Archive of FLOW in the News

Scientists discovered plastic microfibers in the Great Lakes are sticking to green algae that grows along the bottomlands in a way that could help keep the pollution out of the environment. Liz Kirkwood, executive director for Traverse City-based nonprofit For Love of Water, said this is a remarkable revelation by the Valparaiso University research team. And it offers multiple benefits, she argued. “This is an extraordinarily important scientific discovery and it really illustrates how interwoven our actions are to the water itself and how something as small as a microfiber could have impacts on the environment,” she said.

The United States and Canada are not only close friends and neighbours, but are also committed to resolving their differences with civility and common purpose. The 112-year-old International Joint Commission (IJC), which prevents and resolves disputes over boundary waters, is an example of this special relationship. So is the groundbreaking agreement among Ontario, Quebec and the eight Great Lakes states to ban water diversions from these shared and treasured waters. The two nations, however, are clashing over energy policy and the effects of Line 5, the Canadian petroleum pipelines in the open waters of the Straits of Mackinac, a major shipping lane and important whitefish spawning ground where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron. If both Canada and the U.S. take a hard look at these issues together, they will swiftly realize that co-operation, not confrontation, is in the best interests of both — and, significantly, the interests of the planet, write Maude Barlow and Jim Olson in this op-ed published in Canada’s National Observer.

A joint Michigan Senate committee meeting heard testimony Tuesday from Canadian officials and business leaders as a potential shutdown of Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline is on the horizon. President and a legal adviser of For the Love of Water, an environmental advocacy group, Jim Olson said state legislatures have a duty to protect Michigan’s natural resources because of the Public Trust Doctrine. “Pipelines for oil and hydrocarbon transport are important, but they are not dependent on or part of the rights and protected uses of the Great Lakes,” Olson said. “Gov. Whitmer has, under the rule of law, fulfilled the mandatory duty to prevent grave harm to the public trust.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration released its plan Friday to heat Michigan homes without depending on the Line 5 oil pipeline to deliver propane. The plan calls for millions of dollars of investment in rail infrastructure and storage to help wean propane suppliers off the pipeline, plus other programs to reduce propane demand, help low-income customers pay their propane bills, and increase the state’s ability to monitor propane supplies. Liz Kirkwood, environmental attorney and executive director of Traverse City-based water advocacy group FLOW (For Love of Water), called Whitmer’s announcement the “right plan at the right time,” and emphasized the risk to Michiganders of keeping the “dangerous and outdated” pipeline in place at the bottom of the Straits.

Friday, the State of Michigan announced the MI Propane Security Plan. The plan is a multiagency effort with the Michigan Public Service Commission; the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy; the Michigan Department of Transportation, and the Department of Technology, Management and Budget. The state says the five-point plan is focused on ensuring Michigan’s energy needs are met when Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipelines that run through the Great Lakes is possibly shut down. “The administration’s plan protects the health and safety of Michiganders by moving us away from the ticking time bomb of an old, damaged, dangerous oil pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac and embracing concrete actions to secure the state’s propane supply and protect energy consumers,” said Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director for FLOW. “Michigan’s energy needs can be met without Line 5, and we can’t afford another Enbridge disaster like the Kalamazoo River oil spill.”

Michigan released a plan Friday meant to help the state weather expected propane shortages after the ordered May closure of Enbridge’s Line 5 through the Straits of Mackinac. The report recommends companies find other means to transport the heating resource, better ways to store it and measures to protect customers from price gouging when Line 5 is closed. “Michigan’s energy needs can be met without Line 5, and we can’t afford another Enbridge disaster like the Kalamazoo River oil spill,” said Liz Kirkwood, executive director of For Love of Water.

“Line 5’s products mostly serve Canada, with less than 10 percent of the oil used in Michigan,” FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood told Downtown Publications. “The Line 5 easement–essentially a shortcut for Enbridge to move Canadian oil products from their western regions to their eastern refineries, was never intended to be a vital energy source for Michigan. Instead, it threatens the drinking water supply for 5 million Michigan residents, the Pure Michigan tourist economy, and a way of life. It is time for the state of Michigan to evict Enbridge from the Straits of Mackinac and shut down Line 5 because of the oil spill danger to the Great Lakes.”

Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s notice to shut down Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac by May won’t prompt some of the changes many environmental groups hoped for, reports Interlochen Public Radio. It won’t affect how the state reviews a plan to replace the pipelines and build a tunnel beneath the lakebed, according to a ruling from Judge Dennis Mack this week. FLOW and other environmental nonprofits plan to appeal the judge’s decision.

