Right now Canada and the United States are accepting comments on issue-specific aspects of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, from toxics to climate change to invasive species. Great Lakes United is calling on all citizens to ensure a new Agreement reflects current concerns and solutions, and challenge the two countries to protect this vital ecosystem for centuries to come by making sure to participate in the renegotiation process.

Over one hundred years ago, the United States and Canada entered into the first environmental pact in the world: the Boundary Waters Treaty. This committed both countries to ensuring that activities in one country do not negatively affect the quality or quantity of water shared by the two countries, and set the groundwork for the 1972 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

It has now been 22 years since the Agreement was last updated. While we have made progress, these commitments have not yet been fully met, and new challenges demand our attention as well. We have the opportunity today to help in the renegotiation of this historic legislation, and citizen engagement and participation is essential.

Between June 7 and June 9, the governments are hosting webinar sessions on specific topic areas in the Agreement. Join the webinar and demonstrate to the governments that the public is critically concerned about these issues. Click here to register for the webinars.

The other way citizens can currently participate in the renegotiation process is by submitting written comments to the governments. The comment period is open until July 9, 2010, and more information about participating can be found at Great Lakes United’s new GLWQA website:

www.glu.org/glwqa

During the webinars, and in your written comments, raise the most important items on each issue from your perspective and make sure your ideas are included in the new version of this vital Agreement. Great Lakes United has posted webinar guiding points for each of the issue-specific areas that will be addressed. The schedule of webinars is posted below, along with links to the guiding points for each topic:

• Governance and Science Coordination (June 7, 2010 10:00am – 1:15pm EDT)
  • View Governance guiding points from ENGO discussions
  • View Science Coordination guiding points from ENGO discussions
    
• Habitat and Species and Climate Change (June 7, 2010 2:00pm – 5:00pm EDT)
  • View Habitat and Species guiding points from ENGO discussions
  • View Climate Change guiding points from ENGO discussions
    
• Toxics (June 8, 2010 10:30am – 12:30pm EDT)
  • View Toxics guiding points from ENGO discussions
    
• Nutrients (June 8, 2010 2:30pm – 4:30pm EDT)
  
• Ship Source Pollution and Aquatic Invasive Species (June 9, 2010 10:30am – 1:30pm EDT)
  
  • View Ship Source Pollution guiding points from ENGO discussions
  • View Aquatic Invasive Species guiding points from ENGO discussions

Take action today—what we do now to strengthen the Agreement and set the groundwork for a healthier, more robust Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River ecosystem!

We are happy to help you get involved in the webinars and write your own comments. For further information, visit www.glu.org/glwqa or contact John Jackson at 519-744-7503 or jjackson@glu.org or Rachel Heckl at 716-913-2709 or rheckl@glu.org.

In 20 years, cleanup and restoration actions have been completed for only five of the forty-three AOCs. Three of these have been delisted (Collingwood and Severn Sound, both in Ontario, and Oswego in New York State) and two have been declared to be in a “recovery stage” (Spanish Harbour in Ontario and Presque Isle Bay in Pennsylvania).

The most serious aspects of the problem remaining in most of the toxic hotspots are contaminated sediments and pollution from inadequate municipal infrastructure that now, or have the potential to, affect the health of people and the natural life in the AOCs.

The Canadian and U.S. governments estimate that since 1997 approximately 6 million cubic yards of contaminated sediments have been remediated. They estimate that there are between 85 and 100 million cubic yards of contaminated sediments remaining to be cleaned up. This seems overwhelming and very expensive—depending on the remediation method used the cost could be between three and six billion dollars.

Some critics state that the RAPs have just been an endless exercise in planning with little action. These people say Frequently people state that this twenty-year-old experiment should be abandoned and that Areas of Concern (AOCs) and remedial action plans (RAPs) should be removed from Annex 2 of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA). As we now launch into an intensive year of renegotiation of this Agreement, we must decide what we want to do with this program.

In 20 years, cleanup and restoration actions have been completed for only five of the forty-three AOCs. Three of these have been delisted (Collingwood and Severn Sound, both in Ontario, and Oswego in New York State) and two have been declared to be in a “recovery stage” (Spanish Harbour in Ontario and Presque Isle Bay in Pennsylvania).

The most serious aspects of the problem remaining in most of the toxic hotspots are contaminated sediments and pollution from inadequate municipal infrastructure that now, or have the potential to, affect the health of people and the natural life in the AOCs.

