The Right Woman for the Job: Maureen Kennedy Looks Back on 15 Years of Environmental Service

Nov. 19, 2003

Crusading for local wetlands, holding developers‘ feet to the fire, creating an ordinance that wows ‘em nationwide... whoever knew that being a drain commissioner could be such an adventure?
Maureen Kennedy Templeton was an unlikely candidate for Grand Traverse County Drain Commissioner when she took on the job 15 years ago. For starters, she was a woman in what was considered a man‘s field. She was also just 28 years old in a profession in which most drain commissioners are in their 50s and 60s.
Nonetheless, over the past 15 years, Maureen has left her mark on Grand Traverse County, the State of Michigan, and perhaps even the nation with her foresight in creating a groundbreaking stormwater runoff ordinance which protects the environment while saving taxpayers money.
Then too, Templeton‘s support of watershed protection projects in the region, including those of Mitchell Creek, Yuba Creek and Long Lake, have contributed a wealth of knowledge, making Northern Michigan a national center for watershed studies through venues such as the new Water Studies Institute at Northwestern Michigan College.
She has also been an ardent crusader against illegal wetland fills, with the most notable case being that against developer Bill Clous of Eastwood Construction. After Clous thumbed his nose at state and county authorities and illegally filled more than 20 acres of wooded swampland in East Bay Township, Templeton kept the pressure on at the county level to ensure prosecution of the case.

BOWING OUT
With such an impressive track record, Templeton has exalted the role of drain commissioner to heroic status. Yet, to borrow a metaphor from her profession, life ebbs and flows, and for Templeton, it‘s time to move on.
“Now I‘m ready to leave -- I need to have time with my children,“ she says, sitting at her desk in a neatly-arranged office on LaFranier Road in Traverse City. “I really think it‘s good for people to do something new with their lives periodically. I love this job and could stay until I‘m 65, but I think it‘s good for people to change and that‘s what I plan to do.“
Like many a soul-searching professional woman, Templeton says she‘d like to spend more time with her children, ages four and nine, a decision she and her husband Dean have been considering since their youngest was born. She still plans to stay involved in water quality issues, most likely in Long Lake Township where her family lives, but she‘ll be wrapping up a total of 18 years in an office which now handles over 1,000 soil erosion permits for new developments each year.
All of this was quite unexpected for Templeton, who grew up in suburban Essexville outside Bay City and never imagined working in county government. Although she was raised in an urban landscape, she always had an interest in protecting the environment which blossomed early with her decision to seek a degree in environmental health at Ferris State. Her degree gave her a well-rounded education in water and air quality as well as soil preservation and dovetailed with her future profession.
“My commitmment has always been to protect the environment,“ she says. “That‘s why I‘m all about protecting the bay, the streams and the wetlands here. With the amount of development that‘s going on in the area, 10 or 20 years from now, who knows what this position will be like? I could be real controversial.“

WON‘T BACK DOWN
Templeton has a personal warmth and an earnest manner that would seem more inclined towards conciliation than controversy. But on the issue of wetlands filling in the Clous case, she kept the pressure on the county commission and prosecutor‘s office for more than a year to take action against what may be the biggest illegal landfill in the state. Her public comments on footdragging in the case put county authorities on the defensive, sparking vows of action.
“It‘s been a difficult situation and difficult for me to understand why it‘s taken so long to get annything done,“ she says of the Clous case. “Not only locally but at the DEQ and attorney general‘s office as well. It‘s been a real learning experience to see how long it takes for the legal process to work. What‘s also hard for me right now is I don‘t want people to think for a minute that I‘m leaving this job because of that case. People who know me know that I won‘t back down.“
Some of her resolve has to stem from the fact that Templeton knows the drain commissioner‘s office down to the nitty-gritty. “I learned everything from the bottom up,“ she says. “I‘ve held every position that there is in the office through the years.“

GETTING STARTED
Her first experience with Northern Michigan was as a college intern at the former Tri-County Health Department where she met accountant Bill Rokos, who was working on audits and budgets. After Rokos ran successfully for the post of county treasurer, he gave her a ring one day to say that there was a secretarial and payroll post opening at Grand Traverse County‘s drain commission office.
“It didn‘t have anything to do with my degree, but something was telling me to take the job,“ she recalls. “I really felt that and decided to take it for six months.“
That was in the late ‘80s when the region was suffering from high water levels on the Great Lakes. Templeton rose to the position of soil erosion inspector and then deputy drain commissioner. When Warren Verhage retired from the top post in 1988, she decided to run for drain commissioner at the age of 28. “I was pretty young at that point for a drain commissioner; plus being a woman was a very odd combination. At that time, the post was predictably male and drain commissioners were typically ages 55 to 60 across the state.“

GROUNDBREAKING ORDINANCE
When Templeton took the post, however, she learned that in some areas, the office lacked specific guidelines to follow beyond administering the Michigan‘s Soil Erosion Act. The Act requires a soil erosion permit for anyone building within 500 feet of a lake or stream, or when developing more than one acre of land.
A real concern for Templeton was the area of stormwater run-off in a county where rapid development was underway. At the time, developers were paving over large areas of Grand Traverse County with new roads and parking lots, with the resulting stormwater run-off flushing surface pollutants into the bay and creating flood problems. “I really felt we needed something we could hand a developer to get the situation under control,“ she says.
Templeton organized a stormwater workshop in 1989 which drew about 100 people. Some 60 people signed on to policy and technical committees, and environmental consultant Lillian Dean was hired to fine-tune what became a model county ordinance in stormwater control. The ordinance was approved in 1991 and has since been adopted by many other communities. “A lot of counties in Michigan have used it because it‘s really cutting-edge,“ Templeton says. “It‘s a prevention-type ordinance to keep stormwater problems from happening.“
Thanks to the ordinance, today all commercial developers must build retention basins on their property to collect stormwater run-off. “What the retention basins do is hold the additional water so it doesn‘t flush into the bay. This allows water to soak back into the water table, mimicking the natural hydrology of the earth.“
A bonus for taxpayers is that the ordinance puts developers in charge of paying for control of stormwater run-off, rather than saddling muncipalities with the bill. “It puts the cost of development back on the developer on a problem that can cost counties hundreds of thousands of dollars to correct.“

EDUCATION A MUST
Templeton has also headed-up a number of watershed projects in the area which have helped raised public awareness on the need to preserve resources such as Mitchell Creek. In East Bay Township, officials acted on a watershed study to implement a tiered buffer zone to protect Mitchell Creek, safeguarding a community treasure.
She has also been on numerous water quality committees at the state and multi-county level, and is ardent on the need to educate the public on the value of preserving our water resources. Overall, her‘s has been about as glorious a career as one could ask from civil service, and Templeton is more than grateful. “I‘m just so thankful for being given the opportunity to serve this community,“ she says. “It‘s been one of the greatest things in my life and I really thank the community for that because it‘s been wonderful.“
She‘s also grateful for the support she‘s had over tough issues such as the Clous case.
“People have come forward and have been really supportive. I think that people understand how difficult it can be to stand up for what‘s right. Sometimes it would be easier to do something different and just let a problem go, but I just can‘t.“