After Democratic nominee John Kerry's allusion to a clean car program in his acceptance speech last night, the question becomes how long before the Bush campaign begins inundating the Michigan airwaves with ads featuring misleading, alarming statistics about the millions of jobs the program will cost?
http://www.detnews.com/2004/politics/0407/30/a08-227582.htm
Let's hope Michiganians, and Americans, are wise enough to realize that a) the details of the program haven't been announced, so how can we tell? b) the current and previous President both announced clean car initiatives that cost no jobs -- and accomplished almost nothing for the environment c) if we're going to survive on this planet, and if Michigan is going to survive, we need to figure out ways to develop cars of the future that are clean.
Although sold as an agreement to stop long-distance exports of Great Lakes water, the new proposed pact among the Great Lakes states actually contains a significant loophole allowing short-distance exports, within the states themselves. See:
http://www.speakongreatlakes.org/states/u.s.-compact-draft-7-19-04.pdf
Go to page 16 of the proposed interstate compact, section 9.2 (3). The last sentence basically says an export, without compensating return flow, can be allowed within 12 miles of the Great Lakes Basin divide if it's less than 250,000 gallons per day and is for public water supply purposes only. Sounds great until you realize this is the "Waukesha" exemption, which could allow that Wisconsin community and dozens of others just outside the Basin the ability to subsidize their sprawl with Great Lakes water.
There's a lot of good in the compact and associated agreements, but this has got to go. Only a humanitarian emergency should be allowed to support such a drain of Great Lakes water.
Is the environment getting cleaner or dirtier? It's hard for the public to tell, as state agencies and the feds tend to release generally self-serving, subjective reports. That needs to be addressed fast -- especially before we ask Congress to give $4-6 billion for cleanup of the Great Lakes. We'd better have measures to show whether it changed anything.
This Associated Press story by first-rate reporter John Flesher, in today's Detroit News, talks about another aspect of the data problem -- reporting by polluters. Finally, Michigan has joined an electronic network that will streamline that job and save taxpayer money.
http://www.detnews.com/2004/metro/0407/28/c08-224898.htm
But when will Michigan and the other Great Lakes states publish an independently verifiable, objective report card on environmental progress or lack of same?
Great. Another chemical threat to the Great Lakes when governments already are unable to cope with existing ones. It's reported in today's Chicago Tribune (registration required).
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0407270348jul27,1,4603358.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Here's an excerpt:
"Chemicals used to make Teflon and Scotchgard have been promoted as modern marvels for their ability to keep food from sticking to pots and fast-food packaging, repel stains on carpets and furniture and make water roll off coats and clothing.
Now scientists are finding that the chemicals also have managed to spread throughout the world. Researchers have detected them in polar bears roaming near the Arctic Circle, dolphins swimming in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Italy and gulls flying above ocean cliffs outside Tokyo.
Known as perfluoronated compounds, the chemicals also were recently detected for the first time in the Great Lakes, one-fifth of the Earth's fresh water and the source of drinking water for more than 7 million people in Illinois and 33 million others in the United States and Canada."
When will we quit using the Great Lakes and the global environment as a chemical lab?
Almost daily you can find a story in Great Lakes media about somebody promoting a business or event by throwing water we used to drink from the tap inside a plastic bottle and selling or giving it away. Here's an example from Michigan today:
http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-16/109085319241300.xml
It sounds harmless enough and in most cases probably is.
But what if we're bottling this water and it ends up in large quantities outside the Great Lakes Basin? And how much plastic waste is generated?
How about a non-policy change of pace? One of the favorite joys of many Great Lakes residents is traveling to the shore to watch a sunset over water. Is anyone out there interested in nominating her/his favorite Great Lakes sunset vantage point? Please be specific. Sunrises count, too.
The editorial linked below from the Chillicothe Gazette, a town far outside the Great Lakes Basin within Ohio, is a good reminder that the Great Lakes influence people and inspire concern outside their physical boundaries.
http://www.chillicothegazette.com/news/stories/20040723/opinion/900498.html
Although similar editorial opinions have been registered recently in Michigan newspapers, the public as yet seems utterly unaware of the importance of what's happening right now, this summer, to decide the future of the Great Lakes. Maybe it's time for opinion leaders from the Governor on down, including Detroit newspapers, to open the eyes of Michigan's nearly 10 million with a campaign from their bully pulpits.
Not long ago -- a little over two years ago, to be exact -- it was the State Senate Republican leadership that was calling for passage of a water conservation law.
