Great Lakes Echo (http://greatlakesecho.org/2012/02/page/3/)
Communities often struggle finding ways to dispose of household drugs. Michigan officials are funding community programs in an effort to keep the drugs out of water sources.
It’s been a weird winter in the Great Lakes region. We’ve had warm temperatures, almost no snow and I’ve even seen the sun in February. Although not having to shovel the driveway is nice, I have had a very disappointing cross-country ski season. Maybe it’s time to invest in more versatile winter sporting equipment. Take, for example, the Snourfboard.
Coal tar sealants protect pavement from cracking and splitting from the elements.
But new research shows the sealant is a major source of toxic chemicals in nearby air and water.
I recently got an email about a free comedy show in Ann Arbor, Mich. Featuring Canadian stand-up comedian Derek Forgie. Derek is not a typical comedian. He’s an activist whose entire show is about the bottled water industry. He prides himself on being raised on tap water (according to one of his YouTube videos), entertains a crowd while serving up a great lesson about water quality and why tap water is (much) better than anything bottled. One of his four reasons: the price. Forgie compares paying for bottled water to buying an Oh Henry candy bar for $10,000. He asks if you would buy a dollar candy bar if someone were to charge you ten thousand times what it’s worth. The Ann Arbor show was in collaboration with Food and Water Watch, a national consumer advocacy group.
Coal-fired power plants in seven Michigan counties have been linked to hundreds of premature deaths in the state. But utilities warn that new federal regulations will lead to plant shutdowns and increased customer costs.
If scouring the shoreline for dead birds is one of your favorite pastimes, there’s a citizen science project just for you. Beachcombers around the basin can help scientists track potential outbreaks of a disease caused by a dangerous toxin, avian botulism, using the Wildlife Health Event Reporter. “What we’re trying to do is broaden the core of people who are looking for things,” said Joshua Dein, wildlife veterinarian with the U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis. “Often what we find is when you have five or 10 dead animals in one spot it gets people’s attention. Where we don’t have a lot of information is dead animals in ones and twos, which may be just as significant.”
The Wildlife Data Integration Network, a partnership between the National Wildlife Health Center and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, put together the Wildlife Health Event Reporter.
The debate in Wisconsin over sandhill crane hunting is heating up. Research shows that the cranes are genetically diverse, which is a strength that hunting could severely impact.
To submit an image to Great Lakes Echo Photo Friday, send photo, caption and your name to greatlakesecho@gmail.com.
A group in west Michigan is restoring a heavily polluted creek by drawing on their faith to spur environmental engagement. The Plaster Creek Stewards are leading by example to clean up the river.
By Jon Gaskell
Capital News Service
LANSING— Beware the Northern snakehead. Beware the inland silverside. And beware a host of other invasive species prompting a recent report recommending spending billions to separate the Mississippi River from the Great Lakes. The Asian carp is the media darling that gets all the attention. But according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, there are 39 other “high-risk invasive species” that might migrate through Chicago waterways and have the potential to wreak ruin on native ecosystems.
Of these species, 10 could potentially cause huge environmental damage, the agency said. “Asian carp are sort of the canary in the coal mine,” said Jared Teutsch of the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes.