Environment committee  Thank you very much. I'm very pleased to be invited to speak. My name is Jan Ciborowski. I'm a professor in the department of biological sciences at the university. I've been there since 1984. I'm an aquatic ecologist interested in understanding the relationship between environ

Environment committee  Thank you. Shoreline development, episodically low water levels, as Mr. Sweetnam has described, and most especially the threats of invasive species are the really major threats. The prospect of Asian carp entering the Great Lakes through the Chicago channel and elsewhere is per

Environment committee  I didn't refer to them specifically. The environmental estrogens can be byproducts of things like PCBs, but they also come in through personal care products. They've been documented to have influences at the site where sewage treatment plants may release their materials, but ther

Environment committee  Perfluoric?

Environment committee  I'm not that familiar with it.

Environment committee  I'm not familiar with that.

Environment committee  It depends on what part of the lake you're looking at, because we have a shallow western base—

Environment committee  I'll be happy to respond to that. That's receiving an incredible amount of attention, especially in Ohio where the Maumee's been charged with a lot of the hazardous algal blooms. There's intense interest by the farm community to undertake voluntary best management practices to

Environment committee  Okay. The western basin is a case in point, which is perhaps the best study of the Great Lakes because it's been subject to pollution for the longest time. When conditions are good, the water mixes, there's enough oxygen there, and the mayflies come out as fish flies and do very

Environment committee  They recovered in 1992. That's what got me my start there. There wasn't supposed to be any there, and they had recovered very well. They're missing from the eastern part near Leamington. That's the one part of the lake where they haven't returned. But the populations are doing be

Environment committee  One of the problems we have is that we have surprisingly little information. This is a point I wasn't able to make, but despite all the efforts, all the attempts, the funding for doing the basic research, as Mr. Sweetnam said, just doesn't seem to be there. If you have only so ma

Environment committee  Yes, I agree with that too. The timeframes are very short for setting goals, but there's very little in terms of actually implementing them, as we've said.

Environment committee  I am to some extent. Yes, we're helping to sample in some of the areas. One of the biggest challenges in understanding the condition of the Great Lakes is that over time funding available for monitoring and conducting research has declined. We know more about the conditions in La

Environment committee  That's absolutely correct. Lake Erie is the poster child because we have the most information, the most scientists, and therefore the best understanding of the relationships. That can certainly be applied to the different Great Lakes. Because we almost have three different lakes

Environment committee  That is true, and I'm actually on the task group that's charged with estimating that based on the best available science. Presently, the guidelines that have been proposed for Lake Erie have been 11,000 metric tonnes per year. When we have a normal year in terms of rainfall the a