CLEVELAND -- Technicians and volunteers have finished building the tallest wind-monitoring tower on the Great Lakes, something that could help scientists determine the future of wind power on the lake.
The 3-ton wind tower rises 165 feet above the lake atop the Cleveland Water Department intake crib, which sits 3.5 miles north of downtown and is the major collection point for the city's drinking water.
It took a helicopter three attempts over three hours Monday to position the upper half of the galvanized steel tower into place. But once workers finally bolted it into place, there were cheers.
The tower will collect data for two years. The goal is to determine whether it's feasible and economical to build large, electricity-generating wind turbines several miles offshore in Lake Erie.
Water plan is good, but it can be even better
A proposed agreement to protect the Great Lakes from water exports and diversions needs our support -- but it also needs to be strengthened.
We take issue with a comment by a Wisconsin official in an Aug. 19 News Tribune, "Northland comments on Great Lakes plan," defending a loophole in the agreement that would allow exports of Great Lakes water in bottles. The official said, "We have to draw the line somewhere," and compared water in bottles to water used to make soda pop, beer and automobiles.
But there's a big difference. Companies that make soda pop, beer and automobiles don't claim to own that water. They use it as an ingredient or process material and such use is protected by centuries of common law.
Companies that take water essentially in its natural state and put it in bottles and sell it are claiming to own the water and are making a public resource into a source of private profit.
It's self-defeating for the agreement to ban the export of large amounts of water in freighters or pipelines, then to allow the same amount of water to leave the Great Lakes in small bottles. We do have to draw the line somewhere -- and it should be drawn to defend the Great Lakes from virtually all exports and diversions no matter what the container size.
We also want to commend reporter John Myers for his continuing excellent coverage of important Great Lakes issues that have great meaning for Duluth, Superior and the entire Lake Superior watershed.
CONNIE MINOWA
DULUTH
The writer is the Executive Director of the Environmental Association for Great Lakes Education (EAGLE).
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/editorial/12511840.htm
ASHWAUBENON — It’s the grapefruit tree that really bothers Curt Andersen.
A family member of Andersen’s moved to Sun City, Ariz., to get away from pollen and northern winters. He started growing grapefruit with the aid of a round-the-clock sprinkler system.
“He’s living in the desert and he’s got a drip hose that runs all time,” Andersen said.
That’s why Andersen came to a meeting Monday night about the Great Lakes. Like many others in the crowd of 60 people, Andersen wants policies to protect lake water from being siphoned off by other states.
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/news/archive/local_22383308.shtml
It appears that Waukesha, Wisconsin may have figured out an ingenious way to tap the Great Lakes without getting anyone's permission except the governor of Wisconsin, according to an observer. The City is apparently arguing -- and recent news articles back this up -- that it is IN the Great Lakes Basin because its groundwater formerly flowed into the Lake...that flow has been halted or reversed because of overpumping.
Waukesha is trying to make the case (using USGS [U.S. Geological Survey] to do it) that they are within the 'groundwater divide' of the Great Lakes and all those lands and communities within it should be considered part of the Great Lakes Basin -- if they can make that case they feel they don't have to go through any approval process to get Lake Michigan water -- strictly a Wisconsin issue and they believe they can roll the governor.
Obviously the precedent will be set for the rest of the Great Lakes region with thousands, if not tens of thousands, of square miles being open for development subsidized with Great Lakes water...they have enlisted the Lansing consultants to help make the pitch from what I can tell.
Multiply these initiatives over and over, and there is hope the Great Lakes can be truly healthy again.
"I hope that someday, when I'm old and gray, I can come back to the banks of this river and see dozens and dozens of sturgeon," said Marty Holtgren, an inland fisheries biologist for the Manistee-based Little River Band of Ottawa Indians. "Next year, if we see just a few of the fish we're releasing today, I'll consider it a success."
http://www.mlive.com/news/muchronicle/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1125333908208480.xml&coll=8
WAUKESHA - Waukesha will probably know in the next few months whether it will be allowed to connect to Lake Michigan for its drinking water.
But the question remains whether that is the right direction for the city - and even some other municipalities - to take.
http://www.gmtoday.com/news/local_stories/2005/August_05/08262005_06.asp
That is the question -- should communities outside the Great Lakes Basin have access to Great Lakes water? Especially when they have not thoroughly examined all alternatives including water conservation, have been sprawling, and complain about the cost of returning the water to the Lakes from which it came.
The draft agreements that are out for public comment until day's end would permit Waukesha to make a bid for Great Lakes water, but it's a high hurdle. Not just return flow to Lake Michigan but also unanimous approval of all eight Great Lakes governors. Still, it's a slightly wider door opening than current law.
And the question is, once you have artificially extended the boundary of the Great Lakes to include nearby communities, can you keep that boundary from billowing outward farther in future years?
This is the week that Great Lakes Basin residents can speak out on both a proposed compact to limit water exports and a proposed $20 billion Great Lakes cleanup plan.
Our lakes are crying out for protection.
Now.
Before it's too late.
http://www.petoskeynews.com/articles/2005/08/27/news/opinion/opinion01.txt
It's an article several weeks old, but such rays of hope need to be captured and preserved.
Most visitors to the Petoskey State Park play in the water, dig in the sand, and walk the shore. But this summer, two first-time park visitors raised a family and in so doing took their species three birds further from extinction. This was an important step forward for the endangered Piping Plover.
The Great Lakes Piping Plover came perilously close to extinction in the 1980s, when their numbers–once estimated at 800 breeding pairs–dropped down to only 12 pairs.
These shorebirds’ rapid decline is attributed to habitat destruction, nest disruption and predation. In 1986, the Piping Plover was placed on the Federal Register and listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USF&Ws). Fortunately, the numbers of breeding pairs and fledged chicks has grown in the last three years to 55 last year, one-third of the way to the recovery goal of 150 pair.
http://www.harborlightnews.com/News/2005/0727/Community/038.html
Across North America, the bottled water industry is exploding. Bottled water sales are now the fastest growing segment of the entire beverage industry. Over the past decade, the consumption of bottled water has more than doubled in the U.S. alone, in Canada; bottled water consumption now outpaces that of coffee, tea, apple juice or milk.
Inside the Bottle provides a vivid and disturbing portrayal of how four big companies Nestlé, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Danone --- dominate the bottled water industry today. It examines key issues of public concern about their operations, including how they:
* pay little or next to nothing for the water they take from rural springs or public water systems;
* turn ‘water’ into ‘water’ through elaborate treatment processes;
* produce a product that is not necessarily safer than, nor as regulated as, tap water;
* package it in plastic bottles made of toxic chemicals that are environmentally destructive;
* market it to an unsuspecting public as ‘pure, healthy, safe drinking water.’
* sell it at prices that are hundreds and even thousands of times more costly than ordinary tap water.
http://www.polarisinstitute.org/pubs/pubs_inside_the_bottle.html
Monday is the official public comment deadline for two agreements that are intended to strengthen the defenses of the Great Lakes states and provinces against the impacts of excessive water withdrawals, diversions, and exports. Take the time at least to e-mail your comments to the Council of Great Lakes Governors at the address below:
annex2001@cglg.org
If you would like to see a summary of the documents and view them, please go to the Council's website:
http://cglg.org/projects/water/annex2001Implementing.asp
LANSING -- Neither the water-bottlers nor the environmentalists are happy with proposed Great Lakes water rules regulating the shipment of bottled water outside the Great Lakes basin.
At a public hearing on Great Lakes Charter Annex rules proposed by the Council of Great Lakes Governors, chief opposition Tuesday was to a provision allowing the shipping of water for consumption outside the basin.
That water could not be transported out of the basin in containers larger than 5.7 gallons. Individual states could enact tighter rules.
http://www.mlive.com/news/statewide/index.ssf?/base/news-6/1124878201249360.xml&coll=1
Michigan's loyalties are exclusively to the Great Lakes. All but a tiny patch or two of Michigan drains to the Lakes. But a consulting firm in Lansing is a subcontractor for the city of Waukesha, Wisconsin, which wants to divert Great Lakes water, and also a consultant for Nestle Corporation, which loves the loophole in the proposed Great Lakes agreements (comment deadline Monday) that permits exports of Great Lakes water as long as it's in bottles. The people of the state of Michigan have always shown their allegiance to the water. Let's hope they do so again.
http://cglg.org/comments/index.asp
The arguments coming out of Mississippi River Basin community Waukesha, Wisconsin for getting Great Lakes water are getting more sophisticated. Now Waukesha is really IN the Basin, but it's the groundwater Basin. Nice spin!
