Members in Jackson Thank MI Sierra Club for Help on a Big Win!

 In early October Jackson residents living next to the Cascades Falls Park got a welcome surprise. They received an email about state funding and one line was a dream come true. It read, “Shirkey said the budget measure passed by the Senate includes $1 million for a Cascades Ponds dredging project to improve a beloved recreation spot."

The residents have been lobbying their county officials for years to dredge out the dammed up lagoons to stop flooding their neighborhood. So finally, the county had enlisted the aid of a friendly state politician, who helped push through funding.

In fact basement flooding has become so bad by 2019 that residents submitted photos of severe damage to the County Board. In some cases living room walls had split up the middle, In another, the main support beams had cracked the entire length of the home. Homes were settling, walls cracking. Mold was making people very sick. Property values plummeted.

The drainage stream for these five inter connected lagoons, a tributary to the Grand River, had been dammed up over a number of years. The last culvert pipe was closed off around 2000. But nearby residents had no clue. When a neighbor’s basement was flooded in 2005 by rising groundwater, old city storm sewers were faulted.

As luck would have it, one local resident in the flooded neighborhood had joined Sierra Club. She and another local member volunteered to help county residents to stop a factory farm (a CAFO) from operating in a wetland. They learned how to organize the community living around the CAFO site. With input from MI Sierra Club leaders, they learned about the DEQ, (now EGLE) an agency responsible for enforcing environmental laws, like the NPDES permit.  They helped township residents write up and practice giving public comments at loud and raucous township meetings. Finally the issue came to a head, and went before a judge. The CAFO was still able to open, but had to move all operations away from the wetlands and faced tougher restrictions. The Sierra Club members involved had completed their first crash course on community activism.

So when one club member's home near the park was flooded, the next project was born. In 2018, Fix the Cascade Park Lagoons Neighborhood Group was formed. Neighbors were organized, submitted public comments and documentation. Then a recommendation from MI Sierra Club helped to find legal help. Laws were researched and the park was found to be in violation for not having any NPDES permits for over 25 years of discharges, and the park water attractions were shut down.

Paradise is Leaking

The sapphire blue and emerald green of Lake Superior, below an ancient sand dune in the middle of Paradise Michigan, is mixing with reds, oranges and black chemicals, leaching from the dune. The now infamous Paradise leak has been spitting into the pure waters of Lake Superior in plain sight for decades.

A small group of residents have spent the last ten years assimilating all they can about mercury and lead and chromium, and petroleum based fluids (LNAPLS) and PFAS and salt contamination. And the residents have learned the hard and disappointing lesson of working with government people who do not care and who walk away.

Bridget Nodurft and some friends realized that they had a significant chemical dump across the street from the Whitefish Schools, next to the community hall and across from a parsonage. The land and dump had been owned and used by the Chippewa County Road Commission. No one disputes who owns the responsibility for creating the dump.

But Nodurft’s group, the Paradise Brownfield Remediation Initiative (PBRI), thought that they and the reasonable people who oversaw pollution like this could stop it, and end the threat to their village and a significant native commercial fishing area. They contacted EGLE, which in 2004 acknowledged that the site was contaminated and leaking, and after ignoring requests to solve it declared years later that the site was “orphaned.” That sad term actually means EGLE doesn’t think anyone owns the buried dump and therefore nothing can be done. EPA, meanwhile acknowledged that the site was the Road Authority’s problem.

Sierra joined the fray in 2019. The Three-Lakes Group has met with Bridget Nodurft and her group and promised to help. 

The road authority has now switched from its earlier agreement to seek funding for a cleanup to throwing the responsivity back on Whitefish Township, and crucially, refused to apply for a brownfield remediation grant.

The people of Paradise sought other help. EGLE turned mute, in their terms. Earlier this year they sent a letter to Michigan’s Attorney General to assign Part 201 liability For the Road Authority’s contamination site and to enforce NERPA regulations. It has gone unanswered despite follow-up calls. Subsequent appeals to the Michigan Governor, the Michigan Public Advocate for Environmental Justice, Senator Stabenow, and Senator Peters have either been ignored or met with a cursory return telephone call and no assistance, according to the citizen’s group.