In the budget blueprint announced by the White House last week, President Barack Obama proposes $475 million to begin a Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. The money would be spent by the EPA on a wide range of issues including invasive species, industrial and agricultural runoff and contaminated sediments in rivers and lakes.
 

During the campaign, Obama pledged $5 billion for the project, but even that was only a down payment for a larger $20 billion restoration plan that was developed by the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration in 2005. That plan, ironically, was requested by the Bush administration, which then didn’t bother to fund most of the recommended projects.

The budget also includes $3.9 billion to help state and local governments upgrade their sewage and drinking water systems, about $1.4 billion of which would go to Great Lakes states. Upgrading those systems is absolutely vital to improving the quality of the Great Lakes because combined systems, those in which wastewater and stormwater are held in the same system, frequently overflow after major rain storms, causing the release of millions of gallons of untreated sewage into rivers and streams throughout this state and the other Great Lakes states.