Tag: FLOW

Two Love Letters to the Great Lakes

Published on February 28th, 2018 by - Blog Posts

LOVE LETTER TO THE GREAT LAKES:

 

I HAVE ALWAYS LIVED CLOSE TO YOU,

I PADDLED IN YOUR SHALLOWS AS A CHILD, DRINKING IN YOUR TASTE.

WAVES CARESSED MY BACK AS I WATCHED SAND ON THE LAKE BED,

PILED INTO TINY RIPPLES & DUNES…IT WAS MAGICAL!

I DREW MAPS & GAMES WITH MY BIG TOE IN WET SAND ON YOUR SHORE

AND SPENT EVERY SUMMER DAY, EVEN SOME WARM NIGHTS NEXT TO YOU.

SOMETIMES AT NIGHT I WATCHED SILENT WAVES OF “GREEN LIGHTNING” 

FAR OFF IN THE NORTH, WONDERING “WHAT COULD THAT BE?”

FAR INTO THE DARKNESS I WATCHED WHITE CRESTS OF WAVES ENDLESSLY CREEPING TO SHORE,

SCANNING THE STARRY SKY ABOVE UNTIL MY SLEEPY LIDS CLOSED

 

I LEARNED TO SAIL…

ACROSS THE WIND ON A CLOSE REACH, HEELING & “HIKING OUT” 

TRYING TO STAY LEVEL SO WE COULD SPEED

TACKING & JIBING WE ROUNDED A MARK ON A RACE COURSE,

YOUR WAVES SPARKLING AND TEASING “GO FASTER!”

WIND ON THE STERN, WE FLEW THAT CHUTE LIKE A KITE PULLING US

TOWARD ANTICIPATED VICTORY.

SOMETIMES WE WERE FORTUNATE TO SLEEP CLOSE UNDER THE FOREDECK 

FALLING ASLEEP TO YOUR VARIED & CONSTANT LULLABY LAPPING LAPPING

 

I STORED THOSE MEMORIES LIKE A MOUSE FILLING ITS CHEEKS 

WITH CORN & SEEDS FOR A COMING WINTER,

STUFFING THEM INTO PLACES I DIDN’T KNOW I HAD.

NOW CALLED BACK IN TIMES OF STRESS, IF I CLOSE MY EYES…

I CAN WATCH THE SCENE PLAY IN MY HEAD, SEE RIPPLES & SPARKLES.

FEEL MY TOE SCRIBING THE SHORE.

I AM BACK IN THE SHALLOWS, A CHILD…

I AM RUNNING BEFORE THE WIND, LAUGHING…

I AM AT PEACE WITH STARS & THE UNIVERSE ABOVE

AND I WILL FALL ASLEEP TO THE LULLABY LAPPING LAPPING

 

-Libbet Paullin Terrell

 

Red Queen Waves

 

When the Red Queen led Alice

To the chessboard field

Where horses, towers, and men and women

Common, knightly, priestly and royal

Would play their match

(This was after giving an etiquette lesson

And explaining she owned all the ways

So that none were lost without her leave)

She ran pell-mell

The child hanging on tight and trying to keep up

But the scene around them, instead of blurring

Stayed the way it was.

Had they not run that fast, she said,

The world instead

Would push them back

At a pace to make the head swim.

 

You must move fast to stay in one place.

 

Evolution, I read, works that way.

All that lives must run, fly, swim,

hide, fight, feed, grow, multiply

To keep pace with a changing world

Or else be swept away

As those in the Red King’s dreams when he wakes.

 

Alice herself would make a crossing

Playing in the place of the White Queen’s little pawn-princess,

Through an oddly organized train ride,

Wondrous insects,

A wood where names wane,

Meeting those who step out of nursery rhymes–

Two who battle over a ruined rattle and flee a crow

An egg precariously on a wall

Who works words to his own will

Two out of a coat of arms

Vying for a crown that’s not their own

Along with eccentric pieces–

The queens assume different forms

And one white knight bears many inventions–

And two familiarly mad messengers

Until she reaches the farthest space

And ascends to a crown, title and feast

All the while, there is much she must stay ahead of

Before passing through the mirror again,

All the while collecting verses…

Many of those who live in the water

Mammal, mollusc and fish…

 

In the inland sea near where I live

Sometimes the waves are strong enough

To reflect the Red Queen’s statement for me:

As all the beasts, fishes and molluscs do,

Stride, tread, cling or swim as hard as you are able

To stay in one place;

I butterfly or crawl freestyle

Just enough to keep that pace,

But only in short bursts

Before needing to rest,

Lest I collapse like a bread-and-butter-fly

That has had no cambric tea.

Yet I would often fly to it

As an aspiring snap-dragon-fly to a lamp;

For if I can’t keep a queen’s swimming pace

I go with the flow towards shore,

Leaping in the waves, swaying to and fro

As a rocking-horse-fly moves from branch to branch

(Minding large hidden stones as I go),

Wordlessly curtseying in the waves’ wake

Freely acknowledging the lake’s Majesty.

 

-Emily Baker

Help Stop an Attack on Michigan’s Water

Published on February 27th, 2018 by - Blog Posts

Should Michigan law make it easier for special interests to grab large amounts of water without public oversight?

Most citizens would say no, but the Michigan Legislature is considering a “yes.”  The State House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday, February 28 at 9 a.m. on a bill, HB 5638, giving automatic approval to proposals for major water extraction projects by agribusiness – shifting the burden to the state DEQ to prove such proposals will be harmful.

Even worse, the data justifying the extraction would be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. The public would be denied the critical information used to decide new large quantity water withdrawals, the impact they are causing, or how they were approved.

As FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood said of this and other recent legislation, “I think what these new bills represent is a new strategy to just wholesale remove the state of Michigan’s oversight of its public water resources.”

You can help protect Michigan’s water by:

Our water wealth supports and sustains multiple water-dependent sectors of Michigan economy – industry, tourism, recreation, commerce, and agriculture.  The Water Withdrawal Assessment Tool (WWAT) is a vital tool in ensuring that water remains plentiful and available to fulfill future needs. 

HB 5638 circumvents the WWAT by allowing a company to secure a water permit based on a presumption of no harm backed by its own hydrogeological reports and information.  This information would be exempt from FOIA; in effect this is a license to steel water from our creeks, watersheds, wetlands, a license to cause harm.

In MCWC v. Nestle, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that under our common law any water use or withdrawal must maintain adequate water in the stream to sustain the ecology of the stream and to sustain the other uses made of the water by others.  HB 5638 violates this rule of law.

Moreover, Art 4, Sec. 52 of our State Constitution mandates that the legislature “shall provide by law for the protection of water and other natural resources from impairment or destruction.”  HB 5638 will result in impairment and destruction of water resources of state, and therefore violates the Michigan Constitution.

Availability of data to state and federal agencies and local governments is essential so that government can administer our water laws sustainably and provide proper oversight and stewardship.  We now have the data and analytical tools and capabilities to exercise extraordinary foresight in ensuring that water is used sustainably and is always available for our future needs and future generations.

HB 5638 undermines the legacy of good governance to which you have aspired.  The bill is a step backward – instead of supporting a more robust understanding of water availability, it reduces the amount of data and information available, interfering with our ability to make informed decisions.

Once More: Line 5 and the Public Trust

Published on February 27th, 2018 by - Public Trust Tuesday

byzantine-empire-public-land.-trusts

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, this commons – including the Great Lakes — belongs to the public.  And governments, like the State of Michigan, have a responsibility to protect public uses of these resources.  We explicitly address public trust concerns on what we’re calling Public Trust Tuesday.

Perhaps if they hear it often enough, they’ll act.

Michigan’s Pipeline Safety Advisory Board, established by Governor Snyder in September 2015, heard Monday from FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood about the state’s public trust responsibilities.

It was FLOW that identified these responsibilities as the debate over unsafe Enbridge Line 5 at the Straits of Mackinac intensified several years ago.  Simply put, the public owns the lakebed under the Straits that Line 5 crosses – and state government, as the trustee, has the authority and the obligation to assure that any party granted an easement to use the public’s lakebed is not compromising the public uses protected by the trust.  The Legislature passed a law in 1953 granting Enbridge an easement across the Straits – subject to the public trust.

Enbridge has clearly fallen short of that standard with shoddy maintenance, concealment of damaging information and a track record of failure, culminating in the mammoth spill into the Kalamazoo River watershed in 2010. 

FLOW’s message Monday – Enbridge can comply with public trust interests and state law only if the state compels it to submit an application for the entire massive overhaul of Line 5 it seeks to undertake, and only with simultaneous consideration of feasible and prudent alternatives – including using other means to deliver the petroleum currently served up by Line 5.

Here are a few of Liz’s comments from Monday: 

“We are approaching the hour of decision on the fate of Line 5.  This process has been an epic example of how not to protect a world-class resource.  Transparency, corporate integrity and the rule of law have all been casualties. But there is one last chance to make it right.

“Enbridge has never applied for and DEQ has never comprehensively reviewed, considered, or authorized the new design with 128 screw anchors elevating the Line 5 pipelines off the lakebed.  This new design was not contemplated in 1953.  Moreover, the Great Lakes Submerged Lands Act does not authorize ‘activity’ permits that actually constitute a new design, permanent structures, and improvements on bottomlands or suspended in water areas above the bottomlands; rather, a new application is required in conformance with the public trust.

“The Great Lakes are held in trust by the State of Michigan as public trustee for the benefit of its citizens. The 1953 easement with Enbridge was issued fully subject to the public trust, and the U.S. Supreme Court has held states have the power to resume the trust whenever the State judges best.  The state owes Enbridge nothing.  Enbridge owes the people of Michigan the respect they deserve by ending its efforts to skirt statutes and the public trust.”

Great Lakes Proud

Published on February 26th, 2018 by - Blog Posts

Great Lakes Proud (GLP) isn’t just a local brand, it’s national, even dabbling internationally (with stickers spotted in South Korea, Japan, Austria, and Croatia – to name a few)  – and the work it is doing locally is adding value fit for the scale. Since 2009, the Michigan-based business has donated over $100K to Great Lakes conservation efforts, with no signs of slowing down.

Not bad for an idea that was born in the back of a car in Northern Michigan.

Austin Holsinger, a proud Michigander, grew up in the Petoskey area and has long had an affinity, and deep pride, for the Gems of the North – our Great Lakes.

Like any Great Story, GLP has fought to get where they are today. It took over 50 rejections before Austin, who was living off friend’s couches at the beginning, found his first retail partner, Roast and Toast Cafe in Petoskey, Michigan. 8 years later, he not only maintains a partnership with that first Northern Michigan business, but also hundreds of other amazing small businesses throughout the state and the Great Lakes Area. His goal is to make sure that each local community benefits from his product and while he hasn’t reached that goal (yet), he is doing good for the Great Lakes community at large!

GLP is driven by their goal of saving the Great Lakes and building the small business community. Over the years, they have partnered with local businesses, as well larger brands like Moosejaw and Patagonia’s Chicago team to get involved, raise awareness, and fundraise.

GLP strives to support Michigan’s best businesses and to promote intentional consumerism. They are so much more than just a Great Lakes sticker company (and the original one, at that). They are part of an environmental movement. By purchasing one of their unique designs, you are contributing to something much bigger – adding value to the world instead of taking from it – as 15% of all proceeds are donated to special organizations.

These stickers are the vehicle for change (for your vehicle).

GLP is excited to partner with FLOW to help foster awareness of the Line 5 issue and facilitate a way to get involved and make a change. Working closely with Daniel Sloboda from Patagonia and graphic artist, Chris Apap, GLP is excited to launch a design that spreads awareness, encourages conversation, and promotes change. Stemming from the firm belief that the Great Lakes are “a public trust – waters and bottomlands held in trust for the benefit of the public to use and enjoy,” this latest design brings the Line 5 issue to top priority.

The pattern of the sticker shows what the spread of oil would look like, and by purchasing this unique design, one is able to specifically donate to FLOW and their mission of “educating, advancing policy, and providing solutions to pressing water, energy and climate issues facing our region, nation, and planet.”

Dedicated to saving one of nature’s most beautiful gifts.

Committed to being #GreatLakesProud.

Determined to #ShutDownLine5.

Public Trust Tuesday:  A Big Win for the Public Trust

Published on February 20th, 2018 by - Public Trust Tuesday

byzantine-empire-public-land.-trusts

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, this commons – including the Great Lakes — belongs to the public.  And governments, like the State of Michigan, have a responsibility to protect public uses of these resources.  We explicitly address public trust concerns on what we’re calling Public Trust Tuesday.

Score a big win for the public trust doctrine.

In what can be termed literally a landmark decision, the Indiana Supreme Court on February 14 ruled that the state’s public trust rights to the Lake Michigan shore extend to the ordinary high-water mark.

FLOW founder Jim Olson called the decision “exciting” and said it was an even bigger affirmation of the public trust doctrine than a 2005 Michigan Supreme Court ruling because it carefully explained the basis of sovereign public trust ownership by the state.

The ruling came in a case brought by landowners who sued the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, seeking exclusive access to all land up to the water’s edge. Public trust advocates argued that Indiana received land below the ordinary high-water mark at statehood under the public trust doctrine, and that an act of the legislature is required to deed such land to a private party.

But Olson said the Court should also have articulated a list of traditional and incidental public trust uses, like swimming, bathing, and staging, sitting or other uses that are incidental and necessary to those traditional uses that are protected by the public trust doctrine. “In finding ‘at a minimum’ walking the beach below the ordinary high-water mark is protected, the Court exercised restraint and left the scope of public trust uses unclear until enumerated by the legislature,” he said.

“The public trust is a dynamic and flexible doctrine, dependent on changing public needs and uses of public trust lands or waters,” Olson said. “Certainly, walking and fishing were predominant in earlier centuries, but the use of our public shores and beaches below the ordinary high-water mark for access and their public use and enjoyment has encompassed swimming, canoeing, kayaking, surfing, kite boarding, and similar uses. These uses for safety and convenience necessarily include staging, sitting, and even sunbathing incident to those traditionally protected uses.

The “public trust doctrine is a court-made doctrine common law doctrine, so the Court was well within its traditional judicial powers to enumerate those uses rather than defer to the legislature,” he added.

Trump Administration: Importance of Great Lakes Cleanup Equal to Hosting a Military Parade

Published on February 19th, 2018 by - Blog Posts

The Trump Administration on February 14 revealed that President Donald Trump’s proposed military parade, inspired by his attendance at the Bastille Day celebration last July in Paris, would cost taxpayers as much as $30 million.

While there’s been broad criticism of the appropriateness of such a display by the world’s sole military superpower, particularly in the context of federal budget deficits, it was the $30 million figure that stuck with me.

That’s because just two days earlier, the administration released its proposed $4.4 trillion fiscal year 2019 budget, which would severely cut core Great Lakes programs as well as funding for the federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, charged with implementing them.

Of key concern to FLOW and other Great Lakes policy groups is the proposed 90% cut from fiscal year 2017 budget levels to the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI), which helps communities clean up toxic pollution, reduce polluted runoff, fight invasive species such as Asian carp, and restore fish and wildlife habitat. Funding for the GLRI would be slashed from $300 million down to just… $30 million.

Thus, in the course of two days, the administration had equated the importance of restoring and protecting the world’s largest surface freshwater system with hosting a one-time military display.

Thankfully, proposed cuts have drawn bipartisan scorn from Michigan’s congressional delegation, which successfully protected the GLRI from elimination in last year’s budget. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, released a statement saying, “Michigan deserves better than this. The health of our Great Lakes must be a higher priority.”

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, who co-authored the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative in 2010, pointed to the critical role that clean water plays in our economy, with more than 700,000 Michigan jobs – fully 1-in-5 jobs in the state – tied to water resources. Michigan projects have received more than $600 million in funding from the initiative since its start.

It’s the same success story across the watershed, where the Great Lakes generate more than 1.5 million jobs and $60 billion in wages annually, support a $7 billion fishing economy, and provide drinking water to more than 40 million people.

Kelly Thayer

Communities across the Great Lakes region are benefiting from economic recovery and re-investment thanks to the GLRI. Full implementation of the initiative is projected to generate $50 billion in long-term economic benefits for the region and a 2:1 return on investment, according to the Great Lakes Commission.

Visionary leaders are calling for a continued Midwest transformation from Rust Belt to Water Belt. Getting there requires steady, long-term investment and oversight – just the opposite of short-term grandstanding at a parade.

Let’s Go to the Creek!

Published on February 16th, 2018 by - Blog Posts

“Let’s go to the creek!”

