(NY) The New York Times - The decision by the Chesapeake Energy Corporation not to drill for natural gas in New York City’s watershed is a smart and welcome move on the company’s part, and very good news for the 8.2 million New York City residents who depend on this environmentally sensitive region for their drinking water.

(MI) Grand Rapids Press - Will the wind someday carry water from Lake Michigan to Grand Rapids water customers?

(MI)  Detroit Free Press - Transportation is an inherently regional issue. Everyone enjoys the economic, social and environmental benefits of a good mass transit system, whether they ride it themselves or not. (Skeptical? Ask employees at local grocery stores, hospitals and coffee shops how they got to work.)

(IL) Chicago Tribune – Mayor Richard Daley’s top budget aide tried Wednesday to convince the City Council that the wheels aren’t falling off the city’s blue-cart recycling program, even as he acknowledged there would be no major expansion of the program to most of the city for at least another year.

(NY) The New York Times - House and Senate conferees yesterday approved a $10.3 billion spending plan to fund U.S. EPA for fiscal 2010, a 36 percent boost over last year’s levels.

(NY) The New York Times - Bowing to intense public pressure, the Chesapeake Energy Corporation says it will not drill for natural gas within the upstate New York watershed, an environmentally sensitive region that supplies unfiltered water to nine million people.

(IN) The Post-Tribune - U.S. Steel Gary Works will begin treating benzene-laden groundwater leaking into Lake Michigan from north of its coke plant by the end of October.

(MI) The Detroit News - Congressional negotiators reached a deal Tuesday that would effectively exempt 13 shipping companies that haul iron ore, coal and other freight on the Great Lakes from a proposed federal rule meant to reduce air pollution.

(MI) Traverse City Record-Eagle - Who hasn’t been riveted by the spectacular images of Michigan in the award-winning Pure Michigan ads? Many of these spots focus on our state’s most defining feature — water.

By Emily Lawler
Oct. 28, 2009
LANSING– Asian longhorned beetles and sirex woodwasps and hemlock woolly adelgids – Oh my!
Those three invasive species spotted in northeastern Ohio could soon ravage Michigan, and that could prove disastrous, horticulture experts warn.