Even though the current President was elected by a much smaller percentage.
A Vote Lost in the Smog
One person's consensus is another person's split vote, at least in Washington.
Last week, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson set new rules for the amount of fine particulate matter, or soot, that Americans can breathe in any given day. (He cut the existing standard of 65 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 35.) But the administrator decided to maintain the standard for the amount of soot Americans breathe on average over the course of a year, at 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air.
EPA's Clean Air Science Advisory Committee, by a 20 to 2 vote, had urged the agency last year to reduce the annual soot standard to 13 or 14 micrograms per cubic meter. When reporters pointed this out in a telephone conference call on Thursday, he emphasized that the panel's recommendation was not unanimous.
"We didn't ignore any recommendations. In fact, the opposite's true," Johnson said. "There was not complete agreement on the standard. This is complex science, and reasonable people can disagree."
Those comments did not please the advisory panel's chair, Rogene Henderson. This week, Henderson -- a senior scientist emeritus at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute -- called Johnson's comments "a little disingenuous," since "20 members were in total agreement" on the issue.
Given that level of agreement, she added, Johnson should have heeded the committee's advice. "The public is not well served by circumventing the scientific advisory process," she said.
Nonetheless, EPA spokeswoman Jennifer Wood said her boss stands by his comments. "As Administrator Johnson said last week, wherever the science gave us a clear picture, we took clear action," Wood said.
-- Juliet Eilperin
What was once called the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is now the Minnesota Ethanol Promotion Authority, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported today. Well, not quite, but --
Buffalo Lake Energy had a problem.
Earlier this year, the company feared that its plan to build a large ethanol plant in this slowly shrinking prairie town was in danger of getting derailed by the state's environmental rules.
Help came fast.
Sheryl Corrigan, then the commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) sent the company a letter it could show to financial backers saying that the agency, which enforces environmental statutes, intended to issue permits for the plant by May 24.
...In Granite Falls, Minn., state officials let a company open an ethanol plant last year knowing that the well water it would need to operate might last only a few years, according to regulators and state records. Now, with the aquifer draining even faster than expected, the company is exploring the use of twice as much water from the Minnesota River so it ostensibly can double production to 100 million gallons of ethanol a year.
In Aberdeen, S.D., a proposal by Glacial Lakes Energy to build a large ethanol plant drew strong opposition from some farmers in the throes of a severe drought. But county commissioners approved a zoning change that enabled several local individuals, including farmer Levern Didreckson, to sell land to the proposed plant's developer.
...The MPCA is taking steps to speed up the time it usually takes ethanol plants to get permits. This spring, Corrigan established a new ethanol team to work with the industry with a " 'We are one' ethic," state records show. The agency also is considering rule changes that could make it easier for plants that do not meet state water-quality standards to get permits.
Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, said the ethanol industry is using the promise of jobs and energy independence as cover to weaken state environmental laws. "Ethanol is big business, and they've got political clout," said Marty, chairman of the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee.
Marty said he was disgusted to learn that Corrigan had written a letter on Buffalo Lake Energy's behalf as her staff complained about the company's proposal. "It's absolutely inappropriate," he said.
...Minnesota's point man for ethanol development is Rocky Sisk, who works with a program called BizNice. He's an MPCA employee, but splits his time with the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). Sisk says he advises companies on getting through the permitting process in ways that limit an ethanol plant's impact on the environment.
Some of his colleagues in state government see him mostly as an industry booster. "His position, whatever that is, it's truly rah-rah-rah, let's move forward on it," said Jay Frischman, a hydrogeologist with the Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
When will the environment get equal time? Place an environmental professional in the economic development agency -- and let her/him insist that any new businesses lured by that agency are environmentally sustainable.
Until then, let us not treat environmental protection agencies as toys to be pushed aside when a politically potent new industry comes to town.
http://www.startribune.com/10107/story/709124.html
This several-days old Canadian commentary is another alarm bell. The free market religion that has brought the U.S. a failed health care system, the contracting out of war and other misadventures has captured advocates of water sales here and north of the border, leading to such visions as:
"It would cost between $4-billion and $9-billion to build a pipeline of water to Texas from Manitoba," said Paul Wihbey, president of GWEST LLC of Washington. "Annual revenue could be $7-billion, which is about the current budget of the provincial government and City of Winnipeg government combined."
