Boatnerd Discussion Forum

Rob wrote:We'd be naive to think that only innocuous, all-natural ingredients make up the contaminants in runoff from a major city(or even a small municipality for that matter). In the case of Milwaukee it's an established fact that their antiquated municipal sewers mix storm and sanitary flows in not-so-major precipitation events. And that combined flow of untreated, under treated or just old plain raw sewage flows into Lake Michigan.

The following links to a recent Huffington Post article on Great Lakes algal blooms due to non-point-source runoff from overuse of chemicals on both farms and lawns and, of course, due to various human and animal pollutants(read poop):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/1 ... 10902.html

Rob wrote:Isn't that why we send ships there to be scrapped, their almost utter lack of regulation? Money seemingly trumps every other consideration. It's extremely dangerous, dirty work. Sooner or later it will come back to bite us all in our collective posterior.

Check out the recent discussion of Milwaukee's and Chicago's huge amount of polluted runoff into Lake Michigan. I'm an advocate for ALL uses of our waterways, including swimming, which I'm very hesitant to do in Lake Michigan, as our cottage sits almost directly across the lake from Milwaukee. You should see the foamy gunk I witnessed on the beach last week.

Maybe we could get aerial pictures of major cities along the Great Lakes after major precipitation events. I know last year's storm in Duluth changed the color of the western end of Lake Superior.