local climate is like generally,” Trudeau said.

What does early spring mean for agriculture and more?

The early arrival of spring can have widespread impacts, said Trudeau. People with seasonal allergies, like Lau, will be exposed to more pollen because plants get more time to produce and release it.

Warmer temperatures can also cause birds to migrate too soon. One of the busiest migratory routes, or flyways, in North America moves along the Mississippi River. Each year, about half of all migratory bird species on the continent follow it to get from as far north as Canada to Central and South America, and then back.

When birds migrate too soon, said Trudeau, they miss out on the peak abundance of food. They can fall out of sync with insects or the flowers they pollinate, which can affect other species, too.

“That can cause this ecological mismatch,” Trudeau said.

Earlier springs can also put the agriculture industry at financial risk, she said. Whether it’s corn, soybeans, or specialty fruits, these crops can get hit with a hard freeze following an early leaf-out — also known as a false spring. It could lead to major economic damage in the agriculture industry, said Trudeau.

In 2017, a hard freeze in the southeastern U.S. destroyed fruit crops like peaches, pears, blueberries, strawberries, and even grass for livestock. It led to more than $1 billion dollars in losses for the agriculture industry, according to a report from NOAA.

“We are so dependent upon what happens in the natural environment,” Trudeau said. “And so when things start to shift and change, it’s also going to cause pretty widespread impacts for our lives.”

Growers of specialty crops — such as apricot trees or iris flowers — will be particularly vulnerable. Row crop farmers, like Lau, have more technology to aid them. He said seed treatments have allowed soybean farmers to plant earlier and grow longer, increasing their production. 

So the effects of an earlier spring have been “minimal” for him.

“From purely a row-crop production standpoint, the springs have been very favorable for us,” said Lau.

One thing that does have him worried is the bug activity out in his fields — they’ve been plentiful with the warmer weather. 

“I raise all non-GMO corn and so I don’t have the insect traits bred into the corn genetically modified, and so that does concern me that we’re kind of relying on what nature hands us,” Lau said. 

While farmers and communities are doing their part to innovate and adapt to continue producing, Trudeau said addressing the root of climate change is the most urgent need.

“There is no substitute for dramatically reducing our carbon pollution,” she said.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

The post Climate experts say spring is coming earlier. How will that affect agriculture and ecosystems? appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/04/16/climate-experts-say-spring-is-coming-earlier-how-will-that-affect-agriculture-ecosystems/

Grist

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In: Featured, Forests and Plants, Latest News, Science, Technology, Research, Wisconsin

Once a week, first and second graders at Tower Rock Elementary School in Sauk County step into a classroom without walls. 

About 25 students, accompanied by three teachers, spend the day in their outdoor classroom tucked into nearby woods with a soaring sculpted bluff — called Tower Rock — in the school’s shadow.

Students follow a science and social studies-based curriculum on topics like insects and space, along with practical lessons like how to dress for the cold. 

In March, days before Blizzard Elsa blanketed the state with snow, first graders in the outdoor learning program prepared to blast off to Saturn. In small groups, students rode an imaginary rocket ship, learning about the planets while in their outdoor environment. 

Angus Mossman, left, leads an outdoor lesson on planets Thursday, March 12, 2026, at Tower Rock Elementary School in Prairie du Sac, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

Nature-based education and outdoor classrooms are expanding in Wisconsin and across the country. The concept of teaching outdoors got a boost during the pandemic. But now, according to Natural Start Alliance, there are more than 1,000 nature classroom programs in pre-schools nationwide. That’s up from a few dozen a decade ago. 

Teachers at Tower Rock want students to learn about the environment under their feet.

“It’s more than sitting in a classroom and saying, ‘We live in a beautiful area, you should protect it.’” JoAnnah Sorg, a teacher at Tower Rock, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “We go out there and we’re like, ‘Look at all of this. You want this to be here for your family someday. You want to continue to enjoy this, so we need to work to take care of it.’”

The landscape near Tower Rock Elementary School on Thursday, March 12, 2026, in Prairie du Sac, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

Keeping special places special

According to the state Department of Public Instruction, there are at least 17 schools that have a dedicated outdoor learning day in Wisconsin. Tower Rock, which launched its program in 2021, is one of a handful of public, non-charter schools in Wisconsin with this learning model. 

That means all first and second graders who attend Tower Rock participate. There is no waiting list, application or fees. Neurodivergent students and students with disabilities receive accommodations to participate. 

Principal Kelly Petrowski, right, helps a student with a science lesson Thursday, March 12, 2026, at Tower Rock Elementary School in Prairie du Sac, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

The school only cancels the outdoor program when the windchill factor plummets below zero. But this isn’t recess or free play. Every outdoor learning day is guided by a curriculum with a “place-based learning” model in mind, where educators use the local community and environment as a foundation for study. 

Sorg has been at Tower Rock for 15 years. She and two other educators, Dylan Edwards and Angus Mossman, run the program. Together, they build lessons and plan field trips to state parks and protected areas in Sauk County, an agricultural community on the banks of the Wisconsin River. 

Mossman went to Tower Rock and his mother still teaches there. He said many people leave Sauk County not realizing the beauty of it. The majority of the rural community is dedicated to farmland, but there are more than 22,000 acres of dedicated natural parks and open spaces, 63 lakes and nearly 160 miles of rivers and creeks, according to Explore Sauk County, the county’s tourism website.  

“There’s a lot of focus on getting urban students exposed to nature and I think there’s not a lot of focus on exposing kids in rural areas to nature,” Mossman said. 

“I want kids to realize that this is a special place and if people care about it, it will stay a special place. And if people don’t care about it, it might not stay a special place,” Mossman added. “I think (children) have it in their hearts to learn that.”

Students operate an imaginary spaceship with teacher JoAnnah Sorg as they learn about science outdoors Thursday, March 12, 2026, at Tower Rock Elementary School in Prairie du Sac, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Angus Mossman tells a story as students gather to listen Thursday, March 12, 2026, at Tower Rock Elementary School in Prairie du Sac, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Teacher Dylan Edwards, left, helps students launch rockets using a water bottle Thursday, March 12, 2026, at Tower Rock Elementary School in Prairie du Sac, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

The wonder of bees and spiders

Since the program started, students have helped to restore a native prairie and learned about the federally endangered rusty patch bumble bee, which is rare, but can be found in Wisconsin. 

“In first and second grade, I was really, really scared of bees,” said Bentley Hughbanks, a fifth grader who went through the outdoor learning program. “I was insanely scared to the point where on a field trip, I didn’t want to go because of the bees. But now I’ve overgrown my fear of bees.”

“I realized that they don’t mess with you unless you mess around with them,” Bentley said. 

There are countless stories from students overcoming fears, educators said. Students who didn’t like spiders now prevent others from squishing them. One student asked his parents to stop using ant poison in the garage. And another wants to be an ornithologist.  

First-grade students participate in a lesson on space Thursday, March 12, 2026, at Tower Rock Elementary School in Prairie du Sac, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

“A powerful thing about outdoor learning and the experience we can give the kids here is that we’re teaching their hearts and not just teaching their minds,” Mossman said. 

Sorg recalled one student who struggled academically in the classroom but on an outdoor learning day found the perfect way to pack snow into a bucket for building a structure, and the other students followed his lead.

“The power that it gave him among his peers to be able to have that opportunity to shine and have that moment — he didn’t get a lot of those moments in the classroom during the day,” she said. 

Finding those moments is one benefit of outdoor learning. Research shows it can also promote concentration, perseverance and creativity, said Christy Merrick, director of the Natural Start Alliance. 

“(Nature) is a space that is always changing. Nature is not static,” Merrick said. “It’s keeping things interesting for students. It tends to promote very active, hands-on learning, which we know is a very effective way for children to learn when they’re young.”

Students explore the woods during a lesson Thursday, March 12, 2026, at Tower Rock Elementary School in Prairie du Sac, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

An outdoor program like this is unique and requires a reliable funding stream. The teachers say it takes additional work to keep the program going. Each year, they apply for about $5,000 of local and state grants, Mossman said. The Community Foundation of South Central Wisconsin accepts donations on behalf of the school and other programs like it. The school also hopes to create an endowment. 

Outdoor learning is starting to become part of the fabric of attending Tower Rock. Now some fifth graders, like Brooks Mack, have younger siblings there, too.

“I can help (my brother) out. He asks me questions when he gets home, like, ‘We did this today but I didn’t quite understand it.’ So I get to answer those questions and other kids ask me questions, too,” Brooks said. “Sometimes I get to answer, which feels good.”

The post Nature is the classroom at this central Wisconsin elementary school appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

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https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/04/16/nature-is-the-classroom-at-this-central-wisconsin-elementary-school/

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Internal government emails show staff at the Canada Water Agency trying to make sense of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s budget cuts in response to questions from the media.

