The Izaak Walton League was well represented at the 10th annual Great Lakes Restoration Conference in September 2014, hosted by the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition. Bob Stegmier and John Trimberger from the League’s Dwight Lydell Chapter, Executive Board member Jill Crafton, Headwaters Chapter member Ivan Hack, and IWLA Conservation Director Mike Leahy participated.

The conference celebrated 10 years of progress in cleaning up and restoring the Great Lakes and looked to the future by focusing on a wide range of conservation challenges and opportunities, including how EPA’s proposed clean water rule can help improve Great Lakes water quality; preventing algal blooms created due to nutrient runoff, such as the one that affected Toledo’s drinking supply this summer; reducing litter, including the ever-present microbeads; stopping invasive species; hydraulic fracturing; and new developments on the Mackinac pipeline, which was the topic of a League resolution at this year’s convention.