who is cameron davis, great lakes 'czar'?

Cameron Davis, is special advisor to the EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, appointed by President Obama June 4, 2009 to oversee the "Great Lakes Restoration Initiative" [GLRI is funded FY2010-2014]. . . which has $475M to distribute basically to scientists and others with a track-record of commitment to cleaning up the Great Lakes. Davis was originally the director of the Alliance for the Great Lakes in Chicago. To monitor the progress/results, the GLRI has also funded an Accountability System which has to keep track of that drop of water from L. Nipigon all the way to the Atlantic Ocean at it floats by Anticosti Island, right, in Quebec.

So . . . in 2007, journalist Peter Annin who works for the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources, wrote "Great Lakes Water Wars" which was at least somebody trying to fathom it out. Does anyone out there know about any of this???? -- Posted by Barbara

Great Lakes Restoration . . .

OK . . . . "President Obama's 2010 Budget contained $475 million within the EPA budget for a Great Lakes restoration initiative which targeted the most significant problems in the region including invasive aquatic species, non-point source pollution, and contaminated sediment." Here is is: US EPA Great Lakes Restoration Initiative . . . . . Follow the money . . . This whole thing is being run out of Chicago: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Great Lakes National Program Office, 77 W. Jackson Boulevard (G-17J), Chicago, Illinois 60604-3511. --- Who knew????

-- Posted by Barbara

Time to ask 'at what cost,' agriculture?

Where do we swim, what water do we drink, when the L. Ontario shoreline from Nine-Mile Point in Wayne County to Bogus Point in Monroe County/NYS is inundated with primarily agricultural runoff steadily building massive algal blooms in which toxic bacteria are thriving . . . not to mention Sodus Bay which is simmering under a toxic blue-green algae blanket. Take a look at the incredible north-running rivers and streams: Genesee River, right, Irondequoit Creek, Salmon Creek, Buttonwood Creek, left, Northrup Creek, Fleming Creek and those that flow into the Genesee R. - Black Creek, Oatka Creek . . . . Ask yourself, with this massive water movement, incredible waterfalls, wildlife, fish and birds and humanlife ringing these watercourses, for whatever purpose has the US governmental agencies [EPA, DEC, SeaGrant, etc.] given a 'free pass' to agriculture? How in god's name has this lobby remained so powerful into the third millenium? Take a gander: US EPA calls Rochester Embayment "Area of Concern." If you look long enough at the 'partners' and 'stakeholders' over the past 50 years, you come up with one conclusion: all of the attempts to clean up the Great Lakes have failed because they were nothing more than buying time and pushing the problem off onto the next generation. Are you ever going to adopt organic standards, farmers and landowners? -- posted by Barbara

blue-green cyanobacteria algae and swimming, drinking water

What does the NYS Department of Health say about the algae blooms in the bays and ponds along the southern shore of New York State? "Blue-green algae, technically known as cyanobacteria, are microscopic organisms that are naturally present in lakes and streams. They usually are present in low numbers. Blue-green algae can become very abundant in warm, shallow, undisturbed surface water that receives a lot of sunlight. When this occurs, they can form blooms that discolor the water or produce floating rafts or scums on the surface of the water."

"What are the potential health effects from drinking or coming in contact with water containing blue-green algae?"

"Some blue-green algae produce toxins that could pose a health risk to people and animals when they are exposed to them in large enough quantities. Health effects could occur when surface scums or water containing high levels of blue-green algal toxins are swallowed, through contact with the skin or when airborne droplets containing toxins are inhaled while swimming, bathing or showering.

Consuming water containing high levels of blue-green algal toxins has been associated with effects on the liver and on the nervous system in laboratory animals, pets, livestock and people. Livestock and pet deaths have occurred when animals consumed very large amounts of accumulated algal scum from along shorelines.

Direct contact or breathing airborne droplets containing high levels of blue-green algal toxins during swimming or showering can cause irritation of the skin, eyes, nose and throat and inflammation in the respiratory tract.

Recreational contact, such as swimming, and household contact, such as bathing or showering, with water not visibly affected by a bluegreen algae bloom is not expected to cause health effects. However, some individuals could be especially sensitive to even low levels of algal toxins and might experience mild symptoms such as skin, eye or throat irritation or allergic reactions." -- http://www.nyhealth.gov/environmental/water/drinking/bluegreenalgae.htm -- posted by Barbara

waterworld of invaders

Here is the underwater weed world in Braddock Bay, NY - a vast tangle of Eurasian watermilfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum) . . . . water chestnut (Trapa natans) . . . Curlyleaf pondweed (Potamogeton crispus) . . . fanwort (Cabomba carolina). . . duck weed or something like little green floating dots. There are both invasive plants and animals and the USDA National Agricultural Library knows, so does Cornell Cooperative Extension's Sea Grant.

Besides the weeds, there are perch, carp, pike, bowfin and little minnows that are so cute. -- posted by Barbara

existence is a thing of variable intensity

These waves wash ashore on a remote, untrammeled beach on L. Ontario at the end of the 'Owl Trail' and as I write, I can hear the whooo who who hooooot of an owl who yesterday was in the west woods and now is down along Salmon Creek to the south. It's dark already in late August, moon almost full over the bay and frogs singing again. Quiet. cool at last, a summer of swelter and rain. While driving up to Ridge Road a little while ago, caught a classic rock playlist with 'Hey, you get offa my cloud' starting to get everybody in the mood. . .and then 'Landslide' but this time not by Fleetwood, but the Dixie Chicks.

