A disastrous growing season for northwestern Lower Michigan’s cherry crop is resulting in calls for federal aid and a growing sense that climate change is warping the health of this iconic fruit.
The sweet cherry crop has been deemed a failure, and similar conditions have affected tart cherries. It’s estimated that cherry growers lost 30% to 75% of their crop this year. Governor Gretchen Whitmer has called for federal assistance to cherry growers, including low-interest loans and funds to rehabilitate or replant affected trees.
Tim Boring, the director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD), says weather patterns related to climate change are damaging the agriculture industry. “Climate resiliency is one of our highest priorities at MDARD. We know the long-term prosperity and viability of Michigan agriculture, especially our specialty crops, depends on our ability to adapt to shifting climate conditions,” said Boring.
Weather is becoming more erratic and less predictable, experts say. One of the culprits is a steadily warming Lake Michigan, which in springtime means a higher risk of premature blossoming of cherry trees.
This year’s problems were caused by weather variability. A mild 2023-2024 winter led to higher insect populations. A warm, wet and humid spring and early summer resulted in skyrocketing populations of spotted wing drosophila and rapid development of fungi, including cherry leaf spot and American brown rot.
Emily Miezio of Suttons Bay, a Leelanau County farmer who sits on the Michigan Cherry Committee, said cherry growers in the business for many years have told her they’ve never seen a growing season like it. A premature warm spell followed by a hard freeze wiped out 90% of the 2012 crop, but this year’s borderline conditions forced growers to make a season-long effort that nonetheless resulted in a significant reduction in crop yields.
“With my Grandma I like to walk along the beach and find Petoskey stones. With my Grandpa I like to go in Lake Michigan and body surf the waves,” my 11-year-old granddaughter Ava Bachmann reflected in late August when she stood with me along the shores of West Grand Traverse Bay. We were ruminating together about the bond that grandparents and grandchildren share, and the responsibility that we elders have to leave behind a healthy legacy for our descendants.
“I just hope the waters can stay clean as long as they can possibly be clean,” Ava added. “It’s really fun to be spending time on Lake Michigan with your grandparents.”
Several recent events have prompted me to think about the urgency for those of us who are grandparents—whether by ancestry or the passing years—of wanting to do more for our grandchildren in the next decade. This urgency led to the idea of a new campaign that FLOW will launch that enables grandparents in the Great Lakes region to respond to this urgency to care and act for our grandchildren while we can. While we help out parents and care for our grandchildren day-to-day, what better way to care for them for a lifetime than increasing our awareness, support, and work to protect the integrity of water, communities, health, ecosystem, and quality of life right here in the Great Lakes Basin? “Grandparents for Grandchildren and the Great Lakes” is the name of our new campaign. We intend to form a continuing, engaged network of grandparents who are committed toward doing more to mitigate and improve the lives our grandchildren will experience in 20 to 30 years. To do this, we can form a network to increase our effectiveness by forming a network to work together.
I write “urgency” because I’m feeling a greater urge to care, act, and do what I can for grandchildren who in the coming decades will face tumultuous change—climate, pollution, flooding, droughts, collapsing safety nets of drinking water, health care, infrastructure, and political instability, in the midst of global upheaval and migration. Admittedly, this is made more poignant because of my age, 70-something, and the birth of my seventh grandchild (two more step-grandchildren will soon be added to the family tree). It seems as a grandparent I’m suddenly pressed to pay more attention to grandchildren—future generations—everywhere. To the power of the future in the present intensifies as the years pass. To the threatened if not certain cataclysmic changes to the air, water, land, forests, and life on this planet if people, states, and countries do not take sweeping action. The future is now.
In October 2018, the UN International Panel on Climate Change issued a grave warning about a narrow window for humanity to act to prevent the global temperature from rising more than another 1.5 degrees Celsius. The range of effects will unravel life as we know it if we do nothing; our grandchildren have a chance to experience the planet we know and love—if we do all we can in the next 10 years. Otherwise, the effects will whipsaw as extreme heat, flooding, drought. Here in the Great Lakes region, according to a recent scientific report published by Environmental Law and Policy Center in Chicago, the next decade could bring as much as a 30-percent increase in precipitation—translate that as flooding, infrastructure damage to coastal areas, erosion, property loss, and the loss of tillable land for food, plants and wildlife. If we think water levels and damage to ecosystems, wetlands, shoreline property, and public infrastructure are high this year, “we ain’t seen nothing yet.” And, of course, it’s not just the increase in precipitation. The other extreme, drought and low water levels, are just as real. Two billion people could be without water, portending death, suffering, and mass movements of people from one region to another for water, food, and survival.
Grandparents are the solution
I don’t write this blog as another “doom and gloom” threat with no solution. We have one—grandparents everywhere. Most of us grandparents want to do something for our grandchildren; it is human nature. We can all do something. If we do this together, the benefits to our grandchildren will multiply.
In June, this urgency must have been in the back of my mind when I walked by Ed Roth’s hat and t-shirt design store on Front Street in Traverse City before I reached the FLOW office. I noticed a hat with the words “crazy grandpa,” and a rush of emotions about grandchildren and the coming decades screamed, “Buy it.” So, I did.
