Filter By:
Type
State
Priority
Posted On
Search Results
Use Salt to Melt Ice? Here Are Some Tips So You Don’t Pollute Your Favorite Lakes and Rivers!
Michigan’s Outdated and Dangerous Combined Sewer Systems
Many of Michigan’s urban and suburban areas expanded rapidly between the 1920s and the 1950s — an era with different priorities for water management. Many of Michigan’s water systems were originally built as combined systems, meaning the pipes carried both stormwater and wastewater. These systems simply discharged all water directly into local lakes, rivers, and streams, without treatment. Wastewater treatment centers were built later, and the combined sewer pipes were redirected there for the water to be processed before being released back into the water table. Starting in the mid-1950s
Protecting Michigan’s Waters: Infrastructure for the Future
Michigan is the Great Lakes state. As such, Michigan residents are acutely aware of our duty to protect the Great Lakes and our water resources for future generations. There are currently many threats to our water here in Michigan. Most of these threats have been looming for years, but action on them has been pushed off, as our legislature procrastinates and ignores the problems instead of taking the hard steps that action requires.
The Flint water crisis brought the dangers of lead infrastructure and poor oversight from the state to the surface and a city was poisoned as a result. Every year
Michigan’s Aging Septic Systems
E. coli is a major bacterial pollutant in Michigan’s water. While E. coli is commonly talked about in reference to combined sewer overflows and large-scale agricultural operations, there is another major source of E. coli in our water that every state in the country other than Michigan has worked to eliminate — leaking and failing septic systems.
Michigan is currently the only state that does not require regular inspections of septic systems, and the problem is only getting worse with time. Septic systems are generally found in rural areas where municipal sewer systems don’t exist, or in older
Putting Drinking Water First: Restoring Clean Water Act Protections to Streams and Wetlands
Download the pdf.
Clean Water's Putting Drinking Water First approach means preventing threats to drinking water where they start. Clean Water Action is working to win strong water pollution controls by focusing on public health and drinking water impacts in Clean Water Act programs and other policies where decisions about water pollution are made. We also work to bring public health and environmental voices into Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) implementation activities.
Read the other papers in this series
Protecting sources of drinking water from contamination is essential. Recent