- [Ward] On this edition of "Great Lakes Now", ice climbing in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.

- There is no place in the world where you can actually go ice climbing over open water.

And that makes us very unique.

- [Ward] Is offshore wind power coming to the Great Lakes?

- I've really spent my entire life exploring Lake Erie.

Having 1,500 wind turbines in Lake Erie would be devastating.

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

(soft music) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation.

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

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.

The Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at DPTV.

The Polk Family Fund, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Hi, I'm Ward Detwiler, welcome to "Great Lakes Now."

There are lots of ways to get outside and enjoy winter in the Great Lakes region.

For our first story, Ian Solomon took a trip to the shores of Lake Superior to try his hand at one winter sport you may not have heard of.

(indistinct chatter) - [Ian] It's a sport that's growing in popularity, especially around the Great Lakes.

And it's custom made for northern winters.

It's climbing, but not on rocks.

It's on ice.

Munising, Michigan, is one of the hottest spots for ice climbing.

Bill Thompson is an avid climber, an instructor, and one of the owners of Down Wind Sports in Munising.

- There are a lot of places in the country to go ice climbing.

But Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Munising, Michigan is unbelievable.

Just based on the scenery.

We get a lot of snow up here.

But we are also nestled on the southern shore of Lake Superior.

A lot of our climbs actually ascend right out of Lake Superior.

There is no place in the world where you can actually go ice climbing over open water.

And that makes us very unique.

(upbeat music) What else makes us unique is that we can climb ice from November to May.

And you cannot find that anywhere in the lower 48 or at sea level.

- [Ian] So I decided to check it out.

I headed north to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to see what ice climbing was all about.

My first stop was Down Wind Sports, where I knew I could get two important things.

Great gear and a great guide.

- [Emily] Hi, I'm Emily!

- Hi, Emily.

Nice to meet you, Ian.

- Nice to meet you.

All right, you can come on back here and we'll get you all set.

- Cool.

- [Emily] The first thing I'll have you do is fill out a waiver.

- Okay.

- What size shoe are you?

- [Ian] I am a 12, to 12 and a half.

- All right, I'm gonna go grab some boots for you.

- Okay, thank you.

- Yeah, no problem.

So have you ever been ice climbing before?

- [Ian] No, I haven't, this will be my first time.

- [Emily] Oh, heck yeah.

- [Ian] Emily Gantner is an ice climbing guide.

She discovered the sport when she was a college student at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, about 45 miles west.

- When I was in college, we'd go hiking, but there was never anything that I was like, "Oh, I love winter."

But when I found ice climbing I was like, "Okay, now I know why I love winter.

This is why I wanna be up here, like it's something to do."

Our winters are like six months long.

- [Ian] Emily got me outfitted with the gear I needed, including insulated mountain boots and something critical to ice climbing.

They're called crampons.

- These are the crampons.

These are what is gonna help us get purchase on the ice.

- Okay.

- Right now we're kind looking top down at them, parts of the crampon that we have.

This is the toe bail here.

And then this is called the heel throw in the back.

So you want this to be nice and tight onto your boot.

- [Ian] What are your number one tips for a beginner?

- Everything you know about rock climbing, throw it out the window.

So the technique is completely different.

Sometimes rock climbing, sometimes you do just kind of have to be strong enough to like pull yourself up to something, where ice climbing rewards good technique.

- (knocks on helmet) Feels good.

After getting fitted with a helmet, and a quick lesson in using the ice tools, we loaded up the gear.

- You ready to go go climbing, Ian?

- [Ian] I'm beyond ready to go climbing, let's do it.

- It isn't far from downtown Munising to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.

- [Emily] It's just right up this hill.

- Cool.

- Shouldn't be too bad though, but this is kind of like the hardest part of the day.

- All right.

- Just the hills.

- [Ian] Which is home to a stretch of ice climbing routes known as the Curtains.

It's easy to see where the name came from.

