Echo

Wastewater spray contaminated west Michigan groundwater

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The Detroit Free Press has an extensive, two-part series on contaminated ground water in west Michigan. Food processing plants spray wastewater onto local crops, kicking off a process that primes groundwater to pick up extra iron and other heavy metals. The food processing industry and a state environmental agency have known about the problem for years, but residents say they have been slow to clean up the problem or notify them. Part one: “Companies denied responsibility, failed to meet cleanup deadlines and violated state law with leaks, spills and illegal dumping of fruit waste, records show.” Part two: “What unfolded next was a saga of illegal blueberry waste dumping, which contaminated the groundwater that fed the stream, killing fish and other aquatic life in it.”

Echo

Tribe continues work to recover and test barrels of military waste in Lake Superior

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By Jeff Gillies
jeffgillies@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
July 28, 2009

The Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa will update officials and residents next week on its efforts to pull 70 barrels of military waste out of Lake Superior next summer, the Duluth News Tribune reports. The U.S. Army dumped as many as 1400 barrels between 1959 and 1962 to keep bomb designs out of Soviet hands. A contractor hired by the Red Cliff Band this past fall found 591 barrels using sonar and submarines. A 2008 report from the Minnesota Department of Health found that the barrels posed no likely threat to human health. But Red Cliff officials want the barrels tested for chemicals that could contaminate fish.

Echo

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could play major role in Great Lakes habitat restoration

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Editors note: Congress may invest $475 million this year in Great Lakes cleanup. This story is part of an occasional look at proposals for spending it. Weigh in on this and other ideas on Echo’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative forum. Other stories. By Jeff Gillies
jeffgillies@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
July 23, 2009

A federal agency better known for dredging harbors than building wetlands could soon have a bigger stake in restoring Great Lakes habitats.

Echo

Wisconsin scientists target invasive species in Great Lakes ballast water

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By Jeff Gillies, jeffgillies@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
July 13, 2009

Associated Press reporter Elizabeth Dunbar recently wrote this story that checks in with researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Superior who are testing systems to kill aquatic organisms hiding in the ballast water inside of ships. They’re using a system of tanks and pumps to replicate the innards of a ship navigating freshwater — the only such facility the world. Treatment systems have to eliminate foreign organisms that wreak ecological havoc on the Great Lakes while leaving the water clean enough to return to the lakes.  The systems are one element of the patchwork of ballast regulations passed and proposed by Great Lakes states.  The confusion of following different rules in different states has shippers and environmentalists calling on Congress to pass a unified set of federal ballast rules.

Wildlife

Scientists hope to curb exploding bat lungs near Great Lakes wind turbines

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By Jeff Gillies, jeffgillies@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
July 9, 2009

Wind turbines cut air pollution, but they may mean respiratory trouble for bats flying nearby. “Basically, their lungs explode,” said Barb Barton, biologist with the Michigan Natural Features Inventory. Though wind turbines can kill bats by smacking them out of the sky, the huge spinning blades more often take out bats without touching them. Turbine blades spinning at up to 200 mph leave in their wake a vortex of low pressure, Barton said. Bats get caught in the vortex, and the change in pressure ruptures capillaries in the bats’ lungs.

Echo

American Environmental Photographs collection holds trove of historic Great Lakes images

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By Jeff Gillies, jeffgillies@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
July 6, 2009

Wonder what the rocky cliffs of Lake Superior or the dusty dunes of Lake Michigan looked like 100 years ago? You can find out using the American Environmental Photographs collection from the University of Chicago Library. The collection holds around 4,500 photographs taken from 1891 to 1936, and includes hundreds from around the Great Lakes. The collection is part the work of Henry Chandler Cowles, a botanist, conservationist and pioneer in the field of ecology, said Daniel Meyer, the University of Chicago Library’s associate director of special collections. Cowles taught botany at the University of Chicago, where he often led a summer course that included a trip to ecologically significant locations like the dunes of Lake Michigan, the south shore of Lake Superior and a few of the lakes’ islands.

Wildlife

For Great Lakes mudpuppies in decline, new Canadian research is a bright spot

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A bizarre salamander and the endangered, clam-like mussel that relies on it got good news recently from Canadian scientists. Federal researchers found an apparently stable population of mudpuppies in Ontario’s Sydenham River. The research is published in the June issue of the Journal of Great Lakes Research. Mudpuppies are native to the Great Lakes and have beady eyes, slimy skin and feathery gills sticking out of their necks. “I find them very interesting animals, but I can see why the general public wouldn’t rate them up there with bluebirds,” said Jim Harding, herpetology specialist at the Michigan State University Museum.

Echo

Two series highlight trip around Lake Superior, fisheries in Lake Huron and Lake Michigan

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By Jeff Gillies
Great Lakes Echo
June 25, 2009

Here are couple of recent and on-going series on Great Lakes topics. Dave Spratt of Great Northern Outdoors has written a good three-part series that tells the story of shifting food webs in lakes Huron and Michigan. Parts one and two look at the collapse of Chinook salmon and the rise of walleye in Lake Huron — changes driven by the impact of zebra and quagga mussels on the once abundant alewives. Part three heads to Lake Michigan, where alewives are down but haven’t disappeared, and competing interests from five resource departments in four states make consensus on fish sticking decisions tough. The story is the third one listed on the Great Northern Outdoors main page.

Echo

Special Report: On the (Lake) Level

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The International Joint Commission spent $3.6 million to study water levels of lakes Michigan, Huron and Erie. A five-part series on the controversial results. What did the study find, who still isn’t happy and what happens next? Day 1: Report blames natural causes, not dredging, for low lake levels
When the Great Lakes are high, shoreline houses risk erosion that could tumble them into the water. When they are low, more structures are exposed to wind damage, boaters can’t pull up to docks and ships can’t transport as much cargo.

Echo

Lake levels report weighs Great Lakes basin’s glacial legacy

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By Jeff Gillies, jeffgillies@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
June 8, 2009

Even today the Great Lakes landscape is bouncing back from the glaciers that retreated 10,000 years ago. A key question researchers recently sought to answer is whether that has anything to do with fluctuating lake levels. Here’s how it might work: The massive ice sheets pushed down the earth’s crust like a person pressing on a basketball, said Grahame Larson, professor of geology at Michigan State University. And when the ice is gone, the relatively pliable layer under the Earth’s rocky crust rebounds, though more slowly than the surface of a basketball. “When you stop pushing on the basketball, the basketball surface pops right back up,” Larson said.