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New program encourages sustainability in Great Lakes cities

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A new regional initiative encourages green energy use, economic development and water resource protection in more than 70 Great Lakes cities. The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a bi-national network of mayors promoting the region’s restoration, recently launched the Green Cities Transforming Towards Sustainability program. The program is supposed to protect water and coastal areas and promote low-carbon energy generation and green land use and building design. Officials hope green economic development stimulates local economies.

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NASA: Moon may have more water than the Great Lakes

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The fight to keep Great Lakes water in the Great Lakes isn’t just regional anymore. Things just got global, if not interplanetary. That’s because new NASA-funded research suggests that the amount of water locked up in Earth’s longtime orbital nemesis — the moon — could exceed the volume of the Great Lakes. So unless the region conserves every drop it can, I’ll have to listen to my grandkids prattle on about how “The Great Lakes were cool until their volume was marginalized by the discovery of hydroxyl indigenous to lunar apatite, a water-bearing mineral.” Lousy moon-brats.

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Grants spotlight lighthouse projects

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Supporters of 10 Michigan lighthouses requested renovation grants from the Michigan Historic Preservation Office this year.

Funding for the Michigan Lighthouse Assistance program comes from the sale of specialty license plates. Michigan has 128 lighthouses, the most of any state.

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Friday Five: The grandma who stood up

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You know the big names credited with major policy decisions that affect the basin.

But who are the people behind the scenes who shape Great Lakes policy?

Our series ends this week with Sandy Bihn, western Lake Erie’s well-armed activist.

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How connected do you feel to the Lakes?

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One of my sources, a scientist at the Annis Water Resources Institute in Muskegon, Mich., recently chided me for writing about the Great Lakes from the middle of Michigan here in East Lansing.  How could we properly relate to the Lakes when we are so far away, he wondered. It got me thinking.  Does he have point? The Great Lakes Echo is hardly on the beach.  According to Daft Logic’s handy Google Maps distance calculator, the Echo newsroom is 71 miles from Lake Huron, 82 miles from Lake Erie, 88 miles from Lake Michigan, 236 miles from Lake Ontario and 258 miles from Lake Superior as the crow flies.   And as long we we’re being honest, in the six years I’ve lived here, I’ve only been to two of the Great Lakes. But do you have to be on a Lake to feel connected to it?  They influence state policies, provide research opportunities for our universities, influence our weather patterns, draw tourists and their cash, and make this region of North America just a little more unique.  I don’t have to be on the beach to remember that I’m surrounded by massive freshwater seas. But Michigan is unique.  We have more Great Lake shoreline than any other state.  How connected do the folks in Indiana feel to their tip of Lake Michigan?  What about Minnesota, with a side-swipe of Lake Superior?  Or Pennsylvania, the state with the least amount of Lake shoreline?  We’re all in the same basin, we share invasive species and federal policies, but does everyone feel a connection to the Lakes?