Blog posts by FLOW team and guest writers
A growing movement is afoot here in the Great Lakes – a broadening recognition and fierce determination to tackle the ubiquity of single-use plastics in our waters. Just in our small neck of the woods in northern Michigan, a number of nonprofit groups, concerned citizens, and conservation districts are seizing the moment and starting conversations… Read more »
Michigan is the 22nd largest state if you consider only the land within its borders that is above water. But if you add its submerged lands, it’s the 11th largest. Much of the approximately 40,000 square miles of Michigan under water consists of Great Lakes submerged lands, which belong to the public and are managed… Read more »
For almost eight years, Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality has sided with resource exploitation over resource protection. MDEQ’s recent decisions to grant Nestle a 60% increase in the volume of water it can extract from springs near Evart for bottling and sale, and to authorize Enbridge Energy to bypass full environmental alternatives review and install… Read more »
Last month, I took a plane out to Eugene, Oregon to visit my brother and his girlfriend. We spent most of our time playing pinball and visiting the local tea bar to try out various Oolongs, but one of the days out there, we decided to head out to the coast to see the water…. Read more »
The 10-year-old Great Lakes Compact is not just an agreement among eight states. It is also a compact between the citizens and public officials of those states. A decision yesterday in Wisconsin puts both compacts at risk. Wisconsin has now approved a diversion of up to 2.7 million gallons a day of Lake Michigan water to be… Read more »
FLOW’s organizing principle is the public trust doctrine. What sounds like an exotic concept is quite simple. This centuries-old principle of common law holds that there are some resources, like water and submerged lands that by their nature cannot be privately owned. Rather, these commons – including the Great Lakes — belongs to the public. And… Read more »
“This couldn’t be just a lake. No real water was ever blue like that. A light breeze stirred the pin-cherry tree beside the window, ruffled the feathers of a fat sea gull promenading on the pink rocks below. The breeze was full of evergreen spice.” — Dorothy Maywood Bird, “Mystery at Laughing Water” 2018 should… Read more »
Eight states border the Great Lakes, but only five national parks. For those who think the spectacular values of the freshwater coast are underrepresented among the crown jewels of the national park system, there is good news: a small but dogged group of Wisconsin citizens is keeping the torch lit for the establishment of a… Read more »
The “Fox in the Henhouse” bill package in the State Legislature is on the move again. The Michigan Competitiveness Committee in the Michigan House of Representatives is holding a meeting Wednesday at 2:30 PM in Room 307 of the House Office Building. On the agenda are the three Anti-Department of Environmental Quality (Senate-passed) bills: SB 652, 653, and 654. Tomorrow’s meeting is expected… Read more »
Five years ago this spring, when I first learned about Line 5, I could only imagine what a catastrophic oil spill would look like here in the heart of the Great Lakes. Two weeks ago, we dodged a bullet as we watched a hazardous liquid spill from two neighboring transmission cables unfold. What we witnessed… Read more »