And now comes the real charge:
Ironically, Canada's wing-nut politicians -- Liberals and NDPers in particular -- have spoken out against water exports, as though it was somehow bad for the nation or that Canadians would die of thirst.
Some even spoke about water as the "hidden agenda" behind free trade with the United States. But water is in huge surplus in Canada and is, unlike oil or natural gas or metals and minerals, a renewable resource.
Renewable? Really? There is a finite amount of water in the world. What this thinker is discussing is really water mining -- taking a resource from one place and selling it somewhere at great profit. But water is part of the commons. If there is a profit, it goes to the public.
Wing-nuts indeed.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/columnists/story.html?id=dbb04244-e54d-48f7-bdbc-6d4d03383696
Next door in Wisconsin, a major chemical company appears to be dictating policy on how much of its material should be allowed to pollute groundwater. This kind of influence in the regulatory process is not unique to Wisconsin among the Great Lakes states.
Bruce Baker, deputy administration of water for the Department of Natural Resources, was shocked at the letter the agency received late last year from St. Louis-based Monsanto Chemical.
A week before, Monsanto convinced a joint legislative committee of the need for an independent study of the health effects of alachlor ESA - a chemical in an herbicide used by farmers and manufactured by the company - that state health and environmental officials had worked for nearly 14 years to regulate.
Studies by the state and federal government and even by Monsanto showed the chemical causes anemia when given to lab rats at high levels, though the science is not clear on its effects on humans.
Now, after years of study, Monsanto was asking for another review of the science, outlining in the letter how the independent study should be run and providing names of experts it wanted used.
http://www.madison.com/wsj/mad/top/index.php?ntid=100646
WASHINGTON -- Congress appears to be getting more serious about protecting endangered fish and wildlife in the Great Lakes.
The U.S. Senate is expected to approve legislation today to double federal funding for fish and wildlife protection in the Great Lakes, boosting the annual allotment from $8 million to $16 million. The House approved the bill late Wednesday.
OK, it's not the same as $20 billion, but it's a start, and it does show there's a community that can raise heck for the Great Lakes and get something done in out-of-touch Washington, D.C.
http://www.mlive.com/news/statewide/index.ssf?/base/news-8/115939501677600.xml&coll=1
Detroit Free Press editorial today is on point. But when all is said and done, a lot more is said than done about the threat posed by ballast water to the Great Lakes. The shipping/port lobby is incredibly powerful.
The need to fend off Asian carp has grabbed the headlines recently, but it's equally important to keep the pressure on to treat ballast water, perhaps the most common way that foreign plants and animals make their way into the Great Lakes. Two important steps forward took place last week:
• A federal judge in California gave the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency two years to come up with a plan for treating ballast water discharges. This is an important victory in a case filed by an environmental group, joined by the attorneys general from the Great Lakes states, including Michigan's Mike Cox.
• The state of California passed its own ballast water rule, the second state to do so after Michigan. That should encourage other states to get on board, including the rest of the Great Lakes states and coastal states on both sides of the country. America's great ocean bays, from San Francisco to Chesapeake, have just as much trouble with invasive species as the Great Lakes do.
http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060927/OPINION01/609270319/1068/OPINION
Most Michiganders consider the lakes an important part of our state's character, ranking right up with there with the auto industry. But, just like the Big Three, the lakes themselves are reeling.
...Politicians regularly intone the need to protect the waters, and then refuse to take action against non-native species invading the lakes in the ballast water of ocean-going freighters. They talk glowingly about childhood memories on the beaches, and then give industry sweetheart deals when it comes to cleaning up messes. They orate about the majesty of the lakes, and then leave gaping loopholes in new laws to permit de facto diversions of Great Lakes water.
Regular citizens have a responsibility to not just send these folks to Lansing or Washington, but to keep tabs on what they're doing. Great Lakes citizens who are serious about restoring and protecting the lakes must the logical first step by educating themselves on the issues, actively engaging lawmakers and taking to task those who aren't properly responsive. That means voting out of office those incumbents who regularly place special interests above those from the district they represent.
http://www.themorningsun.com/stories/092706/loc_editorial001.shtml
A look at the water challenge from a global and Great Lakes perspective is coming to commercial TV soon.
http://www.troubledwatersdoc.com/
Andy Guy of the Michigan Land Institute is one of the region's most astute observers of the convergence of economic and environmental trends. His new blog is worth checking for signs of hope as well as signs of challenge.
http://greatlakesguy.blogspot.com/
NIPIGON, Ont. (CP) - Residents of this picturesque paper mill town on the north shore of Lake Superior fondly recall a time when they had their choice of eight taxi drivers, four main street hotels and three grocery stores.