In August, FLOW filmed a short clip of three of my grandchildren standing with me on the shore of West Grand Traverse Bay. The interview is a prelude to FLOW’s new “Grandparents for Grandchildren and the Great Lakes” campaign. My granddaughter Ava described her passion for swimming, searching for Petoskey stones, kayaking, and fishing, her voice joyful and clear as water. Then her voice turned more serious when she said how uncertain she was about the future of water in her lifetime. The words from a Leonard Cohen poem flashed through my mind: “Oh, and one more thing/ you aren’t going to like/ what comes after America.” And, these triggered lines of Fan-Chih from a collection of Cold Mountain Poems: “A hungry bird will gorge itself to death/like a man who’ll die to get his hands on property/ Money’s the thing that ruins humans/ the wise will keep it at a distance.”
The next day FLOW’s board chair Micheal Vickery sent me an email with a terse note: “What you think about this?” sharing the poem “Questionnaire,” by Wendell Berry — from his book Leavings(Counter Point, 2009). A few days later FLOW’s former chair Mike Dettmer sent me the same email.
How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons.
For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of
your favorite evils and acts of hatred.
What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization? Please list the monuments, shrines, and works of art you would most willingly destroy.
In the name of patriotism and the flag, how much of our beloved land are you willing to desecrate? List in the following spaces the mountains, rivers, towns, farms you could most readily do without.
State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes, the energy sources, the kinds of security, for which you would kill a child. Name, please, the children
whom you would be willing to kill.
Disturbing. How did we turn life and nature upside down? When did we start sacrificing life, natural spaces, water and health for gods of progress, money, and patriotism? Strange how reason can hide desire and excess, how the mind can slip into sophism—fallacious reasoning that covers up disastrous ends with supposed benefits—to justify our actions or apathy as sacrifice for money, markets, and nationalism.
We must sacrifice profit
The answer to Berry’s question is to turn sacrifice right-side up. How can we grandparents sacrifice our grandchildren and the planet with untold suffering in the face of the reality that we have a decade to prevent this suffering? Ironically, the traditional notion that we accumulate wealth to pass on to our children or grandchildren has become sophistry. What good is the accumulation of wealth or materialism in the name of legacy, when that legacy destroys the planet and the lives of our grandchildren? This has become a sophism, a falsehood. The truth is we cannot continue to slide into apathy when it comes to our grandchildren’s future, when it comes to climate change, water, human dignity, and, yes, the Great Lakes.
We are hundreds, thousands, millions of grandparents. The answer for us grandparents to protect and gift our grandchildren with life is to reverse Wendell Berry’s “Questionnaire.” How much world trade and free markets are we willing to sacrifice for our grandchildren’s health? How much land and water are we willing to preserve for their food and thirst? What blanks would you fill in for acts of goodness and love? What energy source, security, financial investment are you willing to sacrifice, give, to prevent flooding, drought, landslides, massive fires, or cause that kills a grandchild?
This is why we at FLOW have decided to announce our new campaign to build and sustain a widespread coalition of Grandparents for Grandchildren and the Great Lakes—a wave of grandparents and businesses whose single mission is to reverse the culturally perverse sacrifices we’ve made in the past. A new culture, one with the deepest roots of all, that chooses to sacrifice, give, and support all those acts of love, care, protection of our grandchildren and the water, hydrosphere, land, liberty, life, and civilization that they inherit. What better stewards, what better way to establish a trust for your grandchildren, a public trust ethic that protects what is essential for the quality of their lives across generations.
It is time for us grandparents to join together, compress time, give, sacrifice, conserve, support the ethical increase in taxes required for rapid actions to reverse or mitigate the harsh realities of climate change and impacts. It is time to become sensitized to the realities of the future our grandchildren face here in the Great Lakes Basin, really, grandchildren and generations everywhere. Stay tuned for the launch of this new campaign for grandparents in the Great Lakes region, grandparents everywhere, who want to do what we can for the Great Lakes, our communities, and future of our grandchildren and future generations. FLOW and I welcome your emails, texts, posts, comments and ideas as we launch Grandparents for Grandchildren and the Great Lakes. The time is now.
Jim Olson is the founder and President of FLOW. He and his wife Judy have seven grandchildren.
How grandparents can help:
• Join our “Grandparents for Grandchildren and the Great Lakes” campaign and pledge to pass along a healthy Great Lakes to your descendants. Click here to support FLOW’s work.
• Talk to your grandchildren about water protection, and about issues that affect the health of our Great Lakes and groundwater, such as Line 5, PFAS, and the lack of septic protections.
• Enjoy the Great Lakes with your grandchildren. Swim with them, look for Petoskey stones with them, bodysurf with them, fish with them.
Another state court confirms that the 3,200 miles of Great Lakes shoreline are owned by states in public trust for citizens to enjoy for walking, swimming, sunbathing and similar beach and water related activities on public trust lands below the Ordinary High Water Mark (“OHWM”).[2]
When Indiana was carved out of the Northwest Territories and joined the United States in 1816, the State took title in trust for all waters of Lake Michigan and all land below the OHWM along the state’s 45-mile shoreline.
In 2012, the lakefront owners on Lake Michigan in Long Beach, Indiana, filed a lawsuit against the town of Long Beach, claiming they owned all of the land to the waters’ edge. Lakefront owners asked the trial court judge to prohibit any interference with their private property by town residents and the city who used the beach as public for walking, sunbathing, swimming, and picnicking since the town was incorporated. A group of local residents and homeowners organized into the Long Beach Community Alliance (“LBCA”), and intervened in the dispute to defend their public right of access for walking and recreation over the wide strip of white sugar sand between the shoreline and the retaining walls and yards of the lakefront owners. The Alliance for the Great Lakes (“AGA”) headquartered in nearby Chicago, and Save the Dunes (“STD”), a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the dunes on Indiana’s shoreline, also intervened to protect the interests of their members who were citizens of Indiana and used and enjoyed the Lake Michigan shore.
