...But the Environutz are More Interested in 'Get Dow!!' than they are in Clean Water!!!

Sunday's Bay City Times contains an editorial about cleaning up our watershed. It's from somebody who cares about the environment!

An FYI to the local environutz who are out to create even less jobs in the tri-city area and kick chemical industry butt, I have cared about the Great Lakes and especially the Saginaw Bay when many of you were still wearing diapers! My family have been boaters since the 1960s. Industry began creating non-phosphate cleaners way back then. We always made sure our cleaning products, dish soaps, etc. for use when we were boating contained no phosphates!!!

NOW... just want to share a 2004 photo album I created showing the Bay City State Park in mid-summer. All the other State Parks were already buzzing with activity. Here's the album: Beach

Here is the editorial for anybody who might not have read it:

Make 2008 the year we saved Saginaw Bay
Sunday, March 16, 2008

Saginaw Bay is sick.

Rotting muck has ruined sandy beaches.

Human fecal matter - yes, that! - and animal waste are in that mess.

Invasive phragmites are taking over our shorelines.

Accidentally imported animals are remaking our native waters into ecosystems we don't recognize.

Yet the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality didn't even list Saginaw Bay in the first draft of its ''impaired waters'' report this year.
The bay needs action, now.

It demands a comprehensive plan.

Yet, we see no outrage.

Where, for example, are the environmentalists?

Lately, they seem more attuned to chemicals in the bay than they are to what rots and stinks up the place.

Refocus, you guys and gals: We need your dedication and experience.
The few steps taken to turn the bay around are commendable. The Bay County Board of Commissioners has enacted a ban on phosphates in lawn fertilizers to stop the growth of algae that dies to become muck. The bay needs more help than that.

In the past year alone, municipal wastewater treatment plants in Saginaw, Saginaw Township, Bay City and Essexville dumped 388 million gallons of only partially treated sewage into the Saginaw River. That's enough to fill 456 Olympic-size swimming pools.

Shrugs all around. What can we do?

Stop it, that's what.

Build more retention basins used to hold combined sanitary sewage and storm runoff. Or separate sanitary sewage from storm water.
Yes, it will cost millions of dollars, even billions. The work will take years.

So we better start now.

Nobody knows how many rural homes and cabins send their raw sewage downstream through failed septic systems.

Nobody has looked in any comprehensive way.

Find them and fix them. Take the Bay County ban on phosphates in fertilizer to all 22 counties in our watershed. Ban phosphates in
dishwashing detergents.

When people became enraged about industrial pollutants, laws were written and the offenders were found and fined. That pollution stopped.
The same outcry and the same, strong government response is needed to stop the biological poisoning of Saginaw Bay.

The work won't end once we get a grip on wastewater and runoff.

What do we do about zebra mussels?

Nobody knows, because little is known about the tiny bivalves that took over the bay more than 18 years ago.

Even less is known about the other invaders.

Study continues at the pace of a snail.

Ramp it up, and find solutions.

Get angry, get involved and get that bay of ours clean.

We will not be ignored if we stand as a region.

Determined that, together, we will cure our sick Saginaw Bay.

Starting this year.

Addendum to my 4:30 pm blog...

... was so involved in the dissertation I forgot to tell why Barber's article in the Saginaw News motivated me. I haven't done much blogging lately because it really bothered me that I could dislike a whole group because I distrust their leadership.

I don't dislike the whole group. I do feel sorrow that they were caught in the trap set by such professional activists. It occurred to me that Miller & Riddick were both around to get sucked into the Greenpeace propaganda machine 'way back when.... Why else would a simple highschool teacher get so involved in a hate campaign against one successful local business? Henry Dow did start his little company right here in mid-Michigan. Why else would a simple nurse speak so venomously of Dow Chemical in particular? She's even against MDEQ now that the 'culprit' and the 'regulator' are working together. Ya know, I don't even dislike them... I think the word is more like..... pity.

It's not about DEQ... It's not about Dow...

...It's about me. You may have noticed less updates here at TRVoice lately. I thought it was just because I'm too busy, but truth is I didn't feel motivated; wasn't sure what I wanted to write - or why.

Thanks to Barrie Barber, reporter for The Saginaw News & his big frontpage spread in Sunday's paper yesterday - Group won't back down from Dow - I come back rejuvenated. Barrie's series of articles was well written but perhaps he didn't go back far enough.

Perhaps there is a core to Lonetree beyond the nuclear plant fiasco. I speak now to my contemporaries. Remember when an international bunch of gangsters visited Midland - attempting to make trouble in the Tittabawassee River in the vicinity of Dow Chemical? Don't remember? How about if I mention the name Greenpeace? Ah! Now you remember! What were they doing in the river? Why has Greenpeace become persona non grata in the United States?

Look at the collage below. This is the face of Lonetree. This is the face of Greenpeace. This is the face of a bully and terrorist, for is it not terrorism when a bully frightens people into following his lead? Is it not a bit weird that the huge international organization named Greenpeace compares Bhopal, India to Midland, Michigan? Read all about it here at their website!

Click on my little poster to see if you know anybody in the photos. Yup, that's right. Some of them are from right here in mid-Michigan.

Whoa! Now is that terrorist tactics - comparing dead babies with perfectly healthy American children? Recognize the little blonde poster child? Well, I don't but... That's right folks... Greenpeace's poster children in 2003 were little Ruby from Bhopal and little Paul from the Lonetree pack of litigants/terrorists right here in the good ol' U.S. of A! Watch out for the bullies, people... they wear many masks.