It truly is a great time to be a Great Lake because, as Great Lakes Watcher Dave Dempsey points out – instead of debating whether to fund restoration, the federal government is debating how much money to dedicate to restoration. Great Lakes restoration is no longer considered fodder for the great Piggy Book (read pork barrel) instead it is a legitimate budget line, and that didn’t happen without a lot of your blood, sweat and tears.
Dempsey goes on to caution us not to fall into the same pattern as previous restoration efforts, such as the Chesapeake Bay rescue that still struggles after years of work. One of the Bay’s big problems is sewage from humans and farms – the Great Lakes share this disadvantage. We need to make sure we get as much money from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund as possible to deal with our water infrastructure problems. Recently, we learned that the US House is threatening to change the formula used to dole out these funds and the Great Lakes states will lose federal help in this much needed effort. Not only do we need to ensure that this does not happen, but we also need to be on guard and hear Dempsey – this restoration effort cannot peter out. Unlike the brackish Chesapeake Bay (that happens to sit right under the collective noses of Congress), the Great Lakes are miles away and hold the lion’s share of this nation’s fresh water reserves. This has to be preserved as our population grows and our fresh water continues to diminish from overuse and the ravages of climate change.
We are at a wrinkle in time when we have a unique opportunity to save the Great Lakes (and we don’t even have to travel to the fifth dimension to do so). We have to harness the federal effort and ensure that the Great Lakes Regional Restoration Strategy is the blueprint used for spending that money. Last March, HOW’s co-chairs wrote to each member of the Federal Great Lakes Interagency Task Force and suggested four principles that would make the GLRI a success. The EPA’s action plan shows they listened by incorporating most of our recommendations, but still there are ways we would like to see the action plan revised to fully match our suggestions. That is why HOW will be sending our comments to the EPA this week – comments that are informed by those HOW members who wrote to us. We have until Wednesday to submit these comments. If you want to read HOW’s document and sign onto it contact Jennifer Heller at Hellerj@nwf.org as soon as possible. Great work team – onward!
Related posts:
- Land, Stone and Mist on the Shores of Lake Superior
- Halloween Land Carp Attack
- Oceans Task Force (Includes Great Lakes)to Testify at Hearing
- It’s Lobby Season and the Great Lakes are on the Agenda
- Great Lakes Bills Waiting For US Senate Action