In late December 2013, the trial judge ruled that the lakefront landowners could not interfere with the town or residents’ efforts to pass ordinances recognizing the land below the OHWM belonged to the state and was held in public trust for residents and citizens of Indiana.[3]
Not satisfied, the lakefront owners appealed to the Indiana Court of Appeals. In 2014, the appellate court recognized the trial judge’s ruling below, but remanded the matter back to the trial court for a more comprehensive decision on the State’s title and the public trust in the shoreline.[4] The court reasoned that the State of Indiana had not been made a party in the local suit, a prerequisite for a court ruling on a landownership and pubic trust shoreline dispute.
Another lakefront owner pressed forward with a related new lawsuit, again claiming ownership to the waters’ edge, based on their deeds that, they argued, gave them title to the waters’ edge, even if that meant their title cut off the rights of citizens of Indiana to the shoreline below the OHWM. This time the state was named a defendant, and the LBCA, AGA, and STD once more intervened.
It’s common knowledge that Lake Michigan water levels have fluctuated about 6 feet between highs and lows since the federal government started keeping records in 1860. In the late 1980s, the water levels and wave action threatened the lakefront owners’ retaining walls and homes. In 2013, the year the first court ruling came down, the water levels were so low, the distance from the waters’ edge to the lakefront owners’ retaining walls was wider than the length of a football field.
While the knowledge may not be so common for many citizens, the U.S. Supreme Court and the courts of states abutting the Great Lakes have routinely ruled that each state took title to the waters and lands of the Great Lakes up to the OHWM. In 1892, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all of the Great Lakes’ waters and bottomlands to this ordinary high water mark are owned by the states in trust for all citizens.[5] The Illinois legislature deeded one square mile of Lake Michigan on Chicago’s waterfront to the Illinois Central Railroad company for an industrial complex. However, the Supreme Court voided the deed, and found that the public trust in these lands and waters is inviolate and could not be sold off, alienated, or even legislated away.
Despite this history, lakefront owners the Gundersons, pushed for exclusive ownership of the beach to exclude residents from the beach between their homes and the waters’ edge. The State of Indiana Department of Natural Resources, LBCA, AGA, and STD defended public ownership and the residents and citizens’ right to use the public trust shoreline for walking, swimming, sunbathing, and similar water-related recreational activities.
On July 24, 2015, LaPorte County Judge Richard Stalbrink wrote a near text-book-perfect decision on the public trust doctrine and ruled against the lakefront owners in favor of the state, LBCA, AGA, and STD, confirming that the beach below the ordinary high water mark to the waters’ edge belongs to the state and is subject to a paramount public trust that cannot be interfered with or impaired by lakefront owners.[6]
First, Judge Stalbrink followed the Supreme Court cases holding that the state obtained title to the waters and bottomlands to the OHWM when it joined the Union in 1816. Second, Stalbrink ruled that this beach land below the OHWM was held in trust for public walking, swimming, fishing access, and other public recreational uses. Third, the Court confirmed that Indiana’s definition of the OHWM was proper, given that the definition takes into account the physical characteristics that define a permanent shoreline as reasonable evidence of the public portion of the shoreline. Finally, Judge Stalbrink recognized that because water levels of Lake Michigan fluctuate, the width of the beach is subject to change, but that there is always a paramount right of the public to access the beach for proper public trust recreational activities.
As Judge Stalbrink observed near the end of his decision, ”Private lot owners cannot impair the public’s right to use the beach below the OHWM for these protected purposes. To hold otherwise would invite the creation of a bach landscape dotted with small, private, fenced and fortified compounds designed to deny the public from enjoying Indiana’s limited access to one of the greatest natural resources in this State.”[7]
(Author’s End Note: See rulings by the Michigan Supreme Court in 2005. Glass v Goeckel, 473 Mich 667, 703 N.W. 2d. 58 (2005), Ohio Supreme Court in Merrill v Ohio Department of Natural Resources, 130 Ohio St. 3d 30, (2011) (on remand before Court of Common Pleas, Lake County, Ohio for factual determination of OHWM); the Gunderson decision upholding public trust in Long Beach should control the decision in the companion case, LBLHA, LLC v Town of Long Beach et al., supra note 2, on remand to the Laporte County trial court).
[2]See Melissa Scanlan, Blue Print for a Great Lakes Trail, Vermont Law School Research Paper No. 14-14 (2014). (Professor Scanlan proposes walking trail within public trust lands and without interference with riparian use based on public trust doctrine in the Great Lakes); James Olson, All Aboard: Navigating the Course for Universal Adoption of the Public Trust Doctrine, 15 Vt. J. E. L. 135 (2014) (Author documents the application of the public trust doctrine in all eight Great Lakes states and two provinces of Canada).
[3]LBLHA, LLC v Town of Long Beach et al., Cause No. 46C01-1212-PL-1941. (The author, Jim Olson, discloses that he was one of the attorneys, along with Kate Redman, Olson, Bzdok & Howard, P.C., Traverse City, Michigan, in this case for the Long Beach Community Alliance in favor of public trust in shoreline).
