SAB Review Of Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Action Plan

Nov 14: U.S. EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB) will conduct a public teleconference on December 6, 2011 to receive an update on EPA strategic research directions. One of the items for consideration will be a draft Review of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Action Plan. In a Federal Register announcement of the teleconference [76 FR 70445-70446] it is noted that EPA is leading an interagency Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) to protect and restore the chemical, biological, and physical integrity of the Great Lakes. The GLRI is designed to target the most significant environmental problems in the region.

 

    To guide the efforts of the GLRI, EPA and its Federal partners, through the Great Lakes Interagency Task Force, developed a comprehensive multi-year Action Plan. The EPA Great Lakes National Program Manager requested the SAB to review the GLRI Action Plan to assess the appropriateness of its measures and actions to achieve its stated priorities and goals. An SAB panel reviewed the EPA's action plan and prepared a draft report that will undergo quality review by the chartered SAB.

 

    Among other items in the panel review, the SAB indicates, "The Action Plan is consistent, for the most part, with previous plans and strategies, reflecting a continuation of collaborative planning in the region. This continuity in planning is good, but such consistency does not guarantee sufficiency and the SAB has a number of comments and recommendations to improve future efforts. . ." SAB said that a "solid science plan" is necessary "to drive the restoration plan, but the SAB notes that such a plan appears to be missing." SAB indicates that a standing science panel is "an important organizational tool that seems to be missing."

    Members of the public can submit comments for a federal advisory committee to consider as it develops advice for EPA. Input from the public to the SAB will have the most impact if it provides specific scientific or technical information or analysis for the SAB to consider or if it relates to the clarity or accuracy of the technical information. Members of the public wishing to provide comment should contact the Designated Federal Officer directly. Brief oral statements can be made at the teleconference written statements must be submitted by December 1.

 

    Access the FR announcement which provides details on the meeting, commenting and contact information (click here). Access the SAB Panel website for links to the 54-page draft review report as well as the 41-page GLRI Action Plan and additional background (click here).

 

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Great Lakes Regional Body & Compact Council Meetings

Nov 8: The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Water Resources Regional Body (Regional Body) will meet on December 8, 2011, at 2:00 PM EST. The meeting will be held at the Drake Hotel, 140 E. Walton Place, Chicago, Illinois 60611. The meeting is open to the public and will include an opportunity for public comments. An agenda, materials to be discussed and call-in information for those wishing to participate remotely are available. Additionally, the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Council (Compact Council) will meet the same day and the same place, immediately following the meeting of the Regional Body. The Compact Council meeting is expected to begin about 2:45 PM EST. An agenda, materials to be discussed and call-in information for those wishing to participate remotely are also available. The Council of Great Lakes Governors serves as Secretariat to the Regional Body and the Compact Council.

 

    Access the Regional Body information (click here). Access the Compact Council information (click here).

 

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Report Highlights Need For Cost-Based Water Pricing

Nov 9: Recommendations made in a new Great Lakes Commission (GLC) report indicate that as plentiful as water is in the Great Lakes region, the cost to deliver it to consumers is creeping up and should be reflected more accurately in bills to encourage conservation. The "Value of Great Lakes Water Initiative" was an 18-month project supported by the Great Lakes Protection Fund to investigate how public water is priced in the Great Lakes region and whether price could be used as a water resource management tool to change consumer behavior for more efficient water use. Principal partners with GLC in the report included the Alliance for Water Efficiency, MSU Institute for Public Utilities and the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

    The Initiative focused on three primary issues: 1) how energy costs factor into water bills; 2) whether the cost of providing water to consumers is fully transparent; and 3) if an efficiency-oriented revenue structure would change water use in the Great Lakes basin. Jeffrey Ripp of the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, a technical adviser to the project said, "Water has historically been undervalued in the Great Lakes region because of its abundance. However, the cost of delivering safe and reliable water continues to increase and many have concerns about the long-term sustainability of Great Lakes water. The results of this project will help communities price water in a way that reflects its value to the region's economy and environment."

