Great Lakes Blogger

cast your vote: share Great Lakes water to save lives?

Poll question here...only 4 votes as of 7:30 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

thank you, Michigan Rep. Dan Scripps

"Building on the legacy of Governor William G. Milliken, Michigan's land protection laws remain a national model," Scripps said. "These protections have played a vital role in the great strides Michigan has made in preserving our wetlands and any change has the potential to put our water at risk. I take great pride in being a responsible steward of our waters and preserving this law will ensure our natural resources can be enjoyed for generations to come."

kawabunga

Great photos of Lake Michigan surfing from Sunday near Chicago.

meanwhile, down in Indiana

Thanks to Gitte Laasby, who continues to do some of the most thorough and important environmental reporting in the Great Lakes region:

For several years, benzene-laden groundwater has been seeping into Lake Michigan from an old tank farm at U.S. Steel Gary Works.

The company plans to install a $1.4 million system that would treat the benzene starting in August or September. Officials will present the plan to the public at a meeting on Tuesday in Gary.

a world of trouble

The power struggles over words in last week’s World Water Forum are definitive, and left unchallenged, suggest a world of trouble, in the years to come.

Full piece here.

thank you, Jackson Citizen Patriot

Former Gov. William Milliken did Michigan a service when he signed this state's wetlands protections into law 30 years ago. He is still doing right by his home state in insisting those protections should stay in place.

omnibus public lands bill

In addition to wilderness protection for part of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, the public lands bill Congress approved the other day contains all kinds of goodies. It's going to take a while to read it and determine whether there's anything else for the Great Lakes region, but there are these:

* Over 1,100 miles of 86 new Wild and Scenic Rivers in eight states;

* Creation of the National Landscape Conservation System containing areas of archaeological and cultural significance;

* The Coastal and Ocean Observation System Act, which will authorize the establishment of an integrated system of coastal and ocean observations for the nation's coasts, oceans and Great Lakes;

* The Coastal and Estuarine Land Protection Act, which will authorize funding for a program to protect important coastal and estuarine areas that have significant conservation, recreation, ecological, historical, aesthetic, or watershed protection values, and that are threatened by conversion to other uses.

Lake Erie wind

A committee coordinated by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission has come up with a statement of both hope and concern about wind turbine siting in and around the Lake. For the first time in the region some serious environmental impact issues, particularly related to fish and wildlife, are being expressed.

Great Lakes hero inducted into WI Hall of Fame

His name was Chuck Stoddard and here's what he did.

Stoddard put his career and reputation at stake in the late 1960s when confronting the Reserve Mining Co. in Silver Bay, Minn., on Lake Superior. Mining officials and some Minnesota politicians tried to suppress a report by the Minnesota natural resources agency that found the company was dumping up to 67,000 tons of taconite tailings daily into Superior.

Stoddard was so confident in the report, and in the danger of dumping these asbestos-type fibers into Superior, that he leaked the report to the press. Federal courts eventually ruled against Reserve Mining, fined it more than $1 million and forced it to dump its wastes at on-land disposal sites.

why do we need the Saginaw News?

This editorial is disgraceful. Inaccurate, irresponsible and inflammatory.

MIchigan is in big trouble if arguments like this for abandoning wetlands protection and weakening environmental enforcement are taken seriously.