Port officials are wary about new state regulations intended to keep invasive species out of the Great Lakes. Several states are working on laws that would tighten restrictions on ballast water in foreign ships. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Kelleher reports:
Transcript
Port officials are wary about new state regulations intended to keep
invasive species out of the Great Lakes. Several states are working on
laws that would tighten restrictions on ballast water in foreign ships. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortiums Bob Kelleher reports:
Proponents hope to keep creatures like zebra mussels from getting
established in the Great Lakes. The non-native plants and animals arrive
in ship ballast water, carried from overseas ports.
Adolf Ojard is the Duluth Seaway Port Director. He says a state-by-state
approach to regulate ballast water is the wrong approach.
“We’re not the only area that is dealing with invasive species. Every
harbor and estuary around the world has a similar concern. It needs to be
dealt with on an international and world level, so that it can be a level
playing field for everybody out there that is involved in transportation.”
Michigan has passed new rules with stiff fines for ships with untreated
ballast water. Wisconsin and Indiana are expected to consider similar
rules; and Minnesota’s Attorney General says he’ll propose the
regulations this spring.
Harry Randolph lives above a shallow aquifer in southeast Michigan. His dad taught him the vanishing rural folk practice of well witching (locating underground streams). His dad used a cherry branch. Harry uses bent metal rods. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)
Randolph and his neighbors blame this nearby gravel operation for draining too much of the local groundwater supply. A court settlement forced the gravel mine to stop pumping in 2003. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)
Locals say this ditch washed millions of gallons of water from the gravel mine out to Lake Erie before the quarry was forced to quit pumping. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)
States around the Great Lakes regulate large-scale water withdrawals with one exception. Michigan – the state surrounded by the Great Lakes – does not restrict withdrawals. Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm says it’s “shameful” that Michigan is the last of the Great Lakes states to require permits before pumping large amounts of water. But the businesses and farmers who use the water don’t see a need for regulation in a state that’s surrounded by the world’s largest freshwater supply. We have more from the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett:
Transcript
States around the Great Lakes regulate large scale water withdrawals with one exception.
Michigan – the state surrounded by the Great Lakes – does not restrict withdrawals. Michigan
Governor Jennifer Granholm says it’s “shameful” that Michigan is the last of the Great Lakes
states to require permits before pumping large amounts of water. But the businesses and farmers
who use the water don’t see a need for regulation in a state that’s surrounded by the world’s
largest freshwater supply. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports:
“This is a restoration on a Model A. ’29. That’s a ’31.”
Harry Randolph runs an auto body shop in the southeast part of Michigan. He needs water to
help prep the cars for sanding and spray painting. He also needs water for his home next door. In
2000 his well went dry … like hundreds of other wells in the area. He dug deeper for water.
That worked for a while. But in 2002, his well went dry again.
He collected rainwater to wash the cars in his body shop, and had drinking water delivered to his
house. Randolph and his neighbors blame a nearby mining operation that was pumping millions
of gallons of water to get to the sand and gravel underground.
They believe that theory was proven when water came back a few weeks after the quarry stopped
pumping in early 2003.
“It’s all pretty clean. You’ll hear the pump come on in a minute. It’s come up faster than it ever
has.”
In his corner of the state, homes and businesses sit above a shallow aquifer. And Randolph says
it should be the state’s job to make sure that the big kid on the block isn’t draining too much from
a sensitive water supply.
“I mean, pump the water, sure go ahead and pump the water. But when you’re hurting a whole
community because they haven’t got the water on account of it, they should be stopped pumping
that water. Or regulated.”
But Michigan doesn’t regulate water withdrawals. It’s the only Great Lakes state that doesn’t.
There’s so much water around Michigan, not much thought’s been given to limiting use… except
when that use was simply exporting the water.
Six years ago, officials in Ontario, Canada agreed to let a company called the Nova Group ship
about 150 million gallons of Lake Superior water to Asia every year. There was an immediate
and loud protest. People didn’t like the idea of shipping Great Lakes water to other countries.
The uproar over the plan forced the provincial government to rescind that permit. But it was
enough to worry Great Lakes leaders. And later that year, they started work on a regional plan to
prevent similar threats to Great Lakes water from other parts of the world.
What came out of the governors’ and premiers’ efforts was a regional agreement called Annex
2001, an amendment to an agreement between the U.S. and Canada. It commits the states and
provinces to come up with standards to protect Great Lakes water and to regulate large
withdrawals by this year. The Annex 2001 calls for two things:
One was to require users to register withdrawals of more than 100-thousand gallons a day. The
eight states and two provinces surrounding the Great Lakes have done that. But Michigan never
met the second requirement: that states regulate withdrawals of more than two million gallons a
day. Dennis Schornack chairs the U.S. sector of the International Joint Commission which works
to prevent and resolve water disputes between the U.S. and Canada.
To this point in time today, Michigan is the only state that has not complied with that piece of the
puzzle. And it’s sort of the price of admission to participate in consultations about withdrawals.
And Michigan so far hasn’t met that price of admission.