“People come to Michigan and Canada because of the Great Lakes, not because of an oil pipeline,” FLOW executive director Liz Kirkwood told The Sarnia Journal. “And they’re certainly not going to come if there’s a black stain in our Great Lakes.” FLOW commissioned a University of Michigan study that concludes 70% of a spill would never be recovered, resulting in an economic hit of $6.3 billion over five years. Kirkwood said the threat isn’t hypothetical. Line 5 has suffered more than 30 spills in its lifetime. “It’s quite remarkable that the Canadian response has really just focused on jobs and the economy related to the fossil fuel industry, rather than talking about the incredible responsibility of protecting the Great Lakes,” she said. Kirkwood said Line 5 is just one of multiple pipelines servicing Sarnia. Enbridge pipeline Line 78, for example, carries 500,000 barrels of oil daily and could cover the shortfall.

Enbridge is defying Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s move to shut down the Line 5 underwater pipeline, which environmentalists and tribes fear could cause an environmental disaster. Before 2010, most Michiganders didn’t know Line 5 existed, FLOW executive director Liz Kirkwood told Drilled News. Whitmer ordered a review of the original 1953 easement that allowed Line 5’s construction, which concluded the state had never demonstrated that Line 5 abided by Michigan’s public trust doctrine. This legal principle requires Michigan to protect navigable waters and other “natural resources that are inalienable and belong to all of us,” Kirkwood said, allowing the state to give private companies use of such waters and lands only if it improves or doesn’t harm them.

The moment FLOW and many environmental groups in Michigan had been waiting for more than a decade for happened this year when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced she was shutting down Enbridge Energy’s Line 5 pipeline. “Unexpected” is the word FLOW executive director Liz Kirkwood told MLive.com to describe the Nov. 13 move by Whitmer. Kirkwood and others have spent years trying to get the state to end its easement with Enbridge and shut down the oil and natural gas line. “Line five is a race against time,” Kirkwood said. “And so the action of the governor comes at a moment, at a really critical moment.”

When Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer took office in January 2019, she immediately put a spotlight on the Enbridge Line 5 oil pipeline and started the process that would eventually lead to her ordering it shut down. In her 2018 campaign, Whitmer also pledged to remedy the inequities related to water withdrawal issues, specifically a Nestle Waters case being fought by grassroots advocates that originated in the administration of former Gov. Rick Snyder. Both are among the most high-profile environmental issues in Michigan in recent times and are at the heart of the public trust advocacy work Liz Kirkwood does, writes Gary Wilson for Great Lakes Now.

“The state of Michigan is the legal guardian of the public trust waters,” Liz Kirkwood, executive director of the nonprofit FLOW (For Love of Water), tells The Progressive Magazine. “They have a paramount duty to the public and to the waters and all the uses of fishing, swimming, navigation, commerce, and more. … (The tunnel) is not an alternative we should be embracing. With the construction of the tunnel you have the impact on wetlands and the discharge of wastewater directly into the straits. On top of all that, the continued operation of Line 5 is in conflict with Michigan’s goals for reducing carbon emissions,” said Kirkwood, citing an executive order from Governor Whitmer that targets 2050 as a goal for the state’s carbon neutrality.

In a move sought for years by environmental advocates, tribes, and hospitality and tourism businesses, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer this month notified Enbridge Inc. that it would no longer have the state’s permission to operate the Line 5 pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac.“I think (the state) is very much on the offensive,” said Liz Kirkwood, an attorney and executive director of For Love of Water (FLOW), which has long advocated the pipeline’s closure. “They’re affirmatively saying under public trust law that the 1953 easement never incurred the proper public trust evaluations. As the public trustee, the state’s duty is ongoing and continuous.” Kirkwood called it an “exceptional case” and unique, since public trust issues typically involve areas where land and water meet. “They’re typically beach-walking cases,” she said.

