Lake Michigan gets regular health checkups, but like many people, it sometimes needs special monitoring or scanning to get to the bottom of symptoms or concerns. The latest results from some of these tests and evaluations are now available in an Environmental Systems Research Institute Story Map, Lake Michigan Health: A Deeper Dive.
The Cooperative Science and Monitoring Initiative (CSMI) intensive examination of Lake Michigan occurs every five years through an initiative that rotates around the Great Lakes—scientists in the region coordinate their efforts to answer critical questions and fill science information gaps for each lake.
Each year since 2002, through CSMI, multiple federal, provincial, state, and university scientists have joined forces on one of the Great Lakes to take part in coordinated research. This binational program is organized through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes National Program Office and Environment and Climate Change Canada in support of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement Science Annex.
Unlike your medical records, information on the health of Lake Michigan is available to everyone, including environmental managers, scientists, educators, students, boaters, anglers and lake enthusiasts in general. On the story map, information is presented through interactive graphics, easy-to-understand diagrams and photos of science in action.
Lake Michigan Food Web: Changes throughout History
“Having this straight-forward tool that helps us explain to anglers and other stakeholders how bottom-up factors affect fish populations is a great thing and very timely, given the changing Lake Michigan ecosystem,” said Vic Santucci, Lake Michigan program manager, Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Lake Michigan: A Deeper Dive, which was developed by Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, includes a brief history of the lake as well as information on several key areas of study from 2015—Lake Michigan’s most recent CSMI field year focusing on the lower food web, prey fish and contaminants.
The invasive quagga mussels featured prominently in the scientists’ reports. They found that their lakewide numbers have declined, but that quagga biomass has increased as mussels age and grow larger. In deeper parts of the lake, quagga mussel populations increased between 2010 and 2015.
One way that scientists can assess the number of quagga mussels on the lake bottom is using a towed benthic sled, which, equipped with a camera, visually records mussel distribution and numbers at the bottom of the lake. While visiting the CSMI story map, you can ride along on the benthic sled and see what the scientists saw. Also, Lake Michigan: A Deeper Dive provides graphic illustrations of how the lake food web has changed since the influx of invasive species.
Another key finding is that, in general, larval fish are growing about half as fast as they did before quagga mussels were established in the early 2000s. In fact, quagga mussels, by filtering large amounts of plankton, may be having a negative impact on fish production.
Next year, CSMI scientists will once again gather on Lake Michigan for monitoring and testing to assess the health of the lake. To set 2020’s research priorities, scientists and resource managers came together in 2018 to discuss the latest findings and to define critical data needs. Over the next couple of years, scientists will report the results of their fieldwork and the CSMI story map will be updated with information from this upcoming Lake Michigan checkup.
This project was supported by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG) staff have been extra busy lately helping southern Lake Michigan communities and other Great Lakes communities address coastal issues through research, outreach and education, and their work has not gone unnoticed. Sea Granters working on pollution prevention, social science and communication have received three awards recognizing their excellence in bringing the latest science to those who can best use the information, empowering people to solve problems in sustainable ways.
Early Career Award
As part of the Great Lakes Sea Grant Network meeting, Sarah Zack was distinguished as recipient of the 2019 Great Lakes Sea Grant Network Early Career Award, presented in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan in September. Zack holds a dual role in pollution prevention, working for both Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and University of Illinois Extension. Since taking on the position of pollution prevention specialist in 2016, she has participated in nearly 60 outreach or education events, reaching nearly 5,000 Great Lakes residents and decision makers, scientists, veterinary professionals and students with the pollution prevention message.
“I was honored to be nominated for the award by my program administration, and shocked and grateful when I won, because I work with so many amazing, effective Sea Grant staff from programs around the Great Lakes,” said Zack. “It feels really good to be recognized, but it’s definitely the strength of my partners that make what we do so fun and meaningful. I couldn’t do it alone!”
The Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant medicine collection program hit its 10-year anniversary in 2018 under Zack’s leadership. During that time, over 118 tons—or 236,000 pounds—of medicine have been collected through community collection programs supported by IISG. Since 2016, seven new permanent programs have been established, bringing the total of engaged communities to 54.
Since 2017, Zack has also played a critical role in organizing the annual Emerging Contaminants in the Environment Conference, cohosted by the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center and Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. It has grown from a one-day conference in 2016, with about 60 attendees, 15 presentations and 11 posters, to a two-day conference with over 100 attendees, 32 presentations, 15 posters and an expert discussion panel in 2019.
The Great Lakes Sea Grant Network (GLSGN) awards are organized and given by the GLSGN program leaders to recognize individual Sea Grant professionals who have shown noteworthy enthusiasm, performance, accomplishments and impact during their Sea Grant careers. Great Lakes Sea Grant individual achievement awards are the only Great Lakes Sea Grant-sponsored awards to recognize individual accomplishments during Sea Grant careers. Recipients of the GLSGN Early Career Award have worked for Sea Grant less than seven years at the time of the award.
Silver Medal for Superior Service
As part of the Zephyr Great Lakes Remediation Team, Caitie Nigrelli won a 2018 Silver Medal for Superior Service Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, presented at the U.S. EPA National Honor Awards in Washington, D.C. in July. This Great Lakes Legacy Act team successfully remediated the wetlands below the former Zephyr Oil Refinery in Michigan. The team was successful in remediating legacy contamination and restoring native habitat within this Great Lakes Area of Concern (AOC), and contributing to the future removal of BUIs within the AOC.
The team was honored for exemplary problem-solving and project management to successfully remediate an extremely toxic contaminated sediment site under extreme pressure and tight timelines. They also won the Western Dredging Association 2019 Environmental Excellence Award, presented in Chicago in June.
Nigrelli works for University of Illinois Extension and Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant.
APEX Award
Every year, Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant publishes the ways in which the program has impacted communities and the region through long-term projects addressing critical coastal issues. The impacts booklet published last year, Impacts 2017: Two Great States Caring for One Great Lake, has won a 2019 APEX Award of Excellence in the category of 1-2 Person-Produced Annual Reports. IISG’s strategic communicator, Irene Miles, and graphic designer, Joel Davenport, produced the booklet together.
“This is a well-deserved award and is evidence of how hard-working, dedicated, and excellent our communications team is,” said Stuart Carlton, IISG’s assistant director. “It’s also evidence of the strong impact that Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant has had in the area, helping people use science to live a more resilient life.”
APEX awards are based on distinction in graphic design, editorial content and the ability to achieve overall communications excellence. The awards are given each year by Communication Concepts to recognize outstanding publication work in a variety of fields.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue University Extension.
We all know the Great Lakes are big and beautiful, but you may not know that after decades of industry along their shores, many communities in the region have been left with polluted waterways and degraded waterfronts. Now that much of this manufacturing activity is gone, many of these Areas of Concern are being cleaned up through federal, state and local partnerships. Much of this work is funded through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
Recently, National Geographic photographer Peter Essick spent some time documenting the sights, the people and the work taking place in these locations. These striking images provided an opportunity for the Great Lakes Sea Grant Network to tell some stories of restoration, revitalization and revival in this collective photo essay called Great Lakes Resurgence: Cleanup Efforts Bring Life to Local Waterfronts.
Forty fourth grade students from East Chicago spread out along the Grand Calumet River in May to learn about science and environmental stewardship. Through a series of hands-on, active learning stations, scientists taught students how life has returned to the previously degraded landscape. The field trip was part of the seventh annual Grand Calumet River Stewardship Day at the Seidner Dune and Swale Nature Preserve in Northwest Indiana. As these students head back to school and into the fifth grade, the hope is that—because of their participation in the stewardship day—they will have a renewed love for nature and a stronger tendency towards caring for the local environment as they grow older.