Wide eyes and an expectant smile stared up at my dad. Growing up with a state park behind our house, I felt the creek had a mystical quality. We would explore for what felt like days, sliding down the hill, peering in the fox den, but mostly just crashing through the forest and scaring everything in a ½ mile radius. Once down at the creek, we’d clamber across the rocks that worked as a makeshift bridge, ending up various levels of soaked. We’d make it to the other side, “the wild,” and explore until I was too tired to walk and my dad would drag or carry me home on his shoulders, grinning ear to ear or dead asleep.

“Alright, lady, let’s do it.”

My relaxed grin and outstretched hand did little to calm the fears of the high school student I was guiding. Terrified of water, she was not happy about canoeing on String Lake, a shallow lake in the heart of the Tetons. I sat on the bow, feet planted on the dirt, legs gripping the hot aluminum to steady the canoe best as I could. Still hesitating, she grabbed my hand and gingerly put one foot in the air. “You got it, way to go!” She froze. I had broken her focus.

Squeezing my hand harder, she stepped down into the metal boat. One foot followed the other, and she immediately tucked into a tiny ball in the middle of the canoe. Our group cheered and slapped their paddles on the water. She sat frozen in the middle of the canoe, still clutching my left hand while I pushed us off the bank with my right. Slowly, her head peeked up from between her knees, her grip on my hand relaxed and even let go to point out a fish swimming under us. A week later, she was stomping through the water with her friends during our stream research.

Moments of stretching past comfort zones, building confidence and a new comfort zone, are dramatic to support and facilitate. They aren’t always so evident. Sometimes they look like observing a beetle instead of running away, asking a question in front of the whole group, or sitting alone in the wilderness for a few minutes. Spending so much of our life inside today, we are missing opportunities and experiences in the natural world to grow and develop. Many of us see more nature on Instagram than in person. We recognize scenes from Planet Earth, yet don’t know what kind of trees grow at the park.

The idea that our collective relationship with nature is fading is supported by a study that cites only 5 minutes of outdoor exercise as being enough to significantly lift your mood. Kids as young as eight spend over 50 hours a week on a device. In a poll of over 600 American teenagers, only 10% reported daily time outdoors. These jarring statistics all point to a loss of connection with nature, a further separation of our human environment and the natural environment from where we came.

Even if an extensive wilderness trip is not an option right now, outdoor education can be practiced by closely observing a dandelion pushing up between the sidewalk cracks, comparing differences between river rocks, or following the high tide line down the beach. Remember the feeling of running outside after school to play until the street lights came on? Of the forts built, squirrels chased, and knees scraped? Let’s make sure our kids get to experience some of that.

Kaitlyn is an outdoor educator who loves getting kids into the wild, whatever that means for them. She is most excited about helping students develop their relationship with and understanding of the natural world through place-based, experiential education. She has lived and worked in central New York, Wyoming, and currently calls Traverse City, MI home.

What a Difference 100 Years Makes

Published on February 14th, 2018 by - Blog Posts

What a difference 100 years makes.

In 1918, a US-Canadian commission reported on the condition of the boundary waters between the two countries with an emphasis on the connecting waters of the Great Lakes. In the words of the International Joint Commission, the situation was a disgrace.

It was also fatal to thousands. At the time, many communities drew their drinking water from rivers into which upstream communities dumped their typically untreated sewage. Predictably, disease resulted. Typhoid and cholera outbreaks were not rare. 

Among the boundary waters studied were the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers. The Commission also compiled health statistics from communities relying on the two waterways for drinking water, including Port Huron, St. Clair, Marine City, Algonac, Detroit, River Rouge, Ecorse, Wyandotte and Trenton. The results were striking: typhoid fever death rates were highest in cities whose community water supplies were drawn from the foulest water.

The St. Clair River was too polluted for drinking without extensive treatment for 34 miles south of Port Huron. Even worse was the Detroit River. “From Fighting Island to the mouth of the river the water is grossly polluted and totally unfit as a source of water supply…Unfortunately, Wyandotte, Trenton and Amherstburg are taking their water supplies from this part of the river,” the Commission said. 

Those on land weren’t the only victims. In 1907, a steamer traveling the Great Lakes pulled drinking water from the Detroit River, resulting in 77 cases of typhoid fever. In 1913, on three Great Lakes vessels carrying 750 people, there were 300 cases of diarrhea, 52 cases of typhoid and seven deaths.

The report helped spur governments along the border, including Detroit and downstream communities, to chlorinate drinking water supplies and save lives.

