Great Lakes Echo (http://greatlakesecho.org/tag/hazardous-waste/page/3/)
(MI) Holland Sentinel – Rainwater infiltrating the separate sanitary sewer system in Holland, combined with power outages, led to the overflow of more than a million gallons of untreated sewage into Lake Macatawa on Saturday. Holland’s stormwater sewer lines are designed for rain, while sanitary sewers capture material from drains in homes and businesses. More
(MI) Detroit Free Press – The Environmental Protection Agency has given Lake Michigan Carferry, owner of the SS Badger, until 2012 to change its practices — a deadline the company says it will meet. The Badger hauls people and vehicles between Ludington and Manitowoc, Wis. The Badger’s crew mixes coal ash waste with water and dumps the slurry into Lake Michigan during each trip. “It’s been tested. It’s inert, benign.
(NY) The New York Times -Swimmers were told to stay out of the water on Sunday at Coney Island and nearby Manhattan Beach because of concerns about a sewage overflow. The city’s parks department posted signs Sunday saying swimming was not permitted at the two Brooklyn beaches. But the Coney Island boardwalk was open, and sunbathing on the sand was allowed. The city’s Department of Environmental Protection said ocean water at the two beaches might be contaminated by raw sewage from a sewage treatment plant that overflowed. More
(MI) Muskegon Chronicle – Since the early 1990s, the environmental mess that is the former Whitehall Leather Co. tannery site and adjacent Tannery Bay has been the source of many meetings, debates, deadline delays and negotiations. The final cleanup plan, which will effectively end much of that work and prepare the site for redevelopment, is nearly ready for submission by Genesco, the former owner of the site that is still responsible for its cleanup. More
(MI) Muskegon Chronicle – The material in the six contaminated lagoons on the former Whitehall Leather Co. tannery site likely won’t be removed, based on comments Wednesday night by environmental consultants and state Department of Environmental Quality officials. Many of the 100 or so residents who turned out for a public meeting at the Howmet Playhouse voiced concerns about the proposed plan that would leave the lagoons in place. The proposal is expected to be part of a final cleanup plan for the entire 33-acre site polluted by more than a century of leather-tanning operations. A developer wants to turn the site into condominiums. More
(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. Rich, green grass has returned to the small ridge known simply as “the burning grounds,” where TNT and old munitions were melted and recast decades ago. Lush cottonwood and hackberry trees now stand on the high grass where smoke stacks spewed noxious fumes into the air. Beavers and birds cool themselves in the winding creek that was a dumping ground for harmful solvents and chemicals. But below ground, the picture is different.
(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. With coal burning comes waste, emissions through the stack – specifically exempt from regulation by Wisconsin and Michigan state law – but also an ash slurry that is dumped daily into Lake Michigan. That ash discharge used to be considered normal operating procedure for coal-fired vessels. A 1973 portion of the U.S. Clean Water Act – when there were still more than 50 coal-fired vessels operating – stated discharges like the Badger’s, which are “incidental to normal operations,” were allowed.
(MI) Michigan Messenger – Federal environmental officials recently announced an agreement with Georgia-Pacific Corp. to begin work on capping a Kalamazoo Township landfill filled with material laden with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, part of a federal Superfund cleanup of the Kalamazoo River. Design work on the $13 million project will begin this year and be complete sometime in 2010, said Michael Berkoff, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s project manager in charge of landfills on the Superfund project. More
(NY) New York Times – There are not many towns in America that would welcome the 2.5 million cubic yards of toxic sludge being dredged from the bottom of the Hudson River in New York, but to hear Mayor Matt White tell it, Eunice is one of them. Storing waste nobody else wants means more jobs, Mr. White said, and the oil workers here are used to living with hazards. After all, there are several oil wells in the town itself. One of them is a block from City Hall.
(MI) The Detroit News – Most of them, if not all, smell and smell bad. Some pollute Michigan’s air and water and increase human health risks. One of their main byproducts is, to put it politely, excrement — and lots of it. And for better or worse, they might be a big part of Michigan’s farming future. The practice of crowding more livestock onto fewer acres, known as concentrated animal feeding operations, has helped many Michigan farms survive and even thrive in an era when many midsize farms are being squeezed out of business.