Scientists and agency leads joined the students at Roxana Marsh to help with fish identification, macroinvertebrate sampling, bird watching and dune and swale exploration. Special guests included Chris Korleski, director of the U.S. EPA Great Lakes National Program Office, and Tomas Höök, director of Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG).
The stewardship day served as a celebration of a successful remediation and restoration process thus far for the river. “The Grand Calumet River is an Area of Concern, which means that it has environmental degradation, has pollution, and the habitat has been fragmented, lost or taken over by invasive species,” said Caitie Nigrelli, social scientist for IISG and the U.S. EPA, and organizer of the annual event. “We’re working together with a lot of state, federal and local partners to clean it up and restore it.
The Grand Calumet River was once called the most polluted river in America. Through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, 2 million cubic yards of river and wetland sediment have been removed or capped and 84 acres of habitat have been restored. “If you clean up a portion of a river or a lake, people want to come fish,” said Korleski. “Maybe somebody opens a bait shop, then somebody opens a coffee shop for the people who want to come fish. So, it’s not just the environmental aspects that are critically important to us, but [cleanup] helps restore communities economically as well. It gives people more options and more recreational opportunities. It’s a place that people want to be.”
Grand Calumet River Stewardship Day is a place-based education program and part of IISG’s efforts to connect students with local restored natural areas. The goal of the event is to increase students’ attachment and belonging to the Grand Calumet River and surrounding nature, heightening their sense of place and encouraging them to protect and care for the river.
Learn more about the Grand Calumet River and other Areas of Concern on Nigrelli’s website, Great Lakes Mud.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue University Extension.
Lately, Sheboygan is on the upswing. This city in Wisconsin that sits along the Sheboygan River is booming with new housing, more tourism, and more water-based recreation opportunities, according to a recent Great Lakes Commission study. Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG), as part of a team of partners, provided expertise that contributed to this success story.
Not so long ago, the river was considered a black eye on the community. Labeled one of the most polluted rivers in the country, it was contaminated with an alphabet soup of PCBs and PAHs. With funding from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, approximately 300,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment (or 15,000 full dump trucks) were removed from the river in 2012-2013. As a result, river-goers enjoy a deeper river with better navigation and access, and a cleaner habitat for fish and wildlife to thrive.
“There’s no question in my mind that if that cleanup effort hadn’t gone on, we would not see the kind of development and enthusiasm going on in our community,” said Adam Payne, Sheboygan County administrator. “It absolutely triggered a lot of the good things that are in play.”
As is typical for projects funded through the Great Lakes Legacy Act, partners were key to its success, including federal, state, local—agencies, non-for-profits, private companies—the list is extensive. “The level of collaboration and teamwork was unprecedented of anything I had seen in my career,” added Payne.
For its part, IISG funded research to assess the economic impact of the contaminated river on housing prices. “We looked at actual sales of single family houses in the area from 2002-2004,” explained John Braden, University of Illinois economist (now retired). “And we surveyed 850 residents to understand people’s perceptions of the river, and their willingness to pay more for housing if the river was cleaned up.”
Braden found that property values for homes within five miles of the contaminated waterways were significantly depressed—an 8 percent discount, on average. This research and related Sea Grant outreach helped illustrate the value of the cleanup, helped to keep the Sheboygan community informed about the remediation process as it happened, and helped to change the conversation about sediment remediation.
“Sediment remediation is very expensive, so how can we justify these multi-million dollar projects?” said Caitie Nigrelli, IISG social scientist. “The main goal is to improve environmental quality of water resources, but if we understand more of the benefits, we can make a better case for these projects.”
Nigrelli worked with a Sheboygan outreach team in 2012 to provide information to stakeholders and the public. She helped convey the results of Braden’s research in her outreach efforts through publications and other venues. In addition, bringing her social science expertise to the project, she oversaw a study to bring community perceptions to light to better understand how to communicate about the sediment remediation project and its benefits to the public.
“We found that while the river was viewed as an asset, it had a negative stigma,” said Nigrelli. “Our interviews before the remediation revealed that residents saw the water as unclean and some were hesitant and even afraid to come in contact with the water.”
