2024 was a tumultuous year for our movement. We made some gains, and there are some silver linings. However, the results of the 2024 election were broadly not what those of us who value our environment, action on climate change, or protection of our water resources were organizing and fighting for. Now more than ever, it is important that we find ways to spread hope and light while we strengthen our resolve and fully commit ourselves to victory in the upcoming fights.
Personally, I am grateful to each one of you who have taken action in whatever way you were able to move our cause forward. I am so thankful for this community that believes in our fight and that is prepared not for short-lived and short-term victories, but for endless pursuit of the values that we hold dear. Dr. King knew that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” and I am thankful that we have so many thousands of people engaged in grassroots struggle to bend that arc more fully towards justice every day.
That being said, we have some important work ahead of us. December will be a very contentious lame duck legislative period. We will have to play both offense and defense as members of the Michigan House of Representatives and Michigan Senate decide which side they’re on. Will they choose to spend lame duck enacting popular and necessary policies to bolster our state’s ability to protect our residents and natural resources, or will they spend this time giving even more of our tax dollars away to unaccountable corporations in the name of economic development?
We are going to spend our time in December advocating for policies like water affordability, polluter pay, government transparency, increasing Michigan’s regulatory ability to protect our water, allowing real community solar that isn’t controlled by monopoly utilities like DTE and Consumers Energy, and strengthening our Democracy. We are going to continue opposing efforts to undermine our environmental goals and opposing efforts to spend our tax dollars on billionaires and corporations. We’re going to fight like hell for a better world because our members and all people deserve no less.
I am incredibly proud of the work that our team pursued in 2024. Despite long odds and despite legislative inaction in Lansing, we have continued organizing and putting the pieces together that are necessary for long-term success. Throughout 2024, our field team knocked on over 200,000 doors. We were not surprised to find broad support in communities across the state for policies like ensuring that all families have safe, clean, affordable water, for protecting our Great Lakes by shutting down Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline, and for ensuring that all people regardless of income or where they live have access to clean, reliable, low cost renewable energy sources.
In April, our staff and Clean Water Action members traveled down to Cincinnati to stand with Attorney General Nessel as her team advocated for the Line 5 case to be sent back to state courts. That effort was successful! Now our case to shut down Line 5 is back in Michigan where it belongs — and that case could potentially end with the existing Line 5 pipeline being shut down within the next two years. Meanwhile, thanks to legal challenges spearheaded by the Bay Mills Indian Community, Enbridge has to go back to the drawing board on their Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) permits and we will have the ability in 2025 to stop the tunnel scheme through our advocacy at EGLE.
This year we have also been partnering with a coalition led by frontline grassroots activists to stop state and federal governments from creating tax giveaways and incentives for highly polluting CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, aka factory farms) as a source of so-called “Renewable” Natural Gas. At the end of the day, this means still burning combustibles that emit methane and carbon, as well as producing vast quantities of smelly digestate with no real plan beyond dumping it on rural communities. This is another false solution that helps big polluters at the expense of local communities and the water we all rely on. Clean Water Action is in this fight for the long haul, and we will continue this crucial work in 2025.
We have also continued pressuring Lansing lawmakers to hold polluting corporations accountable. Making sure that polluters, not taxpayers, are on the hook for the damage that they cause is an issue that the great majority of Michigan residents, regardless of age, income, or political party support and it is the right thing to do. We are pushing for more gains on this issue in lame duck, and will continue pushing forward until we win a polluter pay program that truly puts our natural world and the people who rely on it first.
These are broadly popular policies that Clean Water Action has been advocating for over the course of many years, however whether Republicans or Democrats have control in Lansing, we haven’t seen the necessary legislative action to get the job done. We know that none of this important work will succeed if we only address the symptoms of our legislative malaise, we must address the root causes. That is why in late 2023, Clean Water Action became one of the founding steering committee members of the Taking Back Our Power coalition.
Taking Back Our Power is aimed at the heart of one of Lansing’s biggest problems - the corrosive influence of corporate money on our political process. Right now, monopoly utilities like DTE and Consumers Energy and government contractors spend massive amounts of money on legislative lobbying and on our elections. Meanwhile, Michigan ratepayers pay some of the highest energy rates in the Midwest while suffering through the most and longest power outages in the region. In Lansing it is cheaper for these utilities to spend money playing politics and avoiding accountability than it is for them to invest in providing cleaner, more reliable, and cheaper energy to their ratepayers.
We are seeking to ban all regulated utilities and all government contractors with contracts worth more than $250,000 from making political contributions. Throughout 2025 and 2026, this will be one of our biggest fights. When we win, it is likely to bring about a watershed moment in enacting popular policies that help real people, not corporations. Similar policies have been enacted in other states, and strong ethics rules like this have already been upheld in federal court.
We won’t win every one of these battles, but we are choosing important fights for the future of our movement and simply engaging in these struggles moves the ball forward. In times like these, help from supporters like you really makes a difference and sustains us in the fight. In times of tribulation and conflict, times where we face long odds like today, I often think of John Steinbeck’s words for organizers of the 1930s, “fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live - for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken”.
With so much moving forward and so many important fights coming up, we need your help today more than ever. Together we will walk the path ahead and prove that a grassroots struggle that builds power from the bottom up is essential to making progress on the issues that matter most. As we prepare for 2025 and the critical fights ahead, I take courage in knowing that we can count on your support, and I’m thankful to be in this fight with you.
Now is the time to make a difference for our water. Our Great Lakes are counting on you to respond.
- Send messages to your lawmakers on these important issues, and make sure our voices are heard in Lansing.
- Support our advocacy and organizing work with a special year-end donation, and help us finish 2024 strong.
- If you are able to give even more, please consider a tax-deductible gift to Clean Water Fund.
However you’re able to help, know that your actions are helping to protect our water, now and for the future. And know that we are extremely grateful for your support.
From all of us at Clean Water Action, we wish you and yours a happy, healthy, and restful holiday season.
