From Circle of Blue:

Last week the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, one of the nation’s largest municipal water suppliers, announced that along with requiring its customers to use less water under mandatory conservation measures it also would hike up the price for water by 15 percent over the next two years.

The board of the Los Angeles-based water district, which supplies drinking water to nearly 19 million people in parts of Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, anticipates a public push back.

Indeed as water sales have declined because of the recession and conservation, water utility boards all across the country have raised rates, prompting civic dismay. A growing number of raucous council meetings, street protests and petition drives in opposition to higher water prices have occurred in cities large and small–Detroit; San Diego; Joplin, Mo.; Prairie Township, Ohio.

In effect, in too many American cities to count, water consumers are dramatically reducing the amount they use only to be hit with higher water rates. Existing designs for deciding water rates are the culprits. A handful of cities are restructuring their billing systems to benefit conservation-minded consumers who deserve to be rewarded rather than penalized. Read more.

Leslie Dorworth, IISG aquatic ecology specialist has written several articles for Grist magazine about the Grand Calumet River. This one describes how things got so bad for this polluted waterway:

The Grand Calumet River is about 13 miles long and flows through one of the most industrialized areas in the United States. At one time, the river’s branches and tributaries flowed throughout northwest Indiana and supported globally unique fish and wildlife. Today, thanks to being moved and manipulated by humans over the years, the Calumet river system is one of the smallest watersheds in the region, and there are stretches of river that support nothing but sludge worms.

How did this happen? Two words: people and industry. Read more.

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is proud to announce that the program has won two 2010 APEX Awards for Publication Excellence.

The Medicine Chest, a new curriculum collection addressing the problem of disposal of unwanted medicines, won in the category Green Materials. This award is shared by Robin Goettel, associate director for education, Terri Hallesy, education specialist, Susan White, graphic designer, and Tracy Colin, communication assistant. The Medicine Chest gives educators a tool to create service-learning experiences for their students, while tackling an important environmental and human health concern.

The second APEX award went to the display Get Rid of Stuff Sensibly in the category One-of-a-Kind Green Publications. Named in this award are White and Irene Miles, communication coordinator. This display informs audiences of all ages about how to recycle, reuse, or sensibly dispose of medicines, electronics, fish and aquatic plants and more. It includes a colorful marble game that provides a fun way to think through ‘getting rid of stuff.’ On display at the Illinois State Fair and other venues, Get Rid of Stuff Sensibly has thus far engaged 4,600 people on the issue of sensible disposal.

From the Great Lakes Echo:

The combined parking lots of four Great Lakes states take up nearly 500 square miles, according to recent estimates by Purdue University.

That’s enough pavement to cover 30 percent of Green Bay in Lake Michigan, 40 percent of Saginaw Bay in Lake Huron or twice the surface of Isle Royale in Lake Superior.

It also contributes to one of the biggest threats to Great Lakes water quality: Urban runoff. Read more.

From the Great Lakes Echo:

Echo recently took a look at the finalists for $161 million worth of Great Lakes Restoration Initiative grants, breaking them down by state and group type. Here we’ll check out two more metrics: Biggest winners and GLRI focus areas.

But first, remember that these numbers are still preliminary. Finalists have until the end of June to submit the last paperwork before they’re eligible for the awards.

Also, the totals don’t account for subcontracts within grants. For example, Michigan State University is in line for $3.3 million in grants that it won outright, but it could see more initiative funds from other grant winners who have partnered with the school. Read more.

From the Muskegon Chronicle:

A perfect storm of invasive species in Lake Michigan continues to clarify the water to historic levels and threaten the lake’s forage base from bottom and top, according to new reports from the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

Analysis of current and historic data from Lake Michigan shows serious threats to sport fish brought on by quagga mussels, spiny water fleas and other invasive species that continue to thrive, although researchers remain uncertain how that will influence the lake’s future. Read more.

