Badger Article

Here's an article from the Muskegon Chronicle about the S.S. Badger's future, in the face of the pending EPA deadline, issued in 2008 (with an warning that a deadline was coming made in 2006.) Written by Eric Gaertner, it quotes Badger officials as being "confused and frustrated" by the "uncertain" time frame given. No, as we just pointed out, the time frame has been generous and clear for years. The EPA has seemed more than reasonable. And despite constant criticism (and calls by some for the agency's demise) the EPA tends to run towards a tenable, long-term, moderate approach to environmental issues.

Conversations we've had with the EPA give us the information that lawyers representing the Badger call them and ask where things stand. But the EPA has made the deadline clear, as well as its necessity. The EPA has also informed us of air quality issues people have concerns about, and photos received from Ludington residents showing fly ash residue that worries them, even on their pets.

Often repeated is this sense of nostalgia for the last coal-fired ship, and this is, again, seems both understandable, and an attitude which needs to move on. In our own neighborhood, and maybe yours, most houses once had coal furnaces, and no one seems to think of them nostalgically. If they're considered historic, it's with relief. The problems of coal mining, delivery, storage, burning, bottom ash and fly ash, are ones the previous owners of these houses gladly gave up. With good reason. No one wants their neighbor to reboot a coal furnace. Certain fuels in certain situations are over and done with.

Adding this later: there's a new post on mLive on the Badger that mentions Sierra Club and executive committee member Mark Muhich, who wrote a letter to the Badger's owners not long ago. Also by Muskegon Chronicle writer Eric Gaertner, the article mentions a point often made but rarely fully examined, that the Badger saves on pollution because people would have to drive halfway around Lake Michigan but for the ferry. Well, maybe and maybe not, because if we in Detroit, for example, were to drive to Wisconsin, we would not first drive to Ludington, then around the Lake to Manitowoc, then westward. Most of us travel in straighter lines than that.

And it simply leaves out the main point: the dumping of 4 daily tons of coal ash into the drinking water of over 10 million people. How systems like that ever were regarded as safe and reasonable is puzzling, but not the point here. How it ever made sense for a lake to be a dump and simultaneously a drinking water supply is a mystery of our region's industrial past, one we need to put and keep in the past. People driving around Lake Michigan do not seem to dump tons of anything into Lake Michigan. Our concern is the Lake, and keeping its waters safe.

Posted by Sierra Club volunteer Rebecca Hammond