By Victoria Witke, Circle of Blue

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS, Michigan Public and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work HERE.

Wildfire risk is high in the upper Great Lakes, and research shows that large, scorching wildfires spell trouble for lakes in the region’s remote watersheds. 

The reason: Vegetation burns in the fire. Scorching, high temperatures make the soil hydrophobic, which causes erosion and more runoff into lakes. Plants are no longer there to filter the sediment seeping into waterways. One region of concern is northern Minnesota where fires are blazing in dry and windy conditions.

In early June, lightning caused three wildfires in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, prompting a campfire ban. Two more fires recently sparked in Ely, leading to emergency evacuations. In mid-May, the Flanders Fire east of Breezy Point charred more than 1,700 acres in about a week.

The multiple blazes are evidence that elevated fire risk is becoming the new norm for the region, according to Teresa Floberg. She’s the Ely Fireshed Coordinator for environmental think tank Dovetail Partners and works with Superior National Forest.

“When you look at wildfire risk maps for northern Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, northern Michigan, that wildfire risk resembles the West,” Floberg said. “Same level of risk factors, and potential for intensity.”

That risk, of course, isn’t unique to the North Woods. This year, wildfire experts predict a severe fire season nationwide as drought grips most of the country. As of mid-June, the National Interagency Coordination Center reported that more than 2.5 million acres have burned in wildfires across the U.S. – nearly double the 10-year average.

The causes have been gradually accumulating for more than a century. Climate change – balmier summers, shorter winters, unexpectedly dry and windy days – is largely to blame. That, and more than a century of federal fire suppression policies. Decades of fuel buildup in forests, like downed trees and dense undergrowth, feed the flames, growing wildfires to catastrophic dimensions.

Extinguishing wildfires comes with a hefty price tag. Northern Minnesota wildfires last year alone required an $8.7 million emergency response from the state’s National Guard and firefighting staff.

Chris Filstrup is an expert on how wildfires are affecting northern Minnesota’s remote lakes.

Five years ago, while the Greenwood Fire burned across more than 26,800 acres of northeast Minnesota, the lake scientist became enthralled with what that summer’s largest and most destructive wildfire was doing to the thousands of pristine lakes residing in its warpath across Superior National Forest.

Filstrup poured over previous research investigating how fire affects watersheds. There were few studies, and those he found overwhelmingly featured the Western half of the United States.

“We need to be studying this in the Midwest due to all the differences in vegetation, landscape, hydrology and weather patterns that likely affect how lakes respond to fires,” Filstrup said. “We have very different systems here.”

Sam Reed agrees. Reed is the climate conservation manager at advocacy organization Friends of the Boundary Waters, where he is reviewing all of the climate impact research in the greater Quetico-Superior Ecosystem. Fire has been largely excluded from that work.

“The relationship between fire and freshwater is something that needs way more attention, both from a research perspective and a policy perspective,” Reed said. “We need to be thinking about how it affects our amazing freshwater resources.”

Filstrup is one of the leaders closing that knowledge gap.

Along with a team of researchers, Filstrup received rapid funding from the National Science Foundation to find out the consequences of wildfires for the Upper Midwest’s inland lakes. When they began studying Superior National Forest watersheds the following May after the fire, much of the landscape was still charred. Filstrup said it was like stepping onto a different planet. The lakes within the burn scar were – and still are – the color of sweet tea with few plants along the shores. Pre-fire, they were clear, home to an assortment of flora and largely unaffected by contamination.

In the years since the Greenwood Fire, Filstrup and the lab he directs at the University of Minnesota continue to monitor the lakes every summer.

“You can see the landscape rejuvenating. You can start seeing those soils stabilize again. You can start seeing the regrowth of vegetation, which is really cool,” Filstrup said. “But lots of these lakes, when it comes to water quality, really haven’t recovered yet.”

During their initial study, Filstrup and the other scientists sampled lakes scorched by the fire and some outside of the burn scar. The researchers found that lakes in the burned stretches of the forest had higher levels of phosphorus, nitrogen and carbon than their untouched counterparts. The water was more murky and acidic. This all means degraded water quality.

Though researchers didn’t see an increase in algae growth in the studied lakes, increased nutrients can boost algae growth, which can trigger algae blooms – the rapid overgrowth of the organism seen in places like Green Bay or the western Lake Erie basin.

That green sludge can deplete loads of oxygen from the water when it dies and block sunlight to the plant communities at the bottom of the lake that would normally bind to nutrients. Without that vegetation, the nitrogen and phosphorus stay in the water and can fuel algae blooms, and Filstrup said they could see fish kills due to low oxygen levels.

