FY1999 - 2000 Great Lakes Priorities and Funding Guidance

FY1999 GREAT LAKES PROJECT SUMMARIES

CONTENTS

GLNPO Funding

GLNPO makes "venture capital" available for important, innovative projects to protect and clean up the Great Lakes ecosystem. In FY 99 GLNPO looked for projects in the areas of Contaminated Sediments, Pollution Prevention and Reduction (pursuant to the Binational Toxics Strategy), Habitat (Ecological) Protection and Restoration, Exotic Species, and Emerging Issues. Our criteria specified that we were looking for projects which: (i) are action oriented, (ii) are not clearly the mission of other Federal programs, (iii) are leveraged with other funding sources, (iv) complement, but do not duplicate, other efforts, and (v) were developed through a collaborative, partnership process such as LaMPs or RAPs.

Each Fall, mid-level environmental managers from Great Lakes State, Tribal, and Federal programs meet in a Great Lakes Planning Meeting to discuss Great Lakes priorities and the criteria for projects to be funded by GLNPO in the upcoming year. That information is used in developing a Great Lakes Funding Guidance which is then used in a broad solicitation of Preproposals through direct mailings, notification in the Federal Register, and Internet posting and announcements.

The Great Lakes Funding Guidance asks interested Applicants to submit short Preproposals for Great Lakes projects. Reviewers internal and external to USEPA evaluate the Preproposals. Evaluations take into account recommendations on specific needs and priorities of geographic areas within the Great Lakes. Applicants are notified as to whether they should subsequently submit full Assistance Application Packages (full Proposals). Final funding decisions are based upon the full Proposals. GLNPO makes reports and other products of this assistance accessible to the public via the Internet and other means.

In November 1998, GLNPO solicited pre-proposals for $4 million in projects to be funded during 1999. The solicitation sought Great Lakes projects addressing contaminated sediments; pollution prevention and reduction; habitat protection and restoration; invasive species; and emerging issues. In response, 180 applicants submitted 244 pre-proposals seeking a total of $28 million in funding. Following an extensive review process, GLNPO requested full proposals for 56 projects totaling $3.8 million. At the end of the year, GLNPO had issued awards for 55 projects totaling $3.6 million. These included:

• 8 projects totaling $879,000 to states
• 4 projects totaling $158,644 to interstate agencies of commissions
• 1 project totaling $5,000 to special purpose district
• 2 projects totaling $139,750 to counties
• 3 projects totaling $92,830 to tribal organizations
• 4 projects totaling $262,595 to municipalities
• 3 projects totaling $136,000 to federal agencies
• 10 projects totaling $714,812 to colleges or universities
• 1 project totaling $80,000 to a federally funded research and development center
• 19 projects totaling $1,089,449 to other organizations

In addition, GLNPO issued awards for projects totaling $2.8 million for priority projects outside of the Funding Guidance process.

About This Document

This document contains brief summaries of projects funded by GLNPO in FY 99. Projects are divided first by the Great Lakes priority they address. Within each priority area projects are divided by the Great Lake impacted by the project. Projects that address the issues of more than one lake are placed under the heading "Basin-wide or Multiple Basin" for each of the priority areas. The first line of the heading for each project contains the project’s name, identification number, and the amount of funds granted to the project. The second line indicates to which organization the grant was awarded. The project period describes the anticipated length of the project. The project officer is the GLNPO employee primarily responsible for overseeing the project. Any specific questions regarding a project should be directed to the project officer at the telephone number given. General questions regarding this document or GLNPO funding should be directed to Michael Russ at 312-886-4013.

We especially appreciate the efforts of Intern Megan Gaughan in pulling this document together.

GLNPO contacts for the principal areas described in this document are:

EMERGING ISSUES

Lake Huron

Michigan Department of Environmental Quality’s Office of the Great Lakes (OGL) will continue efforts to develop a strategy for addressing Lake Huron. OGL will compile existing information and data for initial development of a planning document for Lake Huron. OGL will work with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission’s Lake Huron Committee to coordinate the development of environmental objectives for Lake Huron. This project may perform some of the preliminary tasks associated with the development of a Lakewide Management Plan for Lake Huron.

