Tick populations are on the rise, and with them, tick-related emergency room visits. Scientists attribute this increase to growing deer populations and warmer winters.

But thankfully, there are simple steps you can take to protect yourself from tick-borne illnesses like Lyme disease. You can start by wearing long-sleeve shirts and long pants when you spend time outdoors, and by checking yourself and your pets for ticks when you get home. Insect repellents can also help keep ticks away.

Learn more at GreatLakesNow.org

#Ticks #Insects #GreatLakes #Outdoors #Wildlife #Disease

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The post How to Protect Yourself from Ticks appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

By Kelly House, Bridge Michigan

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan; Circle of Blue; Great Lakes Now at Detroit Public Television; and Michigan Radio, Michigan’s NPR News Leader; 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 should reject Consumers Energy’s plan to sell its 13 Michigan dams to an out-of-state private equity firm, an administrative law judge overseeing the proposed sale concluded Wednesday.

In a 312-page recommendation to state regulators who will ultimately decide whether to approve the sale, Judge James Varchetti wrote that the deal “is inconsistent with the public interest,” “highly problematic” and “unreasonable and imprudent.”

Varchetti, who has spent months gathering evidence and testimony from Consumers and interest groups that support and oppose the sale, concluded that the transaction threatens public safety and may not be the cheapest option for ratepayers.

“For a transaction involving infrastructure like major hydroelectric dams to be in the public interest, it would be a transaction that ensured the new owner is financially committed and able to meet the dam’s full lifecycle needs, thereby protecting taxpayers from assuming future liabilities such as decommissioning costs,” Varchetti wrote. “This transaction fails that test.”

The advice comes nine months after Consumers first proposed selling its aging dams in the AuSable, Grand, Kalamazoo, Manistee and Muskegon rivers to a Maryland-based private equity firm for $1 apiece, then inking a 30-year contract that would obligate the company’s 1.9 million ratepayers to buy back the power at twice the market rate, plus pay a $270 million profit to Consumers.

Spokespeople for Consumers Energy and its proposed buyer, Confluence Hydro, expressed disappointment in the recommendation but noted that it is not legally binding.

The Michigan Public Service Commission, a trio of utility regulators appointed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, is expected to decide by September whether to approve the sale. 

“We believe the judge did not appropriately recognize the major benefits of the sale, Consumers spokesperson Katie Carey said. 

Arguing the deal would bring “significant cost savings” for ratepayers while “protecting the 13 communities and tens of thousands of people who depend on the dams,” Carey said Consumers officials will continue to advocate for sale approval.

Michigan should reject Consumers Energy’s plan to sell its 13 Michigan dams to an out-of-state private equity firm, an administrative law judge overseeing the proposed sale concluded Wednesday.

In a 312-page recommendation to state regulators who will ultimately decide whether to approve the sale, Judge James Varchetti wrote that the deal “is inconsistent with the public interest,” “highly problematic” and “unreasonable and imprudent.”

Varchetti, who has spent months gathering evidence and testimony from Consumers and interest groups that support and oppose the sale, concluded that the transaction threatens public safety and may not be the cheapest option for ratepayers.

“For a transaction involving infrastructure like major hydroelectric dams to be in the public interest, it would be a transaction that ensured the new owner is financially committed and able to meet the dam’s full lifecycle needs, thereby protecting taxpayers from assuming future liabilities such as decommissioning costs,” Varchetti wrote. “This transaction fails that test.”

The advice comes nine months after Consumers first proposed selling its aging dams in the AuSable, Grand, Kalamazoo, Manistee and Muskegon rivers to a Maryland-based private equity firm for $1 apiece, then inking a 30-year contract that would obligate the company’s 1.9 million ratepayers to buy back the power at twice the market rate, plus pay a $270 million profit to Consumers.

Spokespeople for Consumers Energy and its proposed buyer, Confluence Hydro, expressed disappointment in the recommendation but noted that it is not legally binding.

The Michigan Public Service Commission, a trio of utility regulators appointed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, is expected to decide by September whether to approve the sale. 

“We believe the judge did not appropriately recognize the major benefits of the sale, Consumers spokesperson Katie Carey said. 

Arguing the deal would bring “significant cost savings” for ratepayers while “protecting the 13 communities and tens of thousands of people who depend on the dams,” Carey said Consumers officials will continue to advocate for sale approval. 

All told, the deal would cost Consumers ratepayers $3.4 billion, or an average of $1,800 per person.

