- [Anna] Coming up on "Great Lakes Now."

Saving a spawning reef from century old mining waste.

- I believe the reef will return to its normal habitat and size.

I have hopes that it will.

I believe that it will.

- [Anna] Connecting with the plants of our region through foraging.

- Foraging is the simple art of working with the edible and medicinal plants in your landscape.

- [Anna] And news from around the lakes.

(upbeat music) (air whooshing) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you by; the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at Detroit PBS, Polk Family Fund, DTE Foundation, and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(ambient music) - Hi, I'm Anna Sysling, welcome to "Great Lakes Now."

In 2019, we told you about Buffalo Reef.

At the time, the race was on to save the reef before it was buried under mining waste.

Well, there have been some developments.

So today we bring you a recap of our 2019 coverage and an update on where the effort to save Buffalo Reef stands today.

Here's the story from the Keweenaw Peninsula.

- [Announcer] The Keweenaw Peninsula extends into Lake Superior from Michigan's Upper Peninsula and it's famous for copper.

Copper was mined and used by indigenous people at least 8,000 years ago.

And copper items from the area were traded across the continent.

Later, copper mining became an industry.

Dozens of mines produced millions of tons of copper, often by crushing the ore in stamping mills.

Before closing in 1932, stamping mills in Gay Michigan generated 22.7 million metric tons of crushed waste rock known as stamp sands.

- As the rock moves through this mill, it's crushed to a smaller and smaller particle, and then it would separate out the sand from the copper.

The copper was a heavier weight, and then the sand would be washed out of the mill and with high volume of water, is sent out as a slurry into Lake Superior.

- [Announcer] For roughly a century, wind and waves have been moving the stamp sands across the lake bottom and down the shoreline.

The stamp sands now extend along the shore from miles and in some places cover the natural beach with several feet of black toxic sand.

The stamp sand is also drifting onto Buffalo Reef, an important spawning ground for fish.

Great Lake spawning reefs aren't made of coral.

They're composed of rocks, the size of baseballs or softballs.

And lake trout and whitefish lay their eggs in the spaces between those rocks where they'll be sheltered and protected, but also bathed in cold, highly oxygenated water.

For lake trout and whitefish, Buffalo Reef is one of the most productive reefs in Lake Superior.

It's estimated that the Buffalo Reef Fishery provides four and a half million dollars of revenue through commercial and recreational fishing every year.

But fishermen in the area have noticed a decline in their catch and some have had to fish elsewhere.

That's partly because the stamp sand is filling in those critical spaces between the rocks.

The sand is also a chemical pollutant.

Charles Kerfoot of Michigan Technological University has been studying the environmental effects of Michigan's copper mining history in the UP for over a decade.

- You have to realize that concentrations of copper are really high.

1,500 parts per million of copper where the state says 120 can have ecological effects.

I must say you're dealing with orders of magnitude here.

- [Announcer] To understand the effects of the stamp sand, Dr. Kerfoot and his team have collected samples from the lake bottom around the reef.

- [Dr. Kerfoot] The jaws come in and scoop up a sample of the sand that's on the bottom, of the sediment's on the bottom.

And then we'll take it back and determine under the microscope how many grains are stamp sand and how many are natural.

It's a way for us to calculate copper concentration and potential toxicity.

- [Announcer] Dr. Kerfoot has shown a direct link between higher concentrations of stamp sands and fewer benthic organisms.

These are the bottom feeding animals that fish rely on for food.

- By 50%, stamp sands is very serious effect.

By 75, it's a desert.

There's just nothing down there.

If nothing is done within 10 years, 60% of Buffalo Reef will be covered by stamp sands.

- [Announcer] That would be a disaster for the four commercial fishing operations that depend on the fish of the Buffalo Reef, including the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community or KBIC, one of the Native American tribes that has fought to secure federal funding to clean up Buffalo Reef.

Evelyn Ravindran is the KBIC's Natural Resources director.

- The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community is a fishing community.

It's part of our identity.

The loss of that reef would be devastating to our community.

If we lose that one, we'll be losing not only parts of the fish population that are here, we're losing all those connections to that area.

It's not something that can't be replaced.

- [Announcer] In 2017, the US Environmental Protection Agency created the Buffalo Reef Task Force, which includes entities from federal, state, and tribal nations.

- This has been a big endeavor.

As a whole, this is important to everybody.

It's been really good to see that so many people consider it to be important and so many agencies consider it important.

- [Announcer] The next year, dredging began with the aim of protecting the reef while the task force developed a permanent solution.

As a kid, Robert Regis spent his summers vacationing in this area.

He's a retired geology professor at Northern Michigan University.

Professor Regis did extensive research on the detrimental impact of stamp sands on the environment and has presented his findings to the Buffalo Reef task force.

