And he can start to work on two nationally significant wetland cases involving Michigan.
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/qp/04-01034qp.pdf
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/qp/04-01384qp.pdf
Alito Confirmation Puts Clean Water, Air Laws at Risk
Washington, DC: The Sierra Club praised those Senators who voted against
Judge Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court today. The group also
expressed disappointment in those Senators who, by voting for confirmation,
ignored the threat Judge Alito's philosophy poses to environmental
protection. Unfortunately, Judge Alito was confirmed to a lifetime
appointment by a final vote of 58-42.
"Judge Alito poses a serious threat to the environmental protections we
cherish. We applaud those Senators who recognized that the ability to
protect our clean air and clean water are at stake," said Carl Pope,
Executive Director of the Sierra Club. "Those Senators who voted for Judge
Alito are putting hard-won protections at risk."
Sierra Club's opposition to Judge Alito's confirmation rested on his
Constitutional philosophy, which threatens both the ability of Congress to
pass laws to protect the environment, and the ability of citizens to
enforce those laws.
Judge Alito ruled (in Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) v. Magnesium
Elektron) that the Constitution barred citizens from enforcing the Clean
Water Act even against a company that admitted it had been violating the
law for years. The Magnesium Elektron decision threatened to put a stop to
most Clean Water Act enforcement. Fortunately, the Supreme Court
effectively reversed this decision three years later in another case.
In U.S. v. Rybar, Judge Alito dissented from a decision upholding Congress'
power under the Commerce Clause to regulate the possession of machine guns
Coming after six other federal appeals courts had upheld the same law,
Judge Alito's reasoning is extremely troubling because it could translate
into limits on Congress' authority to protect our water and air.
These seemingly abstract Constitutional issues will have significant
consequences in the short term. Now that he has been confirmed, Judge Alito
will be ruling on two Clean Water Act cases now pending before the Supreme
Court and deciding whether this same Constitutional provision, the
Commerce Clause, gives Congress the authority to protect any of America's
streams and wetlands (US v. Rapanos and US v. Carabell). This same
philosophy could eventually jeopardize all of the environmental laws that
protect clean air, clean water, endangered species and more.
###
A few days ago, Waukesha, WI confessed to an urgent need for a new water source (Lake Michigan) or drastic conservation measures. Now the Chicago area weighs in. Both are emphasizing conservation first, which is good, but whether this is public relations or genuine is unclear. What is clear is that the Great Lakes compact signed by the 8 Great Lakes governors last month gives special treatment to the existing Chicago diversion of water from Lake Michigan. That may translate to special treatment to a request from the Chicago area to increase the diversion.
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/sunpub/wheaton/news/du27water.htm
Martin said the Lake Michigan water used in DuPage doesn't return to the lake, at least immediately, because it's not in its drainage basin. Before it can be soaked into the ground, a lot of water also runs off the surface into storm sewers.
"Water drains elsewhere as opposed to just in Lake Michigan," he said.
Other Great Lakes states that extract water are allowed to do so only within the detention basin, but Illinois is exempt because of the legal ruling limiting by cubic square foot the amount extracted. If it had to comply with the regulations of other states, only those within a few blocks of the lake would be able to use its water, Martin said.
If Minnesota can pursue this, Michigan certainly can -- both states have hundreds of polluted waters that need fixing.
Sen. Dallas Sams, DFL-Staples, announced a plan Friday to dedicate at least $40 million this year toward cleaning up Minnesota's rivers and lakes. Flanked by other members of his party, Sams said at a news conference that cleanup is needed to prevent harm to Minnesota's tourism and fishing industries and to allow commercial and residential development in expanding areas.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty supports water cleanup, said spokesman Brian McClung, but added that there needs to be further discussion about how to pay for it. He said some of the funding could come from bond proceeds, such as those Pawlenty has suggested to improve sewage treatment plants or to pay farmers to set aside more farmland near rivers for conservation.
Marie Zellar, executive director of the Clean Water Action Alliance, said that virtually all Minnesotans hunt, fish, boat or swim, and that they deserve clean water. "It's a small price to pay to protect our $12 billion tourism and outdoor recreation industries," she said.
http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/local/13739035.htm?source=rss&channel=grandforks_local
Electronic missive du jour:
"Have you heard anything about attempts to pass a law that would officially classify manure as a "non-pollutant"?"
No, but there are rumors that the Michigan Legislature will define water as private property.
With a series of new studies confirming the worst, Lake Michigan fishery managers have begun a drastic plan to save the fish species whose absence they believe would crash the lake's ecosystem.
The alewife.
There was a time when Lake Michigan was stuffed to the gills with the Atlantic invader, which washed up on beaches by the smelly ton. As strange as it may sound, fishery managers now fear a downturn last year has left the lake with too few.
