IVLP for Philippines (4) with Cultural Vistas. October 8: Musical performance by Darcy Wilkin of the Corn Fed Girls and Cohost of Grassroots on WMUK. October 12: James Baker, Director of Public Services of the City of Kalamazoo. October 13: Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director of FLOW - For Love of Water, and Ryan Baker, CEO of the Kalamazoo River Alliance.

In October 2021, we hosted three sessions as part of an IVLP focused on something near and dear to every Michigander’s heart - clean water. Our visitors from the Philippines were all administrators and policy makers tasked with providing clean drinking water to their communities. Before getting to our professional meetings, we provided a wonderful cultural experience for our guests. Owing to the 12 hour time difference, songwriter, musician, and co-host of Grassroots on WMUK, Darcy Wilkin provided a Saturday morning (Kalamazoo time) and Saturday evening (for our visitors) private concert. She played both original and cover pieces all rooted in the deeply-American folk music tradition. 

Our first of two professional sessions was with City of Kalamazoo Director of Public Services, James Baker. James is the top civil engineer in the city and is charged with providing Kalamazoo and neighboring community residents with clean drinking water, among other things. Mr. Baker covered the city’s water reclamation plant, its response to the PFAS/PFOS challenges, and the city’s groundwater infrastructure in great detail. In particular, the detective work required to successfully manage the PFAS danger was very interesting. The sourcepoints of the pollution had to be identified alongside novel filtration methods both at that sourcepoint and in the reclamation plant were experimented with. When a later PFAS scare occurred in May of this year, the Mr. Baker’s team acted quickly and efficiently based on what they learned. As our visitors were water utility professionals themselves, there was an excellent dialogue focused on ways to pre-empt detection of these types of chemicals, in part due to the difficulty in testing for them. Both Mr. Baker and our visitors noted they enjoyed this session greatly.

Changing gears somewhat, our second session was focused primarily on surface water and protecting it for generations of people, and wildlife, to come. We had two local hosts (in Traverse City and Kalamazoo) during this session. Ryan Baker, CEO of the Kalamazoo River Alliance, shared his experience starting the group with fellow anglers in 2020 after the botched repair of Morrow Dam on the Kalamazoo River, which deposited 400,000 cubic yards (40,000 heavy dump trucks) of silt along a 30 mile stretch of the river. His group has been working to hold the parties involved responsible and is seeking ways to restore the river’s heavily damaged fish population. Mr Baker’s segment was followed by an excellent presentation by the executive director of For Love of Water (FLOW), Liz Kirkwood. Ms. Kirkwood, an environmental lawyer now based in Traverse City, had previous work experience in Southeast Asia advocating for and supporting efforts to develop clean water policies in various nations, including the Philippines. She covered a great number of topics including the challenges presented by the Line 5 oil pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac, the enormity of our freshwater resources in the Great Lakes region, examples of cooperation by state, federal, and international bodies, and innovative policy to help communities gain a more equitable return for companies utilizing their natural resources. Our visitors had a ton of questions and were very engaged the whole time.

This virtual project examined water resource management and how its linked to the increasing vulnerabilities in community health, civil society, and national security. Participants had an opportunity to explore how the U.S. manages water resources at the national, state, and local levels as well as learn best practices from government and private sector stakeholders. Project participants were exposed to learning techniques that support long-term solutions to water scarcity as it relates to agricultural production. The project assessed regional and trans-boundary water management programs and discussed institutional, financial, scientific, and technical innovations for safeguarding freshwater sources.  They also examined best practices in securing safe drinking water supplies and wastewater management in urban areas and vulnerable environments.