Overview
- The Trump administration’s FY 2026 budget proposal calls for a $1.7 billion reduction (≈27%) in NOAA’s budget and directs the complete elimination of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) along with all climate, weather, and ocean labs. In Michigan, this jeopardizes the existence of Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) in Ann Arbor (and its Muskegon field station), the only federal freshwater research labs serving the Great Lakes.
- GLERL has lost at least 35% of its 48-member staff (about 16 people), including most probationary employees and its entire communications unit. Now unable to publish or share real-time freshwater safety data, the remaining scientists operate under a $1 credit-card purchase limit, with all supply requests requiring headquarters approval. Nicole Rice, the sole communications specialist with institutional knowledge, was part of the layoffs.
Partnered with GLERL, the University of Michigan’s Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR) has frozen its Summer Fellows Program and halted field placements for approximately 22 graduate students. These positions were central to training early-career limnologists who collected data on HABs, invasive species, and ice climatology. Without NOAA support, faculty report a rapid shift of talent toward coastal programs or private consultancies—undermining the region’s scientific pipeline.
NOAA’s internal pass-back memo identifies both Ann Arbor and Muskegon GLERL sites for potential closure, which would shutter over 30 buoys, 15 water-quality sensors, and multiple real-time modeling systems that power HAB alerts, wave forecasts, and navigation tools. These data streams serve some 30 million residents, support $3 trillion in regional GDP, and are critical for municipal water safety, storm planning, and maritime operations.
During spring 2025, GLERL failed to deploy more than 80% of its real-time monitoring network in Lake Erie’s western basin—the number of active buoys dropped from 17 to just 3. Consequently, water utilities in Monroe, Toledo, and southeast Michigan lacked timely microcystin and turbidity data, delaying intake closures and safety alerts. Local operators reported 11 rogue wave or sediment incidents that would have been forecast by NOAA models, highlighting the operational impact of the data blackout.
- GLERL’s 45-year lake-temperature dataset underpins local infrastructure models: Ann Arbor’s climate-adjusted storm-sewer design standards, Washtenaw County health forecasts for recreational beach water quality, and Huron River Watershed Council dredging schedules based on winter ice predictions. Each of these tools now relies on aging or missing data—with no NOAA staff to maintain models, deploy sensors, or provide calibration. This erodes public health protections and planning capacity for 360,000 Washtenaw County residents.
Transcription
David Fair: This is 89.1 WEMU, and we are all witness to the fact the climate is changing. The average temperature on the planet continues to go up. We have more frequent severe weather events, often with catastrophic results. I'm David Fair, and welcome to this week's edition of Issues of the Environment. Already enacted and further proposed federal cuts would take away another $1.7 billion from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and that could result in closure of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab at the University of Michigan, further hampering our ability to predict severe weather events and to adapt to climate change. Our guest this morning is Nicole Rice. She was among the more than 100 NOAA employees in the Midwest fired earlier this year. She served as communication specialist at the lab in Ann Arbor and has some insight into impacts we've already seen and the impacts that may yet to come. Thank you so much for making time for us today, Nicole! I appreciate it!
Nicole Rice: Thank you so much, David! Happy to be here!
David Fair: How much has staffing been reduced at the research lab in Ann Arbor so far?
Nicole Rice: So, about 35% of GLERL's federal workforce has been reduced either through the illegal firings of probationary employees, of early retirement offers, or of just regular retirement that cannot be fulfilled due to a federal hiring freeze.
David Fair: Are there also those leaving because they don't want to work under the current circumstances?
Nicole Rice: I think some of those early retirements may have been the case. I have some conversations with colleagues. It's just not the work conditions that folks have wanted to work under, but we will say about those colleagues that they devoted their entire careers and their entire lives to the benefit of the Great Lakes. And not a single person that I spoke with was happy to leave the organization. Everyone left was very sad having to leave their colleagues and the work.
David Fair: Well, let's talk about the work. I think to understand the environmental impact of the cuts, we need to understand what work is being done. What do you see as the role of the Great Lakes Research Lab at the U-M?
