Catch the latest energy news from around the region. Check back for these monthly Energy News Roundups.

The disputed reroute of the Line 5 pipeline is officially underway. Energy company Enbridge started clearing trees in late February for a segment of pipeline planned to go around the Bad River Reservation, almost seven years after the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa sued to have the pipeline removed from its land. The tribe has fought against the reroute since then. And while Enbridge is currently free to proceed, new lawsuits could force work to stop.

Separately, Michigan Attorney Dana Nessel and Enbridge lawyers faced off before the U.S. Supreme Court late last month as part of another yearslong legal battle: Nessel wants the part of Line 5 that runs under the Straits of Mackinac shut down over fears a spill could cause ecological disaster in the Great Lakes. The Supreme Court is weighing in on whether the case should continue in state court or be moved to federal court, as Enbridge requested. Meanwhile, key decisions are expected soon on the controversial tunnel Enbridge wants to build beneath the lakebed to house the pipeline.

A group of private equity investors including a BlackRock subsidiary is planning to buy the utility that serves more than 520,000 people around Indianapolis. The parent company of AES Indiana, among the state’s largest investor-owned utilities, announced last Monday it agreed to be purchased and could go private as soon as this year. The $33 billion deal has some state leaders worried private ownership will worsen already rising electric rates.

A major Michigan utility isn’t budging on plans to sell its hydroelectric dams. If state regulators block Consumers Energy from selling 13 dams to a private equity firm, the utility will decommission them all instead, an executive wrote in testimony last week. The sale agreement faces a host of recommended conditions meant to protect Consumers Energy customers. But the utility said it’s not willing to negotiate the terms of the sale despite concerns from state officials and ratepayer advocates.

And who will pay to run the coal plants the Trump administration is keeping open past their retirement dates? Federal regulators will have to decide. The U.S. Department of Energy issued emergency orders in December to delay the closure of two Indiana coal plants, citing an energy reliability emergency. Now the utilities that operate the plants are asking regulators to spread the cost of keeping them open to ratepayers throughout the region, not just local customers.

More energy news, in case you missed it:

• The now-delayed push to reopen Michigan’s retired Palisades nuclear plant may be part of a new era for nuclear power as developers race to deploy new technologies.
• Google inked a deal with iron-air battery startup Form Energy for an installation in Minnesota that will be able to hold an eye-popping 30 gigawatt-hours of energy.
• Ontario announced an agreement with seven other provinces and two territories to build interprovincial transmission capacity meant to make Canada more energy independent.
• Ford Motor Co. is on track to start production this summer at a $3 billion southern Michigan battery plant that a citizen opposition group has failed to block in court.
• A Columbus, Ohio suburb is suing to stop Amazon from building a six-acre plot of natural gas-fed fuel cells on the site of an existing data center.

The post Legal fights continue as reroute of Line 5 pipeline begins appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

By Brian Allnutt, Planet Detroit

This article was republished with permission from Planet Detroit. Sign up for Planet Detroit’s weekly newsletter here.

Water levels on the Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair continued to decline below long-term averages over the winter, just a few years after lakes hit record highs in 2019 and 2020.

Lake levels are expected to begin their seasonal rise and stay close to long-term averages, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ six-month forecast issued March 4.  

The recent decline in Great Lakes water levels hasn’t been especially steep, but the overall trajectory of lake levels is one of increasing variability, according to Yi Hong, a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research.

Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, which are technically two lobes of a single lake, saw record highs in 2020 less than a decade after being hit by record lows in 2012 and 2013, Corps records show.

Climate change-driven extreme storms and heatwaves are influencing lake level variability, but there isn’t enough data to show if levels will trend lower or higher over the long-term, Hong said.

Over the next six months, the Corps predicts water levels will stay below long-term averages on all the lakes, except possibly Lake Ontario.

Lake Michigan and Lake Huron will be the farthest below average. From March to August, levels will be 4 to 7 inches below last year’s levels and 11 to 12 inches below the long-term average. Closer to Detroit, Lake St. Clair will see water levels 6 to 10 inches below last year and 5 to 7 inches below the long-term average.

Megan Royal, a Corps hydraulic engineer, said the agency doesn’t anticipate any water level issues in the shipping channels and harbors used by Great Lakes freighters. Sediment can occasionally move into navigation channels and harbors, requiring emergency dredging, she said.