Michigan environmental regulators will not reconsider their decision to let Nestlé Waters North America increase groundwater withdrawals to support the company’s Ice Mountain bottling operation in Stanwood, state officials announced Friday. Instead, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy has dismissed a complaint challenging the 2018 permit that allows the company to increase its withdrawals form the Osceola County well by 60 percent. Jim Olson, founder and president of the nonprofit For Love of Water, said EGLE’s action “undercuts citizens’ faith and trust. There was no reason for the Department or Attorney General’s office to after-the fact argue there was no jurisdiction,” Olson said, “other than punish citizens’ good faith participation in government.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has a strong case against Enbridge Energy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the oil will stop flowing through Line 5 anytime soon, writes Bridge Michigan. Ultimately, the most important question in the case may not be WHETHER Enbridge must shut down Line 5, but WHEN. “Delay is their biggest weapon here,” said FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood. She added that if Whitmer succeeds in her shutdown quest and Michigan’s propane and oil industries find other ways to transport petroleum products, Enbridge will have a harder time convincing the Michigan Public Service Commission a new pipeline is necessary. “Making a decision about whether to let Enbirdge relocate a piece of pipeline from Point A to Point B is a very different question than ‘are we going to let you restart this pipeline that has already been shut down?’”

It is impossible to sum into a couple of words the grandeur of the five Great Lakes. These are by far the largest sources of fresh water in the world, specifically 21 percent of the world’s fresh water. It is home to more than 3,500 species of plants and animals, and 170 species of fish. Not to mention over 30 million people rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water – that’s 10 percent of the U.S. population and 30 percent of the Canadian population. Advocacy groups such as Oil & Water Don’t Mix and For Love of Water (or FLOW) continue to push for the complete elimination of Line 5, which seems like one of the only solutions to effectively protect the Great Lakes and the surrounding environment.

There’s an effort underway to take back the pumping site in Michigan’s Osceola County where Nestle draws groundwater for Ice Mountain bottles, reports WOOD TV8. Earlier this year, the multinational corporation’s CEO shared the company is considering selling most of its bottled water operations in the U.S. and Canada. In response, several organizations including FLOW sent a letter requesting Nestle divest from certain operations before any potential sale. “Michigan is literally giving away our water for free,” said FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood. “It is imperative that our states and that our nation claim these public waters for the people and not for profit.”

Just go home. That’s the message from Peggy Case, president of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, to Nestle Waters North America. Nestle said this summer that the company was thinking about getting out of the regional bottled water business. Ice Mountain, the Nestle brand bottled in Stanwood, Michigan, and withdrawn from wells near Evart, is one of the brands. The time is ripe, according to Case, for action. “This is a good opportunity, when they are trying to negotiate sales to these places, to tell them to just return the permits. Return whatever they think they own back to public entities,” Case told the Cadillac News. “It’s a good time for them to just go home. That’s all we want. Just go home. Leave the water where it is.” “But we do take a strong position on the privatization of water anywhere in the country,” said Jim Olson, FLOW’s founder and president. “As we enter into the 21st century, there’s a huge demand for water,” Olson said. If water is privatized for sale, it’s a slippery slope leading to people losing control of their right to use water, he added.

About 20 homes and one business in Traverse City’s East Bay Township may have for years been using drinking water contaminated with PFAS chemicals, and state environmental regulators now launched efforts to find out for sure. Officials said the new investigation comes after a series of state-installed groundwater monitoring wells returned elevated results for various PFAS chemicals. The worry is some residents of the nearby Pine Grove neighborhood may have been drinking and cooking with PFAS-laden water for decades. FLOW executive director Liz Kirkwood said the latest PFAS discovery in the Traverse City area is a “disturbing reminder of the systemic statewide health issues raised by the past and present use of these forever chemicals. On a broader level, this emergency provides additional evidence that prevention and precaution must guide the use of hazardous chemicals in our state and that polluters, whether public or private, must be held accountable and pay to clean up their pollution.”

What are the full costs of our continued dependence on fossil fuels? The answer should inform the Whitmer administration’s decisions on the future of Line 5 — the 67-year old pipeline system transporting crude oil across Michigan and under the Straits of Mackinac, writes Skip Press in Bridge Magazine. The burning of fossil fuels affects the environment and public health in ways that are well documented by scientists, economists, and public health officials. The impact from fossil fuel uses include respiratory diseases from air pollution, environmental degradation of surface and groundwater, and acidification of oceans and lakes.

Enbridge’s video is a sleek and misleading sales pitch to the people of Michigan, FLOW tells UpNorthLive. The company continues to hammer a narrative that isn’t accurate. Line 5 and its proposed tunnel are not critical energy infrastructure. It benefits Enbridge, not the citizens of Michigan. The state’s UP Energy Taskforce and multiple independent reports over the past 5 years have concluded that Line 5 is not vital energy infrastructure. This is a system with multiple pipelines. There are lots of ways to move energy. Plus, we are shifting to a new energy system with renewables. Governor Whitmer is moving us to become energy neutral by 2050. But we must do it decisively and intentionally to make sure the UP has the energy it needs at affordable rates.

