Regional global warming plan urged
Great Lakes unity needed, activist says
 
Dave Dempsey relaxes before giving the keynote speech at the Western Lake Erie Today and Tomorrow Conference.
( THE BLADE/LORI KING )

By TOM HENRY
BLADE STAFF WRITER
 


Great Lakes governors and premiers need to adopt a regional strategy to combat global warming before its effects on the world's largest source of fresh surface water become more acute, a Great Lakes author-activist told about 100 people at Maumee Bay State Park yesterday.

 

Dave Dempsey, former Michigan Gov. James Blanchard's environmental adviser, said the $20 billion Great Lakes restoration plan that 1,500 people spent a year writing for President Bush will be meaningless if the region's leaders don't create a unified plan to curb carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming.

 

Citing a recent Union of Concerned Scientists report, Mr. Dempsey said the effects on this region will include a continued decline in lake levels and a shrinkage of remaining wetlands. The former will hurt recreational tourism while the latter will result in more flooding and erosion-induced pollution, he said.

 

"Why aren't Great Lakes governors talking about global warming?" he asked, claiming they are relatively silent on the issue compared to governors in the Northeast and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

 

The speech was the keynote address of the first Western Lake Erie Today and Tomorrow Conference sponsored jointly by the Waterkeeper Alliance, the Sierra Club, Toledo Area Metroparks, and Erie Metroparks.

 

In a follow-up interview with The Blade, Mr. Dempsey said he fears global warming has been a taboo subject because of powerful lobbying by utilities that own coal-fired power plants, one of the largest sources of carbon dioxide. Ohio trails only Texas in emissions from coal-fired power plants.

 

Gov. Bob Taft's spokesman, Mark Rickel, said that a regional water-management agreement that governors and premiers approved in December has language that, to some degree, recognizes global warming as an emerging issue for the lakes.

 

Mr. Rickel said the governors are focused on getting that agreement ratified by Congress first, so that the region can beef up its legal ammunition against large water withdrawals. That agreement attempts to block any future proposals for substantial pipeline diversions or bulk exports of lake water.

 

Mr. Dempsey, 49, has written two Great Lakes books since 2001 and has a biography of former Michigan Gov. William Milliken coming out this month.

 

During his speech, Mr. Dempsey said that America's inability to achieve energy independence after the 1973 OPEC oil embargo is "the biggest public policy failure" of the past 33 years.

 

He encouraged the development of offshore wind turbines in Lake Erie, although he said they need to be placed well outside migratory bird flyways. That, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, would pretty much rule out the west end of Lake Erie.

 

Global warming will impact Lake Erie in many ways, including an expansion of its infamous "dead zone" that dates back to at least the 1930s and possibly centuries before that. The dead zone is a mysterious pocket of low-oxygen water that fish can't tolerate. It is usually in the central part of the lake, though it bulges and shifts throughout the summer.

 

"As global warming progresses, that is going to get worse," said Jeff Reutter, director of Ohio Sea Grant and Ohio State University's Stone Laboratory on Gibraltar Island. He also heads the Center for Lake Erie Area Research and the Great Lakes Aquatic Ecosystem Research Consortium.

 

Mike Bur, a U.S. Geological Survey biologist, said that a warmer climate could displace several valuable fish species from Lake Erie, including walleye, yellow perch, smallmouth bass, and lake trout. All prefer cooler temperatures.

 

Contact Tom Henry at:
thenry@theblade.com
or 419-724-6079.

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