Paddling upstream, so to speak, Doug Martz is nonetheless making progress in his effort to up the status of Lake St. Clair. The Macomb County Water Quality Board chairman says the lake is “like the orphan child,” forgotten by the government. “I’ve been trying for nine years to make it part of the family, if you know what I mean. With the designation, it will get the attention it deserves.” Martz is abandoning his fight to name St. Clair the “Sixth Great Lake,” in favor of dubbing it, “The Heart of the Great Lakes.”
“I figure the sixth Great Lake won’t fly nationally, because I need an act of Congress for that,” explains Martz. “But if you look at the lake, it looks like a heart, and we’re all the capillaries, living off of it.”
In a major coup last week, Macomb County congressional Reps. Sander Levin and Candice Miller introduced a resolution on the U.S. House floor to increase federal funding that would benefit the lake. To that end, the two legislators are also seeking $5 billion in federal low-interest loans to communities seeking to upgrade their sewer systems.
Considering that millions of people get their drinking water from the lake, if granting it a fancy new title will help get the cash needed to clean up the human caca that has frequently polluted the lovely body of water since the early 1990s, then it might behoove us to take Martz’s mission to heart, so to speak. For more information, call 586-764-2443.
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