Latest Lake Stories

By Dan Egan, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Jul. 30--The Great Lakes Compact will hit center stage in Washington D.C. today when the Senate Judiciary Committee holds a hearing on the eight-state agreement governing large-scale water diversions outside the Great Lakes region. The hearing comes just two days after President Bush issued a statement congratulating the eight Great Lakes states for reaching the historic agreement to protect a group of lakes that provide drinking water to more...

OAK ISLAND, NORTHWEST ANGLE, Minn. _ In July the sun rises here early and stays in the sky late and nearly everyone thinks about fishing. Maybe not the postmaster on Oak Island, Don McClanathan, who opens his small office three days a week. But everyone else. The previous evening here, in a tall bucket beneath a table in a fish cleaning house, a few dozen walleye carcasses pooled themselves in odd shapes. Their fillets had been extracted by anglers who by then were eating dinner or who had...

Two Russian mini-submarines explored the depths of Siberia's Lake Baikal -- the world's deepest lake -- this week, scientists said. Mir 1 and Mir 2 reached depths of 5,184 feet and 5,223 feet, respectively, the Guardian reported Tuesday. The Russians initially said they had gone down 5,512 feet but issued a correction later, the British newspaper said. Back in the 1990s, another research expedition had measured its descent at 5,371 feet. We have gone to the depths of Lake Baikal to find...

Russian explorers reached the bottom of Lake Baikal in Siberia "” the world's deepest lake "” but said they fell short of breaking the record for the deepest freshwater dive.The Mir-1 submarine descended 1,580m (5,184ft) and not a record 1,680m as was earlier claimed, organizers said.The mission is part of a research project led by Artur Chilingarov, a scientist and Kremlin-backed member of parliament, to research and promote conservation of the lake. Lake Baikalwas declared a Unesco...

U.S. President George W. Bush congratulated the governors and legislatures of the eight Great Lakes states Tuesday for approving a conservation agreement. The states that border the Great Lakes -- Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- approved and sent to Congress the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact. The accord, also approved by two Canadian provinces, restricts the diversion of water from the Great Lakes watershed....

I congratulate the Governors and Legislatures of the eight States that border the Great Lakes on their conclusion of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact. Made in the spirit of cooperative conservation, this Compact is the result of many years of close coordination and consensus-building that resulted in the Compact's approval by the eight Great Lakes States and two Canadian Provinces. The Great Lakes are a national treasure. They were vital to the exploration...

By John Gillie, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash. Jul. 27--Hundreds of fish ranging from 20-inch-long carp to fingernail-sized perch lay dead in the waters of Tacoma's Wapato Lake on Saturday, a day after the South End lake was treated with chemicals to kill toxin-producing algae. The fish were scattered around the shore of the pollution-troubled lake where visitors gawked in disbelief. "There are dead fish everywhere," said South End resident Gilbert Durand. "The water looks clearer than...

DETROIT, July 24 /PRNewswire/ -- It takes a drop of water nearly 400 years to travel from the headwaters of Lake Superior to the edge of Lake Ontario. Along the way, the water passes by towering cliffs dotted with early Native American pictographs, caribou and moose grazing on the shores, over giant prehistoric sturgeon lurking among thousands of shipwrecks and past nearly 40 million people who live along the more than 10,000 miles of coastline. It is a dramatic journey through some of the...

To: NATIONAL EDITORS Contact: Jeff Skelding, Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition, +1-202-797-6893, jskelding@nwf.org; Cameron Davis, Alliance for the Great Lakes, +1-312-375-2004, cdavis@greatlakes.org; Jordan Lubetkin, Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition, +1-734-887- 7109, lubetkin@nwf.org ANN ARBOR, Mich., July 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --Advocates for the Great Lakes urged Congress to act quickly on the Great Lakes- St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact, a historic...

TOOLIK LAKE, Alaska -- Scientist Anne Hershey paddled a small inflatable raft across an arctic lake, pausing in her stroke to consider how the melting permafrost caused a landslide of mud and sediment spilling down the bank into the water. Since the bank collapsed two years ago, the water has grown cloudy with sediment, providing scientists a natural laboratory for studying how warmer temperatures may play out in ecosystems far and near. Global air and water temperatures are inching up,...