WC142 MayJune 2025 - Magazine - Page 20
COVER STORY
“One of our champion programs has been the Great Lakes
Restoration Initiative. It has allowed us to do a lot of work to
improvewaterqualitythroughouttheGreatLakesbasin.”
This decision is fueled by efforts on the part of the Department of
Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) to cut hundreds of millions of
dollars dedicated to protecting the waters of the Great Lakes.
Commenting on those proposed cuts, Christy McGillivray,
Political Director for the Sierra Club’s Michigan chapter, pulled
no punches in yet another Guardian story when she observed that
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s ignorance is staggering, and they
have no idea what the federal government does for this region,” in
direct reference to the ecologically sensitive Great Lakes.
In an interview with Water Canada, Erma Leaphart —
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WATER C AN ADA • M AY/JUNE 2025
spokesperson for the Sierra Club’s
Michigan chapter (and co-worker
of McGillivray) — offers a more
hopeful perspective on which programs will be spared for the sake of
maintaining, if not improving, the
health of the Great Lakes.
“One of our champion programs
has been the Great Lakes Restoration
Initiative,” Leaphart observes. “It
has allowed us to do a lot of work to
improve water quality throughout the Great Lakes basin.”
Before funding for that initiative kicked in during the Obama
administration, there were 43 water bodies that were declared
Areas of Concern by the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), including the Detroit and Rouge Rivers, which feed into
Lake Michigan.
However, Leaphart says, “GLRI money and also Great Lakes
Legacy Act funds have allowed us to do a lot of the cleanup
work… and the successes are very clear to see. So we are hoping
not to see any cuts to that program.”
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T
GLSL Cities, Getty Images
Mayor Bill Bazzi of Dearborn Heights, MI
visiting North Branch Ecorse Creek future
restoration site with Dr. Rick Spinrad, thenNOAA Administrator, in April 2024.
