- [Ward] On this edition of "Great Lakes Now."

A high-tech approach for keeping sewage out of waterways.

- There's no humans controlling anything.

The system essentially intelligently understands, and then it routes water to the wastewater treatment plant.

(uplifting music) (air whooshing) - [Ward] World War Two aircraft on the bottom of Lake Michigan.

- There was submarines off of both coasts.

So where are you gonna train people?

Qualify them?

- [Ward] And news from around the Great Lakes.

(air whooshing) (music continues) (air whooshing) - [Announcer 2] This program is brought to you by The Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

- [Announcer 3] The Consumers Energy Foundation is committed to serving Michigan from preserving our state's natural resources and sustaining our future to continuing business growth, academic achievement, and community involvement.

Learn more at consumersenergy.com/foundation.

- [Announcer 2] The Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at DPTV, The Polk Family Fund, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(soft music) (air whooshing) - Hi, I'm Ward Detwiler.

Welcome to "Great Lakes Now."

Many cities in our region need a way to keep raw sewage out of our waterways, but building more capacity isn't always affordable.

How do you protect rivers and lakes without going bankrupt?

Officials in South Bend, Indiana, found a smart solution.

(air whooshing) This story is part of a new Great Lakes News Collaborative project, "Refresh: What Comes Next for Great Lakes Clean Water."

(air whooshing) (water running) - [Reporter] The city of South Bend, Indiana gets its name from the southernmost bend in the St. Joseph River, which flows north before emptying into Lake Michigan.

In South Bend, people fish in the St. Joseph, something that wouldn't have been advisable in the past.

Kieran Fahey is the Director of the Long Term Control Plan for the city of South Bend.

(soft music) (water running) - The amounts of combined sewage, sewage mixed with the rainwater that used to go to the river used to consistently be over 2 billion with a B gallons per year.

- [Reporter] South Bend has a combined sewer system, which mixes rainwater with raw sewage on its way to the wastewater treatment plant.

(melancholic music) Heavy rain can overwhelm the system with dirty water, forcing city officials to release it into the St. Joseph River.

Those releases are called combined sewer overflows, or CSOs, and they can make the river dangerously polluted with salmonella, hepatitis, dysentery, cryptosporidium, and other infectious diseases.

And South Bend isn't unique.

The EPA says there are more than 150 cities in the Great Lakes region like South Bend that have Combined Sewer Systems.

The non-profit organization "American Rivers" estimates that three and a half million Americans get sick each year after swimming, boating, or fishing in water they thought was safe.

In 2012, a Federal consent decree said South Bend had to stop releasing all that raw sewage into the river.

EPA Policy mandated reductions in combined sewer overflows.

- That policy basically became legislation, which meant that cities could no longer do what many cities have been doing for generations, including South Bend, where we have the same pipes that carry sanitary water from bathrooms and kitchens and all that kind of stuff, and actual rainwater as well.

- [Reporter] The new law stated that South Bend had to drastically reduce the frequency of combined sewer overflows, so the city and the EPA agreed on a plan.

South Bend would build nine enormous underground storage tanks that could hold up to 30 million gallons of combined sewage and rainwater.

But there was a problem.

All that new infrastructure would cost a lot of money.

- A lot of money, a lot of money.

So a billion dollars for 100,000 people.

And even though you have 20 years to do the plan, if you can't afford it, you've got no plan at all, and that's where we find ourselves to be.

- [Reporter] City officials went in search of a solution.

They didn't have far to look.

Just a few hundred feet from the St Joseph River sits Notre Dame University, where engineering students and professors were working on technology that could help.

Mike Lemmon is a professor of Electrical Engineering at Notre Dame.

- The idea was to essentially embed these devices that we had developed for DARPA in the municipal sewer system.

(fire arm firing) - [Reporter] DARPA is a US Defense Department agency that develops technology for military uses.

Shortly after 9/11, Notre Dame was doing research into using these embedded devices or sensors to track down terrorists in remote areas.

The thought was if the sensors could be used to monitor bad guys in Afghanistan, could they also monitor sewer pipes in South Bend during heavy storms?

(soft music) - The way that basically the smart sewer sort of technology works is it detects when these events are about to occur, when there's basically going to be an overflow as a result of a rain event.

