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Welcome to the Great Lakes Town Hall

Like the town meetings on which it is modeled, the Great Lakes Town Hall provides a "space" where Great Lakes basin residents can come together to share concerns, opinions and ideas about Great Lakes issues. At the Town Hall you will find frequently updated original content offering opinions and analysis on current events from our editors as well as guest features written by important figures in the Great Lakes community. But you don’t have to be an expert to participate! All are welcome and encouraged to give feedback, join the discussion and create their own posts in the community forum. Please read, learn, then log in and start discussing what matters to you.

Dave’s Place

Department of Aquatic Fear

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 10:01 — Dave Dempsey

Put the two words "United Nations" in any domestic policy discussion and you inflame the fears of those concerned about a conspiracy to create one world government spying on us all. That applies even when the issue -- the effect of the Obama Administration's task force on ocean and Great Lakes policy -- comes with this third-party disclaimer: 

Editorials

Lots of (non-Asian Carp) news in the past few weeks worthy of mention and of course,  comment.

A couple of weeks ago USEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson released the final Great Lakes Restoration Initiative plan for 2010. It's along the lines of the draft circulated for comment last year, but it has been updated to reflect the immediacy of the Asian Carp issue.

The highlight of the plan for me continues to be cleanup of the toxic sites known as Areas of Concern. There are 30 such sites on the U.S. side of the Lakes and they contain PCB's and other heavy manufacturing waste left as a legacy from the industrial era of 40-50 years ago.

Guest Feature

Asian Carp and Cane Toads

Sat, 03/06/2010 - 18:57 — Sarah Clement

 

As everyone watches the cane toad's advance into the Great Lakes with baited breath (along with a lot of lobbying, campaigning and frustration), here in Western Australia we have been watching cane toads advance to our state for years. This toad was purposely introduced in the 1930s to control the French's cane beetle that threatened sugar cane crops, and it has been spreading across the country ever since. Cane toads are poisonous, harming native wildlife by eating small animals and poisoning the larger animals that try to eat them.