New York State Department of Health: Great Lakes Community Project

The New York State Department of Health is working on a grant-funded project called, "Enhancing public health support for brownfields and land reuse and characterizing community well-being in New York's Areas of Concern of the Great Lakes", or the "Great Lakes Community Project".

The purpose of the Great Lakes Community Project is to develop an inventory of brownfield sites and to investigate different ways to measure community health in communities near the Great Lakes where brownfield redevelopment is occurring.

This project is funded through a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

Great Lakes Areas of Concern are environmentally degraded areas within the Great Lakes Basin. The US Environmental Protection Agency established six Areas of Concern in the Great Lakes Region of New York. These areas are defined by the US-Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (Annex 2 of the 1987 Protocol) as:

image showing Great Lakes Areas of Concern

geographic areas that fail to meet the general or specific objectives of the agreement where such failure has caused or is likely to cause impairment of beneficial use of the area's ability to support aquatic life.

The US and Canadian governments identified 43 areas: 26 in US waters, 17 in Canadian waters, and 5 shared between US and Canada on connecting river systems.

The State Health Department mapped New York State Remedial Program sites, including brownfields, for these six Areas of Concern identified in New York State.

Maps of the Specific Great Lakes Areas of Concern

For More Information

For more information about this project, e-mail us at beei@health.state.ny.us, or call 518-402-7880.