The first wolf pups in several years have been born on Michigan’s remote Isle Royale, surprising researchers who have been tracking the large new batch of wolves transplanted into the wilderness there in the last two years. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200915-isle-royale-wolves
The final resting place of the Pere Marquette 18 is under about 500 feet of water roughly 25 miles off Sheboygan, Wisconsin. She was long sought-after by Great Lakes wreck hunters, driven in part by the mystery surrounding her final voyage. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200915-ferry-shipwreck
New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has welcomed a new ice breaking tugboat designated to work in the Niagara River to help alleviate shoreline flooding and reduce the likelihood of ice limiting the power production at large hydro plants along the Niagara River. Read the full story by the Niagara Gazette.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200915-niagara-icebreaker
The controversial culling of cormorants in Ontario starts Tuesday, intended to protect the fish population, the province says, but many groups disagree. Read the full story by CTV News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200915-cormorant-hunt
Wild rice harvest season runs through mid-September in northern Wisconsin, and while many tribal and non-tribal people are enjoying their annual pilgrimages to their favorite rice wetlands, others are concerned about the effects of climate change on this unique crop. Read the full story by Green Bay Press Gazette.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200915-wildrice
Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council, along with partners Michigan Environmental Council, National Wildlife Federation, and the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, have been granted permission to participate in a Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) regulatory case involving plans to construct the Line 5 pipeline into a tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac. Read the full story by the Petoskey News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200915-line5
Sea lamprey control efforts have been so successful that some researchers now suggest a more permanent solution: complete eradication of the pest from the Great Lakes. Read the full story by GreatLakesNow.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200915-lamprey
U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) have introduced the Great Lakes Winter Commerce Act. The bipartisan legislation aims to codify the U.S. Coast Guard’s icebreaking mission on the Great Lakes and increase the icebreaking capacity of the Great Lakes fleet. Read the full story by MarineLog.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200915-icebreaking
NCEI News Feed
http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news//news/humans-ncei-hernan-e-garcia-phd
Sea lamprey control in the Great Lakes has been a success.
Compared to the 1950s, 90% fewer of the toothy, invasive, eel-like parasite are spawning.
Control efforts have been so successful that some researchers now suggest a more permanent solution: complete eradication of the pest from the Great Lakes.
Great Lakes Now
https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2020/09/sea-lamprey-invasive-species-research-eradication-great-lakes/
Fish and Wildlife Service News
Fish and Wildlife Service News
http://www.fws.gov/news/ShowNews.cfm?ref=u.s.-population-of-northwestern-moose-does-not-warrant-listing-under-the-&_ID=36770
EDENVILLE, Mich. (AP) — Residents who lost their lakes when dams collapsed in mid-Michigan could be getting expensive long-term bills to restore them.
People near Wixom and Sanford lakes in Midland and Gladwin counties could pay thousands of dollars per year for 40 years, if that duration is allowed by the state, the Four Lakes Task Force said Thursday during an online meeting.
Great Lakes Now
https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2020/09/ap-residents-midland-dams-paying-for-years/
NCEI News Feed
http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news//news/Global202008
Researchers from the University of Waterloo have developed a new method for assessing the economic impact of climate change on the Great Lakes. Read the full story by Kitchener Today.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200914-economics-model
For the second consecutive year, poor conditions at Wisconsin’s primary chinook salmon egg collection facility have caused state fisheries staff to turn to backup sites to support the Lake Michigan stocking program. Read the full story by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200914-salmon-stocking
Three resort owners in Minnesota are accused of catching ciscoes in the protected waters of Quentico Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada, and selling them throughout northern Minnesota to be used as bait. Read the full story by Bring Me The News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200914-illegal-bait
An extensive state review of Canadian energy giant Enbridge’s compliance with easement requirements for its Line 5 pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac is wrapping up soon, according to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200914-pipeline-decision
The director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy is reviewing an administrative law judge’s decision to allow the water bottling company Nestle to increase withdrawals in northern Michigan. Read the full story by Cadillac News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200914-nestle-decision
Minnesota’s iconic wolf is the focus of upcoming public input opportunities sponsored by the Department of Natural Resources. In three virtual meetings and a parallel online input period, the public will be asked to provide input on updates to the state’s wolf management plan. Read the full story by Lake Superior News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200914-wolf-plan-update
A Michigan Circuit Court judge ruled that the Canadian energy company Enbridge can restart the east segment of the Line 5 crude oil pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac that had been shut down by court order in June. Read the full story by Michigan Radio.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200914-line-5
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials report that despite seasonal declines, Great Lakes water levels remain high as fall storms approach. Read the full story by WNEM-TV – Saginaw, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200914-high-water
Crews recently discovered another Lake Michigan shipwreck, the Pere Marquette 18, a freighter that sank in September of 1910. Read the full story by The Associated Press.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200914-shipwreck
Sections of the Lakeshore Trail along Muskegon Lake in west Michigan that were damaged by erosion and high water are expected to be restored beginning this fall. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200914-muskegon-lake-trail
At any given moment about half the world’s population is wearing blue jeans or other denim clothing. And every time we launder our jeans, tiny string-like particles called microfibers come loose, flow out of our washing machines, down sewers and into lakes and oceans.