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/local/12461058.htm
There is a striking loophole known as article 207.9 in the final draft of the Great Lakes Annex Agreement and it should raise alarm bells for all those committed to preserving and protecting the world's largest body of freshwater. Under this article, water bottling companies will have free reign to extract water from any of the five Great Lakes and package it for human consumption, provided that the containers they use are 5.7 gallons (20 litres) or smaller in size.
This loophole spells nothing less than a bonanza for the bottled water industry.
Unlimited access to the Great Lakes basins also provides a monumental gift to some of the largest brand name corporations on this planet. Fifteen years ago, the bottled water industry in North America was composed of hundreds of independent, locally based companies. Globally, the industry is dominated by four giants of the food and beverage market --- Nestle, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Danone.
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/editorial/12432460.htm
Including the water relationship.
Part of the problem is that we are working through a system of border arrangements that are obsolete. Of the more than 200 treaties governing our relationship, most rely on goodwill — they have no prescribed set of dispute-settlement mechanisms that are binding or subject to arbitration procedures.
The International Joint Commission worked well in resolving water disputes, as long there was a co-operative attitude on both sides. Now that one of the partners treats this venerable institution as irrelevant, the capacity to effectively share stewardship of the continent's most valuable resource has been put in jeopardy.
This sprawling suburb west of Milwaukee is spending gobs of public funds to lobby every decisionmaker in sight to get access to -- meaning to divert -- Great Lakes water. How much of that money is being spent on Michigan-based consultants?
One more week before the deadline for public comment on the proposed Great Lakes Basin Water Resources Compact. It's being billed as a strong anti-diversion agreement, but all of that strength could be drained (literally) if the states start redrawing the boundaries of the Great Lakes Basin to accommodate in-state political needs. That, in turn, could make the Lakes boundaries vulnerable to being expanded to include the Farm Belt, the Sunbelt, or other continents.
Aug. 22--Gov. Jim Doyle says that Waukesha officials are making credible scientific claims that the city is entitled to tap Great Lakes water because the groundwater beneath them flows into Lake Michigan.
In an interview, Doyle stopped short of endorsing Waukesha's bid to one day tap the lake as a source of drinking water.
But Doyle said he wants Great Lakes governors and premiers who are reviewing a revised water management agreement to consider the scientific merits of water requests from communities such as Waukesha, which are outside the surface water basin of the lakes.
http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=215259&source=r_science
Sometimes you have to be an outsider to see things clearly.
My husband and I recently retired to Michigan. We moved from Nashville, Tenn., much to the amazement of our friends and neighbors. "You must be crazy," we heard repeatedly as we packed our belongings and headed north.
But after extensive travel throughout the United States, we fell in love with the Great Lakes. That is why I am inside on this beautiful, sunshiny day. I learned that in late 2004, President Bush formed a bipartisan team to develop a plan to restore the health of the Great Lakes.
http://www.mlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1124532987147840.xml?grpress?NEGC&coll=6
Given the realities, the proposed protection of 445 acres in exchange for killing the ones on-site with an expanded landfill is probably the best deal the public can get. But there are two questions:
1) How does the community that gets the expanded landfill benefit from wetlands 30 miles away?
2) Will anyone hold the officials of the then-DNR accountable for the guarantees they made in the 1990s? Not likely.
The owners of a landfill in Wayne County have an option to buy 445 acres of stunning Lake St. Clair marsh.
But there's a hitch: They're offering to purchase and protect the privately owned coastal marsh along Anchor Bay if the state compensates them by allowing them to fill 31 acres of wetlands at Woodland Meadows Landfill in Van Buren Township.
http://www.freep.com/news/mich/landfill22e_20050822.htm
Few people can drive home a point like John Dingell. So it was a potent start for a Great Lakes hearing when the Dearborn congressman thundered, "Future generations are going to curse us."