Basin Wide or Multiple Basins

Diatoms are perhaps the single most useful organisms for detecting the degree and magnitude of environmental change and have been widely used in this context in the Great Lakes. This project would provide the Great Lakes community with updated information on the rapidly changing diatom flora. It would provide assistance in the identification and naming of problematic taxa currently found in the Great Lakes basin.

This grant will allow for a day-long Stakeholder’s Forum to take place on the credible and appropriate use of economic information in Great Lakes environmental decision-making. This forum will be a follow-up to one which took place in July of 1998, which focused on the economic benefits of the Great Lakes and the tools which economists have to quantify these environmental benefits. This upcoming forum will focus on how to use these techniques in environmental decision-making.

This grant will support the first phase of a two-phased project to develop economic information on the potential benefits of sediment remediation at selected sites around the Great Lakes Basin. This first phase of the project will assess available data at select Areas of Concern which could be used in the second phase to perform a benefits valuation on contaminated sediment remediation, and will scope details of economic benefits studies which could be conducted at these sites.

This research will focus on the capability of flow cytometry to determine E. coli concentration more rapidly than currently used protocols. For this purpose, a beach will be tested during the swimming season. Water samples will be simultaneously tested using cytometry and traditional filtering approach. Results from the two protocols will be compared statistically using regression analysis and paired test.

TEACH Great Lakes, the development of an educators network and web site that will significantly advance the nature and extent of Great Lakes-related educational materials, including curriculum, information exchange via listservs and bulletin boards, and an expert speakers bureau.

This project will result in the production of a guide that consolidates and enhances web references to government, foundation, and corporate grant programs.

INVASIVE SPECIES 

Lake Huron

The overall goal of this project is to develop a mass balance modeling tool to quantify the relationship between external phosphorus loads and zebra mussel densities (ecosystem stressors) and benthic and pelagic production and biomass (ecosystem responses). Expected outcomes of the work will be (1) a better quantitative understanding of ecosystem stress-response relationships and benthic-pelagic coupling in the Saginaw Bay ecosystem and (2) forecasts of possible future states of the bay as a result of changes in external stressors such as nutrient loads and zebra mussel densities and size structure. This project will draw upon results from a previous GLNPO grant to develop an aquatic ecosystem modeling framework for Saginaw Bay, integrating the various processes involving nutrient-phytoplankton-zebra mussel-PCB dynamics.

Lake Ontario

The report generated by this assistance will be used to educate the appropriate users about the invasion of Lake Ontario by a specific pelagic zooplankter, Cercopagis pengoi. The gained population dynamics, biomass, and production data from this study will provide a fundamental understanding of this new exotic species.

Lake Michigan

The grant will allow the City of Chicago to devise and implement a strategy of manual, biological, and chemical controls specifically suited to the urbanized wetlands of the Lake Calumet region. The biological control will utilize two leaf-eating beetles (Galerucella pusilla and G. calmariensis); the chemical control will consist of herbicide treatment. Efforts will focus on a single site, the Indian Ridge Marsh (approximately 140 acres).

Basin Wide or Multiple Basins

The number of successful cross-boundary aquatic species transfers, especially between Eastern Europe (Pont-Caspian region) and Western Europe (Baltic Sea) and North America (Great Lakes), appears to be increasing in frequency. This financial support  will provide for a special session or workshop on the Ponto-Caspian-Baltic-Great Lakes invasive species connection, to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in June 2000. The goal is to bring together a broad, international group of scientists from Europe and North America to examine existing and emerging aquatic species invasion mechanisms and pathways to the Great Lakes, and to form collaboration for continued studies and information exchange between Great Lakes and European scientists.

Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) will prepare a scoping report on the threat of wetland and terrestrial exotic plants in the 1842 ceded territory within the Great Lakes Basin. They will survey off-reservation areas of the Bad River/Chequamegon Bay watershed to evaluate the effectiveness of purple loosestrife control activities. GLIFWC will perform additional purple loosestrife surveys in the Bayfield Peninsula and along the Lake Superior shoreline. They will revise and expand their GIS database of exotic plant distributions. GLIFWC will also develop a system of criteria to prioritize treatment sites and work with other agencies to promote and coordinate exotic plant control activities in the 1842 ceded territory within the Great Lakes Basin.