Plus, extinguishing wildfires can come at a risk to water quality. Increasing fire intensity and frequency means firefighting agencies are using more retardants to put flames out. Those red plumes dumped from planes can contaminate waterways with chemicals like heavy metals, fertilizers and phosphorus. 

“My concern was that all these really prized, cherished ecosystems like the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Superior National Forest are going to start changing towards lakes that you tend to see in highly urbanized or highly agricultural areas, or areas where you just have a lot of human pressures within that watershed,” Filstrup said.

When Filstrup first began analyzing these lakes, he said there were arguments over how much fire actually affects water quality. Some said it was a minor disturbance, that the lakes would recover by the next year on their own.

“Five years after the fire, these lakes are still showing those similar characteristics of having more nutrients, being browner, having water that’s turbid and you can’t see through as clearly,” Filstrup said. “These are sustained impacts, and this is the result that’s shocking a lot of people because they thought this wasn’t something that we necessarily had to manage for.” 

It’s not just the lakes that are affected. 

Degraded ecosystems could have drastic consequences for the Minnesotan economy. Outdoor recreation in the northeast region alone generated more than $1.3 billion in economic output in 2024.

“If you start changing the quality of water in these ecosystems, people aren’t going to travel as far to visit them,” Filstrup said. “If people aren’t traveling to get there, they’re not spending along the way.”

Part two reports on how Minnesotans look to controlled fires to protect watersheds.

The post When Forests Burn, Lakes Suffer appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

By Jon Hurdle Inside Climate News

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Advocates for lower electricity prices in Pennsylvania said Wednesday their goals can be achieved by requiring large-load users like data centers to supply their own power rather than taking it from the grid, by reducing utility profits and by speeding up the interconnection of new clean-energy projects. 

The group, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, the Evergreen Collaborative and state Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler, touted a report showing that consumers in the state could save an average of more than $840 a year on electricity costs by 2030 vs. the status quo if lawmakers enact policies that address the causes of soaring retail power prices.

The report, from Synapse Energy Economics, an environmental consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said the proposed policy reforms could reduce household electricity costs by an average of $197 in 2027 alone and deliver an estimated $2.4 billion in cost savings statewide by 2030.

Some consumers are now having to choose between paying for their electricity and their medication, and that’s not a choice they should have to make, said Fiedler, a Democrat who chairs the House Energy Committee and represents part of South Philadelphia. Residential electricity rates in Pennsylvania rose almost 14 percent in the past year alone, according to federal data. Costs for consumers were up more than 50 percent compared to 2020.

Fiedler urged lawmakers to enact reforms that lower electricity prices to levels that everyone can afford. The legislature faces a June 30 deadline for finalizing the fiscal 2027 state budget.

“Often in this building, especially during budget season, we are facing numbers that lead us to a place where we believe we must cut policies and programs that people count on,” Fiedler said at a press conference on the steps of the state Capitol in Harrisburg on Wednesday. “This report shows us the tremendous amounts of money that people can keep in their pockets.”

Fiedler and the advocates said the energy-hungry data center industry—which plans to build more than 50 of the giant computer complexes in Pennsylvania—has driven up retail power prices by increasing demand to the point that it exceeds new supply.

Fiedler urged support for HB2224, the Return on Equity bill she co-sponsored, that would ease consumer costs by lowering the profit margins of state-regulated utilities.

Patrick Cicero, an attorney with the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, said investors would still be attracted to utilities even if the return was reduced.

“A significant share of a utility bill isn’t paying for power or pipes, it’s paying for a utility’s shareholder profit,” said Cicero, whose group works to ensure that low-income residents receive safe and affordable utility service.

The latest projected power demand from data centers would be the equivalent of adding two-and-a-half times the electricity currently used by New York City to the service territory for the eastern and central Pennsylvania utility PPL within the next decade, according to Jackson Morris, an analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, who spoke at the press conference. 

“The rapid rise in data centers and expected future growth are unique, unprecedented and uncertain, and will require a different approach than simply asserting that basic market forces of supply and demand will take care of it,” he said.

But Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, a trade group, denied that the industry causes retail electric prices to rise.

“Studies…have consistently found that data centers do not raise energy prices, and that data centers pay for all the power they use, just like any other customer,” Dorio said in a statement. “In fact, research shows that large-load users like data centers can actually keep costs down for residential customers by absorbing more of the grid’s fixed costs.” A recent study that reached this conclusion was funded by the Data Center Coalition. 

Advocates for action to curb rising electricity prices also accused the grid operator PJM Interconnection of “mismanagement” by being slow to approve new energy sources, especially from clean energy like wind and solar, that might address the supply shortfall.

