Our World and Everything in It

Does anyone else find it fishy that Michigan’s Senate Republicans fought to keep 25% of surface groundwater such as wetlands out of the Great Lakes Compact, and specifically out of the public’s domain, and now Michigan’s DEQ says it must slash its wetland inspection, and pollution spill response programs? The DEQ says many will be on the honor system when it comes to withdrawing water and dumping pollution. Great. Here we go with self regulation again, that’s not working out well in other sectors of the economy right now. 

So no one will be around if you complain that the guy behind you is filling in that nice little creek between both your houses, or that nice piece of land next to you in the boonies up north becomes a dump site of sorts, not to mention siphoning rivers like the Au Sable, and making some wetlands literally dry up.

So many cuts have been made to help Michigan’s economy along. Didn’t the senate anticipate little to no regulators being able to keep watch on our wetlands in the very near future?  It’s only been months since that compact was signed and already surface water is threatened, and not just the 25% the senate fought to keep out of the compact. Hmmm.

The only good thing is that Gov. Granholm also signed bills to manage the use of surface ground water via a computer system that will determine when and where business can make withdrawals. The problem is this computer system is so new. Just how many places have monitors installed? Probably very few. Where will the money to monitor come from since the DEQ is fresh out of money?

And here’s the kicker. Obama wants to contribute $5 million dollars to really, really clean up the Great Lakes. The way things stand now, our service water is out of the loop of protection as part of our Great Lakes. Unless it’s included in the future, there will be no clean Great Lakes. Pollutants from groundwater will make it into the lakes. And unchecked withdrawals of surface water will likely take place to the point some wetlands may disappear.

The decision to keep surface water out of public domain caters completely to industry and special interest groups. Now it’s all come back to kick us in the pants when we find we’ve lost our say in our own backyards for 25% of surface water  problems, and nobody will come if you call about the other 75% either.

http://www.mlive.com/news/kzgazette/index.ssf?/base/news-30/1221576618242910.xml&coll=7

http://greatlakesgreatmichigan.org/legislation.htm

All eight states surrounding the Great Lakes have signed the Great Lakes Compact, an agreement to protect, preserve, and keep in tact all of our available freshwater today in Saugatuck, MI. Two Canadian provinces, Quebec and Ontario, have passed an almost identical agreement. The compact is off toWashington where there is little doubt it will be approved.

I was also glad to read that MI groundwater will be closely monitored too. If you remember there was lack of agreement on that between the House and Senate when signing MI’s new water bills. What was accomplished:

·     Regulations ensuring that water users do not excessively harm aquatic resources by taking too much water.

·     The adoption of conservation principles to be utilized by large water users.

·     More public input into decisions about large-scale water uses that might impact local ecosystems.

·     Overall, 75% of Michigan’s surface waters will be protected from harmful withdrawals. Use of the remaining waters will be subject to rules ensuring availability to all parties for reasonable use.

But I have still been concerned about the 25% of surface groundwater that goes unprotected. One quarter of our entire surface water falls under ambiguous rules that will be enforced by whom?

Well it looks like the governor also signed bills to manage the use of surface ground water in Michigan via a computer system that will determine when and where business can make withdrawals. This might help with enforcing the rules. Kudos for that!

Read the latest: http://www.charlotte.com/nation/story/706004.html

Check this out. Someone has come up with a way to extract the water from the atmosphere the way leaves dew, get it?

The structure collects dew and makes it into fresh water. I have to ask about acid rain type water, or water passing through a polluted atmosphere? But it is quite a nice structure as far as contemporary sculpture, which is up my alley, maybe not so much for country folk.

It’s not big, provides shade, does not take up a lot of space around the bottom and yields 48 liters of water per day!  Holy Cow, if a liter is a tad over a quart (1.0567 quarts), then 48 liters is 12.68 gallons.  Couple this with reduced shower usage, a water saver shower head, low flow toilets, gray water recycling system, this WatAir as it’s called,  gets close to what all is needed in a two person household. My two person household does a heck of a lot less laundry, dishwasher loads, and such than larger households.