    A survey and economic analysis by Michigan State University (MSU) of the largest municipal water systems in the Great Lakes states found that utility expenses have climbed some 25 percent on average, mainly due to the rise in costs for infrastructure and operations. To make up for the costs, water rates are generally going up, and many public water systems are providing information about conservation to their customers and even introducing special, efficiency-oriented rates. These rates are designed to encourage the customer to use their water more wisely. Typically, the price of water increases as the customer consumes more water. Dr. Janice Beecher of MSU, who led the survey, noted that "even in this water-abundant region, there is a growing recognition that cost-based water pricing plays a central role in prudent resource management and long-term sustainability." Cost-based water pricing means setting a price per unit of water to cover the costs of providing the water (e.g., pumping, treating and delivering the water to the customer).

    The Initiative engaged utility managers and local officials in a series of four workshops to discuss the impacts of water rates using the Initiative's Water Pricing Primer on the basic principles of different water rates and how they can be used to achieve various water management goals. Also discussed were the political, institutional and economic barriers to using price to achieve water conservation goals. Such barriers include lack of political will; resistance to change; lack of consumer education on why rates need to increase; media unwillingness to research all the facts; and opposing agendas between management and elected officials. A team of experts assembled for the Initiative used results from the water system survey and the workshops to make 17 recommendations for advancing water pricing to achieve both economic viability for the utility and environmental sustainability of the water resource.

    Access a release from GLC (click here). Access the full project report (click here).

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Bluff Collapses Into Lake Michigan At We Energies' WI Plant

Nov 1: A detailed article in the Milwaukee Journal (MJ) reports, "A large section of bluff collapsed Monday next to the We Energies Oak Creek Power Plant, sending dirt, coal ash and mud cascading into the shoreline next to Lake Michigan and dumping a pickup truck, dredging equipment, soil and other debris into the lake. There were no injuries, and the incident did not affect power output from the plant." MJ reported that, We Energies spokesman Barry McNulty said, "Based on our land use records it is probable that some of the material that washed into the lake is coal ash. We believe that was something that was used to fill the ravine area in that site during the 1950s. That's a practice that was discontinued several decades ago." We Energies confirmed later in the day that the coal ash was likely in the debris.

 

    Sierra Club issued a release saying, "A partial retaining bluff collapse Monday at the We Energies Oak Creek Power Plant in Wisconsin sent toxic coal ash spewing into Lake Michigan. This collapse comes just weeks after the U.S. House voted to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from protecting Americans from coal ash" [i.e. the Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act (H.R.2273)] [See WIMS 10/14/11]. A similar bill, S.1751 is now before the Senate for consideration.

 

    Sierra Club said, "We want to thank the first responders, cleanup and safety workers for their courage in helping to clean up this mess. We are very grateful that no one appears to have been injured. Unfortunately, residents of Southeast Wisconsin have been victims of We Energies negligence for years. The burning of coal is a public health menace. This incident underscores that as long as we are still mining and burning coal someone somewhere is paying the price."

 

    Access the MJ article with picture (click here). Access the Sierra Club release (click here). Access legislative details for H.R.2273 (click here). Access legislative details for S.1751 (click here). [*Energy/Coal, *Solid, *Haz]

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Impacts Of Power Plants On Great Lakes Water Resources

Nov 1: Approximately 90 percent of the electrical power in the basin is produced by thermoelectric plants, which use 26 billion gallons of water a day for cooling. A recently completed research project by the Great Lakes Commission (GLC), as part of the Commission's Great Lakes Energy-Water Nexus (GLEW) Initiative, sponsored by the Great Lakes Protection Fund, examined how water withdrawal or consumption associated with power production could impact the health of the Great Lakes basin's rivers and streams. Findings from the 18-month effort are summarized in the report entitled, Integrating Energy and Water Resources Decision Making in the Great Lakes Basin: An Examination of Future Power Generation Scenarios and Water Resource Impacts.
 
