Sunday, August 14, 2005

Daniel Mears / The Detroit News Polluted sediment is removed from the Black Lagoon in the Detroit River in Trenton. The former McLouth Steel Mill is in the background.

Hope builds for federal bailout bill

Task force, local lawmakers may give legislation a push

By Deb Price / Detroit News Washington Bureau

Daniel Mears / The Detroit News The nearly finished cleanup of the Black Lagoon in Trenton points to how quickly environmental messes can be turned around once the federal government puts its muscle behind a cleanup effort. Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery

WASHINGTON -- Environmentalists and some Michigan lawmakers see a window of opportunity this coming year to seek passage of a multibillion-dollar package to revitalize the Great Lakes.

Backers of the package, which U.S. Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Grand Rapids, plans to incorporate into legislation, say a number of political factors could boost its chances:

• A task force set up by President Bush recently called for a $20 billion commitment to fix the Great Lakes. The report comes at a time when Bush is seeking to cement his legacy on domestic issues.

• The Great Lakes region is represented in Congress by 16 senators and 105 House members. If lawmakers unite behind one bill, the legislation would carry enormous clout.

• Seven of the eight Great Lakes states will have gubernatorial elections next year. Environmentalists plan to leverage support for Great Lakes restoration by getting candidates to commit to setting aside state funds. Without such funds, Congress is unlikely to act.

• Much of the Great Lakes region is up for grabs in the 2008 presidential contest. Bush could give a boost to the Republican nominee by signing authorizing legislation and saying that a Republican would be better positioned to finish the job. Environmentalists also believe the Great Lakes would rise on the agenda of presidential candidates if Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who represents a Great Lakes state, runs for the White House.

"While it is indisputable that the Great Lakes are an environmental signature for North America, it is the political importance of the Great Lakes states that ultimately will get them restored," said Tom Martin, executive vice president of the National Parks Conservation Association and a former chairman of the Great Lakes Commission, a binational agency that promotes and protects Great Lakes water resources.

The report by the presidential task force in particular is giving hope to backers of large-scale legislation.

"Momentum is building. We don't want to lose this unique opportunity," said Andy Buchsbaum, director of the Great Lakes office of the National Wildlife Federation.

Yet the gigantic federal budget deficit, competing cleanup projects and the difficulty of crafting legislation that would affect a number of states mean that getting a revitalization package through both the House and the Senate won't be a snap.

Environmentalists hope to build support for a federal effort by not only highlighting its benefits to birdwatchers and duck hunters, but also by pitching it as a bill that would create jobs for states such as Michigan, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.

Of the bill's projected $20 billion cost, two-thirds would be spent on upgrading sewer systems. A piece of it would also go to clean up the Detroit River, one of 43 highly contaminated Areas of Concern identified by the United States and Canada.

Ehlers

Ehlers, a physicist who chairs the House Science subcommittee that oversees the Environmental Protection Agency, said he wants to hold hearings by early 2006 that would attract a large number of co-sponsors. He said that in a recent meeting with EPA administrator Stephen Johnson, who chaired Bush's panel, he received "a clear commitment to carry this forward."

In an interview with The News, Johnson noted that Bush requested funding increases for individual Great Lakes projects in his 2006 budget, making the Great Lakes one of only a handful of projects unrelated to national security for which the president sought extra money.

"With a war going on and budgetary constraints, that's a strong signal and commitment," he said.

Bush set up the task force last year, ordering Johnson to coordinate teams working on Great Lakes problems. More than 1,500 scientists, lawmakers, environmental activists and business leaders participated.

A draft, calling for upgrading sewers, combating invasive species, cleaning up polluted sites and expanding wetlands, was released in July. The final version is due in December.

The report lays out a comprehensive plan to deal with threats facing the Great Lakes. In contrast to the $20 billion sought in the report, the federal government pumped just $1.7 billion into helping the Great Lakes between 1992 and 2004.

"Our history with the Great Lakes has been to do things incrementally. That's been pretty much a failure," said environmentalist Buchsbaum. "Sure, an incremental step might solve one problem, but in the meantime, two or three problems jump up in its place. Stressors are outpacing our ability to solve them one by one."

Similarly, the Great Lakes states have tackled problems piecemeal, often without interstate coordination. Michigan, for example, is the only Great Lakes state not to have a statutory plan governing diversion of water from the lakes. The state Legislature is weighing the Michigan Water Legacy Act, supported by Gov. Jennifer Granholm, which would prohibit water diversion and strictly limit commercial bottling of the Lakes' water.

But Congress has slowly begun responding to the Great Lakes' problems, passing legislation to permanently ban offshore oil drilling, for example, to study "red tide" algae blooms, and to clean up "hot spots" with dangerously toxic pollutants in sediment.

And if the United States takes the lead in a large-scale effort to rescue the Great Lakes, Canada might follow.

If Congress passes major legislation, "it'd change the dynamics" in Parliament, where no large-scale Great Lakes legislation is pending, said Mike Goffin, Great Lakes spokesman for the Ontario region of Environment Canada, the nation's equivalent of the EPA.

U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Menominee, shares Ehlers' hope that a large-scale Great Lakes bill will be passed. But he's doubtful that Bush will follow through with support for the legislation, given the cost of the war on terrorism and Bush's record on environmental issues.

Still, Ehlers remains optimistic. He notes that much of the early spade work of simply educating a majority of Congress that the Great Lakes are imperiled has already been done.

The six-term lawmaker chuckled in recounting a conversation during his first year in Congress in which he asked a colleague to vote for zebra mussel research.

The response: "'Why do research on the muscles of zebras?'" said Ehlers, who was actually pushing for additional study of the invasive form of shellfish. "That woke me up with a jolt of how much education I needed to do."