One of these atmospheric dew extractors in a place like Michigan could have a ridiculous yield. But would we homeowners keep viable water from re-entering the Great Lakes?

Read more about it: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070604222124.htm

Senator Richardville had this to say about the Great Lakes Compact:

I don’t know what’s more important to Michigan in regard to its natural resources, but also when you’re talking about the identification of Michigan in the Great Lakes region, than its water. And so what we did today was help protect the Great Lakes water in a way unprecedented in the state of Michigan or really in any of the other Midwestern states we are taking a lead because we are saying loud and clear don’t mess with Michigan’s water.

 

Great rhetoric except our own senate is messing with our water. Influenced by a big farm lobby, they are still planning to allow each industry (bottling, manufacturing, and farming) to be able to siphon off up to 2 million gallons per day without any permits as opposed to the Democratic House that wants limits set at 1 million gallons per day. The idea that water used on farms somehow ends up where it started is a misconception. Plenty of the water is taken up by crops that are shipped elsewhere. Most of our entire daily water intake comes right from the food we eat. Even meat has a really high percentage of water, over 50%. On top of this, and depending on how the water is applied, the evaporation rate can be high. That’s why we’re told it’s just a waste of water to use little oscillating water sprinklers on hot summer days.

The senate justifies losing this much water by following the logic of farm lobbyists that think we have no claim to groundwater. What? We have a claim to the Great Lakes that surround us and hit our shores, but not to the water that actually lands on our soil? Groundwater is a major contributor to streams, inland lakes and wetlands, and coastal wetlands. It affects aquatic habitats for plants and animals. Michigan’s fishing industry depends on groundwater flow to streams and lakes.

Our smaller streams and rivers are in trouble if this bill passes. The bill will take 25% of the water from these rivers and streams at the height of the summer season when it’s hot and dry, and when these smaller tributaries are already down to a trickle. There will be bone-dry stream and riverbeds if Senate Bill 860 passes.

The idea that there won’t be any restrictions up to 2 million gallons per day is bad enough, but this bill allows absolutely no recourse from the public if citizens in a particular area object to their water disappearing down the road. According to a Michigan fisherman blogsite, Mackie’s Bait, “All current users will be grandfathered, including the control structures that maintain lake level stream flows in the rivers Muskegon, the Platte, the Huron, the Clinton, and many more.”You will hear talk about Groundwater Assessment Tools, which are in no way a complete science yet in Michigan. Their are thousands of stream segments types in Michigan and according to the same blogsite, only “230 stream flow gages are in operation across the state.” So how is the senate making an actual quantitative assessment for their decision? 

http://mackiesbait.com/blog/files/category-great-lakes.php.

By signing this Great Lakes Compact, eight states and Canadian provinces unite to try to keep our water here, and our Senate fritters it away, caving to Farm Bureau demands. It won’t come back, and we certainly can’t depend on weather to help us any longer. We had better speak up and fast to our senators that we support the House version of a 1 million gallon per day limit because with Senate bill 860 we’re stuck with the results for good, no argument after the fact. Individuals lose to big industry again. 

Michigan’s House and Senate passed the Great Lakes Compact yesterday but it’s still not a done deal. Accompanying legislation about groundwater usage is still unsigned. It’s necessary before the Compact can head to the governor’s office for final approval. The House and Senate are wrangling over how much water can be taken from groundwater, streams, and inland lakes. The House wants to issue permits for users of more than 1 million gallons a day, and the Senate wants the ceiling at 2 million gallons a day. Of course the Senate leans toward business concerns and the House leans toward environmental concerns. Isn’t the whole idea of the compact to conserve our water by keeping it here? And our Senate still insists on excessive use of it?

I say we do away with bottled water all together for a big savings both in water and oil. According to  Environmental Graffiti’s website:

Three gallons of the wet stuff is required to produce one gallon of what you will happily pay a dollar for, largely because of the length and complexity of the various “purification” processes and the evaporation loss that takes place while the water is in the plant. This is quite an ugly statistic, when juxtaposed to the fact that less than one percent of the water on our planet is both accessible and potable.

