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May 26, 2025 13 mins
In this episode of West Michigan Weekend, Phil Tower welcomes Dr. Jo Lattimore, Ph.D. , director of the Michigan Clean Water Corps (MiCorps). 

Dr.Latimore spoke about the opportunity for Michigan residents to sign up for volunteer lake monitor training through the Michigan Clean Water Corps (MiCorps). 
MiCorps is a statewide network focused on water quality, has been running its Cooperative Lakes Monitoring Program for 51 years, with support from the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy.
MiCorps is administered by Michigan State University Extension under the direction of EGLE and in partnership with the Huron River Watershed Council and Michigan Lakes and Streams Association.

More Online: Michigan Clean Water Corps (MiCorps). 

 
Questions about getting involved with MiCorps?

 
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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is iHeartRadio's West Michigan Weekend. West Michigan Weekend is
a weekly program designed to inform and enlighten on a
wide range of public policy issues, as well as news
and current events. Now here's your host, Phil Tower.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome back to our program. In this segment, let's talk
about water. It is our greatest resource here in the
state of Michigan, well at least beyond the wonderful people
that live here. But we thought we would talk about
the importance of water quality monitoring. The Michigan Clean Water
Core is our focus for this segment, a network of

(00:37):
volunteer water quality monitoring programs in Michigan created through Michigan
Executive Order to assist the Department of Environment, Great Lakes
and Energy that's EGL in collecting and sharing water quality
data for use in water resources management. We need to
constantly monitor our water to make sure it's safe and

(00:59):
the quality is good. The program, the MI cores, administered
by Michigan State University Extension and with us on the
liveline is doctor Joe Lattimore. She is my Core director
with MSU's Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. It's a mouthful,
did I get most of it right, Joe.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
You sure did.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
That's exactly right.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Okay, good, thank you so much. And let's roll back
a little bit to how this got started. I mentioned
it was a creative through state executive order. I'm assuming
it's been around a while. When did this all.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Start, that's a great question. Even before it got the
name MI CORE or Michigan Clean Watercore, the state of
Michigan has had volunteer monitoring programs for both our inland
lakes and our streams. The inland lake program, which we
also call the Cooperative Lakes Monitoring Program, that started back
in nineteen seventy four. That means we're into our fifty

(01:54):
first year of data collection with volunteers, and it also
means we're the second oldest lake monitoring program in the
entire country. The stream Yeah, the stream monitoring program is
a little newer, but it also dates back to the
early nineteen nineties. So volunteers have been critical to monitoring

(02:14):
our lakes and streams for decades in Michigan, really important,
and in the early two thousands, that executive order from
the Governor's office kind of cemented those programs by forming
the Michigan Clean Water Core, which we call my CORE
for short, and we continue to partner with the State
of Michigan and the Agency Eagle that you mentioned before.

Speaker 4 (02:38):
To this day.

Speaker 5 (02:39):
So you have three core programs.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
You mentioned the stream monitoring, which we'll talk about later
in this conversation, and cooperative lakes monitoring program. There's also
a volunteer stream cleanup program, which is important because sadly,
just amazes May, people still throw trash and junk in
bodies of water, streams, rivers, lakes here in Michigan.

Speaker 5 (03:02):
So three parts of this.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
You just recently completed some live trainings for people interested
in doing the lakes monitoring. But I know as we
are airing this on the radio, you still have some
videos at your website for people to get involved to
learn how to monitor. But let's start with the beginning part.

