Tag: FLOW

Public Trust Doctrine Policy Framework Encouraged in Final LEEP Report

Published on February 27th, 2014 by - Reports & Media Releases

Click here to view and download the full press release as a PDF

February 27, 2014

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director
liz@flowforwater.org or 231-944-1568

Public Trust Doctrine Policy Framework Encouraged in Final LEEP Report

FLOW Commends International Joint Commission as “Forward-Thinking”

TRAVERSE CITY, MI – FLOW lauds the International Joint Commission (IJC) for including public trust standards into its recommendations for solving Lake Erie’s harmful algal blooms in its 2014 final Lake Erie Ecosystem Priority (LEEP) report. FLOW’s comments to the IJC on its draft LEEP report (2013) urged state governments to apply public trust standards as a key strategy for restoring and protecting Lake Erie’s waters. FLOW congratulates the IJC for their forward-thinking approach, one that includes the public trust doctrine as a mechanism that extends beyond traditional regulations to eliminate the nutrient runoff loads causing of algal blooms.

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) – an issue once thought to be solved when legislation regulated public wastewater treatment facilities and outlawed phosphorus from soaps and detergents in the 1970s – created a “dead zone” the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined on Lake Erie in 2011. HABs emerge perennially in the summer months, and excrete toxins that pose hazards to swimmers, fish and fishers, boaters, tourists, and property owners. Under the premise that HABs interfere with these protected public water uses and impair water quality, state- and province-level officials can invoke the public trust and use it as a policy tool to achieve more aggressive reductions in phosphorus (and related nutrient) run-off from agriculture and municipal sewer operations in order to reduce and prevent future algal blooms.

In the final LEEP report, the IJC encourages states and provinces in the Great Lakes Basin to apply the public trust as a framework for future policy decisions in order to prevent and minimize harmful algal blooms (HABs) in Lake Erie. From the final LEEP report:

“The governments of Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Ontario should apply a public trust framework consisting of a set of important common law legal principles shared by both countries, as an added measure of protection for Lake Erie water quality; government should apply this framework as an added decision-making tool in policies, permitting and other proceedings…”

Functionally, the public trust guarantees each person as a member of the public the right to fish, boat, swim, and recreate in Lake Erie, and to enjoy the protection of the water quality and quantity of these waters, free of impairment. The effects of HABs – from “dead zones” that suffocate aquatic species, to toxic secretions that close beaches and pose health hazards to boaters, fishers, and swimmers – are clear violations of the public trust. Thus, as sworn guardians of the Great Lakes waters under the public trust, the states have a duty to take reasonable measures to restore the water quality and ensure that the public can fully enjoy their protected water uses.

“We applaud the IJC for its foresight and guidance on one of the greatest threats to the Great Lakes, and urge the states to immediately implement and evaluation actions necessary to address nutrient runoff problems,” says FLOW Founder Jim Olson. “The IJC’s sense of urgency and call for cooperation sets the tone for immediate action in reducing reactive phosphorus loading, aimed at the “hot spots” first,” he says.

“The call for a public trust framework recognizes a benchmark adopted by the courts of all eight Great Lakes states and Ontario,” he explains. “This benchmark means governments must act. They have an affirmative duty,” he says.

“It also means that all private interests involved with phosphorus management practices, farming, and the non profit organization sector must work together, because we share this common water held in public trust. Finally, it means that if the states, province, and those engaged activities that fall short of best practices or fail to reduce phosphorus by setting a limit for Lake Erie, then the citizens as legal beneficiaries may seek recourse to make sure that the continuing nuisance and interference with private and public uses of high value are protected,” he says.

FLOW has worked on the issue of public trust as it relates to HABs for several years. In 2011, Olson and Council of Canadians National Chairperson Maude Barlow authored and presented a report to the IJC on the application of public trust principles to the Great Lakes. In 2013, FLOW submitted comments to the IJC on their 2013 draft LEEP report that enumerated how the public trust framework can complement present regulations and cooperative efforts to prevent nutrient run-off from creating HABs in Lake Erie and elsewhere.

HABs are becoming an increasingly common problem in other Great Lakes regions including Green Bay, Saginaw Bay, and along some parts of the eastern shoreline of Lake Michigan. “Utilizing the public trust framework as a means for solving HABs in Lake Erie is just the first step,” says FLOW’s executive director, Liz Kirkwood. “Once the Lake Erie Basin states demonstrate the application and effectiveness of the public trust in solving HABs, it will be much easier for the rest of the Great Lakes Basin states to follow suit. This problem is not limited to Lake Erie.”

The IJC has taken a significant step to lead the governments and citizens and interested parties to a goal of reduced phosphorus loading of Lake Erie, to a point where the reactive devastating harm and public nuisance can be abated.

The Pipeline in the Straits: Learning About Line 5 with Enbridge in St. Ignace

Published on February 26th, 2014 by - H2Olson, News

By FLOW intern Jonathan Aylward. Jonathan has been with FLOW since January 2014 and also works on food-related projects throughout the Grand Traverse region.

There is an oil pipeline running through the Great Lakes underneath the Mackinac Bridge. The pipeline, called Line 5, is owned and operated by Enbridge, a Canadian energy corporation. Enbridge has pumped crude oil through the less than one-inch-thick pipeline for sixty-one years along the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac. Built under Dwight Eisenhower’s administration at a time before modern pipeline regulations, Enbridge increased the output of Line 5 by 50,000 gallons per day in 2013. While Line 5’s capacity has increased, neither regulatory scrutiny nor corporate transparency have followed suit. The Great Lakes, which contain 84% of North America’s and 20% of the planet’s surface freshwater, are at a greater risk than ever.

Line 5 is part of a vast network of Enbridge pipelines that transports crude oil and natural gas liquids originating in Western Canada (mainly the Athabasca tar sands) and North Dakota around the country. Line 5 is the section that passes from Superior, Wisconsin through the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan into Sarnia, Ontario.

Enbridge put on a public presentation in St. Ignace, MI, on February 5, 2014 in response to mounting public concern spurred in part by an alarming report released in 2012 and an unsettling video released last year, both by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). Some of the most illuminating segments can be heard and read below.

First, a quick reminder of why Michiganders should be especially wary of Enbridge’s Line 5 and its 1,900 miles of pipeline surrounding the Great Lakes.

Enbridge’s Dilbit Disaster in Kalamazoo, MI

Bitumen is the type of oil that is extracted from the Athabasca tar sands, a region of Alberta the size of New York state. It’s not normal liquid oil; bitumen is more solid than it is liquid, and it has to be strip mined or boiled to be released from the ground. It is the heaviest form of petroleum in the world, which makes it especially hazardous to transport because in the event of a spill it can sink. From extraction to refinement, it has the largest carbon footprint of any type of petroleum.

Since 1999, Enbridge has been responsible for 983 spills, the largest of which happened in Marshall, MI (near Kalamazoo, MI) in 2010. That spill, on Line 6b, was the largest on-land oil spill in US history.  About one million gallons of diluted bitumen (dilbit) leaked into Talmadge Creek, a tributary of the Kalamazoo River. The pipeline was forty years old, twenty years younger than Line 5. Enbridge has responded with negligence ever since the initial rupture:

  • The Line 6b leaked for 17 hours, and during the spill operators actually increased the pressure to release what was thought to be a blockage.
  • Enbridge monitors weren’t the ones to discover the spill; it was a local utility man that reported it to local authorities.
  • 180,000 gallons of bitumen still sits on the bottom of the Kalamazoo River three and a half years later.

