Contaminated Wells in Michigan Directly Linked to Michigan's Senate Decisions About Groundwater

by: riar

Fri Aug 14, 2009 at 19:28:49 PM EDT

Aside from illness is the resident’s inability to sell their homes. One small business owner said his filters, heat boiler, and water softener got so clogged with iron they no longer worked. Who’s going to pay for that? And why has the state been so slow to do something about the ever-growing contaminated plumes infiltrating our groundwater? The article claims state officials have known about the problem for at least a decade. But the reason nothing has been done is because agriculture is the number 2 industry in Michigan employing thousands and bringing in billions.

What I don’t understand is if this industry is so profitable why don’t they put some money toward cleaning up their act? The article went on to say that the state and industry are working out the problems behind closed doors and without public input. What we have here is self-regulation that went horribly wrong. Belief in self-regulating industry comes from none other than Michigan’s Republican Senate.

I distinctly remember Michigan Democratic congress people trying to get stiffer regulations on CAFO’s in the past few years. They cited pollution of the interior of N.C. as an example of what can happen when huge industries like Smithfield Foods in that instance contaminated land, streams, and eventually the coastal waters from their practice of spraying fields with wastewater that included animal feces, blood, pesticides, antibiotics, etc. But our Senate squashed the Dem’s proposal saying the current regulations were good enough. They took the less is better route, (trusting industry), and opting to fine perpetrators when and if an “accident” happened. Only this is no accident. It’s standard practice for industry to spray their wastewater on surrounding land. What the senate proposed was: “We’ll smack them on the back of their hands, and fine them for being bad,” then back to business as usual. And the senate won.

I also wrote a blog just about a year ago that the state was cutting the DEQ, so no one would be around to monitor wetland contamination (groundwater) or pollution spills. http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/2008/09/deq-wont-be-checking-on-wetlands-or-pollution-spills-due-to-cuts/. The gist of that blog, however, was how the Republican Senate just a few months earlier fought to keep at least 25% of all of Michigan’s groundwater out of the Great Lakes Compact, and specifically out of the public’s domain. Surely they anticipated more statewide cuts in light of the economy, which would leave wetlands and/or groundwater not only unprotected but also without regulators nosing around. It was an industry’s dream scenario.

So Michigan’s Republican Senate is responsible for blocking more regulation for CAFO pollution that directly affects our groundwater, fighting to keep 25% of Michigan’s groundwater from protection under the Great Lakes Compact, and the whole time knowing full well that there would be fewer regulators on hand to monitor any violators. The citizen’s in the Freep article should be “Afraid of the Water”—very afraid. They should thank Michigan’s Senate for helping industry along.

Michigan’s Republican Senate has protected industry above the health and monetary concerns of Michigan residents more than not. This is not how government is supposed to work. We elect officials to represent us not industry. You may say the senate is only protecting jobs. At 63 billion in profits last year just for Michigan’s food industry, they can afford to be good stewards of the land that keeps them in business. Job loss is just a threat. What they really fear is profit loss. But if industry, especially the food industry, continues their practices as before, they are in essence, stupidly poisoning the ground that feeds them, and everyone else in their path.