Biologists blame the change on the Chinook salmon of the Pacific Northwest. The most voracious fish in the lake. The fish that feeds in the same water level as alewives. The very fish they've stocked since 1967 to hold the alewives in check.
Alarmed their decades-long plan may suddenly be working too well and believing the Chinook have taken to breeding on their own, fishery managers said they'll stock 1 million fewer in their annual release this spring.
[Jan. 24, 2006] Over the past several weeks it has been revealed that the Bush administration has undertaken a broad - and secret - spying campaign on US citizens. While ostensibly part of its anti-terrorism efforts, these spying and surveillance activities, in fact, have targeted many environmental organizations. In this week's show, host Daphne Wysham explores this troubling development.
http://www.earthbeatradio.org/index.html
WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency for the first time is establishing criteria for tests by pesticide makers on human subjects.
Three California Democrats, Sen. Barbara Boxer and Reps. Henry Waxman and Hilda Solis, denounced the new rule after obtaining a copy of the final draft. They had led the effort in Congress to require that the EPA outlaw the use of pregnant women and children as subjects and that it meet high ethical standards.
"The fact that EPA allows pesticide testing of any kind on the most vulnerable, including abused and neglected children, is simply astonishing," Boxer said.
If EPA won't stop it, the states must.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1501AP_EPA_Human_Testing.html
Now that the Great Lakes compact is signed, officials of Waukesha, WI (and rumor has it, Chicago and 'burbs as well) are suddenly recognizing how much they need more Great Lakes water. Thank goodness the compact gives them a shot at getting it...
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wauk/jan06/387174.asp?format=print
"It's like saying when your credit card bills mount up, you sell your house."
When longtime Grand Rapids camper Robert Stauffer, 59, heard about the sale proposal, he had a simple reaction: "Stupid."
"I think it's taking a wonderful asset and giving it to the private sector.
"I think it's wrong for the state to do that."
Two leading Great Lakes states are so far refusing to crack down on toxic mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. How does that square with their Great Lakes protection vows?
Environmental groups pulled their formal challenge to Minnesota's mercury reduction plan Friday and instead will likely take their case to federal court.
The groups claim the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's mercury reduction plan fails to cut mercury levels enough to protect the state's lakes, fish and people who eat fish from mercury poisoning.
Environmentalists - who were told that Granholm would act quickly after the release of a report from a mercury task force last summer - are weary.
"I'm getting ready to put out some extremely harsh language if there's no action on this issue within weeks," said Lana Pollack, president of the Michigan Environmental Council.
http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060123/NEWS04/601230331/1005/RSS02
This Washington Monthly article illustrates a golden opportunity for conservationists and environmentalists to work together -- and for progressive politicians to provide tangible benefits to the public. If progressives seize on the opportunity to protect hunting, fishing and other forms of recreation, they can begin building a majority again.
In a reversal of the tragedy of the commons, the American conservation movement has been far more successful, both in garnering popular support and in saving species from extinction, than efforts in countries where a different mentality exists toward ownership of wildlife. Whereas America brought back the elk, antelope, and white-tailed deer, in Britain boars, beavers, and bears no longer roam. Today, however, this heritage faces a new challenge, unfathomable in the days of Penn or Roosevelt. As Todd Bogenschutz of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources told me, "Our forefathers made wildlife public, but they screwed another thing up. They should have made access to wildlife public."
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0601.larson.html
Eventually, terrorism will fade as a threat. But if Bush succeeds with his overweening view of presidential authority, the United States may never recover the careful balance designed by the Constitution's framers.
Yes -- and where are the revolutionaries ready to resist the King?
http://www.startribune.com/561/story/196015.html
It is becoming easier to discern the growing potential of renewable energy and conservation strategies for Grand Rapids; but it is also still easy to overplay the economic advantages of continued reliance on coal plants. Coal is often touted as the cheap option, but it's not cheap for Michigan to buy coal from western states when it can produce wind power at home.
http://www.mlive.com/columns/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-0/113784221022730.xml&coll=6
One of the issues in the Supreme Court confirmation process for Samuel Alito is his lack of environmental concern, profiled well in this article:
Judge Alito provided the deciding vote in favor of polluters to overturn protective actions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. For example, in W.R. Grace v. EPA, Judge Alito provided the decisive vote to overturn the EPA's emergency-cleanup order under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The company had sued to block a requirement to clean up its pollution, which threatened the drinking water of 180,000 people in Lansing, Mich.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0119-23.htm
And they can't all be wrong, can they -- especially when five are Republicans?
Dumb quote of the day:
"EPA administrators like to regulate things," said Ebell, whose think tank receives contributions from companies opposed to mandatory carbon limits. "That what EPA does. That's their only approach to anything."
