Author: Rebecca Williams

Environmentalists in Michigan have been on the defensive since the last
election. Republicans rolled back shoreline protections they say were onerous and they limited the ability of the state to conserve land. New bills in the works would open up more places to motorized vehicles. And now some of the lawmakers leading the charge on these issues say they’re worried about something more ominous. They want to strike back against what they see as a global conspiracy. Peter Payette reports:

The town of Vanderbilt has seen better days. The village bills itself as the gateway to the Pigeon River Country State Forest, a few miles down the road. But the Gateway Restaurant in Vanderbilt closed in 2009.

That was a year after horseback riding was restricted to certain trails in
the forest.

The owner, Ernie Schuster, says business was already tough then because
of high gas prices.

“Probably 50 percent of our business was from the horseback riders. Then
after the DNR put the stops to most of the riding out there, and campsites, most of the
riders said they weren’t coming back because it just wasn’t worth it and
basically collapsed our whole economy in this town.”

Some lawmakers point to Vanderbilt as an illustration of a larger
problem.

Among the more prominent is State Senator Tom Casperson from
Escanaba.

Mainly, Casperson just thinks there are too many environmental rules.

But he says the obstacles that communities come up against on land use
issues are baffling.

“We can’t get trails put in for ORVs. We’re kicking horse people
out… pretty much when it comes to recreational activity, if you’ve got to build anything or connect anything, it’s a battle to get it done. Why?”

Casperson says he was dismissive when it was first suggested to him
that the answer is a global conspiracy.

This is commonly referred to as Agenda 21.

That’s the name of a report issued 20 years ago by United Nations about
stuff like controlling pollution, combating poverty and helping farmers.

The report is non-binding.

It’s not a treaty.

But Casperson says he often comes across plans in Michigan that seem
to connect to ideas in Agenda 21.

“Most citizens if you tell them something like that is going on I think most
people would say ‘You’re crazy.’ I’m still not convinced except for all these
coincidences.”

This summer State Representative Greg MacMaster from Kewadin
introduced legislation meant to outlaw Agenda 21.

It makes it illegal for any government in Michigan to implement parts of
Agenda 21 that infringe on private property rights.

It would also ban organizations that are accredited by the U.N. to help
with this program.

MacMaster thinks the United Nations is a threat to the property rights of
U.S. citizens.

“I took an oath in office that I was going to protect and defend the Constitution of the
United States and the Michigan Constitution and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

Conservationists say all this is disturbing.

Paul Rose is on the board of the Pigeon River Country Advisory Council.

He says he didn’t take any of it seriously until he saw the legislation.

“It just seemed too preposterous, too absurd to take seriously. Obviously, we all know there are a certain number of conspiracy theorists out there. Some people are mentally and emotionally just wired to be prone to these sorts of things.”

Rose says in the case of horses in the Pigeon River Country, there are a
number of reasons for the restrictions, like preserving a place for the
wild elk herd there.

Rose says talk of a global conspiracy shortcuts debate with fear.

“The ideas themselves should not be threatening and to me, the debate
needs to take place on these ideas as they relate to resource management
in Michigan and not who shares those same values.”

What a ban on Agenda 21 would do is not clear, not even to
Representative Greg MacMaster.

He says he wants to hold hearings to see exactly what influence the
document has.

For the Environment Report, I’m Peter Payette.

The candidates looking to represent Michigan’s northernmost congressional seat call the Great Lakes the “jewel of the Midwest” and a “treasure of immeasurable value.” Both say they’re committed to keeping the lakes healthy. But they vehemently disagree about the best ways to do that. Linda Stephan reports:

Climb the lighthouse tower at the tip of the Old Mission Peninsula  — where the two Grand Traverse bays meet … and look out over rocks and exposed bottomlands.

The shallow surf dried up years ago and levels on Lake Michigan are now at near-record lows.

Both Republican Congressman Dan Benishek and his challenger – former state Representative …and Democrat …Gary McDowell say that concerns them.

But in a recent debate – Benishek – who’s a surgeon – said he’s skeptical of claims this has anything to do with climate change.

“Well, frankly, I’m not sure how significant global warming is.  I spend a lot of time in the sciences and I’m not sure what’s happening with the climate.”

