Southeastern Michigan Environmental Resource Association (smera)

Parent Issue

Agenda, May 1989

Month

May

Year

1989

Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)

Rights Held By

Agenda Publications

OCR Text

The Foully Fated Pigeon Fish Affair Sixth of a Series

ENVIRONMENTAL LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF MICHIGAN

by Solomon Eagle

Fish disasters and suspicious crimes against trout often get underplayed in the media, probably because egocentric humans prefer their own colorful and endless catastrophes. So a curious Michigan cause not so celebre recently involving fish may have gone unnoticed by most readers. Yet the Pigeon Fish Affair flirts with major issues.

In July 1984, an employee of Golden Lotus, Inc., a Michigan resort business upstate, while repairing a dam operated by the company on the Pigeon River, accidentally let silt from a pond enter the river. The sad demise of some 7,000 trout ensued before fish fanciers could hook and eat them.We have no quarrel with fish fanciers, though Pigeon is a rather sissy name for a river in this Eagle's opinion.

Among DNR skills is an ability to count fish. Thus, the Michigan DNR competently and no doubt promptly counted the departed trout. Then DNR joined the Attorney General, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, and the Michigan Council of Trout Unlimited in a concerted battle against Golden Lotus. The late and fiercely lamented members of the family Salmonidae were perseveringly championed by this strange quartet, not to be confused with the Guarneri. And after four years a consent judgement was finally reached under which the company pays the Environmental Protection Division $15,000 annually on or by November 30 from 1988 through 1993. The state's $90,000 payoff works out to about $12.86 per fish. The Michigan United Conservation Clubs gets another $2,000.

Also Golden Lotus must "within a reasonable time" take measures "to assure the long-term strength and safety of the dam and non-repetition of sediment release." Sounds reasonable, and hopefully fish of the future will be protected. Both fish and their fanciers should feel relief. Robert Reichel of the Attorney General's office proudly reported that this was "one of the largest cash payments made in a single fish-kill event in Michigan." But a four year fish fight between the state and a Michigan business makes us wonder why so much legal sweat and calisthenics are necessary to accomplish so little. Shakespeare and probably Casey Stengel pointed out the folly of "much ado about nothing."

Questlons: How much did the litigants spend on the case? What state talents and resources were tied up? Did the state efficiently invest time and resources by focusing legal fury on an accidental silt spill? Could those involved have been given more productive assignments to benefit the businesses and public that pay them?

Matters such as the Pigeon Fish Affair call for quick, responsible agreements and cleanup instead of extended state-business disputes and legal push ups for 40% of a decade. Certainly more serious issues wait to be resolved. For the environment's sake, the litigants' energy might better have gone into fixing what was wrong. Such affairs encourage the suspicion that the DNR favors badgering and working over a business rather than friendly chit chat and rational resolution. Businesses as well as fish are important to the state and also deserve concern, support, protection, fair play. Our advice to all is sit together, get the facts straight, reach a civilized agreement by supper time, and then convivially dine - on Michigan trout perhaps - and toast the rare but not impossible achievement of business-government rapport with a glass of Michigan wine.