The Wild Rice Conference will bring together Great Lakes Tribes, the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, federal and state agencies, and regional universities to share cultural and scientific information on wild rice. The goals of the conference are to present and discuss recent research conducted, review the success of recent and historic projects designed to reintroduce or enhance wild rice stands, set up a network to disseminate future findings, economic opportunities, and regional research directions, and to increase the understanding between Tribes and non-Tribal organizations of the cultural significance of wild rice to Native Americans. The anticipated results are a greater awareness of potential markets for wild rice, and an increased awareness of the effects of erosion, metals, water chemistry and depth, exotic species, eutrophication, motor boat activity, and herbicides.

HABITAT 

Lake Ontario

This project will implement a coordinated Dune Steward Program for the beaches and dunes of eastern Lake Ontario, restore and re-vegetate damaged dunes using locally-grown native beachgrass, protect dunes with sensitive public access, and engage the local community through a dune/wetland education program.

The lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) was once widely distributed among the Great Lakes, Hudson Bay, and Mississippi River drainages, but now is conferred protected status in each of the 20 states in which it is a native species. The success of lake sturgeon conservation and restoration programs requires the identification and protection of preferred habitat types for all life history stages. Equally important is the identification of factors that make these habitats suitable for lake sturgeon. This study will examine the apparent habitat partitioning between juvenile and adult lake sturgeon in the St. Lawrence River. Specific objectives are to determine the preferred prey types of juvenile and adult lake sturgeon, and to examine the relationship between feeding characteristics of juvenile and adult lake sturgeon and the benthic invertebrate community within their preferred

Lake Michigan

This project will allow the Lake Michigan Federation to develop and disseminate an education program on Lake Michigan sand dunes for the general public, citizen groups, local government, and schools in coastal communities to;

• Raise public awareness and knowledge on the ecological and economic value of the Lake Michigan sand dune ecosystem;
• Increase the capacity of local coastal groups, entities and individuals to promote protection and preservation of Lake Michigan sand dunes;
• Assist and inform local decision-making by local governments and the general public;
• Generate public support for dune protection efforts;
• Encourage the strengthening of local protections, and;
• Stimulate local preservation efforts.

Lake Erie 

This project will improve up to 2500 feet of streambank within the watershed, re-establish critically impacted habitat for game and fish and other animals, improve nearshore aesthetics, and replace non-native noxious vegetation with native trees and shrubs. It will also seek to create a network of interested community representatives who will conduct project activities and monitor the project and assess the effects on enhancing stream corridor habitats.

This project will educate municipalities, homeowners, engineers, and consultants about innovative soil bioengineering techniques for stream and riparian zone restoration that will help to address the loss of fish and wildlife habitat as well as pollutant loadings from an urbanized area within the Cuyahoga River Area of Concern

This project will determine distributions, movement patterns, and habitat use of adult lake sturgeon during spawning migrations, and will identify critical spawning and non-spawning habitats of adult lake sturgeon in the Detroit River and adjacent Great Lakes waters. Sonic telemetry will be used to monitor lake sturgeon captured during their spring spawning migrations between Lake Erie (and possibly Lake St. Clair) and the Detroit River. This project will provide us with current information about the distribution, movements, and habitat use of adult lake sturgeon in the Detroit River. This information can then be used by fisheries managers in their efforts to rehabilitate lake sturgeon populations throughout the Great Lakes.

The Huron River Watershed is currently the cleanest river in Southeast Michigan. The watershed supports a multi-million dollar fishery, is home to threatened and endangered species, and contains two-thirds of the region’s public recreational lands. The Huron River Watershed Council is engaged in several projects aimed at preserving open spaces and wildlife habitat in the Huron River Watershed, modeled after the Chicago Wilderness program.