Now there's just one of each, all of them struggling to stay afloat as the town's young people leave in search of work and its elders retire from a workforce whittled to nothing by steep job losses.
But locals think they can reverse the trend - and their secret weapon is a 65-year-old children's book called "Paddle to the Sea."
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/23092006/2/national-sleepy-ontario-town-bets-future-park-based-kid-s.html
Amen, George:
Here we go again with much talk but minimal action on long-promised substantial funding for Great Lakes cleanup and restoration.
http://www.record-eagle.com/2006/sep/24weeks.htm
Federal money for scientific research, toxic-pollution cleanup and correcting sewage-overflow problems remains a major issue.
"Unless we invest in a solution to restore the Great Lakes today, the price we pay tomorrow will be much higher, and future generations may never experience the lakes as we know them," said Tom Kiernan, president of the National Parks Conservation Association and co-chairman of the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition.
Three species of Asian carp threaten the Great Lakes: Black, big head and silver. But any one of them spells disaster.
Plankton eaters, Asian carp eat up to 40 percent of their body weight daily, grow up to 100 pounds and have no natural predators. They would have a major impact on Lake Erie's perch and walleye populations.
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/115900090237770.xml&coll=2
CLEVELAND - Gov. Bob Taft said yesterday that a pair of congressional bills calling for an unprecedented $20 billion in Great Lakes cleanup funds could become a key election issue this fall and in the 2008 presidential election.
Though the federal budget has been spread thin by the response to Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq, Mr. Taft said Congress cannot bypass the needs of 40 million Great Lakes residents in the United States and Canada by letting the Bush Administration back off its once-assumed commitment to fund the Great Lakes Collaboration Implementation Act.
"No new money is not an acceptable answer, especially when state and local governments have been investing more heavily in the Great Lakes than the federal government," the outgoing Republican governor told a packed ballroom in downtown Cleveland's Crowne Plaza, where 250 scientists, activists, and government officials are attending a three-day Great Lakes conference.
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060923/NEWS06/609230412
CLEVELAND -- Problems on the Great Lakes are approaching the tipping point and environmentalists need to intensify their push for Congress to fund restoration efforts on the lakes.
Those assessments came Friday from a series of speakers during the first day of the two-day Great Lakes Restoration Conference sponsored by the eco-group Healing Our Waters -- Great Lakes Coalition.
The 18-month-old group comprises nearly 90 environmental groups in the Midwest, and was created to offer a unified grass-roots voice on problems of the Great Lakes.
Scientists are worried that the lakes are approaching a tipping point after which recovery will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, said University of Michigan professor Don Scavia, the coalition's chief scientist.
The Lake Erie shoreline has a crunch to it.
With each step, you will step on bits and pieces of zebra and quagga mussel shells.
Mounds of crushed shells are a reminder of how widespread an impact the fingernail-size mollusks have had on the Great Lakes since they were discovered in the late 1980s.
Two conferences in Cleveland, one opening Friday and the other Wednesday, will look at the health of the Great Lakes and ways to control invasive species.
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1158827597245180.xml&coll=2
Cleaning up the Great Lakes will take buckets of money and a tsunami of political will. More waterpower than the Bush administration is willing to invest, apparently.
http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-2/115876384645780.xml&coll=6
This is no shock. Since the date of the Bush Great Lakes announcement in 2004, it's been clear that the President merely wanted to get out front of the parade of politicians calling for protection of the Lakes. Ultimately the region's political leaders, Republican and Democratic, must make the Lakes a priority themselves. Chespeake Bay and Florida Everglades programs approved by Congress did not get their primary momentum from presidential endorsements, but instead from home-state legislators.
No U.S. House member who votes to slash the funding for this very modest bill can make a credible claim this fall of being a Great Lakes defender.
Urge House Members Not to Short Change the Great Lakes
Take Action:
* Call your member of the House of Representatives. The Capital Switchboard, where you can be patched into his or her office is (202) 224-3121.
* Tell them you support S. 2430, the Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Restoration Act of 2006, as written, and strongly oppose any attempt to amend it on the House floor.
The Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Restoration Act is a critical component of the larger Great Lakes restoration effort. Earlier this summer, thanks to the leadership of Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH), the Senate passed this bill (S. 2430), which authorized Congress to spend up to $20 million a year to protect and restore Great Lakes fish and wildlife habitat.
Last week, a subcommittee of the House Resources Committee held a hearing on the bill. This Wednesday, the House leadership is poised to bring the bill up for a vote on the House floor, but plan to pass it at its previously authorized level of $8 million.
We have manageable solutions to the problems facing the Great Lakes. But we’ll never be able to put the lakes back on track with a business-as-usual approach.
Overall the Great Lakes region has lost over 50% of its wetlands. Some parts of the Great Lakes have lost over 90%. This habitat loss and fragmentation is combining with invasive species, sewage overflows, toxic pollution, and other stressor such that scientists say the Great Lakes are nearing a tipping point of irreversible change.
Every day we wait, the problems get worse and the solutions get more costly. Please take action today on behalf of the Great Lakes by calling your Member of the House of Representatives today.
---
But hey, it's better to get 1.17% than 1.12% for conservation...
For the first time since 2002, Minnesota’s Governor and Legislature this year enacted a slight increase in the share of the state general fund allocated to conservation and environmental programs. Although much work remains to assure that Minnesota’s state budget reflects the importance of natural resources to our economy, our health and the Minnesota way of life, the 2006 legislative session was a welcome break from recent years of conservation budget reductions.
In February, Governor Tim Pawlenty proposed both a strong 2006 bonding request for conservation and a supplemental operating budget that directed a small amount of a forecasted $405 million surplus to water pollution cleanup. With this as a starting point, the Legislature ultimately passed a bonding bill that included even more funding for conservation than the Governor’s recommendations, and approved a supplemental operating budget that includes a modest but important first investment in cleaning up polluted waters.
Unfortunately, hopes for a long-term natural resources funding solution were dashed at the end of the session when the House and Senate failed to agree on a proposed constitutional amendment to dedicate a fraction of sales tax revenues for water protection and wildlife and habitat conservation.
http://www.mepartnership.org/sites/VOTEMINNESOTA/sub_whatsnew.asp?new_id=2077
Lake St. Clair's increasingly swampy shoreline has been overrun by weeds, including one fast-spreading plant that grows more than 12 feet tall and is difficult to destroy.
Experts say high levels of sewage and certain chemicals -- most likely derived from lawn fertilizers -- have fed an infestation of seaweed along the shore, particularly in Harrison Township. Plants are growing in the shallow, stagnant waters by the lake's edge and in mucky soils along the seawalls where the water has receded.
http://www.macombdaily.com/stories/091706/loc_lakeweed001.shtml
After more thought, I realize I was mistaken in arguing that we should simply bar ocean-going ships from the Great Lakes to keep exotic species out. What we should do is bar saltwater ships and block the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, plugging the lakes at both ends.
Otherwise, we risk losing a $5 billion annual sport and commercial fishery and who-knows-what in tourism and biological diversity so that a handful of industries can save a few bucks.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006609170670
Interesting pair of letters to the editor in today's Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Militarization of Minnesota's northern borderlands
Last week the Coast Guard fired live ammunition on Lake Superior, despite a request for an extended public comment period. Soon the Great Lakes will become periodic firing ranges, endangering recreational boaters and fishermen, while sinking large amounts of lead to the lake bottoms.
This week the people of Grand Marais will learn where a new 34,000-square-foot Homeland Security Facility will be built; on the hill above Grand Marais or at another undisclosed site somewhere close to the Gunflint Trail. This building will include three, 700-square-foot detention cells and a helicopter pad. Fifty Border Patrol agents will soon be parked at boat launches inside and outside of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, as well as patrolling the border lakes by canoe, snowmobile, motorboat and helicopter. By contrast, the average number of detentions at the Pigeon River Crossing is one person per month, most commonly for lack of proper identification.
And soon, George W. Bush's "Secure Borders Initiative" will reward a government contractor billions to install sensors and remote detection devices all along the Canadian border.
The target date for the completion of all of these objectives is the end of 2008. While intercity neighborhoods in St. Paul and Minneapolis struggle with the lack of local law enforcement, border communities are watching the purposeful militarization of Lake Superior and the wilderness borderlands. I implore the newspaper to speak out against the militarization of the Canadian border and instead demand a focus on rational security, and keeping our home-soil friendly.