My first climbing route, appropriately enough, is called Opening Curtain.

- First thing we'll do is we'll throw on our helmets, then we'll do our harnesses, then our crampons.

(rock music) - [Ian] Getting the crampons on in the snow wasn't easy.

- Move that.

Now try.

There you go, perfect.

- But the scenery was breathtaking.

I'm really overwhelmed with just like this structure as a whole.

You know, the whole time I thought that these were waterfalls that had just frozen over, I thought that's what ice climbing was, so I'm just now learning from Bill and Emily that they're actually a snow runoff, so snow melts.

- We get a lot of rain in the fall, we get a lot of early snow, and the rock formation here is sandstone and it's incredibly brittle and porous.

And so now we have cold temperatures, maybe a little bit warming, then cold again, and the ice forms right out of this rock and we have miles and miles of this type of terrain.

(ice pick thudding) - Oh yeah.

- Do you hear that?

Versus, like.

(ice pick thudding) - Wow.

- And this is kind of what we would call seep ice.

So what that means is if you actually look behind the bigger ice, you can see all how it's kind of just seeping out of the rock.

And then you can actually walk right behind this stuff.

Whew, it's a little drippy, but - [Ian] This is so cool.

Before I start climbing, Bill sets some anchors and rigs up a safety line so that if I slip, make that when I slip, I'll be caught by my harness instead of tumbling all the way to the ground.

Emily will have my safety line in her hands and she can create friction on the rope to stop me from falling.

It's an essential part of the sport called belaying.

- He has the black line here, that's our static rope, so it doesn't stretch.

He is tying that off to trees that are up there and then our green rope will be our climbing rope.

- [Ian] I am about to climb that ice.

Do I know how to know to, no.

Am I gonna figure it out with Emily?

Yes.

(laughs) Before I got started though, Emily gave me some pointers.

- So see how I kind of swung?

And you can tell, you'll like feel it and you'll be like, oh yeah, that's in the ice really well.

But even if I pull down on this ice tool it's not moving or going anywhere.

So right now I'm in this kind of A frame position.

So I'm actually like super stable.

All of my weight is on my feet right now, even with my arm up here.

So my next move would be to kind of move up my feet.

- [Ian] So now that Emily and Bill have shown me the ropes, it's my turn to climb.

- Climbin'?

- Climb on.

- [Emily] Now look where that left foot is going, yep.

Yes, in there, yes.

Hips in, yep, and swing, like flick your wrist.

Whoo, you got it.

- [Ian] I learned pretty quickly that the real secret to success is to find a good rhythm between using your legs and arms, and finding good places to rest is key.

I had to plan my next moves and that's way harder if you're hanging on with your fingernails.

- Oh, so you're at the top, so.

- Well, let me celebrate.

(laughs) - So before you come down, look back, you can see the lakes behind you.

- Oh wow.

- Isn't that pretty?

- [Ian] Oh, this is gorgeous.

- And I'll start to slowly lower you.

- [Ian] Okay.

- Nice job.

- That is fun.

Yeah, I can tell I was using my arms way too much with how they feel right now.

You guys hear that?

Very, I'm gonna repeat it, very noble to get somewhere and on my first time.

That was really cool.

Every year novices like me, along with more experienced climbers, travel to Munising for an annual event called Ice Fest.

- We get about 1,200 climbers up here, we double the population of the town.

Every hotel from Munising to Marquette is filled up.

All the restaurants are full and it's so much fun to just walk around town and see everyone is an ice climber and it's so special to come up here for that festival and we liken it to a big family reunion.

- My first time ice climbing is in the books thanks to Downwind Sports here in Munising.

I cannot wait to come back to put what I learned to the test, 'cause let me tell you, the gloom of winter is no match for a sport like this.

Exhilarating, adventurous, and totally cool.

- For Ian's column about his ice climbing trip, and for more about other ways to enjoy winter in the Great Lakes region, visit GreatLakesNow.org.

