- [Narrator] Coming up on "Great Lakes Now."

Are we prepared for an oil spill in the Great Lakes?

- Up until now, most of the focus on oil spills has been on marine oil spills.

We haven't thought that much about oil spills in fresh waters, but the impacts could be major.

- [Narrator] Floods, they can devastate communities and flood risk can be driven by buried rivers that flow beneath our feet as well as by our own history.

- 96% of the extreme floor risk, they were all in redlined communities.

(upbeat music) (air swooshes) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation.

The Charles Stuart Mott Foundation, Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at Detroit PBS, Polk Family Fund, DTE Foundation and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(air swooshes) - Hi, I'm Anna Sysling.

Welcome to "Great Lakes Now."

The Great Lakes are a source of drinking water for millions of people, so a major oil spill could be disastrous.

Are we ready to deal with one?

Producer David J. Ruck sought to find out what's being done to prepare.

(air swooshes) (upbeat music) - [David] In September of 2023, the US Coast Guard was in the Straits of Mackinac, along with partners from the US Navy and specialists in spill response, testing their oil spill preparedness in the event of a worst case scenario.

Rob McClellan is with the Navy's Supervisor of Salvage or SupSalv which maintains much of the response equipment deployed by the government during a spill.

- We are doing a joint training exercise with Coast Guard on open water oil spill collection equipment.

What we brought was a current buster and what it's used for is open ocean spills.

They were used extensively in the Deepwater Horizon spill and was able to be attached to a vessel, in this case a CoastGuard 225.

- [David] This exercise isn't just about equipment, it's about rethinking response strategies and exploring what's at stake in a freshwater spill, where threats are unique and the stakes are high.

- It is definitely a different operational environment and it caused us to rethink actions and operations that we've probably had taken for granted in the ocean and now we have to rethink about how those appointments are gonna be done here.

(workers chattering) - [David] Most spills happen in salt water.

So skills and experience needed to respond in a freshwater environment are thin by comparison and unlike the ocean, the Great Lakes are a source of drinking water for millions of people.

Additionally, unique economic, cultural and environmental considerations make freshwater response in the Great Lakes a daunting challenge on multiple fronts.

US senator, Gary Peters became aware of these challenges after the 2010 deep water horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

What if this happened in the Great Lakes?

- I had the commandant of the Coast Guard testify before my committee and I asked him, how confident was he that they could clean up a major oil spill in the Great Lakes?

And he was very clear that he is not confident at all.

He says the techniques aren't there, the training isn't there and he would not feel comfortable with a major oil spill.

- [David] It was 2017 when Admiral Zukunft then commanded onto the US Coast Guard, confirmed the senator's worst fears.

- I cannot state in with any degree of reliability that we have the technology right now to be able to recover that and mitigate that before it would truly cause downstream in environmental harm.

- You know, it's certainly my hope that we can continue to work together and perhaps look at how we can marshal resources in public-private partnerships as well as involving the academic community to do more research on oil spill cleanup in the freshwater setting, 'cause unfortunately we're likely to be confronted with these incidents and they may increase with time.

- [Narrator] Following these revelations, Senator Peters pushed legislation to address these gaps, which resulted in the establishment of the Great Lakes Oil Spill Center of Expertise led by the US Coast Guard.

With partners in research and industry, the center would focus solely on the science and strategies needed to better understand freshwater spills.

- We were able to get legislation in and passed to create the Center of Expertise and what they're gonna do is learn more and train more to be prepared to clean up spills in freshwater and in particular here in the Great Lakes.

- [David] Jerome Popiel, the incident management and preparedness advisor for the Coast Guard's Ninth District in Cleveland explains how the new center coordinates with other agencies to strengthen preparedness, specifically in the Great Lakes.

- Senator Peters engaged with our Coast Guard headquarters and came up with a plan to have this Great Lakes Center of Expertise to basically target the need for science, technology, testing and evaluation of oil spill response tactics in fresh water and what they did was first interview, who's who in the zoo of preparedness, response, research and development, internationally.

So they talked to Coast Guard and EPA, talked to state, talked to Tribes county EMAs, talk to NOAA, essentially all the partners that we typically work with in spill preparedness and response.

