Tag: Joan Wolfe

Does Environmental History Become Environmental Prophecy?

Published on December 20th, 2021 by - Blog Posts, News

Dave Dempsey, Senior Advisor

By Dave Dempsey

When a book of history you’ve written becomes history itself, this not only makes you feel old, but also gives you a chance, in hindsight, to see how accurate it is.

Twenty years ago, in 2001, the University of Michigan Press published Ruin and Recovery: Michigan’s Rise as a Conservation Leader. It was a book I’d long wanted to write. Based on 20 prior years of learning the environmental history of Michigan on the job, I attempted to put in perspective the good and bad in the state’s management of its natural resources.

Despite the catastrophes marking Michigan’s environmental history, I intended the book to capture a stirring story of citizen action to rebuild and protect the air, water, forests, fish and wildlife–and human health–since Michigan became a state in 1837. I was fortunate that the book received a generally warm welcome.

But now it’s time to look back. Although I’m pleased with much of Ruin and Recovery, I also see its flaws. They’re considerable. Here are a few; the book was:

  • Intended to cover Michigan’s environmental history as a state, but in doing so it said virtually nothing about the people who lived here for approximately 10,000 years before that. How did they live in relation to the landscape and waterscape? How did their ways and practices affect these peninsulas?
  • At 368 pages, too long for many readers.
  • Simplistic in its faith that Michigan would become a conservation leader among the states again.

This faith was founded on the finding that Michigan had lived through several cycles of destruction and healing. First, rapacious logging companies stripped Michigan of its white pine, and market hunting and fishing devoured wildlife and aquatic life.

Then citizens organized and successfully pressured state legislators to create forest reserves and commit to a plan of sustainable harvest. They also compelled legislators to enact legislation establishing harvesting seasons and rules.

Similarly, when pollution blackened the sky and poisoned the water, it was citizens who clamored for the cleanup laws that distinguished Michigan among the 50 states.

I projected that this would happen again as new challenges occurred, including urban sprawl, climate change, and new forms of air and water pollution.

So far, I’ve been wrong. Not because of lack of concern among Michigan’s residents, but because of a political culture resistant to–and designed to be resistant to–the wishes and forces of the public. And also because of social changes that limit the amount of volunteer and advocacy time available to the public.

Some readers have even joked darkly that the book should be renamed Ruin and Recovery and Ruin Again. I can’t go that far, or anywhere near it.

I still take heart from examples of Michigan’s past.

Charles Garfield, a Grand Rapids banker, for 20 years in the late 1800s and early 1900s advocated that the state create a public forest system to replace cutover, fire-charred acres of Northern Michigan. Today, the Department of Natural Resources manages 3.9 million acres of state forests.

Genevieve Gillette, a landscape architect, spent 50 years of her life from the 1920s as a volunteer champion of building Michigan’s state park system. Her work contributed to everything from Tahquamenon Falls State Park to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Today, there are 306,000 acres of state parks and recreation areas.

Joan Wolfe, a citizen advocate living in Belmont, organized and led a coalition of interests that overcame polluter resistance to win state legislative approval of the Michigan Environmental Protection Act (MEPA) in 1970. Today, MEPA stands tall as a landmark law empowering the public.

As Joan said in summarizing the work to enact MEPA, “To me the greatest lesson is: ‘None of us is as smart as all of us,’ and ’Nothing we do can be accomplished alone.’”

There is no time to fall back on cynicism. And there is no purpose in apathy. Michigan’s environmental challenges are too great. The impulse for environmental recovery in Michigan has always begun with its public. Today, it must again.

If it does, 20 years from now an environmental historian can write Ruin and Renewal: Michigan’s People Rise Again.

Joan Wolfe’s Enduring Protection of Michigan’s Air, Water, Land, and Living Creatures

Published on February 1st, 2021 by - Blog Posts, News

Dave Dempsey, Senior Advisor

By Dave Dempsey

It is sometimes difficult to see where a hero’s work fits in history immediately after she dies. Not so in the case of Joan Wolfe, who passed away on January 23. A passionate, visionary and effective champion of Michigan’s environment, she holds an assured place in Michigan’s environmental history. Few citizens have done so much to protect our air, water, land, and living creatures for posterity.

