Land

Great Lakes cities found at the intersection of walkable and affordable

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We’ve always known that the Great Lakes are the center of the freshwater universe. But who would have thought that they are the intersection of affordability and walkability? A group that’s developed a method of scoring a community’s walkability recently listed neighborhoods in a dozen U.S. cities that are not only easy to get around, they’re affordable to live in. They produced the list with Walk Score data – which measures walkability – the Cost of Living Index and the average rents for every major city in the country. And guess what?

Energy

Mr. Great Lakes on sun, wind and tires

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Click the audio for details and Mr. Great Lakes for the text. Mr. Great Lakes is heard at 9 a.m. Fridays in Bay City, Mich., on Delta College Q-90.1 FM NPR and is rebroadcast on Great Lakes Echo with permission.

Echo

New NWF chief to focus on education, outreach, engagement

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The National Wildlife Federation has a new president and CEO. Collin O’Mara was recently in Michigan for an environmental tour of the Detroit Area, and stopped by Current State. For a CEO, he’s fairly young at 30 years old. Current State’s Melissa Benmark asked him what environmental values he brings to this position that might be different than someone in their fifties or sixties. O’Mara says he’s going to try engaging more citizens with nature in a personal way in order to overcome urgent conservation challenges.

Wildlife

Fireflies in southern Michigan

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Photographer Ken Scott captured these fireflies streaking through the night sky near Willis, Mich., with a series of photos taken over 40 minutes. The technique of merging multiple short exposures into one eliminates the possibility of overexposing the ambient light such as that coming from a nearby city, said Scott, a Suttons Bay professional photographer. It also captured one of the beetles trundling across the ground and flashing its light.  Scott said it wasn’t until he posted the image that he noted the insect’s ground trek from the lower right corner of the frame. “Yeah, that bugger was a bonus!” he said.

Echo

Former Echo reporter scores another national award, gives success formula

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A former Echo writer has won national recognition for a series of environmental stories about the Great Lakes. Brian Bienkowski, now a reporter and editor at Environmental Health News, received second place in a beat reporting category in the contest sponsored by the national Society of Environmental Journalists. The series is called Stories of the Great Lakes’ People, Places and Creatures. Bienkowski, a 2012 graduate of the Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, also received the same award in the same contest last year. While at MSU, he received the center’s Rachel Carson Award for outstanding environmental journalism graduate student.

Wildlife

Dead birds spur cleanup of longstanding DDT contamination

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Nearly 100 residential yards in a nine-block neighborhood of St. Louis, Mich., are scheduled to be dug out and replaced with clean soil. It is the latest attempt to reduce the decades-old contamination legacy of the same chemical factory that brought Michigan’s PBB crisis of the mid 1970s.

Water

A deeper dive into Lake Erie’s pea-green soup

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Karen Schaefer, an independent public radio journalist based in Ohio who has been covering algae blooms in Lake Erie for years, reported on the recent Toledo water crisis for Great Lakes Echo. Here she gives deeper background on the development of the threat posed by algae and what may lie ahead. Additional stories here. This report first appeared on WKAR’s Current State public affairs program and is produced as a partnership with Great Lakes Echo.  

Energy

Michigan voters favor changing energy mix – especially if it doesn’t cost anything

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More than 42 percent of Michigan potential voters think the state should dramatically reduce its reliance on electricity generated from coal over the next 25 years as technology improves and costs decrease for other sources, according to a recent poll by Public Sector Consultants. But only 13 percent favor a dramatic drop in coal-produced electricity over the next 10 years, even if it means electricity rates were to increase, according to the poll of 600 likely voters done by the Lansing public policy company and Denno Research. Poll respondents were told before answering:

“Michigan produces 57 percent of its electricity from coal, 11 percent from natural gas, 22 percent from nuclear, and 10 percent from renewable energy sources. Of these sources, coal is the source that produces the greatest amount of carbon emissions, a component of climate change. As you think about balancing Michigan’s energy needs with the price of electricity on one hand, and the environment on the other, which of the following statements comes closest to your beliefs?”