Besides the extravagant amount of oil used to make the bottles and large volumes of water used in the bottling process, there are of course, several other considerations. Firstly, there are the transport costs - by the time you transport every bottle by rail or truck and keep it cool, you may as well have filled it one-fourth of the way with oil. Let’s also not forget the operating costs of the factories themselves and the profit the bottled water companies have to make for their shareholders. Therefore, purely from an economic standpoint, if you only drink bottled water, you’re a mug.

Beyond that, there is also an environmental impact from production. This in fact, is quite simple to calculate: every ton of PET plastic for the bottles produces 3 tons of carbon–adding 2.5 Million tons of carbon dioxide emissions to the 17 million barrels of oil.

We need to move ahead with this bill and only allow minimal water withdrawal, since we can see by the above the excessive use of water can be eliminated. Get a Pur or Brita water filter for your tap for Pete’s sake! Besides we now know plastic can leach bisphenol A, a hormone disruptor. We don’t want that now do we?

Because Michigan is surrounded by the Great Lakes, being one of the last two states to sign makes us look, well, not very environmentally green. And we are one of the last two because Wisconsin not only passed the Compact today, but it’s headed to Governor Doyle’s office for signature. We should have had this hammered out long ago.

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/05/michigan_legislature_approves.html

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/green-living/what-is-cost-of-bottled-water/1129

http://www.biztimes.com/daily/2008/5/15/

Good news and just in time I think. The Great Lakes Compact looks to be signed off by the last, (Wisconsin), of 8 states that are involved in the agreement to keep Great Lakes water from being diverted elsewhere. The deadline for Wisconsin coming on board is April 17th.  Wisconsin was holding out for changes to the compact that many claim would unravel the whole thing. So either Wisconsin conceded or something changed.

I say this happened just in time because the March 31st issue of Time magazine featured an article on Lake Mead drying up. It looked like the photographs of Lake Chad in Niger Africa that I blogged about in 2006.  Lake Chad was once 10,000 sq mi but is now a mere 500 sq mi., probably less now in 2008. Lake Chad is comparable to some of our Great Lakes. It’s drying up, as is Lake Mead. The Time article said the marks on the surrounding rock show past water levels of Lake Mead that were100 ft. higher.

After that article, I picked up my latest Reader’s Digest May 2008 issue and the special report was titled as a question: “Are we running out of water?” That article highlighted Atlanta’s latest drought, as well as Lake Mead. The whole time I’m thinking about Wisconsin holding out on signing the compact because they are worried about communities outside of the basin getting water from the Great Lakes.  The wells that one of the communities used to rely on are full of radium, so they need lake water more than ever.

But without the compact and as the law reads now for this Wisconsin out-of-basin community, the governors of the Great Lakes basin states can say no to a diversion from the Great Lakes for no reason at all. At least the new rules in the compact set up standards a community must meet to get the water, and as long as the treated wastewater is returned, that community wouldn’t be denied access.  Did Wisconsin ever stop to think that they shouldn’t tick off the other governors by holding up this valuable compact, that those governors could veto the water to this out-of-basin community in the future? It’s doubtful that would happen, considering the moral and ethical implications, but Geez.

I think that we’re all a little spoiled. That Wisconsin community was used to just getting the water without a big hassle before. All they have to do is comply with standards outlined by the new compact, which they probably have been doing all along. So do the paperwork involved for the compliance and get your water already!

And the rest of us in the Great Lakes area are spoiled as well. I live right on the water. It is higher this year than all but one of the past 20 years I’ve lived here. Yet I read about fellow Americans suffering drought and fires elsewhere in the country. The dumb thing is that if climate gets so bad that drought forces millions of Americans out of their homes and migrating back toward the Great Lakes basin to settle, we will be using the water up anyway now won’t we? Instead of pumping it to them, they come here for it. What’s the difference? We’re simply delaying the process with this compact because if the scenario for water scarcity gets worse, we’ll be packed in like sardines around here, and just counting the days to our demise anyway.