The Kalamazoo spill has forced Michiganders to wake up to the interrelated threats to public health, the economy, and our environment that Line 5 poses. Pressing questions about the age and condition of the pipeline and the type of crude being pumped quickly surface.

  • After Kalamazoo, why should the public continue to entrust Enbridge as stewards of the Great Lakes?
  • Why is Enbridge using a sixty year old pipeline if their forty year old pipeline ruptured in Kalamazoo?
  • Which type(s) of tar sands oil product are shipped through Line 5?
  • Why is there a pipeline going through the Great Lakes at all?
  • Under what conditions was the pipeline approved and why is it still there?

Enbridge Comes to St. Ignace

Enbridge sent a public relations advisor and two of their engineers along with their cleanup contractor to St. Ignace to present “their side of the story” at the Mackinac County Planning Commision meeting. The room was packed with around 175 attendees. No representatives from NWF or other concerned organizations were present on the Q&A panel.

The environment was carefully controlled. Two Enbridge employees in the front row acted as a whispering counsel to the panel throughout the event. Instead of an open floor question and answer format, Enbridge opted to have the public write their questions down. Then, through an unexplained process, Enbridge proceeded to answer certain question cards. The mood shifted from respectful concern to outright frustration over the course of the hour and half long event. Many questions were left unanswered, and even more questions arose.

The Potential Disaster

1. Enbridge says 5,500 barrels (231,000 gallons) of light crude oil could leak into the Great Lakes.

Listen:

[soundcloud id=’136703886′ color=’#091571′]

Watch:

In the audio build-up to the video clip, the public relations advisor initially dismisses a question about the company’s assessment on a worst-case discharge. A minute passes (which has been edited out), and the citizen that wrote the question stands up and demands that they revisit his question. In the video, after more audience questioning, the Enbridge Engineer gives the number off the top of his head.

2. “Extremely conservative” estimate says 25 square miles could be covered.

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3. In the winter, “Mother Nature will dictate.”

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Winter ice is not the only force of nature present at Line 5’s Straits crossing that would enhance the complexity and difficulty of a clean-up. Here is an excerpt from the NWF report “Sunken Hazard” about the powerful currents in the Straits:

“The Straits of Mackinac in northern Michigan is a unique area of the Great Lakes, a four-mile-wide channel that funnels colossal amounts of water between Lakes Michigan and Huron. Powerful storm-driven currents that cause water to oscillate back and forth between the two lakes can move water through the Straits at a rate of three feet or more per second. At times, the volume of water flowing beneath the Mackinac Bridge is 50 times greater than the average flow of the St. Clair River, one of the largest rivers in the Great Lakes basin. Those currents also make the Straits one of the worst places in the Great Lakes for an oil spill. There are few other places in the lakes where an oil spill could spread so quickly.”

What’s Inside the Pipeline?

4. Question: Are there any plans to pipe tar sands through this pipeline?
Answer: “There are no plans to pump what’s known as heavy crude, and sometimes called tar sands, through that pipeline.”

[soundcloud id=’134804329′ color=’#091571′]

This was the first question selected by Enbridge in the Q&A segment. Enbridge openly reports on their website that they are piping several types of tar sands oil through Line 5, mainly the product called synthetic crude, and not the heavier dilbit. Bitumen from the Athabasca tar sands becomes transportable in two ways: it’s either diluted with other chemicals to create dilbit, or it is partially refined at an upgrader facility in Alberta and mixed with chemicals to create a lighter product called synthetic crude. This document on Enbridge’s website reports “Light Synthetic” as one of four groups of products piped on Line 5, and this other Enbridge document lists the specific products that are commonly shipped through Line 5. All of the Light Synthetic products are derived from tar sands bitumen, and some of the “Light & High Sour” products are as well.

5. Question: What procedure does Enbridge have to follow if they change their mind and want to start shipping tar sands?
Answer: “It’s complicated, let me come back to that.” She didn’t.

[soundcloud id=’134804330′ color=’#091571′]

Again, Enbridge is already shipping a variety of tar sands crude products through Line 5. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the federal pipeline regulatory agency, treats all crude oil the same despite the fact that spill consequences vary by type and product. Enbridge can pump anything that classifies as crude oil or natural gas liquids through their pipelines, from conventional light crude oil to dilbit. On page three of this document from Enbridge’s website, it says that even if a product is not marked as permissible or existing for a specific pipeline (e.g. dilbit in Line 5), transporting it would simply “require prior authorization from Enbridge”. It appears that pipeline companies do not even have to document changes in batches or the chemical composition of its current products.

6. Line 5 currently pipes low density crude oil and natural gas liquids in 10,000 barrel batches.

[soundcloud id=’134804328′ color=’#091571′]

540,000 barrels pass through Line 5 per day.

7. Most of the product comes from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota.

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Over half of the products listed on Enbridge’s website that pass through Line 5 can be traced to the Athabasca tar sands’ region. Here is the link again.

Kalamazoo River Spill

8. All oil floats, but some oil floats better than other oil.

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The 180,000 gallons of bitumen on the bottom of the Kalamazoo River demonstrate otherwise.

9. All questions that mention the Kalamazoo River spill were rejected.

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Enbridge says Lines 5 and 6b are ”two different lines that do different things”, so all questions that mention the spill are rejected.

The Condition of Line 5

10. Enbridge inspects for dents, cracks, and wall thickness. Line 5 under the Straits has no dents and good wall thickness.

[soundcloud id=’134804341′ color=’#091571′]

11. In 2012, Enbridge documented hundreds of “abnormalities or cracked features” on Line 5.
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12. “They don’t build it like this anymore.”

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13. “The seamless pipeline under the straits is in fact seamless.”

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At this point in the event, the word seamless had been used a lot.

14. The pipeline is welded every 40 feet. The seamlessness of the pipeline is referring to the side-seam.

[soundcloud id=’134804338′ color=’#091571′]

For an hour and a half, the audience pondered how it was possible to make, transport, and install a 5-mile long seamless pipeline. The question was finally answered near the end of the meeting. An Enbridge engineer clarified that the each pipeline piece is welded to the next section every 40 feet, and that the “seamless pipeline” is referring to the lack of a side-seam.

15. “There were no regulations that had to be met when that line was built,” but Enbridge looked it over in 2004 and concluded that Line 5 to par.

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16. People got angry that Enbridge didn’t answer all their questions at a public meeting about Line 5.

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For audio and video transcripts, click here.

TRANSCRIPTS: The Pipeline in the Straits: Learning About Line 5 with Enbridge in St. Ignace

Published on February 26th, 2014 by - News

Want more? Here are the transcripts of the clips from the February 5 Enbridge meeting with Mackinac County officials and the public regarding the expansion of the Line 5 oil pipeline that is, in part, submerged underwater at the Straits of Mackinac in the Great Lakes.