Jeff Shields, a spokesman for PJM, said many delays were beyond its control. “We need to build generation at a faster pace to keep up with rising demand driven by data centers, and PJM is doing everything in its power to make that happen,” Shields said in an email.

The grid operator, whose Northeast and mid-Atlantic territory covers around 65 million people, has 50 gigawatts of generation that have cleared its interconnection process but continue to face delays from forces outside of PJM’s control, including those in state permitting.

This week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved PJM’s proposal for an expedited interconnection track for large state-sponsored generation projects of any fuel type or technology that can come online quickly, and address the imbalance between supply and demand, Shields said.

“PJM continues to work closely with state and federal governments on multiple paths to bring new generation online quickly including a plan for new data centers to bring their own generation,” he said. The plan also includes an agreement by data centers to be curtailed if and when the system needs power for residential customers, he added.

In Pennsylvania, developers who want access to the state’s “Fast Track” permitting program must bring their own power, a condition demanded by Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat. Shapiro, who has faced frustration from some of the residents fighting data-center development, said in a statement that a price cap he negotiated with PJM saved consumers across the region billions of dollars and his new data-center standards are designed to protect communities and ensure that developers deliver real benefits “if they want the Commonwealth’s support.”

The post Pennsylvania Activists Urge Lawmakers to Help Curb Soaring Electric Bills appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

By Danielle Kaeding, Wisconsin Public Radio

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

An amendment added to a bipartisan wildfire bill in the U.S. Senate would end protections for millions of acres of roadless areas on national forest land, including in Wisconsin.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 11-9 along party lines to include a Republican-authored amendment to repeal the controversial “roadless rule” under the Wildfire Prevention Act. The legislation next heads to the full Senate.

First passed in 2001, the rule prevents logging and road construction on almost 59 million acres of national forest land, including 69,000 acres of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Wisconsin. That’s less than 5 percent of the forest’s over 1.5 million acres in Wisconsin.

Unlike in western states, very few fires in Wisconsin stem from lightning or other natural causes, said Paul Strong, former forest supervisor of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Around 98 percent of wildfires in Wisconsin are caused by people, and the No. 1 cause of wildfires is burning debris.

Strong said rescinding the roadless rule would not make the forest noticeably safer.

“Even if roads were put into those areas, it wouldn’t be a noticeable change (where people) would say, ‘Yeah, we’ve just reduced fire risk significantly,’” Strong said. “That would almost be laughable.”

Supporters of the rule say it protects against the spread of invasive species, maintains higher air and water quality and supports biodiversity. But as the West faces significant wildfire risk, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who chairs the Senate committee, said the roadless rule has “wreaked havoc” on western communities.

“The rule restricts access for multiple use on nearly 59 million acres of Forest Service lands in ways that, in different respects, have a tendency to increase wildfire risk and danger in communities and limit economic activity,” Lee said during the Wednesday hearing.

The move comes as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which houses the Forest Service, is making a separate push to repeal the rule that’s still under review.

Cassie Steiner with the Sierra Club Wisconsin chapter said it’s frustrating to see the repeal of the roadless rule included in the wildfire bill, adding fires usually occur near roads. In California, the Forest Service found two-thirds of fires in the southern portion of the state started along roadways.

“It’s really disappointing to see fake information about how repealing this rule would benefit wildfire prevention. In reality, it just opens our wildest places up for development and extractive industry,” said Steiner, the group’s senior campaign coordinator.

A 2020 study by the U.S. Forest Service found that a lack of roads has not stopped fire prevention. The research found forests with and without roads have burned at similar rates since the rule took effect.

“Speculation that eliminating road prohibitions would improve forest health is not supported by nearly 20 years of monitoring data,” the study states.

U.S. Senate Democrats on the committee said they were disappointed about its inclusion in the bill to address wildfire threats by increasing prescribed burns and thinning of forests, which are among prevention measures used in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.

Strong said there shouldn’t be a blanket approach to the rule, noting Wisconsin forests aren’t incredibly fire prone when compared with those in arid western states. But the number of wildfires in Wisconsin has increased in recent years as the state has seen significant droughts and changing climate conditions. Climate scientists say the state is becoming more vulnerable to wildfires.

Even so, Strong said large blazes like the 2013 Germann Road Fire that burned nearly 7,500 acres across northern Wisconsin are rare, and repealing the roadless rule would do little to significantly reduce wildfire risk.

The post Federal wildfire bill may repeal ‘roadless rule’ that protects national forest land in Wisconsin appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

By Isabella Figueroa Nogueira, Bridge Michigan

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan; Circle of Blue; Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS; Michigan Public, Michigan’s NPR News Leader; and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work HERE.

