From today's New York Times:

December 4, 2004
Officials Lay Groundwork for Cleanup of Great Lakes
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 - Dozens of officials from the United States and
Canada signed a declaration on Friday that outlines a comprehensive
plan to clean up the Great Lakes and the major waterways that feed
them.

As one of President Bush's major environmental initiatives, the Great
Lakes Regional Collaboration combines federal, state, local and tribal
resources to broaden the continuing restoration efforts that have
lacked such coordination.

"This is the largest formal collaboration of its kind focused on the
environmental and economic health of the Great Lakes Basin," said
Michael O. Leavitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator,
who presided over the signing ceremony in Chicago. "Today, we are
committing our collective organizations to protecting and improving
this national treasure."

With cabinet officials, governors, mayors and lawmakers from Great
Lakes States in attendance, the signing ceremony represented at least
a symbolic success for the administration, which is generally viewed
by environmental groups as having been a poor steward of the nation's
natural resources.

The new collaboration has won early praise from environmental groups,
large and small, however, for seeking input from an array of sources
beyond a tight circle of policy makers in Washington.

In response to President Bush's executive order in May calling for a
"regional collaboration of national significance" to clean up the
Great Lakes, E.P.A. officials leading the effort have included tribal
leaders, small-town mayors and local environmental groups in addition
to elected officials from the eight states that border the five Great
Lakes.

"This is a good idea. It's the right process at the right time," said
Andy Buchsbaum, director of the Great Lakes office of the National
Wildlife Federation.

"Dozens of other processes have been started by subsets of the
participants here," Mr. Buchsbaum said, "but we've never wound up with
everybody pulling in the same direction. This is designed in the right
way to do that."

Will Cwikiel, policy director of the Tip of the Mitt Watershed
Council, a small environmental group in northern Michigan, said: "I'm
cautiously optimistic. The last thing anyone wants to see happen is a
collapse, just grips and grins, pomp and circumstance, without
anything really happening on the ground."

The collaboration sets forth a framework for establishing committees,
lines of communication and overarching goals leading to cleaner water
- the Great Lakes contain about 20 percent of the world's fresh water
supply and serve as a source of drinking water for more than 30
million people in the United States and Canada.

Specific targets include pollution controls for agricultural and
industrial runoff into the lakes; new efforts to restore and protect
wetlands, forests and indigenous species; and the elimination of
invasive species, like the Illinois carp, which Gov. Rod R.
Blagojevich of Illinois called "a terrorist of the Great Lakes
ecosystem."

The framework also proposes deadlines, with a preliminary plan due in
six months and a final strategy to put the plan fully in motion due
six months after that. Mr. Leavitt describe the program as "not a
redoing, but a redoubling" of existing efforts.

What the framework does not provide, however, is a financing scheme,
asserting that those who signed the declaration acknowledge that
participation "is subject to funding availability."

That raised concerns for some participants.

Representative Rahm Emanuel, a Chicago Democrat who has introduced
legislation that would provide $4 billion over five years for
essentially the same goals as those in the framework, said the new
effort would fail without adequate money. The bill, a bipartisan
effort sponsored by more than 100 House members, and a companion
Senate bill are languishing in committee.

In an interview, Mr. Emanuel criticized Mr. Bush as promising more
money for Great Lakes cleanup projects, only to back off in his budget
requests. Mr. Emanuel also said that the framework's goals and
partners were virtually the same as those in an effort proposed in
2002 by Mr. Leavitt's predecessor, Christie Whitman.

"If there are resources, then great," Mr. Emanuel said of the latest
effort. "But if this is in lieu of resources, it's a cruel hoax and
leaves us years behind."

Neither Mr. Leavitt nor any of the 46 officials who spoke at the
signing ceremony discussed financing. That was deliberate, Mr. Leavitt
told reporters after the event. He said, "No one knows how much money
is currently being spent" on Great Lakes cleanup efforts.

Rather, he said, the intent of the framework is to expand on programs
of the last 30 years, build coalitions and rank goals so that whatever
money becomes available is spent appropriately.

"The type of collaboration we are launching is messy, messy and hard,"
Mr. Leavitt said. "But it's absolutely necessary."

-------------------------------------------

Now, if we can only get RI and MA off their respective butts and start
on making Narragansett Bay and in particular Greenwich Bay cleaner,
we'll be all set. :)

Later,

Tom