Thompsonville, Michigan — The Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan, a citizen-led ballot initiative group seeking to ban horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, begins collecting signatures on Friday, April 12, 2013, for a six-month period to qualify for the 2014 ballot. Starting this week, the Committee announces its campaign kick-off events in communities around the state, including a Traverse City event on Tuesday, April 2, from 7 to 8 p.m. in the lower level of Horizon Books on Front Street and a Manistee event on Saturday, April 13, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 164 Harrison Street.

The kick-off events are for volunteers and people interested in volunteering for the campaign who want to obtain petitions and campaign literature, learn about the ballot initiative process and how to circulate petitions, and begin organizing in their community.

The Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan changed its petition from a constitutional amendment proposal to a “legislative proposal” earlier this year. The legislative proposal would amend the state statute — not the state constitution — and requires 258,088 signatures. When the signatures are validated, the proposal goes first to the legislature, which must pass or reject it with no changes. If both the House and Senate vote ‘no’ or take no action within 40 days, the proposal automatically goes to a vote of the people in the November 2014 election. If Michigan voters approve the ban, the new law cannot be vetoed, however, the legislature could amend it, but only with a three-quarter vote in both houses.

“In Michigan, we have the constitutional power to write our own laws through a ballot initiative and put them before the voters,” said LuAnne Kozma, campaign director, in a press release.

The Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan is part of a worldwide movement to ban fracking. France and Bulgaria have banned fracking, as have numerous communities in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Colorado. Vermont became the first state to ban fracking in 2012, and Michigan’s citizen effort has the support of Vermont legislators Tony Klein (D) and Peter Peltz (D) who sponsored the Vermont ban bill.

“It was clear in Vermont the dangers of fracking to our natural resources. In Vermont, our natural resources are our number one priority, so it was not a difficult thing to prohibit fracking forever. It passed overwhelmingly,” Klein said in the Committee To Ban Fracking’s press release. “We encourage all states, when they have the chance to do so, to ban this dangerous technique.”

Michigan is already being horizontally fracked by the gas industry, with three wells currently in operation, 27 sites that are being prepared for drilling, and 52 wells permitted so far, according to Paul Brady from Respect My Planet. Toxic chemicals — many of them known carcinogens — sand, and millions of gallons of water are used in the process to fracture the targeted rock formations, permanently destroying millions of gallons of water by turning them into fracking waste. And it should be noted that companies can get a site ready and do initial drilling before a permit is granted for water usage.
“Drilling and fracking create a tremendous amount of solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes, polluting the land, water, and air. Wastes and pollution are integral to the process, not an accident or a possibility, but a surety,” said Kozma.

When it comes to disposal, drill cutting and muds are solidified on site or are brought to landfills. Between 10 and 70 percent of the millions of gallons of water that are pumped into the ground flow back to the surface — the rest of the wastewater remains in the fracked well, transforming it into its own toxic waste well — and this ‘flowback water’ brings with it any naturally occurring heavy metals and salts that were picked up underground, in addition to the chemicals that were used in the fracking fluid. Flowback wastewater is brought to injection wells and once again pumped deep under ground, a process which has caused small earthquakes in Arkansas, Ohio, and Texas.

But it’s not just underground where there are problems. Just last month, a new study reports that in Pennsylvania, where most of the wasterwater is trucked to treatment facilities rather than injection wells, there are increased levels of chloride, one of the elements found in flowback water that is difficult to remove. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that, on average, an additional 1.5 treatment plants in a watershed led to an increase in chloride levels by 10 percent downstream. Additionally, the study found that the adding 18 well pads in a watershed increased the concentration of total suspended solids (TSS) — essentially the particulate in the water that makes it murky — by 5 percent.

Here in Michigan, flowback wastes from a fracked well in one county can be brought to injection wells in other locations. For example, some fracking wastes generated in Kalkaska County are brought to an injection well in Grand Traverse County. Michigan has more than 1,000 injection wells, and more are being proposed and approved.

