In June, @InspiredPlanet-x6r became the first in 40 years to explore the deepest point in Great Lakes, more than 1,300 feet beneath the surface of Lake Superior.

During the historic dive, the encountered forests of colorful hydra—small stationary animals that capture zooplankton for food.

Watch the full expedition on the Great Lakes Now YouTube

#GreatLakes #Exploration #Livestream #Underwater #LakeSuperior #Animals #Wildlife #FreshwaterWorld

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By Anna Barnes, Michigan Public

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.

Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Division received one-time funding of $350,000 for whitefish recovery from the state budget. The ailing species has undergone a rapid population decline in recent years, and for the first time, recovery efforts have a specific line in the state budget.

But officials said while the funding will help rescue some of the most vulnerable lake whitefish populations, it’s not enough to address the systemic ecosystem issues causing the decline.

Randy Claramunt, the state’s fisheries chief, said whitefish have struggled against several different invasive species introductions through the years.

“Populations were very strong until the 50’s and 60’s but when the sea lamprey invasion really hit hard, most populations declined,” he said. “They rebounded up until the time when the next big invasive introduction happened in the Great Lakes.”

Now, invasive zebra and quagga mussels have caused another decline in the population, but this time it’s a crisis, Claramunt said. He said the one-time funding shows legislators recognize the importance of the whitefish.

“It was driven by concerned lawmakers that recognized the problem and wanted to see some action,” he said.

But the funding is limited, and Claramunt said there are at least a dozen vulnerable whitefish stocks across the Great Lakes, many of which will not receive help this time around because others are even more sensitive.

“It’s a drop in the bucket when you look at the scale of the problem,” he said.

Nichole Keway Biber of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians works for Clean Water Action. She said whitefish are a culturally important species to the Anishinaabe tribes in Michigan.

Oral histories of the Anishinaabe and whitefish tell of a deep relationship, Biber said: “At a time of starvation, they decided to sacrifice themselves with the agreement that we’d survive as long as we make sure that they did.”

She said human activities and invasive species have damaged the natural systems that kept whitefish alive until now and while the funding is necessary, the systemic causes of population decline needs to be funded and addressed.

“I think of it as kind of like seed saving,” she said. “Doing what we can to have enough whitefish to survive as we look toward the time where necessarily we’ll be collectively putting our focus on how the ecosystems become restored.”

Keway Biber said the one-time funding is also coming at a time when human activities are threatening the whitefish’s ability to re-populate. She said a project to move an oil and natural gas pipeline from the lakebed on the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac, to a tunnel under the straits, would strain the population.

Permits for the project were issued this week by state agencies, although it still needs further approvals to start construction.

“The tunnel project would put massive amounts of wastewater into the Great Lakes, right into the sensitive ecosystems where whitefish are already struggling and on the brink of collapse,” Keway Biber said.

The decline of whitefish in Michigan is largely attributed to rising populations of invasive mussels.

Claramunt said there is a bill proposed int the state Legislature that would supply the Great Lakes Fishery Commission with $500 million dollars over 10 years to combat the invasive mussels, but he is not counting on it passing any time soon.

Dan O’Keefe, Michigan Sea Grant southwest district extension educator, said research on mussel populations in western Lake Erie has shown a decrease in the species. This is likely due to predation by freshwater drum fish in the region.

The freshwater drum have crushing teeth in the back of their throat which makes eating shelled prey, like the invasive mussels, comparatively easy for them, he said.

There are other native fish in the Great Lakes that can eat mussels, but either their populations are too low to make a difference or the caloric benefit is not sustainable for them, O’Keefe said. (The shell gets in the way, he said.)

The freshwater drum can eat enough of the mussels to sustain itself and the biomass of mussels in western Lake Erie has decreased with populations on a downward trajectory, said O’Keefe. However, the freshwater drum only lives in shallow areas of the Great Lakes, limiting their ability to clear mussels.

Quagga mussels can live in deep water and have spread further into the Great Lakes where fish like the drum will not go.

Sturgeon also eat mussels and in certain cases, they can make up a significant amount of their diet, he said, but sturgeon prefer most other prey to the mussels. Their population is also not large enough to have a great impact on the mussel population.

Ashley Elgin, a research ecologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said mussel control is not possible in the Great Lakes region right now but agencies are focusing on the targeted removal in high value locations.

One strategy, pioneered by the Great Lakes Spawning Whitefish and Invasive Mussels Project, is to infuse carbon dioxide underneath a heavy mat on the lake bottom to smother the mussels, she said.

“We’re also looking at the use of underwater vehicles to be moving custom-designed implements on the bottom that are designed to remove mussels from the sediment and destroy them,” Elgin said.

Elgin said while native fish predation on mussels may not be a complete solution, it should be encouraged.

“If you can take advantage of natural native populations as being part of the control strategy, that makes a lot of sense and we could make it more effective,” she said.

The post Michigan fisheries get one-time funding for whitefish restoration appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

It takes a lot of energy to power 1,800 slot machines. The Fond du Lac Band of Ojibwe’s Black Bear Casino is located near Cloquet, Minnesota about 20 miles from Duluth. In 2016 the Band took steps to offset the energy and environmental costs of running their casino and hotel complex by installing a 1 megawatt, 5 acre solar array. According to the Band’s Strategic Energy Plan, adding solar as a power source has saved the community about $772,403[SD1]  per year in energy costs. It is just one part of their long-term plan to “develop energy resources in ways that will sustain current and future generations.”