EPA administrators also tend to care about the survival of people on this planet.
Quietly but steadily, the Detroit River Wildlife Refuge is expanding. It's one of the Great Lakes good news stories of recent years.
It's also good to see that the Toledo border wars of the 1830s are now resolved more amicably between Michigan and Ohio.
At 17 acres, Gard Island is one of many offshore pieces of land in Michigan's Monroe County few people could point to on a map without a little research.
But two area congressmen said yesterday that Gard Island ultimately could play a role in linking wildlife recovery efforts in Michigan and Ohio.
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060118/NEWS17/601180372
Although it might sound more bizarre than brutal to surf on the Great Lakes, the 26-year-old is proving that it can be done, even in the winter.
Up until Lake Ontario and Lake Erie froze over in December, Donaldson braved the cold by wearing a thick bodysuit and putting Vaseline on his face to avoid frostbite.
http://www.mississauganews.com/mi/people/story/3264942p-3780677c.html
This week Ron Olson, state parks chief of the 97 state parks in Michigan, responded to a recommendation from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy that it sell off 14 of its parks, including Otsego Lake State Park, as a means to raise funds for the cash-strapped state.
“We have no intention of selling any of our parks,” Olson said Thursday. “We have been looking at ways to preserve what we have and I think it would be poor management to take all of the traditions and history of these parks in the heat of the moment and sell them off.”
Selling off the public estate as a way of balancing budgets makes no sense. Anyone who knows the history of the Michigan state park system also knows what heroic effort it took to build the structure. But sometime between now and 2008 Michigan's public or policymakers must come up with a new and reliable source of funding to maintain and protect the parks.
http://www.gaylordheraldtimes.com/articles/2006/01/16/news/local_news/local_news01.txt
BY HUGH MCDIARMID JR.
Detroit Free Press
DETROIT - A little-studied fire retardant has accumulated in Great Lakes sediment and game fish for decades without detection, according to new research.
The discovery about Dechlorane Plus, which went into production in 1964, surprised federal regulators.
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/news/nation/13613139.htm
Key quote:
"OxyChem would not sell the product if we did not believe it could be used safely," Larry Meriage, a company vice president, said in an e-mail response to questions.
And who better to know than the manufacturer what is safe?
Does anyone have an extra $20 billion stowed away in coffee cans to clean up the Great Lakes?
The next month will tell whether the federal government has even a few tens of millions. Watch the Bush budget announcement in early February.
http://www.walkermn.com/placed/index.php?sect_rank=6&story_id=213437
A first-of-its-kind study released today by the Ecology Center revealed new information about toxic chemical exposure in automobile interiors. PBDEs, used as fire retardants, and phthalates, used primarily to soften PVC plastics (and partly responsible for "new car smell"), were found in dangerous amounts in dust and windshield film samples. Drivers and passengers are exposed through inhalation and contact with dust. These groups of chemicals have been linked to birth defects, impaired learning, liver toxicity, premature births and early puberty in laboratory animals, among other serious health problems.
http://www.ecocenter.org/releases/20060111_autotoxics.shtml
The St. Paul-based insurance giant next month will become the first U.S. company to offer a discount to owners of hybrid vehicles, knocking 10 percent off their auto insurance premiums.
http://www.startribune.com/535/story/168150.html
Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois has taken a bold step toward mercury control that other Great Lakes governors, including Michigan's Jennifer Granholm, can emulate -- and use for cover. If they all take shelter under this unexpectedly strong proposal, the benefits will be great.
Good idea: why don't the Great Lakes governors do what NE governors have done, too, and initiate a regional climate change action plan? No sense waiting for Washington.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060109/OPINION01/601090315
Thanks to the alert eyes of Reg Gilbert at Great Lakes United, here's a link to a major campaign promise by Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin -- headed for a January 23 election. He proposed "a 10-year, $1-billion comprehensive four-part strategy to clean-up problem areas of the St. Lawrence River basin and the Great Lakes as part of a new national environmental revitalization plan."
Election years bring out Great Lakes promises. In 2004 the Bush Administration declared the Great Lakes "a national treasure" and set in motion a planning process that has resulted in a $20 billion restoration plan. In February it will be known whether the President's budget contains any new money for the Lakes.
Let's hope these promises on both sides of the border for the Lakes are fulfilled.
http://www.liberal.ca/news_e.aspx?id=11330
Shedd Aquarium is doing terrific work to educate the public about the risk posed by invasive alien aquatic species.
