Like the town meetings on which it is modeled, the Great Lakes Town Hall provides a "space" for you to come together with your neighbors around the basin to share and explore what it means to be a Great Laker.  Have something to say about the Great Lakes?  Join the discussion on the Town Hall today!

- Visit The Great Lakes Town Hall -

Today when you visit www.greatlakestownhall.org, you will be looking at a new and improved Town Hall! 

We've kept many of the same features of the old site, including the "Community Bulletin" and "Celebrate the Lakes" sections. 

Here is a quick look at a few of the new components:

1.  User profiles: Log in and update your personal information (your interests, job, location in the basin, etc.) and photo.  This allows other logged in users to get to know you, and you them!
   
   
2. Monthly feature: A rotating trio of opinion polls, 5 Questions (putting high-profile Great Lakes individuals in the hot-seat) and Great Lakes Spotlight (featuring a new grassroots organization).
   
   
3. New section names: Weekly Editorial (formerly known as the Featured Issue, written by Dave, Gary or Brenna), and the Daily Post (what used to be called the Guest Speaker, written by a new person each week).

- Check Out the New GLTH -

Margaret Wooster is the author of Living Waters: Reading the Rivers of the Lower Great Lakes, being released this month by the State University of New York Press. She has also published many articles and stories about local rivers and creeks including Somewhere to Go on Sunday, a guidebook to the “natural treasures” of the binational Niagara bioregion. She works for the Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper mainly on fish and wildlife habitat protection and restoration projects, having most recently completed a habitat assessment with community-based conservation goals for the Buffalo and Niagara Rivers. (Find it on the Riverkeeper website at www.bnriverkeeper.org.)

She was Executive Director of Great Lakes United for eight years and before that a watershed planner for local municipalities. She likes to canoe, kayak, camp and generally explore streams, lakes, ponds and springs and to draw, paint, or otherwise catalogue these places and their inhabitants.

 - Read Margaret's Essays -

 Monthly Feature: 5 Questions

Each month we premier one of three added features of the Great Lakes Town Hall.  These three consist of Opinion Polls, 5 Questions and the Great Lakes Spotlight.

This month, Jennifer Browning, Executive Director of the Biodiversity Project, is in the hot-seat as we feature the 5 Questions section.  One question we asked Jennifer was 

"You're responsible for messaging for two of the world's greatest watersheds, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. How are they similar or different?"

- Click Here Read Jennifer's 5 Questions and Answers -

Our Weekly Editorial

Crossing the Divide: A Look Back and Prediction

Each week, one of our moderators, Dave Dempsey, Gary Wilson or Brenna Wanous, writes an essay describing, criticizing, praising or highlighting a Great Lakes issue. 

This week, Dave looks back at past Administrations to identify problems in making progress on important issues (including environmental), and speculates that grassroots activism is crucial in delivering results the government is lax in providing.  He writes,

"The day this is posted, George W. Bush is President. The last day it's featured, Barack H. Obama will be finishing his first week as President. Will the Great Lakes know -- now or in four years?"

This week on the Town Hall...

  Newly Remodeled Website

Daily Post Writer: Margaret Wooster, author of Living Waters: Reading the Rivers of the Lower
Great Lakes

Weekly Editorial:  Crossing the Divide: A Look Back and Prediction by Dave Dempsey

Monthly Feature: "5 Questions" about Jennifer Browning of the Biodiversity Project

Latest Community Bulletin Posts:

• Teen Leads by Example on Bottled Water
• Chesapeake Bay -- A Sobering Report
• Defining Moments -- Earth and the Great Lakes

Your contributions to the Town Hall make it possible to run this dynamic and exciting website. 

When you donate to the Town Hall, you will receive a FREE 2009 Great Lakes Forever Photo Contest Calendar!