BY ZACH MORTICE
The Lake Michigan coast, on the South Side of Chicago. Photo by Zach Mortice.
In 2014 alone, 22 billion gallons of untreated sewage and stormwater made its way into the Great Lakes, according to the Great Lakes Commission. On its way there, this stormwater degraded the rivers and streams it flowed through and caused flooding in areas where hard surfaces terminally halt its infiltration.
To deal with this regional calamity, the Great Lakes Commission and Lawrence Technological University have launched a new initiative to disseminate technology and techniques that can mitigate untreated stormwater pollution, the Great Lakes Stormwater Technology Transfer Collaborative.
This partnership between the Great Lakes Commission, a Michigan-based nonprofit that works to protect the ecology and economic health of the region in the United States and Canada, and Lawrence Tech?s Great Lakes Stormwater Management Institute will leverage the commission?s widespread industry contacts with the school?s technical expertise. The Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation provided $120,000 to fund the effort, which launched in November. The collaborative is an effort to bring together the companies that develop stormwater technology with the municipalities, nonprofits, and conservation groups that want access to it; it’s a ?matchmaking? effort, says Victoria Pebbles, the program director at the Great Lakes Commission.
?There?s a lot of technology out there that can...