Echo

Wheeling wetlands dispute on settlement track

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(IL) Chicago Tribune – In July, the Chicago District of the Corps found that village-owned wetlands west of Mark Smith’s Prairie Park condominium development at 700 N. Wolf Rd. had been filled improperly. Smith and village officials agree Smith’s company, Smith Family Construction Inc., did the filling without authorization or approval from village officials.”We encroached on some village property slightly,” Smith said last week of the work he said his company mistakenly did on the land east and south of the Rogers Memorial Diversion Channel that takes water to the Des Plaines River. More

Echo

Float down the Grand delivers a story

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(MI) Lansing State Journal – It’s been 16 years since then-Editorial Page Editor Mark Nixon’s battle cry for riverine improvement. And, to the credit of many, much has been done to improve Lansing’s river. But, as a recent, eye-opening boat tour along its downtown segment illustrates, there is still much to be done to make the Grand River all it could be. More

Echo

Farm runoff woes: Can voluntary programs alone keep dirt out of the water?

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By Jeff Gillies
jeffgillies@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
Sept. 17, 2009

The Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay both field noxious summer algae blooms fueled by dirt and nutrients from farm fields. The six northeastern states that drain into the Chesapeake Bay have a patchwork plan to curb it. It doesn’t work and never will, says a recent report by the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit lobbyist and research group. The report claims runoff prevention programs fail because they’re voluntary — farmers that don’t want to participate don’t have to.

Echo

State needs to continue wetlands protection

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(MI) The Muskegon Chronicle – West Michigan residents should get behind a Saugatuck Township lawmaker’s effort to save Michigan’s wetlands protection program, which will end on Oct. 1. Sen. Patricia Birkholz last week introduced a bill to keep the program, which Gov. Jennifer Granholm wants to eliminate as a cost-savings measure, running for at least two more years while new funding sources are sought. More

Nearshore

Dams Are Thwarting Louisiana Marsh Restoration, Study Says

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(NY) The New York Times –
Desperate to halt the erosion of Louisiana’s coast, officials there are talking about breaking Mississippi River levees south of New Orleans to restore the nourishing flow of muddy water into the state’s marshes. But in a new analysis, scientists at Louisiana State University say inland dams trap so much sediment that the river no longer carries enough to halt marsh loss, especially now that global warming is speeding a rise in sea levels. More

Recreation

Dredged silt from Lake Macatawa will be used as soil to help build parks in Ottawa County

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(MI) Grand Rapids Press – Reclaimed soil from the bottom of Lake Macatawa will be heaped on dry land this summer to help build parks in four area townships. As much as 200,000 cubic yards of dried lake silt will be distributed by the Holland Board of Public Works and the Army Corps of Engineers to build or improve parks in Fillmore, Laketown, Park and Zeeland townships. Since 1997, the Corps deposited the dredgings in a 48-acre containment facility at Waverly Avenue and Lakewood Boulevard. The facility now is full of nutrient-rich black dirt that will be hauled to the four townships and three other sites. More

Water

Lakes Erie and St. Clair get spring dose of dirt

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Some Great Lakes watersheds sweating off the winter freeze are sending huge brown plumes of sediment into Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair. But are these smudges, visible in satellite photographs, a sign of spring or a sign that something is wrong? “It’s both,” said the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ John Matthews on the Lake Erie plume. “It’s normal, but it’s also a function of how we’ve affected stream channels in that watershed.”

Echo

Local wetlands programs in limbo as state seeks to shed regulatory authority and costs

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Jeff Gillies, gilliesj@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo

Whether local governments in Michigan will still regulate small wetlands is murky after Gov. Jennifer Granholm proposed returning the state regulatory authority to the federal government. Michigan and New Jersey are the only states authorized to enforce the section of the national Clean Water Act requiring a permit for filling wetlands. Under that authority local communities can enact even stricter rules for protecting wetlands valued for providing wildlife habitat and sponging up storm water runoff. Since 1984, anyone seeking to drain, dredge, fill or build in a wetland must apply for a permit from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. In other states federal regulators oversee such permits.

Echo

Great Lakes cleanups hampered by economic woes, bureaucratic hurdles

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By Andrew Mcglashen
Environmental Health News

A most-wanted list of toxic substances–including PCBs, dioxins, mercury, lead and pesticides–has lingered in western New York’s Eighteenmile Creek for decades, leaving its salmon, trout and other fish unsafe to eat and jeopardizing its wildlife. Now the nation’s sour economy has complicated and delayed the already daunting cleanup of the Lake Ontario tributary, as well as several dozen other toxic hotspots around the Great Lakes. “Given the fiscal situation in the State of New York, it’s really up in the air if the cleanup will get done,”said Victor DiGiacomo Jr., who chairs a local group of landowners, officials and others aiming to restore the area. Eighteenmile Creek, a meandering, lush stream in Niagara County known for its salmon and trout runs, is one of 43 highly contaminated sites that were designated “Great Lakes Areas of Concern” more than 20 years ago as part of a water-quality pact between the United States and Canada. As a promise to expedite the cleanups, Congress passed the Great Lakes Legacy Act in 2002, and then last fall, reauthorized it for another two years.