Great Lakes-St. Lawrence News for Legislators | |
The next annual meeting date and location are set — Sept. 23-24 in downtown Chicago — and a limited number of travel scholarships will be available for Great Lakes legislators to attend | |
A hallmark of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Legislative Caucus is its annual meeting — the only event of its kind devoted to legislators serving the eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces within the Great Lakes basin.
The GLLC Executive Committee, led by Illinois Rep. Robyn Gabel, chair, and Minnesota Rep. Jennifer Schultz, vice chair; is pleased to announce that the organization has secured a meeting date and location — Sept. 23-24 in downtown Chicago, at the InterContinental Chicago Magnificent Mile.
Registration for the meeting and a preliminary agenda will be available soon. Watch your mailboxes for a follow-up announcement. In the meantime, please mark your calendars and plan to join your legislative colleagues from both sides of the border.
Over the course of the meeting’s two days — which will likely include a site visit in Chicago in addition to a series of sessions — participants will explore key issues related to protecting the Great Lakes and other water resources. Legislators will be joined by policy leaders and top water scientists and researchers. Attendees also will have the chance to meet and network with fellow legislators with an interest in Great Lakes protection and restoration.
Some travel scholarships will be available for GLLC members to attend. Please contact the Midwestern Office of The Council of State Governments (which provides staff support to the GLLC) for more information, either by phone (630.925.1922) or email.
As a reminder, GLLC membership if free and open to all Great Lakes state and provincial legislators.
View current membership roster and enroll as a member here »
Recap of this year's GLLC webinar series
Thank you to all the legislators, legislative staff and expert speakers who joined us earlier this year for the four-part GLLC webinar series. If you didn't have the chance to participate, these webinars can be viewed in their entirety via the links below.
Plastics in the Great Lakes: An Update on the Science and Discussions on Future Cleanup Efforts »
Climate Resiliency: Challenges and Opportunities for Great Lakes States and Communities »
Great Lakes Policy Update: A Look Back at Key Developments in 2021 and Look Ahead to the Rest of 2021 »
Water Quality and Wetlands: What the Science Says, and Why Policy Matters »
Tracking Great Lakes, water legislation in the states and provinces
Have you recently introduced legislation or helped enact new laws to protect the Great Lakes and/or the water resources in your state or province? If so, we want to know about it. Please contact Tim Anderson or Jon Davis, who help track Great Lakes- and water-related legislation for the caucus. So far this biennium, close to 200 bills have been identified and are being followed on the GLLC legislative tracker.
View the GLLC legislative tracker here »
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Developments Related to GLLC Policy Agenda | |
Water Consumption: Michigan making major new investments to replace lead service lines, address problem of PFAS in drinking water | |
Buoyed by the influx of new federal dollars and strong overall state fiscal conditions, Michigan is moving ahead with an ambitious plan to strengthen the state’s water infrastructure, including the replacement of lead service lines and removal of emerging contaminants that pollute drinking water.
In all, the Legislature allocated close to $2 billion for water projects as part of a larger, $4.7 billion supplemental budget bill approved earlier this year (SB 565). Close to 90 percent of the infrastructure spending is coming from federal sources (including the Coronavirus State Fiscal Recovery Fund, the American Rescue Plan, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act); Michigan’s general fund appropriation under SB 565 is $571.6 million.
PFAS remediation will be a focus of much of the work on drinking water contaminants. For example, a $15 million grant will go toward cleaning up a PFAS-contaminated site at a former industrial site in Muskegon that feeds into Lake Michigan.
At least $325 million will be used to replace lead service lines, including all of the lines in the southwest Michigan town of Benton Harbor. As of late May, more than half of Benton Harbor’s lead lines had been replaced or verified as lead-free with new copper lines.
Three years ago, with adoption of a new Lead and Copper Rule, Michigan became the first U.S. state to require the removal of all lead service lines (by 2041). The state’s action came in the wake of a public health emergency in the town of Flint, where toxic levels of lead in drinking water led to an uptick in deaths from Legionnaires’ disease and lead poisoning among children. This past year, a lead-in-water crisis hit the southwest Michigan town of Benton Harbor.
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Invasive Species: Study credits laws on both sides of the border for drop in invasive species introductions | |
U.S. and Canadian laws enacted over the past few decades have greatly reduced the number of invasive species incidents in the Great Lakes, according to a study published earlier this year by The Society for Conservation Biology.
Since 1993, transoceanic ships with filled ballast tanks have been required by the U.S. Coast Guard to exchange their freshwater or estuarine ballast with oceanic water prior to entering the Great Lakes. However, authors of the study found that up to 95 percent of ships visiting the Great Lakes were loaded with cargo and declared as "no ballast on board" ships, thus exempting them from this regulation on exchanging water.
Species in the ships' residual water thus made their way into the lakes.
But under regulations that took effect in 2006 (Canada) and 2008 (United States), ballast tanks must be rinsed with ocean water, which flushes most residual water while killing freshwater organisms by immersing them in water too salty for these organisms to tolerate.
Any tank that fails inspection is not allowed to discharge water into the lakes.
“When we examine data for invasions attributed exclusively to ballast water release, the number of invaders discovered over the preregulation (1981−1993), partial regulation (1994−2006), and total regulation (2007−2019) periods was 16, 15 and 2 species, respectively, suggesting an 87 percent decline in ballast water invasions under total regulation,” the study concludes.
The authors note that other factors also may have contributed to the decline — for example, state and provincial efforts to raise awareness about the problem of invasive species, combined with new laws and regulations on sales, transport and possession. (As one example of the role of states, Michigan earlier this year awarded $3.6 million to 31 projects that control the introduction and spread of invasive species.)