[4]LBLHA, LLC v Town of Long Beach et al., 28 N.E. 3d. 1077 (2014). The Indiana Court of Appeals remanded to the trial court to add the State of Indiana as a party; this case will not proceed in same fashion as the Gunderson case discussed in this paper, which was decided by the same LaPorte County trial court.
[5]Illinois v Illinois Central Railroad, 146 US 387 (1892).
[6]Gunderson v State et al., LaPorte Superior Court 2, Cause No. 46D02-1404-PL-606, Decision, July 24, 2015, 22 pps. (Judge Stalbrink, Richard, Jr.); Indiana Law Blog, Ind. Decisions, July 28, 2015 http://indianalawblog.com/archives/2015’07/ind_decisions_m_709.html.; see also U.S. v Carstens, 982 F Supp 874, 878 (N.D. Ind. 2013).
Above: Maps of the collection of drowned river mouths encompassed in the proposed West Michigan coastal research reserve along Lake Michigan from the St. Joseph River north to the Platte River. (Graphic/Megan Mader)
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer supports the proposed reserve.
With support from Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the proposal has begun its journey from west Michigan to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which administers the National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) program. There are 29 reserves in the system, with four others moving through a review process. There are two NERR reserves in the Great Lakes –Old Woman Creek in Ohio and theLake Superior reserve, based in Wisconsin.
The proposed reserve would promote scientific research of a unique string of drowned river mouth estuaries from the St. Joseph River to the Platte Rivers along Lake Michigan.
The proposed reserve would promote scientific research of a unique string of drowned river mouth estuaries from the St. Joseph River to the Platte Rivers along Lake Michigan. Drowned river mouths were formed following the glacial retreat of approximately 14,000 years ago, when rebounding sand dunes trapped melting rivers trying to reach the newly forming Lake Michigan.
The reserve’s headquarters and visitor center would be based in the Muskegon area.
Estuaries are typically areas along ocean coasts where tributary fresh water mingles with salt water, but the NOAA program also includes freshwater sites where inland and Great Lakes waters with different chemical and physical characteristics comingle and create unique ecosystems with high biological production. These freshwater sites provide many of the ecosystem services and functions that brackish estuaries do, including natural filters for runoff and nursery grounds for fish and other animals, and are popular destinations for recreation and development.
These freshwater sites provide natural filters for runoff and nursery grounds for fish and other animals, and are popular destinations for recreation and development.
The proposed Michigan NERR would include habitat critical to a wide range of fish and wildlife, and to Michigan’s economy, its proponents say. “In proposing this NERR, we share with the NERR System a vision of creating a unique ‘living laboratory’ where scientists, educators, and community partners use science-based information to create distinct educational resources, to inform and facilitate natural resource stewardship, and to support the local economies based on our remarkable estuarine-based natural resources,” proponents add.
Grand Valley State University’s Alan Steinman is one of the original proponents of the coastal reserve.
Alan Steinman, the Allen and Helen Hunting Research Professor at the Annis Water Resources Institute, is one of the original proponents of the West Michigan NERR.
“This natural gradient of drowned river mouths, ranging from pristine sites at the northern end to more impaired systems at the southern end, provides a perfect environment to ask and test questions about the ecology, biology, chemistry, geomorphology, and socio-economics of these locations,” Steinman said. “and provide answers to the local stakeholders about how to maintain, protect, and where necessary restore, these systems. There is no other system on the planet like them.”
“This natural gradient of drowned river mouths, ranging from pristine sites at the northern end to more impaired systems at the southern end, provides a perfect environment to ask and test questions,” said Alan Steinman. “There is no other system on the planet like them.”
In her letter to NOAA Under Secretary Richard Spinrad, Gov. Whitmer said the research associated with the Michigan site would “produce research information and education that will quickly make it a focal point in the NERR system and show how science-based decision-making leads to better land management and high-quality waters in our Great Lakes.”
This story originally appeared on NatureChange.org, Joe VanderMeulen’s online publication that features conversations about conservation and climate in northern Michigan.
The beaches along Michigan’s west coast have all but disappeared under the rising water levels of Lake Michigan as well as the other Great Lakes. In fact, lake levels haven’t been this high in well over 100 years. They reached an all-time low in 2013 before a meteoric rise brought them to an all-time high in just 7 years.
If you love taking long walks along the lake shore, the high water and waves might just push you inland and on to private property. What can you do? Do you still have a right to walk the Great Lakes shorelines?
Jim Olson, J.D., LL.M
NatureChange.org talked with FLOW founder, president, and highly-respected environmental attorney, Jim Olson, about the changing coastline of Lake Michigan and the public’s right to walk the lake shore. As Olson describes, the land under the waters of Lake Michigan (and the water itself) along Michigan’s coast is held in public trust by the State. For a very long time, the public has had the right to walk along the beach below the Ordinary Natural High Water Mark — an obvious physical line of topography and vegetation created over many years by wave action. However, the rapid change in water levels and coastal erosion has overwhelmed the Ordinary Natural High Water Mark. So, where can we walk?
Mark Breederland
Olson says, “you have the right to still walk the beach, but you’re going to have to have your toe in the water or walk in the wet sand to be [legally] safe because we don’t know where that new natural ordinary high is. But we certainly know that if you’re within the wet sand, you’re certainly within the wave action and have a right under the public trust doctrine to access and walk along the beaches and shoreline of the Great Lakes.”
