Citizen action and public engagement safeguards Michigan waters
Most everyone familiar with the beauty and majesty of Long Lake regard it as an exceptional example of the stunning natural features that are so abundant in Northwest Lower Michigan. The largest lake in Grand Traverse County and the headwaters of the Platte River, Long Lake harbors five exquisite islands that enhance every lakeshore view and vista.
Recently, the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) received an application for the construction of a boat storage basin that would significantly impair Long Lake’s ecology, shoreline, and wetlands. The proposed project would entail dredging 292 cubic yards of bottomland materials to create a private entrance channel 88 feet long and 33 feet wide.
The dredged channel would provide connecting access to the inland boat basin, requiring the excavation of more than 3,200 additional cubic yards of material landward of the ordinary high water mark. In addition, the proposed project would include a 40-foot-long by 5-foot-wide boardwalk, supported by helical piers, to be constructed across 200 feet of wetlands.
EGLE denied the permit based on those impacts, as well the determination that the dredging would disturb fish habitat and interfere with littoral currents. The permit applicant, the Carrie C. Barnes Trust, appealed, much to the consternation of neighboring lakefront property owners. EGLE’s administrative law judge (ALJ) affirmed the permit denial in every particular.
When the Barnes Trust appealed the ALJ’s decision to EGLE’s Environmental Permit Review Commission (EPRC), FLOW was asked to weigh in. After reviewing the extensive record, FLOW provided detailed comments on the facts and applicable law. The EPRC unanimously upheld the ALJ’s decision.
But the Carrie C. Barnes Trust wasn’t done. The trust filed yet another appeal to the 13th Circuit Court in Grand Traverse County.
The good news is that on Tuesday, April 9, Judge Charles M. Hamlyn affirmed EGLE’s permit denial.
As a result, a project that would have done significant, permanent harm to Long Lake has been averted. And the citizens who would have been most impacted successfully joined together in concerted action to maintain the health, character, and ecology of Long Lake. FLOW commends their efforts and is proud to have supported them.
As a non-partisan, nonprofit law and policy center, a key component of our mission is to help Michigan’s elected leaders uphold their duties under Article IV, Section 52 of the state constitution, the Michigan Environmental Protection Act, and the public trust doctrine to protect the waters of the state from pollution, impairment, and destruction. Our policy recommendations are responsive to these legal duties, the best available science, and pragmatism.
To fulfill its legal duties in 2024, the 102nd Legislature should prioritize the enactment of four bills
1. Statewide Septic Code
PROBLEM
Michigan is the only U.S. state without a uniform septic code governing the construction, maintenance, and inspection of septic systems. As a result, roughly 338,000 failing septic systems are polluting ground and surface waters with human fecal microbial waste. Extensive research by Michigan State University sampled 83% of the river systems in the Lower Peninsula and found human fecal contamination in 100% of river system samples. The study also found that the primary source of microbial contamination was substandard, failing, or nonexistent septic systems. In addition to harming our natural resources, this septic contamination poses a serious public health problem to the drinking water of nearly 4 million Michiganders who rely on private wells.
SOLUTION
FLOW is working with a diverse coalition that includes public health agencies, EGLE, septage haulers, SEMCOG, MEC, MML, MAC, and other important organizations to address technical issues that are critical for the successful implementation of a statewide septic code. Strategies to overcoming more than 30 years of legislative gridlock are: (1) establishing a reasonable inspection schedule; (2) ensuring county health departments have sufficient resources to administer inspections; and (3) providing financial assistance to septic system owners who may not be able to afford the cost of repairs or replacements. Michigan’s legislature has the opportunity to accomplish what prior legislatures have been unable or unwilling to do—set legal standards for the reasonable oversight of onsite wastewater treatment systems, as every other state has done. Enacting legislation will help identify failing systems, protect groundwater and drinking water wells, support property values, and reduce contaminated wastewater migrating to our lakes, rivers, and streams.
2. Polluter Accountability
PROBLEM
The Michigan Legislature has enacted a number of polluter entitlement laws that prevent state agencies from adequately protecting water resources. These legislative actions include:
Elimination of the “polluter pay” law (1995), which effectively shifts the cost of cleaning up contaminated sites (including state waters) from the entities that caused the pollution to the taxpayers that are harmed by it.
