MUSKEGON—New luxury homes, yacht slips, and trendy hotels and restaurants are cropping up along the glittering waterfront of this west Michigan city.

Nothing unusual for the Lake Michigan coast, long known for beach towns that cater to summer vacationers and wealthy second-homers. But to those familiar with Muskegon’s blue collar history, it’s a stunning transformation.

Not long ago, the shore of the 4,232-acre Muskegon Lake, a drowned river mouth that connects the city to the big waters of Lake Michigan, was so fully dominated by polluting factories that you could tell which ones were operating by the color of the water that day. It took decades of activism and more than $80 million to repair the damage, mostly on the public dime. 

The result is a lake with cleaner water, a gentler shoreline and better habitat for fish and wildlife. Good for swimming, fishing, boating and — for investors with the means to buy the land that industry left behind — capitalizing on the view.

“Are you looking for the ultimate first-class waterfront community?” asks an advertisement for Adelaide Pointe, one of several new developments cropping up on vacant former factory sites. 

A two-bedroom condo there lists for upwards of $700,000.

To many, the lake’s emerging cachet is something worth celebrating. It brings people, tax revenue and other benefits to a shrinking city of 37,000 people, where the median household income is nearly $25,000 below the state average. 

But Jen Sanocki and many of her neighbors feel conflicted. They look at the new homes, marinas and vacation rentals catering to wealthy out-of-towners, and wonder who, exactly, was meant to benefit from the cleanup that taxpayers funded.

“It’s going to bring some economic value to my neighborhood and Muskegon in general,” said Sanocki, president of Muskegon’s Nims Neighborhood Association. “But it does kind of feel like we’re creating a gated community on the water.”

Muskegon Lake and its namesake city are at a familiar crossroads for Great Lakes manufacturing communities that, after decades of industrial abandonment, suburban flight and economic malaise, have been made marketable again thanks to a massive publicly funded cleanup of the region’s most polluted waterways.

It leaves residents, policymakers and developers to grapple with a tricky question: Can cities like Muskegon embrace the wealthier newcomers who now want to live there, while ensuring that residents who endured the city’s darkest years get a fair share of its brighter future?

From ruin to rebirth

This story is part of a Great Lakes News Collaborative series examining the region’s “blue economy,” a term used to describe communities whose wealth is derived from and dependent upon water.

The term inspires visions of people living in harmony with nature. But for much of the Great Lakes’ modern history, it meant letting industry exploit the region’s abundant water for profit, with little concern about the consequences. 

Fishing species out of existence. Carving shipping channels to connect the Great Lakes to the ocean, which opened a gateway for invasive species. Building shoreline factories to easily access shipping routes, and then dumping toxic waste in the water.

Like many other Great Lakes waterways, Muskegon Lake became a casualty. 

“The stink from factories was the smell of money, as people referred to it,” said Alan Steinman, who has spent decades studying the lake and is the Allen and Helen Hunting Research Professor at Grand Valley State University’s Annis Water Resources Institute. 

Lumber barons built mills on the waterfront starting in the mid-1800s and then filled in the shallows with sawdust and debris until the lake had shrunk by 16%. When there was nothing left to log, heavier industries moved in: steel, paper, a coal-fired power plant and factories building car engines and war machines. 

Many of those who could move, did. Amid white flight to the suburbs, Muskegon’s white population dwindled from 98% in 1940 to 55% today. Those who couldn’t move — either because of their economic circumstances or racist housing policies — remained in the shadow of industry.

The lakeshore was so ugly and unsafe, Muskegon was built with its back to the water.

City Manager Jonathan Seyferth, a longtime resident, spent his childhood swimming at what’s now the local Boys & Girls Club, without realizing it sits on waterfront property. Virtually all of the windows faced inland.

“The lake was an afterthought,” Seyferth said. “It was a resource that we used.”

The Clean Water Act of 1972 ended the era of unregulated dumping, but it would take decades more to recover the water quality and habitat that had already been destroyed.

The United States and Canadian governments added Muskegon Lake to a list of 43 Great Lakes Areas of Concern — the region’s most degraded waterways — and partnered on cleanups with a citizen group known today as the Muskegon Lake Watershed Partnership.

As industry gradually retreated from the lakefront, those partners stepped in to dredge contaminated sediments, excavate hundreds of millions of pounds of industrial debris, plant trees and reopen wetlands. 

In the early days, a cleaner lake seemed so out of reach, “we had to prove to people that it was even possible,” said Kathy Evans, a longtime member of the watershed partnership. 

“They had to see it to believe it.”

But after several decades and more than $80 million (mostly federal dollars with other public and private sources mixed in), the lake is now clean enough to remove from the Areas of Concern List — and for a new debate about how its future should look. 

Who benefits?   

On a macro level, cleaning up Muskegon Lake has been an economic boon for Muskegon.