And if it can, it closes a valve to basically hold back that water in the sewer system so that once the storm has passed, it can be metered into the wastewater treatment plant in a way which it can actually handle.

- [Luis] Where's the blue line going?

- [Worker] That's to the pressure transfusion.

- [Luis] Okay, so it's got a pressure- - [Worker] It's got both sensors in it.

- Yeah.

- [Reporter] Luis Montestruque was a graduate student at Notre Dame working with professor Lemmon on the smart sewer technology.

Today, he is co-owner of a company called Hydro-Digital in South Bend that consults with dozens of cities across the US and Europe that are using the technology.

- What we discovered was that when it rains over the city, it doesn't rain evenly throughout the entire city.

If there is a way to dynamically control how sewer systems behave, sort of like a smart traffic system, then we can avoid overflows from happening.

(uplifting music) So what we have here is a composite manhole cover that allows radio transmissions to go through it.

And inside we have a remote terminal unit that is essentially a microprocessor that has a sensor, a battery, and a radio, that is sampling how much water is going through this pipe every five minutes.

- [Reporter] That data from the sensors is what makes the system smart, and it's critical during heavy rain events.

The information is sent in real time to another essential component of the system, the smart valve.

(lid squeaking) - So this is something that we call a smart valve.

This smart valve essentially controls how water moves from this part of the system, all the sewage that comes from all of these houses that are on this side, and controls how that water goes into what we call the interceptor line.

(lid closing) (upbeat music) - [Reporter] Together, the sensors and smart valves work to find empty space in South Bend's six-hundred miles of sewer pipes, and use that space to temporarily store huge amounts of untreated wastewater.

Wastewater that doesn't find its way into the St. Joseph River.

- There's no humans controlling anything.

The system essentially intelligently understands where constraints are hydraulically, and then it routes water to the wastewater treatment plant in that way.

- [Reporter] And so far, it's proven to be the solution South Bend was looking for.

(music continues) (water running) - [Kieran] We've gotten 75, 80% of the problem solved without having to build anything, which is for us phenomenal.

(music continues) - E-coli concentrations in the St Joseph River have dropped by more than 50 percent.

And Fahey estimates that the smart sewer system has saved the city around $450 million dollars by not having to build an enormous underground infrastructure that it couldn't afford in the first place.

(music continues) With results like this in South Bend, it's no surprise that the smart sewer technology is catching on.

Nearly 500 miles to the east on the shores of Lake Erie, is Buffalo, New York, and just like South Bend, Buffalo was also having problems with combined sewage overflows.

Tim Ruggaber is co-owner of Hydro Digital in South Bend.

The city of Buffalo is one of their clients.

- Everything was going into Buffalo River, Niagara River, Lake Erie.

(upbeat music) - [Reporter] More than 100-years ago, Buffalo was one of the largest cities in the US.

Back then, it installed a huge sewer system, anticipating a population explosion that never happened.

Over the years, those underground pipes, some measuring 18 feet in diameter, were being under-utilized.

- What we worked with the city and several other engineers to work on is, "Well, let's store water in these pipes, so let's basically create a stoplight in there, so we hold back this water to let other water get to that plant."

(music continues) - [Reporter] O.J.

McFoy is General Manager of Buffalo's Sewer Authority.

- We've already installed over 100 sensors throughout our 850 miles of sewers.

We have 20 rain sensors that are not only in the city of Buffalo, but also in our surrounding connected suburbs.

All of that is focused on ensuring that we can keep as much water in our pipes as we can.

And that's to the tune of billions of gallons per year that we're able to keep in our system and treat.

And those gallons would have gone out into our waterways.

(music continues) - [Reporter] So not only is the water cleaner in Buffalo and South Bend and elsewhere, but the smart sewer technology has also translated into some big savings for residents.

- We've saved 450 million dollars.

Almost half a billion dollars in savings, which equates to $11,000 dollars per household, and an average sewer bill for maybe a $200 sewer bill per month to like a $50 sewer bill.

So those are very, very real figures for lots of people.

(air whooshing) - For more about smart sewer technology, visit GreaLakesNow.org.