When it comes to water use, the fracking industry is using more groundwater per well in Michigan than in any other state. In Excelsior Township of Kalkaska County, one well by Encana is using 21 million gallons per frack, and the two other wells there are using 21 million gallons between them. Of the company’s newest applications, also in Kalkaska County, two propose to use more than 18.9 million gallons each and three would use 31 million gallons each per frack. This is a total water usage of 174.5 million gallons for eight wells, or about 21 million gallons each. In other states, the average is between 2 million to 9 million gallons per frack.

Higher amounts of water used per well means that Michigan is also creating much more fracking waste. Michigan depends on clean ground water for drinking, with more private wells than any other state. Michigan is also connected to four of the Great Lakes, and its water flows directly into them.

In addition to banning horizontal hydraulic fracturing, the Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan’s ballot proposal would ban fracking wastes and eliminate the state’s policy, codified into current law “fostering” the oil-gas industry and “maximizing production” —“frack, baby, frack” language that provides the fossil fuel industry with uncommon special interest protection.

“It is a dire situation, but there is something we can do,” noted Kozma. “As a grassroots movement of people, building signature by signature, circulator by circulator, we are the largest, on-the-ground force in the state working to ban fracking. Committee to Ban Fracking volunteers are devoted to making change, getting onto public sidewalks, in parks, at farmers’ markets, and other public gatherings to raise awareness face-to-face, voter-to-voter, while collecting signatures for a ban on fracking.”

Only a ban can protect us from the significant harms of fracking. The language in our current law favoring the fossil fuel industry makes it inevitable that Michigan contributes mercilessly to global climate change and serious pollution of the Great Lakes, which make up20 percent of the world’s available fresh water. It is urgent that we move to alternative forms of energy to protect future generations.

The entire Lower Peninsula now stands to be fracked. Encana is drilling the Utica-Collingwood Shale in state forests and on private land and plans to drill and frack 500 to 1,700 sites. Densely populated areas such as Ann Arbor, Oakland County, and the Grand Rapids region — communities historically not affected by oil and gas drilling within their borders — are now facing the threat, too. There have been two mineral-rights auctions, and more are likely. All the state land in Benzie County and most other counties have been auctioned off for gas and oil leases by the State of Michigan. The drilling is mostly on state land, which is supposed to be land for the people. But as it stands now, Benzie is wide open for drilling, as are Leelanau and Grand Traverse counties.

This article is part of a series called The Water Column, as an on-going part of the third annual Benzie County Water Festival, taking place Friday, April 12, at Benzie Central High School. Peggy Case is one of two panelists who will be taking the stage at 5:30 to talk about fracking. Case, president of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, is a member of the Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan, and she will be collecting signatures at the Water Festival. For a schedule of Water Festival events and more information — or if you’d like to learn how you can become a contributor to The Water Column — go to http://water-festival.org or email aubreyannparker@gmail.com.

BENZONIA, Michigan — It’s apparent why a great number of Benzie residents wonder about the risks of fracking and whether the state and the federal government ought to shut the technology down. The industrial breakthrough that now enables developers to recover oil and natural gas from hydrocarbon-rich shales 6,000 to 10,000 feet beneath the surface is potentially fraught with danger.

No new technology comes without assorted risks, though, especially one as environmentally significant and economically powerful as fracking. But along with the risks come benefits. The question is whether the United States has the capacity to significantly reduce the threats through regulatory safeguards, or is there one or more aspects of the technology that are so inherently dangerous that fracking should not be allowed at all?

Answering the question involves distinguishing the difference between “potential” and “actual” risks and benefits.

On the potential side of the discussion, the risks seem fearsome. The fracking process blasts millions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals down a well at ultra-high pressure to shatter the shale rock and release the natural gas trapped within. Anecdotal evidence, and several instances of contamination confirmed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, point to a risk that fracking can contaminate freshwater aquifers much closer to the surface. It’s not clear yet how significant that risk is, though the EPA is studying the issue and preparing to issue a definitive report next year.

Likewise, public health authorities in Pennsylvania are starting to study the consequences of fracking to human health, and they’re also focusing on air pollution. Big diesel engines operate at the well sites, and it takes roughly 2,000 truck trips to transport water, fuel, and equipment to each well. Vehicular collisions, moreover, have taken the lives of dozens of truck drivers and motorists in both Pennsylvania and North Dakota.

