Pelican Numbers Increasing in Southeastern Michigan

Brian Sullivan - Cornell

In recent years, increasing numbers of pelicans have been sighted in southeast Michigan at the edge of Lake Erie. Initially they were thought to be migrating to and from summer breeding grounds far to the west. Lately, however, as many as 60 of the birds have been seen throughout the summer at Michigan’s Pointe Mouillee State Game Area.

The American White Pelican is a large bird with a nine foot wingspan. In recent decades, their population has been increasing. They feed by simultaneously swimming and skimming the water with their large lower beak pouches, often in coordination with one another, to catch fish.

Most of these pelicans winter along the U.S and Mexican Gulf coast or on the southern California coast and along the Baja Peninsula. In the spring, most migrate to nesting areas near or on Canadian inland waters in the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, some in the Dakotas in the U.S.

Pointe Mouillee State Game Area is just south of the convergence of the Detroit River and Huron River at the western end of Lake Erie

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/05/26/pelican-sightings-rise-michigan-lake-erie/637363002/

Moroun Family Seeks EPA Superfund Status for Abandoned McLouth Steel Site on Detroit River

McClouth Steel, Trenton, 1950s-Reddit

McLouth Steel expanded its Detroit operations to a 188 acre site in Trenton, Michigan, south of Detroit on the Detroit River, in 1948. McLouth became one of the nation’s largest steel producers.

In 1996, the plant was sold. The Trenton facility remained idle after several failed attempts to restart it. The site has been and continues to be one of the most polluted on the Detroit River.


Wayne County foreclosed on the property in April 2017 for unpaid taxes. Past due city and county taxes exceeding $4 million are expected to be the Morouns’ purchase price.

A Michigan Department Environmental Quality (MDEQ) report said “contaminated soils at the site consist of slag fill material containing metals, arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, selenium and zinc, as well as documented spills with contaminated soils containing PCBs.”

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/2017/05/18/mclouth-steel/101815090/

A spokesman for the Morouns’ real estate development company, Crown Enterprises, is quoted in Crain’s as saying, "This is going to be a Superfund site that's not going to sit and languish." (Easy for him to say. The property has been sitting, languishing and polluting for the better part of 70 years.)

It’s reported that Crown Enterprises and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have a tentative agreement to add the old McLouth property to the National Priorities (Superfund) List. The Wayne County Land Bank has extended the time for negotiations three times.

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20180531/news/662351/epa-morouns-reach-tentative-deal-to-clean-up-mclouth-steel-plant-site

Managing Invasive Phragmites in Coastal Wetlands of Lake St. Clair

Natural coastal wetlands have a profound, positive influence on the water quality in the Great Lakes region. Coastal wetlands are often sacrificed for commercial, recreational and residential development. Along with shoreline development, pollution, turbid storm runoff and the introduction of invasive species greatly diminish our freshwater heritage.

Wetlands slow storm runoff, filter pollutants, suppress waves that would erode the shoreline, and serve as food, shelter and incubator sources for many native fish, mammal, bird and insect species.

Of the numerous invasive species decimating our waters and wetlands in recent decades, phragmites (frag-MY-teze), a tall, virulent reed, is one of the most insidious.

Phragmites can spread by root or seed, expanding in concentrations so dense that it crowds out all other plants, while simultaneously reducing the nutrition, shelter and nursery functions of diverse, native wetland plants.

In a remarkable display of stewardship, a sportsmen’s organization, Ducks Unlimited, aided by federal, state and local partners, organized and implemented a project to control phragmites, including 1200 acres of wetlands in the Anchor Bay portion of Lake St. Clair.

https://www.greatlakesphragmites.net/files/Kafcas_Lake-St.-Clair-status-update.pdf