Proposal for an Integrated Lake Michigan Surface Water Quality Tributary Monitoring Network
Introduction and Background
Lake Michigan, the second largest Great Lake by volume with 1,180 cubic miles of water, is the only Great Lake entirely within the United States. Approximately 118 miles wide and 307 miles long, Lake Michigan has more than 1,600 miles of shoreline. Averaging 279 feet in depth, the lake reaches 925 feet at its deepest point. It is the fourth largest freshwater lake in the world in terms of area, and the fifth largest in terms of volume. The drainage basin, approximately twice as large as the 22,300 square mile surface area of the Lake, includes portions of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Because of the large size of the watershed, physical characteristics such as climate, soils and topography vary considerably across the basin. Average annual precipitation in the basin ranges from 28 to 40 inches. Average annual runoff ranges from 8 to 15 inches in the basin. The lake's northern tier is in the colder, less developed upper Great Lakes region which is sparsely populated, except for the Fox River Valley, and is dominated by conifer forests. The climate of the southern areas of the basin is much warmer, the soils are deeper with layers or mixtures of clays, silts, sands, gravels and boulders deposited as glacial drift or as glacial lake and river sediments. These lands are usually fertile and can be readily drained for agriculture. The original deciduous forests have given way to agriculture and sprawling urban development. About 37% of the southern basin is in agriculture, mostly in the St Joseph river basin of Michigan and Indiana.
Lake Michigan’s coast contains about 40% of all US Great Lakes coastal wetlands. There are 411 coastal wetlands covering almost 121,000 acres. In the southern part of the lake many of the wetlands at the mouths of rivers have been eliminated by urbanization. Census data for 1990 indicate a basin population of over 10 million, most located in the densely populated southern portion of the basin which contains the Milwaukee and Chicago metropolitan areas. The predominant development trend is continued low-density sprawl which consumes vast amounts of agricultural lands and open space. Reductions in farmland acreage in some Counties in southern parts of the basin exceeded 15% for the 10 year period ending in 1992. Two of the top twenty areas of the country noted for most productive agriculture land combined with most development pressure are in the southern Lake Michigan basin.
Water quality in basin tributaries varies widely, from nearly pristine in some northern forested areas to seriously contaminated in the heavily populated and industrial southern portion of the basin. The major contributors of point source pollution include paper mills in the northern basin, and steel related industries in the south. Green Bay has one of the most productive Great Lakes fisheries but receives the wastes from the world's largest concentration of pulp and paper mills. Ten Areas of Concern (AOCs), where beneficial uses are impaired, have been identified on Lake Michigan. Remedial Action Plans (RAPs) have been prepared for these areas in order to restore the beneficial uses. Nonpoint sources of pollution include the runoff of soils and farm chemicals from agricultural lands and disharges from storm sewers draining urban impermeable surfaces. These nonpoint sources contribute sediment, nutrients, pesticides, and heavy metals. The large surface area of the lake also makes it vulnerable to direct atmospheric pollutants that fall with rain or snow and as dust on the lake surface. At the lakewide scale, a Lakewide Management Plan (LaMP) has been developed to address restoration of beneficial uses.
Outflows from the Great Lakes are relatively small - water retention time in the lake is estimated at 100 years, causing pollutants that enter the lake to be retained and to become more concentrated with time. Also, pollutants remain in the system due to resuspension (or mixing back into the water) of sediment and then cycle through biological food chains. Toxic contaminants pose a threat not only to aquatic and wildlife species, but to human health as well. Fish consumption advisories have been extablished for 11 speccies, PCBS are the principal contaminants causing the consumption advisories. Beach closings due to biological factors remain an episodic problem and many exotic nusiance species have found a new home in the ecosystem causing problems the extent of which is still being defined.
