The Institute formed a grassroots group, Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear, which quickly organized people to attend public meetings and write letters to park management and elected officials. The group developed a long-range vision, found money to operate, and recruited more than 100 supporters. In response to the public's concern, the Park Service has agreed to work on a preservation plan.

The Institute and Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear have big plans for 1999: to bring in a preservation expert to speak on successful similar projects in national parks; apply for funding from the federal government, businesses, foundations, and citizens; and have a barn re-raising party at the Olsen farmstead in the summer.

Draining an Unjust Law
In 1998 the Institute's Public Trust Alliance project began an investigation of Michigan's Drain Code, a law devised in the 19th century to provide public funding to drain land for farming.

We found that developers and local governments now use the law to drain valuable wetlands, pollute rivers, and force local taxpayers to finance the storm water systems for sprawling new development. Not only that, but the unchecked runoff from ever more parking lots, roads, shopping malls, and subdivisions has turned streams into polluted flood-gorged canals after heavy rains, causing serious erosion downstream in backyards and public lands.

The Public Trust Alliance is working hard to show how the Drain Code and other state policies provide developers with privileges that are superior to the rights of ordinary citizens. We are seizing the "property rights" message on behalf of the environmental and public interest community, and making it our own.

Reform Sweeps the Oil and Gas Industry
After working for three years to strengthen oversight of the oil and gas industry, the Institute's Michigan Energy Reform Coalition had much to celebrate in 1998. The state Legislature accomplished more last year on this important front than it has in decades.

In response to the numerous, documented injuries caused by poisonous hydrogen sulfide releases from wells, processing stations, and pipelines, the state Department of Environmental Quality drafted new regulations. These proposals will require drilling companies to thoroughly report accidents and provide emergency response plans to the DEQ and local governments. The Coalition is working to keep these regulations from getting watered down, and we're also continuing to push for a total ban on the poisonous gas where people live and work.

Political leaders also responded to the public's widespread concern about potential environmental damage caused by "directional drilling" from the shoreline under the Great Lakes. Gov. John Engler imposed an indefinite moratorium on leasing Great Lakes bottomlands in April.