by Dave Dempsey

June 16, 2009

The help wanted ad could have read: “Job opening for Czar: Must Be Able to Leap Tall Bureaucracies in a Single Bound, Keep Business and Environmentalists Happy, Guide the Potential Spending of Billions of Federal Money, Coordinate 33 Federal Programs, and Save the Great Lakes.”

President Barack Obama didn’t post such an ad, of course, but his administration has recently created and filled a position in the U.S. EPA dubbed by news media as the “Great Lakes Czar.” The more prosaic title offered by the feds is senior policy adviser to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on Great Lakes matters.

As the only state that touches four of the five Great Lakes, Michigan has a pronounced interest in what the “czar” will do for these freshwater resources — and especially what he will do with $475 million in new money for Great Lakes programs that the Obama Administration is trying to wring from Congress.

The money could help the state, long considered a leader on Great Lakes matters, in implementing a $3 billion-per-year strategy for clean water, habitat protection and underwater toxic cleanups that Lt. Gov. John Cherry announced early this year. Nearly all the $3 billion, however, would come from the federal government; without federal funds, Michigan will be hard-pressed to maintain existing programs for the Lakes.

So who is this czar? And what is he going to do?

Cameron Davis.

His name is Cameron Davis, and for the last decade he’s served as the top dog at the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a nonprofit advocacy group born in 1970 as the Lake Michigan Federation. Most recently president and CEO of the Alliance, he lives in Chicago with his wife and young son, Sage, not far from Obama’s old neighborhood.

In fact, when Obama was a state legislator, Davis managed to attract him to a Chicago lakefront cleanup. He was an advisor on environmental issues in Obama’s 2008 presidential bid.

Davis has Michigan ties, too. He spent much of the 1990s on the staff of the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes office in Ann Arbor and as an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan Law School. He graduated from Boston University and earned a law degree from the Chicago-Kent College of Law.

More important, says Davis, “I’ve flyfished the Betsie, Pine, Manistee and Pere Marquette, walking the river bottom and listening to what the greatest Great Lakes tributaries have to say.”

He’s almost mum on what he’ll be doing in his new job, but acknowledges, “I think it’s safe to say that my job will be to advise the [EPA] administrator on efforts to advance Great Lakes restoration measures in the federal government.” It’s a job not unlike that of J. Charles (Chuck) Fox, who Obama picked to be senior advisor on Chesapeake Bay cleanup in March. (FoxNews counted 18 Obama Administration czars as of April, including an auto czar and climate change czar, but apparently only a few are keeping a tally — or realize that czar is a title imposed by reporters, not presidents.)

Michigan friends
Davis has friends in Michigan’s environmental community and state government. Chris Kolb, new president of the Michigan Environmental Council, calls Davis “a steadfast defender” of the Lakes and adds, “We believe he can help direct the president’s restoration plan into meaningful, quantitative projects that will improve the health of the Lakes and the people who depend on them.”

Jack Bails, former Michigan DNR chief and now chair of the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes that Davis is leaving, praises the new czar for bringing that organization “from one of many struggling environmental groups…to the leading citizen-based Great Lakes advocacy organization.”

Still others give Davis credit for being one of the architects of the historic Great Lakes Compact, the multi-state, anti-diversion agreement that went into effect last December after Michigan and the other Great Lakes states and Ontario provinces adopted it and won congressional approval for their efforts. Davis helped build bridges with industry to ease their concerns during the difficult, seven-year campaign.

George Kuper, president of the Council of Great Lakes Industries, reacted hopefully to the appointment of Davis, saying he’s worked well with the business community.

“We’ve worked quite closely on legislation and other things in the basin. He understands the value of multi-stakeholder participation,” Kuper said.

So, we know Davis is capable. But this being major league politics, what’s the outlook for Congress giving Obama the $475 million to get things started on the right foot?

