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

Earlier this month while working outside, I noticed a prevalence of little reddish ants. I’m not saying fire ants necessarily because they are not supposedly indigenous to Michigan, but little reddish ants seem to be everywhere and they bite. I got bit on my left leg. A trail of horribly itchy red bites took about a week or more to get rid of. I put my usual sting cure on them, a wet aspirin. Aspirin is just salicylic acid, so meat tenderizer, and anything else including special shampoos that have salicylic acid usually work to take the sting away. Not so for those bumps.

I live in the country and have been bitten by chiggers, mosquitoes, spiders, fleas, and am really allergic to apple maggot fly bites that many people call black flies. They are those triangular shaped flies with spotted wings. I guess they don’t bite as much as deposit eggs under the skin. Lovely. But, I know when I’ve been bitten by one of those. I feel the pinch, the skin gets hot, and aspirin  works great. Not so with the trail on my left leg. I put all the over the counter stuff on the bites, and the household stuff like ammonia, alcohol, baking soda, vinegar, you name it. I even took tweezers and pulled at what looked like the spot of entry, then applied Neosporin.

Nothing worked. The dots remained and eventually ran their course. After beating up my skin so bad, I started to worry about scars. I can tell where the bites were but they left little trace considering what I did to them and my skin.  I was soooo happy when they were gone.

Last week it was cool outside and I didn’t do much work out there at all so there was little chance for me to get bit right? I thought nothing of pulling on a pair of jeans and sweatshirt I threw off to the side of my nightstand just the day before. I left the house to run errands on Thursday before Memorial weekend. I thought the itch behind my right leg was persistent as I stood at my pharmacy to pick up my renewed prescription for Allegra. I remember scratching there more than once while I was running around. Something in my jeans felt picky.

When I got home and removed my jeans I had a trail on my inner thigh around the back of my knee and down the outside of my lower leg. I was so disgusted knowing what those bites were and how they would itch, be ugly, and not go away all weekend. If that wasn’t bad enough, when I woke up Friday morning and thought I had hives on my back and neck, I found it was yet another trail of ant bites.

I didn’t try any weird treatments this time. I learned my lesson the bites are much like poison ivy, oak, and sumac, all of which I’ve had my fair share. I had poison ivy four times one summer thanks to my cat. They are miserable but I won’t die. My husband made sure I was planning to wear long pants when we went out to eat so as not to look like I had some sort of plague.

So memorial weekend did create quite a memory for me. Now I know what not to do while working in my yard in Michigan. I have biting ants that I didn’t have before. Call them what you will, but I say they are indeed fire ants, and Michigan is getting more and more of them because of climate change. I watched a little black ant bite me and nothing happened. I saw the color of the ants in question. They are reddish and seem to be everywhere. Like a nightmare they are not centrally located around a large mound like ant experts describe. 

When I started to plant my vegetable garden in a pair of shorts and spotted little reddish ants in the dirt, I quickly went inside and returned with long pants, and knee high socks over the pant legs. I also had on a long sleeved shirt that I tucked in. Real cute.  My mom said to put rubber bands around the sleeves of my shirt also. Yard work will not be fun when temperatures soar above 80 degrees and I have to wear this kind of get up. 

One good thought: I know these ants are in Michigan now. And one good cure for the itch is an ice pack.  But my one bad thought outweighs the good. What else is in store for us insect wise in Michigan? What plague of things we didn’t have to worry about before will global climate change bring? The ants are bad enough. I don’t even want to think about the mosquito populations. 

The Bush Administration is at it again. They are still trying to push the carry/use of concealed weapons and loaded firearms in our national forests and state parks. Don’t we have enough gun issues? Everyone other than POACHERS has been happy with the ban for 78 years now. Reagan opened the can of worms that now threatens to open wider to allow people to shoot firearms in our parks and forests. “Firearms were first banned in national parks in the 1930s in a bid to curb poaching. The current rules, implemented under President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, allow visitors to national parks and refuges to possess firearms so long as they are ‘rendered temporarily inoperable or are packed, cased or stored in a manner that will prevent their ready use.’” http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2008/2008-05-01-10.asp.  This is a ludicrous law that invites illegal use of firearms, because why bother carrying a gun at all?  How would you like to be the first to get shot, or your dog? I have a feeling this ties in with the eradication of wolves somehow, because Dirk Kempthorne, Secy. of the Interior is involved.