This project will fund the habitat inventory components of their ongoing work. The Watershed Council staff will gather existing data regarding open spaces, building on the work done by the Michigan Natural Sources Inventory, National Wetlands Inventory, and other efforts. A "Gap Analysis" will also be performed to target rare ecosystems or communities. All of the information will be stored as multimedia and geographic information system (GIS) databases. This project will support publicly accessible computer-based tools for evaluating land use options for informed community planning.

This project will develop and implement a marketing and outreach campaign which evaluates the awareness and knowledge level of local residents regarding the Oak Openings, develop a professional marketing strategy and campaign to inform and engage local residents as the importance of the Oak Openings as a unique natural area, implement an Oak Openings marketing campaign, conduct a market evaluation to gauge effectiveness, and restore 2-3 small sites as visual examples of the messages disseminated through the marketing campaign.

This project will support a series of meetings with community leaders, organization and agency administrators, and consultants involved in ecological protection and restoration in southeast Michigan to explore ways of developing the most effective, comprehensive conservation initiative possible for the region. Other community models such as Chicago Wilderness, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Portland, Oregon will be explored. The goal is to begin to develop a structure and identify leadership to assume responsibility for a coordinated planning and resource management effort.

This is a habitat project in Springfield Township, Michigan. Springfield Township will work in five areas: 1) develop education materials about the project and the benefits of using native vegetation, and provide a system for information dissemination to developers, builders, landscape designers, suppliers and homeowners; 2) analyze existing Township standards and ordinances for possible conflicts with native vegetation enhancement goals; 3) develop proposed revisions to standards and ordinances that encourage integration of native vegetation into design and development practices, such as stormwater management; 4) develop proposed guidelines for the protection and re-use of existing native vegetation on sites being developed; and 5) develop a database of native plants appropriate for use in the Township and identify sources for these plants.

The St. Joseph River Watershed Initiative (SJRI) will contact land owners along the river and tributaries to promote installation of conservation practices, focusing on buffer (filter) strips of native grasses. SJRI will focus on outreach activities, with an emphasis on contacting farmers or agribusinesses within the watershed. SJRI will collaborate with at least nine other environmental agencies who can supply grass seed for willing landowners. The St. Joseph River Watershed Initiative will use the results of a recent survey to prioritize actions in tributaries with the highest concentrations and volumes of pesticides, bacteria, and sediment.

Lake Superior 

This project will identify how biodiversity found in the northwestern Lake Superior area is important within both local and regional ecosystem contexts and will teach local landowners and natural resource managers a methodology for identifying conservation strategies that compatibly integrate economic, social, and ecological information.

This project involves rebuilding the remnant of a former pier in Lake Superior’s Chequamegon Bay. This artificial "island" is one of only two Common Tern colony sites on Lake Superior, including Canada. Deterioration of the "island" threatens the continued existence of the tern colony. The Common Tern is listed as endangered in Wisconsin and has been designation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a species of management concern in the Great Lakes.

Basin-wide or Multiple Basins

This project will provide a forum at the 1999 Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference for the continuing education of professional resource managers within FWS Region 3. The meeting is scheduled for December 5-8, 1999 in Chicago, IL (estimated attendance 1,000).

This project will serve to help identify new mine roosts critical to bat survival in the upper Great Lakes region and to protect at least four critical mine hibernation roosts which provide shelter to more than 220,000 bats. Some bats are federally listed endangered species and some bats consume large quantities of insect "pests", thereby reducing the need for the application of chemical pesticides in the Great Lakes basin.

This assistance will help recruit, coordinate, and manage volunteers; develop and distribute survey materials; and manage incoming data for the monitoring of the birds, amphibians, and plants of marshes in the Great Lakes basin.

The report generated by this assistance will help define the boundaries of rare species and significant habitats and ecological communities and make this information available in a geographic information system (GIS) format for land use decision-making in the Great Lakes basin.

Go Native! With Native Plants is an expansion of a project previously funded by GLNPO in FY98. In this current project, Michigan Association of Conservation Districts (MACD) will continue to develop prototypes of successful native plants use in ecosystem restoration and native landscaping in each of their conservation districts. In this project: 1) MACD will expand the project to an estimated 30 Districts (counties); 2) expand work with private growers of native plant material to promote an increase in native species availability; 3) intensify native plant training and education program for Districts, NRCS staff, other partnering agencies and landowners; 4) expand collections of plant materials as needed to stimulate commercially available sources of local genotypes; and 5) share project information with other Conservation Districts, especially in the Great Lakes and Midwestern states.