We look back on such practices as primitive. But 100 years from now, which of our practices will seem primitive to our descendants?

Have we really come so far in a century, or are we creating a new generation of problems with the same shortsightedness as our ancestors? The public trust doctrine, with its intergenerational concerns and duties, can help us prevent and resolve the mistreatment of our waters.

Public Trust Tuesday: Shutting Down Line 5

Published on February 13th, 2018 by - Public Trust Tuesday

byzantine-empire-public-land.-trusts

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, this commons – including the Great Lakes — belongs to the public.  And governments, like the State of Michigan, have a responsibility to protect public uses of these resources.  We explicitly address public trust concerns on what we’re calling Public Trust Tuesday.

The public trust doctrine is at the heart of FLOW’s efforts to shut down the antiquated Line 5 oil and gas pipelines that span the lakebed at the Straits of Mackinac.  Enbridge, the pipeline owner and operator, has access to the lakebed only because the State of Michigan provided an easement to the company’s predecessor in 1953, subject to the requirements of the public trust doctrine.

Under the terms of that easement, the State, acting as a trustee of the public interest in the Great Lakes, cannot allow impairment of public uses of the affected Great Lakes waters and submerged land.  Further, the State authorized the easement subject to Enbridge exercising “the due care of a reasonably prudent person for the safety and welfare of all persons and of all public and private property.”  Multiple disclosures by Enbridge of shoddy stewardship of Line 5 have demonstrated the lack of due care.

Last week, FLOW submitted to the State six pages of comments and additional exhibits making the case that Enbridge’s patchwork approach to maintaining Line 5 has fallen well short of that standard.  Further, FLOW argued that the major changes in structural support for the pipeline contemplated by Enbridge constitute a new project for the purposes of review by the state.  This requires the State to insist that Enbridge demonstrate the absence of feasible and prudent alternatives to the proposed pipeline support changes – including alternate routes for the transport of oil and gas.

FLOW concluded, “the burden rests with Enbridge – not the State of Michigan or its citizens – to establish that there are no unacceptable risks or likely effects to waters, fishing, navigation, commerce, and public and private uses, and that no feasible and prudent alternatives to Line 5 based on existing or feasible capacity of overall pipeline system in the Great Lakes; the required scope of this showing of no alternatives includes determination of whether existing or improved pipeline infrastructure within the Enbridge system into and out of Michigan are a feasible and prudent alternative.”

You can read the full comment letter here.

A Holistic View of the Public Trust Doctrine

Published on February 6th, 2018 by - Public Trust Tuesday

byzantine-empire-public-land.-trusts

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, this commons – including the Great Lakes — belongs to the public.  And governments, like the State of Michigan, have a responsibility to protect public uses of these resources.  We explicitly address public trust concerns on what we’re calling Public Trust Tuesday. Today’s thoughts are from FLOW’s founder, Jim Olson.

This winter marks the fourth year of the water policy course at our Water Studies Institute, a two, four, and post-graduate degree program at Northwestern Michigan College. Each year is a cycle, with fresh information, insights and ideas. The approach to this new course is to explore and view water and the risks to water – locally or globally – holistically; that is, to see human behavior and risks in the context of the earth’s water cycle.  The water cycle consists of several arcs that make up the whole– precipitation, runoff, and percolation into and through soil to groundwater, groundwater flow to seeps, wetlands, springs, creeks, streams, lakes, rivers, oceans, evaporation, hydrosphere, condensation, and full cycle to precipitation. If we understand the relationship between human and natural effects and impacts on our hydrological cycle – our water – we can begin to find solutions to the threats to life, earth, people, and communities.

Water runs through every part of our life on this earth. What we do through impact on or use of water affects every arc of the water cycle. If pollutants discharge to groundwater, the groundwater transports the pollutants, like nitrates from fertilizers or pesticides, to streams or lakes, and evaporation lifts some toxic chemicals from pesticides into the atmosphere, then they fall back to earth and to our lakes, streams, and percolate into groundwater somewhere else. Several decades ago, a carcinogen known as toxaphene used on cotton crops in the southeastern U.S. was found on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. PCBs used by the electrical utility industry as a heat retardant in transformers hundreds of miles from where they were used. These chemicals show up in fish, other wildlife, and humans.