Allowing guns and firearms into parks is dangerous and just encourages poaching again. I’ve already read reports of the attacks by poachers on the black bear populations in the U.S.  Much like poachers in Africa, that are desperate, poachers in this country are killing off our black bears for sale of their gall bladders on the black market in Asia. We know better. We’re supposed to be a big moral nation. Somehow that morality disconnects from all things nature, where we take no responsibility for our actions that affect the environment or creatures in it. We treat animals horrendously. Ditto for air, water, and earth then believe God will take care of things.

God is not a puppeteer. To believe so is the relinquish a very important principle, that of free will.  He gave us charge of the earth’s domain and we pollute it, and then claim huge, quick changes are natural or rather supernatural. But we’re over the limit with pollution the effects of which are showing up everywhere. We can clearly see that this administration is pushing us to the point of harm relative to air, water, land, health and safety. Everything seems to be particle per unit to the limit anymore. We push the envelope for how much damage we can do without really getting massively sick. Capping and trading and shifting pollution around, like people I ran into that advocated letting BP dumping excess ammonia into Lake Michigan because the EPA signed off on it, and it created a few jobs.  Now we know that the EPA in our country is in trouble, and Indiana is gaining more jobs by becoming more environmental versus allowing companies like BP to stretch pollution to the limits . 

We’ve had far too much faith in the decisions of our government in lieu of following the faith of our spirit where we have a conscience about all we do and how it affects our brother, not just in this nation, but on other continents. Instead, we just sit back and let the current administration push the environmental envelope toward disaster for the love of money, an earthly commodity with finite use. And now there this push to add loaded firearms to the list of disservices perpetrated against our forests/parks, and animals/habitats? Just what we need.

To allow more guns in public areas to a population that isn’t getting the idea of brotherly love, let alone extending that love to all living things by sustaining a clean, healthy environment for all , is out right dangerous and only invites more evil not good.

Ah, how soon we forget. Just a little over a year ago the United States Supreme Court ruled that the EPA could not bypass its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. That ruling caused a rush to court on behalf of other industry polluters, i.e., coal burning facilities. But luck ran out for the coal industry when the of U.S. Court of Appeal’s basically threw the EPA’s cap and trade program out, and told the EPA that they were wrong by taking power plants off the list of hazardous pollution sources with its “Clean Air Mercury Rule.” Now the EPA has two years to develop mercury emissions standards for existing power plants. http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=232

So it seems a little redundant for citizens to have to sign a petition to send a message to our state congress to get Michigan moving. This particular petition calls for Governor Granholm to issue an executive order to immediately direct Michigan’s DEQ (Dept. of Environmental Quality) to regulate CO2 emissions from coal and other power facilities.

The real goal here is to show our state government we are indeed watching what does or does not happen in Michigan as far as legislation to move forward to bring new jobs to boost the economy, while continuing to curb pollution in Michigan. Our two houses and the governor continue to come to a stalemate regarding jobs, the environment, pollution, and our economy. We wouldn’t be as afraid to loose jobs in polluting industries like construction of coalburners, refineries, and even nuke plants, if we had a decent RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standard) and Energy Efficiency program to entice more green industry into our state, which seems to go hand in hand with the technical industries also.

Job growth in a new sector certainly takes the sting out of job loss and poor working conditions in waning manufacturing sectors. So get on with it Michigan! We’re missing a golden opportunity to transform ourselves quickly from old manufacturing status quo to something new completely that’s being afforded by green industry.

Perhaps signing a petition to nudge our politicians forward is a very good idea to show we want the green—both industry and paycheck green.

Take the time to sign at:   http://progressmichigan.org/page/s/globalwarming.
 

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.
 