This project will identify concentrations of songbirds in nearshore habitats along Lake Ontario and eastern Lake Erie using a new remote sensing technique, Next Generation Radar (NEXRAD). The project will also use existing, unutilized databases to determine how songbirds use nearshore habitats.

This project will help to increase citizen involvement in aquatic habitat protection at the local level by providing direct support to local initiatives through the Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat Network and Fund’s mini-grants program.

This project will identify the ecological and economic impacts of nonindigenous nuisance species in the Great Lakes basin; and identify unmet needs in prevention and control. Products from this grant will include: 1) preparation of a briefing paper; 2) conducting a workshop for Great lakes stakeholders on NIS; and 3) preparation of a workshop proceedings document highlighting prospective priorities for NIS prevention and control efforts.

MONITORING 

Lake Michigan

This agreement will provide funds to the University of Iowa for monitoring of toxics in conjunction with the Episodic Events/Great Lakes Experiment (EEGLE) research effort. The EEGLE Study is being funded by the National Science Foundation to study nutrient transport in a plume that occurs in Lake Michigan annually. This effort would enable the study of toxics in this plume. This information would also be in support of the Lake Michigan Loading Study/Mass Balance (LMMB) by providing insight into the air/water exchange of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polychlorinated aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The grantee will also provide information necessary to determine the spatial and temporal variation of loadings across the Lake.

This project was solicited to provide a toxics component to the EEGLE study. The original pilot project was awarded to SUNY Buffalo (GL985762). Based on the success of the pilot project, it was decided by GLNPO to continue the project. The PI at SUNY Buffalo moved to University of Iowa, thus the continuation is being awarded in a new grant to this institution.

The purpose of this interagency agreement is to provide additional funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atmospheric Research Laboratory for completing the estimation of Atrazine and Mercury loadings to Lake Michigan using emissions and deposition modeling. This is the third Fiscal Year of funding for this project, which began on October 1, 1996.

Basin-wide or Multiple Basins

This agreement will provide information on the concentration of toxic organic contaminants in lake trout and walleye that have been collected for the Open Lake Trend Monitoring element (Element 1) of the Great Lakes Fish Contaminant Monitoring Program. Composites of whole fish will be analyzed for PCB congeners, toxaphene homologs, pesticides, and other contaminants as listed in the 1996 USGS/EPA Cooperative Agreement and in the Request for Proposal (RFP) from EPA/GLNPO dated April 9, 1997. The project will complement trend analyses performed in previous years in the Great Lakes Fish Contaminant Monitoring Program. This agreement will also provide information on the concentration of toxic organic contaminants in coho salmon that have been collected for the Game Fish Fillet Monitoring element (Element 2) of the Great Lakes Fish Contaminant Monitoring Program. Skin-on fillets will be analyzed for the same contaminants identified above for Element 1 of the Fish Monitoring Program. This part of the project will provide information regarding potential human exposure to contaminants through consumption of popular sport species, as well as complement trend analyses performed for top predator species with shorter exposures than lake trout. In addition to information collected for the Great Lakes Fish Contaminant Monitoring Program, this agreement will provide for the analyses of a small number of fish samples from Mariupol, Ukraine. Whole fish will be analyzed for the same contaminants identified above for the Great Lakes Fish Contaminant Monitoring Program. The results will provide information for a joint U.S. EPA and University of Illinois at Chicago project concerning environmental pollutants and the health status of children living in Mariupol.

