Apr 13 2008
News Digest: Great Lakes Update
The Detroit Free Press has a story about how global warming could reduce Lake Superior water levels:
Those are among the dire forecasts about the impact of global warming on the Great Lakes from scientists who concluded two days of presentations Thursday at Michigan State University.
Some changes already are dramatic. Consider the speedy warming of Lake Superior, where water temperatures are rising twice as fast as air temperatures.
One consensus of the scientists in attendance: Governments need to start planning for changes, such as lower lakes, storms and floods that could overwhelm existing sewer systems.
“We may have significantly lowered lake levels,” said Steve Colman, professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.
Although many climate researchers say they think the Great Lakes region will be wetter and warmer in the future, lake levels still will decline because there will be less ice cover in winter, allowing more water evaporation, he said.
The lakes also will see more cyanobacteria, a class of harmful algae that includes toxic forms, said Steve Wilhelm, a microbiologist at the University of Tennessee. Algae blooms can smother fish and harm animals and humans.
“We already have major issues in the Great Lakes with these algae,” he said.
Recent research shows that the algae grow faster at higher water temperatures, and more algae will survive and outcompete other algae and tiny creatures as temperatures rise.
Lake Erie, the warmest and shallowest, has had increasing amounts of algae, including toxic forms, in the past decade with warmer temperatures.
Meanwhile, cylindrospermopsis, a type of algae prevalent in Florida, now is established in the Great Lakes, Wilhelm said.
Even in winter, Wilhelm has found algae under the ice, as well as in open water.
“Algae blooms we used to see in the spring, we’re now seeing in winter,” he said.
As temperatures warm, Wilhelm predicts more dead zones in the lakes, which deprive fish and plants of oxygen.
Rose’s research shows a link between heavy rainfall and disease outbreaks nationally between 1948 and 1994. That’s because sewer systems get swamped and overflow, carrying untreated sewage and agricultural waste into waterways.
In 2005, 1,500 people got sick on Lake Erie’s South Bass Island after heavy rains inundated septic tanks and wells, spreading bacteria into drinking water.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer has an extensive article on Great Lakes water issues:
“You’re sitting on the largest source of fresh water outside of the polar icecaps — how much more important can anything be than that?” asked Retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “There’s no way you can underestimate the value of the lakes.”
More than 40 chief executives and others from 30 of the Great Lakes region’s leading business organizations agreed this year that marketing the region as “America’s Freshwater Coast” was one step toward cashing in on that value.
Those business leaders and others are saying that Great Lakes cities like Cleveland — in spite of the troubled housing market and other challenges — may be in the right place at the right time at the dawning of what is being called the Water Century.
Their fundamental principle is simple: Water is wealth.
“I don’t see water being a defining reason for relocation, at least not in our lifetime,” said Robert Ady of Ady International in Chicago, one of the nation’s largest site-selection consultants. “Unless it’s a company that needs to use copious amounts of water, there are too many other factors that outweigh water availability.”
Ady pointed to a survey of corporations taken late last year by Area Development Magazine that showed more than 20 other factors for business location outranking the only water-related component — waterway accessibility. Among the top reasons were highway accessibility; labor, energy and construction costs; and the availability of land.
And a Brookings Institution report this year noted that if the Great Lakes region “stood alone as a country, it would be the second-biggest economic unit on Earth — second only to the U.S. economy as a whole and larger than Japan, the rising powers of China and India and the traditional heavyweights of Germany and the United Kingdom.”
Last week, legislators in Wisconsin announced a deal to approve the Great Lakes water compact. This leaves Ohio as the last major obstacle to multi-state approval. Here’s the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story:
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=737414
The Toronto Star has a commentary piece supporting the use of market conditions to support Great Lakes water conservation:
Mortsch walked me through the Lakes’ historic water calendar. Typically, the year begins with most smaller lakes and rivers – and large expanses of the great ones – locked in ice. Snow covers the land. As spring comes, the snow and upland ice melt, releasing a vast pulse of fresh water to the Lakes.