And for more stories from the Refresh project, visit GreaLakesNow.org/Refresh.

We've told you about some of the shipwrecks that can be found in the waters of the Great Lakes, but you may be surprised to find that those ships aren't the only pieces of our nation's history that are sitting on the bottom of the lakes.

(air whooshing) (upbeat music) - [Reporter 2] A and T Recovery searches for sunken treasure.

But not chests full of Spanish doubloons, they hunt for World-War-Two-era aircraft that have been sitting in these waters for decades.

The planes weren't lost in combat.

They went down as the US raced to train thousands of pilots after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Taras Lyssenko is one of the founders of A and T. - The political mood of the time before the attack of Pearl Harbor, the American population wanted nothing to do with the war in Europe and the war in Asia.

That was their far off war.

(air whooshing) But then when the Japanese attacked at Pearl Harbor, then the entire nation said, "Let's go to war."

Well, keeping in line with that "Let's keep out of war," the nation wasn't ready to go to war.

- [Reporter 2] The Navy needed pilots who could take off and land on aircraft carriers, but there were German U-boats patrolling the East Coast.

- If you try to qualify a pilot on a training aircraft carrier where a submarine is shooting torpedoes at you, it gets really hard if you're...

It's not easy, right?

So, and then off the West Coast, the Japanese actually had really good submarines.

So there was submarines off of both coasts.

So where are you gonna train people?

Qualify them?

- [Reporter 2] The Navy looked to the Great Lakes.

(intense music) Two excursion ships were purchased, and wooden flight decks were added to create makeshift aircraft carriers.

In October of 1942, in the waters of Lake Michigan, the US Navy started qualifying fifteen-thousand pilots to take off and land on those ships, the USS Wolverine, and the USS Sable.

- [Taras] So what happened was these pilots didn't have a lot of experience, it's not like today where they go through years of training.

It wasn't easy, so about 130 aircraft ended up in the lake, which is really a small number for all the landings and takeoffs they had to do, and 15,000 pilots.

So about 130 end up in the lake.

They recovered about 10 of them leaving about 120 aircraft, which was happy hunting ground for us.

- [Reporter 2] Taras began searching for the lost planes in the 1980s.

- We went to the National Archives and got the log records.

We read every single log page of the USS Wolverine and the USS Sable that indicated all the radar positioning of where they thought they lost the aircraft.

And then we got really good side scan sonar and we started finding aircraft after aircraft after aircraft.

(techy music) - [Reporter 2] To date, A and T Recovery, working with the National Aviation Museum, have rescued 40 planes from the depths of Lake Michigan.

- [Taras] For lifting it, we use our own trade secret, but we use the built-in lifting assemblies generally of the aircraft to lift them.

And when they're over 100 feet deep, we use remote-operated vehicles to hook our lifting equipment onto those things, which is a whole talent in itself.

- [Reporter 2] But getting the wrecks out of the lake is only the beginning.

These planes have been sitting in the bottom of the lake for decades, and they're in rough shape.

Before they become glistening museum pieces, they have to be meticulously restored, and often that happens here, at the Air Zoo, in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

(upbeat music) Troy Thrash is the Air Zoo's president and CEO.

- The Air Zoo is an interactive aerospace and science experience.

Over the last 43 years we've built, now we have over 200,000 square feet of exhibit space, over 100 rare and unique aircraft and spacecraft, amusement park rides related to aviation, full-motion flight simulators, a theater, all kinds of hands-on education programs.

- [Reporter 2] Recently, the Air Zoo completed a five-year restoration of an Douglas Dauntless SBD-2P dive bomber that was shipped to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum in Hawaii.

Although the work done at the Air Zoo is largely a volunteer effort, the museum's unique approach to restoration gives even museum visitors a chance to be part of the process.

- We invite people behind the ropes to get up close and personal with the restorations, and in some cases, they even get to work on our aircraft that we're restoring.

(drill whirring) - It's kind of fun knowing that someone in the past built that, and you're recreating what they built, kind of bringing back their legacy.

- [Museum Volunteer] Okay.

You are good, you're hired.

(museum volunteer 2 laughing) - [Reporter 2] The Air Zoo team has been working to renovate an FM2 Wildcat for the past ten years.

