Northern Michigan's Online Ride Board

I have had a great car pool arrangement for the past few months, riding about three days a week with a guy who doesn't like to ride in other people's cars and would rather have homemade bread than gas money. Unfortunately, Joel has decided to move out west and gave his two weeks notice last week. Everyone at work is thinking about alternate transportation ideas, so I thought I might as well talk about the Northern Michigan Transportation Alliance online ride board.

This is an online version of those old college bulletin boards where people posted where they we going and whether they needed a ride or wanted someone to share the gas. It is well planned as a website; you can enter your start point and destination, your schedule, specify smoking or non. It is under utilized and under publicized. Probably it needs a block of people, like me and my coworkers, to move in and be the first adopters.

The site has the shortest user's agreement I've ever seen; unfortunately if you read the user agreement, there is no button to get you back to the registration page -- I had to start all over again. The site uses Google Maps; don't skip the street address or mapping part or you'll lose all your schedule input when it tells you to resubmit. It's also hard to figure out when you've completed the process of posting a ride. I ended up pushing submit three times before I gave up and went to see if my offer was posted. I was sure to put an end date since some of the rides showing now have been there for a couple of months.

I don't know if I'll get a new carpool out of this, but it's worth a try. The site needs much more advertisement and use.

Michigan Water - Public Trust or Product?

The Sunday Record-Eagle had more background information on the water bills before the Michigan Legislature. George Weeks summed up the situation like this:

In Lansing, there's debate about whether Michigan can say "no" to large water withdrawals, including by those who export huge amounts in small containers.

Yes, we can say no, insists Michigan Director Cyndi Roper of East Lansing-based Clean Water Action, who is among those whose voices under the dome are politically faint compared to well-funded interests pushing for commercialization and privatization of our water.

At issue: The state Senate passed legislation related to the Great Lakes Compact that is weaker on withdrawal of groundwater for bottling than action by the House. Said Roper in a Detroit Free Press commentary:

"The Senate legislation requires only those pumping more than 2,000,000 gallons per day to ask permission on that water use. Compare this to Minnesota's permission trigger, which is 10,000 gallons per day, or Wisconsin's, at a million gallons. Both states have created a system to allow public input and oversight at levels up to 200 times more protective than the Michigan Senate approved. Michigan's senators thumbed their noses at the public's rights to have a meaningful voice in decisions about massive water withdrawals."

Late last week, with further legislation pending in the House, Roper sent e-mail missives to environmentalists urging them to "inundate lawmaker offices demanding they fight for our water and stand up to the corporate interests wishing to seize control of our water."

Traverse City attorney Jim Olson, advocate of the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation's long legal fight against Nestle's bottling operation in Mecosta County, called the Senate action "the great give-away of Michigan's water -- 25 percent of it! Other countries, private investors, will be thirsting to get their taps into Michigan. It'll be like the Oklahoma Gold Rush, only this time it's the Michigan Water Rush."

Olson says MCWC and others are "holding fast to the principle that water in Michigan, because it is the source of all streams, lakes, and most of inflow into the Great Lakes, is subject to a public trust. This means the state owns the water and must protect and manage it for citizens, not privatize or hand over control to private interests for profit as the primary purpose of a water project."

Water -- a public trust, not a product. A quaint, but correct, notion.

I usually don't use those boilerplate messages when writing to my legislators; I think a more personalized message is more effective. But time is of the essence in this case, so I broke down and used the message at Progress Michigan:

The time to stand up for Michigan's waters is now. Unfortunately, the State Senate voted last week to allow up to 25% of some of our precious lakes and rivers to be open for withdrawal.

If that wasn't bad enough, the Senate also allowed proposals that undermine public control over our water. Without strong laws that support public control of the Great Lakes, our state is vulnerable to corporations and special interests that seek to export and misuse our water.

That's why I urge you reject the Senate Bill 860. Don't allow our inland lakes, rivers and aquifers to be available to the highest bidder. As Michiganders, we have a special duty to protect our lakes, rivers and aquifers - our drinking water sources.

Instead please take action now and support legislation that will protect our precious Great Lakes. Please support a bipartisan legislative package, House Bills 5065-5073, that will safeguard our freshwater supplies. HB 5065-5073 gives citizens a voice in decisions affecting the withdrawal, shipment and misuse of Michigan
waters. This bipartisan package protects Michigan's water users - boaters, property owners, farmers, industry, tourism, fishers - from outside water takers.

We urge you to send a clear signal that Michigan's Water is NOT FOR
SALE!

There is a short window of opportunity to make your opinions on this issue known. I know I want to keep the water in our lakes.

Michigan's Great Lakes Threatened By Michigan Legislature

Just a quick post today, about Michigan Senate Bill 860, recently passed by the State Senate and under consideration by the State House. While we hear noise about building a pipeline to divert Great Lakes water to thirstier states, the real danger is massive bottled water operations like the ones that would be permitted under SB 860.

The legislators characterize the bill as a "a fair and common sense plan in which science is the measuring stick":

An automated point-and-click computer tool will allow users to determine if a proposed withdrawal will be within legal limits. The user will enter key data into the computer, including location, proposed pumping rate, and depth of well, and the computer based model will automatically assess whether or not the proposed use is within the legal limit. The computer will also generate a certificate that the withdrawal is in a safe limit and that certificate will help to provide the user with the assurance that they are OK to move forward.