Fond du Lac is not an anomaly in Ojibwe country when it comes to energy reform. In 2017, the Leech Lake Band launched the first community solar garden in the U.S., selling power to the grid and using the savings to subsidize low-income winter heating bills and create workforce training for tribal college students.  

In 2022, the Mille Lacs Band commissioned a 3-megawatt solar array in Hinckley, Minnesota. The system offsets the electric demand needed to run their two casinos — Grand Casino Mille Lacs and Grand Casino Hinckley.

Further north, the Red Lake Nation added a 70-kW rooftop system at the Government Center and a 240-kW system at the Oshkiimaajitahdah workforce center. Red Lake Nation has plans to build 20 more commercial-building systems, plus a 13-MW solar farm.

And, the White Earth Ojibwe Nation is installing a 500-kW solar array with a storage microgrid at the Pine Point Resilience Hub, a new energy outlet expected to come online in 2026.

Solar Sovereignty

There are seven Ojibwe Nations in Minnesota and five of these communities have embraced alternative energy sources over the last ten years. And now, there are six. The Bois Forte Ojibwe Nation is far away from the sunbelt and winter days are six-to-eight hours long. As Rebecca Gawboy of the Bois Forte community confirmed, “we have shorter days [in winter], but they’re clear. We have really sunny winters for the most part.”

Gawboy is the co-director of Waawaate, a non-profit group that works on food sovereignty projects.

“We established Waawaate because we wanted to do training, information presentations and assistance with people in the community interested in the food sovereignty movement,” she said. “We were always involved in the food sovereignty thing, because growing food and caring for the land are, you know, inherent values for us.”

Bois Forte has made the leap between food sovereignty to energy sovereignty through a program called The Solar Commons. An initiative of the University of Minnesota Duluth, the project was founded by Kathryn Milun, associate professor of Anthropology and the Department of Studies in Justice, Culture and Social Change. Bois Forte is the second “living lab” in the United States. The first lab is located in Tucson, Arizona.

With the help of community partners and a mix of funding, the Solar Commons at Bois Forte has completed one of the short-term goals of the project — building a 500kW solar array in rural, northern Minnesota. The array of solar panels is situated on the roof of the Vermilion Country School in Tower, Minnesota.

According to the project website, the longer-term goal of the Solar Commons project is “to reduce Co2 emissions by 6,500 metric tons and create around $70,000 a year” [RL2] [SD3] in energy savings. Prof. Mulin and Gawboy met through the work of Dani Pieratos, a food sovereignty activist from Bois Forte who “changed worlds” in 2025. In a jointly-written article Milun and Gawboy honored Pieratos’s legacy, stating that, “we have worked together to realize Dani’s plan to demonstrate the healing power and gift economy that are at the heart of both solar energy and traditional Anishinaabe foodways.”

Gawboy explained more about how utilizing the gift of sunshine will benefit the people of Bois Forte:

“The foundational value of the solar commons is that the sun’s energy belongs to all of us, and no utility company should profit. And so, the way to get around that is by establishing a solar project and then using the solar saving — minus maintenance and expenses — in a Solar Commons trust fund. Our focus was using that trust fund money to benefit the food sovereignty movement at Bois Forte.”

Gawboy has a lot of experience with the land and feeding people.

“I have 100-acre farm right outside of Tower — an organic farm, and we do workshops on the farm, we teach butchering, slaughtering, we teach gardening, we teach canning, food preservation, all those kinds of things, right there,” she said.

I asked her about the connection between food sovereignty and renewable energy and she explained that food sovereignty and energy sovereignty are “part of our guardianship responsibility of the earth. When we’re looking at energy and sovereignty, we’re not looking at drilling more oil wells, we’re not looking at digging coal, we’re not looking at digging uranium.”

“What we’re saying is that the sun and wind have offered us their energy, they have this as a gift to us, a sacred gift, and not utilizing it is ignoring the gift. So, we should utilize those gifts, because what they create is, first of all, a relationship to the land, and that intimate relationship with the land and the water is what feeds our community,“ she said.

Repairing the World

The funds collected in the Solar Commons trust fund will be stewarded by students at the Vermilion Country School, an arrangement built into the Solar Commons formula that is designed to teach regenerative economy principles using a digital dashboard of tools. This process is called “participatory budgeting,” and is intended to be a transparent way for community members to decide what to invest in, in their community with their annual distribution from the Solar Commons trust.

“When the kids [at Bois Forte] decide how to spend the accumulation of common wealth trust funds after one year of solar commoning, they will use participatory budgeting and two guiding principles about commons: mutual aid and repairing the world,” said Milun.

The element of reparative justice is stirred into the soup of solar commoning — the idea that the gift of sunlight can power food systems’ vitality, local economic regeneration and help repair the effects of rural isolation, cultural assimilation, economic inequity and other forms of harm.

Building the first solar commons project in Minnesota required buy-in from a network of partners, including a strong commitment from Heliene, Inc., a solar manufacturing plant on Minnesota’s Iron Range. The company agreed to supply the solar panels for the Vermilion Country School at cost, and pass on the solar savings (minus expenses) of a proposed 500kW array on top of the factory in Mountain Iron, Minnesota. This “social wealth trust” between Heliene and the Bois Forte community will extend through the 20-year warranty of the solar panels.

Indigenizing Community Change

Waawaate and the other Solar Commons partners hope to kick-start work on a more extensive Solar Commons project that “indigenizes community change” by installing solar projects at multiple locations. The project seeks to build a 2MW solar microgrid, and two 500kW solar plus storage microgrids at the Bois Forte and Fond du Lac Ojibwe reservations, adding to what both tribal communities have already built.

