From Chicago Tribune:

In a city built on a swamp, where rainstorms already flood basements and force sewage into Lake Michigan and local streams, climate change could make Chicago’s chronic water pollution woes even worse.

Researchers hired by Mayor Richard Daley’s office estimate that intense rainfall will happen more frequently in the not-so-distant future because of warming global temperatures, challenging the region’s aging sewers and the troubled Deep Tunnel project more than ever.

Rains of greater than 2.5 inches a day, the amount that can trigger sewage dumping into Lake Michigan, are expected to increase by 50 percent between now and 2039, according to a study by scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Texas Tech University. By the end of the century, the number of big storms could jump by a whopping 160 percent. Read more.  

From Lake Michigan Shore:

With the greatest freshwater source on the planet in our backyard, it’s easy to think it is an infinite source. But a new report and campaign are warning water shortages are possible throughout the Great Lakes if consumers and municipalities don’t change their ways.

A five-year study by the U.S. Geological Survey in Lansing, Michigan, released earlier this year indicated groundwater levels have dropped by 1,000 feet in the Chicago and Milwaukee metropolitan regions due to increased demand from municipal pumping stations. Those levels could drop another 100 feet by 2040 if demand continues to increase as forecast. Read more.

From Science Daily: 

Tiny crustaceans called copepods rule the world, at least when it comes to oceans and estuaries. The most numerous multi-cellular organisms in the seas, copepods are an important link between phytoplankton and fish in marine food webs.

To understand and predict how copepods respond to environmental change, scientists need to know not only how many new copepods are born, but how many are dying, say biological oceanographers David Elliott of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), and Kam Tang of VIMS.

Elliott and Tang realized there was only one way to discover the answer: find the copepods’ carcasses. Read more.

From the Bloomington Pantagraph:

A proposal pending in the state legislature may make it easier for police departments to pay for a prescription drug disposal program that began in Pontiac.

The Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal program, or P2D2, was launched about four years ago by students at Pontiac Township High School and their teacher, Paul Ritter. The program has spread to other communities and states.

Students were concerned that prescription drugs disposed of improperly, usually down household drains, were polluting groundwater.

High school students in Antioch heard about the program and brought the idea to state Rep. JoAnn Osmond, who is sponsoring a measure that will allow for the safe disposal of prescription drugs at local police departments. Read more.

IISG has worked closely with P2D2 to support medicine take back programs and develop curriculum collections–for example, the Medicine Chest–for high school teachers and students. Many of the activities in this collection help students learn how to raise awareness and take action in their communities. IISG does not engage in advocacy, rather we provide scientific knowledge on a number of water-related issues to a variety of audiences. The students who took part in the legislative hearing to fund medicine collection programs are learning how to affect change in their community by sharing their knowledge with decision makers. Here is a video of their experience.

From Madison.com:

Residents in 36 Wisconsin counties will be able to dispose of unwanted drugs and help keep the Great Lakes cleaner just by using the postal system.

“Get the Meds Out,” a program developed by the University of Wisconsin Extension, will allow residents in counties whose watersheds empty into either Lake Michigan or Lake Superior to send unwanted prescription medications to a facility in Maine for safe disposal.

The benefits are two-fold: Residents get the prescription drugs out of the house and the drugs stay out of the state’s water supply. Read more.

Twenty educators from Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan were actively engaged in many activities shared at the March 24th COSEE Great Lakes workshop, “Catch the Wave!” at the Field Museum in Chicago. At the morning workshop, Steve Stewart, Michigan Sea Grant, demonstrated the many ways teachers could incorporate real-time and historical data to teach about fish habitat, climate, and dead zones. Steve’s presentation was based on the Great Lake Lessons website.

The afternoon session, led by IISG’s Robin Goettel and Terri Hallesy, was filled with hands-on activities that teachers can use in their classrooms and nonformal education centers, along with a tour of the Nab the Aquatic Invader! website. The workshop began with a presentation by Notre Dame University biologist Matt Barnes (pictured here) who provided the latest information on common Great Lakes invasive species Including pathways of introduction. The educators wrapped up the day by developing preliminary action plans to implement community stewardship projects that help prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species.

The use of live organisms in classrooms is a valued tool for engaging students. However, it is not wise for a class to release organisms into the wild or for teachers to allow students to take organisms home as pets (if they are later released). These organisms are often distributed to teachers through biological supply houses, frequently with widely-used science curriculum packages. Sometimes these plants and animals are documented invasive species.

In an ongoing national project, funded through NOAA-National Sea Grant, IISG is working with Sea Grant programs around the country as well as several Canadian entities to address this AIS pathway from two fronts—in classrooms and through supply houses.

At the recent National Science Teacher Association meeting in San Francisco, project leaders talked with teachers about how they can help prevent the spread of invasive species using an exhibit titled “Don’t Release Classroom Organisms! They Can Become Invasive Species.” The exhibit was coordinated by Sam Chan and Tania Siemens of Oregon Sea Grant.

In the top photo, Linda Chilton (on left), Oregon Sea Grant, shares classroom resources that will help students understand this issue. IISG’s Pat Charlebois (bottom photo, on right), along with Robin Goettel, helped develop the exhibit.

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.