(RUSH TRANSCRIPT AND STATEMENTS SIC)

1. Enbridge says 5,500 barrels (231,000 gallons) of light crude oil could leak into the Great Lakes.

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One of our residents would like to know, if there is a, um, break, uh, leak, in that 3 minute period from a 20 inch line at 300 pounds per second, what are we looking at, how much oil or volume would be lost to the on site?
Um, you know, I’m going to be completely honest, we talked about how to address this question, and the bottom line is we can speculate all day on worst case scenarios, what I can tell you, and I’ve tried to show you are all of the different safety mechanisms we have in place to ensure that hopefully we don’t have any incidents, but if we do, we work with our Osrow, and the Coast Guard, and all these other places to ensure that we contain it as quickly as possible, and return it to, um, return it back to the state in which it was. And, there’s more questions, you know, related to , um, who is going to pay for it, and of course we do assume that responsibility, um. What materials do you have in the straits? We talked about that. We have stuff on both ends of the straits, with boom, and our people that live and work here. Um, this a an um, I found this kind of interesting: are you planning for the Madrid earthquake? I can tell you that, um, not necessarily Enbridge, nor osrow =, but i can tell you from my past life that the Madrid earthquake is practiced every year by the department of defense, so that’s a homeland security issue and they are dealing with it. (huh?–crowd.)
Simple math problem about the oil spill–crowd
Compensations to businesses would be the same to county and private residents.
Sorry, you didn’t exactly answer my question with quantity. And, surely you know how much is flowing through just like if i spill a 2 cup, uh pale of water i know how much spilled. so, if there was a breach, what would be the release, because you know the quantity right?
Blake: Well, ok, we’d call that a worst case discharge.
Repeat the question!
Jackie: the question is how much is oil is in the pipeline between the two places in which we can isolate it
After the two minute shutdown
After?
There’s 3 minutes before you totally shut down, you said that earlier. So let’s take the worst scenario of 3 minutes of oil flowing at 100%. Like you said, that’s a simple math problem.
Yeah, that’s a simple math problem. Ok, uh, it’s uh, like, without the automatic shutoff system, it was like 15000 barrels, and then when we installed the automatic shutoff system, that cut it down to like 5,500 barrels, but it’s at a pressure, like i showed you, the pressure is like say 150 psi, or less, and i imagine if those valves shut, it’s going to be less, because they wouldn’t shut unless it was less. And we’ve talked about this, so, we have to give them a figure, and it’s on volume, so the very worst case, and it’s very unlikely, is 5,500 barrels. But, you know, one thing that was interesting, some of our engineers were saying, that the water pressure at the bottom of the straits is almost that much, so. not like we are actually going to open and it up and find out what happens, but there’s a good chance that there’s gonna be water going in at one point and holding the oil in. and the oil wants to float up, and it goes down like this. So I really doubt that even close to even a percentage of that would even leak in a scenario.

2. “Extremely conservative” estimate says 25 square miles could be covered.

[soundcloud id=’134804334′ color=’#091571′]

So, the first one, given the shutdown response stated, what is the volume of discharge during the time frame stated? That was answered right? Ok, what is the surface area that would result? 5,500 barrels? I’m sorry, I don’t have this exact calculation ready for you, but if anybody needs it, but if anybody needs the exact number, uh, predictive number, we can talk about it, but it’s substantial, very substantial, a figure, and I’m probably very low estimating it, 25 square miles, to figure something like that.

3. In the winter, “Mother Nature will dictate.”

[soundcloud id=’134804343′ color=’#091571′]

Next question: May Day, May Day May Day, it’s January 21, 2014, -18, -40 below wind chill, ice is 4 feet htick, oil leak alarms start sounding at 3 locations under the Straits of Mackinac. What are you, Enbridge, and the US Coast Guard going to do about it?
How soon will you have the critical response personal on site, and time to stop the leak. We’ve talked a lot about winter operations, and it should be very clear to everyone that it is a much more difficult type of approach. Now, from a response perspective, we have two ways to access oil under the ice. If it’s thick enough, we can walk out and start drilling holes to get to it. So if this oil spill of one of these 3 leaks that is proposed here, occurs near shore, then we’re going to go out from shore and start doing that. How quick can that happen? First boots on the ground, our first partner companyy is here in St. Ignace, Mackinac Environmental, that provides some assessment, then we start rolling personnel in. And equipment in. As we saw in my slide, we have a 6 hour mainframe model, and a 12 hour time frame model. Now, we need to put a lot of boots on the ground to do that, and to give you an idea of what i would conceive of an operation like that, we’re talking about 100’s of people having to be mobilized in 6-12 hours, so we’re prepared in our planning standards to achieve those kinds of concepts, but to answer the question, in the winter, mother nature will dictate, we need those kinds of resources, and it will complicate it that way, that’s the reality of it.

4. Question: Are there any plans to pipe tar sands through this pipeline?
Answer: “There are no plans to pump what’s known as heavy crude, and sometimes called tar sands, through that pipeline.”

[soundcloud id=’134804329′ color=’#091571′]

Are there any plans to pipe tar sands through this pipeline? As I said earlier, um, Line 5 is a light crude, um, pipeline, there are no plans to, um, pump what’s know as heavy crudes, and sometimes called tar sands through that pipeline. There are no plans to pump, um, heavy crude through Line 5.

5. Question: What procedure does Enbridge have to follow if they change their mind and want to start shipping tar sands?
Answer: “It’s complicated, let me come back to that.” She didn’t.

[soundcloud id=’134804330′ color=’#091571′]

If you decide at some point to change what you…to pipe tar sands oil through the straits, what procedure do you have to follow? I’m going to come back to that one because..it’s complicated. Let me come back to that one.
There was a question that she was asked that she said she would defer. I’d like to hear the answer to that question. “She’s ended answering the questions” She deferred that question, she said she would answer it!

6. Line 5 currently pipes low density crude oil and natural gas liquids in 10,000 barrel batches.

[soundcloud id=’134804328′ color=’#091571′]

Blake Olson – Enbridge Engineer: “Mixtures of petroleum, does that flow through this pipe? Well, It’s light density crude oil and natural gas liquids, that’s what flows through the pipe. Uh, they’re batched in like 10,000 barrel batches, and they have different names by who produced them and from where they came, but they are basically the lighter density oil. Line 5 is designed for piping that type of fluid. If we were to switch to heavy crude, we would have to change a lot of things on the pipeline, including all the pumps and whatnot. That’s all, I guess, I can explain, petroleum dense…light density oil and natural gas liquids, which is raw propane and butane.”

7. Most of the product comes from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota.

[soundcloud id=’136693110′ color=’#091571′]

Where does that product come from? Our light crude comes mostly from the Bakken.

8. All oil floats, but some oil floats better than other oil.

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The question here was: Does all oil float? Well, all the oil has, you know, a density less than water, so it should float. Uh, The, uh, light crude oil has lower density than the heavier crude oil service, and this is the light oil, so, uh, it floats better on line 5 than, it, uh, maybe on the heavier oil lines. But it all floats.

9. All questions that mention the Kalamazoo River spill were rejected.

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There were a lot of questions here about Kalamazoo. Line 5 and line 6 are two different lines that do different things I’m not going to get into discussing Kalamazoo here today. We’ve learned a lot from it. “It’s still not cleaned up” We’re in the process of finishing that.

