Congressman Sander Levin

Environment

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Michigan is surrounded by the largest system of fresh water on Earth. The Great Lakes hold a full 90 percent of the fresh surface water in the United States. They are a priceless and irreplaceable natural resource. I am working to ensure that the federal government is a full partner in helping to restore the Great Lakes, especially Lake St. Clair.

Our State also boasts an abundance of other natural assets, including expansive timberlands, dunes, wetlands, thousands of inland lakes, and pristine public lands. Taken together, Michigan’s land and water resources provide recreational opportunities for millions of people and are vital to our state’s economy. Michigan’s tourist industry alone contributes over $18 billion a year to the state economy, and accounts for more than 190,000 jobs.

We also need to do more to strengthen the laws that safeguard our air, water, and pristine lands. After years of rollbacks in environmental rules and a failure to make the investments necessary to upgrade water and sewer infrastructure, maintain our nation’s parks, and clean up toxic chemicals, it is critical that the Obama Administration and Congress work together to protect and invest in our nation’s natural resources.

Restoring the Great Lakes

The Great Lakes are Michigan’s crown jewels. A comprehensive effort is needed to protect and restore them. Rather than the piecemeal approach that has been used in the past, I have joined with other House members in cosponsoring legislation that calls for an integrated, basin-wide approach to restoring the Great Lakes. Our bill is called the Great Lakes Collaboration Implementation Act [H.R. 500]. It would carry out the recommendations of the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration, which developed a comprehensive strategy on how to restore the Great Lakes ecosystem.

Specifically, our bill would set in motion the most ambitious environmental restoration effort ever attempted.

Protecting Lake St. Clair

Lake St. Clair is an irreplaceable natural resource that provides drinking water, fishing and recreation to millions every year. I am working actively to protect and restore Lake St. Clair and its watershed.

Over the last ten years, a great deal of progress has been to address longstanding environmental damage to Lake St. Clair. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested to upgrade sewer infrastructure to correct the chronic problem of combined sewer overflows into the Lake. Illicit drain connections that dump raw sewage into rivers and streams feeding into Lake St. Clair are being tracked down and repaired.

A key federal program called the Clean Water Revolving Fund Program has provided localities with hundreds of millions of dollars in low-cost loans to improve the watershed’s water infrastructure that keeps sewage from spilling into the Lake. As a direct result of these and other efforts, the number of beach closings on Lake St. Clair has dramatically declined.

House Approves Water Quality Investment Act

 

On March 12, 2009, the House of Representatives approved the Water Quality Investment Act [H.R. 1262] on a vote of 317 to 101. This bill makes key investments to improve water quality.

After years of underfunding wastewater infrastructure, this legislation calls for a robust level of federal funding for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund program. This critical program assists states and communities build water treatment plants and upgrade sewer systems to keep pollution out of our lakes, rivers and streams.

The Revolving Fund program has been critical to the effort to keep pollution out of the Great Lakes. For example, between 2001 and 2004, the Revolving Fund provided more than $100 million to upgrade the Twelve Town Drain in Oakland County.

Toxic Right-to-Know Protection Act

Communities have a right to know when companies release chemicals into the local environment.

For many years, the federal government has kept a Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) that has given communities access to an online database describing what toxic chemicals are being released from nearby plants and refineries. The TRI program has been extremely successful in making sure that communities know what chemicals being released into the air, water and ground. The mere existence of the Inventory has encouraged companies to voluntarily reduce their chemical releases.

Unfortunately, in 2006, the Bush Administration weakened the toxic reporting requirements of the TRI program.

Mountaintop Removal Mining

Mountaintop removal is one of the most controversial coal mining practices. It used to be that mining companies would tunnel into mountains to remove the seams of coal, but in recent years, mining companies have begun extracting coal by literally removing the mountains on top of it. At these sites, the top 100 feet or more of a ridgeline is shaved of its trees, blasted with explosives and then scraped away.

The practice results in a lot of soil erosion, and there is also the problem of what becomes of the tons of rubble leftover from the former mountain.

(Updated November 25, 2009)