Any account of Joan’s work must feature her role in designing and winning legislative approval of the 1970 Michigan Environmental Protection Act (MEPA). And her founding of the West Michigan Environmental Action Council (WMEAC), the first heavyweight citizens group of environmental advocates in our state. She also chaired the state Natural Resources Commission. A complete story of her life and accomplishments is here.

Joan also wrote a cliffhanger, a history of MEPA and the Inland Lakes and Streams Act of 1972. It’s a detailed history of the citizen action that drove the Michigan Legislature to pass these two extraordinary laws, but it’s no dull academic treatise. There is plenty of behind-the-scenes drama as Joan, her husband Will, and a multitude of Michigan citizens overcome lobbyists and unsympathetic legislators who fiercely resist strengthening protections for the environment. Her example and history of citizen advocacy is as important today as it was in the 1970s, maybe more so.

In an era well before e-mail and cell phones, Joan turned I-96 into her advocacy avenue, hurrying the 70 miles to and from her home in Belmont to reach legislators of both major parties and all philosophies for face-to-face persuasion from morning to midnight. But she believed she could have no success without the force of citizens pressuring their own lawmakers, and she dedicated considerable time to partnering with and training groups across the state. One of her fundamental insights was that elected officials are rarely the leaders; rather, citizens must lead those so-called leaders.

I had the honor and privilege of getting to know Joan and Will while researching my first book, Ruin and Recovery (University of Michigan Press, 2001). Every minute I spent with them was memorable. Joan was especially concerned that I accurately report the history of the environmental movement during her leadership era. She graciously reviewed each word and gently pointed out any gaps or inaccuracies.

She also insisted that I make clear that the Inland Lakes and Streams Act was the brainchild and legacy of Will. Truly, they were a team in fashioning tools that 50 years later play a key role in safeguarding Michigan’s natural resources.

Joan’s advocacy was thoughtful and strategic, not governed by emotion (despite her fierce commitment). She encouraged citizen activists to be civil and respectful, not shrill and scattershot. That was one secret to her success.

Joan was the first woman appointed to the Natural Resources Commission and later became its first female chairperson. No woman had served in an equivalent role in any other state.  She broke that glass ceiling. In the 1970s, the citizens conservation and environmental movement was still too much a male show. Some in the movement stereotyped her as an “emotional woman” before coming around to professing that she was more cool-headed and thoughtful, and had more cojones than most of the males.

Joan lent me a videotape (when there were still VCRs) of a special TV program broadcast by Grand Rapids TV-8 on Earth Day 1970. The program featured work she, WMEAC, and others were doing that day. Much of the special addressed the need to protect what was then the future—what we call the present. I told her I was profoundly moved that she was thinking of us, and our children. I think she was pleased.

We owe Joan and her generation a debt it is difficult to repay. But if I could ask her now, I am certain she would say: don’t be disheartened, don’t give up, citizens will always win if they persist. Give your best, and 50 years from now the results of your work will endure, whether it’s a state law or protection of a small local wetland.

We can do no less to respect Joan’s legacy.

The MEPA Turns 50

Published on July 29th, 2020 by - Blog Posts, H2Olson, News

Jim Olson is FLOW’s Founder, President, and Legal Advisor

Photo: Kolke Creek in the headwaters of the AuSable River was protected by MEPA after the Michigan Supreme Court prohibited discharge of 1 million gallons of oil-field treated wastewater.

Editor’s note: This is part 1 of a series on the history of import of the MEPA.

By Jim Olson

Serendipity can mean chance, destiny, and providence. But serendipity means nothing without the commitment of people, often ordinary people whose hearts were moved to act with complete trust that what they were doing was the right thing.