- [David] Lieutenant Commander Kit Pace leads the new Center of Expertise, located on the campus of Lake Superior State University.

- The Coast Guard's Great Lakes Oil Spill Center of Expertise is wholly devoted to this mission.

We can work with industry in a more collaborative way to talk best practices for everyone who's doing this mission.

We can talk to our industry partners, academia and the things that we find, recommendations that we have can be enacted in Coast Guard policy immediately.

- [David] Dr. Ashley Moerke, a researcher at Lake Superior State University's Center for Freshwater Research and Education underscores the importance of understanding the Great Lakes unique characteristics, particularly in extreme like winter ice.

- Really, we're in our infancy in terms of the, building the support structure and the infrastructure but that's also true of the science of oil in fresh water and so the projects that we're trying to support through Lake Superior State University and our collaborators is starting to address that, thinking about how we can detect oil early and how we can understand how it's moving and behaving in fresh water, particularly in cold water systems and under ice, but also understanding what are the most vulnerable parts of our Great Lakes ecosystem if a spill were to occur, so we can help target our efforts more effectively.

- [David] Dr. Kenneth Lee is a senior advisor on oil spill research, preparedness and response for the Canadian government.

- One of the things you have to realize is up until now most of the focus on oil spills has been on marine oil spills, because everybody thinks about disasters and tankers.

We haven't thought that much about oil spills in fresh waters, but the impacts could be major.

You have to remember, we're dependent on fresh waters for drinking water and there's a lot of socioeconomic benefits that we would worry about if there was damage from an oil spill.

- [David] Great Lakes freighters move millions of tons of cargo each year and carry tens of thousands of gallons of diesel or other fuel, oil pipelines zigzag above, under, around and near these bodies of water, refineries dot the coastline.

While these are critical economic forces, they also carry the potential for a major spill.

- The work that we are doing is addressing some of the biggest challenges related to oil spills in fresh water.

- [David] In the event of a spill, the Coast Guard oversees the response and leads a unified command system.

This might include local authorities and other agencies, but the work of the cleanup falls on the responsible party and their approved plan for such an incident.

- As a regulatory entity, our job is really to make sure that a potential responsible party is able to to clean up a spill.

- The responsible party is responsible for enacting the response.

The Coast Guard's there to oversee that and make sure that they do what the law says, so it's a big job, but the responsible party's really on the hook.

- [David] One responsible party that's faced in intense scrutiny is Enbridge, whose Line 5 pipeline runs through the Straits of Mackinac.

A spill from Line 5 could have catastrophic effects.

So the state of Michigan and Senator Peters have insisted that Enbridge reduce its risk.

In response, Enbridge has invested millions into its safety operation in the Straits.

- This is the operation center watch room.

The biggest threat to our pipeline is a anchor strike and we were specifically built for protecting the pipeline from anchor strikes or any damage from passing ship and we maintained a watch 24/7.

The Coast Guard established this regulated navigation area so that people do not anchor in the vicinity or near the pipeline - [David] Through the operation center, Enbridge helps enforce safe transit of the Coast Guards special navigation area near the pipeline.

Automated notifications to vessel traffic and constant monitoring by staff, including many former Coast Guard, ensure no one enters the area while unknowingly dragging an anchor.

- As a ship enters the Straits of Mackinac, we send a AIS message to the ship's navigation system advising them that they're entering a no anchor zone.

Our watchstander acknowledges it and starts tracking that vessel from the time it enters the straits, crosses over the pipeline and exits the straits on the other side.

If there is an unsafe condition, our watchstander is empowered to call the Enbridge control center and initiate a shutdown of the Line 5.

- [David] Shipping companies are also responsible parties.

So like Enbridge, they're required to have an approved response plan, which lays out how a responsible party will take action in the event of an emergency or spill.

Interlake Steamship company operates the largest privately held US flag fleet on the Great Lakes.

If a spill were to occur, a responsible party like Enbridge or Interlake might play a role in responding, but most often this work is done by an oil spill removal organization or OSRO, under contract with the responsible party.

One OSRO that works with both Interlake and Enbridge is Marine Pollution Control.