Researchers at Grand Valley State University found in 2018 that the local economy had enjoyed a 6-to-1 or better return on investment, including rising housing values and more tourism. The rate of return is climbing higher as developers remake the lakefront.

But in a working class city that is 30% Black, some fear the benefits of Muskegon Lake’s cleanup are accruing primarily to wealthy, mostly white newcomers while racial minorities and low-income residents get pushed out of the newly desirable neighborhoods. 

There’s a term for the phenomenon: “eco-gentrification.”

“There’s a lot of perceived positives” stemming from the lakeshore’s redevelopment, said Marria McIntosh, who leads an anti-gentrification nonprofit called Thredz Inc. “But how can our community benefit from it?”

No fewer than four major residential or mixed-use developments are planned or underway on the former industrial sites along the water, most of them made possible with the help of state and locally public incentives. When finished, they’ll boast a combined thousands of housing units and investments approaching $1 billion. For-sale signs have cropped up on other properties.

Ryan Leestma, who owns the Adelaide Pointe development on the site of a former steel foundry with his wife Emily, said the new condos, marinas, breweries and other amenities, help Muskegon compete with other waterfront cities that have built their economies around a wealthier clientele. 

“We have more beaches than anybody else. We have more state parks than anybody else,” said Leestma. “But certain demographics wouldn’t go to Muskegon because there wasn’t premium product.”

Amid Muskegon’s newfound popularity, the city’s average home value has skyrocketed from $109,000 in April 2020 to $174,000 today. 

The average resident’s paycheck hasn’t grown in equal measure, leading to worsening income inequality and housing affordability issues that have been made worse by investors buying affordable homes in the neighborhoods near the water and flipping them into vacation rentals.

The risk is “a glittering lakeshore in one corner of the city, and then in the other corner you’ve got a bunch of houses in ruins and dilapidated infrastructure,” said Amanda Buday, a Grand Valley researcher who has studied residents’ attitudes about the Muskegon Lake cleanup. 

A push for access and affordability

Another key tension point: How to ensure the average person can easily access the cleaner lake their tax dollars paid for, when the shoreline is ringed almost entirely by private property.

For decades, many of the vacant former factory sites along Muskegon Lake were treated as de facto parks, accessible to anyone who cared to wander in with a fishing pole. But recently, fences have been erected on the perimeter of some, while others have filled in with homes and boat storage garages. 

“It’s a huge topic,” said Sanocki, the neighborhood association president. The lake’s cleaner image means “people want to look at it, people want to be at it, people want to see it. People want to touch it.” 

City officials too have a desire for more public parks and beaches, Seyferth said. But they can’t force investors who bought the former factory sites to maintain unlimited access just because their predecessors did. 

“If the city was able to fork over a couple million bucks, we could go buy a piece of property and it wouldn’t be a problem,” Seyferth said. “We can’t afford to do that, so it ends up being more piecemeal.”

Instead, the city is mulling new public access requirements for waterfront developments, and has teamed up with the local chamber of commerce and other allies to persuade developers that open waterfronts are good for business. At Adelaide Pointe, for instance, the Leestmas have agreed to open their shoreline to the public in exchange for permission to use the municipal marina’s boat ramp and lift.

At another planned development called Windward Pointe, on the 122-acre site of the former Sappi paper mill, city officials negotiated public features like boardwalks and fishing docks and an option to buy several lots for a public park. 

And they recently unveiled a vision to expand the public lakefront near downtown Muskegon by swapping a city-owned campground for part of a property that now houses a boat storage facility, and then buying additional land from a shipping port company. 

City officials are also trying to combat gentrification by building affordable housing on city-owned lots and capping the number of short-term rentals allowed in Muskegon. 

“We’re starting to see Muskegon mentioned in the same breath as Grand Haven, Holland, Traverse City and Ludington when it comes to places that people think of vacationing and being on the beach,” Seyferth said. But avoiding negative consequences for longtime residents is “something we’re really conscious of.”

McIntosh said while it’s encouraging to see developers making portions of their properties accessible to the public, it’s not a substitute for truly public land. She wonders whether low-income and minority Muskegonites will feel welcome. 

“If I’m walking down that sidewalk and I’ve got my 5-gallon pail, and I’ve got my fishing rod, and I’ve got my cutoff shorts and my white T-shirt that is not so white anymore … and you in your $700,000 house are looking out your window, and you see me,” she said, “public don’t seem so public at that moment.”

The past is never far behind

Those who pushed for Muskegon Lake’s recovery say they’re now focused on protecting the investment taxpayers made in a cleaner lake, while managing new environmental challenges that the cleanup program was not designed to address.

Climate change is warming the water and fueling toxic algae blooms. PFAS foam showed up last year, its source unknown. And the new wave of shoreline development raises the potential for habitat destruction and polluted runoff from chemically-fertilized lawns, rooftops and parking lots.