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm is hoping to pony up her state’s admission price with a
new plan to regulate large water withdrawals. It calls for new farms and businesses that pump
100-thousand gallons a day to apply for a state permit by the end of the decade.
But the state’s agriculture and business lobby has resisted similar plans in the past.
Scott Piggott is with the Michigan Farm Bureau.
“The farmers in Michigan, what’s really hard to get across to them: why. What is the benefit of a
full-blown, water use, comprehensive, regulation system on an area that doesn’t see scarcity of
the resource, that agriculture is an excellent steward of the resource. I think they’d feel it’d be a
regulation not worth having.”
But for people in a few pockets of Michigan, water has been scarce. Just ask autobody shop
owner Harry Randolph. And he’s not the only one. In rural central Michigan, people say their
wells go dry in the summertime when large-scale farms pump groundwater to irrigate their crops.
But those aren’t the withdrawals people worry about.
For much of the Great Lakes region, fears about water diversion usually involve arid southwest
states, or shipping freshwater in tanker ships to other parts of the world as the Nova Group
planned to do.
But Dennis Schornack of the IJC says the real problem of water diversion is not so far away. It’s
dealing the demand for water by the growing communities just outside the Great Lakes basin.
“And the people living just on the other side of the divide can’t use the water. They can see it,
they can smell it, they can swim in it, they can boat in it, fish in it. But they sure as heck can’t
use it for drinking water, or for industrial purposes.”
And advocates for water withdrawal regulations say unless Michigan gets its own house in order,
it’s going to be hard to say no to thirsty communities – whether they’re just outside the Great
Lakes basin, or on the other side of the globe.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.
Harry Randolph lives above a shallow aquifer in southeast Michigan. His dad taught him the vanishing rural folk practice of well witching (locating underground streams). His dad used a cherry branch. Harry uses bent metal rods. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)
Randolph and his neighbors blame this nearby gravel operation for draining too much of the local groundwater supply. A court settlement forced the gravel mine to stop pumping in 2003. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)
Locals say this ditch washed millions of gallons of water from the gravel mine out to Lake Erie before the quarry was forced to quit pumping. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)
Michigan is the only Great Lakes state that does not regulate large-scale water withdrawals. But the state’s Governor Jennifer Granholm is hoping to change that. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports:
Transcript
Michigan is the only Great Lakes state that does not regulate large-scale water withdrawals. But
the state’s Governor Jennifer Granholm is hoping to change that. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports:
Michigan sits right in the middle of the world’s largest fresh water supply. And Governor
Granholm says unless the state starts to regulate the water use of its own farms, golf courses, and
power companies, Michigan won’t have the political clout to say no to other interests outside the
state.
“I do not want to see other states coming into this region and dipping their straw into the Great
Lakes and pulling it out. If we don’t have a law to prevent that, that’s what’s going to happen.”
The Democratic Governor’s proposal calls for new farms and businesses that pump more than a
hundred-thousand gallons a day to apply for a state permit by the end of the decade.
But Republicans control the state Legislature. And some of them worry that new permit
requirements would burden already struggling farms and businesses.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.
The Clean Air Act says gasoline must contain additives to help it burn more cleanly. But the common additive MTBE is a proven environmental threat. And a new study says the alternatives could be just as dangerous. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Corbin Sullivan reports:
Transcript
The Clean Air Act says gasoline must contain additives to help it burn more cleanly. But the
common additive MTBE is a proven environmental threat. And a new study says the alternatives
could be just as dangerous. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Corbin Sullivan reports:
Underground storage tanks at gas stations can leak. Fuel
additives like MTBE leak faster than the gas and can
cause groundwater pollution.
For that reason, seventeen states, including New York,
Michigan and Illinois have restricted or will restrict the use
of MTBE in gasoline.
That means other fuel additives intended to reduce air
pollution will have to be used instead.
Mel Suffet co-authored a new study published in the
journal Environmental Science and Technology.
He says some of the alternatives to MTBE can cause the
same problems.
They can be toxic and can make groundwater
undrinkable. Suffet says to solve the problem, leaks need
to be prevented.
“The first thing you have to do is develop a design of
underground fuel storage tanks to emphasize containment
leak detection and repair.”
Suffet says even modern tanks are prone to leaks. So he
says designers need to go back to the drawing board to
create a leak free tank.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Corbin
Sullivan.
Some homeowners on Great Lakes coasts are concerned about how state governments decide where the lake ends and private property begins. In one state… landowners are pushing legislation to protect their private property rights. But the bill worries recreation and environmental activists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
Some homeowners on Great Lakes coasts are concerned about how state governments decide
where the lake ends and private property begins. In one state, land owners are pushing legislation
to protect their private property rights. But the bill worries recreation and environmental
activists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:
Dennis Bring is a big, burly guy who looks like he wouldn’t be scared of anything. But he says
he is scared. He’s afraid of the bureaucrats at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
They say the land he once owned is no longer his, simply because of the erosion caused by Lake
Erie’s waves.
It started more than twenty years ago. That’s when high waters on Lake Erie started to batter his
shoreline property and erode the bluff. Bring decided to use concrete and large limestone blocks
to protect it. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources required him to get surveys, pay for
engineering, and construction. It cost thousands of dollars. Then he was told he had to sign a
lease agreement, to lease the land that he thought he already owned.
