Latest Lake Stories

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,...

By John Dodge, The Olympian, Olympia, Wash. Jul. 16--When Capital Lakefair festivalgoers head for the shores of Capitol Lake today, they'll be greeted by carnival barkers, music, the mixed aromas of cooking food -- and large colonies of pond weed coated with algae in the lake's north basin. The rooted native aquatic weeds covered with mats of green algae encompass sizeable stretches of the north basin next to Heritage Park, home to many of the Lakefair activities. The lake weeds and...

By Paul Westmoore Seventeen teachers found out on Monday the most efficient way to catch fish in the Niagara River is to shock them to sleep with an electrical charge. The teachers, many from Western New York, are spending this week in Lake Ontario aboard the Peter Wise Lake Guardian, a 180-foot floating science lab owned by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The vessel docked for part of Monday at the U.S. Coast Guard Station at the mouth of the Niagara River to give teachers a...

It's great news that an agreement has been struck to restore the clarity of the largest natural lake in the state. Formed by glaciers and sustained by natural sources of fresh water, Grand Lake is one of Colorado's unique natural wonders, and has been a scenic attraction for decades. Considering that it required a year of public hearings and meetings to reach what seems to us to be an obvious conclusion, however, it is understandable that locals in the quaint town that lines the lake and...

By Lynn Arave Deseret News -- Pro: The famous Spiral Jetty, a man-made art formation in the north arm of the lake, remains readily visible. There are also fewer islands in the Great Salt Lake, as more are connected to the mainland. The islands are also larger and there is more exposed shore all along the lake. -- Pro: The shoreline companies that extract minerals from the lake will find them easier to take out on the one hand, since they are more concentrated. However, at the same time, the...

By Lynn Arave Deseret News The Great Salt Lake is not living up to its name this year, despite a wetter-than-normal winter and a cool spring. The lake is shrinking again and could approach the same near- record low levels seen in 2004. Given this spring's large snowmelt, the Utah Geological Survey's Wallace Gwynn was "anticipating the lake to rise." The Great Salt Lake is already a foot lower than it was a year ago. Gwynn said he was shocked when he saw the July 1 lake level at Saltair of...