Reliance on “institutional controls” (2018), which has allowed polluters to leave more than 3,000 legacy sites and new releases of contamination in state waters subject to use restrictions, rather than clean them up.
As a result of these and other polluter entitlements, Michigan now has 24,000 known contaminated sites, including thousands of known and unknown sources of groundwater and surface water contamination. Almost half of these sites are “orphaned” sites with no known responsible party, resulting in the state being responsible for assessing and remediating these sites without adequate funding.
SOLUTION
Proposed bills would hold polluters accountable for the pollution they create and the ensuing harm that it causes. The Polluter Pay Accountability Act will serve to transform Michigan from the Rust Belt to the Blue Belt, with overwhelming public support and a robust coalition backing it.
3. Stormwater Utilities
PROBLEM
Michigan has already suffered immense financial losses due to flooding, and it’s predicted that damages will only rise with the expected increased frequency and severity of storm events. The consequences of flooding are harsh and include harmful algal blooms and chemical pollution, which in turn can pose serious public health risks and trigger beach closures. According to the Western Kentucky University Stormwater Utility Survey, Michigan has a mere twelve stormwater utilities (SWUs), while Wisconsin boasts over 200; and Minnesota, Ohio, and Indiana each have over 100. It’s crucial that we take action to increase the number of SWUs in Michigan to prevent further damage, ensure the safety of our communities, and build climate resilience.
SOLUTION
Adopting stormwater utilities has emerged as a widely accepted policy approach to tackle this issue. The Clean Water Act mandates municipalities to minimize water pollution from surface runoff. Michigan has so few SWUs in large part because of the 1998 Michigan Supreme Court case, Bolt v. City of Lansing, which held that Lansing’s stormwater service charge was structured as an illegal tax and not a “user fee.” FLOW is collaborating with key stakeholders to develop a Bolt-compliant stormwater management utility act that will protect our environment, economy, and water resources. By passing this type of legislation, we can effectively manage stormwater runoff, mitigate flooding risks and beach closures, build climate-resilient infrastructure, and ensure that we have clean water for our families and future generations.
4. Michigan Public Water Trust Act
PROBLEM
Private corporations presently extract and sell public water for hundreds of millions of dollars in profit each year while paying virtually nothing to the state. Michigan has, in effect, allowed a publicly owned natural resource to be commodified. Consistent with Michigan’s long established jurisprudence, the law should recognize that Michigan waters are a public trust resource. Moreover, with a large and increasing number of Michiganders in both urban and rural communities unable to afford to pay their water bills and facing the prospect of water shutoffs, our laws should provide assistance to these communities.
SOLUTION
In the wake of the Flint lead crisis, the Detroit water shutoffs, and the Nestle 2016 water grab, FLOW authored model legislation to protect water quality, advance water equity, ensure that the waters of the State remain a public resource, and annually provide communities and water utilities with over $250 million in annual funding to address water affordability and infrastructure needs. Modeled after the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund, the Michigan Public Water Trust Act holds the waters of Michigan as a public trust, designates our citizens as the beneficiaries, and requires the government to act as the fiduciary and to ensure that public trust is protected from harm, impairment, and appropriation.
A fish kill in Oregon may seem to have little to do with Michigan waters – but if you look closely there is a close connection in law.
As the result of large-volume groundwater withdrawals like that in Oregon’s Deschutes River, western states have documented the serious impairment of streams, their ecosystems, fish, and the public right to fish. Michigan should also undertake this same type of documentation in order to prevent the loss of our own water resources and important public rights in our lakes and streams.
This kind of robust data collection and information can show the connection between groundwater withdrawals and their causal impact on our public trust resources and protected public uses like fishing, canoeing, and swimming.
Faced with such factual and scientific clarity, most state courts (Wisconsin, Arizona, California, Hawaii) are readily expanding public trust law to limit groundwater withdrawals that diminish flows and levels and water quality on lakes and streams, and cause harm to fish and fishing or other protected uses.
In Michigan, the Supreme Court in Schenk v City of Ann Arborrecognized over 100 years ago that it was unlawful under the common law of groundwater for a landowner—in that case a city—to withdraw and divert water off-tract if this measurably diminished the flow or level of a creek, stream, pond, or lake, or interfered with others’ riparian uses.