“They didn’t need solar panels in Fond du Lac, what they needed was storage,” said Gawboy. “And there again, the Solar Commons idea was presented and accepted by both reservations, as a very good way to do things.”

Gawboy believes that building micro-grids to serve rural communities, solar or otherwise, is the way forward, because the mainstream approach to energy sourcing and distribution hasn’t served the people well.

“The replacement of traditional cultures has been such a disaster,” said Gawboy. “If we believe that man has dominion over the earth, we end up with where we’re at now. If instead we believe what the seven teachings say, which is — man is here and man is beholden to the earth and we are dependent in all of creation being in balance — to keep ourselves in balance — that’s the overarching lesson of the food sovereignty movement, the energy sovereignty movement, the cultural sovereignty movement, all of those things.”

One of the benefits of being the first living lab in Minnesota is being able to help other communities take steps toward energy sovereignty and food sovereignty.

“The whole food sovereignty movement is due to the activism of Indian people on reservations, because almost all of them live in food deserts,” said Gawboy. “This is a really great combination. You can’t have sovereignty unless you control your energy and your food, and if you don’t have control of those two things, sovereignty is illusory.”

The Bois Forte community will come together at the end of July, 2026 to celebrate the Solar Commons installation at the Vermilion Country School. Waawaate and their community partners also have plans to produce a documentary film about the project, work with Anishinaabe artists to create a mural at the school, and create a step-by-step guide to solar commoning for other tribal communities. And if it’s a clear day, the whole community will benefit from the many gifts of the sun.

The post No One Owns the Sun appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

Watch The Full Video: https://youtu.be/gxax0CYZ0kw

A Milwaukee man who played an important role in the early history and innovation of scuba diving. Ever wondered what it was like, where or how scuba diving began?

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While health officials urge people to stay indoors due to the smoke draping the Midwest, experts say we should remember that the same polluted air affecting humans is also threatening animals. 

On July 16, Detroit ranked as the worst air quality in the world with a 724 index– climbing past the 300-point threshold on the Air Quality Index, where air quality is considered hazardous. In second sat Toronto, Canada, then Minneapolis Minnesota and in fourth was Chicago, Illinois.  

According to Dr. Jack Harkema, a Veterinary Pathologist at Michigan State University, said the effects of wildfire smoke on animals isn’t just a single symptom. 

“It doesn’t affect just the lungs, but also the cardiovascular system and the metabolic system,” Harkema said. “We’ve actually even looked at the effects on the brain, and there’s increased inflammation in the brain as well.”

Wildfire smoke may be even more harmful to animals than the everyday air pollution found in cities, Harkema said. 

“Wildfire smoke is probably even more toxic than our regular urban particulate matter,” Harkema said. “These particles create a lot of oxidants, they damage tissue, and they cause inflammation locally in the lung, but then that inflammation can spread to other organs.”

Wildfire smoke contains a mixture of pollutants, including fine particles known as PM2.5. Those microparticles are small enough to go deep into the lungs and, sometimes, enter the bloodstream.

“PM2.5 particles are inhalable,” Mayra Oyola, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin Madison. “They can get into the lungs and, just like in humans, they stay there. They can damage respiratory and cardiovascular tissue in anything that breathes. So it’s not just us.”

The fires that are impacting the midwest are mainly contained towards the lower part of Ontario, Canada.  The smoke from these fires have migrated from wind paths to reach the midwest. 

“Animals close to the fires, that’s the biggest concern, because they will be displaced,” Oyola said. “More often than not, they move into human-populated areas. That creates risk for both humans and the animals.”

Birds are especially vulnerable to wildfire smoke because their respiratory system is more efficient than other mammals, according to research scientist at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology Olivia Sanderfoot. While that helps them get more oxygen, it also means they breathe in more harmful particles from polluted air.

“Birds are able to take up twice as much oxygen with each breath compared to mammals, which also means they’re getting an extra-heavy dose of anything toxic in the air,” Sanderfoot said.

“We’ve known for a long time that birds are more vulnerable,” Sanderfoot said. “So I’m especially worried about them in this smoke.”

Other outdoor animals can also suffer, like horses. Because of respiratory diseases, like heaves, livestock that spend their time outdoors are exposed for days or weeks to smoky conditions which heighten risks, Harkema said.

“If this continues, you’re going to see more illness in humans and animals,” Harkema said.

For pet-owners, Dr. Jennifer Henderson, a veterinarian at Vetco Total Care in Chicago said taking the same precautions you would take for yourself is ideal. 

“The same concerns apply to our pets that apply to humans,” Henderson said. “You just want to keep them inside or limit their activity outside so it doesn’t cause any flare-up.”

Owners should also watch closely for signs that smoke may be affecting their animals.

“I think respiratory symptoms,  with the coughing and the lethargy, are the main things to watch for,” Henderson said. 

She also recommends monitoring for bloodshot eyes, squinting or other signs of eye irritation.The guidance is ultimately simple, Henderson said, if the air isn’t healthy for people, it probably isn’t healthy for pets either.

“Similar to how they’re dealing with it for themselves, apply the same concerns and strategies to their pets,” she said. “You can’t put a mask on a dog, so it’s really just keeping them out of the environment or limiting their time.”

Harkema recommends limiting walks to brief bathroom breaks and avoiding strenuous exercise.

“You don’t want to exercise them because more of these particulate matter and other air toxicants can get into the lung and cause inflammation,” Harkema said.

