Stuart Carlton 0:00
Teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. Welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes. A twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice, ask people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton. I work with Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, and I know a lot about high levels of cringe and low levels of Riz, but I don't know a lot about the Great Lakes, and that is the point of this here show. I'm so happy today to be joined by the one, the only the lake lover herself, Megan. Nunn. Megan, how's your lake

Megan Gunn 0:37
life? My Lake life is non existent right now, but Lake life soon, like this is the time of year where I get to go where I was born, and spend a lot of time by Lake Michigan.

Stuart Carlton 0:48
Lake Michigan this time of year, it's too cold. Do you go in it? I don't have to go

Megan Gunn 0:52
in it. No, but if you there's so much beauty outside of the lake, so just watch the sunset, especially because of like, it's sunsets before my bedtime. Now,

Stuart Carlton 1:03
yes, that's the Indiana thing, right? It's nothing like reading a book at 930 at night outside with a cocktail and no light. All right? Well, anyway, I'm super pumped. So the show this episode was supposed to be our annual season of giving episode, right? That we do as a makeup for the most naval gazing. Ridiculous thing we do each year, which is our lake house of terror. Lake House, yeah, challenge with that is we didn't do the lake house of terror this year, so we have nothing to make up for. So that said, though we still found a very cool non profit, we like to feature non profits around the Great Lakes, and so we found a very cool one to talk to. So we are going to talk to some people from that lake. But first, here's this music.

Thank you for that one. Carolyn. Our guests today are Jill Ryan and Ann Baughman. Jill is the executive director and Ann Baughman the associate director, so higher ranked than I am freshwater future. Jill and Anne Welcome and thank you for joining us on teach me about the Great Lakes.

Jill Ryan 2:20
Thanks for having us. Yeah, great to be here. Okay,

Stuart Carlton 2:23
so let's start big picture, fresh water futures. Y'all are a non profit. I see you're in Petoskey, Michigan, home of the famous stones. What is it that y'all do? Exactly, Jill well.

Jill Ryan 2:33
Fresh water future helps communities around the entire Great Lakes basin to protect their own water resources, everything from the big lakes to inland lakes and streams and groundwater and drinking water.

Megan Gunn 2:45
What does it look like to protect these water resources?

Jill Ryan 2:50
It looks like people really getting involved with their drinking water systems and how those systems are operated and whether they're operating as efficiently and effectively as they could. It also means things like paying attention to what's happening in your backyard, so that if a big proposal is coming in for a large water withdrawal or oil and gas or other kind of drilling or resource extraction, you're paying attention to that and getting engaged to make sure that your voice is heard as those processes move forward. I

Stuart Carlton 3:24
love that. And so is that a lot of policy action and or is it, is it more like working house to house, to help people either adapt in some way or install technologies or or how? What does that look like? Exactly?

Ann Baughman 3:37
Great question. So the way we do it at freshwater futures, we have a few different programs and services that we help communities. One of those is grants. We provide small grants, particularly for groups to do advocacy so really to speak out, make sure our regulations are enforced. Decision makers are educated, making good decisions, hopefully, and those are offered a couple times of the year. Then we also have capacity building, where we help groups be better organizations. We need groups all around the Great Lakes region. We need them to be paying attention. They know their resources better than anyone else. So we need to know what's going on, so we help them to thrive and be good organizations that could be anything from how to become a 501, c3, it might be how do they do fundraising, it might be how to do campaigns. And then we also do get involved in policy as well. So we listen to our community groups. We they, we consider them our partners. So we listen to them, we pay attention, and we try to help out where we have the capacity and the ability to try to make a difference in policy, whether it's local, state or federal level. I think that

Stuart Carlton 4:52
capacity piece is really important. We're doing some work. Well, I'm not, but a colleague of ours, Kara Salazar, is doing a lot of work to try to help communities who. Just especially oftentimes smaller communities, right? They don't have the ability, they don't have the knowledge, they don't have the time to work on this sort of stuff. So what kind of capacity work Do y'all do exactly? Can you give some specific examples?