Ken Debeaussaert, director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality’s Office of the Great Lakes, says the Obama proposal holds “great promise” for Michigan. But he adds that there is no assurance any funds will come to Michigan, although some clearly will be, given the state’s central location.

“Since there’s no guarantee that Michigan will receive a certain amount of funding, we’re working to ensure that Great Lakes partners in Michigan are made aware of funding opportunities and that we maximize our collaborative ability to secure those grant dollars,” he says.

Debeaussaert adds that public meetings held on the state Great Lakes strategy showed “great enthusiasm” for Great Lakes restoration and the Obama proposal has nearly unanimous support from the state’s congressional delegation. He praises the work of the Great Lakes Congressional Task Force and the work of Sen. Carl Levin and Reps. Vern Ehlers in support of the funding proposal.

“Given the economic challenges facing the country, we can’t take this for granted,” says Debeaussaert in speaking of congressional approval. But he notes the $475-million proposal cleared its first hurdle in the House appropriations process recently.

Apple pie
Great Lakes protection is the apple pie and baseball of Michigan politics. Beginning with former Governor William Milliken, the state’s chief executives have uniformly paid tribute to 18 percent of the world’s available surface fresh water.

Milliken staged one of the first interstate conferences on the threat of Great Lakes water diversions. His successor, James Blanchard, proposed and inked the first interstate agreement to resist diversions and created a state Great Lakes office. Governor John Engler was a leader on the early drafts of the interstate Great Lakes Compact that Jennifer Granholm helped bring to fruition in 2008, when it was approved by Congress and former President Bush.

But the state’s chronic budget problems have drained its share of the regional Great Lakes Protection Fund and restrained most new initiatives. Washington hasn’t done much better. The Bush 43 Administration put together a $20-billion Great Lakes cleanup plan in 2005, but failed to fund it.

Capitalizing on public response to this disappointment, Obama rode into the White House on promises to do better. He proposed a $10-billion “down payment” on cleaning up the Lakes and promised to appoint a Great Lakes czar.

Lt. Gov. Cherry was working on his own plan last year. Announced in January, the plan calls for:

• $54 million a year for cleanup of contaminated sediments in bays and harbors;
• $3.8 million annually to prevent beach closures and protect human health;
• Restoring full federal funding for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund so communities can reinvest in necessary improvements to their water and sewer systems.

What Ails the Lakes?

Although the Clean Water Act of 1972 and increased business stewardship have largely vanquished the visible pollution that choked the Great Lakes 40 years ago, they suffer from a variety of ailments that one team of scientists and advocates said could lead to an irreversible ecological meltdown. Among them:

Over 180 aquatic invasive species (most famously the zebra mussel) have colonized the Lakes, disrupting fisheries, requiring public cleanup and touching off unexpected pollution and wildlife disease. The leading source of the invasions in the 1980s and 1990s was the discharged ballast water of ocean-going vessels.

Dwindling wetlands and other habitats have diminished natural pollution filters, and the problem has been worsened by runoff of animal waste, chemicals and oil and grease from farms, cities and other developed lands.

Leftover chemicals deposited in the Lakes through the 1960s (like PCBs, a fire retardant banned in 1976) still linger in the bottom muds of many harbors and bays and can return to contaminate fish and the people who eat them.

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What do the Lakes Mean to the Region’s Economy?

Although politicians have tossed around bromides about the economic importance of protecting the Great Lakes, no one put hard numbers on that value until John Austin, a member of the Michigan State Board of Education and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, did so in 2007. His report estimated that a $20-billion investment in cleaning the Lakes could produce up to $50 billion in benefits in additional tourism, fishing and recreation, property values, reduced water operations costs for municipalities, and new technology developed because of the cleanup program.

In announcing the Michigan Great Lakes plan in January, Lt. Gov. John Cherry emphasized the economics, saying cleanup will make Michigan more attractive to talented workers and new businesses and create jobs.”

