Echo

Opinion: Environmental hearings should be messy, inefficient and public

By |

By David Poulson
Dec. 14, 2009

Confession may be good for the soul but it sure makes for lousy public policy. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources last week dug out an old chestnut of a strategy for soliciting comment on a $600 million copper-nickel mine. Critics nickname this process the confessional style of public discourse. Usually government officials resort to it as an efficient way to handle hearings where hundreds of people are eager to express dissatisfaction, if not anger.

Echo

Emerald ash borer spreads through Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ontario, Quebec

By |

By Nick Mordowanec

Dec. 13, 2009

LANSING, Mich. — Ever since the emerald ash borer swept through Michigan in the summer of 2002, the state has spent tens of millions of dollars to subdue it. But the exotic beetle thought to have come to the United States through airplane or ship cargo remains rampant. Adult beetles cause minimal damage by nibbling on foliage, but the larvae feed on the inner bark of trees, disrupting nutrient and water flow.

Land

Michigan boosts wood exports

By |

By Caitlin Costello
Dec. 12, 2009
LANSING, Mich. – A 40-foot crate is packed with northern Michigan white cedar panels and siding ready to be shipped to Korea by Boyne Falls-based Town & Country Cedar Products. The company started exporting a year ago to expand its customer base after economic downturns forced the industry to “look at changing the way they do business in order to survive,” said national sales manager Mike Rathbun. Strong personal business relationships are important for international marketing.

Echo

Road salt quickly makes its way to area streams

By |

(WI) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Several hours after county and municipal trucks began spreading salt on area streets and freeways in this week’s snowstorm, the salt was detected in urban rivers and streams by a series of water quality monitoring gauges, an environmental official at the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District said Wednesday. Chloride concentrations in Honey Creek in Wauwatosa rose to levels that could kill fish and other aquatic life on Tuesday afternoon and remained at toxic levels until Wednesday morning, said Chris Magruder, the district’s community environmental liaison. More

Echo

Waukesha taking first step to solve radium problem in wells

By |

(WI) Pierce County Herald – Waukesha took one small step yesterday toward getting rid of its radium-contaminated water wells. A committee in nearby Milwaukee recommended that the city declare an interest in selling water to Waukesha under the terms of the new Great Lakes water protection agreement.  

Waukesha is just outside Lake Michigan’s natural basin — and under the new compact, it might eventually get approval from all eight Great Lakes governors to use Lake Michigan’s water. As part of the process, Waukesha is seeking bids from communities which already use the lake’s water — and the city would tap into them. More

Echo

Dow AgroSciences fined $70,000 by EPA for violations at Harbor Beach

By |

(MI) Bay City Times – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reached an agreement with Dow AgroSciences on alleged Clean Air Act violations at the company’s pesticide production facility in Harbor Beach. The agreement, which includes a $70,000 penalty, resolves EPA allegations that Dow Agro violated national emission standards for hazardous air pollutants at the plant, according to information from the EPA’s Region 5 office in Chicago. More

Echo

Lone Tree environmental group to host dioxin meeting

By |

(MI) Bay City Times – The Lone Tree Council, a Saginaw Bay area environmental group, is hosting a “community conversation” with Peter deFur at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Delta College Lecture Theatre. Lone Tree and other organizations are bringing deFur to town to discuss dioxin contamination in the region and the draft consent order between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Dow Chemical Co. of Midland to address the contamination. More

Echo

Asian carp raises fear and loathing on Great Lakes

By |

(MI) The Associated Press – After nearly four decades as a fishing guide on the Great Lakes, Pat Chrysler has seen enough damage from invasive species to fear what giant, ravenous Asian carp could do to the nation’s largest bodies of freshwater. “It’s like introducing piranhas to the Great Lakes,” Chrysler said from South Bass Island in Lake Erie, which teems with walleye, perch and other fish that draw anglers from near and far. More

Echo

Michigan mulls tax break for a fifth battery maker

By |

By Jordan Travis
Dec. 11, 2009

LANSING, Mich. — Any Michigan business hoping to claim a fifth advanced battery manufacturing tax credit will have until March 31, 2010, if Sen. Gerald Van Woerkom, R-Norton Shores, gets his way. The lawmaker introduced a bill that would extend the deadline to apply for a credit of up to $25 million per year for four years. The bill, he said, was written with fortu PowerCell GmbH, a German battery manufacturing company, in mind.

Echo

Petri pork project aims to reduce emissions by forgoing the farm

By |

(ON) The Globe and Mail – Do you care if your sausage never had a chance to squeal? It’s a question green-minded grocery shoppers may one day be faced with if a group of researchers in the Netherlands figures out how to exercise the test-tube-grown pork they’ve got lazing around in petri dishes so the meat will toughen up — and taste — as though it had been raised on a farm. Part of a government-funded group called the In Vitro Meat Consortium, the Dutch scientists are attempting to produce meat while doing away with the farm altogether — a bold departure from the general run of research into ways to stem the harmful atmospheric emissions caused by industrial livestock farming. More