“I just hope that we don’t have any more of our restored habitat ruined,” Evans said.

She was referring to Adelaide Pointe, which has been cited by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) for violations including dredging the lake bottom, damaging wetlands and covering a habitat restoration project with rock rubble.

Many Muskegon residents were angry about the violations — a furor that only grew when they learned of a March 7 letter in which the owner, Leestma, begged a top Trump administration official to “override” EGLE’s authority.

Writing to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Leestma complained of being “targeted” by state regulators and implied Muskegon residents should be thankful for his development. He called it “sorely needed,” while comparing Muskegon to Detroit and Flint and falsely claiming it has “half the education and half the median income of the rest of the state.” 

Muskegon’s household income is 65% of the state average. It has a slightly lower percentage of high school graduates than the state average, and half as many bachelor’s degree holders.

McIntosh, the anti-gentrification advocate, saw the letter as offensive but unsurprising.

“That’s the kind of mindset that people bring,” she said. “Like, ‘you should be happy we’re doing anything in your broke community… and most of the developers feel that way.’”

Leestma eventually reached a settlement with EGLE that requires him to repair some of the environmental damage, and imposes fines that vary from about $200,000 to $500,000 depending how thoroughly he complies. 

He may have a polarizing personality, he told Bridge Michigan, and he regrets the letter. But he sees his development as a step toward a prospering Muskegon that has “room for everyone.”

“If this site was totally fallow and there was nobody here, there’s no spending going on whatsoever,” he said. “But I can tell you, there’s 200 more employees now than there were a year and a half ago.”

Unfinished business, unresolved debates

Meanwhile, the legacy of Muskegon’s industrial past still looms over the effort to remake the rest of the waterfront.

At the former Sappi paper mill property, redevelopment plans call for a mixed-use district with housing, a marina, shops and parks. But first, someone needs to clean up the pollution Sappi left in the soil and groundwater, including PFAS and explosive levels of methane. Taxpayers are again dipping into their pockets, this time with a $15 million state cleanup grant.

Rory Charron, chief operating officer for developer Parkland Properties, said the company has experience making dirty sites clean and usable again. The long-term goal, he said, is “doing something safe and meaningful for Muskegon and West Michigan, which will serve as a catalyst for future economic growth and development.”

While she watches that process play out, Evans is keeping an eye out for opportunities to shield more of the lakeshore from development. A “for-sale” sign recently cropped up on a wooded wetland where a creek drains into Muskegon Lake.

“We should get that,” she said, before listing off all the potential benefits for fish, wildlife, and the public. 

She knows Muskegon’s economic fortunes and development patterns will only keep changing, and debates about the benefits and drawbacks of those changes aren’t going anywhere. 

But amid it all, she said, she hopes that “people in the future feel like they belong to the lake, rather than the lake belonging to them.”

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The post An $80M cleanup made Muskegon Lake trendy. Will ‘eco-gentrification’ follow? appeared first on Circle of Blue.

This article is part of a collaboration with the Associated Press, Capital B, and Flint Beat. The work is part of the AP Inclusive Journalism Initiative supported by the Sony Foundation.

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Chimére L. Sweeney, a Maryland middle school teacher, was preparing to lead one of her first online classes after the pandemic shutdowns in March 2020 when she said she suddenly felt like someone placed a lit match on her spine.

Over the next several weeks, Sweeney’s vision became blurry, she frequently experienced vertigo, and she had difficulty processing basic information. She figured she had COVID-19, but because she didn’t have any of the primary symptoms — cough, fever, and shortness of breath — she was unable to qualify for a hard-to-find diagnostic test. 

In the ensuing weeks and months, Sweeney said she often felt like she had to convince her physicians that she was truly in pain. Ultimately, it took Sweeney two years to be formally diagnosed with a long-term case of COVID-19.

“No one can save this body like me,” said Sweeney, who’s 42 and lives in Baltimore. “The goal for me was to live.”

For Black Americans with long COVID, the first 100 days of the Trump administration have been particularly challenging. The White House has ordered drastic cuts to federal programs that provide funding for research for long COVID and other chronic diseases, including the Office of Long COVID Research and Practice. Those living with or working to treat patients with these illnesses are afraid of how these changes will impact them. 

The administration canceled a National Institutes of Health grant that supported an effort called Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery, or RECOVER. That $1.7 billion program was the single largest federal funding mechanism for research into long COVID, which is generally defined as instances when symptoms of the illness last for three months or longer.

And these changes are occurring at a moment when the nation’s top public health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., promotes conspiracy theories about COVID’s origins and questions the efficacy of the vaccine.

Taken together, those cuts disproportionately affect Black Americans, who, according to a 2023 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, make up about 32% of long COVID cases — second only to Hispanic Americans, who comprise about 36% of those patients. As many as 20 million Americans are estimated to have contracted long COVID.

Sweeney said she’s increasingly concerned about the reductions to these essential programs. 

