Efforts will be made to coordinate quarterly meetings with local activities. E. When possible, Forum meetings will coincide with Great Lakes meetings such as the State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference and the International Joint Commission Biennial Forum. The Lake Michigan Forum is sponsoring a pollution prevention effort aimed at achieving commitments for pollution prevention for Lake Michigan critical pollutants from the primary metals industrial sector. This project is expected to conclude in 1999. Through the LaMP process, phosphorous and atrazine were identified as causes and sources of stress to the Lake Michigan system.
Sediment also transports many additional chemicals into the system.
The initiative will involve coordinating with the federal, state, local, tribes, and agricultural interests in selected project sites in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Indiana, and coordinating among efforts that are already up and running. This project will support the goals of the LaMP and be consistent with the joint U.S. EPA and USDA strategy to address agriculture pollution problems in a watershed context. Biological pollution is the introduction of non-indigenous aquatic nuisance species by ballast water exchange of transoceanic freighters entering the Great Lakes and subsequently Lake Michigan, thereby negatively impacting our aquatic ecosystems and the natural order of our native resources. In the last decade some of our native species have been permanently extirpated. For example, no less than eight of our native nine Daphnaea have been eliminated from Lake Michigan because of the Spiny Water Fly.