There was no mention of a need to study groundwater before passing such a law, today's Senate Republican cry. In fact, it was a pretty darned good report with 66 strong recommendations. What happened?
http://www.lsj.com/news/local/020117_lakes_2b.html
This "open letter" to Governor Granholm from legislative Republicans makes one good point. There is a strong water export veto under federal law -- and former Governor Engler exercised it. Once. He also approved a diversion of water at Akron, Ohio. This authority is a critical measure, at least as a stopgap.
One of the authors of the letter, Senator Patty Birkholz, is a good conservationist, which makes the rest of the letter puzzling.
To contend that we should study groundwater before we pass a water conservation law is folly. Michigan has enough groundwater to study for the next 100 years. The real reason for delay on the conservation law is the head-in-the-sand resistance of lobbies that like the freedom to waste water -- and aren't thinking of their own, let alone the state's, future.
But judge for yourself:
http://www.senate.michigan.gov/gop/senator/birkholz/news/july2004/71904.pdf
If the so-called Annex 2001 isn't the final answer to saving the Great Lakes, what is? Good question.
Maybe the best place to start is this: what could Michigan do if it is serious about stopping water exports for the foreseeable future? The key is to remember that Michigan is the only state almost exclusively within the Great Lakes Basin. That is, it can't export water from the Lakes within its boundaries. New York can. Ohio can. Indiana can. Illinois does. Those states have competing interests; they want to protect the Lakes from raids from other regions, but may want to tap the Lakes themselves.
Here's a try at a Michigan program:
#1 -- Pass a strong water conservation law. In the meantime, implement the world's best water conservation education program.
#2 -- Recognizing that the other 7 Great Lakes states want to export water from the Great Lakes Basin, but within their boundaries, hold fast to the veto power granted each Great Lakes governor by the federal Water Resources Development Act.
#3 -- Rewrite the proposed Annex agreement, keeping such advances as the "resource improvement" standard, but toughening the standards for review of out-of-Basin exports even if within a Great Lakes state.
#4 -- Work with Ontario, which also has a strong interest in keeping the Great Lakes intact, on research regarding the ecological and economic effects of lowered Great Lakes water levels.
So it's out. The long-awaited draft of a plan to implement the so-called "Annex 2001" -- a name guaranteed to glaze the public's eyes if ever there was one -- is now public. You have 90 days to comment. The plan is supposed to build defenses against the export of Great Lakes water outside the physical boundaries of the Great Lakes Basin.
The headline of a news release issued by environmental groups, who have devoted countless hours to trying to better the plan: "Governors and Premiers Move to Protect Basin from Unwise Water Withdrawals."
But do they? Or do they only move to protect the Great Lakes Basin from withdrawals that don't benefit multinational water bottling companies like Nestle (whose Ice Mountain label taps Michigan's water)?
Nestle's skillful advocates have convinced some environmentalists that water bottling is not the issue. "Resource impact" is. But that erases the distinction that should exist between uses of water to help manufacture a product (cars or crops) and the sale of water itself, in bottles, to faraway places.
It does not appear at first glance that the Annex deals with the critical issue of water as a product -- water privatization. And unless it does, the Great Lakes are up for sale, as are the groundwaters and rivers that feed them.
More on this soon. Meantime, environmentalists have established this helpful site for background:
http://www.speakongreatlakes.org/
It's time to tell Michigan voters the truth -- most of our politicians talk a good game about protecting the Great Lakes from water exports, but few of them have the will to do what is needed. Because that would mean offending powerful special interests who, like the lumber barons of old who ravaged our forests, think we have an "inexhaustible" supply of water in Michigan.
The Battle Creek Enquirer disagrees:
http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/news/stories/20040715/opinion/847283.html
All but one of the other seven Great Lakes states has a water withdrawal law in place. As does Ontario. Michigan stands out like a giant water pump.
It is possible to disagree on the exact best strategy to keep the Great Lakes from being raided, but anyone who puts the Lakes first knows that Michigan must be the world's best water conservationist if it hopes to turn back those assaults.
Will the Michigan public demand that Michigan stop being a water use hypocrite?
A hearing in Chicago Wednesday on the viability of the current Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway system, co-sponsored by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Transport Canada, closed a public comment process. It was also an instructive lesson in the "iron triangle" of 'regulated' industries, bureaucracies and their friends in Congress.
The "listening session" began with 45 minutes of talk by agency staff, including suggestions that "misinformation" was circulating in environmental circles that the Corps-Transport Canada study was just a prelude to a bigger study of how to manipulate the Great Lakes to permit gigantic ships, and even more alien species, to invade the system.
