Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/author/capital-news-service/page/33/)
Capital News Service is a wire service at Michigan State University covering state government - issues and personalities.
The latest round of Department of Agriculture (MDA) grants will promote new cost-effective ways to manage wastewater from food processing — a rising concern in growing specialty crops.
The grants to companies in Frankfort and Grand Haven and to Michigan State University are part of a larger initiative to enhance the state’s agriculture industry, including food processing.
Michigan environmental groups say the Senate has unjustifiably delayed a bill to ban a chemical linked to brain damage among breast-fed children.
New research shows increasing concentrations of flame retardants in women’s breast milk in the Great Lakes basin.
Studies show the chemical can harm human health and is finding its way into soil, water and wildlife in Michigan.
Whether consumers should be allowed to purchase unpasteurized milk has been a hot topic in Michigan for years.
Michigan’s bats are under attack — not from tennis racquet-swinging bat swatters or vampire-hunters but principally from a deadly fungus with the potential to disrupt the ecosystem.
Nationwide, white-nose syndrome has wiped out an estimated 1 million bats since it was initially seen in a New York cave in 2006. Since then, it’s been identified in 14 states and two Canadian provinces and is moving westward.
The Department of Natural Resources and Environment has issued its final proposal to impose fishing restrictions on 73 more miles of river, but not without controversy.
With the decline of the automotive industry and Michigan’s economy taking a turn for the worse, workers and businesses are looking for ways to turn things around – and they may have found one answer: Wind energy.
But wind energy isn’t an easy industry to get into because it’s extremely competitive.
Compact fluorescent light bulbs use less energy.
They also contain mercury, and that has some doctors concerned about their ultimate disposal.
Crude oil, once nearly 30 percent of energy produced in state, is now only 4 percent. Production dropped 85 percent between 1980 and 2007. Alternative energy production in Michigan is increasing, but lags other Great Lakes states.
Colony collapse disorder is a scientific mystery in which bees suddenly disappear from their hives.
Large research projects are underway to determine the causes.
Scientists are looking at food sources, nutrition, diseases, viruses and parasites.
A study in Colorado and Texas may influence the Great Lakes wind energy debate.
It says that coal plants ramping up to accommodate the intermittent nature of wind could be more polluting than if they ran at a set rate.