Echo

Solar energy moving in Michigan, but slowly

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By Joe Vaillancourt
Capital News Service
The University of Michigan competes with a prestigious solar car team. Start-up solar projects in Lansing and at Michigan State University (highlighted in the video to the right) show the potential of solar power in the state. Even signs along Michigan’s freeways are powered by the sun. Despite such advances in efficiency, experts say solar energy and self-sufficient homes aren’t in Michigan’s near future–and not because of weather. Costs, among other concerns, remain too high for most consumers.

Echo

Five more solar job openings in Midland

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(MI) The Mudpuppy – A new Evergreen Solar facility in Midland is hiring, again.The company has posted openings for five jobs so far this month. The openings are for three process technicians and two production shift supervisors.  The plant will make a patented product called String Ribbon for use in photovoltaic panels. More

Echo

Rubber ducks race for clean water initiative

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(MI) The Detroit News – Thousands of yellow rubber ducks raced down an Oakland County river to raise money for the Oakland Plus for Clean Water initiative. The first Duck Regatta, on Sunday afternoon outside the Cranbrook Institute of Science along the Kingswood shoreline, aided the nonprofit’s initiative in Oakland County and surrounding areas. The event also helps support the Oakland Plus environmental education programs in schools. More

Echo

If confirmed, officer is latest H1N1 death

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(MI) Detroit Free Press – If confirmed as a case of H1N1, Ryan Settlemoir’s death would be the third in Michigan from the virus. According to the Michigan Department of Community Health, there have been 418 confirmed cases of H1N1 in the state. In the United States, there have been 17,855 confirmed or probable cases and 45 deaths from the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Michigan Department of Community Health is doing further testing to confirm what caused Settlemoir’s death. Health departments in Oakland, Macomb and Washtenaw counties also are investigating the death, Madison Heights Police Chief Kevin Sagan said.

Energy

Grant would help Sterling Heights go green

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(MI) Detroit Free Press – City officials have applied for a $1.2-million federal grant to buy hybrid vehicles and cut energy costs. The funding, from the Department of Energy and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, could be approved this fall. More

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Departments to Toughen Standards for Mining

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(NY) New York Times – The Obama administration said Thursday that it would toughen standards for mountaintop-removal coal mining but would not end the practice as some environmental groups had hoped. Officials from four agencies said they had agreed to order a more rigorous legal and environmental review of pending and future applications for mountaintop mining in Appalachia. The technique involves blasting the tops off mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams. The practice has buried hundreds of miles of streams and has polluted water throughout the region. More

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“Pandora’s Locks” creates route for invasive species that destroy Great Lakes ecosystem

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There are brief moments of gothic ghastliness in Jeff Alexander’s new book: Eel-like sea lampreys repeatedly strike and latch onto a teenage girl trying to swim across a choppy Lake Ontario at night. A 50-foot-wide band of dead fish lines a 40-mile stretch of Lake Michigan’s shore. Loons poisoned with botulism can’t hold their heads out of the water, and drown. But while those images might give readers the willies, the book’s larger tale of the federal government’s failure to keep invasive species out of the Great Lakes will make them downright sick. Michigan State University Press published Pandora’s Locks: The Opening of the Great Lakes-St.

Echo

Genesee may face fight in bid to tap Lake Huron

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(MI) The Detroit News – Genesee County’s proposal to draw 85 million gallons of water per day from Lake Huron is likely to face a legal challenge from at least one other Michigan county. Genesee buys its water from the city of Flint, which buys it from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. County officials say they are looking for other options in the hope of securing better prices and reliability for its customers, and they are negotiating with Detroit Water and Sewerage for a possible long-term deal. Last month, the county’s drain commission applied to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality for permission to build a pipe system and withdraw water from Lake Huron. More

Echo

Eels edging toward extinction in Lake Ontario

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(NY) Newsday – The American eel has for millennia carried out a remarkable survival saga, swimming thousands of miles of ocean to reach Lake Ontario, where it matures the swims back to its ocean birthplace to spawn and die. But after 125 million years, the eel is struggling to run the gauntlet that humans have thrown in its way and is vanishing from the St. Lawrence River-Lake Ontario system, say New York and Canadian scientists. Scientists estimate when the Onondaga Indians fished the lake centuries ago, there were up to 60 million eels thriving in the Lake Ontario system. As recently as the 1980s, the American eel population in Lake Ontario topped 10 million eels, according to harvest studies.

Echo

DNR investigates fish kill in Lake St. Clair

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(MI) The Detroit News – State wildlife experts want to know why thousands of dead fish are floating on Lake St. Clair near St. Clair Shores. Rotting fish, including smallmouth bass, muskie, walleye, perch and bass, are littering boat wells and shorelines across several miles. “It was just unbelievable,” said Adam Jankowski, a Harrison Township resident who usually puts his boat in the water at St.