A bi-national report from the International Joint Commission earlier this year listed uncertainties for Great Lakes water levels due to climate change – including reduced ice cover in winter …and more evaporation year-round. It also says local rainfall may mitigate those effects in lakes Michigan and Huron.

Benishek thinks the bigger concern is that dredging near the southern end of Lake Huron in the middle of last century has lead to water losses for both lakes.

A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman in Detroit says… there have also been times of record high water levels since that last dredging.

In debate, Gary McDowell responded – it’s crazy to ignore the science behind global climate change.

“I think just virtually every scientist who’s not working for BP, the Koch brothers or Dr. Benishek agree that we have to do something.”

The candidates in this race are not leaving the negative messaging to outside interest groups.

Benishek has criticized McDowell on his business record.

The McDowell campaign has repeatedly criticized Benishek for his environmental voting record.

Clip from political ad: “Dan Benishek voted to get rid of our clean water laws and let cement companies put more mercury in the lake. Gary McDowell’s the one looking out for us. I think we need a congressman like that.”

Benishek: “You know, it’s just amazing to hear these repeated attacks…

Again… Dan Benishek:

“I didn’t vote to gut the Clean Water Act, that’s just not wrong [sic]. We haven’t voted to put more mercury in the lakes, that’s just not true. You know, we are working to stop the over-reach of federal bureaucrats in Washington.”

Benishek did vote to amend clean water laws – to restrict federal regulators from imposing new standards … unless the states approve.

Likewise – he did vote to repeal emissions standards for cement manufacturers.

But Benishek says – these were not votes cast to allow more pollution … but to end what he calls “job-killing” federal regulations.

Thoughtful decisions – he says – that shouldn’t be reduced to soundbites.

Benishek says – as the state with the most fresh water shoreline in the basin – Michigan is best poised to set its own standards.

Gary McDowell disagrees.

“The Great Lakes are bordered by eight states, two Canadian provinces. How can you have that many rules and regulations and making sure that they are protected?”

Benishek and McDowell agree on this: whoever takes the seat in January will represent the congressional district with the most freshwater shoreline in the country… and a place where recreation and tourism are not just fun and games.

They’re key economic drivers.

For the Environment Report, I’m Linda Stephan.

This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

A new project is going to try to predict the future of the Great Lakes. 

It’s appropriately named: the Great Lakes Futures Project.  It’s a collaboration of 21 universities from the U.S. and Canada. 

Don Scavia is the director of the Graham Sustainability Institute at the University of Michigan. He’s one of four project leaders.  He says students will team up with a counterpart from the other country, along with a faculty mentor.  The teams will develop white papers outlining the biggest things driving change in the Great Lakes region. 

“They’ll be looking at things like climate, economics, demographics, chemical and biological pollution, invasive species. What have the trends been in the past 50 years and what do we expect trends to look in the next 50 years?”

Scavia says climate change is making everything more complicated.

“Almost everything we see, every one of those stresses we worry about are getting more difficult because of climate change, because of the change in precipitation patterns, because of the warming of the lakes, because of the warming of the atmosphere in the region, makes those standard problems even worse, so it really is the set of problems we’re used to on steroids.”

Scavia says the university teams will hold a workshop in January.  They’ll ask government agencies, industries and environmental groups to join them.  And the group will talk about the best ways to manage the Great Lakes in the future.

The project will cost about $200,000 dollars. The 21 universities are splitting the bill.

(music bump)

This is the Environment Report.

Here’s one of those headlines that’ll probably confirm your hunch:

Weather-wise, this January through September was the most extreme the country’s ever experienced.  Kate Wells tallies up some of the local ripple effects:

Let’s just flip back through the 2012 calendar, shall we?

First, there was the winter-that-wasn’t.

“It started with the non-winter of 2012. It was one of the warmest Januarys and Februarys on record.”

That’s meteorologist Jeff Masters. He’s based in Ann Arbor and is a big name in the weather-blog world.

He says that warm winter led into a stormy spring, with a big tornado in March –

“Which ripped through Dexter, Michigan, causing a lot of damage there. And in addition to March we had summer in March.”

Weird, unprecedented 80 degree days in early spring, that tricked all our apple blossoms into blooming and killing off that crop.

