Pollution from industrial facilities like this one at East Harbor in Indiana up to the 1970s left a legacy of contamination still in need of cleanup from new Great Lakes restoration funding.
Giving President Obama a major victory, Congress on Thursday sent him a spending bill containing $475 million in new funding to help restore the Great Lakes. During his 2008 campaign, candidate Obama committed to a multi-year effort to combat Great Lakes invasive species, habitat loss, climate change impacts and threats to water quality. The Great Lakes contain almost one-fifth of the world’s available surface freshwater.
In 2004, former President George W. Bush declared the Great Lakes “a national treasure” but did not support new federal funding for their care. Although the $475 million is in part the result of a five-year lobbying campaign by Great Lakes organizations, questions persist about whether it will be effective in restoring Great Lakes ecological health. U.S. EPA has released a spending plan dividing the new money among more than 100 different initiatives launched by federal, state and nonprofit agencies.
Cam Davis, the EPA’s Great Lakes coordinator and former long-time director of the nonprofit Alliance for the Great Lakes, defends the plan as a major step forward and that spending plans can be adjusted in future years.
Meanwhile, some Great Lakes cargo vessels have won an exemption from tough new clean air requirements with an approriations rider in the same bill containing the $475 million.
Photo credit: U.S. EPA Great Lakes National Program Office.
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Dave Dempsey
Dave Dempsey is a writer active in conservation for more than 25 years. A frequent freelance contributor and newsweekly columnist, Dave is the author of four award-winning books on the environment and a biography of Michigan’s longest-serving Governor, William Milliken. A native of Michigan who now lives in the Twin Cities metro in Minnesota, Dave served as environmental advisor to Michigan Governor James J. Blanchard from 1983-89. President Clinton appointed him to the Great Lakes Fishery Commission in 1994. Dave has also held numerous administrative, policy and consulting positions for nonprofit conservation and environmental organizations in Michigan and Minnesota. He was both policy director and executive director at the Michigan Environmental Council and Great Lakes policy consultant for Clean Water Action. Dave has a bachelor of arts degree from Western Michigan University and a master’s degree in natural resource development from Michigan State University, and has served as an adjunct university instructor at MSU in environmental policy.
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