Due to years of sedimentation, the depth of Sheboygan River was also viewed as a major concern as its shallowness limited access for larger boats and sailboats. While the point of the remediation was to remove contaminants, a side benefit was an increase in river depth. These and other findings helped Nigrelli and the outreach team target public information to address specific concerns.
Payne describes the value of a well-informed public in terms of just getting through the remediation process. “To put it in perspective, when we were removing the contaminated soil from the river and harbor, we had trucks coming and going through the heart of the city every three to five minutes, 24/7. That’s disruptive, lots of dust, noise, traffic and that obviously raises folks eyebrows and raises concerns. I think where outreach efforts were so helpful is in raising awareness with the public—these potential benefits are why we are going to go through this.”
To learn more about remediation partnership possibilities, “A Seat at the Table: Great Lakes Legacy Act” is a new video that explains what it means to be a cost-share partner with the Environmental Protection Agency under GLLA. The video uses interviews with partners to describe the benefits and challenges of cost-share partnering, the cost-sharing mechanism, examples of in-kind services and the flexibility of partnerships.
To see what successful partnerships can accomplish, follow Nigrelli (@Gr8LakesLady) on Twitter as she has been sharing 22 sediment site success stories, including before and after photos, contamination causes, partnerships and cleanup details. Follow and join the conversation using #22SedimentStories.
Legacy pollutants—chemical contaminants left behind by industry from decades ago and prior to modern pollution laws—remain a burden in some Great Lakes communities. In fact, the U.S. side of the Great Lakes have 27 Areas of Concern (AOC) that are still considered impaired due to risks to human health, pollution, habitat loss, degradation and other issues.
“For the first time, we have a program and funding specifically dedicated to addressing the most pervasive environmental problem facing the AOCs,” said Matt Doss, policy director for the Great Lakes Commission. “Not only has the Legacy Act lead to actual cleanups of contaminated sediments—generating real, on-the-ground environmental improvements—it revitalized the entire AOC program by demonstrating that real progress was possible.”
Over multiple projects, nearly 1 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment in the Buffalo River have been cleaned up through the Great Lakes Legacy Act.
The GLLA program is administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes National Program Office in Chicago, Illinois. GLLA uses a unique funding strategy that combines voluntary support from states, businesses, and non-governmental organizations, and the federal government through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant assesses outreach needs and engages stakeholders at the community level where GLLA sediment cleanups take place.
Sediment cleanups come in many sizes. The largest GLLA completed project dredged and capped one million cubic yards of contaminated sediment from the East Branch of the Grand Calumet River in northwest Indiana.
“Together, the State Natural Resource Trustees, Federal Natural Resource Trustees and EPA have spent over $180 million on sediment remediation projects in the Grand Calumet River, supporting a heathier fish community and attracting a robust migratory bird population,” said Bruno Pigott, Commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
To put dredge volumes in perspective, consider how the size of a single cubic yard compares to the average height of a man.
Much has been accomplished in the program’s first 15 years. Under GLLA, 21 projects are complete in six out of eight Great Lakes states, and more are in the planning stage. Through federal support and local funds, over $588 million has been spent to investigate sediment contamination, design cleanups, and implement solutions to pollution in AOCs.
“The Legacy Act is now among the most successful cleanup programs in the region and a cornerstone of the AOC program,” said Doss.
For the most comprehensive web coverage of sediment cleanups under the Great Lakes Legacy Act, visit www.greatlakesmud.org or follow Great Lakes Mud on Facebook.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue University Extension.
The R/V Lake Guardian’s recently completed survey of all five Great Lakes is not an unprecedented feat. In fact, this survey—which collected samples at over 100 stations this August alone—has taken place twice a year since the early 1980s, once each spring and again in summer.
Something that is new, however, is how much of the work is accessible to us landlocked lovers of the Great Lakes.