Such was the case when a group of civic-minded citizens and organizations in April 1969 took a first-of-its-kind, draft environmental law to the political leaders and powerbrokers of Michigan. Their sustained effort resulted, 50 years ago on July 27, 1970, in Governor William Milliken, surrounded by members of the legislature from both sides of the aisle, signing into law the world’s first environmental citizen suit law. The Michigan Environmental Protection Act of 1970, the MEPA, created the legal right of citizens to bring suits in court to protect the environment in which they live. But the cordial, nonpartisan ceremony doesn’t tell the real story.

The 1960s were tumultuous times. It wasn’t just the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. The jolting assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., President John Kennedy, and his brother Robert Kennedy shattered the illusion that citizens could simply trust the government as if it was a benevolent parent to protect them. By the late 1960s, people realized that they must care, march, speak out, and participate in government decision-making, to expect government to listen, and to do something if government didn’t.

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring exposed the poisoning of the environment, the food we eat, and water we drink, from unbridled use of pesticides like DDT. Smog choked our cities, rivers caught on fire, an oil well ruptured off the coast of Santa Barbara. Scientists declared Lake Erie “dead.” In 1965, a federal appeals court recognized that citizens’ with “special recreational and conservational” interests had legal “standing” to petition a court to overturn a permit for a 2,200 mega-watt pump-storage power plant on the Hudson River. Then came the first Earth Day in 1970, an event that largely started on the campus of the University of Michigan and grew into a national and world-wide movement.

Birth of the MEPA in Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor

So, how did the MEPA come about? What would the proposed law created by a young law professor at the University of Michigan Law School do? How could an environmental law address the scientific complexities of pollution in just two or three pages, when the sweeping regulatory environmental permit standards in the Clean Air Act of 1970 ran 147 pages? [42 U.S.C., Sections 7401-7671]

Joan Wolfe

In 1968, a group of citizens living in Grand Rapids formed the West Michigan Environmental Council—WMEAC—the state’s first broad-based organization of citizens and civic organizations to take action to protect West Michigan’s environment. [Joan Wolfe, A “History of the Michigan Environmental Protection Act” (author’s personal account, circa 1972)] Not long after, led by its founder Joan Wolfe with the help of her husband Will and Grand Rapids lawyers Peter Steketee and Hillary Snell, the group filed a suit in federal district court to stop the use of DDT by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The court, however, threw out the suit because the federal law did not grant them a right to sue to contest the agency’s use of pesticides. All they could do was write letters to persuade the government not to do it.

Professor Joe Sax (1936-2014)

Undeterred, Wolfe and WMEAC contacted a law professor Joe Sax, who had recently joined the faculty at the U of M Law School, to see if a law could be written to fix the lack of the legal right to sue to prevent the degradation of the state’s air, water, and natural resources. By early 1969, Sax drafted a proposed law, which five years later after Michigan’s Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality, he would call an “Environmental Bill of Rights.”[“Michigan Upholds and Ecology Law that Let’s Citizens Halt Harmful Projects,” The New York Times, Archives, Jan. 26, 1975.] The model law stated that “any person could bring an action in court to protect the air, water, and natural resources or the public trust therein” from “likely pollution, impairment, or destruction.”

The model law stated that “any person could bring an action in court to protect the air, water, and natural resources or the public trust therein” from “likely pollution, impairment, or destruction.”

WMEAC convened a vast coalition of community and business leaders, conservation leaders, law students, journalists, and many civic organizations—UAW, AFL-CIO, Michigan United Conservation Clubs, League of Women Voters, National Audubon, the Black Unity Council, the PTA—and showed the draft law to a long-time sportsman, an articulate and highly respected member of the state House of Representatives, Tom Anderson. [Dave Dempsey, Ruin and Recovery: Michigan’s Rise as a Conservation Leader, Chpt. 11, pp. 162-177 (University of Michigan Press, 2004); “Give Earth a Chance,” note 1, supra.] Known as the “gentle giant” because of his reflective manner and his 6-foot, 6-inch frame, [“Thomas Jefferson Anderson-Environmentalist,” Meandering Michigan History] Anderson and his natural resources committee met with Sax, and commenced artful discussions with representatives from both political parties. [Id., Dave Dempsey, at p. 176-177] On April 1, 1969, buoyed by the surging support of so many individuals and organizations, Anderson and sponsor Warren Goemaere introduced the “Sax” bill as House Bill 3055.