The Canadian and U.S. governments estimate that since 1997 approximately 6 million cubic yards of contaminated sediments have been remediated. They estimate that there are between 85 and 100 million cubic yards of contaminated sediments remaining to be cleaned up. This seems overwhelming and very expensive—depending on the remediation method used the cost could be between three and six billion dollars.

Some critics state that the RAPs have just been an endless exercise in planning with little action. These people say that the AOCs are out of date and should be closed down as a concept.

They argue that what we really need in the Great Lakes- St. Lawrence River basin are comprehensive watershed plans for each of the major watersheds, including for those that now have AOCs in them. These people stress that these watershed plans must be more than words on paper, but actual commitments to implement the plans.

It is clear that a principle of organizing for protection and restoration as now required in the GLWQA should be watershed plans throughout the basin. These watershed plans would then feed into the Lakewide Management Plans. Does this mean that the current AOC and RAP process should be dropped?

I believe that instead of tossing out AOCs in disgrace, we should focus on the original reasons these areas were designated as AOCs—their pollution and contamination levels are well above the average: they are toxic hotspots. One of the reasons AOCs have taken so long to address is that in some areas the Remedial Action Plan drifted into becoming a watershed plan. This diverted attention away from the most pressing contamination problems that people living in these areas are confronted with and has allowed governments to claim great progress on relatively inexpensive projects. Habitat rehabilitation projects are a prime example. These projects are important, but were not the core reason for designating these places as AOCs.

In the meantime, the more immediately critical actions of updating municipal infrastructure, including introducing green infrastructure and cleaning up contaminated sediments and toxic sites, has lagged.

For the long-term well-being of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River ecosystem, I believe that we must keep AOCs as part of the GLWQA. But the AOC work should be more narrowly focused on the pollution and contamination problems in those areas that make these hotspots in the first place. The GLWQA should include timelines by which clean-up actions will be completed. The Agreement should also include provisions for designating additional AOCs, if investigations find other areas that are toxic hotspots.

The role of watershed plans should be strengthened in the GLWQA, requiring them to be developed and implemented throughout the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River basin, including in AOCs. When the clean-up actions for the AOCs are completed and once the area has been restored, the AOC designation should be lifted. But people in the community should continue to organize around the watershed planning and implementation process that has been set up in those communities.

The nine MISA regulations came into force in 1993 and 1995 to regulate approximately 140 major industrial facilities in Ontario. They were developed after monitoring the discharges of 140 facilities across nine sectors. Identifying the most likely pollutants in each sector, the regulations set discharge standards for each.

The overarching goal of MISA was to prioritize pollution prevention ahead of pollution control. Instead of focussing on end-of-pipe solutions, the regulations intended to stop the pollution from being created in the first place through processes such as chemical substitution, closed-loop systems, or process improvements.

Unfortunately, the MISA regulations have languished after being ignored for years.

The MISA regulations were intended to be reviewed every five years, with the expectation that they would gradually be strengthened as pollution abatement technologies improved. Yet, to date, no review of MISA has ever been conducted and the standards embedded in the regulations remain largely unchanged over the past 15 years.

In fact, they are so out of date, that some polluters, such as the petro-chemical industry in Sarnia, Ontario, voluntarily exceed the MISA standards by 50 per cent or more. For these industries, it’s clear that today’s best available treatment technology is well ahead of the province’s pollution standards.

In addition, Ontario’s industrial pollution discharge limits are developed independent of the health of the watershed and what all other facilities are discharging into it. This means that when a facility is given permission to pollute, the decision is not based on what their industrial neighbours are putting in the water, or the overall health of the watershed. This contrasts the United States where if a water body is considered impaired, and if currently available technology is inadequate to protect it, the government establishes a maximum daily level of pollution that can be discharged, and this is divided among the various polluters.

Many communities are also struggling to contend with industries that discharge their pollution into municipal sewage systems. These systems were designed to handle domestic waste, not industrial waste; as such, they simply aren’t equipped to remove industrial pollutants. Pre-treatment regulations in the United States require that industries using municipal sewers remove contaminants that may pass through or interfere with sewage treatment plants and contaminate sewage sludge. Ontario’s regulations must follow a similar course, otherwise the province risks becoming a haven for the worst polluters with the lowest regard for human and ecosystem health.

Updating the MISA regulations to reflect currently available technology and practices is critical if Ontario is to fix its sewage problems.

Recommendations:
1. Require facilities to undertake mandatory pollution prevention planning with targets to reduce the contaminant discharges.