(03:26):
If somebody says, doctor Joe Latimore, I want to be
involved with this, I live near an inland lake. Let's
say they live near a large inland lake here in
West Michigan. Is there an opportunity for inland lakes or
is this just the great lakes? Talk about how it works.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Great question. Yes, we focus on inland lakes. There's a
lot of scientists and researchers who work on the Great
Lakes and organizations around the state that focus on those.
We are focused on the inland lakes, and we're the
only statewide monitoring program for our inland lakes here in Michigan.
And so someone lives on or near one of those

(04:02):
lakes or just cares a lot about it, maybe they're
a frequent visitor that that's all you need to be
able to do is access that lake to become a volunteer.
And so we'd encourage folks to reach out to us,
and there's a couple of things we'd do. Then the
first thing we do is we check to see if
we already have a volunteer on that lake. If we do,

(04:23):
then we can help connect you with that person. It
definitely makes the effort a little easier if there's more
than one person. So we have a lot of small
groups of people who monitor lakes across the state. But
then if there's not already someone monitoring that lake, then
it's available and no better time than the present to

(04:44):
get started. So if someone is interested, we identify a
lake that they want to monitor for water quality, then
we would talk about the process of getting enrolled in
the program and getting the training that they need.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
The training is available online. However, if you determine a
person is the only person that's volunteered to monitor the lake,
what kind of equipment do they use? How does the
process of the actual monitoring and sending the samples in
to you at MSU.

Speaker 5 (05:11):
How does that part work?

Speaker 3 (05:13):
Yeah, we offer a lot of different options for people.
For brand new volunteers, we have what we call our
basic parameters, kind of the more entry level, less complicated
ways to kind of get your feet wet. Please forgive
the pun on monitoring in our lakes. So we work
with the volunteers individually to choose what characteristics of their

(05:37):
lake they are most likely to be interested in. The
very basic one, the found regal one that we encourage
all our volunteers to do is to monitor the clarity
of the water in their lake. This is an approach
that's been used for centuries to track the health of
lakes and it's fairly simple.

Speaker 4 (05:54):
We use a device called a seci disc, which is
just a simple eight inch disc painted black and white quarters,
and that disc is lowered into the water periodically throughout
the summer and the volunteer just notes how far.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Down in the water they can still see that black
and white disk as they lower it down. When those
discs get lowered, things that might be happening in the
lake that might make it harder to you would be say,
there's an algae bloom happening, or maybe there's a lot
of silt in the water that's going to make it
hard to see that disc, and that'll be collected. That'll
be noted when the volunteer measures how far they can

(06:32):
see that disc going down through the year. So that's
the kind of most entry level and then our beginning
volunteers also often are interested in measuring the water quality
of their lakes, specifically looking at the amount of the
nutrient called phosphorus. And most of us when we think
of phosphorus, we think about like the fertilizer we might
put on our lawn or our garden. Well, that can

(06:54):
also get into our lakes and by running off from
the soils from yards, that kind of thing. And if
you get too much phosphorus in our lakes, that's when
we see you know, excessive growth of algae or lots
and lots of aquatic plants where you know, unnaturally high
amounts of that, so that's another simple one. We provide bottles,

(07:16):
sterile bottles to the volunteers and just twice a year
they go out and collect a couple samples of water
from the middle of their lake, and then they send
them back to us and we analyze them in our laboratory,
and that gives us a really good sense of how
much of that nutrient is in a lake, and it
may help explain some of the things they might be seeing,

(07:36):
like if they are seeing excessive algae.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
I'm glad you said that directure. Jill Latimore with us.
She is head of am I Core or my Core.
Excuse me, I knew I was going to say that wrong.

Speaker 5 (07:47):
My core m I Corp. And it's am I Co
r p s dot net.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
Micore dot net is the website. I want to go
back to what you said about phosphorus getting into the lakes.
Having lived on a lake for years and being the
head of the Lake Association, which is a very thankless job,
by the way, I know we really urged our residents
not to use fertilizer with phosphorus, which is readily available.
But that's important. It's such an important thing for keeping

(08:16):
your water quality good. You also have a program where
you want people to monitor aquatic and invasive invasive species, right, yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
We sure do so. That's a very popular program with
our volunteers. You know, most of us have heard of
invasive species, and we may all know a thing or
two about the damage they can cause. You know, when
you get species that don't belong in an ecosystem, that
can cause all sorts of problems. A lot of us
have heard of zebra muscles or the Asian carps, especially