An educator for Michigan Sea Grant, Mark Breederland adds that the water levels in Lake Michigan are predicted to continue breaking records for many months, causing even more coastal erosion. In many places, high shore land bluffs and fallen trees can present real hazards to beach walkers. And if beach walkers need help to get out of a difficult situation, the first responders will be put at risk too.
Linda Dewey
“I think,” Breederland says, “our beach walking is going to have to be adjusted, for sure, for 2020.”
Linda Dewey, a journalist for the Glen Arbor Sun newspaper and Lake Michigan shoreline property owner, reminds everyone that walking the shoreline of Lake Michigan is a delightful, shared activity — with limits. When in front of private property, walkers are not permitted to stop, sit and settle in. That has always been true, but now there are new hazards. Where there are fallen trees, private docks or other structures blocking the shoreline, beach walkers are not allowed to walk inland on private property.
According to Dewey, if you encounter an obstruction and can’t go around it in the water, “You’re going to have to turn around.”
The following 4-minute video offers clear explanations and illustrations.
Public notice in a local Michigan newspaper, the White Lake Beacon, in October 2017 announced a permit application for a mammoth swine factory near the Oceana/Muskegon County line along Lake Michigan.Called a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO), this proposed pollution factory activated our resistance. Reviving Our American Democracy (ROAD) is a White Lake-area public interest group that has worked hard to stop this outrage ever since.
We strongly oppose the CAFO because it threatens to 1) degrade natural resources, including Flower Creek, Lake Michigan, nearby beaches, and the groundwater within the Flower Creek Watershed, 2) endanger public health, 3) reduce local property values and erode the tax base, and 4) undermine the quality of life for neighbors.
From the public hearing in January 2018 when 350 people gathered in Montague High School in unanimous opposition to our continuing years-long efforts to contest the permit authorized by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ, now EGLE), we have been relentlessly mobilizing against a massive industrial enterprise that threatens to destroy a peaceful and lovely rural community. We sued in the courts, filed a contested case at the MDEQ, led public information campaigns, sought and made allies, explored dozens of arguments and avenues, raised funds widely, and have urged the Muskegon County Health Department to become involved, given the large potential human health impacts.
This 36,000 square-foot CAFO was built 1.8 miles inland from the Lake Michigan shoreline. The 4,000 pigs multiplied by 2.8 batches per year will generate more than 1.5 million gallons per year of hog slurry (urine and manure) to be spread near the factory.The waste is too heavy to transport a long distance. The farmlands to which the waste will be applied surround tributaries of Flower Creek, which flows directly into Lake Michigan. Much of the acreage has clay soil, which will not absorb the waste when sprayed or spilled, and substantial slopes. Both factors likely will contribute to significant runoff pollution.
Excess nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) contained in runoff, along with climatic warming trends, increase the risk of eutrophication and fish kills, along with harmful toxic and nuisance algal blooms. Runoff also will likely deliver unsafe levels of pathogenic microorganisms to recreational waters. Other nearby areas are very sandy, raising the prospect that nitrates (and pathogens) will infiltrate to the water table to contaminate groundwater, and therefore private drinking well water. More intense rainfall due to climate change could exacerbate all this. Amazingly, no factory farm setback is mandated by law from Lake Michigan or any other water body.
Beyond weak regulatory standards favoring the agricultural industry over public welfare and the environment, there were problems with the CAFO-siting process under the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) — issues ignored, including dismissal by state officials of credible scientific data, coupled with lack of public transparency. The state permitting process also is flawed. This arises in part because no single agency is responsible for overseeing the big picture and anticipating the consequences of this or any other CAFO, let alone combined and cumulative effects of the industry. State review is cut into pieces because of pressures from Big Ag on the legislature. Agencies are underfunded and hobbled.
Swine CAFOs are spreading in Michigan (now there are more than 200, with another 100 or so forecasted for the future) because of abundant water resources, cooler climate, and the recent addition of slaughter capacity in Coldwater (thanks to Pennsylvania pork empire, Clemens Food Group). Major swine “integrator” Fred Walcott, owner of Valley View Pork (VVP, based in Coopersville) helped broker this plant while serving on the Michigan Commission of Agriculture and Rural Development (MCARD, appointed by former Gov. Snyder) with $55 million in state taxpayer-funded subsidies. Not yet up to its capacity of approximately 2.5 million hogs per year) because it is difficult to find workers yearning to kill hogs day in and day out, the Coldwater plant awaits the delivery of hordes of pigs from future facilities.
Flower Creek Swine, LLC, claims to be raising breeding sows to increase production in our region. Flower Creek Swine will fatten the sows to supply a VVP farrowing barn in Walkerville, which will, in turn, supply multiple finishing CAFOs; all hogs owned by Valley View Pork. And Michigan is welcoming the dairy CAFO industry — construction of a mega dairy processing complex and whey powder manufacturing plant in St. Johns is now underway.
ROAD commissioned two scientific studies with alarming conclusions that were ignored by MDARD, MCARD, and DEQ/DEGLE: 1) a hydrologic and geomorphic analysis of Flower Creek Watershed (January 2018) by Drs. Hyndman and Kendall of Michigan State University (eminently qualified subject matter experts) which projects that watershed levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, already high, will increase substantially, making it one of the most nutrient-laden watersheds in the Great Lakes basin; and2) an analysis of Flower Creek water quality (April-October 2018) by another reputable scientist, (Dr. Richard Rediske of the Annis Waters Resource Institute at Grand Valley State University), which documented baseline E. coli impairment of Flower Creek and serious degradation of other water quality parameters. This provides a basis for comparison with future measurements. E. coli levels exceed the state standards for human body contact by four times. DNA analysis of frozen samples will confirm the origin of the bacteria, almost certainly excess dairy manure and not human waste from septic tanks. Both reports are available on the ROAD website.