2. Amend the regulatory requirements to meet the standards obtainable through present-day best available and economically feasible technology, as was intended when MISA was conceived.

3. Ensure Ontario does not fall behind other comparable jurisdictions and become a haven for polluters. A mechanism should be written into MISA requiring the standards to change as production changes or standards should be normalized to production.

4. Put in place a municipal sewage regulation that sets limits for major pollutants in municipal sewage and be more stringent and apply to more pollutants than the anticipated federal regulation under the Fisheries Act.

5.Incorporate industrial pre-treatment requirements to prevent the release of industrial pollutants to surface water via sewage treatment plants.

6. Ensure that all toxic pollutants released by MISA industries are being regulated.

7. The MISA regulations must adopt an ecosystem approach to environmental protection, and one of the key features of an ecosystem approach is measurement of cumulative effects, including impacts of climate change and in polluted or degraded watersheds or areas such as Areas of Concern.

An incident last year at the Chalk River nuclear reactor in Canada, however, brought up a little known risk from the use of nuclear energy – leaks, spills, and emissions of tritium — a radioactive form of hydrogen that is naturally occurring, but also regularly released by U.S. and Canadian reactors.

Not only was there a large leak of tritium into the air from the Chalk River reactor in early 2009, there was also a leak of 7,000 litres of water containing tritium for a period of six weeks. The dangers of these radioactive releases were severely understated by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), the agency that regulates nuclear reactors in Canada, so community activists filled in the missing information.

The Tritium Awareness Project (TAP), a group formed to focus attention on the dangers of tritium, reported that about 28 trillion becquerels of tritium had been released from the reactor to the Ottawa River and an estimated 1 trillion becquerels had been discharged to the air (a becquerel is a unit of radioactivity).

Another Canadian public interest organization and Great Lakes United member, the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, quickly alerted authorities to the health risks from the spills of tritium into air and water. Meanwhile, Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), publicly criticized the CNSC for denying the hazards of tritium and for reassuring the public of its safety. Later, it was found that the Ottawa River was widely contaminated by low levels of tritium. Even though the Chalk River incident was unfortunate, it raised the issue of tritium to a higher level of public attention and concern; hopefully the continued awareness of the problems caused by tritium will translate into community action.

What’s the concern about tritium? Because it is a form of hydrogen, tritium quickly combines with oxygen to form water that is radioactive (tritiated). It acts in every way like water, making it extremely dangerous: it goes wherever water goes and can be absorbed by the smallest life forms to the largest, including humans. In everyday operations, nuclear reactors release tritium into the air, lakes, and rivers. These amounts are considerably higher than the amount of tritium that is naturally occurring. To make matters worse, tritium cannot be filtered out of water.

Although low levels of tritium have not always been considered harmful, recent scientific studies have confirmed that radioactive or tritiated water is dangerous if inhaled, ingested or absorbed through the skin. According to TAP, “Tritium is a carcinogen (causes cancer), a mutagen (causes genetic mutations) and a teratogen (causes problems in the developing fetus resulting in birth defects).” TAP reports that tritium may also cause “heart disease, autoimmune disorders, allergies and hormonal dysfunctions.”

The drinking water standard for tritium in Canada is 7,000 becquerels per litre in Ontario, and in the U.S., the federal standard is about ten times less – equivalent to 740 becquerels per litre. (Regulation in the state of California is far more stringent, at 14.8 becquerels per litre.) Dr. Rosalie Bertell, an international expert in environmental epidemiology, believes the health effects associated with low levels of tritium warrant a conservative goal of 100 becquerels per litre as an interim target on the path to zero man-made tritium in water.

Major sources of tritium to the Great Lakes are from nuclear power plants situated on the shores of the Great Lakes, or the watercourses that feed them. Last year, Great Lakes United passed a resolution proposed by the International Institute of Concern for Public Health to highlight the problems associated with tritium and other types of ionizing radiation in the Great Lakes and acknowledged the need to raise public awareness to properly address the issue.

By Marion O’dell and Tanya Cabala

By 2000, efforts by the government agencies to pull together the RAP were failing and those responsible for the RAP had begun to step back. In 2003, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decided that the only way to get the stalling Buffalo River cleanup moving was to hire a coordinator to focus on implementing the RAP. After putting out a request for bids, the EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office chose the citizens’ group Friends of the Buffalo Niagara Rivers to play this role. In July 2005, the Friends became the Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper, and they continued to be the RAP coordinator.

