The Great Lakes Basin spans more than 750 miles from east to west and, as shown in figure 1, encompasses nearly all of Michigan, and parts of Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ontario, Canada. The U.S. shoreline along the five Great Lakes— Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—is approximately 4,530 miles long, which is more than 2,000 miles longer than the U.S. coastline on the Atlantic Ocean. Numerous stresses threaten the health of the lakes themselves and the adjacent land within the Great Lakes Basin. For example, Asian carp threaten commercial and recreational fisheries in the Great Lakes because they tend to outcompete native fish for resources and modify habitat. In addition, despite progress in reducing the amount of phosphorus in the lakes achieved through mitigation techniques implemented in the 1970s, harmful algal blooms are once again threatening the Great Lakes Basin. The United States has taken several steps to restore the health of the Great Lakes ecosystem during the last four decades. Examples are as follows: In 1972, the United States and Canada signed the first binational Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement with the goal of restoring and maintaining the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Great Lakes Basin. The parties signed another Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in 1978 that was amended in 1983, 1987, and in 2012. The 1987 amendment resulted in the formal identification of specific areas of concern, which were defined as geographic areas where a change in the chemical, physical, or biological integrity of the area is sufficient to cause restrictions on fish and wildlife or drinking water consumption, or the loss of fish and wildlife habitat, among other conditions, or impair the area’s ability to support aquatic life. The 2012 amendment contains provisions for addressing the nearshore environment, aquatic invasive species, habitat degradation, and the effects of climate change, among other things. In 2002, the Great Lakes Legacy Act authorized EPA to, among other things, carry out sediment remediation projects and to conduct sediment contamination remediation research in areas of concern in the Great Lakes. In 2004, the Task Force agencies collaborated with Great Lakes governors, mayors, tribes, and nongovernmental organizations in an effort referred to as the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration, which led to the development in 2005 of the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Strategy to Restore and Protect the Great Lakes. More than 1,500 individuals participated in this effort. A 2007 Brookings Institution report estimated that the $26 billion dollar investment necessary to implement this strategy would have resulted in $30 to $50 billion in short-term benefits to the regional economy and at least $50 billion in the long term. H. R. Rep. No. 111-316, at 110-11 (2009). adaptive management framework for the GLRI and noted that EPA should consider potential impacts of climate change on restoration. In March 2013, the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality announced that the administration is committing to another 5-year GLRI Action Plan, for fiscal years 2015 to 2019. In May 2013, EPA and the Task Force agencies began conducting public meetings and webinars to obtain comments on how the Action Plan could be refined to increase the effectiveness of GLRI investments during the next phase of the Action Plan. The Task Force agencies use the Action Plan to guide implementation of the GLRI. They also use an interagency process to identify and transfer funds to GLRI work, and to enter into agreements among themselves and with nonfederal stakeholders to identify and implement GLRI projects, or they do the work themselves. The Task Force agencies use the Action Plan to guide implementation of the GLRI. The Action Plan is organized into five focus areas that, according to the Task Force agencies, encompass the most significant environmental problems in the Great Lakes: (1) toxic substances and areas of concern; (2) invasive species; (3) nearshore health and nonpoint source pollution; (4) habitat and wildlife protection and restoration; and (5) accountability, education, monitoring, evaluation, communication, and partnerships. Table 1 describes each focus area. Each focus area includes a description of its stresses and several long- term goals to address them. For example, one long-term goal in the invasive species focus area is to eliminate the introduction of new invasive species to the Great Lakes Basin. In addition, each focus area includes a number of objectives to be completed within the 5-year period covered by the Action Plan. For example, in the habitat and wildlife protection and restoration focus area, one objective is to assess 100 percent of U.S. coastal wetlands in the Great Lakes Basin by 2014. The focus areas also include measures of progress—28 in total—each of which has annual targets for fiscal years 2010 to 2014 that are designed to ensure that efforts are on track to meet the long-term