“Long COVID has been one of the most devastating attacks on our workforce and economy because healthy people who became infected with COVID and now live with long COVID simply can’t work or have been forced to reduce their hours,” she said. “Black people are often more likely to be ill with the condition, but they often do not have the money or privilege to retire or stop working. They must return to work.”

Even before the administration’s cuts to programs designed to help the nation address the disease, studies have shown that Black Americans with long COVID encounter significant disparities in health care when compared to their white counterparts.

Researchers have found that Black long COVID patients report experiencing implicit bias, microaggressions, and other forms of discrimination when seeking treatment for their symptoms.

“They would ask questions like, ‘Are you on drugs? Or do you work? Or, what do you do for a living? Do you have insurance?’” Sweeney said of her physicians. “I’m, like, ‘You all must not be reading my chart because I am an educated Black teacher. I am generally healthy.” 

Discouraged by her own encounters with the medical system, and similar accounts from other Black Americans, Sweeney in 2024 founded the Black Long COVID Experience, a website dedicated to providing information about the illness and a resource for patients to find doctors or, as she calls it, “long COVID advocacy for Black folks.”

A cure for long COVID

Brooke Keaton, of Charlotte, North Carolina, is a former elementary school teacher, who — because of her long COVID diagnosis —  is dependent on government disability.

The 44-year-old mother of two — Bria, age 6 and Jaren, age 14 — said that she has experienced cognitive decline, asthma, heart issues, neuropathy, extreme spinal pain, numbness and weakness in her hands, and severe fatigue. 

Keaton says she belongs to several long COVID support groups, partly to make sure there are Black faces in the groups and also to learn what treatments and diagnoses non-Black patients are receiving.

She said she’s struggled to get physicians to take her symptoms seriously. One of her health care providers recently misdiagnosed a heart condition as anxiety. A new doctor finally helped uncover that she had inappropriate sinus tachycardia. 

“I don’t know that if I were not Black, if things would have gone differently,” Keaton said.

Keaton said Black people with long COVID have had to advocate to be included in research studies. Some patients have testified before Congress and written letters to representatives, all to make sure their voices were being heard.

“We are sick people, but we’re doing it to help find a cure,” Keaton said. “We need research. Our ultimate goal is for us to find a cure.”

Long COVID awareness in Black communities

Zanthia Wiley, an associate professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine, said the difference in treatment plans and outcomes between Black and white patients with long COVID often comes down to socioeconomics and access to medical care.

“If you are a bus driver and you have to drive your bus from 8 to 5 every day and you cannot take time off to go and see a doctor, then that is going to decrease the likelihood of your long COVID being diagnosed,” said Wiley. “I think also there is decreased awareness — and not just in Black people, but in the community — with respect to long COVID.”  

There are around 400 long COVID clinics in the nation, according to a report by the Long COVID Alliance, a network of patient advocates, researchers, and drug developers who inform the public about post-COVID care.

Wiley said most of the clinics are in urban areas or close to academic institutions. That reality can affect access for Black patients living in rural or exurban areas, particularly in the South.

In communities without long COVID clinics, Wiley said, physicians are seeking three key pieces of information: If a patient’s symptoms stem from other medical problems; if what a patient is reporting is actually long COVID; and how the disease can be treated.

Wiley said the lack of resources is all the more troublesome when you add deep federal cuts to research. 

“I am definitely worried about the tragic, chaotic loss of funding that is going to affect people and populations in general,” Wiley said. “And a lot of times in these scenarios, those who are affected the most are those who have, unfortunately, the smallest voice.”

Heather-Elizabeth Brown contracted COVID in 2020, before the release of the vaccine. She spent 31 days on a ventilator in a coma in a Royal Oak, Michigan, hospital, just outside of Detroit. When she finally woke up, she had to relearn to walk and eat. 

Brown is a member of the Long COVID Alliance.  She said to understand the racial disparities in how long COVID differs for Black patients, it’s vital to go back to 2020 and the start of the pandemic.

“I definitely think that what we saw a lot was patients — and Black patients, first of all — not even having access to the same type of care when the COVID infection happened, not being taken as seriously with some of their symptoms, or not being able to access the tests,” Brown said.

Brown, like other long COVID patients, enjoys legal protections through the Americans with Disabilities Act, which compels employers and others to provide accommodations, such as hybrid work arrangements, for those who are ill with the disease. 

Brown said she is deeply concerned that the Trump administration, which has already reversed policies regarding the needs of people with disabilities, might also roll back aspects of the ADA.

“Even just thinking about the fact that some of that could be rolled back or changed or challenged is terrifying, to be honest, because one of the ways that I’m able to do my job and do it well is because I was able to get accommodations,” Brown said.

Predominantly Black cities like Flint have “been hit in different ways” 

Aisha Harris, a family medicine physician in Flint, Michigan, said she is nervous about the effect of more cuts in funding for long COVID studies, particularly in places such as Flint. 