    Dr. Vincent Tidwell, principle member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories and a technical adviser to the project said, "Although most water used for power generation in the basin comes directly from the Great Lakes, about one-quarter uses water from groundwater or a Great Lakes tributary. That's not insignificant." The report synthesizes several background reports examining technical and policy aspects of power and water in the Great Lakes basin. The technical analysis examines how changes in the type of power generation could affect sensitive watersheds in the future. That analysis is complemented by a review of relevant water and energy policies that identifies gaps and opportunities for improvements.
 
    According to a release from GLC, new metrics developed as part of the project revealed that approximately one-quarter of all of the watersheds in the Great Lakes basin may be ecologically vulnerable to water withdrawals under certain "low-flow" conditions – conditions that are likely to be more frequent in the future as the impacts of climate change become more severe. Additionally, more than half (57 percent) of the 102 watersheds studied were found to be at moderate to high risk of degrading ecological health due to additional thermal impacts, and 36 percent have water quality that is moderately to highly impaired according to U.S. EPA and state reports. All told, one-fifth of the Great Lakes basin's sub-watersheds rank high for two or more of these risk factors.
 
    Professor Mark Bain of Cornell University, another project partner, said, "Because of the Great Lakes Energy-Water Nexus project, we now know which areas in the basin are most susceptible to ecological impairment from new water uses, including power production." Using a model developed by Sandia National Laboratories, five future power scenarios were analyzed for the period 2007 to 2035: 1) Business as usual, including use of open-loop cooling where water used for cooling is returned to the river, lake or aquifer from which it was withdrawn; 2) no new open-loop cooling; 3) open-loop cooling totally prohibited; 4) a renewable energy portfolio with 50 percent wind, 25 percent biofuel and 25 percent natural gas; and 5) that same portfolio with carbon capture and sequestration.
 
    For all five scenarios, water withdrawals would decrease, but by far the largest decreases (87 percent) would occur where there is no open-loop cooling at all. In every case except the open-loop cooling prohibited, thermoelectric water withdrawals would continue to be the basin's predominant water use through 2035. In contrast, consumptive water use would increase under all five scenarios with the largest increase in consumptive use (24 percent) occurring under the carbon capture and sequestration scenario, in part due to increased water required for this process.
 
    The lowest increase in consumptive use (7.6 percent) would occur under the renewable energy portfolio, reflecting the considerably lower water use associated with natural gas combined cycle technologies as well as wind power generation, which uses no water. Under all scenarios, consumptive uses from the thermoelectric power sector would be lower when compared to industrial and municipal water use sectors. Tim Eder, executive director of the Great Lakes Commission said, "The GLEW project takes us one step further in our understanding of how our energy choices today could impact our water resources in the future."

 

    Access a release from GLC (click here). Access the summary report and background papers (click here).

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Back To The Supreme Court On Asian Carp Issue

Oct 26: Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette announced he has filed a request for appeal with the United State Supreme Court to review a U.S. Court of Appeals decision that denied the request of five Great Lakes states for an immediate injunction requiring a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study on ecological separation to be greatly sped up and the installation of nets to stop the advancement of Asian carp toward Lake Michigan. Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin originally filed the suit in July 2010 against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Chicago Water District in Federal court. Schuette said, "We need to close the Asian carp superhighway, and do it now. Time is running out for the Great Lakes, and we can't afford to wait years before the federal government takes meaningful action."

    On August 24, 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago issued a ruling on the preliminary injunction request concluding that Michigan's lawsuit had "a good or even substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their public nuisance claim." [See WIMS 9/6/11]. Despite the recognition of the real threat posed by Asian carp, the Court denied the states' request. The states then decided to appeal. Schuette's office today submitted a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari also signed by the attorneys general of Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The petition asks the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the 7th Circuit decision and order the following:

• Require the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to install block nets in the Little Calumet and Grand Calumet rivers, two open pathways between the Mississippi River and Great Lakes basins that are vulnerable to Asian carp invasion; and
• Require the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the completion of its study of permanent ecological separation between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins, so that the part of the study focused on the Chicago Area Waterway is completed within 18 months, not five years. 

