Ecology Center

In the debate over whether Michigan should tap gas and oil resources buried underneath the Great Lakes John Engler, and his associates, claim they have science on their side. They argue the resources can be obtained safely without causing damage to the Lakes or anything else. Nothing could be further from the truth.

[Photo Credit: University of Denmark]

The Lake Michigan Federation in its report, Lake Michigan Oil and Gas Drilling: Worth the Risk?, provides citizens with plenty of reasons to be concerned about Great Lakes drilling. For example, it warns that the gas located underneath Lake Michigan is "sour gas."

Sour gas has concentrations of hydrogen sulfide - sometimes called poison gas - that can kill humans when exposed to even low concentrations. While no one has died in Michigan from a leaking gas well, physicians have documented that chronic, low-level exposures to hydrogen sulfide can cause depression, extreme fatigue, dizziness, memory loss and insomnia.

Tapping into Lake Michigan’s gas resources will increase the risk that humans will be exposed to leaking hydrogen sulfide. Because the Department of Environmental Quality is promoting gas exploration instead of regulating it, oversight of this industry is practically nonexistent.

Beyond the inherent risks to people, drilling also puts at risk the health of Lake Michigan’s ecosystem. It’s just plain suicidal to risk our most precious resource–fresh water–for a fleeting hit of that industrial drug of fossil fuels. The battle over the drilling of Lake Michigan is a harbinger of things to come. The wars of the future will be fought over water, not oil.

As Rep. David Bonior, Democratic Whip of the US House (and Michigan gubernatorial candidate) puts it, "There is no amount of oil under the Great Lakes that is worth putting one-fifth of the world’s fresh water at risk."

Our spectacular Great Lakes are of incalculable value to this and future generations.

There is one form of energy from the lakes that could safeguard their cleanliness and ultimate value–wind power. The use of wind power is growing globally at 30% per year, faster than all other sources. At 2.5 cents/kilowatt hour in high-capacity areas, it is cheaper than all other forms of electricity except filthy and unacceptable brown coal.

Electricity generated by wind, and the possibility of wind generated hydrogen, is revolutionizing the global energy scene. Last year Germany installed 1300 megawatts (MW) of wind power, the equivalent of a large nuclear plant. Great Britain has committed to $2.5 billion in new off-shore wind capacity. The wind industry in Denmark employs 13,000 people, making it the second-largest employer there.

Wind power is also making significant inroads here in the United States as well. Substantial wind generating projects are under construction in at least a dozen US states. Some, such as one along the Oregon-Washington border, involve investments of many millions, with capacities exceeding 400 megawatts, enough to power nearly half a million homes each. These are not your backyard spinners.

According to a special report, Rising to the Challenge, released by Climate Solutions, in the Northwest, "The Bonneville Power Administration is moving to become the largest supplier of wind energy in the United States producing as much as 1,255 MW by 2003. That is enough energy to power 300,000 homes in the Northwest. The American Wind Energy Association estimates that California could easily install an additional 5,000 MW of wind capacity. Other western states like Wyoming have a potential ten times that of California.

Wind power also has tremendous potential in the Great Lakes region. The Public Utilities Commission of Minnesota has designated wind as the "least cost" form of new electric capacity, cheaper than coal, nuclear or even natural gas. Minnesota is now second only to California (1,646 MW) in installed wind capacity (272 MW).

Although mainland Michigan is not noted for its wind resources, the wind potential is close to ideal along the shores of the Great Lakes. Traverse City Light and Power has invested in a modern efficient wind turbine and now Mackinac City is doing the same.

There is capacity is for hundreds of wind mills along the shoreline and on the lake. The capacity would far exceed what is now produced by Fermi II and all the other Michigan nuclear power plants, which threaten the lakes and all those who live near them.

Part of the wind-driven power could come in the form of hydrogen, which can be produced by running an electric current thorough the water.. The current separates the hydrogen from the oxygen to which it is bonded. The hydrogen can be used as a fuel whose only emission is water.

Hydrogen is also being used to power fuel cells, which many experts believe will be the ultimate engine of the future both for electricity and for motor vehicles. Iceland has already dedicated itself to be the first nation in the world to convert to a hydrogen-based economy. The technology is far closer at hand than clean or cheap atomic power, which has been a gargantuan fifty-year failure.

Not surprisingly, the fossil-nuke pushers have escalated their attack on wind power, claiming the machines are noisy, unsightly and killers of birds. But new advances from Denmark and Germany have all but solved the noise problem. Unsightly is the in the eyes of the beholder, but machines a half-mile off-shore won’t be seen by anyone except birds and boaters some of whom might actually like them. The environmental movement will insure that these turbines not be built in scenic or sacred places.

The fossil-nuke fanatics, who have discovered a sudden touching concern for wildlife (nuclear power plants are the world’s number one killers of marine life) have used this isolated error to brand all wind machines as bird killers: it’s basically a bad rap, based largely on a single mistake.

In the early 1980s, an array of turbines was wrongly sited in a migratory canyon at Altamont Pass, east of San Francisco. A significant number of birds have been shredded by the blades. A related problem comes from lattice- work towers, on which birds of prey perch, and can be killed as they dive through the blades.

The solutions are easy and obvious: don’t build windmills in migratory canyons, and instead of lattice -work towers use tubular ones, on which raptors can’t perch. In open plains and off-shore areas, there is virtually no bird kill.

Farmers throughout the Great Plains are welcoming big wind machines as potential saviors. Many in Minnesota and Iowa are realizing more profit from lease payments on the towers and turbines than from corn and soybeans.

A single machine can be built in three months, a large wind farm in less than a year. According to the American Wind Energy Association (www.awea.org) there is enough capacity in the Dakotas and Minnesota alone to provide wind-driven electricity for the entire United States.

Wind power is a "natural" for the Great Lakes. Put a few hundred of those machines in and along the Great Lakes and you’ve got enough juice to displace all the dangerous, decaying nukes, and to make the idea of drilling even more gratuitous. Wind power is cheaper, cleaner, safer and more reliable.

New York Governor George Pataki recently issued an Executive Order requiring state agencies to buy substantial amounts of renewable energy to meet their electric power needs. His order will create the first stable, long-term markets for the sale of wind energy in New York State. Bruce Bailey of AWS Scientific, an Albany, New York based wind meteorological firm, has said, "We hope other states, as well as the federal government, will follow New York’s lead."

John Engler isn’t likely to follow Pataki’s lead. Hopefully we can convince Michigan’s next administration to take a positive step and help convert the winds along the shores of the Great Lakes into the electricity we need to save our planet from global warming and the curse of atomic power.

Harvey Wasserman is a well-known anti-nuke activist and proponent of alternative energy. Thanks to David Wright and Pat Diehl for their contributions to this article.

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