Double funding for the great rescue of the Great Lakes

The Great Lakes are getting a little extra help to keep them great from the Obama administration. The president has pledged to nearly double the funding the lakes have received for cleanup and restoration, bringing the total to about one billion clams.

Excerpt:

Barack Obama, of Illinois, is the first president since Michigan's Gerald Ford to come from a heartland state that depends heavily on the Great Lakes for its economic well-being. Hopes have thus been raised that the Great Lakes will at last get the help they need.

The Clean Water Act of 1972 did much to stop direct discharges from industries and municipal sewage systems. But the lakes still suffer -- from lingering industrial pollution, toxics like mercury, deteriorating wetlands, and, more recently, invasive species that have devastated the fishing industry and fouled shorelines.

In response, the Environmental Protection Agency will soon roll out recovery programs known collectively as the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. In June, the House gave the program the entire $475 million the White House wanted. The Senate should do likewise.

This is a small down payment on a project that could ultimately cost $20 billion. But it is an important start that will be administered by one agency, the E.P.A., in an effort to avoid the scattershot funding that undermined earlier restoration efforts.

Read the entire article here.

Read a piece in the Detroit News about the Great Lakes rescue here.