Michigan Governor Whitmer’s Executive Directive to Protect Lake Erie Is Not Bold Enough

Lansing, MI - “We are excited to see Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s announcement yesterday of her Executive Directive to Protect Lake Erie. While we are glad to see her administration working to protect and restore our water resources, this plan is not bold enough, quick enough, or comprehensive enough. We need the Governor to enact and enforce a ban on manure application on frozen and snow-covered ground and a mandatory strategy to achieve a rapid reduction in nutrient loading. Excessive nutrient loading flows into our watersheds through bad actors and loose, unenforced, and voluntary manure management standards. The truth is that the increasing concentration of industrial agriculture and bad manure management practices have led to many of the problems with our Great Lakes, including Lake Erie."

"For years, Michigan communities have been calling for a commonsense solution that would require all excess manure to be properly disposed of or stored, not sprayed on frozen or snow-covered land where it ultimately, with snowmelt, washes into our Great Lakes. Algal blooms such as those the Governor is seeking to stop are, in part, the product of this manure application practice which Michigan has allowed for too long. The Governor’s plan can only succeed with a state-wide ban on manure applications to frozen and snow-covered land."

Contact: Rebecca Wolf, Food & Water Watch, 202-683-2507, [email protected] / Gail Philbin, Michigan Sierra Club, 616-805-3063, [email protected]

###