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Popcorn, Coke and Great Lakes

The inland seas are finally making it to the big (and maybe the home HDTV) screen. In the last year two filmmakers have released documentaries on the Great Lakes and a Michigan-based team is working to stage its own extravaganza.

Mysteries of the Great Lakes is a 40-minute IMAX film released in 2008 produced by the Science North Museum of Sudbury, Ontario. The museum calls it “a dramatic journey through some of the most spectacular scenery in the world.”

Waterlife is a 90-minute film directed by Kevin McMahon that opened June 5 in Toronto. From the filmmaker’s site: “Filled with fascinating characters and stunning imagery, Waterlife is an epic cinematic poem about the beauty of water and the dangers of taking it for granted.”

An as yet-unnamed Great Lakes documentary has Michigan roots. The multi-part made-for-TV program will be based on Michigan author Jerry Dennis’ 2003 book The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas. Boston-based multi-Emmy Award winner Linda Harrar and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Sue Marx of Birmingham are producing it. The presenting partner is PBS station WTTW in Chicago, in conjunction with Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium.

Tony Infante of Brighton is coordinator for what’s called “The Great Lakes Legacy Project.” Former Governors Blanchard and Milliken have both attended fundraisers on behalf of the documentary. “We want the world to know that the Great Lakes are priceless natural resources that are worth fighting to protect and restore,” says Infante. “We want people who have never seen the Lakes to know how it feels to stand on their shores with the wind in their faces. We want them to smell the water and feel the sand on their feet and hear the waves.”

The congratulatory chorus for Davis is not without undertones. Gary Wilson, a Michigan native and co-moderator of a major Great Lakes citizen website, Great Lakes Town Hall, says the praise for Davis’ diplomatic skills is deserved, but adds: the test “will be his willingness to take a tough stance when warranted. Collaboration can only take you so far.”

Wilson adds: “He will have to be willing to say no to the special interests and the D.C. establishment — and that may not come easy. His tendency in recent years, as part of a coalition, has been to take any deal for the sake of a deal and to be conciliatory to special interests such as the bottled water industry. His support of the Great Lakes Compact is an example.”

There’s also concern in some circles that the U.S. is moving ahead unilaterally on funding Lakes cleanup when our neighbor to the north, Canada, is not directly participating in the initiative. Jen Nalbone of Great Lakes United, an environmental group that straddles the border, says the group is “thrilled” with Obama’s commitment to the Lakes and the appointment of Davis. “One of the things we’d like to see,” she adds, “is more engagement with Canada on the Great Lakes funding issues.”

That may happen sooner than later. On June 13, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon announced the two countries will renegotiate and try to update their Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Signed by President Richard Nixon and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1972, the agreement hasn’t been refreshed since 1987. It doesn’t deal at all, for example, with pollution caused by invasive species.

In a Niagara Falls ceremony honoring the 100th anniversary of the Boundary Water Treaty between the U.S. and Canada, Clinton said the pact needs to be updated “to reflect new knowledge, new technology, and, unfortunately, new threats.”

There’s also the question of what exactly this first $475 million will buy, when the Lakes’ needs total in the billions. If politics spreads the money far and wide, efforts will be so diffused that it could be hard for the public to see much benefit.

Nor is money the only answer. Federal funding isn’t necessarily the key to fixing the aquatic invasive species mess, which some environmentalists believe is the number one problem facing the Lakes. They’re looking not only for someone to secure funding, but to borrow the new president’s bully pulpit and tell shipping interests to clean up their act or stay out of the Great Lakes.

Given the Lakes problems and the difficulty getting them addressed, it will take a government official with unprecedented concern for the lakes and the ability to wield unprecedented power to get the job done. It’s also clear that a great many people will evaluate the job Davis is doing by that nearly super-human job description: czar!

Dave Dempsey is the author of two books on Great Lakes protection, a board member of the Alliance for the Great Lakes and former environmental advisor to Gov. James J. Blanchard. He is communications director at Conservation Minnesota in Minneapolis.