Great Lakes Health Tops Illinois Environmental Concerns: Report

CHICAGO — The continued health of the Great Lakes isn't a topic on the Nov. 6 midterm election ballot in Illinois, but winners will have to confront the problem. While environmental concerns haven't become the voting issues they are in states such as California and Arizona, Illinois candidates will be asked for answers when it comes to addressing those areas.

“This is the most important election of our lifetime,” Bill Holland, the New Mexico policy director for the League of Conservation voters, told Popular Science, which put together an inventory of the top scientific, environmental and technological challenges by state.

Governors are on the ballot in 36 of 50 states, including Illinois. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 seats in the 100-member Senate also will be decided. Popular Science said candidates are actively campaigning on some issues, like opioids and fossil fuels, but silent on others. Regardless of the outcomes of the individual races, Congress and state legislatures will have to confront them, magazine said.

After a half-century struggle, Illinois had finally begun winning its battle against pollution in the Great Lakes. In fact, the health of the lakes was finally improving thanks to a federally sponsored cleanup, according to Popular Science.

But Great Lakes advocates fear that work could be eroded if clean water regulations are undone. The magazine points to a June executive order by President Donald Trump that stuck down a 2010 order by President Barack Obama.

The original order had helped safeguard and rejuvenate the Great Lakes ecosystems. But under the new edict, gas and oil development would be allowed and could create "the potential for spills that could foul drinking water and harm aquatic life," the magazine writes.

Interestingly, Peter Roskam and Sean Casten, the 6th District congressional candidates on the November ballot, have both talked about the need for protecting the health of the Great Lakes. But Casten, a clean-energy entrepreneurr, has said Roskam, the Republican incumbent, hasn't done enough in that area.

Water quality is a big issue across the country. States in the Chesapeake Bay watershed have been asked by the EPA to submit specific nitrogen-reduction plans. In Iowa, farm runoff contributes to the massive algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico — called the “dead zone” — that chokes off oxygen to marine life, threatening that region’s seafood industry. Farm pollution is also a big issue in Arkansas, which has suspended permits for new concentrated animal feeding operations amid fears of water pollution due to the state’s density of CAFOs.

The water crisis in Flint, where 100,000 residents were exposed to dangerous levels of lead after a switch in the city’s water source, is a big issue in the Michigan governor’s race. And in Kansas, where an investigation by the Wichita Eagle newspaper found that hundreds of residents of the Sunflower State drank and bathed in water tainted with dry-cleaning chemicals, voters are pressuring elected officials to rescind legislation that directed regulators to stop looking for contamination and “make every reasonable effort” to keep sites off the EPA Superfund list.

Oil and gas drilling threaten the caribou of Alaska and Delaware’s tourism industry. Oklahoma has seen a whopping 13,000 percent increase in earthquakes over the past decade, an uptick that corresponds with expansion of oil and gas exploration, especially fracking. Pennsylvania, which sits on the richest natural-gas deposits east of the Mississippi River, is also trying to figure out what to do about fracking.

Infrastructure, access to the internet and climate change — especially in coastal states threatened by rising sea levels — are issues in many states. And in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, residents are steeling themselves for the next storm as they struggle to recover from the pummeling they took during the 2017 hurricane season. The local Climate Change Council says the island is unprepared for intensifying storms, droughts and what could be a 2-foot rise in the sea level.

YOUR TURN: What science and environmental issues should be top priorities for Illinois politicians? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments section.

Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline (Photo via Shutterstock)