Ann Baughman 5:10
Yeah, it's really personalized consulting, is what we do. So we, you know, work with our groups. We figure out what their needs are, and then we work with them, one on one, to try to build their skill level or provide them training, or help them to actually do some of the work.

Jill Ryan 5:30
That includes things like actually helping them write a strategic plan for their organization, or maybe help them with a fundraising plan or how to write a campaign plan. So there's there many things that we can help groups with, but it's always tailored to that individual group, and I think that's one of the things that makes fresh water future a bit unique. In that consulting space. We also work with about 2000 groups across the region. So in the eight Great Lakes states in Ontario, we have 8000 2000 groups we're working with. And so we learn a lot as we go. And that's a pretty unique thing too, to be able to learn from that many community efforts. So

Stuart Carlton 6:16
how do you do that at scale? How do you provide personalized advice to 2000 groups, or whatever on a consulting basis, because I assume you don't have 2000 agents out there, or if you do, let's talk about your funding situation and how you how you pull that off, but, but so what is the secret to to providing, you know, as personalized advice as you can on that scale?

Jill Ryan 6:36
Well, we clearly don't work with all 2000 at a time in our consulting work, but we one of the things we do is we often link our funding with our capacity home. So while they have a grant, they might be able to also get help in implementing that that grant. But also, we do have about 12 people across the basin, and we're working with people sometimes in a training event. So that might help 100 groups. A lot of times we do things on webinars, and that might help 20 groups. And then, as we find from that that there are specific, more in depth needs, then we go to the what is this particular group need over a little bit longer period of time, and how do we manage that? So, yeah, we're working with them all at different levels.

Stuart Carlton 7:34
That's interesting. Are there some specific projects you could highlight for our listeners that are kind of key examples of what it is you're trying to do.

Jill Ryan 7:40
I think we've we helped to build something called the Flint community water lab. And so after the city of Flint had such terrible water crisis, one of the things that we heard when we went to see if there was a way we could help was that people were not going to drink the water again. They did not trust the water. And we felt that that was a huge harm to individuals, because not to be able to trust your tap is so harmful to have to use bottled water. So we worked with the community to figure out, how could we help ensure that the community can trust that water? And so through a long period of working with local leaders, a trusted community center and we were able to pull together a pilot and then eventually the lab with local partners, of course, not just us, so that now there's a fully functioning, certified community water lab with Flint residents running the lab. You can show up and watch your your sample be analyzed, and it's all free, okay? All Free to the to the whole community of Flint that I think that's definitely one of our proudest achievements, was really going from thinking of it to implementing it.

Stuart Carlton 9:02
That is amazing. And so now, because I I think about the Flint water all the time, right? Because it got to a crisis mode, but there are probably other places out there, right, that haven't gotten a crisis yet. And so that idea of trust, and how do you trust the water, especially in this area of PFAs, I'm holding up my water bottle here. I feel this timing about four times a day, not because I'm some sort of water health, but because it's the triangle, the virtuous triangle between my office, the water found in the bathroom. And as I tug all this water, I'm like, What exactly am I drinking? Me,

Jill Ryan 9:43
maybe, maybe. Anne, you want to talk a little bit about some of our our LEAD program, and how we help people with that question. Yeah,

Ann Baughman 9:52
exactly so, because lead is such a big issue. You know, freshwater future is pretty involved in the entire grade. Lakes Region, one of the things we've been doing is actually paying attention to the information that comes from regulators about which communities are out of compliance with the lead and copper rule, which means they have found through testing that they have elevated levels of lead. And one of the things we found is communities don't do a very good job of informing and educating and reaching people about that. So we've been using social media to really reach out to targeted populations where they might have an elevated level of lead to make sure people know that that's what the current situation is, and then how they can keep their family safe. So making sure that they know how to flush their water after it's been sitting for six hours, that they know it's a good idea to use a filter, and filters are fairly inexpensive, so to use a filter to make sure they keep their family safe, and also that they always run cold water through that filter. We also have an entire tool kit on our website with additional information that people can access to learn more about how to keep their families safe from lead. So that's just one of the things that we've been doing. You also do

Stuart Carlton 11:13
work on climate is that? Right? And that's kind of one of your areas of specialty. What kind of stuff you're doing in terms of climate resilience?