In an interview with Maritime Reporter TV, Eric Peace, vice president of the Lake Carriers Association, said Great Lakes shipping is negatively impacted by several factors, including severe weather over the fall and early ice cover. Dredging will continue to be a challenge for the industry, he said. 

Dry falls, hot summers contribute to lake level declines

A pattern of dry fall seasons from 2023-2025 contributed to the Great Lakes’ falling water levels, Royal told Planet Detroit.

Last summer’s heat also led to near record-high lake temperatures, producing significant evaporation when the winter’s extremely cold air passed over relatively warm water, she said.

“Evaporation is very difficult to measure because of just how large the lakes are,” Royal said, adding that modeling showed evaporation from all the lakes except Lake Erie was above average from October to January.

The rate of decline in lake levels is beginning to stabilize as a drought eases in parts of the Great Lakes Basin and snowmelt drives runoff into the lakes, she said.  

The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center forecasts above normal precipitation across nearly all the U.S. portion of the Great Lakes Basin over the next three months. Temperatures in these areas mostly have equal chances of being above or below normal over the same time period.

The post Great Lakes water levels decline from record highs: What the forecast says appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

By Richelle Wilson, Wisconsin Public Radio

This article was republished here with permission from Wisconsin Public Radio.

Paul Ehorn started scuba diving as a teenager in the early 1960s. On his first dive, he was wearing a self-assembly wetsuit he purchased from a Montgomery Ward catalog for $28.

“The water’s cold, probably the low 40s, and I came up just shivering uncontrollably,” Ehorn told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “All I could say was, ‘How long before we can go back in?’”

“I was hooked. That was it,” he added. “It just became a passion and obsession.”

After that, it wasn’t long before Ehorn picked up some sonar gear and started what would become a lifelong career as a shipwreck hunter. Now 80 years old, he has discovered 15 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. 

His latest find, which he announced to the public in February, is Lac La Belle, a luxury steamer that sank in Lake Michigan more than 150 years ago. The ship has been on Ehorn’s radar from the beginning due to his interest in wooden steamers and because it’s “close to home,” he said in the press release. 

After nearly 60 years of searching, Ehorn got the clue he needed and finally located the sunken wreckage about 20 miles offshore between Racine and Kenosha.

“It was just a wonderful day,” Ehorn said. “Beautiful wreck, it turned out.”

Ehorn and his crew first found the wreckage of Lac La Belle in 2022, but he waited to publicly share his discovery until conditions were right to go down for a dive to film the ship and create a 3D model. Documenting the shipwreck is an important part of the process to educate the public and give historians a unique view into the past.

“All of our wrecks on the Great Lakes have a shelf life — they’re not going to look like this in 100 years,” said Brendon Baillod, president of the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association. “I have to commend Paul for really wanting to do that photogrammetry model, because that’s a good standard for recording exactly how that wreck was at the time he found it.”

As a maritime historian, Baillod has researched a number of Great Lakes shipwrecks. His book “Fathoms Deep But Not Forgotten: Wisconsin’s Lost Ships” includes an entry for Lac La Belle that details its history carrying passengers and cargo — first between Cleveland and Lake Superior starting in 1864, and later on a trade route between Milwaukee and Grand Haven, Michigan. 

On Oct. 13, 1872, the ship sank a couple hours after departing Milwaukee due to a leak that sprung during a storm. The ship was carrying cargo and 53 passengers. Eight people died after one of the lifeboats capsized.

“The Lac La Belle is a time capsule. It’s an underwater museum from 1872,” Baillod told “Wisconsin Today.” “It played such a pivotal role not just in the industrialization of America, but in Milwaukee’s history.”

A ‘golden age’ of shipwreck discovery

The Great Lakes are home to an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 shipwrecks, most of which remain undiscovered, according to the Wisconsin Water Library. 

But more of these sunken ships are being found, Baillod said, due to advancements in affordable technology and with the help of citizen scientists who are becoming more aware of shipwreck history.

“It’s kind of the golden age, I guess you might say, of shipwreck discovery on the Great Lakes,” he said, “and a tremendous opportunity for us to tell the stories of these ships that played such a huge role in the cultural history of the Midwest, and Wisconsin in particular.”

And the race is on to find more of these wrecks, as invasive quagga mussels congregate around shipwrecks and damage what remains.