This agreement will provide funds for the sixth year of operation and maintenance of the Integrated Atmospheric Deposition Network (IADN) by Indiana University. The IADN is a binational network made up of 5 sites, one per Great Lake. Twice a month atmospheric samples of rain, vapor, and particles are taken and analyzed for pesticides and other organics. The results are used to calculated loadings of these substances to the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO) is collaborating with Environment Canada to implement the binational Integrated Atmospheric Deposition Network (IADN) as mandated by Annex 15 of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and Section 112(m) of the Clean Air Act. Both agencies reconfirmed their joint support of this binational partnership in the second phase of IADN, which began in 1998 with the signing of a six-year implementation plan by Dave Ullrich and John Mills. The subject cooperative agreement contributes to this binational partnership by matching Canadian support for the implementation of the IADN Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA/QC) program. This program benefits the public and the Great Lakes States by providing quality controlled data to determine loadings of air toxics to the Great Lakes, for use in identification of sources of air toxics and to target reduction activities at the local level.

POLLUTION PREVENTION 

Lake Michigan 

This is a pollution prevention project for household hazardous waste. The grantee will organize and conduct a household hazardous waste collection effort in Keshena, Wisconsin for residents of the Menominee Indian Reservation. The project will include outreach prior to the event and the actual collection day, which is scheduled for the Fall of 1999. This collection event builds on the success of an event funded by GLNPO in the Summer of 1998. The intent is for the tribe to incorporate the clean sweep program into their regular ongoing waste collection program.

Lake Erie 

Erie County, in partnership with the Western New York Healthcare Association (WNYHA) and the Buffalo Sewer Authority (BSA), will solicit volunteer participation from a minimum of four area hospitals to develop, implement, and measure the success of mercury pollution prevention and reduction strategies tailored to the specific needs of each facility. The proposed work entails: promoting the USEPA/American Hospital Association Memorandum of Understanding (USEPA/AHA MOU); a preliminary assessment of mercury use within each facility; technical expertise and guidance on source identification and reduction strategies; establishment of training and education programs; determination of total mercury reduction achieved; presentation of the four facilities efforts as case studies to remaining Erie County healthcare facilities to further the goals of the USEPA/AHA MOU; and the dissemination of program results and information throughout the Great Lakes Basin.

Lake Superior

The report generated by this assistance will help identify the reasons why people use a burn barrel and determine the most effective means to motivate behavioral change, in addition to increasing public awareness about the health and environmental effects of backyard burning.

Basin-wide or Multiple Basins 

The grantee will use grant funds to replace mercury manometer gauges used on dairy farms with non-mercury gauges. This will reduce the potential for spilling mercury into the environment. Mercury gauges will also be collected from inactive dairy farms. This work will be done at little or no cost to the farmer. All manometers will be stored by the dairy service provider which collects them until the Department of Natural Resources sends a licensed hazardous waste hauler to pick up the mercury for appropriate disposal or recycling.

Great Lakes United, Inc. (GLU) will continue its support and represent the interests of coalition members, work with member groups to support and develop a Great Lakes "clean car campaign", and promote dioxin and mercury reduction from medical waste disposal.

The interagency agreement provides funds to the Naval Dental Research Institute to examine the mercury removal from the dental-unit wastewater stream. Dental mercury is concentrated in fresh-and salt-water food chains, and both mono and dimethylmercury can be produced in bottom sediments by non-enzymatic methylation. The project shall:

1) Educate practioners as to the importance of reducing heavy metal contamination from their dental-unit wastewater streams;

2) Provide an electronic resource where practioners can locate sources, materials, supplies, and help in removing heavy metals from the waste stream;

3) Establish a cadre of qualified personnel to speak to dental professionals on the subject of amalgam hazards, collection, and recycling; and

4) Install, test, and evaluate pretreatment systems for both large and small dental treatment facilities.

The grantee will use grant funds to replace mercury manometer gauges used on dairy farms with non-mercury gauges. This will reduce the potential for spilling mercury into the environment. Mercury gauges will also be collected from inactive dairy farms. This work will be done at little or no cost to the farmer. All manometers collected will be stored by the dairy service provider until a Department of Agriculture employee collects them and brings them to the nearest Michigan Clean Sweep Disposal site.

This Clean Sweep program shall remove and dispose of old, unwanted, suspended, or canceled pesticides from the agriculture community, industry, and homeowners in Michigan at no fee to the end-user. During annual collection programs, pesticides on the Level I BNS-targeted substances, Level II BNS Toxics, and pesticides of concern for the Lake Michigan, Erie, and Superior LaMP are collected and removed from the environment, demonstrating an ongoing need to provide disposal options to household, private, and commercial participants. Some of the pesticides removed include Dieldrin/Aldrin, Mercury, DDT, Lindane, Chlordane, and others, including numerous "unknown" chemicals returned without labeling or original containers.