Disposal of wastewater and fluids from the process has led to spills in Wyoming and North Dakota. Pumping the wastes down deep disposal wells also has caused small earthquakes in Arkansas, Ohio, and Texas. The concentration of wells in a region — all tied together by new roads, pipeline corridors, and assorted processing and pumping stations — has significant implications for the uses of land, particularly if the development occurs in a forested area like northern Michigan.

But when weighing the hazards, it’s just as crucial with this technology to consider how fracking is producing a mountain of environmental and economic gifts as well. The capacity to literally cause liquid and gaseous fuel to flow from solid rock has made this nation self-sufficient in natural gas production, dramatically lowered our oil imports, and helped reduce climate-changing emissions in the United States to the lowest levels since the early 1990s.

Natural gas has half the carbon emissions per unit of energy as coal. Burning it does not produce mercury, sulfur, and other air pollutants that pour from a coal-fired power plant. Shale gas is apparently abundant enough to drive prices so low that gas-fired electrical generating stations now account for more than one-third of the nation’s electricity, and these plants are being built on much smaller parcels of land than what’s required for coal plants. Reason: gas-fired plants don’t need extra room for big piles of coal that pollute groundwater and rivers after heavy rains. A new gas-fired generating station also uses 60 percent less water per kilowatt-hour than a coal-fired plant. It takes 800 to 3,000 gallons of water to extract, transport, store, process, and dispose of one ton of coal, and it takes 25 tons of coal and an additional 12 million gallons of water to run an average coal plant for an hour.

In the environmental and economic contest between fracked gas and mined coal as a source of energy, it’s not terribly close. Coal is the dirtiest and most dangerous source of fuel at every step of the production and combustion cycle. It’s deadly to mine and causes extensive surface and groundwater contamination from acid mine drainage. In Appalachia, coal companies are blowing the tops off mountains to gain access to veins of coal. Coal-fired plants account for 40 percent of U.S. climate-changing emissions, and they’re responsible for much of the mercury that ends up in fish in Michigan and across the northern tier of states.

Here in northern Michigan, oil and gas development has been well understood since the 1970s when the mile-deep Niagaran Formation was developed. In the 1990s, drillers pursued the much shallower Antrim Shale, prompting a civic pushback due to the potential disruption from roads, pipelines, and processing stations installed in the area’s forests. Now the Collingwood Shale, two miles deep and running up the center of Michigan’s northern peninsula like a spine, is summoning the interest of energy companies.

People are justifiably nervous. Does that merit shutting down development here? No. It does mean understanding the risks and taking regulatory steps to minimize them.

This article is part of a series called The Water Column, as an on-going part of the third annual Benzie County Water Festival, taking place Friday, April 12, at Benzie Central High School. Keith Schneider is one of two panelists who will be taking the stage at 5:30 to talk about fracking. Schneider, a Benzonia resident, is a regular contributor to The New York Times, Yale360, Grist, and other prominent news organizations. The majority of Keith’s time is spent directing the news desk for Circle of Blue, a Traverse City-based news organization reporting the global water crisis, where he is the senior editor, having reporting on emerging trends in water and energy from four continents. For a schedule of Water Festival events and more information — or if you’d like to learn how you can become a contributor to The Water Column — go to http://water-festival.org or email aubreyannparker@gmail.com .

By Carol Navarro

Rain and melted snow become stormwater runoff, finding its way to the storm drains and carrying with it our donations of lawn fertilizers, pesticides, animal wastes, dirt, winter salt from paved surfaces, human waste bacteria (E.coli) from leaking septic tanks, and oil from cars, asphalt roofs, and roads. This pollution-laden water then becomes the ‘non-point’ and leading source of pollution that finds its way to Lake Michigan.

Rain gardens — a landscape design that redirects stormwater runoff — is the quickest, easiest, and most practical solution to stormwater pollution. And a rain garden is a relatively simple solution to a seemingly daunting task that any Benzie County resident can install in his or her own yard.

The basic principle: water stays where it falls.

