Lakes effort gets a leader
President Obama’s appointment fills a promise, can help region
The Great Lakes now have a czar. Credit President Obama for maintaining a campaign promise to help this region’s ecosystem by putting someone in charge of coordinating American efforts to give it a better future.
The Obama administration has appointed Alliance for the Great Lakes CEO Cameron Davis as a special adviser to the Environmental Protection Agency. Davis, a former cochairman of the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition, will help oversee the federal program for restoration of the Great Lakes, which is expected to cost more than $20 billion.
During the campaign, Obama promised to create that position and spend $5 billion over a decade toward implementing the restoration plan. This latest appointment is a significant step. Having someone in charge of various programs should focus both the funding and the effort, and could help not only in the United States but in Canada, where responsibility for the Great Lakes doesn’t fall to any one minister.
Davis has many years of advocacy with the Alliance for the Great Lakes, in addition to a legal background. With respect to efforts to protect the Great Lakes, legislatively and otherwise, he is acknowledged as at the top of his class. His challenge will be in knowing where the Obama administration needs to engage Canada if both countries are to protect the health of the lakes most efficiently. Protection cannot occur on only one side of the basin.
The new adviser will face daunting tasks and bear heavy responsibilities, but overall this is a positive move that should benefit those dependent on the Great Lakes for everything from drinking water to economic and tourism dollars.
The previous fractured state of affairs was difficult, at best. The EPA’s Region 5 has responsibility for the Great Lakes, but there is an array of intergovernmental pacts and agreements—for example, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, which has no underlying treaty and therefore, basically leaves it up to each nation to design its own plan for protecting the Great Lakes.
A few years ago, the United States launched the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration as an effort to pull together entities, whether it was the EPA or municipal-level governments and agencies or the Council of Great Lakes Governors. That put in motion efforts to centralize needed work, but there was no one person in charge.
Davis’ appointment is a move toward that goal, and complements the new $475 million Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which the administration and Congress still need to advance.
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