As the person at the helm for the @LakeGuardian Twitter account, I was overjoyed to spend the first nine days of August on board for the Michigan and Huron legs of this year’s summer survey. Officially called the Open Lakes Water Quality Monitoring Survey, this particular research cruise is important to highlight because it brings together scientists from around the basin to focus on contributing research to a long-term monitoring program that has been assessing the health of the Great Lakes for over 30 years.
The fast-paced, round-the-clock nature of research cruises—especially one of this magnitude—hardly allows time for the scientists or crew to communicate the work they’re doing.
But for me, being in the middle of all the action was the perfect time to gather and produce material to share with the Lake Guardian’s Twitter followers. Using the hashtag #SummerSurvey2016, I chronicled the exciting, enlightening, and at times obstacle-laden journey of the survey through live Tweeting updates, photos, and videos from the Guardian’s sampling decks and onboard labs.
Working first and foremost as science personnel for the EPA water quality program, I labored 12-hour shifts each day. From 4 p.m. until 4 a.m., I had to suit up in steel-toed boots, a life vest, rubber gloves, and hard hat every time the ship arrived at a station and head out to the rosette deck to collect the water samples taken from several depths and specific layers of the water column.
Bringing milk-crates full of water samples back into the wet lab, I then had one of two tasks: filter the water and preserve it for four different nutrient analyses or run board chemistry to determine the pH, conductivity, alkalinity, and turbidity of each sample.
While this water-quality portion of the survey is being conducted, samples are taken simultaneously on the fantail, or back of the boat, to collect plankton and sediment. Any station reached after the sun goes down is also sampled for Mysis, an aquatic animal that resembles shrimp and is only active at night.
All three onboard labs are constantly buzzing with sample processing and preserving—with researchers doing things like extracting chlorophyll a or flash-freezing microbial cells in liquid nitrogen.
In every spare moment I tried to capitalize on the flurry of activity relating to both science and ship life. Showing off the research as it’s happening, making it accessible and informative, is the best way to tell the important story of the work being done to monitor and protect the Great Lakes.
By the time I left, the Lake Guardian was preparing for her next trip, the Cooperative Science and Monitoring Initiative. The scientists have already started #CSMI2016, so be on the lookout for updates!
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.
Milwaukee residents who have spent most of their lives near the sprawling Lincoln Park have stories to tell about how degraded the park had become. The Milwaukee River was hidden behind buckthorn and other brush and the fish that lived in the tainted water were too contaminated to eat.
Last week they shared some of these memories as part of a joyous celebration that the park and river have been cleaned up. State Representative Mandela Barnes described the park now as “good for people’s health.” At this event, a ceremonial ribbon was cut and the park was officially reborn.
Lincoln Park is in the Milwaukee Estuary Area of Concern, designated by the International Joint Commission. Contamination in the park came from historic industrial and municipal discharges among other sources.
The cleanup of Lincoln Park got its biggest boost from the Great Lakes Legacy Act, which provided federal matching funds from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to share the project’s cost with Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Milwaukee County Parks. Agency representatives, as well as local officials and residents, were on site to celebrate this success story.
Over a four year period, 171,000 cubic yards of sediment laced with an alphabet soup of contaminants—PCBs, PAHs, and NAPLs—were removed from targeted zones in the river and 12.5 acres of shoreline were restored. Commenting the time and work that went into this remediation and restoration, Cameron Davis, EPA senior advisor to the administrator, described the project partners as more persistent than the contaminants themselves.
Throughout the process, Caitie Nigrelli, IISG environmental social scientist was on the ground, keeping the community informed, but also facilitating residents to take some ownership of the park. Nigrelli helped a volunteer organization get started—Friends of Lincoln Park—and joined in the group’s one year anniversary last fall.
Anne Stadler Vaillancourt, a leader of the Friends group, spoke at last week’s event and a number of members were there to set up, take down, and enjoy the festivities. The organization is enjoying success and is ready to grow in membership. They recently held a volunteer cleanup day at the park and more than 100 people showed up. They have two upcoming Weed Out events to remove invasive species on May 14 and May 28.