The bill’s central feature, a citizen suit to remove complex obstacles of administrative law, [James Olson, Michigan Environmental Law, Chpt. 9, p. 185 (Neahtawanta Press, 1981)] posed a dramatic change at the time. The model law aimed at the “disillusionment” that administrative agencies were “too closely associated with the interests of industry.” [The Michigan Environmental Protection Act of 1970, 4 U. Mich. J.L. Reform, 121 (1970-1971)] As later described by the state’s highest court, “Not every public agency proved to be diligent and dedicated defenders of the environment. The [MEPA] has provided a sizable share of the initiative for environmental law enforcement for that segment of society most directly affected—the public.” [Ray v Mason County Drain Comm’r, 393 Mich 294, 305 (1975)]

In Lansing, Havoc in the House Hearings

The tide of euphoria surrounding H.B. 3055 soon ebbed. Not to be overtaken by a law that would destroy decades of close ties with their regulators, industry and commercial interests mobilized. Industry claimed citizens would file lawsuits that would harass lawful enterprise and stop progress in its tracks; Ford Motor remained concerned that it would make business difficult. [Joan Wolfe, note 3, supra, p. 5] Attorney General Frank Kelley, Governor Milliken’s legal advisor, and the Department of Natural Resources, even Governor Milliken himself, were skeptical at best. At first, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce at first remained circumspect. During the winter and spring of 1970, Anderson’s committee and Senator Gordon Rockwell’s environment committee scheduled hearings. The Wolfe coalition of civic organizations and individuals from all over the state took on a life of its own. Hundreds of citizens packed the committee rooms.

The Chamber was joined by manufacturing and agricultural interests, and struck with full force. The Chamber coalition offered amendments to sink the bill—a provision that would limit suits to “unreasonable” pollution and impairment. [James Olson, note 9, supra, pp. 192-193. In drafting the original bill, Joe Sax was not doubtful of the foresight in Art. 4, Sec. 52 of the 1963 Constitution that mandated the legislature (“shall”) to protect the air, water, and natural resources of the state from pollution, impairment, or destruction, without a qualifying adjective like “unreasonable.”] Another provision would remove the word “public trust,” weakening the duty of the state to protect its lakes, streams, and valuable public lands.

Debate and citizen outcry at times rose to near maelstroms. But Governor Milliken and other leaders took charge, adamantly supporting the original bill. Frank Kelley withdrew his initial skepticism, and Director Ralph MacMullan and the DNR became strong proponents. When the committee passed and sent H.B. 3055 to the House floor for a vote, more heated debate ensued. On April 21, 1970, the House struck “unreasonable” and the other damaging amendments, and the bill passed almost in its original form. [Dempsey, note 6, supra, p. 174-175; Olson, note 9, supra] Now it was the Senate’s turn.

Emerging Ultimately Unscathed in the Senate

The plight of H.B. 3055 was no less dramatic in the Senate. Tom Washington, the powerful, brash head of Michigan United Conservation Clubs, warned the Senate could be the bill’s downfall. [Wolfe, note 3, supra] The Chamber renewed its demand to weaken the MEPA by reinserting the word “unreasonable” in front of pollution. Farm Bureau called for a penalty of twice the costs and attorney fees if citizens lost their lawsuit; the Manufacturers introduced a change that would remove the feasible and prudent alternative test. [Id.; Wolfe, note 3, supra] Senator Rockwell, the chair of the Senate Environment Committee, a critical Republican ally to the bill’s passage, called for patience. After a newspaper editorial chastised him for not scheduling a hearing, he scheduled a hearing on one week’s notice. Wolfe, WMEAC, UAW, Rep. Anderson, Sax, students from Michigan’s Environmental Law Society, and hundreds of others shifted into high gear and packed the hearing to block the renewed efforts to cripple the bill. Governor Milliken continued to speak up and urge passage of the bill. Weeks passed, and there was silence, so Wolfe once more rallied the troops of citizens, organizations, and leaders, calling on senators to take up the bill or suffer the consequences in their primary election. On the last day before recess, the Senate took up the bill, and it passed unscathed.

