Echo

Illinois Solar Tour aims to show how systems can have impact

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(IL) Chicago Tribune – Jim Camasto, a Naperville homeowner who installed two kinds of solar energy systems in his home over the last few years, is generating so much power from those sources on some days that he sells the excess back to the city and gets credit toward his electric bill. Though not completely off the local power grid, Camasto and his wife, Kath, slashed their energy costs to about $1,000 last year compared with about $2,000 in 2001 before switching over to their new alternative energy sources. More

Land

Detroit, Oakland stall transit plan

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(MI) Detroit Free Press – Macomb County commissioners last week took the lead on transit — and regional cooperation — by approving a road map for a Regional Transit Authority. Unfortunately, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing are still largely MIA. Foot-dragging seems to be the one thing Michigan’s richest county and largest city can do in lockstep. While hardly unprecedented, their inaction in this instance is putting all of southeast Michigan at risk. More

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International research team cracks potato genome

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(MI) The Detroit News – A global team of researchers has mapped the genetic code of the world’s most popular vegetable – the potato. The draft of the potato genome released last week represents the work of more than 50 scientists from 16 institutions and will provide a starting point for other researchers to develop sturdier, more nutritious potatoes. More

Echo

The Age of Eco-Angst

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(NY) The New York Times – Call it eco-angst, the moment a new bit of unpleasant ecological information about some product or other plunges us into a moment (or more) of despair at the planet’s condition and the fragility of our place on it. Eco-angst, it turns out, is but one version of a widely studied psychological phenomenon, one well-known in the world of retailing. Take a bargain bin cabernet, tell people it’s an expensive, estate-bottled varietal, and they’ll tell you they like it. They’ll even linger longer over their dinner, enjoying not just the wine but the rest of their food more. Now describe the same wine as a low-end variety from North Dakota, and they’ll tell you it’s not so good – and finish their meal faster, enjoying it less.

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Lake Superior islands purchased for protection

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(WI) Duluth News Tribune – An eight-island archipelago on Lake Superior will be protected from development and mining and preserved for wildlife and rare plants under a $7 million international conservation deal to be unveiled today. The Wilson Islands, just off Rossport in Ontario waters near Nipigon Bay, have been purchased from private owners and will become a Canadian federal natural area under the joint deal backed by the Nature Conservancy, government of Canada and government of Ontario. More

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Proposed freshwater school site needs help

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(WI) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – The final stretch of Greenfield Ave., east of S. Barclay St., hosts UWM’s Great Lakes WATER Institute, where the university might build its School of Freshwater Sciences now that the former Pieces of Eight site on the lakefront downtown is no longer an option. But the street includes huge, unsightly coal piles, a railroad crossing so rough it rattles teeth, and a crumbling former factory that’s nearly 100 years old. The neighborhood might need an extreme makeover if the institute’s 8-acre grounds are to be considered for the freshwater school’s headquarters. UWM officials and other school supporters had once hoped to see it developed at the Pieces of Eight site, but UWM Chancellor Carlos Santiago dropped that proposal over control and design issues with retired business executive Michael Cudahy, who holds the lease for that site. The university is now looking for a new site, bringing attention to the institute and its immediate surroundings – an isolated area with a heavily industrial feel.

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School Drinking Water Contains Toxins

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(NY) The New York Times – Over the last decade, the drinking water at thousands of schools across the country has been found to contain unsafe levels of lead, pesticides and dozens of other toxins. An Associated Press investigation found that contaminants have surfaced at public and private schools in all 50 states — in small towns and inner cities alike. But the problem has gone largely unmonitored by the federal government, even as the number of water safety violations has multiplied. More

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Senate passes $400M Great Lakes bill

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(MI) The Detroit News – The Senate easily passed legislation tonight containing $400 million for Great Lakes restoration by deterring invasive species, cleaning up highly polluted sites and expanding wetlands. The funding level for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative falls short of the $475 million passed by the House in June and supported by President Barack Obama. Michigan Sens. Carl Levin, D-Detroit, and Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, voted for the full bill. More

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UM begins mapping to forecast future of Great Lakes

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(MI) WWJ –  A University of Michigan-led research team is creating a comprehensive analysis and mapping of threats to the Great Lakes that will guide decision-making in the United States and Canada for years to come. The mapping and analysis project will produce the first regional synthesis of human impacts on the Great Lakes, thereby helping regional planners and conservation groups to prioritize their activities. The Erb Family Foundation is funding the $500,000, two-year project. More

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Group wants to tap aquifer to raise level of Penn Lake

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(MN) Minneapolis Star Tribune – Bloomington city officials and residents who live around Lower Penn Lake are again tussling over how to improve the water quality and appearance of the 32-acre lake. The city’s new draft management plan for the lake left many residents cold when it was presented this week at a neighborhood meeting. In their view, lake levels have dropped to unacceptably low levels since state law limited the use of a well that taps an aquifer to raise the lake’s level. More