By Brett Rosenberg
January 16, 2006

U.S. and Canadian mayors from around the Great Lakes region met in Chicago last December to discuss efforts to follow up on a major international strategy to restore and protect the Great Lakes.

In 2004, President Bush signed an Executive Order that recognized the Great Lakes as a resource of national significance. The order established a federal task force and supported the creation of a group of over 1,500 stakeholders that developed the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Strategy to Restore and Protect the Great Lakes. The cost of Great Lakes restorations and improvements, including wastewater treatment plant upgrades, invasive species barriers and wetlands restoration projects could exceed $20 billion over the next 15 years, according to task force estimates.

Local leaders in the Great Lakes region, both in the U.S. and Canada, added considerably to the on-going dialogue on resource protection. Mayors and the region’s governors recently crafted a letter to the President calling for $300 million in new spending on the myriad Great Lakes programs over the next year. While Congress and the Bush Administration have not specifically endorsed such investment, the region is gaining momentum in it efforts to clean so-called areas of concern, which face severe environmental contamination; redevelop brownfields sites; restore wetlands; and fend off non-native species.

At a December 12 press conference at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson pledged to streamline the federal government’s role in protecting Great Lakes resources. He expressed that the Bush Administration will seek to better coordinate the more than 140 federal programs operating in the Great Lakes. In the near term, Johnson also pledged to spend $25 million to clean up contaminated sediments in the Ashtabula River, a major tributary to Lake Erie.

The Great Lakes mayors resolved, during a December 13 board meeting of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, to advance Great Lakes restoration and protection activities at the local level throughout the region. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, the chairman of the organization, expressed the need to broaden these local efforts to attract wider geographical interest and concern in the region. Noting that the eight Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces make up the world’s third largest economy, Daley suggested that regional cities and states would contribute $140 million in matching funds, stating, “I am well aware that there are competing priorities and tight budgets.” “However,” Daley continued, “Investments we make now will prevent the need for far larger expenditures in the future.”

Gary (IN) Mayor Scott King, in discussing the region’s heritage as the nation’s economic heartland, expressed concern that in addition to protecting the region’s ecological resources, there should be a reinvigorated focus on industrial productivity. “We need a hook,” King said, in order to draw upon the talent and resources that the steel, automobile, energy and other industries originally brought to the area. Grand Rapids (MI) Mayor George Heartwell added to King’s point, noting the importance of “sustainability issues, such as how cities, industry, and the federal government relate to social and environmental elements.”

The December 13 meeting coincided with a meeting of Great Lakes Governors and Premiers from the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario, who met in Milwaukee to formally adopt an interstate agreement that would that would strengthen the region’s ability to retain authority over the Great Lakes water supply. Each Great Lakes state’s legislature still must approve the agreement, known as the Great Lakes Charter Annex, and then the U.S. Congress must enact an interstate compact. Canada would adopt similar measures, thereby restricting diversions of Great Lakes water except under only very limited circumstances.

The Great Lakes – Lakes Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario and Superior, and the St. Lawrence River – compose one of the world’s outstanding environmental resources and contain 20 percent of the world’s supply of fresh surface water. Protecting the Great Lakes from overuse, invasive species, environmental contamination and other threats is imperative to the regional economy and their continued use by future generations.