Now researchers at the University of Toronto say they have found denim microfibers in sediment taken from the Great Lakes.
Great Lakes Now
https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2020/09/researchers-denim-microfibers-great-lakes/
The once abundant population of lake sturgeon has dwindled to the hundreds over the last century due to overharvesting and pollution. Moreover, dams have been blocking the fish from their historical spawning site upstream of the Menominee River that has recently had a fish elevator installed to allow the fish to bypass the dams and reach their spawning sites. Fish elevators aren’t effective everywhere, but lake sturgeon are bypassing the Park Hill dam and the Menominee dam by using the fish elevator with overwhelming success.
The 2020 presidential election is quickly approaching, and governors and environmental groups are pushing water quality issues to the forefront to address concerns of old water infrastructure that needs help from federal funding for replacement. Neither presidential candidate takes a firm stance on this critical issue. Advocates like Monica Lewis-Patrick of We The People of Detroit are addressing the elephant in the room to get answers on the candidates commitment to Great Lakes regional water protection.
Tasked with having to replace 1,100 lead lines per year, only 330 lead lines have been replaced this year, leaving the city behind significantly on their goal. At this lagging pace, the city is projected to have all 70,000 lines replaced in 70 years, which advocates declare is far too long for community members to be exposed to the risk of lead poisoning.
For 25 years, Freshwater Future has provided grants to community and grassroots groups supporting advocacy efforts to protect or improve drinking water, rivers, lakes, wetlands, shorelines, and groundwater in the Great Lakes region. Check-out Freshwater Future’s 2020 grant opportunities guidelines to see if your organization is eligible. For examples of past successful projects check out our grant map.
Blog – Freshwater Future
https://freshwaterfuture.org/uncategorized/freshwater-weekly-september-11-2020/
The recent Trump administration rollback of Obama-era regulations that restricted the discharge of carcinogenic and potentially brain-damaging toxic metals into U.S. waterways will allow a power plant in Wisconsin to dump further toxins into Lake Michigan. Read the full story by WTTW-TV – Chicago, IL.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200911-epa-rollback
Ports in the Great Lakes and around the world are critical to global trade but are vulnerable to disruption from climate-related events. The gale-force winds and storm surge that damaged port infrastructure in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, last January are an example of threats to come. Read the full story by The Economist.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200911-ports-vulnerability
Local biologists in Ontario are perplexed by the upcoming cormorant hunt in the province and argue that there is no scientific evidence supporting the need to hunt the birds. Read the full story by Smiths Falls Record News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200911-cormorants
Alpena, Michigan, is no longer expecting cruise ships to visit until 2021. The pandemic has shut down cruising on the Great Lakes and delayed port infrastructure development projects in the area. Read the full story by the Alpena News.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200911-alpena
Michigan residents living along the emptied reservoirs above the Edenville and Sanford dams that collapsed in May could be expected to pay annual assessment fees of up to $2,400 per year for dam and lake restoration for the next 40 years. Read the full story by the Detroit Free Press.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200911-flood-restored
A self-described “Lakeshore Janitor” has turned a hobby of scouring the beaches and waters along Lake Michigan for lost treasures using a metal-detector into a lucrative side-hustle, and helps beachgoers recover items lost among the waves. Read the full story by WZZM-TV – Grand Rapids, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200911-rihanna
Ontario is beginning the process to designate the Ostrander Crown Land Block and the Point Petre Provincial Wildlife Area, along Lake Ontario’s shoreline, as a new conservation reserve. Read the full story by County Live.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200911-ontario
Stretching for 11 miles through the Ottawa National Forest near Lake Superior, the Black River Scenic Byway provides access to five waterfalls in the Black River Harbor Recreation Area and opportunities for hikers. Read the full story by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200911-chasing-waterfalls
The teenagers and scientist announced they located fragments from the 2017 meteorite that crashed into Lake Michigan. Read the full story by Great Lakes Now.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200911-meteor
After fishing trips to the Cleveland river turned up only trash, a Cleveland local started a non-profit organization of volunteers dedicated to fishing trash out of the river. Read the full story by WKYC – TV – Cleveland, OH.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200911-cleveland-river-trash
NCEI News Feed
http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news//news/making-drought-map
The teenagers and scientists searching for the 2017 meteorite in Lake Michigan found more than they had been looking for, representatives from the team reported yesterday.