- I've been dredged almost yearly for the last five years at least or even more because of the dramatic stamp sand accumulation there, even into the harbor and beyond to the natural sand side of the bay.

- The whole idea of the first stage was to buy time that we would get enough dredging done in the harbor, we would get enough dredging done and was an old ancient river bed.

And these would be pumped up to the berm complex, which is originally a pond complex along the shoreline set in stamp sands.

- [Announcer] The dredging operation was intended to be a temporary fix.

And in 2024, after looking at more than a dozen different options, a task force settled on a multi-faced solution for the stamp sand problem.

- There's a long term and a short term plan that's several steps.

The long term plan is to remove the sands and put them in a landfill up behind the town of Gay in an upper area, - [Announcer] A spokesperson for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission consisting of 11 area tribes likes the plan and says it has the best chance of working.

That's the result the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission was pushing for.

- The final plan takes the contaminants, stamp sands, out of the shoreline and off of the lake bed to the greatest extent possible, and it places it in an engineered lined facility away from the lake.

It is ultimately a permanent solution to this kind of ongoing and rather serious environmental problem.

- [Announcer] The short term part of the plan or the first phase is to construct a jetty that will run on an angle into the lake - And that will block the movement, the natural longshore movement of stamp sand grains to the south and the natural wave action, but that also limits any of the natural sand from moving south that created the beaches and the harbor in the first place.

- And secondly, it will be the transit system from the dredges out in the lake.

- [Announcer] The jetty will have a two-lane road large enough to accommodate trucks that will deliver the stamp sands from the dredges to a proposed landfill.

That landfill will be located about two miles inland from the town of Gay.

A critical component of the landfill is a special lining to prevent the toxic stamp sands from leaking into groundwater.

The jetty would be dismantled once the stamp sand is in landfill.

- And then they've got to build some kind of a monitoring system and a wastewater treatment system to keep that from polluting the surrounding area.

- [Announcer] The mining waste will never go away.

So to prevent future pollution, the site will have to be monitored indefinitely.

The US Army Corps of Engineers estimates the price tag for this plan is more than $2 billion, and it's expected to take 20 years to complete.

- Well, you have to realize that the whole thing's been sitting there for a century.

I mean, it started in 1900.

It ended, the discharges ended in 1932.

The darn thing's been sitting around there for us, for over, stamp sands for over a century.

If you dumped the stamp sand, 22.7 million metric tons into railroad cars, they would extend from here to San Diego.

- I believe the reef will return to its normal habitat and size.

Frankly, I'll feel fortunate to be around to see it, given the 20-year span estimated before completion.

I have hopes that it will, I believe that it will, and I am satisfied with it, but it will take a long time definitely.

(air whooshing) - For more about whitefish and environmental remediation, visit greatlakesnow.org.

Humans have been foraging for food since the dawn of time.

It's less common these days, but that may be changing.

Today I'm searching for edible plants in Michigan's Upper Peninsula with Lisa M. Rose, a lifelong forager, and the writer behind our series, "A year in the Wild Kitchen of the Great Lakes."

(bright music) Hey, Lisa.

- Well, hey, Anna.

How's it going?

- Very well, thank you.

- Gorgeous day, right?

- Gorgeous day.

Gorgeous day especially for some spring foraging, yeah?

- [Lisa] Time to replenish the medicine cabinets with medicinal plants, and then also maybe find a couple of wild edibles for the dinner table for tonight.

- [Anna] Cool, let's venture out and check it out.

- We shall venture, won't we little babies?

- [Anna] Lisa is the perfect guide for this adventure.

She's an anthropologist and author who focuses on community health and local food systems.

Is there anything in particular that you're hoping we might find today?

- I am jonesing for nettles, but knowing we're up in the UP early spring, it's crapshoot.

- [Anna] Lisa and I are hoping to harvest some nettles, which are perennial herbs with dark green leaves that grow in nutrient rich damp soil.

We're foraging in early May and we're way up north, so the nettles may not be ready here just yet.

For people who have never done this before, what is foraging?

- [Lisa] Foraging is the simple art of working with the edible and medicinal plants in your landscape.

And for thousands and thousands of years, each of us as humans has relied on the natural world to survive.

- [Anna] Foraging may be having a moment right now, but people have been eating wild plants for ages.

They simply aren't farmed and cultivated in the traditional sense.

So consequently, you won't find them in most local grocery stores.

- Over a hundred years, our food system is really narrowed to where we go into the grocer and we have about 30 varieties of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Before in the Industrial Revolution, we had many, many more wild plants as part of our diet.

- [Anna] There's nothing innately better about the current top varieties of fruits and vegetables.

Rather, they rose to prominence because humans figured out how to effectively and economically process them into food.

Fortunately, the wild plants we used to eat still exist.

As Lisa and I forage, we discover an abundance of wild plants.

- So here's a bit of leaves of the cedar.