Progress is slow because the plane was so badly damaged.

Greg Ward is the aircraft restoration manager at the Air Zoo.

- That airplane took off from the carrier Sable.

The engine quit.

It crashed in the water.

Rolled upside down with the pilot still in it.

Then the ship ran over it.

When the ship ran over it, it broke in half.

(upbeat music) Thankfully, the pilot didn't get a scratch.

- [Reporter 2] The exceptional restoration work being done at the Air Zoo has been recognized by the National Parks Service.

The Air Zoo was recently awarded over 400 thousand dollars through the federal Save America's Treasures program.

The funds will be used to restore a very unique plane.

- So for the next three years, we are going to be able to really drive the restoration of the SBD-1 that we're restoring.

In fact, the only one of its kind in the world.

57 were built, this is the only one left.

(air whooshing) - [Reporter 2] The team at the Air Zoo is committed to preserving a piece of American aviation history, and sharing their passion with a new generation.

- You know, to get middle school kids to hang out with a 94-year-old engine mechanic, for example.

And it's neat to watch them interact.

It's neat to see the kids learning from somebody that is so knowledgeable.

And he's passing the torch.

- Just the idea that the work we do here is gonna so far beyond our doors, our region, but shared around the country, it is inspiring for us, and it's inspiring for our team every day.

Our volunteers, knowing that the work that they are going to do is going to be spread around the country, is gonna be felt around the country, is really a gigantic inspiration for our team.

(upbeat music) (air whooshing) - For more about Great Lakes history, visit GreatLakesNow.org.

And now, it's time for "The Catch," which takes you around the Great Lakes to hear from reporters about the issues they're covering.

(air whooshing) - [Reporter 3] A group of students at Eastern Michigan University are studying a surprising aquatic species hiding out in the Great Lakes.

MLive reporter, Makayla Coffee has the story.

- They were actually spending their first semester studying more about these freshwater jellyfish.

So these students took some time doing field research in a lake in Dexter Township, and went snorkeling, and collected the freshwater jellyfish to come back to kind of like learn more about them.

- [Reporter 3] The students saw a previous story by Makayla about the presence of jellyfish in a small pond near Brighton, Michigan.

It prompted them to reach out about the research they're conducting at Pickerel Lake in Dexter Township as part of a biology class led by professor Cara Shillington.

- It was like around 17 students at Eastern Michigan University, and they spent time snorkeling, collecting, and analyzing different jellyfish that they would bring back to the university.

They were able to collect 25 to 30 jellyfish in the lake.

And from there, they've been trying to come up with some information, and come up with, I guess answers to a lot of questions, because freshwater jellyfish seem to be an animal that not many people have all the answers to.

- [Reporter 3] And while there's still a lot that's unknown about the freshwater jellyfish, one thing researchers seem to agree on, at least for now, is where they came from.

- A lot of researchers seem to think that they come from the Yangtze River Valley in China, and they were transported with ornamental aquatic plants and stuff like that.

- According to the Great Lakes Aquatic Nonindigenous Species Information System, the jellyfish have been in Michigan since 1933, when they were found in the Huron River near Ann Arbor.

Since then, Makayla says they've been found in bodies of water throughout Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

But they're not always easy to spot.

And that's partly because of their small size.

- A lot of the times, these freshwater jellyfish were the size of a dime or a nickel.

So they were very small, and they never really found them close to shore.

So it was more when they were swimming out into the lake, so that may be why a lot of people haven't seen them yet.

- [Reporter 3] And in case you're wondering, yes, these little jellyfish are venomous like their larger sea-dwelling relatives.

But because of their size, Makayla says they don't pose a serious threat to humans.

- A lot of people have questions about whether or not these jellyfish are something to look out for, if they're harmful, but a lot of researchers have concluded that these freshwater jellyfish aren't.

They do sting, but they sting more smaller organisms like plankton.

So humans shouldn't be worried about them in their lakes.

(air whooshing) (soft music) - [Reporter 3] The construction of the St Lawrence Seaway represents one of the most massive industrial transformations of land in North America, and now scientists are trying to understand the impact of that transformation, and what it's cost the overall health of the river.