Consumers officials contend that’s a good deal because they would otherwise seek the MPSC’s permission to charge ratepayers billions to repair or demolish the unprofitable dams. 

But critics have accused them of downplaying the risks. They fear the deal would repeat a longstanding pattern of utilities transferring unwanted dams to private owners who fail to invest in maintenance, raising the risk of dam failures while pushing repair or removal costs onto taxpayers.

The structures generate meager power while operating at a $152 million annual loss. The largest among them, the Hardy Dam on the Muskegon River, needs a multi-hundred-million-dollar spillway upgrade to comply with modern flood safety standards. All but one of the 13 dams are high-hazard, meaning a failure would likely kill people and inflict widespread property damage.

Confluence Hydro, the company set to buy the dams along with tens of thousands of surrounding acres, has vowed to modernize and relicense them to generate energy for decades to come.

In a statement Wednesday, Confluence spokesperson Natalie Joubert said the company “looks forward to continuing to demonstrate to the Michigan Public Service Commission our proven track record of success, owning and operating dozens of hydroelectric power facilities, improving their safety, increasing their sustainability, and generating clean, reliable energy for the communities we proudly serve.”

But critics are wary of the deal, arguing weak contract language and a maze-like corporate structure make it doubtful the company will uphold those vows.

Confluence, which itself is a subsidiary of Maryland-based private equity firm Hull Street Energy, proposes to further divide ownership of the dams by creating 13 of its own limited-liability subsidiaries. Company officials have described that as standard industry practice, but critics see it as a way for Hull to profit off the dams while avoiding liability for their upkeep.

Sale opponents hailed Wednesday’s ruling as a victory for Consumers ratepayers and Michigan taxpayers. 

“The evidentiary record seems to support the position that the coalition has taken all along: That this sale would not be in the public interest,” said Bob Stuber, executive director of the Michigan Hydro Relicensing Coalition. 

Hull Street has bought and sold dozens of dams and power plants across the US since its formation in 2014. More recently, the company has entered the data center business.

The Consumers sale proposal culminated years of deliberations by the utility over whether to keep, sell or remove the dams, which average 106 years old.

The company had no easy options. 

Beyond being expensive to maintain, the dams are destructive to rivers, blocking fish habitat while warming the water, depleting oxygen levels and trapping sediment upstream. Many environmentalists would like to see them removed.

But in their century-plus of existence, the lake-like impoundments created by the dams have become beloved fixtures of nearby communities. Homes, marinas and campgrounds have all cropped up along their shores. 

The sale plan has support from some local governments and waterfront homeowners’ associations, whose leaders see it as a way to secure the reservoirs’ future.

Sale critics include Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, state environmental and utility regulators, ratepayer advocates and outside environmental groups, all of whom contend the deal puts the public at risk.

Some argue it’s too costly for ratepayers. Others say the contract terms make it too easy for Confluence to sell or demolish the dams, parcel off the surrounding land or avoid spending money to keep the structures safe. Yet others balk at Consumers’ attempt to profit off the sale, accusing Consumers of “double dipping” on unwanted assets that ratepayers have already paid-off.

In his recommendation to the Public Service Commission, Varchetti appeared to share many of those concerns. 

He wrote that Consumers has failed to prove that the sale is cheaper than keeping or decommissioning the dams and panned the company’s proposal to reap $270 million in ratepayer-funded profits off the deal.

Taken together, Varchetti wrote, the inflated power price and the proposed profit scheme would set “troubling precedent” that rewards Consumers “for shedding its own future obligations while placing substantial financial risk onto ratepayers and taxpayers.”

Consumers officials have rejected calls to add more safeguards to the sale plan, saying if regulators don’t approve the sale as-is, the utility will seek to demolish all 13 dams.

Stuber called that ultimatum “absurd,” saying he would like to see a community-based approach to decide the best course of action, dam-by-dam.

“All of these projects are unique in their own right,” Stuber said. “You have to sit down with the local community and the larger statewide community, and say what’s the best future?”

Both fans and foes of the sale plan have criticized the utility’s refusal to negotiate. 

Coco Soodek, who represents the Lake Allegan Association, a pro-sale group representing landowners on the reservoir behind the Calkins Bridge Dam, called it “tin-eared” and called upon Consumers to start making concessions.

“I would like them to do this sale,” Soodek said. “But it sounds like if they want to do it, they have to be reasonable.”

If not, she said, “I don’t agree with the ALJ’s decision, but I understand it.”

