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Mayors from eight North Shore communities joined U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk
(R-Ill.) on Monday in announcing plans to fight the proposed discharge
of significantly more ammonia and industrial waste into Lake Michigan
by the massive BP oil refinery in Whiting, Ind., after years of effort
to clean up the Great Lakes.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-070730pollutionjul30,1,5540831.story?track=rss
This Grand Rapids Press article is chock full of deliberate distortions of fact from the Nestle company and its lawyers in interpreting last week's outrageous decision rewriting the 37-year-old Michigan Environmental Protection Act. Here's the article and just a few of the distortions:
http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-37/1185451534265380.xml&coll=6
"The laws (of the Michigan Environ mental Protection Act) are still in effect," attorney Michael Haines said. "If there is damage anywhere, there is relief."
But only if a government agency pursues the lawsuit. Frequently they won't; they're politically compromised. After all the whole Nestle litigation was commenced not by the state of Michigan but by citizens. And when the state did get involved, it intervened to block the judge's order requiring Nestle to shut down its harmful water mining.
Until now "any citizen" could bring an action to prevent as well as stop conduct polluting, impairing or destroying natural resources. No more, says the Michigan Supreme Court. Now you have to show you're personally affected and probably that the damage has already occurred, and is not just speculative. Well, the principle of MEPA was that the air, water and other natural resources of Michigan belong to all the people.
Nestle spokeswoman Deb Muchmore said Wednesday's ruling simply reflected that 2004 decision. She said the company complies with all state laws and has an interest in protecting the environment.
This is just garden-variety PR talk. An interest in protecting the environment is not consistent with targeting the headwaters of Michigan's cleanest streams for water mining.
Quotes from two dissenting justices, one Republican, one Democrat, are perhaps the best way to wrap up this post:
"(The majority) has taken the power to protect the
state's natural resources away from the people of
Michigan," she wrote, terming the decision an
"assault."
"This court oversteps its bounds by telling the
Legislature how it should function," Kelly wrote.
"It fails to exercise appropriate judicial restraint.
It extinguishes a valid cause of action for no reason."
Pepsico Inc. will spell out that its Aquafina bottled water is made with tap
water, a concession to the growing environmental and political
opposition to the bottled water industry.According
to Corporate Accountability International, a U.S. watchdog group, the
world’s No. 2 beverage company will include the words “Public Water
Source” on Aquafina labels.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19985269/
Is "public water source" sufficiently clear? Why not "Captured Municipal Tap Water"?
A voracious fish believed to be the first Asian carp to invade the
Great Lakes in three years has been caught off Sarnia, to the horror of
the commercial fishing crew that captured it in its nets.
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Local/2007/07/27/4371878-sun.html
Here's the story of how the law gutted yesterday by Michigan's Supreme Court became law. A previous generation spent plenty of blood and sweat on it. Now it is our turn. (Taken from the book, Ruin and Recovery: Michigan's Rise as A Conservation Leader.)
But we also see how water protection laws
can be used to needlessly kill jobs with the correct ruling by the
Michigan Supreme Court against environmental groups challenging the
Nestle/Ice Mountain bottling plant in Osceola County. The plant has
been targeted even though it will use less water than most food
processing and automotive manufacturing facilities. It would be
foolish for Michigan and other Great Lakes states not to protect water
quality or monitor how much water is being drawn out of the lakes for
shipment to other places. It would be equally foolish to so
restrict water use that the state derives no economic benefit beyond
tourism from this potent asset. When the water is all commercialized and beyond public control, will the Detroit News find that foolish? Michigan will then be an impoverished colony of corporations. And of course, citizens won't have standing to sue them. http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007707260318
To say this ruling from a predictable right-wing four-member majority of the Michigan Supreme Court is a surprise would be wrong -- but it is still an outrage and a profound disappointment.
CORPORATE INTERESTS ERODING PUBLIC’S CONSTITUTIONAL
RIGHTS TO PROTECT GREAT LAKES
MI
Supreme Court ruling threatens public control over water
resources
Michigan's future is much more at risk today because of
the court’s attack on
Citizens have used MEPA to
produce such public interest victories as halting Shell Oil’s plan to
indiscriminately drill for oil and natural gas in the Pigeon River Country State Forest
But at least there's a strong citizen campaign to conserve it. This is a campaign well worth joining. Thanks to the Land Conservancy of West Michigan and Michigan Land Use Institute.
This time, [citizens] are taking on Oklahoma billionaire and Seattle Supersonics co-owner Aubrey McClendon, who spent $39.5 million to outbid local efforts to buy 412 acres known as the Denison property, which many locals wanted to preserve as public park land.
The natural-gas tycoon wants to develop the pristine dunes land along 1.25 miles of Lake Michigan coastline into "high-end residential."
Although he has yet to offer a formal plan, environmental and civic organizations have begun mounting opposition.
The newly formed Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance -- made up of seven environmental and civic organizations -- will launch its effort with a rally Thursday evening. Despite the jazz band booked for the event, the gathering on the sand won't be casual.
http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-37/118528113551390.xml&coll=6
Lots of stunning pictures and persuasive prose here:
Our non-reality-based Bush Administration is at it again. Unfortunately, the EPA Administrator can't create his own reality through words. Gov. Granholm is right on this one.
At the National Governors Association annual meeting here, I asked Environment Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson what's been accomplished. He replied:
"Thank you for asking me, because we're making very good progress on our commitments as part of the collaboration across not only the federal government, (but also) states, tribes, as well as cities.”
He said: "We are continuing to meet our commitments. We identified as part of the federal government's portion of the collaboration … 48 near-term objectives that we were going to achieve. To date, we have completed 12 of those, and we are continuing to make progress. And, of course, were are looking forward to state and tribal officials to continue efforts to get the Great Lakes cleaned up.”
I then asked Gov. Jennifer Granholm if she was satisfied with the progress. She snapped: "No. What progress?” Noting that she raised the issue with Johnson in a private weekend meeting that included Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, she said: "We had a whole flags and bagpipes meeting in Chicago a couple of years ago where we all agreed what the priorities would be, and there would be restoration, and the federal government (would) clean up toxic spots — all of the things that needed to happen — and there has not been follow-through. In fact, there has been reduction on the part of the federal government on the comment given to (Department of Environmental Quality), for example.”
By the way, she wasn't speaking allegorically -- the Chicago meeting did features flags and bagpipes.
Nestlé has shown its true colors to the people of Michigan. The July 6 forum by Scott Goward, manager of the Swiss company's water operations here in Michigan, at best ignored, and at worse misrepresented, the facts concerning the foreign food giant's calculated attempt to attack Michigan's flagship environmental law.