Key Provisions of the MEPA

The MEPA is terse compared to other laws. [Act 451, Public Acts of 1994, Part 17, Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act, MCL 324.1701-1706] The opening section simply states that “any person may maintain an action” in court “for the protection of the air, water, and other natural resources and the public trust in these resources from pollution, impairment, or destruction.” [Section 1701(1), MCL 324.1701(1)] The dramatic contrast between the MEPA and long, complex regulations that govern the approval of permits proves the difference. Unlike laws and permitting regulations managed by agencies tasked with narrow, specific technical standards to limit toxic and hazardous substances, harmful discharges, and control or manage toxic wastes, the MEPA took a different tack.

Not only does it grant citizens the right to bring a civil lawsuit, the MEPA charges courts with the responsibility to find the facts and rule in each case whether there is likely pollution based on the underlying factual proofs and science in open court and subject to the truth-searching light of cross examination. [Section 1703(1), MCL 324.1703(1)] In short, the MEPA levels the playing field. All persons or parties to a dispute share equal access and responsibility for addressing or disputing the alleged harm. If a citizen (plaintiff) who files a suit establishes that conduct “has or is likely to pollute, impair, or destroy” the environment, the conduct is prohibited unless the defendant proves that here is “no feasible and prudent alternative” and the conduct is consistent with health, safety, and welfare and an overarching concern for the natural resources or public trust involved. In addition to citizen suits, persons may intervene in an agency permit proceeding and participate as a party to oppose or present evidence that shows the applicant’s proposed conduct or development is likely to cause harm the environment. And, if the harm is shown to likely occur, the agency cannot approve the permit unless it can determine that the applicant has no alternative consistent with the state’s paramount concern for its natural resources. [Section 1705, MCL 324.1705]

In short, the MEPA levels the playing field. All persons or parties to a dispute share equal access and responsibility for addressing or disputing the alleged harm.

But the MEPA does more. It authorized the courts in day-to-day decisions in the cases before them to develop, collectively, what has been called “the common law of the environment.” Each case becomes another benchmark to guide persons, industry, developers, businesses, and governments in deciding what is and what is not permissible conduct affecting the environment. While the MEPA does not cover every minor human action, those actions that exceed the threshold of “likely pollution, impairment, or destruction” do violate the law. This standard has become the lifeblood of Michigan’s environmental principles and ethos. If a court finds the threshold has been violated, the conduct is prohibited unless a defendant proves there is no feasible and prudent alternative that is consistent with the state’s paramount concern to protect its natural resources.

A Message from Joan Wolfe on the MEPA’s Key Lesson

The MEPA was born out of a deep mutual desire by often competing stakeholders to do the right thing. Today, all of us in Michigan should take time to reflect on the lessons learned, the injustices prevented or eliminated, and the principles that have evolved into our common law and ethos to protect the environment. As Joan Wolfe, the mother of MEPA, has wisely passed on to all of us, present and future generations:

“Two ingredients may not be obvious. One is the importance of a coalition agreeing on one priority at a time, and the other is to persist — persist until the ink is dry.

But the lesson I want most to emphasize is the need for the leader/coordinator to reach out and actively encourage a diverse spectrum of individuals and groups to adopt the issue as their own and take some initiative, so that information and work are shared and grow at an exponential pace, and imaginative ideas and help that can make a pivotal difference are more likely to happen.

Think of the woman who went to Lansing just to help swell the crowd, and ended up persuading Peter Kok to vote for a crucial amendment that passed by ONE vote. Think of the creative idea and initiative by two Earth Day leaders that, when publicized at a pivotal point, defused a powerful report from the Attorney General’s office. Think of the parts so many individuals played.