Unlike most fourth-graders, AJ Beaudion likes to leave recess five minutes early.

It’s part of his job.

At 9 years old, Beaudion is the composting manager at Hayes Elementary School in Livonia. His responsibilities include arriving on time during kindergarten through fourth-grade lunch to help sort the food waste, stacking compostable trays and placing them into bins destined for an offsite facility where they’ll be turned into rich soil.

“It’s important to help the Earth,” said Beaudion.

An unknown number of schools across Michigan have, like Hayes, taken up composting initiatives. But coalitions of education and anti-food waste groups, including Make Food Not Waste and the Detroit Food Policy Council, want to see more.

They’ve begun lobbying state legislators in hopes of securing $3 million for a pilot grant program that would allow schools across the state to replicate the program at Hayes Elementary. 

After an unsuccessful attempt to secure funding for the fiscal year that starts in October, they’re starting conversations early in hopes of succeeding next year. 

“If you get kids young learning about these things and thinking about what happens when they are done with the food on their plate, you’re teaching them to reduce waste and think about how things can be repurposed instead of going to a landfill,” said Amy Kuras, the program manager at Food Policy Council.

According to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, Michiganders landfill up to 2 million tons of food waste each year — nearly a fifth of all waste sent to municipal landfills. 

Michigan’s K-12 schools, which dole out millions of meals each day, contributed 17,200 tons in 2024.

Beyond taking up limited space, landfilled food contributes to climate change by breaking down to produce methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. 

Nationwide, food waste sent to landfills emits 270 million metric tons of greenhouse gases — an impact equivalent to putting 24 million more gas-powered cars on the road, according to EGLE.  

The Michigan Healthy Climate Plan calls for the state to cut food waste in half by 2030, with strategies ranging from reducing school cafeteria waste to promoting curbside compost pickup programs, drop-off locations and collection sites for businesses. 

A nascent effort

In school cafeterias across the state, uneaten meals and discarded packaging fill trash cans quickly, turning lunch periods into an environmental liability. 

Lunchtime at Hayes Elementary looks different.

There, students end their lunch period with a stop at waste disposal stations overseen by student volunteers like Beaudion. 

The volunteers act as traffic directors, helping their peers sort each waste item into the correct bin: A banana peel is placed into a composting bucket while the sticker on the peel becomes trash.

“We get to save our Mother Nature, and there is a lot of plastic,” fourth-grader Mustafa Yakliftin told Bridge Michigan as he was finishing up his lunch. “Composting saves all our waste. Plastic takes more than 300 years to go away.”

Hayes is one of several Michigan schools, from metro Detroit to Genesee County, that have begun compost cafeteria scraps.

But with $3 million, Kuras said, the state could help more schools pay for compost bins, educational materials, staff training and infrastructure needed to set up their own composting programs.

She acknowledged the idea may be a tough sell as lawmakers contend with shrinking state revenue.

“Funds are tight and there are a lot of competing priorities in the Legislature,” she said. 

State Budget Office spokesperson Lauren Leeds said none of the draft budgets proposed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or the state House or state Senate include funding for food waste diversion initiatives.

Spokespeople for state Sen. Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, the Senate budget chair, declined to comment, while House Republicans spokesperson Gideon D’Assandro and state Rep. Ann Bollin, R-Brighton, the House budget chair, did not respond to questions from Bridge Michigan. Spokespeople for Whitmer redirected Bridge to the State Budget Office.

Composting in action

Hayes Elementary’s composting program began with a waste audit in 2016.

“We analyzed only one bag of trash and the small group of kids that I got together to do this waste audit could see that one bite was taken out of the middle of a grilled cheese sandwich and they just thought that was ridiculous,” said Christine Lakatos, an art teacher and Green Team leader at Hayes Elementary.

So Lakatos and her students sought to do something about it. The school contracted with a company called My Green Michigan to build a composting program that now diverts nearly 10,000 pounds of cafeteria food scraps annually.

Sixty miles north, Davison Community School District runs a similar program in four of the district’s nine schools, said Food Services Director Jennifer Lutze.  

Davison administrators used excess money in the district’s food service fund to purchase stainless steel trays and reusable sporks, a change that reduced waste and saved roughly $11,000. 

James Emmerling, the district’s science and health coordinator, said the district used the savings to fund its composting program, which has diverted an estimated 23 tons of food waste from landfills this year.

“If you can eat it, it can go in there,” Lutze said of the bins that have become a staple in participating cafeterias.

Sold as a soil amendment to landscape supply companies Hammond Farms and Spurt, the composted material improves overall soil properties and creates a better environment for root growth.