Ann Baughman 11:19
Yeah, we've been involved in climate resilience for quite a while, and one of our current efforts is really focused on helping communities really address flooding, localized flooding, and coming up with community driven solutions. So in Detroit, we're working with several community groups they're using. Most of them are using an app to document and collect information about where flooding is occurring, and then we can help them map that data and then produce reports that they can share with decision makers to say, look, we've collected this data over the last year. It's flooded in this one location four times. It's causing problems for the residents. It's causing problems on the road. You know, what are you going to do about it? It doesn't mean that we get the solutions real quickly, but we those community groups are really gathering that data and being able to voice their concerns in a way that they can then say, this is what we want as well, we want you to fix this, but we also want some green infrastructure here to make our neighborhood more beautiful and to also make this settings nicer, as well as collecting and treating storm water. So that's an exciting project, and it's it takes a lot of data, though, and a lot of time.

Stuart Carlton 12:39
Yeah, that's really cool. So how do you get people, I think about this a lot with community science, or citizen science, as other people call it, type of things. How do you get people to actually collect the data beyond, you know, the initial rush. Have y'all had any successful examples of that? What are the secrets? Well,

Jill Ryan 12:53
good question. We struggle with that too, right? You know, especially with when you're looking at flooding data, because it changes. You know, Detroit has had major rain events almost every year, but they're not always in the same location. So your your location, and Jefferson Chalmers may have had the big flood in 21 but then you've only had minor ones since then, right? So it is hard to keep those community groups engaged. I think one of the ways we do it, though, is we just develop really meaningful relationships. You know? We really build strong partnerships with our groups, so we listen to them they might want to pivot on certain issues, and we try to support them with that as well. And hopefully we'll come back to the flooding when the next rain event comes. Right?

Megan Gunn 13:43
Yeah, it's amazing. I love I love that. Like when you get the people to become involved and be a part of that, taking the action, they they have more buy in to whatever the solutions could be, because they have been a part of taking, collecting that data and making a change,

Ann Baughman 14:01
and they know what the better solutions are, right? They know where the green infrastructure should go. They know what residents need. Their downspouts disconnected. They know, you know which, where the areas are being flooded the most, and so, you know, we really have to trust the residents. So I have

Stuart Carlton 14:18
a question thinking about this. See, I'll do a ton of my heart first of First of all, before we get here, y'all do a ton of work across the Great Lakes. And I want every visitor right now to go to every listener, excuse me, to go to freshwater future.org O, R, G, and they're in orange brown, in this kind of a University of Texas orange. I want you to click on that donate button and and then I want you to make a donation. We don't charge anything, we don't have advertising, we don't ask much. Just click on a dang link and give it a little donation to help make a real difference in people's lives. But so thinking about the breadth of stuff they all work on, in terms of water threats to people in their water. Water? Do you think you could come up for our listeners with a top three or top five threats that we should be worried about to our water? Is that a doable thing? Each you write one or two down, and then we'll go back and forth. This is what we'll do, and we'll do it. Oh, I got this. Don't worry. I know exactly this is going to go perfectly. And then what we're going to do is we're going to have a I'm going to add, I'm going to say, number five, and we'll have a drum roll, and then you'll say the number and then I'll give, like, a little sound effect, and then we'll, you'll tell me why it's such a big threat, and it, whenever we do this, it works perfectly. It's not at all confusing. Uh, nobody looks like an idiot. Actually, the only person looks like an idiot is me, so it's all fine. All right, so does that work? Sure, the number five threat to people's water in the Great Lakes is

Jill Ryan 15:54
resource extraction.