Stadler Vaillancourt expressed to the morning’s participants that the Friends of Lincoln Park are committed to take care of the park for the long term.
Also in attendance were: Kevin Haley, landscape architect and John Dargle, Jr., director, both of Milwaukee County Parks; State Sen. Lena Taylor; State Rep. David Brown; Theo Lipscomb, chairman of Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors; and Ed Eberle, assistant deputy secretary of Wisconsin DNR.
The Grand Calumet River in northwest Indiana, abused from centuries of industrial contamination, celebrated a triumphant milestone in October.
Volunteers, environmental organizers, and local, state, and federal politicians gathered to admire the incredible transformation of a river that was once drained of its ecological significance.
IISG Environmental Social Scientist Caitie Nigrelli who led an outreach team to raise awareness about this enormous undertaking soaked it all in.
Caitie Nigrelli, left, and Diana Mally, an environmental
engineer with the U.S. EPA, walk by the river.
“I’m enjoying the beautiful river,” Nigrelli said. “It‘s amazing because just a few years ago I was standing in the same spot, and it was contaminated. Now I look out and it is clean and beautiful.”
Nigrelli serves as a liaison between the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA) and community stakeholders to promote awareness of the Grand Cal remediation through public meetings, tours, and events with school children.
The Grand Calumet was at rock bottom when the International Joint Commission designated it as an Area of Concern in 1987. Since then $159 million in combined state and U.S. EPA funds through the Great Lakes Legacy Act have thus far provided the means to clean it up.
Because of the extent of the work, the Grand Cal’s 13-mile system was divided into eight separate projects, with more milestones to come. This most recent event marked the completion of a 2-mile section from Kennedy Avenue to Cline Avenue at a cost of $82 million. The money went toward remediating 1.1 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment, restoring 58 acres of marsh habitat, and installing more than 170,000 plants.
This effort not only remediated sediment, but also removed invasive species like Phragmites that had overrun dune and swale habitat, crowding out native plants.
The federal funding, while generous, comes with a significant stipulation: Local partners must match at least 35 percent of the cost of remediation. The Indiana Departments of Natural Resources and Environmental Management footed the bill with money from a Natural Resource Damage Assessment involving eight industries.
Kris Krouse, Shirley Heinze Land Trust executive director, said, “From our perspective as an organization, it is probably one of the most spectacular and monumental achievements when it comes to land conservation.”
Octogenarian Lee Botts, a prominent Great Lakes environmental activist since the 1960s, is making a film about the changes the south end of Lake Michigan is experiencing. She remembers questioning that any kind of restoration was ever going to happen.
“Amazing progress is being made by partnerships among all kinds of interests—some of whom in the past were enemies and opposed the conservation,” Botts said. “Now it’s a shared goal of all these interests. We’re making progress.”
Remediation on the next section starts next week—going west, it includes the city of Hammond and will go up to the Illinois border.
For more information on the ongoing cleanup of the Grand Calumet River, visit www.greatlakesmud.org.
This story appears in the latest edition of The Helm.
Our lawns are greening up just in time for #EarthDay2024. 🌎 The @ILINSeaGrant Lawn to Lake Program has advice for a healthy lawn that minimizes polluted runoff. Find these #NaturalLawnCare tips at @ILextension @ILEPA @ILAgriculture
As part of the Zephyr Great Lakes Remediation Team, Caitie Nigrelli won a 2018 Silver Medal for Superior Service Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, presented at the 
Every year, Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant publishes the ways in which the program has impacted communities and the region through long-term projects addressing critical coastal issues. The impacts booklet published last year, 
Anne Stadler Vaillancourt, a leader of the Friends group, spoke at last week’s event and a number of members were there to set up, take down, and enjoy the festivities. The organization is enjoying success and is ready to grow in membership. They recently held a volunteer cleanup day at the park and more than 100 people showed up. They have two upcoming Weed Out events to remove invasive species on May 14 and May 28.
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