Superior, the largest lake, receives the biggest pulse. As the winter’s snow-melt flows in, the Lakes’ levels rise, with Superior reaching its peak earliest and the lower lakes peaking progressively through the summer until the annual pulse of winter runoff reaches Lake Ontario, usually around Labour Day. The Lakes are at their lowest in December and January, when the cycle begins again.
Now this timeless rhythm is changing. Average air temperatures in the Great Lakes region rose by nearly a degree Celsius over the last 100 years, faster than the world average. Winter and spring have warmed even more, with highs as much as 4 degrees Celsius above those of the last century.
Across Ontario, calculated losses to evaporation claim two-thirds of every centimetre of rain or snow the province receives. Scientists who monitored lakes in northwestern Ontario between 1970 and 1990 discovered that as temperatures rose by 1.6 degrees Celsius – more than twice the global average for that period – rainfall declined. But evaporation ballooned by 50 per cent. Annual runoff into Lake Superior plummeted by almost two-thirds, from 40 centimetres to only about 15.
[The combination of late-forming ice on the Lakes, and that invisible thief evaporation, may have been largely responsible for this past winter's record snowfalls in eastern Ontario and Quebec. With little ice to protect the Lakes' water, it easily evaporated into the dry arctic air that flows south during the winter, riding the wind to fall back to land later as snow. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, the record heaps of snow were not evidence of climate change slipping into reverse — but of it going into overdrive.]
If Mortsch and her colleagues are correct, Lake Superior’s seasonal low-water levels could fall 38 centimetres below present-day lows before mid-century. Lake Ontario could drop more, losing 54 centimetres from present-day lows, with the deepest impact in the spring. But Lake Erie, already the shallowest of the five, could fall as much as 85 centimetres below its current low-water level. Another study has suggested that the St. Lawrence River at Montreal could in some late summers be at barely half its present volume.
The marketplace is the most flexible problem-solving institution we have. Adapting it to the smarter use of water veers away from the one-size-fits-all frame of last century’s “big engineering” and outdated eco-Marxism that sets disciples of Blue Gold on course toward a tragedy of the commons.
http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/410662
The Newhouse News Service has a report assessing the relative danger of “nationalization” of the Great Lakes:
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that Lakes Michigan and Huron will not increase in water levels despite record winter moisture:
Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are expected to remain 18 to 21 inches below their normal long-term averages this summer, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
And to the west, the deep sandstone aquifer that is running dry in Waukesha County won’t enjoy a drop from all of the melted snow.
These are two consequences of the winter of 2007-’08, when more snow fell in Milwaukee than any time in 122 years.
The current total of 97 inches ranks second behind the winter of 1885-’86, when the city labored under 109 inches of snowfall.
“You are not going to see a quick recovery,” Dunning said.
The same is true for the Great Lakes. In addition to Lakes Michigan and Huron, Lake Superior is predicted to be 8 to 11 inches below its long-term average though September, said John Allis, chief of watershed hydrology for the Corps of Engineers office in Detroit.
Even though Milwaukee had heavy snowfall, as did the Detroit area, Allis said other regions in the watershed received only average snowfall.
“We have had dry conditions over many years,” Allis said. “We still have a long way to go.”
Even though snowfall is more than a foot deep in parts of northern Wisconsin, soil conditions are still considered to be in the grips of a drought.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture continued to list a broad swath of the north as “abnormally dry,” although conditions are improving.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=736199
The Toledo Blade reports that a Brookings Institution researcher describes the Great Lakes region as a sleeping powerhouse:
The region on whose shores Mr. Austin, a Brookings Institution scholar, has set foot is none other than the Great Lakes region, an area he said is “unrivaled” for its natural resources, educational assets, and industrial know-how.
Mr. Austin said the Great Lakes region has or can get the things that attract residential and business development — built infrastructure, historic buildings, waterfronts, civic and cultural institutions, and public transportation.
He said if the Great Lakes Economic Region were a nation, its gross domestic product would rank as the world’s second largest.
“Our trade between the U.S. and Canada is the biggest on earth,” Mr. Austin said. “This region is the agricultural-industrial center of the universe.”
