The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that would provide 250 million dollars to help clean up the bottom of the Great Lakes. A similar bill is currently working its way through the U.S. Senate. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell has this report:
Transcript
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that would
provide two hundred and fifty million dollars to help clean up the bottom
of the Great Lakes. A similar bill is currently working its way through
the U.S. Senate. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell has
this report:
It takes a long time for water to find its way out of most of the Great
Lakes. For instance, Lake Superior can retain its water for more than 150
years. But that means that it also takes a long time for those lakes to get
rid of pollution. Representative Vern Ehlers of Michigan says that’s why the
government needs to step in and help…
“You know once a lake is contaminated, it’s contaminated for a very long
time. And if you’ve got non-biodegradable contaminants, you’ve got a major
problem.”
Ehlers was one of the sponsors of the Great Lakes Legacy Act, which just
passed the House. If passed into law, the Act could provide money to the
EPA to assist in the clean up of polluted sediments on the lake floors.
Some scientists have linked those sediments to a variety of health problems,
including birth defects.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Matt Shafer Powell.