For shipwreck hunters, the mussels are a double-edged sword: Despite the damage they cause, the mussels also are clarifying the water, making shipwrecks easier to spot. Whereas Lake Michigan used to have only about 5 or 10 feet of visibility underwater, now divers have a much clearer view.

“We called it ‘Braille diving.’ You’d go down and you’d have to get within a couple of feet of the shipwreck,” Baillod said. “Now, you go down there and you can see sometimes 50, 80, 100 feet — you can see the whole ship.”

While that has created opportunities for “beautiful underwater photos of these shipwrecks” and raised public awareness, Baillod said, the quagga mussels are ultimately decimating the food web and changing Lake Michigan’s biome, leading to the collapse of native species like whitefish.

Baillod is one of the founders of the Ghost Ships Festival, an annual community event to promote research, education and public awareness of Wisconsin’s shipwreck history. This year, the event is being held in Manitowoc on Friday, March 6 and Saturday, March 7 and includes a presentation from Ehorn about his discovery of the Lac La Belle.

“We’re trying to educate the public about the Great Lakes maritime history and about the role these ships played in building America back in the 1800s,” Baillod said. “And we’re having a lot of success — people are learning about it.”

The post Shipwreck hunter discovers sunken 150-year-old luxury liner off the coast of Wisconsin appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

“This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.”

The Canadian oil pipeline giant Enbridge will pay Wisconsin law enforcement for riot suits, training, and hours spent policing protests, according to an agreement approved by two counties last week. The secretive arrangement offers an uncapped funding source to local sheriffs as the company prepares for disruptive, Indigenous-led resistance to the controversial Line 5 reroute.

Last Tuesday, Enbridge began construction on a 41-mile segment of Line 5, which carries around 540,000 barrels of oil and natural gas liquids daily from a transfer point in Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario. The pipeline is designed to send fossil fuels from Canada’s tar sands region and the Bakken fracking fields to U.S. refineries before shipping much of the refined products back into Canada. 

The proposed reroute comes after the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa fought for years to force Enbridge to shut down an existing 12-mile segment of the pipeline that passes through the tribe’s reservation. After several of the pipeline’s easements expired in 2013, the Bad River Band declined to renew them over concerns about a potential oil spill. Enbridge continued operating, and in 2023, a federal judge ruled that the company was illegally trespassing and ordered it to shut down the reservation segment by June 2026. 

Enbridge appealed, and last Friday, the same judge that issued the trespass decision lifted the June deadline until the appeal is resolved. Bad River’s leaders want the pipeline stopped altogether, arguing that the reroute would surround the reservation and threaten the tribe’s treaty-protected watershed and wild rice beds. Tribal nations have also joined the state of Michigan in demanding that a separate section of corroding Line 5 pipeline be shut down under the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. However, under President Donald Trump, the federal government has repeatedly weighed in in favor of keeping Line 5 oil flowing. Shortly after taking office, Trump declared a national energy emergency to speed up the development of fossil fuel projects. Under this directive, the Army Corps of Engineers expedited a permit last spring to build a tunnel for Line 5 under the straits. The move prompted several tribal nations in the region to withdraw from pipeline talks in protest.

Anticipating significant public pushback against the reroute construction, Enbridge and the Wisconsin Counties Association negotiated the Public Safety Expense Reimbursement Agreement. The agreement is designed specifically to address the cost of potential protests, allowing police and public safety agencies along Line 5 to submit invoices for an array of expenses. Eligible costs include daily patrols of the construction area, crowd control, police coordination with Enbridge, education programs, and Enbridge trainings on “human trafficking and cultural awareness” — an attempt to thwart transient construction workers who use trafficked women for sex. Firearms, tasers, K-9 units, and recording devices will not be reimbursed. 

An account manager appointed by the Wisconsin Counties Association will review the reimbursement requests before Enbridge pays the police via an escrow account. 

At Ashland County’s Board of Supervisors meeting last week, about a dozen people spoke out against the account. Riley Clave, a community member, told the board the agreement “would be turning our public service into private security.” Another commenter, Soren Bvennehe, called the agreement “a blatant conflict of interest,” arguing that paying the sheriff’s office incentivizes preferential treatment for the company.