And while the population of the Great Lakes states is undereducated compared to America in general — because of a legacy of a wealth of factory jobs that didn’t require postsecondary education, its universities educate a disproportionate share of the national population.
Two of the young people he offered a hand to are Abby Wilson, 28, of metro Pittsburgh, and Sarah Szurpicki, 27, of metro Detroit, co-founders of the Great Lakes Urban Exchange (GLUE). GLUE has a Website that serves as a video and audio forum about the Great Lakes region, www.gluespace.org.
The Port Huron Times Herald reports on a “clean boating” campaign in which boaters are working to help lessen the impact of recreational boating on the Great Lakes:
“The lake was basically polluted and in spots unusable,” he said. “We’re trying to educate our boating community, 4,000 members, on products they use, refueling procedures, etc.
Dan Keifer, development director of the watershed council, said there are 130,000 registered boaters making 2.2 million trips annually on the Clinton River and Lake St. Clair.
“When you think about that use in a concentrated area, it does all add up,” he said.
By practicing clean boating, he said, recreational boaters are “being lake friendly.”
The association last year started a pilot program to recycle shrink wrap, he said. The Ohio company collected 150,000 pounds of shrink wrap from 18 participating marinas and produced 15,000 useable plastic pieces. The goal this year, according to Remias, is to recycle 250,000 pounds of shrink wrap.
The program is being expanded to 105 sites at marinas in southern Michigan from Luna Pier to Muskegon.
A Wayne State University professor has a column supporting passage of the Great Lakes water compact. It appears on the Center for Michigan website:
The Ohio-based blog Green City Blue Lake has a post in support of the Great Lakes compact:
Experts from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers appear to contradict the previous Journal Sentinel article about Lake Superior water levels. Detroit News excerpt:
DETROIT — A wet and snowy winter has Lake Superior’s water levels up over last year, and the spring melt should bring it even higher, scientists say.
All of the Great Lakes remain below their historical averages. But despite a higher-than-average drop in March, Lake Superior averaged a depth of more than 600 feet, which is up from last year’s 599.7. And it’s still gaining.
“Lake Superior has a much larger snowpack this year than last,” said John Allis, chief of the Army Corps of Engineers’ watershed and hydrology branch in Detroit. “The lake is already above last year’s level, and it should catch up a bit on its historical levels later this year.”
The news isn’t quite as bright in the other Great Lakes. Lakes Erie and Ontario are at last year’s levels, and Michigan and Huron are slightly down from last year. The Lake Michigan/Huron system reached an average depth of 576.7 feet in March, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That’s down slightly from the same time last year, when the level was 577.1. Allis said under the best conditions, Michigan and Huron would recover to last year’s levels by June or July.
The Detroit Free Press has the following:
“Michigan has the image of being a water cowboy,” he said. The state agreed to limit new large-scale water uses in 1985 but didn’t do so until two years ago. Former Gov. John Engler also vetoed a request by Lowell, Ind., a town 5 miles outside the basin, to use Lake Michigan water in the early 1990s. At the same time, he allowed farmers in the Thumb to divert even more water from Lake Huron for irrigation, a move no other governor could veto since it was inside the basin. Michigan ranks last in the region in conserving and respecting water use, Annin said.
Other states still resent Michigan and fear its veto. It’s the only state that will never need to ask permission for a diversion for its communities, since they’re all inside the basin.
Annin said towns like Waukesha, Wis., in a county straddling the watershed, are worried that Michigan will veto diversions they want from Lake Michigan. Several key Wisconsin legislators, including one from Waukesha, oppose the compact because they fear it would strangle development. So far, they have convinced lawmakers to block passage of the compact.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has this:
The National Weather Service said above-average precipitation continued in February for a third consecutive month, and that produced a continuing rise in the Lake Michigan water level at a time of year when it normally is declining.
The lake is expected to continue to rise for the next six months, reaching the same level in June as it was in June of last year, before it dropped drastically by the end of the year to near record lows, the weather service said.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=733988
Here are some links related to a recent and significant Brookings Institution report on the Great Lakes:
The opening photo comes from the State of Michigan’s website.