“Flint has made a lot of small steps as far as progress, even though with those steps, we’ve been hit in different ways,” said Harris, a professor at the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University. “But the idea of those cuts happening will be devastating and will cause a crisis in Flint that I don’t really want to imagine,” she said. 

According to the July 2024 Michigan COVID-19 Recovery Surveillance Study, a joint project between the University of Michigan School of Public Health and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, of the 17,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the state between March 1, 2020, and May 31, 2022, 22.7% of Black adults reported symptoms of long COVID. 

In addition to Sweeney and Brown, several Black long COVID patients who spoke with Capital B said they often aren’t believed by doctors, that they have to push to be included in studies, and that receiving a diagnosis and treatment can be a challenge.

Raven Baxter, who works on educational initiatives at the Mount Sinai Health System’s Cohen Center for Recovery from Complex Chronic Illnesses in New York City, said clinicians failing to believe Black patients when they report symptoms is a significant issue. 

Baxter, herself a former long COVID patient, said that during a recent seminar she led, about 10% of the health care providers who were in attendance strongly doubted the actual existence of the conditions being reported by those seeking help.

“So education really goes a long way,” said Baxter, who is a molecular biologist and educator. “Unfortunately, people from all walks of life are already experiencing gaslighting in other dimensions, and it’s just unfortunate that that continues and is compounded by what’s happening with the onset of long COVID.”

Although the clinic where Baxter works is privately funded, she said any disruption in federal dollars for researchers could be devastating to the long COVID community. 

The youngest long COVID patients

Stephanie Cunningham, who lives in Warren, Michigan, about 20 minutes outside of Detroit, says doctors suggested that her 8-year-old daughter, Peyton Lee, had invented her symptoms and encouraged her to take Lee to see a psychiatrist. 

“Every time we would go to a doctor, they would dismiss me,” said Cunningham, who works with the Michigan Department of Corrections probation department. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told through this process that, ‘You appear to be educated, so I’m going to provide you with knowledge, more information than I normally would.’

“What? That’s devastating to hear,” she said, “Not only for my child, but what about the families that are not educated? What about the families that don’t know how to advocate for their child?” 

Amy Edwards is a pediatric infectious disease specialist at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland. Peyton is one of her long COVID pediatric patients. 

Edwards said children over the age of 10 are at the highest risk of developing long COVID. 

“Think about your life from 10 to 20 and everything that you did and everything that you learned and how much it shaped who you are as a person,” Edwards said. “Then imagine you’re already struggling with racism and classism, if you’re also poor, on top of being non-white. And then imagine having chronic fatigue syndrome or something, and long COVID just dropped right on top of that and how much that takes away.” 

Now, with the cuts to federal funding for COVID research, Cunningham said she’s scared for her daughter. 

“This is so new, and no one knows enough about it,” she said. “So, how does this affect Peyton? How does it affect her quality of life? She doesn’t have four years to wait on a new administration. We need this information now.”

The post The Fight to Be Believed: Long COVID’s Toll on Black Americans appeared first on Capital B News.

Michigan now covers more than double the portion of the population it did 30 years ago. Is that growth unchecked, or just enough to cover the most vulnerable?

The cuts to the program will impact literacy tutors, homeless assistance and the Special Olympics as a result of efforts to slash the federal budget.

A major storm took hold across swaths of the central and southern United States on Wednesday unleashing extreme flooding and huge tornadoes from Arkansas up to Michigan. And conditions are expected to worsen on Friday as soils become saturated and water piles up: The National Weather Service is warning of a “life-threatening, catastrophic, and potentially historic flash flood event,” along with a risk of very large hail and more twisters. Eight people are so far confirmed dead, while 33 million are under flood watches across 11 states.

While scientists will need to do proper research to suss out exactly how much climate change is contributing to these storms, what’s known as an attribution study, they can say generally how planetary warming might worsen an event like this. It’s not necessarily that climate change created this storm — it could have happened independent of all the extra carbon that humanity has pumped into the atmosphere — but there are some clear trends making rainfall worse.

“In a world without the burning of fossil fuels, this event would happen once in a lifetime — that’s kind of what the National Weather Service is saying,” said Marc Alessi, a climate science fellow at the Massachusetts-based Union of Concerned Scientists. “But with the burning of fossil fuels, with more heat-trapping emissions, with a warming planet, this event will become more frequent.”

Rainfall is changing because Earth sweats. When the sun evaporates water off Earth’s surface, that moisture rises into the atmosphere, condenses, and falls as rain. But greenhouse gases trap heat up there, so the planet sweats more in response. In other words, it strikes an energy balance.

