MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said water security and safety is increasingly becoming a global issue, as well as a focus of research at MSU.

“We’re excited not only to have these seven grants that are in our name, but to partner on seven more across the state in ways we think will have a profound impact on water quality in our future,” Simon said.

Joan Rose, a fisheries and wildlife and crop and soil sciences professor, is one of the leaders of the beach health projects. She said new technology is now able to quickly pinpoint the source of pollution at many beach areas to help determine the public and ecosystem health risks.

With climate change and other environmental risks, Rose said it is impossible to prevent some flooding at beach sites. The public often gets frustrated when they know there are public health risks nearby, but can’t get the information they need quickly enough, she said.

“When flooding occurs, pollution occurs,” Rivers said. “These grants help allow public health department and the state to create better messages, faster messages.”

MSU students will be directly involved in almost all the initiative’s projects, Rose said.

“In almost every grant, the students are going to be involved in both the training systems and the sampling,” Rose said. “Those are the people that are going to be taking the next set of jobs. Clearly in the wider business, we’re reaching a crisis in terms of having enough human resources to meet the needs of the future.”

Cameron Davis, a senior advisor with the Environmental Protection Agency, said the grants announced Friday are a piece of the anticipated $63 million of total grants that will be awarded to Michigan for Great Lakes projects under the initiative.

Davis said the standard of care for the Great Lakes has changed from minimizing damage to preventing it from happening.

“The new standard of care is to proactively leave the Great Lakes better for the next generation than the condition in which we found them,” Davis said.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow said the Great Lakes are experiencing more threats now than ever before because of factors invasive species, low water levels, global climate change, toxic sediments and declining fish populations.

For Michigan, the initiative is about protecting the economy, but also the way of life for the people in the state, she said, adding that research at MSU will be critical to the grants’ success.

“Because of the leadership of MSU and the knowledge and science available through MSU, they will be relied on for many of the projects,” Stabenow said.