Blog posts by FLOW team and guest writers
Editor’s Note: The following is a media release issued by FLOW on November 30, 2021; please contact Executive Director Liz Kirkwood at (570) 872-4956 or Liz@FLOWforWater.org or Legal Director Zach Welcker at (231) 620-7911 or Zach@FLOWforWater.org. “The State of Michigan took a strategic step today in the race to prevent a catastrophic Line 5 oil spill in the… Read more »
Register today for FLOW’s Dec. 8 conversation with author Dave Dempsey on freshly updated ‘Great Lakes for Sale’ Editor’s note: This is an excerpt of the prologue to Great Lakes for Sale (Mission Point Press, 2021) the freshly updated, must-read book by Great Lakes luminary and FLOW Senior Advisor Dave Dempsey. Be sure to buy… Read more »
Michigan Technological University professor Nancy Langston is a nationally recognized environmental historian and the author of five books . In her latest, Climate Ghosts: Migratory Species in the Anthropocene, she explores the fate of three species historically found in the Great Lakes watershed: woodland caribou, common loons and lake sturgeon. Nancy reports on stresses imposed on these signature species by European colonization and now by climate change. Can we restore them? Perhaps, she answers, if we’re willing to make difficult choices. FLOW interviewed Langston recently by e-mail.
Editor’s Note: The following is a media release issued by FLOW on November 16, 2021; please contact Executive Director Liz Kirkwood at (570) 872-4956 or Liz@FLOWforWater.org or Senior Legal Advisor Jim Olson at (231) 499-8831 or Jim@FLOWforWater.org. Judge Neff’s decision today addresses only the narrow, procedural issue of whether a state or federal court should… Read more »
In the end, it took outside intervention to begin moving the people of Benton Harbor toward a clean, safe water supply this fall. Why? Despite three years of data showing that the city’s drinking water exceeded state standards for lead contamination, it wasn’t until the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center filed a petition with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on September 9 that the State of Michigan took decisive action to address the problem. The EPA followed suit with an order to the city on November 2 to improve disinfection and corrosion treatments at the water plant, monitor for disinfection byproducts, repair plant filters, and contract with a third party to study the long-term operation of the city’s drinking water system.
Michigan has a gigantic opportunity to provide clean drinking water, clean up sewage and stormwater runoff, and restore the Great Lakes—while promoting access for all to clean, safe, affordable water—after last Friday’s final bipartisan Congressional action on the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act.
While world leaders gather for a second week in Glasgow, Scotland, at the United Nation’s COP26 climate change conference, FLOW’s Jim Olson in this blog calls for a new approach to planning and zoning in the Great Lakes watershed that respects the increasing variability of water levels.
The following op-ed by FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood appeared in the Traverse City Record-Eagle on November 3: We at FLOW agree, “The clock is ticking.” That “tick, tick, tick” sound, however, isn’t coming from Enbridge’s proposed tunnel. It is coming from an environmental ticking time bomb called Line 5—Enbridge’s twin pipelines pumping oil nearly 20 years past their intended lifespan in raging currents at the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac.
FLOW, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2021, is pleased to announce the election of new officers on its Board of Directors, including the first woman to chair the Board. Renee Huckle Mittelstaedt, former president and CEO of Huckle Media, LLC/Huckle Holdings Inc., has taken over as FLOW’s new Board Chair. She joined FLOW’s board in 2015 and previously served as treasurer.
The logjam that has halted progress in dealing with PFAS, the toxic “forever chemicals” that plague communities across Michigan and the nation, is finally breaking up. On October 27, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered state government to discontinue the purchase of many PFAS-containing products, as encouraged by FLOW last month. The Governor, whose support was critical in enacting health-protective state drinking water standards for PFAS last year, said “PFAS are dangerous, man-made chemicals that pose a threat to our health.”