Ah, dogs barking at the night . . . . calm down, Jackson, it's just Friday night. -- posted by Barbara

just below the surface

It's already getting to be mid-August and we can feel fall in the air -- different winds picking up off the lake. As beautiful as blue L. Ontario is, we know that there's more to this than scenery. There are chemicals still in the lake sediments, invasive mussels, snails, fish, eels, fluctuating lake levels which affect shoreline animals like mink and otter, as well as the marshes, impending wind farms and hydro-diversion in the Niagara R. and constant runoff from agriculture, lawn chemicals, waste water treatment. Blue-green algae blooms, giant green blobs of floating algae and now water lily beds which were never there before. Where have we been sleeping while the great lakes just seeped in this and we along the shore let it go on?

This image, right, was taken in early August when a powerful off-shore breeze pushed the waves even higher. Image taken by ChristineLikeCamera.
-- posted by Barbara

Lake Winnebago lake sturgeon almost at the edge of extinction

A fantastic group of fish biologists in the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources studied the centuries-long decline of sturgeon over a 20-year period and decided to do something about it: restore habitat, raise fry in hatcheries and release to a series of streams that feed into L. Michigan. The spawning sturgeon are coming back to the original streams after swimming long distances in the Great Lakes. The scientists are adept at this and developed imprinting techniques when they are about to be released. It's incredible -- see Sturgeon Underwater. Apparently, lake sturgeon are picky spawners. "In their spawning beds they like crushed limestone, stones of all sizes and coal cinders dumped by boats more than 100 years ago. They need depths of more than 15 feet and a swift current. It takes 15 years for males to reach sexual maturity and females won't lay eggs until they are 20 to 25 years old. The eggs can be a third of her weight so after spawning it takes two to seven years for the fish to spawn again." Sturgeon spawning is featured in "Mysteries of the Great Lakes" which is playing all around this summer.
-- posted by Barbara

Science North's "Mysteries of the Great Lakes" !!

Must see: Mysteries of the Great Lakes -- a large-format film produced by a consortium under Ontario's Science North with director and producer iMax expert David Lickley. Some of the sponsors of this film: Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, the Ontario Science Center in Toronto. It chronicles the history, geology and state of the lakes with special focus on the restoration of sturgeon accomplished by the Wisconsin DNR. Spectacular photography including images of Agawa Canyon petroglyphs and the woodland caribou of the Slate Islands in northern L. Superior are combined with the first person story of Ronald Bruch who spearheaded the sturgeon restoration project in Wisconsin. Go Wisconsin! And thank you David and crew. I saw this film today in Rochester, NY at the Rochester Museum and Science Center's Strasenburg Planetarium. -- posted by Barbara

Great Lakes, a mysterious fog

Not since Gordon Lightfoot sang of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald off Superior's southeast shores in 1971, has the true nature of the Great Lakes been captured. Lightfoot, a Canadian, who loved Georgian Bay, the "sixth great lake" [which is virtually unknown in the US] explored the history and drama of the lakes naming each lake and linking them back to native legends. At right: looking out onto L. Ontario from Salmon Ck. as it flows into Braddock Bay, NY.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the ruins of her ice water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams,
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.

And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed, 'til it rang 29 times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they say, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early.

From "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot

But the entire Great Lakes Basin with its continental divides, class five+ rapids and whirlpools in the Niagara River, the many, many islands, shoals, submerged wrecks, rivers, streams, creeks, beaches and rocky shores, is in serious need of a consciousness-updating. The Voyagers and their canoes did get some play in "Black Robe" which at least opened up the Huron history to contemporary thinking, a little. Oh, there is Hemingway's 1925 "Big Two-Hearted River" based on the real Two-Hearted River in upper peninsula Michigan; Paddle to the Sea by Holling Clancy Holling which actually is a true cross-border story; and Carl Sandburg who wrote this haunting poem . . . .

The Harbor

Passing through huddled and ugly walls

By doorways where women

Looked from their hunger-deep eyes,

Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands,

Out from the huddled and ugly walls,

I came sudden, at the city's edge,

On a blue burst of lake,

Long lake waves breaking under the sun

On a spray-flung curve of shore;

And a fluttering storm of gulls,

Masses of great gray wings

And flying white bellies

Veering and wheeling free in the open.

More!! Why not stories of both/either the "Thousand Islands" at the entrance to the St. Lawrence R. or the "Thirty-Thousand Islands" in Georgian Bay? Time to find what inspires, what tells the true tale. I'm on a journey, I know it. . . . . . .

Braddock Bay Swan Family

A lot of people don't like the mute swans on L. Ontario such as the NYS DEC. Cygnus olor do live here on the bay - this photo was taken on Salmon Creek which flows into Braddock Bay. In the winter occasional tundra swans - cygnus columbianus - visit. I think trumpeter swans - cygnus buccinator - are seen, too. But all in all, the nature of the mute swan is questioned by naturalists. In the winter I have seen entire flocks of swans in formation beating their wings as they take off from the bay seemingly flying to more inland marshes upstream. It's honestly breathtaking to see and hear.

Lake Sounds

"Rose Marsh" -- one of the last uninhabited, undeveloped
beaches along L. Ontario in Monroe County,
For more: ChristineLikeCamera
-- posted by Barbara