    The filing with the Supreme Court poses two questions to be decided as follows: "This multi-sovereign dispute involves the imminent invasion of Asian carp into the Great Lakes ecosystem. Although the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that catastrophic harm has a "good" or "perhaps even a substantial" likelihood of occurring, Pet. App. 4a–5a, it affirmed the district court's denial of even the plaintiffs' most modest requests for injunctive relief. The Seventh Circuit's opinion raises two questions for this Court's review: 1. Whether a request for multiple types of preliminary-injunctive relief requires a balancing of harms with respect to each form of relief requested[; and] 2. Whether a party's statement that it is 'considering' implementing the relief requested in a motion for injunction is a ground for denying the injunction."

   

    On April 26, 2010, The U.S. Supreme Court for the third time declined to address the debate between Great Lakes states on issues and actions necessary to control the spread of Asian Carp into the Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes [See WIMS 4/26/10].

 

    Schuette noted a recent study commissioned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and conducted by independent scientists at the Center for Aquatic Conservation at the University of Notre Dame identified the Chicago Waterway as a "major pathway" for the spread of invasive species, concluding that "the canal represents a potential highway to environmental havoc for many species that pose a high risk to both the Great Lake and the Mississippi basins."  

 

    In addition to his ongoing legal efforts to combat the threat of Asian carp, in September 2011, Schuette organized a national coalition of 17 attorneys general who urged Congress to act on a legislative solution to the threat posed by invasive species traveling through the Chicago Waterways. The coalition called on congressional leaders to support the Stop Asian Carp Act, introduced earlier this year by sponsors Representative Dave Camp (R-MI) (H.R.892) and Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) (S.471).  

 

    Access a release from Attorney General Schuette (click here). Access the 32-page Petition for a Writ of Certiorari (click here). Access the complete opinion from the Seventh Circuit (click here). Access multiple postings on the Supreme Court's consideration of the Asian Carp issue on the WIMS Great Lakes Environment Blog(click here).

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Economic Study Of Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway System

Oct 18:  October 18, the marine industry released the results of a year-long study of the economic impacts of the entire Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway navigation system. According to a release, for the first time, the economic impacts have been measured for both the U.S. and Canada, at the same time, using the same methodology. The purpose of the report is to provide the navigation community, transportation planners, government policy makers and the general public with a realistic assessment of the contributions made by the Great Lakes-Seaway system to federal, state/provincial and local economies.

    The study found that maritime commerce supported 227,000 jobs; contributed $14.1 billion in annual personal income, $33.5 billion in business revenue, and $6.4 billion in local purchases; and added $4.6 billion to federal, state/provincial, and local tax revenues. North American farmers, steel producers, construction firms, food manufacturers, and power generators depend on the 164 million metric tons of essential raw materials and finished products that are moved annually on the system. Additionally, marine shipping saves companies approximately $3.6 billion per year in transportation costs compared to the next least-costly land-based alternative.

    The study was commissioned by members of the marine shipping industry, in partnership with U.S. and Canadian government agencies. Martin Associates of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a global leader in transportation economic analysis and strategic planning, was retained to conduct the study. In order to ensure defensibility and accuracy, the study methodology and results of the analysis was peer reviewed by leading U.S. and Canadian economists in academia and the private sector.

The impacts of 2010 cargo movements were calculated at 32 U.S. and Canadian ports along the system. Chapter 1 lays out study methodology; Chapter 2 presents the system-wide impacts; Chapter 3 breaks down those economic impacts by vessel flag; Chapter 4 evaluates the data exclusively for commerce utilizing the St. Lawrence Seaway; Chapter 5 reveals the impact from the perspective of the New York ballast water regulations; and Chapter 6 presents information on related users along the system.

    Access a release on the study and link to an executive summary and the complete 98-page study (click here).

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