Wenipashtaabe Gokee, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, raised concerns about the disproportionate policing of Indigenous people in the area. She noted that the Ashland County Sheriff’s Office, which would be tasked with policing Indigenous-led protests against Line 5, already has a presence on the Bad River Reservation — in 2017, her 14-year-old nephew, Jason Pero, was killed by an Ashland County sheriff’s deputy in front of his home. “We’re already targeted,” Gokee said during the hearing. She also pointed to a 2019 state law making it a felony to trespass on the property of oil pipeline companies, part of a wave of anti-protest legislation passed nationwide following the 2016 Dakota Access pipeline protests. 

Those in favor of the agreement repeatedly expressed their desire to avoid raising taxes or using sparse county resources to police the pipeline. County officials asserted that they would rather have local law enforcement respond to protests than private security. Andy Phillips, a lawyer for the Wisconsin Counties Association, estimated the counties will face “millions” in pipeline-related public safety expenses. The agreement includes no cap on reimbursements and does not specify that the money has to come from Enbridge. “We didn’t care where it came from,” Phillips said, so long as the burden did not fall on taxpayers.

Bayfield County Sheriff Tony Williams noted his chief deputy is already making a list of equipment, including helmets and shields. “I think that cost was up to $60,000,” Williams said, adding, “I don’t know if it’s fair to put the cost back on the community and the taxpayers if we can get a billion-dollar company to pay us back.” 

Ashland and Iron counties ultimately approved the agreement, while Bayfield County rejected it.

The approved agreement includes a clause stating that all communications regarding the reimbursements are highly confidential, citing unspecified risks to public health and safety. “The clause in the agreement is wildly over broad,” said Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, arguing that it looks like an attempt to “tip the balance” of the state’s public records laws. 

Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said, “Enbridge does not believe local communities and taxpayers should be saddled with these extra costs associated with Line 5 construction and offered a constructive solution.” 

Funding arrangements like this emerged after the 2016 Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access pipeline, which cost North Dakota $38 million in policing and other protest-related bills. The state spent years in court attempting to get the federal government to pay the costs, even after Energy Transfer donated $15 million to offset the bill. In 2019, South Dakota, under then-governor Kristi Noem, drafted legislation to establish a protest-policing fund for the Keystone XL pipeline, before the project was canceled by the Biden administration.

The model was successfully tested in Minnesota during construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline expansion. There, the state Public Utilities Commission established an Enbridge-funded escrow account that ultimately reimbursed $8.6 million to 97 public agencies for everything from energy drinks to zip ties and porta potties. 

In the aftermath of Line 3, several people arrested during the protests pursued legal motions arguing that the escrow account created an unconstitutional police bias that violated their rights to due process.

While Minnesota’s escrow manager was state-appointed, Wisconsin’s manager will be appointed by the Wisconsin Counties Association — an organization that a judge ruled in 2014 is not subject to public records requests. The Wisconsin Counties Association did not reply to requests for comment.

Dawn Goodwin, a White Earth Nation member who worked with the nonprofit Indigenous Environmental Network to fight Line 3 in Minnesota, attended the recent Ashland County meeting. She said she watched trust in law enforcement deteriorate in counties that accepted Enbridge’s reimbursements. In her own county, however, the sheriff decided not to submit any invoices to the company.

“Our sheriff told me he took an oath to uphold the First Amendment,” Goodwin recalled. ”He held to that.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/indigenous/enbridge-paid-police-to-protect-one-pipeline-now-it-wants-to-do-it-again-in-wisconsin/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The post Enbridge paid police to protect one pipeline. Now it wants to do it again in Wisconsin. appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

This story was produced by @tvotoday

Salt trucks are a familiar sight in the Great Lakes region. Every winter, roads and sidewalks are covered with salt to melt ice and prevent accidents. But is the salt doing more harm than good? Citizen scientists in Ontario have been studying how salt is impacting local waterways and advocating for stronger limits on its use.

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“Is Road Salt Destroying Ontario’s Waterways?” was produced by @tvotoday in partnership with Great Lakes Now/Detroit PBS.

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The post Should we use less road salt? | Great Lakes Now appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Every winter, ice boaters race across frozen waterways, chasing serious speeds.

Meet Ron Sherry. He’s an Iceboat World Champion and iceboat designer who build DN Class boats from his workshop in Michigan.