Implementing those systems is not always straightforward, said Lakatos. Schools must balance waste reduction goals with operational realities like busy lunch schedules and limited staffing and funds.

But it’s worth the effort, Lakatos said, because it reduces waste while instilling sustainable habits that students carry into adulthood.

The post In school cafeterias, kids fight Michigan’s food waste problems appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

A walk through the woods is no longer the only place Midwesterners should watch for ticks. Researchers say the tiny parasites are spreading to communities across the region and they show no signs of slowing down.   

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), emergency room visits attributed to ticks are at the highest levels in nearly 10 years. The Midwest is the region with the second most likely emergency room visits due to  tick bites. 

In 2023, state health departments reported more than 89,000 cases of Lyme disease in humans to the CDC, the most recent year numbers have been published.  

Experts like Edward Walker, a Michigan State University entomologist who has tracked changes in tick populations across Michigan and the Great Lakes region, warn the increase of ticks may not go away anytime soon.  

“This is a long-term process of expansion in the range of ticks,” Walker said. “It’s not just that there is more this year than last year. It’s a much bigger, longer-term thing.” 

In places where ticks were once rare, expansion of the species continues. Walker says ticks are being found in backyards and parks rather than just forests.  

“People will say things like, ‘We never had ticks here and now we do.’ I accept that as a real observation. It’s not imaginary,” Walker said.  

The most common ticks in the Midwest are the deer tick, lone star tick and the wood tick, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

The deer tick, best known for transmitting Lyme disease, has been one of the most closely watched species. Their population has grown significantly over the past 20 to 30 years, William Miller, an associate professor at Calvin University who studies tick populations in Michigan, said.  

 “Populations were showing up pretty much everywhere within our sampling region,” he said, noting that areas once considered low risk are now seeing consistent tick presence. 

Traveling ticks 

How are tick populations traveling? Deer.   

The white-tailed deer population plays a critical role in that expansion. Walker described them as fuel for growing tick populations. 

“Deer is really an all-you-can-eat buffet for ticks,” he said.  

Deer populations have continued to rebound across the Midwest, especially after near elimination in the past century in some Midwestern states. Their return, combined with warming temperatures, has created conditions for ticks to thrive. 

That includes both deer ticks and lone star ticks, which are moving north away from historically warmer climates. 

Rising temperatures are a major factor that allow ticks to survive farther north, according to Jonathan Oliver, a professor at the University of Minnesota and public health entomologist specializing in vector-borne diseases.  

 “They were previously limited by minimum winter temperature,” Oliver said. “As the minimum winter temperature has risen, they are able to survive.” 

Gilbert Kersh, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expert who specializes in tick borne diseases, echoed this statement.  

“If you have weather warming up earlier in the springtime, this is going to give ticks a longer time period to grow and breed during the year,” Kersh said.  

The result is a compounding effect, with a mix of more suitable habitats, more hosts and longer warm seasons. 

“Increased temperatures as well as increased deer populations are two big drivers of the increased number of ticks,” Kersh said.  

How to protect yourself 

As tick populations expand across the Midwest and beyond, researchers say that many tick-borne illnesses can be prevented with a simple precaution before and after spending time outdoors. 

“Prevention is definitely the best mode of avoiding getting a tick-borne disease,” said Oliver.  

He recommends repellents and protective clothing as first-line defenses. 

“Insect repellents tend to be effective with ticks,” he said. “Permethrin-treated clothing-those are both going to be effective for keeping ticks, mosquitoes and black flies off of you.” 

Kersh also recommends practical steps like showering. 

“A good way to do this is by showering right after coming in from outdoors,” he said. “You can also put your clothes in the dryer on high heat for 10 minutes or longer, and this will kill ticks.” 

Time matters when a tick attaches to human skin. The longer it remains on the skin, the higher the chance of disease transmission. 

“If you do find a tick embedded in your skin, it’s important to remove it as soon as possible,” Kersh said. “Removing the tick can prevent transmission of disease.” 

Daily tick checks are another simple but powerful habit, Oliver said. He emphasized that Lyme disease transmission often requires time. 

“If you’re doing daily tick checks, then you can greatly reduce disease risk,” he said. 

Miller also stressed the importance of awareness. 

“Fear of ticks can sometimes be paralyzing,” he said. “The important thing is being tick aware but not tick afraid.”

The post Protect Yourself: Why Ticks Are Spreading in the Great Lakes region appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

By Katie Thoresen, WXPR

This story was originally published by WXPR. WXPR is a community-licensed public radio station serving north central Wisconsin and adjacent areas of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Listen to their stories here.