Sanderfoot said keeping pets in cool, air-conditioned spaces with clean, filtered air whenever possible is best. 

As wildfire seasons grow longer and more intense, Sanderfoot says she expects poor air quality events to become a more frequent occurrence across North America.

“The issue is that climate change is supercharging these fires and lengthening our fire season,” Sanderfoot said. “The bigger the fire, the more smoke.”

According to Oyola, research shows wildfire smoke will become a persistent problem.

“It’s very clear that climate change is real and that it’s not slowing down,” she said. “With drier conditions and warmer conditions, we should expect more events like this.”

The post How wildfire smoke impacts pets and wildlife appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

By Vivian La, Grist

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in northern Michigan. ​​​

Michigan regulatory officials on Wednesday issued several key permits for the construction of a tunnel to replace an aging section of the Line 5 pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac, the waterways that straddle the state’s Upper and Lower peninsulas. Officials said that the necessity of the project in preventing an oil spill in the Great Lakes outweighed other public interests.

The controversial plan by Enbridge Energy would replace a dual segment of the crude oil and natural gas liquids pipeline that runs through the environmentally sensitive straits, with one buried beneath the lakebed between lakes Michigan and Huron. For more than 73 years, Line 5 has transported oil and natural gas liquids 645 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario. 

The Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, or EGLE, approved a construction permit on lake bottomlands “following comprehensive review.” The agency said in a news release that the permit requires Enbridge to minimize damage to surrounding wetlands.

Despite acknowledging that construction would “adversely impact” rare plants and animals in the area, the state Department of Natural Resources still issued a permit to Enbridge. By state law, the permit also requires the company to “lessen impacts” with measures such as collecting seeds for later restoration or only clearing trees in the winter to protect bats.

Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy said the permits are “an important step forward” for the project that will “ensure the uninterrupted flow of energy that supports Michigan and the region.” Products from Line 5 are used in Canada and Michigan for propane or at oil refineries. Enbridge is currently reviewing the permits “to assess any impacts to tunnel construction,” Duffy said.

Line 5 opponents slammed the decisions by state regulators. “The bigger picture is that there should be no destruction, no wetlands destruction, there should be no forest destruction for a project that is not needed,” said David Holtz, coalition coordinator for anti-Line 5 group Oil & Water Don’t Mix.

Enbridge maintains that the tunnel project will protect the Great Lakes, and that Line 5 continues to operate “safely and reliably” under federal standards. 

Holtz said the news is especially ironic given the thick smoke currently blanketing the Great Lakes region from wildfires burning in Canada. He called out Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s administration for approving a project that would lock in fossil fuel use for decades, worsening climate change. Hotter average temperatures around the U.S. and Canada are making the conditions that can cause fires to ignite and burn more common.

Tribal nations across the state also denounced the permit approvals. EGLE’s permitacknowledged that destruction or removal of historic and cultural resources is likely — including the remains of tribal ancestors — and requires Enbridge to submit a plan that would mitigate impacts.

But Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community, said any such plan is a “false penitence.”

“Tribes have had so much taken away from them. We have had our land taken, we have had our rights taken, we have had our language taken, we have had our children taken,” Gravelle said. “To now have our ancestors taken and dug up, and moved, and not respected when doing all of that is disgusting.” 

The Bay Mills Indian Community, whose treaty lands the tunnel project would cross, is exploring its legal options for challenging the permits issued this week, such as initiating  a contested case hearing for the EGLE permit.

Enbridge is still waiting for additional permits from state and federal regulators, plus a court decision over a previously issued state permit, before it can begin construction. Wednesday’s decisions signal a favorable path ahead for the tunnel project, according to opposition groups.

A pending state permit would allow Enbridge to discharge about 5 million gallons of treated wastewater a day during construction. Enbridge received this permit in 2021, but it has since expired. 

Environmental groups and tribal nations brought their challenge of a permit issued by the Public Service Commission in 2023 to the Michigan Supreme Court. Oral arguments were in March and a decision from the court is expected before the end of summer.

Wednesday’s decision from EGLE also includes a certification under the Clean Water Act that allows the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to move forward with issuing its own permit. The Trump administration declared a national energy emergency last year, fast-tracking review processes for energy projects including Line 5. Holtz, with the Oil & Water Don’t Mix Coalition, said it’s highly likely the federal agency will issue its permit to Enbridge.

Separate from the tunnel project, Line 5 faces legal challenges from groups that have fought to shut down the pipeline for years, including the Whitmer administration’s own litigation against Enbridge. This spring, a unanimous ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for state court proceedings on whether the aging pipeline can continue operating in the Straits of Mackinac.

And in northern Wisconsin, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and environmental groups are challenging the ongoing construction of a new Line 5 segment that crosses the tribe’s watershed. Last month, crews spilled about 1,900 gallons of drilling fluid into surrounding wetlands.

Gravelle said the permit decisions are a setback. “But we have been trying to protect these things since time immemorial,” she said, “and we cannot abandon that sacred duty to do so because our children and future generations depend on that.”

The post Line 5 tunnel in Michigan clears major permitting hurdle, in blow to opposition appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

The Great Lakes are filled with shipwrecks. But these underwater time capsules are under threat from an unlikely foe: mussels.

Quadrillions of mussels have taken over much of the Great Lakes, anchoring themselves to any surface they can get ahold of, including shipwrecks. While filming the documentary All Too Clear, @InspiredPlanet-x6r discovered one of these wrecks– believed to be the steamship Africa– covered in the invasive mollusks.