In Europe, offshore wind farms are relatively common, but in the US offshore wind power is still pretty new, and there are no offshore wind farms in the Great Lakes.

But a project called Icebreaker, proposed for Lake Erie just off of Cleveland, could change that.

- [Reporter] Jade Davis represents Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, or LEEDco, a public-private partnership in Cleveland that is joined with Norwegian industry leader, Fred Olsen Renewables, to develop the Icebreaker Wind Project.

- Icebreaker is a demonstration project that is designed to demonstrate how we could possibly create large scale energy from offshore wind here in the Great Lakes, but specifically in Lake Erie.

- [Reporter] The name Icebreaker hints at one of the big obstacles of the project, building offshore turbines that can withstand the annual freezing of Lake Erie.

- [Jade] We tend to get ice in this part of Great Lakes.

All the Great Lakes in the wintertime, and these turbines will have to be able to withstand and break ice on their own.

- [Reporter] Compared to large offshore wind farms already in place in Europe, Icebreaker is modest, just six 480 foot turbines producing 20.7 megawatts.

But while the scale of Icebreaker is small, its impact could be huge.

- If we're talking about climate change, renewable energy is gonna be needed, more energy is gonna be needed and that's what this project is going to be providing.

But it's also more importantly gonna provide science and data that will help us make good informed energy generation decisions, especially when we are thinking about our greatest actual resource, which is Lake Erie.

- [Reporter] To gather the science and data, and to satisfy various requirements from state and federal regulators, LEEDco has conducted many environmental studies.

Ed Verhamme is a senior engineer at LimnoTech, an environmental consulting firm.

He led the initial research team.

- When you look at the Icebreaker Project, we started to divide some of the environmental issues into above the water and below the water.

So our work was, was looking at all the activities of the project that would impact the lake, whether it was during construction or whether it was during operations.

- [Reporter] Verhamme and his team's research included evaluating water and sediment quality, tracking fish migration, monitoring bat activity, and understanding what happens when the lake freezes.

But some say their research isn't enough.

The Lake Erie Foundation is against the Icebreaker Project.

Board member John Lipaj explains their position.

- The Lake Erie Foundation is about Lake Erie.

And so we're not about choosing winners or losers with energy policy, we just follow the science.

And in this case there's not enough science, there's not enough data to support building industrial wind turbines in Lake Erie.

- [Reporter] According to Lipaj, the foundation's concerns include the cost of the project, the impact on migratory birds, and the fallout of disrupting potentially toxic sediment during construction.

- When the US Army Corps of Engineers dredged the Cuyahoga River for decades and decades, they just dumped the toxic sediment out in the lake.

And one of the things that we know is that construction of something like a wind turbine out in the lake will disturb that toxic sediment.

- [Reporter] Verhamme says concerns about toxic sediment were also shared by his team.

But their research concluded that no Icebreaker turbines or the buried cables that connect each turbine to the power grid will be located in areas known to contain toxic sediment.

Verhamme also says offshore construction isn't a new concept on the lake.

- All of these activities happen on the Great Lakes already, in terms of building bridges, putting in foundations, varying power cables to islands.

So we did have a lot of referential impact work to look at.

When we look at that I think that there was little to no impact - [Reporter] On the Atlantic seaboard, offshore wind is already a reality.

The first offshore wind farm built in the US is located here at Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island.

Alex Kuffner, an environment reporter for the Providence Journal, has reported on the project from the beginning.

- The project was initially proposed around the same time as Icebreaker actually, and it took, you know, the better part of a decade to get the approvals to get built.

There were a number of concerns, one was cost.

The second sort of area of opposition had to do with, you know, the views.

These turbines, even though they're far off the mainland shore of Rhode Island, they're very close to the Block Island shore.

- [Reporter] Despite these concerns, the product was completed in 2016.

In the time since, have the rosy promises or the dire warnings come true?

In terms of energy production, Block Island promised to generate 30 megawatts of energy, enough to power 17,000 homes.

