Echo

Belle Isle study lights way for savings

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The installation of a state-of-the-art street lighting system on Belle Isle – located on the Michigan side of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario – was a major step forward in saving energy and electricity while improving safety for visitors. Now five years later, a new study says computer optimization modeling could lead to even further savings and other benefits, such as fewer crashes, for communities that upgrade their street light systems. 

Echo

Tracking trail trees: Looking for horizontal shapes in a vertical world

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Native Americans once bent saplings to grow into directional markers. They signaled such things as where to cross a river and where to enter and exit trails. There are likely only a few hundred original trail trees left in the Great Lakes area. Some are over 200 years old.

Echo

More Michigan communities strive to become age-friendly

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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in June approved a plan to make the state age-friendly. It focuses on communication and information, respect and social inclusion, health services and community support, social participation and transportation. 

Echo

Guilty pleas in Clean Water Act prosecution

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An Ottawa County, Michigan, electroplating company and two of its top officers have pleaded guilty to violating the federal Clean Water Act by discharging wastewater with excessive amounts of zinc.

Commentary

September: Connections

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How we name things affects how we think about them. We name fields, and forests, and marshes, and streams as separate things, so we tend to think of them as separate things. But separating these habitats in our vocabulary and in our minds obscures the innumerable connections that bind these habitats into a single working landscape.