His point -- that dilly-dallying on the lakes amounts to a crime against the future -- was echoed rightly and repeatedly at Thursday night's Cobo Hall event as speakers supported a draft plan by the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration to restore the lakes. The federally coordinated blueprint covers the gamut from toxic hotspots to wetlands, a price tag of $20 billion.
http://www.freep.com/voices/editorials/elakes20e_20050820.htm
Not sure if this means "The Great Lakes" or inland lakes in the Great Lakes region. Either way, another alarm bell.
GLOBAL warming is bringing an earlier spring thaw to the Great Lakes of North America, according to scientists.
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1801232005
If nothing else, this summer has generated plenty of meetings and lots of public enthusiasm for protecting the Great Lakes.
Great Lakes water belongs in the lakes and not in a pipe, ship or truck leaving the region.
That's the prevailing message from Northland residents commenting on a plan by Great Lakes governors to regulate how Great Lakes water is used.
About 50 people attended an open forum Thursday night in Duluth sponsored by the Great Lakes Council of Governors, which is trying to reach agreement on a water plan.
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/local/12422929.htm
DETROIT, Aug. 18 /U.S. Newswire/ -- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Steve Johnson was in Detroit Thursday night to discuss a draft strategy for cleaning up the Great Lakes. The plan was prepared by the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration, a partnership of federal, state and local governments, tribes and other interested parties to work on Great Lakes environmental and natural resource issues.
Great Lakes water is one of the things that make Michigan a great place to live. Under a legal principle dating back centuries - the public trust doctrine - you and all the citizens of the Great Lakes states own the waters of the Lakes and the navigable streams that feed them.
Public ownership of Great Lakes waters assures that Michigan's elected officials must manage and protect the waters of the lakes and the submerged lands below them in the public interest. This protects your right to fish, swim, boat on, drink and enjoy the waters of the lakes.
But now that legal principle is threatened.
http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050818/OPINION02/508180336/1
Great piece of journalism by Andy Guy of the Michigan Land Use Institute -- undermining the Michigan business lobby's claim that water conservation planning requirements will kill the state's economy. In fact, they could make some Michigan businesses more competitive while protecting the Great Lakes.
When an engineering intern from Western Michigan University figured out a way to save E/M Coating Services thousands of dollars each year simply by recycling the company’s wastewater, Environmental, Health, and Safety Coordinator Joy Neumann said the proposed modification “was pretty much a no-brainer.”
For the strikingly low cost of $85 in pipe and a few hours of labor, the Shelby Township-based auto parts supplier could significantly reduce its water consumption, decrease the amount of wastewater it discharges to the Detroit municipal system, and save $6,200 annually. The minor change, which involved rerouting the company’s plumbing to reuse treated wastewater, also would enable E/M to cut chemical use by more than 20 percent, saving an additional $5,300 per year on compounds like caustic soda and calcium chloride.
http://mlui.org/landwater/fullarticle.asp?fileid=16909
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Steve Johnson will attend a meeting in Detroit on Thursday, Aug. 18, to hear comments on the draft strategy of the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration. The meeting will be held from 6:30 to 9 p.m. in Cobo Hall, One Washington Blvd., Room W262, Riverfront Entrance.
This is the $20 billion proposed Great Lakes cleanup and restoration plan that has attracted so much attention this summer. If it's not to become one of the many such Great Lakes plans and strategies that have been announced to great fanfare and then died on the vine, the Great Lakes communitiy needs to keep the pressure on for years to come.
Whatever one thinks of George Will, you have to give him credit for making an attempt to understand why the domestic auto industry is struggling -- and coming up with a completely erroneous prescription about how it can recover.
The way to get to a glistening future may be to get back to the chrome-covered 1950s, when each autumn boys mounted their balloon-tire Schwinns and rode around to dealerships to savor the excitement of the curtain rising on a new model year. The loss of theatricality — today’s seemingly random arrival of too many models, too many of them boring — is central to the domestic industry’s decline.
If by "theatricality" Will means exciting, high-tech, high-mileage cars of the future, maybe he's right. But somehow that doesn't seem to fit. It sounds like he wants tailfins and 8-cylinders again.
And somehow he manages to miss the point that many people want cars that are well built and reliable more than design flourishes.
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=58772
This is not the thing to do to our one of our 2 closest neighbors and often our strongest ally. It does have Great Lakes implications; since the same treaty that is being snubbed in this case is the one that governs U.S.-Canada relations over all the boundary waters.
