Summer's coming, get ready for more fecal matter closing Great Lakes beaches (and why your great grandma is to blame)

A popular Lake Michigan beach in South Haven closed earlier this week after too much human sewage was routed into the lake by substandard sewer systems. Simply put, too much shit in the water: http://bit.ly/b63PlI

This problem is not unique. Lots of Michigan beaches are shut down each summer because of dangerously high counts of E. coli, the bacteria that is an indicator of fecal matter in the water. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) tracks contamination data from public beaches. In 2008 it reported that 5 percent of beach water samples in Michigan exceeded minimum bacterial standards:  http://bit.ly/9dK2c0. That translates to hundreds of beach/days of closure each summer.

According to the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, there are six beach closures today alone: http://bit.ly/bM8g3L

The beaches exceeding standards by the greatest amount in 2008 according to the NRDC include: Crescent Sail Yacht Club in Wayne County (45%), Singing Bridge Beach in Arenac County (30%), St. Clair Shores Memorial Park Beach in Macomb County (26%), Pier Park in Wayne County (20%), Silver Creek Channel (20%), Lighthouse Beach At Silver Lake State Park in Oceana County (19%), and Caseville County Park (17%). You can track recent beach closures in Michigan here: http://www.deq.state.mi.us/beach/

And we’re only talking swimming beaches – not places like the Rouge River downstream from my house, where rafts of condoms and piles of feces quite literally float by in the wake of heavy rainstorms.

Human waste is by no means the only culprit. Animal and bird feces contribute to E. coli, and it may even be reproducing in beach sand … meaning that shifts in wave action could drag the stuff out into the water: http://bit.ly/c55cz2

But human feces is, undoubtedly a huge problem. It's a little unsettling to think you could be swimming in the very same unmentionables you thought you'd flushed away yesterday. Or, worse yet, your neighbor's unmentionables. All told, it's  a black eye for the Pure Michigan image of the Great Lakes State, and for those in the 772 cities that the EPA says still have combined sewer systems: http://bit.ly/btAJh0

Such “combined” sewer pipes carry both stormwater runoff and “sanitary” sewage from your toilet. (Shouldn't they call it, "unsanitary" sewage?) When it rains hard, the sudden influx of stormwater and overwhelms the treatment plant. Emergency discharge valves open up, allowing the nasty mix to spill directly into the Rouge River, or the Kalamazoo River, or the Grand River or whatever.

Today, all new sewer systems are separated. Stormwater goes into one pipe.  Toilet water goes into another one. But there are enough old combined lines around to create a problem for decades into the future. Separating them is incredibly expensive, and not always the most effective use of scarce dollars available to spend on water quality improvement.

It’s a sterling example of how shortsighted policies of the past were penny wise and pound foolish. Building a single sewer pipe and dumping everything into the river saved a lot of money for the taxpayers of 1900, or 1920, or 1940. But their great grandchildren are now paying the price – both in terms of expensive solutions and in diminished quality of life.

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Celebrating success: The stirring comeback story of the Detroit River

Environmentalists are notoriously leery of celebrating good news. The moment you acknowledge how much cleaner a river is or how much less smog is in the air above a city, it will be seized on by some people as a good reason to gut the laws and other protections that made the improvement possible in the first place.

So with the caveat that we have a long way to go, let’s revel in the comeback of the Detroit River, as chronicled in today’s Detroit News: http://bit.ly/9jQM66

It was only a generation back that the Rouge River, which flows into the Detroit River, caught fire due to the industrial chemicals and flammable debris floating on its surface. The Detroit River still suffers from its image an industrial cesspool. Visitors are often shocked to learn that it is a world-class walleye fishery. And I’ll never forget the story of the biologist who – using a crude egg trap hastily cobbled together from duct tape and Home Depot scraps -- confirmed in 2001 the first spawning sturgeon in the river in 30 years.

John Hartig http://bit.ly/cMwgnn, featured in the News’ story, is a true hero in the battle to protect what’s left of the natural systems that nurture the river. But he’s just one of thousands of Michiganders who fought tooth-and-nail during the past 40 years to bring the river back. Those fights occurred in the halls of Washington where Congressman John Dingell helped pass the Clean Water Act, to the very shores of the Humbug Marsh where grassroots citizens fought for more than a decade to keep condos from destroying the last remaining coastal wetland along the U.S. side of the river.

The river is cleaner because of laws requiring treatment of human sewage and regulations limiting toxic chemical releases among many other measures. It’s a stirring example of how a committed citizenry, demanding strong stewardship of our natural resources from elected officials, can make a huge difference.

There are powerful lobbies trying to weaken the very laws that created this success: http://bit.ly/am4NY7. An apathetic electorate is a sure-fire way to ensure that they succeed. That’s worth considering when you you’re your votes this August and November

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