The first task of the new RAP coordinator was to deepen community engagement in the RAP and revitalize the Remedial Advisory Committee. With the assistance of the Remedial Advisory Committee, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and over 30 other governmental and non-governmental agencies and organizations, Riverkeeper re-assessed all beneficial use impairments, revised the delisting criteria, identified data gaps and reviewed needed projects. They then spent considerable time working with stakeholders in the community encouraging them to carry out activities that will help achieve the RAP goals.

Waterkeeper, has successfully spent considerable time pulling together partners to obtain the funding from government and private sources to carry out the assessments needed to address the problems in the area. They are now developing the funding matches to obtain Great Lakes Legacy Act grants for the estimated $60 to $100 million needed to clean up contaminated sediments in the Buffalo River.

Waterkeepers usually work outside of the normal government structures, using testing and technical studies, public exposure of their findings, and legal action, if necessary, to push others to do the cleanup. In this case, however, Waterkeeper has become the one hired by government to coordinate action. Interestingly, the same scientific, outreach and legal skills needed to advocate for action are the same that are most effective in coordinating the cleanup. By leveraging this with their credibility in the community they have been able to pull together a wide range of partners to do the task.

One concern around the Waterkeeper playing this role was whether industry and governments would fully cooperate with them. The fact that the RAP was stagnating and that no on else interested in doing the job meant that the field was open. In addition, the open bidding process lent credibility to the winning organization, who would have rose to the top as the best fit as determined by a fair and competitive process. This meant that those who would not normally be easy partners of a Waterkeeper were willing to give it a try.

The other concern is whether having the Riverkeeper become the official coordinator would interfere with the Riverkeeper’s essential role as advocate for issues throughout the Niagara and Buffalo Rivers. Would the group need to restrain itself on some advocacy in order to maintain the partnerships needed for the AOC cleanup? This has not proven to be the case. They continue their monitoring of the rivers and exposing of problems and continue to be engaged in controversial issues such as proposals for power turbines below the waters of the river, and expanded highways.

Barry Boyer, a law professor and emeritus board member of the Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper, says that “no situation has come up at which the Riverkeeper has been tempted to step back to protect their RAP coordinator role.” He says that they are able to combine the two roles because they always ensure that their advocacy positions are on “sound ground” and because they frequently touch base with others who may oppose their positions.

Taking Action

Jill Spisiak Jedlicka is the Buffalo River Remedial Action Coordinator and Director of Ecological Programs for Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper. The lessons she has learned from this community-driven RAP implementation process have been the importance of:

• Identifying a local group, individual, or agency that is unequivocally dedicated to the restoration of your AOC to coordinate the implementation;
• Having the courage to lead and take risks. Others will follow, but not down the path of destruction – small decisions and smart decisions build credibility;
• Being creative with in-kind resources. Leverage the hidden existing local investments (sweat equity can build you a lot of in-kind);
• Using the “team of rivals” model: leverage individual passion and commitment to challenge, inspire, mobilize, and collaborate with others who can support or derail your efforts; and
  Reaching out to and educating your local elected officials and agency representatives. Get them out of their offices and onto the water.

The report, Up to the Gills: 2009 Update on Pollution in Great Lakes Fish, analyzes the latest fish advisories published by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment in the Guide to Eating Ontario Sports Fish. It looks at eight species of fish in 13 locations across the Great Lakes. Many categories of fish were found to be somewhat or completely unfit for human consumption. The report also looks at fish advisories over a period of time (2005 to 2009), and finds the situation is not improving.

The report published in 2007 showed that in many places fish consumption advisories had become more severe since 2005, particularly in Lake Ontario. The updated report shows that while some areas and species have improved slightly, most advisories remained severe in the lower Great Lakes.

In Lake Ontario for example, 40% of the advisories examined in this report stated that it was unsafe to eat the affected fish in any quantity. Larger fish typically receive more severe advisories because they are generally older and have accumulated more toxins in their tissue but, in Lake Ontario, even small sizes of fish are receiving the most severe advisories.

Lake Superior has the least severe advisories, compared to Huron and Erie which had severe advisories for the larger sizes of the predatory species. Lake Ontario consumption advisories remained extremely high.

The major chemical contaminants that cause consumption advisories for Great Lakes fish include mercury, PCBs, pesticides, dioxins and furans. Health effects of these chemicals include damage to the nervous, respiratory and immune system, as well as cancer.

Almost 400,000 Canadian anglers fish the Great Lakes every year. The commercial and sport fishing industries are estimated to be worth $2.45 billion a year. While the report highlights the benefits of fish in a healthy balanced diet, it does caution consumers to watch what kinds of fish they eat and from where. It stresses the need to consult the advisories guides before consuming any fish caught in the Great Lakes.

