Blog posts by FLOW team and guest writers
I remember the shock of the journalists on a 1985 media tour of the Rouge River in southeast Michigan when they were told to look down from a bridge to see raw human waste in the waters below. In 1985? Hadn’t we taken care of raw sewage by passing the Clean Water Act in 1972?… Read more »
Anyone who visits Traverse City can easily see how important freshwater is to this region. The iconic Grand Traverse Bay, numerous inland lakes and the Boardman River winding through downtown make freshwater an essential part of Traverse City’s landscape and culture. Our unique freshwater resources provide remarkable recreational opportunities that bring thousands of visitors to… Read more »
After more than 30 years of working on environmental policy, I moved to within a few hundred feet of one of the Great Lakes. Given the opportunity to stroll along the shore as often as I wanted, I suddenly realized I didn’t know what I could legally do when the water’s edge traversed private property. … Read more »
Editor’s note: Tom Bailey has served as executive director of the Little Traverse Conservancy for more than 30 years. He retires next month. Michigan State University Press has published a collection of Tom’s essays, entitled North Country Almanac. Tom will be signing and discussing his book Saturday at Horizon Books in Traverse City from 4 to 6 pm…. Read more »
“Water Justice Flows Like Water.”[1] Law professor Sprout D. Kapua’ala, borrowing from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I’ve Been to the Mountaintop speech in 1968 (“justice rolling down like waters”), captures decades of conflict over the streams and waters of Hawai’i, siphoned and dried from a century of withdrawals and diversion ditches cut across the landscape for… Read more »
Summer in northern Michigan is one of our favorite things, and we are trying to enjoy it to the fullest while it is here. With all of the busyness this season, it does become a conscious effort. It’s not unusual to hear this around the FLOW office: “Wow, is it really already July?” There are… Read more »
Last Thursday, July 6, was FLOW’s second annual An Evening for the Great Lakes hosted by amazing co-organizers Cammie Buehler and Jeremy Turner at the beautiful Cherry Basket Farms near Omena. What a fantastic night! We want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who made the event such a major success. Special thanks to incredible… Read more »
By: FLOW Chair, Skip Pruss Taking Legal Action Recently, John Sellek, Attorney General Bill Schuette’s campaign spokesperson, pushed back on the charge that the Attorney General could have taken legal action to shut down the Enbridge Line 5 petroleum pipelines at the Straits of Mackinac, stating “If this claim about the easement [filing a lawsuit] was… Read more »
“The water cycle and the life cycle are one” —- Jacques Cousteau A White-Water Trip Down the Currents of the Public Trust Doctrine In ancient times, people knew water and the life cycles were the same. Without water, civilizations collapsed. Rome, with its dependence on water and the spokes of its aqueducts, knew this…. Read more »
The Local Movement Did you know that the City of Traverse City has been addressing plastic pollution, climate change, and water privatization for almost a decade? I’m so proud of our small but mighty Midwest town here in the heart of the Great Lakes. In 2009, our city adopted a resolution to ban plastic bottled water… Read more »
