Panel estimates cleanup costs for Great Lakes at up to $20b
MILWAUKEE -- A year after President Bush ordered the federal government to take a fresh look at cleaning up the ailing Great Lakes, a wide-ranging group of federal, state, tribal, and local officials as well as residents from the eight Great Lakes states has come up with a rough cost for the job -- $18 billion to $20 billion.
The group, convened by the Environmental Protection Agency, says that is the amount needed in the next 15 years or so to plug the sewage spills that plague the lakes, scoop up the widespread pockets of toxic sediments, and slam shut the door to invasive species, among other measures.
The price dwarfs the approximately $8 billion now being spent on the high-profile restoration of the Florida Everglades, but EPA officials did not want to dwell on that issue yesterday.
At a news conference called to tout the new plan, EPA staff said they did not know what the cost range of the cleanup would be, even thought it was in the draft plan they had just presented to the public.
''This is about far more than just developing a price tag," said Benjamin Grumbles, assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Water. He said it was also about accelerating coordination and efficiencies of existing programs.
But some of the conservationists who helped craft the document during the past seven months said the issue is almost entirely about money.
''If it's not funded," said Andy Buchsbaum of the National Wildlife Federation, ''it's just a plan."
That plan is the result of presidential order in May 2004 to establish the ''Great Lakes Interagency Task Force" to develop a streamlined cleanup program for the lakes. That came after Congress released a report indicating that $1.7 billion had been spent on dozens of state and federal restoration programs between 1992 and 2001, but there was little coordination among those efforts. The US waters of the five Great Lakes are jointly managed by Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. The federal government also plays a role in their management.
''We have a lot of musicians," former EPA administrator Michael Leavitt said on the day the task force was created. ''What we need is harmony."
Leavitt and Bush were criticized at the time by some who perceived the creation of the task force as a campaign ploy without committing any new money toward Great Lakes protection.
Highlights in the document include:
$13.7 billion from the federal, state, and local governments to fund wastewater treatment improvements.
About $2 billion to clean up the lakes' most toxic sites by 2020.
An increase of between $177 million and $289 million annually for the next five years for Great Lakes habitat and species protection.
Passage of federal legislation that would better protect the lakes from an onslaught of freighter-borne invasive species.