Stuart Carlton 15:59
Oh, no, there we go. Now tell me why resource extraction. That's not what I would have guessed. So this is so this is interesting,

Jill Ryan 16:03
yeah, so as we have to drill day before metals to make batteries, for example, all of those things have big water implications. You have fill wetlands. You have to do something with the waste brine that comes out of those drilling wells you have to manage basically forever, the toxic waste that comes out after you extract the metals from the rock you're trying to get it from. So those are really big processes that have a big impact on water resources and can really impact drinking water. People don't often connect those two, but because all water is connected, those toxins can flow from groundwater to surface water to rivers. So resource extraction is a really big concern. I

Megan Gunn 16:58
had not thought about that.

Stuart Carlton 16:59
Now they don't drill for oil and stuff like that in the Great Lakes, right? But they do it in this they drill for minerals and aggregate all kind of stuff in the surrounding area, right? Well,

Jill Ryan 17:08
they they drill. They don't drill within the lakes themselves. Um, except Ken, in the US, there is a ban on on drilling in the Great Lakes, but in our Great Lakes states, there is all kinds of drilling, and then there is also our metals are there are a lot of metals in the top tier of the Great Lakes. So the upper part of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota all have a lot of minerals buried. And so those are places that we're very concerned about,

Stuart Carlton 17:43
all right. And the number four threat to people's water in the Great Lakes is

Ann Baughman 17:53
harmful algal blooms.

Stuart Carlton 17:56
These are near and dear to our hearts. Tell us about harmful algal blooms, and if y'all are doing anything to help people

Ann Baughman 18:01
with Well, we are, and you might know more about them than me, but,

Unknown Speaker 18:06
oh, I know we we are

Ann Baughman 18:09
definitely very involved in trying to address the issues with nutrient pollution in Lake Erie as well as all around the Great Lakes. You know, all five great lakes had Harmful Algal Blooms last summer, and so it's time that we start looking at, you know, what do we really need to do to to prevent that nutrient pollution? But Lake Erie in particular, we're really focused. We have a few partners there that we work closely with that really we need to start addressing manure management, it's really that simple. We've invested billions of dollars into farms to help them voluntarily reduce nutrients, and it's not making a difference. It's not working, and the permitting process for large factory farms creates lots of problems, so there's lots of opportunities there. You know, Lake Erie might be the smallest, but it's one of the most important Great Lakes, and it deserves to be clean as well. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 19:14
it's a top five great lake. You can actually hear, if you want to hear a really awkward interview with me and David Rock, the director of the Erie situation, who did a whole film about algal blooms in Lake Erie. You can go to teach me about the Great lakes.com. 74 slash seven four. And the title of that one is, it depends on how you do a one, so I don't know what we're talking about at that point. At that point, all right, Jill, the number three threat to my drinking water in the Great Lakes is

Jill Ryan 19:48
water withdrawals. I

Stuart Carlton 19:50
can't believe we're still doing this. Tell me about water withdrawals. Jill,

Jill Ryan 19:57
so the Great Lakes system is. Is just that it's a system, and it's a balanced system. Great Lakes were created 10,000 years ago by glaciers. They were dug out by the glaciers, and then the melting glaciers filled in those holes with water. And we can't just take out unlimited amounts of water and think that it will be replaced. Only about 1% is replaced by precipitation, snow and rain every year, but also about 1% is lost through the shipping canal, out to the ocean and also through evaporation and uses. So we do have to pay attention to how we use this water, we have to be conservative, even though, when we look out at those amazing, great lakes, it seems like it's limitless, it is not. And so those withdrawals, especially as we become a thirstier nation, with some areas of the country not having adequate water supplies, increasingly, we really have to pay attention to how we're using it and keeping it in its place. One of the things I really like to say about the Great Lakes is that these waters are special because of where they are. Take the components and bust that up into little bottles of water and ship it around the world. You don't have great lakes anymore. And so I really think that you know, keeping this sense of place that we know in the Great Lakes, and keeping this integrity of this water resource is really important. So we have to, we have to look at those water withdrawals. I