The report makes several recommendations on how to protect public health including: improving the information used in fish advisories; enhancing the delivery of fish advisories to high risk groups; preventing fish contamination advisories by reducing pollution from industry, sewage systems, agriculture and urban runoff; and enhancing the Canada-U.S. response when fish in the Great Lakes are threatened.

The report, Up to the Gills: 2009 Update on Pollution in Great Lakes Fish, is available to download for free at www.environmentaldefence.ca and the Guide to Eating Ontario Sports Fish is available at www.ene.gov.on.ca.

Mike Layton is an author of the report and a Program manager for Environmental Defence. He can be reached by e-mail at mlayton@environmentaldefence.ca

The US EPA and Environment Canada have released
their assessment of the Great Lakes on several indicators.
For much of the report, status is reported as mixed.
(click image to enlarge in new window)

This summer the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Environment Canada released the State of the Great Lakes 2009 Highlights report. The document reports on progress to address several issues facing the Great Lakes, and indicates whether conditions are improving or worsening.

On the whole, the report finds that conditions in the region are mixed. Some areas, are improving, others deteriorating, and conditions range from poor to good.

Human health status is described as “mixed”, though whether this is improving or getting worse is “undetermined”. Similarly, biotic communities are described as of mixed status, and their trajectory undetermined.

However, the report has more information on biotic communities than human health. This failure to more seriously assess the impacts of conditions in the Great Lakes on human health conditions has long been a concern of community activists.

The most negative of the Great Lakes indicators is invasive species, which is given a “poor” status rating and a “deteriorating” trend by the governments.

Contamination is shown as being of “mixed” status and with an improving trend. For the contaminant phosphorus, however, nearshore conditions are found to be “poor” in all lakes except Lake Superior.

The report is produced following the State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference (SOLEC), where scientific data is reported and discussed. These conferences pull together scientists, governments and activists from across the Great Lakes region.

Typically, they have been held every two years since 1994. However, in order to save resources, the governments have decided to now hold them every three years. This means that the next conference will be held in 2011 and the next report released in 2012.

To obtain a copy of the State of the Great Lakes 2009 Highlights report go to www.binational.net/solec/intro_e.html.

Supported by a grant from U.S. EPA, The Great Lakes Green Chemistry Network provides a free and informative telephone seminar series on issues around green chemistry. Great Lakes United provides technical and administrative support for this network. Here’s a recap of what we heard this summer:

» In June, Joel Tickner, Director at the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production described the work of the GC3—the Green Chemistry in Commerce Council—a business-to-business network dedicated to advancing safer chemicals and products. Dr. Tickner explained that companies who want to green their chemical products have to deal with many of the same economic, regulatory, and technical realities of implementing green chemistry and environmental design. GC3 steps in as a catalyst and forum for these firms. Through dialogue, the GC3 moves to implement green chemistry and green engineering solutions, promote education and information exchange on green processes and best practices, and identify existing information on toxics and hazards, risks, and alternatives. They do this in the frame of Anasta’s and Warner’s 12 principles of green chemistry and the tenets of the US EPA’s Design for Environment program.
The GC3 is online at www.greenchemistryandcommerce.org

» In July, Mark Rossi, research director at Clean Production Action, outlined the “Green Screen for Safer Chemicals” a tool that uses the principles of green chemistry to define chemicals that exist in products and processes today, how to measure a chemical’s potential for harm all along its lifecycle, and how to avoid or minimize these chemicals by substituting safer ones. Rossi emphasized the focus on human health effects in this process. Cancer, reproductive harm, and developmental harm raise red flags when evaluating whether a chemical should be used or restricted. Governments and environmental managers already used the Green Screen tool to guide the substitution of less hazardous and toxic chemicals. Moreover, the Green Screen is one of the first green chemistry metrics created; this is an important step in the process towards identifying the bad and bringing forward the good.
You can look at the Green Screen tool at www.cleanproduction.org/Greenscreen.php

» In August, Richard Liroff. Executive Director of the Investor Environmental Health Network (IEHN). explained the changing world of business governance and ethics as companies strive to respond to consumer demands for safe and environmentally responsible products. Liroff notes that the market has already spoken on many hazard-containing products—large multinational retailers are moving away from carrying products containing Bisphenol A and by doing so contributing to the phasing out of PVC and brominated flame retardants. The IEHN guides investor and company shareholders so they can hold companies accountable for environmentally responsible chemical policies. The IEHN focuses on open dialogue and transparency; shareholders and firms look at the facts about the chemicals in products and the best pathway to safer products, hazard substitution, and more economically and environmentally sustainable companies.
You can find out more about the IEHN at www.greenbiz.com

The Great Lakes Green Chemistry Network Phone Seminar Series continues this fall. To find out more about the call schedule, to download past presentations, to review green chemistry resources, and to learn more about the network, you can visit www.glgc.org.

