At the recent University of Illinois Public Engagement Symposium, IISG featured its unwanted medicine collection program and a University course, Community Stewardship through Environmental Education, in which students bring the issue of aquatic invasive species to elementary and middle school classrooms in Champaign and Urbana. Under the guidance of their student leaders, the local school children formed community partnerships with local organizations to create community stewardship projects, to be used by the partners to inform the public. In this photo, Robin Goettel, IISG associate director for education, is sharing the course description with two U of I students who were interested in learning more about the course.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Billed as an engineering marvel and national model, Chicago’s Deep Tunnel was designed to protect Lake Michigan from sewage overflows and put an end to the once-frequent practice of dumping human and industrial waste into local rivers.

But nearly four decades after taxpayers started paying for one of the nation’s most expensive public works projects, billions of gallons of bacteria-laden sewage and storm runoff still routinely pour into the Chicago River and suburban waterways during and after storms, according to records obtained by the Tribune. Read more.

As World Water Day quickly approaches on Tuesday, March 22, now is the time to start thinking about how our lawn care practices affect local lakes.

Many landscapers and residents who manage lawns and other landscapes overuse chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and water. The “Lawn to Lake” program is working to improve awareness on this issue, and will be holding a “Natural Lawn Care for Landscape Professionals, Homeowner Associations, and Municipalities” workshop from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 23, at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines.

Lawn to Lake focuses on outreach to multiple audiences, including municipalities, landscape professionals, homeowners, master gardeners, teachers, retailers, and commercial property owners.

“We propose to change the practices of those responsible for the creation and upkeep of lawns and landscapes,” said Margaret Schneemann, a water resource economist for Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, which is leading the project. “Not only can this benefit the health of our waters, but it can also open new markets for lawn and landscape companies, help municipalities save money while meeting sustainability initiatives, and reduce the chemicals and water required for lawn maintenance.”

Lawn to Lake is funded by a grant from the U.S. EPA Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, and the three-year project aims to reduce the amount of toxins entering Great Lakes Basin waters. For this project, IISG has partnered with Safer Pest Control Project, Lake Champlain Sea Grant, and University of Illinois Extension.

“Our goal is to protect water quality in the Great Lakes by reducing the amount of pollution from fertilizers and pesticides. We can prevent pollution more easily than we can clean it up,” said Susan Ask, an IISG watershed specialist. “What we put on the land, winds up in the lake.”

Rachel Rosenberg, Safer Pest Control Project executive director, offers tips for maintaining a healthy lawn without over-relying on chemicals. She suggests that using organic fertilizers and leaving grass clippings on the lawn can help capture and deliver nutrients to the lawn, improving both soil and plant health. Also, mowing high will increase root strength and create healthy grass that better withstands drought.

During the March 23 workshop, the featured speaker will be Chip Osborne, president of Osborne Organics, who has more than 30 years of experience in the turf and horticulture industry. Participants can also choose between two specialized workshop tracks: “Implementing Natural Lawn Care on Your Property,” or “Running a Natural Lawn Care Business.” The event is co-sponsored by the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association and the Midwest Ecological Landscaping Association. The cost is $150, with lunch and a take-home binder with all program materials included. Discounts for groups and affiliated organizations are also available.

For more information, visit lawntolakemidwest.org.

From the CBC:

A mysterious resurgence of phosphorus in the Great Lakes is endangering the aquatic food chain and human health, says a binational agency that advises Canada and the U.S.

Fifteen years after the last programs to control phosphorus runoff ended, the International Joint Commission urged on Wednesday a renewed effort to get the oxygen-depleting chemical out of the water.

The call to action was one of 32 recommendations the commission made to both governments in its biennial report on the state of the Great Lakes at Detroit’s Wayne State University.

The report specifically urges the two governments, which are currently renegotiating a binational water quality agreement, to include human health language in the agreement.

The report underlined a growing problem with phosphorous in the Great Lakes, especially in Lake Erie, which over the last few years has seen an increase in algal blooms caused by excessive nutrient runoff such as phosphorous. Read more.