Megan Gunn 21:40
like that. You mentioned that it does make a huge difference. I went to a talk at a conference recently, and they were mentioning how they were planning to do water withdrawals, but they would input it back in a certain amount of cycles to have different like tide changes, like the ocean does. And I was like, and they were thinking that it wasn't going to have an impact on the ecosystem. I was sitting in the corner like this is going to have a huge impact. And you all aren't thinking about all the things that it could impact. You're just thinking about extracting the water. And so thank you for bringing that up. Yeah,

Jill Ryan 22:10
that's so true. And right now, one of the big things that water withdrawals are being used for, these ones are being put back, just like you said, but they're often put back warm. So when, when they need water for cooling, they put it through the system. And there is a way to do that with a loop. It's more expensive, so most don't. They just keep taking new water and putting it back in the source water warmer than they took it. And that has huge implications for things like algae, for things like the native species who want to live in that area. It just doesn't, doesn't work. So you're right. It has huge implications for the system, all

Stuart Carlton 22:52
right. And the number two threat toward drinking water the Great Lakes is

Ann Baughman 23:01
toxic chemicals.

Stuart Carlton 23:05
Toxic chemicals. This is a big topic, toxic chemicals. What ones are you thinking about these days? Well, I think

Ann Baughman 23:13
you know, what's on everybody's mind is PFAs, right? You can get away from it. And you know, we've been involved in that issue since before it was an issue. And I think the problem with PFAs, of course, is they're in 1000s of products. We're still making those products. We're still using those products. And so until we stop making them, it, you know, we're not going to make a dent. But we've used them for, you know, 40 years or plus, and so the amount that's already in our system now both in groundwater and surface water, and we know it's in the rain and in precipitation, I think it's just going to be an issue that we're going to have to deal with in the future. We want our drinking water sources to be clean and safe, it's going to probably require some type of filtration. Right now, that filtration is cost prohibitive for most systems to be able to do for every system in the Great Lakes or in this country. To do so, we're going to have to come up with some more innovative solutions to how do we make that affordable so that we can remove these chemicals from our water? But with

Stuart Carlton 24:20
that stuff and micro plastics like, it's got to be filtration, because there's just so much of it, you're not going to suck it all out of the Great Lakes, right? I mean, it's literally called Forever chemicals. And so, yeah,

Jill Ryan 24:31
yeah, that's, it's filtration is going to become more important, or at some sort of treatment at the tap. I think, yeah. I think, you know, we're used to our water systems taking care of all that for us, but we've seen through issues like lead that it can't always be taken care of. The lead isn't coming from the plants, but it is coming from the pipes, and so all of those things have to be taken into consideration. And. We really need to start thinking more forwardly about, how are we going? Where is the best place to be treating the water for our drinking water in different situations? Probably, it's probably not a one size fits all. It's an important one.

Stuart Carlton 25:17
I just realized with these drum rolls, we have O'Reilly saying, woo. We're supposed to do that instead of the instead of the symbol, so I will fix that for this last one. I apologize for having the wrong sound effect, but that's okay. All right. Jill, Ryan, what is the number one threat to my water, my drinking water, or my swimming water, to my water in the Great Lakes. It is

Jill Ryan 25:47
the cost.

Stuart Carlton 25:50
Tell me about the cost. Interesting. I like this left field answer I was expecting. I don't even know what liquid cancer or radiation like the cost. Tell me about the cost.

