A sport fish native to the Great Lakes region is famous for its looks and its size, but overfishing and habitat loss have driven its numbers down. Now, some fish experts are helping the coaster brook trout make a comeback. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports:
Transcript
A sport fish native to the Great Lakes region is famous for its looks and its size… but over fishing and habitat loss have driven its numbers down. Now, some fish experts are helping the coaster brook trout make a comeback. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports:
Coaster brook trout, or coasters, cruise the near shore waters of Lake Superior most of their lives, and only swim into rivers to spawn. Male coasters turn vibrant red when they’re spawning. And the trout grow much larger than their inland relatives… an 8 pound fish is a trophy.
But coasters are rare, so Trout Unlimited is working with other scientists to boost their numbers. In the last 2 years, biologists have released baby coasters in 4 rivers in the Upper Peninsula.
Bill Deephouse is president of Trout Unlimited’s Copper Country chapter.
“You can’t protect all of these little creatures. So you put… and this certainly isn’t exact… but you put 10,000 fish in, you hope a few thousand of them make it. Maybe a few hundred make it to adulthood.”
The biologists say it may be some time before fishermen will feel one of the reintroduced coasters on the end of their lines. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.
Aerial view of industry along the Fox River. Photo by Great
Lakes United.
One of the rivers that flows into Lake Michigan is polluted so badly that it’s being treated much like a Super Fund site…an environmental disaster. It’ll be decades before it’s cleaned up, and some environmentalists think it might never be cleaned up properly. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
One of the rivers that flows into the Great Lakes (Lake Michigan) is
polluted so badly that it’s being treated much like a Super Fund site –an
environmental disaster. It’ll be decades before it’s cleaned up. And some
environmentalists think it might never be cleaned up properly. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
(Sound of fish splash)
It’s late at night. The moon’s out. And the fish are flopping on the Fox
River. In downtown Green Bay, Wisconsin, Robert Hageman and a few of his
friends have been fishing. A couple of the guys are bragging about the big
fish they caught. But they’re not taking any home with them tonight.
LG: “Had any luck?” RH: “Yeah, I caught 23 fish.”
LG: “And wwhat did you do with them? RH: “Let ’em right back.” LG: “why?” RH: “Because it’s dirty. Fox River’s dirty.”
LG: “What have you heard about the Fox River?” RH: “The fish ain’t good for you. They can’t hurt you, but they ain’t good for you.
(friends in background say “PCBs, man.”) “yeah.”
LG: “What do you know about PCBs?
RH: “I don’t know nothing about it. That’s why I ain’t eatin’ them.” (all laugh)
Hageman and his friends are right when they say there are PCBs in the Fox
River. But apparently they haven’t heard that eating fish from the river
probably can hurt you in the long run. There are 60-thousand pounds of
PCBs, or poly chlorinated byphenyls, in the 39 mile run of the Fox
River. Of that, 50-thousand pounds – that’s 25 tons – is in the sediment of
the last seven mile stretch just before the river flows into Green Bay and
on into the rest of Lake Michigan. It’s that final stretch where Hageman
and his friends have been fishing.
The Environmental Protection Agency says seven paper mills along the Fox
River are the likely polluters. The EPA says PCBs were produced as a
by-product of the paper manufacturing process, and from the 1950s to the 1970s
they were dumped into the river. Now, the agency intends to make those
mills pay for cleaning up the contaminants.
Dennis Hultgren works for Appleton Papers, and is a spokesperson for a group
that represents the seven companies. Hultgren says the paper mills want to
clean up the pollution. But they don’t want to pay more than they have to.
“What we want to do is make sure that the money that we do spend
is spent wisely and it does the most environmental good for the region. And
so, we have one chance to do it right and we want to do it right the first
time.”
The paper mills have been working closely with government agencies to try to
determine where the PCBs are concentrated and how best to clean up the
pollution. Some of the companies have spent millions of dollars on tests in
the river. Just recently, Hultgren’s firm offered 40-million dollars… ten-million dollars a year for four years… for data collection and preliminary clean-up tests. The government agencies praised the decision and some environmental groups voiced their approval. But a local grassroots group, the Clean Water Action Council of Northeast Wisconsin, does not approve. Rebecca Katers is with the council and says it’s a delay tactic by the paper mill companies.
