Here’s How Climate Change Is Impacting Lake Michigan

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2020

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Recent wildfires on the West Coast and Mayor Lightfoot’s plan to replace lead service lines in Chicago have brought the environment to the top of our minds. And as reporter Monica Eng found last year, Lake Michigan is already being affected by climate change. For a look at what we can expect moving forward, we return to a question from 2019. Plus, we take another peek inside the new school year in the city.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Linnea Dominic, Curious City Intern.
0:03.4	A couple of weeks ago, we dove into an episode from the archives to explain why Chicago has so many lead water pipes.
0:10.2	We're continuing to feature stories that highlight environmental concerns facing the city.
0:15.4	And today, we return to an episode from 2019 that covers another important issue,
0:22.7	how climate change will continue to impact Lake Michigan.
0:25.3	Reporter Monica Ang has more.
0:30.2	I'm standing on the walking path at Chicago Avenue near Lake Michigan.
0:35.4	The city built this path just three years ago, but over the summer,
0:39.7	it got buried underwater again, pushing walkers into the bike lanes and turning the former
0:44.8	ledge into a big puddle. It's all due to super high lake levels, levels that are freaking
0:52.4	people out. And they inspired at least one guy to ask Curious City how climate change is going to affect
0:58.6	Lake Michigan water levels in the future.
1:01.6	He didn't want to be part of the story, but it's a great question.
1:05.1	I mean, how far is this going to go?
1:07.1	Should we start planning for water to just start sloshing up on the Lakeshore Drive soon?
1:12.6	Well, first, we should say two things.
1:14.6	One, when it comes to climate change, the Great Lakes region is expected to fare a lot better than the coasts.
1:21.6	And two, these high lake levels, yeah, they broke some records in the spring.
1:26.6	But this summer, they're still within the
1:29.2	range of highs and lows we've seen for hundreds of years. To find out what drives these highs and
1:35.4	lows, I talked to Keith Campo-Lewicz. He monitors lake levels for the Army Corps of Engineers.
1:40.7	We track a quantity of water that's known as the net basin supply, and that's rainfall
	...

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