Echo

Three lakes are targeted for cleanup to reduce pollution

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(MN) Minneapolis Star Tribune – Storm water carries so much phosphorus into a chain of lakes in Maple Grove and Plymouth that it may take 20 years to get the three lakes off the state’s impaired waters list. That’s the finding of a new report to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency which describes the extent of the pollution in each lake and what can be done to reverse it. The report begins the process of cleaning up the lakes as required by the federal Clean Water Act. More

Land

Rising threat of food-borne illness lurks in packages of leafy greens

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(IL) Chicago Tribune – A growing threat for food-borne illnesses comes attractively packaged, is stunningly convenient and is increasingly popular with shoppers looking for healthy meals: ready-to-eat leafy greens that make putting together a green salad as easy as opening a bag. Though beef and poultry are a more frequent source of food-related outbreaks than produce, the number of outbreaks tied to lettuce, spinach and other leafy greens, whether fresh-cut or whole, has been rising over the last two decades, according to the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest. On Tuesday, researchers with the group called leafy greens the riskiest food regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, with 363 outbreaks linked to those foods from 1990 to 2006. (Meat is regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.) More

Echo

Obama Ignores Sportfishing Industry in Great Lakes Policy

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(TX) FishingWorld.com – A sweeping oceans and Great Lakes management policy document proposed by the Obama Administration will have a significant impact on the sportfishing industry, America’s saltwater anglers and the nation’s coastal communities. The draft policy, the Interim Report of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, issued on September 17, will govern federal Pacific and Atlantic Ocean waters and Great Lakes resource conservation and management and will coordinate these efforts among federal, state and local agencies. This past June, President Obama created the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, led by the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), to develop a draft national policy and implementation strategy for conserving and managing the United States ocean territory and the Great Lakes. More

Echo

International Joint Commission examines Great Lakes water quality

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A binational group of Great Lakes scientists and policy experts advising the U.S. and Canadian governments about the Great Lakes met in Windsor in early October. This special report encompasses some of the issues they discussed

Oct. 8, 2009
The U.S. Coast Guard considers new rules to regulate ballast to slow the spread of invasive species in the Great Lakes. Oct. 7, 2009
Global warming could spur algae growth in Lake Superior.

Echo

Global warming could spur algae growth, oxygen loss in Lake Superior

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By Emma Ogutu
ogutu@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Oct. 7, 2009
Editors note: This is part of a series relevant to the International Joint commission’s biennial meeting in Windsor today and Thursday. One of the reports a U.S. and Canadian advisory commission will consider today in Windsor will look at runaway plant growth in the Great Lakes. Members of the International Joint Commission, which advises the governments on environmental issues, will likely hear that there is no cause for alarm about excessive growth of algae in Lake Superior. But global warming is catching up with the Great Lakes, Superior included, and it may soon undergo changes that could turn it into the perfect host for algal blooms.

The effects of global warming could actually be more complicated than just that.  An important question is how prepared the commission and other government agencies are to handle emerging global environmental issues.

Echo

Reseeding project gets to rice’s historic roots

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(WI) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Like canoe-paddling Johnny Appleseeds, John Patrick and others are trying to change northern Wisconsin’s landscape back to the way it used to look, one handful of wild rice at a time. Efforts to restore ancient wild rice beds are paying off as rice gatherers – who recently finished one of the best harvests in recent years – now collect as much as one-third of the annual crop from reseeded beds, said Peter David, a wildlife biologist with the commission. More

Echo

Water Wars: Advocating for ‘public trust’

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(MI) Traverse City Record-Eagle – It was a busy summer on the water front for Great Lakes advocates in what environmentalists and others are calling “The Water Wars.” Traverse City environmental attorney Jim Olson, west Michigan citizens groups and various organizations are in the thick of it, working to plug holes they see in laws and agreements designed to protect the lakes from water withdrawals, sale, privatization and export outside the basin. More

Waste

Garbage-to-ethanol plant would change town

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(IN) The Post-Tribune – Yellowed photos and a school yearbook tell the story of a rural town of 300 people whose lives may never be the same again if a $285 million, first-of-its-kind garbage-to-ethanol plant becomes a reality. The vast majority of Schneider’s populace hopes it will. Businesses come and go, struggle to stay alive in and around this burg that hugs the Kankakee River and, while most residents work outside of town, many are unemployed, they say. More

Echo

Danish secrets of renewable energy

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(MI) The Mudpuppy – We’ve been introduced to a whole new world in Copenhagen. Green energy is the norm. People “believe” in climate change. Words sound funny. On Monday, we rode in a bus called Turisfart. Those last four letters mean fast, or speed.

Echo

Long-forgotten water cistern adds to Dominican’s sustainability effort

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(IL) Chicago Tribune – Through a dim hallway, past a huge chamber filled with chugging generators and wheezing boilers, the jewel in Dominican University’s green crown sits quietly in a dank antechamber dappled with sunlight. It’s an ancient concrete water cistern, and for more than 90 years it has studiously collected rainwater runoff from nearby buildings. Overlooked and forgotten for decades in the basement of one of the oldest buildings on campus, the old reservoir is now the centerpiece of the River Forest-based university’s green initiative. The story of how the ancient cistern was put back into use at Dominican is a combination of fortuitous discovery and sensible sustainability. More