Flow Of The River

So long, and thanks for all the fish

So long...

Well, this is the final post for our Great Lakes Earth Day Challenge blog. I hoped I'd have some more statistics to report on how much our participants collected at their e-cycling and unwanted medicine events around the Great Lakes, but the data is coming in gradually and will continue to do so for a few more weeks.

I'd like to leave you with a few places where you can get more information. I hope you'll continue to think about conservation and recycling long after Earth Day is past.

• The Great Lakes Earth Day Challenge web site will remain up and report the challenge results
• Earth 911 has ongoing information about recycling and a blog, too.   You can find recycling resources in your area there.
• EPA has info on eCycling and proper disposal of medications
• IL/IN Sea Grant has a whole toolkit about disposing of unwanted medicines
• EPA's ongoing blog "Greenversations" is written by EPA staff

... and thanks

Thank you to the many EPA staff who worked very hard on the Earth Day Challenge, and most importantly to the people all around the Great Lakes who organized events and participated in them. You have made a difference.

Thank you to everyone who wrote for this blog, provided photos, and left comments.

• Earth Keepers: Natasha Koss
• Great Lakes Surfers: Vince Deur, Ingrid Lindfors
• IL/IN Sea Grant: Jackie Adams, Susan Boehme
• EPA: Phillippa Cannon, Cynthia Faur, Mary Gade, John Haugland, Melissa Hulting, Beth Murphy, Chris Newman, Karen Reshkin

And a special thank you to Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock and his staff in the Office of Web Communications for setting up this blog for us and giving us the opportunity to join the choir.

Karen Reshkin manages the EPA Chicago regional Web site and edited the Earth Day Challenge blog.

We have our fill of pills!

Well, Earth Week is over, and results are starting to come in from the more than 100 events taking part in the Earth Day Challenge.

Ten of the collection events have together collected 2,184,000 pills which were turned in for safe disposal -- more than double the challenge goal. EPA also expects to far exceed its goal for e-waste based on 216,000 pounds of electronics collected at six events.

If you didn't make it to one of these events, you can still help make a difference. Earth 911 keeps an ongoing database of recycling and collection events all across the US. (I searched on "medicine" and "Chicago, IL" to find places which accept unwanted medicines year round.) It's still hard to find medication collections (learn why), but it's an issue that's beginning to get more attention.

Karen Reshkin works in EPA Region 5's Office of Public Affairs.

A Day in the life of a researcher on board the Peter Wise R/V Lake Guardian

And...we're off. It's 3:00 pm on April 14, 2008 and the 2008 Spring Survey aboard the Peter Wise Research Vessel (R/V) Lake Guardian has begun. We just left our home dock in Milwaukee, WI and are expecting to hit our first sampling station on Lake Michigan in a few hours.

A typical day on the Peter Wise R/V Lake Guardian is not like your typical day in the office. There are at least 8 people up and working at all times, as the ship doesn't dock until the end of each lake. You begin your day by waking up, showering, and then heading down to the galley (ship term for kitchen) to grab something to eat. Then you hear it: "15 minutes to station". It's the captain or one of the mates on the P.A. system letting you know that you now have 15 minutes left to get everything together for your first station of the day. So, you finish that something you were eating, drop the dish in the dirty dish tray, and head back to the lab to put on your mustang suit (protective work clothing to help people survive if they fall into cold water) because it's really cold outside, and your hard hat. Then, you grab your sample bottles and the temperature probe and head on to the deck.

Out on deck, you get the probe covers off of the SeaBird, which is the instrument attached to the rosette, which gives us a profile of the water column (learn more about the sampling equipment). Once we're on station, the captain calls "On station", over the radios and the sampling begins. The marine technician lifts the rosette out of its stand using the winch, and you guide it over the side of the ship and watch it go into the water. Now comes the fun part. You head up to the rosette control tower where you see the profile of the water as the rosette is lowered deeper into the water column. You decide where and which depths it will be that you'll fire the collection bottles. Then you head back down to the rosette deck to retrieve the rosette, guide it back to its stand, and begin collecting the water from the rosette bottles.

Once all of the water is collected, you take it into the lab, where all analyses are run. Then you can head into the lounge, the computer lab, or up to the bridge to wait until you hear that next 15 minute call.

Onboard the Research Vessel Peter Wise Lake Guardian

Ship's schedule 2008

Jackie Adams works for IL-IN Sea Grant in the EPA Great Lakes National Program Office. Her research interests include effects of induced stresses on benthic invertebrates, Great Lakes water quality, ecosystem monitoring and habitat restoration.  Jackie works aboard the R/V Lake Guardian for both the spring and summer GLNPO Open Lake Water Quality Surveys as well as helps communities to develop habitat restoration master plans following sediment clean-up.