You Can Fight City Hall and Win Big

 Norm Spring

You can fight City Hall and win.  It takes time and patience, but sometimes the results are spectacular.

Years ago we lived across the street from the city park in Grand Haven, Michigan where the elm trees were sprayed with DDT to fight Dutch elm disease.  Long after the spraying we would see robins trembling in their death throes.  DDT is a long lasting pesticide that magnifies through food chains and the robin that had fed upon earthworms died before our eyes.

The fish in nearby Lake Michigan were affected even more since food chains in water are long.  DDT builds up in plankton and then magnifies with each step up the food chain.  Small fish and then larger fish and then the American bald eagle that feeds upon fish began to show the effects of DDT.  The young of eagles, peregrine falcons and ospreys did not hatch because DDT caused the shells of the eggs to break before the birds could hatch.

At that time, I was reading Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring,  and showed it to my husband, Norm Spring.  His reaction was visceral.  He had to do something about it.  He marched down to city hall and asked that the DDT program stop in our city park.  When it was not stopped, he brought experts to explain why it should be stopped.

City hall countered by bringing agriculture department people.  This went on for three years before he convinced city hall to stop the DDT program.

Then people from a neighboring city, Holland, Michigan came and together with others Norm Spring formed the Michigan Pesticides Council.  It met at M.S.U. with Dr. Ted Black, Dr. George Wallace, Dr. Howard Tanner, Dr. John Kitchel, Joan Wolfe and others.  Together they marshaled citizen support and by 1969 DDT was banned in Michigan and by 1972 was banned nationally. 

It took years for DDT to purge from Lake Michigan food chains, but today we often see bald eagles along the beaches and the Grand River that flows through Michigan.  On January 4, 2003, the Grand Haven Tribune reported 46 bald eagles on the ice and in the trees not far from U.S. 31.  About a third of these were mature eagles.

The Dynamic Great Lakes and Earth Day

The Dynamic Great Lakes shows what people have been able to do by thinking globally and acting locally.  Since before the first Earth Day, people have brought about environmental victories in and around the Great Lakes.  There is still much to be done.  Read the book and think of ways to participate.

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Environmental Success Story

The American bald eagle was nearly wiped out by DDT and like pesticides that were used after World War II. Since these poisons take many years to break down, they were caught up in Great Lakes food webs and affected the fish eating birds such as the eagles.

The eagles are higher on the food pyramid than humans since they eat only fish and meat, but fish eating humans were also being poisoned by these insecticides.

My community was the first to ban DDT that was used to control the Dutch elm beetle in the park in front of our house. My husband and I formed a committee to get it stopped and after this was accomplished, we joined others to form the Michigan Pesticides Council that met at MSU. This was a grass roots movement and it was part of a national movement.

As a result of this work, the eagles have returned to the Great Lakes as well as peregrine falcons and ospreys. Read more about this in The Dynamic Great Lakes
This book is available online at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and many other stores.