STACI L. DROUILLARD, GRAND MARAIS, MINN.
The mayor of Duluth needs to get real. When the Coast Guard uses its weapons it will be on the water not on land. You train for the environment you are on.
LYNN WIEBE, BOYD, MINN.
http://www.startribune.com/563/story/682577.html
Until this blog is overhauled, it's impossible for readers to post comments. But here's one from a well-informed Great Lakes citizen advocate, responding to today's post:
"Thanks, Dave. Not only do you correctly illustrate Great Lakes budget cuts, but I'd also point out that Congress' draft FY '07 budget, again, does not come close to full funding for the Great Lakes Legacy Act - the bill designed to clean up the toxic sediment sites scattered around the Lakes. It appears that only $30 million will be appropriated out of $54 million that could be. And this was/is a cornerstone of the administration's restoration efforts. Gary Wilson, Chicago."
The linked article begins with a fundamental misunderstanding of Great Lakes restoration politics; no one expected Congress to adopt "the $20 billion restoration plan" for the Great Lakes or in fact for several years. The Bush Administration has opposed new spending, and it took over a decade for an Everglades restoration bill (dealing with one state) to get traction in Congress.
This is a long-term effort.
The third paragraph of the story is clearly the bigger worry; cuts in Great Lakes existing funding would be an insult to the region and must be resisted.
(September 15, 2006) — A massive grass-roots plan to safeguard the ecological future of the Great Lakes may be endangered on Capitol Hill.
Congress appears likely to adjourn this year without adopting the $20 billion restoration plan for Ontario and the other Great Lakes. The biggest obstacle seems to be cost.
Even worse, in the view of conservationists, Congress could end up cutting existing Great Lakes cleanup programs at a time when scientists warn that the lakes show signs of extreme stress from sewage overflows and other pollution, invasive species and loss of buffering wetlands.
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060915/NEWS01/609150414
Minnesota state legislators' environmental records are now on line, courtesy of Sierra Club North Star Chapter.
http://northstar.sierraclub.org/2006scorecard
Michigan's League of Conservation Voters does the same for the Wolverine State:
http://www.michiganlcv.org/1095MLCV2005Scorecard.pdf?donate_page_KEY=1407
Two years ago, when up for re-election, President Bush with much fanfare signed an executive order calling the Great Lakes a "national treasure," setting in motion a process that resulted in a $20 billion restoration plan for the Lakes.
http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/EnvironmentNewsService/2004/05/19/471108?extID=10032&oliID=213
It's a pretty good plan. But George Bush is not up for re-election this year, and here's what the plan has led to:
Despite calls for federal financial assistance from scientists and state officials, the Bush administration says it won't be investing billions of dollars in new funding for cleaning up the Great Lakes.
The admission came Wednesday during a U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee hearing as members of Congress, including Michigan's Rep. Vern Ehlers, quizzed Bush officials about the administration's financial commitment to Great Lakes restoration.
"I'm very disappointed the administration has taken the position that we'll only undertake the recommendations ...that can be done within existing budget projections," said Ehlers, R-Grand Rapids. "We simply cannot accomplish what we need to do ... with the current funding."
http://www.mlive.com/news/statewide/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1158190802278720.xml&coll=1
People are pigs.
This is a logical conclusion for a Chicago beachcomber, but Jennifer Roche had a kinder view of us two-legged beasts as she roamed the sands on Tuesday, stooping to toss her finds into a white plastic garbage bag.
Cigarette butts. A Corona beer cap. Cigarette butts. Duct tape. Cigarette butts, cigarette butts, enough cigarette butts to make even a skeptic think the recent proposal to ban smoking on the city's beaches might not be so crazy after all.
"I like to think that once people get conscious about it they'll do the right thing," said Roche, plunging a hand into the sand.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0609130038sep13,1,5040457.column?coll=chi-news-col
If all eight Great Lakes states put up some of their own funds to begin Great Lakes restoration (or at least put together plans and priorities), it might induce the feds to help.
ELYRIA - The state plans to move ahead with its initiative to clean up Lake Erie, even without federal funding.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has announced a list of projects, with goals ranging from combatting invasive species to mapping all of Ohio’s wetlands.