The post Judge: Michigan should reject Consumers’ ‘highly problematic’ dam sale appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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 predicted to stay elevated through June in the Upper Midwest from drought and high winds. That’s risky for the region’s pristine inland lakes, but land managers are working to reduce wildfire risk in the Northwoods with controlled burns.

Some experts are advocating for increasing the use of this centuries-old method of prescribed fire to create more resilient ecosystems.

Chris Filstrup knows how severe fire changes freshwater in Minnesota’s wilderness. He’s a lake scientist at the University of Minnesota Natural Resources Research Institute and investigates the consequences of the 2021 Greenwood Fire for remote lakes. Along with a team of researchers, Filstrup continually samples lakes in the burnscar each summer for water quality issues like high levels of phosphorus, carbon and nitrogen.

According to a study Filstrup published in the journal Geological Research Letters, charred lakes have higher nutrient levels than their unburned counterparts. Those degraded waterways are still brown and murky – the color of tea, Filstrup said.

Yet, each watershed of the 15 fire-affected lakes Filstrup studies responded differently to the Greenwood Fire. For some, the flames incinerated entire shorelines. For others, the fire was further back, scorching only a small slice of the watershed. Filstrup found that the more severe fires caused worse damage because hotter flames burn more vegetation and disturbs the soil. That allows more nutrients to flow into lakes.

“Anything we can do to reduce the potential severity of those fires would be a good thing,” Filstrup said.

Prescribed burns – low intensity fires planned by land managers – prevent the likelihood of catastrophic wildfires by reducing fuel loads. When fire catches in areas with dead trees, dense shrubbery and overgrown vegetation, flames have more to feed on and spread quickly.  

These less severe fires can harm water quality, but those impacts are temporary, especially compared to intense wildfires.

“If you have higher severity fire, you kill all the [tree] canopies,” Ge Sun, a U.S. Forest Service research hydrologist, said. “They get too hot. The soil is burned bare, too, and it’s difficult for the vegetation to grow back. But that’s not the case for prescribed fire.”

When trees burn, the whole water cycle of the forest changes. Trees put water back into the atmosphere through a process called evapotranspiration. Roots also store water in the soil and filter it, taking out some of the impurities before it flows into lakes. With fewer trees, more water ends up flowing into waterways instead of the atmosphere or groundwater, and it holds more contaminants.

Despite the potential for prescribed fire to protect water quality by reducing the chances of catastrophic fire, little research has actually investigated how this tool affects lakes.

Peter Caldwell is trying to understand those consequences for forested watersheds. At an experimental forest in North Carolina called the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, Caldwell – who, like Sun, is a Forest Service hydrologist – is collaborating on a study launched in 2019 to find out if prescribed fires can be used without causing water issues.

“We’ve got some early results that suggest that because these are low severity fires, those impacts are very small and short-lived,” Caldwell said. 

Low severity fires kill only the forest understory, which can recover quickly, Sun said. Besides, many species depend on fire to thrive, such as blueberries and jack pines in northern Minnesota. These species adapted to fire because it’s a regular, natural phenomenon. 

Fire will happen in forests across the continent with or without people, Sun said.

Fire suppression 

In much of the country, including Minnesota’s Superior National Forest and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, people have been managing the land with controlled fire for centuries. 

Nisogaabokwe Melonee Montano dedicates much of her time understanding the relationship between fire and land. She’s a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota and an enrolled member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.

“The Indigenous people, when you look at pre-colonization, across the entire landscape had been using fire to survive, to caretake our lands,” Montano said in a Friends of the Boundary Waters webinar. 

“When people had come into the Boundary Waters as a new area for them, they saw it for its beauty and all of those other things,” Montano said. “It was in that state because it was being taken care of by the Anishinaabeg people by things like fire. Fire has always been a part of that ecosystem.”

For instance, the open old growth red and white pine stands surrounding the shorelines of lakes in the wilderness area exist because of fire stewardship.

“That was the world that existed before colonial settlers arrived in North America,” historian Char Miller said. He studies the history of the Forest Service and wrote a book about fire suppression called “Burn Scars.”

Many fire-dependent ecosystems in the Great Lakes haven’t seen flames in decades. Cultural and controlled burns abruptly stopped because of colonization, leaving only wildland fires for a century.

Part of that halt was fear-based. After waves of catastrophic blazes in the late 1800s, like the Great Chicago Fire and the Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin, the federal government began enforcing strict fire suppression policies. That included the fires Indigenous communities practiced for centuries before.

