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Posts from the ‘environmental health’ Category

Jun 9

MEC President Chris Kolb, second from right, discusses the impact of proposed budget cuts at a press conference Thursday

Legislature’s irresponsible budget plan slashes front-line protections for public health

MEC and our partners at the Michigan League of Conservation Voters released a report Thursday showing that deep budget cuts proposed in Lansing and Washington put at risk essential programs for protecting the Great Lakes, ensuring safe drinking water and cleaning up toxic contamination.

In the short time since we released the report, the state budget picture has come into clearer focus. And it’s worrisome, to say the least.

The report, prepared by Public Sector Consultants, compiles for the first time all the known environmental programs and public health protections threatened by the proposed cuts. President Trump has called for slashing the Environmental Protection Agency budget by nearly a third, while Michigan lawmakers aimed to cut state support for the Department of Environmental Quality by $13 million under a House plan and more than $26 million in the Senate proposal.

The analysis shows that the combination of the Legislature’s planned cuts and the president’s plans to gut federal programs could be disastrous for state-level environmental programs in Michigan. That’s because federal funds make up a significant share of the DEQ’s budget—more than a quarter in the current fiscal year. In 2016 the state received more than $168 million in EPA grants for water infrastructure and environmental protection activities, with the vast majority going to the DEQ—which puts those dollars to work supporting local governments and nonprofit partners like watershed councils, local cleanup groups, researchers and others.  The rest of the federal funds support 200 employees who are responsible for protecting our air, land and water quality.

Just after we released the report, House and Senate leaders held conference committee meetings to finalize an agreement between the two chambers that cuts nearly $10 million from the DEQ budget in 2018. While not as severe as anticipated, it remains an irresponsible budget that does nothing to address serious threats to public health. Read more

Mar 20

D40V0013

Snyder takes action to combat lead, enlists MEC staffer in the fight

MEC is proud to announce that Tina Reynolds, our health policy director, has been appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder to serve on a new Child Lead Exposure Elimination Commission. Snyder signed an executive order creating the commission on Thursday and said it will be a permanent body.

Also on Thursday, Snyder outlined tougher state standards for implementing the federal Lead and Copper Rule—changes he says will ensure that Michigan communities are able to provide safe, clean drinking water.

New commission to protect Michigan kids

The 15-member commission will advise the governor and the Department of Health and Human Services on policies and programs to meet an ambitious but achievable goal: ending childhood lead poisoning in Michigan.

That’s also the ultimate goal of the Michigan Alliance for Lead Safe Homes (MIALSH), which Tina has helped to lead since she joined MEC in 2010. Last year, MIALSH succeeding in maintaining funding at $1.75 million for the 2017 budget, bringing the total funding for the past four budget cycles to more than $6.5 million. Before MIALSH formed in 2010, there hadn’t been significant state funding for lead cleanup programs in decades.

Tina is one of three commission members appointed to serve an initial three-year term; other members will serve one- or two-year terms. The commission also includes MIALSH members Rebecca Meuninck, deputy director of the Ecology Center, and Paul Haan, executive director of the Healthy Homes Coalition of West Michigan. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician who became a hero of the Flint water crisis and won MEC’s 2016 Milliken Award, also will serve on the commission.

“I am honored to join this commission and grateful to Gov. Snyder for creating it,” Tina said. “Protecting Michigan kids from lead hazards has been a top priority of my work since I joined MEC. There’s an impressive level of collective expertise on this new commission, and I think we have a great opportunity to achieve real, meaningful progress toward making lead poisoning a thing of the past in Michigan. It’s not going to happen overnight, but the governor has demonstrated that he is serious about doing what it takes to make Michigan lead-safe.” Read more

Mar 9

Lt. Gov. Calley

With encouragement from Lt. Gov. Calley, advocates rally in Lansing to end lead poisoning

About 60 environmental advocates, public health professionals, lead-abatement contractors and other citizen-lobbyists gathered in Lansing on Wednesday for the fifth annual Lead Education Day organized by the Michigan Alliance for Lead Safe Homes (MIALSH). MEC Health Policy Director Tina Reynolds is coalition manager for MIALSH.