Watch All Too Clear on the PBS App or at https://www.pbs.org/show/all-too-clear/

#GreatLakes #Shipwrecks #Environment #Mussels #InvasiveSpecies #History #LakeHuron

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By Vivian La and Ed Ronco, IPR

This story is made possible through a partnership between Interlochen Public Radio and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

Northern Michigan is enveloped in a thick blanket of brown smoke from wildfires in Minnesota and Canada.

“We currently can’t see across (Lake Charelvoix),” said Jenny Clasman, executive director of the Boyne Area Chamber of Commerce, which canceled an outdoor concert set for Wednesday night. “I can see across the street, but it’s definitely foggy, cloudy. There is ash on our cars right now and it smells like burning tires.”

Clasman, who has asthma, said she was having a hard time breathing and was wearing an N-95 mask outdoors.

And she might not get much relief this week.

“It’s going to be with us certainly for Thursday, and there’s a pretty good chance it’s going to hang around into the day on Friday before we can really start to displace it,” said Jeff Zoltowski, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Gaylord.

The fires are hundreds of miles away from Michigan, but until they settle down or go out altogether, off-and-on smoke will be possible as long as the winds are coming out of the northwest.

“It’s a really, really thick plume of smoke. It’s being added to continually,” said Jim Haywood, senior meteorologist with EGLE. “We’re seeing new fires breaking out all the time.”

Haywood said smoke forecasts currently look ahead 48 hours, and are issued with help from meteorologists across the Midwest.

Because of how aggressive the fires are, EGLE said their air quality alert will extend into Thursday and possibly Friday.

Health impacts

Most of northern Michigan was under an air quality alert. At a monitoring station in Houghton Lake, the air quality was listed as “unhealthy for sensitive groups” on Wednesday afternoon. In Seney, in the Upper Peninsula, the air quality was “unhealthy,” meaning all populations were at risk of adverse effects.

It’s recommended that people avoid any strenuous outdoor activity because of high levels of fine particulate matter, which can cause health problems when inhaled. Children, older adults, or people with respiratory and cardiovascular disease are particularly vulnerable.

Northern Michigan is also under a heat advisory, with high humidity and temperatures expected to stay in the upper 80s well into the weekend.

Wildfire smoke can exacerbate health issues from extreme heat, said Lisa Del Buono, a retired doctor in Traverse City and founder of the nonprofit Michigan Clinicians for Climate Action.

“When there are two hazards being described, we have a tendency in our communication and in our brains to silo the issues, but they tend to work together and sometimes have compounding effects,” she said.

Under both a heat advisory and air quality alert, Del Buono recommends running the air conditioner and making sure the filter inside is clean.

She also suggested checking in on neighbors because heat and smoke can sometimes trigger heart attacks, stroke, or preterm deliveries.

Days like this with multiple hazards are a reminder that northern Michigan is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, Del Buono said. Average summer temperatures in Michigan have increased by 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, according to data from the research nonprofit Climate Central.

Hotter temperatures around the U.S. and Canada are making the conditions that can cause fires to ignite and burn more common.

From her vantage point about halfway out Old Mission Peninsula, Del Buono said she had lost sight of an island that’s usually in view, just about a mile away.

“Right now, I can’t even see the water at all, let alone the island or across the bay,” she told IPR.

“We are not avoiding the impacts of climate change, as we can see looking out the window right now,” Del Buono said. “All of this is tough on our health.”

Canceled plans

Clasman, who leads the Boyne Area Chamber of Commerce, said it was disappointing to have to cancel tonight’s event, but it was also an easy decision.

“I do worry about people getting sick,” she said. “I do worry about the ERs filling up this evening, and I definitely don’t want to be contributing to that.”

Boyne City’s weekly Evenings at the Gazebo Summer Music Series hardly ever cancels an event. Even when it rains they move to a pavilion at Veterans’ Park.

Wednesday night’s act, the Traverse City-based duo “Dags Und Timmah!” will return on Aug. 19, air quality permitting.

Clasman said it’s the third year they’ve dealt with smoke drifting into the area but this is the worst it’s been.

“I’ve never had ash on the car. That’s new,” she said. “I’ve never smelled burning tire. That’s new.”

The post Air quality alerts issued for northern Michigan as wildfire smoke blankets region appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

By Christian Thorsberg, 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.

Growing up in the shadow of a coal plant in rural Indiana gives a child a unique relationship with the passage of time. 

As a little girl in the small town of Wheatfield, population 900, Barb Deardorff recognized the months by the height of the cornstalks and beansprouts which grew on her family’s farmland. The years were marked by what loomed beyond these fields — the R.M. Schahfer Generating Station and its ever-rising piles of toxic coal ash, their ascending silhouettes a scourge framed for years by her school bus window. 

“My whole childhood, thirteen years, twice a day to and from school, I was watching the coal ash landfill build up layer by layer,” says Deardorff, now 50 years-old, in her Wheatfield home in June. 

Deardorff’s kitchen today looks out onto a long, flat treeline, above which, just a couple miles away, the flues of that same half-century-old coal plant continue to billow smoke. They stand as readily visible emblems of an old energy era giving way to a new energy revolution that is putting fresh water, clean air, and human health at risk in small Great Lakes communities.

Wheatfield is a microcosm of industrial eras old and new. Having endured for decades the transformational effects of living in the midst of America’s 20th-century coal boom, residents are now left to wonder and worry how the age of artificial intelligence — bolstered by hyperscale data centers and the power plants they depend on — will affect their community.

