 It was the courageous testimony of Marie Yovanovitch, former ambassador to Ukraine with thirty-three years experience in the Foreign Service Department, who got me thinking about the people behind the scenes, government employees working to keep us safe, individuals who must stay focused while the pendulum of politics shifts about them. Her testimony made me realize how rarely I think about, or express gratitude to, others like her. It got me thinking about the Environmental Protection Agency, an organization charged with protecting human health AND the environment. It is not an easy task when climate change threatens to unravel decades of success addressing issues like polluted runoff and invasive species. Nor can it be easy when a new administration pulls threads from the fabric of legislation used to balance human life with the health of our water, air, and land. The EPA was created in 1970 because people in the country were alarmed at the deteriorating condition of the environment and the potential health risks to themselves and their families. Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, outlined the dangers associated with DDT, pesticides, and other synthetic chemicals. Smog emitted from automobile emissions and industries choked large cities like New York and Los Angeles. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were found in mothers’ breast milk. Poisons were leaking from rusty drums into backyards. A man-made chemical used for testing nuclear weapons was discovered in crops growing near or in contaminated soil. Factories dumping chemical pollutants, human waste from city sewers, phosphorous and pesticides from agriculture killed a plethora of fish along Lake Erie’s shoreline. And, according to a report published by the Science History Institute, the country was throwing out 100 million automobile tires and 30 billion glass bottles per year. Most of the trash was piled “in mountainous open dumps.” According to Meir Rindle, author of the Science History Institute report, President Richard Nixon created the EPA and proposed an ambitious pollution agenda not because he was “a nature lover,” but because he was politically astute enough to realize the political power of an environmental movement that was sweeping the country. Shortly after taking office in 1969, public outrage over two events forced his hand. In January, oil leaking from an offshore rig off the coast of Santa Barbara covered twelve miles of beaches in southern California, killing birds and other marine life. Months later, Time magazine published a front cover photograph of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River engulfed in flames, its surface polluted from decades of industrial waste. And while the photo was from a 1952 fire, not the smaller 1969 fire, the photo brought to the forefront the condition of our sources of drinking water. In 1970, President Nixon, a Republican, presented the Democrat-controlled Congress with a 37-point message on the environment. The result was bipartisan legislation like the Reformation Plan of 1970—which gave birth to the EPA in December 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and several amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1963. In the 1970s, the environment was neither a Republican nor Democrat issue. It was an issue of life and health. It still is. However, as reported in September in The New York Times, under the Trump administration—with Republican support—eighty-five environmental rules affecting issues such as air pollution and emissions, drilling, animal protection, toxic substances, and water pollution are being rolled back. On a local level, Since President Trump took office, the number of inspections of factories and other industrial plants by the EPA’s Midwestern office has dropped 60%. According to a November 25th editorial in the Chicago Sun Times, there are 150 fewer scientists, technicians and other employees covering six of the Great Lakes states, including Michigan. And it appears many of their recommendations are being ignored or overruled. Quoting a report by the Better Government Association, the editorial points to examples such as a decision to no longer require a waste incineration plant in Sauget, Ill to monitor smokestacks despite a decade’s worth of evidence of arsenic, lead, mercury, and other metals polluting the air. Tests for cancer-causing gases at three Chicago suburban plants have been curtailed. A copper and nickel mine in Minnesota was allowed to discharge wastewater that could contaminate the St. Louis River and Lake Superior. An electronics plant near Racine, WI was granted an exemption from required air filters. It feels as if we are slipping back into the environmentally toxic days of the sixties. What will it take for us to say, “enough?” Resources:
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 Everything I love about living in West Michigan is affected by climate change. More rain events exceeding 6 inches. More damaging winds. More crop failures. More volatility in lake levels. More ticks and Lyme disease.
