Bruce Beach Canada

The 2023-2024 season marked the warmest winter on record for the lower 48 states, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The change in the weather has had an outsize impact on the festivals, events and tourism that define the Great Lakes identity. Read the full story by CNN.

The Soo Locks in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, opened the Poe Lock to all marine traffic at 6 p.m. Eastern on Friday, March 22, marking the start of the 2024 Great Lakes shipping season. Read the full story by the Daily Press.

The owner of the decommissioned Palisades nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan about five miles south of South Haven, Michigan, is better known for decommissioning nuclear plants. Its endeavor to restart the plant is one that has never been attempted in the United States. Read the full story by Michigan Public.

Alongside the lack of ice coverage, unseasonable winter temperatures in the Great Lakes region are creating the conditions for the proliferation of invasive species, strain on the lakes’ natural, temperature-driven stratification process, and the rise of toxic algal blooms. Read the full story by the Daily Herald.

The regional grid operator that oversees electric reliability in 15 states, including nearly all of Michigan, recently released a series of proposed transmission projects aimed at stabilizing the power grid in the future as more renewables come online and coal plants retire. However, the up to $23 billion plan left out one notable project: an underwater cable across Lake Michigan connecting the lakeshore with eastern Wisconsin. Read the full story by Crain’s Grand Rapids Business.

On World Water Day, the Canadian government announced $800,000 in funding to improve water in the Saint Lawrence River. The money from is being used for initiatives that are part of the Saint Lawrence Action Plan that began in 2011 and runs until 2026. Read the full story by CTV News.

Explorers from the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association have discovered and identified the remains of the steam barge Milwaukee, which sank in 1886, about 40 miles west of Holland, Michigan. Read the full story by WXMI-TV – Grand Rapids, MI.

The northwestern Ontario site being considered for a nuclear waste repository is safe for that use, according to the industry-funded organization tasked with creating a repository. So is the other site on the shortlist for the proposed deep geological repository, according to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. Read the full story by MidlandToday.

Ohio’s Bowling Green State University recently received a new high-resolution mass spectrometer that university researchers call a “game-changer” for improving water quality in the Great Lakes region and beyond. Read the full story by The Blade.

To prevent the movement of invasive carp into the Great Lakes, the states of Illinois and Michigan and the Army Corps of Engineers need to sign an agreement, but for months they have been locked in a stalemate over what comes next. Read the full story by WBEZ – Chicago, IL.

The U.S. Department of Justice and environmental groups filed two lawsuits against Campbell Soup in Napoleon, Ohio, accusing the company of allowing wastewater and pollutants to flow unchecked into the Maumee River, which flows into Lake Erie, for years. Read the full story by CBS News.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is challenging a decision that federal courts have jurisdiction over the future of Enbridge Energy’s Line 5. That’s after a judge moved her legal challenge from the Ingham County Circuit Court to a U.S. district court. Read the full story by Michigan Public.