Great Lakes Tour: Macomb

by: jcherry

Wed Jul 30, 2008 at 13:37:43 PM EDT

The Mt. Clemens Water Treatment Plant also hosts one of the region's real time monitoring stations.  It is the most sophisticated regional monitoring system in the world and is capable of measuring the level of 28 specific chemicals every 15 minutes.  Just over a dozen stations stretch from Port Huron on Lake Huron along both the St. Clair River and Lake and all the way south to Wyandotte on the Detroit River.  The Real Time Monitoring Program provides early detection of drinking water contamination from chemical spills or other polluting events.  For the three million residents of southeast Michigan that depend on this water course for their drinking water, the system is critical to their public health.

Yesterday, I presented Macomb County with a check from the State of Michigan for $250,000.  The Macomb County Department of Public Health operates the system at an annual cost of one million dollars.  This grant will contribute to the region's efforts to fund the system over the next year.  Board Chairman Bill Crouchman and Commissioner Dana Peterson were there to receive the check on behalf of Macomb County.  Mayor Dempsey of Mt. Clemens, State Senator Dennis Olshove and Ken DeBeaussaert, Director of the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes, were present as well.

Thirty-two million American citizens get their daily drinking water from the Great Lakes.  They depend on healthy lakes to insure healthy lives.  Yet the Great Lakes are a drinking water source that is always threatened by other competing users.  Fortunately, the residents of southeastern Michigan are blessed to have a real time monitoring system to protect them from such events.  Just as importantly, this multi-governmental cooperative effort also serves to protect the ecosystem of the Lakes.