Michigan’s Constitution, article 4, section 52, declares that our state’s water and natural resources are of paramount public concern and interest. Michigan’s groundwater law and the Great Lakes Compact recognize that groundwater, lakes, and streams are a singular hydrological system. There is no ethical, scientific, or legal reason why the impairment of public trust resources or interference with public rights and uses of our lakes should not be ruled unlawful by our courts in Michigan under the common law public trust doctrine.
The Environmental Permit Review Commission (EPRC) recently made an important decision affecting inland lakes and the public trust doctrine in Michigan.
In a case involving the proposed construction of a boathouse, boat basin, and dredged entrance channel on the 3-acre lakefront property on Long Lake in Traverse City, the EPRC upheld the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ)’s decision upholding EGLE’s decision to deny the permit application based on credible evidence that the proposed dredging would cause adverse impacts to fisheries and recreational fishing aspects of the public trust, as well as fish and wildlife.
FLOW submitted public comments along with the leading citizen group, Lovers of Long Lake, in support of EGLE’s decision to deny the permit grounded in public trust violations and the applicant’s failure to present feasible and prudent alternatives. (Download our comments (PDF).)
In the 2018 Gunderson case, the Indiana Supreme Court held that Indiana’s Lake Michigan beaches are, and always have been, held in trust by the State as public trust resources, with State ownership extending from the natural ordinary high water mark (where the dune grass starts) all the way to the submerged lakebed.
Save the Dunes, Indiana’s oldest environmental organization, represented by the Conservation Law Center, intervened in the Gunderson case to ensure those public trust rights are protected. Since then, we have been fighting together to protect those same public lands so that future generations will be able to enjoy them too.
The latest battle has moved to the regulatory arena, where we are stepping in to make sure that the Hoosier State actually enforces its own public trust laws and regulations.
Presenting unique challenges, Indiana’s Lake Michigan’s shoreline hosts highly industrialized ports and factories alongside sections of pristine dune ecosystems sheltered within the state and national park. The cause of erosion along this stretch of beach. Who is responsible for addressing it has long been a source of conflict and controversy. The Port of Indiana’s interruption of natural sand accumulation has exacerbated erosion along the beaches to its west, a trend made worse by increasingly severe and frequent storms and fluctuations in the Lake’s water levels.
The Town of Ogden Dunes, which sits along this impacted stretch of beach, wants to finish building a massive armor-stone revetment, which, if allowed, would span the Town’s one-mile stretch of beach and effectively frustrate public access and use along the shoreline. Unfortunately, the Indiana DNR issued a permit allowing completion of the stone wall in June of this year.
Phase I of the Ogden Dunes Revetment (July 27, 2023, E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune).
Before approving seawalls and revetments like this, DNR is required by state law and regulation to assess the impacts on navigation, the environment, neighboring properties, and coastal dynamics. The DNR is also required to ensure that these hard structures will not violate the public trust, and if they do, that compensatory measures are taken to mitigate those violations. None of that happened with DNR’s approval of the Town’s stone blockade.
Accordingly, Save the Dunes appealed DNR’s approval for failing to evaluate the serious threats the structure imposes on the public trust and surrounding ecosystems. In fact, the agency could not have evaluated these impacts because it failed to determine the location of the boundary between public trust and private land, otherwise known as the natural ordinary high water mark.
The National Park Service also opposes the Town’s plans because of the devastating impact on the surrounding Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Based on extensive study of the problem, the NPS confirmed that annual beach nourishment is a more sustainable alternative that would protect the lakeshore and its fragile ecosystem.
Save the Dunes’ appeal of DNR’s decision is vitally important.
If Indiana’s public trust laws are not translated into sound regulation and effective enforcement, our collective rights to enjoy Lake Michigan, its beaches, and its natural beauty will be reduced to a centuries-old promise made hollow.
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For more information on the adverse impacts of seawalls, revetments, and other shoreline hardening structures in the Great Lakes and available alternatives, click here (PDF).
With Gratitude: Celebrating 10 Years of Keeping Water Public and Protected with You
This past year marked an extraordinary year for FLOW, as we celebrated a decade of keeping our water public and protected. In reflecting upon this past decade, we have much to be grateful for, even in these challenging times.