The Canada Water Agency launched in October 2024 to help protect Canada’s fresh water, including leading restoration work to clean up the Great Lakes, Lake Winnipeg and other important sources of drinking water. Canada is home to 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, which is being threatened by climate-driven floods, droughts and algal blooms, as well as industrial contamination and other groundwater stressors.

Carney’s first federal budget proposed $3.8 million in lower spending by 2029-30 at the agency, and a further $1.2 million categorized as a separate “ongoing,” or permanent spending reduction, for a total of $5 million in cuts. They were part of Carney’s $60 billion in proposed cuts — split into $48 billion in spending reductions through 2029-30, and a further $12 billion in “ongoing” cuts with no given end date.

The Narwhal reported on the budget in November, summarizing the government’s proposal as cutting $5 million in total spending at the agency over a number of years. After that story was published, the agency emailed The Narwhal with a request for a “small correction,” asking that figure be changed to $3.8 million.

When The Narwhal asked the agency why it shouldn’t include the $1.2 million in ongoing spending cuts in the figure — which would make it $5 million — internal emails released under Access to Information law show staff reached out to Finance Canada, sharing a screenshot of the budget’s spending review page for the agency with the proposed “ongoing” cut circled in red. 

“Hello Finance Department colleagues, we are fact-checking an article in The Narwhal that mentions the [agency]’s budget cuts, and just want to make sure we are understanding the budget chart correctly,” the agency wrote. 

The water agency asked the Finance Department whether the $5-million figure, which it had already asked The Narwhal for a correction on, was in fact, correct.

After the Finance Department said it would look into the matter, the water agency asked for guidance on how to explain the permanent portion of the spending reductions to journalists.

“Do you have messaging you can share around communicating the ‘ongoing’ to the media?” the staff member asked.

The next day, an official at Finance Canada said the story did not need a correction after all.

Canada Water Agency to cut 13 jobs, but continue restoration and protection of fresh water

Last month, a Canada Water Agency planning document showed how it expected to absorb the first three fiscal years’ worth of cuts, amounting to $2.6 million by 2028-29. One result was the loss of roughly 13 jobs, or what’s known as full-time equivalent positions, from a workforce of 223.

It said it was also planning on “modernizing government operations” and “leveraging new technology” as well as making administrative and support functions more efficient.

At the same time, the agency plans to keep conducting water quality and ecosystem restoration, including in the Great Lakes, it said.

The federal budget says cuts are necessary to “rein in government spending” from pandemic highs. Carney has gone on to trumpet other multibillion-dollar investments in areas like the military, technology and infrastructure that could in turn pose new environmental challenges for water.

Last week, the Canada Water Agency took on a new task when the Carney government promised $3.8 billion to “protect nature” as part of a new environmental strategy. The agency will be working on the country’s first National Water Security Strategy meant to reflect Indigenous knowledge systems including water stewardship.

The Narwhal emailed the Canada Water Agency asking how its spending cuts will affect freshwater stewardship and restoration work.

A spokesperson said the government’s budget cuts would not impact the agency’s “planned activities, staffing and funding commitments for restoration and protection” of its eight freshwater ecosystem initiatives through Canada’s Freshwater Action Plan, a “signature” federal program.

The program includes the Great Lakes, lakes like Simcoe and Winnipeg and rivers like the St. Lawrence in Ontario and Quebec, and the Mackenzie in the Northwest Territories. Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s 2023 federal budget allocated $650 million over 10 years to these freshwater initiatives.

Federal funding for freshwater protection has been important in Ontario in recent years, because the province has not invested as much in ecosystem restoration, according to an environmental scientist at the University of Windsor. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

“Like all federal organizations, the Canada Water Agency is contributing to the government’s plan to reduce spending, eliminate duplicative programs and focus resources on core priorities,” the spokesperson wrote.

“The agency remains fully committed to delivering on its mandate to improve freshwater management in Canada by providing leadership, effective collaboration federally and improved coordination and collaboration with provinces, territories and Indigenous Peoples to proactively address national and regional transboundary freshwater challenges and opportunities.”

The agency also told The Narwhal the reduction in jobs would be staggered, with four next fiscal year, followed by another four the year after and five more after that.

Asked how the agency was planning for the budget’s proposed $1.2 million in permanent cuts, the spokesperson reiterated the budget review was meant to ensure government spending was sustainable and funding cost-effective programs and activities.

Federal funds support water conservation in Ontario and the Great Lakes

The spending reductions come at a time when the Ontario government is amalgamating its watershed protection agencies, called conservation authorities, from 36 to nine, as well as moving to give itself the power to dictate more rules around drinking water. 

Federal funding has been important for conservation authorities because Ontario has not been investing as much in community science and ecosystem restoration, Catherine Febria, the Canada Research Chair in freshwater restoration ecology, said. 

An associate professor at the University of Windsor’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, Febria said that the federal “scale of investment is something that the province was never able to do.”

“That was really exciting, it was like a leapfrog in progress with this single initiative, and a number of large-scale projects were invested in [over] the first two years,” she said, naming the freshwater ecosystem initiatives in places like the Great Lakes as one example.

The federal government and Ontario have been working together “for over 50 years” through a series of agreements on protecting and conserving the Great Lakes, the spokesperson for the Canada Water Agency said. 

As one example, the Canada-Ontario Agreement on Great Lakes Water Quality and Ecosystem Health lays out how the two will coordinate protection efforts.

“This partnership has led to remarkable improvements, including dramatic reductions in harmful pollutants, and the return of pollution-sensitive species such as bald eagles,” the spokesperson wrote.

Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks did not respond to questions from The Narwhal about how much provincial funding was going towards efforts to restore freshwater ecosystems, and to what extent the ministry was working with the federal water agency.

Febria said given the federal water agency is still relatively new, it’s still not clear what its full mandate will be, not to mention if or how the proposed cuts will impact its work or what exactly may be lost.

She said another Carney initiative, directing $1.7 billion toward a series of scientific initiatives, including research awards attracting high-level talent from abroad, holds promise. Some of the research awards will focus on water security, environment and climate resilience. 

Still, it’s a “tricky balance,” she added, between investing in research and also carrying out on-the-ground work to improve local areas.

“I think we need both,” she said. “When the pendulum swings towards a whole bunch of researchers, that’s great, but at the end of the day, we still need people and organizations and communities on the ground.”

The post Canada Water Agency wasn’t quite sure how to explain Carney’s budget cuts to the public, documents show appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/04/15/canada-water-agency-wasnt-quite-sure-how-to-explain-carneys-budget-cuts-to-the-public-documents-show/

The Narwhal

On:
In: Featured, Ontario, Water Quality and Restoration Efforts

Internal government emails show staff at the Canada Water Agency trying to make sense of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s budget cuts in response to questions from the media.

The Canada Water Agency launched in October 2024 to help protect Canada’s fresh water, including leading restoration work to clean up the Great Lakes, Lake Winnipeg and other important sources of drinking water. Canada is home to 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, which is being threatened by climate-driven floods, droughts and algal blooms, as well as industrial contamination and other groundwater stressors.

Carney’s first federal budget proposed $3.8 million in lower spending by 2029-30 at the agency, and a further $1.2 million categorized as a separate “ongoing,” or permanent spending reduction, for a total of $5 million in cuts. They were part of Carney’s $60 billion in proposed cuts — split into $48 billion in spending reductions through 2029-30, and a further $12 billion in “ongoing” cuts with no given end date.

The Narwhal reported on the budget in November, summarizing the government’s proposal as cutting $5 million in total spending at the agency over a number of years. After that story was published, the agency emailed The Narwhal with a request for a “small correction,” asking that figure be changed to $3.8 million.

When The Narwhal asked the agency why it shouldn’t include the $1.2 million in ongoing spending cuts in the figure — which would make it $5 million — internal emails released under Access to Information law show staff reached out to Finance Canada, sharing a screenshot of the budget’s spending review page for the agency with the proposed “ongoing” cut circled in red. 

“Hello Finance Department colleagues, we are fact-checking an article in The Narwhal that mentions the [agency]’s budget cuts, and just want to make sure we are understanding the budget chart correctly,” the agency wrote. 

The water agency asked the Finance Department whether the $5-million figure, which it had already asked The Narwhal for a correction on, was in fact, correct.

After the Finance Department said it would look into the matter, the water agency asked for guidance on how to explain the permanent portion of the spending reductions to journalists.

“Do you have messaging you can share around communicating the ‘ongoing’ to the media?” the staff member asked.

The next day, an official at Finance Canada said the story did not need a correction after all.