A warmer atmosphere also gets “thirstier”: For every 1 degree Celsius of warming, the air can hold 6 to 7 percent more water. That means more moisture is available to fall as rain: This weekend, the slow-moving storm is forecasted to dump as much as 15 inches of rainfall in some areas. “The sponge, which is the atmosphere in this case, will become bigger, which allows the sponge to hold more water and carry it from oceans farther inland,” Alessi said. “That could be tied into this event here.” 

The body of water in question here is the Gulf of Mexico. An outbreak of tornadoes and heavy rain is typical for this time of year as warming waters send moisture into the southern and central United States. And at the moment, the Gulf of Mexico is exceptionally warm. “There’s a lot more fuel for these rain-producing storms to lead to more flooding,” Alessi said. (The influence of climate change on tornadoes in the U.S., though, isn’t as clear.)

So a warmer Gulf of Mexico is not only producing more moisture, but the atmosphere is also able to soak up more of that moisture than it could before human-caused climate change. Indeed, the U.S. government’s own climate assessments warn that precipitation is already getting more extreme across the country, as are the economic damages from the resulting flooding. That’s projected to get worse with every bit of additional warming.

The problem is that American cities aren’t built to withstand this new atmospheric reality. Urban planners designed them for a different climate of yesteryear, with gutters and sewers that whisk away rainwater as quickly as possible to prevent flooding. With ever more extreme rainfall, that infrastructure can’t keep up, so water builds up and floods. And with storms that last for days, like those tearing through Arkansas and Kentucky right now, soils get saturated until they can hold no more water, exacerbating flooding even more. On Thursday, rescue crews in Nashville, Tennessee were scrambling to save people trapped by surging water levels. 

Now scientists will have to pick through the data to figure out, for instance, how much additional rain the storm dropped because of the sponge effect and warming of the Gulf of Mexico. But the overall trend is abundantly clear: As the planet warms, it doesn’t always get drier, but wetter, too.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Did climate change supercharge the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ storm pummeling the central US? on Apr 4, 2025.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership with Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan.

Seven Indigenous nations have withdrawn from discussions over an oil and gas liquids pipeline in Michigan, citing federal agencies’ failure to adequately engage with tribal governments during the process.

The move is expected to trigger lawsuits the tribes hope will block the controversial Line 5 project, a 645 mile pipeline that carries over half-a-million barrels of crude oil and natural gas liquids per day and runs between the United States and Canada. Enbridge, the company behind Line 5, has proposed a tunnel under the Great Lakes in order to replace a section of the 72-year-old pipeline.

The tribal nations have been involved with the permitting process since 2020, when Enbridge applied to build the underground tunnel for the pipeline, but have grown increasingly dissatisfied with negotiations they say ignored tribal expertise, input, and concerns, and undermined treaty rights. 

On March 20, tribes say the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency assessing the project and its environmental impacts, informed them that it would likely soon grant Enbridge a fast-tracked permit for the tunnel under President Donald Trump’s energy emergency declaration, which effectively created a new class of permit to boost energy supplies. That announcement, the tribes say, prompted the withdrawal.

“Tribal Nations are no longer willing to expend their time and resources as Cooperating Agencies just so their participation may be used by the Corps to lend credibility to a flawed [Environmental Impact Statement] process and document,” they wrote in a March 21 letter to the Corps. 

Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community, said the tunnel would destroy “not only the Great Lakes, but also an Indigenous people’s way of life, my way of life, for all Great Lakes Anishinaabe.”

“We’ll do what we need to do now moving forward, not participating in that process,” she added.

Tribal nations in Michigan — and others across the country — have long argued that the pipeline is unsafe, and that the tunnel would further threaten their way of life by extending the possibility of an oil spill into the Straits of Mackinac, which connect lakes Michigan and Huron, and potentially contaminating the largest source of fresh water in North America.

In an email, Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy said the tunnel would “make a safe pipeline safer while also ensuring the continued safe, secure, and affordable delivery of essential energy to the Great Lakes region.” But critics say that risk has yet to be properly analyzed and the Army Corps maintains that considering the risk of oil spills, or their impacts, is beyond the scope of its authority and should be conducted by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Despite that stance, in early January an assistant secretary with the Department of Defense directed the Army Corps to carry out that assessment. That will now likely be ignored under the Trump administration’s executive order, according to attorneys with the tribes.

In an email, Army Corps spokesperson Carrie Fox said the agency is reviewing the tribes’ letter and relying on existing regulations to speed up permitting for eligible projects under Trump’s executive order, adding that new procedures will be posted publicly.

The odds are heavily weighted toward Enbridge, according to Matthew Fletcher, a citizen of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and a professor of law at the University of Michigan.

“The rule of law is basically dead. Enbridge and the feds are not acting in good faith,” he said in an email. “It must be apparent to the tribes that, in this administration, no matter what the tribes say or do, or evidence they provide, etc., Enbridge will get absolutely anything it wants from the United States.”

