Groundwater teachings
New York is sinking. So is Boston. A recent study from Virginia Tech documents that the entire eastern seaboard is going down. This sinking is not only due to the rise of oceans. It’s directly related to the loss of ground water.
We should be especially engaged with this emerging understanding. While the Great Lakes are the largest unfrozen freshwater ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere, they are fed by a complex system of underground aquifers. Most estimates say that our groundwater is the equivalent to all of Lake Michigan. And like our neighbors on the eastern coasts, we have not been good stewards.
Much of southeastern Michigan has followed the path of unrestricted building, draining marshlands and filling in delta lands. Many of our cities and suburbs are built on shaky grounds.
But of equal concern is the both the extraction of the groundwater for human consumption and industrial production and the contamination of it in these processes.
Across the country about 40% of all water that people drink comes from underground sources and about 39% of all water used in food production is pumped from underground sources. Michigan relies even more heavily on our groundwaters. About 44% of the state relies on it and it is the sole source for most people outside of major cities. Our farms and orchards have more than doubled their use of groundwater since 2009.
Yet most of us don’t think about these waters or the risks we face. Entire ecosystems are contaminated by failing septic systems, agricultural runoff, abandoned wells, industrial and military pollutions.
This pollution of course finds its way into our above ground waters as well. A recent study by For the Love of Water (FLOW) and MSU “sampled 64 river systems that drain approximately 84 percent of the Lower Peninsula for E. coli and the human-specific source tracking marker bacteria called B-theta.” Liz Kirkwood, executive director of Flow said, “The more septic systems in the watershed, the more human fecal source tracking bacteria were found in the water.”
FLOW documented “more than 24,000 contamination sites, including 11,000 orphan sites.” Orphan sites are polluted areas where a corporation caused pollution many years ago, but the corporation has left.
This contamination is in addition to what are now called “forever chemicals” like PFAS, a group of roughly 15,000 known chemicals used in hundreds of consumer and commercial products including firefighting foams, non-stick pans, stain resistant clothing and cosmetics.
The fragility of our groundwater underscores the critical nature of statewide efforts to establish a true water affordability plan. Decades in the making, this legislation establishes two basic principles that provide a foundation for moving toward a more just, sustainable future. They establish clearly that water is a human right and a sacred trust. The current efforts by some, especially right-wing forces in Macomb country, to undermine this effort are shameful and short sighted.
Water is the essence of life. Of all the essentials that our extractive culture abuses, water is also the most forgiving. It has the capacity to cleanse itself, to regenerate, and reclaim it course.
We have the opportunity in Michigan to create a new relationship with the waters that sustain us. The current legislation, modeled and encouraged by Detroiters for decades, deservers our full support. This legislation wages love for our people and our waters.