Great Lakes Article:

Presidential campaign could be savior of Great Lakes
By Dan Egan, degan@journalsentinel.com
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Published September 8, 2007

Chicago - Perhaps the best hope for finding the billions of dollars experts say it will take to restore and preserve the deep blue waters of the Great Lakes is the fact that they are surrounded by purple states.

With the presidential election less than 14 months away, Great Lakes advocates should capitalize on the fact that five of the eight states bordering the world's largest freshwater system are designated as key battlegrounds, a media consultant told a group of about 250 conservationists, scientists and business leaders that gathered in Chicago this week for the third annual Great Lakes Restoration Conference.

Those states are Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

"In 2008 these states are going to matter. And they're going to matter, big time," said Eric Adelstein, of the Chicago-based consulting firm Adelstein Liston.

Adelstein said advocates for the nearly 2-year-old Great Lakes restoration plan that remains largely unfunded should do their best to make it a campaign issue for presidential hopefuls courting a region that holds more than half of the 270 Electoral College votes it will take to win the election.

He pointed to polling that shows more than 80% of residents in the region see sewage spills, mercury contamination and wetlands destruction as major issues. Even invasive species, a complex problem but a vexing one nonetheless, registers as a major issue for 72% of residents, he said.

"People believe these (lakes) are crown jewels that are important to their lives, and they believe they're threatened," Adelstein said.

But restoring the lakes might also be as much an economic issue as it is an environmental one.

In May 2004, President Bush signed an executive order to create a Great Lakes Interagency Task Force to coordinate and streamline environmental programs for the system of lakes that has historically been managed by a hodgepodge of local, state, federal and tribal interests.

What ultimately emerged from that executive order was the release in late 2005 of a $20 billion restoration plan put together by hundreds of scientists, agency workers, environmentalists, tribal representatives and others convened by former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt.

That plan so far has gotten nowhere in Washington, D.C. But a study released earlier this week by a group of independent economists said restoration of the lakes, now estimated at $26 billion, will lead to $50 billion in long-term economic gains for the region. The benefits would be linked to increases in tourism, property values, fishing and other recreational activities.

Study co-author John Austin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the group gathered in Chicago that restoring the lakes would make the region a more attractive place for businesses to invest, and "jobs are the number one political issue."

"We've got to make sure that every candidate for president who comes through the Great Lakes states takes a position" on Great Lakes restoration, said Peter Wege, president of the Michigan-based Wege Foundation, which co-funded the conference with the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation.

But while polls may indicate that Great Lakes issues resonate with voters, it may not be the case with the candidates themselves.

Organizers of the two-day conference invited representatives from all the major presidential campaigns to send representatives to attend. Only Democratic hopeful Illinois Sen. Barack Obama sent someone to address the group.