The $475 million investment nearly doubles U.S. federal
spending on Great Lakes priorities. The money will be
spent on cleaning up toxic pollution, fighting invasive
species, restoring habitat, non-point pollution
issues, and monitoring results.
(click image to enlarge in new window)

The Environmental Protection Agency just completed a series of public meetings to collect public comment and determine the best way to implement President Obama’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

A total of eight meetings took place in cities across the Great Lakes. The meetings were well attended by the public, NGOs, and state and federal agencies.

Cameron Davis, special advisor to the U.S. EPA, set the tone before a full auditorium in East Lansing, Michigan, by calling for “urgency, action, and accountability.”

“We know the lakes are hurting, it is time for action,” Davis said.

In Rochester, New York, a packed room voiced strong support for the new commitment to Great Lakes restoration. Commenters stressed accountability, as well as the need to address tributary and watershed deterioration, to coordinate with Canada, and to access the expertise at the local level.

The EPA hopes to maximize the effectiveness of the initiative by hearing from those with on-the-ground knowledge of the priorities in restoring the Great Lakes and what might be missing from the draft outline.

Comments geared toward the draft were consistent and solutions-based. Amongst the comments, a theme of collaboration, public education, health, and prevention of invasive species resonated.

The Restoration Initiative aims to fund projects through a grant process. Projects that tackle problems such as toxic pollution, invasive species, near-shore health and non-point source pollution, habitat and wildlife protection, and evaluation that are considered “shovel-ready” will be considered strong contenders.

This funding is also intended to be a new source of funds. It is not intended to supplant existing resources.

The amount to be allocated in the 2010 budget is still being fine tuned. The House of Representatives has passed the initiative at $475 million, while the Senate Appropriations Committee approved $400 million. Once the full EPA budget is approved the total amount of the Initiative will be determined. The total is expected to be between $400 and $475 million. This investment increases federal Great Lakes environmental funding to about $1 billion annually.

These funds are the first installment of a $5 billion dollar Great Lakes trust fund that Obama promised during last year’s presidential election. Eleven agency and cabinet organizations like the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Homeland Security, for example, head-up the development and implementation of the Initiative.

If you would like to learn more about the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, visit www.epa.gov/glnpo/glri. The new grant proposals to restore the Great Lakes are being accepted this fall, with over half of the 2010 total federal funding to be allocated at the local and state level.

Melinda Koslow is the Regional Campaign Manager for the Safeguards Program at the National Wildlife Federation Great Lakes Regional Center. She can be reached at koslowm@nwf.org.

In June, the federal and provincial governments announced that they were jointly giving $7 million to Nipigon and $9 million to Red Rock to upgrade their sewage treatment systems.

Though the principle of local contribution towards clean-up costs makes sense in most cases, governments need to make sure that their guidelines have enough flexibility to allow them to drop the local payment component when a community is suffering an economic crisis.

Being in dire economic straits should not mean that a community also has to live with the stress of not being able to clean up its environment and force its residents to continue to endure the health threats that contamination problems pose. In fact, a failure to act on pollution can exacerbate economic problems, discouraging positive population growth and encouraging residents and businesses to leave town.

Debate over who pays, and how, is the most frequently recurring reason that municipal infrastructure upgrades and clean up of contaminated sediments are stalled. These are both critical for the restoration of most Areas of Concern in the Great Lakes. The principle usually used by senior governments – federal, provincial and state – is that local sources must pay a substantial part of the required money.

In Canada, for example, the standard formula is that the federal and provincial governments each pay one-third of the costs of these projects. The other third, they argue, should be paid by the municipality or local polluters. This requirement usually leads to substantial delays, if not total stalls, in the project.

This can become an insurmountable problem in areas suffering severe economic stress, such as Nipigon Bay on the north shore of Lake Superior. Major progress has been made on implementing the Remedial Action Plan, but the outstanding problem is the sewage treatment systems in Nipigon and Red Rock. With this funding Nipigon can finally complete their clean up efforts.