In a live update on the Adler Planetarium’s YouTube channel, students and researchers shared two major finds from The Aquarius Project’s years-long attempt to find the meteorite: a sample that could be from that meteorite and a sample from a meteorite much, much older.
Great Lakes Now
https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2020/09/aquarius-project-findings-update-meteorite-fragments-lake-michigan/
By Elena Bruess, Circle of Blue
At the shoreline, between lake and land, Melissa Wiatrolik reflects on those who were here before Michigan became Michigan. She had been raised in a community that honored the dead, that understood that their ancestors were always present. As a child, she had watched her own family clean the gravestones of those before her.
Great Lakes Now
https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2020/09/michigan-rising-lake-levels-sacred-ground/
Cities across the country are investing in their water infrastructure systems with hopes of achieving triple bottom line benefits – for people, the environment, and economic return. In the face of a changing climate that brings more extreme wet weather, a combination of gray infrastructure (pipes and tunnels) and green stormwater infrastructure (plants and soil) is a recipe for resilience that many cities are trying to perfect.
Alliance for the Great Lakes, in partnership with the City of Detroit Department of Public Works, identified five cities that have had success implementing green and gray water infrastructure improvements in their cities, with a focus on the public rights-of-way (streets). Streets are ideal for green stormwater management practices because they are already designed to move water, and streets make up a vast majority – up to half – of impervious surfaces in cities.
Check out our case studies on green stormwater infrastructure in the right-of-way to learn more about how these five cities have created policies, programs, design guidelines, and more to help them achieve their triple bottom line goals.
The post Green Stormwater Infrastructure in the Right-of-Way: 5 Case Studies appeared first on Alliance for the Great Lakes.
News – Alliance for the Great Lakes
News – Alliance for the Great Lakes
https://greatlakes.org/2020/09/green-stormwater-infrastructure-in-the-right-of-way-5-case-studies/
Enbridge said Wednesday it will fully resume operation of a Michigan Great Lakes oil pipeline after a partial shutdown this summer because of damage to a support structure. Read the full story by The Associated Press
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200910-enbridge-pipeline
In Ohio, The Toledo Zoo’s popular lake sturgeon stocking event won’t happen this year, though a pause in the program – thanks to the international COVID-19 pandemic – won’t hurt the project. Read the full story by Great Lakes Now.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200910-sturgeon
Indiana celebrated Lake Michigan and the rest of the Great Lakes during the second annual Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Appreciation Day this week. Read the full story by The Times of Northwest Indiana.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200910-GL-appreciation-day
A new study has identified the most important coastal wetlands to focus on to preserve more than a dozen species of marsh birds on the Great Lakes. Read the full story by Wisconsin Public Radio.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200910-marsh-conservation
A river that marks the border between Michigan and Wisconsin has been removed from a federal list of heavily polluted sites in Great Lakes waters, although it continues to have contamination issues with toxic fluorochemicals. Read the full story by MLive.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200910-menominee-river
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources is asking residents to keep an eye out and take precautions against spreading European frogbit. Read the full story by the Port Huron Times Herald.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200910-frogbit
The Minnesota Court of Appeals will take its own look at the actions of the state’s Pollution Control Agency, after a district court judge found that the state agency did not break permitting rules when it pressured the federal Environmental Protection Agency to delay issuing public comments on its proposed water discharge permit for PolyMet. Read the full story by The Timberjay.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200910-Polymet-water
Land conservancies are often a critical partner in the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund process, pre-purchasing land that is later sold to municipalities or the state with trust fund money, arranging financing for the 25% matching funds required by the program, negotiating with landowners and performing ongoing stewardship. Read the full story by Second Wave Michigan.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200910-land-conservancies
Work to fix erosion issues along the Iron Ore Heritage Trail is ongoing along US-41 in Marquette, Michigan. Read the full story by WLUC-TV – Marquette, MI.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200910-ore-heritage+trail
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that improvements at Lewiston Landing Park on Lake Ontario as part of Cuomo’s Resiliency and Economic Development Initiative have been completed. Read the full story by WGRZ-TV – Buffalo, NY.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200910-lewiston-restoration
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Tuesday signed a budget bill that will fund a federal $300-a-week unemployment benefit, flood cleanup costs in the Midland area and Michigan’s contribution toward a project to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. Read the full story by The Associated Press.
Great Lakes Commission
https://www.glc.org/dailynews/20200910-carp-project