Not sure the substance of the Canadian environmental argument is that strong -- but the point is, Canada deserves to be treated as an equal, not a junior cousin.
WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Despite Canadian fears of contamination, North Dakota began pumping water on Monday from its Devils Lake floodlands into a system that leads eventually into a commercial fishery north of the U.S. border.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050815/wl_canada_nm/canada_environment_canada_devilslake_c_col
Outstanding, even award-winning Great Lakes journalism today. A massive job of covering all the many issues. Here's the overall link:
http://www.detnews.com/2005/project/0508/14/index.htm
Here's the link to the story about water scarcity out west and what it might mean for the Great Lakes:
http://www.detnews.com/2005/project/0508/14/Z13-275546.htm
To many folks, bottled water seems to be a clean, smart, convenient, and affordable answer. Bottled water nearly has “universal acceptance,” as a marketing professional might put it.
It’s simple. What else does anyone need to know? hmmmmm...
http://www.knowbottledwater.org/
It's only a matter of time before somebody besides the bottled water industry covets the Great Lakes.
SALT LAKE CITY — Dozens of people from western Utah and Nevada protested at the federal building here against a proposal to take groundwater from their remote desert region and send it to thirsty, growing Las Vegas.
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=8497
"Today the economics are not there to say we're going to take all the water in the Great Lakes and ship it to Phoenix and Vegas," said Todd Ambs, the water division director of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. "But water's not getting cheaper. Twenty-five, 30, 40 years from now, the economics are going to be different. We've got to have a system in place to deal with that."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/national/12water.html?th&emc=th
Interesting study. It's especially interesting given the recent flap over EPA offering low-income families indoor pesticides to use to see what happens to their kids. There is no need for government agencies to inflict pesticides on kids via their studies; we're running that experiment naturally on our own.
Researchers at the University of North Dakota want to know if pesticide exposure affects children's brains. The scientists say it's the first study to look for a possible link between pesticides and children's brain development. Half of the kids in the study live on farms, the other half do not.
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/08/12_gundersond_undpesticide/
Can you believe they're worried about melting peat bogs? Front page news in London, stock listings will command more attention in the U.S., thank goodness. The fact that moderate models of climate change suggest the levels of Lakes Huron and Michigan might fall 3-5 feet by the end of the century is not our concern. That's a problem for those who come after us.
OK, maybe 98% of the scientists are overreacting. But doesn't prudence dictate that we take notice and try to prevent the worst?
A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.
Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.
The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.
It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1546824,00.html
WASHINGTON -- Despite growing concern over global warming, major automakers still pursue product strategies that make the problem worse. Through 2003, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions -- a primary cause of global warming -- from U.S. cars and light trucks have increased 25 percent above the 1990 level. Both the total CO2 emissions and the average emissions per vehicle continue to rise. These are among the findings of a new report from Environmental Defense, Automakers' Corporate Carbon Burdens.
Analyzing federal data, the report examines what's behind the growing global warming pollution from cars. Among the six largest automakers, who account for 87 percent of U.S. sales, Nissan's new fleet-average CO2 emissions rate increased the most, rising 8.4 percent between 1990 and 2003. Ford's performance was second worst, with its average CO2 emissions rate rising 7.7 percent. DaimlerChrysler's rose by 6.8 percent and GM's did by 6.3 percent. Even as they pioneered hybrid-electric cars Honda's and Toyota's product strategies were still damaging overall, with their new fleet-average CO2 emissions rates rising 5.7 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively, between 1990 and 2003.
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/pressrelease.cfm?ContentID=4725
Not far from the Nestle project, the battle over water conservation legislation is being depicted as a struggle between "powerful" environmental groups like the Audubon Society and small water users.
http://www.cadillacnews.com/articles/2005/08/07/news/news01.txt
But as the article points out, passing the legislation is unlikely to affect the concerned businesses in the short run.
Michigan and the Great Lakes states generally can go on treating water as inexhaustible, as they once did the primeval forests and wildlife, or they can practice conservation and leave healthy and productive ecosystems for future generations. That's the real battle.
Contact:
Terry Swier, President Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation 231-972-8856
Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation Files Brief for Termination or Modification of Nestlé’s Stay to Continue Pumping at the Sanctuary Springs
Lansing, MI, August 9, 2005 – Jim Olson, legal counsel for Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation (MCWC) in its two-year court battle against Nestlė Waters North America, Inc, filed a brief in the Court of Appeal asking the Court to terminate or reduce pumping at the Sanctuary Springs site in Mecosta, Michigan while the appeal is pending.
In November 2003, Judge Larry Root of the Mecosta County Circuit Court stopped Nestlé from unlawfully pumping and diverting water from Sanctuary Springs, directly connected to the Dead Stream, the headwaters of the West Branch of the Little Muskegon River.
Nestlé filed an emergency application in the Court of Appeals on December 15, 2003. The Court of Appeals granted Nestlė a stay order that allowed Nestlė to pump at 250 gallons per minute (gpm) on a monthly average during the appeal. After hearing the evidence, the Trial Court found that a stream, lake, and wetlands were diminished and impaired at 160 to 170 gpm. Since the Court of Appeals granted the stay order, Nestlė has pumped 250 gpm based on the average, but has exceeded this limit for significant periods of time.
Dr. David Hyndman, a hydrogeological expert who testified during trial, recently reviewed monitoring and pumping rate date and found that continued pumping and lower seasonal flows in the stream have combined to diminish flows and levels at more than twice the effects that occurred during the trial. Nestlé’s continued pumping has ignored the variable or seasonal lower water levels, resulting in serious effects and impacts to the stream.
MCWC has requested the Court of Appeals to act on the motion to reduce or terminate pumping as soon as possible to prevent further significant and irreparable alteration and harm to riparian landowners and the fragile stream/lake/wetlands complex.
The Court of Appeals heard oral arguments from Nestle’s and MCWC’s lawyers in June and a decision is expected in the next few months. A modification of the earlier stay order will prevent further harm until the Court releases its decision.
####
EAST LANSING — The latest draft of a proposal to prevent mass water diversions from the Great Lakes Basin contains flaws that could undermine its good intentions, according to water policy experts from the United States and Canada who met here recently to evaluate the agreement.
Experts said they were surprised that the new draft proposal, known as the Annex 2001 Implementing Agreements, drops all mention of water as a public trust resource. The elimination of the public trust declaration is part of a broader ongoing debate over how best to address water privatization and export.
For instance, while the proposal forbids entrepreneurs from shipping tankers of bulk water from Lake Superior to China, it allows them to ship the same amount of water packaged in small bottles to any Wal-Mart store on the planet.
http://www.mlui.org/landwater/fullarticle.asp?fileid=16907
...along with subsidies for the oil and gas and nuke industries. A small silver lining in a bad piece of legislation.
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050807/NEWS06/508070337
While there's plenty of talk about the $20 billion plan to restore the Great Lakes, there's not enough talk about the need to spend some money to protect what is already majestic -- and imminently threatened. It's good to hear that the tourism-dependent communities of the north are beginning to come to grips with their pollution problems. But they could use some help.
The North Shore of Lake Superior, famous for its clear tumbling streams, is one of Minnesota's favorite places to get away from it all. More and more, however, instead of getting away from it, we are taking it with us.
Last month, eight Lake Superior beaches (a record number), from the twin ports of Duluth-Superior all the way up the shore to Grand Marais, Minn., were closed temporarily because of high bacteria levels in the water.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/357/5546352.html
One of the so far inexplicable features of the proposed Great Lakes Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement (on which you can comment until August 30) is an exemption from its proposed no-diversion policy for "a proposal to withdraw water and package it in the Basin for human consumption in containers 5.7 gallons (20 litres) or less" (#9, top of page 11) in the document linked below:
It's important to remember that the 7 years of work that went into this agreement began when, in 1998, an Ontario company won permission (later rescinded) to remove up to 50 tankers per year of water from Lake Superior for shipment to Asia. The public outcry against this was so huge that the Great Lakes governors and premiers agreed to build stronger defenses against Great Lakes water exports.
Here's an example of the coverage then:
http://www.gue.com/news/glexport.html
What this agreement would do, apparently, is allow another Nova Group proposal. This time, the company couldn't ship the water out in tankers per se; it would have to figure out a way to put the water in bottles within the Great Lakes Basin, then load it onto the 50 tankers each year. Or trucks, or trains.
