From a Pentagraph editorial:

Like a pebble dropped in a lake, sending ripples far beyond the starting point, the Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal program started by teachers and students at Pontiac Township High School, continues to spread its impact across the country.

It’s a fitting metaphor for a program designed to protect the safety and quality of our drinking water.

The key message behind the program is that improper disposal of old drugs — flushing them down the toilet or down a drain — can lead to contamination of water supplies. Throwing them in the trash could lead to them falling in the wrong hands.

But, without an active Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal program — the P2D2 program — consumers have few options. Read more.

From the Army Corp of Engineers:

On November 17, the University of Notre Dame notified the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that some water samples, taken from the area between the electric barriers and Lake Michigan on September 23 and October 1, tested positive for the presence of Asian carp. The positive samples were from an area about one mile south of the O’Brien Lock, approximately 8 miles from Lake Michigan.

As part of its ongoing Asian carp monitoring program, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continues to work with the university to use eDNA genetic testing of water samples to monitor the presence of bighead and silver carp in Chicago area waterways.

“Keeping Asian carp from reaching Lake Michigan remains the focus and goal of the IDNR and the Rapid Response Work Group. We will continue to work with the group and our partners on how best to address this new issue and move forward with achieving our overall goal,” said IDNR Assistant Director John Rogner.

The multi-agency rapid response team is working to develop appropriate courses of action based on this new information. Initial response actions will include focusing Asian carp eDNA sampling and other monitoring efforts on areas upstream of the barrier to gather near real-time data on the current location of Asian carp to aid the Rapid Response team in their planning efforts.

The Rapid Response Work Group is finalizing plans to apply rotenone to a section of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in early December as part of a scheduled fish barrier maintenance shut down.

“Scheduled barrier maintenance will proceed as planned,” said Major General John W. Peabody, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Great Lakes and Ohio River Division. “This new information reinforces the importance of preventing any further intrusion of the Asian carp via the largest pathway, the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.”

 

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The decade-old battle to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes might be over.

New research shows the fish likely have made it past the $9 million electric fish barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, a source familiar with the situation told the Journal Sentinel late Thursday.

The barrier is considered the last chance to stop the super-sized fish that can upend entire ecosystems, and recent environmental DNA tests showed that the carp had advanced to within a mile of the barrier. Read more.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

A practical battalion of state and federal fishery workers will soon be dispatched to the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in a drastic attempt to keep Asian carp from invading Lake Michigan.

Early next month, more than 200 people are expected to participate in a two-day, $1.5 million project to poison nearly 6 miles of canal just southwest of Chicago. The idea is for biologists to temporarily kill the river so a new electric fish barrier can be briefly shut down for maintenance. Read more.

When people’s prescriptions change, their drugs expire or are no longer needed, these medicines are typically flushed or thrown away. A 2008 Associated Press investigation found pharmaceuticals in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans. In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas.

Illinois-Indian Sea Grant has developed a series of toolkits and initiatives to help communities, schools and individuals develop and promote programs for safe disposal of unwanted medicine.

This Thursday, November 19, over 110 local waste managers and others are registered to take part in a one-day workshop on developing collection programs for unwanted medicines in Indianapolis. This workshop will provide information and tools for community unwanted medicine collection programs, as well as for pharmacies and medical facilities to safely manage unwanted medicines. Presenters will focus on alternatives to flushing, including best practices from solid waste facilities in Indiana and surrounding states.

Topics to be discussed include: why unwanted medicine disposal is a problem, wastewater treatment issues, unwanted medication handling and disposal, and an update on legislation regarding unwanted medicine collection and disposal.

This is the third workshop on this topic that IISG has sponsored in Indianapolis in the past several years. This workshop is also sponsored by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the Indiana Board of Pharmacy, the Indiana Pharmacists Alliance, the Indiana Household Hazardous Waste Task Force, and Eli Lilly.

From Science Daily:

Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb. Read more.