Bill Hazel is the company's president.

- Responses built in the United States is a partnership between responsible parties, regulatory bodies, in their case the Coast Guard and then response organizations such as Marine Pollution Control.

It all comes down to what people put into the plan.

What Interlake would do on any kind of incident that they have is they open the book.

So it's extremely regimented.

It starts from their plan, which identifies the procedures and protocol for calling out all the response agencies and the parties that need to be notified.

- [David] Katie Wells is Inter Lake's environmental officer.

- It's called activating your plan.

In fact, Coast Guard will say, have you activated your plan?

Our master is aboard, so they are in charge.

They are given the authority of this vessel, of the people on it.

They are the ultimate command and their job is to make that phone call to our designated person ashore.

I'm getting notified immediately.

I'm contacting our OSRO.

- [David] Rachel Wellman understands that the responsible party is most often the first to be on scene in the event of a spill, with expertise gained in her previous career as a commissioned officer in the Coast Guard, she now coordinates Enbridge training and response exercises.

- [Rachel] We have an incident management team that focuses on the overall management coordination of incidents and then we have what we call field response teams deploying equipment if there ever is an incident, we do that to optimize response times in the event that there is an incident.

- [David] In most cases though, the bulk of the response will come from an OSRO.

- We don't own skimmers, we do own boom and different immediate spill response equipment that we can immediately deploy in the event that we were to have an incident, but I'm relying on Marine Pollution Control to provide me with the skimmers and the educated personnel that know how to watch for the currents and the wind conditions and take all these other factors into place to give us the best possible outcome.

- What you have to have is open-minded, appropriately motivated people that want to do it the right way, that we're all interested in forwarding that response network.

- [David] At a recent ceremony to officially commission the Great Lake Center of Expertise, Captain Justin Peters, the United States Coast Guard's deputy director of Emergency Management spoke about the work being done and the work ahead for the center.

- In the two short years since the crew's been here in place, they've accomplished a great deal.

They've acquired cutting edge uncrewed systems, developed training and deployment protocols that have improved oil spill response capabilities throughout the Great Lakes region and those are exportable too.

- [David] For all its focus on spill and emergency response, the US Coast Guard can make no judgment call on the merits of oil related products or infrastructure on or near the Great Lakes.

Their job is simply to know that it's there and how best to respond to a worst case scenario.

What we do know transportation and use of these products is demanded by our current way of life until there is significant change of course, in that regard, spills remain an accepted risk.

- What keeps me up at night is certainly what we call the all hands on deck event and that would be the catastrophic incident.

I can sleep at night because I know that we've done our due diligence and done our best to be as prepared as we can, but if you say what keeps me up at night is the fact that these things can still happen.

(air swooshes) (bright music) (air swooshes) - Flooding can destroy property and have serious effects on health and it can follow patterns of housing discrimination from almost a century ago.

This segment is part of The Checkup: Water and Health in a Changing Climate, a project of the Great Lakes News collaborative.

BridgeDetroit, environmental reporter, Jena Brooker brings us the story.

(air swooshes) (bright music) - So my project is mapping Detroit's buried waterways.

So I've been out around the city, riding along the routes of the creeks and the streams and the drainage ditches, looking for things that relate to water and trying to understand how to navigate the city from a perspective of water rather than a perspective of concrete or freeways.

- So we're further up on Fox Creek now, where the creek daylights.

Can you explain what that means?

Joanne Coutts is a cartographer.

She logged many miles on her two-wheeler following as closely as she can, the trail of numerous buried creeks and streams that flow out of sight under the streets of Detroit.

- I tried walking, but the creeks are really, really long.

I've ridden about 220 miles so far, so if I tried to walk that, it would like take forever.

- [Jena] I asked Coutts how she goes about following these buried creeks if she can't see them.

- I use the 1905 U.S.G.S map and various other historical maps which I have downloaded to Gaia, which is a GPS mapping app and so then I have my phone mounted on the front of my bike and I'm able to see where I am in real time on these historical maps.

So I follow the root of the creek on the bike and at the same time I track and it creates a track of where I've been.

- [Jena] All of this tedious hard work is being done for a reason.

