U.S. plan to save Great Lakes not likely this year

The Detroit Free Press carries this article on the lack of progress on a comprehensive plan to restore the Great Lakes:

Congress appears likely to adjourn this year without adopting a sweeping Great Lakes restoration plan that says it will take $20 billion and five years to slow the escalating environmental degradation of the giant waterways.

Even worse, conservationists say, Congress could end up cutting existing Great Lakes cleanup programs at a time when scientists warn the lakes are on the verge of a collapse that could permanently damage the U.S. environment and economy.

The lakes -- Superior, Huron, Erie, Michigan and Ontario -- make up 95% of the fresh water in the United States and provide drinking water to 25 million people. And they help produce a third of the nation's gross state product.

The restoration plan before Congress, called the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Strategy, is essentially a blueprint to save the Great Lakes. It was drafted by a presidential commission made up of business leaders, environmentalists, Indian tribes, scientists and state and local government officials.

About $8 billion of the recommended federal share would go to improve aging sewer systems to prevent overflows. The remainder would be used to clean up mercury pollution, restore wildlife habitat and wetlands and fight invasive species such as the zebra mussel, which has starved native fish by devouring plankton.

Great Lakes lawmakers also are scrambling to get Congress to approve money for a permanent barrier to keep plankton-gobbling Asian carp from invading Lake Michigan from the Illinois River.

New book predicts Great Lakes ecological tragedy

The Michigan Daily has an article about "The Great Lakes Water Wars", a new book by Peter Annin:

Peter Annin recalls staring in fascinated horror at what had been the coast of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, now a desolate wasteland strewn with scrub brush and corroded hulls of abandoned fishing boats.

Once the world's fourth-largest inland water body, the Aral has shrunk to a quarter of its previous surface area in less than half a century - the result of a Soviet-era decision to divert rivers feeding the sea to promote farming in that arid section of central Asia.

Annin visited the region while researching his book, "The Great Lakes Water Wars," published by Island Press and scheduled for release Sept. 14. The former Newsweek magazine correspondent says he'd heard ominous references to the Aral disaster while studying the debate over Great Lakes water diversion and wanted to see it for himself.

Ecological and political differences make it unlikely the Great Lakes will suffer the Aral's fate, but the tragedy still conveys a warning, Annin says: "What it showed to me in a very surreal way was that these giant lakes are vulnerable, they actually can be drained. They are not immune to human destruction."

The book relates the history that began more than a century ago with construction of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which diverts water away from Lake Michigan and other legal and political skirmishes that led to the regional agreements. And it explains how the Great Lakes were formed, their unique characteristics and the threats facing them, from the global water shortage to exotic species and climate change.