Congress is sending President Bush a bill that would extend for two years a federal program to clean up areas of pollution and contaminated sediment around the Great Lakes.
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is calling for a $5 billion trust fund for Great Lakes cleanup and restoration as he focuses on states critical to winning the White House.
The Senate voted Friday to ratify a compact to prevent the diversion of water from the Great Lakes, quickly approving legislation sought by the region's governors worried that thirsty places would covet one of the world's largest sources of fresh water.
Foreign species that slipped into the Great Lakes in ballast tanks of oceangoing cargo ships cost the regional economy at least $200 million a year, according to a University of Notre Dame study released Wednesday.
A compact designed to prevent remote regions or countries from tapping into the Great Lakes was approved Wednesday by the last of the eight states that surround one of the world's largest sources of fresh water.
A year ago, it seemed a proposed interstate compact designed to prevent thirstier regions from raiding the Great Lakes might be sunk by squabbles among the eight states with jurisdiction over the vast reservoir.
Gov. Jim Doyle has signed legislation making Wisconsin the fifth state to approve an interstate compact aimed at protecting the Great Lakes.
Seeking to build support for the ailing Great Lakes, lawmakers from the region are urging voters in their states to let the presidential candidates know how critical the issue is to them.
President Bush's proposed budget would shortchange efforts to clean up the Great Lakes and prevent the worsening of problems such as sewage overflows and exotic species invasions, critics said Wednesday.
Video images from the St. Clair River bottom show no evidence that erosion is causing water levels on Lakes Michigan and Huron to drop, scientists working for a U.S.-Canadian advisory group said Thursday.
Under pressure from Congress, a U.S.-Canadian agency Thursday agreed to quicken a study of whether erosion from dredging on the St. Clair River is causing water levels to plummet in Lakes Huron and Michigan.
The governors of the eight Great Lakes states worked for four years to write a plan that would protect their abundant water from being piped south to regions where booming populations face dwindling water supplies.
Laser pulses bounced off the surface of Antarctica by NASA's ICESat mission have revealed numerous areas of ice that either rose or sank due to highly pressurised water flooding into or out of subglacial lakes beneath (Image: Fricker et al/Science)
A little red lighthouse. Boardwalks. The blue-green waters of Lake Michigan stretching to the horizon. It's just another pretty-as-a-postcard view on the shores of this sleepy town of 5,700 a half-hour east of Green Bay. But how long the unspoiled vista in Algoma and in other communities along the Great Lakes will last is anybody's guess.