Our World and Everything in It

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

Yesterday both the House and Senate committees passed a comprehensive package of bills to prevent irresponsible water withdrawals from the Great Lakes. The bills were expected to move to both House and Senate floors for final passage.

This is only a small step toward comprehensive protection. Our Republican Senate backed lobbyists from industry and agriculture so groundwater failed to get public trust status. Gaining public trust for our groundwater has its detractors but in arguments for passage of these bills testimony from Cooley Law Professor Chris A. Shafer makes sense:

The basic tenet of the public trust doctrine is that certain natural resources, especially the waters and beds of the sea coast and navigable lakes and rivers, are of such importance to the public that they are incapable of purely private ownership and control. Legislatively extending the public trust to groundwater reinforces its importance and creates a mandatory duty for the MDEQ to consider this protection during regulatory procedures. For these reasons, all waters of the state must be protected to prevent excessive and unreasonable exploitation. Expanding public trust protections to include our groundwater must be clear and explicit in statute. Regarding concerns about private property rights, these bill packages specifically reserve riparian rights and property rights for lawful use of water. The ‘takings’ would actually occur when corporations divert water from local watersheds and affect the rights of riparian users. http://www.greatlakesgreatmichigan.org/Public_Trust.pdf

And considering groundwater makes up 79% of all of Lake Michigan’s water, I would have to agree. But groundwater as a public trust will have to come in another step. Michigan is taking too long and too many baby steps toward a clean future because we have too many politicians listening to industry lobbyists.

But on the bright side and according to a news release by Michigan’s Sierra Club the protections won in this package of bills include:

• Approval of the Great Lakes Compact, guarding against large-scale water diversions (Michigan will become the 7^th of the 8 states needed to approve it).
• 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.

It’s the 25% that goes unprotected I’m concerned about. One quarter of our entire surface water falls under ambiguous rules and that will be enforced by whom? Right. And isn’t more public input into decisions about large-scale water uses that might impact local ecosystems just about equal to a public trust for groundwater anyway?  Geez.

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’m sorry to read that Michigan persists with pollution policy instead of sound environmental policy. We need to get the corporate friendly senate moving in a cleaner direction. We have an obligation in this state to at very least try to keep the water clean. If we keep goofing off, someone might decide we are poor stewards and should share the wealth and management of our water. Does adding more coalburners to the list of 19, including the country’s second largest in Monroe, sound like anyone here pays attention to health issues, future problems with water shortages, or the earth? The latest out of MI senate is a push to alter abortion issues in Michigan. That’s the big priority? People need jobs; we need a decent and moral economy. By moral, I mean we do our utmost not to disturb life in the process of living and producing.  A green economy can offer plenty of jobs but that ride is being held up either on a state or federal level and benefits the oil industry.

We know for instance about oil leases that have been sold in pristine areas and/or habitat for polar bears, seals and all types of birds. Drilling there is pending and the oil industry wants to get moving. It’s becoming obvious that placing the polar bear on the endangered list is purposely being stalled. All that is needed is a great motivator. Bingo, gas will go up beyond $4.00 per gallon shortly. We’re already being taunted by that forecast. People are expected to cry drill, drill, drill and to hell with the animals. And we’ll probably do that, instead of seeing the big picture and how we’re being manipulated by the utilities. Even Warren Buffet commented that we’ve been sticking straws into the earth and sorry but it’s a finite practice. We will eventually run out. We collectively had over 500,000 wells. Our demand is ridiculous, and growing and it all revolves around the same fossil sources.

Heaven forbid we advance in technology and perfect wind and solar power for the individual home, and make it cheap. Houses would stand-alone without need for utilities. It’s almost laughable isn’t it? We are street smart enough to know the powers that be won’t let that happen. Anyway, our airwaves will be controlled shortly. Can’t even get free air anymore, besides there is that ever lovin entertainment/sports world that’s always going to charge too.

We could practice conservation. We could develop an RPS for Michigan, (more on that in another blog), which would entice green developers to come here. I’ve been saying this for quite awhile. What green industry is going to plant themselves next to a bunch of pollution? We’ll never get away from polluting industries once they are established without paying for it dearly. The buck will pass on to us for corporation’s stubborn business sense if and when in the future a big conservation effort needs to be enacted because, gee, we really are polluting ourselves to death. 

I was reading the Sierra Club’s “The Mackinac” and it states what I’ve been reading elsewhere, that many places in this country are not giving permits to more coalburners. The front-page article said 44 proposed coal-fired plants were either denied or withdrawn in 2007 thanks to The Sierra Club. So what happened here? 

There were five more coalburners looking for environmental permits in Michigan, with three more new plants under discussion the article said. It also stated that the challenge to put a moratorium on coal-fired plants in Michigan is daunting. Well I guess, especially with a corporation friendly senate. It said, “The state has refused to regulate the CO2 from coal plants that contribute to global warming (so long as the applicants address other pollutants, the state will let them be built). So that’s why the rush to install scrubbers? The scrubbers address other pollutants that are breathing irritants, but not the mercury that is permeating through the water to the fish, to the birds, and eventually anyone who drinks the water—one of the world’s largest freshwater supplies that is no longer so fresh. Or the CO2, that’s warming us up and causing some really bad weather—almost tornado season. What’s the sense of the Great Lakes Legacy Act?  What a tail chase, and meanwhile the water and Michigan loses, while the polar bears, seals, fish, and birds, the entire earth, take a back seat to our excess.

 Take a stand and participate. Read: http://michigan.sierraclub.org/.

There was more on the news today about water contamination in America on ABC news. It seems trace amounts of hormones, antibiotics, and antidepressants are turning up in fish everywhere. This time it was Lake Mead near Las Vegas. Our filtration methods seem to be failing more and more.

It’s been quite a few years since I first heard about genderless, or unisex fish in the waters of New York due to unusually high amounts of human waste in some areas due to poor filtration. I started wondering if that water would have the same gender/hormonal affects on humans eventually? We know that baldness is not just hereditary but also related to hormones, and that it is on the rise. Children are reaching puberty far too early. Makes one wonder, doesn’t it?

The next time I heard about gender problems in fish, it was in the Potomac River as reported by Robin Roberts of Good Morning America. That was a year, or more ago. I reported not long ago the same contaminants,  hormones and antidepressants, were found in trace amounts in Lake Michigan. This is an obvious and growing problem—that’s been ignored.

I’ve harped over and over again about CAFO’s and their practice called nutrient loading. I can clearly see a link between nutrient loading and tainted crops. Nutrient loading is when the holding lagoons from farm animal excrement is blown all over the surrounding land as some sort of fertilizer. Read the article link below. It states that: “In several recent studies of soil fertilized with livestock manure or with the sludge product from wastewater treatment plants American scientists found earthworms had accumulated those same compounds [widely used antidepressants] while vegetables — including corn, lettuce and potatoes — had absorbed antibiotics. “These results raise potential human health concerns.” This really needs to change.

If drugs show up in crops from manure, why not e-coli from manure as fertilizer on lettuce and spinach? It’s a disgusting situation any way you look at it. I saw the pics of what happened when too much spring rain caused an overflow of those CAFO lagoons down south. It killed all the fish in the subsidiaries all the way to the ocean where more fish were instantly killed.

I remember all these reports.  It seems to be spreading.  Does anyone in charge, truly care about our freshwater?  We keep getting reports that our air, water, and foodstuff is getting increasingly better. Just go ahead and drink tap water, breathe the air from around coalburners, and eat whatever is served up.  We’re just asking for poor health by not being more involved and demanding in the way we want our basic air, food and water. We should really be questioning what’s happening. With all the recalls, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see something very wrong is most certainly happening. It’s not a natural phenomenon that’s happened before. It’s us. It’s not a stretch to think we’re causing global warming, the more we’re aware of the pollution we create by something as simple as flushing our pills.  

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=4422001

I can’t believe it. The Bush administration hasn’t exited yet and things are changing for the environmental good already. According the Environmental News Service today, Feb. 8th, 2008, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia “vacated two rules issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that failed to set strict limits on mercury emissions from power plants.” Vacated, I can’t believe it. That means “No Way!”

· The EPA’s cap and trade program was thrown out the window by the court.
· Then the court told the EPA how they “erred by taking power plants off the list of hazardous pollution sources when it issued its Clean Air Mercury Rule” that advocated the cap and trade program.
· The article went on to say, “the EPA now has two years to develop mercury emissions standards for existing power plants.”

The Clean Air Mercury Rule was an attempt by the EPA to limit the amount of mercury discharged by industry. There were two caps. The first was to be 38 tons of emissions reduced by first getting rid of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide called “co-benefits” by the rule. The rule suggests mercury reductions are achieved by doing this. But mercury is a chemical element. It is what it is. It is not sulfur and nitrogen. They are what they are. Granted they’re bad for the respiratory system, but what about the mercury? The court obviously got tired of this nonsense too and told the EPA to get on the ball. There was also an obvious problem with this little statement in the Clean Air Mercury Rule: “”…and because recent information demonstrates that it is not appropriate or necessary to regulate coal and oil-fired utility units under section 112 of the Clean Air Act.” What?

I griped about all of this in another blog when DTE (Detroit area energy provider) announced they were installing scrubbers for sulfur and nitrogen on their Monroe coalburner. Whoopty Doo. Scrubbers do nothing about the mercury, but today the courts sure did. I also predicted that  utility companies would continue too long on their same course and then whine about the cost to reverse things and comply with new clean air policy. How soon before we hear the sob stories?  So predictable. When companies have a big lobby, they throw all foresight to the wind.  They don’t need to stay on the ball. They pay to change the play instead.  And the taxpayer bears the brunt. Read about that again: http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?m=200701.

This ruling comes on the heals of the June 2007 edict by the Court of Appeals that vacated the EPA’s Incinerator Rule. The court blasted the EPA for violating the Clean Air Act for relaxing limits on emissions of smog-forming compounds from large power plants, factories, and other industrial sources,” according to Chemical and Engineering News. Smog and smoke have always been pretty self explanatory to me. If you can see it in the air, it’s substantial, and you probably shouldn’t be breathing it. As a result of the court’s ruling, chemical plants, refineries, and other industrial facilities that burn the waste they generate in on-site incinerators must comply with the law’s most stringent rules governing hazardous air pollutants. So what about Holcim Cement?

As I sit in a county with the nation’s second largest coalburner that sits on Lake Erie, and a Holcim cement plant that’s big on incinerating and has racked up big fines for doing it, it’s going to be real interesting how the court’s rulings play out.

The announcement of the court ruling today: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2008/2008-02-08-01.asp.
The June, 2007 ruling about incinerators: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/85/i25/8525news7.html.
The EPA’s Clean Air Mercury Rule that is defunct as of today: http://www.epa.gov/camr/basic.htm.
A disturbing report about mercury hot spots: http://www.mindfully.org/Air/2004/Fort-Wayne-Indiana-Mercury11jan04.htm.