The group met with 40 legislators or their staff members to provide updates on MIALSH’s policy priorities for addressing the continuing statewide lead crisis. Among those priorities are:

  • Universal lead testing for all Michigan children at ages 1 and 2. In 2015 at least 4,791 Michigan kids had an elevated blood lead level. But the true total is likely much higher, because only about 20 percent of the state’s children under 6 years old are currently tested for lead exposure.
  • Switching the burden of proof in rental housing so that landlords must demonstrate their property has been made lead-safe if the rental unit has previously poisoned a child. Today, some rental properties repeatedly poison the children of tenant after tenant. The majority of Michigan’s lead-poisoned children live in rental housing.
  • Continuing state general fund support for the lead program to ensure state priorities and federal match requirements can be met. Last year, MIALSH succeeding in maintaining funding at $1.75 million for the 2017 budget, bringing the total funding for the past four budget cycles to more than $6.5 million. Before MIALSH formed in 2010, there hadn’t been significant state funding for lead cleanup programs in decades.

    MIALSH members meet with a staffer for Rep. Chris Afendoulis

“Your advocacy and your timing could not be more perfect, and it does make a difference,” said Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, who met with MIALSH members to answer questions and share insights on the recommendations issued in November by the state’s Child Lead Poisoning Elimination Board, which he chaired.

Some of those recommendations—which focus on primary prevention of lead poisoning—align with MIALSH priorities, Calley noted. For instance, the board reported that rental properties represent a major opportunity to better protect Michigan children. He also said the state could pursue policies to take advantage of home sales as an opportunity for action to make homes lead-safe. Calley added that there are opportunities to weave lead abatement projects together with energy efficiency upgrades, noting for instance that windows are usual suspects for both containing lead-based paint and causing energy-wasting drafts.

Calley said that Gov. Rick Snyder later this week would announce additional steps he’s taking to protect Michigan families from lead poisoning, and emphasized that the ultimate aim is to end lead poisoning altogether in Michigan—a daunting goal, but one that is achievable.

“It’s not called the lead poisoning reduction board, it’s the lead poisoning elimination board,” he said. “It’s still realistically a generational issue. But why not start now, and start big?”

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Mar 7

Incinerator

Action opportunity: Speak out for clean air in Detroit

MEC and our partners at Zero Waste Detroit urge southeast Michigan residents to attend an important public meeting Wednesday night and call on state environmental regulators to get tough on one of the city’s worst polluters.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality will host an information session and public hearing beginning at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 8, at the International Institute of Metropolitan Detroit, Hall of Nations, 111 East Kirby Street in Detroit.

Since January 2015, the Department of Environmental Quality has cited Detroit Renewable Power 19 times for violating emissions limits on carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter at the trash incinerator it owns and operates in Midtown.

However, a draft consent order between DEQ and DRP only penalizes the company for six of those violations, for a total of just $149,000.

By contrast, the health impacts of pollution from the incinerator total $2.6 million each year, according to Community Action to Promote Healthy Environments, a community-based research partnership housed in the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

In a letter to the department, MEC, ZWD and several other environmental justice and health groups call the incinerator’s history of illegal emissions “a clear environmental justice issue.” The letter notes that 87 percent of Detroiters living within a mile of the facility are people of color and 60 percent live below the federal poverty line. The community has a high rate of asthma and other respiratory illnesses that are triggered by pollution like that coming from the facility’s smokestack.

Adding to the injustice, about 65 percent of the waste burned in the facility is trucked in from Oakland County—the state’s wealthiest county—with just 25 percent coming from Wayne County.

If you plan to attend the meeting and have questions about this issue, please contact Zero Waste Detroit Convener Margaret Weber at (313) 938-1133. Thank you!

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Nov 21

Gov. Snyder appoints MEC president Kolb to public health panel

Michigan Environmental Council President Chris Kolb was appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder last week to a 24-member Public Health Advisory Commission.

Kolb will represent nonprofit environmental and health organizations on the panel, which is charged with completing an assessment of Michigan’s public health delivery system at the state and local level. The commission will issue a final report to the governor by April 1, 2017.

“It is an honor to serve on this commission alongside a wide range of state officials, medical professionals, public health experts and others who share my commitment to making Michigan a safe, healthy place for all residents,” Kolb said. “I look forward to working together and finding ways to ensure that public health programs are coordinated and effective in serving our state’s most vulnerable residents.”