First and foremost, we are thankful for you, who have made our work possible year after year. You have understood the urgent need to steward our water as a commons protected from one generation to the next. You have seen the need for us to establish a new healing relationship with water and to apply science and the rule of law as foundational principles for making informed policy decisions that protect human health and the entire water cycle. You stood with us to take on the threats of water privatization and commodification, oil pipelines in our waters, water insecurity, an affordability crisis, chemical contamination, crumbling infrastructure, and much more.
Because of you, our movement continues to grow, forging potent alliances and partnerships with people, organizations, and governments across the Great Lakes Basin, including indigenous tribes, frontline groups, and business and community leaders. In the next decade, it will take all of us rowing together in the same direction to secure the kind of durable and lasting water policies needed for these globally unique and magnificent Great Lakes.
We give thanks to FLOW founder Jim Olson for his visionary legal thinking, leadership, and passion in founding a nonprofit wholly dedicated and committed to protecting water as a shared commons for all peoples from one generation to the next. His lifelong dedication to clean, safe, affordable, and public water has never faltered. Jim’s work continues to this day. We cannot begin to thank him enough.
We give thanks to our current and past board members and advisors, who have been tremendously helpful in charting our visionary policy work and establishing our unique public interest voice across the Basin.
FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood
We give thanks to our staff for lending exceptional talent and devotion to Great Lakes protection every day. Our staff brings heart and soul to this challenging and rewarding work, drawing on decades’ worth of law, policy, and communication experience to improve the future of all living creatures and communities in the Great Lakes. And our policy work is richer thanks to a decade of amazing interns, volunteers, visual artists, writers, performers, and filmmakers sharing their gifts.
We give thanks to our partners, allies, and friends who share our core values and goals, working to secure water for all, and who bring diverse and rich perspectives to solving complex issues.
The next 10 years are critical, with urgent solutions needed to protect water and public health from the climate crisis. We want you to know that your unwavering support and commitment make all the difference.
Board Chair Renee Huckle Mittelstaedt
We thank you for empowering our work for the last decade and for standing boldly with us in the next 10 years. Our pledge to you remains the same: We are committed to law, science, facts, and truth. We focus on empowerment for the common good and public interest. We speak for the water. We include all persons and succeed together.
Our warmest wishes to you,
Liz Kirkwood and Renee Huckle Mittelstaedt
Please watch this video below of Liz and Renee thanking FLOW supporters and unveiling our 2020-21 Annual Report:
“FLOW is responsible for the major success we’ve had so far as a movement in halting the Line 5 pipeline that crosses the Straits of Mackinac,” said FLOW senior policy advisor Dave Dempsey in this testimonial about the impact we’ve had during the past decade.
During 2021, our 10th anniversary year, FLOW supporters and collaborators are sharing reflections on what our work together has meant to them and to the freshwaters of the Great Lakes Basin.
“Without the public trust doctrine that Jim Olson and Liz Kirkwood have been advocating, that pipeline would be set to operate for another 50 years, and I think we’re in a position to shut it down, thanks for FLOW’s work on this. I think of the public trust doctrine as the key that can unlock all the environmental doors for us. It can protect our water, protect our air, protect us from climate change. It’s the secret weapon.”
Watch a video below of Dave Dempsey’s testimonial:
“It was 10 years ago that I first met Jim Olson, and I invited him to be a guest speaker for Green Elk Rapids,” recalls Royce Ragland, the organization’s co-founder and a founding FLOW board member. “He talked about his favorite thing—the public trust. I was just so taken with the idea. It’s an old thought. It combines everything from policy to stewardship to theology to philosophy. I loved it.”
For 10 years FLOW has worked to keep our water public and protected. During 2021, our 10th anniversary year, FLOW supporters and collaborators are sharing reflections on what our work together has mean to them and to the freshwaters of the Great Lakes Basin.
“FLOW gave me an understanding of the importance of policy,” said Ragland. “It gave me an appreciation of the role and the link between policy, which is what FLOW works so mightily on, and the role of everyday life and needing our water, caring about our water. It just merges it all together.
“I chair the planning commission in Elk Rapids, where we seek to raise awareness about environmental ordinances—especially water ordinances. This is the work of everyday citizens trying to alert each other about how we need to take care of these issues, these elements. When friends and neighbors know you’re involved with an organization or a board, it’s an endless opportunity to educate.
“It’s easy to take it for granted. It’s easy to lose an understanding for how policy relates to laws and legislation and advocacy.”