These concerns are justified. In the past two years, aided by state and federal policy, the tech giant Amazon has invested roughly $29 billion to turn Northwest Indiana into what it calls a new “Silicon heartland,” flush with three energy-intensive data center campuses, one already completed, spanning 2,200 acres. Next door to the Schahfer generating station, Indiana approved two natural gas-fired turbines for construction. Those plants are poised to power the newest Amazon installation — a $7 billion data center — and are estimated to consume roughly 6 billion gallons of water annually from the nearby Kankakee River.

Amazon found a ready ally in the Hoosier state, which has embraced data centers and their thirst for power. Last year, state regulators granted the region’s primary utility first-of-its-kind authority to generate energy just for data centers. And in response to Trump administration directives, officials have re-written state energy policies to keep old coal plants — including Schahfer — operating to supply data centers indefinitely. 

Experts anticipate that by 2040, more than one-fifth of Indiana’s energy needs will come from data centers alone. 

The surge in construction investment and new power supply coincides with a comprehensive weakening of environmental protections on both the local and federal level — a risky proposition in a state that already is home to some of the most polluted waters, largest losses of wetlands, and worst air quality in the country. 

Deardorff has a front row seat to a show of power and technology unlike anything seen before in this region, or across the country. Like other residents of rural communities bullied by data center construction, she says she feels almost helpless. As someone whose conception of time is inseparable from Schahfer, she says she feels suddenly entangled in multiple discouraging realities.

“Everything, everywhere,” she says, “is happening all at once.”

What Was and Is No More

Deardorff has reason to be suspicious of the mammoth display of technology and energy generation under construction around her home. 

She has not known life without the R.M. Schahfer Generating Station as a neighbor. She was an infant when the coal-fired power plant opened its doors in 1976, and has lived next to its operations ever since, watching it become one of the country’s largest single emitters of greenhouse gasses. By one estimate, the plant causes 20 premature deaths each year from drifting soot and smog. And its groundwater, recent testing has shown, is contaminated with carcinogenic heavy metals — an existential threat for the dozens of residents who live within several miles of the facility and rely on shallow private wells as their sole source of drinking water. 

So when Schahfer announced in 2018 that it would close its doors at the end of 2025, celebrations rang out for many. The prospect of life without the plant represented, literally, a brand-new horizon.

“I got emotional, because I thought we outlasted them,” says Deardorff, whose family has lived in Wheatfield for six generations and previously farmed the land where the coal plant sits. “We were here before them, we dealt with them, and I thought we were going to be here after them.”

Residuals of Ash

This dream was short-lived. Not only has a series of 90-day extension orders from the federal government kept Schahfer operational as usual into the present, but the plant’s legacy of waste and health concerns are crescendoing. Deardorff and others worry that the new landscape of data center and natural gas construction and operation could eventually produce more degradation. 

At the Wheatfield home of Chris Hunter, a retired local farmer, coal ash’s stubborn tendency to permeate water and air lays bare. Just hours after severe thunderstorms and tornadoes tore through the town, Hunter’s wife, Cindy, ran a paper towel along the white exterior window sills of their home, located roughly two miles downwind from Schahfer.

Immediately, a dark, sooty film appeared on the pristine white background, the now-darkened paper towel a canvas that distills Wheatfield’s modern story.

“You just get it jammed down your throat,” Hunter says, looking out at the coal plant from his front lawn and thumbing through the wipe. “And we watch it all through our windows.”

In a state known for its high cancer rates — Hoosiers are nearly 12 percent more likely to die from the disease than the average American — Northwest Indiana where Hunter and Deardorff live stands out as a statewide hotspot for incidences of lung, colon, and breast cancers. 

The statistics are made material in Wheatfield, where many residents living in the vicinity of Schahfer share stories of family members and friends who have suffered from poor health. 

Deardorff recalls several neighbors and friends who have been diagnosed with cancer in recent years. Matt Mish, 35, who lives within a half-mile from the coal plant on his grandparents’ old farm, says that his grandmother died of cancer in 2015. 

Hunter says he lost his younger brother at 52 years-old to a rare type of cancer, and his father to liver cancer at 62 years-old. His mother, 90, has lived with Parkinson’s disease for more than two decades. 

“But how are you gonna really prove it,” Hunter asks, “and say it was [the coal plant]?”

All of these residents breathe Wheatfield air, and are among the dozens of people who rely on private wells to draw groundwater from the shallow local water table. Existential concerns for the quality of this supply were raised in 2018, when testing showed that Schahfer’s coal ash landfill had contaminated the plant’s own groundwater with cobalt, arsenic, lithium, radium, boron, and molybdenum in levels above federal thresholds. 

Meanwhile, water samples collected at 107 wells in and around the plant between 2010 and 2019 found that 86 percent had at least one pollutant in excess of federal advisory levels, according to Earth Justice’s Ash Tracker dashboard. 

“And we only found out about that because a law passed requiring [the plant] to publicly make that data available,” Deardorff says. “Who knows how long they had contaminated the groundwater before then?”

Indra Frank, a doctor and coal ash advisor with the Hoosier Environmental Council, says there is significant concern that the plant’s polluted groundwater will spread through the area’s shallow, flood-prone topography and contaminate wells and ditches that supply water used for drinking, recreation, and irrigation, especially as construction on the natural gas plant and data center begins.

The plant’s own ash-contaminated groundwater, held largely in unlined ponds spanning more than 80 acres, sits at least 15 feet higher than the groundwater that area residents depend on. 

