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 biweekly 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 other Tuesday.
— Christian Thorsberg, Interim Fresh Editor
Weekly Watershed
- Twelve states, including Michigan and Wisconsin, have sued FEMA and DHS for failing to provide states with federal assistance after flooding and storms.
- As Wisconsin seeks to meet rising energy demands, new legislation would offer tax breaks for nuclear fusion and fission facilities.
- A natural gas provider in Pennsylvania has been charged with 100 counts of environmental law violations for contaminating water across eight counties.
- Hundreds of years of Anishinaabe cultural burning helped preserve Lake Superior’s pine forests — which today are more vulnerable than ever to large wildfires, a study shows.
Fresh from the Great Lakes News Collaborative
- Alberta let an oil and gas company ‘in survival mode’ take over 170 wells. Now it’s not paying its bills — The Narwhal
- How a dam removal is helping revive Michigan’s sacred wild rice — Bridge Michigan
- Michigan environmental groups want EPA to test for microplastics in drinking water — Michigan Public
- Fifty years later: The little-known story of the families the Fitz left behind — 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
Last week, a coalition of 11 states and one governor sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for what they say is a failure to provide communities with adequate federal aid in the aftermath of emergencies, including rainstorms, flooding, and hurricanes.
Filed in a U.S. District Court in Oregon last Tuesday, the complaint demands declaratory and injunctive relief for what the plaintiffs allege is spotty and selective assistance from the federal government to states in need.
“The Trump administration has taken numerous actions in furtherance of this goal — including denying or restricting requests for emergency declarations, withholding grant funding, and imposing irrelevant and unconstitutional terms on recipients of long-standing FEMA grants,” the complaint reads.
Many recent and notable denials of FEMA disaster assistance have occurred in states with Democratic governors.
In late October, FEMA denied appeals for aid from Maryland and Wisconsin — led by Democrats Wes Moore and Tony Evers — after both states endured historic flooding this spring and summer.
In North Carolina — which suffered 1,200 landslides, damage to 160 water and sewer systems, and the destruction of 126,000 homes amidst Hurricane Helene last year — FEMA announced in April that it would no longer match 100 percent of the state’s emergency spending.
In a letter addressed to President Trump in September, Democratic Gov. Josh Stein estimated that federal support has covered just 9 percent of North Carolina’s estimated $53 billion in damages — pushing small communities waiting for aid “to the brink” as a result.
And in October, FEMA denied a request for federal aid made by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in the aftermath of two large storms and flood events this summer in the Chicagoland area. The state has already submitted an appeal.
Meanwhile, in the past month alone, FEMA has approved flood-assistance packages for Republican-led Nebraska, Missouri, North Dakota, and Alaska.
In an October press release that responded directly to an article in the New York Times, the agency “categorically refuted” its actions followed partisan lines.
The plaintiffs, who together say that FEMA’s actions “erect inappropriate barriers,” are the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Oregon, Maryland, Hawai’i, Nevada, Maine, Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Andy Beshear in his capacity as the Governor of Kentucky.
In the News
Nuclear Tax Breaks: Falling in line with the Trump administration’s push for a nuclear energy revival, recent legislation introduced to the Wisconsin legislature aims to incentivize the industry’s local growth.
Assembly Bill 618, presented last week to the Wisconsin Committee on Energy and Utilities, would create sales and income tax exemptions for the operation of nuclear facilities across the state. Introduced last week by six GOP representatives, the bill is the latest in a recent flurry aiming to enhance the state’s nuclear capabilities.
Assembly Bill 472, proposed in October, would make it easier and cheaper to build nuclear plants. And two new laws, signed in July by Gov. Tony Evers, created a board to organize a nuclear power summit in Madison and directed the Public Service Commission to explore new locations where nuclear power and fusion stations may be built.
The push towards nuclear energy — including both fusion and fission — has gradually gained bipartisan support in Wisconsin, which is hungry for power generation as it continues to attract large data center campuses.
Only one nuclear facility, the Point Beach Nuclear Plant, currently operates in Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Michigan. Like many other nuclear facilities, large amounts of water are recycled to cool its reactors.
According to Close Point Beach, a local opposition group, the average water intake at the shoreline facility is 700 million gallons per day in the winter, and 1.1 billion gallons per day in the summer, then returned to the lake at warmer temperatures.
Across the country, nuclear plants consumed roughly 946 million gallons of water per day in 2020, per the most recent USGS data. With a slightly different calculation, the Energy Information Administration estimated daily consumption was 716 million gallons that year.
Anishinaabe Fire: A report published in August in the journal PNAS has brought renewed attention to the importance of historic and contemporary Indigenous fire practices in the Great Lakes region. According to a synthesis of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Western science, researchers have found that the old-growth red and white pine forests along Lake Superior’s shoreline would not exist today without the stewardship of Anishinaabe communities in the 18th and 19th centuries. Cultural burning practices helped build resistance to wildfires, keeping fuels to a minimum so that fires on the landscape would not burn out of control.
But the subsequent loss of Native land around Lake Superior — and the dense accumulation of flammable vegetation, as a result — leaves the region’s forests vulnerable to larger, smokier fires, especially as the climate warms, scientists warn.
In context: Wildfire Rampage Injures Lungs in the Great Lakes
Looking Ahead
Charges Filed for Water Contamination: Two grand juries in Pennsylvania have brought charges against Seneca Resources, LLC, a natural gas producer, for contaminating water sources in eight counties across three separate incidents.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, Seneca is charged with 64 violations of the state’s Solid Waste Management Act, and 36 violations of the Clean Streams Law, all “related to improper waste management practices and policies.”
“Every Pennsylvanian has a constitutional right to pure water, and these cases resulted in violations of those rights,” Attorney General Dave Sunday said in a statement. “In one example, a couple’s home — which they worked their entire lives to afford — was subjected to contaminated water. Such outcomes will not be tolerated, and I commend our Environmental Crimes Section for their work in this case.”
According to PennLive, Seneca produces 4 percent of the state’s natural gas, and 11 percent of its wastewater.
You can find more stories from the Great Lakes region here.