10. Enbridge inspects for dents, cracks, and wall thickness. Line 5 under the Straits has no dents and good wall thickness.

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The monitoring efforts and inline inspection: the inline inspection tools in our sophisticated electronic vehicles move inside the pipe along with the oil, they obtain detailed measurements in the pipeline condition, they’re look at, these are three of the different types: they look at corrosion or wall thickness of the pipe, that’s how they can tell that the pipe is still the same thickness. They also look for dents in the pipe. And they look for, uh, cracks in the pipe. And the, uh, data, at the end of last year, the new data shows that the wall thickness is still almost an inch thick, and it also shows that there’s no dents on any of the straits.

11. In 2012, Enbridge documented hundreds of “abnormalities or cracked features” on Line 5.

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Based on Enbridge 2012 documents, hundreds of abnormalities or cracked features have been documented on line 5, and these abnormalities, they say, are similar to 6b which ruptured and caused that largest inland heavy sands spill. And uh, so, what, specific measures is Enbridge taking to remediate these abnormalities on the pipeline through the straits? Well, that’s what I was talking about, that;s what we’re doing; we beefed up the whole division that works on those, and we keep, just, and then, of course the straits piping, we’re running the tools, and we’re not finding any indications. So, uh, it’s because, that’s the thickest pipe we have in our whole system in all of North America. They just over-designed the whole straits crossing, that special seamless pipe.

12. “They don’t build it like this anymore.”

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Hello, thank you for coming. Ok, Enbridge, uh, strives for a safe delivery of liquid petroleum, and transport. The seamless steel pipe is a very robust design, it’s, you, we really have to give credit to the engineers that designed it, it’s really built to last. It’s really one of those stories where “they don’t build it like this anymore”. The, uh, pipeline is nearly 1 inch thick of steel, the two 20-inch lines.

13. “The seamless pipeline under the straits is in fact seamless.”

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Um, there’s a question about seams, the pipeline, the seamless pipeline under the straits is in fact seamless.

14. The pipeline is welded every 40 feet. The seamlessness of the pipeline is referring to the side-seam.

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Ok, just a clarification probably: how is a pipeline 5 miles long created without any seams. And, as you can see on the pipeline, there’s a different process to make a seamless pipe than there is to make a regular piece of pipeline. A regular piece of pipeline you take a flat piece of metal, it get’s rolled and folded, it gets welded, kind of like your pantleg, you’ve got a seam going down your pant leg, and that’s the side seam. As far as that piece of pipe it’s more continuous, there’s a whole different process that produces a seamless pipe. Now, there are joints in the pipe, so to be clear on that, the pipe did come out in 40 foot sections, so they are welded every 40 feet along there, there’s a butt welded to a joint, but there’s not a seam going all the way down there.

15. “There were no regulations that had to be met when that line was built,” but Enbridge looked it over in 2004 and concluded that Line 5 to par.

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A question that is a 2 part one: if teh pipeline were to be installed today, how would it differ from the way it was designed originally? Would it be done differently to meet design requirements? For example would a double walled pipe be required?
Just a little history, I used to work for the Minnesota office of pipeline safety, so I was trained with PHMSA, and so I got a pretty good background on the requirements. This pipeline going across the straits was built before PHMSA existed, so there were no regulations that had to be met when that pipeline was built. Now that said, Enbridge went back in 2004, went back through all the orignial design calculations just to double check how it was built and if it was still built to an acceptable standard today, and it was far in excess of what PHMSA requires.

16. People got angry that Enbridge didn’t answer all their questions at a public meeting about Line 5.

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Um, we’ve exceeded the time that the commission has allowed us, we hope we’ve answered your questions. (Audience angry yelling) I realize that. I’m sorry, this is going to end, if you want to have your question answered after this session by Enbridge employees, uh…we could go on for hours but uh, this is what was sessioned…(audience yelling)

Systemic Threats to Great Lakes Demand an Immediate Paradigm Shift to Water as Commons Protected By Public Trust

Published on February 24th, 2014 by - H2Olson

Pursuant to his recent publication in The Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, the following are some thoughts from Jim Olson on the importance of the public trust doctrine at this time in history.

Systemic Threats to Great Lakes Demand an Immediate Paradigm Shift to Water as Commons Protected By Public Trust

“We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.” – Jack Cousteau

The systemic threats to the Great Lakes water, like the “dead zone” covering nearly one-third of western Lake Erie, with alarming algal blooms extending along the bays and shores of Lake Michigan, call for immediate action by state governments. That action is demanded by the public trust doctrine.

This ancient legal principle is alive and well in the Great Lakes, and places a fiduciary duty on states to prevent subordination or impairment of the public rights of use and enjoyment of these waters, and the waters and ecosystem that support them.

The states have been called the “sworn guardians” of this trust in the same way a bank trustee is accountable to its beneficiaries. If we demand and act to assure the integrity of these waters using the public trust principle as the benchmark, we will start making the right decisions about water, energy, food, transportation, and communities.

It’s a threatening time with the Great Lakes facing a critical mass of issues such as algal blooms, invasive species like Asian Carp, sewage overflows, threatened diversions, climate change and extreme water levels, overuse and waste from such water-intensive uses as crops, fracking, or poor urban infrastructure. But is an exciting time, with an open slate of new choices for our communities, businesses, farming and food, careers and jobs, transportation, and economy. In this century the public trust principles offer a unifying pathway or beacon to help us get there.

More and more biologists, hydrologists, and other scientists have documented that the billions of dollars spent worldwide in the past several decades to protect crucial conservation lands, international and national parks, wilderness, and biologically significant areas may be futile. The data shows all of the Earth’s natural systems are decline, despite our best efforts. This is because pollution, waste, and the effects of globally harmful practices like climate change or the release of hazardous substances do not know political or legal boundaries.

It is also because these larger systemic or massive harms have overwhelmed not only water and ecosystems but our twentieth century legal framework. Regulation by permit for every drop that is discharged to a sediment basin, treatment plant, lake or stream may have worked for specific place at a given time. But the fact is that these regulations have legalized lesser amounts of pollution or higher amounts of water losses and waste than watersheds and larger ecosystems like the Great Lakes can withstand.

For example, the International Joint Commission has documented and called for adaptive management practices to respond to the extreme changes in water level caused by climate change. Scientists, including those studying global warming, ice cover, precipitation, and evaporation, have documented that climate change is resulting in droughts with exponentially harmful effects on water levels and impacts on wetlands, streams, lakes, biological systems, fish, and habitat. Data shows a direct connection between the “dead zone” caused by non-point run off of phosphorous and nutrients into Lake Erie. The phosphorous combined with warmer water temperatures, clearer water from invasive species, to produce a toxic algal bloom covering nearly one-third of Lake Erie, closing beaches, killing fish, damaging fisheries, swimming, boating and recreation. These same blooms have been showing up in Michigan’s Saginaw Bay and Wisconsin’s Green Bay. Then there are the quagga mussels and hundreds of other invasive species, including the threat of Asian Carp that would alter and potentially wipe out a billion dollar fishery in the Great Lakes.