The Oneida County Health Department will be testing the water at five public beaches this summer.

As WXPR reported last year, they tested Buck and Boom Lake beaches in Rhinelander, Torpy Park in Minocqua, and the Sugar Camp Public Beach.

This year, they’re adding Maple Lake Beach in Three Lakes.

Testing is done once a week for E. coli.

What is E. coli?

E. coli is a type of bacteria that can make people and animals sick. Symptoms can be mild or severe.

Common symptoms include: diarrhea, abdominal cramps, fever, or nausea and vomiting.

If you have been in the water and think you have an E. coli infection, contact Oneida County Health Department and seek medical attention, if symptoms are severe.

How will I know the E. coli levels?

Testing results will be updated on the Oneida County Health Department website and Facebook page each week.

If there are elevated levels, there will also be yellow advisory signs and red closure signs posted at the beach.

Help prevent E. coli outbreaks in swimming areas

• Picking up dirty diapers and fecal matter from dogs
• Do not feed seagulls and other birds
• Look for birds flying over water recreation areas
• Check water conditions: if you see algal blooms, avoid the water
• E. coli levels can be higher after heavy rain because dirty water can wash into lakes and beaches

Are they testing for anything else?

OCHD staff will also monitor the beaches for cleanliness and for blue-green algae blooms.

Conditions can change quickly, so swimmers should be on the lookout if the water looks like pea soup, green or blue spilled paint, or has a green scum layer on the surface.

What is blue-green algae?

Blue-green algae, also known as Cyanobacteria, are a group of photosynthetic bacteria that many people refer to as “pond scum.”

In Wisconsin, blue-green algae blooms generally occur between mid-June and late September.

People and animals can get sick from it. Symptoms range from rashes to vomiting.

To report a blue-green algae bloom or illness, visit Wisconsin Department of Health here, or contact OCHD at 715-369-6111 or email eh@oneidacountywi.gov.

The post Oneida County Health Department to monitor five public beaches for E. coli this summer appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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

Coal plants in Indiana and Wisconsin hit the jackpot last week: They’re getting close to $50 million of the $425 million the Trump administration announced for modernization projects at a dozen coal plants across the country. Hallador Power Company’s Merom Generating Station south of Terre Haute is expected to get $27.2 million to improve water treatment measures. Alliant Energy’s Columbia Energy Center north of Madison is in line to receive $19 million for reliability and efficiency upgrades. Both plants have already been kept in operation well past their original closure dates.

The Trump administration staved off the closure of another Indiana coal plant last year by ordering it to stay open. There’s just one problem: NIPSCO’s R.M. Schahfer plant has been offline for repairs since the end of February. It’s expected to stay offline until at least October, NIPSCO told grid operators last month. One of the plant’s two coal units had been out of service for months before the emergency order due to mechanical failures, while the other went offline Feb. 28 for planned maintenance.

And state and federal lawyers clashed in a Washington courtroom over whether the Trump administration’s order to keep Michigan utility Consumers Energy’s J.H. Campbell coal plant operating past its retirement date was needed to avert a power shortage. The plant on Lake Michigan was scheduled to close last May until Energy Secretary Chris Wright intervened. The U.S. Department of Energy has said the order is in accordance with a national energy emergency that President Donald Trump declared on his first day back in office. Attorneys for Michigan and other states say there is no emergency.

Two former Ohio utility executives have been indicted — again — on bribery, fraud and corruption charges after their last trial ended with a hung jury. In a statement announcing the reindictment, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said FirstEnergy was “hijacked by two scheming executives who sought to control the regulator that influenced the company’s stock prices.” Jurors in the last trial couldn’t decide whether former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and senior vice president Mike Dowling paid a $4.3 million bribe to the state’s top utility regulator -– partly to bail out a pair of unprofitable coal plants.

Meanwhile, Ohio’s tax break for data centers cost the state 11 times more than expected last year. Data centers in Ohio are exempted from sales taxes, and the exemption was originally estimated to cost $136 million. In 2024, it cost about $555 million; in 2025, it cost nearly $1.6 billion. Companies benefitting from the exemption include Meta, Alphabet and Amazon. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced a pause on new exemptions days after Signal Ohio reported on the cost to the state.

