Join us on Sunday, January 17 from 5-6 p.m. for a FLOW virtual event with award-winning Michigan writer Alison Swan reading from her new book of poetry, A Fine Canopy. FLOW’s own Dave Dempsey will ask the questions.
Just as water does not stop at the international boundary in the middle of the Great Lakes, climate change is having dramatic effects on both the U.S. and Canadian sides of the shared waters. In its triennial report issued last week on Great Lakes water quality progress, the International Joint Commission (IJC) called for the two nations to begin coordinating the response to wide fluctuations in water levels, warming lake waters, shrinking ice cover, threats to biological diversity, and storms of increasing intensity that release large pollution flows to the Great Lakes and their tributaries.
In nature, there is often a long time between the planting of seeds and the ripening of fruit. In 2020, the public policy and action seeds FLOW began planting a decade ago turned into wins for the people of Michigan, public water, and the paramount value of our environment.
FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood made the following statement during a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers public hearing on Monday, December 7, regarding the environmental impact of Enbridge’s proposed oil tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac.
Growing up in Elk Rapids, FLOW intern Nikki Hayes was fortunate to have a summer job throughout high school working as a dock attendant at the Edward C. Grace Memorial Harbor. She got to see both the good and the bad of human behavior in environmental stewardship.
In a baffling decision announced November 20, the director of Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) dismissed a contested case brought by citizens challenging the state permit issued to Nestlé Waters North America in 2018 for increased water withdrawals from springs north of Evart, in Osceola County’s Osceola Township. The announcement also, in effect, dismissed the more than 80,000 comments EGLE received opposing the permit (only 75 comments were in favor), the testimony of hundreds of citizens opposing the permit at a public hearing in 2017, and the thousands of hours of effort put into the permit challenge by Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation (MCWC), the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, and their allies.
With the shutdown of the Line 5 oil pipelines in sight, past and present FLOW Board Chairs take note of this moment in history, and recognize the results of your commitment in supporting FLOW’s public trust work. Take heart in how far we’ve come and celebrate in the fact that your gifts to FLOW matter, in the past, now, and in the future. From the bottom of our hearts and the bottomlands of your Great Lakes, we thank you for supporting FLOW.
The memorable year of 1970, whose spring featured the first Earth Day, culminated in the creation of the nation’s first consolidated federal environmental agency. Officially born on December 2, 1970, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has overseen significant improvements in air and water quality in the last 50 years. But it has also zigged and zagged according to the philosophy of the President who appoints its chief.
The federal lawsuit Enbridge filed Tuesday is an attack on the State of Michigan’s sovereign title and authority to protect the public trust in the Straits and Great Lakes from Line 5. The federal government can regulate safety, but it can never control the location and use of the State of Michigan’s own public trust waters and bottomlands of the Great Lakes, except as it relates to navigation.
Above photo courtesy of Biden-Harris transition By Skip Pruss History will mark 2021 as the year the United States finally got serious about combating climate change and protecting water security. The Biden administration appears to fully comprehend the depth and gravity of current climate trends and is prepared to take action commensurate with the challenges… Read more »