The bowl-shaped design — usually located in the lowest point of a yard — uses native plants and well-drained soil to catch, clean, and recycle stormwater runoff. Acting as a filtering system, the plants’ deep root systems soak up excess water and filter out pollutants, leaving behind clean water.

Because most of the water stays where it falls, it recharges the aquifer, and any water that does find its way to the surface is clean and free of pollutants.

Native Plants Are Good for the Environment.

It’s not only what the eye can see, but what grows beneath the surface. The root systems of native plants have a much greater mass and run deeper than the traditional grass that we typically see lining our neighborhood streets.

A rain garden needs native planting, sand, and compost. After the initial investment of money and labor, rain gardens require only annual maintenance — removing invasive plants and adding fresh mulch to keep the soil damp — in place of the mowing, watering, and fertilizing of the typical lawn that all contribute to stormwater pollution.

Changing attitudes and behavior are what is needed to insure the integrity of one of our priceless natural resources: our freshwater supply.

Rain gardens are a way for home and business owners to take responsibility for the social practices that are responsible for polluting. The end result is that water runoff that does find its way to the Great Lakes will be clean.

Carol Navarro, a Frankfort resident, is the outreach coordinator for the Benzie Conservation District, a sponsor of the upcoming Benzie County Water Festival. At the festival on March 19, Navarro will co-lead a rain garden workshop with Carolyn Thayer — a landscape designer, owner of Designs in Bloom, and the president of Plant It Wild — who has designed a rain garden for the new Gateway Housing Project development on Forest Avenue in Frankfort. This workshop is designed for private homeowners interested in the basics of rain garden fundamentals and design. For more information on the workshop, contact Navarro at 231-882-4391.

This article is the part of a new series called The Water Column, as an on-going part of the first annual Benzie County Water Festival, an education and celebration event taking place March 18 through 20. For a schedule of events and more information — or if you’d like to learn how you can become a contributor to The Water Column — send aubreyannparker@gmail.com an email.

By Emily Votruba

You know the old environmental activist expression NIMBY — “Not in my backyard”?

It always bothered me a bit. If not in my backyard, then in whose?

What if everything did go through my backyard first? Wouldn’t that be a big incentive for me to make sure my life didn’t require toxic chemicals, inorganic fertilizers, and petroleum-based foaming agents?

I was surprised to learn during the Alliance for the Great Lakes beach clean-up this year that much of the small plastic and other garbage on the beach actually comes from storm drains, not from lazy beachgoers who don’t pick up after themselves. No, even if we had all majored in litterbuggery in college, we still wouldn’t be able to match what the storm drains bring in.

(Although, you should look up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is a mass of plastic in the Pacific Ocean that has an estimated area between double the size of Texas to larger than the continental U.S. Check out www.theplastiki.com for more information.)

In addition to trash, overflowing storm drains are a huge source of excess nutrients and toxins in lakes. Pet waste, lawn fertilizer, motor oil, antifreeze, detergents, and organic matter — such as leaves and grass clippings — get flushed into the storm drains from streets and sidewalks when it rains.

In many places, storm drains feed directly into waterways, which means that, once chemicals and dog poop are on the street or sidewalk, there’s nothing to stop them on their inexorable, soupy journey into the nearest stream during the next rain.

On top of all that wastewater rushing into the storm drains from our roofs, driveways, sidewalks, and streets, we also have overflowing sewers and leaky septic tanks that are located too close to moving water — and yes, this happens “in our own backyard.”

Just last summer, a spill at the Frankfort and Elberta BLUA sewage treatment facility sent millions of gallons of sewage into the Betsie Bay, knocking out beach activity for a few days. What’s silly about these overflows is that an estimated* 50 to 80 percent of the water that goes down your drain and into the sewer doesn’t require intensive treatment: it’s what’s known as greywater — water you’ve used to shower, wash clothes, or do the dishes.

Why burn fossil fuels to clean water that doesn’t even have to go into the sewer in the first place? It seems like it would be a good idea to capture all this water — inside and out — and put it to better use.

The phosphates, nitrogen, and bits of organic matter that cause unhealthy algal blooms in lakes and streams are exactly the kind of thing your lawn likes. It’s free fertilizer!