On the Great Lakes Now YouTube channel, learn more about this high-speed sport and join GLN contributor Ward Detwiler for his first time boating on ice.

#GreatLakes #Iceboat #Iceboating #Winter #WinterSports
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The post Inside a Champion Iceboater’s Workshop appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Six Nations of the Grand River is one of the most highly populated Indigenous communities in Canada with around 29,000 residents. A primary source of water is from the McKenzie Creek, which is mostly used for agricultural purposes for the Six Nations and non-Indigenous communities throughout the watershed. 

According to a recent study, Ontario’s McKenzie Creek watershed is likely to face increasing levels of water scarcity throughout the rest of the century. This research examines how water scarcity, due to factors like climate change, land use and water consumption, will have impacts for agricultural production for the Six Nations.

“I live on reserve and it’s just something that you don’t really think about on a daily basis until you’re actually living it, where you see your appliances die early because of the hardness of the water,” said Six Nations Senior Manager of the Environment Sara Curley-Smith.

Of the water available for Six Nations, the people here also face ongoing challenges with water quality. This compounds the effects of water insecurity.

“You have the majority of families at Six Nations that are water insecure already, so if they’re water insecure in good times, you can’t imagine what’s coming our way in the next 50 years,” said emeritus professor of Indigenous Studies at McMaster University Dawn Martin-Hill, who was also involved with the study.

Martin-Hill leads the Ohneganos Indigenous Water Research Program, which the study was a part of. She is also part of an initiative to create a Haudenosaunee Environmental Research Institute that centers Indigenous knowledge to better understand these issues. Part of her interview is also featured in the article, “Water is Life, Six Nations lead international approach to long-standing water insecurity.”

“In the design of the project we consulted with the environmental folks at Six Nations, the fish and wildlife folks, leaders, traditional knowledge holders, we just got a sense of what their concerns and priorities were,” Martin-Hill said. “Climate change came up quite a bit because cities and towns have access to that information and modeling, whereas reserves and reservations do not.”

Throughout the project process, Indigenous traditional knowledge holders helped guide the scientists on where and when to conduct the research, Martin-Hill said.

This led to a focus on the McKenzie Creek subwatershed, which was understudied compared to the Grand River watershed, according to Tariq Deen, lead author of the study at McMaster University.

“That’s why that project was so beneficial in terms of process, because traditional ecological knowledge was the foundation of it,” said Smith.

Traditional ecological knowledge incorporates Western and Indigenous knowledge together in dialogue, Martin-Hill said, to better understand the environment.

The McMaster University study based its projections of water scarcity off of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Representative Concentration Pathway scenarios 4.5 and 8.5, which signify medium and high greenhouse gas emission and climate warming levels. 

The study by hydrologists and geographers looks at the projected levels for two types of water; blue and green water. While the study anticipates increased levels of water scarcity for both types of water in the future, Six Nations has already experienced these challenges. 

Blue water is fresh water that can be extracted for human activities.

To account for blue water scarcity, the study used two scenarios. The first was a low estimate scenario using monthly agricultural water consumption patterns. The second scenario estimated higher water consumption using the maximum amount of water that could be extracted, assuming this would occur with warming climate trends and an increase in agriculture.

“Under that scenario, we saw that blue water scarcity would increase to a level where it would negatively affect the ecosystem,” said Deen.

Another study on the Grand River watershed from the University of Guelph found similar trends in blue water scarcity considering increasing water demands due to climate change.

“This is a common trend where if you have more withdrawals and more agriculture use, there would be some scarcity that would be coming in,” said author and University of Guelph associate professor in water resources engineering Prasad Daggupati.  

However, water use data for the Six Nations was not included in the water scarcity estimates of the McMaster University study. This is because the Grand River Conservation Authority, who manages the McKenzie Creek watershed, does not collect water use data for the Six Nations. This means the water scarcity levels projected in both blue water scenarios are a low estimate.

“Under climate change scenarios, we saw that green water scarcity would increase throughout the next century,” Deen said.

Similar future patterns for green water scarcity were also found in the University of Guelph study, which used the same Representative Concentration Pathways to account for future impacts of climate change. 

Green water is the type of water that remains in the soil for plant growth.

“Moving into the future, obviously with increased precipitation, there would be more evapotransportation happening up, which would result in having less soil water available, which is green water,” said Daggupati.