Canada Water Agency to cut 13 jobs, but continue restoration and protection of fresh water

Last month, a Canada Water Agency planning document showed how it expected to absorb the first three fiscal years’ worth of cuts, amounting to $2.6 million by 2028-29. One result was the loss of roughly 13 jobs, or what’s known as full-time equivalent positions, from a workforce of 223.

It said it was also planning on “modernizing government operations” and “leveraging new technology” as well as making administrative and support functions more efficient.

At the same time, the agency plans to keep conducting water quality and ecosystem restoration, including in the Great Lakes, it said.

The federal budget says cuts are necessary to “rein in government spending” from pandemic highs. Carney has gone on to trumpet other multibillion-dollar investments in areas like the military, technology and infrastructure that could in turn pose new environmental challenges for water.

Last week, the Canada Water Agency took on a new task when the Carney government promised $3.8 billion to “protect nature” as part of a new environmental strategy. The agency will be working on the country’s first National Water Security Strategy meant to reflect Indigenous knowledge systems including water stewardship.

The Narwhal emailed the Canada Water Agency asking how its spending cuts will affect freshwater stewardship and restoration work.

A spokesperson said the government’s budget cuts would not impact the agency’s “planned activities, staffing and funding commitments for restoration and protection” of its eight freshwater ecosystem initiatives through Canada’s Freshwater Action Plan, a “signature” federal program.

The program includes the Great Lakes, lakes like Simcoe and Winnipeg and rivers like the St. Lawrence in Ontario and Quebec, and the Mackenzie in the Northwest Territories. Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s 2023 federal budget allocated $650 million over 10 years to these freshwater initiatives.

Federal funding for freshwater protection has been important in Ontario in recent years, because the province has not invested as much in ecosystem restoration, according to an environmental scientist at the University of Windsor. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

“Like all federal organizations, the Canada Water Agency is contributing to the government’s plan to reduce spending, eliminate duplicative programs and focus resources on core priorities,” the spokesperson wrote.

“The agency remains fully committed to delivering on its mandate to improve freshwater management in Canada by providing leadership, effective collaboration federally and improved coordination and collaboration with provinces, territories and Indigenous Peoples to proactively address national and regional transboundary freshwater challenges and opportunities.”

The agency also told The Narwhal the reduction in jobs would be staggered, with four next fiscal year, followed by another four the year after and five more after that.

Asked how the agency was planning for the budget’s proposed $1.2 million in permanent cuts, the spokesperson reiterated the budget review was meant to ensure government spending was sustainable and funding cost-effective programs and activities.

Federal funds support water conservation in Ontario and the Great Lakes

The spending reductions come at a time when the Ontario government is amalgamating its watershed protection agencies, called conservation authorities, from 36 to nine, as well as moving to give itself the power to dictate more rules around drinking water. 

Federal funding has been important for conservation authorities because Ontario has not been investing as much in community science and ecosystem restoration, Catherine Febria, the Canada Research Chair in freshwater restoration ecology, said. 

An associate professor at the University of Windsor’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, Febria said that the federal “scale of investment is something that the province was never able to do.”

“That was really exciting, it was like a leapfrog in progress with this single initiative, and a number of large-scale projects were invested in [over] the first two years,” she said, naming the freshwater ecosystem initiatives in places like the Great Lakes as one example.

The federal government and Ontario have been working together “for over 50 years” through a series of agreements on protecting and conserving the Great Lakes, the spokesperson for the Canada Water Agency said. 

As one example, the Canada-Ontario Agreement on Great Lakes Water Quality and Ecosystem Health lays out how the two will coordinate protection efforts.

“This partnership has led to remarkable improvements, including dramatic reductions in harmful pollutants, and the return of pollution-sensitive species such as bald eagles,” the spokesperson wrote.

Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks did not respond to questions from The Narwhal about how much provincial funding was going towards efforts to restore freshwater ecosystems, and to what extent the ministry was working with the federal water agency.

Febria said given the federal water agency is still relatively new, it’s still not clear what its full mandate will be, not to mention if or how the proposed cuts will impact its work or what exactly may be lost.

She said another Carney initiative, directing $1.7 billion toward a series of scientific initiatives, including research awards attracting high-level talent from abroad, holds promise. Some of the research awards will focus on water security, environment and climate resilience. 

Still, it’s a “tricky balance,” she added, between investing in research and also carrying out on-the-ground work to improve local areas.

“I think we need both,” she said. “When the pendulum swings towards a whole bunch of researchers, that’s great, but at the end of the day, we still need people and organizations and communities on the ground.”

The post Canada Water Agency wasn’t quite sure how to explain Carney’s budget cuts to the public, documents show appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/04/15/canada-water-agency-wasnt-quite-sure-how-to-explain-carneys-budget-cuts-to-the-public-documents-show/

The Narwhal

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In: Featured, Fish, Birds and Animals, Latest News, Michigan, Recreation and Tourism, Recreational Hunting and Fishing, Science, Technology, Research

This article was republished here with permission from Great Lakes Echo.

By Addie Tussing, Great Lakes Echo

Every year, thousands of hopeful hunters apply for one of only 260 licenses to hunt elk in Michigan. 

The state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) received a record-breaking 47,493 applicants in 2025. 

“It’s a chance for folks in Michigan who are used to some similar hunting experiences, but with the added uniqueness and challenges of pursuing a different animal,” said Brent Rudolph, the deer, moose and elk specialist with the DNR. 

Michigan’s original native elk disappeared in 1875 due to overhunting and habitat loss. They were reintroduced in 1918, and populations have since stabilized, according to Rudolph. 

“We are working on viewing the uniqueness that they bring to the communities where they’re around, and then balance the efforts to manage their population to minimize potential conflicts,” he said.

In 2025, Michigan hunters shot 153 elk. The DNR estimates Michigan’s elk population to be around 1,100 animals.

Every year, the National Resources Commission works alongside the DNR to create quotas to control the number of elk that can be taken. 

“Our five-year average has been around a 72% success rate in fulfilling those quotas,” said Rudolph, while “the 2025 success rate was 64%.”

Brent Henige of New Lothrop shot this-559 pound bull on Dec.13, 2025.

Licenses are awarded to applicants through a random drawing. Once selected, they receive specific information on the hunting period and type of license they have received. 

“Some receive licenses that are ‘any elk,’ which mean they can pursue bulls, which is often the preferred target because they are antlered animals,” said Rudolph. 

Some, however, receive licenses for antlerless-only elk to control the number of females in the population.

There are two hunting periods: The first consists of three independent sessions throughout August and September, and the second from Dec. 13-21. The second period poses challenges to some hunters because of unpredictable weather conditions and proximity to the holiday season. 

When selected, “you will have an opportunity to hunt in one of two core elk range units” said Rudolph. 

Hunters are restricted to the land of the Pigeon River Country State Forest and what is referred to as the “Elk management Unit X” land, both in the Northern Lower Peninsula near Gaylord. 

As the 2025 hunt came to a close, the DNR drafted an alternative to its current Elk Conservation and Management Plan. 

The proposal aims to lengthen both the first and second hunt periods, and most notably, consolidate the first hunt into one continuous period. 

“We are aiming to make it more convenient for hunters having a more contiguous period so they could choose when they’re able to participate,” says Rudolph, who said that the change will give hunters who aren’t local more leeway, increasing the success rate of the first hunt. 

According to the DNR, the proposed first period would be 30 days from September to the beginning of October, and the second period would run from Dec. 1st to the 15th. 

They intend to shift the first hunt to begin at later dates to avoid hot weather which is both uncomfortable to hunt in and leads to more elk meat spoiling. 

The new dates for the second hunt would be more accessible to hunters who celebrate holidays towards the end of December. 

Michigan residents were given the opportunity for public comment on the proposed regulations. 

Seventy-three residents emailed their thoughts to the DNR before the Jan. 23 cutoff. Rudolph said 63% supported the change and about 27, or 37%, were opposed to some aspect.

While a majority supported the proposed regulations, many were concerned that the new timeline would overlap with the days to hunt bears. 

“Some hunters can pursue bear[s] with dogs, and hounds moving through could make hunters anxious or could just lead to some conflicts,” said Rudolph. 

Chad Sides, who chairs the Michigan Elk Country Association, a conservation organization based in Gaylord, is weighing the benefits of the proposition. 

“It could be beneficial if implemented properly,” Sides said. “It may provide a better experience for the hunters and have a better hunt.” 

On the other hand, Sides said he is apprehensive about the elk population going forward. “I hope that the state realizes that our herd is significantly down from years past.”

A more successful hunt could decrease the population at a more rapid rate, Sides said. 

The regulations will be finalized during the Natural Resources Commission’s April meeting. 

Before then, Rudolph and the DNR will try to reduce conflict with the bear hunting season. “We will be making some adjustments to the proposed dates and lengths to still reach the original objectives.”

Rudolph said the elk hunt is a vital and unique resource in Michigan.

