Our mission

FLOW's mission is to ensure the waters of the Great Lakes Basin are healthy, public, and protected for all.

Our mission encompasses all waters in the Basin, including groundwater, wetlands, rivers, streams, and inland lakes. We empower residents to know their rights under the public trust - an ancient and durable legal doctrine - that exists in all Great Lakes jurisdictions and provides its 40 million citizens a legal right to use these common waters for drinking, fishing, swimming, recreation, navigation, and the like.

We hold governments accountable for safeguarding our shared resources and address systemic threats to the Great Lakes Basin such as contamination, deteriorating infrastructure, and climate change.

The Great Lakes belong to all of us and they are ours to defend.

What we do

We believe access to clean water is a fundamental human right, essential for public health. Unfortunately, many communities in the Great Lakes Basin lack access to clean, safe, and affordable drinking water due to various issues, including household water shutoffs, lead contamination, failing infrastructure, emerging contaminants, and pollution of groundwater resources. Moreover, private interests are profiting from the extraction and bottling of public water, depleting Great Lakes tributaries, and endangering wildlife and personal wells. Climate change exacerbates surface water level changes, and the decaying Line 5 oil pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac continue to pose a significant threat to the Great Lakes.

Great Lakes Protection
FLOW is a leading legal and scientific voice and a founding steering committee member of Oil & Water Don't Mix, a broad-based, multi-year campaign to prevent a massive oil spill from the decaying pipelines that cross the open waters of the Straits of Mackinac.

Groundwater Protection
45% of Michigan residents drink groundwater, yet Michigan is the only U.S. state without a uniform septic code. FLOW is working to overcome more than 30 years of legislative gridlock in passing a statewide septic code that establishes a reasonable inspection schedule, ensures county health departments have sufficient resources to administer inspections and provides financial assistance to septic owners who may not be able to afford the cost of septic repairs or replacements.

In addition, FLOW is working with allies to tackle polluter pay reform. Since the repeal of polluter pay laws in Michigan in the 1990s, Michigan has amassed 11,000 contaminated "orphaned" sites for which the parties responsible for groundwater contamination are unknown.

Keeping Our Water Public
FLOW is working on solutions to address disparities in access to clean water and healthy lake ecosystems. FLOW has drafted a model state law that affirms public ownership of water and creates a Water Trust Fund using royalties derived from bottled water sales to support public health protection and infrastructure investment. FLOW is also working with allies to address water affordability concerns across the Great Lakes Basin.