For 10 years, FLOW has worked to keep our water public and protected. During 2021, our 10th anniversary year, FLOW supporters and collaborators are sharing reflections on what our work together has meant to them, and to the freshwaters of the Great Lakes Basin.
Click here to view our video series featuring the testimonials of key FLOW supporters and stakeholders.
Meet Peggy Case, executive director of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation (MCWC).
“It’s not just a matter of saving water in a creek or a stream here or there. It’s a matter of engaging in global human rights activities. Resources that should be available for everybody,” says Case.
“I had friends who had been alerted to what was going on with the new bottling plant in Stanwood that Nestlé was building. They were protesting and demonstrating. They were part of the original groups that were trying to stop Nestlé from coming into Michigan.”
“FLOW came out of MCWC. [FLOW founder] Jim Olson’s work with MCWC prompted the need for FLOW. Showed that there was a need for a policy and legal organization that would gather together experts, researchers, and legal minds to do something about the flawed laws that we have to advocate for better policy, better legal systems, and better ways to protect waters.”
“Water is a public trust. Government must protect it. Each of us has a right to water and a responsibility to care for it,” says Olson. “FLOW launched in 2011 following a successful campaign to protect the streams and lakes from Nestlé’s large water wells, and stop the sale of our public water.”
“Our work is grounded in law and science,” says FLOW executive director Liz Kirkwood. “We empower communities and citizens to assert their rights. From the Straits of Mackinac where the Line 5 pipelines threaten our precious fresh waters, and across the Great Lakes Basin.”
“FLOW has had a unique opportunity to be able to take a leadership role in some really important legal issues. Line 5 in particular,” says Case. “It’s made a big difference to have an organization like FLOW taking on that role.”
“Michigan boasts a proud environmental legacy of protecting our lakes and streams, our groundwater and our drinking water. It’s time to once again embrace our duty to protect that world-class resource,” says FLOW senior policy advisor Dave Dempsey.
“Your support, your investment, your commitment these past 10 years have made our work possible. A decade of keeping our water public and protected. Please stand with FLOW in the decade to come as the eyes of the world focus even more on our freshwater,” says development director Diane Dupuis.