Flower Creek has joined Little Flower Creek, which drains the adjacent watershed, among the sorry ranks of polluted Michigan waters. A “No Swimming” sign is a permanent fixture where Little Flower Creek traverses Meinert Park beach into Lake Michigan. The state environmental agency says the hog CAFO “won’t make things worse.” That is a pitiful consolation to offer the residents of Claybanks Township. Pig manure has yet to be spread but is expected in August (pigs were delivered to the CAFO in April 2019). We doubt the state’s assertion.
No attention is paid to the human health impacts stemming from the disposal of massive amounts of pig waste, which is untreated and therefore teeming with infectious microorganisms, despite an abundance of incriminating scientific evidence. Public health risks include infections from contact with contaminated recreational waters, infections and nitrate toxicity from contamination of groundwater/aquifers supplying private drinking wells, and respiratory ailments related to toxic CAFO air emissions.
Odor is given some, but insufficient consideration. Due to diet and physiological differences in the animals, odor from pig manure is triple that from cow manure, making outdoor activities in the area or opening windows unpleasant to hazardous. A recent jury award in North Carolina exceeded $50 million against CAFO operators for environmental degradation and nuisance. Iowa has more than 7,000 CAFOs and a third of U.S. pork production. The City of Des Moines Waterworks, which serves a quarter of the state’s residents, sued the industry for pollution of water supplies.
ROAD is committed to shutting down this CAFO and stopping the spread of more such outrageous violations of the public trust. Our organization has raised and spent $40,000 in 18 months. We need at least $20,000 more to carry on with our contested case with the state environmental agency and a related civil action for an injunction. More will likely be required.
The reason to alert the wider Michigan public is that this facility and the ones that are sure to follow, likely will result in a huge environmental disaster for Michigan and impose very high human health costs. With lead in Flint, PFAS in Rockford, and hog waste in Claybanks Township as examples, Michiganders deserve better than their government is delivering. The White Lake area is still recovering from Hooker and Dupont malfeasance — let’s not allow a repeat horror to befall this natural resource-rich community. Let’s fight together to be “Pure Michigan!” We need to unite and “take back our water.”
Tracy Dobson co-founded ROAD in 2010. She was a professor of Fisheries and Wildlife, as well as and Women’s Studies, at Michigan State University for 31 years and co-creator of the Center for Gender in Global Context. She led study abroad trips in Kenya and conducted environmental research in Malawi. A long-time summer resident of Montague, she is now a full-time resident and activist.
The excitement when packing for a trip to the beach is palpable; we select our favorite sun hats, towels and snacks while our children gleefully nestle toys and buckets for sand castles into the day bag. We hope that the sun will shine bright and Lake Michigan not be too frigid or choppy; and we expect that the beach where we recreate and relax will be clean and safe for our families.
The reality is that many of our Michigan beaches are sullied by refuse and littered with food wrappers, soggy cigarette butts, and small plastic pieces of mysterious origin. In an extreme case, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore staff found thousands of pieces of broken glass deliberately spread in April on the Lake Michigan beach near the Good Harbor picnic area.
Whether littered on-site or carried from elsewhere in the watershed, unsanitary garbage on our coasts puts-off beach-goers and infringes upon the public’s right to enjoy the shoreline—a great Michigan summertime tradition that’s protected by the public trust doctrine.
Upon entering a body of water, these bottle caps, balloon fragments and straws tangled in summer berms pose another danger to the health of wildlife and people, threatening public trust uses as waves, wind and sun break down materials into small pieces called “microplastics”. Microplastics are known to be harmful to wildlife and are present in Great Lakes drinking water. The prevalence of plastics on our shorelines and in our waters has prompted local beach cleanup efforts.
Microplastics Present in the Great Lakes
The general awareness of plastic pollution in earth’s oceans (and scientific study of the issue) currently exceeds the awareness and scientific understanding of the effects of microplastics (including microfibers) in the freshwaters of the Great Lakes. As USGS put it, “the microplastics story is large and complex”.
But we do know that microplastics are present in our waters.
A United States Geological Survey (USGS) page based on a 2016 study emphasized that one plastic particle per gallon of water was found in Great Lakes Tributary Water; 1,285 particles were found per square foot in river sediment. 112,000 particles were found per square mile of Great Lakes water. Since 2016, plastics have continued to accumulate in the Great Lakes.
Microplastics and Wildlife, Human Health
The Great Lakes support a multitude of wildlife; aquatic insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds; and provide drinking water for approximately 40 million people human and non-human species alike, we all need water to survive; our health is interconnected within the hydrosphere.
Freshwater and marine aquatic wildlife have displayed ill effects from ingesting microplastics. According to National Geographic, “Experiments show that microplastics damage aquatic creatures, as well as turtles and birds: they block digestive tracts, diminish the urge to eat, and alter feeding behavior, all of which reduce growth and reproductive output. Their stomachs stuffed with plastic, some species starve and die.”
