EPA announces new program designed to clean up Great Lakes

CLEVELAND, Ohio — EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler visited Cleveland Friday to announce a new program designed to help remove trash from the Great Lakes and its shores.

The Trash-Free Great Lakes grant program will provide about $2 million in grants to clean up waste along Great Lakes beaches, shorelines, harbors and rivers. The money will also support trash and litter prevention efforts in the Great Lakes, as well as educational projects.

"We are here today because the health of the Great Lakes is a top priority for President Trump and his administration,” Wheeler said during a news conference along Lake Erie. “We are committed to protecting and restoring one of America’s greatest natural resources.”

The program is part of the EPA’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which the Trump administration proposed cutting from $300 million to $30 million earlier this year. The administration less than a month later reversed course and supported fully funding the GLRI. 

State and local agencies, tribes and non-profits can begin applying for Trash-Free Great Lakes grants in October, and the money will become available in February. The program could pay for up to 12 grants — potentially enough to support two large projects and 10 smaller projects. The program could award grants up to $500,000.

The lake’s annual harmful algal bloom is forecasted to be more severe than last year, but on par with 2017. The bloom affects Toledo to the islands, contaminating drinking water, and turning it pea green. The size of the annual spread depends on how much rain falls on Northeast Indiana, Southeast Michigan and Northwest Ohio between March and July and how much phosphorus runs off farms into the Maumee River which feeds into the lake.

Wheeler said the EPA has recently announced $14 million in grants to help reduce nutrients, which include phosphorus, in the Great Lakes.

“We also recognize that marine litter is just one of the challenges facing the future of the Great Lakes,” he said.

Before announcing the trash cleanup program, Wheeler joined U.S. Rep. Dave Joyce, of Chagrin Falls, aboard the EPA’s largest research vessel, the Lake Guardian, and heard from scientists about their work studying the Great Lakes.

The EPA each year surveys all of the Great Lakes, once in the spring and once in the summer. In addition, the agency studies the dead zone in Lake Erie annually.

The agency also annually spends an intensive period studying one of the Great Lakes, rotating each year between each of the bodies of water. This year, it’s Lake Erie’s turn.

Wheeler and Joyce surveyed how the vessel sampled water and mud samples in Lake Erie. The scientists said they’ve seen areas in the lake with lots of mayfly boroughs, a positive indicator of the lake’s health. The officials also saw the equipment the scientists used to take photographs and film underwater, to see, for example, how many invasive mussel species there are. One instrument, a sled constructed using snow mobile parts, is dragged along the lake floor to take videos of the lake bottom.

Scientists are also studying naturally occurring manganese levels, a metal found in Lake Erie’s sentiment. The metal can unbind from sentiment in low oxygen areas, creating foul-smelling, yellow water, that’s expensive to treat. Scientists are trying to come up with a model to predict these spikes in manganese for water treatment plants.

Wheeler, an Ohio native and a graduate of Case Western Reserve University, remarked that he believes he’s the only EPA administrator to go swimming in the Great Lakes.

“I’ve been swimming in Lake Erie and I want to make sure that future generations can continue to go swimming in Lake Erie,” he said during the news conference.