FLOW (For Love of Water), the Great Lakes law and policy center based in Traverse City, is excited to announce the growth of our board of directors as we welcome Barbara Brown and Benjamin Muth.
Brown, an attorney based in St. Ignace just north of the Mackinac Bridge, was an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Michigan from 1987-2003 and 2008-2011, where she served in the Attorney General’s Finance, Executive, Transportation and Municipal Affairs Divisions. She was the recipient of the Attorney General’s 2010 Excellence in Opinion Draftsmanship Award and co-author of the chapter “Power to Formulate Local Policy,” Michigan Municipal Law, published by the Institute of Continuing Legal Education, 2012. Brown also worked as an Administrative Law Judge and, by appointment of former Governor Granholm, a former 92nd District Court Judge. Brown served 14 years on the Mackinac Bridge Authority and is currently a member of the St. Ignace Downtown Development Authority Board. She received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Vermont and a Juris Doctor from Cooley Law School.
“While the waters of the Great Lakes provide livelihoods and recreation opportunities, these waters do not belong to any one person, group, or corporation,” said Brown. “Above all, the waters of the Great Lakes are the very source of life for millions of people. We each have a moral obligation to protect our natural resources not only for those of us with temporal interests in them, but for all living beings in times to come. I am honored to have the opportunity and am looking forward to working with the remarkable people at FLOW to protect our most precious and life-giving resource—the waters of the Great Lakes.”
Muth, an attorney based in Ann Arbor, teamed up with the National Wildlife Federation as the lead organizer of the “Oil and Water” film tour in Charlevoix, Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor, and Chicago in 2015-2016, which advocated for a shutdown of the Line 5 pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac. Muth also assisted the implementation of the Line 5 Michigan Business Coalition. And he conducted voter outreach and a candidate education campaign in Ohio surrounding harmful algal blooms.
Muth graduated from Vermont Law School in 2012, where he was web editor of the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law. He also authored An Urban Agriculture Permit System for Detroit’s Vacant Land and researched public trust doctrine history for FLOW founder Jim Olson’s law review article, All Aboard: Navigating the Course for Universal Adoption of the Public Trust Doctrine.
“FLOW is the only organization in Michigan exclusively dedicated to upholding the public trust doctrine, which protects Michigan’s waters and beaches from privatization,” said Muth. “As a lifelong Michigander and lover of our lakes, supporting FLOW is not a decision, it’s a mandate. Our grandchildren deserve the same pristine lakes that I enjoyed as a child, and FLOW brings that mission to life.”