“Extreme energy” – massive, intensive, unconventional desecration of water, nature, and communities – is another example. As the global water crisis and droughts around the North America and the world intensify, there will be increasing demand to force water out of the Great Lakes basin to the southwest, the oil and gas development fields in the west, or to grow crops here to export food to drought or water-poor countries like China and the Middle East – so-called “virtual water.” Demands for diversions and exports of food and water will run up against demands for water for industries, food, urban areas, and recreation – all the backbone of our economy.

A dramatic example is the unfolding drama over the expanding use of pipelines and shipments of oil and natural gas from the Alberta tar sands and North Dakota heavy oil and natural gas through and over the Great Lakes region. Canada proposes two double the volume of tar sands oil the Alberta Clipper – Line 67 – will transport to Superior, Wisconsin on Lake Superior. From there a much dirtier, heavier oil with bitumen may be transported through Line 5 across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, under the Mackinac Straits of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, down through Michigan and under the St. Clair River to Sarnia. A spill under the best response conditions would cover 25 square miles of the Straits area. A spill from a ship carrying heavy oil would have equally decimating impacts.

So what framework and legal principles will work to save the Great Lakes and the rights and interests of the 40 million people who live around the largest freshwater surface water system in the world – 20 percent of the world’s fresh surface water? The public trust doctrine and its set of discrete principles that have protected water from private control and abuse for over 1,500 years.

  1. Public trust waters cannot be subordinated or transferred to the primary or exclusive control of private interests and gain.
  2. Public trust waters and the right of public use and enjoyment cannot be significantly impaired from one generation to the next.
  3. The states and provinces of Canada have a fiduciary duty to account to and assure their citizens that principles 1 and 2 have not and will not be violated.

These are the benchmarks for everything we face and how we should decide what is acceptable and what is not in terms of living up to the public trust doctrine. What’s been hard for sometime, that is until these recent systemic threats, is to understand that these waters and their management by states as trustees are commons, not private property. Markets and concepts of private property apply to private things. Public trust principles apply to common public things. It’s that simple. If we take to understand what is happening, and apply these benchmarks, we, our children and grandchildren will share in the same enjoyment and as we have in these waters held and managed under a solemn perpetual trust.

If you want to read about the history and principles under the public trust doctrine that apply to the Great Lakes basin in the U.S. and Canada, read the article in full, click here, or for reprints or hard copies of the article, contact Vermont  Journal of Environmental Law editor Emily Remmel or visit vjel.vermontlaw.edu.

For more, read the press release here.

Postscript

As Maude Barlow puts it in her new book Blue Future: Protecting the Planet for People and the Planet Forever (The New Press 2013), “Olson writes in the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, ‘a possible answer is the immediate adoption of a new narrative, with principles grounded in science, values, and policy, that views the systemic threats we face as part of the single connected hydrological whole, a commons governed by public trust principles.’ He goes on to say:  ‘[t]he public trust is necessary to solve these threats that directly impact traditional public trust resources. The most obvious whole is not a construct of the mind, but the one in which we live – the hydrosphere, basin, and watersheds through which water flows, evaporates, transpires, is used, transferred, and is discharged [and recharged] in a continuous cycle. Every arc of the water cycle flows through and is affected by everything else, reminiscent of what Jacques Cousteau once said, ‘We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.'”

Jim Olson Pens Seminal Article on Public Trust in the Great Lakes

Published on February 24th, 2014 by - Reports & Media Releases

Click here to view and download the full press release as a PDF

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Contact: Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director
liz@flowforwater.org or 231-944-1568

FLOW Founder Pens Seminal Article on Public Trust in the Great Lakes

“All Aboard” in Vermont Journal of Environmental Law

TRAVERSE CITY, MI – FLOW Founder and veteran water attorney Jim Olson has recently published his latest article about the public trust in the Great Lakes. The seminal article “All Aboard: Navigating the Course for Universal Adoption of the Public Trust” appears in the Spring 2014 edition of the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law (Volume 15, Issue 2, p. 135-191). It is also available online at: http://vjel.vermontlaw.edu/files/2014/01/Issue-2_Olson.pdf.

Olson, (LL.M., University of Michigan, 1977; J.D., Detroit College of Law (Michigan State University College of Law) 1971) is a Traverse City-based water and public interest lawyer with expertise in public trust backed by 40 years of litigation. Named the 2010 Champion of Justice by the State Bar of Michigan for his work defending water in the public interest as the plaintiff attorney in the Nestlé bottling plant lawsuit in Mecosta County, Olson is the Great Lakes Basin’s preeminent legal expert on matters of protecting and conserving water as a common and public resource.

“All Aboard” not only thoroughly reviews and confirms the viability of the public trust doctrine in each of the Great Lakes Basin states and two Canadian provinces, but also inspires and charts the way for leaders and citizens to affirm and apply the public trust to stem the systemic threats to the Great Lakes. The article proposes an integrative commons framework for understanding and finding solutions to problems affecting water at every phase of its hydrologic cycle. The article underscores the rich potential for invoking the public trust as an overarching policy tactic to effectively address and solve the systemic and large-scale threats to the health of the Great Lakes, including climate change, algal blooms, pollution, exports, and privatization.

What’s more, the public trust is a versatile legal lens to analyze policy problems because, as Olson outlines, “[t]he public trust doctrine—or at least its principles—offer a legal construct to integrate our understanding of energy production, food systems, and climate change with the hydrologic cycle” (139). This “nexus” of overlapping concerns—water, energy, food, and climate change—is a new set of issues in the 21st Century that 20th Century laws and policies aren’t equipped to address. Olson’s decades of experience invoking the public trust as a legal means for closing that gap is reflected in the depth and breadth of the “All Aboard” article.

“Each Great Lakes Basin state and province has, in their own way, a clear legal obligation under the public trust to ensure that the Lakes’ water is protected,” says Olson. “It is both feasible and necessary for governments across the board to recognize that the public trust is their tool for solving the problems that elude existing policies that are still letting things like algal blooms and extreme water levels slip through the cracks,” he says.

“All Aboard” published in the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law (Volume 15, Issue 2, p. 135-191) in February 2014. The Vermont Journal of Environmental Law was founded in 1996 with support from Vermont Law School’s Environmental Law Center. The Journal is a student-run organization that publishes articles on topics in the environmental field quarterly.

Through Olson’s nonprofit Great Lakes policy and education center FLOW, Olson will help to bridge the ideas of “All Aboard” and share them beyond the academic and law sphere. “It’s important that both decision-makers and citizens are informed about the utility of the public trust and its empowering potential as a legal solution,” says Olson. Olson blogs about the public trust regularly on FLOW’s website at https://forloveofwater.org/soundings-blog/.

FLOW’s mission is to advance public trust solutions to save the Great Lakes, and its policy and education programs focus on empowering decision-makers and citizens with legal strategies and tools for addressing water, energy, food, and climate change issues affecting the Great Lakes. Olson’s “All Aboard” article supplements FLOW’s growing niche in the public trust and commons policy field.

In 2011, Olson and fellow public interest advocate, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians Maude Barlow, presented findings from their joint report on the public trust doctrine in an exclusive meeting with the binational regulating agency for the Great Lakes, the International Joint Commission (IJC). As journalist Keith Schneider wrote in his 2012 article about Olson and Barlow’s landmark presentation: “It was the first time that a framework for managing the Great Lakes as a commons had been presented at such a high government level in both nations.”

