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NEMWI to Participate in Great Lakes Days Events
NEMWI is participating in several events this week to mark Great Lakes Days (an annual push to raise awareness about the Great Lakes on Capitol Hill) and National Invasive Species Awareness Week. The Institute will co-host a briefing on invasive carp tomorrow, February 23 (details below), as well as an annual Great Lakes breakfast on Thursday. Staff will also attend a Canadian Embassy-sponsored tour focused on ballast water treatment testing. Lastly, NEMWI's Allegra Cangelosi will present at the semi-annual Great Lakes Commission meeting. Her comments will be about ballast water treatment technology and policy.
For more information, contact
Matthew McKenna, Director of the Great Lakes Washington Program, or
Allegra Cangelosi, Sr. Policy Analyst - Environmental Projects and PI of the Great Ships Initiative, at the Northeast-Midwest.
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NEWMI to Cohost Briefing on Invasive Asian Carp, February 23
On Tuesday, February 23, NEMWI, in conjunction with the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee, will hold a Congressional Briefing on invasive Asian carp and the Great Lakes region. The briefing will focus on current efforts to slow and minimize the impact of Asian carp in the Great Lakes and will involve short presentations from numerous federal stakeholders. The event will be held in 1310 Longworth House Office Building from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM and will take place the same week as both the National Invasive Species Awareness Week and Great Lakes Days in Washington, D.C.
For more information, contact
Matthew McKenna, Director of the Great Lakes Washington Program at the Northeast-Midwest Institute.
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Congress Begins Budget Hearings
The House and Senate are back in session this week. The House will take up several pieces of legislation, including The Sportsmen's Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act of 2015 (H.R. 2406), a bill that would: open up most federal land for recreational hunting and fishing activities, exempt ammunition and lead fishing tackle from the Toxic Substance Control Act, and bar the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from prohibiting individuals from possessing a firearm in public areas of a water resources development project. The bill was approved by the House Natural Resources Committee by a largely party-line vote of 21-15 last fall.
The Senate could resume debate on a bi-partisan energy bill (S. 2012). The bill stalled out before last week's recess because of a push to include an amendment to provide Flint, Michigan with federal funds to replace lead-contaminated water pipes. Negotiations on the amendment, which was authored by Michigan Senators Debbie Stabenow (D) and Gary Peters (D), continued through the recess and will largely dictate how and if the Senate can move forward with the energy bill. The Senate may also take up legislation addressing the epidemics of prescription opioid abuse and heroin use (S. 524).
The House and Senate Appropriations Committees will kick off the first of many budget hearings. Full schedules for the week are available
here (
House) and here (Senate).
Other notable hearings are listed below.
For more information, contact
Matthew McKenna
, Director of the Great Lakes Washington Program,
or Colleen Cain, Sr. Policy Analyst,
at the Northeast-Midwest Institute.
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Regional Advisors Weigh in on NEMWI Aquatic Invasive Species Project
On February 18 and 19, the NEMWI hosted an advisory meeting for a Great Lakes Protection Fund-supported project entitled "Revealing How Clean is Clean: Great Lakes Invasive Species." This project seeks to develop methods to support a scientific basis for setting numeric standards for aquatic invasive species (AIS) discharges to protect the Great Lakes, and other ecosystems. The advisory committee includes individuals from academia and federal and state government agencies. The 20 participating committee and project team members contributed invaluable ideas, and voiced strong support for continuing the project to better understand the risk of AIS to the Great Lakes associated with varying organism drop-off rates. The current phase of the NEMWI project conducted experiments and field sampling during the spring, summer, and fall of 2015 and results are being analyzed. The advisors gave input on practicable experimental design and survey methods to further assess a direct cause-and-effect relationship of organism drop-off rate and AIS establishment, as well as linking the results with federal and state AIS prevention policies and actions.
For more information, contact Allegra Cangelosi, Sr. Policy Analyst - Environmental Projects and PI for the Great Ships Initiative at the Northeast-Midwest Institute.
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Commerce Opens Competition for National Network for Manufacturing Innovation Institute
The U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) last week announced a competition for the formation of up to two Manufacturing Innovation Institutes to join the
National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI). This competition will be the first NNMI solicitation in which proposals will be accepted on any advanced manufacturing topic.
The NIST institutes will be private-public partnerships that foster collaboration among industry, academia, nonprofits and government agencies. Through the institutes, these stakeholders work to accelerate U.S. innovation and increase competitiveness by investing in industrially relevant, cross-cutting advanced manufacturing technologies and processes.
Thus far, four out of seven institutes are located in the NEMW region (Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and New York).
More information on this competition is available
here
.
For more information, contact Colleen Cain, Sr. Policy Analyst at the Northeast-Midwest Institute.
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NEMWI: Strengthening the Region that Sustains the Nation
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