ABOUT JOEL BRAMMEIER:
As Alliance for the Great Lakes President and CEO, Joel Brammeier oversees all aspects of the organization. He leads a team of professionals across the Great Lakes and Washington DC, along with a base of more than 10,000 volunteers around the region dedicated to protecting clean water and building a sustainable future for the Great Lakes.
Joel is a leading voice on water protection and invasive species prevention across the Great Lakes region. He has testified before Congress and advises decision makers on critical Great Lakes issues.
Joel has overseen the longest period of sustained growth in the organization’s history since he became President and CEO in 2010, doubling the size of its full-time staff and increasing assets to more than $10 million.
Joel believes that the abundance of fresh water makes the Great Lakes region like nowhere else in the world, and that everyone in the region should benefit from our invaluable freshwater assets. He is committing to building a Great Lakes movement that fully reflects the people of our region, and can ensure the lakes are clean and safe for everyone who depends on them.
ABOUT REBEKAH WARREN:
Rebekah previously served in the Michigan Legislature for 14 years, representing Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and broader Washtenaw County in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. In the House, she chaired the Great Lakes and Environment Committee and helped lead bipartisan efforts to pass landmark water protection legislation implementing the Great Lakes Compact—widely recognized as one of the most significant freshwater protection laws. In the Senate, she served as Vice Chair and Ranking Member of the Natural Resources, Environment and Great Lakes Committee and worked extensively on issues including water quality, invasive species, renewable energy, land use and recycling policy.
ABOUT LISA WOZNIAK:
Lisa’s career spans over two decades of environmental and conservation advocacy in the political arena. She is a nationally-recognized expert in nonprofit growth and management and a leader in Great Lakes protections. Lisa is a three-time graduate from the University of Michigan, with a bachelor's degree and two ensuing master's degrees in social work and Education.
Lisa serves a co-host and content partner in 89.1 WEMU's '1st Friday Focus on the Environment.'
RESOURCES:
Michigan League of Conservation Voters
Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI)
Brandon Road Interbasin Project
TRANSCRIPTION:
Rebekah Warren: This is 89.1 WEMU, and welcome to a special fundraising edition of October's First Friday Focus on the Environment. Our Great Lakes and connected inland waterways are under enormous pressure from increased development, invasive species, plastic pollution, agricultural runoff and an array of toxins and much more. We thought it would be a good idea to take a deep dive into the subject. My partner on First Fridays, as always, is Lisa Wozniak, who serves as President and CEO of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. And, Lisa, you found just the right person for our conversation today, didn't you?
Lisa Wozniak: Yes, indeed! I'm very excited to say that Joel Brammeier, President and CEO of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, said "yes" to our invitation. So, welcome to the show, Joel!
Joel Brammeier: Thank you! Glad to be here!
Lisa Wozniak: For the people of Michigan, Joel, the Great Lakes is such a constant presence that it can sometimes be easy to take them for granted. And so, as you look across the region today, among all of these threats that Rebekah outlined in the introduction facing the Great lakes, where do you see the greatest opportunities to make progress?
Joel Brammeier: Well, I'll start just with the basics, and that's the Great Lakes protections come because people in the region, like you mentioned, recognize how incredible they are and how valuable they are to all of us. And this is a great opportunity, right now in this moment of chaos and confusion, to kind of step back and reset and recognize that this water is just an incredible asset for our region, and it's an incredible natural resource that we all depend on. Now, having said all that, I think there are some incredible opportunities in front of us, too, and that's to sort of get real about our expectations of our federal government and its engagement with the Great Lakes at a time when some of the federal protections and commitments to science are eroding. And there's a lot of questions in the region right now about some of the larger water users that are coming into the Great Lakes. Of course, data centers is top of mind, but there are lots of other ways that people are proposing new ways to use Great Lakes water, and I think that's something we've got to be really vigilant about. And it's engaging people across the region like no issue I've seen in a while.
Rebekah Warren: Joel, one of the biggest issues for the Great Lakes advocates right now is reauthorizing the Great Lake Restoration Initiative. Those of us who've known about this project for a long time, we call it GLRI. But for listeners who may not have heard that acronym or don't exactly know what the program does, what is the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, and why is re-authorization so important?
Joel Brammeier: Quick history lesson that people who've lived here for a long time will know: the Great Lakes were, and still are in some ways, an industrial center of North America, really. Manufacturing, steel, oil refining, all that sort of thing, that left a big mark on the Great Lakes in the 20th century, and a lot of messes that needed to be cleaned up. The GLRI is a federal program that has put about $5 billion of cleanup funding and restoration funding into the region over the last 15 years. And it is up for reauthorization by Congress this year, which is really important because it's Congress saying every five years, the Great Lakes are critical. We're going to keep investing in these camps. We're going to keep investing in making this region better. And we see it as a national priority, not just Michigan, not just the Great lakes region, but something that rises to that level of national importance. So we're hoping that by the end of the year before this Congress adjourns, we get that reauthorization and set the region up for that next five years of dealing with some of these top Great Lakes priorities.
Lisa Wozniak: Joel, another major issue you've been working on is the Brandon Road Interbasin Project in Illinois. And this was intended to prevent Asian carp from reaching the Great Lakes. There was significant concern this summer when construction was halted, but that work has now resumed. So, could you bring us up to speed? Where does this project stand today?
