Help stimulate economy in Great Lakes

The Great Lakes are often viewed as an awesome natural resource and a place for abundant recreational opportunities. But don’t overlook the economic impact of the Great Lakes, either. In fact, that’s a message which an organization representing mayors in Great Lakes communities wants Congress to remember. It’s part of the group’s quest to secure government funding for water infrastructure and coastal protection.

“There’s an urgent need to make up for lost revenues and avoid layoffs of city staff and delayed expenditures for local projects,” said Michael Vandersteen, chairman of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative.

“If many of these projects can go forward, that’s going to be a boost to the economy because we’re putting people back to work.”

The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative is an organization of close to 100 mayors from the U.S. and Canada working to advance the protection and restoration of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River.

Vandersteen, who is the mayor of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, said some of the group’s key priorities are safeguarding drinking water and modernizing clean water infrastructure.

One point that the group wants to emphasize is how hard Great Lakes communities have been hit by the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“The Great Lakes are a great place for tourism and many communities that had great tourist activity have seen it drop to almost nothing,” he said.

“So first of all that’s hitting your (hotel) room tax.”

Lake County’s bed tax was raised to 5 percent from 3 percent in 2017.

All the additional funds raised by that increase go toward lakefront projects.

Vandersteen added that in parts of the Great Lakes region with a strong manufacturing presence, some plants were closed for extended periods of time.

Because of a plant shutdown in his community, Vandersteen said they lost about $275,000 in water sales just in one month.

In addition, he said the group is asking for $500 million to be allocated for coastal erosion mitigation.

“This funding could create over 400,000 jobs if it is appropriated and the communities get to those coastal erosion mitigation projects,” Vandersteen said.

In 2019 and 2020, there have been several monthly record high average water levels recorded on Lake Erie, further exacerbating erosion problems along the coast.

Shoreline erosion is an issue that certainly resonates with property owners and local government entities in northern Ohio.

In one local example, the deck at Overlook Beach Park in Mentor-on-the-Lake was closed due to the amount of land lost to erosion. The stairs had already been closed for several years.

Vandersteen said that the Congress members they’ve reached out to have been receptive to their concerns, but said some members have reservations because not all the original CARES Act money has been spent.

“We’ve asked them to relax those rules,” Vandersteen said.

“Give us an opportunity to spend that money. With the rules as tight as they were, we couldn’t use it for a lot of things that we talked about. We could only use it for COVID expenses. We couldn’t use it to replace revenues, only extra expenses we had because of COVID and if they would change some of those rules, much of the originally appropriated funds could be used for some of these projects in the future.”

Vandersteen added that Congress members they’ve spoken to have been frank that these economic stimulus bills “don’t leave a lot of leeway for one individual to push it one way or the other.”

“But we still made them understand some of the real problems being experienced in our cities,” he said.

Because the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative is a bi-national coalition, the group faces the challenge of getting the U.S. and Canadian governments to approve funding for water infrastructure and coastal protection projects.

Hopefully, legislators understand that stimulating the economy of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence region will help contribute to the larger national economic recoveries in both countries.

Therefore, we believe that the coalition’s proposals deserve careful consideration.