Christina Hall

Detroit Free Press

Safe drinking water for all Michigan residents topped the list of priorities in the state's new 30-year water strategy to protect, manage and enhance the state's water resources, including the Great Lakes.

Gov. Rick Snyder rolled out the new plan Friday at the Lake St. Clair Fisheries Research Station in Harrison Township with sunny skies and the Clinton River and the lake as a backdrop.

The initiative has four other main priorities:

Achieving a 40% phosphorous reduction in the western Lake Erie basin

Preventing the introduction of new invasive species

Supporting investments in commercial and recreational areas

Developing and implementing Michigan's water trails system

Earlier in the day, Snyder was in Flint, a city that has been in a water crisis because of a dangerous level of lead in the drinking water supply likely caused by a failure to add corrosive controls to a new water source.

"We're making progress there. We need safe water throughout Michigan," Snyder said. "There's a framework here for long-term success."

Snyder did not put a dollar figure on how much the decades-long plan would cost, saying, "I wouldn't want to throw out a number. It's a large number. The important part is to reinvest. The first part is community engagement."

While some of the efforts may cost money, officials said, others may be voluntary, such as boaters washing and drying their vessels after leaving a body of water to help eliminate bringing in an invasive species.

Jon Allan, director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Office of the Great Lakes, said the plan has been in the works for several years and is the vision of not only officials but also residents.

"This is something we do together," he said.

The plan is to deal with water issues that officials have been talking about for a couple of years, such as harmful algae blooms in Lake Erie that disrupted the drinking water supply to Toledo in 2014, and invasive species, including Asian carp and the New Zealand mudsnail, recently found in the east branch of the Au Sable River near Grayling.

U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, a Harrison Township resident and a boater, said the effort to reduce phosphorus in the western Lake Erie basin is aggressive with a 20% reduction by 2020 and 40% reduction just five years later. Phosphorus runoff comes from farms and other sources, which contribute to algae blooms.

Miller said "painfully, we have not been the best stewards" of the Great Lakes.

However, she said the statewide plan address many important areas, including refurbishing and upgrading a real-time water monitoring system to Lake Erie, part of which was installed but not fully maintained because of cost in the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River.

The plan also has wetlands preservation, Miller said, which is "really Mother Nature's sponge."

Miller, who said more than seven billion gallons of sewer overflows enter the Clinton River, said there is "room for improvement" with the state's bodies of water.

Contact Christina Hall: chall99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter: @challreporter.