The tribes aren’t alone. The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues has repeatedly called for the suspension of pipeline operations until the free, prior, and informed consent, or FPIC, of affected Indigenous nations has been secured. FPIC, a right guaranteed under international law that says countries must consult with Indigenous peoples in good faith and obtain consent for development projects on their land, is rarely enforced and the U.S. has yet to codify the obligation.

“Any law that requires consent, or even consultation, of Indians and tribes, is a threat to this entire industry,” Fletcher said. “I guarantee this administration will ignore and/or denigrate all of these laws on behalf of their climate change-inducing and pollution-generating constituents.”

But even adhering to the Trump administration’s “America First” priorities, the tunnel project shouldn’t receive a fast-tracked permit, said David Gover, an attorney for the Native American Rights Fund which is representing Bay Mills. “You’re talking about a project, Line 5, that serves Canadian companies and Canadian interest,” he said. 

While much of the pipeline’s oil and gas products pass through Michigan and on to Canadian refineries, Enbridge says the pipeline provides jobs and other benefits to the state, including more than half of Michigan’s propane. Those benefits won’t pay off in the long run, according to opponents, and experts have said the pipeline’s continued operation would generate tens of billions of dollars in climate damages. Moreover, replacing that section of pipeline wouldn’t create more capacity, Gover said, “So there’s no extension or expansion of meeting those energy needs here in America.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

“We are multifaceted governments, and not all tribes oppose oil. But all tribes in the state of Michigan have stood up to say that this is a bad project,” said President Gravelle. “If we wanted to protect one of our most precious resources, which is the Great Lakes themselves, we would decommission this for those future generations.”

Editor’s note: Earthjustice, one of the law firms representing the Bay Mills Indian Community, is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why Indigenous nations are walking away from pipeline talks in Michigan on Mar 31, 2025.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist, BPR, a public radio station serving western North Carolina, WBEZ, a public radio station serving the Chicago metropolitan region, and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan.

On a recent Friday afternoon, Marie Richards sat in her living room in northern Michigan. She was having a hard time talking about her job at the U.S. Forest Service in the past tense.

“I absolutely loved my job,” she said. “I didn’t want to go.”

Richards, a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, was a tribal relations specialist at the Huron-Manistee National Forests. In mid-February, she found out she was one of the some 3,400 workers who had been targeted for layoffs — an estimated 10 percent of the workforce — as part of the Trump administration’s move to cut costs and shrink the federal government.

Richards watched as some of her colleagues were laid off on February 14 — the so-called Valentine’s Day massacre, when the Trump administration laid off thousands of probationary employees, generally hired within the past two years. She got a call from her supervisor that Saturday informing her that she had been let go, too. The letter she received cited performance issues, even though she, along with others in a similar position, had received a pay raise less than two months earlier.

“None of us deserved this,” Richards said. “We all work hard and we’re dedicated to taking care of the land.”

The U.S. Forest Service, which stewards 193 million acres of public lands from Alaska to Florida, was in trouble even before Trump took office. Chronically understaffed, the service was already under a Biden-era hiring freeze, all the while on the front lines of fighting and recovering from back-to-back climate disasters across the country.

For now, workers with the Forest Service fear this isn’t just the end of the line for their dream careers, but also a turning point for public lands and what they mean in the United States.

“It’s catastrophic,” said Anders Reynolds with the Southern Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit that litigates environmental issues in the southeastern U.S. “We are losing an entire generation of talent and passion.”

The federal agency does more than ensure that Americans have a place to hunt, hike, fish, or paddle. In the South, forest workers played a key role in helping western North Carolina and other communities recover from impacts of Hurricane Helene. In the West, they’re taking on fire risk mitigation and fighting wildfires. They’re also involved in fisheries management in places like Alaska. Across the country, agency biologists and foresters are busy working to strengthen the over 150 national forests and 20 grasslands it monitors in the face of changing climate.

Increasingly, the service is getting spread thin. 

The agency has experienced a steady decrease in staffing over the last decade and the workers that remain are often overworked and underpaid, according to Reynolds.

“That means you’re going to see those campgrounds close, the trails go unmaintained, roads closed, you’re going to feel the effects of wildfire and hurricane recovery work that’s just going to remain undone,” said Reynolds. “Communities are going to struggle.”

The Forest Service has reduced its capacity over many years, causing headaches for staff.

A report from the National Association of Forest Service Retirees showed the agency losing a little over half of staff who supported specialty ecological restoration projects — meaning a whole range of jobs, from botanists to foresters to wildlife and fisheries biologists — between 1992 and 2018. As a result, understaffed Forest Service ranger districts, hemorrhaging staff positions, have consolidated.

Former employees report they saw serious financial and staffing shortages during their time. Bryan Box, a former timber sale administrator with the Forest Service who took some time out of the agency to care for his aging mother, said he found the working conditions unsuitable for a stable, normal life. Box worked for the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Wisconsin, where he said he made so little he biked around on his off days rather than wasting money on gas. While he was working, multiple national forests around him consolidated, causing a downward spiral on organizational capacity.

