Fighting blight though faith
Detroit church takes stand against sprawl

By Erin Toner

Twenty-four years ago, Loraine Krajewski lost her home and her church. Both were demolished when General Motors built a sprawling auto plant over Poletown, a Polish-American neighborhood at the Detroit border. Krajewski says it was the fight of her life.

“I did things I never thought I would do,” Krajewski said. “I picketed in rain and snow. I wrote letters…And I went to meetings until 1, 2 o’clock in the morning at times, and I took time off from work to go downtown to council meetings.”

General Motors made a deal with Detroit in 1981 that allowed the company to raze Poletown in an effort to keep car making in the city. That deal forced more than 4,000 people out of their homes, including Krajewski.

She was mad at the city of Detroit for letting it happen and mad at the Catholic Church for not fighting the project. But she wasn’t mad enough to leave the church. Krajewski and neighbors forced out of Poletown found a new parish in the city, St. Josaphat.

Founded in 1889, St. Josaphat was the fourth Polish-speaking parish within Detroit. Krajewski still attends Sunday Mass at St. Josaphat, even though she has to drive 15 miles from her suburban home to the church.

“We decided we are not going to let another Polish church go down the drain," she said.
The Rev. Mark Borkowski is St. Josaphat’s pastor. He said people like Krajewski, who travel 10 to 20 miles for Mass, are just barely keeping the church open.

Only a few dozen Catholics show up at St. Josaphat for Sunday Mass — the church can hold 1,200 people.

Sunday collections alone can’t support the church, Borkowski said. “So with our monthly fundraising dinners, we can survive. But there’s a difference between surviving and flourishing.”

People left Detroit churches when they left the city for bigger plots of land and better schools in the suburbs. And the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit followed. It built brand-new churches in new communities surrounding the city.

After decades of declining congregations in city churches, the Archdiocese is rethinking its role in urban sprawl.

Rev. Ken Kaucheck is on the Detroit Archdiocese’s urban sprawl committee. Kaucheck said sprawl creates social and economic inequities between cities and suburbs.

“It creates blight,” Kaucheck said. “It creates loss, it creates desolation and desecration.
And it destroys not only communities, it destroys the lives of people.”

Kaucheck said the anti-sprawl campaign is encouraging local governments to work together on economic development issues. He said if communities don’t try to one-up each other to win new development projects, there would be less incentive for companies to move farther into rural areas.

Kaucheck said the church wants priests to talk about sprawl in Sunday sermons. He calls it “stirring the population” to affect social change.

“Is this what the gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to?” Kaucheck said. “No, it doesn’t call us to sprawl, it calls us to solidarity in community, and...maybe I’m going to have to give something up.”

It isn’t likely the Catholic urban sprawl committee will be able to do much to bring people back to Detroit parishes. Father Mark Borkowski at St. Josaphat prays about the problem to Our Lady of Czestochowa, the “Black Madonna.” Her image is at the center of his church’s main altar.

“My personal reason for the novena is to say to the Blessed Virgin Mary, ‘I haven’t got a clue as to what to do, so I’m turning the problem over to you. This is your shrine, if you want to stay here Mary, do something to help us help you stay.’ When the problem is too big you have to turn it over to a higher power.”

The Archdiocese works to protect the churches remaining in Detroit, and ones that could become the next victims of sprawl. Those are churches in so-called “first-ring” suburbs that once served the early waves of Catholics leaving Detroit.

Almost 40 Detroit parishes have closed since 1980.

This story was originally produced for the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, © 2004

RESOURCE

St. Josaphat Church: www.gbjann.com/stjosaphat

Common loon in the crosshairs
Lead poisoning take its toll on a threatened species

By Debbie Munson

Paired off as mates for life, two common loons will return to their annual summer home this spring — at an undisclosed secret location somewhere in the southern half of Michigan.

This particular nesting spot is kept a closely guarded secret because it is home to the southern-most breeding pair of loons in the country. The birds have chosen to put up house in an area of Michigan with very little undeveloped land around it, leaving few options for relocation if unwanted attention were too disruptive.

“In this situation, if they didn’t return the next season or if one of the loons died, it would mean the end of their legacy in Michigan,” said Arlene Westhoven, Michigan Loon Preservation Association president.

The Michigan Loon Preservation Association works to protect the common loon — which the state classifies as a threatened species — from the hazards of shoreline development, commercial fishing net entrapment and poisoning from mercury and lead in the environment. A network of volunteer Loon Rangers monitors the 500 breeding pairs known to nest in Michigan and reports their findings to Westhoven and the state Department of Natural Resources every week.

“We aren’t saying we want people to stop fishing, but all it takes to kill a loon is one lead sinker or jig,” Westhoven said, referring to the small, inexpensive pieces of tackle used and lost by millions of fishermen every year.

“Fishing is a really important part of the economy and culture of Michigan, and ending the poisoning of loons from lead fishing tackle is an issue everyone can do something about while still enjoying the outdoors.”

Getting the Lead Out

Lead fishing sinkers and jigs have been under scrutiny in the United States since the 1970s, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began investigating the effects of lead on water birds. But no formal action was taken to regulate the tackle until 2000 when New Hampshire — where loons are also a threatened species — became the first state to ban the use of small sinkers and jigs.