The public trust doctrine holds that certain natural resources like navigable waters are preserved in perpetuity for public use and enjoyment. Applying a banking analogy, the state serves as a trustee to maintain the trust or common resources for the benefit of current and future generations who are the beneficiaries. Just as private trustees are judicially accountable to their beneficiaries, so too are state trustees in managing public trust properties.

Because many citizens are not aware that the public trust doctrine is part of their bundle of rights in our democracy, many state actors ignore or violate these principles. It is the aim of the “All Aboard” article, as a supplement to FLOW’s programming, to help inform citizens and decision-makers of their rights and responsibilities to enjoy and preserve Great Lakes water for the benefit of the greater good.

Contact: Contact: Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director
liz@flowforwater.org or 231-944-1568

More Than a Christmas Miracle – The Successful Outcome of the Michigan Holy Water Mineral Leasing Issue for Fracking

Published on February 21st, 2014 by - News

By Tom Baird, FLOW Board of Directors member and First Vice President of the Anglers of the Au Sable

This article originally published in the Anglers of the Au Sable quarterly newsletter, THE RIVERWATCH, Winter 2014 Number 68. Click here to read the original article, or view it here. For more about Anglers of the Au Sable, click here to visit their website.

More Than a Christmas Miracle

The Successful Outcome of the Holy Water Mineral Leasing Issue Was
a Product of Shrewd Planning, Coalition Building and a Sense of Urgency

 

It was a tight clock, and there was a long way to pay dirt.

This football analogy best captures the circumstances Anglers faced last October as it became evident that the [Michigan] DNR was going to allow oil and gas companies to bid for leases on land interspersed throughout the heart of the Au Sable [River], its Holy Water. Worse, a third of those parcels were designated “development with restrictions,” which would allow the construction of production facilities and the installation of drilling rigs, storage tanks, compressors, and the other equipment necessary for oil and gas production. At first there was shock, then anger, but there wasn’t much time to dwell on either.

The task was daunting. Still, Anglers of the Au Sable had done the impossible before. Folks who were at the Grayling Ramada in August of 2003 remember the forest of hands that were raised when somebody said, “Who here thinks that oil well is going in on the South Branch no matter what we do?” at a public meeting concerning that crisis. Then there was Kolka Creek — not as dramatic as the Savoy case but maybe more important. The consensus was that Merit Energy would have a free hand in remediating the Hayes 22 facility.

In the end, we won, sometimes with the help of friends, sometimes on our own. Our record is not perfect, nobody’s is, but we know the rules of the game.

In the Holy Waters mineral leases fight, we twice asked DNR Director Creagh to remove the parcels from the October mineral rights auction. After our requests for reconsideration were denied our work was cut out.

First up was the gathering of personnel. We needed experts in communication, issue management, folks with knowledge and connections within the state government, especially the Department of Natural Resources, and, of course, attorneys. Several conference calls were held in short order to get the ball rolling.

We began a behind-the-scenes campaign, including communications from some of our well-placed members, to the DNR, Nature Resources Commission, DEQ, and Governor’s office. There were some weeks when the negotiations had the frenetic feel of a peace accord, but we stayed the course. It is important to remember that those folks involved were also working regular jobs, had family obligations, and were dealing with the same holiday mishmash as everybody else. There were times for some when sleep came at a premium. But we received important signals from key governmental officials that our request was meeting with approval – if we could keep the pressure on.

Next up came building a coalition. Fortunately, the outrageous nature of the DNR’s plan – some likened it to opening the Pictured Rocks or Sleeping Bear Dunes to oil and gas development – aided us in our recruitment. We had partnered with many of the same organizations on sundry causes before. In a very short time Michigan Trout Unlimited (plus two local chapters), the Sierra Club, Michigan League of Conservation Voters, National Wildlife Federation, Michigan Environmental Council, and the Au Sable Big Water Preservation Association were all on board.

It was decided that we needed to go further than the “usual suspects” this time. We were grateful for their support, but everybody involved, including all of them, knew that the extra mile was necessary if we hoped to succeed.

An extensive outreach effort was made to bring in several “non-traditional” partners. It worked better than expected. The City of Grayling, Grayling Township, property owners associations, the Au Sable River Watershed Committee, FLOW, recreation and real estate businesses, and, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs (MUCC) all joined us. MUCC is an extremely important voice regarding conservation questions in Michigan, and having them with us added tremendous weight to our push.

A letter to the DNR Director was carefully crafted. In the end 17 groups, businesses and governmental bodies signed on to it. The letter was sent on December 6, 2013, and copied to any and all in government likely to have a say in the leasing decision.

Many of these organizations took up the reigns on their own, but always staying on message in a carefully coordinated plan of attack. Email blasts to their memberships were forwarded to friends and so on. Almost everybody knew within a day of two of operatives hitting the “send” button what the Holy Water lease issue was all about.

In the meantime, our Public Relations team put together maps, photos, articles and op-eds. We began planting stories with a selected group of reporters throughout the state including the Detroit News, Free Press, the Associated Press, and Michigan Public Radio. The Holy Water lease story was showing up everywhere. It put the oil and gas development issue on the agenda, and the whole thing started to resonate with the public.

And then it went viral. Citizens were now furthering what groups initiated. Perhaps the best example of this was from Robert Thompson, a member of Anglers who is a video producer in Chicago. Thompson was already working on a feature film concerning the Au Sable (watch for its release soon!) and had plenty of footage of the river. He created a 90 second collage of the Holy Water and superimposed the slogans from our “Save The Holy Waters Poster” while adding an affecting soundtrack. Now the cause had a polished, professional commercial (http://vimeo.com/81287261) rolling through the cyberspace.

The tables had turned dramatically in roughly a fortnight. In the public sphere the pressure was mounting with every Internet refresh. People from discrete backgrounds, many of which who were not the typical responders to this sort of thing, were making their views known to the powers-that-be. Thousands of emails and letters were sent to Director Creagh. Behind the scenes in a highly disciplined dance of advocacy our well-placed members were making headway.

And in the end it worked. As outlined in RIVERWATCH 67 (“DNR Director Creagh Joins Anglers in Saying ‘No Surface Development’ on Holy Water”) the Director relented. He allowed the leases, but only as “non-development” in the Holy Waters corridor. This was our objective: preventing development of oil and gas wells near this special piece of water.

Of course, the devil is in the details. We are now working with the DNR on lease language that will prevent changes in the surface use designation during the life of the leases. In addition, Director Creagh assigned his Manager of Mineral Leases to design a way to identify “special places” like the Holy Waters in advance, and, if they are nominated for lease, make it clear they will be non-development. That’s not all there is left to do by a long shot, but we’ve come a long way since last October.

To say that this outcome was one of the most successful efforts in the 27-year history of Anglers would be self-serving, but not necessarily any less true. Given the short window of time and the nature of the government in this right-of-center, “drill, baby, drill” era, it seemed unlikely that we could affect a favorable outcome. But we did more than that. Now there is dialogue. The issue of oil and gas leasing and fracking is far from resolved in our state. The path forward is not clear.

