The Illinois Lake Michigan Implementation Plan (ILMIP) is a collaborative effort to create an agenda for the restoration and protection of Lake Michigan coastal resources. It is a shared vision that guides resource allocation, including federal (e.g. Great Lakes Restoration Initiative), state (e.g. Illinois Coastal Zone Management Program (ICMP), and local environmental projects within the Illinois Lake Michigan watershed.
Throughout this planning process, IDNR ICMP is seeking your input on the issues that impact our coast.
Here’s how you can get involved:
February 15 until May 29, 2013:
Visit IllinoisCoastalPriorities.org to voice your priorities for the Illinois Lake Michigan Coast. The Illinois Coastal Management Program (ICMP) will use your input in development of the Illinois Lake Michigan Implementation Plan (ILMIP) and to guide the funding of coastal projects.
You can vote on issues related to Habitat, Ecosystems, and Natural Area Restoration and Non-Point Source Pollution and other topics, ranging from Public Access and Recreation to Climate Change. The topics change every few weeks, so visit often.
You can sign on to IllinoisCoastalPriorities.org through your email, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google account. Voting is as simple as clicking a button. You can also leave comments to spark more discussion on the topics.
Ongoing:
The ILMIP wiki, a web-based social networking platform, is intended for use by ICMP to:
empower a broader, more engaged, and demographically diverse stakeholder group;
provide a spatially nested framework that scales up to regional goals and down to on-the-ground/in-the-water implementation projects; and
build stronger partnerships through the sharing of best management practices, tools, and other resources.
Individual stakeholders and organizations which would like to become involved with this planning effort are invited to participate. Here are steps for getting involved: Register as a wiki contributor. Please list lehman.stuart@epa.gov the wiki sponsor, as your "EPA contact" when registering. Approval notification should come back in a few minutes.
Please subscribe to the ILMIP mailing list to receive regular updates about the project and ways to stay involved.
Subscribe here.