Implementing the Ohio Lake Erie Action List will cost at least $175 million, an amount that includes a $50 million cleanup that already has started on the Ashtabula River, Ohio EPA Director Joe Koncelik said at the quarterly meeting of the Lake Erie Commission.
http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=307195
This sharp piece of investigative reporting should set off alarms around the Great Lakes Basin. It's almost literally an attempt to make off with a piece of the Great Lakes, outside state and federal law.
The Waukesha Water Utility has kept the recent spotlight away from the issue of its possibly seeking a controversial, predecent-setting diversion of piped-in water from Lake Michigan.
But behind the scenes, the utility is playing hardball, tasking its lawyers with trying to win state support for a jaw-dropping plan: obtaining its desired supply of fresh water from Lake Michigan without having to apply to regional regulators as a new diverter, or get the approval of the other Great Lakes states or be required to return an equal amount of water to the basin for treatment and replenishment.
Lawyers at Godfrey & Kahn, S.C., under contract to the utility, twice this spring proposed to Gov. Jim Doyle that the state allow the city of Waukesha access to Lake Michigan on terms that would help avoid litigation, according to documents obtained from the utility under the Wisconsin Open Records law.
Dropping "litigation" into discussions of Great Lakes water policy-making is like throwing a grenade into a plywood shack.
Perhaps science will bear this out. But perhaps scientists should also look upstream to factory farms and lawns drenched with fertilizers as sources of Lake Erie's recurrent algae problem.
Sep. 8--ELYRIA, Ohio -- Despite the annoyance that mayflies pose each June when they swarm across the region, Ohioans have generally held the broad-winged insects in high esteem because of what they have symbolized: Lake Erie's recovery.
Now, a decade after pollution dissipated enough for mayflies to make their comeback, some researchers believe they could be hurting the lake by helping algae grow.
The theory is that they stir up tiny particles of nutrient-laden sediment, a subtle action at the lake's bottom that might even make the central basin's infamous "dead zone" worse. Those tidbits were among the relatively new pieces of information emerging at yesterday's annual Ohio Lake Erie Conference, which drew nearly 200 people to Lorain County Community College. The event was sponsored by the Toledo-based Ohio Lake Erie Office, an arm of the governor's office, which reports to state agency directors.
Truly, this is one of the most hopeful stories in recent years on the Great Lakes:
Frank McDonald felt the tug on his fishing line and knew he had something big. "I was hoping it was a gigantic walleye," he said. It was much bigger.
McDonald hooked a 3-foot-long sturgeon, a prehistoric fish that was thought to be all but gone from Lake Erie less than a decade ago. He hauled it into the boat just long enough to snap a few pictures before releasing it.
"We were being gentle," he said. "If I could've gotten away with keeping that fish, he would've been on my wall."
Sturgeon prized for its caviar and smoked meat are slowly starting to make a comeback in areas where water quality has improved. The fish, which are protected in just about every state where they're found, were overfished and nearly disappeared in the early 1900s despite being so abundant on Lake Erie that they were burned for fuel in steamships.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2416478&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
The fall Great Lakes literary riches continue to multiply. Now a new book by Jeff Alexander on the Muskegon River is published by Michigan State University Press --
http://www.mlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1157797012264370.xml?muchronicle?NEE&coll=8
This book of essays by women writers on the Great Lakes, edited by Alison Swan, is an outstanding contribution to the literature of the Lakes:
http://msupress.msu.edu/bookTemplate.php?bookID=3014
TRAVERSE CITY (AP) - Peter Annin recalls staring in fascinated horror at what had been the coast of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, now a desolate wasteland strewn with scrub brush and corroded hulls of abandoned fishing boats.
Once the world's fourth-largest inland water body, the Aral has shrunk to a quarter of its previous surface area in less than half a century - the result of a Soviet-era decision to divert rivers feeding the sea to promote farming in that arid section of central Asia.
Annin visited the region while researching his book, "The Great Lakes Water Wars," published by Island Press and scheduled for release Sept. 14. The former Newsweek magazine correspondent says he'd heard ominous references to the Aral disaster while studying the debate over Great Lakes water diversion and wanted to see it for himself.
When talking about the power of one, some area scientists believe individual property owners can definitely make a difference in the quality of White Lake.