Evapotranspiration is the process where water on land and in plants evaporates into the air.  

On top of agriculture and climate factors, corporations like BlueTriton (formerly Nestlé) have a history of extracting water without consulting and securing consent from Six Nations.

“We believe there are good veins of water that are much deeper than what wells were dug to, and that’s the water that Nestlé had been taking which we didn’t know about — 3.6 million liters every day for the last decade,” Martin-Hill said. 

According to Smith, this is a big issue because 70% of the community relies on groundwater. This issue is further exacerbated by the potential for wells running dry and the inability to support the agriculture that a lot of people at Six Nations rely on.

“I think our people have a problem with the way Western science compartmentalizes and silos things such as water,” Martin-Hill said. “We see ourselves as a part of the natural world.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify that Nestlé became BlueTriton and to correct a quote.

The post Climate change is worsening water crisis for Canada’s largest First Nations population appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

By Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco, WBEZ

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between WBEZ and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

Under the warm light of a hanging lamp, Marty Landorf carefully crumbled the dried flower head of a black-eyed Susan between her fingers, teasing apart the chaff to uncover its puny black seeds. Each one was destined for long-term cold storage alongside roughly 46 million other seeds at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Every seed in the garden’s vault is different. Some seeds have hooks. Others verge on microscopic. A few carry a sharp, deterring scent. And some, like the airborne seeds of the milkweed, the host plant for monarch caterpillars, are fastened to silky fluff that drifts everywhere, hitching rides on volunteers’ clothes and following them home.

“Fluff is fun,” Landorf said laughing, seated alongside five other volunteers cleaning, counting, and sorting seeds at a long metallic table in the garden’s seed bank preparation lab.

For all their variation, these seeds share a common trait: They’re native to the Midwest. These species genetically adapted over thousands of years and sustain the region’s ecosystems. That evolutionary inheritance makes them indispensable for restoring the nation’s remaining prairies, wetlands, and woodlands.

The problem: Native seeds are in short supply. And climate change is intensifying demand.

“Climate change is affecting our weather and the frequency of natural disasters,” said Kayri Havens, chief scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden. “Wildfires becoming more common, hurricanes becoming more common — that increases the need for seed.”

In 2024, the Chicago Botanic Garden, a 385-acre public garden and home to one of the nation’s leading plant conservation programs, helped launch the Midwest Native Seed Network, a first step in improving the region’s fragile seed supply. The coalition now includes roughly 300 restoration ecologists, land managers, and seed growers across 150 institutions in 11 states. Together, they are researching which species are most in demand, where they are likely to thrive, and what it will take to produce them at scale and get them in the ground.

The collaborative is compiling information on seed collection, processing, germination, and propagation while identifying regional research gaps and planning collaborative projects to close them. For example, the network is currently collecting research on submerged aquatic plants such as pondweeds, and other species that are challenging to germinate, like the bastard toadflax, a partially parasitic perennial herb.

“We’re addressing these local, regional, and national shortages of native seed that are really just hindering our ability to restore really diverse habitats, build green infrastructure, and support urban gardens,” said Andrea Kramer, director of restoration at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Last year, the network undertook its first major project: a large-scale survey of more than 50 partners across the region. The results were stark. More than 500 are effectively unavailable for restoration. In some cases, it’s because no one grows them. In others, the seeds are available, but the cost — even at a couple of dollars per packet — becomes prohibitive when restoration projects require thousands of pounds. And for certain finicky species, the bottleneck is technical: Researchers and growers still don’t fully understand how to germinate them reliably or help them thrive in restoration settings.

Kramer said that ultimately the goal is to connect the people who need seeds with those who know how to grow them. While the network does not sell seeds, it works with organizations and partners that do. “We are using the network to help elevate what we all know and share what we know to make it easier,” she said.

The shortage itself is not new. In 2001, following sweeping wildfires in the West, Congress tasked federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service — which combined manage approximately one-fifth of the nation’s public lands — to craft an inter-agency, public-private partnership to increase the availability of native seeds. But according to a 2023 report, which identified the lack of native seeds as a major obstacle for ecological restoration projects across the United States, those efforts remain unfinished.

Wildfires have scorched more than 170 million acres in the U.S. between 2000 and 2025, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. In 2020 alone, the Bureau of Land Management purchased roughly 1.5 million pounds of seed to rehabilitate burned landscapes. In a bad fire year, the agency can buy as much as 10 million pounds.