While most of us can point to examples of all five scenarios at various times in our lives, the evidence of the increasing regularity of these events is overwhelming. And sobering. The consequences of a warming atmosphere that holds more water and energy is wreaking havoc in the quality of our lives. More frequent and intense rain events cause flooding, property damage, sewage overflows, an increase in waterborne pathogens that transmit disease, an increase in algal blooms, and polluted runoff. Coupled with damaging windstorms they also place great stress on infrastructure—like water treatment facilities, roads, and bridges. And while scientists predict the warmer temperatures will result in less ice coverage and, therefore, lower water levels by the turn of the century, the storm events create volatility in the levels of the Great Lakes. Such volatility damages our shoreline and increases the cost of maintaining marinas and navigable waterways. It puts tourism, one of the key economic drivers for the region, at risk. It also affects the productivity of our farms, another economic driver, with soybean and maze crops expected to decline 10-30% by mid-century. Warmer temperatures mean an increase in the number of parasites and ticks, including the black-legged ticks known to transmit Lyme disease. This disease, when not detected or treated, can lead to joint pain, arthritis, neurological problems, heart palpitations, inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, numbness or tingling in the hands or feet. This is serious stuff. In addition to the increase in ticks, the warmer temperatures are spurring the migration of the white-footed mouse, a known carrier of Lyme, into southern Michigan. But there are things we can do to slow down the consequences of climate change. And that gives me hope. The David Suzuki Foundation has created a top ten list.
 Her favorite memory of Lake Michigan is walking to Pier Cove Beach with her little sister in the chilly air of a September sunset. They splashed in the icy waters of a nearby spring, a favorite spot for watching turtles. Shivering, they dove into Lake Michigan to get warm, watching as the sun began its descent.
Hannah Huggett’s words fly through the air with the speed of a hummingbird’s wings. “My goal,” said the high school freshman and this year’s leader of Holland’s Youth Climate Strike, “is to bring recycling to the streets of downtown Holland.” Hannah Huggett makes things happen. Earlier this year, as an eighth grader, she introduced the idea of recycling to the 2019 Tulip Time organizers. “I reached out to someone I found on line and was invited to present my idea to the Tulip Time committee. They suggested I start with one event rather than all of Tulip Time. They were concerned people would throw trash into the recycling bins and contaminate everything. They agreed to allow me to place recycling stations at the Tulip Time Run provided I find volunteers to man the stations.” Hannah not only recruited the volunteers, she also contacted Boxed Water, the sponsor that provided water at the Run, so that the waxed cardboard containers not typically part of the local recycling program, could be picked up and taken to the proper recycling facility. “I discovered the concerns of the Tulip Time committee were valid. People don’t pay attention when tossing their trash.” According to the Environmental Protection Agency, municipal solid waste in landfills is the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the United States. The more waste in our landfills, the more greenhouse gases are emitted into the atmosphere. The warmer the atmosphere in the Great Lakes region, the more we will experience frequent and intense rain events, greater risk of crop failures, volatility in lake levels, an increasing number of parasites—including ticks, which can transmit the bacteria causing Lyme, the northern migration of white-footed mice, known carriers of Lyme, and therefore, more Lyme disease. Learning to minimize waste is a quality of life issue. And that got me thinking . . . one of my great learnings from life in the corporate world was that incentives drive behavior. Would we behave differently if we were charged per pound of trash? Would we learn to slow down, not multitask as we haphazardly sort between trash and recycling material? Would we find ways to compost our garbage? I suspect so. The first step is learning what is recyclable in the community. The second is learning to recycle responsibly. If we can do it at home, we can help Hannah—and young people like Hannah in communities around the world—bring recycling to the streets in our cities. We can help minimize the effects of climate change. Together, we can paint rainbows in darkening skies. Will you be part of the story?  The last question raised at the September 17th Living Sustainably Along the Lakeshore’s discussion on Glocal Water had to do with the long-term viability of the 2008 Great Lakes Compact. The agreement among the eight Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces was designed to restrict water use outside the Great Lakes basin. During the discussion, I mentioned Peter Annin and his book, The Great Lakes Water Wars.