“We decommissioned buildings, we decommissioned the infrastructure that we had back in the ‘80s and ‘90s when we had this huge staff,” Box said. “And that put us into a position where we couldn’t hire seasonal employees anymore because we didn’t have housing for them. In rural northern Wisconsin, you know, just there’s not any housing available really. I think at one point our firefighters were all living above a bar.” 

Other foresters he knew failed to make rent and were evicted or lived itinerantly, couch-surfing, for the love of the work they did. For Box, the financial realities became untenable. So, too, had the restrictions on his work, which grew as budgets failed to grow.

Box’s program was expensive to run and required travel, often to reduce fire fuels by harvesting timber after an emergency. The program he worked for, Box said, ended up needing to reduce costs by cutting travel funds and ending overtime, making it difficult for him to do his job well. 

Much of their work involves emergency response, not only fighting fires but also picking up the pieces after conflagrations and hurricanes leave potentially thousands of acres of dead timber. 

Matthew Brossard works as the current business representative and organizer for the National Federation of Federal Employees, and was formerly the general vice president for the National Federation of Federal Employees’ Forest Service Council, which represents around 18,000 employees of the Forest Service, 6,000 of whom are probationary, meaning they have either recently been hired or moved to a new position within the agency. Typically, probation — a part of every federal hiring process — is one or two years. Probationary employees were primarily targeted in the layoffs, meaning a generation of hires is potentially interrupted. Brossard said even though the administration maintains they have not fired positions essential to public safety, there’s more to fighting fires than just the firefighters. Support and logistical personnel are essential. “Extra dispatchers, security to close off roads, food unit leaders, base camp managers, all these very important, 100 percent-needed positions. Those people are getting terminated right now,” Brossard said. 

In another instance recounted by Brossard, someone on assignment to help with long-term hurricane recovery in Louisiana was fired while he was there. The employee lived in Oregon and reported having no financial support for his trip home. 

The loss of a seasonal workforce will also be felt, Brossard added. “Without that influx of seasonal workforce, it puts a huge amount of work onto the permanent staff if they’re still employed to do all the work,” he said, meaning not only trailwork and campground maintenance, but also research and other essential work. “So the work that in the summer that should have been done by 15 or 20 people are now going to be done by five or six.”

As workers continue to struggle with the fallout of their abrupt firings, their union is jumping in to protect them, Brossard said. The NFFE-FSC has joined in multiple lawsuits to challenge the firings, including one filed February 12, provided to Grist, that aims to put a stop to the firings and reverse the ones that have already happened, on grounds that the terminations are unlawful. A decision on the lawsuit is still to come, with more potential legal action following, Brossard said. 

“You’re not reducing, you know, the stereotypical bureaucrats,” Brossard said. “You’re reducing the boots on the ground that are going out and doing work.” 

In an emailed statement to Grist, a spokesperson with the U.S. Department of Agriculture said the new agricultural secretary, Brooke Rollins, supported Trump’s directive to cut spending and inefficiencies while strengthening the department’s services. “As part of this effort, USDA has made the difficult decision to release about 2,000 probationary, non-firefighting employees from the Forest Service. To be clear, none of these individuals were operational firefighters.” 

The statement continued, “Released employees were probationary in status, many of whom were compensated by temporary IRA funding. It’s unfortunate that the Biden administration hired thousands of people with no plan in place to pay them long term. Secretary Rollins is committed to preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted.” 

Back in northern Michigan, Marie Richards, the former tribal relations specialist, crunched down the snowy driveway, pointing toward the Huron-Manistee National Forests where she worked. It spans nearly 1 million acres and covers land tribal nations ceded in two treaties, which the federal government has a responsibility to keep in trust. 

Richards said workers like her are also a vital part of pushing the federal government to meet its trust responsibility to tribal nations. She helped connect the region’s federally recognized tribes with officials and staff at the forest service, set up meetings, and ensured work was being carried out responsibly. 

“It’s not just the damage to that trust relationship with the Forest Service,” said Richards, who left her job as a repatriation and historic preservation specialist for the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians to work at the agency. “It’s across the board for so many things, and tribes trying to work through that freeze, and making people understand that this isn’t DEI — that this is governmental affairs.”

Richards doesn’t know what’s next; she wants to finish her dissertation (about the impact of the lumber industry on traditional cultural landscapes and Anishinaabe bands and communities) and continue her work. 

“It still really hurts that this dream of mine is kind of shattered, and we’ll see, and find a new dream,” she said. “But ultimately, my career, my livelihood, is in tribal relations for our heritage and I will find a home somewhere.”

Lilly Knoepp contributed reporting to this story.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline US Forest Service firings decimate already understaffed agency: ‘It’s catastrophic’ on Feb 27, 2025.