And that was all just a warm up to this summer. Literally.

“You never see corn like this this time of year. No ears.”

That’s Michigan farmer Jon Drozd speaking to MLive reporters this summer.

“’88 was the worst drought anyone had ever seen. Until now. Now this one’s the worst.”

All of Michigan’s counties were declared disaster areas. Nationally, it was the third most expensive disaster in U.S. history.

Plus, it came with some of the hottest days and worst air pollution Detroit has ever seen… and a bumper crop of West Nile virus.

If all of this makes you feel uneasy, meteorologist Jeff Masters says he’s hearing that a lot.

“Something is up with the weather. Absolutely. You don’t have to be a meteorologist to know that.”

He says Michigan’s climate has reached a sort of tipping point.

“I think we’ve moved into a new climate regime. I mean, the climate that I knew growing up is no longer our climate. We’ve moved to a new, higher energy climate.”

Masters says that means more extremes on both ends: massive droughts and frequent storms.

So when it comes to extreme weather, 2013 just might give 2012 a run for its money. For the Environment Report, I’m Kate Wells.

Related Environment Report stories:
Climate Change and Extreme Weather

Hard Freeze Hurts Michigan’s Cherry Crop

Coping with a Historically Low Crop in the Cherry Capitol

Hedging Bets on Wine Grapes in Northern Michigan

The search for the oldest shipwreck in the Great Lakes has resumed.  The team that believes it has found the wreck is moving ahead after closing a legal dispute with the State of Michigan.  They’re trying to prove that what they’ve found in Lake Michigan could be a French ship that disappeared in 1679.

It’s been thirty years since Great Lakes Exploration began searching for the Griffon.  In fact, the original team has been at it so long, they’re running out of time to see it through themselves.

Jim Cucharski is one of the original divers on the team.  But he’s not in the water today because he recently had a heart attack.

In fact, just one of the original divers, Cucharski’s brother Tom, is in good shape for diving this week.

“You know, time takes its toll. We’re all getting older. I was like thirty years old when I started this and I’m 63 now, so, yeah, it doesn’t get any better, you know?”

The group out of Dayton, Ohio spent countless vacations up here camping and combing the bottom of northern Lake Michigan.

Their leader, Steve Libert, lives in Virginia these days. Libert says his interest in the Griffon goes back to junior high. That was when he first heard of the French explorer Robert de La Salle, and his ship with a mythical animal carved on the stern; half lion and half eagle.

“It was a figurehead to ward off evil spirits and they called it the Griffon.”

The location of the Griffon has been the subject of some debate over the centuries.

Libert says he was criticized for looking in Lake Michigan by people who thought the wreck was in Lake Huron. That’s because it was said that it went down among the Huron Islands.

“But the Huron Islands, according to Indian, meant rough and wicked, the term Huron, so what that told me was there was still a possibility that ship could be in Lake Michigan.”

So Libert’s group searched around the islands off the Garden Peninsula near Green Bay, and in 2001, they found a wooden beam sticking up from the bottom with a few pegs in it.

Survey work done since then has started to outline the shape of something buried beneath it: something that is curved like the hull of a boat and close to 20 feet wide, which is the size of the object they’re looking for.

So now they are trying to figure how long it is.

Mark Holley is a nautical archeologist.

“That’s your sub-bottom profiler. Essentially it’s just a big glorified fish finder. You know how a fish finder will send down a cone of sound? This is actually going to send down a beam… and it’s going to be a foot wide beam of intense, low-frequency sound and with that you can penetrate and see up to 100 feet into the lake bed.”

With the device strapped on the back of the boat, they cruise back and forth over the area where they believe the shipwreck is. Once all this information is processed they should have an outline of whatever is down there.

The next big step would be to get the shovels out and dig. But that will require a permit from the State of Michigan, and this group has not been on the best of terms with the state.

In fact, they’ve fought in court for most of the last 20 years.

But Steve Libert is convinced there’s a shipwreck down there and that they’ll soon demonstrate it’s worth a look.

“This location is not going to stay hidden for a lot of years. There’s going to be people coming in here, diving, dropping huge anchors trying to plow the bottom and if we don’t get those permits to start excavation that site could be destroyed.”

