Ken Winter
Waste

A new focus on PBB

By |

Ken Winter comments on what some consider one of Michigan’s worst agricultural disasters, continuing to make headlines some 40 years later.

Water

New laboratory will study effects of consumer chemicals on aquatic life

By |

(ON) The Hamilton Spectator –  A new $4.6-million, state-of-the-art research facility at the Canada Centre for Inland Waters will be used to try to better understand the environmental consequences of everyday chemicals and contaminants. Scientists at the Aquatic Life Research Facility, which opened yesterday, will look at the downstream implications of consumer products such as dyes and cosmetics on fish and aquatic life. More

Waste

Joliet seeks hike in EPA radium limits

By |

(IL) Chicago Tribune – Joliet is pushing the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to more than double the concentration of cancer-causing radium it’s allowed to dump onto farmland in the south suburbs, expanding the potential for deadly radon gas in these increasingly urban communities. Radium is a naturally occurring radioactive element abundant in deep-water wells in northern Illinois and throughout the Midwest. Cities such as Joliet that rely on these deep wells spend millions of dollars each year to remove radium from their drinking water. Some communities pay to dump radium in a landfill, but Joliet and others use a cheaper alternative, mixing it with waste material that is sold to farmers as fertilizer. More

Water

Mercury limits disregarded

By |

(OH) Columbus Dispatch – Since 2004, the state has allowed 42 treatment facilities, power plants and factories to ignore federal limits on dumping mercury into lakes, rivers and streams.

This year, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is considering more than 30 new requests for variances from companies that argue that the cost of keeping mercury out of the water far exceeds any benefits to wildlife and human health. More

Echo

Appleton Papers to appeal PCB ruling

By |

(WI) Green Bay Press Gazette – A court fight over funding a paper-industry cleanup of PCB contamination in the Fox River rekindled Monday when one company disclosed plans to appeal a judge’s recent ruling and another moved to reassert its own legal claims.

An attorney for Appleton Papers Inc. said the company will appeal U.S. District Judge William Griesbach’s ruling Dec. 16 to dismiss a claim by Appleton Papers and NCR Corp. for cleanup contributions from several other parties. More

Echo

PCBs: No laws were broken

By |

(WI) Green Bay Post Gazette – The recent decision by U.S. District Judge William Griesbach to throw out a lawsuit by area paper companies is just another travesty in the PCB Fox River saga. To place the cost on the paper mills alone is wrong. When PCBs were discharged in the river as a byproduct of carbonless paper manufacturing, it was a legal thing to do. Years later, after the federal government banned the use of PCBs in 1977, the government steps in and is forcing companies to clean up a problem that was created by what was legal at that time. That does not make any sense.

Echo

Down river pollutants hurt chances for harbor dredging funds

By |

(MI) Grand Rapids Press – Hopes to get $1 million or more for dredging have been washed away because Kalamazoo Harbor is at the wrong end of the river, a Superfund cleanup site. Mark Bekken, a member of the harbor’s master plan committee, told Saugatuck’s City Council that that a consulting firm has advised that it probably won’t get any funding because the harbor is downstream from pollutants at Kalamazoo. More