Enbridge tells Michigan Radio it will ensure the Straits of Mackinac are protected and safe while it pursues the Great Lakes Tunnel Project which is planned to house Line 5 one hundred feet below the lake bed. But there’s reason for concern. “This is just yet another effort, I think, to kind of distract the public and our state leaders on the ongoing crisis that continues in the Straits of Mackinac,” FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood tells Michigan Radio. She says the only safe answer is to shut down Line 5. “Here we are 10 years after Enbridge’s Kalamazoo disaster and Line 5 is still operating. It’s quite extraordinary to think we still have an oil pipeline in the middle of our Great Lakes.”

It’s convenient to think of fixing a problem and it’s done. But that doesn’t apply to the long-neglected legacy polluted sites in the Great Lakes region. In simple terms we think of a cleanup as removal of something that, left unattended, will become a nuisance or a problem. But cleanup of toxic sites, especially in water, is not that simple, writes Gary Wilson for Great Lakes Now. In 1987 Michigan Gov. Jim Blanchard launched a Great Lakes 2001 program designed to clean up the toxic sites in Michigan by 2001, according to David Dempsey, FLOW senior policy advisor and former Blanchard adviser. Dempsey said funding for the project ended when Blanchard, a Democrat, lost his reelection bid to Republican John Engler.

Home owners with septic systems don’t think much about them — unless the system quits working. During Septic Smart Week, now through Sept. 18, the Mason-Lake Conservation District asks people using septic systems to think about what they put down drains, flush down toilets, how they use water, and to consider having their system inspected and pumped if that hasn’t been done in the past few years. This op-ed in the Ludington Daily News quotes FLOW as reporting that Michigan is the only state that lacks a uniform sanitary code requiring periodic inspection and maintenance of septic systems — even though 30% of Michiganders rely on such systems.

The interconnected series of lakes bridging Canada and the United States is the largest group of its kind on Earth by area, containing about a fifth of the world’s supply of surface fresh water. Unfortunately, these resources are under attack from threats including chemical spills, microplastic pollution, and invasive species. However, there are dedicated people working to combat these problems. In no particular order, here are some organizations striving to repair the damage before it is too late.

Mary McKSchmidt: ​I heard a knock on the door while I was editing this video about safe water and handed my first-ever “boil water” alert. The utility considered it a precautionary measure—expressing concern about a broken water main nearby and the potential for bacterial contamination in our water. Coincidence? I don’t think so. It was a wake-up call.

Ludington marked the finish-line for six swimmers on Wednesday as they wrapped up their 60-mile swim across Lake Michigan. The Epic Swim 2020 overnight adventure started on Tuesday night in Two Rivers, Wisconsin and finished on the shores of northern Michigan just under 21 hours later. Epic Swim 2020 teamed up with FLOW (For the Love of Water) as their charity partner to help not only honor the lakes but also raise awareness for Great Lakes protection and preservation.

Jon Ornée has had the same dream for the past seven years. He’s hoping it becomes a reality in the near future. Some time between Aug. 9-23, the team will depart Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and swim continuously, relay style until they reach the shore of Ludington, Michigan. The team hopes to complete the 60-mile swim in 24-28 hours. A support boat — a 39-foot Sea Ray motor yacht — will accompany and assist them on the trek. The swim will support the charity, For Love of Water (FLOW), which is based in Traverse City, Michigan. FLOW is dedicated to protecting and preserving the Great Lakes as an extraordinary and essential natural resource endowment. They aim to apply public trust principles to educate, advance policy, and provide solutions to the pressing water, energy and climate issues facing the region, nation and planet.

“We really wanted to partner with an organization that’s committed to protecting and preserving Lake Michigan and FLOW is doing that and for the Great Lakes as a whole,” Ornée said. “None of this is possible unless we care for the amazing resource and gift the lake is, so we want to make sure we use our swim to encourage people to keep the lake clean and keep it a gift that keeps giving for generations to come.”

Saturday marked the 10th anniversary of Enbridge’s spilling almost a million gallons of heavy tar-sands oil into the Kalamazoo River from its 41-year-old Line 6B — causing one of the worst inland oil spills in U.S. history, writes FLOW executive director Liz Kirkwood. The July 25, 2010, disaster awoke Michigan from its complacency by revealing an even older and more dangerous set of oil pipelines lurking in the open waters of the Straits of Mackinac — Enbridge Line 5. Today the overwhelming consensus across party lines is that Enbridge’s 67-year-old Line 5 threatens Michigan resident’s drinking water, economy and our way of life.

