community weblog - [ Environment ]

Bush signs Great Lakes compact with Ont., Que.

TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan — Great Lakes water cannot be diverted to thirsty areas elsewhere in the United States and abroad under an agreement signed Friday by U.S. President George W. Bush.

Approval of the Great Lakes Compact was the final step in a nearly decade-long quest to strengthen legal protections for the five Great Lakes, their connecting channels and the St. Lawrence River.   more...

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Coast Guard adjusts cargo sweeping rules

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - The U.S. Coast Guard is allowing Great Lakes freighters to continue sweeping dry cargo residues overboard, but has tightened rules dealing with the practice.

For many years, ships have used high-powered hoses to wash their decks after loading or dropping off cargo in port. They're believed to wash 1 million pounds of coal, iron ore and other material into the lakes every year. more...

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Algae blooms doomed by coming cold

Blooms of blue-green algae, also called cyanobacteria, were reported in several areas of Mona and Muskegon lakes over the past week. One of the blooms on Mona Lake washed into Lake Michigan last week. more...

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The Ocqueoc River And the effort to keep it one of Northern Michigan's true 'gems'

Gary Hubbard has an interesting way of trying to combat the erosion problem that plagues his property overlooking the Ocqueoc River in Presque Isle County. He has built a little platform on which he tees up stones and chips them with a golf club over the giant bluff down to the river below, where they plant themselves into the sandy bank that is forever shifting with the seasons.

Of course Hubbard, a Lansing area dentist, realizes his fun little exercise in futility is just that. He isn't making any difference against the force of the Ocqueoc and its ability to tear away the sandy bank that is just a couple dozen yards away from the new log home he recently had built.   more...

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The lifeblood of Planet Earth

The most entertaining movie I saw over the weekend was the Coen brothers' "Burn After Reading." The most enlightening was Irena Salina's "Flow," which argues that global conflicts over the availability and access to fresh, clean water are slowly coming to a boil.

While Brad Pitt's performance as the village idiot deserves your applause, "Flow" -- which opens Friday at Cinema 21 -- merits your attention.

Salina spent five years circling the globe to measure the dwindling supply of water and the escalating vigor of companies such as Vivendi and Suez to privatize -- and drain profits from -- what remains of the Earth's most precious resource.

"Flow" explores the efforts of multinationals to exploit water shortages in Africa and South America, and the protests and riots that followed. It examines the controversy in which Michigan residents took Nestle to court when the company's bottling plant began draining water from a local aquifer.   more...

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Mud fight is chasing firm -- and jobs -- out of Michigan

SPARTA -- This is a story about a mud puddle and how it made a criminal of entrepreneur Alan Taylor.

It's also a story about 100 existing jobs, and untold future jobs, that could leave Michigan for Colorado or Wisconsin because Taylor and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality can't settle their squabble about the mud puddle.

It's a sad story, but who knows? Perhaps Gov. Jennifer Granholm -- who often vows "to go anywhere and do anything" to save jobs for Michigan -- could intercede and find a way to stop this madness.   more...

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Earth Voyager ends lakes tour

After spending the summer touring the Great Lakes, the Earth Voyager is back in Port Huron.

The 60-foot trimaran owned, built and raced by Raymond Howe of Rochester, N.Y., has broken records in the Port Huron-to-Mackinac Island Sailboat Race since 2001. In 2007, Howe offered the use of the boat to the Friends of the St. Clair River Watershed for Great Lakes advocacy.   more...

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Channel not cause of low lakes

Early indications are that the so-called "bathtub" effect under the Blue Water Bridge is not responsible for low water levels in the upper Great Lakes.

Though more analysis is needed, the underwater videography is now complete and its suggests the riverbed near the bridge hasn't changed, says John Nevin, communications advisor for the International Upper Great Lakes Study. more...

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A clean Kalamazoo River is at least seven years

PLAINWELL -- It will be at least seven more years before cleanup work on the Kalamazoo River reaches Saugatuck under a new, expedited cleanup plan unveiled by the Environmental Protection Agency Tuesday night.

Officials unveiled a preliminary schedule for removal of contaminated sediments from the river bottom and banks, working downstream from Plainwell to Lake Michigan one segment at a time.   more...

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Mussel power slams divers, lake's ecosystem

In most places, the hunt for invasive species is a figurative term. But not in Kankakee's Haigh Quarry, where a small group of scuba-diving volunteers armed themselves over the weekend with air tanks, dive fins and a steely resolve to remove as many of one non-native species as they could find.

There could not have been a less charismatic quarry in this quarry. It is infested with zebra mussels.   more...

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Study: Dams help spread lake invaders

Artificial lakes formed by dams are magnets for invasive species, providing fertile waters that hasten the spread of foreign organisms across the landscape, according to a new study.

A study of 4,200 lakes and 1,081 dam impoundments in Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula found that zebra mussels and other foreign species are far more likely to invade the artificial ponds. The study by scientists from the universities of Colorado, Wisconsin and Washington was published in the September issue of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.   more...

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Shippers, activists clash over cargo sweeping

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - Day after day, ships longer than three football fields depart Great Lakes ports after picking up or delivering loads of iron ore, coal and other cargo. Reaching open water, crews wash the decks with high-powered hoses.

It's called "cargo sweeping," because residues that spill onto decks during loading and unloading are swept overboard. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates that 1 million pounds of such debris is washed into the lakes every year. more...

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On an Infested River, Battling Invaders Eye to Eye

THE FISH ARE JUMPING, BUT NOT IN A GOOD WAY Asian carp leaping out of the Illinois River near Havana, Ill., as researchers cut through the water in an aluminum “shock” boat, which has equipment that sends electric currents into the water, stunning fish long enough for researchers to scoop them up and identify and measure them before tossing them back.    more...

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Dunes Lakeshore and State Park to host beach health science spectacular

As the 2008 swimming season comes to a close, beach managers, scientists, and policy-makers from across the Great Lakes and the nation will converge on Duneland next week to share new findings, advances, challenges, and opportunities to improve beach health, at the eighth annual Great Lakes Beach Association (GLBA), to be held Sept. 15-17 at Indiana Dunes State Park and the Indiana Dunes Learning Center.  more...

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Growing list of fish threatened in Ohio, across nation

This week, the U.S. Geological Survey and American Fisheries Society listed 700 fish species in the United States, Canada and Mexico as vulnerable, threatened or endangered. The list includes 61 species considered extinct.   more...

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