“It makes the company look generous. But, in fact, they should be doing this anyway. They should have done this ten years ago.”
Giving the money now, Katers says, only manages to delay legal action
against the company for four more years. Besides, she says, while
40-million dollars might seem like a lot of money, the estimated clean-up
could cost as much as 30 times that amount.
The Clean Water Action Council says this money and the government’s
willingness to accept it are representative of the cozy relationship the
companies seem to have with regulators. But Katers says the state and
federal agencies are forgetting about the people who live here. She
bristles when she hears the government agencies talk about how close they
are to the paper mills.
“They talked at the announcement about ongoing discussions they
have on a daily basis with the paper industries on this issue. But, they
haven’t met once face-to-face with the public. They haven’t held a public
discussion or debate on this issue.”
And it appears there won’t be many opportunities in the future. Although
the Fox River is not a Superfund site, the EPA is generally following the
process used for Superfund sites. The EPA says that means the public can
submit comments in writing. But there won’t be a lot of public discussion
until the EPA actually has a proposed plan. Katers thinks the people
should have a voice a lot earlier in the process.
But, the paper mills’ representative, Dennis Hultgren says it’s better to
let the experts work first.
“It’s complicated. For the normal citizen, it’s going to be very difficult to comment on it because they’re going to be looking at the technical merits
of their comments. And a general citizen, not having been involved, it’s going to be very difficult to have germane comments.”
The companies say they’ve been studying and testing and they’ve found
disturbing the sediment by trying to remove it proves that the PCBs should
be left in the sediment, allowed to slowly break down… a process called
natural recovery. And where there’s risk that sediment laden PCBs might
be disturbed by the river’s currents, engineered caps could be put in place.
The Clean Water Action Council says the paper mills tests were designed to
end up with that conclusion because that would be the cheaper way to deal
with the PCBs. The council wants the PCBs removed from the river and
disposed of safely… a much more expensive job.
The acting regional administrator for the USEPA, David Ullrich, says
there’ll likely be some combination of natural recovery, capping, and
removal. But, Ullrich says none of that will happen anytime soon. It’s a
big job, and it looks as though it will take up to ten years to deal with
the PCBs. And Ullrich says that’s just the beginning.
“The actual recovery of the resource, getting fish contaminant
levels down to acceptable levels and getting the PCB loadings to Green Bay
and out to Lake Michigan down, could take a longer period of time than that,
perhaps up to twenty years.”
And over that 20 year period, experts say that contamination will
naturally spread farther and farther into Green Bay and Lake Michigan.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Mercury emissions from more than 150 coal-burning power plants across the Great Lakes are coming under greater scrutiny this summer. Several states are considering ways to reduce those emissions. Wisconsin could become the first state in the nation to issue rules requiring large mercury reductions. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach has the story:
The Environmental Protection Agency says it could be a decade before a river that feeds Green Bay and Lake Michigan will have tons of PCBs cleaned up. And a lot longer before the river recovers from the effects of the pollution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Emissions from power plants in the Midwest are still causing acid
rain in the eastern United States. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports:
The Upper Mississippi River is a key navigation route for
commercial vessels traveling to and from the Great Lakes. The U-S
Army Corps of Engineers is studying ways to enhance the river’s traffic
capacity. One option is to expand some of the locks. That would reduce
the time it takes for barges to travel between ports. But one Corps
economist says the benefits of lock expansion don’t outweigh the costs.
Now, he’s blowing the whistle on those whom he says have fixed the
numbers to justify a one billion-dollar construction project. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Kevin Lavery reports:
Transcript
The Upper Mississippi River is a key navigation route for commercial
vessels traveling to and from the Great Lakes. The U-S Army Corps of
Engineers is studying ways to enhance the river’s traffic capacity. One
option is to expand some of the locks. That would reduce the time it takes
for barges to travel between ports. But one Corps economist says the
benefits of lock expansion don’t outweigh the costs. Now, he’s blowing the
whistle on those whom he says have fixed the numbers to justify a one
billion-dollar construction project. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Kevin Lavery reports:
Lock and Dam number 25 near Winfield, Missouri straddles the upper
Mississippi 40 miles north of St. Louis. Last year, 39 million tons of
grain, soybeans and other cargo passed through here. Though it’s winter,
water continues to rush through the dam. However, ice on the river farther
north has slowed barged traffic here to near non-existence.