Jill Ryan 26:01
Well, all of the things we've been talking about, anything that can get into our water supplies, anything in our pipes that are causing us to have to change pipes, any all of these things cost more money, and our federal government used to pay well over 70% of the costs of our drinking water systems now they pay around 7% so all of those costs are being devolved down to the customer, and every time we have to install one of those new pricey filtration systems or new pipes, for everybody that has a lead pipe, it's a big cost. And what we know is there are many people in our country on a for unable to afford their water. When we say afford, what we mean is there's an EPA standard and the United Nations standard, and we like to think that for those people, 200% of the federal poverty level, or below, they should not pay more than 3% of their income for drinking water, waste water and storm water. Unfortunately, at some places, including places like Detroit, some people are paying 25% of their income monthly. It is gracious, or their water bill, yeah, it's it's really atrocious. And there have Recent studies show that right now, up to a third of families in the United States cannot actually afford their water by this standard, and so when what happens then is we lose access to water. Utilities will shut water off after you can't pay your bill. They also will put that bill on your tax bill, and if you can't pay the tax bill, they'll take your home so this is a huge problem for families living in not just the Great Lakes region but the whole country. The issues that we have with our source water and getting it to our homes are making water unaffordable, and we have to find new solutions so that everyone has access to to tap water, no exceptions, and so I think that's one of our biggest issues. Because if we really care about water and we want it to be cared for into the future, we have to ensure that people can access it and access it in a way that doesn't create other hardships in our household.

Ann Baughman 28:42
And the Great Lakes are a source of drinking water for 40, over 40 million people, and

Stuart Carlton 28:47
that's that's before Arizona comes for the water. Anyway. Different episode. You can listen to that one too. This is actually really interesting, and I'm so glad that you shared with Well, I'm so exist in a world in which you've shared with us the top five threats to our water but now, now I'm not going to sleep tonight. And

Megan Gunn 29:04
if you want to learn more about these issues that they've talked about, go back to their website, and they have a tab for issues, and you can click on each of these areas and learn more about them, and

Stuart Carlton 29:15
click on the University of Texas burnt orange

Megan Gunn 29:19
and donate some don't need some money.

Stuart Carlton 29:21
Don't take it. I mean, the cost is, the cost is real. A lot of our listeners are students and things like that. So students stay in school and study hard, so eventually they'll have the money to click on that yellow button or that orange button. Red one yells, it's not that hard. But that's actually not why we invited you here on teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason that we invited you on teach me about the Great Lakes is to ask two questions, the first of which is this, if you could have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch? Anne, which would you choose?

Ann Baughman 29:51
Well, I have to say a donut for breakfast.

Stuart Carlton 29:56
Donut picker, how about that? Alright, so I'm going to go to petesky, Michigan, where we. Good? Well, I'm gonna get a good donut. Can

Ann Baughman 30:02
I cheat and pick another town? So I have to say that the best donut you can find in the Great Lakes region would be in Jackson, Michigan, which is a little far from a great lake because it's in the middle of the state. That's a great lakes Pete. That's fine, but it's still in the Great Lakes State. And you'd go to Hinckley bakery and you would get a chocolate crescent, yeah, yeah. They are delicious. They have been voted as one of the best donuts in the state, or the best donut in the state, but you should go Jill.

Stuart Carlton 30:34
Are you a sandwich or donut person?

Jill Ryan 30:35
Well, I'm really going to throw a wrench in things, because I can't have gluten. Oh so I would pick tacos. Okay, that is my favorite lunch. Is

Stuart Carlton 30:47
there? It is all right. Where am I going to get a guitar in Michigan or wherever, um,

Jill Ryan 30:52
Jose's restaurant in Petoskey without hands down? Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Carlton 31:00
Write it down. Love a good taco. I spent a lot of fun years in Texas, and so got into tacos. In fact, a friend of mine is in Texas every now and again, undergoing some medical stuff, and I've been sending them all of my Texas taco record, nice Jose's taco,

Megan Gunn 31:20
and they are still open. So

Unknown Speaker 31:22
hey,

Jill Ryan 31:24
that is good to hear, because I would be devastated if Jose closed.

