Damage to Huron River continues
Conference puts focus on conservation
May 9, 2005
BY HUGH McDIARMID JR.
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
The Huron River's enemies used to be easy to spot. Sewage treatment plants poured barely treated waste into tributaries. Factories spewed toxics into the river.
HURON RIVERWATERSHED FACTS
The Huron River Watershed Council, the oldest watershed group in Michigan, was formed in 1965 in response to water-quality concerns. Its membership includes dozens of governments, organizations and citizens, to whom it provides scientific and technical assistance in forming polices that help protect the water.
The watershed drains 910 square miles of land, moving about 383 million gallons of water each day.
It includes 74 communities. Its geography ranges from the Milford area in Oakland County to the Stockbridge area southeast of Lansing down through Ann Arbor, Belleville, Flat Rock and eventually into Lake Erie, where it drains.
More than 90 dams alter the course of the river and its tributaries, most notably at Kensington Metropark, where a dam creates Kent Lake -- a favorite of boaters, swimmers and anglers.
In addition to Kensington, the watershed runs through numerous other Metroparks, including Lake Erie, Oakwoods, Willow, Lower Huron, Dexter-Huron and Hudson Mills.
The river contains close to 100 species of fish. The watershed supports critters including mink, muskrat, beaver, otter and is a stopover for migrating bald eagles, peregrine falcons, ospreys and sandhill cranes.
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Today, the threats in the 910-square-mile Huron watershed are every bit as dangerous, but they're harder to figure out and even tougher to control, said speakers at the Huron River Watershed Council's annual State of the Huron conference Friday.
"It's not an end-of-pipe problem any more," said Jo Latimore, a watershed scientist with the council.
A groundswell of environmental activism and a slew of landmark laws in the 1970s helped curb such wanton pollution.
"Today the sources are more diffuse, and more to do with individual actions," said Latimore.
The conference marked the 40th anniversary of the organization, which was formed to protect the Huron, its tributaries, wetlands and groundwater.
Latimore said 12 years of water monitoring suggest the river is holding its own against burgeoning development that threatens the water's quality. But the nature of the battle to keep the water clean has changed.
Epic showdowns with large-scale polluters have been replaced by grassroots educational efforts to reduce the hazards from so-called nonpoint sources -- fertilizer from residential yards, grease and oil swept into sewers from parking lots during rainstorms, and erosion from stream banks where anchoring vegetation is removed.
It's a tougher job, said Latimore, because this time the villains are often not them, it's us.
For example, most homeowners don't need much phosphorus in their yard fertilizer, but slather it on anyway. The excess runs off into streams or sewers that run directly to creeks, providing an overload of phosphorus that can lead to algae blooms, reductions in the water's oxygen levels and other problems.
On a larger scale, land-use decisions by townships and cities will have a huge impact on the Huron's future, said several speakers at the conference.
If the trend toward building new subdivisions on former woodlots and farmlands continues, much of the natural buffer that protects the river from flooding and polluted runoff will be lost, said Keith Schneider, founder of the Michigan Land Use Institute. Instead, federal, state and local policy should focus on encouraging revitalization of existing suburban and urban areas, said Schneider, keynote speaker at the conference.
Every meter of concrete that replaces soil and shrubs is another tiny bit of stress on the Huron River, said Don Tilton, a wetland expert who spoke at the conference. He described the relationship between the land and water as that of kidneys, which filter impurities from blood.
"We're disconnecting kidneys from the blood flow," he said of the changing landscape.
But appealing to nature lovers won't get public policy changed, warned Schneider. Instead, conservationists must begin learning a different language: The language of money.
"Environmentalists are good scientists, but they're not very good economists," he said. "It is cheaper to build our existing communities from within rather than continuing to move out, and you've got to be able to show that."
He said the Benzonia-based Land Use Institute talks less about birds, butterflies and trout and more about taxes required for extending roads and sewers.
"Following the money: That's almost all we talk about anymore," Schneider said.
Whether such a shift in policy comes soon enough to make any substantial dent in the rate of growth in the Huron basin is uncertain.
"It's harmful," said Schneider. "And it's coming your way."
Contact HUGH McDIARMID JR. at 248-351-3295 or .