 My mind works in strange ways and so all the things I’m blogging about here go together in my mind. I was watching the Super Bowl and I caught the beginning where everyone was reciting the Declaration of Independence. I thought I just wrote something with the Declaration of Independence in it, and sure enough I did a blog on the 4th of July. I was urging people to be patriotic and contact their reps to support a moratorium on CAFO’s in Michigan. That didn’t happen. As a matter of fact thanks to the MI Farm Bureau and Republican Senate, it’s easier than ever to come to Michigan with a CAFO. Go to the link about CAFO’s below and check out the aerial pictures. Tell me during downpours of rain that those lagoons don’t breach. Groundwater runoff in Michigan ultimately ends up in a lake somewhere. So the opening of the Super Bowl brought up a sore subject for me.

Today, I’m reading an article in the Detroit Free Press about botulism killing Great Lakes birds. It said: “The deaths of hundreds of loons, cormorants, gulls, long-tailed ducks and grebes were scattered across the sand washed up and rotting.” There were 2900 dead birds along a 14-mile stretch of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. That’s ugly. The botulism is being blamed on two foreign, Black Sea area, mussels and round gobies that look like minnows but fatter. Biologists think they are the cause, and it looks like warmer weather, and lower water levels contribute to the problem. The botulism is native to the Great Lakes but hasn’t been around for more than 20 years. The cycle of botulism works like this:

The lakes are warmer and more shallow. The mussels are so numerous they filter the water, which becomes clearer. The sun penetrates to the bottom farther in clear shallow water, and a type of cladophora algae over grows from the sunlight. When the algae dies, it rots and the botulism comes to life. The mussels absorb the botulism, the gobie fish eat the mussels, the birds eat the gobie fish—and ultimately die from botulism.

The article in the Free Press said that the cladophora algae flourished in the 60’s and 70’s because it was nourished by the phosphorus from fertilizer runoff and poor sewage treatment. Bans in Michigan on phosphorus and improved sewage treatment reduced that algae in the 80’s and 90’s. Well, it’s back. 50,000 birds have died from E botulism since 1999.

I remember yesterday’s game, the Declaration of Independence, the CAFOs, and now sewage. I started thinking about a proposal I did for septic systems in Michigan as an assignment for class. Boy was that an eye opener. I found a fairly current article in the Sanitation Journal that said there are over 1.2 million septic systems in Michigan, and up until a few years ago Michigan didn’t have a state sanitary code. Over 40 percent of the new homes in Michigan are in rural areas where septic systems are necessary, and new homes near the water must have above-the-ground engineered septic fields now. But what about older homes like mine?

My husband is a stickler about our septic system, but there are homes along my road that are 40 years old with the original owner in them. Many of Michigan’s septic fields are only inspected when a home sells. Get the picture? The Sanitation Journal said one of the biggest contaminants of our lakes and streams, rivers, springs and such, is failed septic systems, so that’s something the state is really watching.” I don’t know about that, not all of it anyway. I thought we were supposed to be keeping a watchful eye on the ballast water of freighters too, and look at all the mussels.  

The Detroit Free Press story link is below. It was an exceptionally poignant story because one of the biologists rounding up the dead birds found one with a band on its leg. It was an old loon he tracked for 14 years or more. A loon that kept a mate for one of the longest pairings ever recorded, and most amount of chicks raised. That would have really got to me.

 http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=87.

If you want to see what I mean about CAFO’s: http://www.mythinglinks.org/FactoryFarms_WalmartManureDoc.html

More about CAFO’s: http://www.ccofdc.org/documents/CAFO.pdf

http://www.sanitationjournal.com/mstadavesnyder.html.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008802040334

Look out Michigan. Rising oil prices are causing some of our legislators to get creative. There was talk on WXYZ about scouting around for more places to drill for oil in Michigan. Isn’t that going to be a lovely sight for tourists to see, or us for that matter? Erie, Michigan thought they had a big fight over Eminent Domain with the railroad; wait until the oil industry sets their sights on a spot to drill. They got their way with millionaire ranchers out west, forcing one of them to build a new home in a corner of his own ranch to get away from the noise and scenery of the oil drilling operations. He found out the hard way that he only owns the dirt on top. The government owns the mineral rights below. He was told to move over.

And don’t think the oil price squeeze isn’t squeezing out the idea of drilling in the Great Lakes again.  After all, Canada does it. Just because we think that Congress permanently banned drilling in the Great Lakes in 2005, doesn’t mean a thing. Look at the past 7 years in this country. What was in place is nada now. Endangered species, wildlife habitats, national parks, clean air, clean water, and even private property have been challenged when we thought, well, they were protected.