“Basically, our fish and game commissioner stood up at a meeting and said, ‘we know lead is bad for all kinds of things, so let’s just get it out of our environment.’ That’s when the ball really started rolling on the state legislation,” said Liza Poinier, New Hampshire Fish and Game Department information officer.

“There definitely was opposition from fishermen who didn’t want to be told what to put in their tackle boxes,” Poinier said. “After all, we are the ‘Live Free or Die’ state. But once we started our educational campaign and people learned more about the issue, they just got it. Now we are moving to expand the original bill from a ban on the use of lead to a ban on the sale of it, too.”

Four more states — New York, Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont — have followed New Hampshire’s lead with their own versions of lead tackle restrictions, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has banned the use of lead sinkers and jigs in 13 national wildlife refuges, including the refuge in Seney, Mich.

A bill proposing a statewide ban on the sale of lead tackle by 2007, and its use by 2008, was introduced in the Michigan House of Representatives in August, but was still in committee at press time. If it became the law, the bill would require the state to conduct an educational campaign promoting the use of non-toxic tackle and the proper disposal of lead sinkers and jigs before any enforcement begins.

The Loon Doctor

Restrictions on lead sinkers and jigs were sought by both conservation groups and state agencies after research by Dr. Mark Pokras, director of the Wildlife Clinic at Tufts University, showed a significant link between loons eating lead tackle and subsequent deaths from lead toxicosis, or lead poisoning.

“Lead is killing loons that are part of the healthy, breeding population in New England,” said Pokras, who examined hundreds of dead loons from nine Northeast states during his 10-year study. “Normally with loons we see deaths from diseases that have picked off the weak birds, but lead sinkers and jigs are indiscriminate.”

Diving birds — such as loons — pickup lead sinkers and jigs while feeding and looking for small stones that aid in digestion. The strong acids in a loon’s gizzard break lead down into a toxic substance that enters the bloodstream, nervous system and organ tissues.

Loons suffering from lead poisoning will have seizures, trouble flying and act disoriented, Pokras said. They will not be able to feed and often end up beaching themselves until they die from starvation or are attacked by predators. Pokras, a wildlife veterinarian, has only seen one loon with lead poisoning survive the ordeal.

The combined data from Pokras’ research show that on average, 46 percent of dead loons have lead sinkers or jigs in their system. Pokras also found the frequency of finding lead in the bird’s system went up dramatically — in some cases to 80 and 90 percent — in areas that are heavily fished year round.

“At this point, lead isn’t going to endanger overall loon populations,” Pokras said. “But it could be a factor in areas where the breeding pairs are already feeling pressures.”

A smaller data set collected by the Michigan DNR over a 10-year period found at least 24 percent of dead loons had ingested lead sinkers or jigs, results Pokras said are consistent with his research.

“We have hundreds of animals dying a painful, slow death over a one to two week time period that is totally preventable,” Pokras said. “A federal ban on the use of lead is what we eventually need, but fishermen can make the choice to use non-toxic sinkers and jigs now.”

Consumer Choice

The American Sportfishing Association, an industry trade group, contends that bans on the use or sale of lead tackle are premature and may wreak havoc on an industry with an annual economic output of $1.1 billion in Michigan alone.

“We don’t deny that if a loon eats a lead sinker it will probably die,” said Gordon Robertson, ASA vice president. “But so far we have not seen evidence that this causes a decline in the overall loon population. There are bigger pressures on the entire loon population from shoreline development and mercury contamination than from individual lead sinkers or jigs.”

While the ASA does represent some tackle companies that already produce non-toxic sinkers and jigs, Robertson said considering the economic impacts of lead tackle bans is the ASA’s priority.

“Right now we don’t see significant consumer response to the non-lead sinkers and jigs on the market, except in the states where the sale of lead is prohibited,” Robertson said. “If it is required, and the cost of fishing goes up, does that mean they’ll play golf instead of fish? We can’t take that chance.”

Although the non-toxic tackle available today — made of tin, aluminum, bismuth, putty, ceramics, tungsten and steel — is more expensive than traditional lead varieties, pro fisherman Mike Weidman said the slightly higher cost is negligible considering the superior performance of the newer non-toxic weights.

“Professionals are lucky enough to win a tournament here and there, so we can afford the nicer fishing equipment,” said Weidman, who fishes the Michigan BASS Federation circuit and smaller tournaments around the state. “That’s one thing the manufacturers don’t get yet — the tungsten sinkers and pliable sticky weights just perform better, so of course we are going to want them.”

An employee at Bass Pro Shops in Auburn Hills, Mich., Weidman also said he believes most fishermen enjoy the whole experience of the outdoors and want to pass that legacy on to their children.

“I want our resources to be clean, I want my kids to hear loons on the lakes when we go fishing,” Weidman said. “If I can do that and get better performance from my equipment, then everybody wins.”

Including two common loons somewhere in southern Michigan.

RESOURCES

For more information on non-toxic sinkers:
http://www.moea.state.mn.us/reduce/sinkers.cfm

Follow the life of Michigan House Bill 6114 (proposing a statewide ban on the sale and use of lead tackle):

http://www.michiganlegislature.org/mileg.asp?page=getObject&objName=2004-HB-6114

Learn more about common loons:
http://www.michiganloons.org