“I think, in the past, people have believed there was nothing they could do,” said Luttenton. “Thinking it was somebody else at fault, like industry and carcinogens released into the water. We’ve gotten a lot of those issues under control now. One way to help stop the growth of macrophytes is to stop using phosphorus in fertilizer. People have a much bigger role than we initially anticipated.”
Muskegon County has implemented a county wide ban of phosphorous in fertilizer, taking effect Jan. 1, 2007.
http://www.whitelakebeacon.com/news.php?story_id=10884
The state has purchased land on two Lake Erie islands with plans to include more marina space, campgrounds and destinations for nature-loving tourists.
North Bass and Middle Bass islands are now largely undeveloped quiet places, much different from their neighbor South Bass, home to Put-in-Bay with its party atmosphere and 1 million visitors each year.
http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/09/05/20060905-D4-02.html
Map here:
https://www.piersystem.com/go/site/678/
A decade of warm winters with sporadic snowfall has failed to refill the snow-dependent Great Lakes, with falling water levels bringing the top ever closer to the bottom in Lakes Michigan and Huron.
The ebb has raised cries to dredge harbors, cost lake freighters small fortunes and meant trouble for breakwaters, which can survive the fiercest storms but won't suffer exposure to the air.
As the lake floor unexpectedly peers up through shallow spots, experts and observers say the situation has offered a dramatic lesson in the ancient machinery that empties and refills the Great Lakes.
It is gravity, and in the lakes, it is working on a massive scale.
A billion years ago, North America tried to tear itself apart, and the leftover rift became the Great Lakes. Dying mountains and sprawling mud flats filled it with sand and shale.
A continentwide glacier tamped it down next, then filled what remained as it melted 10,000 years ago. That water has been replaced 100 times over, continuously shoved out by more recently melted snows.
The system is time-tested and works well, provided it's fueled properly.
When snows are small and sporadic, problems arise, said Scott Thieme, chief of Great Lakes hydraulics and hydrology for the Army Corps of Engineers in Detroit. Last winter's spotty snowfalls are a good example.
"It [was] just melting in pieces instead of one big slug in the spring," Thieme said. "We just didn't get a huge spring ride--it wasn't doing bad in the April-May time period, but it did suffer in the summer time period."
Not too long ago, the lakes were brimming with water. Levels sloshed far above average in 1986 and 1997 in Lakes Michigan and Huron--technically considered the same lake because they rise and fall together.
The snow that supplies them blankets forests in central Ontario and Interstate Highway 70 in western Ohio. From Minnesota nearly to Montreal, the land works to feed the lakes. Yet because the area is so big, the lower lakes sometimes live separately from the lakes upstream.
Lakes Ontario and Erie are flourishing at average levels this year, after a series of dying tropical storms dumped what was left of their water on them in 2005. Lake Superior, on the other hand, is in drought, as is northern Lake Michigan, and the upper lakes are suffering accordingly.
Lake Superior level drops
The level of Lake Superior dropped 3 inches in August, a month it usually rises an inch, with a record low amount of rain across the big lake's watershed.
The International Lake Superior Board of Control reported Thursday that it was the least amount of rain to fall over the lake's basin in August since records have been kept.
The lake is 12 inches below its long-term average for Sept. 1 and 4 inches below the level at this time last year.
Lakes Michigan and Huron dropped 3 inches in August and now sit 18 inches below the long-term average and 2 inches lower than this time last year.
Boaters on Lake Erie and around the Great Lakes could be booted from their favorite fishing holes so the Coast Guard can practice with machine guns and live ammunition, a new phase of homeland security.
The Coast Guard plans to establish 34 "safe zones" around the Great Lakes, including four on Lake Erie, for target practice. Two boats will be deployed for target practice. One boat will fire at a target with mounted automatic weapons and bullets that have a 1,500-yard range. The other boat will keep an eye out for wayward boaters.
The Coast Guard will broadcast marine warnings when target practice is planned. There has been no advisory as to the frequency of target practice. The four Lake Erie zones are all in areas where Ohio fishermen can be found throughout the year. The large zones, which appear to be five to 10 miles offshore, are northeast of Huron, northeast of Cleveland, between Fairport Harbor and Geneva and between Conneaut and Erie, Pa.
http://www.cleveland.com/sports/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/sports/1157100117274620.xml&coll=2
See the zones, courtesy of Alex Sagady:
http://www.sagady.com/livefire/