But nothing quite like this has ever been done in the Great Lakes.

When asked what kind of proof might be sufficient to get a permit to dig, the archeologist on the team said he has no idea.

This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

The Eagle Mine near Marquette is under construction. It will be mining mostly nickel and copper along with smaller amounts of other metals.

The company Rio Tinto owns the mine.  They’ve received their state and federal permits, but those permits are being challenged in court.  The mine has been divisive in the community.  A lot of people want the mining jobs, and many others are worried about the impacts the mine could have on Lake Superior and nearby rivers.

Dan Blondeau is a spokesperson for Rio Tinto.  He says the company will be spending about a million dollars on environmental monitoring that’s required by their permits.  But he says residents have been telling them that wasn’t enough.

“For the last several years, community members have told us they’d have more trust in environmental monitoring if it was done independently.”

Rio Tinto just signed formal agreements with a nonprofit group.  The company will pay $300,000 a year for independent testing around the mine area, the mill and certain transportation routes.  Dan Blondeau says this kind of agreement is a first for Rio Tinto.

“It’s really unprecedented. We have not been able to find another example of something like this in the U.S. or globally.”

The Superior Watershed Partnership is the group that will conduct the testing.

Carl Lindquist is the Partnership’s executive director.  He says the group was opposed to the mine from the beginning.  But once it was clear the mine was going forward, they wanted to be involved as watchdogs. 

“You know, mining is a big part of our history in the U.P.  So it’s been a divisive issue in the community since the beginning and this monitoring program has been one of the few things that’ve come out of the whole Eagle Mine that has generated support from all sectors.”

Lindquist says his group’s scientists will be in charge of the testing, and they’ll be using labs approved by the Environmental Protection Agency.  They’ll be taking split samples to verify the samples Rio Tinto’s workers take and make sure they’re getting the same results.  They’ll also be looking for pollutants in the air, groundwater and surface water. 

Lindquist says anybody can suggest tests they want to see done.  And he says they’ll post all of their data online.  He says Rio Tinto will get a chance to comment on any tests that show a chemical is above a state or federal standard.

“That doesn’t stop us from posting anything.  But let’s say there is – I don’t want to say a violation – but an exceedance, we want to get that out as soon as possible; they do have the opportunity to provide their comment and both will be shared.”

Lindquist says one of his main concerns is making sure the monitoring is kept at arms’ length from the company.  He says to do that, the money from Rio Tinto will be handled through the Marquette County Community Foundation.  He says they’re also seeking additional funding sources.

But others are worried the additional monitoring will not be enough.

“There’s just no way that $300,000 is an adequate amount of money to achieve any sort of comprehensive monitoring over that much terrain and for so many parameters.”

Michelle Halley is an attorney for the National Wildlife Federation.  Her group is suing to challenge the company’s state permits.

She says her group is concerned about the type of mining that will take place at Eagle Mine. It’s often called sulfide mining and it can produce sulfuric acid. That can be highly toxic to people and wildlife.

“In almost every location where sulfide mining has occurred there has been contamination of groundwater or surface water and usually of both.”

The company insists it can mine safely.

But there are many people watching what happens.  Rio Tinto is one of several companies planning to tap into potentially billions of dollars worth of metals in the Upper Peninsula.

I’m Rebecca Williams.

This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

The federal agency that regulates nuclear power plants released more information about a leak over the summer at the Palisades plant near South Haven. The plant has one of the worst safety ratings in the U.S. after a number of problems last year.  (You can learn more from our timeline of the problems at Palisades over the past two years.)

Michigan Radio’s Lindsey Smith has been following developments at Palisades. There’s been at least three water leaks at Palisades this summer. Lindsey, remind me which leak this was?

Lindsey: “This one is arguably the most important because water was leaking from the actual vessel that holds the nuclear reactor. It’s important that water covers the reactor completely. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn’t allow any leakage like this so the plant shut down in August to fix it.”

Rebecca: It has been fixed, right? Do we know what caused it?

Lindsey: “Yeah, the leak has been fixed and Palisades is operating. We know that the leak was coming from a tiny hole in one of the reactor’s control rod drive mechanism. Plant operators can move these control rods in or out of the reactor vessel to control the rate of the reaction.