It's not misinformation, it's fact -- unless the public rises up and stops it.
While environmental groups solidly opposed even considering Seaway system expansion, the port and shipping lobbies spoke up in favor of it, and scarcely acknowledged the alien species problem they have contributed to.
All this is happening largely outside the public eye. But the results could be hugely important. They would include perhaps $10 billion of taxpayer money spent on dredging, blasting and scouring connecting channels and building new locks; and the final demise of the biological integrity of the Great Lakes.
Predictably, Dawson Bell of the Detroit Free Press touts the Republican Party line in today's editions, dismissing the idea of water conservation legislation.
http://www.freep.com/news/mich/lakes13_20040713.htm
He's right about one thing -- the Great Lakes protection pledge unveiled by Democrats yesterday is a stunt. But it's far from meaningless. And it's certainly better than "more study," the Republican answer.
Somehow people are forgetting Michigan pledged to pass a law like this in 1985, via the Great Lakes Charter.
Even more importantly, Michigan is a huge water waster. Yet we expect Illinois, let alone Texas, to respect us when we say "no" to Great Lakes water exports?
Republicans and Democrats need to put the posing aside. Here's a three-point plan: 1) A statewide water conservation program built on both education and financial incentives, and ultimately, binding limits on water withdrawal and consumption. We all need to develop a water conservation ethic in Michigan. 2) Vigorous defense of Michigan's right to veto water exports under the federal Water Resources Development Act. 3) A stronger partnership with Ontario, which also has reason to resist water exports. Joint research on the effects of lowered water levels, and a pact between the two jurisdictions to be great stewards of the lakes would be a good start.
Oh, and no more water bottling operations in Michigan, either.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports this morning on the netting of a black carp, an Asian exotic, in the Mississippi River north of St. Louis. It's the third such fish caught in the river in the last year and a half, and the paper says it "has raised concern that the voracious feeder now is established in the wild."
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4870936.html
This is one of the species of Asian carp that worries Great Lakes fisheries officials. The electronic barrier installed in the Illinois River may or may not work to stop them.
Says the Star Tribune: "Fisheries officials from 27 states asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service four years ago to restrict the interstate trade in black carp and prohibit further importation by putting the fish on its "injurious species list."
The service has been studying the issue, but has not acted despite calls to do so by more than two dozen members of Congress."
Will it take another ecosystem disaster to awaken our policymakers to the threat? They should be slapping tough regulations on the importation of exotics and also be halting the invasion of alien species through ballast water by halting the transit of oceangoing vessels at Montreal.
About six weeks ago, President George W. Bush created yet another Great Lakes task force charged with coordinating federal Great Lakes programs and boosting the cause of Great Lakes restoration. The task force won cautious praise from observers like longtime Detroit News columnist George Weeks:
http://www.detnews.com/2004/editorial/0405/23/a21-160521.htm
Sounds nice, until you realize that what the Great Lakes community was hoping for from Mr. Bush was a commitment to proposed legislation in Congress that would earmark $4-6 billion to restore the Lakes. Task forces are a lot cheaper.
As someone who once served in Michigan state government, and helped set up a few task forces, I understand why this happens. It shows concern without commitment. And in this case it overlooks the fact that there is already a U.S. government coordinating panel and a binational executive committee charged with Great Lakes issues.
Let's call a moratorium on new Great Lakes task forces for a while. And if the President wants to do something cheap that will help the lakes, why not support regulating ballast water containing alien species as a pollutant under the Clean Water Act? Shutting off the invasion of aliens wouldn't cost government much, and would protect the biological integrity of the Lakes.
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, originally signed in 1972 and renewed several times since, has been called the "north star" for government policies to restore and protect the Lakes. But in the last decade it's been more symbol than substance, as governments neglect the Lakes and work around the visionary language of the Agreement. The International Joint Commission has done a smart thing by creating an electronic bulletin board to let the public talk about how or whether the Agreement should be updated. Suggestion: follow the link below and tell the IJC that the goals of "zero discharge" of long-lasting toxic substances and restoring the biological, physical and chemical integrity of the Lakes are still relevant. What we need is not so much a new Agreement as governments with guts to pay attention to it.
http://www.ijc.org/rel/boards/b_board/en/index.php
Welcome to one of Michigan's first environmental issues blogs. It's a chance to talk about land, air and water issues, with an emphasis on the Great Lakes. Your comments are welcome. Just keep them short and polite. Disagreement is also welcome. The First Amendment still lives (for now).