Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/tag/great-lakes/page/14/)
(WI) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Milwaukee economic development officials would use discounted water rates to help recruit companies from Atlanta and other cities with water supply problems, under a plan endorsed Wednesday. The city would offer reduced rates to Milwaukee’s 100 largest water users that create at least 25 jobs by either moving to the city, or expanding current operations, said Carrie Lewis, Water Works superintendent. More
(MI) Up North Live – The community will have new opportunities to learn about the importance of the Great Lakes with the help of a grant. The Grand Traverse Conservation District was awarded $200,000 from the Great Lakes Fishery Trust for a grant under the Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative. More
(WI) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – There are a lot of fish tales going around. Here is a true one that is about more than just the recently famous Asian carp. Once upon a time, many years ago, Chicago was a cesspool. It was so polluted in the late 1800s, it has been written, that chickens could run across the scum that formed on top of the rivers. I don’t know if I believe this because it has also been written that, instead of fish, the rivers were full of the floating carcasses of dead cats and horses, and I am not sure a chicken would go anywhere near a dead horse.
(MI) Detroit Free Press – The so-called hole in the St. Clair River, which carries water from Lake Huron down into Lake St. Clair, is definitely big enough to merit filling, although the fix would surely be more technologically sophisticated than that. Nonetheless, the recommendation of a study group — that their findings be incorporated into a much larger study of the lakes — is probably sound. The St.
(ON) Toronto Star – Workers at the Darlington nuclear station filled the wrong tank with a cocktail of water and a radioactive isotope Monday, spilling more than 200,000 litres into Lake Ontario. Ontario Power Generation is investigating how the accident happened and officials say hourly tests of the lake water show that the level of tritium — the radioactive isotope of hydrogen — poses no harm to nearby residents. More
(IL) Chicago Sun Times – Twenty years after the pervasive zebra mussel was first detected in the Great Lakes, the U.S. Coast Guard is preparing rules to prevent new invasive species from infiltrating the nation’s freshwater systems.
Ecologists, environmentalists and public officials have mixed feelings about the rules. While they are delighted over the prospect of the first national standard for treating ship ballast water, they’re disappointed by the timetable. “We’ve been dealing with this issue literally for decades,” said Matt Frank, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. “And we don’t believe the Coast Guard rules are aggressive enough.” More
(WI) The Associated Press – Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said Wednesday he wants to know more about the threat Asian carp pose to the Great Lakes. The carp have been migrating northward in the Mississippi and Illinois rivers for decades. Scientists say if they get into the Great Lakes, they could consume plankton, interrupt the food chain and devastate the $7 billion fishery. More
(ON) CBC – Navigational dredging along the St. Clair River in southwestern Ontario has contributed to a drop in water levels in the upper Great Lakes basin, but it’s not an ongoing problem and doesn’t require immediate action, a panel of U.S. and Canadian experts has found. Water levels between Lake Michigan and Lake Erie have dropped an average of 23 centimetres between 1963 and 2006, according to a report by the International Upper Great Lakes Study Board. More
(MI) Detroit Free Press – In blunt terms, members of an international study panel said the idea that a widened St. Clair River is losing billions of gallons of water each day, causing the levels of Michigan and Huron lakes to drop, is bunk. A Canadian group put forth that idea five years ago after an expert it hired concluded that the river was acting like a bathtub drain that had been enlarged by dredging, allowing billions of gallons of water to escape too quickly into Lake Erie. More
(WI) Green Bay Press Gazette – The latest invasive species to threaten the Great Lakes is a brute called the Asian carp. The Wisconsin Legislature should take an opportunity today to act swiftly against the threat. Capable of growing to 4 feet long and 100 pounds, the Asian carp has starved out native species by scooping up plankton as it slowly migrated north up the Mississippi River since the 1970s. The fish originally was imported from Asia to cleanse fish ponds and sewage lagoons in the deep South, but they escaped into the river. More