A lock is essentially a watery elevator that raises and lowers boats to
different depths. Each lock is 600 feet long, but a typical 15-barge tow is
12-hundred feet long. Walter Feld is with the Corps of Engineers’ St.
Louis District. He says a tow has to break apart to negotiate the lock’s
narrow chamber:
“One lockage would take about 30 minutes. When you break that tow
apart and put two pieces together, it takes probably closer to 90 minutes.
So all that delay adds up to triple the length of time to get through
it.”
In 1993, the Corps began a 58-million dollar study of the upper
Mississippi in an attempt to plan for the needs of the navigation industry
over the next 50 years. Dr. Donald Sweeney was named the lead economist
for the study:
“The feasibility study is a planning and implementation
study.
You’re required to investigate the economic effects and environmental
consequences of whatever actions you might propose.”
At the start of the study, Sweeney says his team was told to give its best
unbiased estimate of the situation:
“And I believe that was truly the spirit of the study up
until
late 1997, at which it turned 180 degrees.”
Among other alternatives, the Corps looked at doubling the size of seven
locks to reduce congestion on the river. But the economics team concluded
the benefits gained would not be worth the cost of construction. Sweeney
says the analysis showed such a project would result in a loss of up to
20-million dollars a year.
In a written affidavit, Sweeney testified that top Corps officials
the economists to alter their analysis to justify spending a billion
dollars to expand the locks. The report points to a number of internal
memos indicating the Corps’ desire to appease the barge industry. In 1998,
Sweeney was relieved as head of the economics team, five years after the
study began.
Corps spokesman Ron Fournier says the media has underplayed the full scope
of the navigation study, and that lock expansions are not the only option at
the agency’s disposal.
“The study is actually navigation improvements, which is
variety of alternatives for the river. We have alternatives such as
extending the guide walls, adding mooring cells or buoys for barges to
tie up to, and then again also the expansion of the lock chambers
themselves.”
Fournier says Sweeney failed to take into account some of those
alternatives, many of which he says were added since the economist left the
study team.
“The navigation study has been evolving for the past seven
years; and as new data is received from the shipping industry, from the
farm growers and from a variety of other economists throughout the
country, new calculations are being used and different results are
being obtained.”
Aside from the financial issues associated with large-scale construction,
environmentalists say lock expansion would jeopardize wildlife on the river.
Washington D.C. based Environmental Defense has taken a leading stance in
the issue by releasing many of the internal Corps documents to government
officials. Senior attorney Tim Searchinger says the papers clearly show
most of the people in the study had a great deal of professional integrity,
and that some may have been pushed into doing the wrong thing.
“There is a top ranking leadership that’s willing to cause
environmental harm, even when the analysis clearly shows that from a
purely economic standpoint, the project isn’t justified either.”
Another reason why economist Donald Sweeney says the Corps is pushing
expansion is because such projects would bolster the agency’s stagnant budget.
“They’re trying to become a bigger, more vital agency.
And
sometimes that conflicts with a purely unbiased scientific analysis of
potentially a billion dollars worth of expenditures.”
Late last month, the Office of Special Counsel declared the Corps likely had violated the law in
catering to the interests of commercial navigation. The OSC is the independent federal agency with
whom Sweeney filed his affidavit. The office has ordered Defense Secretary William Cohen to
conduct an investigation and report back by the end of April. Spokesman Ron Fournier says from the
start, the Corps has been forthright about the
study both with Congress and the public.
“We feel that when this investigation is complete,
they’ll
find there’s no wrongdoing, and of course the
study has been done in an above
Corps will prove that the
board, upright manner.”
The investigation has also reached the congressional level. The Senate
committee on Environment and Public Works is conducting a number of public
hearings on the study this month.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium,
I’m Kevin Lavery in St. Louis.