CHICAGO - The huge Asian carp are real, the gape-mouthed round gobies are real, but organizers of a new exhibit that opened this week at the Shedd Aquarium decided not to mess with real zebra mussels — they're just replicas.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060106/ap_on_en_ot/museums_invasive_species_2
Namely: it will consume too much energy to ship water from the Great Lakes to the Far West, so why should we worry about conserving water?
It's understandable that potato growers, who use large amounts of water, are worried about state standards for their water use, but this strawperson is too easy to knock down.
A pipeline over the Rockies is not the 'alleged external threat.' It's the possibility of diverting water relatively short distances to the Mississippi River and thence to the Great Plains. It's also the multiple assault of climate change (which could lower the level of Lakes Huron/Michigan five feet this century), private capture and sale of water in tankers and bottles, and population growth and wasteful water use just outside the Great Lakes Basin.
http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060105/OPINION02/601050329/1087/opinion
MILWAUKEE -- Democratic and Republican legislators are rushing to make Wisconsin one of the first states to ratify a new U.S.-Canadian management plan for the Great Lakes.
Historians, and our grandchildren, and their grandchildren, will lament it as an historic mistake.
Call it the Wisconsin Jobs Creation Act, III -- more environmentally-insensitive legislation that will spur sprawl development and, worse, set a precedent that will add new stresses to the already-burdened Great Lakes.
http://www.wisopinion.com/index.iml?mdl=article.mdl&article=3036
Andy Guy of the Michigan Land Use Institute has authored another set of provocative articles on Great Lakes water policy. One of the ideas generating comment (pro and con) is:
Establish a Water Resources Trust Fund, similar to the existing Natural Resources Trust Fund, to finance and enhance research, stewardship, quality, conservation, and restoration efforts for Michigan’s waters. Raise $3 billion annually for the fund by charging one cent for every gallon of water consumed—i.e., withdrawn from, but not returned to, the Great Lakes ecosystem—by municipalities, industrial manufacturers, and power producers.
http://mlui.org/landwater/fullarticle.asp?fileid=16981
Is imposing fees on the use of water the same as turning it into a commodity? That seems to be the conundrum to some.
What's interesting is that Great Lakes states charge significant sums for the removal of other minerals, but not for the removal of the one essential to human life.
Here's the now:
The specific objectives of the Ann Arbor to Downtown Detroit Rapid Transit Alternatives Analysis Study are to:
* Conduct a rapid transit Alternatives Analysis;
* Identify and evaluate a set of feasible alternatives;
* Identify a Locally Preferred Alternative
* Prepare a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS)
http://www.annarbordetroitrapidtransitstudy.com/
Here's the then:
February 21, 1981 -- LANSING -- Gov. William G. Milliken has launched a last-ditch effort to save the controversial Detroit subway project from the Reagan Administration's budget ax.
The existing plan, approved by the Legislature and the Southeast Michigan Transportation Authority, would provide buses, commuter tains, a downtown Detroit 'people mover' rail loop and a subway no more than six miles in length.
Cost estimates range from $900 million to $1.6 billion, with the federal government providing 80 percent and the state 20 percent.
There was an edge of frustration in Paul Cellucci's voice when he raised the topic of fresh water exports in a radio interview last month.
"Canada has probably one of the largest resources of fresh water in the world," the former U.S. ambassador said during a debate on Canada-U.S. relations.
"Water is going to be - already is - a very valuable commodity and I've always found it odd where Canada is so willing to sell oil and natural gas and uranium and coal, which are by their very nature finite. But talking about water is off the table, and water is renewable.
"It doesn't make any sense to me."
The idea that water should be another commodity like oil, natural gas, uranium and coal is what doesn't make sense. Try drinking some uranium when you're dying of thirst.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cpress/year_water_for_sale
The mystery of the sailing ship Griffon has tantalized adventurers and historians ever since the vessel, loaded with furs, disappeared in 1679 on its maiden voyage in northern Lake Michigan.
It's the oldest and most elusive of Great Lakes shipwrecks. And Steven Libert, an amateur underwater explorer who says he has been hunting the Griffon most of his adult life, thinks he may have found the wreckage.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051231/NEWS06/512310356/1118/RSS
Did a curse do in the Griffon? Or perhaps a storm sank it...
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051231/NEWS06/512310355/1118/RSS
Happy New Year. Perhaps it's time for the elected officials of the Great Lakes states to band together as never before -- not for more studies, but to demand real support for protecting the Great Lakes. Or, stop calling them a "national treasure," and take their fate (and the resources needed to support them) into our own hands.
It seems more clear all the time that the Great Lakes states are a great fly-over area for the pols in Washington, except for GOP fund-raisers who comb this section of the country for contributions. Much of the time, the Great Lakes states are simply written off, even though Ohio contributed the electoral vote margin of victory for George W. Bush in 2004
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051229/OPINION02/512290321/-1/OPINION