Kuffner says the amount of energy generated fluctuates.

- So in certain years the project has produced actually more power than they promised, 'cause it turned out that the turbines were a little bit more efficient than they thought, that the winds were stronger.

But then in, you know, recently some of the turbines had to go down for maintenance.

- [Reporter] Prior to construction, some predicted that coveted fishing grounds would be disrupted.

According to Kuffner, that didn't happen.

The turbines were strategically placed to avoid a negative impact.

And while new jobs were mainly limited to temporary construction positions, the local charter boat industry is enjoying a healthy uptick in business.

- The guys that have small boats that are taking people out to, you know, do rod and reel fishing, they love the wind farm because you've created this reef effect around the bases of the turbines and that attracts fish.

So now if they have clients and they've had an unsuccessful day out, they stop by the Block Island wind farm 'cause they know they'll catch something there.

- [Reporter] Back in Ohio, John Lipaj and his colleagues at Lake Erie Foundation are concerned about the precedent Icebreaker could set.

They worry that it would lead to widespread wind turbine development on Lake Erie.

- The developers for Icebreaker have stated on multiple occasions that their goal is to generate 5,000 megawatts of electricity out of Lake Erie by the year 2030.

And to do that, they would need to build about 1,400 to 1,600 wind turbines in Lake Erie.

Having 1,500 wind turbines in Lake Erie would be devastating to all of us who love Lake Erie.

- [Reporter] But LEEDco spokesperson Davis says, any future offshore wind plans would need to be independently reviewed and approved.

- LEEDco is not a blanket permit to outfit Lake Erie and the waters of Lake Erie with wind turbines.

- [Reporter] One thing is clear though, offshore wind development along New York's roughly 75 miles of Lake Erie coastline seems unlikely.

In December New York State released a long awaited feasibility report, which concludes that the benefits of offshore wind on Lake Erie don't outweigh the risks and costs.

It seems likely that the benefits, risks, and costs of offshore wind in the Great Lakes will be a topic of debate for some time.

No energy solution is perfect, all of them have pros and cons, so there's no zero impact option available.

The choice is between which impacts seem most acceptable.

- If you accept climate science, right, we have to reduce our carbon emissions, We have to, you know, ween ourselves off fossil fuels.

Offshore wind is key to to doing that.

- For more about energy and climate change in the Great Lakes region, 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.

- [Reporter] Here in the Great Lakes region, we know all about gray winter skies.

But according to Bridge, Michigan reporter Kelly House, this winter has been especially cloudy.

- So in the first eight days of 2023, a Grand Rapids National Weather Service monitoring station registered five minutes of total sunlight.

And that's out of thousands of minutes of potential over those days.

- [Reporter] And while Great Lakes winters are known to be cloudy, Kelly says that the beginning of 2023 was an outlier, even by Michigan standards.

The reason, climate change.

- Our winters are gained warmer, and that can lead to drearier muddier, you know, experiences when we're used to having crisp skies and snow by this time of year.

The reason for that has to do with the lake effect.

So many Michiganders know the reason we can get some intense storms in the middle of winter is because of air sweeping over the Great Lakes before they really freeze and picking up moisture from the water.

So as our winters get warmer the lakes are slower to freeze and that means that the potential for clouds and storms is higher.

- [Reporter] Of course, the lake effect is felt in many areas south and east of a Great Lake.

Most famously Buffalo, where lake effect snow contributed to a deadly blizzard in the final days of 2022.

Kelly says that the trend toward warmer winters changes the lake effect, leading to strong winds sweeping over the open waters, picking up more moisture, which then creates persistent cloud cover.

This can wreak havoc on the people living in this region during the winter months.

- It turns out there's actually a name for that, seasonal effective disorder, which is a real thing.

I talked with a researcher who told me the reason that happens has to do with receptors in our brains that are activated when sunlight touches our eyes.