“We’re happy to be able to take input on how we can try and best accommodate some of the diverse opinions people have,” he said.

The post Michigan mulls changes in elk hunt regulations appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/04/10/michigan-mulls-changes-in-elk-hunt-regulations/

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In: Energy, Clean Energy, Ethanol and Fracking, Featured, Industry, Energy, Economic Development, Latest News

By Sarah Shemkus

This story was originally published by Canary Media.

Balcony solar is one of the hottest ideas in renewable energy right now. Boosters say the systems — DIY kits that can be plugged right into a standard outlet — save users money without any need for subsidies, government incentives, or utility permission.

As Americans continue to struggle with soaring power prices, about half the states in the U.S. are considering legislation to pave the way for residents to adopt plug-in solar and start generating some of their own electricity from their own backyard or porch.

“It’s about energy affordability,” said Cora Stryker, co-founder of Bright Saver, a nonprofit that promotes plug-in solar. ​“Every legislator wants their constituency to have less trouble meeting their energy demands.”

As these efforts work their way through the legislative process, we will be monitoring the action here, using information from Bright Saver and bill-tracking databases.

Latest action: Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) signed the state’s plug-in solar bill into law on April 6.

The post Which Great Lakes states are advancing balcony solar? appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

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In: Featured, Forests and Plants, Latest News, Milwaukee, Politics, Policy, Environmental Justice, Research, Data and Technology, Science, Technology, Research, The States, U.S. and Canadian Federal Governments, Wisconsin

By Danielle Kaeding, Wisconsin Public Radio

This article was republished here with permission from Wisconsin Public Radio.

A union leader representing federal Forest Service employees in Wisconsin says workers may have to move as part of the Trump administration’s plan to shutter regional offices.

The Forest Service announced Tuesday that the agency is moving its headquarters to Salt Lake City and closing nine regional offices, including in Milwaukee. Administrative and technical support in those offices will shift to six operational service centers, one of which will be located in Madison. The overhaul will also include 15 state directors to oversee operations in one or more states.

Brian Haas is president of the National Federation of Federal Employees Local 2165. The union represents employees in the Milwaukee regional office and the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. He said the restructuring mostly affects Milwaukee-area employees. Union officials estimate around 50 employees may be affected.

“The regional office actually already was hit a lot harder by people leaving, retiring, taking the different buyouts,” Haas said. “They’re already really down in their numbers.”

Haas said workers have been told they can continue working for the service as long as they’re willing to relocate or change job descriptions. When the reorganization was first announced last year, he said many employees transferred or relocated amid Trump’s return-to-office order.

The number of Forest Service employees in Wisconsin dropped from 645 to 539 between federal fiscal year 2025 and 2026, according to federal workforce data.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which houses the Forest Service, has been shifting thousands of employees out of Washington. Around 260 employees in the nation’s capital will be expected to relocate to Salt Lake City, according to the Associated Press.

“This is about building a Forest Service that is nimble, efficient, effective and closer to the forests and communities it serves,” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said in a statement.

Trump administration officials said the move will improve forest management, save taxpayer money and boost employee recruitment.

“The official stance from the administration is that it is not a reduction in force, but the reality on the ground is that it is going to continue to drive people to leave the agency,” Haas said.

A USDA spokesperson said employees will receive information about relocation timelines, options and resources to support their decisions. The agency said the number of staff that will be moved beyond the nation’s capital is unknown at this time.

Current and former Forest Service employees say the Trump administration’s actions over the past year have created chaos and uncertainty with few answers. The elimination of regional offices and shift to state-based hubs will take place over the coming year.

No changes for national forest in Wisconsin, research facilities close

The Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, or CNNF, has 235 employees who would be unaffected, according to Kaleigh Maze, a forest spokesperson. Maze said the forest and its district offices would see no changes to staffing.

“The Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest is committed to ensuring that all operations — including wildfire readiness and response — continue without interruption,” Maze said.

Forest Service research facilities in 31 states will also close and be combined under a single research organization in Colorado. The agency’s website shows Rhinelander and Madison research sites would not be affected, but Haas said Rhinelander employees may also be required to move. As of 2023, the agency’s Forest Products Lab in Madison had 80 research scientists and 168 support staff.

Two other facilities are slated for closure in Wisconsin Rapids and Prairie du Chien. Paul Strong, former forest supervisor of the CNNF, said he’s unfamiliar with those sites and questioned whether USDA facilities may have been mistakenly included.

The USDA Forest Products Laboratory on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025, in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

The Forest Service said a single research organization would speed up the use of science in forest management and reduce duplication. Strong told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” it’s unclear what the move will mean for existing and long-term research projects.

“What I think we should be concerned about is what kind of pressure and stress this puts on employees and how they’re being treated as public servants,” Strong said.

Under the reorganization, the Forest Service said there will be no changes to firefighters or their positions. But the Trump administration is seeking to bring firefighting efforts under a single agency, which would affect thousands of employees if implemented.

Former U.S. Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck served during the Clinton administration and lives in Wisconsin. He said he supports efforts to streamline the agency, noting past proposals to reorganize offices failed due to lacking support from congressional lawmakers.

Even so, he noted a similar attempt to move the Bureau of Land Management during Trump’s first term was later reversed. Dombeck said restructuring will likely cause the agency to lose more staff who choose not to uproot their families. He also fears the agency will lose ground on managing 193 million acres of national forests, climate change and wildland firefighting issues.

“I think this will be a real wake-up call to what the real values of national forests are,” Dombeck said. “We need to really ask this administration: what is the end game when we take a look at this level of chaos?”

Editor’s note: This story was updated with staffing figures on the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest from the U.S. Forest Service.

Wisconsin Public Radio, © Copyright 2026, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.

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Wisconsin Public Radio

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In: Featured, Michigan, Politics, Policy, Environmental Justice, Research, Data and Technology, Science, Technology, Research, U.S. and Canadian Federal Governments

The Trump administration plans to close four US Forest Service research facilities in Michigan, shifting scientists out of the state as it reorganizes and consolidates the agency.

Officials have not announced a closure date for the facilities, located in the Lower Peninsula communities of East Lansing and Wellston, between Manistee and Cadillac, and the Upper Peninsula communities of Houghton and L’Anse, saying changes will be implemented over the next year.

The Forest Service headquarters will also move from Washington, DC, to Salt Lake City in what Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins described as a measure to save money, boost logging and put workers “closer to the landscapes we manage.”

“Establishing a western headquarters in Salt Lake City and streamlining how the Forest Service is organized will position the Chief and operation leaders closer to the landscapes we manage and the people who depend on them,” Rollins said in a news release.

The announcement prompted dismay in Houghton, where workers with the US Forest Service Northern Research Station collaborate closely with researchers at Michigan Technological University and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. A smaller group in L’Anse conducts forest inventories and analysis.

“It’s very disappointing,” said David Flaspohler, dean of the university’s College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science. “I understand priorities change from one administration to the next, and this administration is interested in increasing the volume of timber that is coming off of the national forests. To do that in a sustainable, safe way, you have to have people that are trained in the latest science and silviculture.”

Flaspohler estimated between 20 and 25 people work at the Houghton station, including scientists and other staff. The station has a “multidecadal history of partnerships” with researchers and foresters in the UP, he said. 

The heavily forested Upper Peninsula contains more than 8 million acres of forestland, split roughly evenly between private or locally owned timberland and state and federal forests.

Beyond conducting research that aims to keep northern forests healthy and productive, Flaspohler said, the lab is an important economic contributor to a region with scarce jobs.

“This lab with its many employees — who all had salaries and invested in the region just like any employed person does — that’s going to be lost.”

Two-thirds of facilities cut 

The Michigan facilities are part of a network of 57 nationwide. Nineteen will remain following the closures, with the Forest Service instead establishing regional hubs that serve multiple states. 

A Madison, Wisconsin, hub will serve Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Missouri.

Michigan DNR spokesperson John Pepin said leaders in the state Forestry Resources Division are not yet sure how the changes will affect the state agency, which works closely with federal partners. 

“It’s pretty apparent that the details and individual impacts to a lot of programs are not worked out yet,” Pepin said. 

The biggest change appeared to be in Houghton, Pepin said. The facility houses the Northern Institute for Applied Climate Science, which Pepin said is relocating to Fort Collins, Colorado.

He said DNR and university officials in Michigan and other Great Lakes states “have worked closely” with the institute for many years assessing the climate vulnerability of forests, developing adaptation strategies and applying it to forest management.

It wasn’t clear whether layoffs would occur as part of the reorganization, but the administration’s announcement emphasized the reduction of “administrative duplication.”

“The Forest Service will provide employees and partners with detailed transition guidance as different milestones approach,” stated an agency release.

Agency spokespeople did not immediately respond to emailed questions from Bridge Michigan. 