*Art Ludwig, Parker Abercrombie, and Michelle Howard, Create an Oasis with Greywater (Santa Barbara, CA: Oasis Design, 2009).

Emily Vortruba is an editor of the newly reborn Elberta Alert. A recent transplant, she spends her time split between her house in Elberta and her boyfriend’s apartment in Brooklyn, New York. This is the second of a two-part series in which Emily explores how individuals can make easy cuts in their personal water usage.

This article is the first in a new series called The Water Column, as an on-going part of the first annual Benzie County Water Festival, an education and celebration event taking place March 18 through 20. For a schedule of events and more information — or if you’d like to learn how you can become a contributor to The Water Column — send aubreyannparker@gmail.com an email.

By Emily Votruba

We Michiganders have 90 percent of America’s surface freshwater resources in our backyard. Whether we feel a sense of ecological responsibility, rely on the lake for our livelihood, or just want nice beaches to enjoy with our families, we can all agree it makes sense to celebrate and protect our inland seas.

Like a lot of Americans of my generation, I grew up never worried about the water supply. I let the tap run full blast while I did dishes in the sink or brushed my teeth; I ran around under hoses and sprinklers in the heat of the summer afternoons, and every once in a while, after a day at the beach, I shampooed my hair in Lake Michigan. (It was the ’70s).

In young adulthood, I became more environmentally conscious — I took showers, never baths, and I did yard watering in the early morning or evening, never in the heat of the afternoon. In college, we all agreed not to flush just for pee — we had a little saying, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.” (It was the ’90s.)

I switched to nontoxic cleaners, occasionally frustrating my bleach- and Drano-happy roommates. I was fairly confident that I was doing what I could to save water and keep poisons and excess nutrients out of the watershed.

But a few years ago — after I got involved in the movement against hydrofracture natural gas drilling (also known as “fracking,” in which a megagallon water-chemical mixture is used to break underground shales containing natural gas, often leaving contaminated water wells in its wake) — I decided to see what else I could do, or not do, to protect my local watershed.

I call my personal plan “water descent.”

(You’ve maybe heard of energy descent — the transition we’ll all soon be making, whether we like it or not, toward using less and less petroleum and other fossil fuels. I like the term “water descent” because it reminds me of the way water naturally flows, and also because it sounds like “dissent.”)

According to National Geographic, household activities — drinking, cooking, dishwashing, laundry, bathing, even watering the yard — add up to about 100 gallons per day per person, which is just 5 percent of each American’s total water footprint.

That sounds low for all household use, doesn’t it? (Even though, compared to the rest of the world, we seem like water hogs: according to the United Nations, each person requires 13 gallons for daily household activities, but, in some water-poor countries, the average is just 2 gallons per day!)

It turns out that most of our per capita water use is actually taken up by transportation, food, energy, and the clothing and other “stuff” we require. The total? On average we each use 1,981 gallons every day! That’s twice the average of the rest of the world. (To see how you rate, take the water footprint calculator survey.)

I found taking the water-footprint quiz very enlightening.

All this time, I’d thought doing the dishes by hand in the sink (only turning on the tap to rinse) was better than doing them in the dishwasher… but by National Geographic’s estimates, an Energy Star washer does a full load with just 4 gallons, whereas handwashing uses about 20 gallons.

Laundry-wise, front-loading clothes washers use about half the water required by top-loading machines — just 20 gallons per load. I thought I was doing well with the fossil-fuel-free, hand-powered washing machine I proudly ordered from Lehmann’s last summer… but it averages a little more than 25 gallons per load with a 31-pound capacity. (It’s got some fringe benefits, though: if you’re looking for a workout that’s equivalent to 15 minutes on the heavy bag at the boxing gym, this machine is for you.)

We would all have to change our lifestyles drastically to make our share of the planet’s fresh water more equal, since the American lifestyle sort of makes us water gluttons.

But there are several easy things people can do to cut their household water consumption — remember, that 5 percent? — in half, all while saving time and money, growing a beautiful green yard, and helping to keep our waterways clean and healthy.

