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
- Indiana legislators are preparing to introduce a new bill that would expand the size of a federal wilderness area and better protect a crucial source of drinking water.
- The village board of Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin, unanimously approved a $13 billion plan to build 15 new Microsoft data centers.
- A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists urges policymakers to invest in clean energy to meet the power demands of data centers.
- The U.S. House voted this week to lift a ban on mining in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Fresh from the Great Lakes News Collaborative
- Public feedback is open for proposed sea lamprey barrier in Upper Peninsula — Michigan Public
- Hundreds of miles of new transmission lines planned in Michigan — Bridge Michigan
- Ontario will sever Wasaga Beach park despite 98% disapproval in public comments — The Narwhal
- $18M approved in bill credits for Pennsylvania customers in ‘forever chemicals’ settlement — Great Lakes Now
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
The Charles Deam Wilderness, which spans nearly 13,000 acres inside the Hoosier National Forest, is Indiana’s only protected wilderness and one of the largest contiguous stretches of nature in the lower Midwest. In a state that has lost roughly 90 percent of its historic wetlands, the low-lying swath of forest and karst topography is especially precious habitat. Efforts to expand this preserve have advanced in recent years, most notably with a bill proposed in the U.S. Senate in 2023.
Though that effort ultimately failed, legislators, conservationists, and advocates plan to reintroduce a similar bill early this year. At the center of this proposal is the protection of a crucial source of drinking water.
If approved, the Deam Wilderness would more than double in size, encompassing 28,000 acres through the creation of a natural recreation area on adjacent land. These combined areas would surround two-thirds of Lake Monroe, Indiana’s largest lake and the sole source of drinking water for roughly 130,000 people. The lake is also the only source of domestic and industrial water for the greater Bloomington area.
Runoff from farming has long sullied the quality of Lake Monroe, and flooding has worsened as a result of unchecked erosion. Under the Clean Water Act, the lake is listed as an impaired water body, with excess nitrogen and phosphorus routinely seeping into the lake from nearby industry. Algal blooms are common.
Placing the watershed under expanded federal protections, environmentalists hope, would have myriad health, social, and environmental benefits.
There is also much to be gained by way of capital value. A new analysis from Earth Economics, a nonprofit organization that estimates the economic utility of natural resources, asserts that this larger swath of Indiana wilderness, wetlands, and forests—if approved for expansion—would together produce at least $235 million in annual public benefits.
In Context: Political Left, Right, and Everyone Between, United Over Water
In the News
Data Center Expansion: The village board of Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin, voted unanimously this week to approve the construction of 15 new Microsoft data centers in Racine County, a project estimated to cost $13 billion.
The new facilities will expand the footprint of Microsoft’s existing presence in the town, where two data centers — $7 billion investments themselves — are already being built. These original buildings were expected to consume 8.3 million gallons of water per year and, combined with the nearby Port Washington data center, require 3.9 gigawatts of power. This is enough electricity to power all of Wisconsin’s homes.
It is not immediately clear how much water or electricity the 15 new data centers will require.
Clean Energy Transition: A new report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists analyzes a variety of future energy, emissions, and economic scenarios amid America’s data center boom.
If current energy policies remain unchanged and high demand for these facilities continues, the report’s authors estimate that power generation from gas and coal will be 11 percent higher in 2035 compared to a mild-growth base scenario; carbon emissions would reach up to 72 percent more than the base scenario; and electricity system costs would be 73 percent higher compared to the base scenario.
“Taken together, our results show that powering data centers with clean energy is more affordable, safer, and healthier than using fossil fuels,” the authors write. “However, these beneficial outcomes require stronger federal, state, and local policies.”
Looking Ahead
Boundary Waters Wilderness: The U.S. House voted last Wednesday to overturn a ban on mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a protected nature preserve in northern Minnesota.
As Fresh reported earlier this month, Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources gave Franconia Minerals — a subsidiary of mining company Twin Metals Minnesota — permission to drill exploratory borings in up to 19 locations just outside of the wilderness, though within the same watershed.
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 fate of this ban will now be determined by a vote in the U.S. Senate.
“Congress just tossed aside years of scientific study and local input about how to conserve the headwaters of this wilderness for future generations, allowing the threat of toxic mining to return,” Jordan Schreiber, director of government relations at The Wilderness Society, a nonprofit land conservation organization, said in a statement. “The Senate must reject this attack and the precedent it sets to arbitrarily strike down well established public lands protections.”
You can find more stories from the Great Lakes region here.
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