Gary Wilson
Commentary
By Gary Wilson
The Great Lakes intelligentsia rolls into Chicago this week for its confab loosely known as Great Lakes Week.
It’s the gathering of the various councils, commissions, initiatives, agencies, coalitions and environmental groups that meet annually. This year it’s Chicago’s turn to host.
The agenda covers the gamut of Great Lakes issues but they always try to localize it. Expect to hear about Asian carp, the Chicago waterways and urban infrastructure.
Chicago’s end of Lake Michigan doesn’t have an algae problem, but algae blooms have to be on the agenda because of the havoc they’ve wrought on drinking water quality elsewhere.
This tends to be a happy confluence of conferences so you’ll hear a lot about the merits of collaboration and celebrating success.
Plus, the Great Lakes community is a stay between the lines bunch that avoids confrontation in favor of collaboration at almost all costs. Its working model has moved closer to that of The Nature Conservancy where it’s thought a better result can be achieved by working closely with the polluters — agriculture for example — than to confront them.
The Natural Resources Defense Council’s Chicago office is the exception.
Its director, Henry Henderson, does not suffer platitudes from politicians, agency staffers or polluters. NRDC attorney Ann Alexander minces no words when criticizing the U.S. EPA for its laissez faire approach to handling agricultural pollution.
What to expect
The agendas are honestly bland this year, unless you’re interested in managed grazing, bird migration, PAH loadings and other important but uninspiring topics.
There is a session titled Solving a Great Binational Challenge: Lake Erie Algal Blooms. That’s interesting because what needs to be done is known, we just don’t do it. I’m not sure what more talk will accomplish.
Jo-Ellen Darcy’s keynote address on invasive species (read Asian carp) and the Chicago waterways system could be of note. Darcy is in charge of Civil Works for the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps is the favorite whipping boy for many Great Lakes advocates who think it has dawdled in finding a long term solution to fend off the advancing carp.
But Darcy has home field advantage since there’s not much sentiment in Chicago and Illinois for what many want — the physical separation of the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River. And she has the support of both Illinois U.S. senators who want no part of a multi-billion dollar, multi-year federal project like what’s been proposed.
Where’s Waukesha?
Conspicuous by its absence is any mention of Waukesha’s imminent request to divert Great Lakes water out of the basin — the first test of the Great Lakes Compact.
That’s curious because it’s one of the biggest issues facing the Great Lakes. The Waukesha decision will set precedent for the diversion requests that will follow. A discussion of it is more important than that of managed grazing, you’d think.
The Healing Our Waters coalition of environmental groups is singularly focused on securing federal money for Great Lakes restoration and keeping that program going. Waukesha is not on their radar, though members of the organization do engage on it individually.
I’m not sure why or how Waukesha was left off the Great Lakes Commission’s (governors) agenda. Waukesha’s request is expected to land squarely on seven governor’s desks early next year and you’d expect there would at least be an update briefing.
Northerly Island: Where’s the lake?
Field trips can be the highlight of a conference and there’s one that I recommend.
A tour of Northerly Island, Chicago’s recently completed and conflicted attempt to turn a lakefront airport into a nature area is worth a look. I biked it last week and it’s a conundrum that can’t seem to figure out what it is.
Northerly Island was already in a natural state the Chicago Park District said in a 2009 promotional video touting its many nature-in-the-city benefits. But a new nature project was conjured up by the Army Corps and the Chicago Park District in 2012. Seems they found some unspent restoration money — salvage, it’s called — and didn’t want it to go unspent.
Was it necessary to gin up an excuse to spend $9.5 million dollars — mostly from federal taxpayers — to make it slightly better and a little more natural? It’s not like they would be restoring brown fields.
Then there’s this.
Rocks stabilize Northerly Island erosion. Image: Gary Wilson
The project designers and planners apparently didn’t factor lake erosion into their process so they installed a long line of double-stacked boulders on the lake side of the natural area. The boulders are there to protect the rest of the park from lapping waves and intense storms.
That means there’s a nature area on the edge of Lake Michigan, but you can’t see the lake. Go see for yourself.
For $9.5 million it seems the Army Corps, the Chicago Park District and celebrity architect Jeanne Gang could have figured out an alternative to huge boulders that block a view of the lake. But then, I’m not an engineer, a celebrity architect or a park executive.
And speaking of the $9.5 million, it’s notable that $4.2 million of it came from federal Great Lakes Restoration funds.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, overseer of restoration funding, had to turn a blind eye to that expenditure. It’s not Great Lakes restoration.
Not even close considering that bordering — literally — the nature preserve is a 30,000 seat rock concert venue that last week hosted Farm Aid. When I visited the site, beer and soft drink trucks were in the queue to restock for the next concert.
The $4.2 million to spruce up 40 acres on Northerly Island is harder to fathom when compared to what has been spent from Great Lakes restoration money to clean up the legacy toxic sites in the Detroit River.
According to the EPA’s restoration tracking system, $6.4 million has been spent on the Detroit River Area of Concern. That’s only a couple million dollars more than for Chicago’s 40 acres on Northerly Island.
Conference attendees may want to reflect on that when staring at the boulders.
Conferences at their best educate and energize the attendees. But they come and quickly go and rarely live up to their hype.
I’ve attended versions of this conference many times and it can be substantive and dynamic. Grand Rapids in 2005, Detroit in 2011 and Cleveland in 2012 come to mind.
I don’t get that sense this year but maybe it’s just me.
It could be the rock concert venue and those super expensive boulders on Northerly Island that have me bummed out.
Or imagining what could have been accomplished with that $4.2 million. That’s a bummer.