Other potential vectors (and ongoing threats) for introducing invasive species into the Great Lakes include the “live trade” of living organisms for use on fish farms or as aquarium pets and bait fish. Asian carp, for instance, originally came to North America for use on fish farms in the American South.
Preventing the spread of Asian carp into the lakes is a paramount concern, with the focus now on the construction of new barriers at the Brandon Road Lock and Dam in Illinois by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In May, a U.S. Senate committee approved a measure to fund the construction phase of this project, with the federal government paying for 90 percent of the costs. That percentage is a higher share than most U.S. Army Corps' projects, which require a non-federal sponsor. Great Lakes governors have requested that the federal government fully fund the remainder of the project.
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Coastal Communities: Work on regionwide resiliency study has begun at federal level, and states are investing in new projects of their own | |
In an effort to better address the challenges of changing water levels, erosion, and destructive storms and flooding along the thousands of miles of Great Lakes coastline, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has launched a long-sought, basinwide study on resiliency.
This kind of assessment initially was authorized in 2018 by the U.S. Congress with passage of that year’s Water Resources Development Act. This month, the U.S. House passed a new version of the WRDA requiring the Corps to expedite completion of the Great Lakes study.
A total of $1.1 million has been allocated in fiscal years 2022 and 2023 for the study, with the total cost estimated to be $10.6 million; a quarter of that total must come from the Great Lakes states, according to Mlive.com.
Along with identifying areas that are particularly vulnerable to changing climate conditions, the study will include recommendations on how to bolster the coastline’s ability to withstand, recover from and adapt to future lake-level conditions and increased storm severity. The Corps also has said it will prioritize incorporating natural flood barriers — including wetlands and building offshore reefs — as opposed to relying upon less successful boulder seawalls.
At the state level, too, policymakers are investing in coastal resiliency projects of their own.
In New York, for example, the Department of Environmental Conservation recently announced almost $2.5 million in infrastructure funding for various projects in the Rochester suburbs along Lake Ontario — elevating a road and installing a new drainage system; constructing a living shoreline stabilization structure made up of natural elements; building masonry flood walls; and constructing a more secure wall around a local pump station’s control building.
In Michigan, the state is offering grants and training opportunities for local leaders to develop resiliency strategies. Examples include the the Coastal Leadership Academy, the Catalyst Communities Program, and the Resilient Michigan Collaborative.
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Nutrient Pollution: Voluntary water quality program for agricultural producers in Minnesota shows positive impact on operations' bottom lines | |
For the third year in a row, Minnesota farmers enrolled in a state program aimed at reducing runoff entering state waters have shown higher profits than non-certified farms.
According to an April study by the Minnesota State Agricultural Centers of Excellence, 94 farms in the Minnesota Agricultural Water Quality Certification Program had profits in 2021 that were 6 percent higher than non-certified farmers. That equates to higher net farm income, on average, of more than $16,000 per farm. (See attached table; the column "Environment Cohort" represents the incomes of farms certified under the program.)
Looking at three years of data, the average income was more than $25,000 higher for these certified farms. Other key financial metrics, such as debt-to-asset ratios and operating expense ratios, are also better for farms enrolled in the voluntary program.
Participants get and maintain certification by adopting approved farm management practices. They are then automatically deemed in compliance with any new state agricultural water quality laws or rules for 10 years.
The state also regularly analyzes the program’s environmental impact; last year, researchers found:
- 216 million pounds of soil have been kept on Minnesota fields annually; and
- 76.2 million pounds of sediment and 47,878 pounds of phosphorus are being prevented from entering Minnesota’s waters every year.
Researchers also found that the state’s certified farmers helped keep 44,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere. Since the program’s statewide launch in 2016, 1,197 farms totaling more than 845,000 acres have been certified across Minnesota. Gov. Tim Walz has announced a goal of enrolling one million acres by the end of 2022.
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Toxic Substances: Work completed at one of the largest-scale 'Areas of Concern' projects in Great Lakes | |
Petroleum hydrocarbons, mercury, lead, heavy metals, oil and other contaminants have long impaired Muskegon Lake in Michigan and the surrounding area — the result of many years of heavy industrial activity.
In May, local, state and federal leaders announced a major milestone: All of the necessary cleanup at Muskegon Lake had been completed. The next step toward delisting this site as a Great Lakes "Area of Concern (AOC)" is assessing and monitoring the environmental quality of the lake over time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says.
Restoration of Muskegon Lake is one of the largest-scale AOC projects in the Great Lakes region.
Cleanup involved the remediation of contaminated sediments at different sites, with work accelerated thanks to funding from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. According to the EPA, a total of four sediment remediation projects were completed at a total cost of $46.6 million ($30.3 million in federal funding and $16.3 million from nonfederal sources).
The GLRI funds a variety of Great Lakes protection and restoration initiatives, but the removal of toxic substances and cleanup of Areas of Concern receive the most dollars (see pie chart).
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The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Legislative Caucus (GLLC) is a binational, nonpartisan organization that exists solely for the purpose of engaging state and provincial legislators in the policymaking process related to the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River. Secretariat services are provided by The Council of State Governments Midwestern Office. Financial support is provided in part by The Joyce Foundation and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation provides support for the GLLC's work on nutrient pollution.
For more information about the caucus, visit the GLLC website. CSG Midwest's Tim Anderson, Derek Cantù and Jon Davis contributed to this newsletter.
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