(08:47):
in the Great Lakes, well in our inland lakes. You know,
although zebra muscles can be a problem there too. Probably
the most concerning invasive species that we have in our
inland lakes are different species of plant plants that you know,
aren't from the region, maybe notren't even from North America,
but have made their way into a lot of our

(09:08):
water bodies. And when they do, some of these plants
can grow out of control and you know, make the
lake overly weedy. It makes it hard to go fishing
or swimming or move your boat through there. And it
also is not good for the fish and other creatures
that live in the lake because those aren't the plants
that they are adapted to live with, they don't create

(09:30):
good habitat for our fish and other creatures in the lake.
So we are glad to be able to train volunteers
on how to identify some of the most likely invasive
species that they may find. Some of your listeners may
be familiar with Eurasian water millfoil.

Speaker 4 (09:45):
That's kind of the.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
Plant that you know, if you live on a lake
in Michigan, you either have it in your lake or
you've heard about it. And so we'll train folks on
how to identify that plant and a few others, and
what to do if they find it, who do they
reap harder to what resources are there to help manage
it or prevent it from spreading further. So we call
that our Exotic Aquatic Plant Watch, and it's very, very

(10:10):
valuable for lake communities. And also, you know, on a
statewide basis. Just so on a statewide level, we at
Michigan State University and also with our state environmental agencies
can kind of keep an eye on where these invasive
species are and where they might be heading. Next.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
Doctor Joe Lattimore with us from my Core the Lakes
Monitoring Program here in Michigan and a very valuable one
at that. Again, you can learn more at MyCoRe dot
netm I corps dot net. Now that's where you also
can learn information about stream monitoring. In late April, State

(10:47):
of Michigan said, my core needs stream monitoring volunteers. This
is done through your local watershed program. So people all
over West Michigan and really all over the state at
accessing this radio program. Joe, what's the best way for
them to get involved? A lot of people love streams,
They love the sound of streams. They may even have

(11:09):
a stream running through their backyard. How can they get
involved in their local watershed program? You have information on
your website, right, we sure do.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
Stream monitoring is a lot of fun. That's actually where
my background, my education started with is working in streams
and using the insects that live in our streams to
inform us on how healthy or maybe unhealthy our streams are.
Streams are like the insects that live in our streams
are like canaries in a coal mine. They will indicate

(11:38):
to you whether the stream is healthy or if it
has problems with solution or habitat loss and so forth.
So it's really kind of fun to go out and
use a net and look for critters in the stream.
And so there are watershed groups and other water resource
agencies all over the state, and we work directly with
those groups to train their staff and the methods for

(12:02):
doing this kind of sampling and reporting the data back
into the database where anyone can look and see how
healthy their local water bodies are. So, if you are
interested in volunteering for one of those opportunities, you can
reach out to us so we can help connect you
to your local watershed group that does stream monitoring, or
you can just go straight to that website that you've

(12:23):
mentioned a few times now, and we have a listing
of all our active stream monitoring groups throughout the entire
state of Michigan, and they're listed by county, so you
can look at where you're located and see what organizations
are doing stream monitoring where you live. They're always eager
to have volunteers and to get out and have some fun,
maybe get your feet wet a little bit and find

(12:44):
out how healthy your local stream is.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
So important, and I'm so glad we could add this conversation.
We've got to do a part too, because I'm out
of time, but this is always timely, it's always important.
And doctor Joe Lattimore, I appreciate you being with.

Speaker 5 (12:57):
Us so much. She is director of my Core and
you can learn more at m I.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
C rps dot net through MSU's Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.

Speaker 5 (13:07):
Doctor Joe Latimore, thanks for joining us, thanks.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
For having me, and thanks for your interest.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Absolutely you've been listening to iHeartRadio's West Michigan Weekend. West
Michigan Weekend is a production of Wood Radio and iHeartRadio
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