ALLIANCE FOR THE GREAT LAKES

Our vision is a thriving Great Lakes and healthy water that all life can rely on, today and far into the future. We aspire to be a voice for the lakes and to support the voices of the communities that depend on the lakes and their waters.

With our three-year strategic plan created in 2021, we envision three broad impacts for people and the lakes:
- Safer, cleaner, more accessible water for all
- People and communities can safely enjoy and rely on all the benefits the lakes have to offer, from safe drinking water to recreation opportunities
- Every community that depends on the lakes is heard and included in our work

Our approach includes four core strategies:

Water Advocacy
o Protecting safe, clean, and affordable water
o Reducing agricultural pollution
o Stopping invasive species
o Restoring the health and resilience of the Great Lakes
o Safeguarding hard-fought Great Lakes protections

Local Partnerships
o Building leadership for Great Lakes protection in communities, using our skills, resources, and expertise in support of local leaders and networks

Engagement
o Growing a credible and lasting voice for the Great Lakes by motivating tens of thousands of people each year to take action

Operations & Fundraising
o Supporting a strong staff and board of directors, and ensuring the fiscal health that enables the Alliance to advance our mission and vision 

As a regional leader dedicated 100% to the health and vitality of all five Great Lakes, the Alliance’s approach combines our strength in influencing and shaping federal and state policy with programs and opportunities that directly engage residents and communities. We leverage the power of a unifying Great Lakes message, relationships with networks of influential leaders, businesses, and community partners, and our policy savvy and deep issue knowledge to encourage decision-makers to improve Great Lakes and water policies. Founded in 1970, we have decades of experience leading and co-leading some of the most critical policy developments to protect the Great Lakes, including the federal Legacy Act, the Great Lakes Water Resources Compact, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the federal ban on plastic microbeads, the commitment to reduce phosphorus pollution to Lake Erie by 40%, the Vessel Incidental Discharge Act, and the Brandon Road Lock and Dam project to stop invasive carp.

The Alliance recognizes the critical need to elevate voices from Great Lakes communities. We convene people and listen to them on local issues that matter urgently to Great Lakes residents, and partner to adjust our priorities and strategies. We depend on our 25 highly qualified professional staff located in five of the Great Lakes states and Washington, D.C. to lead the day-to-day work. Our board of directors comprises leaders in a variety of disciplines from across the region, each with a passion for our Great Lakes. Finally, we work with dozens of other NGOs across the Great Lakes region to bring a shared and powerful message to the public about the importance of protecting the Great Lakes and clean water.

Building on a 52-year history, the Alliance’s fiscal strength means our momentum can be maintained over time. Dozens of philanthropic foundations and thousands of individuals give to support our work each year. An asset base of $10 million and a growing annual budget approaching $5 million means we can bring the capacity needed to take on major Great Lakes challenges.

2022 Accomplishments:

We secured a historic federal investment to keep invasive carp out of the Great Lakes. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers now has the full funding to complete the engineering and design phase for, and to begin construction on, a project at the Brandon Road Lock & Dam, a critical choke point for keeping invasive carp from reaching the Great Lakes.

We advocated for – and won – an additional $1 billion federal investment in Great Lakes restoration. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will use the bulk of the funding to clean up and restore Great Lakes Areas of Concern, some of the region’s most environmentally contaminated and degraded sites, by 2030.

We co-convene the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds (SRF) Advocates Forum, a diverse community working to ensure that federal water funds are allocated to the hardest-hit communities and advance resilience to climate change. Our group of community leaders and policy experts is playing a pivotal role in reforming the biggest state water funding programs to ensure that all Great Lakers have access to clean, safe, and affordable water.

We activated our supporters to speak out in support of Great Lakes restoration. People around the Great Lakes region sent over 13,000 emails to their members of Congress, urging their representatives to invest in fixing failing water and wastewater infrastructure, stop invasive carp, and champion the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and Clean Water Act.

Adopt-a-Beach volunteers have collected more than half a million pounds of litter collected at cleanup events since the Alliance began tracking data in 2003. More than 85% of the litter cleaned up is made entirely or partly of plastic, putting our volunteers on the front lines of keeping plastic pollution out of the lakes.

We educated Detroit City Council members about the benefits of nature-based green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) in their districts. GSI can reduce basement backups and neighborhood flooding, and help stop sewer overflows. This results in cleaner water entering the Rouge River, Detroit River, and Lake Erie.​

We produced over 20 episodes of our Lakes Chat podcast that have been downloaded over 8,000 times, educating thousands of listeners on topics ranging from plastic pollution to environmental justice to federal policy.

We published a first-of-its-kind case study that found water bills are higher for communities that pull their drinking water from Lake Erie. The additional costs are for monitoring and treatment due to harmful algal blooms caused by farm runoff. The study highlights the fact that water users far away from pollution sources are paying the real cost of protecting their families from a problem they did not create.

We developed a Cleveland-focused civic engagement and advocacy curriculum to support a growing network of community partners working toward shared water policy goals in the largest city on Lake Erie.