Sep 23, 2017
A slender journal of a summer on Lake Huron will become available in two weeks through Amazon. Coming in at just under 100 pages, it will retail at $6.95. Any proceeds will go to Lake Huron protection. More details coming the day the book is...
Sep 22, 2017
It is now three years, three months since the formation of the first of two State of Michigan task forces to examine petroleum pipeline safety — and the end of the pipeline is not in sight. In fact, the end receded another 6 months this week when state officials decided to complete a study of spill risks posed by Enbridge Line 5 at the Straits of Mackinac — which they had shelved due to conflicts of interest on the part of the contractor. Putting Michigan Tech’s Great Lakes Research Director, the respected Guy Meadows, in charge of bringing the study is not a bad idea. But completing the study is a waste of time in the first place — unless your game is delay. Punting has been the political game from the start. Put on the spot by Enbridge’s record-breaking pipeline spill in the Kalamazoo watershed in 2010, and then a compelling video of the ill-maintained Line 5 commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation Ann Arbor office (thanks, guys!), the Snyder Administration created the Petroleum Pipeline Task Force in 2014 — an election year. That deferred any charges that the governor was lax past his re-election. Now the second board, the Petroleum Safety Advisory Board, is plausibly on a path to kick any tough decision down the road to Snyder’s successor. After all, when Dr. Meadows’ study comes in, a 60-day comment period will be needed, then a 90-day period for the Board to cogitate, and then… All this after Enbridge has convincingly demonstrated its incompetence at stewardship and communications. Two takeaways: Gov. Snyder has a chance to become...
Sep 2, 2017
Here we go again. It happens at least once per year, usually many times per year: government agencies issue a news release announcing with pride the spending of millions of dollars to help agriculture clean up its contribution to the harmful and nuisance algal blooms that plague bodies of water like Lake Erie. The gist of these news releases is that cutting edge science will be deployed to ascertain how much phosphorus goes from which fields under which practices into waterways. This, in turn, will lead to improvements in environmental stewardship by farmers. How will that happen? Voluntarily, of course. The projects are funded, the results come in, and western Lake Erie continues to deteriorate. The cycle is unbreakable because big agriculture has managed to exempt itself from most major environmental laws. That is, this industry gets special treatment. It is not nearly as consistently and aggressively regulated as are others. Another way of putting the last is that the ag lobby has over the years made it taboo to talk about any serious regulation of farm practices to protect the environment. Yet an estimated 85% of the phosphorus delivered to Erie from the Maumee River is of agricultural origin, much of it from factory farms. If we had waited for municipalties and non-agricultural businesses to be inspired to reduce phosphorus rather than required to do so, Lake Erie would be beyond redemption. The business as usual approach will not work. When will policy change to reflect...
