Greetings! Its hard to believe I am in my fifth month here
at the Commission. I am lucky enough to
be a 2013 Great Lakes Commission Fellow.
You notice I don’t say THE GLC Fellow. This year the Commission decided to
take on not one but two fellows! The other fellow is from the state of New York
and just finished law school. We get
along really well and are having a great time working together at the
Commission.
Things have been crazy since I began in June. My time is divided between 4 main projects;
the Great Lakes Phragmites Collaborative,
a Great Lakes Restoration Database website, a nutrient credit trading
program and a coastal science strategy project.
For the purpose of this post I’ll
just focus on the nutrient credit trading program or “Fox P Trade”. The goal of this project is to develop a
trading program in the Lower Fox River watershed, which is the main tributary
to Green Bay. The Lower Fox River and
Green Bay have a large nutrient management problem. This project started just a
few months before the beginning of my fellowship, so I have been able to help
get the project up and running which has been a great learning experience. My involvement with the project includes
organizing and running various meetings and related webinars in addition to
helping finalize the work plan. We work
with a wide range of stakeholders on this project to make sure everyone’s voice
is represented. These stakeholders
include: Wisconsin DNR, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Oneida
nation, and local wastewater treatment facilities among others. In the upcoming months we will be finalizing
a request for proposals and a potential scope of work for a study to determine
the economic feasibility of nutrient trading in the Lower Fox.
In September I traveled with several Commission staff to
Milwaukee for Great Lakes Week. This was
an amazing networking opportunity and a chance to learn more about issues
affecting the Great Lakes. It was great
to meet all of the Commissioners and discuss the specific problems facing each
of their states and provinces. The
conference had also organized some really cool field trips. I got to go paddleboarding in the Milwaukee
Harbor with some of my colleagues where we learned about the local sturgeon
population. Overall it was a fantastic
experience!
I'm really looking forward to the rest of my time here and I'll let you all know how it goes!
Best,
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