In summary, I go back to the quotes that preceded this account: To me the greatest lesson is: “None of us is as smart as all of us,” and “Nothing we do can be accomplished alone.”[Joan Wolfe, note 3, supra]

This lesson is as true today as it was in 1970. In 2020, we are empowered, and we hold the present right and responsibility to solve the continuing systemic, devastating effects to our air, water, and natural resources in the 21st century. At any time, we have the choice to rise above our political or ideological differences and unite through relentless, tireless, day-to-day work and forward-looking vision to face the complexities and uncertainties in our lives and those of our children and grandchildren.

“But the lesson I want most to emphasize is the need for the leader/coordinator to reach out and actively encourage a diverse spectrum of individuals and groups to adopt the issue as their own and take some initiative, so that information and work are shared and grow at an exponential pace, and imaginative ideas and help that can make a pivotal difference are more likely to happen.” — Joan Wolfe

___________________________________________________________________________

Editor’s note: Still to come is Part 2 of the series – The MEPA’s Growing Pains

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the MEPA, the next installment of this series will look at the challenges and growing pains of a new law that has matured into a pillar of Michigan’s and the nation’s environmental laws. Five more states passed their own citizen suit laws patterned after the MEPA, and Congress incorporated citizen suit provisions in the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

Within three years after MEPA took effect, as many as 50 citizen suits had been filed across the country, 33 of them in Michigan, and 26 succeeded [Joseph Sax and Roger Connor, Michigan’s Environmental Protection Act: Progress Report, 70 Mich L. Rev 1003 (1972); Joseph Sax and Joseph DiMento, Environmental Citizen Suits: Three Years’ Experience under the Michigan Environmental Protection Act, (Env. L. Quarterly, 1974)] in the six states that had enacted citizen suit laws. Since then, citizen suit provisions have been included in numerous federal laws, and formed the legal framework for state consumer protection laws.

The broad-based provision that authorized courts to prohibit conduct that would pollute the air, water, and natural resources, and the incorporation of the public trust doctrine to protect those resources, would come to influence environmental law and policy around the world. It is not without significance that, in 2007, the MEPA and its author Professor Joe Sax won the Blue Planet Prize, the Nobel prize for the environment.

Reflecting on Earth Day 1970 in Michigan and the Origin of the State’s Environmental Movement

Published on April 22nd, 2019 by - Blog Posts

Above: Poster for the ENACT (Environmental Action for Survival) Earth Day Teach-In on the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor campus in March 1970.

“Man has so severely despoiled his natural environment that serious concern exists for his survival…What began as an idea and a desire to do something about saving our environment by a small study group has now mushroomed into an officially recognized organization with nearly 200 members.”

— From the newsletter of ENACT (ENvironmental ACTion for Survival), University of Michigan, Nov. 19-28, 1969

The public concern awakened in 1962 by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring had deepened with news of the exploding world population and declining wildlife species like bald eagles, which plummeted to just 82 pairs in Michigan during the 1960s after DDT exposure thinned their eggshells. As pollution darkened skies and choked rivers, many new activists drew a link between environmental problems and threats to the survival of the human race. The new movement of environmentalists suddenly became a major force in Michigan during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Jane Elder, who worked for the Michigan chapter of the Sierra Club in the 1970s, said, “I and many others of the new environmental movement came of political age during the closing scenes of Viet Nam and the crest of civil rights. We knew we could change the world, and saving the environment was part of that agenda. We saw a generation of activists stop a war. Our motivations were driven in part by collective vision and passion, not the inside game.”