As previous public trust articles in this column have artfully noted, our navigable lakes and streams, including our inland seas like the Great Lakes, are owned by each state in a public trust for the benefit of citizens to protect our public rights in these public trust waters for navigation, fishing, swimming, boating, drinking water, and essential sustenance. Under the principles of this public trust doctrine, no one, including our government as trustee has a right to measurably impair or subordinate these preferred public trust uses; nor can government allow another person to privatize these public rights and uses for private gain. If a member of the public wants to fish or canoe in a public trust stream, private landowners along the stream enjoy their shore rights as private landowners, but they cannot interfere with these public uses; nor could a landowner pollute these public waters to the point it impairs these public uses or public health.

In the 1980s, a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision in Just v Marinette County held that wetlands could not be filled or dredged if the activity impaired public trust uses and aquatic resources in an adjacent stream. It was understood that wetlands and lakes or streams were arcs of a whole that were inextricably connected. Not long after, the California Supreme Court decided in what is known as the Mono Lake case that Los Angeles couldn’t divert water for its city water supply from a non-navigable tributary upgradient from the lake, because it impaired the wildlife, aquatic life, and public use and enjoyment of the public trust lake. In other words, an activity upstream that impairs the downstream public trust body of water violates the public trust doctrine as much as if you discharged pollutants or diverted water from a pipe directly from the downstream water.

If human activity including industry, farming, land developments on land or near water harms or impairs downstream public trust waters, is that upstream? And if it violates the public trust, is it a reasonable or lawful use of land?

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, courts in Hawaii, Wisconsin, California, and Vermont have extended the protection of public trust waters to groundwater. The Hawaiian courts viewed groundwater and lakes and streams as inseparable in the same way as the earlier Mono Lake and Just decisions, and declared them to be subject to the duties and rights of protection under the public trust doctrine. Hawaiian farming and development interests could not rob groundwater and lower the levels of streams where it degraded or impaired public trust rights and uses of the stream. In Wisconsin, the state could not permit a town’s groundwater withdrawal without considering and limiting impairment to the public trust uses of an adjacent lake. In Vermont, a landfill could not leach chemicals to groundwater where it is determined it impairs public trust wildlife, fish, or uses.

In the last few years, courts now recognize that there is little difference from a land use that discharges pollutants to or removes water directly from a stream, and a land use that discharges or leaves pollutants on the land, or alters the land through construction that robs water that would otherwise flow to the stream. Hawaiian courts have nullified zoning permits issued to land developers where local governments have failed to consider the effect of the change in land use on adjacent or hydrologically connected public trust streams. Just recently, a court granted citizens the right to intervene in a land use permit proceeding to protect their public trust interests in nearby public trust waters. Last month, here in Michigan, a trial judge in Otsego County recognized that anglers had standing to contest privatization by a private fish farm of the public waters of the Au Sable River.

To come full circle around the water cycle, last fall a federal district court in Oregon in a case called Juliana v United States ruled that children of families whose use and enjoyment of public trust in streams and rivers were or would be impaired from increasingly frequent and more intense storm events or droughts could bring a court action against the federal government for failing to take stronger actions to protect their public trust rights attributable to the U.S. portion of human induced greenhouse gases.

When what we humans do to land, the hydrosphere, groundwater or our lakes and streams impairs our fundamental rights in public trust waters for sustenance, survival, health, safety, fishing, boating, or drinking water, now and for future generations, we are subject to the paramount rights of all citizens and communities protected by the public trust doctrine.

Think about it. Private landowners and their uses of water sit side-by-side with these public uses protected by the public trust doctrine. Both private landowners and the public depend on the common water that runs through and defines their watersheds, livelihood, health, and quality of life. What value does land have if the use of land or water destroys the common waters that sustains the private and public or community uses in a community?

Jim Olson

So what does this mean for us in a city or rural village in the Great Lakes region? It means that collectively we can use the existing framework for local planning and zoning, water and health ordinances, and redesign local or watershed local regulations and infrastructure like water services, roads, development, stromwater and erosion controls. It means that the focal point of this redesign is water centered on a single backstop principle— the public trust in our water commons that calls for protection of water quality and quantity from impairment in each community. If we do this, we will make good decisions in our communities and the world at large about health, food, energy, land use, infrastructure and quality of life for current and future generations.