Environmental groups note that the bill allows for a diversion of a heck of a lot of water:

By contrast, SB 860 relies solely on the newly developed ‘Water Withdrawal Assessment Tool’ for decisions about new or expanded water withdrawals. Consequently, SB 860 would not require permits for large water withdrawals even if the proposed withdrawal is in an area with marginal water availability. Without permits, there is no opportunity for local input into water withdrawal decisions. Further, as written, SB 860 designates from 22-40 % of stretches of natural wonders like the Jordan and Au Sable Rivers as available for withdrawal; in stretches of other water waterways, withdrawals as could be allowed for as much as 46% of the flow.

Somehow, I'm reminded of the birthing scene in Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life", in which the doctors are so transfixed with their technology ("The machine that goes "beep!") that they leave the laboring mother alone out in the hall.

What Else is Happening

As predicted, I am tripping over tomato and basil plants while we wait for weather warm enough for planting. I am trying peanuts this year; my first attempts at starting them inside resulted in rotting seeds that smelled awful. I was advised to try again, with charcoal in the soil to lighten it up. I had a spot in the warmer part of the garden where I had burned before, so I tried some outside with wall-o-water cylinders to warm the soil. No news on that, yet.

The potatoes are in, the peas are up, and we've been eating greens from the garden. I also tried dandelions from the yard this year. They were good, parboiled for a few minutes and then sauteed with a little garlic. You just need to clean them very well because the stray blade of grass is like trying to chew dental floss. Rhubarb is up and very vigorous. I've been selling a lot to passersby and to the Covered Wagon Farm for pies. Rhubarb traffic is a constant interruption, but rhubarb lovers are such nice people that I don't mind.

There is one more bake sale, this Saturday, in front of the Leland Mercantile, for the Odyssey of the Mind teams that are going to world competition. They have managed to raise over $1o,000 in a about six weeks, though bake sales, car washes, a movie premier, large and small donations, and grants from the Leland Educational Foundation and the Oleson Foundation.

I will be baking again for this sale, but I have to go to work earlier and attend a noon meeting so my output will be less than the 20 loaves I baked last time. Maybe some Rhubarb Crumb Cake would be in order.

All this happens, but we still stop to admire the orioles, indigo buntings, and hummingbirds. And to hunt for morels. I never find any, but all that hunting gives me opportunity to note the locations of raspberries and gooseberries so I can go back later in the summer. I came home from work late one night and found a Cool Whip container of morels on my kitchen table. It seems the neighbor was weed whacking when he found the mother lode of morels on the site where the former neighbor cut down an apple tree 12 years ago. Not many people will share morels, but I have wonderful neighbors.

Leland Township Trustee

I think it was Al Gore's book, The Assault on Reason, that got me thinking about rejecting the default role of consumer and more fully embracing the role of citizen. This was the underlying subtext of my decision last week to file as a candidate for Leland Township Trustee.

But the more direct reason is that friends were asking me to run. I, in turn, kept asking other people to think about running, but in the end, at the deadline, there were two candidates filed for two trustee offices. I filed as a Democrat, so we will all be unopposed in the primary, but three wil vie for two seats in November. (An independent candidate has until July to file for the November election.)

When I was trying to recruit other people to run, I did some thinking about what makes a good candidate. I came up with a list of three themes:

• Stewardship: We think of land stewardship, but in the older sense, stewardship is a word that means "caring for the things that belong to the community." The community assets could be tax dollars or dark skies or a volunteer's hours. Stewardship is the opposite of using an elected office to enrich one self or one's cronies. Efficiency in government is a form of stewardship, making sure that tax dollars are not wasted. Respect for volunteer efforts is also a form of stewardship; you don't waste the many volunteer hours that went into developing a Master Plan by treating it as a nuisance or a joke.
• Good Government: We follow the law to ensure that decisions are made fairly, with all parties having meaningful input, and avoiding even the appearance of impropriety. Good government values transparency, avoids conflicts of interest, follows procedures, and operaties under the rule of law, especially in regards to the Open Meetings Act, the Freedom of Information Act, etc.
• 21st Century Vision This was a hard one to articulate last winter, but events have caught up to us. Far-off goals like vibrant villages, universal broadband access and a local food chain are suddenly very much on everyone's minds as we confront ever-rising fuel prices and wonder how to rework our lives for greenhouse gas reduction. Today's entrepreneurs would love to locate their businesses in our area, but they simply can not do so without up-to-date internet access. We have alternative energy entrepreneurs here already --if we help them with zoning and utility decisions that support their work, they will support us in crafting new, energy efficient ways of living. We have family farmers, some who have been here for generations and some brand new farmers. We value them, not just as scenery, but a source of food security and an economic driver of our community. Another economic driver is tourism. We cannot afford to take tourism for granted and mindlessly remake our community to look like everyplace else. The future of our community depends on forward thinking and flexible government and citizenry.

I'm not sure if these are values, personal attributes, or overarching themes. I just know we need more of this in government on all levels.

Climate Change: No More "Belief" Debate

It was nice to see the headline "McCain Differs With Bush on Climate Change". Suddenly, finally, we are not debating whether we believe in climate change, we are beginning the debate on how to best address climate change.

I've said all along that my two big issues in this presidential election are climate change and restoring our constitution. It looks like we might see an actual discussion of one of my issues between now and November. I'm getting ready by studying Obama's energy policy and McCain's Cap and Trade proposal and climate change page.

Obama is talking cap-and-trade, too, but it is only one part of his comprehensive plan. Obama specifies a 100% auction cap and trade system; McCain is not very specific, so it would appear that he intends to "grandfather in" some current carbon emitters. Doing so has been criticised as amounting to a windfall for existing polluters.

Of course, making a serious effort at combating climate change will take a whole host of plans, not just a cap and trade plan. Obama is ahead of the pack on this, addressing everything from conservation to reinventing the electrical grid. I think that we will see more ideas from McCain, and I'm welcoming the chance for a healthy debate.