We have a blueprint, though, recently tested and found to be effective. It involves smart and committed people from varied backgrounds hammering out consensus. It involves new partners, who for the first time are seeing the downside of oil and gas development when allowed to proceed in places that are special. We need to keep the pressure on, through a campaign involving diverse voices from the conservation community, environmental groups, business and local government. It cannot succeed without respectful discourse with the decision makers. And, finally, it can only truly be effective when it has the support of the people.

So, you see, it’s really not self-serving to say this may have been one of the Anglers’ Finest Hours. It came about due to a hell of a lot of people putting in a hell of a lot of effort, and doing it in double time.

Thank you all!

FLOW’s Transparent Open Door Fracking Program

Published on February 20th, 2014 by - H2Olson

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” – Richard Feynman

As a non-partisan policy and education center focused on protecting the Great Lakes, FLOW undertakes projects and programs based on the demonstrated reality of problems needing resolution. Unequivocally, FLOW’s mission and sole motivation is to protect our common fresh water resources from permanent harm through education and empowerment of leaders and citizens.

Recently in several online articles, FLOW was misrepresented as an “anti-fracking” “advocacy” group. We were painted as “environmentalists” possessed by an ulterior motive to obstruct the existence of the oil and gas industry, writ large, through “backdoor” practices.

We would like to clarify for the public record that these characterizations are neither true nor reasonable. Rather, our program for local governments to address fracking impacts is an apolitical and pragmatic solution for communities who approach FLOW and voluntarily participate in the program. Our approach is based on factual information regarding the potential risks of fracking and oil and gas development, and what local governments can and cannot do. It is then up to local communities and citizens to identify their local concerns and implement the legal tools and ordinances that address those concerns.

Our method is to work transparently and in direct participation with citizens and officials involved in the issue and solution. This democratic, participatory approach to problem-solving is why we pursue both policy and education as a means of protecting the public interest and maintaining the quality and quantity of our public common waters.

Our program to address local impacts of fracking derives from our thorough and intensive legal analysis report on the topic. FLOW was prompted to investigate the impacts of fracking as it relates to freshwater consumption in the unconventional horizontal (also known as high-volume) fracking process, which in Michigan uses unprecedented volumes of water (more than 21 million gallons per frack well).

The water-intensive horizontal fracking technology we’re seeing proliferate throughout the U.S. is occurring in a vacuum of federal and state regulations, and the industry is exempt from several key water, air, land, and public health protections.

In the spirit of Feynman, we echo the sentiment that, in regards to this particular fracking technology, “reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” FLOW’s intention is to address the reality of fracking impacts as they affect nature and human health in our communities. Despite the fallacious clamoring from some sources that say we are advocates, Luddites, or otherwise in denial of modernity, we at FLOW are – and will remain to be – nonpartisan nonprofit consultants working to protect the public interest of our Great Lakes water.

A Heartfelt Thanks to Our Partners at FLOW

Published on February 17th, 2014 by - News

We have so many partnerships to be grateful for at FLOW, and in honor of Valentine’s Day, we’re taking time to say thanks, and invite others to join us. Just this year, several organizations have reached out to us because of our mission to protect the Great Lakes as a commons and offered their support with community benefit events. From the Yoga for Health Education and Pete Seeger Tribute Community Concert fundraiser events, to the Beans 4 Blue coffee benefit with Great Northern Roasting Company, to the Great Lakes Information Network (GLIN) Site of the Month partnership, we all share a love for our precious common waters.

In January, for example, Yoga For Health Education owners Libby and Michael Robold in Traverse City graciously held a community yoga day to benefit FLOW.  And as a yoga teacher myself, I must say how impressed I was with the amazing teachers and ambiance of Yoga for Health Education at the Commons.

In March and April, Tim Joseph of the Spirit of the Woods Music and Gretchen Eichberger from the Northwest Michigan Folklife Center are organizing three separate Pete Seeger Tribute Community Concerts in Northern Lower Michigan, with proceeds to benefit FLOW. Pete Seeger was a real hero to us all, inspiring us with music to promote social justice and to protect our air, water, and land for current and future generations. The first Pete Seeger Tribute Concert will be held in Northern Manistee County on March 15, the next one will take place at the Mills Community House in Benzonia on March 23, and a final one will be in Traverse City in late April.  Stay tuned for more details about these upcoming events on our website https://forloveofwater.org/event/

Other wonderful news to celebrate is the brand new roll out of Great Northern Roasting Company’s (GRNC) Beans 4 Blue Coffee line with three blends: (1) the original Lake Effect blend, (2) the Wake 5 dark roast, and (3) the Shoreline light roast. All three blends are now on the shelves at grocers throughout Michigan’s lower peninsula and three percent of every bag sold benefits FLOW.  How lucky are we to have connected with GRNC owners Jack and Sarah Davis to celebrate organic fair trade gorgeous coffee and support Great Lakes water policy work, with 3% of sales proceeds donated to FLOW.

And just this month, the Great Lakes Commission-based Great Lakes Information Network (GLIN) named FLOW their Site of the Month for February.  As a GLIN partner, FLOW is honored and delighted to contribute to their outstanding resource network.  GLIN’s website feature comes at an auspicious time as FLOW is celebrating our one-year anniversary of our website today.

GLIN is a critical resource for the multi-jurisdictional agencies, organizations, and resources dedicated to managing and protecting the Great Lakes.  And such a resource is needed more than ever before so that we can effectively partner and collaborate to meet the grave challenges, systemic lake-wide threats like invasive species, algal blooms, dead zones, climate change, water levels, pollution, and many others.  It’s time to empower leaders and citizens across these great lakes with a new vision that protects our commons waters as a legacy for future generations – that’s what we’re about at FLOW. If you have an idea for partnering with FLOW, contact us at https://forloveofwater.org/great-lakes-partners/ and we hope that you join us in protecting these 20% of the world’s freshwater, now and forever.

Beans4Blue Coffee Now in Three Blends at Stores Statewide

Published on February 11th, 2014 by - Reports & Media Releases

Click here to view and download the full press release as a PDF

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director, FLOW
liz@flowforwater.org or 231-944-1568
or
Jack Davis, Owner, Great Northern Roasting Company
jack@greatnoroco.com or 231-943-3917

Beans4Blue Coffee Now in Three Blends at Stores Statewide

3% of Sales to Benefit the FLOW Great Lakes Policy and Education Center

TRAVERSE CITY, MI – A new series of three coffee blends aims to caffeinate and conserve water for Great Lakes lovers. The Beans 4 Blue coffee line from Traverse City-based Great Northern Roasting Company (GNRC) has three blends: the original Lake Effect blend, the Wake 5 dark roast, and the Shoreline light roast. All three blends are now on the shelves at grocers throughout Michigan’s lower peninsula. Three percent of every bag benefits FLOW, a Traverse City-based policy and education center working to protect the Great Lakes.

All three blends of Beans 4 Blue by Great Northern Roasting Company will now benefit FLOW

All three blends of Beans 4 Blue by Great Northern Roasting Company will now benefit FLOW

The GNRC has been roasting and selling coffee beans since 2001 when it was founded by Jack and Sarah Davis. GNRC is dedicated to providing the most exclusive and unique coffees, all of which are drum roasted by hand and held to the highest standard in quality and freshness. Embedded within their business standards is Jack and Sarah Davis’s love for the Great Lakes. Now with three blends available in the Beans 4 Blue coffee line, the GNRC is happy to announce that their customers can join them to help protect the Great Lakes.

