The Great Lakes hold nearly 20 percent of the world’s surface freshwater, making them a resource of national and international importance. They power regional economies, support shipping routes vital to global trade, and provide drinking water to 40 million people across the U.S. and Canada. Safeguarding the Great Lakes is not only essential for the communities that rely on them daily, but also for the stability of North America’s environment, economy, and international partnerships.

Fresh is a weekly newsletter from Circle of Blue that unpacks the biggest international, state, and local policy news stories facing the Great Lakes region today. Sign up for Fresh: A Great Lakes Policy Briefing, straight to your inbox, every Wednesday.

— Christian Thorsberg, Interim Fresh Editor

This Week’s Watersheds

  • A new House bill proposed in Michigan would require formal notice to residents when dangerous levels of raw sewage or E. coli are detected in waterways. 
  • The soup company Campbell’s admitted last week in court documents that it violated the Clean Water Act thousands of times at its northwest Ohio factory. 
  • Chemical manufacturer 3M, engaged in a years-long legal fight with Michigan over PFAS limits in drinking water, won a significant victory in a lower court last week.

Fresh from the Great Lakes News Collaborative

Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now at Detroit Public Television, Michigan Public and The Narwhal work together to report on the most pressing threats to the Great Lakes region’s water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work here.

The Lead

The chemical company 3M enjoyed an appellate panel victory late last week as its legal challenge of Michigan’s drinking water regulations for PFAS continues. 

The legislative battle dates back to 2021, when 3M first filed suit against the state over the maximum PFAS contaminant levels (MCLs) its Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) had established for drinking water in August 2020.

3M, which manufactures PFAS, argued that the state set these regulations without conducting an adequate analysis that would show how the benefit of implementing these limits would outweigh the costs. 

In setting the new MCLs, EGLE had estimated water suppliers would need to pay $11 million annually to comply with infrastructure improvements, testing, and treatment. The department also argued that the sweeping benefits to public health would be “significant,” without naming a specific dollar value for medical costs saved.

In its original lawsuit, 3M said the $11 million figure was far too low and argued EGLE “did not substantiate its claim of a causal relationship between exposure to PFAS chemicals and ‘health effects’” and “also failed to provide a quantitative estimate of the benefits.” 

EGLE has maintained that putting a dollar value on human health is near-impossible. 

In November 2022, a Court of Claims sided with 3M but allowed the MCLs to remain in effect until a higher court weighed in. The following August, a Court of Appeals upheld this judgement. 

The Michigan Supreme Court agreed in February 2024 to hear the case, for which dates have not yet been set, and this past March remanded the Court of Appeals’ original decision for reconsideration, “with instructions to address whether 3M was required to pursue an administrative appeal before filing suit and whether the case was moot due to subsequent regulatory developments,” according to Law 360.

Last week, and for the second time in five years, the lower court sided with 3M.

The MCLs remain in effect for now, though environmental policy experts have indicated that the result of this court battle could set the precedent for PFAS restrictions not only in Michigan, but across the country. 

“Michigan must have strong PFAS rules and regulations in place to defend public health,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a February 2024 press release. “The manufacturers who profit from these forever chemicals now challenge the regulations that protect people from exposure; 3M again puts their profits over people. I am fighting to maintain our state’s important public health standards against these self-serving corporate challenges.”

In the News

Brown Alert: “Shit happens,” quipped Michigan State Rep. Alicia St. Germain (R-62) during a House Natural Resources and Tourism committee meeting earlier this month in Lansing as she presented her new bill, dubbed “The Brown Alert,” to fellow lawmakers.

If passed, HB 4427 would require an emergency notification to be sent to residents if maximum safe contaminant levels of either raw sewage or E. coli are detected in a county’s waters. Health officials would have within 12 hours of this determination to issue these alerts, likely straight to the public’s phones via text message. Records of such discharges are available online, though no direct line of communication is currently in place. 

Inspiration for the bill hit in April of this year, St. Germain said, when an equipment malfunction at a municipality retention basin in Macomb County spilled 1.2 million gallons of raw sewage into the Clinton River and flowed into Lake St. Clair. 

“The residents that live along those waterways never knew,” she told the committee.

According to state records, several other large spills have occurred within just the past few months alone. Roughly 1.3 million gallons of sanitary sewage spilled into the Huron River in the town of Monroe in July, and 1.8 million gallons spilled into a local Ontonagon waterway in April. 

 “We’ve seen all kinds of things being built so quickly, and frankly our ancestors and engineers didn’t keep up with our water infrastructure,” St. Germain said. “So here we are playing catch up and trying to do better by our residents.”

By the Numbers

5,400

In court documents filed jointly last week by plaintiffs Environment Ohio, Lake Erie Waterkeeper, and the U.S. EPA, the defendant Campbell’s Soup admitted to violating the Clean Water Act at least 5,400 times between 2018 and 2024 at its factory in Napoleon, Ohio.

The court records show that the soup giant regularly discharged effluents containing phosphorus, E. coli, ammonia, oil and grease, and suspended solids above permitted limits into the Maumee River, which flows into Lake Erie. 

“Campbell’s admission that it committed these violations will speed this case toward a trial that will decide what steps the company must take to curb its pollution and how large a civil penalty should be imposed,” said John Rumpler, the Clean Water Program director for Environment Ohio in a press release. “That’s great news for the people who live along the Maumee River and Lake Erie, who want prompt action on reducing sources of the toxic algae in their local waters.”

You can find more stories from the Great Lakes region here.

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Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer from Chicago. He is passionate about climate and cultural phenomena that often appear slow or invisible, and he examines these themes in his journalism, poetry, and fiction.