But we still don’t know what the root cause of the hole was. During a briefing Monday afternoon, NRC branch chief Jack Giessner noted that there was a similar leak from the control rod drive mechanisms – he calls them CRDMs – in the past.

“All the CRDMs were replaced in 2001. That was one of the drivers for why we did an special inspection. We said ‘hey, it’s only been 11 years and we have another through-wall leak.'”

It’s not clear how quickly the hole formed. Palisades operators believe it formed slowly over eight years.  The NRC says that’s possible but believe it could have been only two years. We won’t know that for another three or four months.”

Rebecca: What else did Giessner say about the leak?

Lindsey: “He estimates that up to 10,000 gallons of water leaked from the reactor vessel over 33 days.  He says the radioactive water was contained in the building and then processed like normal radioactive liquid and there were no safety concerns for the public.

I asked Giessner how well he thought Palisades responded to the leak. Because an independent safety assessment done last spring said there was a “repeated emphasis of production over safety.”

“I think they were prompt to shut down. I think the NRC’s assessment when they were getting ready to start up we weren’t happy with their performance in that case and we took specific action.”

Giessner says the NRC had to prompt Palisades to do a more thorough inspection before restarting the plant.”

Rebecca: So what’s the bottom line here?

Lindsey: “The bottom line here is that Palisades is under more scrutiny because of the recent safety problems. The NRC wants to be more transparent about what’s going on there. So that’s why the agency took this unusual step of releasing preliminary results of its inspection.

We’ll get the final results of the inspection in a few months. But in the meantime, the NRC is in the middle of a different, even bigger inspection.  This one is to follow up on the poor safety culture among workers at the plant that led to Palisades’ poor safety rating.  The results of both of these inspections will impact the safety rating, but we won’t know the final results for a while.”

Rebecca: Thanks Lindsey.  Lindsey Smith is Michigan Radio’s west Michigan reporter.

You can listen to the Environment Report segment above, or read an expanded version below

Documents released this week show a Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector based at Palisades discovered a new leak during a routine inspection on September 20^th.  

Palisades is under more scrutiny this year after a series of problems earned it one of the worst safety ratings in the country. This is at least the third water leak (depending on exactly how you tally them) at the nuclear plant this year. You can find more details about the first leak from a large water tank above the control room here, and the second water leak from the actual reactor here.

Palisades sits right next to Lake Michigan near South Haven. It uses water from the lake to help cool equipment.

This new leak is from a valve on a pipe that funnels that Lake Michigan water back into the lake. The water is leaking from that valve into a secondary building at the plant. Right now the leak is about a cup and half an hour. The water is not radioactive.

“(The pipe) can still do what it was designed to do,” NRC spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng said. “Eventually this valve, it needs to be fixed, but it is not an immediate safety concern.”

But this is just the latest water leak; Palisades shut down twice this year to fix two other separate water leaks. So how many leaks is too many?

“We are asking ourselves that question but in a different way, which is; why is this happening? Is there a common thread that we need to look at?” Mitlyng said.

A Palisades spokesman says they’ve determined where the leak is coming from. He says the company may repair the “through-wall, pinhole leak,” replace the valve, or change the system of pipes to bypass the valve altogether. It’s unclear when that fix will happen.

Mitlyng says this is a good example of how regular NRC inspections do identify issues of concern.

View our timeline of problems at Palisades over the past two years.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has the authority to set aside land to make sure biodiversity is preserved.  Basically, that means the DNR can designate an area to protect the variety of plants and animals that live in that place.

But new legislation seeks to greatly limit that authority.

Senate bill 1276 would prohibit the DNR from setting aside an area of land specifically for the purpose of maintaining biological diversity.  The DNR could not make or enforce a rule to do that.

Senator Tom Casperson is one of the bill’s sponsors. He says the DNR has too much power to set aside land for the purpose of conservation.

“They need to have authority but when it comes to the direction where we’re going as a state with our public lands, I think there needs to be some checks and balances.”

Casperson says he gets angry calls from his constituents when they learn, for example, that motorized vehicles are not allowed in certain areas.  He says his bill would put more power in the Legislature’s hands.