- Including mullein, cedar trees, horsetails and Chaga.

It's worth pointing out this is a mushroom.

(bright music) What are some of the basics as far as how to make sure that you're identifying something and being safe and responsible when you're out foraging?

- It's really about developing an awareness of where you're at.

You start to understand or get a sense of how plants grow across the season.

The biggest thing I'm paying attention to across the season is the weather.

You know when you're not supposed to plant your tomatoes downstate and that's before May 15.

Here, it's like June 15, right?

So you start to understand what might be growing and when.

Mullein is a good medicinal plant.

- And it's really soft.

- It is really soft, but people say it's good for toilet paper and that is not correct.

- Noted.

We haven't even really started the walk yet and already found something.

- And that might be the most valuable piece of information I give you today.

(laughs) - [Anna] What's this one, just out of curiosity?

- That is a variety of dock.

So the plants like dock or nettles, it's really important to consider the land.

Legacy chemicals come to mind immediately.

- [Anna] Even in the forest, the past is always present.

This spot might look like untouched wilderness, but the area has a history of mineral extraction.

- We're in the Upper Peninsula, outside of one of the world's largest industrial copper mine sites, and that is left behind a lot of legacy contaminants.

Mining is a very chemical intense process.

And so for me, I'm always looking where the sunrises and sets, where the lake is, how the creeks might be flowing, what the soil is like, but then also like what happened here.

- [Anna] The presence of legacy chemicals isn't the only factor foragers must be aware of.

- In the Upper Peninsula, there are so many uncapped mines and mine shafts that I was brought up not to leave the trail.

(ambient music) - Here in the UP, foraging is an extreme sport.

There are lots of hazards to navigate, including property owners who are wary of trespassers and even bears.

Despite the risk, it's worth it even if Lisa and I don't find any nettles.

I've learned so much walking around with you today.

We haven't exactly found any nettles yet though.

So what do you think about that?

- Well, I think it might be a bit early up here, but it is nettle season downstate.

I'm from downstate and I've got them in tow and I'm wondering if you'd like to have lunch.

- I would love to have lunch.

(Lisa laughing) Let's do that.

(bright music) We're going to use Lisa's nettles to make pasties, which are the Upper Peninsula's signature dish and part of Lisa's family heritage.

- They're my roots in terms of like a good chunk of my family coming from Cornwall in the 1860s.

- [Anna] After immigrating from Cornwall, England, Lisa's great-great-great grandfather worked in the copper mines while her grandmother took care of the family.

They were part of a wave of skilled Cornish miners and their families who came to the UP in search of better opportunities.

Lisa's ancestors brought their cooking traditions to the region, most notably the Cornish pasty, a humble folded pastry stuffed with a savory filling, often consisting of root vegetables and shredded meat, the perfect portable meal for a hungry miner.

Re-imagining her grandmother's pasty recipes helps Lisa to connect to the relative she never met.

- What was in her pantry, how many times did she maybe have to do some foraging that we might call it?

What was her food preservation?

How long did she have to stretch the root vegetables in the larder?

- [Anna] And all of this inspires Lisa to develop her own recipes.

- It's pretty fun to be able to have my own wild foods twist on it and kind of shake things up a bit and hopefully make my ancestors proud.

(bright music) - All right, so we are in the kitchen, we've got all kinds of stuff in front of us, put the star of the show in my eyes, the nettles.

- The nettles, the nettles are one of my favorite spring greens.

- [Anna] According to Lisa, nettles are a great alternative to spinach or kale and they'll make a great filling for our pasties.

- [Lisa] I've got already chopped and simmering nettles with a little bit of onion and just a little bit of salt and pepper.

So if you wanna go ahead and even give that filling a taste- - [Anna] It's so dark.

They coast down so dark.

- They really do.

It tastes like earth.

- Yes, it does.

It has that kind of like bitter quality to it, but also kind of smokey.

Can I do it too?

- Yeah, go for it.

- [Anna] After a little bit of rolling, filling, shaping, and baking, it's finally time to eat.

Now it's time for the taste test.

- So Cornish pasties, remember they're miners' food and they're made to hold as a little pocket.

- All right, cheers.

- Cheers.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

(lighthearted music) Hmm.

Wow, so flaky.

That's good.

Really good.

- Thank you, nettles.

Oh my god.

(Lisa chuckles) So good.

(air whooshing) I hope you enjoyed my little nettle dance at the end there.

A big thank you to Lisa M. Rose for an adventurous day in the woods and the kitchen.

For more about foraging and wild food recipes, visit greatlakesnow.org.

And now it's time for the catch where we bring you new stories and events from around the Great Lakes.

(air whooshing) In 2023, massive wildfires in Canada sent unprecedented amounts of smoke to the Great Lakes region.

Brett Walton covered the story for Circle of Blue.

