(MI) The Detroit News – Gardening is quiet and hopeful, a specific remedy for despair that requires only soil, water, sunshine and human will.

By Allison Bush, bushalli@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
June 5, 2009
Some shoreline cottage owners blame dredging and other human-caused activities for eroding the St. Clair River and lowering Lake Huron.
But experts with the International Joint Commission cite variations in climate as the main cause for dropping lake levels in recent years.
Although erosion from both human and natural causes contributed to the declining water levels in lakes Michigan and Huron, it has only played a small part in recent years, said Frank Quinn, a participant in the IJC study.

(MI) Bay City Times – A university study says agriculture is the main contributor of E. coli bacteria to Lake Huron.

(NY) The New York Times – A new appraisal of existing studies documenting the links between tiny soot particles and premature death from cardiovascular ailments shows that mortality rates among people exposed to the particles are twice as high as previously thought.

(PA) Erie Times-News – A 12th Street parking lot, transformed into a welcome center. Pedestrian-friendly sidewalks and safe intersections. And a port that serves as an international shipping center.

(NY) The New York Times -A federal judge has blocked state officials from implementing an expansion of the state’s recycling laws that would include a deposit on water bottles, a delay that could cost the state tens of millions of dollars that it was counting on to balance its budget this year.

(IL) The Chicago Tribune – BP is facing new questions about its Whiting refinery from federal environmental regulators, who accused the company Thursday of starting a project to process heavy Canadian oil three years before it obtained the necessary permit.

(IL) Chicago Tribune – To walk the grounds of the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant in 2009 is to see nature’s best effort to heal the scars of a once-heralded manufacturing empire.

(MI) Ludington Daily News – Ludington’s S.S. Badger is lauded, revered and adored for its uniqueness as the last operating coal-fired passenger ship in the United States. On the other, it faces environmental regulation for that very reason — coal, or, in this case, a coal-burning waste product, ash.

(MN) Minneapolis Star-Tribune – Chain saws and experts are converging in the Twin Cities in the fight against the emerald ash borer.