We shouldn’t be fooling around about conservation in this country any longer.  We’re seeing some pretty drastic changes in a very short period of time, a lot shorter than ”oh we-don’t-have-to-worry about global warming for ten years!” Right. 

Read about the Great Lakes Compact: http://www.glc.org/about/glbc.html

About finalizing the compact: http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/page/community/post/coryliebmann/C27D

About the holdup in Wisconsin: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=718988
 

There is a presentation at MCCC’s Meyer Auditorium tonight called “Coming Home. State of the Straits: Status and Trends of Key Indicators. This is an effort to present the results of compiled data on the ecosystems health in the Detroit River and Lake Erie. I wanted to go but I’m 40 minutes away from MCCC’s parking lot and don’t like the looks of the weather. What I did is find the results of the program and printed out about 30 pages that comprise the comprehensive and integrative assessment.

This presentation is based on information in “50 key trend data sets and indicators” according to the report itself. However, it also states that this comprehensive and integrative assessment is initial and heavily weighted on state information with “important data and knowledge gaps.” Nevertheless, it “lays the foundation for continuous improvement in the future.”

But I can’t tell from the report what we’re improving on. There are percentages of increase or decline of contaminants with no beginning measurements given. There are also very few quantitative targets. So we don’t know what aiming for.  The study is over a 35-year time span. In 1970, we were polluted. The Clean Air and Water Act improved everything initially in a huge way. So to tell me from 1970 until now there has been an overall improvement in our water, well no kidding. What I want to know is what transpired over the past 10 years? For instance, regarding contaminants in western Lake Erie sediments, there is a record in 1971, and another in 1995 for mercury and PCB’s. Two records, 24 years apart are telling us there is a 70% decline in mercury in sediment and a 50% decline in PCB’s and other organochlorine contaminants. I don’t think that is very thorough. The mercury is 70% lower from what amount? Does this constitute a good amount? Mercury may have been 85% lower in the 90’s with pollution levels going up some 15% since then and the overall reading from 1971 will still look good at 70% reduction in pollution even though it’s rising again and quickly. Many of these reports concerning water end in 2004 too, like amounts of mercury in walleye.

Reports from 1977-2004 show that mercury in walleye has seen a 60% decline between the late 70’s and early 80’s; levels have remained steady since. What? Nothing has changed in over 25 years? It may be because there is more fishing, and therefore more fish caught at an early stage. We’re told to eat the smaller fish, especially in the ocean, because they have had less time to ingest mercury. There is nothing in this report that shows the accumulative affects of mercury either like from sediment, to fish, to birds, to larger predators.

I had to consider the source and motivation of this report too when I saw the list of editors and funding. Two of the editors are from the USFWS, the controversial agency that currently aims to kill the wolves and buffalo out west without presenting a solid answer as to why.  And the funding sources include DTE, and the US EPA, another favorite controversial agency of mine. But like I said, I really wanted to hear this presentation. The presenters probably had really good slides of the wildlife that is thriving. Nothing is all bad news. If anyone attended please let me know about it.

I’ve included an article from the Toledo Blade about this presentation relative to receding shorelines and loss of water in the Great Lakes too.  http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080107/NEWS06/801070402.

These are the actual tables resulting from the compilation of data for the trends reported in the presentation. http://www.epa.gov/med/grosseile_site/indicators/sos/assessment.pdf.
 

I blogged about the Farm Bill and the changes that are needed if we are ever going to get healthy and get the nation turned around so that the small farmer thrives once again. Not going to happen. The November 12th, 2007 issue of Time Magazine had a scathing article by Michael Grunwald called “Down on the Farm” about the farm lobby and the lopsided business of farm subsidies. The article is too long to outline here. But our future for free range chicken, pork, or beef, more fruits and vegetables, and less tainted meat and food supplies in general instead of the top five commodities—corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice is mighty bleak.