The Pioneering Work of Joan Wolfe in Michigan

One of the most effective of the new advocates was a bird-lover, mother, and volunteer, Joan Wolfe of Rockford, north of Grand Rapids. Born in Detroit in 1929, Wolfe grew up in Highland Park with parents who contributed considerable time to community affairs. Her mother was president of the local hospital auxiliary and of the Girl Scout Council; her father was president of the Highland Park school board and of the state chapter of the American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers. By contrast, her husband Willard had no family tradition of community activism, but had become an active fly fisherman. In his childhood living on the Detroit River at Grosse Ile just before World War II, he had seen “tremendous weed growth” and stayed out of the polluted water, but hadn’t then made broader observations about the condition of the outdoors. He was delighted to find trout in the Rogue River, which wound through the Rockford area, when the Wolfes moved there in the late 1950s. But the same stream was also fouled by effluent from the Wolverine Tannery and a paper mill. “There was no outcry,” Will Wolfe said in 1999. “It was still too close to the Depression. The problem was too close to the bread and butter of the community.”

Soon both of the Wolfes would become activists. In the early 1960s, Joan Wolfe became president of the Grand Rapids Audubon Club. In that position she tried to call the attention of Audubon members to issues that connected bird conservation to larger trends such as habitat loss and pesticide use.

A fire on the Cuyahoga River at Cleveland in July 1969 helped galvanize public sentiment for Earth Day the following year. A fire also erupted on the Rouge River in southeast Michigan in October 1969, alarming the public and inspiring calls for tougher environmental laws.

Her most important work began in 1966. Working with 11 sponsoring organizations, Joan Wolfe coordinated an all-day seminar that October at the Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids to educate the community about problems facing the local, state, and national environment. It was one of the biggest events of its kind in that era, attracting over 500 people, half of them college students. Officials of the state conservation and public health departments spoke on the need for better sewage systems and the dangers of persistent chemicals, but others addressed threats caused by growing population and a social attitude that science could fix any natural resource problem. Dr. Howard Tanner of Michigan State University’s Department of Natural Resources said the predicted U.S. population of 400 million in the year 2000 posed special challenges, adding, “if we don’t put a level on our population and give thought to its distribution, we’re just stupid. There’s no other word for it.” Merrill L. Petoskey, assistant manager of the Southern Michigan Region of the department of conservation, called humankind “too reckless and too greedy. It’s almost past time when we can repair the damage we have caused.” 

The process of planning the seminar had resulted in general agreement among the sponsoring organizations that the community needed a coordinating organization. In February 1968, Joan Wolfe pulled together a dinner of Grand Rapids community leaders to ask their support for something she was calling the West Michigan Council on Environmental Action. The roster of the meeting was extensive and impressive.  Paid for by the Dyer-Ives Foundation, the dinner was attended by representatives of the local League of Women Voters, the West Michigan Tourist Association, the local Garden Club, the Anti-Pollution Committee of the utility workers local union, the Isaac Walton League, the Grand Rapids Press and WOOD-TV, the president of Grand Valley State College, and other dignitaries.

The group agreed on the need for a council of organizations and individuals who would work together on environmental causes, and they signed up to support it.  At the new council’s first meeting the following month, Wolfe was named president. The council grew quickly to include 45 organizations and more than 400 individuals. The organization also launched its issues work quickly, speaking at numerous hearings held by government agencies. An official of the state water resources commission exclaimed at a public hearing in 1968, “This is the first time we’ve heard from the grass roots.”

Gaylord Nelson Takes It National

U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin had proposed a national environmental “teach-in” on college campuses to be held in April, urging that it become an opportunity for learning about the nation’s and world’s grave environmental problems. Fueled by campus activism, the teach-ins evolved into Earth Day and stunned skeptics. An estimated 10,000 schools, 2,000 colleges and universities, and almost every community in the nation participated in events to celebrate and clean-up the environment. Cars were banned for two hours on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The U.S. Congress adjourned for Earth Day so that members could attend teach-ins in their districts.

All three major TV networks covered the events around the country. A geology student attending Albion College, Walter Pomeroy, appeared on a CBS-TV prime-time special on April 22, Earth Day: A Question of Survival, hosted by Walter Cronkite. In contrast to protests on other campuses that Cronkite called sometimes “frivolous,” the Albion activities Pomeroy organized included the cleanup of a vacant lot to create a small urban park.

