Bill Wright braves the snow at Saginaw bay. Avram Golden
It all began with the flood of the century.
When Bay City resident Bill Wright began working in the Saginaw County planning department in 1986, unprecedented flooding struck a broad swath of the central Lower Peninsula.
The city of Saginaw and surrounding communities were hit particularly hard because land there is low and flat. There’s almost no topographical difference between the swampy area where the Shiawassee and Tittabawassee Rivers converge to form the Saginaw River and the river mouth about 25 miles to the northeast.
A strong northeast wind can blow water from Saginaw Bay right back up the river into the city of Saginaw and surrounding communities.
And that’s exactly what happened in 1986, in spectacular fashion.
"The mid-September flooding here actually exceeded what they projected as the hundred-year flood, which meant they had to go back and redo all the calculations because it was worse than they thought it was going to get," Wright says. "But on the local level, it made a number of community leaders very much aware of the fact that we are all in this boat together."
And Wright was one of them. The ’86 flood roughly coincided with the American and Canadian governments establishing 43 different environmental Areas of Concern (AOCs) along the Great Lakes, including the Saginaw Bay and Saginaw River, in 1987.
Between the wake-up call of the flooding and the environmental issues that the local AOC listing brought to light, Wright says he was “pretty well bitten by the watershed bug” from the late ‘80s on.
In his capacity in the county planning office, Wright participated in the formation of the Saginaw Bay Watershed Council, which united 40 different area governments shortly after the flooding.
He also became involved in watershed protection groups including the Saginaw Bay National Watershed Initiative, an effort funded by a special state congressional appropriation, and the Saginaw Basin Alliance. The groups petered out in the early ‘90s when state funding for the SBNWI, which had supported them, dried up. But Wright and other stakeholders in the organizations regrouped as a single new coalition called the Partnership for the Saginaw Bay Watershed, which Wright chairs today.
Recent years have seen some noted improvements in the watershed, and Wright says he's “overall pretty satisfied” with progress towards delisting the Saginaw AOC. Since 2008 three of the AOC's 12 beneficial use improvement (BUI) indicators have been officially removed: tainting of fish and wildlife flavor, taste and odor of drinking water, and loss of fish and wildlife habitat.
Wright describes the AOC system as a "stroke of genius" for the way it’s united local environmentalists and given them common goals to work toward and a common way of measuring their progress. However, he says the specific language involved in drawing up BUIs can be troublesome in some cases.
Although the Saginaw AOC's wildlife habitat BUI has been removed by the terms of the BUI as written, Wright says habitat issues still remain in the AOC. And he says it’s “kind of silly" to claim that water taste and odor issues in the AOC are resolved, given recent major water problems in Flint (which lies outside the AOC but still within the Saginaw Bay watershed).
"Sometimes it just seems like there are processes that we won't have much control over, and other processes that will take much longer than my lifetime to finish solving," Wright says. "That’s a little frustrating. You’d like to see the game over, but you don't want to rush into declaring a victory and going home when we've still got other issues to deal with."
Wright retired from Saginaw County in 2002, and from his last part-time job in 2011. But he remains involved in environmental work and has no intentions of stopping anytime soon. Asked why his passion for the local environment has remained so strong, Wright's answer is simple: he's a grandfather with his grandson in mind.
"I’d like to be able to tell him, ‘I'm passing this on to you in better shape than we found it when I was a kid,'" he says. “Not that I can take credit for it, but I can certainly take credit for being on the side of the effort that did accomplish it. Maybe I'm just a cheerleader for it, but if the cheerleader can raise the energy level and help people stay focused on moving the ball forward, then that’s all to the good."
This series about restoration in Michigan's Areas of Concern is made possible through support from the Michigan Office of Great Lakes through Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
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