From NWI:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is taking action to clean up a long-dormant Gary landfill that is leaking hazardous waste into a neighboring wetland near the Grand Calumet River.

On Tuesday, the EPA added the former Gary Development Landfill, at 479 Cline Ave., to a list of 15 properties nationwide that it wants to classify as Superfund sites.

The former landfill operated from 1975 until 1989, EPA officials said. It legally accepted solid waste, as well as hazardous materials such as volatile organics, metals and insecticides that it wasn’t permitted to handle, said Patrick Hamblin, who oversees the EPA’s Superfund National Priorities List for the Great Lakes region. Read more.

IISG’s education team, Robin Goettel and Terri Hallesy, visited Laura Senteno’s 7th and 8th grade classroom at Niños Heroes Elementary School and Rosemary Reddice’s 7th grade classroom at George Pullman Elementary School on February 18. Angie Viands, Windy City Earth Force coordinator, asked Terri and Robin to visit these two classrooms to enrich students’ understanding of the pharmaceutical disposal issue and to help the teachers and students come to a decision regarding which Earth Force community issue they plan to tackle. This process is integral to the Earth Force-Sea Grant partnership in which students are led through a six-step process of community action and problem solving to address important community issues.

After talking to students about the problems posed by improperly disposed of medicines and good alternatives, they engaged the youth in a Jeopardy game, a vocabulary word scramble game, and a marble labyrinth game, Get Rid of Stuff Sensibly. Activities were selected from IISG’s Medicine Chest curriculum materials. Once the students select their issue, they will work on projects that will be exhibited at a culminating youth summit, coordinated by Earth Force.

Following this visit, Laura Senteno commented on the students’ response: “The information you presented helped very much, especially in terms of motivation. After you left, quite a large group of them really got busy with their personal care product assignment, and I overheard them discussing some of the information from your workshop.”

This effort is part of a larger project funded by the U.S. EPA Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

From Dredging Today:

Thomas Simon knows first hand what a terrible condition the Grand Calumet River has been in. When he first sampled it for fish in 1985, his findings were scary.

“The only fish we caught, it was a carp, it had no fins. It was completely bloody,” recalled Simon, then in his first year with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “There was no (Indiana Department of Environmental Management) at the time. It was the health department. All the guys started cheering. There was a fish and it was alive. That was the first fish we caught.”

Three years later, Simon went back. That’s when he found Blinky — a fish who got his name because he was so severely deformed that he had no eye on one side of his mouth.

Fish deformities are part of what led scientists to list the Grand Calumet River as impaired for all 14 possible uses in 1972, earning it the title of the most polluted river in the nation.

This summer, Simon hopes to start changing that by proving that the river is in much better condition than government data shows. Now a researcher for Indiana State University, Simon will be sampling a 10-mile stretch of the river and areas nearby. Read more.

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant’s Kristin TePas recently began her new position at the U.S. EPA Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO) in Chicago. As of Feb. 1, she is IISG’s Great Lakes community decision-making specialist. In this position, Kristin will assist coastal communities and other clients in making informed decisions, strengthening policies, or implementing programs that improve the health of the Great Lakes ecosystem. She will be working with GLNPO scientists to use their monitoring and research data to make products and publications for community leaders.

Kristin previously worked as the program’s aquatic invasives extension associate for almost 10 years, conducting outreach focused on preventing the introduction and spread of invasive species.

“I’m very excited about this new opportunity,” Kristin said. “I’m looking forward to working with the Great Lakes communities and broadening my focus beyond aquatic invasive species.”

One project she is currently working on is acting as a liaison between EPA and Purdue University, which is developing indicators for land use change and agricultural lands. The project is being done in the hopes that EPA will adopt the indicators.

Kristin holds an M.E.M. in coastal environmental management from Duke University and a B.A. in psychology from the University of Notre Dame.

From Science Daily:

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have come up with a way to detect pathogenic Escherichia coli and Salmonella bacteria in waterways at lower levels than any previous method. Similar methods have been developed to detect pathogenic E. coli in meat products, but the approach by the scientists with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) represents a first for waterways. Read more.