Waste

Detroit incinerator’s burning issues

By |

(MI) The Detroit News – If you eat, sleep or waste in Detroit, or Royal Oak or a dozen other local municipalities, chances are good your garbage will be shipped to the heart of this city where it will be incinerated and converted into steam, electricity and exhaust fumes that will be recycled into some citizen’s lungs. If you take a trip to the incinerator — or if you prefer the official Orwellian name, the Greater Detroit Resource Recovery Facility — you are in for a view of the decadent, profligate habits of the American citizen and the protracted problem of trying to dispose of his detritus. More

Air

China benefits from Obama’s fuel mandate

By |

(MI) The Detroit News – On the same day President Barack Obama marched the Big Three auto executives smiling to the guillotine, China announced it will not set mandatory emissions standards and instead will attack greenhouse gases with a strategy that doesn’t threaten its ferocious economic growth. America has chosen a sharply different tack, as was apparent this week at the White House, where Obama announced he would make the harsh California emissions mandates the national standard. The automakers, now wards of the federal government, had no choice but to cheer the mandates, even though a senior Ford executive told the L.A. Times the mandates would likely put the automaker out of business.  More

Air

Automakers, Obama Announce Mileage, Pollution Plan

By |

(NY) The New York Times – President Barack Obama wants drivers to go farther on a gallon of gas and cause less damage to the environment — and be willing to pick up the tab. Obama on Tuesday planned to announce the first-ever national emissions limits for cars and trucks, as well as require a 35.5 miles per gallon standard. Consumers should expect to pay an extra $1,300 per vehicle by the time the plan is complete in 2016, officials said. More

Echo

Public comment period on new Bay County coal plant ends Wednesday

By |

(MI) Bay City Times – Wednesday is the last day for public comment on a draft air permit for a new coal-fired power plant in Bay County. So far, more than 1,000 comments have been received about the proposed Consumers Energy project, said Mary Ann Dolehanty, with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality in Lansing. “The majority of them are form letters, that are probably 50-50 split,” for and against the new plant, a proposed $2.3 billion, 800-megawatt expansion to the Karn-Weadock complex in Hampton Township, said Dolehanty, acting permit section supervisor for the DEQ Air Quality Division. More

Air

U.S. to Offer New Mileage and Emission Standards

By |

(NY) The New York Times – The Obama administration will issue new national requirements for the emissions and mileage of cars and light trucks in an effort to end a long-running conflict among the states, the federal government and auto manufacturers, industry officials said Monday. President Obama will announce as early as Tuesday that he will combine California’s tough new auto-emissions rules with the existing corporate average fuel economy standard to create a single new national standard, the officials said. As a result, cars and light trucks sold in the United States will be roughly 30 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016. More

Echo

Changes Proposed to 2010 Air Monitoring Network

By |

(IN) Muncie Free Press -The Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) suggests adding additional monitors to Indiana’s monitoring network to include measuring for lead, PM-2.5, sulfate, and meteorological data. The agency released a draft of the 2010 air quality monitoring plan to the public for comment until June 14th. IDEM is required to review the state’s air monitoring network every year to make sure the agency has monitors in the right locations to get accurate air measurements. The agency also removes or relocates air monitors that no longer give relevant information.More

Echo

EPA taps 21 Great Lakes schools for air tests

By |

By Thomas Morrisey
Capital News Service

Federal and state officials are scrutinizing 21 Great Lakes-area schools as part of a nationwide check on whether bad air threatens the health of elementary students. There are 62 schools nationwide that will be monitored for 60 days as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency initiative. An EPA scientist said the program will help determine if the pupils are at risk and guide future testing for potential dangers. “It’s really hard for us to know. We couldn’t make a list of the worst 60 schools if we wanted to because we just don’t have that information,” said Jaime Wagner, an environmental scientist with the EPA’s regional office in Chicago.

Echo

Great Lakes or great sink? Pollutants produced abroad and still circulating at home threaten water quality

By |

By Matthew Cimitile, cimitile@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo 4/22/09
Indian cement plants, Russian incinerators and Chinese farms send large amounts of persistent pollutants to the Great Lakes. The continued expulsion of these toxins pose serious environmental and health problems for all countries, including those who have long since banned these chemicals, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Climate change may further complicate the issue. As countries like China develop, they are not only becoming the largest emitters of carbon dioxide but of persistent organic pollutants or POPs, according to the International POPs Elimination Network. These chemicals drift into the atmosphere or fall to the surface to evaporate.

Echo

An ill wind blows no good

By |

Matthew Cimitile, cimitile@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo 4/21/09
As contaminated sediment is cleaned up in the Great Lakes, persistent pollutants continue to blow in, threatening again to poison soil and harm human health. That has some experts questioning if it’s worthwhile to spend money to remove toxic sediments if they will once more become contaminated in a matter of years. “We have been very hung up on cleaning the watershed because we believed it was the source of contamination in the lake, but in recent decades contamination has come through the air,” said Mel Visser, former vice president of environmental health safety at Upjohn Pharmaceutical in Michigan and author of Cold, Clear, and Deadly: Unraveling a Toxic Legacy. “Even if you cleaned all the lakes tomorrow you wouldn’t do anything to the water because the concentration of these chemicals is controlled by the amount in the air,” said Visser, whose book describes current sources of chemicals that continue to pollute the Great Lakes’ air, food supply and water. The Great Lakes Legacy Act signed in 2002, provides funding to clean up Great Lakes sediments.

Echo

Building a Great Lakes toxic legacy

By |

Millions of dollars have been spent cleaning historic Great Lakes contamination. Millions more are sought. Does it make sense to clean the lakes before the pollution sources are eliminated? A look at toxic fallout. An ill wind blows no good
As contaminated sediment is cleaned up in the Great Lakes, persistent pollutants continue to blow in, threatening again to poison soil and harm human health.