Assessing, Restoring, and Protecting the Great Lakes
To help achieve the goal of restoring and protecting the waters of the Great Lakes under Annex 2 of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA), the United States and Canada agreed upon the development and implementation of five (5) Lakewide Action and Management Plans (LAMPs). Each LAMP describes the state of a single Great Lake and list actions to be taken by federal, state, and tribal agencies and organizations to assess, protect, and restore it. They also list actions that can be taken by everyone to help protect the lake. Once completed, the new action-oriented LAMP will supersede first-generation Lakewide Management Plans (LaMPs) developed between 2000 and 2008.
State of Lake Michigan
In addition to LAMPs, the 2012 GLWQA required the development of State of the Great Lakes reports to help identify water quality and ecosystem challenges across the Great Lakes Basin. In the latest report, Lake Michigan was rated as “fair and unchanging” overall. Overall, the lake continues to provide safe, clean drinking water and safe recreational opportunities and concentrations of many toxic chemicals continue to decline. In addition, destructive sea lamprey remain under control and there has been increased natural reproduction of several native species such as lake sturgeon and lake trout. However, Lake Michigan continues to be subject to habitat degradation, nuisance and harmful algal blooms in Green Bay and other selected nearshore areas, contaminant-driven restrictions on the consumption of certain fish species, and major food web impacts caused by aquatic and terrestrial invasive species, such as quagga mussels, round goby, purple loosestrife, and common reed.
2025-2029 Lake Michigan Lakewide Action and Management Plan
The Lake Michigan Partnership, a group of federal, state, and tribal agencies with management responsibility for the lake, is currently drafting the 2025-2029 Lake Michigan LAMP. The LAMP will list five-year partnership action priorities within the following categories:
- Preventing and reducing chemical contaminant pollution
- Preventing and reducing nutrient-driven water quality impacts and protecting beach health
- Preventing and controlling invasive species
- Protecting and restoring habitat and native species
Once developed in early 2025, the LAMP will be made available for public review and comment.
LAMP at Work in Indiana
A GLRI grant provides support to Indiana’s LAMP program. This LAMP Management Assistance Grant enables IDEM to work with many partners to address the LAMP goals and implement LAMP-related projects within the Lake Michigan basin. Among other programs, the Indiana LAMP program helps support:
- Indiana Lake Michigan Coastal Program (LMCP) coordination
- Lake Michigan Beach Monitoring and Notification Program (Beach Program) outreach and implementation
- Interpretive programming at Indiana Dunes State Park
- Indiana Clean Marina and Clean Boater Program implementation
- Indiana participation in Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC) meetings and working groups
Members of the public can read about work occurring in Indiana and around the Lake Michigan Basin in the LAMP annual updates produced by U.S. EPA.
Resources
- LAMP Overview Presentation [PDF]
- Lake Michigan Basin Webinar Series
- U.S. EPA’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative
- Binational.net: Joint Canada-U.S. Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement portal
- Indiana Water Quality Assessments and Reporting
- List of Approved Watershed Management Plans in the Lake Michigan Basin:
- List of Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Reports in the Lake Michigan Basin:
- Deep River-Portage Burns (E. coli, dissolved oxygen, nutrients, impaired biotic communities)
- Galena River (E. coli)
- Lake Michigan (E. coli)
- Little Calumet River and Burns Ditch (E. coli)
- Salt Creek 2004 (E. coli) and 2012 (E. coli and impaired biotic communities)
- St. Joseph River - Lake Michigan (E. coli)
- Trail Creek (E. coli)
- Indiana Coastal Atlas
- Lake Michigan Biodiversity Conservation Strategy
- Northwest Indiana Urban Waters Federal Partnership
Beach Alerts
With the IDEM BeachAlert app you can receive notifications of beach advisories and closures via email or text.