The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law dedicated $1.4 billion for ecosystem restoration over five years, including $200 million for the National Seed Strategy, a coalition of 12 federal agencies and various private partners established in 2015 to provide genetically diverse native seeds for restoration. The following year, the Inflation Reduction Act invested nearly $18 million to develop an interagency seed bank for native seeds. And in 2024, the Interior Department announced an initial round of $1 million for a national seed bank for native plants.

“The U.S. does have a major seed bank run by the [Department of Agriculture], and it mostly banks crops,” said Havens, the scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden.“But we don’t have that kind of infrastructure in place for native seed.”

Momentum for establishing a native seed bank stalled following funding cuts by the Trump administration. In early 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency cut 10 percent of the staff at the National Plant Germplasm System, which is home to one of the largest and most diverse plant collections in the world.

“If something isn’t supported on a national level, then it becomes incumbent on states and regions to do that kind of work,” Havens said. “So that’s why we’re focusing right now in the Midwest.”

The network is the first of its kind in the Midwest, though similar initiatives have been active elsewhere in the country for years. Today, there are more than 25 similar networks operating across the U.S. In the western United States, these coalitions have come together in response to post-wildfire restoration projects.

“One of the reasons why we were among the first is because of this federal land ownership that we have in the West, whereas in the Midwest, it’s more private land,” said Elizabeth Leger, a professor at the University of Nevada in Reno and co-founder of the Nevada Native Seed Partnership. More than 90% of all federal land is located in 11 western states.

Kramer said she hopes to run the seed availability survey again in 20 years and get a different response.

“I want them to say, ‘We have access to all the seed we need,’” said Kramer. “And we can move on to the next challenging question, like, ‘Why isn’t the seed establishing in my restoration? Or, how do we manage the next challenge coming with climate change?’”

This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Elizabeth Leger’s name.

The post A network is racing to save the Midwest’s native seeds appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Mike Shriberg, University of Michigan

What began as a straightforward question from one water-quality advocate has morphed into a high-stakes battle over an oil pipeline at the highest levels of the U.S. government – with implications that go far beyond the fate of a technical legal conflict.

The question arose after a 2010 Enbridge Energy oil spill in Michigan. The advocate asked what other Michigan waterways were at risk from crude oil spills. But in the wake of, among other issues, two ships doing damage to an underwater section of another Enbridge oil pipeline, the conflict has now come all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Feb. 24, 2026, the justices heared oral arguments and will thereafter deliberate about the future of Enbridge Energy’s Line 5 oil pipeline, which runs through Michigan and Wisconsin.

As a water policy scholar with a focus on the Great Lakes, I have participated directly in the Line 5 debate as a gubernatorial appointee to an advisory board, as well as analyzed its implications. I see this moment in the Supreme Court as one layer of a complex debate that Line 5 has stirred up about states’ rights, Indigenous rights and the future of the fossil fuel economy.

Enbridge Energy vs. Dana Nessel

The actual issue in front of the Supreme Court is procedural: In 2019, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel sued Enbridge in a Michigan state court, seeking to shut down the pipeline, alleging “violations of the public-trust doctrine, common-law public nuisance, and the Michigan Environmental Protection Act.” Federal law allowed Enbridge to seek to move the case to federal court within 30 days of the initial filing.

Enbridge did not do so, but the Canada-based multinational company has since argued that it still should be allowed to deal with the case in federal court, as it is doing in a similar case brought by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.

The specific question before the Supreme Court is a very technical legal one: Even though Enbridge failed to request the move to federal court in a timely way, should that prevent Enbridge from moving it later?

A sensitive waterway

There is no debate that Line 5’s crossing of the Straits of Mackinac – which separate Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas right where Lakes Michigan and Huron meet – lies within Michigan’s territorial boundaries.

The lawsuits from Nessel and Whitmer are attempting to stop Enbridge from operating the pipeline in this sensitive area of the Great Lakes.

The risks became clearer to the public when a ship’s anchor struck the underwater pipeline in 2018 and another ship damaged one of the pipe’s supports in 2020. In the 2018 incident, some fluid – not crude oil – leaked into the lake water.