In Thursday’s Crain’s Chicago Business, Hugh Dellios interviews Annin on the Compact. The author discusses the Chicago diversion of 2.1 billion gallons of water per day from Lake Michigan and the rare opportunities that diversion provides to Chicago and the state of Illinois. Annin does not see such a diversion happening again, pointing to the strength of the Compact, an agreement that was “lawyered to death.” However, he expresses concern about climate change and the effects the “ferocity and the frequency of large storm events” are having on water infrastructure and the water quality of the Great Lakes. We will need to “squeeze efficiency out of every last drop” of water, even in a water-rich region like ours, he says.  Did you know that the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written just after World War II, did not mention water? And that when the General Assembly voted to add the right to water and sanitation in 2010, the United States abstained from voting?
Did you know one out of nine people in the world don’t have access to clean water? And that 2-3 billion people lack basic sanitation? That 5,000 children per day die as a result? (As a frame of reference, there are 4,500 children in Holland public schools.) Did you know within 25 miles of Lake Michigan there are four townships in Ottawa County (north of Holland, south of Grand Haven, west of Hudsonville) with limited access to abundant groundwater? That in 2008, homeowners on wells in several new subdivisions awoke one morning to find no water flowing from their faucets? And that the farmers in that same area suffered massive crop burn after irrigating their fields? Did you know there is no connection between Lake Michigan and the deep bedrock foundation found in those townships? And that even with abundant rain and snowmelt, their water levels are dropping? Abundant, cheap, and safe water is not something that can be taken for granted in this world, this country, or even this community. Have you thought about the ramifications? The potential for water wars and what that means to those of us living in the Great Lakes region? Do you know what you can do to conserve water? To help clean up 20% of the world’s fresh surface water that defines this region? To care for and protect Lake Michigan and all our sources of water? I invite you to watch the video of Tuesday’s Living Sustainably Along the Lakeshore: Community and Neighborhood—Glocal Water featuring Dr. David Van Wylen, Dean for Natural and Applied Sciences at Hope College; Paul Sachs, Director of Planning and Performance Improvement for Ottawa County; and me, author and Lake Michigan advocate. I promise you will learn something new.
In my fourteen years living near Lake Michigan’s shoreline, I have yet to meet anyone who isn’t concerned about the deteriorating health of the lake. The question I am always asked is, “what can I do?” The upcoming presentations are designed to answer that question—with examples from across the region that I hope will spark creative thinking and fuel a desire to get engaged. Please join us.
On September 17th at 6:30 p.m. in the Herrick District Library in Holland, I am honored to be participating in a panel discussion on “Glocal Water.” Part of the Living Sustainably Along the Lakeshore Series, the forum will focus on water quality, quantity, distribution, and conservation locally and globally— i.e. “glocal.” Joining me will be Dr. David VanWylen, Dean for Natural and Applied Science at Hope College. He will outline the challenges of global water scarcity as people, communities, and nations struggle to find safe, accessible, and affordable water. Discussing local challenges with groundwater depletion created by our unique bedrock Marshall Sandstone formation will be Paul Sachs, Director of the Department of Planning and Performance Improvement for Ottawa County. As for me, my presentation is titled “If It’s Not Okay, Then What?” It is not okay that the health of Lake Michigan is at risk. Nor that the number and magnitude of the issues are increasing. There are things we can do, as individuals, to make a difference. But if we want to drive needed changes faster, more efficiently, we need to link arms and form teams. Following the example of forty-two fourth graders at Quincy Elementary School, we’ll explore how organizations can get involved in tackling the everyday issues that threaten--access to and the quality of—our water. I also am thrilled to be speaking at the Hope Academy of Senior Professionals (HASP) on October 10th at 1:00 p.m. in the HASP classroom. The talk is titled "A Lake Michigan Love Song."  