Great Lakes Blogger

Waukesha, WI's new water park

The southeast Wisconsin community that wants to divert Great Lakes water has a new recreational facility and a cheesehead friend corresponds on the subject:

Waukesha used to be famous for its water. When Chicago built the 1892 Columbian Expo, a pipe was laid from Waukesha to the expo grounds just so fair goers could drink the famous Waukesha spring water. 

But a hundred years of over development and waste have drained Waukesha's aquifer, and today its water tastes brackish and stale. So naturally the good Republicans who run the county want to tap into Lake Michigan. But the Great Lakes compact won't let them - Waukesha is on the wrong side of the divide. 

But the good people of Waukesha still water their huge lawns, wash their SUVs, and hang out at their water park. Conservation is for losers, doncha know?

Excellent review of 'Pandora's Locks'

Jeff Alexander's new book on the ecological calamity triggered by the St. Lawrence Seaway gets a thumbs-up from George Weeks in the Traverse City Record-Eagle.

Why we need wilderness/primitive areas

So that new generations can come along and experience feelings like this at Lake Michigan's Nordhouse Dunes:

That’s all well and good, but the truly remarkable thing about Nordhouse is the over 7,000 feet of nearly pristine Lake Michigan shoreline and the dunes which run, undisturbed, beside it. You get a sense, as you enjoy a sunset or a mid-day hike, what it must have felt like to see the Lake Michigan shoreline 200 years ago, before beach houses were erected, before beaches were widened and inundated with beach-goers, even before pathways to the beach were established.

You get a slight glimpse what it must have been like to step off a boat, bound for who-knows-where, and make the first human foot impression in the seemingly never-ending sand. That is surely one of the reasons to keep and maintain such places: So that we may know what life was like in the place of our birth before we were even born. I, for one, was filled with that sense many times during my visit to Nordhouse, and thanked my lucky stars I could experience it before it was all once again swept away.

Check out Great Lakes Town Hall this week

Excellent content -- a thoughtful essay by Gary Wilson on where we go from here on an apparent division in the Great Lakes community over the strength of the Great Lakes Compact in preventing water commercialization.

And a great opening post by Kevin McMahon, maker of the new Great Lakes documentary Waterlife.

sea of diamonds

Commentary here.

Your $475 million at work

The federal Interagency Task Force working on Great Lakes restoration has commendably made public a detailed list of how President Obama's proposed Great Lakes initiative would be spent.  Time to wade through a slightly daunting 28-page document.

Download 2010GLRIProgramsProjects

Great Lakes sewage

The news is full of stories on the subject. 

Duluth agrees to end raw sewage overflows by 2016.

Milwaukee dumps almost a billion gallons in Lake Michigan in a recent overflow.

The Saginaw River in Michigan has a health advisory because of overflows resulting from heavy rains.

It's important to remember that of the $20 billion in the 2005 Great Lakes restoration plan, over $13 billion was for upgrading sewage systems.

I remember a stunned Michigan reporter who in the early 1990s asked what was in these overflows. When told, she couldn't believe it.  "I thought we stopped dumping raw sewage in rivers years ago."  And that was 17 years ago.

Climate change flip-flop

Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota was for cap-and-trade before he was against it.

Clearly, political ambition has nothing to do with that.

Going global

The Economist takes note of all the movement around Great Lakes restoration and management.

Fix the Seaway, or close it

On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the official opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, more than 50 environmental groups from Canada and the U.S. say the waterway has taken a “devastating toll” and are calling on the shipping industry to be more environmentally friendly.

Article here.