Joel Brammeier: Boy! The carp issue in Brandon Road, it's like getting to the end of a really long book and thinking that you're done and then realizing that there's another chapter still to go. This is a project that...the carp issue had come to the attention of the Great Lakes back in the 2000s. There's been this effort to build this really incredible custom technology barrier system southwest of Chicago, where construction started at the beginning of 2025. And there had been fits and starts to this project all along the way, but it really was created out of a consensus that these fish are a massive threat to the Great Lakes. We've experienced the impacts of invasive species before. We don't want to deal with this again. And we all thought the project was on track. Recently, at the end of July, the White House ordered construction on that project to stop at Brandon Roadblock and Dam with no real explanation. And while that was really disappointing and needlessly wasting time and money, what we saw was this outcry from the region. So, everybody from individual citizens up to members of Congress and everything in between, going to the White House and basically saying, "What gives? What is going on here? Why would you possibly have a reason to stop this project that everybody in the Great Lakes has agreed is critical?" So, six weeks later, again with no explanation, the project was restarted, and it's back on track in the sense that construction is moving forward. But we really can't afford these kinds of shenanigans that delay the project and potentially put the Great Lakes at risk.
Rebekah Warren: WEMU's First Friday Focus on the Environment continues with Joel Brammeier, President and CEO of the Alliance for the Great Lakes. I'm your host, Rebekah Warren, and my First Friday co-host is President and CEO of Michigan League of Conservation Voters, Lisa Wozniak. If you value this kind of environmental programming, please visit our website at WEMU.org and donate today. Joel, beyond the Great Lakes themselves, there is the infrastructure that delivers drinking water and handles waste and stormwater in our communities. How large is the water infrastructure currently facing Great Lakes states like Michigan?
Joel Brammeier: We've got a sort of a massive debt to pay down here in the Great Lakes. We have water challenges that basically affect human health, that affect property and well-being, like flooding, sewage overflows, drinking water impairments, things that make it unsafe to use our water systems. And when we're surrounded by 20% of the world's fresh surface water, that's just unacceptable. And so the good news, again, in the last five years or so, the Great Lakes region has really been investing a combination of federal, state and local money into fixing those problems. But we still have billions of dollars of challenges in front of us. And so this looks like just a simple fact of, "Can I safely drink the water coming out of the tap when I have an extreme storm?" which, unfortunately, we're seeing more of with the impacts of climate change on the Great Lakes. "Is my street going to flood? Am I going to see a sewage overflow in my basement that puts my property at risk? Is my health at risk?" And so, the need there is really to remind our federal partners that we need continued investment in the funds that go to those kinds of projects and also that we're seeing that paired with state and local funds. And we've got to manage our funds in a way that acknowledges that reality and brings some equity into that conversation across the Great Lakes region.
Lisa Wozniak: So, Joel, as those stressors on our water are happening, we're also seeing, as you noted earlier, a growing interest in data centers across the Great Lakes region. What safeguards do you think that states like Michigan need to put in place before communities take on these major new water and energy demands?
Joel Brammeier: About three years ago at the Alliance for the Great Lakes, we started asking around about this question of large-scale water use. And it turned out that it was sort of right under the surface. Communities were very concerned about some of these data centers and some other kinds of industrial users coming in looking for large quantities of water. In the data center issue, it really came down to cooling, so these are massive chip facilities that generate a lot of heat. And a lot of them were using what we call once-through cooling, and that's when you send water in and it evaporates and it's gone. So we call that a consumptive use of water. And it just appeared that states were really unprepared for this uptick in consumptive use, which had been going down for a long time. Fast forward to today. What's happened is that a lot of these facilities have started putting in higher-tech cooling systems that use a lot less water. And they've been trumpeting that fact saying, "Hey, our facility doesn't use that much!" Well, the flip side of that is that their energy consumption, the energy demand, from those kinds of cooling systems jumps up dramatically. And so now, what the states are really facing is not so much the issue of that direct water use. It's the energy that's required to cool these systems. And that issue is not going away anytime soon. So what's really incumbent on states like Michigan is, one, get transparency about what the facilities need for cooling right there at the site, but also, you've got to understand where that energy is going to come from and how much water is being consumed when that energy has been generated, right? Because energy isn't free. It costs the rate payer, but it also costs us water to be produced unless it's renewable water-neutral energy. And so, transparency, making sure communities are in a position to go to these projects with both eyes open and hear about deals done behind closed doors, and in the case of our water resources, just get really, again, transparent about how much water--total water--is going to be required to build these kinds of facilities and make sure communities have the ability to choose if that's something that they want or don't want.
Rebekah Warren: Joel, as we are nearing the end of our time together, what should listeners here in Southeast Michigan who care about clean water and the future of our Great Lakes be watching for in the months ahead? And how can they make their voices heard?
Joel Brammeier: I work for a non-partisan organization, but what I can say is really important is to ask about the clean water issues you care about when you're talking to people running for elected office. That's critically important. I think a little bit longer-term, what's going to be important is that, after our turnover of many of our governors here in the Great Lakes region, sort of educating our state leaders about the importance of the Great Lakes. Never underestimate how important that is.
Rebekah Warren: Joel, thank you so much for the time and for offering us your insights into these complex and involving issues.
Joel Brammeier: Glad to be with you!
Rebekah Warren: That's Joel Brammeier. He is the President and CEO of the Alliance for the Great Lakes. I'm Rebekah Warren, and my partner in First Friday Focus on the Environment is Lisa Wozniak, CEO and President of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. For more information on our conversation today and to access the First Friday archive, visit our website at WEMU.org. I'm Rebekah Warren, and this is your community NPR station, 89.1 WEMU Ypsilanti.
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