Some water-quality groups say Michigan needs to take a stronger stance against Enbridge for its refusal to assume responsibility for losses related to a Line 5 oil pipeline failure in the Great Lakes. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources announced yesterday that the pipeline company has not agreed to provide a minimum of $900 million in liability insurance to cover all damages and losses caused to property or individuals due to the operation of the pipelines through the Straits of Mackinac. Liz Kirkwood, executive director of FLOW, says that while financial assurances are nice, they can’t keep the Great Lakes whole. “But ultimately the fate of Line 5 is really a race against time,” says Kirkwood. “We’re either going to act with the kind of prudence and precaution that we should or we will end up with a catastrophic disaster.”

Liz Kirkwood, the executive director of FLOW (For Love of Water) and one of the central attorneys opposing Enbridge in this case, said questioning the project as a matter of infrastructure is critical. “We haven’t, as a state, even sat down and asked the question, ‘Do we need Line 5 for our energy future?’ Not ‘Does Enbridge need it?’ but ‘Do we need it?’” Kirkwood said. “We’re going to be asking ourselves the most important public questions, such as, ‘Is there a public need for this type of pipeline?’” Kirkwood disputes Enbridge’s claims that the Upper Peninsula and the state as a whole rely on energy from Line 5. She cited a 2018 National Wildlife Commission study that found that decommissioning the pipeline would not have huge economic impacts. She said it is time for Line 5 to have its day in court.

Join us outdoors in Glen Arbor on Friday, July 31, for the “Words For Water” Poetry Throw-Down at the Glen Arbor Arts Center. “Who owns the water?” People? Communities? Corporations? Nobody? That question is the basis for the Words For Water open-air poetry throw-down at the Glen Arbor Arts Center. This event is part of the GAAC’s 6ft Apart Art program, a series of outdoor pop-up events, and is offered in collaboration with FLOW. Participating poets and writer are challenged to create a short, original poem that answers this question: Who Owns The Water? Poems will be performed or read outdoors on Friday, July 31, at 7:00 p.m., before a live audience. Each writer may read up to five minutes. No pre-registration is required. Poets will be added to the evening’s readers list on a first-come basis.

Liz Kirkwood, executive director of Traverse City water law nonprofit ‘For Love of Water’ (FLOW), called the continued addition of screw anchor supports to Line 5 an “ongoing crisis in the making.” “Why on earth are [they] granting another permit?” said Kirkwood. “This response is, in my opinion, really not adequate, given the magnitude of harm and … duties to protect our public waters.” FLOW and other environmental watchdog groups have long contended that the dual lines weren’t designed to be supported by the screw anchors, which were added over time to secure the pipes as the Straits’ strong currents eroded the lakebed. They’re calling on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to revoke the 1953 easement with the state of Michigan that allows Enbridge to operate the lines.

Liz Kirkwood, environmental attorney and executive director of the Traverse City-based environment group FLOW (For Love of Water) said the public service commission’s decision is “a big win for all Michigan residents that upholds their public trust rights in the Great Lakes.” “Enbridge now has the burden to show a public need for this proposed oil pipeline under the Great Lakes, ensure no harm or pollution to our public trust waters and lands, and fully consider feasible and prudent alternatives to this project,” she said.

Join The Energy Show, an Upper Peninsula Environmental Coalition (UPEC) livestream with guests Jim Olson, Founder and President of the group FLOW (For Love Of Water), and Joe Kaplan of Common Coast Research & Conservation. Olson will discuss issues surrounding Enbridge Energy’s Line 5, a major oil and gas pipeline that crosses the length of the Upper Peninsula, passes through the Straits of Mackinac on the lakebed, and continues through the Lower Peninsula to Sarnia, Ontario. Kaplan will talk about the potential dangers large-scale solar farms pose to migrating birds.

“We agree with EGLE that Enbridge’s application falls woefully short of complying with legal requirements,” said FLOW executive director Liz Kirkwood. “Now the state of Michigan should require Enbridge to apply for and obtain authorization for an easement to occupy state-owned bottomlands with a tunnel before any construction permitting proceeds. Enbridge is putting the cart before the horse, which suits their interests, but not the public interest in protecting the Great Lakes. The company’s haphazard rush during the pandemic is alarming.”