A mass of spiny waterfleas have taken up shop in the waters of Lake Superior…making for some yucky swimming from Odanah to Michigan. The waterfleas are about a quarter-inch to a half-inch in size with long, barbed tails.
http://www.businessnorth.com/kuws.asp?RID=1566
Rhinelander Water Resources Specialist Cathy Cleland says they came from the ballast waters of Russian ships passing through.
Match this against the announcement earlier this summer that the commercial shipping industry is doing demonstration projects on a control technology for invasive species. It's too bad the ballast water vector for invasive species has been well known for 20 years -- and now we're getting demonstration projects as an answer.
MILWAUKEE -- Maybe it's the baseball. Maybe it's the beer. Maybe it's the artsy vibe emanating from this old city on Lake Michigan. But whatever it is, Milwaukee is suddenly a magnet for twentysomethings looking for fun.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060730/FEATURES07/607300531/1032
Perhaps Milwaukee doesn't need to sell Lake Michigan water to distant suburbs outside of the Great Lakes Basin. Maybe it just needs to build on some assets to bring the people closer to the water.
Bottled water exported out of the Great Lakes is not "just another use" of water...
Wisconsin's economic growth will be determined in part by its vast water resources. But if we export our waters a bottle at a time, we may be simultaneously exporting future water- dependent jobs and diminishing our manufacturing base.
Bottled water, unlike other products that use water such as paper manufacturing, is not just another way to capitalize on our water wealth. For Neenah Springs and Aquafina, water is the product. But for the vast majority of Wisconsin's manufacturing jobs, water is one ingredient incorporated into a final product.
The difference might appear subtle and legalistic, but it could be the difference between exporting jobs and environmental protections and building thriving communities around the Great Lakes.
Bottled water is the most familiar form of privatizing and exporting water in bulk. We think bottled water is innocuous because we see it everywhere. But ask people if they want to see a pipeline built, or tanker trucks lined up, to ship water to Arizona to keep golf courses green, and you'll get an angry "no" in response.
http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/column/other/index.php?ntid=92554&ntpid=1
A deadly fish virus suspected of killing thousands of fish in the Great Lakes basin appears to be spreading to new species, researchers say.
Since May, viral hemorrhagic septicemia is believed to have killed several thousand fish in Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, said Paul Bowser, a professor of aquatic animal medicine at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/27072006/3/canada-virus-killing-fish-great-lakes.html
Lake Superior has long been a source of inspiration for artists living along its shores, from the Anishinabe storytellers who made their home on Madeline Island to the cabin-dwelling painters, kayaking photographers and deep-woods writers striving to capture the majesty of the world's largest body of fresh water.
So, as the specter of global warming threatens to degrade some of the lake's natural beauty, it's no wonder that artists are among the most adamant defenders of the ecosystem that has provided centuries of poems, paintings and stories.
http://www.ashland-wi.com/dailypress/index.php?sect_rank=1&story_id=210374
From a friend...
And we've all talked about it, now it is here….bottled air! You’ve long been able to buy oxygen at oxygen bars, but now there’s bottled oxygen for those on the go. Big Ox (http://www.thebigox.com/) contains 30 breaths worth of 93% pure oxygen, which can be used to “relieve stress, boost energy or give hangover relief.” The bottles sell for $10 to $15 and are available at gas stations and health clubs in the Midwest (it is produced in Missouri). And it comes in two flavors, mountain mint and tropical breeze, with two more flavors on the way, citrus and original. A local NBC affiliate in Springfield MO started its story…"Several years ago, if you heard someone was going to bottle water and make it into a $9 billion industry, you probably would have laughed. Now a company here believes it may have the next product that will have sales growth like bottled water.”
The JS (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) really, really, really wants Milwaukee to sell water to the paper's advertising base in New Berlin, and has repeated an error that helps it argue the way it wants to argue.
http://milwaukeerising.blogspot.com/
CLEVELAND (AP) — The newest update to a Lake Erie management plan predicts that global warming will lead to a steep drop in water levels over the next 64 years, a change that could cause the lake’s surface area to shrink by as much as 15 percent.
http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/07/24/20060724-B7-00.html
Mankind has learned to live with dwindling natural resources. But the time has come to stop accepting the situation and do something about it.
