I’m not normally one to consider the environment as one of the more pressing issues needing to be addressed. But when I read about how President Barack Obama plans to maintain his $300 million annual funding to the Great Lakes, it made me wonder: Why have politicians in this state deemed that attempts to dictate what a woman can choose to do with her uterus are more important than ensuring that their citizens have clean water? 

I grew up in Milwaukee, about a 30 minute drive from Lake Michigan. So when I hear talk about why the Great Lakes need to be cleaned up, I know firsthand Lake Michigan is in dire need of just that. Some days it’s the smell from overpopulated algae. Other days it’s the sewage – the Great Lakes Echo reported that 6.5 billion gallons of sewage were dumped into the lake in 2010 in the Chicago area alone, and according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the lake was polluted by an 80 million gallon overflow of raw sewage caused by excessive snow melting. Then, of course, there was the 1993 cryptosporidium outbreak alleged to have been caused by sewage overflow into Lake Michigan that WUWM reports affected 40,000 people and killed 100. 

Needless to say, Lake Michigan needs some work. 

Right now, one of the keys to being a politician who keeps their seat seems to be pushing the budget. And while the quality of the Great Lakes may not seem like a pressing issue, sewage overflows and cryptosporidium outbreaks cost money. This is a situation where being proactive will save the state a huge chunk of change. 

In fact, Obama shouldn’t just be pledging to recommit $300 million; he should be increasing funding. But why should it take the president to do something that affects citizens all over the state? Shouldn’t our representatives be the ones spearheading the issue? Instead, they’d rather focus on limiting collective bargaining rights, because, y’know, indirectly cutting educators’ benefits and salaries now will eventually save the state so much money when young students no longer have adequate education and are probably more likely to turn to costly criminal activities. All in all, the fact that an impetus for increasing the quality of the Great Lakes has to come from the federal government shows that state politicians are myopic when it comes to the costs of ignoring environmental issues. 

But hey, it could be worse, right? Lake Michigan could be on fire, like one of Lake Erie’s tributaries was in 1969. So I guess we’ve got that going for us. 

Reginald Young ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in legal studies and Scandinavian studies.