The City of Superior will develop and conduct a workshop to educate people both in Wisconsin and Minnesota on state and federal regulations relating to PCBs. They will cover health issues, environmental impacts, identification issues, removal and disposal requirements, and toxic waste disposal option for small businesses such as Clean Shop.

This project will focus on developing, adapting, and disseminating high-quality mercury related educational materials for schools. The focus will be on reducing the use of mercury in the school, in students’ homes, and in the communities of participating schools throughout the Great Lakes Basin.

Through this project, the Delta Institute will focus on achieving toxics reductions through commitments from private and public sector owned and operated energy production units. There are three separate components to this project. The first is to engage selected industrial sectors in pollution prevention initiatives through increased use of energy efficiency and conservation technologies for boilers. The second is to determine the incentives for and barriers to investments in energy efficiency technologies and conservation practices. The final component involves development of a method to quantify the reduction of persistent bioaccumulative toxics from energy efficiency and conservation technologies and practices.

Through this project, the National Wildlife Federation will focus on 1)building on existing efforts to implement pollution prevention, by way of sector-based strategies; and 2) coordinated Environmental Non-Governmental Organization participation in the Binational Toxics Strategy.

SEDIMENTS 

Lake Ontario

The objective of this project is to collect data which will further delineate the spatial and temporal extent of sediment contamination in the vicinity of Battle Island, which is located just upstream of the Oswego River Area of Concern. Battle Island was chosen as the study area based on the results of a previous GLNPO-funded project. Information resulting from this study will be useful for estimating the volume or bed-load of contaminants of concern. In addition, biological monitoring results from this study will determine if the sediment deposits near the Battle Island site are a source of contaminants to the Oswego River system, which is an Area of Concern.

Lake Michigan

At this time, it is proposed that an estimated 36,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment and tannery wastes be dredged from Tannery Bay on White Lake, Muskegon County, Michigan. Up to eight feet of contaminated materials will be removed from Tannery Bay. This will vastly improve aquatic life habitat in this portion of White Lake.

The remediation of White Lake has been planned by the State of Michigan for the spring of 2000. The Lake Michigan Federation and the White Lake Public Advisory Council (PAC) plan to leverage that effort by conducting public outreach on the cleanup effort, promoting its benefits to the community, and thoroughly involving community members throughout the course of the cleanup. Ultimately, this could inspire other successful initiatives around Lake Michigan.

This project will provide an assessment of the nature, extent, and ecological significance of sediment contamination in Muskegon Lake. The investigative sampling will primarily focus on regions of known sediment contamination in near shore areas and in deeper deposition zones. This project will also provide information on the fate and transport of contaminated sediments in drowned river mouth systems. Information on the distribution and significance of contaminated sediments will play an important role in the restoration process of the lake.

Lake Erie

The purpose of this project is to support a sediment study and risk assessment on the Ottawa River, part of the Maumee River Area of Concern. The project will allow for the collection of additional sediment cores, which will help to determine where the hot spots are. It will also make use of previously collected data to assess risk. Both of these activities will aid in developing priorities for future remediation.

This interagency agreement will support the development of a cost estimate and site preparation design plans for a beneficial use demonstration project at the Toledo Harbor Confined Disposal Facility (CDF). Several private vendors have indicated that they would like to use significant amounts of the dredged material from annual navigation dredging in separate, economically self-sufficient projects. This project will investigate the economic feasibility of the beneficial use projects and determine the site preparation work to prepare the site for use by the private vendors.

This grant will support the collection of sediment samples in Presque Isle Bay, Pennsylvania. The assessment will include the collection and analysis of sediment cores and surficial samples from 10 locations. Samples will be analyzed for chemical contaminants, biological toxicity, and benthic community structure. Results will be used in making sediment management decisions for the Presque Isle Bay sediments.