Outdoor writers across the Midwest are penning the most eloquent pleas for a new way of looking at our land, our water, our home. Today's turn belongs to Dennis Anderson of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
http://www.startribune.com/533/story/566908.html
If governors from the eight Great Lakes states allow Waukesha to tap Lake Michigan water, the annual financial boon to the Milwaukee Water Works would be at least $1.7 million and would grow each year, according to a utility official.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=475244
How much economic development (residential, commercial, perhaps industrial) will Milwaukee lose by supplying water to fast growing suburban areas in the Mississippi River Basin? More than $1.7 million per year.
The entire SE Wisconsin diversion debate is driven by gross mismanagement of groundwater by communities that should have been looking ahead. To reward that mismanagement and waste with Great Lakes water is a mistake. It will lead to an endless round of such requests, and ultimately lead to the draining of the Lakes.
And the compact that sets rules for (i.e., allows) such diversions has not yet been ratified by a single state.
Better yet, some of these same fast growing suburbs don't even want to conserve water wasted on their lawns. So in essence Lake Michigan will be used as a giant sprinkler system. See:
This is from yesterday's edition of the Kettle Index,
a Journal Sentinel-owned suburban in Western Waukesha
County paper.
The water issue is everywhere, and with various
tributaries of interpretation...
Water debate overflows to town plan commission
Kelly Smith, Staff Writer July 20, 2006
Town of Delafield - While Supervisor Clare Dundon may have succeeded Tuesday night, July 18, in opening the floodgates of debate over water conservation, her idea of banning residential sprinkler systems drowned in a
lack of support from fellow town Plan Commission members.
While plan commissioners were sympathetic to her concerns about how water is being wasted in the town, they were not convinced that banning residential
sprinkler systems was a solution to the problem.
"It is literally a drop in the bucket," said Commissioner Tom Tagtow.
Tagtow suggested the amount of water being used on lawns in the town is insignificant when compared to the amount of water that would be consumed by the proposed 2-million-square-foot retail, commercial and residential development near Highway C and I-94.
Dundon explained she was concerned that the town's rapid population growth and increasing number of large homes was contributing to a potential shortage of water in aquifers supplying private wells in town.
Furthermore, she argued, automated residential lawn sprinkling systems were contributing to the wasteful use of water.
She asserted that the systems automatically begin watering lawns, whether they need it or not.
"I have seen them watering lawns while it was raining," she said.
"You don't have to think about turning them on. You don't have to think about turning them off. You don't have to think about whether the lawn needs to be
watered," she said.
If the automated sprinkler systems were prohibited, she suggested, residents might think twice before watering their lawns.
"Because you can live in a $500,000 home doesn't give you the right to deplete the natural resource that the rest of us depend upon," she added.
But Plan Commission Chairman Tom Oberhaus, a farmer, challenged her premise that the water was being wasted.
"I think any time you have water going back into the ground, that is good," he said.
Furthermore, he argued, private septic systems did a better job of preserving the water supply than toilets using municipal water and sewer systems.
The septic systems, he suggested, return water to the ground, while municipal sewer systems flush it away.
"If anybody would do an honest study of it, maybe we would find out how much we waste every time we flush the toilet," he said.
Town Board Chairman Paul Kanter, a federal prosecutor, had a more lawyerly approach to the issue: "Isn't there a fairness issue here? One resident can get to
use their system simply because they got it installed before the deadline, while another resident cannot use one because they didn't have it before the ordinance was passed?"
Commissioner Gary Meyers compared Dundon's proposal to a recent attempt by the commission to ban tree-cutting in the town.
"I am not sure it is something that we, as town government, should be trying to do," he said.
Meyer agreed with Dundon that town residents sometimes engage in wasteful practices when watering their lawns.
Dundon responded philosophically to her fellow commissioners.
She said that even if the town did not adopt the ordinance, at least the public debate about it might raise awareness of the issue and prompt town residents
to use water more carefully.
(c)Kettle Moraine Index 2006
And the indoor environment (dust and air) are fingered.
http://www.ehponline.org/members/2006/9121/9121.pdf
The sneak attack on Lake Michigan water by New Berlin casts a bright light on a little-discussed, but crucial, element of the Great Lakes water debate: exactly what is the process to be used to apply for diversion permits, evaluation standards for those applications, and the public input and oversight of this process. It should have been impossible for New Berlin to apply for, and DNR to make a decision on, a diversion request without any public knowledge, much less input.
