The Great Lakes: Unprotected documents how novel rule-making, staff cuts, and dramatic shifts in funding priorities are systematically unraveling a 60-year-old program of safeguards for the region’s rivers, lakes, wetlands, habitat, and drinking water. The government’s neglect sharply increases the region’s vulnerability to water pollution, land degradation, economic disruption and harm to human health.
National AI Boom Hits Home as Demand for Power Surges
PLYMOUTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN — On a warm fall afternoon, dairy farmer Chris Kestell pushes through prairie brambles taller than himself, tracing a path overgrown with thickets and swarming with bees as he hikes toward a hidden waterway. Though the route is unidentifiable to the untrained eye, Kestell, 47, has lived here, in the small town…
Momentous Court Decisions Near For Line 5 Oil Pipeline
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – For 72 years, in order to serve as a shortcut for crude oil from production fields in western Canada to refineries in eastern Ontario, Enbridge Inc.’s Line 5 pipeline has transported 540,000 barrels of oil and natural gas liquids daily beneath the forests and wetlands of northern Wisconsin and Michigan. Opened…
Three Great Lakes States at Greatest Risk as EPA Rolls Back Wetland Protections
On Monday, the U.S. EPA and Army Corps of Engineers proposed a set of new rules that would leave millions of acres of wetlands, small waterbodies, and ephemeral streams across the country unprotected — threatening the drinking water of millions of Americans and leaving crucial habitat and floodplains susceptible to filling. These proposed changes were…
The Next Deluge May Go Differently
In early August, days after thousand-year rain fell on southeastern Wisconsin, officials waded through the devastation’s wake — and liked what they saw.
New Era of Confrontation Between Energy and Water Opens in Great Lakes
With accumulating force and accelerating speed, a new era of electrical generation and power demand is taking shape across the eight states of the Great Lakes basin – and with it come potentially treacherous consequences for the region’s environment and its world-leading supply of clean, fresh water.
Fresh: A Great Lakes Policy Briefing
The Great Lakes hold 20 percent of the world’s surface fresh water, making them a vital resource for drinking, agriculture, industry, and energy across North America. But they are also at the frontlines of climate change, facing rising temperatures, fluctuating lake levels, pollution, and stressed ecosystems. What happens here offers a preview of global water challenges — from ensuring safe drinking water to balancing economic growth with environmental protection. Paying attention to Great Lakes news is not just about regional concern; it’s about understanding how water security shapes our shared future.
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.
The Latest
Fresh, January 7, 2026: Planned Indianapolis Tech Campus Would Discharge Wastewater into Public Drinking Supply, Alarming Residents
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
- A massive industrial campus under construction outside of Indianapolis will require 25 million gallons of water per day, with discharges planned to flow into a public reservoir.
- Lawmakers in Michigan have introduced three new bills to limit and track the amount of electricity and water that data centers in the state consume.
- State senators in Indiana have similarly proposed legislation that would require data center energy and water use estimates before granting construction permits.
- The Minnesota DNR has greenlit exploratory drilling in up to 19 locations just south of the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area.
Fresh from the Great Lakes News Collaborative
- Michigan lost billions in climate-related investments in Trump’s first year — Bridge Michigan
- $18M approved in bill credits for Pennsylvania customers in ‘forever chemicals’ settlement — Great Lakes Now
- Michigan invests $77 million to restore contaminated areas across the state — Michigan Radio
- What’s scarier for Canadian communities — floods, or flood maps? — 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
Indiana’s Giant LEAP: Lawmakers and residents in the greater Indianapolis area are voicing concerns over a state-backed plan to pump 25 million gallons of water per day to a sprawling new industrial park currently under construction just 30 miles from the state capital and Purdue University.
Advertised as “America’s Newest Sustainable Community,” the LEAP Lebanon Innovation District is a 9,000-acre mixed-use campus with ambitions to attract hundreds of companies in the pharmaceutical, life science, ag tech, defense, and AI industries. According to an Indiana Chronicle investigation published last February, the state by that time had invested nearly $1 billion into the campus, including $170 million in water services.
In August, the city of Lebanon announced that a 1,500-acre Meta data center campus would be a significant fixture of LEAP. The tech giant pledged an initial investment of $800 million, which could grow to as much as $4 billion over the course of its planned, six-part expansion.
This week, five state lawmakers — two senators, and three representatives — addressed a letter to the Indiana Financial Authority, which is approving $70 million in state loans for the project, expressing concerns over the impact LEAP will have on the local water supply. Among the issues raised were uncertainties about the project’s “lack of notice, disclosure and accelerated schedule,” the impacts to the Indianapolis watershed, and LEAP’s proposal to dump wastewater directly into the Eagle Creek Reservoir, which supplies both public drinking water and is used as a flood control reservoir in the state capital.
“Discharge in public drinking water systems-treatment is not a foolproof method,” the letter reads.
Citizens Water, the utility that has been contracted to service LEAP, will source the 25 million gallons of water from 10 different sites, NBC 13-WTHR reports. As part of this supply, it will increase the current volume withdrawn from the Eagle Creek Reservoir from 10 million gallons daily to 13 million gallons.
In context: Political Left, Right, and Everyone Between, United over Water
In the News
Data Center Disclosures in Michigan: Three Democratic Michigan state senators have introduced new bills aiming to regulate and monitor the amount of water and energy that data centers in the state can use.
Senate Bill 761, introduced by Sen. Rosemary Bayer, would bar data centers that plan to consume more than 2 million gallons of water per day from receiving a withdrawal permit. Senate Bill 762, introduced by Sen. Sue Shink, would require the state Public Service Commission to publish an annual report detailing each data center’s water and energy use. Finally, Senate Bill 763, introduced by Sen. Erika Geiss, would prohibit water utilities from passing the costs of data center-related construction or improvements onto residents.
“We have seen hyperscale data center projects proposed in Saline, Battle Creek, Mason, and many other places throughout Michigan,” Sen. Bayer said in a statement. “Residents of these communities are rightfully concerned, and by implementing additional guardrails, we can protect our constituents and our natural resources.”
Data Center Disclosures in Indiana: A bipartisan duo of Indiana state senators introduced new legislation that would require Indiana’s utility regulatory commission to establish a working group that will “determine an estimate of the future electricity demands of the data center industry in Indiana” by no later than October 31, 2026. Senate Bill 79 would require data center operators to submit quarterly reports on electricity use, and would also mandate counties or townships, before issuing construction permits for data centers, to require energy and water use estimates and site assessments.
Looking Ahead
Boundary Waters Mineral Exploration: Despite ongoing opposition from environmental groups in northern Minnesota, the state Department of Natural Resources has granted Franconia Minerals — a subsidiary of mining company Twin Metals Minnesota — permission to drill exploratory borings in up to 19 locations just outside of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in the town of Ely.
The company will have until the end of March 2027 to complete its exploration, part of which will occur beneath Birch Lake, a local water body that flows into the Boundary Waters system.
In 2023, following a bid from Twin Metals to build a formal mine in the area, the Biden administration revoked the company’s federal mineral leases and instituted a 20-year mining ban on a large parcel of federal land just south of the Boundary Waters. The Trump administration has conveyed its intention to undo that ban, Minnesota Public Radio reports. But no action has officially taken place.
“Despite having clear legal authority to deny this permit, and despite overwhelming opposition from Minnesotans, the Walz administration is holding the door open to this toxic industry,” said Chris Knopf, executive director of the Friends of the Boundary Waters, in a statement.
You can find more stories from the Great Lakes region here.
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