And of course in the winter, when you have these cloudy skies and the angle of the sun is different you're not getting as much of that.

So your brain isn't sending signals to boost your serotonin rate.

- [Reporter] As far as what the future holds for for Great Lakes winter cloud cover, it's likely to continue, but won't necessarily get worse.

- Scientists were pretty clear that, yes, lake effect is going to increase over time, meaning a greater chance of those cloud layers and storms happening.

That doesn't necessarily mean we will have more cloudy days, in part because we already have so many.

- [Reporter] Icy roads are a fact of life for drivers in the Great Lakes region, which is why salt is commonly used to de-ice the pavement.

But the use of road salt can be bad for waterways.

As part of the Great Lakes News collaborative project called Refresh, Circle of Blue reporter Brett Walton recently investigated the environmental impact of all that salt on roads in Michigan and beyond.

- It's the increasing salinity of freshwater that researchers and officials are concerned about.

It can harm insects and mussels and freshwater fish, it can loosen pollutants that are already bound up in sediment and send them downstream where they can influence things like harmful algal blooms, which are already a problem in some of the lakes, especially Lake Eerie.

- [Reporter] Salt can also damage infrastructure, making concrete and metal deteriorate faster than they would otherwise.

That's especially true in urban areas where there's lots of pavement.

One way to curb these negative consequences, salt smarter.

- That can be achieved in a number of ways.

One is education, better training.

It can also be achieved by changing equipment and changing techniques for salting.

So salting trucks are now going slower down the road and pre-wetting the salt.

- [Reporter] These techniques aim to keep more salt on the pavement where it's needed, instead of letting it bounce and scatter off the road, wasting it.

And the results are measurable.

The County Road Association says that decades ago 500 pounds of salt per lane mile were used to de-ice highways.

Today, that figure has been cut in half.

- The bottom line is that to address the salt problem you have to use less of it, and that means a change in practices and also change in expectations about what roads look like in the winter.

- [Reporter] A new study shows concerning levels of PFAS in fish harvested from rivers and lakes across the United States, including the Great Lakes.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Laura Schulte has the details.

- A group of researchers from the environmental working group and Duke University got together and they analyzed a lot of data that was available from federal agencies regarding PFAS in fish tissue harvested from freshwater lakes, streams, across the country.

- [Reporter] PFAS is an acronym for a family of chemical compounds that have been widely used for decades in waterproof and stain resistant products and foam used to fight aircraft fires.

- And these chemicals are an issue specifically for humans because they accumulate, bioaccumulate in our body over time and the chemicals have been linked to types of kidney and testicular cancers, lower birth weights, harm to immune and reproductive systems, altered hormone regulation, altered thyroid hormones as well as high blood pressure.

- [Reporter] The researchers analyzed hundreds of fish filets collected by the EPA between 2013 and 2015.

Fish with PFAS were found in all 48 contiguous states and PFAS levels in wild caught fish were substantially higher than those in commercially raised fish.

- Consuming fish, you know, once a month, 12 times a year can increase the amount of PFAS that are accumulating within your body as you take those fish in.

And this is really important to know about because we have always looked at PFAS and drinking water being the largest risk to human consumption with these chemicals.

But now we're finding that it is accumulating in our food and therefore, you know, accumulating in our body.

- [Reporter] All of the 152 fish harvested from the Great Lakes had detectable levels of PFAS.

And one salmon harvested from Lake Michigan near Milwaukee in 2010 showed 19,000 parts per trillion of the chemical PFOS.

To give some perspective, the EPA released guidance that humans shouldn't consume more than 0.02 parts per trillion of the chemical compounds.

- [Laura] For communities with strong ties to fishing this is going to have a huge effect, this is going to limit the amount of times a year that they can consume the fish, you know, that they rely on for sustenance.

- 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.

(bright music) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation.

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

The Consumer's 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.

The Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at DPTV.

The Polk Family Fund.

And viewers like you, thank you.