To produce a user-friendly map of where these buried waterways are located around Detroit.

- This is the map so far of all the creeks that I have ridden and all of these way points represent things that I have seen on the creeks that are related to water.

- [Jena] Coutts uses symbols and emojis to mark the location of various things like murals and cemeteries, even temporary things like seagulls and Canada geese.

- Something that's really important about map making is like, it's a snapshot of like an experience.

Maps don't have to be things that are always permanent.

- Why is it important that people know about buried creeks and where they are?

- Scientifically it may be important from the perspective of ameliorating the impact of flooding.

- [Jena] Although they can't be seen, these waterways are still flowing underground and the homes and neighborhoods built on top of these ghost streams are more prone to flooding and it turns out in Detroit and many other cities, there's a racial component to all of these buried waterways.

Jacob Napieralski is a geology and geographic information systems professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

(Jena speaks indistinctly) - So I did work several years ago where we found out that in Detroit, over 85% of the channels and rivers and streams that exist in 1905 have been removed from the landscape and then we started to combine that with communities and neighborhoods and we realized that the way we've sort of segregated communities in Detroit, that also impacts how people experience flood risk.

So we've manipulated the landscape and we've kind of moved neighborhoods and sort of segregated people into these communities and that was from redlining in the thirties and forties and so communities that were redlined and put in communities that were labeled hazardous, they tend to have a much higher flood risk.

- [Jena] Established by the US government, during The Great Depression, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation was meant to protect homeowners from foreclosure, but it also produced color-coded maps of major cities, grading neighborhoods largely based on race.

Wealthy white areas often got A or B ratings, meaning it was safe to loan money there.

While areas with more Black residents were frequently redlined, given a C or D rating, meaning loans there would be hard to come by.

- In these A and B communities, these are the really well-to-do communities, the ones that we had banks and lenders invested in them, they're also the ones that are more protected from really extreme flood risk.

- How does that compare to the communities that live in those historically redline neighborhoods now?

- So 96% of the the extreme flood risk at the parcel level, they were all in redline communities.

- [Jena] And many of those high risk parcels are also on top of buried waterways.

This is Jefferson Chalmers, a neighborhood on Detroit's far east side.

In the days of redlining, it was given C and D ratings.

Long before that, Jefferson Chalmers was a huge marsh called Grand Marais or Great Marsh until it was covered over and developed into housing.

Some houses back up to canals where residents can anchor their boats, but this water access comes with a price.

This neighborhood built on top of a swamp is the lowest section of Detroit and has a history of flooding after heavy rainstorms, because deep underground the water is still flowing.

I met with the Reverend Michelle Baylor, co-pastor along with her husband at the Emmanuel Grace AME Church in Jefferson-Chalmers.

- [Michelle] Welcome to our church.

- [Jena] Thank you.

Baylor vividly recalls the storm of 2021, which dumped six inches of rain in the Detroit area.

It was the second 500 year storm to hit in a span of just seven years.

- Miss Susan lives right across the way from the church, right?

And I remember when it was raining and she called me and she said, "Pastor, the back door is open."

And I said, "Well, can you go over and close it?"

She was like, "No, not exactly."

The water force had literally took the metal door off the hinges.

- [Jena] Baylor took us into the basement of the church, which is used as the fellowship hall.

She says, during the flood water came up to the ceiling, - [Michelle] We lost TV, we lost the refrigerator.

Everything you see now was replaced, like the tables.

Everything had to be replaced, the bathrooms had to be gutted.

So all of the bathrooms have been redone and it took a minute, it took, it took a minute.

- And how would you estimate that costed you?

- It was over a hundred thousand dollars, because our insurance was a hundred thousand dollars.

- It was over a hundred thousand dollars just to repair this basement room and it wasn't just the church, the entire neighborhood was flooded.

- I can't find the right words to say how impactful it is.

People are utterly surprised when they go in people's homes and realize that they don't have furnaces back anymore and realize that they still have three years of damage from a flood that happened in 2021, because they don't have the resources to clean it, right?

But it's their home, so they're living there.

- [Jena] And it's not just the money or the physical damage to homes and property, there's also an emotional impact associated with flooding.

