HEATH HINEGARDNER
Candidate Donald Trump never made a secret of his contempt for the Environmental Protection Agency. Asked by Fox News what he would cut from government, Trump responded, “Environmental Protection. What they do is a disgrace.”
Trump’s pick to head the EPA, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, had sued the agency fourteen times before taking the helm. The President called for cutting the EPA’s 2017 funding by $3 billion and trimming staff by 3,500. Congress balked, mostly funded the EPA, and restored full funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, an ambitious long- term regional agenda with roots in the second Bush Administration.
The proposed Back Forty open pit mine would be located just 150 feet from the Menominee River,shown here.
There was a brief sigh of relief in the environmental community before Trump’s 2018 budget revived savage EPA cuts. Meanwhile, Pruitt has forged ahead with a sweeping review and rollback of decades of environmental rules protecting land, air, water, and people.
“This administration is unlike any we have seen before,” says Kyla Bennett, director of the New England chapter of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. A former EPA employee, she’s seen policy shifts between administrations, but never this extreme. “This is literally a war,” she says. “The administrator of the agency doesn’t want the agency to exist. He is delegitimizing not only the people who work there but what they stand for. It’s a war on science and the EPA.”
It may be a war, but it is not a surprise attack. Pruitt’s fights against the EPA and for his corporate allies are a matter of extensive public record. A New York Times analysis of his schedule during his first four months found it skewed toward corporate assignations and away from public advocates. Pruitt’s office was righteous, without apology.
The headlines keep coming: “EPA Decides Not to Ban a Pesticide, Despite Its Own Evidence of Risk”; “EPA Now Requires Political Aide’s Sign-Off for Agency Awards, Grant Applications”; “Goodbye Science, Hello Industry.”
Gliding through it all, firm in his convictions and isolated from both protest and professional challenge, Pruitt may be Trump’s most efficient operator. He argues that environmental protection should be, whenever possible, the purview of the states. And, in his view, natural resources exist to be used.
It may be a war, but it is not a surprise attack.
At a Heritage Foundation event in October, Pruitt evoked a mythical apple orchard, one he claims environmentalists would fence off. “We should harvest that apple orchard,” Pruitt urged. “We should use it to benefit our fellow mankind, but with environmental stewardship in mind for future generations.”
But can this work? What if that orchard is bordered by eight states and two nations? What if that orchard is the Great Lakes, which hold 20 percent of the world’s surface freshwater?
In 2008, after years of groundwork, Great Lakes states and the provinces of Quebec and Ontario forged the Great Lakes Compact, which regulated the movement of water out of the basin. That was a state-led initiative.
But before the EPA was created in 1970, the Great Lakes were largely run by the states and were in deep trouble—Lake Erie was once even declared dead. It was the EPA that sparked a Great Lakes revival that continues today, its progress hanging in the political balance.
“The EPA represents the federal backstop and leadership to make sure that the Great Lakes are protected and restored for all people, today and tomorrow,” says Joel Brammeier of the Alliance for the Great Lakes. “It is the foundation upon which the protections for the Great Lakes are built.”
After World War II, Gary, Indiana, was a boom town. Postwar economic expansion kept the area’s steel mills continuously producing. And polluting: U.S. Steel’s facility annually released more than two hundred fifty tons of pollutants into the air. Three hundred million gallons of liquid waste sluiced daily into Gary’s waterways. The city was on the road to its punchline designation as “the armpit of America.”
Soot was everywhere, tap water ran foul, and infant mortality rates rose sharply. In the 1960s, a regional effort began to coax industry toward some kind of pollution control for the Calumet River, which plumbed the shorefront industrial complexes of South Chicago and northern Indiana. Environmental law was new, and cities attempted to set basic standards. The huge steel mills, leveraging their economic heft, secured a clause allowing them to substitute compliance with a promise to take gradual steps.
In a 1968 hearing designed to cajole the mills along, Mrs. L.W. Bieker of the Indiana Division of the American Association of University Women testified: “It is obvious that increased destructive influences on the lake have stiffened the need for even firmer control in administering the law.” That spirit crystallized over the next few years in landmark legislation: the National Environmental Policy Act (1970), the Clean Air Act (major upgrades in 1970), and the Clean Water Act (1972). The EPA was established by executive order in late 1970.