- The 2023 wildfire season in Canada was off the charts, obliterated the records for number of acres burned.

By far, the highest in the last 40 years.

Almost 45 million acres burned in Canada.

That was area of land almost the size of Minnesota.

Fires sent smoke down into the Great Lakes region, particularly in June when particulate matter levels spiked in the atmosphere and sent this really hazy, noxious air into the region.

- [Anna] That summer, doctors in emergency rooms saw an uptick in patients coming in for things like asthma problems and lung irritation.

- Patients we're coming in for all manner of problems from breathing, but also eye irritations.

Heart problems are also connected with wildfire smoke.

People weren't always making that connection between their coughing and their inability to breathe with the wildfire smoke that was coming in.

- [Anna] One reason why many people were so unprepared is simply because the Great Lakes region isn't used to getting large amounts of wildfire smoke, but climate change might make this our new normal.

- Wildfires are a tricky combination of a lot of factors.

Climate change for one is certainly making wildfires worse.

It's drying out forests, it's hotter, fires are burning bigger, forests in the west are overgrown, and Canada also, there's an increasing trend line for the amount of acres burned.

We're going to be seeing a smokier future.

- [Anna] So how could people in communities better protect themselves?

Investing in equipment like air purifiers is one place to start, along with increased access to education and information about wildfire smoke.

- There's a lot that people in places can be doing to prevent some of the worst health impacts from wildfire smoke.

Some of that is on better equipment and what we call hard infrastructure, so things like air purifiers and better purification systems for buildings like schools in particular.

There are all these steps that can be taken from better public notification and better infrastructure around air quality in homes and buildings, and just public awareness to make sure that when smoke does come, that the worst impacts are not realized.

(air whooshing) - [Anna] A wooden steamship has been found more than a century after it went missing in Lake Superior.

Bruce Lynn is the executive director of the Great Lake Shipwreck Museum, which made the discovery.

- The Adella Shores was pretty typical of the lumber hookers of the era.

It was very much a workhorse that would be carrying a lot of lumber on the decks, but also uncertain trips.

It would be carrying things like salt, coal, iron ore possibly, but it was also considered a really handsome ship, very maneuverable one, and a real workhorse too.

When we say it went missing, that means it left the dock, nobody ever, other than maybe a couple ships out on the lake before it disappeared, nobody really saw that thing again.

- [Anna] On April 29th, 1909, the Adella Shores was carrying a load of salt to Duluth when it vanished on Lake Superior.

There were 14 crew members on board.

- It was following another larger ship called the Daniel J. Morrell.

It got about 40 miles northwest of Whitefish Point and just vanished.

It's an over 650 feet of water, so it's a relatively deep wreck.

- [Anna] This wasn't the first time that the Adella shores had taken on water.

It had sunk three times before, but each time was resurfaced and put back into service - With a wooden vessel like that of that period, you know, a ship could have the hall punctured with maybe ice or something along those lines, and they would sink at the dock.

That wasn't unheard of.

That happened three times with the Adella Shores.

- [Anna] The Great Lake Shipwreck Museum originally made the discovery in 2021, but held off on announcing it until they could verify that it was actually the Adella Shores.

- It's one thing to know that you have a shipwreck and that's great.

We get really excited about that.

We also wanna make sure that we're really identifying what we have.

We wanna make sure that we're giving an accurate portrayal or telling the story accurately.

- [Anna] Bruce says that these types of discoveries are important for understanding the history of the Great Lakes and the people who traveled them.

- When you can look inside a cabin and you can see bunks, you can see tables, chairs, you can see plates, dishes, mugs, pitchers, just little remnants of everyday life, that kind of humanizes it.

It's like a little museum unto itself on the bottom of the lake, It's a time capsule.

(air whooshing) - [Anna] And now an excerpt from our digital series called "Waves of Change," where we look at the environmental justice movement throughout the Great Lakes.

This month we spoke with Kim Wasserman, executive director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization based in the Chicago neighborhood Little Village.

Kim played a major role in a years long campaign to close two coal plants that were negatively impacting residents' health.

- For the first time, we actually had numbers where we could go to the city of Chicago and say, "Hey, look, 41 people are prematurely dying every year because of the impacts of this coal power plant."

We were able, with the support of our partners, able to make this one of the top three questions that was asked of all mayoral candidates when they were in debate, right?

Just to say the coal power plants in Chicago are a problem, what is your commitment to this issue?

(air whooshing) - Thanks for watching.

For the full interview with Kim Wasserman or for more about any of our stories, visit greatlakesnow.org.

When you get there, you can follow us on social media or subscribe to our newsletter to get updates about our work.

See you out on the lakes.

(bright music) (air whooshing) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you by; the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at Detroit PBS, Polk Family Fund, DTE Foundation, and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(gentle music) (bright music)