Lake Michigan off M-22 | Susan J. Demas
Members of the U.S. House from throughout the Great Lakes basin on Thursday reintroduced legislation to extend a key program helping to protect 22% of the world’s freshwater.
The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI), established in 2010, provides funding to states, tribes and local communities, for on the ground efforts to address the largest concerns facing the Great Lakes, This includes ensuring fish are safe to eat, water is safe for recreation, areas of concern are delisted, sources of drinking water are safe, the elimination of harmful algal blooms, controlling and preventing the introduction of invasive species and the protection and restoration of native habitats.
According to the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a nonprofit working to preserve the Great Lakes, the program has provided funding to more than 7,563 individual projects throughout the region to date, totaling $3.7 billion.
With Congress failing to pass a bipartisan effort to extend the program from 2027 through 2031 at $500 million per year before the end of 2024, U.S. Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor), Bill Huizenga (R-Zeeland), David Joyce (R-Ohio) and Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), have reintroduced the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Act with the support of several other lawmakers from the Great Lakes region.
Alongside Dingell and Huizenga, the bill was cosponsored by several other members of Michigan’s congressional delegation, with Reps. John Moolenaar (R-Caledonia), John James (R-Shelby Twp.), Tim Walberg (R-Tipton), Haley Stevens (D-Birmingham), Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit), Jack Bergman (R-Watersmeet), Hillary Scholten (D-Grand Rapids) and Shri Thanedar (D-Detroit) also backing the bill.
Don Jodrey, the Alliance for the Great Lakes’ director of federal government relations thanked the bill’s sponsors in a statement, noting that the program supports tens of millions of Americans living in the Great Lakes Region.
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