Phone calls to Forest Service facilities in Houghton and Lansing were not answered. A person who picked up the phone in the Huron-Manistee National Forest, which includes the Wellston office, declined to comment. Bridge Michigan was unable to locate a phone number for the L’Anse facility.

While an agency press release described the move as a “structural reset and a common-sense approach to improve mission delivery,” some critics have described it as an effort to shrink the Forest Service and shift its mission away from protecting forests and toward logging and privatization.

Utah has been a frequent battleground for debates about public lands, from the fight over Bears Ears National Monument to a lawsuit by the state of Utah that aimed to take control of millions of acres of federal land and Utah Senator Mike Lee’s repeated efforts to sell off public land. 

“This reorganization will wreak havoc on the Forest Service management and organization, adding fuel to the unpopular narrative by officials like Senator Mike Lee that public lands should be sold off to private industry” said Josh Hicks, Conservation Campaigns Director at The Wilderness Society. “At a time when wildfires are getting worse, and access to public lands is already under strain, the last thing we need is an unnecessary reorganization.”

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https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/04/06/trump-administration-plans-closure-of-4-michigan-forestry-research-centers/

Bridge Michigan

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In: Detroit, detroit river, Featured, Industry, Energy, Economic Development, Michigan, Recreation and Tourism

By Janelle D. James, Bridge Michigan

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan; Circle of Blue; Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS; Michigan Public, Michigan’s NPR News Leader; and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work HERE.

More than a decade after the idea first surfaced, a revamped proposal to buy Belle Isle and turn the public park into a privately funded housing, entertainment and retail district is drawing sharp criticism from Michigan officials and the Belle Isle Conservancy, who call the idea unrealistic. 

Southfield-based real estate developer Rodney Lockwood has proposed buying Detroit’s Belle Isle for $1 billion and transforming it into a high-density “special economic zone” with high-income housing, mixed-use developments and more than 100 restaurants.

Lockwood’s firm stirred debate last week with the release of a poll it had commissioned. But the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, which manages the island as a state park under a 30-year lease agreement with the city, told Bridge Michigan it has no plans to take Lockwood up on the offer. 

“This proposal is not something the Michigan DNR has been involved in and it’s not something the state is considering,” Tom Bissett, assistant chief of the DNR’s Parks and Recreation Division, said in a statement. 

“Since assuming management of Belle Isle in 2014 through a lease with the city, the state has focused on investing in the historic park, recognizing the central role Belle Isle plays in the life of Detroit and its residents,” he said.

The Belle Isle Conservancy, a nonprofit that partners with the state and city to protect the island, was even more forceful in dismissing Lockwood’s redevelopment plans. 

“Belle Isle is a public park. Period,” said Meagan Elliott, president and CEO of the Belle Isle Conservancy. “The Belle Isle Conservancy has not been consulted at all on this dystopian plan. Our face-to-face community engagement this summer touched 12,000 people, showing that residents endorsed the idea of the Belle Isle Commons and more recreation offerings.” 

Lockwood could not be reached for comment. 

The idea, which he first wrote about in a 2013 novel set 30 years in the future, would rely on private investment, with the aim of turning the island into a global hub like Singapore or Dubai. It’s estimated that the project would create 20,000 construction jobs over 10 years and generate nearly $200 million in annual tax revenue, he told a local news outlet last week.

Lockwood first floated the idea more than a decade ago, before the island became a state park, when it was under city control and facing years of deferred maintenance, budget shortfalls, deteriorating infrastructure, reduced services and concerns about safety and upkeep.

It’s the latest proposal from Lockwood for Detroit land in recent years. In 2019, along with businessman Larry Mongo, Lockwood sought to redevelop a golf course that makes up about half of Palmer Park.

A Mitchell Research & Communications poll conducted for Lockwood’s company — Belle Isle Freedom City — and released last week purported to show state and local support for the concept.

But a press release noted the many steps it would require — passage of legislation by Congress, the state and the city to create the “special economic zone” — and critics noted a small number of Detroit residents were surveyed. 

“The (poll) Mitchell Research released this week had a sample of less than 200 people,” said Elliott, the Belle Isle Conservancy CEO. “This ridiculous plan is a great reminder of just how lucky we are to have this world-class park as a public asset for everyone.”

The Belle Isle Conservancy has its own plans for the island. The Belle Isle Commons proposal includes a public square near the aquarium and conservatory designed to improve connectivity and create gathering spaces without relying on cars.

The state, meanwhile, has invested more than $178 million in improvements at Belle Isle, which is the most visited state park with 5.5 million annual visitors, according to the DNR. 

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Bridge Michigan

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In: Buffalo, Equity and Environmental Justice, Featured, New York, Politics, Policy, Environmental Justice, Science, Technology, Research, Water Quality and Restoration Efforts

By Jennifer Wybieracki, Inside Climate News

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Julissa Hernandez was at work when she saw the news, in 2024, that a young mother, Chianti Means, had jumped to her death at Niagara Falls State Park, taking her two young children, a 9-year-old and 5-month old baby, with her. When Hernandez called her dad later that day, she realized that Means was a second cousin who used to babysit her.

Hernandez feels like she often hears stories from her friends and people in the community about another person trying to commit suicide or another person dying. Hernandez and Donte West, a high school classmate, recall at least five students who died by suicide during their time at Niagara Falls High School. 

“Even if the signs are there, people just excuse it, because that’s just how the people in the Falls are,” Hernandez said.

Once celebrated as the honeymoon capital of the world, Niagara Falls is now better known for its environmental and mental health challenges, with data showing higher suicide rates a growing body of research suggesting a link between these issues and local conditions.

Niagara County Health Assessment data indicate that the area has elevated air pollution levels and suicide rates higher than the state average, at 14.2 per 100,000 individuals. ZIP codes in Niagara Falls report the highest rates of youth asthma-related emergency room visits. New research correlates air pollution with mental health disorders, such as depression. 

Environmental and genetic factors influence the developing brain. Researchers are still exploring exactly how air pollution impacts young minds, but several studies have found that high levels of particulate matter 2.5 microns, or PM2.5, in the air can affect brain chemistry, leading to increased aggression and a loss of emotional control. Other forms of air pollution have been linked to the development of mental health disorders such as anxiety, psychosis and neurocognitive disorders such as dementia. 

Niagara County no longer has active Environmental Protection Agency Air Quality monitors for PM2.5 or NO2 and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation’s monitor list shows many Niagara sites closed before 2012. Factories such as Covanta and Goodyear still report emissions to the state and the EPA under their Title V permits, however, the reports do not reflect the air quality experienced by residents in surrounding neighborhoods. The area’s air quality is now estimated using regional models and data from neighboring counties, leaving uncertainty about what residents in Niagara Falls are actually breathing.

A view of Niagara Falls State Park. Credit: Matt Hofmann

A study published in 2025 found 36 links between ambient air pollutants and adverse mental health disorders such as autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Psychologist John Roberts and a team from the University at Buffalo took this research one step further and examined how air pollution exposure affecting mental health might be correlated with historical redlining in several cities in New York state, including Niagara Falls. 

Redlining was a structural racism practice conducted across the United States beginning in the 1930s that involved denying mortgages to residents of racial or ethnic minorities. Roberts’ study looked at the impact of ambient air pollutant levels on emergency room visits for mental disorders and how those visits varied across neighborhoods affected by redlining. Overall, they found that both PM2.5 and NO2 were elevated and significantly associated with mental health disorder-related emergency room visits in historically segregated New York state neighborhoods. 

“We looked at the overall concentration levels of air pollutants across regions [in the city] and found that there were elevated levels in the redlined neighborhoods,” Roberts said. “So the discriminated neighborhoods had greater pollutants, because there’s more industry or disposal wastes there.”

That means young adults in Niagara Falls are at risk, facing the adverse health effects of intensive, concentrated industry pollution. [StoryGISMap] 

In the early 1900s, engineers were drawn to the region’s potential for harnessing hydropower. This hydroelectricity enabled electrochemical processes that use electric currents to trigger chemical reactions to produce compounds such as chlorine and caustic soda, or to extract aluminum from aluminum oxide. This process made Niagara Falls home to factories that produced defensive chemicals and materials used for building atomic bombs during World War II. Radioactive slag still plagues the city years later. [Source]

It also brought companies such as Hooker Chemical, which became notorious for the Love Canal catastrophe, where leaking industrial waste from a toxic chemical dump, on which a Niagara Falls neighborhood was built, led to a landmark environmental disaster that helped spark the modern environmental movement and prompted the establishment of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) in 1980. Today, it appears history is repeating itself, only now, the federal government is removing limits and regulations on toxic emissions. 