Lake Superior

This grant will support the collection of sediment samples in nine (9) designated fisheries lakes on the Fond du Lac Reservation. These lakes are part of the watershed for the St. Louis Area of Concern, and the sediment assessment will provide valuable information regarding the levels of sediment contamination in these lakes. Sediment samples will be analyzed for mercury, PCBs, and lead. Additionally, biological toxicity tests will be performed on a subset (four to six) of the study lakes.

Basin-wide or Multiple Basins

This project will establish a Regional Beneficial Use Task Force, develop a brochure on the beneficial use of dredged material, and develop a regional process to coordinate State involvement in the development of Federal guidance for beneficial use of dredged material.

This amendment to the existing interagency agreement augments the existing funds for procuring the support of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the collection and analysis of sediment samples, review of feasibility studies and remediation design plans, and other technical support for sediment assessment and remediation studies. This agreement allows for the integration and coordination of USEPA and USACE activities and provides the USEPA with access to USACE’s vast technical experience in dealing with sediments on an "as needed" basis.

This agreement will enhance the understanding and management of contaminated sediments in the Great Lakes by producing a report investigating the use, monitoring, and environmental impacts of using Confined Disposal Facilities (CDFs) to manage contaminated sediments. The report shall be a detailed summary of the status of CDFs on the Great Lakes constructed and operated by the Corps, including information about the purpose of the CDFs, the types of designs and operations applied, the state of knowledge on their environmental performance and impacts, and the net environmental effects of CDFs on the Great Lakes. The majority of the report will be extracted from a number of existing reports, white papers and documents developed by and for the Corps and EPA. This project is envisioned to provide a consolidated report summarizing information contained in existing documents into one concise and consistent report.

This grant will support the development of a guidance manual for assessing and making remediation decisions regarding contaminated sediments. The manual will include a focused review of relevant literature and develop an ecosystem-based framework for assessing and managing contaminated sediments that is consistent with the International Joint Commission guidance on ecosystem management. The manual will be reviewed and published as an EPA-GLNPO document.

This grant will support the development of a model for the transport and fate of mercury in Lake St. Clair, where mercury is a well documented problem. This model will simulate mercury sources, water and sediment concentrations, and fish bioaccumulation in Lake St. Clair. It will be used to evaluate trends, direct research needs, and provide guidance to Great Lakes managers. The model which results from this project will eventually be of use throughout the Great Lakes Basin.

One of the primary organic contaminants of concern in the Great Lakes sediments are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). This project will measure the harbor sediment contaminated by PAHs with a rapid, vertically discrete, in-situ technique. A detection limit of 1 ppm is achievable with this technique. The grantee will demonstrate the ability of this system to detect PAHs in sediment samples and its applicability as a screening tool to accurately delineate the extent of sediment contamination at two AOCs.

This grant will allow for Michigan DEQ to purchase software, hardware and training in order to map five contaminated sediment sites in Michigan. The software will allow MDEQ to digitize these sites and represent them in three dimensional space, which will aid in defining hot spots and calculating volumes of contaminated sediments. In addition to providing valuable information for future sampling and remediation decisions, the final maps and graphs created with this tool will be useful for informing the public about the sites both at presentations and on the internet.

OTHER 

The project consists of a joint developmental project that employs a SAS based data verification system that is utilized for verification of Lake Michigan Mass Balance Data and Great Lakes limnology and fish data. The amended aspect of the grant provides for the transfer to GLNPO and the archiving of data and meta-data onto an FTP site for primary user access.

This Interagency Agreement to the Waterways Experimental Station of the Army Corps of Engineers will enhance our ability to model the resuspension and movement of sediment in Lake Michigan and other Great Lakes. This is important to the Lake Michigan Mass Balance Modeling Study which seeks to follow contaminants, which attach to particles, through the ecosystem and through the food web.

This grant supports the International Association for Great Lakes Research in its mission to "Promote research and education on the Great Lakes and other large lakes of the world..." Funding of this organization, on a biennial basis (when the meeting is hosted by a U.S. university) improves the quality of the meeting and of the organization. The International Association for Great Lakes Research in a primary venue for the publication of research on the Great Lakes relevant to the needs of EPA and other state and federal agencies.

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