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Everybody is talking about the Blue Water economy these days.

MICHIGAN RISES: Water Key to Manufacturing Edge Over South, West States

Save Your Union Money Boys, Rust Belt States Will Rise Again

May 30, 2014       Leave a Comment
By: Dave Rogers

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Everybody is talking about the Blue Water economy these days.

But what does it really mean for us day-to-day?

What our blue water (the Great Lakes) gives us is an edge in the future of manufacturing, according to Dr. George Puia, Saginaw Valley State University professor.

"The Blue Water Economy means using water smarter and in more sustainable ways," Dr. Puia said at the Bay Area Chamber of Commerce Bay Area On the Go event this week at the DoubleTree hotel-Bay City riverfront.

The Davidson Room was jammed with eager learners despite the fact that Dr. Puia and Eileen Curtis of the Bay Area Community Foundation have given the same presentation several times before.

Obviously, the Bay County Road Map for the Future, first unveiled Jan. 7, "has legs" as the political wags say. That means it's a story of lasting interest and importance. (See Road Map, Jan. 8, and Chamber Links Leaders, MyBayCity.com, March 12.)

Inside the strategic planning lingo of the Bay County Road Map to the Future, Dr. Puia wove a bigger message--one of hope and promise that will drive the engine of rebirth in the Rust Belt.

"CEOs predict the decline of China by 2040 because of their one child policy; they will no longer have enough young workers to keep their manufacturing economy going," said Dr. Puia.

In the U.S., the South and the West Coast will "max out" because they can't create sites with water, and manufacturing requires water, he predicted.

Those Blue Water factors appear to have the seeds of a renewal of the much-maligned Midwest as the center of the world's economy -- much as when Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago ruled the productive landscape during the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the last century.

A recent Michigan Economic Center Report: "Water, Michigan and the Blue Economy" is a baseline inventory of Michigan's blue economy activity and conservatively estimates nearly one million Michigan jobs, and $60 billion in annual economic impact, linked to Michigan's water assets and water innovation abilities.

http://discoverygreatlakes.org/white-paper-on-water-and-michigans-economy/

The report was commissioned by the Governor's Office of the Great Lakes to inform a developing state water strategy, and as a first step context-setter for the project "Growing Michigan's Blue Economy", supported by the C.S. Mott Foundation, designed to accelerate the growth of Michigan's Blue Economy.

It's hard to remember the pre-air conditioning days when it was too hot to run factories in the South and parts of the West, when factories rose in now scorned spots like Hamtramck and Ecorse, Michigan, Gary and Whiting, Indiana, Akron and Canton, Ohio, and Erie and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The big question for Bay County is, how do we attract professionals with degrees to relocate?

The reincarnation is not just going to be handed to us, Dr. Puia indicated. "P-20 education (pre-school through grad school), workplace skills, apprenticeship, internships--all must be upgraded by Rust Belt states," he advised.

The region has fallen in those areas, especially places like Bay County that cannot match many other regions in a key statistic -- percentage of the population with college degrees.

Just how deficient are we in the attainment of college degrees? Only 18 percent of people 25 and older in Bay County have at least a BA or higher, he said, noting that figure is about 7 percent below the state average.

At 24.7 percent, Michigan is better than West Virginia at 17.3 percent and Arkansas at 19.3, but still lagging far behind the District of Columbia, 47.5 percent, Massachusetts, 37.9 percent, Maryland, 35.2 percent, Virginia and Vermont at 33.9 percent, and Washington, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Connecticut, all in the 30s.

Dr. Puia's Global Economy honors group at SVSU is working on strategies for Bay County, said Dr. Puia, examining the education of the workforce for jobs that don't exist today.

"We need a higher level of engagement and support from the community in schools; we need to be relentless in looking as subgroups," he said, with Ms. Curtis, who operates a college student support center at the Bay Area Community Foundation nodding agreement.

One drawback is that we don't have a BA degree-granting institution located in Bay County, which is not entirely true since Northwood University has a program at Delta College whereby students can accomplish a four-year degree.

Ms. Curtis outlined an exciting (to educators and social scientists) program aiming at females who don't have even a GED (General Educational Development) certificate, a high school diploma equivalency.

Many of these women don't have the $150 to take the GED test, for them a hard factor to overcome, she said.

The BACF Women's Philanthropy Circle has helped 10 women work toward their GED certificates; five have achieved that and some have gotten jobs. Now, with a $25,000 grant from Walmart, the BACF is poised to take the program to a new level.

She closed with the magic words: "Money is not a barrier."

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Dave Rogers

Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read,
respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City.
(Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com)

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