Since President Donald Trump’s second term began, his administration has moved quickly to slash EPA funding and weaken emissions standards for major industries. Congress overturned Biden administration rules regulating seven toxic air pollutants, marking the first efforts to curb the Clean Air Act since its inception.

The rollbacks threaten cities like Niagara Falls, where factories still operate near residential neighborhoods.

In 2025, the Niagara Falls City School District lost nearly $734,000 in funding to provide support services for students and families after the Trump administration cut funding for two school-based mental health grants.

That funding cut impacted the Niagara Falls Student Champion Team, a student group Hernandez and West were both a part of before they graduated. Members focus on mental health awareness and trauma-informed learning. The students meet with the office manager from the University at Buffalo’s Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care School of Social Work twice a month to learn about trauma, its causes and how to be sensitive when discussing traumatic experiences. Students also share ideas and develop strategies to support their school’s and community’s mental health efforts. 

The team is still active this school year, but has scaled back its activities due to budget cuts.

With the death of another student at the beginning of the last school year, the district administration arranged for the team to present what they’ve learned to Niagara Falls’ mayor and city council in early 2025. In May, during Mental Health Awareness Month, the team also presented before the Buffalo Bills Foundation, a philanthropic arm of the NFL team that supports organizations that are committed to improving the quality of life in the Western New York region, which donated $10,000 to support trauma-informed care training. 

The school district used to conduct Youth Risk Behavior Surveys, but hasn’t since 2019. The surveys found that high school students in the city of Niagara Falls reported feeling more sad or hopeless in the past year than students statewide. More than 43 percent of students reported serious difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions due to physical, mental or emotional problems. 

Niagara Falls High School is surrounded by powerplant and factories. Niagara resident Amanda West says she can feel the exhaust chemicals on her skin when she goes outside sometimes. Photo by Matt Hofmann.

In response, the Niagara Falls school district has hired 18 social workers for the district over the last seven years. Before that, there were zero. Each district school also has a family support center which offers students and their families food, clothing and services they need to set students up for success. The district also offers Say Yes Buffalo opportunities which provides students tuition and support to increase the rates of high school and post-secondary completion.

“[The surveys] showed that suicide and suicide ideation is high,” district Superintendent Mark Laurrie said. “I think that comes from a lot of people feeling hopeless. I think that poverty causes a lack of schema, and people can’t see what they can become, or what they can do, because we’re surrounded by poverty.”

Roberts added that aside from poverty, family conflict, abuse, discrimination and other social trauma as a child can create a negative cognitive schema, which changes one’s basic beliefs and values about themself and changes their capacity for feeling in control. He said environmental stressors, such as pollution and violence that are elevated in sacrifice zones, make matters more difficult. 

While the district is developing more resources for students, the high school still sits across the street from some of the city’s largest polluters.

Hernandez and West describe the school as run-down and likened it to a prison. They said they felt stressed at school because when they looked out their classroom windows, all they saw were factories.

“We don’t got much going for us in terms of positivity,” Hernandez said. 

Hernandez was born and raised in Niagara Falls, but she lived with family in North Carolina for eighth and ninth grade, during the COVID-19 pandemic. She noticed her skin cleared up and her asthma symptoms disappeared after she left Niagara Falls. She was able to start running again, which is something she had to give up years ago because she could never catch her breath.

Julissa Hernandez played several sports throughout childhood, her favorite being softball. Credit: Matt Hofmann

Hernandez grew up participating in a wide range of sports, including softball, soccer, lacrosse, track, dance, cheerleading and gymnastics. As she got older, her asthma got worse, forcing her to gradually drop every sport. She believes the poor air quality in Niagara Falls contributed to her asthma complications.

Hernandez is now an early childhood education major at Niagara University. After graduation, she hopes to become a teacher with newly acquired trauma-informed tools to help students and educate parents and guardians. West joined the team after seeing their presentation to the Niagara Falls City Council and was interested in learning and advocating for students who don’t have safe living environments. He had an aunt and a cousin who died by suicide.

“If you’re around nothing but drama and chaos, you’re not gonna be able to focus or feel right,” West said “There is no room for somebody to get their mental state right if they don’t even know how to do it.”

Christen E. Civiletto, born and raised in the city, is now a lawyer, an environmental law adjunct professor at The University at Buffalo and author of the forthcoming book “Thundering Waters: The Toxic Legacy of Niagara Falls,” set for release in June. She has spent more than 20 years researching contamination in Niagara Falls. 

“People are sick in numbers too high to ignore. Niagara Falls’ children are bearing the brunt of harm from past and ongoing pollution—these are generational harms that must be addressed before any hope of restoration in the Falls is possible,” she said.

“If you’re around nothing but drama and chaos, you’re not gonna be able to focus or feel right,” West said “There is no room for somebody to get their mental state right if they don’t even know how to do it.”

Christen E. Civiletto, born and raised in the city, is now a lawyer, an environmental law adjunct professor at The University at Buffalo and author of the forthcoming book “Thundering Waters: The Toxic Legacy of Niagara Falls,” set for release in June. She has spent more than 20 years researching contamination in Niagara Falls. 

“People are sick in numbers too high to ignore. Niagara Falls’ children are bearing the brunt of harm from past and ongoing pollution—these are generational harms that must be addressed before any hope of restoration in the Falls is possible,” she said.

Industry along Buffalo Avenue in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Credit: Matt Hofmann
Industry along Buffalo Avenue in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Credit: Matt Hofmann

Brian Archie, a lifelong Niagara Falls resident, is tackling the city’s health epidemic from two angles. He is a current member of the Niagara Falls City Council and also serves as the executive director of the Creating a Healthier Niagara Falls Collaborative (CAHNF), which focuses on building community by improving the social determinants of health. The collaborative also educates residents about topics  such as air quality and mental health.

The Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo recently awarded the collaborative $10,000 to host a youth workshop on organizing and environmental justice.

The collaborative also partners with the Buffalo Clean Air Coalition, a nonprofit that develops grassroots leaders who organize their communities to lead environmental justice and public health campaigns in western New York.

The coalition hosted three environmental justice meetings in Niagara Falls in between June and October.

Brian Archie speaks at an event in the spring of 2025. Credit: Jennifer Wybieracki

Archie and the Niagara Falls City Council are teaming up with residents to develop programs and policies that aim to improve mental well-being and physical health. Last fall, Niagara Falls became a New York state Climate Smart Community, a state program that provides climate assistance to local governments. 

“If I’m not working to change our city, then I’m complacent,” said Archie.

Despite the legacy of pollution and intergenerational trauma there are still these places where hope is alive and community persists. Just like the Love Canal Homeowners Association back in the 1970s, the community is fighting back. 

“There’s this rule in organizing that if we can get just 3.5 percent of a population united behind a shared goal, we can make societal changes,” said Bridge Rauch, Clean Air Coalition environmental justice coordinator. “Three or four people out of 100 and you can make a lot of things happen.”

With citywide groups such as CAHNF and student-led groups such as the National Champion Team, Rauch feels like the sky’s the limit.

“Ultimately, I believe basic organizing is what will restore deep democracy and build community across movements and demographics, and allow us to tackle the issues of the 21st century,” said Rauch. 

Donte West at his graduation in June 2025. Credit: Matt Hofmann

In June 2025, West sat in a half-filled auditorium for the Coalition’s first ever environmental justice meeting for Niagara Falls residents. He listened to Rauch speak about his city’s history, including the Love Canal catastrophe and asked questions, including why he wasn’t taught about the environmental threats in school. 

“I don’t know why it isn’t brought up, it could literally happen again,” West said. “Trauma is passed down generation after generation, and people don’t know how to stop it.”

Reporting for this project was supported by the Pulitzer Center

The post How Two Teens in Niagara Falls Are Confronting Pollution and a Mental Health Crisis appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2026/04/01/how-two-teens-in-niagara-falls-are-confronting-pollution-and-a-mental-health-crisis/

Inside Climate News

On:
In: Featured, Forests and Plants, invasive species, Ontario, Science, Technology, Research

By Leah Borts-Kuperman, The Narwhal

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now, Michigan Public and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

Mycologist Aishwarya Veerabahu regularly walks the forests near her home in Wisconsin, marvelling at the myriad shapes and colours of mushrooms, sometimes foraging for something to bring home and sauté in garlic and butter. It’s a landscape she knows well, but in the last few years, she’s been noticing a worrying and unfamiliar presence: vibrant yellow, tightly clustered invasive making itself at home. 

Known as golden oyster, it’s a ’shroom completely altering native fungi communities in North America.

“Golden oysters will grow in an order of magnitude more than any other mushroom that you’d see. If you come up on a log with golden oysters on it, there’s always a ton of them, multiple clusters,” Veerabahu said.

The popular mushrooms, often found on menus and supermarket shelves, are native to forests in Russia and Asia. They were first brought to North America in the early 2000s for cultivation, and took to the forests by 2010, expanding their numbers and range rapidly.

