The Palisades nuclear power plant in West Michigan.

Great Lakes United and the International Institute of Concern for Public Health released a stunning map of nuclear hot spots in the Great Lakes basin. The map identified nuclear power plants, a proposed nuclear water dump near Lake Huron and other sites.

Four days after that map was released, the Palisades nuclear power plant in West Michigan released 79 gallons of “slightly radioactive water” into Lake Michigan. The owner of this troubled power plant assured the public that no harm was caused by the “slightly radioactive” water (which, to me, sounds like someone claiming they are “slightly pregnant”).

Together, these two items demonstrate that nuclear power remains a serious — and potentially growing — threat to the largest source of surface freshwater on the planet.

Sleeping Bear Dunes in northern Michigan, a source of incredible beauty and the victim of invasive mussels that fuel algae blooms, which have killed thousands of birds.

The bad news: The lakes face a host of new problems, including the spread of foreign mussels and other aquatic invasive species, new pollutants that are transported to the lakes by wind currents, and the resurgence of nuisance and toxic algae blooms across much of Lake Erie and isolated parts of lakes Michigan, Huron and Ontario.

Despite enormous challenges, and the threat of an Asian carp invasion, the Great Lakes remain a source of incredible natural beauty, economic importance and the source of drinking water for 30 million people. I offer this brief assessment of the Great Lakes for two reasons: There can never be too many news articles, blog posts, books, poems or songs written about these incomparable freshwater seas; and I love lists. Here goes:

THE GOOD

The return of lake sturgeon to the Detroit River symbolizes the extent to which the Great Lakes have recovered from decades of pollution.

• The lakes are being restored: The federal Great Lakes Restoration Initiative has funded the removal of 1 million cubic yards of toxic sediment from polluted harbors, protected or restored 20,000 acres of wetlands, identified new ways to combat invasive species and funded efforts to keep Asian carp from invading the lakes.

• Concentrations of so-called legacy pollutants, chemicals like PCBs and DDT that were deposited in the lakes in the 20th century, have decreased in much of the Great Lakes. The flip side is that concentrations of new pollutants, such as fire retardants are increasing. Read more here.  

• Iconic lake sturgeon are reproducing again in the Detroit River, once one of America’s most polluted rivers, and Lake Erie has made a dramatic recovery since it was (incorrectly) declared dead in the 1960s. Read more about the Detroit River recovery here.

THE BAD

This graphic produced by the University of Michigan shows which of the Great Lakes are under the greatest environmental stress. See more details here.

• Invasive quagga and zebra mussels, and other aquatic invasive species, have turned the ecosystems of lakes Michigan and Huron upside down and are causing more than $100 million in economic damages annually. Read more here.

• Climate change is causing many changes in the Great Lakes basin: More extreme storms that cause sewer overflows, send more polluted runoff into the lakes and fuel massive toxic algae blooms in Lake Erie; winter ice cover on the lakes has decreased 71 percent over the past 40 years; and warmer water temperatures increase evaporation, which contributes to lower water levels, and make the lakes more hospitable to new invasive species.

• New contaminants, such as fire retardants and pharmaceuticals, have been detected recently in the lakes. Those contaminants pose potential threats to aquatic life and could eventually affect human health.

Check out this interactive graphic of problems affecting the Great Lakes. 

THE UGLY
• Sewer overflows: I find this one of the most appalling problems facing the Great Lakes. Cities with outdated sewer systems — particularly Chicago, Detroit, Gary, Ind.; Milwaukee, Cleveland and Buffalo — discharge tens of billions of gallons of raw and partially treated sewage into the lakes every year. This chronic but solvable may be one of the biggest failures of the 1972 federal Clean Water Act. Read more here.

• The Lake Michigan car ferry SS Badger was recently given permission to dump contaminated coal ash into the lake for another two years. For years the Badger, the last coal-fired ferry on the Great Lakes, has dumped about 500 tons of coal into Lake Michigan annually. The illegal dumping was supposed to end in 2012.

The ferry SS Badger has dumped its coal ash into Lake Michigan for decades.

But politicians in Michigan and Milwaukee pressured the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to give the Badger’s owners until 2015 to convert to cleaner fuel.  To me, the Badger symbolizes the willingness of certain politicians and businesses to put profits for a few ahead of the health of the Great Lakes, which contain nearly 20 percent of all surface freshwater on the planet and provide drinking water for millions of people. Read more here.

• Plastics waste: The Pacific Ocean isn’t the only place with a garbage patch. Recent research has discovered large quantities of plastics waste in the Great Lakes (much of it is tiny pieces of plastic that sink and threaten the ecosystem). Certain areas of the Great Lakes have some of the highest concentrations of plastics waste of any waterbodies on Earth (read more here). That is a sad commentary on our wasteful society on this, the 43nd anniversary of the first Earth Day celebration.    

