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Dredge Project Update
The National Wildlife Federation
and Lone Tree Council are challenging as illegal under the Clean
Water Act a permit issued by Michigan Dept. of Environmental
Quality that authorizes the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to
discharge toxic pollutants from a dredged material disposal facility into
the Saginaw River at concentrations higher than allowed for in the
Great Lakes.
Both groups have petitioned an administrative law judge to nullify the
permit, which would allow dioxin, mercury and PCB's to be discharged into
the Saginaw River.
After the DEQ gave their okay for the dredge plan, Saginaw County Board
of Commissioners and County Public Health officials gave approval for
the project to move forward.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers applied for the permit as part of its
effort to dredge the Saginaw River to accommodate commercial navigation.
The Corps intends to build a dredged material disposal facility in
Zilwaukee Township. The facility will discharge effluent containing toxic
pollutants into the Saginaw River.
"The state of
Michigan failed to require limits on toxic pollutants as mandated by law
to protect the quality & safety of Great Lakes water," said Neil Kagan,
senior counsel for the National Wildlife Federation's Great Lakes
office. "Under the permit approved by the state, the contamination of the
Saginaw River will be perpetuated, and this is not acceptable."
"We support the dredging of the Saginaw River for commercial navigation,"
said Michelle Hurd Riddick of the Lone Tree Council.
"However, we remain very concerned about the tradeoffs in terms of public
health, resource protection and environmental impacts associated with this
site. The Saginaw Bay Watershed has already been identified as one of the
most polluted in the region. We need policies that restore this vital
system, not exacerbate its condition."
Food for
Thought . . .
In light of
the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision pre-empting state medical marijuana
laws under an expanded construction of the Interstate Commerce Clause,
effectively turning incredibly sick people into common criminals; coupled
with the continuing costs of the War in Iraq, which are bankrupting our
country; compounded by continued reports of abuses at Guantanamo Bay, the
following passages written in 1955 offer significant 'food for thought'.
"What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the
government and the people. And it became always wider. The whole process
of its coming into being was above all diverting; it provided an excuse
not to think for people who did not want to think anyway; it gave us some
dreadful, fundamental things to think about, and kept us so busy with
continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated by the machinations of
the 'national enemies' without and within, that we had no time to think
about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all
around us.
"Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on
occasion, 'regretted' that unless one understood what the whole thing was
in principle, what all these 'little measures' must some day lead to, one
no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees
the corn growing.
"Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for
the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion,
thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in
resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, 'alone'.
"But the one great shocking occasion when tens or hundreds or thousands
will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. The forms are all
there, all untouched, all reassuring - the houses, the shops, the jobs,
the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays.
"But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong
mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a
world of hate and fear and the people who hate and fear do not even know
it themselves.
"When everyone is
transformed, no one is transformed. You have accepted things you would not
have accepted five years ago, a year ago; things your father could never
have imagined."
-
From
Milton Mayer, 'They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955
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