Nicole Rice: So, the folks at the Great Lakes Research Lab and our partners at the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research through the University of Michigan work diligently to research topics within the Great Lake that impact human health, impact property, so things like harmful algal blooms that are near water treatment plants or understanding wind and wave interactions that impact coastal communities and, also, understanding lake effect snow and ice forecasting, all of these things that really impact not only the economy of the Great Lakes, but coastal communities and all of the residents around the Great Lakes as well. The research portion of what NOAA does is imperative to all of those operational forecasts that you would see through entities like the National Weather Service or the National Ocean Service.
David Fair: So, we're at that time of year where we always see major algal blooms in Lake Erie. Have these cuts made it more difficult for the predictions that come with those blooms or the study of the outcomes of those blooms?
Nicole Rice: Absolutely! For example, we have a harmful algal bloom monitoring program in Saginaw Bay that has been reduced from bi-weekly sampling to about monthly sampling. If you know anything about harmful algal blooms, they move day-to-day. So not being able to sample for toxicity near water treatment plants in Saginaw Bay is going to prevent the capability of forecasting and allowing those water treatment plant managers to take care of the water or change their operations, depending on where the bloom is and the toxicity of the bloom. In Lake Erie, we have had a program in 2017 where their environmental sample processors had been placed near both the Monroe and the Toledo water intake, and those were real-time--near real-time--forecast of toxicity within the bloom. So, instead of actual humans having to go out and take those measurements, bring them back to the lab and, maybe24 hours later, have that information, these robots were able to do that within a two-hour time span. Now, we don't have those environmental sample processors out in the lakes this year, due to program cutting, due to funding and due to actual staffing. We no longer had the capability to get those out into the water.
David Fair: WEMU's Issues of the Environment conversation with Nicole Rice continues. Nicole was among those fired from the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab in Ann Arbor when the federal administration started making cuts to staffing and programs. In looking ahead, Nicole, with the federal administration's proposal to cut 27% of the overall budget for NOAA in the 2026 fiscal year and completely eliminate the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, how dramatically will the efforts to improve climate adaptation and mitigation be affected?
Nicole Rice: Oh, I don't even know that it can be stated how dramatic those cuts will affect climate adaptation in the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Research Lab looks ahead at the implications of the lakes versus changing in climate patterns, changing in tele-connection patterns, day-to-day weather, without understanding how that interacts with the lakes, which the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab is the only entity looking at those things. We will not be able to predict what will happen with water levels in the future. We will not be able to predict where best we build industry, where best we build residential, how to understand our shipping industry that relies heavily on understanding water levels for dredging operations and things of that nature. So, just those things alone that I've mentioned are just off the top of my head, but if you really look at the future of the Great Lakes, not having the data that this laboratory collects by getting buoys out every summer, by physically having human interaction with the lakes, if we lose any of that data, all of the prediction capabilities of what's going to happen to climate in the future essentially go away.
David Fair: You know, everything is connected. The EPA is another part of the government structure in the crosshairs of the federal administration. There have been cuts there and more to come. Additionally, the EPA recently recommended rolling back various emission standards, including those for power plants and vehicles. It's not just a climate and environmental issue--it's a public health issue. What goes in the air ends up in the water and on the land. How will that impact the function of NOAA moving forward with less resources?
Nicole Rice: Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned the EPA office. We have American Federation of Government Employee Unions both in the NOAA office, the EPA Office, and then other federal offices throughout the Great Lakes. And we work very closely with them when we look ahead at what the impacts of these cuts are going to be. I've spoken with colleagues over at the EPA, and we've actually worked together to kind of gather some information. And when you're looking at things like, let's just take one example, farmer on offset contributes to harmful algal blooms in the Great Lakes. If we don't have the ability to understand what the chemicals are that go into the farms, what the emissions are that come from farm equipment or trucking equipment, things like that, we're not going to then be able to understand what's going into the lakes, what the impact is going to be on our fisheries, on our drinking water. You know, it's just at the trickle down effect. So, we've been working closely with our colleagues that those entities to kind of better understand what we're really looking at it if these divisions of the federal government go away.
David Fair: Our Issues of the Environment conversation with communication specialist Nicole Rice continues on WEMU. One of the values that most of us benefit from on a daily basis is weather forecast and predictions. We recently saw in Texas failure to have enough eyes on the patterns and readings can result in inadequate warnings that save lives. In Washtenaw and Lenawee counties, WEMU is the emergency alert station. We are dependent on timely and accurate watches and warnings. How much of that is at risk here at home?
