By Gary Wilson
Gary Wilson
Finally, someone talks about the elephant in the Great Lakes room — the metaphor for an ignored but obvious truth.
The “elephant” in this case is Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk and the “truth” is that Kirk’s reputation for being a Great Lakes champion doesn’t match his record.
“If you are not addressing climate change, you are not addressing the health of the Great Lakes,” Henry Henderson said about Kirk in a recent blog post. Henderson directs the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Midwest office in Chicago and is known to not suffer the pontifications of elected officials.
His post says that climate change is the biggest threat to the Great Lakes and he detailed how Kirk cast a key vote “to prevent the EPA from enforcing efforts to cut carbon pollution.”
He didn’t stop there.
Henderson illustrated how Kirk even voted against funding for a bill that could have helped reduce sewage flowing into the Great Lakes, one of Kirk’s perpetual pet projects.
NRDC also recently ran what Josh Mogerman describes as an “issue ad” on television featuring Kirk. Mogerman is NRDC’s deputy director of national media. The ad references Kirk’s carbon pollution vote with images of kids in the background.
Kirk’s office did not respond to questions from The Hill about his climate vote, but instead touted his Great Lakes record.
Kirk, a Republican, is up for re-election in 2016 and the University of Virginia Center for Politics calls the race for his senate seat a tossup.
I’ve followed Kirk’s Great Lakes career for a decade and have always thought that his rhetoric didn’t match reality. Like many politicians, he’ll work on the easy stuff like lobbying for Great Lakes restoration money. Beyond that his record is thin.
But he’s gotten a pass from Great Lakes groups like the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes, which has been reluctant to criticize its home state senator.
Algae elephant
There are other elephants in the Great Lakes room that go unacknowledged.
The region’s passive approach to the algae issue that plagues Lake Erie and threatens its drinking water is a big one.
While other regions of the country such as the Chesapeake Bay area have taken tough stances to prevent algae, the Great Lakes region dawdles.
Phosphorous runoff from farms is the prime source of Lake Erie’s algae blooms, but we still rely on farmers to self-regulate — like auditing your own tax returns. We encourage them to use best practices and even pay them to not pollute, which is a perverse incentive.
But regulate them? No way.
Meanwhile Chesapeake Bay states and advocates went through the same process for more than a decade hoping that agricultural interests would see the light and stop polluting. They didn’t and legal intervention was necessary.
Chesapeake Bay advocates just won a major victory in an appellate court that upholds strict limits to how much phosphorous can flow into the bay.
And the Des MoinesWater Works has finally tired of waiting for voluntary efforts by ag interests to cut pollution. It filed its own suit that attempts to hold farmers accountable for polluting drinking water.
But here we’re unable or unwilling to learn from the experience of other regions, especially the Chesapeake Bay.
We’re pinning our hopes on a marginally interested group of Great Lakes governors who’ve pledged to cut ag pollution using the same methods that didn’t work in the Chesapeake.
WOTUS elephant
Back to Great Lakes officials with over-hyped environmental credentials.
Ohio Rep. David Joyce came to office in 2012 and quickly became a darling of Great Lakes advocates.
With a district that borders Lake Erie, he tried to establish his Great Lakes credibility by securing funding for Great Lakes restoration. Joyce, a Republican, is on the House Appropriations Committee — the folks who write the checks from taxpayers’ checking account.
Joyce also wants to “reduce the scope and size of government” according to his website.
And he’s trying, even if it puts clean water at risk.
Joyce is a sponsor of the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) Overreach Protection Act.
The “Act” would prohibit the U.S. EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers from implementing the WOTUS “rule” that clarifies which waterways come under the Clean Water Act, the landmark legislation that protects drinking water.
The rule’s passage is a “big deal” because our “water resources are so interconnected” the Environmental Law and Policy Center says on its website. Streams connect with rivers which connect to lakes — you get the connectivity picture.
If the Great Lakes community wanted to acknowledge the elephant in the room, they would call out Joyce and other Great Lakes politicians who want to ditch the WOTUS rule. But that’s not happening even though the WOTUS rule will have a significant and positive on water quality.
NRDC’s public rebuke of Kirk on his climate vote and Great Lakes record was deserved. And other politicians who profess to be Great Lakes champions should be subjected to the same scrutiny.
I’m not a fan of praising politicians for small moves in the right environmental direction. It provides them with political cover more than anything else.
But if you’re going to heap praise on politicians you have a responsibility to criticize too.
That’s where Great Lakes advocates often fall short. They’re like the referees who shirk their responsibility and swallow their whistles, afraid to make a tough call in the closing seconds of a game.
We can’t do that; we can’t continue to ignore the elephants in the Great Lakes room.