Each winter, airports around the country use more than 30 million
gallons of deicing fluid. The gooey substance prevents ice and snow from
building on a plane’s wings. However, the fluid can also seep into the
ground and pollute groundwater. It’s a costly problem for airports. But
now, one has found a unique solution. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:
Transcript
Each winter, airports around the country use more than 30 million gallons of deicing fluid. The
gooey substance prevents ice and snow from building up on a plane’s wings. However, the fluid can
also seep into the ground and pollute groundwater. It’s a costly problem for airports. But now, one
has found a unique solution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:
(sound of plane)
It’s a cold, overcast day in Albany, New York as a passenger plane lifts off the runway. It’s one
of the hundred or so planes that take off from here every day. At this time of year, they’ll all
have to be deiced. Steve Lachetta is the Albany airport’s planner and environmental manager.
“We’re in the Hudson River basin and our winter season extends for over 214 days, from early
October through late April or early May. Albany, being a typical small hub, uses 100 thousand
gallons of PG per year.”
PG is propylene glycol, the main ingredient in deicing fluid that makes it gooey. Any time the
temperature dips below 40 degrees, airports are required by the FCC to use PG. The problem is,
propylene glycol also seeps into the ground.
And in Albany’s case, it started showing up in the nearby Mohawk River – a local source for
drinking water. So, Albany became the first airport in the country to receive a state mandate to
clean up its deicing fluid.
“We were spending one million dollars to dispose of our winter storm water after collection. So we
tried every form of recycling the fluid, trucking it off airport. And we took a common sense
approach to cost control and became very interested in establishing biological treatment.”
In other words, Lachetta turned to microorganisms for help. He added bacteria to the dirty storm
water. And found they started digesting the propylene glycol. The bacteria broke it down into
acidic acid and then carbon dioxide and methane. The process gives the microorganisms fuel to grow.
“The manufacturers refer to propylene glycol as the filling of the Oreo cookie of the microbe world
and very readily digested so we did much experimentation and found total removal. Byproducts are 85
percent pure methane and 15 percent carbon dioxide.”
(sound inside treatment plant)
That pure methane is put to use here – providing heat for the airport’s storm water treatment
plant. It looks like something out of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The room is filled
with a jumble of brightly colored pipes. There’s deep purple, vibrant green and canary yellow. Each
one has a special purpose.
“The large blue pipes are cycling 22 gallons per minute through the large vessels outside standing
35 feet high, 14 feet wide, and the brown pipes are the dirty storm water directly off the aircraft
aprons and the light blue pipes are for the clean water.”
Those pipes run to and from a pair of giant mixing vats. They stir up a brew of dirty storm water,
microorganisms, and some extra nutrients. It’s all cooked at a temperature of 85 degrees. And the
result is clean water.
Shelly Zuskin-Barish is the project manager for the EPA’s Airport Deicing Operations Study. She
says Albany has the most stringent treatment program in the country.
“I was very impressed when reviewing their treatment system. We found they were getting very good
removal in terms of not only propylene glycol but also an additive called tolyltriazole.”
Zuskin-Barish says there’s growing concern about tolytriazole because of its impact on aquatic
life. This is the first system she’s seen that removes it. As for propylene glycol, most airports
use a combination of recycling it and trucking it off site. Albany’s system removes more of the
pollutants, and it’s cheaper. Zuskin-Barish says Albany is on the cutting edge because it had to
be.
Albany airport has a local limit through their own state of 1 part per million propylene glycol.
For the different airports we’ve seen, that’s a very tight limit and I think in large part, pushed
them to go to this technology, which is helping them achieve those levels on a daily basis.
But now, other states – and countries – are starting to crack down as well. And Albany’s Steve
Iachetta is getting lots of visitors.
“We’ve been visited by Tokyo International, some European airports, the Department of Defense, much
larger airports, Denver, Nashville, other hubs that have come to see our early pioneering efforts.
It’s great to be on the leading edge. It’s nice to know we can contribute to improving the
environment.”
Right now, airport pollution controls differ from state to state. But next winter, the EPA will
consider national regulations to govern the disposal of deicing fluid. That may bring even more
visitors to Albany – to find out how a small airport ended up with the country’s most innovative
system.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly in Albany, New York.
