When stormwater and municipal wastewater overwhelm treatment plants, cities get overwhelmed with overflows that can close Great Lakes beaches, threaten drinking water supplies and prove too expensive and time-consuming to fix.

April 5, 2011
Milwaukee pioneers innovative stormwater controls
Milwaukee built some of the region’s first sewers to carry untreated wastewater into rivers and the lake. But today the city is a national leader in reducing stormwater runoff.

December 13, 2010

Greening sewers saves environment, money
Detroit is greening its sewer systems with environmentally friendly technologies.

December 8, 2010
Sprawl, climate change, carp …

One way to keep an arm’s length from the vapid Earth Day sales pitches, TV ads and junk mail circulating this month is to remember that the Great Lakes not only had a role in the creation of that event – but a role in the entire modern environmental era.

Preserving historic barns does more than maintain the beauty of the state’s rural landscape — it has economic benefits as well, preservation experts say.
It often creates new businesses, agritourism destinations and jobs.

Sable Points Lighthouse Keepers Association maintains three lighthouses: Big Sable Point and the Ludington North Breakwater Light in Ludington, Mich.; and Little Sable Point, in Shelby, Mich.

Working Bugs, an East Lansing based company, is doing big things with small microorganisms. It is a small part of a growing biomanufacturing industry hoping to replace petroleum in plastics, clothing, fuel and other products.

To submit an image to Great Lakes Echo Photo Friday, send your photo, a caption and your name to greatlakesecho@gmail.com.

Using complexity to describe disease clusters and remediation of toxic sites is a gross understatement.

Disease clusters are complicated to confirm and challenging to investigate, as evidenced by recent confusion surrounding a suspected one in Muskegon County, Mich., that was reported recently by two national environmental organizations.

Focus remains on current, non-native residents in the Great Lakes, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration did a “scientific census” of nonindigenous species looking to take up residence in the Great Lakes.

Michigan’s 2.7 million acres of national forest produce enough lumber each year to build around 18,000 average-sized houses and provide habitat to endangered species such as the bald eagle and osprey.