Karen Freeman-Wilson, former attorney general of Indiana and Gary’s mayor today, was a little girl in the 1960s; she remembers the pollution and the dead fish washing up on the beaches. She believes that if not for the EPA and accompanying legislation, Gary might not be habitable today. And she’s deeply worried by the direction of Pruitt’s EPA.
“I don’t care what anybody says, they are on a different mission,” she says. “Now don’t ask me what it is. I know it’s not the protection of water and air in this country.”
And yet Freeman-Wilson names U.S. Steel alongside Gary’s beaches as being among the city’s greatest assets. U.S. Steel is one of the largest American industrial corporations, with revenues in 2016 of $10.2 billion. Gary’s municipal budget for 2018 is $55 million. They need each other, but there is no mistaking who has the power. The EPA helps level the playing field.
“I’m not saying I want more regulation,” Freeman-Wilson says. “But I’m certainly saying that having less regulation from the EPA at the federal level is going to be a burden on the environment of communities.” She believes Gary’s future is built on a foundation of environmental protection and innovation, including a green infrastructure plan that may help solve one of the city’s longest running environmental problems: combined sewage overflows.
The city’s sewer system sends both household waste and storm runoff to the same treatment facility. Gary has one of 184 combined systems around the Great Lakes. Stormwater runoff is increasing due to urban development and rising precipitation rates and storm intensity. When a combined sewage system hits capacity, overflow typically runs—untreated—into the lakes. It’s a startlingly common event: In 2014, an estimated twenty-two billion gallons of untreated wastewater fouled the lakes, leading to beach closures and threats to drinking water. A 2016 estimate for wastewater treatment infrastructure needs in the Great Lakes runs to $80 billion.
The price tag for economically distressed Gary was simply too high. “We don’t have $100 million sitting around,” Freeman-Wilson says. But Gary won a grant from the EPA, which sent a team of civil engineers to explore turning Gary’s surplus land—underused parks, parking lots, abandoned lots—into green infrastructure such as rain gardens. The city has been in violation of pollution standards for decades but may soon be able to work its way to compliance.
“This is not possible without the technical assistance of the EPA,” the mayor says. “Having them embedded with us helped us think out of the box and execute out of the box.”
In August 2014, toxins from algal blooms in Lake Erie forced an emergency shutdown of the water supply for Toledo, Ohio. Half a million residents had no potable water for more than two days, and a state of emergency was declared in three counties.
To water-quality experts, the Toledo crisis came as no surprise. Nutrient pollution leading to eutrophication and harmful algal blooms was another consequence of the postwar boom. Nitrogen and phosphorus production had been scaled up for the war, then turned to the production of fertilizers.
The problem is widespread, with no easy solution and no obvious advocate. Don Scavia, director of the Graham Sustainability Institute at the University of Michigan, has worked on nutrient pollution for decades, including a long stint at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where he studied the hypoxic area, or dead zone, in the Gulf of Mexico.
“It’s clear what needs to be done to solve the Gulf problem, the Chesapeake Bay problem, and the Lake Erie problem,” he says. “Find some way to manage and regulate nutrients coming off of agricultural lands.”
Scavia sees no action forthcoming from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has regulatory authority in this area, but sees some hope in a cooperative agreement among the Chesapeake Bay states. The deal was brokered by the EPA, and faced a legal challenge from the Farm Bureau. Pruitt, from Oklahoma, joined an amicus brief to support the challenge. When asked during his confirmation if he would support the deal as administrator, he pivoted, saying Oklahoma’s concern had been “about the precedent, the role that EPA was playing initially.”
Pruitt said it was fine by him for states to “join together and enter into an agreement to address water quality issues.” But what happens when states disagree about a shared resource? Lake Erie is a perfect example.
But what happens when states disagree about a shared resource? Lake Erie is a perfect example.
Even before the Toledo crisis, the International Joint Commission, a binational group formed to facilitate management of boundary waters, suggested that Ohio and Michigan formally declare western Lake Erie impaired. This would trigger EPA oversight and mandate pollution limits for waters draining into Lake Erie.