States in the Mississippi river basin are protesting a decision by the state of Mississippi to allow a foreign fish to be introduced tocontrol a pest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports… the other states are concerned the fish will escape into the wild and damage the environment:
Transcript
States in the Mississippi River Basin are protesting a decision by the state of Mississippi to
allow a foreign fish to be introduced to control a pest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports the other states are concerned the fish will escape into the wild and damage the
environment:
If you buy a package of catfish filets at the supermarket or order blackened catfish at your
favorite restaurant, chances are that fish was raised in a farm pond in Mississippi. The state of
Mississippi supplies almost three-fourths of the world’s commercial catfish. It’s a two-billion
dollar a year business, coming in only after cotton and timber as one of Mississippi’s largest
industries.
In recent years, Mississippi farmers have been struggling with a parasite that’s attacking the
catfish. Jimmy Avery is a researcher with the National Warmwater Aquaculture Center at Mississippi
State University. He says the parasite is causing quite a bit of damage.
“It’s either killing these fish outright or it’s stressing them to the point they no longer grow.”
Avery says the parasite makes its home in snails. To get rid of the snails, the Mississippi
Department of Agriculture and commerce has approved introducing an Asian fish called the black
carp. The black carp eats snails and mussels. But, other states are worried that the black carp
will escape the farm ponds and get into the wild. Avery says that’s not likely…
“The Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce has decided that through the permit
process, we can minimize this. They’ll know where every black carp is located. They’ll know what
kinds of system they’ve been put in and it felt like that those regulations that had been put in
place are strong enough to prevent that.”
But the State of Missisippi’s assurances don’t convince others. Roger Klosek is the Director of
Conservation at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. He studies native mussels.
“If black carp are used to deal with the snail problem, eventually they’ll escape into the main
waterways, and start reproducing. And once they do that, they’ll start feeding on the native
mussel fauna which is one of the last remaining native mussel faunas in the United States and
literally wipe it out.”
Klosek says native mussel populations have already been hurt by another exotic species, the zebra
mussel. He believes the black carp would be the last straw for American freshwater mussels.
“So, somebody’s going to lose and it’s probably better – I know the catfish farmers will hate me
for saying this, but – it’s probably better that they lose a little economically rather than
reduce some of the native fauna to an irretrievable state.”
Some states’ officials agree with Klosek. Bill Bertrand works with the Illinois Department of
Natural Resources fisheries office. He says there’s a history of Asian carp getting loose. The
silver carp, the bighead carp, and the grass carp have already escaped from farm ponds, mostly
from Arkansas where there are few regulations.
“There’s a history of these exotics, imports, escaping into the river system, spreading throughout
the entire river basin system and causing impacts on all the other states in the system. And
Mississippi appears to tend to ignore that fact and go ahead their own merry way, saying ‘Well
we’re doing this because we want to do it and it’s beneficial to us.'”
Bertrand says governors of some of the states along the Mississippi River have sent letters to the
Governor of the State of Mississippi, asking him to stop the use of black carp. Several of the
states intend to ask the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to ban the importation of the fish. The
federal agency has not yet received that request… but even if the Fish and Wildlife service
found a ban was appropriate, it would take several months to go through the process. Even then, a
ban would not apply to black carp already in the U.S.
Mike Oetker is a fisheries biologist with the Fish and Wildlife service. He says the agency is
trying to play the role of mediator.
“Right now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to work with states and the industry to
try to prevent the problem of the possible release or accidental release of black carp into the
environment. There are several alternatives to black carp where we can use native fish such as the
red ear sunfish or freshwater drum or even big mouth buffalo to do the same type of biological
control that the black carp are doing. And that would give of the ability to kind of circumvent
this problem.”