Nicole Rice: Well, it's interesting. So, the National Weather Service has had cuts as it's been in the news for the last six months. But we get a lot of bipartisan help when it comes to fighting for those operational aspects of NOAA, right, the National Weather Service and making those operational forecasts. But I think what folks don't understand is in order to have those operational forecasts, you have to have the research that goes into making them as accurate as possible. So, like I mentioned earlier, understanding how the lakes interact with these weather systems is critical to understanding how coastal areas are going to flood. One of the projects that the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab had been working on, through the bipartisan infrastructure law, was to take the information from rivers and tributaries, connect it with the lakes to better understand those potentials for flooding more inland, and not just simply looking at how the lakes are going interact with additional precipitation and things like that So, when you take a look at these cuts, not just looking at the operational cuts or those moment-to-moment forecasts, but looking at how those forecasts are made and when you work backward from that, you realize that if we just stop with the research today, how are we going to update those forecasts? And how, as the climate changes, are we gonna be able to bring in impacts like extreme weather, extreme warm winters, and how ice impacts lake effect snow, things like that? So. I think the public would best understand this by taking a look at the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research website and their blog and understanding what that research goes into.
David Fair: So, let's talk about that as our final question. The science and truth: it's become subjective, depending on its service to political expediency. Do you see a path back to public acceptance at least as we understand it today: science as fact?
Nicole Rice: I do. But what I'll say is one of the major cuts to NOAA was NOAA communications. So there were communications groups all across NOAA who, for various reasons, retirement, realignment, things like that, had all been put into new positions, much like myself. And so, when you cut those NOAA communicators, when you've cut the people who are interacting with the public who are telling the stories about what science is and what we're looking toward in the future, you cut that touch point between understanding the work that's done in the science field and understanding how it impacts communities. Let me give you a quick example. Back in June, on June 21st, there was a meteotsunami up in Lake Superior. Now, a meteotunami is caused by a weather system that goes across the lakes, and the atmospheric pressure creates essentially a large wave. Some of the numbers that are coming out of the research that NOAA GLERL did shows that the impact of this wave, the dispersion of the water from the time the wave went through, pushed through, moved the water and then came back as a seiche, that's what we call that, was actually a larger displacement than what they're seeing in places like San Francisco or along the California coast today. However, San Francisco and the California coast had a tsunami warning. There's no such thing in the Great Lakes. So, the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab is working on things like meteotsunami forecasting--putting out buoys, understanding so that we get warnings, things like that. That doesn't exist anywhere in large lake systems around the world. So, GLERL is really leading the way in those types of forecasts and warnings.
David Fair: Through the conversation, I have a sense that the public perception of our talk is that it paints a rather gloomy picture. Those who support the federal directives, the spending changes, and the cuts that are being made might try and paint you as a disgruntled, fired employee with an ax to grind and a forum to complain--a forum, by the way, which I've provided. What do you say to those folks?
Nicole Rice: Well, I'll say that, for the last six months, literally, since the day after I was let go from my position where I stood in front of some of our representatives and told these stories that some of our employees aren't able to tell because they're federal employees, most folks who I know who have been let go from their federal positions have done nothing but advocate for the work that they were doing. This isn't about me. Now, of course, I need my job. I need work. I have a lot of things that came up from the loss of my job. But what we've all really focused on is coming together and advocating for the purpose and the reason why we were doing the jobs we were doing. So, for me, for instance, communicating science, telling these stories, telling why this really impacts everyone's day-to-day life--that's what I've really tried to focus on. So, for the naysayers who say, "Oh, go find another job. Go do this. Go do that," I understand that sentiment. But I like to talk to those folks and talk through why this work is important. Whether it's me doing it or someone else doing it, that's really the most important thing that myself and lots of other folks who have lost their jobs are working on right now.
David Fair: Well, thank you for making time for me today and sharing your perspective, Nicole! I appreciate it!
Nicole Rice: Thank you so much for highlighting this important issue!
David Fair: That is Nicole Rice, freelance government communications expert and a former employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab in Ann Arbor. For more information, stop by our website at WEMU.org. We'll get you linked up everywhere you need to go. Issues of the Environment is produced with support from the office of the Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner, and you hear it every Wednesday. I'm David Fair, and this is your community NPR station, 89.1 WEMU-FM Ypsilanti. Celebrating sixty years of broadcasting from the campus of Eastern Michigan University!
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