I subscribe to The New York Times, my friends to The Wall Street Journal. Both newspapers are targeted to the intellectual reader. So, why is it so difficult to discuss matters of importance? The daughter of an Irish Catholic mother and a father of Irish Protestant descent, I stood in the opening of a peace wall in Belfast, Ireland, pondering the lessons of history. On this misty spring day in 2019, decades after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 settled the “Troubles” of Northern Ireland, the gate still closes at 7:00 p.m., reopens at 7:00 a.m. Both sides feel safer knowing violence cannot be hurled in darkness over a wall 40’ high, 4’ thick, and extending 6’ below the ground. “They would have you believe this was a war about religion. It was not.” He, the first of our two tour guides, stood outside Divis Tower, not far from City Hall, the place where the Troubles began. “It started as a civil rights march from Belfast to Derry,” one of the thought-leaders behind the October 1968 march, explained. “We fashioned the protest after the Civil Right movement in the United States. We wanted equal opportunities for all, including the right to own property, to earn a decent wage, to have one person get one vote—regardless of whether one was Catholic or Protestant. After hundreds of years of conflict, we believed we could bring change to Northern Ireland and end discrimination through peaceful protest. We were wrong.” On the fourth day, as they neared Derry, the protesters were ambushed. Over 300 loyalists (supporters of the union between the Protestant British monarchy and Northern Ireland) appeared in the fields above a narrow country lane bordered by hedges. The loyalists pelted the marchers with stones and beat them with crowbars and lead pipes when they tried to flee. “The police—known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary—did nothing to intervene. There were even members of the police auxiliary, called the B-Specials, involved in the beatings. As riots broke out across Northern Ireland, the loyalists burned our homes and gunned down unarmed family members and friends fleeing the fires. This radicalized our youth and the movement took a violent turn.” It also revitalized the Irish Republican Army (IRA), an organization known for its use of guerilla tactics in Ireland’s War for Independence from Great Britain in 1920. For violence begets violence. By the time the Good Friday Agreement was reached and the Troubles declared over, 3,600 people would die. More than 2,000 were civilians. I see the bullet holes in the walls of Divis Tower and the many gardens of remembrance for the lives lost before I am ushered through the gate to the other side. “Make no mistake, they are terrorists.” the second guide tells us, nodding to the community we have just toured. Formerly a member of the British military, he wore the crossed rifles of a marksman during the Troubles. “My job was to train the loyalists to shoot to kill.” He points to the little girl with bright red curls playing in a vacant lot overgrown with weeds. “That used to be someone’s home before a bomb was tossed from the other side.” He leads us to Frizzel’s fish shop on Shankill Road, the site where a bomb took the lives of nine people in October, 1993, two of them children. Another fifty-seven were injured. He mentions the car bomb that exploded in Omagh and the twenty-nine civilians killed after the peace agreement was signed. “Despite what you hear about the Good Friday Agreement, I believe there are guns, ammunition, and bombs still hidden in bunkers. I believe the IRA is still out there, waiting to attack.” Will the walls ever come down? “Hearts and minds have been shattered. Maybe in the next generation things will change and we can find understanding. But our kids do not play together, do not go to the same school or church, shop at the same stores. They will not see the faces of the children on the other side of the wall until University. They do not have the opportunity for friendship.” According to historian John Gibney, the Good Friday agreement did not address many of the root causes of the conflict, but rather was a brokered peace in a deeply divided society. It was an opening in a wall, an opportunity to end the bloodshed. We, in this country, can learn from the Irish. Before we become so deeply divided our walls become impenetrable, we can engage in dialogue, seek to understand differing points of view. We can join the mourners in Dayton who demanded that government “do something” to address gun violence. We can insist our leaders find an opening in the wall of rhetoric and end these senseless killings. If they cannot, we must find leaders who can. Resources:
In the pocket of Harry Burn, the youngest state representative, was a letter from his mother—a widowed, land-owning, non-voting taxpayer. She urged him to do the right thing, to vote for ratification. He listened, changing his earlier “Nay” vote to “Aye” and broke the gridlock. Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify women’s right to vote, sealing the three-quarter majority required to make the Amendment federal law. Prior to the ratification, women and men had battled emotional, religious, financially-motivated, and political beliefs that women should be governed under the common law tradition of femme covert. A holdover from British rule, it meant all power and authority resided with men. A woman had no rights. Her role was to be silent and subservient. It was a fight that took seventy-two years and spanned four generations. The campaign to change common law practice began in 1848, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott convened a convention of 300 people in Seneca Falls, NY. Advancing the rights of women under a Declaration of Sentiments fashioned after the Declaration of Independence, they emphasized one key difference. The signers held “these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.” Resolutions demanded equal rights for women in marriage, education, religion, employment and “the sacred right to the elective franchise.” They wrote: The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her . . . He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God. He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life. It is a message with an increasingly familiar ring. Susan B. Anthony joined the cause in 1851. The three women, considered founders of the woman suffrage movement, were not alive when the final battle was waged in Nashville. In the engrossing nonfiction, The Perfect 36, the authors describe a thorny path to victory that included bribes, threats, tapped telephones, lawsuits, “parliamentary shenanigans”, and lobbying efforts conducted in the Hospitality Suite of Nashville’s Hermitage Hotel where Tennessee-brewed Jack Daniel’s whiskey was available twenty-four hours a day. Yet despite the drama, the authors concluded that the summer of 1920 “must be counted as one of democracy’s finer triumphs.” It is a triumph at risk. When crowds, whipped into emotional fury, chant “send her back” or “lock her up” to women who have the courage to speak their truth and the confidence to try and make this country a safer, healthier, more just place to live, work and raise children, they are echoing the sentiments of those who believed women deserved no voice outside the home. They are sending all women “back” in action, if not law. I say to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, “You are welcome here! And thank you.” Come November 2020, I will vote with a yellow rose in mind and heart to keep the voices of women—all women regardless of national origin, color, race, religion, or sexual preference—in the public sphere. I urge others to do the same. Resource:
Patrick Dugan, Janann Sherman, Carol Lynn Yellin. The Perfect 36. 1998. Oakridge, TN. The Iris Publication Group. Our climate is changing now. Extremely rapidly. Expect wetter winters and springs with heavy rain, snow events. Intensity and frequency of tornadoes, large hail, damaging thunderstorm winds. Rain events exceeding 6 inches now occur regularly. Flooding. Sewage overflows. E. coli alerts. Beach closures. Water-borne pathogens. Nutrient runoff. Algal blooms. Great stress on water infrastructure. I have just returned from Washington, D.C. The White House says “We don’t believe you” but changes in precipitation affecting farmers. Planting delays caused by spring flooding, excessively wet soil conditions. Delayed planting puts crops at risk during hot, drier conditions. Will likely reduce crop yields for soybean and maize by 10-30% mid-century. More events. More rain. Exceeding capacity of culverts and storm sewers. Lake level variability high, affecting marinas, docks, shoreline homes. Vulnerability of beaches, shorelines and bluffs to erosion. Wave damage. Both parties get it but don’t want to do anything until the political climate is such they don’t feel they are committing political suicide. Shifts in length of season. Increasing concerns about invasive species. Ranges shifting for sport and baitfish. Parasites, especially ticks, surviving in greater number. White-footed mice, carrier of known pathogen for Lyme, to colonize new areas, including southern Michigan and Quebec. I volunteer my time because our children and grandchildren will bear the burden of our decisions. They already are. My note to Congressmen Fred Upton and Bill Huizenga: “Addressing climate change must be a priority. I am not a scientist but I see what is happening to our lakeside communities, dependent in part on tourism, in part on farming. We are under water.” A Found Photo Poem A poem found in the words of Dr. Donald J. Wuebbies, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Illinois, as spoken (in italics) at the June 2019 meeting of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative and published in the report, “An Assessment of the Impacts of Climate Change on the Great Lakes,” Accompanying photos found in Park, Laketown, and Saugatuck Townships.
 Check out this story in today's Detroit Free Press to see why Laura O'Brien and so many others give me hope someday the only colors we will see in the skies above our Great Lakes will be those gloriously painted by God!
"18,000 pieces of balloon waste were found in Great Lakes: Why it's a danger" |
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