Megan Gunn 31:31
Yes. So Anne, back to you, is there a special place in the Great Lakes that you'd like to share with our audience, and what makes it special?

Ann Baughman 31:42
Well, it's hard to pick just one, right? There's, there's just so many special places. But because I live in northern Michigan, there is a really spectacular beach just south of wilderness State Park in North Western Emmet County called Sturgeon Bay. Part of it is part of wilderness State Park, and it's just a really beautiful beach, piping plovers nest there, and it's just a great spot to go later in the summer for a swim, once it's warmed up a little bit. Sounds

Megan Gunn 32:15
like somewhere to add to our list of places that we will visit one day.

Speaker 1 32:19
Do what about

Megan Gunn 32:23
you, Jill, is there any special place in the Great Lakes that you'd like to share and what makes it special?

Jill Ryan 32:29
Yeah, like Anne, it's really difficult to pick. But I just moved back to my hometown, which is Muskegon, Michigan, and that is right on Lake Michigan, and has a natural port of Muskegon Lake attached. And I just think the beaches and the water resources here are really unparalleled. This is we have the largest public beach, the longest public beach on the lake, on Lake Michigan. And it's just amazing to go there and have access to these huge white sand beaches. Many people think you only see on the ocean, but they're amazing here. I

Megan Gunn 33:11
found this beautiful both of the locations they found it amazing. I agree

Stuart Carlton 33:14
we should go to them both. In fact, what are we doing here?

Megan Gunn 33:18
Being silly. Fair

Stuart Carlton 33:20
enough. Jill, Ryan is the executive director and Anne Bauman, the associate director at freshwater future, go visit them at freshwater future.org and click on the button to see what great work they do, and then click on the button and give them money do more of that work. It's critical stuff, right? Our water is necessary for life. We need water more than we need food, and it should be free, and it should be free, or at least affordable, and yes, I'm not sure we can advocate for radical policy change on the show as humble public servants. But this is true, a general good is the water anyway. ANNA Jill, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes. Thank

Jill Ryan 33:57
you so much. We really enjoyed it

Stuart Carlton 34:14
cool. Well, that's a neat nonprofit. I'm so glad you identified them. You're

Megan Gunn 34:18
welcome. I'm glad that I figured out where I saw them before, because they do great work, and they should be highlighted to our listeners. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 34:25
no, it's amazing to see all the important work that people are doing, and nonprofits fill an important role, because the government has a lot to do, and without making comments on what they should or should not be doing, there's, you know, there's only so many. We need people from everywhere. We need people from government. We need nonprofits. We need businesses. We need just, just folks. Everybody

Megan Gunn 34:44
plays a role. Everybody plays a role. Teach me about the Great Lakes. Is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant. We encourage you to check out the cool stuff we do at IIC grant.org, and. At IOI and Sea Grant on Facebook, Instagram and other social medias, or

Stuart Carlton 35:04
just don't do social medias. Our senior producer is the full dog and teach me about the Great Lakes. Is produced by Megan and Rene miles. Ethan shitty is our associate producer and our fixer. There's a lot that's broken these days. We also get a lot of help from multi Thank you. Our super fun podcast. Artwork is by Joel Davenport. The show is edited once she receives the files by Syndra. Syndra, her friends call her Sandy.

Megan Gunn 35:38
If you have a question or comment about the show, please email us and teach me about the Great lakes@gmail.com or leave a message on our hotline at 765-496-4474, thanks for listening and keep grading those links you.

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Creators and Guests

Stuart Carlton
Host
Stuart Carlton
Stuart Carlton is the Assistant Director of the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant College Program. He manages the day-to-day operation of IISG and works with the IISG Director and staff to coordinate all aspects of the program. He is also a Research Assistant Professor and head of the Coastal and Great Lakes Social Science Lab in the Department of Forestry & Natural Resources at Purdue, where he and his students research the relationship between knowledge, values, trust, and behavior in complex or controversial environmental systems.