The catfish farmers in the State of Mississippi say the native fish don’t eat the snails as
quickly as the black carp. The Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce says it will ask
farmers to use chemical treatments first and where native fish will work, they’ll try to use them.
but in the end, the Mississippi agency says it will allow catfish farmers to use black carp when
it appears other methods don’t work.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
More small river dams are being torn down around the U-S. In
fact, a recent report by conservation groups says several states in the
upper Midwest are leading the way at getting rid of dams that no longer
produce electricity. Environmentalists say tearing down thestructures
helps water quality. But some people who live near the dams feel like
they’re losing an old friend. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck
Quirmbach prepared this report:
Transcript
More small river dams are being torn down around the U.S. In fact, a recent report by conservation
groups says several states in the upper Midwest are leading the way at getting rid of dams that no
longer produce electricity. Environmentalists say tearing down the structures helps water quality.
But some people who live near the dams feel like they’re losing an old friend. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach prepared this report:
(sound of rushing water)
“This is an excellent example of the state of many of the dams across Wisconsin and the fact they
are rapidly deteriorating.”
Stephanie Lindloff is standing on top of the Franklin Dam in Sheboygan Country. The rural area’s
about fifty miles north of Milwaukee. The Franklin Dam is about two stories high and half a
football field long. It was built in the 1850’s, to power a grist mill. But the mill is long gone.
And now, on its way to lake Michigan, the Sheboygan river pours through a small hole. That’s
slowly draining the impoundment, or lake behind the dam. Stephanie Lindloff says the hole is a
sign of advanced aging.
“This dam in particular, not unlike a lot of dams around the state, had a gate that was boarded up
and the wooden boards were what was holding the water back in the end of June, two lowermost
boards cracked and water started seeping out of impoundment… wasn’t an emergency situation, but
nonetheless there was a break in the dam.”
Lindloff is with the environmental group, The River Alliance of Wisconsin. She estimates it would
cost at least 350,000 dollars to fix the Franklin Dam. It might take only one-fourth of that
amount to tear it down. Besides saving money, Lindloff says removing the Franklin Dam would also
make the Sheboygan River healthier.
“Scientists agree dams devastate river systems. They continue to block natural functioning of
rivers, impact water quality, they block fish migration and spawning grounds.”
Lindloff says ten miles of the Sheboygan River and river shoreline could be improved if the
Franklin Dam comes out. But some people who live along the small lake are sounding off about the
proposed teardown.
“I mean the dam’s solid. It’s built solid.”
Kris Wilkins believes the Franklin Dam merely needs some repairs. She loves the small farm she has
along the lake, and has even taken to raising geese.
(sound of geese)
Wilkins predicts that removing the dam would drastically cut the size of the lake and harm the
value of her property.
“It’s gorgeous out here, we have all kinds of wildlife: green herring, blue herring, our geese,
fox, woodchucks all around, it’s just nature all the way.”
Wilkins and several of her neighbors are trying to create a lake district. That’s where local
people could assess themselves a tax to raise some of the money to fix the dam. The group’s
leader, Don Last, says he’s prepared to hike his own taxes.
“It’s really the only alternative we have to find the funds and possibly get matching money to
restore and maintain.”
But some wonder if the small number of folks in this rural township can raise enough cash. They
won’t get any help from the dam’s owner, which is the Franklin volunteer fire department. The
department no longer gets its firefighting water from the lake, and fire officials say they have
no money for dam repairs. A state bailout is unlikely too.
If the Franklin Dam comes down, it would join about fifty other Wisconsin dams that have been
removed in the last twenty years. Ohio and Pennsylvania have also taken out a sizeable number of
the old structures. Steve Born is a regional planner at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
He’s written nationally about dam removals. Born says the entire Great Lakes region can benefit,
as long as officials keep a check on contaminated sediments that may have built up behind the
dams.
“There has to be provisions for either draining the impoundment… dredging these… moving them
to safe landfill sites… neutralizing them in some way. But they can’t be allowed to just
disperse throughout the system.”
Born is an advisor to trout unlimited, which is another of the groups pushing for dam removals. If
state and local governments go about removing dams carefully, Born and others will welcome the
site of more free-flowing streams.
(sound of stream)
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin.
A plan by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is
intended to stop invasive species from traveling between the Great Lakes and
the Mississippi river and its tributaries.
The government is trying to stop an invader from expanding from the GreatLakes into the Mississippi River system. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’sLester Graham reports… the field of battle is a small channel nearChicago:
