Steve Pardo / The Detroit News

Federal officials say DNA evidence shows the aggressive Asian carp may have breached the electronic barrier designed to prevent it from invading the Great Lakes.

Officials with the Army Corps of Engineers said today that DNA of the giant carp has been found north of the barrier in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The Cal-Sag channel leads to Lake Michigan. Environmentalists fear the carp could wreak havoc on the region's $4.5 billion fishing industry.
"This means we have to take aggressive action now because an invasion is imminent," said Jennifer Nalbone, director of Navigation and Invasive Species at Great Lakes United. "This is not the time for deliberation. This is the time for action."

Asian carp escaped from Southern fish farms in the 1990s and have been migrating up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers. They grow to more than 4 feet long and weigh up to 100 pounds. The powerful carp are known to knock boaters from their boats.

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Summer surprise comes after heavy rains, snow
BY TINA LAM • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • AUGUST 4, 2008
After a parched summer last year that left docks stranded and boat propellers scraping sandy shallows, the Great Lakes are blissfully -- and surprisingly -- full again this year.

Heavy snow and rains since last winter have made the lakes rise. Scientists aren't sure whether this will last, but they're hopeful. The temperatures, moisture and ice cover next winter will be critical.

"If we get two more good, normal winters with normal precipitation, then we'd have a turnaround," said Cynthia Sellinger, deputy director of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Lake Superior, which beat its 1926 record low last fall, rebounded to within 4 inches of its long-term average in July. Lakes Erie and Ontario are 2 and 4 inches, respectively, above their July averages.

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Waste site planned north of Sarnia, stirring fears of water contamination

By Chad Selweski
Macomb Daily Staff Writer

An online petition drive launched to protest a proposed nuclear waste dump on Lake Huron has gathered 2,000 signatures in its first 24 hours.

Two groups, Progress Michigan and Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, initiated the petition drive to raise the prospect of water contamination posed by the waste site, which is planned for an Ontario location north of Sarnia.

The drive began Monday, in advance of the June 18 close of a "public comment period" offered by the Canadian government.

U.S. officials say state's water, air at risk
BY TINA LAM • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • JUNE 6, 2008

• Environmental groups and U.S. officials are sounding alarms about two major new Canadian projects -- a heavy oil mega refinery along the St. Clair River and an underground radioactive waste repository near Lake Huron -- they say could put Michigan air and water at risk for decades.

Michigan residents and businesses won't benefit from the projects and are largely unaware of them. Opponents say U.S. concerns are not represented in Canada, where the prospect of new jobs makes locals welcome the projects.

Shell Canada plans a giant refinery along five miles of St. Clair River shoreline now dotted with farms and marinas, across from St. Clair and Marine City. The refinery would process up to 250,000 barrels a day of heavy crude oil from rich tar sands in Alberta, making fuel for the Canadian market.

The new refinery would be more than twice the size of the Marathon refinery in southwest Detroit, which is seeking state permits to expand by 15% to 115,000 barrels per day.

Ontario nuclear officials are making plans to dig 2,150 feet underground to bury low- and medium-level radioactive waste from 20 nuclear plants for hundreds of years. The site is half a mile from Lake Huron, across the lake from Michigan's Thumb.

This year consider planting plants native to your area when landscaping or gardening. Native plants are defined as plants that existed in an area prior to European settlement. The use of native plants has numerous benefits due to having evolved over thousands of years and, as such, are adapted to local conditions. The benefits include:

• They flourish without fertilizers or synthetic pesticides and rarely need watering.
• They provide food and habitat for wildlife which continues to disappear due to development
• They contribute to biodiversity
• They keep our regions unique and help us to maintain plant species
• Their root systems rebuild the soil and work as filtering systems.
• Last but not least they are beautiful!

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