About Save Our Great Lakes

Save Our Great Lakes is a bipartisan coalition of citizens and organizations focused on making a difference by persistently throwing all our energy and ingenuity into achievable goals that preserve and protect the Great Lakes, the signature priority issues that the largest number of Michiganders widely agree on.

In many cases, despite widespread opposition, special interests are able to sneak through such proposals that most Michiganders and common sense thinkers would quickly oppose. Our style is to shine light on these issues and spread the word through social and digital media as well as good old-fashioned marketing and communications, knowing that a strong public consensus can quickly help us fend off such threats. We are focused on stopping the four threats to the quality of the lakes that the vast majority of Michiganders oppose:

- Dumping in our Great Lakes. Michigan outlawed dumping in the Great Lakes in 1970 and federal laws including the Clean Water Act are also stringent. The lone holdout trying to make itself exempt from theses laws is the S.S. Badger, a ship that dumps 8,000 pounds of toxic coal ash into the lakes daily. The company got a five-year special exemption from the EPA to clean up its act. Rather than solving the problem, the company is actually asking federal officials for five or more years of further special favors. We focus on the dumping issue through our StopDumpingCoal.org campaign.

- Drilling in our Great LakesDrilling in our Great Lakes. Michigan, Ohio and New York ban oil drilling in our Great Lakes but other states and Canada allow it and this year at least some Michigan political candidates are floating the idea of changing the law. We support efforts to make the ban permanent while shining a spotlight on candidates who flirt with the idea.

- Offshore Wind Farms. Misguided proposals to put a large quota on how much of our energy comes from renewable sources would require the equivalent of cities of wind power-plants floating in our currently unspoiled Great Lakes. We oppose off-shore wind and join others who oppose off-shore wind.

- Invasive Species. Asian Carp and other invasive species have wreaked havoc on our lakes. They must be stopped to preserve the fishing, wildlife and other natural beauty that makes the Great Lakes our greatest natural resource.

Learn more at: http://saveourgreatlakes.org/