Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/author/keweir/page/9/)
(MI) Traverse City Record-Eagle – In the end, imposing a county wide fee on septic tank owners is probably the surest monetary solution to Grand Traverse County’s long-running septage plant saga. But that doesn’t mean taxpayers will like it or that it should be imposed on them by a political body that is neither representative of or answerable to many property owners who will pay the price. More
(IL) Chicago Sun Times – Twenty years after the pervasive zebra mussel was first detected in the Great Lakes, the U.S. Coast Guard is preparing rules to prevent new invasive species from infiltrating the nation’s freshwater systems.
Ecologists, environmentalists and public officials have mixed feelings about the rules. While they are delighted over the prospect of the first national standard for treating ship ballast water, they’re disappointed by the timetable. “We’ve been dealing with this issue literally for decades,” said Matt Frank, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. “And we don’t believe the Coast Guard rules are aggressive enough.” More
(MI) Detroit Free Press – Michigan’s attorney general plans to file a lawsuit to protect the Great Lakes and Michigan workers from the threat posed by the invasive Asian carp. Attorney General Mike Cox’s office said Sunday that Cox will hold a news conference at 10 a.m. today at the Cobo Center in downtown Detroit to announce details of the lawsuit. Cox, a Republican running for governor, said earlier this month that he would file a suit in federal court. More
(MI) The Detroit News – After close to 20 years of separating lawn clippings from trash, bills under consideration in Lansing would roll back Michigan’s 1990 yard waste ban in an effort to convert grass to gas. Bills in the House and the Senate would exempt an estimated more than 20 landfills from the ban to increase production of landfill gas, a renewable energy source that can be sold to utility companies. More
(MI) The Detroit News – Five years ago, when Gov. Jennifer Granholm first asked me to lead the Cherry Commission on Higher Education, we could not have foreseen the global financial crisis that continues to unfold, or the toll it would take on our state’s economy. But we knew then, as we know now, that our economy is in transition. Today, a college degree or professional certificate is no longer an option for every single student in Michigan — it is a necessity. And the only way to keep our kids in Michigan and prepare them for the jobs of the 21st century is to give them a clear path to higher education. More
(MI) Traverse City Record-Eagle – An area fruit processor may solve a growing, expensive problem: how the industry treats its water waste. Grawn-based Cherry Growers Inc. will spend at least $100,000 to pilot the use of air-sparging, a proven treatment for petroleum cleanups, to reverse problems created by the high sugar content in its waste stream. More
(IN) Indianapolis Star Tribune – Environmental activists who are upset about Indiana’s water pollution rules say they’ll ask the federal government to take action against the state. The Hoosier Environmental Council, the Sierra Club and the Environmental Law and Policy Center have scheduled a teleconference today to discuss their plans to ask the federal government to act against Indiana’s authority over its water control program. More
(WI) Green Bay Press Gazette – A federal judge on Wednesday threw out a lawsuit filed by papermakers Appleton Papers Inc. and NCR Corp. to diffuse the $1 billion to $1.5 billion cost of cleaning up PCB contamination in the Fox River. The sweeping action by U.S. District Judge William Griesbach canceled a Jan. 4 trial on the issue and raised questions about whether the two companies will bear the entire burden of the massive cleanup. More
(MI) The Detroit News – Citizens have one more day to offer opinions on a proposed road map for the planned cleanup of dioxin contamination near the Dow Chemical Co. plant in Midland. The public comment period began in October and ends Thursday.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality have reached a tentative deal with Dow on the plan. It outlines the next steps in a Superfund evaluation of contamination in the Tittabawassee River, the Saginaw River and Saginaw Bay and their floodplains.
(WI) The Associated Press – Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said Wednesday he wants to know more about the threat Asian carp pose to the Great Lakes. The carp have been migrating northward in the Mississippi and Illinois rivers for decades. Scientists say if they get into the Great Lakes, they could consume plankton, interrupt the food chain and devastate the $7 billion fishery. More