As long as the newspapers (advertising base), and the regional planning commission (political base), have their suburban agendas, it is critical to develop a transparent process overseen by citizens, that documents need, requires prior conservation efforts, and assesses alternatives. This oversight should be provided by a citizen-appointed board.
http://www.wisopinion.com/index.iml?mdl=article.mdl&article=4716
Conservative corporate-dominated group trying to peddle state legislation to undo clean water protections....
http://www.alec.org/meSWFiles/pdf/Natural_Resources/Cleaing_the_Waters_-_Simmons.pdf
Good series starting in the Minneapolis paper. Others in the region should do the same.
Water flows through everything Minnesotan: landscapes, lifestyles, history, humor, politics, art, literature, commerce -- culture. Our souls, some would say.
People born here take plentiful lakes and streams as a birthright, and they quickly become the equivalent for immigrants like Mrs. Jaques, an Illinois-born New Yorker who married, in her late 30s, an Aitkin man who would become Sigurd Olson's illustrator. Within months, the newlyweds were off on a three-week canoe trip near the Canadian border. Her travel journal records an overnight conversion experienced by countless newcomers from places less blessed with water, which is most places.
Water images are prominent in the state seal and state song, and it was no surprise when Minnesota's commemorative quarter was struck with a fishing boat and lake-dwelling loon on the reverse. Blue waterscapes are home not only to the state bird but also the state grain (wild rice) and state gemstone (Lake Superior agate). Water is essential to an economy so reliant on tourism, timber, agriculture and myriad recreational pursuits. The Minnesota town that has no lake or river is considered an unfortunate rarity.
Why, then, do we treat this resource so shabbily?
http://www.startribune.com/10089/story/553126.html
...80 degrees in a few spots of Lake Michigan...
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/glcfs/mswt-00.html
Sunday is Lake Superior Day, and here's a timely report that explains how enactment of Great Lakes protection and restoration legislation might help Minnesota's Lake Superior Basin lands and waters.
http://www.restorethelakes.org/mn_report.pdf
In summary, there’s a supply problem – so prices will rise. The world’s water pipes are crumbling – and not only in Britain, where much of our water leaks into the ground before reaching us – so there will be repair and replacement projects. There will be more privatisation.
Municipal utility operators often do not have the resources to maintain the water systems up to regulatory standards.
Climate change will mean more extreme weather conditions and more water in the sea. Alternatives, such as desalinisation, are set for sustained growth. Southern Spain’s Andalucia, one of Europe’s most arid regions, is also the continent’s most productive agricultural area.
Intensive irrigation has seriously depleted resources.
Now the city of Almeria collects and recycles all of its water, using it for agriculture. And the newly created Programa Agua will supply desalinisation facilities all along the Mediterranean coast.
http://www.dailyreckoning.co.uk/article/130720062.html
A nearly 500-acre tract of undeveloped northern woodland is for sale, and the state may be interested in buying it.
But there's a catch: In addition to the forest and more than a mile of Lake Michigan shoreline, the property features a storage area for highly radioactive waste.
Catch? What catch? Sure, a permanent national nuclear waste repository has been promised for ages, but someday soon it will happen. In the meantime, this is clearly the only Great Lakes frontage of value the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund board could think of buying.
Make sure the liability for the nukes is clear, at least. And doesn't accrue to the taxpayer. That's pretty basic.
NOTE TO EDITORS AND INTERESTED PARTIES: A press event announcing an industry-led "Great Ships Initiative "to address invasive species problems associated with the commercial shipping industry on the Great Lakes, will take place at 5:00 PM on Wednesday, July 12, 2006, at the Duluth Seaway Port Authority building, 1200 Port Terminal Drive, Duluth, MN. The event is open to the public.
Duluth, MN, and Superior, WI, U.S.A. - Leaders of over a dozen major U.S. and Canadian Great Lakes ports will be joined by scientists and federal agency officials at Duluth/Superior harbor to announce an industry-led "Great Ships Initiative." This $3.5 million effort will focus on developing and implementing shipboard treatment technology necessary to prevent the introduction of aquatic nuisance species into the Great Lakes by ocean-going ships.http://great-lakes.net/lists/glin-announce/last30days/msg05222.html
Twenty years after the zebra mussel, the same year New Zealand mudsnails were confirmed in this same harbor -- and now we're seeing an effort to develop shipboard technology to stop invasive species? It would be much more convincing if this media opportunity announced that all Great Lakes-going vessels have completed implementation of said technology. Enough news conferences about bold new programs.