The article warns if you “eat, drink, or pay taxes—or care about the economy, the environment, or our global reputation” the Farm Bill is a big deal. We still subsidize farmers billions of tax dollars every year. The trouble is that it is redistributed to millionaire farmers mostly when 60% of small farmers get no subsidies at all. Some of the subsidies even go to farms that are no longer in business!

Besides wasting billions of our money by staying status quo and helping the rich, the way our Farm Bill is laid out:

It contributes to our obesity, and illegal-immigration epidemics and to our water and energy shortages. It helps degrade rivers, deplete aquifers, elimiate grasslands, concentrate food-processing conglomerates and inundate our fast food nation with high-fructose corn syrup. Our farm policy is supposed to save small farmers and small towns. Instead it fuels the expansion of industrial megafarms and the depopulation of rural America. It hurts Third World farmers, violates international trade deals and paralyzes our efforts to open foreign markets to the non-agricultural goods and services that make up the remaining 99% of our economy.

And this description is in the first column of a long article on just how construed our Farm Bill really is. Small farmers get next to nothing in help, and are forced out. This says much about our free market system that conservatives like to tout causes competition and keeps everyone in check. Baloney. I’ve been screaming that there is no such thing as a free market system in America any longer as long as we have lobbies and big interest groups throwing millions at Congress. Again, the wealthy rule and find all sorts of loopholes to get rid of the little guy. Some free market system!

For you and me, that means we will continue to be force-fed high fructose corn syrup in everything we eat. Type II Diabetes will continue to rise. The organic industry will continue to struggle. If you’ve ever complained about the high prices of organic, now you know why. The big guys producing the top 5 crops don’t want you buying that stuff. And you won’t at $1.00 per apple. I’ve walked into the organic section of my store more than once with determination to buy what I know is better for me. The prices drive me out. I look for sales instead and go home with half of what I planned on. Example: If you want to buy cranberry juice, and I mean real cranberry juice, no other fruit juices in it, no corn syrup, no additives, full strength, not from concentrate it’s over $7.00 for 32 oz. Thank the big megafarms and our Farm Bill for that. Or then again thank Nancy Pelosi. As a matter of fact, read the article, then contact Pelosi and tell her what you think of her accommodating the same ole farm lobby once again.

Thank goodness I have fruit trees, a vegetable garden, and know how to do good old-fashioned canning. But if our weird weather keeps up, I won’t be able to do that. If we have a water shortage and hot searing sun, I won’t be able to water like it’s needed. I lost most of my fruits this past season when the trees were in bloom and we had a freeze. By fall, the very few small apples I had also had a black, oily residue all over the skins. We’ve yet to determine what it is and where it came from. I’m leaning toward jet fuel and just peeling the skins before I eat the stuff. This is going to get about survival. People who only buy from major stores, who don’t eat healthy anyway aren’t going to notice until it gets really bad. But for people who are health conscious, and raise the things they plan to eat, much like the small, unsubsidized farmer, we know what can happen, and happen fast in a bad way.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1680139,00.html.

http://www.house.gov/pelosi/contact/contact.html.
 

Monroe News presented an article this weekend from ABC news and other sites like The Huffington Report below that 36 states will suffer water shortages in the next 5 years. We’re a little slow to move to divert emergencies in this country lately so it’s imperative each community get moving.  Look what the small town of Clary N. Carolina did way back in 2001.

Cary began a reclaimed water system on a small scale in 2001. Reclaimed water has been treated up to a certain stage in the purification process. We can’t drink it, wash, or bathe in it but meets federal standards. What a community can do is recycle it instead of dumping it into lakes, rivers, and streams and reclaim it for irrigation, industrial processing, cooling, etc., leaving us with more clean drinking water.

Reclaimed water needs a separate pipeline from drinking water. This does require money, but it’s good for jobs and is just the beginning of what a green industry could bring. In the long run the system helps the community in times of drought.

The Cary, N.C. Reclaimed Water website states: “The state lets Cary divert a total of about 5 million gallons of treated wastewater a day from the two treatment plants (water reclamation facilities) for reuse rather than discharging into creeks.
        Amounts reused are:
        • Approximately 1 million gallons on peak day
        • Up to 20 million gallons monthly in summer.”