“They said it wasn’t a big thing. But when we got it, we found out it was 17 to 20 pages long and
basically they had the rights to our property and we had basically no rights and they could come
on our property at any time.”
The cost of the lease isn’t that much, but Bring’s deed says he owns that land. It’s been in the
family for three generations and he pays taxes on it. But the state also wanted him to carry a
million dollars worth of liability insurance on the erosion protection structure.
So he called the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to complain. A state regulator told Bring
that he no longer owns the land because anything up to the high water mark, including the eroded
part that once belonged to Bring, actually belongs to the state.
“And I asked him, I said, ‘You’re telling me the lake is your property, correct?’ And he said ‘Yes,
that’s our property.’ And I said, ‘According to my gist on this, is that your property is damaging
my property. I’m trying to protect this property.’ But I said, ‘In turn you’re making me pay back
what is already mine.’ He said, ‘And we could tear your structure out if we wanted to.’ And then
I hung up the phone, and my wife and I were scared to death.
The state plans to enforce its claim that it owns up to the high water mark. But many lakefront
owners say the state is taking more than its share. They want Ohio’s jurisdiction pushed back
toward the lake – to the low water mark. The difference between the two adds up to thousands of
acres along Ohio’s 262 miles of coast.
Brian Preston grew up fishing in the marshes around Toledo. Speaking at a public meeting on
behalf of the environmental group, the National Wildlife Federation, he argued that the state is
right, anything the lake touches belongs to all the people, not just those who own the adjacent
private land.
“We’re not talking about their land; proximity doesn’t imply ownership. Those 262 miles in the
land going into the water is our land. Just because it’s in front of their house doesn’t make it their
land”.
But property owners disagree. They’ve pushed a bill in the Ohio legislature to move state
ownership back toward the lake. It would also take away much of the state’s authority to regulate
the shoreline. The private land owners say the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers already monitors
the Great Lakes shoreline. Homeowner Jim O’conner says that’s enough regulation.
“For years, shoreline structures have been built along the lake and have been fine. The Army
Corps has kept a pretty close eye on it. But now this program has turned into a radical mess by a
few people that have extreme radical views on what private property owners, shoreline owners,
should relinquish. In order to live on the lake you’ve got to relinquish your property.”
The state says without its additional regulation there would be all kinds of problems. That’s
because in the past houses and other structures have been built too close to the shore and
eventually storms eroded the dirt from underneath them and they fell into the lake. Some
scientists are also concerned that the engineered structures that protect the land from erosion end
up destroying public property. State geologist Don Guy says erosion provides the sand size
material that builds Ohio’s beaches.
“And by armoring the shore, we’re eliminating that source of beach-building material. And as
waves continue through natural processes to carry sediment, at least along this part from east to
west, eventually the sand is eroded from the beach at a given site and there’s nothing to replenish
that beach. So that’s maybe the hidden impact of all the shore protection.”
And that’s one reason the Ohio Department of Natural Resources wants to protect the beach.
State representative Tim Grendell sponsored the bill that would change the boundary from the
high water mark to the low water mark. He says it won’t have any negative impact on the
lakeshore or the environment. He says the state has taken control over more land than it should.
He notes that property deeds often say landownership stretches to the low water mark. Grendell
says state shouldn’t regulate beyond that.
“It recognizes what the Ohio constitution recognizes, that a government agency of the state has no
power to take away people’s property by redefining what they own.”
But most Great Lakes states regulate to the same boundary as Ohio. They say state ownership is
at the high water mark. The state of Ohio says it’s willing to drop some of the things it mandates.
For example, it might drop insurance requirements and help pay engineering costs of shoreline
structures it approves. But Ohio says it will not support turning public ownership over to private
landowners.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.
Some homeowners on Great Lakes coasts are concerned about how state governments decide where the lake ends and private property begins. In one state… landowners are pushing legislation to protect their private property rights. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
Some homeowners on great lakes coasts are concerned about how state governments decide
where the lake ends and private property begins. In one state… land owners are pushing
legislation to protect their private property rights. The great lakes radio consortium’s julie grant
reports:
(sound of lake)
When the water of the Great Lakes batters shoreline property, it erodes the land. Homeowners
want to prevent that erosion. But there are lots of regulations on building shore protection
structures. Too many, according to Ohio homeowner jim o’conner. He says Ohio is regulating
land that he owns…
“They don’t have that right, but they’re doing it. And it’s a shame we have to try to get a bill to
say, ‘Hey, this is our property, don’t take it.'”
A bill in the Ohio legislature would push the state’s jurisdiction back toward the lake, so it would
have less authority over shoreline development. Other states are watching the issue because they
draw the line to same boundary as Ohio. The state says it might drop some regulations, but it will
not support turning public ownership over to private landowners.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.
A report released this week (5/10/99) by sporting and conservation
groups in the upper Midwest calls for regional cooperation in dealing
with mercury contamination in fish. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Nick Van Der Puy reports:
