From the time that fur traders first used
voyageur canoes to carry their goods to markets, to the blue-green algae
creating a dead zone in Lake Erie from nutrient run off today, the Great Lakes
have suffered from pollution, impairment and destruction. For 50 years, the
Sierra Club in Michigan has worked to reverse the harm caused to the Great
Lakes, its tributaries and its shorelands, and to restore health to its unique
ecosystem. Paraphrasing Sierra Club founder John Muir, it is fair to say,“when we try to pick out
anything in Michigan by itself, we find it hitched to everything else related
to the Great Lakes region.” You’ll find stories of Sierra Club’s work on many
of the issues related to the Great Lakes throughout our history blog. In this
article, our focus will be on issues directly related to Great Lakes water
pollution threats, clean up and prevention, and the Sierra Club’s Great Lakes
program, founded in the 1980’s by then Sierra
Club Midwest Regional Director Jane Elder, (http://vault.sierraclub.org/planet/199509/great.asp ) who had also served as the Michigan Chapter’s first staff
member.
Sometimes the more obvious something is, the
harder it is to see. No one can miss the Great Lakes, but their very size means
that it has taken major crises for the impact of pollution in the lakes to be
recognized as more than just a localized issue. The “death” of Lake Erie in the
1960s, and the multiple times the Cuyahoga River, an Ohio tributary, caught
fire helped galvanize nationwide concern about the dumping of pollution into
our waterways, and helped spark the environmental movement. The Sierra Club Mackinac (Michigan) Chapter was
born in this time, with significant focus on protecting wild lands, including
the iconic shorelines of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Sierra Club worked with local, state and
national organizations through the 1970s and 1980s in securing the bedrock
pollution laws that created the basic policy framework we live with today,
including both water quality and air quality laws. In that somewhat giddy time when we had
achieved a national consensus that environmental protection was critical for
the well-being of our state and nation, not only were efforts supported to stop
new pollution, there was a growing awareness that additional threats that were
less visible than black smoke and dead fish needed to be tackled as well.
The Fight to Regulate Air Toxics
One particularly insidious pollution problem
came to light in the late 1970’s as scientists documented the presence of DDT,
PCBs and other toxic substances in the fish in Lake Siskiwit, a lake in the
middle of Isle Royale. These chemicals could only have come into this largest
lake in the largest island in Lake Superior through air transport, a previously
unrecognized source of pollution. Over time, “air toxics” have been identified
as one of the largest contributors to contamination of our waterways and the
creatures living there. In Michigan, virtually every waterway carries a warning
about limiting consumption of wild caught fish because of the presence of
persistent, bioaccumulative chemicals and mercury, with much of the source of
these pollutants known to come from the air. While there are many sources of
air toxins, major contributors include emissions from coal fired power plants,
incinerators of both solid and hazardous wastes, emissions from chemical
factories and other industrial operations. DDT, which was banned from use in
the USA, was found to have been transported extremely long distances from
countries where its use was still allowed.
Jane Elder, whose passion for the Great Lakes
has been at the heart of her long, storied career of environmental activism,
became one of the lead advocates in the nation for controlling air toxics,
tying the importance of controlling these pollutants to protecting the lakes.
These airborne chemicals and metals were not identified among the so called
“criteria pollutants” addressed in the Clean Air Act adopted by Congress in
1970. Michigan Chapter members were active participants in lobbying efforts in
Congress to require the regulation of air toxics. Chapter staffer Anne
Woiwode became part of the Sierra
Club Great Lakes team working on air toxics issues, including producing
educational information and organizing Michigan volunteers. Michigan Chapter leaders had engaged in
fights against air toxics including dioxins and furans starting with the
Detroit Incinerator fight in the mid-1980’s (see article in this blog), and
brought that skill and knowledge to the national fight as well.
In 1990, the Congress adopted amendments to
the Clean Air Act that directed the US Environmental Protection Agency and,
through delegated authority, state environmental agencies, to move toward the
regulation of 189 specific air toxins.
The same law brought about additional controls of Acid Rain causing
emissions of sulfur dioxide (read about the Michigan Chapter’s engagement on
this issue here https://annewoiwode.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/acid-raid-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-part-1/ ). The fight over how these provisions are implemented has
continued since that time, with former
Michigan Chapter staffer Alison Horton (now Central Region Organizing Director)
among those participating in work groups for setting Michigan’s
regulations. Under the Snyder Administration, efforts to weaken air toxics
regulations remind us that victories such as these will always demand
vigilance.
Great Lakes Water Diversion
With 20 percent of the world’s liquid fresh
water in the Great Lakes, the potential threat of diversion of waters out of
the Great Lakes basin only became a concern as ideas for diversion began to
emerge in the 1980s, including proposals to send water to the drought-stricken
southwest United States. Sierra Club’s Great Lakes Program and many volunteers
in Michigan and beyond played a role in advocating for an unusual agreement
among the eight Great Lakes states and the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The
Great Lakes Charter signed in 1985 was a common agreement across the basin that
laid the base for protection of the quantity of Great Lakes water. Sierra Club
members joined with allies across Michigan to lobby then Governor James
Blanchard to produce a strong charter and sign it along with the other
governors and premiers.
As the importance of protecting the Great
Lakes grew in the public perception, additional agreements strengthening the
initial charter were adopted. Issues around the bottling of water from sources
within Michigan for shipment outside of the basin galvanized efforts to further
lock down the provisions for any diversion. In 2005 the Great Lakes–Saint
Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement among the states and
provinces was completed, with a binding implementation document for the states
titled the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact enacted
by Congress and effective in 2008. The
Compact established a variety of requirements for each state to meet in order
to protect the Great Lakes from diversion. Among provisions were requirements
for states to develop protocols for monitoring and regulating the consumption
of both surface waters within the Great Lakes basin and those ground waters
hydrologically connect to the basin.
Sierra Club was joined by Clean Water Action and other organizations to
urge the state to adopt strong requirements for water quantity controls, but
the legislation adopted contains several loopholes including for the use of
water in fracking operations that Great Lakes advocates continue to seek to
plug.
In 2016, the provision of the Compact
requiring that any diversion outside of the basin be unanimously approved by
all eight governors of the states was tested for the first time. Despite strong
evidence of a lack of need, a request to divert water to the city of Waukesha,
Wisconsin, approved by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder highlighted the weakness
of the Compact provisions. In a sign
that companies are looking to take advantage of a Michigan governor who seems
unconcerned about diversion, a proposal to drastically increase the permitted
size of a water bottling plant owned by Nestle in Evart was only brought to
public attention days before the permit comment period was to close. An enormous
outpouring of public concern has led to an extension of the comment period and
agreement to hold a hearing. Sierra Club members are engaging in the effort to
block this unwarranted expansion.
Drilling for Oil and Gas under Great Lakes
Banned
As awareness of the vulnerability of the
Great Lakes to pollution grew, attention was drawn to a potential threat of oil
and gas drilling on or under the Great Lakes. In fact, Michigan had several oil
and gas wells which had been drilled directionally under the bottomlands of
Lake Michigan and Lake Huron starting in 1979. Oil and gas rights under the
bottomlands of Michigan’s portion of the Great Lakes belong to the state, and
in 1997 a lease of 200 acres of oil and gas rights by the Michigan Department
of Natural Resources to a Canadian oil development company sparked outrage
throughout the state.
Sierra Club volunteers and staff joined with
many partners around the state in the late 1990s/early 2000’s to raise an alarm
about the potential for harm in the freshwater ecosystem from this practice.
Concerns about the drilling focused on the potential for pockmarking Michigan’s
precious coastlines with well-heads and dangers of spills, blowouts or other
concerns around these drilling sites. As debate over measures in Michigan’s
legislature got underway in earnest, the US Congress placed a moratorium on
drilling activities until 2003, sending a strong signal about how unpopular
this activity was. In a sign of bipartisanship, the Michigan Legislature passed
a legislative ban on leasing any oil and gas under the bottomlands and
connecting waterways in 2002, but Governor John Engler declined to sign the
bill, and it went into effect without his signature. The ban still stands
today.
The Great Lakes and Environmental Justice
Sierra Club’s commitment to protection and
restoration of the Great Lakes and addressing environmental injustices has come
together in southeastern Michigan over the past decade. Former Great Lakes Program staffer Melissa Damaschke drew a strong
connection among a number of important water and pollution issues in Detroit
and surrounding communities, and with a cadre of volunteers, developed both
advocates and people contributing to solutions. The issues have included: pollution
from the Detroit Water and Sewerage District (now the Great Lakes Water Authority), the
largest waste water treatment facility in the United States; access to
affordable drinking water; advocating for green infrastructure; and hands-on
help for people to address storm water runoff issues at their own homes.
Tackling this suite of issues has empowered community members to become
powerful advocates for public health and the environment. Michigan Chapter staffers Erma Leaphart and Dorthea Thomas are
continuing this work under the Great Lakes Program.
Protecting Against Oil Spills
In July 2010, the largest inland oil spill in
United States history occurred near Marshall, MI, as Enbridge Line 6B burst
open and dumped approximately one million gallons of heavy, tar sands crude oil
into Talmadge Creek, where it flowed into the Kalamazoo River. Sierra Club was among the first to provide
documentation of the severity of the disaster, arranging with a volunteer pilot
from Lighthawk and a photographer to obtain the first aerial photographs of the
spill. Within a day after the spill was publicly announced, the Michigan
Chapter website became a critical source of information about the extent of the
spill and the developing plans of the US Environmental Protection Agency and
the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, which were heading up efforts
to contain and clean up. Sierra Club members, particularly in the area of the
disaster, have continued to participate in and work with both the agencies and
the communities as recovery continues to this day.
This experience motivated Sierra Club and
many allied organizations to rally to prevent future disasters in Michigan and
elsewhere. Environmental groups learned about existing oil pipelines throughout
the region, including the Enbridge Line 5 which crosses the Straits of Mackinac
in two pipelines that sit on braces at the bottom of the straits. Chapter
Forest Ecologist Marvin Roberson in 2012 noticed that the Huron Manistee
National Forest was considering approval of re-issuance of an expired special
use permit for Enbridge Line 5 across the forest, with no additional
environmental review of consideration. Marvin’s discovery and input led to the
Forest Service deciding to conduct a more complete environmental review as part
of consideration of the permit. Sierra Club contends that the Forest Service
failed to fully assess the environmental impacts, including the impact of the
full extent of the line on the environment, but was unable to prevail in court.
In 2012, the National Wildlife Federation
released its report, “Sunken Hazard” (http://www.oilandwaterdontmix.org/sunken_hazard) which examined the threats posed by Line 5 where it crosses
the Straits. Following that report, a new coalition called Oil and Water Don’t
Mix (http://www.oilandwaterdontmix.org/#menu ) was created specifically focused on the huge threat posed to
the Great Lakes ecosystem by the more than 60-year-old pipeline as it crosses
the Straits. Chapter Chair David Holtz has
been central to the OWDM campaign throughout, and plays a critical role on
strategy and communications. Additional reports by NWF and For Love of Water
(FLOW) have continued to detail the dangers posed by the aging pipelines.
Working within OWDM, Sierra Club has joined in working to pressure Michigan’s
Governor Snyder and Attorney General Bill Schuette to take action available to
them to enforce easement provisions to shut down the flow of oil through the
pipeline.
