Polluted Run-off

The Day after Tomorrow: The Great Lakes in Crisis

Close your eyes and think of the worst disaster movie you’ve ever seen, OK, do you have it set in your mind’s eye? The Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition is releasing a report that shows the expected impacts of global warming on the Great Lakes – nearly 95 percent of this nation’s fresh surface water – are much more devastating than anything you could have imagined.

Great Lakes Restoration and the Threat of Global Warming makes it clear that the Great Lakes are poised to reach an irrevocable crisis Read More » »

HOW is Naming Names

How many times have we heard our Washington politicians wax on about the Great Lakes being a “national treasure” that must be protected for future generations? Countless. That is why it is mindboggling that there are still a significant number of Great Lakes Members of Congress who have yet to co-sponsor the Clean Water Restoration Act.

Michigan’s Candice Miller has oft cited the need for sustained federal action to deal with the challenges the lakes face – challenges that in her words hamper the protection and preservation of “our precious Great Lakes” and “our magnificent Great Lakes.” Read More » »

Who Cares If The Water Isn’t Safe?

Defiance, Ohio recently lost nearly 1000 auto industry jobs. The loss takes a deep bite out of the local economy of a relatively small city of 17,000. Like many towns, villages and cities in the Great Lakes region, Defiance has an antiquated waste water treatment system – a deteriorating infrastructure plagued with combined overflow problems. Defiance needs to find $60 million to pay for these problems over the next two decades at a time when jobs are increasingly harder to find.

“Community after community can’t afford to pay the rates,” Ohio Senator George Voinovich (R) told EPA Administrator Steve Johnson in Read More » »

Original Intent

Using the Clean Water Act as their compass, Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) are navigating murky political waters to deliver legislation that would return the brawn and intent to the original Act signed by President Nixon in 1972.

More than one-third of America’s waterways are subject to “No Fishing and No Swimming” signs because polluters continue to evade the rules set by the Clean Water Act. After years of poisonous industrial waste invading U.S. waterways, the Clean Water Act was passed by Congress in 1972. It was Read More » »

They Asked For It

When the first public meeting in nearly two years of the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration opens in Chicago today, conveners will get an earful from representatives of the Healing Our Waters Coalition. The litany of grievances is long, but it can be boiled down to an indictment of the Environmental Protection Agency’s miserable leadership.

Let’s start with the meeting – thanks for calling it, but why wait two years? Did a recent letter signed by over 30 members of Congress and directed Read More » »

Indiana Gov Calls for Review of BP Decision

Sorry, Mitch, the BP permit issue is not going away, but then you know that don’t you? After a rather loud public outcry, including a spanking from the U.S. Congress, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has called for a review of the state environmental agency’s decision to allow British Petroleum to expand their Whiting Refinery on Lake Michigan. 

While calling for a “credible, independent evaluation of the permitting decision and outcome” might lead readers to think the Governor may reconsider the permit, it is more likely he is looking for a heavy rubber stamp to squelch protests. BP spokesman Tom Read More » »

Rain Gardens to Ease Flooding in Toledo

The Toledo Blade reported this month on the launch of a new initiative that will encourage Toledo residents to grow rain gardens, which absorb rain water that would otherwise run off into streets and sewers and cause damage to basements and foundations. American Rivers is spearheading the $600,000 program, which was made possible by a recent grant from The Joyce Foundation aimed at restoring the Maumee River, the largest river in the
Great Lakes system.

U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) was on hand to speak at the event. “[Storm water] is not a problem, it’s an Read More » »

Polluted Runoff

Polluted Runoff

Eroding soils from a construction site, fertilizers and pesticides that have been applied to the land, or oil and grease dripped from vehicles can all be carried by stormwater to local waterways and degrade aquatic ecosystems. Storm sewers help clear our streets of rainwater, but they also channel the water - and everything that comes with it - directly into the lakes.

Oil and grease create oil slicks and build up in sediments. Pesticides and other toxic chemicals can kill insects that fish feed on or build up in the food chain. Soil, Read More » »

Water Quality

Despite much progress since the Clean Water Act was passed more than thirty years ago, the Great Lakes still suffer from water pollution. The Great Lakes are virtually a closed system, with less than one percent of the water in the lakes renewed each year. This means that what we put in the lakes generally stays in the lakes and certain types of pollutants have been building up in the Great Lakes ecosystem for many years. Major water quality problems in the lakes include toxic pollution, polluted runoff, and sewage overflows and beach closings.