Experts talk about current, future efforts to preserve important natural resource

GRAND RAPIDS – Seeking to raise awareness about the plight of the Great Lakes, Congressman Vernon J. Ehlers brought a Congressional field hearing to Grand Rapids Friday afternoon to discuss current and future efforts to protect and restore the Great Lakes and their watershed.

Ehlers, chairman of the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment, Standards and Technology, held the briefing at Grand Valley State University’s Eberhard Center in downtown Grand Rapids, where he heard from six experts. Ehlers, R-Grand Rapids, is the author of the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Implementation Act (H.R. 5100). The following is Chairman Ehlers’ opening statement:

For those of you from out-of-town, welcome to Grand Rapids! It’s good to have you here in my home town. In particular I want to welcome our panel of witnesses. Thank you for your willingness to come and testify this afternoon about the work that you are doing to protect and restore the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes are unique and extraordinary resources that provide drinking water, food, recreation and transportation to over 30 million people. This invaluable collection of water comprises 95 percent of the surface freshwater of the United States. Unfortunately, the Lakes face significant environmental threats. We’ve been struggling for decades with problems of industrial pollution, sewage, and non-native species.

In May 2004, President Bush recognized the Great Lakes as a “national treasure” and issued an Executive Order calling for a “regional collaboration of national significance” on the Great Lakes. In December 2005, the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration produced a strategic action plan for protecting and restoring the Great Lakes. The Regional Collaboration is a partnership of federal, state, and local government officials and program managers; scientists; industry representatives; environmental advocates and interested private stakeholders. The fifteen hundred participants in this groundbreaking initiative focused their attention on addressing the most critical threats to the Lakes. They developed recommendations for eight key areas: aquatic invasive species, habitat protection, coastal health, Areas of Concern and contaminated sediment, non-point source pollution, toxic pollutants, scientific research and monitoring, and sustainable development.

Our briefing today will focus on the current environmental management programs in place to address these many issues, how current science research supports effective management, and what science and information needs exist for future restoration efforts. We need to know what works and what doesn’t work, and science can help us answer that question. Our witnesses will also provide their insights on the recommendations made by the Regional Collaboration and what they see as the next steps forward to support protection and clean up of the Great Lakes.

I have introduced legislation in Congress to implement some of the near-term recommendations made in the Regional Collaboration strategy. My bill, H.R. 5100, includes increased funding and flexibility for the Legacy Act program to help remediate contaminated sediment in Areas of Concern. It also includes comprehensive invasive species legislation, it provides states and cities with assistance to upgrade their water infrastructure, and it reauthorizes and strengthens the Great Lakes Fish & Wildlife Restoration Act.

On the research and monitoring side, Title VII of the bill authorizes increased resources for the federal agencies already conducting important scientific research and monitoring activities in the Great Lakes – NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab and USGS’s Great Lakes Science Center. In addition, it also authorizes extramural grants to universities and other private-sector research institutions. The bill also requires the EPA, USGS, and NOAA to submit a coordinated joint research plan every year to identify those research activities that will assist in the implementation of the Regional Collaboration’s recommendations.

This bill also directs the President to establish and maintain an integrated system of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes observations, data communication and management, analysis, modeling, research, education, and outreach. NOAA would be the lead Federal agency for implementation and operation of the system. NOAA would certify one or more regional associations to be responsible for the development and operation of regional observing, such as in the Great Lakes region.

The bill directs the EPA to develop, in coordination with other federal agencies and Canada, indicators of water quality and related environmental factors in the Great Lakes and a network to monitor those indicators regularly throughout the Great Lakes basin. The EPA would collect initial benchmark data within four years and report to Congress on changes in water quality.

As the Regional Collaboration strategy recognizes, a successful restoration effort has to include a process to measure progress and to identify when success has been achieved. To ensure that resources are not wasted, it is important that the strategy include benchmarks to measure progress.

As a scientist, for me this piece is critical. We have to have ways to collect information, analyze it and determine whether what we are doing is successful or not, and how we might need to change our approach. I am eager to hear three things from our witnesses:

• How we can improve our research and monitoring programs to assist the clean up and protection programs that are implemented;
• How we can ensure that all of our efforts are making the best possible use of what science has told us about the Great Lakes; and
• Finally, what we can do right now, with what we already know, to move the restoration process forward.

Witnesses

Our first panel is made up of two local champions of the Great Lakes.

• Jan O’Connell is currently a national board member and treasurer for the Sierra Club.
• George Heartwell is the mayor of Grand Rapids and has been actively involved in the Great Lakes Cities Initiative, a coalition of mayors and other local leaders organized by Chicago’s Mayor Daley.

On our second panel, we have a distinguished group of Great Lakes scientists and environmental managers.

• Gary Gulezian is the Director of the EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office and has been a lead participant on the Regional Collaboration’s Executive Committee.
• Dr. Steven Brandt is the Director of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
• Catherine Cunningham Ballard is the Chief of the Coastal Management Program within the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. She will provide us with the perspective of an on-the-ground program manager who can attest to current capabilities and future science and resource needs.
• Dr. Alan Steinmann is the Director of Grand Valley State University’s Annis Water Resources Institute in Muskegon, Michigan.
• Dr. Don Scavia is a professor of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan and heads the Michigan Sea Grant program. He is also a leading science advisor to the Healing Our Waters Coalition, a coalition of over 70 environmental organizations that participated in the Regional Collaboration and that advocates for Great Lakes clean up. It is sponsored in part by the Wege Foundation. I am pleased to recognize Peter Wege and Ellen Satterlee for their contributions to this cause.