Michigan Environmental Council

Michigan
Environmental Report

Volume 22 . Number 6
December 2004

PURPOSE
Founded in 1980, MEC is a coalition of over 60 environmental, public health, and faith-based organizations with nearly 200,000 individual members. For over 20 years, MEC has provided a voice at the State Capitol. In addition to serving as a clearinghouse of environmental information, MEC develops public policy, educates elected officials and the public, and provides training and support to member organizations.

SUBSCRIBE

OFFICERS

Chairperson
Chris Graham,
Michigan Natural Areas Council

Vice Chair
Vicki Levengood,
National Environmental Trust

Vice Chair
Terry Miller,
Lone Tree Council

Treasurer
Tom Leonard,
West Michigan Environmental Action Council

Secretary
Brian Imus,
PIRGIM

MEC STAFF

President
Lana Pollack

Policy Director
James Clift

Associate Director
Patrick Diehl

Land Programs Director
Conan Smith

Special Projects Coodinator
Brad Garmon

Office Manager
Judy Bearup

Member Services Director
Michele Scarborough

Policy Specialist
David Gard

Policy Advisor
Dave Dempsey

Environmental Campaign Coordinator
Wendi Tilden

ECCO Field Director
Stephanie Anderson

Land Programs Assistant
Ben Stupka

MER Design & Layout
Rose Homa

Land use laws need fixing

By Tom Bailey, Little Traverse Conservancy

In my small town in northern Michigan since 1973, we've conducted numerous opinion surveys, held community meetings and developed "vision statements" for areas ranging from one town to the entire county.

All studies have concluded the same thing: we want to remain a small town with abundant scenic beauty and a decidedly rural flavor. We want to retain our high quality of life and resist succumbing to the typical sprawl that robs an area of its identity, its uniqueness and much of its traditional business community.

The bad news is that we can't seem to make our vision stick. Before the ink was dry on the county master plan which made protection of agricultural areas a priority, a large discount chain came along and plopped right into a farm field, zoning be damned, followed in rapid succession by office and home stores.

Aggressive developers with stables of aggressive lawyers have intimidated our local planning and zoning bodies, burdened our townships and county with lawsuits, and poisoned the atmosphere for sensible planning, in spite of our long-declared opposition to what they are doing to our land, our heritage and our community.

I'm quick to defend the rights of property owners to sell their land and to develop land within the law. But because the law not only allows but encourages the development of things that we as a community have specifically said that we don't want in places where we have specifically said we don't want them, it is time to recognize that the laws need fixing.

The solution lies not only in local action and adjustment, but in a fundamental shift in the postures our legal, financial and governmental institutions take toward land development and exploitation.

We must retire the 19th and 20th Century institutions that encourage the division and exploitation of land. We must adjust our legal, financial, governmental and tax structures to retain what's left of the wild.

We must take a lesson from the hunters and anglers who faced similar crises a century ago. They formed groups to impose upon themselves licensing regulations, bag limits, seasons and a number of taxes to pay for the protection of the resources they loved and used. These visionary Americans began to see themselves not only as consumers of fish and wildlife. They saw themselves as stewards of fish, game and the habitat for both.

It is time to do the same with land. We can no longer afford to treat land as a commodity to be consumed. Teddy Roosevelt taught that conservation is patriotic, and though some of the less enlightened in our nation would have us sacrifice our land, our heritage and our future under the guise of rights and freedoms, their vision is myopic and their counsel misguided. The altar of short-term economic gain is no place for the sacrifice of this sacred land and our sacred freedom.

Tom Bailey is Executive Director of the Little Traverse Conservancy and the son of the late Ralph Bailey, the Upper Peninsula wildlife chief who initiated the successful wolf and moose recovery programs.