Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/category/waste/page/10/)
Everything from litter to nuclear waste.
Residents of Michigan’s Thumb region are looking across Lake Huron with some concern about a Canadian utility seeking approval to build an underground nuclear waste disposal site near the town of Kincardine, Ontario.
The agreement resolves a decade-long dispute that began with EPA inspections in September 2004 of a plant then owned and operated by PolyOne Corp.
Researchers aboard a converted fishing boat are trawling the Great Lakes for plastic.
Michigan may authorize new uses for toxic coal ash by Great Lakes Echo
One of the bills that cleared the Michigan legislature this session was a provision that allows certain bio-waste materials to be re-used for beneficial purposes. These substances include things like cement kiln dust, wood pulp and coal ash. Coal ash is the leftover residue from coal burned by electric power plants. The bill permits coal ash to be used in road construction, but it may also be used in agriculture as a fertilizer supplement, causing some environmental advocates to become concerned. Current State’s Kevin Lavery speaks with Republican State Representative Wayne Schmidt, the bill’s main sponsor, who strongly states that coal ash is completely safe and does not pose any environmental threats.
Diana Popp Rossiter took this image in early June during a walk through Lyle Park in Bridgeport Township, about six miles southeast of Saginaw. The pedestrian trail starts at a restored historic bridge across the Cass River in downtown Bridgeport and extends through Lyle Park which runs along side the Cass River. “Running alongside the trail is a railroad track and between the tracks and trail is a low area of land,” Popp Rossiter writes. “That low area of land is filled with trash that has been dumped by polluters over the years and also trash that gets deposited there every year by the flood waters. “This trash includes seven tires that are usually sitting there with water in them serving as a mosquito breeding source.”
The Michigan Recycling Coalition, has launched a state-wide recycling campaign, Recycle, MI, to increase recycling awareness and practices. The campaign is to help residents and businesses reduce waste, according to a press release. It encourages people to start recycling at their homes and work places, volunteer at recycling events or facilities and distribute information about recycling in their town, the campaign’s website explains. Recycle, MI has been promoted on radio stations that began this spring mostly in southeast Michigan and will continue in different regions throughout the summer, said Kerrin O’Brien, executive director of the group. “We really saw a need to promote recycling across the state – to unite Michiganders under this logo and message,” she said.
For at least the past decade, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality has sought comprehensive regulations on reusing industrial byproducts like coal ash, the material generated from burning coal for electricity, as an alternative to sending it to landfills.
The “beneficial use” bills, which recently passed the state House, would formally regulate the use of over a dozen forms of industrial byproducts across a variety of sectors, including construction fill and on agricultural land.
Michigan’s Environmental Advisory Rules Committee is a group of environmentalists, manufacturers, attorneys and state officials assigned to identify duplicative, obsolete or burdensome environmental rules.
Weak recycling efforts and a tardy response to water quality concerns hardly lead the way to turning Chicago the same color as its river on St. Patrick’s Day.