Watch Royce Ragland’s FLOW video testimonial below.
Jim Olson is FLOW’s Founder, President, and Legal Advisor
By Jim Olson
The federal lawsuit Enbridge filed Tuesday is an attack on the State of Michigan’s sovereign title and authority to protect the public trust in the Straits and Great Lakes from Line 5. The federal government can regulate safety, but it can never control the location and use of the State of Michigan’s own public trust waters and bottomlands of the Great Lakes, except as it relates to navigation.
Michigan has never surrendered and could never surrender its public trust authority and responsibility to protect the waters of the Great Lakes from the clear and present danger presented by Enbridge’s old and failing Line 5 oil pipeline system. The public rights in navigable waters, according to Michigan’s Supreme Court, “are protected by a high, solemn, and perpetual trust, which it is the duty of the state to forever maintain.”
State of Michigan Conducted an Exhaustive Review of Enbridge’s Line 5 Easement Violations
After a comprehensive, 15-month review of Line 5’s operations and potential for catastrophic harm from a rupture or leak in the heart of the Great Lakes, the State of Michigan determined on November 13 that Enbridge’s easement to use the bottomlands of Lake Michigan must be revoked and terminated because of “longstanding, persistent, and incurable violations of the Easement’s conditions and standard of due care.” The action represents a major milestone in Michigan’s environmental history.
The state’s title and public trust interest and duty in the Great Lakes have been established by the Michigan and United States Supreme Courts for more than 125 years. Every state received title to the lands and waters that were navigable at the time of statehood—for Michigan, 1837, including all of the Great Lakes and its inland lakes, rivers, and streams. The state’s public trust title in navigable waters and lands beneath them is a matter of federal constitutional principle. Once the state has title, it is absolute, cannot be alienated or transferred away, and the state as trustee determines the extent and nature of any activity or use of the public trust waters and lands of the Great Lakes.
The public rights under the Public Trust Doctrine are protected, according to the Michigan Supreme Court, by a “high, solemn and perpetual trust which it is the duty of the state to forever maintain.” The state’s interest and its public trust responsibilities are held forever. Thus, any authorization, like the Enbridge Line 5 easement granted by the Department of Conservation in 1953 remains subject to the state’s duty to protect the state’s title as well as Michigan citizens’ paramount rights that are protected by public trust law. The United States Supreme Court explicitly acknowledged a state’s paramount rights in the landmark case, Illinois Central Railroad Co v Illinois, finding that a grant of property rights in public trust resources “is necessarily revocable, and the exercise of the trust by which the property was held by the state can be resumed at any time.”
Catastrophe Does Not Have to Occur Before the State Acts to Protect the Public Trust
When Enbridge received its easement for its dual lines in 1953, it did so subject to the state’s authority and duty to protect its sovereign public trust title and rights of citizens in the waters and bottomlands of the Straits of Mackinac. No private interest can be granted permission to use these public trust waters and bottomlands for any private or public use without the express authorization by law, and only if the state finds at the time the public’s uses and the public trust will be improved or not impaired.
Enbridge’s easement is basically a license to use these public trust lands and waters subject to revocation if there are dangers that would violate the public trust. If later it is discovered that conditions exist that were not initially understood or new information comes to light indicating public trust resources are at risk or threaten the public’s rights in fishing, navigation, boating, and drinking water, or recreation, the state has the inherent right to revoke the use. No state nor its citizens has to wait until a catastrophe occurs before the state can revoke a use to protect this perpetual trust.
Only the State of Michigan, through its Governor and Department of Natural Resources Director and the Attorney General as trustees and “sworn guardians” of this public trust, has the authority over who, where, and when another person or corporation can use the Straits of Mackinac, such as Enbridge’s use for the dual lines in 1953 and in 2020. Because the circumstances, conditions, and events—anchor strikes, cable strikes, scoured spans under the pipes, and stronger currents—violate the terms of the 1953 easement and endanger the Straits and hundreds of miles of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, the state has every right to revoke the Enbridge easement. Enbridge’s use of Lake Michigan bottomlands has always been limited by the Public Trust Doctrine and the state’s perpetual authority to revoke the use when the public trust is endangered.