In November 2016, Michigan made the impaired designation, but Ohio refused, fretting over possible harm to the lake’s tourist economy. “That’s a perfect example of why we need the EPA,” Bennett says. Two states, the same water body, yet different protection standards. “The least amount of protection is going to win. You can’t have one state saying ‘We’re going to fix this’ and the other saying, ‘We don’t have a problem.’ ”
The EPA is being sued over the impairment status, and in late October acknowledged in court documents that Ohio’s analysis was flawed.
Kristy Meyer, vice president of policy and natural resources for the Ohio Environmental Council, agrees the EPA is “critical in making sure that we have a federal minimum, a regulatory floor.” This is especially true for issues that cross watersheds and state lines, as is the case with invasive aquatic species.
To date, more than 180 invasive species have been found in the Great Lakes, though not all pose the same risks. Quagga and zebra mussels have remade the Great Lakes food web and inflicted billions of dollars of damage nationwide. The species of greatest concern now is the Asian carp working its way up the Des Plaines River in Illinois.
“It doesn’t matter if seven of the eight Great Lakes states are highly protective, as long as there is one through which harmful species can pour into the Great Lakes. All of the states suffer.”
The Trump Administration turned the issue into a minor cause célèbre by directing the Army Corps of Engineers to withhold the results of a study to find solutions after the commercial barge industry voiced its displeasure with the findings. The proposal, finally released after six months, calls for a $275 million barrier, and Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner has balked at the cost.
That’s why a federal presence matters. “Each Great Lakes state has their own approach to risk assessment,” says invasion biologist David Lodge, director of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future at Cornell University. “It doesn’t matter if seven of the eight Great Lakes states are highly protective, as long as there is one through which harmful species can pour into the Great Lakes. All of the states suffer.”
In the creation story of the Menominee Indian tribe of Wisconsin, a great bear emerged from underground at the mouth of the Menominee River, where the running water joins Green Bay. The first Menominee, transformed into a man, started traveling up the river and saw a golden eagle circling above. He called the great bird down and the eagle descended, becoming a man and brother to the bear. They met more animals as they traveled, and soon there were five brothers: the Wolf, the Crane, the Moose, the Eagle, and the Bear.
“The first five major clans were formed that way,” says tribal Chairman Gary Besaw. “I’m actually of the Bear Clan, so I have responsibilities as a speaker and keeper of the law.”
The Menominee no longer live along the river, but former village sites and miles of raised garden beds dot the landscape. “We have stories all along the river,” Besaw says.
So imagine his dismay in 2015 when he learned that Aquila Resources, a Canadian firm, was petitioning the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to place a mine just across the river in Michigan, in an area known to contain twenty-two Menominee cultural sites. The Back Forty mine would be an open-pit operation culling gold, zinc, and copper. The pit, 750 feet deep and eighty-four acres across, would sit within 150 feet of the river. Sulfide ore deposits react with water and air, creating acidic wastewater that can be difficult to contain.
So far, the EPA has accepted the permitting authority of Michigan, which has granted three of the four needed permits. But the Back Forty seems designed to challenge the tension between state and federal jurisdiction. It’s large enough and close enough to the interstate boundary to impact both Wisconsin and Michigan. It adjoins a navigable waterway, which in turn feeds directly into the Great Lakes. Furthermore, a Back Forty breach could set back restoration downstream.
“If any pollution comes in, it doesn’t stay just in the middle of the river,” Besaw says. “The potential magnitude has to be looked at by the U.S. government for all of the users who could be impacted. It should not just be a Michigan decision.”
On November 6, the tribe gave sixty-day notice of its intent to sue under the Clean Water Act. It seeks to force the EPA to accept its responsibilities to protect the health of the Menominee River and the tribe’s cultural sites. As Besaw explains, “We were told within our creation story that the water, the wild rice, the sturgeon, the maple trees—that’s part of our responsibility, to oversee and protect.”
In the past, says Nancy Schuldt, a water specialist for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, the EPA has “been a good partner and has provided a lot of support.” That makes the agency’s new disregard for its mission especially painful.