More energy news, in case you missed it:

• Energy company Enbridge can continue building a new stretch of its Line 5 pipeline in northern Wisconsin but must halt work in waterways where it needs additional permits, a Wisconsin judge ruled.
• Lawmakers in Minnesota — where a moratorium on new nuclear generation remains in place — approved $500,000 in funding to study the possibility of building new nuclear plants in the state.
• A Michigan campaign to ban utility companies and large government contractors from donating to political causes said it turned in over 562,000 signatures to get on the November ballot.
• “This could very well turn into the site where cancer gets cured,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at the groundbreaking of a $16 billion data center campus outside Ann Arbor.
• Frito-Lay is not refusing to buy potatoes grown on farmland that’s hosted solar installations, the snack food manufacturer said after Michigan and Pennsylvania lawmakers spread the false claim on social media.

The post Trump announces nearly $50 million for coal plants in Indiana, Wisconsin as others in Great Lakes region remain on life support appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

By Danielle Kaeding, Wisconsin Public Radio

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

The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating the theft of a navigational beacon at the lighthouse that guides ships into the Superior harbor.

The Coast Guard Investigative Service is offering a $1,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest or conviction.

Investigators say one or more individuals broke into the Superior Entry Lighthouse on Wisconsin Point on or around May 13. The unknown suspects severed the power supply and stole the beacon housed inside, according to a news release.

Ships use the beacon to safely enter and leave the harbor, especially at night or during poor weather. The Coast Guard called the theft a “reckless act” that threatened the safety of vessels using the Superior entry, saying its removal creates a hazard that could lead to collisions or groundings.

“Such accidents pose a direct, life-threatening danger to commercial mariners and local recreational boaters,” the Coast Guard said.

Investigators said a major incident also carries the risk of environmental damage from fuel spills or threatens to disrupt movement of ships carrying goods through the Great Lakes.

The Coast Guard said anyone who steals or tampers with a federal navigational aid could be charged with a felony.

Investigators are asking the public to report any suspicious individuals, vehicles or vessels near the lighthouse at the time of the theft. People can remain anonymous and submit tips to the Coast Guard through an online portal.

The 56-foot tall lighthouse was first lit in 1913. In 2019, the U.S. General Service Administration auctioned off the lighthouse to a tech industry executive from California for $159,000. Two years ago, the GSA once again made the lighthouse available at no cost to eligible parties, including nonprofit groups and government agencies.

The post Coast Guard investigating beacon stolen from Superior lighthouse appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

By Isabella Figueroa Nogueira, Bridge Michigan

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan; Circle of Blue; Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS; Michigan Public, Michigan’s NPR News Leader; and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work HERE.

The number of bald eagles in Michigan is declining, and funding delays aren’t helping the cause. 

Researchers who have spent decades climbing trees, banding eaglets and monitoring nests across Michigan say something unusual is happening this year.

Field crews working with long-term bald eagle monitoring programs say they’ve found empty nests where aerial surveys previously documented young birds. They’ve also seen malnourished eaglets, damaged nests and signs that some adult bald eagles may be attempting to nest a second time after earlier failures.

For scientists who have tracked Michigan’s bald eagle recovery for decades, the observations are raising concern.

“Our initial impressions are that this is not a typical year,” said Bill Bowerman, a professor of wildlife ecology and environmental toxicology at the University of Maryland and deputy director and chairman of the board at the Ann Arbor-based Wings Over Water Research Institute. “We are seeing widespread reproductive difficulties that appear linked to a combination of severe weather and limited food availability.”

Michigan’s bald eagle population is considered one of the country’s major conservation success stories. After decades of decline caused by habitat loss, hunting and the pesticide DDT, federal protections and environmental regulations helped the species recover.

Annual aerial surveys by Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Disease Laboratory showed breeding pairs increased from about 52 pairs in 1961 to roughly 835 pairs by 2017.

But researchers and state wildlife officials said recovery does not eliminate ongoing threats.

State wildlife pathologist Julie Melotti said that, from 1987 to 2024, trauma accounted for the majority of documented eagle deaths examined by the lab, including 34% from vehicle strikes and about 26% from other trauma, while lead toxicosis accounted for nearly 13%.

Melotti said those patterns reflect long-standing risks tied to human activity and scavenging behavior, particularly when eagles feed on roadkill or remains containing lead ammunition.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza, or bird flu, also caused major disruptions beginning in 2022.

Melotti’s lab documented 64 eagle deaths during the initial bird flu outbreak from April 2022 to January 2023, with about 70% of those cases involving adult birds. Additional confirmed cases have continued into recent years, including dozens examined since late 2024, with adults again making up a substantial share of infections.

According to Bowerman and other Michigan eagle researchers affiliated with Wings Over Water, monitoring after the 2022 outbreak documented the loss of more than 400 breeding pairs, and researchers estimate roughly 2,500 individual eagles may have been lost statewide.

Unlike species that reproduce quickly, bald eagles mature slowly and typically produce only one clutch of one to three chicks per year, making population recovery more sensitive to large disruptions.