Groups Applaud Granholm’s Stand On Proposed Great Lakes Diversion
Wisconsin City Wants Access To Lake Michigan Water
LANSING, MI—Ten organizations today applauded Governor Granholm’s refusal to endorse a major new proposal from a Wisconsin city to divert nearly 2 millions gallons a day from Lake Michigan.
In a June 28 letter to Michigan Legislative leaders and in a news release, the Granholm administration noted that the kind of diversion being proposed by the City of New Berlin, WI would be unlawful under Michigan statutes and that Governor Granholm would reject any diversion requested under a federal law covering the Great Lakes.
“New Berlin is just the first of many communities on the edge of the Great Lakes Basin that want to tap into the Lakes, said Cyndi Roper, Clean Water Action Great Lakes Policy Director. “We should not move forward on any diversion application until the criteria and review process for water use requests have been adopted by the states through implementing legislation for the Compact. Until that happens, we need to follow existing federal law and the laws of the states on water use.”
In addition to Clean Water Action, Granholm’s decision was endorsed today by the Alliance for the Great Lakes, Detroit Audubon Society, the Ecology Center, East Michigan Environmental Action Council, Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, Sierra Club, The Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay, Voices for Earth Justice and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom/Detroit Branch.
In its proposal, New Berlin says by 2050 it would use 2.48 million gallons of Lake Michigan water each day. The immediate effect of the proposal would result in 1.875 million gallons of water a day being diverted from Lake Michigan. Under current federal law, all eight Great Lakes basin governors must approve any request for such a water diversion. A new proposed Great Lakes Compact has been signed by Gov. Granholm but must be approved by the Legislatures of all eight Great Lakes basin states, and the U.S. Congress, for it to take effect.
Granholm’s refusal to grant the New Berlin diversion is in response to the first such request since a new Compact was proposed regulating large-scale water use within the Great Lakes basin late last year.
"Communities in southeast Wisconsin have known for decades they were overusing water supplies. We cannot simply reward bad management with Great Lakes water,” said Cheryl Mendoza, Project Manager, Alliance for the Great Lakes "We must enact the Governors' plan before entertaining such a proposal."
The New Berlin proposal comes before any of the eight Great Lakes states has ratified the proposed Compact, which was signed late last year by the governors of the eight states. “What was the point of five years of negotiations over a water compact if we’re now going to disregard it to benefit a particular community?” said Terry Swier, President, Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation.
The New Berlin proposal is prohibited by a federal law passed in 1986 that bans diversions or exports of water from the Great Lakes Basin. The proposed Compact provides for some diversions of Great Lakes waters to so-called “straddling” communities just outside the Great Lakes basin, but only under clearly defined rules and a review process.
Lawmakers will have a chance to strengthen Michigan’s water use laws next year when they consider implementing legislation for the proposed Great Lakes Compact.
Clean Water Action and other environmental groups have called on Michigan lawmakers to eliminate a provision in Michigan water law that would exempt any amount of Great Lakes water packaged in bottles or any other small containers and exported out of the state’s watersheds and the Basin from controls on diversion. A legislative proposal to raise penalties for unlawfully diverting Great Lakes waters and to eliminate the diversion exemption was introduced earlier this year by House Democrats.
This week-old story on MSNBC underscores the seriousness of what is happening in SE Wisconsin. Sprawling outward like most Great Lakes metropolises, this area is finding water supplies the limiting factor in its runaway consumption of farmland, open space, and tax revenues. Will Wisconsin choose to redevelop the inner urban core of Milwaukee or keep moving away from its history and its water resources, the basis of its initial development?
Significantly, if it does the latter, the Great Lakes may be doomed. It's at the boundary of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins in Wisconsin that the issue of Great Lakes sustainability -- that elusive term meaning, "can we live within the means of our resources, or must we artificially and expensively move those resources to suit our whims temporarily?" -- has been joined. For the Great Lakes and for far more than the Lakes, much is at stake. Good luck to Wisconsin advocates, a brave and stubborn and principled group.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13679754/
Dear Editor: June 13, 2006
Your article ("Bottlers, States and the Public Slug It Out in Water War" June 12, 2006) would have benefited from contacting the leadership of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation(http://www.saveMIwater.org) to find out that two Michigan courts upheld the hydrogeological finding of environmental impairment to one stream, two lakes, and three wetlands in the Nestle Ice Mountain spring water mining operation in Mecosta, Michigan.