A one-foot-thick wall of slurry, which extends underground to a layer of shale bedrock, is all that separates the plant’s active waste disposal area (WDA) from the rest of the region’s aquifer. This setup, Frank warns, is precarious. Currently, the WDA receives an average of 2.88 million gallons of “bottom ash sluice water, boiler room sump discharge, and stormwater” per day, according to documents published in 2020.

“You’ve got 15 feet of water pressure trying to push that water out from under the slurry wall,” Frank says. 

For a brief period, it was believed that federal intervention would spur remediation at the site. The EPA in 2015 announced a mandate requiring utilities to clean unlined coal ash ponds that were found to be leaking. But the requirement had several loopholes, Frank says, that the coal plant’s owner, energy utility NIPSCO, has exposed to delay any cleanup.  

“They’re claiming that the ash pond is not subject to the rule, because water isn’t visible at the surface of the ponds,” she says. “Some of these ponds, which are 20 feet deep, hold 19 feet of sitting water beneath their solid top layer.”

The slow-walk to addressing its coal ash storage may have paid off for the utility, which last year produced 200,000 tons of ash. In April, the EPA proposed aggressive rollbacks to the 2015 rule, putting Wheatfield’s coal ash piles in a doubly prolonged state of limbo. 

“It would wipe out requirements for half the coal ash in the country, and that includes some of the coal ash at Schahfer,” Frank says. “It can continue to sit there and contaminate groundwater. They could stop monitoring the groundwater for certain sites. It’s pretty, pretty devastating.”

That the Kankakee River runs directly adjacent to the Schahfer plant is another point of vulnerability. No systematic testing of soils or farmland in the area has ever been done, despite Jasper County being home to some 600 farms. Many of these crop fields rely on the Kankakee River for water, and are connected to both each other and the watershed through a series of drainage ditches. This network was created in the 20th century through the mass-draining of a massive wetland ecosystem once known as “the Everglades of the North.” 

As a result of this degradation, most of the area, including some of the coal ash ponds, sit today within 100-year flood zones. Heavy, erratic precipitation made more likely by climate change could exacerbate the movement of contaminated groundwater through farmers’ ditches and crops. 

According to a February report from the Hoosier Environmental Council, based on state data, 270 miles of rivers and streams in Jasper County are impaired. A one-off sample at a local irrigation ditch that runs adjacent to Schahfer, the Stalbaum ditch, was found to contain elevated levels of molybdenum. “That’s consistent with contamination from coal ash getting into that ditch, which runs into the Kankakee River,” Frank says. 

Deardorff grew up swimming in the river, but those days are long over. “I’m concerned about the effluent they emit into it,” she says. “I can see the pipe, I know where it comes out, and I’m never in the water downstream of it.”

Data Centers’ Indirect Water Use

Concerns about the environmental risks of data centers in Wheatfield center for the time being on water availability. 

On the surface, the new Amazon data center’s estimated yearly water use — between 8 million and 10 million gallons, according to Jasper County Plan Commission documents — is hardly eye-opening, especially for a facility of its size. 

But the much-greater water needs of the two fossil fuel-fired plants operating in its service expose the resource stress the industry indirectly creates. 

In Wheatfield, the Kankakee River is poised to feel the consequences the most.

According to Indiana Department of Environmental Management data, the Schahfer coal plant’s intake well — located in an area of medium-high water stress, according to the World Resources Institute — has the capacity to draw 131 million gallons of water per day from the river. Actual withdrawals from 2022 through 2024 were much less, though not insignificant, according to self-reported data collected by the state: an average of roughly 11.5 million gallons of river water per day, with peak days reaching 25 million gallons of water. 

Much, but not all, of this water is returned to the Kankakee at a higher temperature after being treated on site. And this treatment is crucial and subject to scrutiny: in 2024, which is the most recent data available from the EPA, wastewater stored on-site included 567,763 pounds of chemicals including arsenic, barium, lead, and mercury.

That same year, the coal plant consumed roughly 940 million gallons of river water, according to data collected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration and analyzed by Circle of Blue.

The natural gas turbines are expected to have an even bigger footprint. According to GenCo testimony from this April, the facility plans to draw up to 23 million gallons of water per day from the Kankakee, consuming roughly 16 million gallons of this — amounting to an estimated 5.8 billion gallons of water consumed annually.

The total indirect cost of water, then, sums to nearly 7 billion gallons of water per year — enough water to supply approximately 64,000 American homes for a year — consumed from the Kankakee River in service of electricity production for Indiana’s ‘Silicon Heartland.’

The post The AI Boom Is Prolonging Indiana’s Fossil Fuel Era, With Hidden Costs for Water appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

By Kyrmyzy Turebayeva, Great Lakes Echo

This article was republished here with permission from Great Lakes Echo.

While urbanization continues to displace natural ecosystems across the Great Lakes region, one declining wetland bird has managed to adapt to city life. 

The black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) has unexpectedly found refuge in the very heart of Chicago. 

Today, the largest colony of these birds in the region is located not in isolated, natural wetlands, but on the grounds of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo.

A new study shows that this heavily urbanized environment has become a critical sanctuary for the species.

“This colony is one of the last major black-crowned night heron rookeries in the entire state of Illinois — and probably one of the last strongholds for this species in the entire Great Lakes,” said Sarah Slayton, the study’s lead author and an avian ecologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

According to Slayton, only three colonies remain in Illinois. Two are quite small — one in the Champaign area and another at Emiquon Nature Preserve in western Illinois. 

Black-crowned night herons are listed as endangered in the state. 