Funding delays

For decades, state-supported aerial surveys and field crews allowed researchers to monitor nests across Michigan. 

This year, however, more than $700,000 in federal funding expected through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative for bald eagle and colonial waterbird monitoring has yet to be released, said Wings Over Water officials.

“We were all under the same belief in November that this funding would be available,” Bowerman said. “And we didn’t find out until April that it wasn’t coming.”

Bowerman said the delay has changed what monitoring looks like in practice.

“In normal years, both the aerial surveys that DNR guys (do) would have been funded, and we would have up to three banding crews in the field at one time,” he said.

Instead, Wings Over Water researchers say many nests are being visited by volunteers, limiting how many sites can be visited during the short window when eaglets can safely be handled.

That window typically lasts only five to nine weeks, when researchers climb trees, lower eaglets from nests in specialized bags, collect blood samples, measure feathers and body size, determine sex, band birds and test for contaminants including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), mercury, pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

The data help scientists understand not only eagle health but also broader ecosystem conditions, since young eagles reflect contaminants and environmental conditions present in local food systems.

“Every nest visit provides critical information about the health of Michigan’s waters and wildlife,” said Jennifer Day, executive director of Wings Over Water.

US Environmental Protection Agency officials said the agency provided about $800,000 in Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding to the US Fish and Wildlife Service for bald eagle and colonial waterbird monitoring in Michigan during the 2026 field season. An additional $500,000 was provided for bald eagle and herring gull contaminant monitoring across Michigan and Wisconsin.

EPA directed questions about the distribution of those funds to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Wings Over Water officials said funding expected for their monitoring work had not been released as of this spring.

US Fish and Wildlife did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Nesting under pressure

Recent flooding and high water levels may have reduced fishing opportunities for adult eagles, making it harder for parents to feed young.

“We have fewer eagles that are young,” Bowerman said. “We have some birds that are starving to death.”

Wings Over Water field crews say they have documented dead nestlings, severely malnourished chicks and nests damaged or destroyed during wind events.

The combination of field observations and long-term mortality data helps provide context for what researchers are seeing on the ground. 

Melotti’s statewide records show that, even after population recovery, eagles continue to face persistent threats from trauma, poisoning and disease.

Researchers said this year’s observations suggest multiple stressors may be overlapping.

“The long winter, spring flooding, and repeated severe wind events likely created very challenging conditions for nesting eagles,” Bowerman said. “While each of these events can occur naturally, it is unusual to see them happening together and affecting nests across such a broad area.”

Exactly how widespread those conditions are remains unclear.

Bowerman said aerial surveys are still being completed in parts of the state, making it too early to fully assess overall productivity, one of the most important measures of population health.

But field observations have already surprised even longtime researchers. 

Bowerman said conditions this year have looked different from anything he has seen in decades of monitoring. During one recent trip, he went three days without finding an active nest.

While researchers said they are not suggesting bald eagles are again nearing endangered status, they say continued monitoring is essential to understand how environmental stressors are affecting the population over time.

“Long-term monitoring is the only way we can understand how these major events are affecting the population over time,” Day said.

The post Michigan bald eagle success story faces new threats appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Join a livestreamed expedition to the deepest point in the Great Lakes! Explore a hidden underwater world from your own screen and have your questions answered LIVE.

June 7, 2026
11 A.M. E.T.
Backup dates: June 8 – 9

The date and time of this livestream are subject to change due to weather conditions. Sign up for the Great Lakes Now newsletter to get reminders and updates delivered directly to your inbox: https://www.greatlakesnow.org/great-lakes-now-newsletter/

More than 400 meters (1,300 feet) beneath Lake Superior lies the deepest point in the Great Lakes. It’s a place where no light reaches and few people have ever seen. Great Lakes Now is teaming up with freshwater explorers Yvonne Drebert and Zach Melnick to send cameras to the bottom and explore the area for the first time in 40 years. 

What we’re hoping to see:
• The kiyi, a rare deepwater fish that is believed to live only in Lake Superior.
• Alien looking deepwater sculpin
• Forests of colorful hydra
• The deepwater-adapted siscowet lake trout

Along for the voyage is Michigan DNR fisheries biologist Shawn Sitar, who has been investigating the recent appearance of “zombie fish,” emaciated siscowet turning up across Lake Superior, many of them from the deepest parts of the lake.

Watch live and ask questions in real time as Drebert, Melnick, and Sitar guide you through the depths of one of the largest lakes on Earth.

Follow Great Lakes Now and Hidden Below: The Great Lakes on social media to stay updated about the expedition:

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