But Enbridge is refusing to shut the pipeline down. The company says the dispute belongs in federal court because state laws and regulations generally do not apply to this pipeline, which carries mostly Canadian oil to mostly Canadian refineries, using Michigan and the Great Lakes as a shortcut. Enbridge maintains that a treaty with Canada supersedes state authority.

The ruling from the Supreme Court will likely be narrow and procedural. However, all parties seem to agree that the decision will also have much wider consequences, including being a key determinant and signal of states’ rights to protect their waterways and other natural resources in the face of industry opposition.

Bad River Band vs. Enbridge Energy

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, the Line 5 oil pipeline passes through the reservation of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and the pending legal outcome in a separate federal court case is well beyond procedural.

The band revoked Enbridge’s easement in 2013, but Enbridge has refused to remove the pipeline, so – after years of failed negotiations – the Bad River Band sued in 2019.

U.S. District Judge William Conley ruled in 2023 that Enbridge had been trespassing for 10 years and awarded US$3 million in damage payments. Conley gave Enbridge until June 2026 to find an alternative route around the Bad River Band’s land, or shut the pipeline down.

As this date approaches with no clear resolution in sight, the Trump administration joined Enbridge in seeking to reverse that decision and keep Line 5 open. While Conley’s decision is being contested by both Enbridge and the Bad River Band in an appeals court one level below the U.S. Supreme Court, the status of the pipeline during this legal process is very much in question.

Line 5 cannot operate without the Bad River Band reservation section, but the deeper issue is about Indigenous peoples’ rights to control their own lands and future on reservations. If Enbridge wins, many analysts believe that Indigenous rights to self-determination on reservations will be significantly eroded.

Attempts to reroute

Enbridge has a two-pronged strategy to save Line 5 from decommissioning: fight in the courts against the state of Michigan and the Bad River Band, while simultaneously working to reroute the pipeline around these problematic areas.

In the Straits of Mackinac, that means attempting to put Line 5 in a tunnel underneath Lake Michigan. This requires federal permits – which will likely be issued soon – as well as state permits. The permission issued by the Michigan Public Service Commission to build the tunnel is being challenged in the Michigan Supreme Court, while advocates are pressuring Whitmer not to issue another state permit that is also required.

The situation is similar in Wisconsin, where federal permits for rerouting the pipeline outside the reservation – but not beyond the watershed serving the Bad River Band’s land – were issued in October 2025 by the Trump administration. The state permit is caught up in legal and political challenges.

In each case, the immediate issue is about the direct environmental impacts of the projects. But also in each case, the underlying battle is about the long-term effects of projects involving fossil fuels. Environmental advocates want the state and federal agencies to consider the permits in light of the potential for more climatic, health and environmental damage from burning the oil the pipeline carries. Enbridge and its allies want to focus narrowly on local ecological impacts and not on the larger debate about the future of fossil fuels.

The bigger debate

As the highest court in the land considers what some might see as a very mundane and localized issue, I believe it’s useful to peel back the layers and see deeper meaning. Jeffrey Insko, an American studies professor at Oakland University and tireless chronicler and analyst of the Line 5 saga, summarizes this depth well:

“If shutting down Line 5 were about nothing more than getting an aging pipeline out of the water, if it weren’t about addressing the climate crisis, about reducing fossil fuel consumption, about a habitable future, about cultivating better relations with the more-than-human world, about respecting Indigenous rights and lifeways, it wouldn’t be a movement worth having. It would just be a technical problem with a technical solution, one that basically accepts the way things are. But shutting down Line 5 is ultimately a step toward changing the way things are.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling may be on technical grounds, but its repercussions could be very wide indeed.

This story was updated Feb. 24, 2026, with the fact that oral arguments at the Supreme Court had concluded.

Mike Shriberg, Professor of Practice & Engagement, School for Environment & Sustainability; Director of the University of Michigan Water Center, University of Michigan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Supreme Court’s Michigan pipeline case is about Native rights and fossil fuels, not just technical legal procedure appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Arctic grayling were once abundant in Michigan’s waters. But almost a century ago, habitat destruction, overfishing, and predation by introduced species decimated their populations. By 1936, the fish had vanished from Michigan entirely. Today, and effort is underway to restore self-sustaining populations of this long-lost fish

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“Restoring the Long-Lost Arctic Grayling” was produced by Great Lakes Now/Detroit PBS in partnership with Running Wild Media.

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