“I think they should have to have some oversight within the Legislature, somewhere at least, a check and balance to say okay we agree that’s a good move and let the public weigh in on it through their Legislature.  It seems like they’re reluctant to do that and I understand some of the reason why. It’s not easy to get stuff through the Legislature, but I would also submit that there’s a reason for that.”

Casperson’s bill is pretty wide-ranging.  S.B. 1276 would amend several parts of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act in these ways (you can see this bill summary for more details):

• Prohibit the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Natural Resources Commission from promulgating or enforcing a rule or an order that designates or classifies an area of land specifically for the purpose of achieving or maintaining biological diversity.
•  Delete the conservation of biological diversity from the DNR’s duties regarding forest management, and require the Department to balance its management activities with economic values.
• Eliminate a requirement that the DNR manage forests in a manner that promotes restoration.
• Provide that a State department or agency would not have to designate or classify an area of land specifically for the purpose of achieving or maintaining biological diversity.
• Eliminate the restoration of natural biological diversity from the definition of “conservation.”
• Eliminate a reference to “unusual flora and fauna” in the definition of “natural area.”
• Delete a legislative finding that most losses of biological diversity are the result of human activity.

In testimony, Professor Emeritus Burt Barnes at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment calls the bill “lacking in common sense, ecological literacy, and vision; it is divisive, counterproductive, mean-spirited; couldn’t be worse.” Here’s an excerpt from his letter:

“All individuals and organizations that focus on natural resources necessarily must consider the organisms occupying the lands for which they are responsible. Therefore, it is impossible to legislate biodiversity or its restoration out of the mission of any organization trying to address and solve human-caused problems of the world.”

Environmental groups are reacting as well.

“You should be paying attention to what the Legislature is doing right now.”

Brad Garmon is the director of conservation and emerging issues at the Michigan Environmental Council.

“They’re redefining conservation in a different way than it has been understood for 100 years of Michigan’s conservation legacy, that’s made us a leader in this issue.  That stuff is in jeopardy right now.”

Garmon says the DNR does a good job of managing for all kinds of uses – including timber harvest and off road vehicles… and at the same time protecting the state’s rich animal and plant life.  And he points out the DNR does ask for public input.

“This bill is one of the worst we’ve seen in a while, in terms of just throwing out the respect for the department and the trained experts in ecology and forestry and others, and pretty much saying we don’t trust them to do a good job anymore and we the politicians are going to tell you how to manage our forests.”

He says this bill is the latest in a string of legislation that’s aiming to change the way land is used and managed in Michigan.

That’s the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

You can listen to the story above or read an expanded version below.

Enbridge Energy is replacing one of its pipelines that runs through lower Michigan.  They’re replacing Line 6B. It’s the same pipeline that broke in Marshall two years ago.  The new pipeline will allow Enbridge to double the amount of oil they can transport to refineries in Detroit, Toledo and Sarnia, Ontario.

To build the pipeline, the company says it needs additional easement next to the current 60 foot easement that runs through many people’s backyards. 

Enbridge says many people who own land along the pipeline route have signed contracts with the company.  But Enbridge is taking people who refuse to sign contracts to court.

In a courthouse in Howell yesterday, a judge heard arguments against more than a dozen landowners. (Some of the cases were settled yesterday afternoon, involving the Munsell farming family. The settlement requires Enbridge to stay within the existing 60 foot easement on the Munsell’s property, but does allow Enbridge to temporarily use additional land as workspace for the new pipeline.)

Connie Watson and her husband Tom are among the defendants. 

“Enbridge has taken us to condemnation. Eminent domain is another word for it.  And because we wouldn’t sign their contract as it was, they brought us to court to take the land.”

The Watsons say they’re frustrated with Enbridge because of experiences they’ve had with the company in the past.

For four months, Enbridge repaired sections of the current pipeline running through the Watson’s backyard.  Tom Watson says Enbridge workers brought in lights and worked in their yard with heavy equipment day and night.

“Sounds like a bomb going off about every hour or so, you know, like a bomb went off.”

Connie: “So much noise.”

The Watsons say the work caused cracks in their foundation… and other damage they say they have not been compensated for.  The couple says they were not satisfied with the offers Enbridge made for their land for the new pipeline. 