Scientists have yet to find a reproducing population of Asian carp anywhere in the Great Lakes. They have only found genetic traces of the fish in Lake Erie and Lake Michigan.

“The most plausible explanation is still that there are some carp out there,” Christopher Jerde of the University of Notre Dame, the lead author, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “We can be cautiously optimistic … that we’re not at the point where they’ll start reproducing, spreading further and doing serious damage.”

How will government agencies prevent Asian carp that are likely in Lake Erie and Lake Michigan from reproducing? And is it possible to keep massive populations of Asian carp that are bearing down on the Great Lakes via several rivers from invading the lakes? No one knows. (Check out this graphic see the Asian carp’s steady advance toward the Great Lakes)

I don’t mean to be a pessimist, but I fear the Notre Dame scientists are documenting the leading edge of the next Great Lakes disaster. For that reason, I’ve adjusted the Asian Carp Doomsday Clock to 11:59 — one minute before the witching hour of midnight. This clock strikes midnight if or when scientists find a reproducing population of Asian carp in any of the five Great Lakes. I hope and pray that that day never arrives, but I’m also a realist.

The online news service won the award for a series of articles called, “The Dilbit Disaster: Inside The Biggest Oil Spill You’ve Never Heard Of.” It detailed the dangers of shipping Tar Sands oil from western Canada to refineries in the Great Lakes region and lax government oversight of the industry.

Detroit Free Press graphic

The articles take on added significance now because the company that caused the 2010 Kalamazoo River oil spill, Canadian energy giant Enbridge Energy, wants to ship more Tar Sands oil and diluted bitumen (DilBit) to refineries in the Great Lakes region. Tar Sands oil is more toxic than conventional crude oil and poses more serious environmental risks if spilled into water. The reason: It sinks.

Environmental groups are raising concerns about plans to ship more Tar Sands to Midwest refineries and another plan to ship crude oil from North Dakota oil fields across the Great Lakes in freighters . (Read more about that here).

It’s worth taking a few minutes to read the Inside Climate News articles on DilBit. They detail the serious environmental risks inherent in piping Tar Sands oil long distances, especially in a region that is home to the world’s largest source of surface freshwater.

There are about 2,500 dams in Michigan and the vast majority will exceed their expected lifespan of 50 years by the year 2030. Removing obsolete dams is one of the quickest ways to restore natural conditions in a river. Dams alter water temperatures, disrupt the natural movement of sediment, fish and other aquatic life, and effectively bisect river ecosystems.

The Paw Paw River in southern Michigan was set free when the obsolete Watervliet Dam was removed. (Environmental Consulting & Technology photo)Michigan has about 2,500 dams and most will exceed the average lifespan of a dam (50 years) by 2030. Removing an obsolete dam is one of the quickest ways to restore a river.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources deserves credit for following the lead of other states, such as Wisconsin, that have made dam removal an integral part of river restoration programs.

This stunning video is one more reminder of why we cannot let these menacing fish invade the Great Lakes. The results would be catastrophic.

The bald eagle population has made a stunning recovery in many parts of the Great Lakes over the past 50 years. The iconic birds were driven to the brink of extinction in the 1960s by the insecticide DDT, which caused reproductive failure and eggshell thinning.

Banning DDT led to cleaner fish in the Great Lakes region, which allowed bald eagles to thrive. The presence of baby eagles along the north shore of Lake Ontario is another sign that the Great Lakes are now much cleaner than they were a half century ago. Read more about the bald eagles in Hamilton here.

The ferry SS Badger has dumped its coal ash into Lake Michigan for decades.

The Badger, which sails between Ludington, Mich., and Manitowoc, Wis., has dumped about 500 tons of coal ash into Lake Michigan each shipping season. This has been going on for decades, even though it’s a clear violation of water pollution regulations.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a good summary of the issue, which you can read here. 

The ferry’s owners now have two years to solve this problem or mothball the polluting ferry for good. Personally, I hope they find a cleaner fuel to power the historic ship. But this has to be their last chance to solve this problem — the company has been allowed to use Lake Michigan as a trash can for far too long. 

Lake Superior in warmer times.

It’s important that we fight to protect these magnificent lakes. But sometimes it’s refreshing to sit back and enjoy the splendor of the Great Lakes. I hope you enjoy my attempt at photography. See the gallery here. Enjoy!

Time magazine declared Lake Erie declared dead in the 1960s, when the lake was actually too alive with algae. Sadly, the algae blooms that made Lake Erie look like pea soup and tarnished this wonderful’s lake’s reputation in the 1960s have returned and recaptured the national media’s attention. (I wrote an article about this problem last year, which you can read here.)

Now comes the New York Times with a lengthy article on Lake Erie’s toxic algae problem.  It’s a very informative article, albeit depressing. Because Lake Erie is a bellwether for the other Great Lakes, all of us who live in the region and work to protect these majestic lakes should pay close attention to what happens to Erie.