- I listen to residents talking about flood anxiety and that when they get a forecast, it's not, oh, here comes the rain and there's excitements.

It's, oh, here comes the rain and they go in the basement, they start cleaning up, heart rate goes up and so there's a lot of research that connects unhealthy conditions, especially mental to floods and it's the inner city communities that are most stressed.

- Climate change will bring more intense rainfall and make flooding problems worse and flood risk can affect both the value of a home and the need for flood insurance, which can be expensive.

Recently, Zillow added climate risk scores to their listings and they're not alone.

It's smart to think about climate risks, but if flood risk is higher in historically redlining neighborhoods, will these climate risk maps replicate and perpetuate the harms of redlining?

Maybe, maybe not.

Just across the city limits from Jefferson Chalmers is the city of Gross Point Park, a wealthy suburb that got A and B ratings during redlining, but Gross Point Park was also hit by flooding in 2021 and Zillow's flood risk map reveals the city is almost as flood prone as historically redlined Jefferson Chalmers.

There's been a lot more research recently connecting flood risk with vulnerable communities and even redlining in some cities.

What made you wanna connect this all to ghost stream specifically?

- I think it was sort of a, the idea of what we've done in the past influences what we experience now, but can sort of help us understand potential solutions.

- [Jena] One potential solution, daylighting these underground streams by uncovering them.

Architect Lars Graebner helped to develop a plan for such daylighting.

He contributed to the book titled, "Mapping Detroit: Land Community and Shaping a City."

- So I overlay areas of the city which were vacant and which were in city hand or in hand of the Land Bank and other areas and started to dig in to find more and more streams.

This idea was really to create a self-sustaining hydrological system.

Use that as a new way of organizing the city.

- [Jena] Graebner presented his map nearly a decade ago to city planners.

He says, "To implement a plan like this is going to take a lot of initiative, political will and education of the general public."

- This is not an impossible vision.

It is actually very practical and what turned the city around to be a much, much better city and if you think not in political terms, in four years or eight years or 10 year time spans, but in generations, I think one would actually have something to look forward to, you know, a better city.

- [Jena] Daylighting streams may help alleviate flooding in the future by allowing rivers to expand and soak up water during heavy rains.

In the meantime, the people who live and work in Jefferson Chalmers do the best they can to cope with a flooding problem that only seems to be getting worse with each passing year.

- We don't store anything on the floor anymore.

- Okay.

- And we have tubs that we put things in so that they won't flood.

- I've had people tell me that they remember fishing or learning how to ice skate on a river and the river's no longer there and if it's manipulated, changed, dried up, if it's removed from the landscape, then part of you goes missing as well.

Now it becomes a memory.

So I always say the landscape remembers, there's a memory to that landscape, it knows where water's supposed to go.

There are people that are going out walking, biking because there's a personal connection to those systems.

(air swooshes) (bright music) (air swooshes) - Park rangers protect wildlife and help park visitors make the most of their experience.

Is it your dream job?

"Great Lakes Now" contributor, Ian Solomon talked with a ranger from Isle Royal National Park to find out.

(air swooshes) - There are two main, I would say, job realms of the park ranger world.

One is protection and the other is helping people connect with the park.

- Do you have a favorite part of your job?

- It allows you to have the knowledge to really experience something in depth and sometimes you're able to share that.

- If someone wanted to be a park ranger, you know, what should they know?

What should they do?

- I would say there's, oh, if during the summer, a dozen park rangers in the park approximately, yes, we protect this wilderness island in Lake Superior, but we protect caves, we protect mountains, we protect everything.

You just need to find that motivation and to look at the possibilities and see what sparks your imagination.

(air swooshes) - Thanks for watching.

To learn more about climate change in the Great Lakes region or for more about any of our stories, visit greatlakesnow.org.

When you get there, you can follow us on social media or subscribe to our newsletter to get updates about our work.

See you out on the lakes.

(air swooshes) (bright music) (air swooshes) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation.

The Charles Stuart Mott Foundation, Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at Detroit PBS, Polk Family Fund, DTE Foundation and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(bright music) (bright staccato music)