Connie Watson says she feels like she’s at the mercy of a company that has acted more like a bully than a responsible corporate neighbor.

“Makes you feel sold out, doesn’t it, Tommy? ‘Yeah.’  It makes you feel sold out.”

The lawyers for Enbridge declined to comment.

The Gannett News Service reports Enbridge has taken more than 70 homeowners in Michigan to court to force them to give up some of their property.

Carol Brimhall lives in Stockbridge on 38 acres. 

“Well, we tried to negotiate with Enbridge. We met six times with various attorneys.”

But she says they were not satisfied with any offers.  A judge in Ingham County recently ordered that Enbridge could expand its easement on her property.  Enbridge now has 25 additional feet of permanent easement and 60 feet beyond that to use as temporary workspace. 

The judge also ordered the Brimhalls to accept around $11,000 dollars in compensation from Enbridge. 

“The condemnation was devastating. We couldn’t have been in that courtroom five minutes. So I thought the judge would maybe order mediation, or say let’s give this another two weeks and you guys see if you can work it out… anything. But she signed the order and we were done.”

Brimhall says Enbridge crews cut down more than 100 large trees on her property last week.  She says the work started the same day her mom was in the hospital, dying.

“Oh, it’s awful. They came through, the day my mom was… Monday… they cut my trees. I had called and emailed the agent and said, please give me a little bit of time here, so my mom can pass away and I can be with her and not worry about what’s going on. And they were out there first thing, Monday morning.”

We asked Enbridge Energy to comment for this story.  The company did not make anyone available for an interview.

That’s the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

There are around 4,800 gas stations in Michigan, but at one time, there were a lot more. It seemed like just about every corner had a gas station on it.

Many of those gas stations are closed now, but taxpayers are often on the hook for what’s been left behind.

A map of the open LUST sites in Michigan

Transcript

One morning the owner of Logan’s Gas & Deli came in to check his inventory, and things were a little off.

Steve Beukema is with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

“In the course of a weekend they lost about 8,000 gallons of gasoline. They came to work on a Monday and their 10,000 gallon tank was empty,” said Beukema.

Beukema is the project manager for the clean-up at this site near Battle Creek. He says when they pulled the tank, they found a dime-sized hole on the bottom.

Gas spread through the sandy soil underground, across the street, and under a house and a nearby pizza restaurant. Both get their water from underground wells.

Beukema says the owner tried to clean up the mess, but the insurance company wasn’t paying the bills fast enough.

The clean-up contractor walked away after they weren’t getting paid, and the gas station went belly up.

So that’s when you and I step in. We pay an extra fee at the gas pump that helps pay for this kind of clean-up.

Beukema showed me their clean-up system.

It uses a series of high pressure valves that force air underground. The air pushes the gas vapor upward.

“And the other part of the system is a soil vapor extraction, that’s essentially like a big vacuum cleaner. It’ll suck up all the gasoline vapors from the soil.”

Altogether this clean-up will cost more than a million dollars. Luckily, the underground drinking water wells were not affected here.

This site is an extreme case. Beukema says most leaks at gas stations don’t happen so quickly. They typically leak slowly – over long periods of time.

These kinds of slow underground leaks have affected drinking water supplies and surface water, and there have been a lot of leaks in Michigan.

Today, there are more than 9,000 documented leaks that still need to be cleaned up. Most of these tanks are not actively leaking, but the pollution remains.

In the U.S., only Florida has more open clean-up cases.

Around half of the 9,000 sites in Michigan are known as “orphan” sites. The original polluters can’t be found, or they can’t or won’t pay for them.

So it falls back to the state, but the state has been lagging behind with clean-ups.

Mark Griffin is with the Michigan Petroleum Association. 

“You could not find a more inefficient, stupid way to run a clean-up program,” said Griffin.

He blames a lot of bureaucratic red tape and a lack of funding for slowing down the clean-ups.

In Michigan, there’s a 7/8 cent fee on each gallon of gas that goes into the “Refined Petroleum Fund.”

That fund was originally set up to help clean-up leaks when gas stations replaced their underground tanks, but with the recent tight budget years, that fund has been raided for other purposes.