I’ve run across several articles about Canada’s drilling in the Great Lakes. One of them, in the Detroit News stated:

While Canadian authorities maintain drilling has been safe, “Dirty Drilling,” a 2002 report by the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan, calls spills common, producing ’significant’ pollution that endangers wildlife. The environmental group said drilling in Lake Erie led to 51 natural gas leaks between 1997 and 2001 and 83 oil spills between 1990 and 1995. “‘Drilling has been neither safe nor risk-free,” the report concluded. The report was part of the arsenal used by U.S. drilling foes to push for a ban.

And that ban to drill in the Great Lakes passed in Congress. It is law, yet there are reverberations in Michigan right now about drilling again. I found another environmental blogger that has been watching some of our Michigan Republicans relative to Great Lakes oil drilling. Check it out: http://classwarnotes.blogspot.com/2007/06/why-does-rep-tim-walberg-mi-7-love-big.html.

If you’re concerned about our Great Lakes, or the future scenario for Michigan, better nip this oil drilling in the bud, especially after the ruckus over BP wanting to expand their operations in Indiana relative to Lake Michigan pollution.  We need to remind our legislators, we’re serious about moving forward, away from fossil fuels altogether, not just foreign oil.

Another good article to read going back to the 90’s when the issue of drilling in the Great Lakes came to the forefront:

http://www.opensecrets.org/newsletter/ce76/oilside.asp.

About Canada’s oil drilling in the Great Lakes read the whole Detroit News article:

 http://www.detnews.com/2005/project/0508/14/Z15-275433.htm.

I know “Not From Around Here” wanted to know the deal with the Fish Flies around here. Someone commented that fish flies indicate the good health of our lakes. I’m reading reports of what’s being dredged up at designated sites around the Great Lakes through the Great Lakes Legacy Act. We have a lot of coalburners, particularly around Lake Erie, that put mercury in the atmosphere and ultimately the water, I see tumors on fish, and I’ve lived on Lake Erie for the past 20 years. Fish flies are synonomous with clean water but the facts presented don’t warrant that. I went to some websites to find why fish flies mean the water is clean. There is no big connection other than the fish flies live on the bottom of the lakes for up to 2 years before they emerge. So the logic is that the bottom of the lake and water must be pretty clean. Fish flies are sensitive to oxygen levels. Polluted water has lower oxygen levels.

Oxygen levels in water are also low when there is a lot of weed growth. And what about adaptation? The fish flies we’re seeing used to be rare to Georgia I believe. Suppose they’ve adapted to pollutants? And because we’re warming up here in Michigan we’ve had a new influx of these southern fish flies. We had a minor plague of fruit flies last fall that didn’t leave until Christmas that were also a rare type of fruit fly. They had already adapted to global climate change and came from Europe. Lower species of life like fruit flies, and fish flies adapt to change easily, and extremely fast compared to higher forms of life. That is why fruit flies are used in biology classes. The results for generations shows up quickly.

What I want to know is can’t we just check the water in the Lakes to know the lakes are clean. The idea that fish flies indicate the water is clean over-all might not hold true.  It’s not really scientifice. I don’t get very many fish flies and never have in 20 years of living on the water. I know Bolles Harbor is littered with them sometimes. There is a very big difference where they do and don’t appear in quantity. To say the water is clean over-all, based on fish flies, is not correct then. The assumption is that the presence of fish flies indicate water is clean, then the absence of fish flies indicate it’s dirty. Some places are full of fish flies, others are not, therefore, the water is clean in certain areas only. Somebody needs to do more research on this new, rare fish fly. Quite possibly, I don’t have any fish flies because I live near the mouth of the Detroit River, or my fish flies haven’t fully adapted yet.

In any event, I’m glad I’ve never really been plagued with the little boogers and everyone I know is amazed my neighborhood is not overabundant with fish flies. I’m glad because after the plague of the fruit flies last fall, I have a greater sense for what could be real life plagues in the future. Fish flies would be one of the most repugnant plagues for sure.