The Great Lakes hold nearly 20 percent of the world’s surface freshwater, making them a resource of national and international importance. They power regional economies, support shipping routes vital to global trade, and provide drinking water to 40 million people across the U.S. and Canada. Safeguarding the Great Lakes is not only essential for the communities that rely on them daily, but also for the stability of North America’s environment, economy, and international partnerships.
Fresh is a weekly newsletter from Circle of Blue that unpacks the biggest international, state, and local policy news stories facing the Great Lakes region today. Sign up for Fresh: A Great Lakes Policy Briefing, straight to your inbox, every Wednesday.
— Christian Thorsberg, Fresh Editor
Weekly Watershed
- The Ohio House approved a bill that would establish a statewide process for permitting and regulating carbon sequestration, an industry that has been shown to threaten drinking water resources.
- Wisconsin state legislators are deliberating a $42 million appropriation to a paper mill to restore a wooden, 100-year-old dam on the Wisconsin River.
- After the cancellation of hundreds of millions of dollars of EPA and USDA grants, two new Senate bills in Ohio seek to create food security and farmer training programs.
- The U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition to review a lower court’s determination that Georgia-Pacific, a paper company, is primarily responsible for the costs of cleaning up the Kalamazoo River Superfund site.
Fresh from the Great Lakes News Collaborative
- What to know about Michigan whitefish crisis, from limits to solutions — Bridge Michigan
- How Buffalo, New York has adapted to and embraced an influx of climate migrants — Great Lakes Now
- Drought conditions continue in Michigan — in some areas, since last winter — Michigan Public
- Ontario is subsidizing an energy project in Georgian Bay despite expert advice — The Narwhal
Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now at Detroit Public Television, Michigan Public and The Narwhal work together to report on the most pressing threats to the Great Lakes region’s water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work here.
The Lead
Carbon Sequestration: Last week, the Ohio House voted 93 to 4 to pass HB 170, which would establish a statewide process to permit underground carbon dioxide sequestration and grant the leader of the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management “sole and exclusive” regulatory authority over these activities. Per the text of the bill, the state is liable and responsible for any stored and injected carbon, unless “there is carbon dioxide migration that threatens public health or safety or the environment or underground sources of drinking water.”
This legislation follows action in the Michigan Senate, which in September passed three bills establishing a similar regulatory program. Those bills have been criticized by the Michigan Environmental Council for their “threats to forests, groundwater and health.”
Under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, the U.S. EPA can delegate the regulation of Class VI wells — which are used to inject carbon dioxide underground — to individual states. According to the Ohio bill, when a company seeks a permit to construct a Class VI well, the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management leader must detail the project’s “protection of the public and private water supply, including the amount of water used and the source or sources of the water.”
Recent history has shown that these protections are difficult to execute in practice. In Illinois, the country’s first commercial carbon storage plant got off to a shaky start.
Last September, the agribusiness company ADM was found to have violated federal regulations, its Class VI well permit, and the Safe Drinking Water Act when a monitoring well at its Decatur location leaked liquid carbon dioxide into unauthorized zones. While ADM maintained the leak remained several thousand feet below the groundwater table, other experts expressed skepticism over the company’s models. The worry is that the Mahomet aquifer would be tainted.
The Decatur facility, which stores more than 4.5 million tons of carbon dioxide underground, was “the first and only project of its kind in the country,” at the time of its incident, Capital News Illinois reports.
Indiana has also been bullish on the carbon sequestration industry, though in June, BP indefinitely paused the development of its carbon sequestration facility in Whiting.
In the News
Rothschild Paper Mill Dam: Last week, the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Forestry, Parks and Outdoor Recreation held a public hearing to address two bills that would appropriate $42 million of state funds for the modernization of a dam in the village of Rothschild.
The dam, located at a 120-year-old paper mill in north-central Wisconsin, spans the Wisconsin River and created Lake Wasau following its construction in 1912. It is maintained by Domtar, the company which operates the mill, though its condition has severely deteriorated. At more than 100 years old, parts of the dam are riddled with broken wooden timbers, which are at risk of collapse.
“It has reached the end of its useful life, and is in serious danger of breaking,” said State Sen. Cory Tomczyk during the hearing. “Should this dam break, it would cause catastrophic flooding…homes, businesses, and other property would be washed away by the emptying of Lake Wasau.”
Should AB 416 and SB 421 be signed into law, Domtar would receive $42 million and work closely with the state Department of Natural Resources to complete the four-year project to replace wood timbers with concrete. According to Dave Fawcett, the general manager of the Domtar Rothschild Mill, the grant would supplement the project’s total cost of “well over $80 million.”
A year ago, a report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum found that the state ranks second in the nation in dam failures since 2000, with 34 collapses through the end of 2023. Of these, 28 occurred since 2018. Meanwhile, the last decade has been Wisconsin’s wettest on record, prompting more attention to aging infrastructure.
The average age of Wisconsin’s 4,000 dams is 80 years.
Ohio Farming and Food Security: Last week, Ohio State Sen. Paula Hicks-Hudson introduced two bills to incentivize career development for young farmers and strengthen the state’s farming economy.
SB 287 would create the Farming and Workforce Development Program, open to anyone between ages 16 and 35, including those who have a criminal record. University of Ohio and Central State University extension campuses would provide those enrolled with training “for seasonal crop farming employment.” SB 288 would meanwhile establish the Ohio Food and Agriculture Policy Council to “develop a statewide plan containing policy and funding recommendations for promoting and supporting an equitable, healthy, and sustainable food system on the state and local level.”
These bills arrive to a backdrop of hundreds of canceled and frozen federal grants, distributed through the EPA and USDA, that supported local food systems, training, and education opportunities. Both programs request $500,000 in state appropriations.
Looking Ahead
On Tuesday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition request filed by Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products LP — one of the world’s largest producers and distributors of paper towels and tissue products — to review a Sixth Circuit Court’s May decision that left the company liable for the future cleanup costs of the Kalamazoo River Superfund site.
The decision ends a decades-long legal determination of who is responsible for paying for the site’s remediation. Roughly 80 miles of the Kalamazoo River are contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the aftermath of paper mill operations.
You can find more stories from the Great Lakes region here.
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