State of Michigan, not a Federal Agency, Controls the Public Trust Lands and Waters of the Great Lakes
Enbridge falsely claims that the safety code requirements under the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) supersede the state’s authority and public trust duty to protect the Great Lakes. The claim confuses the federal power to regulate a pipeline’s safety once it is built with the state’s sovereign authority to decide if a corporation or Enbridge can use the public trust lands and waters of the Great Lakes in the first place.
There is nothing in PHMSA regulations or any federal law that remotely attempts to assert control over the use of a state’s public trust lands and waters, nor could the federal government do so. The authority for use of these public trust lands and waters falls entirely within the authority and duties of the State of Michigan, and there is nothing the federal government, Canadian government, or Enbridge can do to impinge on this paramount public trust title and the rights of the citizens of Michigan in the Great Lakes.
The bottom line is that the Great Lakes belong to all of us, and the State of Michigan is doing its duty as trustee to protect our public trust resources so that, now and in the future, we are assured the right to drink from, bathe, fish, and swim in, and boat upon oil-free waters. Alternatives exist for supplying oil and propane without spikes in fuel prices, but our magnificent fresh waters are irreplaceable. Please join FLOW in thanking Gov. Whitmer for standing up to Enbridge and standing up for our Great Lakes.
The State of Michigan’s decision last Friday to revoke and terminate the 67-year-old easement across the Straits of Mackinac granted to Enbridge for the Line 5 petroleum product pipelines was more than that day’s news—it was an event that will be remembered in the state’s environmental history.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Director Dan Eichinger, and Attorney General Dana Nessel announced the decision based on Enbridge’s consistent track record of deception, subterfuge, and poor stewardship, which put at risk a large area of the Great Lakes and the people, industries, aesthetics, and public uses dependent on them. Legally, it was a sound decision under the Public Trust Doctrine, but politically it was difficult. The same is true of most of the milestones in our environmental past. Dedicating Northern Michigan lands to building a public forest out of ravaged land in the early 1900s, standing up to developers who wanted to despoil the Porcupine Mountains in the 1950s and 1960s, and laying down the law on flagrant polluters in the 1960s and 1970s all took political guts, supported by law.
The Line 5 shutdown announcement brought to mind the epic fight over protection of the Pigeon River Country State Forest in the 1970s and early 1980s. This northern Lower Peninsula gem had fed the imagination of a young Ernest Hemingway and had been cobbled together by P.S. Lovejoy, considered Michigan’s equivalent of Aldo Leopold. Lovejoy dubbed the preserve “The Big Wild” and said it “should be left plenty bumpy and bushy and some so you go in on foot—or don’t go at all.”
The discovery of petroleum reserves under the Pigeon River Country State Forest in 1970 fueled an unwise decision by the DNR to offer drilling leases to petroleum companies. Determined to fight for the Big Wild, a legion of individuals, conservation and environmental groups, and editorial writers turned the battle into a test of state priorities. Specifically, weren’t there some publicly owned areas of the state that should be off limits to resource exploitation because of their beauty and significance, and the risk of a catastrophic accident? Governor William Milliken, urged on by First Lady Helen Milliken, took the side of the protectors.
The contest rose all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court, which ruled in 1979, under the Michigan Environmental Protection Act, that drilling could result in unacceptable destruction of the Forest’s herd of 255 elk. Coupled with another Supreme Court decision the same month on a separate drilling appeal in the Forest, the decision effectively barred drilling there.
It was a monumental victory for the forest protectors, but it also sowed the seeds of a partial defeat. Michigan’s economy was struggling and oil companies wooed lawmakers with visions of riches from petroleum development. Rather than lose everything, some members of the coalition of forest guardians compromised on a limited, phased development plan. And out of the controversy rose the idea of dedicating revenues from petroleum development on state lands to public land acquisition. That idea grew into the constitutionally protected Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund, which has now spent more than $1 billion to give the public access to state and local parks, Great Lakes shoreline, scenic wonders, hunting and fishing recreation, public forestland, and more.
The parallel to Line 5 is not exact except in its lesson that a persistent, well-organized, and well-informed citizen coalition is critical to protecting the best of Michigan. And it shows that public officials who look beyond the moment can take action with significance for decades to come.
Last week’s announcement was one of the finest hours in Michigan’s conservation history. The battle is far from over, but it is headed toward protection of our Great Lakes. I am proud that FLOW and its public trust law and advocacy were a big part of it.
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This past year marked an 
