Krista Grimm was awarded the 2014 Art Palleon Lake Michigan Advocacy Award at the LWVLMR annual meeting in Traverse City, Michigan, on October 4. The award was inaugurated in 2013 in honor of longtime member and Lake Michigan advocate Art Palleon.
President Henrietta Saunders presented Grimm with a lovely photograph of a winter scene from Lake Michigan's eastern shore for her work on the Stormwater from the Ground Up education project. The picture was taken by Mary Lee Orr, who won the Palleon award in 2013. In accepting the award, Grimm said, "This is especially meaningful because it has Art's name on it."
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As we've been on the road, promoting the use of green infrastructure for all of its virtues, including its ability to naturally clean stormwater, we've heard plenty of stories. This one comes from Jean & Doug Cheever, of the League of Women Voters of Dubuque, IA. They shared, Our street is a major arterial that is salted and plowed frequently in winter. The strip between the sidewalk and street faces southwest. This "hell strip" gets hot during summer afternoons and, in winter, is regularly exposed to salt and repeated freezing and thawing. The sod installed after construction quickly became weedy and patchy and required more work than the rest of our lawn. We finally gave up and replaced grass with suggested salt-, drought-, and ice-resistant plants. It turned out that the City only allowed grass in parkway plantings. After some research, the Cheevers found a St. Paul, Minnesota ordinance that encouraged other street plantings as long as they were less than 3 feet tall and did not include noxious weeds or marijuana. Armed with their case and the ordinance, they appealed to their government officials. Success! The City changed the policy! Thanks, Cheevers, for helping to beautify America and working towards cleaner water! The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers accepted public comments on its Great Lakes-Mississippi River Interbasin Study (GLMRIS) Report through the month of March. LWV Illinois, LWV Wisconsin and LWV Michigan each submitted letters supporting hydrologic separation to prevent the transfer of invasive species between the Mississippi River watershed and the Lake Michigan watershed. USACE analyzed the expected effectiveness of eight different scenarios that might be used to control the spread of aquatic nuisance species. The analysis is based on the 13 species, listed in the chart at right, that are considered the most risky. The two plans that include permanent barriers between the watersheds are the only ones that are effective against all species, according to the government's analysis. The Leagues' actions were based on their respective Great Lakes Ecosystem positions. |
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