(MI) Detroit Free Press – What does it take to get Michigan’s state parks up and running for summer visitors each year? Although the parks generally stay open all year, many buildings are closed and staff is reduced over the winter. Here’s a look behind the scenes at some of the springtime work.

By Gabriel Goodwin
Capital News Service
MasTech Manufacturing L.L.C. and Mariah Power have come together, in Manistee, to produce windspires allowing Michigan to move closer to Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s renewable energy goals.
Mariah Power is spending $2 million to buy steel for the windspire production and hire 140 workers over the next three years, while MasTech is investing $1.5 million into the manufacturing site to update and retrofit equipment.
Granholm said, “If you can make a part for a car, if you can bend steel for a car, you can bend steel for a …

By Sarah Coefield, coefield@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
May 22, 2009
A Great Lakes water diversion to replace a Wisconsin city’s radium-contaminated wells has been both hailed as a responsible application of new water use regulations and blasted as unwarranted and precipitous.
New Berlin is the first city with residents outside of the Great Lakes basin to receive water under the latest version of the Great Lakes Compact, a federal agreement approved by bordering states and ratified by Congress in 2008.

(MI) Ann Arbor News – Critics charge that modifications to Pall Life Sciences’ long-running groundwater cleanup plan could endanger Ann Arbor’s drinking water.

(NY) The New York Times – The House Energy and Commerce Committee, splitting largely along party lines, approved on Thursday the most ambitious energy and global warming legislation ever debated in Congress.

(OH) The Plain Dealer – Mounds of dried river muck would be dumped and leveled to help create a large industrial park in the Cuyahoga River valley, under a unique plan crafted by Cleveland officials.

(MI) The Detroit News – Leaders of a $125 million light rail project said Thursday they have reached an agreement to collaborate with the city on a three-mile plan to link city riders in a local transit system.

(WI) Sheboygan Press – In the southeast corner of Sheboygan County sits 323 acres of rolling sand dunes, forest and wetlands representing one of the last major expanses of undeveloped — and unprotected — wilderness on the western shores of Lake Michigan.
For years, developers have been eyeing the privately-owned site — known as Amsterdam Dunes — for homes, a convention center, marina and even a casino.

(MI) Detroit Free Press – In a new vision of Detroit’s future, a team of visiting urban planners suggests the city might one day resemble the English countryside, with distinct urban villages surrounded by farms, fields and meadows.

(MI) The Detroit News – The new fuel-efficiency and emission standards may lead to smaller cars with lighter engines. This is not what consumers prefer, auto analysts tell us.