But Miller said fire suppression policies were also racially motivated, meant to disrupt the lives of native people. Taking away fire disrupted their social, economic and religious lives, and Miller said documents from Spanish missionaries, Franciscans and other settlers explicitly supported that.

“Settler colonialism has many guises,” Miller said, “but around fire, it’s very clear it’s got one voice and that is: Suppress the fire, and you suppress the Indigenous people.”

Climate change is mostly to blame for increasing wildfires, Montano said, but the forced removal of the Anishinaabeg people plays a role. They could no longer steward the land as they had for generations.

Evan Larson, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, studies tree rings to understand the history of fire on the landscape. He said during the webinar that the relationship between people, fire and the rest of the ecosystem was disturbed by colonization.

Larson said bringing more fire to the landscape is essential in places like the Boundary Waters, where the bar to conduct prescribed burns is much higher than places like Superior National Forest due to its Wilderness Act status.

“If we think about reciprocity and we recognize that these are fire dependent systems,” Larson said, “we have an increasing responsibility to tend to these places with fire because of the way the landscape has changed, because of the changes that we are seeing everywhere.” 

The disruption in regular fire is hurting ecosystem resilience. For example, those open pine stands along lakes in the Boundary Waters become more susceptible to drought and climate change the denser they become. Fire keeps them open and thin.

Prescribed Fire

Teresa Floberg said using prescribed fire as a tool is a necessary part of living in a fire-dependent landscape. She works with Superior National Forest and other stakeholders in northeast Minnesota as the Ely Fireshed Coordinator for nonprofit Dovetail Partners.

Controlled fires are happening. Over the last three decades, the Forest Service has been slowly upping its prescribed burns – including in Superior National Forest. This year, the agency has eighteen prescribed fires across 5,483 acres planned for the northern Minnesota forest to reduce fuel loads, manage vegetation and maintain wildlife habitats.

Tribes in northern Minnesota collaborate with the Forest Service on some prescribed fires in Superior National Forest, including the Boise Forte Band of Chippewa. Cody Swanson, the band’s Forest Programs Manager, said that’s only a fraction of the burns they do. Outside the forest, the unit conducts low-acreage prescribed fires to protect homes and buildings on the reservation. They’re also bringing back cultural burns for blueberries and medicinal plants and plan to expand that practice.

Recently, the Boise Band acquired 28,000 acres near the reservation boundaries that once belonged to a timber company. The band’s Natural Resources Management has to clear out dead and downed trees, along with some other preparation, so they can reintroduce fire practices on a larger scale.

“Reintroducing fire will reintroduce a lot of the different bearberry, red osier dogwood, juneberry, raspberry, all these different medicines that people historically have used here,” Swanson said. “It’s huge that we’ll be able to reintroduce fire on the landscape in areas that might not have had it for hundreds of years.” 

Reintroducing more fire is a goal for a lot of stakeholders in the region, including Dovetail Partners. But Floberg said getting fire on the ground in northern Minnesota is challenging.

For one thing, prescribed fires require a lot of preparation, especially in the fuel-riddled region. 

“Fuel has to be removed prior to doing a prescribed burn,” Floberg said. “It relies on removing that thick understory, those really flammable trees that could bring even a low intensity fire up into the canopy.”

Sometimes accidents happen. In early June, the Birch Bay Fire that burned more than 30 acres near Ely was likely started by chainsaw operations while Forest Service crews were prepping for a prescribed fire. Hot engines, exhaust and flying sparks could have caught dry grass or pine needles aflame.

Resources are also lacking. There’s a shortage of qualified burners in the state, Floberg said, and conducting burns is expensive.

“There often isn’t a budget at the federal level to do that necessary fuels reduction work to then even be able to consider reintroducing a prescribed fire,” Floberg said. 

The financial burden deters private landowners. Floberg said many homeowners in the area want to set prescribed fire on their forested property, but many can’t afford the thousands of dollars price tag to treat even an acre.

Still, the cost to run a prescribed burn versus suppress a wildfire is significantly smaller. It’s a preventative measure, and the dollars can be difficult to justify. 

“The upfront cost will save huge expenses down the road,” Floberg said. “It’s just, we’re reactionary. We respond to crises and recovery.”

This article is the second of two parts. See part one here.

The post Setting Fires On Purpose to Cut Risk of Catastrophic Wildfires appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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.