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During the last week of September, Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition brought together a diverse group of more than 400 people from throughout the Great Lakes region to attend the Great Lakes Restoration Conference in Chicago. I attended as Minnesota’s state lead for the coalition. At the largest annual gathering of Great Lakes supporters and activists, we learned about important Great Lakes restoration issues and projects. We also developed strategies to advance federal, regional, and local restoration goals for the Great Lakes.

During the conference, discussions focused on many

Anybody who’s ever visited Michigan’s Great Lakes has been taken aback by their inspiring splendor and breath-taking beauty, laid out for all to see. What you don’t see, however, are Enbridge’s two aging pipelines, known as Line 5, that run under the Straits of Mackinac, the waterway that joins Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. And these old pipelines are not only hidden beneath this splendor and beauty, but they actually threaten to destroy it.

By Alessandro Ciari, former community organizer with Clean Water Action and student, Montclair State University

"Ditch this dirty deal! Ditch this dirty deal!" chanted activists at a Day of Action at the Statehouse in Trenton yesterday. Environmental activists joined hundreds of concerned residents for a lobby day and rally against the egregious ExxonMobil settlement which lets the company off the hook for paying for over 100 years of pollution in New Jersey. “Governor Christie – Don’t Sell Us Out to Exxon! Don’t Sell Us Out to Exxon!” intoned the audience with signs that read “Make