State of the Environment
State of Water Quality
By Gail Gruenwald, Executive Director
Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council
Northern Michigan contains some of the most important, diverse, and pristine water resources on earth. The Great Lakes, inland lakes, rivers, streams, and wetlands are vast and ageless and at the same time fragile. These waters are a way of life and a cherished vacation destination. The Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council is here to protect the future of these waters. We now monitor 47 different lakes and streams and have thousands of records in our water quality database collected over 25 years.
Watershed Council staff uses this data to characterize lakes and streams, identify specific water quality problems, and view trends or changes in water quality over time. Two trends stand out in the data. Total phosphorous concentrations appear to be decreasing on a number of lakes that we monitor. Phosphorous is the most important nutrient for plant productivity and its inputs into a lake or stream should be limited. We suspect that phosphorous levels are decreasing due to the introduction of the invasive zebra mussels, an incredibly prolific and efficient water filtering species that removes nutrients from the water.
While phosphorous levels seem to be decreasing, chloride levels are definitely increasing. Chloride, a component of salt, is contained in many products associated with human activities, e.g. de-icing salts, water softener salts, and bleach. Although chloride levels have not reached concentrations to harm fish, chloride levels are indicative of other pollutants such as automotive fluids or nutrients and bacteria from septic systems and should be monitored closely. The remaining parameters that we collect indicate that region’s inland lakes and streams remain in good health.
The Great Lakes contain 20% of the world’s surface freshwater. This represents 90% of the freshwater in the United States. This global treasure needs our attention. Invasive species pose an enormous threat to our water resources, particularly our Great Lakes. Over 186 aquatic invasive species have entered the Great Lakes ecosystem – a new one is discovered every 6-8 months. The cost of control and damage of invasive species in the Great Lakes Basin is $5 billion per year. We have seen the awful results of these invasions here on Little Traverse Bay and the Lake Michigan shoreline with the accumulation of tons of algae along the shoreline and more recently the large die-offs of aquatic birds from avian botulism.
Solutions are possible to prevent the introduction of any new invasive species. The Watershed Council is working on the state and federal level to enact needed policies.
The Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council, founded in 1979, is celebrating its 29th years as the lead organization for water resources protection in Antrim, Charlevoix, Cheboygan, and Emmet Counties. We work to maintain the environmental integrity and economic and aesthetic values of lakes, streams, wetlands, and ground water. Please see our website for additional information – www.watershedcouncil.org, or call our office to find out what you can do to help us protect our waters.
State of Land Conservation
By Tom Bailey
Executive Director
Little Traverse Conservancy
The state of land conservation in the greater Petoskey area is generally good. In the private, non-profit sector, the Little Traverse Conservancy set a record for land conservation in 2007. Land owners are becoming more and more interested in private land conservation options, and new state property tax incentives are encouraging more land owners to consider conservation for their land. The Conservancy is also working to help our youngest generation—the land’s future caretakers--understand and value the land by offering outdoor nature education programs to schools at no charge. Last year, over 6,000 children participated.
Meanwhile, also in the Greater Petoskey area, the Walloon Lake Trust and Conservancy continues to focus on protecting significant land in the Walloon Lake Watershed. As the pace of development accelerates in our area, non-profit land conservancies are working to ensure that land protection keeps pace with land development.
In the public sector, the news is a bit mixed. Local units in and around Petoskey maintain a strong interest in parks, open space, recreational land and trails. The plan prepared by the Petoskey Area Open Space Task Force remains a model document, and Emmet County is embarking on a major Master Plan update that will include conservation. Things are a bit more bleak at the state level, where budget woes have contributed to a number of uncertainties about the future of state parks, state forest campgrounds, and a number of fisheries and wildlife programs. People in our resort area with a lot of tourist-oriented business are watching closely to see if the state can overcome political gridlock and invest appropriately in protecting and providing public access to the natural resources that attract tourism–which is the number three industry in our state.
Over the next year, look for more progress at the local level and hope that more citizens will get involved with local open space and conservation programs. At the state level, look for much political back-and-forth about the overall budget, but hopefully some recognition of the importance of conservation and natural resource programs to our state’s quality of life, tourism, and economy.
State of Recycling
By Elisa Seltzer, Director
Emmet County Department of Public Works
We are pleased to report that 2008 finds recycling in Emmet County in an excellent state.
Recycling came into 2007 in strong form. Consider that:
- Emmet County recycling and waste disposal have not relied on tax dollars since 1992.
Over 80% of Emmet County residents recycle - 60% of Emmet County residents now have curbside collection of their recyclables, making recycling as convenient as throwing materials away
- Over 150 businesses in the county have signed up to recycle using the curbside system.
- In 2006 we shipped over 5,150 tons of materials to factories throughout Michigan and the Midwest, and constituting 31% of the waste generated in the county.
- Sale of these recyclables—otherwise a liability to be disposed of—brought $372,130 into our local economy and employed roughly 20 people.
- Recent expansions have added the capacity to:
~ Recycle electronics
~ Recycle wood and rubble
~ Compost yard wastes
~ Sell compost and mulch products
These strengths developed in the context of a healthy overall system of waste disposal and resource recovery. For example,
- We continue to reap the benefits of market-based policies set in the early 1990s:
Flow control—a system to protect a competitive market for waste hauling services and retain local control of management of waste—has meant that, despite dozens of mergers and buy outs of waste haulers, residents and businesses still have three or more private waste haulers to choose from.
Pay-As-You-Throw: By simply requiring that all waste disposal fees be based on the volume thrown out—as opposed to a flat charge to throw out any quantity—individuals are given responsibility for the waste they generate and an incentive to recycle and reduce waste. - A new contract in 2002 to landfill the waste from the county Transfer Station has saved our communities millions of dollars over the past five years.
However, even starting from this excellent position, 2007 was an exceptional—even extraordinary—year. In 2007
- Wawatam Township and Mackinaw City signed on to the Emmet County Solid Waste Ordinance, bring total participation to 17 of 21 communities in the county.
- Drop sites were added in both Mackinaw City and Cross Village, bringing the total number of sites at your service to 11.
- The United States Supreme Court upheld Flow Control as a constitutional and desirable policy in managing solid waste and recycling.
- Our nation entered a new “green” era, in which we recognize that our economic vitality is dependent on the health of our environment. Connections are being made between climate change, recycling, and energy savings which will contribute to solving our environmental problems while also presenting huge opportunities for growth in the recycling industry. Recycling is an action we can all take in our homes, businesses and community which both feels good and IS good.
Our communities have long been recognized as state leaders in rural recycling. We are moving into the future ever striving to increase the convenience, comprehensiveness, and cost-effectiveness of recycling in Emmet County.
