Aug 29, 2018
Toward the end of Dan Egan’s award-winning book, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, the author observes that in the 1960s Michigan unilaterally planted exotic salmon in the Lakes. The action produced a new sportfishery but also changed the ecology of the Great Lakes in unforeseen ways, with consequences that all the people of the Lakes had to bear. Now, Egan says, emerging technologies formerly the stuff of science fiction may yield solutions to invasive species challenges. A DNA-based eradication tool could wipe out an unwanted fish species, even the detested zebra and quagga mussels. But if experience tells us anything, it is that the application of such a tool could alter the Lakes in ways not anticipated. “Would a single Great Lakes state today try to act on its own and release a manmade gene in a similar fashion?” Egan asks. “If not, would it take a unanimous vote by all the Great Lakes states? What about the Canadian provinces? What about the federal governments? What about the prospect of mischievous, if well-meaning individuals or groups acting on their own?” He quotes Russ Van Herick, former director of the Great Lakes Protection Fund: “We are not even close to developing a governance system to catch up with these emerging technologies.” We aren’t – and we barely know how to conceive of decision-making criteria. How do we determine what kind of Great Lakes we want? And who decides? Numerous Great Lakes institutions exist and so do numerous Great Lakes agreements, both formal and informal. Most important are the binational Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, which addresses pollution...
Aug 16, 2018
Who decides the fate of the Line 5 pipelines at the Straits of Mackinac? Definitely not the governor of Michigan, but you wouldn’t know that if you just read the news. There continues to be commentary that September 30 is the deadline for the final decision on Line 5. No, that is the deadline arbitrarily set by Governor Rick Snyder for a decision about what he’d like to see. But he is a lame duck governor. More importantly, even a governor cannot commit state government to give environmental permits to a project which has not been reviewed under environmental law. If the governor, as seems likely, determines that he would like to see a tunnel replace the suspended pipelines, all he can do is encourage Enbridge to submit applications pursuant to state law. State agencies then decide whether the permits can be issued after extensive review. State government would then have to determine whether the pipeline replacement even complies with the law. It’s simply not within the governor’s power and would not happen during his tenure in office. So the final deadline is far in the future — certainly not before 2019....
Aug 12, 2018
It is time for the Great Lakes region to grow from a psychology of restoration to one of protection. The region endured a century of contamination of groundwater, rivers and streams. Communities addressing this legacy are appropriately attracting funds from federal, state and private sources for such actions as cleaning up contaminated sediments and restoring degraded habitat at one of the more than 30 remaining locations in the Great Lakes Area of Concern (AOC) program. But what about Areas of Quality? While restoration receives considerable attention and funding, far less notice goes to those areas of the Great Lakes ecosystem that enjoy high-quality waters. Protecting them is every bit as important as restoring AOCs, but there is no AOQ program. And with climate change, population growth and emerging contaminants looming large in the near future, areas with high quality water cannot afford to be complacent. I live near an AOQ, Grand Traverse Bay. There are dozens out there. Let’s band together while there’s...
Aug 5, 2018
I remember the shock of the journalists on a 1985 media tour of the Rouge River in southeast Michigan when they were told to look down from a bridge to see raw human waste in the waters below. In 1985? Hadn’t we taken care of raw sewage by passing the Clean Water Act in 1972? Not quite. Even today, in some communities, raw sewage escapes into rivers and lakes during and after storms. It doesn’t have to. Courage on the part of elected officials to raise and invest money in water treatment systems (including green ones) could virtually eliminate the threat. We may also have believed we took care of the toxins in our drinking water by passing the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974. Not at all. Last week’s warning to residents of Parchment in southwest Michigan not to drink their community’s water because of PFAS contamination is proof of that. Before that, there was the Flint lead contamination disaster that began in 2014 and the weekend-long “do not drink” advisory for customers of Toledo drinking water in 2014, the result of a toxic algae bloom. No, drinking water contamination is not limited to faraway nations. It’s right here in the Great Lakes region, and in Michigan. Perfection may be impossible, but we can do a lot better than this. The fact is that most drinking water contamination uncovered in recent years is preventable and/or correctable — if only our governance system had the will. Toledo’s 2014 emergency and Lake Erie’s continuing algae mess are the result of elected officials’ unwillingness to take strong measures to curb excess...
