Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/tag/lakesriverswetlands/page/9/)
Kayaker Bryan Hansel said his new 17.5-foot boat is comfy and seems seaworthy, two traits he’ll put to the test Saturday when he embarks on a 3,800-mile trip around all five Great Lakes.
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.”
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.
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.