If it’s cheaper and less work, you’ll at least try it, won’t you? It all starts in your backyard.

Emily Vortruba is an editor of the newly reborn Elberta Alert. A recent transplant, she spends her time split between her house in Elberta and her boyfriend’s apartment in Brooklyn, New York. This is the first of a two-part series in which Emily explores how individuals can make easy cuts in their personal water usage.

This article is the first in a new series called The Water Column, as an on-going part of the first annual Benzie County Water Festival, an education and celebration event taking place March 18 through 20. For a schedule of events and more information — or if you’d like to learn how you can become a contributor to The Water Column — send aubreyannparker@gmail.com an email.

By Aubrey Ann Parker

Imagine the wind in your hair, the sun on your face, and the sense of adventure you feel as you switch gears. You are zipping along on your bike, winding through the 22 miles of trail that snake along the Betsie River from Thompsonville to Frankfort. You end the day with dinner on the Coho Café patio, and then meet your friends for drinks at the Cabbage Shed before a skinny dip at Elberta Beach.

Now imagine the same beautiful Northern Michigan day, but with just a few minor changes.

There are no cattails swaying in the breeze; no migratory birds navigating a trail of young through the clear waters; no fishermen boasting their catch; no sailboats moored in the harbor. Only a narrow channel of water remains at the center of the riverbed — the rest has been taken over by reeds and sediment. As you sit at a bonfire on Lake Michigan, you are fearful that the encroaching thicket of tall, dense grasses will catch fire.

And forget about trying to get a decent price for your waterfront property now that the common reed has set up summer camp on the beaches of Benzie County.

The Great Lakes Basin is home to two types of “common reed,” scientifically known as Phragmites. One species is historically native to this region and can coexist with other wetland plants. Its European brother, however, is exceptionally invasive and can drastically change the natural habitat, biological composition, wetland hydrology, and overall aesthetic of a shoreline — as we may find out the hard way.

When the non-native common reed — which can reach up to 10-feet tall — becomes rooted along a water’s edge, it blocks light to other plants and inhabits much of the growing area, consequently creating a monoculture. Phragmites can multiply at an astonishing rate, because it gives birth at both its head and its base. Seeds are airborne, while root systems spread along and below the ground by upwards of 30 to 50 feet per year.

A variety of methods are used to control Phragmites, including burning, cutting, digging, draining, dredging, mowing, mulching, and pulling. Grazing by certain types of moths, aphids, and mites is another form of control. Additionally, studies in both Nebraska and Virginia have shown 50 to 100 percent control of Phragmites in just one season using chemical herbicides like Rodeo.

The costs can be colossal and the work arduous, but the payoff for proactively controlling Phragmites invaluable. Saginaw Bay paid $75,000 to aerially release herbicide over 120 acres, while Beaver Island spent an estimated $17,000 on 27 acres in 2007. But by 2008, only three additional acres required treatment on Beaver Island — this diminishment thanks to the quick action by a community who understood that tending one beach and not another would have been futile.

The common reed is a commonplace problem. Come discuss what can and should be done about Phragmites with our community on Saturday, August 28th from 4-5:30pm at the Elberta Farmers’ Market Pavillion. Ryan Locke, park ranger for the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, will be present to give a more detailed background and answer questions from the public.

Aubrey Ann Parker is a Northern Michigan native and graduate of both Kalamazoo College and the University of Michigan. She is a reporter for Circle of Blue, a Traverse City-based organization reporting the global freshwater crisis.

That’s a pretty good camouflage. Any know the species of this frog?

Photo © Susan Armstrong.

On a site note: Need a place to stay during the Water Festival? Give us a shout (info@water-festival.org), Crystal Mountain Resort has partnered with us this year and is offering Water Festival attendees discounts on overnight lodging!

Photo © Susan Armstrong.

A nice shot of Empire, Michigan, its shoreline, and South Bar Lake. Question of the day, what type of lake is South Bar Lake?

Photo © Susan Armstrong.

(p.s. Best chocolate in the world?)

Another addition of: Can you guess the lakes?

Also, why is the littlest one so dark?

Photo © Susan Armstrong.