Lake Michigan supports 43% of all Great Lakes commercial fishing with a value of almost $11 million annually. Additionally, recreational boating and sport fishing is very popular and the southern shore of Lake Michigan had a gain of 1,000 new boat slips per year in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Lake Michigan supplies over 20,000 million cubic feet of water per year for power production (12,000), manufacturing (8500), and municipal use (2,300). Over xxxxxxx people use Lake Michigan as their water source. In 1993, about 400,000 inhabitants of Milwaukee became infected (4,000 hospitalized) by a protozoan parasite (Cryptosporidium)
Problem
The demand for high quality, relevant data concerning the health of various components of the Lake Michigan ecosystem has been escalating rapidly for the past decade or so. The United States has spent billions of dollars and uncounted hours attempting to reverse the effects of cultural eutrophication, toxic chemical pollution, over-fishing, habitat destruction, introduced species, etc. Environmental management agencies are being asked to demonstrate that past programs have been successful and that the success of future or continuing programs will be commensurate with the resources expended. The demand for high quality data, while operating with limited resources, is forcing environmental and natural resource agencies to be more selective and more efficient in the collection and analysis of data.
The most efficient data collection efforts will be those that are cost-effective and relevant to multiple users. Numerous agencies at the Federal and State level are involved in contaminant monitoring of Lake Michigan and its tributaries. An integrated monitoring network for Lake Michigan should be based on land use and other factors that influence water quality gradients and provide information sufficient to characterize Lake Michigan ecosystem health across scales and disciplines. The network should provide information that links sources, with processors and receptors and when linked with retrospective data provide trends information. The key ingredient in developing and implementing such a network lies in the development and cordinated use of a set of chemical, biologic and physical indicators. Various environmental indicator committees have proposed sets of these indicators, but they have not been finalized to date.
Objectives and Scope
Develop and implement a Lake Michigan Surface Water Monitoring Network that addresses the objectives of monitoring currently being funded by Federal, State, and Local agencies. The network should include: 1) chemical, physical, and biological components; 2) address how water quality changes propogate downstream; 3) help to define the sources and sinks of contaminants as well as relevant processes; 4) and be capable of providing reasonable estimates of water quality in unmonitored basins based on land use and other environmental characteristics. The parameters measured should be based on agency objective as well as indicator development efforts ongoing in the basin and should utilize comparable protocols. The resultant data from the monitoring network should be stored in an easily accessible user friendly database that provides a minimum set of metadata elements.
Benefits
The surface water network developed and implemented according to this proposal will help to reduce the costs of current monitoring efforts by ensuring similar data quality and comparability and a reduction in duplication of effort. The development of an integrated monitoring network will also provide a mechanism for developing a coordinated response to issues of mutual interest.
Approach
The approach employed should address: water use and drinking water; important national and regional issues relevant to legislation and government initiatives (305b, 303d, CWAP, UWA, TMDLs, RAPs, LaMP, GLWQI, AFOs, EQIP, etc.), location of gaging stations, and provide appropriate links with ongoing investigations (NAWQA, MICWI, WDNR Priority Watersheds, etc.)
The approach should establish a consistent, easily understood suite of indicators that will objectively represent the state of major ecosystem components and that will guide data collection activities across the Lake Michigan basin. The SOLEC draft indicator list may be used as baseline set of indicators. With a mutual understanding of the indicators to be monitored, government agencies can more efficiently allocate resources to data collection, evaluation and reporting. This system of a core set of indicators will be flexible enough to expand to take into account new emerging issues.
Achieving an understanding on a set of core indicators does not mean that individual programs and jurisdictions can not maintain their own unique indicators. Individual user groups may need to retain certain indicators or other data requirements that are not shared by other groups.
Common databases would provide easier access to relevant supporting data, and the relative strengths of the agencies could be utilized to improve the timeliness and quality of the data collection.
Products
Resources
To implement this proposal resources will be required from a number of sources. In the near term, many of these resources must be supplied voluntarily, with the hope that in the long term efficiency gains from coordination will pay dividends. Possibly funds from EPA 319 grants, the IJC, etc. may be made available to provide travel (and some salary) support. Additionally, the USEPA has provided some grant funding to the Great Lakes Commission for executive secretarial support to the Council.
Currently resources are being supplied for a number of ongoing projects in the basin, a listing that includes some of the ongoing projects and some past projects can be found below (4 States and USGS,WRD only). It is hoped that the funding needed for several of these projects can be reduced due to the coordination effort. It is also hoped that the coordination effort will provide additional impetus for committing available resources to the Lake Michigan Basin. The specifics of how the resource needs will be met will be developed as a part of the proposed study.
Partial list and location of ongoing studies
Western Lake Michigan Drainages NAWQA