Albion called itself “Manufacturing City U.S.A.,” CBS reported, and not all its foundries had installed air pollution control equipment. But Pomeroy told reporter Hughes Rudd that he had arranged meetings with the local polluters to promote dialogue.  “We were afraid,” he said, “that if we picketed the factories, it would actually turn the community against us.” The special showed Pomeroy’s fellow students jumping up and down on the non-aluminum cans they’d collected in the cleanup, making them easier to return to the manufacturer with a message that it should switch to recyclable materials. Michigan television stations also broadcast specials in the season of Earth Day. WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids broadcast a series, Our Poisoned World, detailing serious local air, water, and noise pollution, and the problem of garbage disposal.

Michigan One of the Hotbeds of Earth Day Action

At a five-day teach-in on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor in March, in which an estimated 50,000 persons participated, Victor Yannacone, who in 1967 had filed the Environmental Defense Fund lawsuits to stop the spraying of DDT and dieldrin, spoke on use of the courts to halt pollution. He told students, “This land is your land.  It doesn’t belong to Ford, General Motors, or Chrysler…it doesn’t belong to any soulless corporation.  It belongs to you and me.” A new student group called ENACT organized the week’s events, which included an “Environmental Scream-Out,” a tour of local pollution sites, music by popular singer Gordon Lightfoot, and speeches by entertainer Arthur Godfrey, scientist Barry Commoner, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, and Senators Nelson and Edward Muskie of Maine.

Business Week magazine said the Ann Arbor event had attracted the greatest turnout of any teach-in to that date.  Noting that President Richard Nixon and college administrators hoped environmental issues would turn students away from Vietnam War protests, the magazine fretted that it appeared “the struggle for clean air and water is producing as many radicals as the war.  And if the rhetoric at Michigan is any guide, business will bear the brunt of criticism.”

Action Took Different Forms on Different Campuses

Tom Bailey, a Marquette high school student, worked with students at Northern Michigan University to plan Earth Day activities.  One was a “flush-in.” Students flushed fluorescent dye tablets down dorm toilets at a synchronized moment in an effort to prove that sewage was directly discharging into Lake Superior. 

Events like these not only attracted the attention of the press, but also gave future environmental professionals their first major public exposure. Bailey later worked for the state Department of Natural Resources, as had his father, and became executive director of the Little Traverse Conservancy. One of ENACT’s founders on the University of Michigan campus, John Turner, later became director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Doug Scott, a graduate student active in ENACT’s teach-in planning, moved on to the national staff of the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club.

Student concern and action did not stop on Earth Day. Walt Pomeroy of Albion College contacted activists on other campuses who agreed the next logical step was the formation of a student lobby for the environment.  Described as “lobbyists in blue jeans” by one newspaper, the new Michigan Student Environmental Confederation received a surprisingly warm welcome from some in the Capitol.

“Soon we made friends in the legislature on both sides of the aisle,” said Pomeroy in 1999. “We learned a day at a time. And since we were in the Capitol almost every day, our network of friends and supporters expanded from just student groups to a diversity of community, environmental and sportsmen groups. Legislative priorities turned into victories…We started an environmental organization with a good cause, not much financial support and worked with the sportsmen and other environmental groups. We created the path – the opportunity – for others to also organize environmental groups and hire staff. None had existed solely to focus on state environmental legislative policies prior to the creation of MSEC. Many followed and are now part of the accepted political landscape in Lansing and throughout Michigan.”

About the Author:

Dave Dempsey, Senior Advisor

FLOW Senior Advisor Dave Dempsey has 35 years’ experience in environmental policy. He served as environmental advisor to former Michigan Governor James Blanchard and as policy advisor on the staff of the International Joint Commission. He has also provided policy support to the Michigan Environmental Council and Clean Water Action. He has authored several books on the Great Lakes and water protection.

This article has been edited and excerpted from Dave Dempsey’s book, Ruin and Recovery: Michigan’s Rise as a Conservation Leader.