From the Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel:

Thursday was a rough day to be a fish in the Little Calumet River south of downtown Chicago.

Dozens of fishery crews took to the murky waters with barrels of fish poison in the latest effort to keep Asian carp from swimming up the heavily plumbed Chicago waterway system and into Lake Michigan.

“We’re going to be able to kill damn near everything in here,” said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deputy regional director Charlie Wooley at the beginning of a five-day, $1.5 million fish eradication program on a two-mile stretch of river.

Federal officials are hoping to confirm what environmental DNA testing has been telling them for the better part of a year: At least a tiny number of the voracious invasive carp have breached an electric barrier about 25 miles downstream from Lake Michigan.

“If there are Asian carp here, we should get confirmation of that this week,” said John Rogner of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Read more.

In the ongoing effort to prevent the invasive Asian carp from entering Lake Michigan and the rest of the Great Lakes, one solution keeps popping up: “If you can’t beat them, eat them.” For boaters in the Midwest, this is good news.

“These fish taste great,” said Pat Charlebois, Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG) aquatic invasives specialist, about Asian carp. Chicago Tribune food critic Phil Vettel echoed this sentiment in a recent review. “I could eat this everyday,” Vettel said of the Asian carp dish offered at a local Chicago restaurant.

In the 27-minute video, U.S. Geological Survey fish biologist Duane Chapman tackles the bones in Asian carp fillets, which make them difficult to eat. He shows step-by-step procedures for deboning the fish, as well as how to remove the bones after they are cut and cooked.

Most people are not aware of the high quality of meat in Asian carp, which Chapman refers to as the hamburger of Asia. According to Charlebois, boaters and anglers often associate Asian carp with common carp, a bottom-feeding fish, and are reluctant to catch and eat them. Rather, Asian carp—a collective term for numerous species, such as bighead and silver carp—feed on microscopic plants and animals that live in the water column so they have much higher quality meat.

Anglers who catch and eat Asian carp will be helping to rid the waters of these invasive species, which disrupt ecosystems and harm native fish populations. “We want people to reduce the number of Asian carp in our waters, and thus reduce their impact on the environment,” Charlebois said. “One way to do that is to encourage anglers to eat the fish.”

Although anglers are encouraged to catch and eat the fish downstream of the electric barrier installed in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, any Asian carp caught in Chicago area waters should be, if possible, frozen in a sealed plastic bag and reported to IISG (847-242-6440), the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (618-435-8138 x123), or the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (317-234-3883).

Knowing whether Asian carp are in those waters will be useful in the ongoing debate about the measures necessary to prevent Asian carp from entering Lake Michigan.

The video, produced by the Louisiana State University AgCenter, can be seen in three parts on YouTube.

Robin Goettel, IISG associate director of education, (right) found plenty of interest in Nab the Aquatic Invader! at the Ocean Today Kiosk at the Smithsonian Natural Museum of Natural History on her recent trip to Washington D.C.

Nab the Aquatic Invader! is an educational web site created by IISG, along with Sea Grant programs in New York, Louisiana, Connecticut, and Oregon to provide the latest information about aquatic invasive species through colorful characters and a crime-solving theme. Since its inception, the project has expanded to include species from coastal regions around the country.

The Ocean Today Kiosk, developed by NOAA in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution, presents news, video stories and in this case, interactive pages that highlight some of the most interesting, surprising, and pressing issues facing our ocean today. Through a large touch-screen interface, kiosk visitors are offered a variety of information about ocean life, current science and technology, and recent discoveries. The kiosk also features a ‘current news’ section, presenting users with near real-time data about ocean and weather conditions around the U.S.

The Nab the Aquatic Invader! feature is focused on the suspects–aka the invasive species–in four regions of the country: Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf, and Great Lakes. In each region, visitors can see read interrogation interviews with the 10 Most Wanted AIS and learn their origin, problems they cause, and some control methods used to slow the spread of these species.