goals. Some of the measures address environmental conditions. For example, one measure for the habitat and wildlife protection and restoration focus area addresses the number of fish passage barriers that are to be removed or bypassed annually for the period of time covered by the Action Plan. The annual targets for the measure are the removal or bypassing of 100 barriers in 2010, 150 in 2011, 250 in 2012, 350 in 2013, and 450 barriers in 2014. The last part of each focus area is the principal actions, broad statements of the most significant activities that EPA and its federal partners conclude need to be done in order to achieve the goals, objectives, and targets in the Action Plan. For example, a principal action for the invasive species focus area is to promote the development and use of new control technologies, including biological control methods, that will significantly reduce the cost or increase the effectiveness of invasive species control measures. See appendix VI for a complete list of the Action Plan long-term goals, objectives, and measures of progress. The Task Force agencies identify the GLRI projects they plan to implement through an interagency process. EPA and the other Task Force agencies then enter into interagency agreements that describe the scope of the GLRI work that is to be undertaken and the amount of GLRI funds EPA will transfer to the Task Force agency doing that work. The Task Force agencies and nonfederal stakeholders have started more than 1,450 GLRI projects since the program began. GLRI projects can range in size from 0.25 acres for a fish spawning project to 10 million acres for a project to update habitat and wetland maps to identify sensitive and restorable wetlands across the basin. These projects may take place in one location or across multiple states within the Great Lakes Basin. GLRI projects have also ranged in cost from $3,000 to protect nesting piping plovers to $60.5 million to address contaminated sediment in multiple areas of concern.complete and, as a result, many projects funded in fiscal years 2010 to 2012 are still under way. For example, approximately 64 percent of the fiscal year 2010 to 2012 projects reported in GLAS were at least half completed as of May 2013. Tables 2 and 3 show the number of projects Many GLRI projects take several years to funded by Task Force agency and by focus area as of May 2013, respectively. Although we did not break down GLRI funding per project in detail, some Task Force agency officials told us that they use a small percentage of that funding for administrative tasks. For example, officials from one Task Force agency told us that they used 5 percent of GLRI funds for one agency project for overhead and indirect costs. In this case, the agency performs laboratory and monitoring work that the nonfederal stakeholders that implement the project do not have the capacity to do. As shown in figures 2 and 3, most GLRI funding has been utilized by EPA, the Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and focus area one—toxic substances and areas of concern—has received more GLRI funding than the other focus areas in each of the past 4 years. EPA and the Task Force agencies have 2 years to obligate GLRI funds, which means that the amounts allocated in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 are not likely to change, but fiscal year 2012 and 2013 amounts may change as the period for obligating those funds comes to an end. In addition, while nearly all of the GLRI appropriations from fiscal years 2010 to 2012 have been obligated, not all of those obligations have been outlayed because many GLRI projects take several years to complete.Table 4 shows the extent to which GLRI appropriations for fiscal years 2010 to 2012 have been obligated and outlayed as of July 2013. After EPA and the Task Force agencies have agreed to the GLRI fund transfers to each agency and the work that will be done, each agency either does the work itself or implements it through mechanisms such as cooperative agreements, contracts, or grants with nonfederal stakeholders. In the case of GLRI grants, a Task Force agency announces the availability of the grants through a request for application process. For example, EPA announced on April 19, 2012, that the agency planned to award approximately $20 million for about 100 projects in four of the five focus areas, and that the applications were due on May 24, 2012. The request for application document included the amount of money and number of grants that would be awarded in each focus area and grant eligibility information, among other things. Similar announcements were made by other Task Force agencies for their GLRI grants, and EPA issued its first request for applications for fiscal year 2013 projects in July 2013. Although EPA uses information from GLAS and a variety of other sources to assess GLRI progress in meeting the annual targets associated with each of the 28 measures of progress in the Action Plan to assess GLRI progress, this information may not produce sufficiently comprehensive or useful assessments or support program adjustments.