The Great Lakes region has 43 Areas of Concern (AOCs). Each AOC has a group of community members who provide their expertise to discussions of cleanup and their time to related volunteer activities. To learn more about this important form of public engagement, we spoke to activist and organizer with Sierra Club Michigan, Erma Leaphart.

The majority of Wisconsin’s lead poisoning cases are from Milwaukee’s north and south sides, where the local populations are predominantly Black and Brown. From this crisis, Milwaukee has also become home to a grassroots collective working to get the lead out of the city: The Coalition on Lead Emergency (COLE).

The Door-Kewaunee Watershed Demonstration Farm Network is supporting sustainable methods of farming to reduce runoff pollution into Lake Michigan and Green Bay, improve groundwater and surface water quality, and model those practices for other local farms.

After years of clean-up efforts, the Ashtabula River in Ohio is no longer considered one of the “most environmentally degraded” areas in the Great Lakes Region thanks, in part, to Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) funding.

The Rouge Education Project trains a new generation of conservationists while monitoring river health.

Thanks to federally funded programs such as the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (SRF), communities that struggle with aging water infrastructure can get low-interest or no-interest loans and even loan forgiveness to upgrade these systems and protect communities and habitats over the long term.

By implementing the conservation practices that are part of this demonstration farm network, projects such as this support the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative goal for reducing nutrient runoff from agriculture.

Planting native vegetation along the Pike River and restoring an adjacent wetland is reducing erosion, preventing storm runoff, and providing a home for fish and other native species.