Chemical harm from ingesting microplastic causes further concern. Heavy metals, flame retardants and antimicrobials which adhere to plastic surfaces have been associated with endocrine disruption in humans and cancer (via National Geographic).
Since the composition of plastic materials varies greatly, estimating toxicity of plastic is difficult, as is predicting toxicity as chemicals move up, through the food web; and eventually to us, through consumption of wildlife (via National Public Radio).
Drinking Water
We who drink Great Lakes water are ingesting microplastics through our taps. So miniscule in size, microplastics pass through water treatment facilities and into our cups. Microplastics are even turning up in beer brewed from Great Lakes water.
Opting for bottled water may not decrease the risk of ingesting microplastics; in fact, total microplastics in bottled water are evidenced to exceed microplastics in tap water.
Beach Cleanups
Performing beach cleanups supports our community’s right to enjoy our shorelines and can prevent the introduction of some plastics into the Great Lakes. Alliance for the Great Lakes reports that every year, through its “Adopt-a-Beach” program, “15,000 volunteers hit the beach and remove about 18 tons of trash.”
Photos courtesy of NMC Freshwater Society
Mike Seefried and Kathryn Depauw, NMC Freshwater Studies students and members of the NMC Freshwater Society, are participating in the “Adopt-a-Beach” effort this summer by coordinating community beach cleanups.
Seefried and Depauw collected a total 24.36 pounds of trash during their June 1 cleanup at Bryant Park in Traverse City. Local organizations supported the initiative; collection buckets were provided by the Grand Traverse Bay Watershed Center. Volunteers, equipped with gloves and data sheets, combed the shoreline public park and, over an approximate area of 550 feet, removed 707 cigarette filters, 236 foam pieces, and 459 plastic pieces. “When you’re actually on the ground picking it up, there’s kind of a ‘wow’ factor—of how much is actually there,” said Seefried.
A June 29 cleanup performed at Sunset Park yielded 387 cigarette butts, 227 pieces of small foam, and 253 small plastic pieces. Seventy-five food wrappers were also picked up over the area of 261 feet. At the end of the process, 11.7 pounds of trash no longer littered the park—an immediate benefit to the community.
FLOW can equip you with beach cleanup kits (containing items such as gloves, pencils, clipboards, data sheets, trash bags, and buckets) to use independently. FLOW’s Lauren Hucek encourages anyone interested to rally their friends, families, and coworkers to host their own beach cleanups. Please choose sites that offer public waste receptacles or prepare to dispose of trash privately; recycle when possible. Email Lauren Hucek with questions and requests for kits, or call the FLOW office at 231-944-1568.
Raising Awareness
Plastic is so ingrained and pervasive in our systems, can the independent effort of individuals cleaning beaches make any difference? Are beach cleanups effective?
“Honestly, I think we take the beaches in our area for granted a little bit,” said Seefried. “The point of this work is to clean the beach—but also to raise awareness.”
We know that plastics are in our water—and in our bodies. We know that microplastics are harmful to wildlife, and that it is not understood how they may be harmful to people. But there’s something about actually picking through the refuse on our beaches that sticks with us; we wonder, will a fiber of this cigarette butt; this lost sock; this disposable diaper; one day slip down someone’s throat via a glass of drinking water?
Performing beach cleanups prompts us to consider our own choices and to get involved with the overarching threat to Great Lakes water, wildlife, and our own health—plastics.
In celebration of the Traverse City Cherry Festival and the warm days ahead, we wanted to highlight one of our favorite summer activities. For many, picnicking in a park or near Lake Michigan is a summer tradition. In keeping with our #getoffthebottle campaign and dedication to reducing our single-use plastic footprint, we've made some easy swaps to make your family's picnic zero waste.
Happy picnicking!
Zero waste picnic
Before: sandwich, chips, pear, carrots, fruit salad, cookies, water
Typical picnic
Before: sandwich, chips, pear, carrots, fruit salad, cookies, water
After: Tupperware, reusable water bottle, cloth napkins, metal silverware
After: plastic wrappers, single-use plastic bags, single use-plastic water bottle, plastic silverware, paper napkins
We were really surprised at how much trash we generated from what we thought would be a pretty low-impact picnic. Some of these items can be recycled (bottle, some of the plastic containers), but it's not always easy to find a recycling bin, and often these items end up in the trash. We hope that these images make us think twice about our plastic footprint.
Tips for a zero waste picnic:
Plan out foods that don’t need a lot of waste.
Finger foods make great picnic fare! Sandwiches, crackers, cheese and meats, whole fruit and vegetables, cookies.
Bring an apple and an orange instead of a pre-cut fruit salad that you would eat with a fork.
If you do want a salad (greens, potato, pasta, etc), put it in a tupperware and bring your own reusable forks and spoons.
Be creative in packaging like putting chips or crackers in a tupperware container (versus a single use plastic bag), or wrapping items in a cloth.
Bring your own water bottle filled with water or a summer drink, like lemonade or tea.
7– It would take at leastseven yearsto plan and build a tunnel under the Mackinac Straits, according to an estimate by Michigan Technological University, if proven to be legal and feasible, while Line 5’s threat to the Great Lakes would grow larger.
6– A Line 5 oil spill in the Mackinac Straits could deliver a blow of more than$6 billionin economic impacts and natural resource damages in Michigan, according to a study commissioned by FLOW.
4– Installing a new4-inch diameterpropane pipeline from Superior, Wisconsin, to Rapid River, Michigan, would replace the propane supply delivered by Line 5 in the Upper Peninsula.