“There are some times where I’ve gone through a forest and teared up because I know that there are other mushrooms that were in that wood that aren’t there anymore,” Veerabahu said. “It can be a very sad thing when now it’s just dominated by this one species.”

A researcher at the University of Madison-Wisconsin, Veerabahu published a study last August that used data from citizen scientists to confirm the trend she’s been seeing locally. Golden oyster mushrooms — scientific name Pleurotus citrinopileatus— are quickly invading North America, including Ontario. 

And, scientists say, a booming home-growing trend may be accelerating their spread into forests and impacting biodiversity.

Golden oysters have been found in 25 states, “after escaping cultivation” of commercial growers and hobbyists. They’ve made their way to Ontario, where there have been more than 80 sightings logged on the iNaturalist app of the clusters growing out of dead hardwood in forests, provincial parks and even residential neighbourhoods. 

While most golden oysters in Canada are still concentrated closer to the border with the United States, the species has already travelled as far north as Magnetawan, Ont., near Parry Sound, and is increasingly established around Georgian Bay, on Lake Huron. The speed and distance of its spread has been surprising, Veerabahu said.

“It has thoroughly been unleashed and rapidly spread over the course of a short decade,” she said, adding that the mushrooms have more recently appeared in Quebec. “The best thing that we can do now is to try and prevent it from getting to new regions.” 

Provincial invasive species regulations don’t capture golden oyster mushrooms

Cassidy Mailloux is a guide at the Ojibway Prairie Complex in Windsor, Ont., who takes guests through the nature reserves year-round. She’s also working on a biodiversity study of the region’s native mushrooms as part of her master’s degree at the University of Windsor and has posted golden oyster sightings on iNaturalist, observations that helped inform Veerabahu’s study.

“We’ve only seen it in one of our parks out of the entire complex … and that’s one of our heavily foot-trafficked and most travelled parks,” she said, adding that this is a good sign that the invasion “hasn’t fully taken off yet.”

In Ontario, there have been more than 80 sightings logged on the iNaturalist app of invasive golden oyster mushroom clusters growing out of dead hardwood in forests, provincial parks and even residential neighbourhoods. Photo: Aishwarya Veerabahu

Still, she worries about the effect of invasive golden oysters on rarer species of fungi, such as the coral pink marulius, which is uncommonly reported but in large abundance in the Ojibway Prairie Complex. 

“I’m worried the golden oyster mushroom might take precedence,” Mailloux said, given golden oysters are an aggressive species that can grow quickly and prolifically in many kinds of wood and even sawdust — unlike some native species that require specific conditions to thrive. Both the city and her organization are still trying to figure out the best way to manage the invasive — and say visitors documenting sightings can inform this work. 

“Encouraging citizens to upload these observations can really help management and our ecosystem,” Mailloux said, “and just keeping a track on how bad it might be getting in the area.”

Despite the threat, the Government of Ontario has not added live oyster mushrooms to its prohibited or restricted invasive species lists, which would make it illegal to import, buy, sell — or sometimes even possess — an ecologically harmful strain.

Without this regulation, Veerabahu said, live cultures continue to be transported across borders. And, she said once golden oysters colonize an area, fewer other unique fungal species will be found there. The communities that do exist are also entirely changed. 

“Let’s say in an uncolonized dead tree, you had a nice, rich community of fungi A, B, C, D, E. Once golden oyster colonizes, now it’s golden oyster and fungi X, Y, Z,” Veerabahu said. 

This makes her concerned about a domino effect because fungal communities are primary wood decomposers of forests, playing an important role in cycling nutrients and storing carbon. “The identity of which species are able to coexist in that space is changing.” 

Monica Liedtke, terrestrial invasive plant coordinator for the Invasive Species Centre, in Sault St. Marie, Ont., agreed. She told The Narwhal via email that non-native invasive fungi can significantly disrupt Ontario’s ecosystems and environmental processes that have developed over thousands of years.

“When non-native invasive fungi establish, they can interfere with important symbiotic relationships between native fungi, trees and plants,” Liedtke told The Narwhal. Golden oysters can quicken the rate of wood decay, which then impacts the birds and bugs that use dead and dying trees for homes and food. “Over time, these disruptions can affect biodiversity across the entire ecosystem.”

Meanwhile, climate change is creating warmer conditions that will make Ontario even more hospitable to these mushrooms, allowing them to expand their range. Veerabahu and her team used a climate prediction model developed by NASA to predict what might happen in the next 15 years. The model predicted that the North American region climatically suitable for golden oyster mushrooms to grow would almost double. 

Grow-your-own mushroom kits threaten Ontario forests

Kyle McLoughlin, an arborist and supervisor of forest planning and health for the City of Burlington, said the reason he fears golden mushrooms is exactly why they’re popular among amateur growers.

“From an ecological perspective, they don’t have a niche. They can go anywhere. They’re very wide-ranging. They’re very comfortable in a lot of different types of wood and a lot of different environments,” McLoughlin said of golden oysters. “This is also why you can grow them so well.”

Kits with detailed growing instructions are readily available on the internet, with prices between $20 and $40. These are a “major source of their invasion,” McLoughlin said. 

“It’s literally being introduced into people’s homes and their properties through grow kits,” McLoughlin said. “We shouldn’t be selling people potential invasive species to bring into their homes.”

Still, grow kits remain widely sold with little public awareness of the risks. Consumers are often not warned when they buy a grow kit that tossing spent soil onto the compost pile, or leaving a kit outdoors, could unintentionally help an invasive spread.

There are some ways people can help slow the spread if they spot oyster mushrooms. If someone sees a log on their own property pop with golden oysters for the first time, it could be helpful to burn it, Veerabahu explained. People can also forage the mushrooms from forested areas, collecting them in closed containers to prevent spores from spreading.

The challenge is to muster enough public awareness and political will before things get out of control.

“It’s kind of like cockroaches. Once you start to see them, you know there’s a heck of a lot more in your walls,” McLoughlin said. “They are putting billions of spores into the air when they’re fruiting. And this is happening constantly.”

Some companies that have sold these kits around the world, like Far West Fungi, North Spore and MycoPunks have since discontinued some products due to concern. In a blog post titled “Yellow Oyster Disaster Zone,” MycoPunks wrote: “No shade intended on any other vendors who choose to keep selling golden oyster kits … we’ve all got our own different moral codes, but it’s not something we feel able to do in good conscience any more.”

But, given a lack of regulation in the province, it’s still easy to import kits from within Canada or around the world to grow in Ontario.

“Gardeners [and] hobby farmers should carefully consider the species they are cultivating. Choosing native species helps to reduce ecological risk,” Liedtke, from the Invasive Species Centre, said. Some kits sell species such as lion’s mane or chestnut mushrooms, which are both edible and native to Ontario. 

For those who are growing golden oysters, the Invasive Species Centre advises that used grow kits should be sealed in a garbage bag and left in the sun for several days to a week; this process, called solarization, helps kill remaining spores and fungal material. Then, the bag should be disposed of in municipal waste — not compost. 

“Neither the producer nor the consumer wants to be part of that spread,” Veerabahu said. “The mushroom grow kits are a huge point of concern. They’re essentially a live culture that can be transported anywhere, but they’re not being regulated and I’ll never blame hobby mushroom growers for that.”

The post Spore loser: the DIY mushroom-growing trend invading Ontario forests appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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The Narwhal

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In: Featured, Industry, Energy, Economic Development, Michigan

By Vivian La, IPR

This story is made possible through a partnership between Interlochen Public Radio and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

No one wants to drive in an ice storm.

But one year ago — during the devastating northern Michigan ice storm that knocked down trees, snapped utility poles, and took out power for thousands — Wanda Whiting had to get her husband to a hospital. He was having a heart episode and calling an ambulance to their rural home in Lewiston would take too long. She had no choice but to brave the roads.

While driving the route almost exactly a year later, Whiting recalled the mess of dropped power lines and broken poles “like matchsticks” that littered the highway shoulder along the 20-mile stretch to Gaylord

“These were all down. Everything was down. These poles are all broken, snapped,” she said. Whiting remembered getting lost on dark roads with dead streetlights. She was trying to meet an ambulance at a halfway point. Arriving at the rendezvous parking lot, she had to drive across thick wires that had fallen on the roadway.

Her husband made it to the hospital. And eventually, in the weeks that followed, the power lines and poles went back up.

But Whiting can’t help but wonder how those wires will fare whenever she sees a forecast for snow and ice. And if there’s an alternative solution.

“And if it meant going underground, then by God, go underground,” she said.

After the storm

Burying power lines often comes up as a potential solution for preventing outages and minimizing the costs of storm recovery. And for good reason — underground wires are proven to increase reliability, according to researchers, electric utilities and regulators.