The primary colony, boasting between 500 and 700 individuals, resides on the grounds of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo during the spring and summer.  

“Because this is the largest group of this species left in the Great Lakes and it is a species that is at risk, it is vital for us to know how they are doing health-wise, how they are surviving in the city and how the overall regional population is doing,” Slayton explained.

Researchers note that such a high concentration makes the colony particularly vulnerable.

Localized threats such as severe storms, disease outbreaks and human disturbance could cause the birds to abandon the site, meaning the region would lose a huge chunk of the population.

Black-crowned night herons are colonial wading birds whose numbers have been declining across the Great Lakes and the northeastern United States, driven largely by habitat loss.

“To most city dwellers, they are just big charismatic birds that you might see near the water,” Slayton said. “But to ecologists, they are an important indicator species for the health of these environments.”

The primary driver behind their shrinking numbers is the destruction of wetlands, Slayton said

“We have destroyed about 90% of the wetlands in Illinois,” she said. “As those environments disappear, the birds are forced to adapt and look for new places to successfully breed and survive.”

Interestingly, populations in Florida and along the Gulf Coast remain stable because the birds are year-round residents, while migratory populations face the greatest hardships. Birds from the Chicago colony spend the winter in Florida, Louisiana and Cuba before returning north to the Great Lakes in the spring to breed. 

To understand how night herons survive in a concrete jungle, Slayton and her colleague Henry Adams from Lincoln Park Zoo’s Urban Wildlife Institute launched an ambitious research project using modern technology.

The scientists equipped the birds with miniature GPS trackers – weighing just 16 grams (0.56 ounces) – which the birds wear like tiny backpacks. The solar-powered devices collect location data via satellites and transmit it to researchers whenever they connect to standard cellular towers.

The tracking results surprised the ornithologists. 

Instead of avoiding humans, the herons actively exploit urban infrastructure, using city parks, fishing lagoons, the Chicago River and even the coastal structures of Lake Michigan.

One of the most unexpected findings was that the night herons regularly forage in the deep open waters of Lake Michigan.

“We don’t normally associate these birds with that kind of water body because the water is so deep. Most wading birds forage in shallow water. They stand really, really still and wait for a prey item to swim by before ambushing it,” Slayton said. 

“However, these birds have taken advantage of the docks in the harbors and breakwaters, the large concrete structures out in Lake Michigan that help reduce wave action. They use them as perches to forage directly into Lake Michigan in a way that is very different from what we would expect in a natural wetland environment.”

The herons have also proven to be highly opportunistic feeders with a broad diet. 

While other heron species are specialized and picky about their food, black-crowned night herons eat almost anything from fish and frogs to small mammals. Scientists even suspect that in Chicago, they have taken up hunting small urban rats.

GPS data also revealed that individual birds possess distinct behavioral strategies. Some individuals are highly conservative, sticking to a single foraging ground and returning to the exact same park lagoon every day. Others constantly experiment, moving between different parks, the river and the harbors based on prey availability.

“The amount of individual variation in the birds was really, really cool,” Slayton noted. 

“For example, we would see them hunting in the harbors when there were fish spawning events, when fish would concentrate in these areas to breed. They might take advantage of those opportunities and feast for a couple of days, and then once those periods were over, they would go to another spot.”

Furthermore, the data showed a clear behavioral split between breeding and non-breeding birds. To conserve energy and feed their chicks, active breeders rarely forage more than 10 kilometers (about 6 miles) away from the zoo colony. Non-breeding birds, on the other hand, face less pressure to stay close and freely wander across the entire Chicago metropolitan area.

A major breakthrough of the study came from long-term GPS monitoring that spanned several years. This allowed scientists to map the herons’ movement patterns outside of Chicago in detail for the first time, while previous tracking data had been fragmented and limited to single seasons.

“We had one individual who we captured in Chicago – she was my favorite bird,” Slayton recalled. “Her band code was A24, and we were able to collect several years of tracking data on her.”

For two years in a row A24 followed a remarkably consistent annual cycle. After the breeding season in Chicago, she flew north to spend the post-breeding season in Green Bay, Wisconsin. 

From there, she migrated south to winter in Florida, spending months at a time in restored wetland complexes near Lake Okeechobee. Then she returned to Chicago for the breeding season.

“We caught her a second time and collected a bunch more samples, and then we found her nest and she was raising three adorable chicks,” Slayton said. “Getting to see her do this cycle over and over again was incredible because we had never seen data like this before.”

The GPS maps also showed that while A24’s precise migratory paths varied slightly from year to year, her final destinations remained exactly the same, showing very high site fidelity. 

According to Slayton, capturing this level of movement data would be impossible without trackers.

“This data is critical because these birds can only come back to breed if they make it through the rest of the year,” said Slayton. “Learning about what’s happening in other parts of their migratory paths and what threats they might be facing is also really important for the conservation of this whole colony.”

Researchers say uncovering how night herons navigate and survive in Chicago could ultimately inform conservation strategies for other migratory bird species sharing the same flyways and habitats.

Scientists emphasize that this data is more important than ever as wetlands loss continues and pressure mounts on the natural ecosystems of the Great Lakes region. 

The study does more than just document a threatened bird adapting to city life – it highlights the growing role of urban green spaces as unexpected, yet vital, refuges for wildlife conservation.

Ultimately, Slayton notes that her team’s vision extends far beyond Cook County, aiming to support black-crowned night heron conservation throughout their entire regional range.

The post Refuge in the Windy City: Declining wetland bird makes a home in downtown Chicago appeared first on Great Lakes Now.