“I believe $10-15 million a year during the Granholm administration was siphoned off to the Department of Treasury to pay quality of life bonds,” said Griffin.

And the fund is still being diverted under the Snyder Administration.

The 7/8 of a cent that we pay on each gallon of gas generates around $50 million a year for the Refined Petroleum Fund.

But in recent years, only $20 million of that has been put toward cleaning up these leaks. (The Snyder Administration did request that $30 million go toward clean-up in the next fiscal year, but James Clift of the Michigan Environmental Council says it remains to be seen how that money will be spent.)

This summer, the legislature passed a series of bills aimed removing a lot of the red tape in the clean-up program.

It will also set up an advisory board to take a look at how the money in the Refined Petroleum Fund is spent.

The state estimates it would cost around $1.8 billion to clean up the more than 9,000 contaminated sites around the state, so even if all the gas fee money went towards clean up. It would take decades to tackle the backlog.

With this year’s drought, fish in northern Michigan are fighting low water levels and hot temperatures as they head upstream to spawn.  As Linda Stephan reports – the drought is causing major problems for one river, in particular:

The state Department of Natural Resources is about to take very rare action and ban fishing near the mouth of the Betsie River, near Frankfort.

Fisheries biologist Mark Tonello says if people stay away from the area, there is enough room for the fish to swim up river.

“Even when they’re not intending to, a lot of times they’re spooking the fish and the fish wind up beaching themselves and dying.”

Officials are trying to avoid a mass salmon die-off on Betsie Bay. For now, the request that people stay away from exposed bottomlands near the mouth of the river is voluntary.

It’s one of a handful of rivers where salmon are not stocked and must reproduce naturally to survive.

For The Environment Report, I’m Linda Stephan.

(music bump)

This is the Environment Report.

If you’re thinking of planting trees or shrubs in your yard… the U.S. Department of Agriculture has guidelines for what to plant depending on where you live. It’s called the Plant Hardiness Zone Map.  It’s based on average minimum winter temperatures.  So you can use it to decide if the kind of tree you want to plant will make it through the winter without freezing to death.

This past January, the USDA updated this map for the first time since 1990. 

But one researcher argues it’s already out of date.

Nir Krakauer is an assistant professor of civil engineering at the City College of New York. He says the USDA used the annual minimum temperatures between 1976 and 2005 to make their map.  He updated that map with more recent data.

“In general, a lot of Michigan might be a half zone less cold than the USDA map would show.”

In other words – he says – our winters have been warming faster than other seasons… and that’s shifting those plant zones north.  That means plants that used to only survive in warm southern climates are doing well farther north.

Krakauer says you might be able to experiment with growing plants that do better in warmer places.

Experts say one of the things that’s striking is how much warmer our winters have gotten on average.

Jeff Andresen is the state’s climatologist and an associate professor of geography at Michigan State University.

“If we look at our changing temperatures, Michigan is warmer now than it has been in the past, but it turns out much of the warming that has occurred, especially in the last few decades, has occurred during the winter season and the spring season as well, and overnight: minimum temperatures have increased in some cases 5 to 10 degrees F in the winter in just the last 30 years. Those are very, very significant changes.”

He says the USDA plant zone map is still a reliable guide for what to plant in your yard.

Unless you really love taking risks.

“It’s like dating in high school, people want what they can’t have, they want to go for that next one up.”

Bert Cregg is an associate professor of horticulture and forestry at MSU. (You can read his blog post to find out why he was excited when that new USDA hardiness zone map finally came out).  He says a lot of people want to try to plant things that really won’t survive in Michigan.

“I go to these gardening shows and whatnot and see Tshirts: Been There Killed That or You Don’t Really Know a Plant Until You’ve Killed it At Least Three Times.  People are always wanting to push their hardiness zones.”

Cregg says the trouble is… even in a warming climate, we can still get very cold winter events.

“Yeah, on average, the winters are getting warmer, but that extreme event is still potential and of course that’s what’s going to take your plants out.”

Cregg says you might’ve heard fall is the best time to plant trees.  But he actually recommends waiting until spring… because if it gets cold early this fall, it could be hard for those young trees to get established.

I’m Rebecca Williams.