Sep 28, 2018
This week, my organization released a report about the need for stronger protection of Michigan’s groundwater. It’s deja vu all over again, as the immortal Yogi Berra is supposed to have said. Thirty-five years ago, as I entered Michigan’s environmental policy wars, groundwater — specifically widespread groundwater contamination — was a top concern. It was front-page news. Responding to public pressure, the Governor and Legislature passed laws to prevent groundwater pollution and approved hundreds of millions of dollars to clean it up. Then they moved on to other things. Now we have over 130,000 failing septic systems, thousands of private wells fouled by nitrate, over 2500 places where state law has barred use of polluted groundwater instead of cleaning it up, thousands of legacy contamination sites and almost no money to address them. Why should anyone care? Here are just 3 of many good reasons. About 45% of Michigan’s population gets its drinking water from groundwater. We need groundwater to support industry and agriculture. Because 20% to 40% of the water budget of the Great Lakes begins as groundwater, we need clean groundwater to have healthy Great Lakes. I hope we act once and for all this time. I won’t be around in 35 years, but many of today’s Michiganders will, and their lives and health will be affected by what we do, or don’t do,...
Sep 19, 2018
This is not a book about the Great Lakes themselves, although the Great Lakes figure prominently in the story. Instead, this is a book seeking to understand something about the people who love the Great Lakes – the Lake Nation – and their relationship to those lakes. Estimated at roughly 35 million, the population of the Canadian and American Great Lakes watershed is greater than that of Saudi Arabia, Australia or Taiwan. If this population formally constituted a nation, it would be approximately the 40th largest in the world. Thirty-five million is a lot of people, and it’s a lot of impact on the world’s largest freshwater ecosystem. Therein lies the story. These many millions flush their wastes, fertilize their lawns or farms, use electricity, drive their vehicles and buy things, lots of things. In all of these activities they – we, for I’m one – place burdens on the Great Lakes. But at the same time, for millions among them, the Great Lakes touch what Lincoln (by way of Seward) called “the mystic chords of memory.” The Lakes represent carefree beach holidays of youth, charter fishing trips that resulted in the catch of a prize salmon, the calm rhythm of waves heard at night from a cabin in the coastal woods, the limitless vista from atop a dune. These are not meaningless fragments lodged in the mind. They are experiences attached to emotions, and one of these emotions is love. We say we love them. So why are the Great Lakes so at risk? Why don’t we love them enough to protect them? Shedding my public policy orientation,...
Sep 11, 2018
My latest opus. “The more than 35 million people who live among the Great Lakes overwhelmingly profess devotion to these waters — yet the Lakes are in mediocre condition at best. Why the gap? Author Dave Dempsey seeks the answers not in political theory, but in personal narratives and dialogue. Some of the answers he discovers are surprising, some expected. Ultimately, he finds that for the Lakes to thrive, not just endure, the Lake Nation may have to redefine citizenship.” You can order it here. More on this to...
