Echo

Waste agency to restart pharmaceutical collections

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(IL) Chicago Tribune – North Shore and northwest suburban residents can resume giving some old pharmaceuticals to the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County as long as those medications do not include controlled substances. SWANCC stopped collecting pharmaceuticals from member cities earlier this year after the federal Drug Enforcement Administration called its attention to a regulatory hitch: Patients cannot give controlled substances to anyone for disposal, except police departments. More

Wildlife

30,000 cormorants destroying lakeside park

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(ON) The Toronto Star- One arm of the Leslie Street Spit, home to Tommy Thompson Park and the Great Lakes’ largest colony of cormorants, looks like a wintry apocalypse. There are no trees now, just a few guano-spattered snags. This is where cormorants first settled in the park in 1990. They now number about 30,000. In some Ontario parks, Parks Canada officials shoot cormorants to stem the loss of trees.

Air

China benefits from Obama’s fuel mandate

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(MI) The Detroit News – On the same day President Barack Obama marched the Big Three auto executives smiling to the guillotine, China announced it will not set mandatory emissions standards and instead will attack greenhouse gases with a strategy that doesn’t threaten its ferocious economic growth. America has chosen a sharply different tack, as was apparent this week at the White House, where Obama announced he would make the harsh California emissions mandates the national standard. The automakers, now wards of the federal government, had no choice but to cheer the mandates, even though a senior Ford executive told the L.A. Times the mandates would likely put the automaker out of business.  More

Land

Detroit farming interest grows

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(MI) Detroit Free Press – The Detroit-based Self-Help Addiction Rehabilitation Inc. (SHAR), a nonprofit drug rehab center funded by the state and others, is proposing that it be given up to 2,000 acres of vacant city-owned land to farm. The project, known as Recovery Park, would have the dual purpose of teaching addicts therapeutic and marketable skills and rehabbing the city itself, said SHAR’s chief executive, Dwight Vaughter. More

Wildlife

Counting frogs: Keeping track of species keeps habitats healthy

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(IL) Chicago Tribune – Crouched in fields of prairie grass under moonlit skies, Matt Hokanson leads workshops three times in the spring to teach new monitors how to count the population of frogs by the number of calls they hear. There are 13 native species of frogs in Illinois, Hokanson said, but four to five are limited to specific habitats such as sandy areas. The rest can be found in wetlands where habitats are located by aerial photographs taken by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Audubon Society Chicago Region. More

Echo

On Golf Courses, Sensors Help Save Water

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(NY) The New York Times – In seven years of overseeing every root and blade of grass on the grounds at the Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa., Matt Shaffer has built a reputation on innovation and conservation. An early advocate of course playability over aesthetics, he long lived by the maxim “the drier, the better.”

But when a stifling heat wave threatened the club’s greens before the 2005 United States Amateur Championship – a record 17th U.S.G.A. championship at Merion – Shaffer turned to his old boss, Paul R. Latshaw Sr., for advice. Latshaw told him there was one way he could continue to cut down water use while keeping his turf dry and as fast as a microwave: sensors. More

Echo

Interest in diesel vehicles quietly growing

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By Thomas J. Morissey
Capital News Service

LANSING — Although hybrids may be the most talked-about vehicle technology, good old-fashioned diesel is quietly making its own resurgence, according to a new study by a multinational marketing research firm based in Michigan. “The hybrid electric vehicles continue to get the most attention. They’re the ones consumers are most familiar with, and they’re already on the road,” said Bryan Krulikowski, vice president of Farmington Hills-based Morpace Inc.

But personal vehicles with diesel engines are catching up, according to the company’s recent Powertrain Acceptance and Consumer Engagement study. “We asked a question on our survey about awareness of clean diesel vehicles on the road today,” Krulikowski said. About 70 percent of those who responded were at least aware of the technology.

Echo

Suing to Stop Bottled Water From Getting a Deposit Fee

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(NY) The New York Times – A coalition of bottled water companies filed suit on Tuesday to block an expanded bottle deposit law scheduled to take effect next month, arguing that the law, which imposes a deposit fee on bottled water sold in New York State, is unconstitutional. The new law requires distributors to collect a 5-cent deposit per bottle of water, which can in turn be redeemed by consumers, provisions designed to encourage New Yorkers to recycle the billions of water bottles now thrown away each year. But companies that bottle water must affix a new universal product code label to bottles sold in New York. More

Echo

Georgia-Pacific Corp. agrees to new $13 million cleanup for Kalamazoo River Superfund site

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(MI) Kalamazoo Gazette – Georgia-Pacific Corp. has agreed to a new $13 million cleanup for the Kalamazoo River Superfund site in Allegan and Kalamazoo counties. The settlement was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court and announced Tuesday by the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. Atlanta-based Georgia-Pacific will install a landfill cap for a portion of the site, which includes an 80-mile stretch of river extending to Lake Michigan in Saugatuck, a three-mile segment of Portage Creek, closed paper mill properties and four landfills.  More

Energy

The Earth Wins One

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(NY) The New York Times – The nationwide automobile mileage and emissions standards announced by President Obama on Tuesday represent a huge step forward in the effort to limit greenhouse gases and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. They also represent a departure from the Bush administration’s indifference on these issues and an important down payment on Mr. Obama’s pledge to fashion an aggressive and imaginative energy policy. The standards, forged after weeks of negotiations orchestrated by Carol Browner, the White House coordinator on energy and environmental matters, may also mark the end of decades of wearying, unproductive legal and political combat between the automobile industry and environmentalists.  More