You Talk Castrating the EPA, You're No Friend to the Great Lakes

Last time Congressman Bill Huizenga gave a town hall meeting in Grand Haven, Michigan, he bragged about plans to castrate the EPA or abolish it altogether. Seems to me Russ Harding of the Mackinac Center's ultraconservative environmental Lobbying arm has slipped into his ears.

That's a pity.

After all Huizenga is of one of a very small handful of people in US Congress who represent regions around the Great Lakes shorelines. He SHOULD be safeguarding the Great Lakes from greater pollution, from water diversions, from phosphorous runoff...he SHOULD be aware how vital the Great Lakes are to our way of life...

And yet he's willing to throw it all away for his financiers.

He's talking about abolishing or castrating the very organization that has cleaned up the Great Lakes, and ensured that instances like the Cuyahoga river fire never happen again. He should perhaps learn a thing or two about the Great Lakes and the condition Lake Erie was in before the EPA was established and intervened: shockingly polluted, crushed fisheries, with tributaries so covered in petroleum waste that it caught on fire...SEVERAL TIMES.

You talk about hacking at the the EPA, you are no friend of the Great Lakes.

Perhaps we need to remind Mr. Huizenga that the State he represents is ENTIRELY within the Great Lakes watershed. Dumping toxic substances on the ground in Mt. Pleasant in the middle of the state is STILL dumping toxic substances directly into the Great Lakes.

We along the Great Lakes lakeshore need an advocate for the Great Lakes in DC...not a puppet dancing in lock step with hardline conservative lobbyists who want to abolish protections to the waters we love and our way of life. Mr. Huizenga, so far, hasn't shown himself to be that. He supported the Conservative introduced budget that slashed Great Lakes restoration.

And of these cuts, Bill Huizenga bragged about how he has voted for Every Single one put before him. Every single one. Even if it slices the throat of protections to our waterways that have made places like Sleeping Bear Dunes win awards as the most Beautiful Place in America. The waterways that are a source of employment for so many, a source of respite and peace for so many, a source of food and recreation for so many.