Great Lakes Commission

Great Lakes Commission, a U.S. interstate compact agency headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, acts as a prime recipient on federal grants and contracts focused on aquatic invasive species prevention, water quality management, habitat restoration, and regional coordination across the Great Lakes basin. The Commission operates as a government entity rather than a private contractor, competing full-and-open across EPA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. All recent activity appears as grants and contracts to the Commission itself rather than set-aside or teaming arrangements; the Commission is not a typical federal contractor vendor.

The top five customer agencies by award count account for 70 percent of recent awards. The Department of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service Region 3 and the Environmental Protection Agency each hold 17 awards; the Army Corps of Engineers has 15; NOAA has 13; and USDA's National Resources Conservation Service has 9. The EPA Region 5 office carries the largest potential-value concentration at $3 million across 7 awards, though the broader portfolio shows obligated dollars ($163.4 million across all sources) substantially exceeding combined potential value ($4.4 million), indicating high realization and spend-down of prior-year awards. The Commission has served 14 distinct customer agencies since the 1998 start of the source dataset.

Recent capability work sits heavily in aquatic invasive species (AIS) management, regional coordination, and water quality restoration. A $2 million Cooperative Agreement with USDA's National Resources Conservation Service (CFDA 10.902, Soil and Water Conservation) through December 2029 tasks the Commission with administering the Great Lakes Sediment and Nutrient Reduction Program, conveying the GLSNRP Task Force, and coordinating streambank stabilization and erosion control projects across the Great Lakes region. The Commission received a $750,000 labor-hour definitive contract from EPA Region 5 (ultimate completion September 2026) for maintenance and updating of the Regional Contingency Plan and Area Contingency Plan for Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. Under the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (CFDA 15.662), the Fish and Wildlife Service has awarded multiple project grants totaling roughly $1.3 million for invasive species surveillance, European frog-bit collaborative expansion, live-bait pathway outreach, AIS program structure assessment, and aquatic invasive species landing blitz capacity-building through at least 15 subawards to state and local partners. NOAA funded a $369,326 project grant through December 2025 and a cooperative agreement for habitat restoration projects on the Maumee and Niagara rivers' areas of concern. The Commission self-performed all reported work on SCI-reportable contracts; median government-paid rates across prime labor-hour contracts ran around $66.71 per hour, with senior labor reaching $232.55 per hour.

Activity has remained relatively flat year over year (six to seven awards annually across 2022–2024, dropping to five in 2025 and one by September 2026), though the obligated-to-potential-value ratio suggests substantial multi-year spend. Eleven awards face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, exposing the Commission to grant recompete and renewal competition. The Commission places nearly all work as a prime recipient (99 percent of awards); it recorded one sub-award as a sub-recipient from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy on a grosse pointe shoreline softening project. The portfolio concentrates in scientific and technical consulting services (NAICS 541690, Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services; NAICS 541990, All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services) and environmental and conservation work, grounded in the Commission's statutory role as a regional convening and coordination body for the eight Great Lakes states and provincial and tribal partners.