Cary is aiming at a 20% water usage reduction by 2015. Currently, close to 1900 communities across the country are using reclaimed water. The most progressive states include Washington, Florida, California, Arizona and Texas. Cary is a small town of a little over 112,000 that saves almost 1,000,000 gallons of water per day. If the roughly 2000 communities are doing as well as Cary than 2 billions gallons of water is saved per day or more by reclaiming water.

Think about an entire country doing this, the jobs it would create. But I’ve blogged about lack of money to renew water infrastructure in this country. We are in need of much money wasted on war concerns at a time when we should be hunkering down and getting serious about alleviating global warming. We can see our environmental conditions are changing. Preparing for its effects is not unwise. I don’t know about anyone else but the less I have to change drastically the better. If it means starting earlier than so be it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20071026/vanishing-water/.

http://www.townofcary.org/depts/pwdept/reclaimhome.htm.
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I was brought up and went to Catholic schools my whole life. While I no longer practice organized religion, I have a firm belief in the Lord, and I might pray for rain privately, but when people are gathering in public governmental places to pray for rain in Atlanta, I think it makes us look like boob tubes to the rest of the world. For Pete’s sake the water commission and/or government there have failed to stop over 400,000 gallons per month or more than 14,000 gallons per day from flowing to just one wealthy resident’s estate because of lack of evidence he is breaking watering laws. Watering laws? Cut the guy off! The guy’s last name is Carlos.

And maybe this is supposed to be a humbling experience for moral America. Alabama prayed for rain and got nothing ever since. We sure remember to pray when something goes wrong, but forget morality and mercy when it comes to our use and abuse of animals in this country between research, industrialized farms, aerial killing of wolves, canned hunts, roadside zoos and carnivals. For that matter, many children don’t fare much better.

And how about the air, earth, water? We just don’t want to own up to being one of the largest polluters on earth. We take the self-righteous path and immediately point to others like China. Our neighbor Canada announced on the news that 25% of all pollution coming out of China is directly due to America and our demand for cheap goods. I would say we have plenty of work to do in our own back yards.

Americans also ignore news that our pollution directly affects poor nations like Africa. They, not Michigan, have the world’s largest freshwater lakes that are drying up due to global warming and the rape of that land and its natives by big oil concerns. We as Christians have literally turned a blind eye to our treatment of the paradise God bestowed on us, and our neighbors, like the Africans, because it doesn’t directly affect us, and the earth has no soul, was given to us as our domain. Animals have no soul. And anyone that is not Christian will not get to heaven. This is some of the credo coming right from our pulpits, and we’re going to pray to God for rain now? 

Do we as a moral society pay attention to our prayers at all anyway? When they end with: “World without end, Amen,” and “Heaven on Earth, Amen” do we really believe it? Because an awful lot of people think the world is going to disintegrate somehow after saying those very words in church every Sunday. And if we truly believe we will have heaven on earth, why are we pigging it up so badly? Do you really think God just wants us to keep procreating without being responsible for our waste also? I’ve written plenty of blogs that address these moral issues.

Gore is right about the overall care of the environment being a moral issue. We’ll see when other states dry up, how much we love our brothers. I know I want Michigan’s water to stay in Michigan. I have property all along the waterways. But I’m not going to let a fellow citizen perish from lack of water, that is if those in need have done all they can possibly do for themselves first, and that doesn’t mean simply praying. Remember: “God helps those that help themselves?”

He meant it. He gave us great mental capacity to overcome many obstacles. I doubt he will do anything for a people that not only do not help themselves to their full capacity, but also have created even more obstacles to life that they don’t know how to dismantle. That’s hardly doing all that we can do or being all that we can be. We need a big kick in the rear to wake up. God is our FATHER, and as a parent to let our children make their own way, figure out their own mistakes is sometimes the best wake up call, the best lesson to teach. We should ready ourselves for more lessons unless we begin to change.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/us/15water.html?ref=us.