I call it the "fallacy of the aggregate" when officials and water privatizers contend that bottled water is just a minute percentage of water use, making no distinction between water takings and water usings. Commodifying and privatizing water itself for profit and removing it from its environment is completely different from existing legitimate water users who return to the environment substantial amounts of the water they
use.
The bottled water fad is relatively new and water recharge factors such as preciptiation are unlikely over time to replenish adequately aquifers and protect the immediate local environments. Spring water mining operations provide few jobs, yet they threaten the large tourist/recreation/country living industry. Relying on better regulated tap water is sufficient for human consumption and a lot less costly for the consumer.
Don Roy
Board Member of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation
901 Colburn Ave.
Big Rapids, MI 49307
231 796 1378 (home)
231 591 2764 (office)
The beaches of Lake Michigan offer summer sand and surf unmatched in the Midwest.
But lurking below the often placid fresh water are dangers most swimmers expect to encounter only in the ocean.
http://www.mlive.com/news/kzgazette/index.ssf?/base/news-18/1152440988302250.xml&coll=7
TRAVERSE CITY — In their bids for the GOP nomination to oppose Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Republicans Mike Bouchard and Keith Butler tout energy policies that include drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and more drilling off the Gulf and other mainland coasts.
But not off Michigan's Great Lakes shoreline — a rare position they share with Stabenow.
http://www.record-eagle.com/2006/jul/09weeks.htm
Last week I took a group of tourists to Tettegouche State Park on a kayaking trip through Superior Coastal Sports. We were having lunch on a secluded beach looking out over Lake Superior when a wiry man with a large gray beard came canoeing up in a beautiful red wooden canvas canoe. It is rare to see a canoe on the big lake, so I jumped up and ran to the waters edge to hale him down. It turns out that Steve Wingard is paddling and sailing his 1940 Peterborough Canoe all the way around Lake Superior.
http://www.grandmarais-mn.com/placed/index.php?sect_rank=2&story_id=221866
According to the July 6 OMI map, fires in western Canada generated large amount of smoke that is advected toward the Midwest. As seen on the OMI map below, the aerosol index is between 1 and 1.5 just west of the Great Lakes. Here is another view of the smoke over the Great Lakes (MODIS Rapidfire).
http://alg.umbc.edu/usaq/archives/001735.html
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?T061871605
"My biggest fear is that someone will wake up one of these days, and the beaches will be so far gone that we won't be able to fix it. And it never should have been neglected in the first place."
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=451185
Granholm said in a statement Wednesday that while she has forwarded the New Berlin application to appropriate Michigan officials for their review, she "would not consider the application for diversion."
That effectively puts New Berlin's application in legal limbo and dead in the water.
Granholm cited existing Michigan law and the fact that no Great Lakes state had yet to pass legislation to implement the pending procedure and law changes covering diversions.
That process could take up to 10 years, observers generally believe.
http://www.wisopinion.com/index.iml?mdl=article.mdl&article=4590
The only question here is why New Berlin, WI thought it might get a green light to divert Great Lakes water when the new compact that makes such applications possible has yet to be ratified by Wisconsin, let alone the other seven Great Lakes states.
ESCANABA — Escanaba has recently become home to a couple of very special visitors, and area residents are being asked to leave the welcome wagons — or kayaks — in the garage.
A small island off Escanaba’s Aronson Island is currently home to a small family of piping plovers, an endangered species. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Christie Deloria-Sheffield said this is the first time a breeding pair of piping plover has been found this far west in Delta County.
http://www.dailypress.net/stories/articles.asp?articleID=2710
Water levels declined in 1998 and have remained low, forcing ships to take on lighter loads and sparking concern about shorelines and wetlands in the Great Lakes, the world's largest supply of freshwater and a major commercial shipping route for Canada and the United States. Iron ore and grain are among the biggest cargoes shipped on the lakes.
"It's a pretty different mindset to come off 30 years of above-average water levels and to suddenly, since the late 1990s, have below-average levels," said Scott Thieme, chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Great Lakes Hydraulics and Hydrology Office in Detroit.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/07/03/greatlakes.reut/
A quiet bid by New Berlin and state officials to expand the community's access to Lake Michigan water was struck down this week by the governor of Michigan, an indication that the feel-good push by the eight Great Lakes governors to tighten laws protecting the world's largest freshwater system could soon turn ugly.
http://www2.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=446990