Lakes Michigan and Huron almost set records for low water levels in October, as the long-term effects of this summer’s drought are still being felt. 

From the Detroit Free Press: 

“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which tracks Great Lakes ups and downs, recorded Michigan-Huron at 576.6 feet above sea level for October. That’s an inch-and-a-half above the lowest point for that month since the agency began keeping records in 1918, and about 6 inches above the all-time low recorded in March 1964.

Michigan and Huron are considered one lake from a hydrological perspective because they have the same surface level and are connected at their northern ends by the 5-mile-wide Straits of Mackinac.”

Read the complete article at the link above for more information about the lake levels and their causes.

“The study is the first to look at plastic pollutants in the Great Lakes. It is part of a larger global endeavor to understand the origin and prevalence of plastic pollution in water and was conducted with the Los Angeles-based 5 Gyres Institute.

 

“We had two samples in Lake Erie that we just kept going back and rechecking the data, because the count, the number of plastic particles in the sample, was three times greater than any sample collected anywhere in the entire world,” SUNY chemistry professor and project lead Sherri Mason said.”

“This quest received a financial boost last week when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded a $448,663 Great Lakes Restoration Initiative grant to the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust. In return, the group and its partners will inventory and eliminate the most aggressive of invasive plants in wetlands and waterways in the six counties.

 

Graff, executive director of the land trust, said work will continue the rest of this year on locating each infestation. The organization is working with other land trusts in the region, the Wisconsin Land and Water Conservation Association and River Alliance of Wisconsin to curb the threat posed by the exotic plants.”

Chicago area waters will be searched again beginning next week for indicators of Asian carp presence near Lake Michigan.

From WTAQ.com:

As a result, an actual search for the bloated carp will take place next Tuesday through Friday on the North Shore Channel and a six-mile stretch of the Chicago River west of the city.”

Read the complete article at the link above.

“The Animal Planet show that spent four days filming on and around the Illinois River last summer for a feature on the acrobatic insanity of everyone’s least favorite invasive fish, the Asian carp, will be shown Sunday.

 

“Off the Hook: Extreme Catches,” with host/professional wrestler Eric Young presents “Carpocalypse Now” at 7 p.m. Sunday. Greg Gephards, who owns Schooners on War Memorial Drive and had a role in the production of the program, is hosting a party for the occasion.”

Thousands of residents in Illinois and Indiana came out last Saturday with the goal of ridding their homes of unwanted pharmaceuticals as part of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) 5^th annual National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. police officers and volunteers in more than 200 locations in Illinois and 70 in Indiana collected bottles, boxes, and sometimes even garbage bags full of prescription and over-the-counter human and veterinary medications. Everything collected will be properly incinerated by the DEA.
  

Single-day collection events like this are an important way to limit negative impacts to wildlife and local waterways from prescriptions and medications that are improperly disposed of. A wide-range of pharmaceutical chemicals has been found in rivers, groundwater, and drinking water throughout the country due to medications being flushed down the toilet or thrown in the trash. The impact of these chemicals on long-term human health is still unknown, but a connection between pharmaceutical-contaminated waters and impaired development, behavior, and reproduction has been found in many species of fish and other aquatic wildlife.

IISG has been educating people on pharmaceutical stewardship issues and helping communities establish safe and legal permanent medicine collection programs for more than six years. For additional information on how to dispose of medicine between take-back events or in areas where collections are not available, visit www.unwantedmeds.org.    

“The radishes planted in northwest Ohio go in about this time of year and are left in the ground to die, explained our host, Allen Dean. Planting doomed radishes, it turns out, is an innovative technique he has used in recent years to improve soil nutrients and reduce runoff from his Williams County farm.

 

Here’s the basics on how it works: Farmers plant seeds for a plant called an oilseed radish. It doesn’t actually have to be that plant, but it needs to grow a foot or longer into the soil during the fall in a tubular shape, like a carrot or a parsnip. It also needs to grow a fair amount of foliage up on the ground. Radishes are usually more affordable.

 

It’s important that the plant drill down into the soil so that when it dies, usually during a mid-January freeze, it decays and leaves behind a v-shaped hole for snow and water to penetrate deeper. The decayed radishes Dean showed us looked like organic socks.

 

Oilseed radishes are particularly good at absorbing nutrients from the surface and sending them down into the soil as the tubular plant drills it way into the ground.”

“Financial viability is the bottom line for most farmers here along the Maumee River. The Maumee passes through 4.5-million acres of farmland before entering Lake Erie at Toledo. Along the way it picks up a lot of topsoil from farm fields. Attached to that soil are fine particles of phosphorus, one of the nutrients that helps crops grow, but also feeds algae blooms. No-till farming has reduced particulate phosphorus runoff by nearly 40-percent. But researchers from Heidelberg University say their thirty years of water quality data shows that another form of phosphorus – called dissolved phosphorus – has risen dramatically in recent years. And to reduce that nutrient enough to curb Lake Erie algae blooms will take a whole new set of techniques.” 

“The sport fishing industry, beach resorts, amusement parks – all took a hit from the 2011 algae outbreak. Connor says cities …not just farms…have to do more to stay on top of it.

Overflows from sewage systems that collect storm water and waste water are a fairly regular occurrence in Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit and other communities around the lake. And it’s a huge cost to fix it.”