Before closing out 2024, we want to take some time to celebrate some of the clean water wins this past year. The Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition is grateful for our partners across the eight-state Great Lakes region and these successes wouldn’t have been possible without their continual efforts; thank you, all!

The U.S. Senate last night passed the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Act of 2024. It is important that the House pass the bill in the remaining days of Congress, as a failure to act will mean that the Great Lakes congressional delegation will have to start from square one with a new Congress in January 2025.

The dust is settling after the 2024 elections, and Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition staff are assessing what the elections will mean for our work. In the meantime, there’s a lot of work left to do before Congress adjourns at the end of December, and we are focusing on several priorities that we believe can be pushed across the finish line.

Materials from the 2024 Fall Fly-in

We had another successful Great Lakes Conference in 2024! Around 280 people joined us in Chicago over the course of two days. We’re already planning the 2025 Great Lakes Conference and we hope you’ll join us next fall in Rochester, New York!

This week the EPA removed New York’s Rochester Embayment Area of Concern on the shore of Lake Ontario from the list of most-contaminated sites in the Great Lakes region, drawing praise from the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition.

Hundreds of advocates for the Great Lakes are preparing to gather in Chicago, Illinois, September 26-27, for the 2024 Great Lakes Conference, put on by the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition.

To help combat tree inequity, nonprofit environmental advocacy organization Faith in Place was awarded $1.99 million by the U.S. Forest Service’s Urban and Community Forestry Program to increase urban tree canopies in the Great Lakes region. Made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act, these funds will allow Faith in Place to facilitate tree planning and workforce development projects at faith institutions and 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations serving disadvantaged communities throughout Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.