CBC News reporter Verity Stevenson is covering the story in Montreal.

- Every year they do a survey of the water quality of the Saint Lawrence River.

And it's a really complete... Like their goal is to make it as complete as possible.

(air whooshing) - [Reporter 3] Lead by scientists from the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, the survey covers a total of 600 kilometers or 372 miles of the St Lawrence River.

The scientists set out with many research goals.

Most are aimed at learning about contaminants, and the flow of the river, which was dramatically reshaped to serve industry in the 1950s.

- So there's this throughline of settler societies, and how they've treated or we have treated rivers, and the St Lawrence is not alone in this necessarily, but it has been transformed by one of the most massive industrial projects in modern history, and that is the St Lawrence Seaway.

So basically carving out canals to bypass these rapids in the river.

And what that's done is it's really altered the natural landscape of the river.

- [Reporter 3] The seaway was built in partnership with the United States, and turned the river banks of Montreal into locks and piers for the exchange of goods from thousands of vessels each year.

It was a boon for maritime business, but it also caused widespread destruction, flooding ten Ontario communities, and displacing thousands.

- These are losses that are really felt for generations.

And that's just part of, you know, so it's not only in the environment that you see how it's changed the water quality, but there's also sociological effects of these transformations.

- [Reporter 3] The scientists are trying to find out what changes inside the water as it travels past cities, farms, islands, ports, and factories.

- They're realizing that there's connections not only between the industrialization of the river, and like the sociological effects, but also all of the different environmental impacts on the river.

And that includes, you know, from municipalities' wastewater, in Montreal we have a huge wastewater treatment plant, but it's also the only one managing the wastewater for the city, and it's very old.

(air whooshing) - [Reporter 3] Montreal's current facility filters solids and some nutrients out of the water, but Verity says a lot of contaminants, including E.coli, pharmaceuticals, and heavy metals still make their way into the river.

- One of the challenges for the water quality in the St Lawrence and a lot of other big waterways in North America is wastewater treatment.

And so there is a refurbishment of the Jean R Marcotte treatment plant in Montreal that's coming.

It's just that it's been delayed for ten years.

It's tripled in cost.

So although it's supposed to come next year, some people are sort of skeptical of, you know, when that will actually happen.

(air whooshing) - [Reporter 3] A new study illustrates how culturally relevant resources can improve environmental health literacy among the Great Lakes' Anishinaabe population.

Journalist Abigail Comar has the story for Great Lakes Echo.

- So the study is a collaboration between the Medical College of Wisconsin, the Inter-tribal Council of Michigan, and the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority in Sioux Saint Marie.

- [Reporter 3] Abigail says one part of the study looks at the efficacy of an advisory program in the form of an app called Gigiigoo'inaan, which means our fish in Ojibwe.

It's focused on safe fish consumption in an Indigenous cultural context.

- Fish are a very important cultural resource for the Anishinaabe, and a very important part of a traditional diet.

- [Reporter 3] However, because of concerns over increasing mercury and PCB levels in Great Lake's fish, there are recommended limits of how much fish is safe to consume.

- But these recommendations have historically been made from a culturally neutral perspective.

And a culturally neutral perspective does not take into account the importance of fish in a traditional Anishinaabe diet.

(air whooshing) - The researchers who developed the Gigiigoo'inaan app, noted how previous advisories failed to help the Anishinaabe track and understand their fish consumption.

This new resource incorporates feedback from members of the Anishinaabe community to make it culturally relevant, and encourage safer practices.

- This app is absolutely a signal for the way forward.

It was developed with the community that it was designed for, and I think that is the only way forward in terms of health literacy is to create resources that are made for the people who are going to use them.

(air whooshing) - Thanks for watching.

For more on these stories and the Great Lakes in general, 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.

(upbeat music) (music continues) (music continues) (air whooshing) - [Announcer 2] This program is brought to you by The Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

- [Announcer 3] The Consumers Energy Foundation is committed to serving Michigan, from preserving our state's natural resources and sustaining our future, to continuing business growth, academic achievement, and community involvement.

Learn more at consumersenergy.com/foundation.

- [Announcer 2] The Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at DPTV, The Polk Family Fund, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(soft music) (piano music)