“After all, coffee is just filtered water” says GNRC Owner Jack Davis, “and you just won’t get a good cup of coffee without fresh, clean water. That’s why we decided to create a product that includes protecting the Great Lakes as a part of the bottom line.” Teaming up with the Traverse City-based nonprofit FLOW “was a no-brainer” says Mr. Davis, because of their common goal to protect the Great Lakes.

FLOW’s mission is to advance solutions to save the Great Lakes and their expert team of attorneys and professionals specialize in the legal strategies known as the public trust doctrine. Through educational presentations and advanced policy research, FLOW develops legal strategies that all add up to better protections for the waters of the Great Lakes.

“Sometimes folks can feel helpless when big issues threaten to harm the Great Lakes,” says FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood, “and that’s where FLOW comes in, to empower people with tools for taking action that will ultimately create a better future for these waters.”

This rang true and captured the attention of Mr. Davis, whose daughter goes to the same school in Traverse City as both of Mrs. Kirkwood’s kids. A longtime vision that had yet to come to life, Mr. Davis had always wanted to find a way for his company to give back to the community. When he learned about FLOW’s action-oriented policy and education programs that address Great Lakes issues, “right away I knew that we should collaborate to create a coffee that benefits the Great Lakes,” he says. And so, Beans 4 Blue was created.

The first Beans 4 Blue coffee, the Lake Effect blend, premiered in stores in late fall of 2013. Now, GNRC is in full-tilt production and fulfilling requests for Lake Effect blend as well as the new dark roast, Wake 5 blend, and the light roast, Shoreline blend. All blends of the Beans 4 Blue Coffee are 100% shade grown Arabica, and Rainforest Alliance certified.

Not unlike FLOW’s educational programs, and in the spirit of ensuring an excellent coffee experience to customers, GNRC also offers informational workshops on coffee, roasting, tasting, and human and economic impact of global coffee markets. GNRC specializes in direct trade and fair trade, and are committed to upholding the highest standards for human and labor rights as well as environmental protection, including biodiversity and sustainability.

For more information, to find a store near you that carries Beans 4 Blue, or to place an online order, please visit: http://beans4blue.com

Contact: Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director, FLOW
liz@flowforwater.org or 231-944-1568
or
Jack Davis, Owner, Great Northern Roasting Company
jack@greatnoroco.com or 231-943-3917

FLOW Local Ordinance Program Addresses Fracking Impacts in Conway Township, MI

Published on February 10th, 2014 by - Reports & Media Releases

FLOW Founder Jim Olson addresses Conway Township Fracking Issues

Click here to view and download the full press release as a PDF

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director
liz@flowforwater.org or 231-944-1568

FLOW Local Ordinance Program Addresses Fracking Impacts in Conway Township, MI

Over 100 Citizens Attend FLOW Presentation

FOWLERVILLE, MI – In February of 2014, Conway Township signed up as the third township to participate in FLOW’s Local Ordinance program that helps the township develop regulatory ordinances to address potential risks and impacts of high volume hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for oil and gas. On February 6th, FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood and FLOW Founder Jim Olson delivered the first of two public presentations to educate and empower Conway Township leaders and residents about the associated risks and impacts of fracking and specific legal strategies to consider.

Held at the Alverson Center for Performing Arts in Fowlerville, the presentation drew an estimated crowd of almost 150 citizens and leaders who came to learn about horizontal fracking developments in Michigan since 2010, potential risks and impacts, and viable legal strategies to regulate fracking impacts as part of FLOW’s ordinance program for Conway Township. FLOW works with the township to determine what areas of concern are most pertinent to the community to regulate, and the public presentations dually serve as a forum for citizens and leaders to express the topics they hope local legal strategies can address.

“The turnout was impressive,” says Olson, “and the citizens demonstrated not only a real concern but a remarkable knowledge of the issues and context of fracking in Michigan and in their own community.” The GeoSouthern Energy Corporation drilled an exploratory well in Conway Township, granted by a 2013 permit. The permit approved three million gallons of water and fracking fluid to explore a one-mile radius area. The exploratory well is located on a property that, according to the owner in a Denver Post article from September 2013, was drilled three times in the past 30 years without success.

The February 6th presentation in Fowlerville was the first of two public presentations FLOW will host for Conway Township. Then, the FLOW staff will carefully craft a package of recommendations for Township leaders to consider incorporating into their local ordinances and laws as they see fit.

FLOW Founder Jim Olson addresses Conway Township Fracking Issues

FLOW Founder Jim Olson addresses Conway Township Fracking Issues. Photo (c) FLOW/Liz Kirkwood

“The fracking process is largely under-regulated or exempt from key federal and state laws that protect common water, land, air, and public health,” says Kirkwood. “The local governments are left holding the bag when it comes to protecting their citizens from the potential harms and risks of the fracking process or any other industrial processes that come to their town. Our program empowers local governments and their citizens to prepare themselves in advance to handle it,” she says.

Fracking for oil and natural gas is exempt from many regulatory laws at both the federal and state levels, including the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts, the Great Lakes Compact, and Michigan’s Water Withdrawal Act. Despite zoning prohibitions to regulate drilling, construction production, and operation of oil and gas wells, townships still do maintain legal authority to regulate ancillary activities, including roads, truck traffic, pipelines, flow lines, gathering lines, location of wells, disclosure of chemical use, air pollution and more. Moreover, townships can rely on other sources of authority such as police power ordinances and franchise agreements.

FLOW has delivered a similar educational overview to over twenty communities throughout Michigan in the past year. This informational presentation is based on FLOW’s November 2012 report, “Horizontal Fracturing for Oil and Natural Gas in Michigan: Legal Strategies and Tools for Communities and Citizens.” FLOW’s report highlights legal strategies and policies designed to assist local governments in safeguarding their communities against the unprecedented and cumulative impacts of fracking.

Horizontal fracking requires injecting a cocktail of up to 21 million gallons of water and over 750 chemicals under high pressure into wells in order to fracture deep shale formations and release oil and natural gas. A review of literature on fracking and its associated risks reveals several concerns: (1) massive water withdrawals; (2) groundwater contamination; (3) surface spills and leaks; (4) wastewater management; (5) land-use impacts; (6) truck traffic and burden on infrastructure; (7) lack of public disclosure.

An op-ed piece from January 12, 2014 the news service LivingstonDaily.com published outlined that, no matter where Conway Township officials and citizens choose to draw their party lines in regards to fracking, “there clearly can be an impact on the surrounding community where fracking is conducted, and it is more than fair for the local communities to have some controls in place to make sure they are minimal.”

The next FLOW public workshop for Conway Township will be held in late March, early April.  Conway Township like many of the neighboring townships in Livingston County is interested in proactively protecting the area’s valuable natural resources for agriculture and high quality of life. To ensure different viewpoints on this topic, Conway Township has invited the Department of Environmental Quality to speak to local officials about its permitting role for the oil and gas industry this coming week of February 10.

Contact:
Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director
liz@flowforwater.org or 231-944-1568