After over two decades, the Lake Superior Binational Forum funding has been eliminated. Lissa Radke with the Forum has been a familiar face at Lake Superior events and a familiar voice on community radio.
Funding from the popular Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) used to support outreach programs will end when the Forum’s current grant expires in early April 2015.
The Forum has been an active outreach and diverse stakeholder group that’s been working basin wide since its founding in 1991. The Binational Forum has been the only basin-wide outreach diverse stakeholder group for the world’s largest freshwater lake.
One of the Forum’s outreach programs in the last 11 years has been recognition of individuals and organizations who had demonstrated an outstanding commitment to environmental stewardship through leadership. In 2013, WTIP Community Radio was the recipient of the Environmental Stewardship Awards Program in the U.S. for organizations.
Another Cook County tie is the person who handcrafted the awards, Gail Anderson of Grand Marais. In 2014, the Forum presented awards made by Anderson, which highlighted the basin’s unusual geology. Anderson’s handmade beach stone lamps consist of stones from the Minnesota North Shore assembled in one-of-a-kind formations.
The Forum is fortunate to have been supported by USEPA funding for almost 24 years and for over 20 years through Environment Canada. But the Forum is deeply discouraged by the sudden lack of federal support for lake-by-lake outreach campaigns that encouraged public input into how the Great Lakes are managed and informed lake users what they can do to protect the land and waters they care about.
While the average annual GLRI budget has been about $275 million, the Lake Superior Binational Forum had a budget under $100,000 per year. All five Great Lakes Forums cost a total of about $350,000 per year.
GLRI funds are allocated through congressional budgets and are used to clean up toxic hot spots called “Areas of Concern” in the Great Lakes, as well as pay for restorations of impaired areas to return them to more natural ecosystems. The GLRI initiative has brought $1.6 billion dollars to Great Lakes work since 2010, which is the most robust investment in Great Lakes work for many decades.
The Flute Reed River Partnership in Hovland received $540,603 for restoration projects in 2009. Also receiving GLRI funding in 2010 was Cook County Soil & Water Conservation District (SWCD), which receives $687,034 for the projects on the Poplar River.
At this point USEPA has offered no plans for how states and tribes will do this outreach work: USEPA informed the Forum that no additional federal funds to conduct outreach or public engagement programs will be allocated to states and tribes through GLRI.
The Forum is exploring other options to continue its outreach work and is seeking funding from individual donations, foundations, memberships, and other means to cover staff and successful outreach programs such as Lake Superior Day, an annual environmental stewardship awards program, an electronic newsletter, weekly radio program, open public meetings, webinars, and other projects.
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