Now, as recovery from the ice storm continues a year later, some residents are calling for a more reliable grid that can withstand worsening extreme weather.

But burying lines is expensive, and utilities say those costs often outweigh potential benefits.

Last year, the storm knocked out power for some 200,000 people. Recovery cost utilities hundreds of millions of dollars, leading to increased electric bills for ratepayers across the region, as emergency federal aid hit delays.

The state’s largest electric co-op, Great Lakes Energy Cooperative, saw more than 66,000 power outages last year from the storm, and recovery costs totaled more than $150 million. In response to the storm, the co-op implemented a policy in December that requires any new lines to be installed underground, in an effort to increase resiliency.

“I think there’s reliability benefits for our membership, because it’s going to help prevent outages over the long term,” said Shari Culver, chief operating officer for Great Lakes Energy.

IPR reached out to the other hard-hit electric cooperative — Presque Isle Electric & Gas Co-Op — for comment about burying lines, but they declined due to ongoing discussions with federal agencies about pending storm relief funds.

Consumers Energy, another large electric provider in the region, says they hear from customers “consistently” about burying more lines. Last week, the Michigan Public Service Commission approved a $276.6 million rate hike for Consumers Energy — the largest increase in decades — to improve reliability for customers, which includes undergrounding some lines. Regulators said a typical residential customer using 500 kilowatt-hours a month will see an increase of $6.46, or 6.1%, in their monthly bill.

“There’s no better way to improve the resilience of the grid than just to get the lines out of the way of all the trees and ice and wind. Now, it comes at a cost,” said Greg Salisbury, Consumers Energy’s senior vice president of electric distribution. The company estimates it’s about $400,000 per mile to bury a line.

This year, Consumers Energy plans to bury more than 10 miles of lines around the state. That’s a small number, compared to the nearly 100,000 miles in the utility’s system, of which about 15% is already underground.

“Our viewpoint is that each circuit needs to be treated with the right interventions to get the best outcomes for the best cost for those customers,” Salisbury said.

To bury or not to bury

Burying power lines is relatively easier and cheaper with new construction, as crews install other utilities like water or gas. It’s in relocating the existing overhead lines where expenses for construction, labor and materials can add up quickly.

Burying electric lines isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, either. Smaller utilities like Traverse City Light & Power (TCLP) are dealing with a different environment than rural co-ops, for example. In the city, there are more sidewalks, buildings, streets and other wires.

“There’s just not a lot of room to place that equipment in town without getting easements and such,” said Tony Chartrand, director of electric engineering and operations for TCLP, which has more than 170 miles of electric lines over 16 square miles in the city.

But, Chartrand said, for the municipal electric utility, there are still situations where burying makes more sense than stringing wires from poles. About half of TCLP’s lines are already buried, most running through conduit pipes, which protect wires from the elements or from accidental damage from other utility work.

TCLP tries to be proactive with burying power lines in hard-to-reach areas, like in people’s backyards, Chartrand said. In some cases, burying a residential line is cheaper than the costs of repairing aboveground wires after a tree falls on it.

Still, buried lines present their own challenges if there’s an outage. Unlike the clear visual cue of a branch hanging from overhead wires, problems underground require more equipment to find and fix.

“There’s times where, even if it is in conduit, we can’t just pull the wire out. We actually have to dig it up. And of course, that’s a whole ordeal and takes a lot of time,” Chartrand said.

There’s a lot of attention on grid reliability right now, he said.

“Part of that solution is undergrounding lines. But it’s not necessarily undergrounding everything. It’s trying to balance that cost with the benefit that we’re trying to do,” Chartrand said.

Ice storms and climate change

That balance could get harder to find as extreme weather worsens with climate change. Research suggests that northern Michigan could see more ice storms in the future, as a warming world shifts the range for freezing rain further north.

“Places where it used to be cold, below freezing all the time, it’s not always below freezing anymore,” said Richard B. Rood, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan who studies how ice and freezing rain are changing.

It often takes big storms, like last year’s, for governments, utilities and people to spend money on planning for a warming world. And Rood sees that as a problem.

“You can’t think of what we’re experiencing as, ‘this is how it used to be, and this is where it will be.’ You are right in the middle of the change here,” Rood said.

Some policy experts say we won’t see more buried lines without significantly bringing down the costs to utilities. Eric Paul Dennis, research associate of infrastructure policy at the Citizens Research Council, said that could involve improving how we coordinate infrastructure projects so you only “dig once.”

“No one thinks that the best option is to operate outdated unreliable infrastructure and just fix it when it goes down,” he said. “But there are trade-offs. Investments must be recovered in rates. No option will be one hundred percent reliable.”

Still, only considering costs to utilities leaves out how much society benefits from having reliable electric service — roads are safer, food doesn’t spoil, people contribute to the economy.

“This is not because the utilities or people who run them don’t care, this is just the system we have,” Dennis said.

The post The northern Michigan ice storm battered the electric grid. Is burying power lines the solution? appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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In: Drinking Water, Featured, Illinois, Industry, Energy, Economic Development

By Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between WBEZ and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

Illinois is in the midst of a public health crisis. Nearly 1.5 million service lines — the pipes that carry drinking water to homes and businesses — contain or are suspected to contain lead, a neurotoxin linked to cognitive, reproductive and cardiovascular problems.

Now, public health and workforce advocates want to turn the state’s long-overdue pipe replacement backlog into a statewide economic engine, creating up to 90,000 jobs over a decade.

A recent report proposes a plan to replace the state’s staggering inventory of toxic lead pipes and create tens of thousands of jobs. To do so, the analysis calls on state and local officials to fast-track pipe replacements for communities that have suffered from the most lead exposure and to use the projects to build a more diverse local workforce. It also urges the Illinois General Assembly to help plug a multibillion-dollar budget gap for lead pipe replacements.

“The longer we put off taking care of our water infrastructure, the more expensive it’s going to get, the more that we’re going to be looking at water rates increasing to deal with that, and the more people are going to be in the position where they’re not going to have access to safe and clean drinking water,” said Justin Williams, a senior manager at the Metropolitan Planning Council, one of the policy think tanks that helped develop the plan. “And that’s not a situation we should be in as a state or region.”

Several other regional and national nonprofits also worked on the analysis, including Current, a water solutions hub; Elevate, an organization working on water and energy affordability issues; and HIRE360, a workforce development group.

Illinois has the most lead pipes in the country. The state estimates it has 667,000 known lead service lines and another 820,000 suspected lines. Chicago alone accounts for nearly 30 percent of those pipes.

Replacing these service lines is expensive. In a 2022 report, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency found that a single service line replacement can cost anywhere from $4,000 to $13,000 across the state. In Chicago, the price tag is even higher: City officials estimated that replacements cost more than $30,000 per line on average.

State officials have estimated that replacing all the known or suspected lead pipes across Illinois could cost between $6 billion and $10 billion. The Biden-era Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the bipartisan infrastructure law, set aside $15 billion over five years to help states replace lead pipes. Illinois is estimated to receive about $1 billion, but given the state’s unique needs, that number “is probably on the low side,” Williams said.

The report makes the case that state lawmakers must approve dedicated, sustained and predictable funding to close the multibillion-dollar shortfall. Without long-term guarantees, replacements will likely remain inefficient and delayed.

“It’s a bit of a chicken and egg: Unless you know how much money is going to be allocated to this — how many opportunities are coming down the pipe — they’re not going to add additional people to apprenticeship programs,” said Jay Rowell, executive director at HIRE360.

Using workforce projections from the American Water Works Association and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the report’s authors calculated that already allocated federal funds could generate approximately 2,000 direct jobs and 9,000 indirect jobs. If legislatures closed the multibillion-dollar funding gap, those figures could jump substantially to 35,000 direct jobs and 55,000 indirect jobs — a total of 90,000 jobs over a decade.

“We’re calling attention not only to the problem, but also to some of the opportunities to get more candidates engaged in apprenticeships,” Rowell said. “This is a really big problem that needs very thoughtful, state-led solutions.”

A major pillar of the report is diversifying the building trades. An analysis of Chicago’s workforce found that only 3.8% of registered apprentices are women and just 10% are Black. To bridge this gap, the report advocates for requiring utilities and municipalities to include diversity and equity requirements in project contracts.

The report’s authors argue that Illinois has the rare opportunity to tackle two challenges at once: address its toxic legacy while laying the groundwork for a more inclusive economy. The financial and political hurdles remain high, but advocates say the cost of inaction is higher.

“We are the envy of the world in terms of our access to fresh drinking water,” Williams said. “We need to be really thoughtful stewards of that, and that means investing in that the same way we invest in other infrastructure.”

The post Can replacing Illinois’ toxic lead pipes lead to a workforce boom? appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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WBEZ