From the New York Times:

At Yellowstone National Park, the clear soda cups and white utensils are not your typical cafe-counter garbage. Made of plant-based plastics, they dissolve magically when heated for more than a few minutes.

At Ecco, a popular restaurant in Atlanta, waiters no longer scrape food scraps into the trash bin. Uneaten morsels are dumped into five-gallon pails and taken to a compost heap out back.

And at eight of its North American plants, Honda is recycling so diligently that the factories have gotten rid of their trash Dumpsters altogether.

Across the nation, an antigarbage strategy known as “zero waste” is moving from the fringes to the mainstream, taking hold in school cafeterias, national parks, restaurants, stadiums and corporations. Read more.

As if Lake Michigan fish don’t have enough competition for resources. An Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant study has found that the diet of an invasive freshwater hydroid includes organisms that are an important food source for young-of-the-year and bottom-dwelling fish.

“Cordylophora caspia typically eats larval zebra and quagga mussels,” said Nadine Folino-Rorem, Wheaton College biologist. “However, when those sources are not readily available, the hydroid can feed on other invertebrates, which potentially affects prey availability for fish.” Folino-Rorem, along with Martin Berg, a Loyola University Chicago biologist, studied the distribution and diet of C. caspia in Lake Michigan.

The hydroid lives in freshwater and brackish or slightly salty habitats. The freshwater colonial hydroid is native to the Caspian and Black Seas. C. caspia colonies consist of several polyps or individuals approximately one millimeter long that are interconnected by their gastrovascular cavities. Colonies grow on hard surfaces; in southern Lake Michigan, C. caspia can be found in harbors on rocks, piers, pilings, and on clusters of zebra and quagga mussels.

The researchers found C. caspia in all eight Chicago harbors sampled as well as at two offshore sites. In fact, the population of the freshwater hydroid is growing in Lake Michigan. Folino-Rorem speculates that this may be due in part to street salts washing into the lake and changing water quality. “C. caspia thrives in higher salinity,” she explained.

The researchers also found that the freshwater hydroid can eat organisms—chironomids– that are two to three times its size. “This was often accomplished by working together,” said Folino-Rorem. “When one polyp gets a hold of a chironomid, the organism can continue to thrash about until another polyp latches onto it too. The two polyps engulf the chironomid, sometimes meeting in the middle.”

C. caspia is limited in its range due to its need to colonize on hard surfaces—Lake Michigan’s muddy bottom does not provide a hospitable habitat. However, the recent spread of quagga mussels may increase the amount of available substrate for attachment. Unlike zebra mussels, quagga mussels can colonize the soft, muddy bottoms found in deeper areas. According to Tom Nalepa, a NOAA biologist at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, 99 percent of what his team finds when sampling offshore in southern Lake Michigan waters is quagga mussels.

“They are more efficient than zebra mussels in using food resources,” he said. “And they tolerate cooler temperatures. We found that the number of quagga mussels in deep and in shallow waters far exceeds zebra mussel numbers even at their peak.”

For C. caspia, the spread of quagga mussels may prove beneficial in terms of expanding their range to offshore waters. For fish populations, this may prove to be more bad news.

Illinois Valley Community Hospital worked with the Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal Program (P2D2) to initiate a new medicine collection program at the Illinois State Police Headquarters in LaSalle County. Residents can drop off their unwanted medicines at the station using a new medicine drop box. The drop box was installed at a ceremony at the police headquarters on September 23, 2009. IISG purchased the drop box for the station.

Pictured by the box are: (back row left to right)–State Senator Gary Dahl; City of La Salle Mayor Jeff Grove; La Salle Police Chief Rob Uranich, Tommy Hobbs, CEO Illinois Valley Community Hospital; Captain Roach, Chief of State Police District 17; Ashleigh Scholle, student at Area Career Center located at La Salle Peru Township High School; Jennifer Sines,pharmacist Illinois Valley Community Hospital; Deb Parisot, graphic arts teacher at the Area Career Center; Trooper Craig Graham, State Police District 17.