Snyder also appointed Kolb in 2015 to co-chair the Flint Water Advisory Task Force, which investigated the city’s drinking water crisis, found state-appointed emergency managers and the Department of Environmental Quality chiefly responsible and provided recommendations to prevent similar disasters statewide.

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Oct 26

Four overlooked issues for National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week

This is National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week, which aims to raise awareness to reduce childhood exposure to lead.

In the wake of the Flint water crisis, Michiganders may be more aware of the hazards of lead than ever before. Still, we’ve got a lot of work to do. In 2014, more than 5,000 children in Michigan had blood lead levels above 5 micrograms per deciliter. That’s the level at which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends public health action to protect children, but the CDC says there is no safe level of exposure to lead. The true number of lead-afflicted children in Michigan is likely much higher, since only 20 percent of children under six years old were tested in 2014.

We’ve written quite a lot here about lead poisoning in Michigan and our work to make it a thing of the past. You can find useful background here, here and here.

Since we’ve covered the basics in previous posts, we thought we’d mark this prevention week by highlighting some lead-related issues that don’t get much attention:

Don’t get tricked by toxic treats.

With Halloween coming up next week, it’s good to be aware of a largely overlooked source of lead exposure: imported candy. The Food and Drug Administration says children and pregnant women should not eat candy imported from Mexico, which may be contaminated by lead in wrappers or through improper manufacturing practices. Candy from China, the Philippines and other countries may also contain trace amounts of lead. The federal government reports that, in California, 15 percent of childhood lead poisoning cases can be traced to tainted candy.

We don’t want to needlessly stoke fears. Halloween is fun, and you’ve got enough to worry about it. Just stick to candy produced in the U.S.

We need more cleanup contractors. Read more

Apr 29

Septic installation_Andy Rogers via Flickr

Time to get serious about solving Michigan’s septic problem

Editor’s note: This post is by MEC intern Matthew McLaughlin

A story of infrastructure long forgotten is developing in Michigan. While we rank number one in the country for most dissatisfaction for road conditions, the recent tragedy in Flint has forced all Michigan citizens to consider the infrastructure that we don’t see. Here and in other states, an out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality has led to neglect of water lines, municipal sewers and other infrastructure.

That neglect is especially apparent when it comes to on-site wastewater treatment systems, commonly known as septic systems, used by homes that are not connected to a centralized sewer system. Michigan has about 1.3 million septic systems in its rural areas and sprawling suburbs. Once septics are installed, many homeowners simply don’t remember to have them inspected, or even emptied, unless a problem occurs. This history of neglect has led to a widespread problem of failing systems.

Surprisingly, given the central role fresh water plays in our lifestyle and identity, Michigan is the only state without a law that specifically regulates septics. Eleven counties exercise some oversight of septics, including regular inspections, but they are unregulated in the remaining 72 counties. The state has attempted to address the problem multiple times, including in 2004 when then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm created the On-Site Wastewater Treatment Systems Task Force. That year the task force released a white paper with recommendations for a statewide sanitary code regulating septics. To date, however, there has not been a legislative solution to the problem.

And it is a serious problem. Joan Rose, an expert in water microbiology, water quality and public health, and others at Michigan State University recently found that rivers in areas with high concentrations of septic systems have increased evidence of E. coli and B. theta, which are indicators of human waste. In fact, they found evidence of sewage in all 64 river systems that they sampled. The state’s water strategy, issued last year by the Department of Environmental Quality, estimated that 10 percent of the state’s septics—about 130,000 systems—are failing and leaking an astounding 31 million gallons of sewage every day into our rivers, lakes and ground water. That’s a conservative estimate, far lower than observed rates in other states. Read more

Apr 15

DTE Belle River power plant

On retirement day for some old coal plants, bad state policies keep others limping along

You may have noticed a lot of news stories lately about coal-fired power plants. That’s because—with federal regulations kicking in to protect public health—today marks the end of the operating permits for a number of coal plants in Michigan, including Consumers Energy’s oldest generating units, sometimes charitably described as the “Classic Seven.”

