It was a big loss for the state Senate in 1993 when Grand Rapids Republican Vern Ehlers left to become a congressman.
As he was in Lansing, he has been low-key but highly effective in Washington, and has been a leading advocate of environmental protection.
This was underscored last week when the House overwhelmingly passed and sent to the Senate the bill that Ehlers co-authored with Minnesota Democrat James Oberstar to triple to $150 million the amount of annual environmental cleanup funding under the Great Lakes Legacy Restoration Act.
Michigan leads all Great Lakes states in federally designated "areas of concern" about toxic pollution in rivers and harbors feeding into the lakes. It has 31 contaminated AOC sites, ranging from the Upper Peninsula to Detroit.
Six of the sites are in waters located wholly or partially in the district of Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Menominee -- Saginaw River and Bay, Menominee River, Manistique River, Deer Lake, Torch Lake and St. Marys River.
Stupak fought successfully for the Environmental Protection Agency's 2007 cleanup of Tannery Bay in Sault Ste. Marie. It was part of the St. Marys AOC, being polluted from byproducts left behind by the Northwestern Leather Company, which operated in the area from 1900 to 1958.
The cleanup removed 88,000 pounds of chromium and more than 70 pounds of mercury from the bay and wetlands on Tannery Point. Stupak said that of the total spent on the $8 million project, $4.8 million was provided through the Great Lakes Legacy Act.
During House discussion last week, Rep. John Dingell, D-Dearborn, said, "The Great Lakes Legacy Act has been an incredibly successful program."
In fact, the first success story from the Legacy Act is in Dingell's district, in Trenton. He said:
"Black Lagoon, as it had been named in the 1980s because of the oil and grease that had accumulated between the 1940s and the 1970s, was renamed Ellias Cove just one year ago after the area was remediated. Without the Great Lakes Legacy Act, the $9.3 million cleanup would not have been possible."
But "incredibly successful" are not words often heard these days about the Great Lakes, or in getting the politicians along Pennsylvania Avenue -- from the White House to Capitol Hill -- to deliver on all promises.
As noted previously in this space, earlier in the Bush administration there was talk, but lack of action, on a strategy to mobilize various agencies, led by the Interior Department, to create $20 billion in programs for the Great Lakes as recommended by a group called The Great Lakes Regional Collaboration.
The current recommendation of the administration's Interagency Task Force on the Great Lakes is that the $20 billion be funded from existing programs. There was no prospect for this even before Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said last week that "hundreds of billions of dollars" are needed to rescue financial markets.
Dingell criticized President George W. Bush's "dearth of adequate funding of Great Lakes restoration and protection programs during his eight-year tenure."
He said, "the Great Lakes are a national treasure. However, to date, they have not been treated as such. The Lakes have seen deterioration of water quality, the introduction of aquatic invasive species, and the contamination of toxic sediment, among other things. While the Great Lakes region has worked diligently over the past several decades to help clean up the Lakes, it is clear more must be done on the federal level to implement the streamlined strategy already in place."
As evidenced by Black Lagoon in Dingell's district and Tannery Bay in Stupak's, long-abandoned industries left behind a legacy of toxic pollution.
Stupak said, "I look forward to working with the next administration to make Great Lakes cleanup a real priority."
Both John McCain and Barack Obama, who released a Great Lakes plan last week, promise priority attention.
We'll see.
George Weeks retired in 2006 after 22 years as political columnist for The Detroit News. His weekly Michigan Politics column is syndicated by Superior Features
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