About fifty of the nation’s more than 500 tribes regulate their own resources, and many more exercise treaty rights in areas beyond their reservations. As such, they have a legal right to be at the table. In the past, when state and tribal interests have conflicted, the EPA has been known to be a fair broker. But now, Schuldt worries that EPA staffers will no longer play this role.
“I think that their hands are being tied,” she says. “I don’t think they are going to be able to come out staunchly on the side of the tribes if it affects the state’s decision making.”
Most damaging of all would be if Pruitt upends the Waters of the United States rule. He characterizes it as regulatory overreach, but that simplification belies a deep history.
In 1972, Congress was vague when describing exactly which bodies of water the Clean Water Act protects. When people argue about whether or not something is a wetland, whether it can be filled in or otherwise degraded, they are ultimately talking about the Waters of the United States. The loose definition has spawned numerous court battles, two competing Supreme Court decisions, and extensive negotiation.
In 2015, under Obama, the EPA published the Clean Water Rule, expanding protection for two million miles of streams and twenty million acres of wetlands. These coalesce downstream becoming part of the drinking water for one third of Americans.
Water flows downhill, and when dirty water flows downhill—or doesn’t flow at all—people who live downstream face the consequences. “We’re undermining the policies that really protect the rivers and streams that feed the Great Lakes,” warns Meyer. “I think of it as a circulatory system with the lake as being the heart. If you cut off part of the capillaries the system is not going to work properly.”
“I think of it as a circulatory system with the lake as being the heart. If you cut off part of the capillaries the system is not going to work properly.”
“These are smart people. They know exactly what they are doing,” says David Ullrich, who chairs the Great Lakes Advisory Board and the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. “Going after the definition of the Waters of the United States strikes directly at the heart. It will not be possible to protect things like the Great Lakes.”
Ullrich spent years at the EPA, much of it putting the Clean Water Act to work in the Great Lakes. Then he spent fourteen years at the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a coalition of 131 cities. “This is a wrecking ball for forty-five years of environmental policy under Republican and Democratic administrations,” he says. “There is no substitute for having a very strong federal presence on a global resource like the Great Lakes. It is definitely going to have a negative effect.”
For example, without a strong push in nutrient management in the western basin of Lake Erie, not only will harmful algal blooms continue, but the problem will become harder to fix. “We have momentum now,” says Ullrich. “We are running the risk of losing that momentum because of negative leadership at the federal level.”
Nowhere is that more apparent than climate change. Setting aside the divisive argument about what causes it, there can be no denying that both temperatures and precipitation in the Great Lakes region are rising, and that rain happens more frequently and with more intensity. Both of these trends drive the Great Lakes system, and accelerate its problems. Warmer temperatures favor harmful algal blooms. More intense rain makes it harder to keep nutrients on farm fields and out of waterways.
If there is a silver lining to the willful climate denial in the White House, it’s that the Great Lakes mayors have stepped into the void, creating programs for both climate adaptation and mitigation. In the absence of federal leadership, local governments across the basin and the nation have pledged to meet U.S. obligations. But some states are standing in the way.
Wisconsin, the home of Aldo Leopold and the birthplace of Earth Day, was once proud of its environmental heritage and protections. Republican Governor Scott Walker has changed that, presiding over wholesale strip mining of frac sand, corporate giveaways of groundwater, the sale of public lands, and the scrubbing of climate change from public discourse. Under Walker, Wisconsin has prevented local governments from enacting shoreland zoning or runoff standards that are stricter than state law—restraining what motivated local governments can do to protect the Great Lakes.
Across the Midwest, resource agencies have become more politicized, friendlier to industry, less heedful of the natural world and the public interest they were chartered to protect. In this environment, a strong federal presence is more important than ever. Few states have the expertise or firepower to tackle a complicated case like the Volkswagen scandal, or to oversee a huge facility run by a Fortune 500 company. At a time when corporate power is ascendant, we need regulators who can stand toe to toe with multinational corporations.
“These are generational decisions,” says Brammeier. “The decision to erode the EPA’s authority over protecting clean water might not show up next year. It could be a generation before you start to see impacts from the lack of protections on these streams. And then one day you wake up and realize that fish can’t live in your rivers anymore because of the pollution that is occurring upland.”
Erik Ness is a freelance writer based in Madison, Wisconsin.