It’s good news that these coal plants are retiring—good for our health, good for our climate and good for our pocketbooks. In 2008, when Michigan enacted clean energy laws, 66 percent of our electricity came from coal. Thanks to those laws, coal now supplies less than half our electricity. With a continued, steady increase in affordable renewable power and energy efficiency, we can shrink coal’s slice of the energy pie to 35 percent by 2020.

Unfortunately, even as they retire their oldest power plants, our large, investor-owned electric utilities are still clinging to dirty coal. DTE Energy, for example, still generates over 70 percent of its electricity from coal and continues to spend millions of dollars a year to keep old plants operating, heaping the costs onto Michigan families.

And sadly, our Legislature is doing nothing to protect Michigan residents from skyrocketing energy bills or the public health impacts of dirty coal plants. Read more

Mar 3

Lead Ed Day 2016

With lead in the spotlight, MEC-led coalition calls for more state funding to protect kids

A lot can change in five years.

MEC Health Policy Director Tina Reynolds convened lead advocates in 2010 to form the Michigan Alliance for Lead Safe Homes (MIALSH) because lead poisoning received almost no attention in Lansing, despite being a completely preventable condition and one whose health effects cannot be reversed once a child is exposed.

During the coalition’s first Lead Education Day at the state Capitol, Reynolds and allies were met with puzzled faces from many lawmakers who thought the lead problem was solved when lead-based paint was banned in 1978. (About 70 percent of Michigan’s housing stock was built before that ban, so thousands of our state’s children are still exposed each year to lead from paint in older homes.)

Wednesday’s fifth annual Lead Education Day, however, came at a time when lead poisoning could hardly be a more prominent issue.

The LG weighs in

The poisoning of Flint children from lead in corrosive city water is a profound tragedy and a staggering failure of government to protect public health. It also has put an unprecedented spotlight on lead issues, providing a must-seize moment to face Michigan’s lead problem head-on.

“Now it’s something everybody is thinking about,” said Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, who kicked off Lead Education Day with remarks to the nearly 50 MIALSH members from all over the state who braved a snowstorm to meet in Lansing with legislators and urge increased state investment in successful lead-abatement programs. “I think it is time that we set some very ambitious or bold goals when it comes to eradication. We have an open door here.” Read more

Feb 15

Downtown Flint_MI Municipal League via Flickr

Another way to help Flint

We’ve been getting calls in our office lately from people concerned about the Flint water crisis—folks from as far away as West Virginia and New Mexico—who want to know what they can do to help.

One easy answer: Head over to helpforflint.com, where you can easily donate to community organizations working to help Flint residents, or sign up for a volunteer shift. Please consider volunteering, and ask for help from your family, friends, coworkers or members of any groups you belong to. (MEC staff members had a wonderful experience volunteering with the Red Cross this past weekend. We had great leadership from a pair of seasoned disasater-response veterans, got some exercise and delivered four truckloads of water and filters to Flint residents. It was definitely a day well spent.)

Donating money and volunteering your time are good, helpful steps, and we encourage everyone to chip in however they can.

In addition, we’d like to propose another way to help: Visit Flint.

A Flint crowd enjoys live music

The serious health impacts and human suffering caused by the disaster are outrageous, and we need to do everything we can to help the people of Flint. We also should do what we can to support the city. Flint has faced serious challenges for years, and the water crisis certainly hasn’t helped its reputation.

But anyone who has spent time there knows Flint has a lot to offer. (And it’s worth noting that, while the Flint River’s reputation has taken a beating during the drinking water crisis, it’s an outstanding recreational asset for the region, and its water quality is improving. The problem was improper treatment of the water, not the river itself.)

So, we encourage you to spend a day exploring Flint, support some local businesses and tell your friends about the good stuff you find. Here are just a few options.

Shop and dine at one of the country’s great farmers markets.

Did you know Flint has a world-class farmers market? In 2009 it was named the “Most Loved Market in America” in an online contest, smoking the closest competition by more than 1,000 votes. Established in 1905, the market moved to a new location downtown in 2014. The American Farmland Trust ranked the Flint market number three in the nation last year, and the American Planning Association listed it among just six designated Great Public Spaces.

There’s a wide range of foods available at the market, from local produce to gourmet popcorn, cheeses, chocolates, Middle Eastern cuisine and barbecue. Classes and workshops also are available. It’s open year-round, but only on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-5, and Saturdays from 8-5, so plan accordingly. Read more

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