3– Forthree years, Canadian pipeline companyEnbridge hid from Michigan regulators the fact that Line 5 has lost its anti-rust outer coating in more than 60 places in the Mackinac Straits.
2– Enbridge’stwin steel pipeslying on the bottom of the Mackinac Straits since 1953 are bent, cracked, dented, scraped bare of rust protection in spots, and past their life expectancy.
1– We haveone chanceto get this right: Preventing a Great Lakes oil spill is possible, but cleaning one up is not.
½–Half of all Michiganders,from Mackinac Island to the Motor City, rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water, as do more than 48 million Americans and Canadians in total.
0– There’szero time to waste: Tell Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Attorney General Bill Schuette to shut down Line 5 now! And contact your state lawmakers too.
Take action:
Sign the petitionto oppose the creation of a tunnel alternative for Line 5.
Talk to your state of Michigan lawmakers and ask their position on shutting down Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac to prevent an oil spill disaster. You can look up your State representative here &State senator here.
Donate to FLOW to help us continue to make the legal, scientific, and common sense case for shutting down Line 5 to protect the Great Lakes and the drinking water supply for half of all Michiganders.
Dave Dempsey, Senior Advisor Phone: 231-944-1568
FLOW (For Love of Water) Email: dave@flowforwater.org
Jim Olson, Founder & President Phone: 231-499-8831
FLOW (For Love of Water) Email: olson@envlaw.com
FLOW Challenges Wisconsin’s Approval of Lake Michigan Water Diversion
A Lake Michigan water diversion approved by the State of Wisconsin is inconsistent with the Great Lakes Compact and threatens an open season on Great Lakes water, FLOW said today.
The Traverse City, Michigan-based science and law center asked Great Lakes governors and a Regional Body established by the Compact to review Wisconsin’s approval of a 7 million gallon per day diversion request by Racine, Wisconsin, a city entirely inside the basin, primarily for the Foxconn Corporation in Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources approval of the diversion is based on a faulty interpretation of the Compact and sets a dangerous precedent, FLOW said.
“We can’t go into this century’s water crisis with a loosely conceived decision that turns the ‘straddling community’ exception to the diversion ban on end,” said Jim Olson, founder and president of FLOW. “The Compact envisioned sending water to cities that straddle the basin with existing water infrastructure that already serves residents on both sides of the divide. Wisconsin has shoe-horned Racine’s request to extend its pipes outside the basin to serve a private customer, not a public water supply. Scores of other communities and private interests could start doing the same, and billions of gallons will ultimately end up outside the basin.”
“Wisconsin’s approval of this diversion doesn’t just bend the Compact, it threatens to break it,” said Dave Dempsey, Senior Advisor to FLOW. “The Racine-to-Foxconn diversion must receive the highest degree of scrutiny, and if it is discovered that the application of this exception violates or is not consistent with the Compact, the Council, Regional Body, and parties or citizens must correct the error before it is too late.”
The approved diversion allows the City of Racine to extend its existing water supply system to an area of Mt. Pleasant not served by a public water supply and outside the Great Lakes watershed.
FLOW’s challenge has two parts:
The Foxconn diversion stretches the Compact’s exception to a ban on diversions for so-called straddling communities that is intended “solely for public water supply purposes,” primarily residential customers. The exception was intended to assist communities with public water supply systems that already extend across the divide and serve a straddling public water supply, with emphasis on residential users. The Racine-to-Foxconn diversion is simply a diversion of an in-basin city’s in-basin public water system to an area outside the basin for an industrial purpose, as acknowledged publicly by state and local officials. The City of Racine circumvented the requirement by using its gross water utility system-wide data to show that its in-basin system serves 30,425 residential customers, 848 multi-family residential customers, about 3,000 business, commercial, and 302 industrial users. But the water diverted or transferred here is the 7 million gallons covered by the Racine application. If the analysis is limited to that required by law, the primary purpose of the diversion is to serve customers outside the basin who are commercial and industrial—the Foxconn plant project, and not residential users.
The Foxconn diversion violates the exception for “straddling communities” because the exception is solely for public water supply “within” or “in” “the straddling community.” A customer area in an incorporated town like Mt. Pleasant is not a public water supply of Mt. Pleasant, and therefore Mt. Pleasant without its own public water supply system does not qualify as a “straddling community.” To interpret the exception otherwise, is to allow a city inside the basin to divert water to a new customer in an area outside the basin by merely assuming the identity of an existing community whose corporate limits straddle the basin divide. This is not what the exception was intended to allow; it does not serve the public water supply of Mt. Pleasant; and it serves the customer and newly diverted water on the part of Applicant City of Racine.
The Council and Regional Body have broad authority to bring actions, exercise rights as aggrieved parties, or exercise powers of review for consistency, compliance, uniformity based on a joint commitment to protect the integrity of the Great Lakes; this means upholding the diversion ban and interpreting and applying the exceptions to the ban as written. The Racine in-basin community proposed diversion for primarily industrial use by an industrial customer in Mt. Pleasant, but outside the basin, does not qualify for the straddling community exception.
The Council and Regional Body and affected or aggrieved parties should demand an investigation, review, and determination of whether or not the Racine proposal and final determination by the Wisconsin DNR fall within, meet and/or comply with the “straddling community” exception standard, FLOW said.
Jim Olson is the founder and President of FLOW. He and his wife Judy have seven grandchildren.