This make sense only if the bottled water industry is co-author of that provision of the Agreement.
The loophole needs to be closed.
That Northland residents are passionate about the Big Pond was never in doubt, and now some locals are putting that passion behind a plan to clean up Lake Superior and its sister Great Lakes.
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/local/12309336.htm
Great web site created by the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
http://www.startribune.com/style/news/metroregion/invaded_waters/invaded.html
Despite the best efforts of fisheries biologists, the dynamics of the Great Lakes food web remain elusive. It's interesting that this story never mentions the possible effects of invasive species, including the zebra mussel, on that food web.
Five of the years that failed to hit 30 pounds were in the 1980s; the other three have been since 2000.
To DNR fisheries biologist Paul Peeters of Sturgeon Bay, that may be another sign of a potential problem. Salmon ate themselves into trouble in the 1980s, when nearly twice as many were stocked as today. That set up a baitfish crash and led to bacterial kidney disease in chinooks.
“It took us nearly a decade to recover from that,” Peeters said. “Do we want to learn from our past or make the same mistakes and put in too many fish?”
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/sports/archive/sports_22065761.shtml
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) just handed Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty a plate full of walleye, and he probably boosted his approval rating 10 points with a simple meal. Not real bright.
Governor Pawlenty isn't mincing any words when it comes to letting PETA know exactly what he thinks about its request to declare walleye pike off limits to anglers.
http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=104015
Longtime Great Lakes citizen advocates Lee Botts and Paul Muldoon have authored a book on the history of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.
What is that, you say?
It's an international pact between the U.S. and Canada, signed in 1972, that set the framework for ridding the Lakes of phosphorus pollution and later helped the two nations deal with toxic substances in the Lakes. The agreement helped create mechanisms -- including public oversight and accountability -- that galvanized the recovery of the Lakes in the 1970s and 1980s.
But governments didn't like that much accountability, and the agreement has been largely neglected in recent years.
The Botts and Muldoon book tells that story and offers some hope as to how the agreement could become an instrument of a second Great Lakes recovery.
You can order an advance copy here:
http://www.davedempsey.org/prorderform.pdf
GRAND RAPIDS -- The Great Lakes provide West Michigan with things we need to survive: drinking water, recreation, and lakeshore tourism that brings billions of dollars to the area.
A meeting on the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration drew more than 170 people Monday night to the GVSU Pew Campus, to discuss what they feel is important: an action plan draft called "A Strategy to Restore and Protect the Great Lakes."
http://fox17.trb.com/080105-wxmi-greatlakes,0,1105676.story?coll=wxmi-home-2
It's a Minnesota story, but the characters could be almost anywhere in America. Government regulators meeting in secret with the interests they are supposed to regulate to protect public health and the environment...and conspiring to protect each other instead of the public.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1405/5537958.html
Great piece by Andy Guy of the Michigan Land Use Institute on the hopes and fears associated with the Great Lakes restoration plan now out for comment:
Despite the growing awareness of the environmental and economic need for a Great Lakes restoration initiative, observers say there is no guarantee the latest plan will lead to substantial action. They point to numerous studies over the past several decades that have urged major investments in improving the Great Lakes. Most failed to generate the regional and national coalitions necessary to secure such big-ticket federal appropriations that, for example, launched restoration of the Florida Everglades. And while Great Lakes leaders say they believe that the current effort, launched by President George W. Bush, will be different, some signs indicate otherwise.
http://mlui.org/newsservice/articles/glbnews.asp?fileid=16903
Although Thomas Friedman of the NY Times is wrong on much, he's right on the energy bill that passed Congress last week:
And if you were president, and you had just seen more suicide bombs in London, wouldn't you say to your aides: "We have got to reduce our dependence on Middle East oil. We have to do it for our national security. We have to do it because only if we bring down the price of crude will these countries be forced to reform. And we should want to do it because it is clear that green energy solutions are the wave of the future, and the more quickly we impose a stringent green agenda on ourselves, the more our companies will lead innovation in these technologies."
Instead, we are about to pass an energy bill that, while it does contain some good provisions, will make no real dent in our gasoline consumption, largely because no one wants to demand that Detroit build cars that get much better mileage. We are just feeding Detroit the rope to hang itself. It's assisted suicide. I thought people went to jail for that?