Echo

Great Lakes states top pollution list

By |

America’s Top Power Plant Toxic Air Polluters, released by the Environmental Integrity Project, contains data on toxic power plant emissions and puts Great Lakes states right at the top. Some highlights:

Six of the top 10 arsenic emitting power plants are in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania power plants emit 28 percent of the nation’s arsenic air pollution from power plants
Two Consumers Energy plants in Michigan emit 86 percent of the state’s total chromium air pollution from power plants
The Miami Fort Generating Station in Ohio is the nation’s top polluter of hydrochloric acid among power plants

Echo

Photo Friday: Ships passing through the Soo Locks

By |

With more than 10,000 vessels traversing the Locks each year, the Soo Locks allow a variety of ships to pass from Lake Superior to the lower Great Lakes efficiently and safely. The Soo Locks are located on the St. Marys River between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, between Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Ontario, Canada. They bypass the rapids of the river, where the water drops 21 feet. The Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge between the United States and Canada permits vehicular traffic to pass over the locks.

Echo

Catch “Drain the Great Lakes” on the Discovery Channel

By |

The Discovery Channel’s Drain the Great Lakes dives below the surface of the Great Lakes. See the underwater topography of each lake and learn about shipwrecks, submerged waterfalls, craters and invasive species. The lakes hold almost 20 percent of the world’s surface freshwater … but what if the water was gone? The program explores some of the man-made and natural wonders underneath the waters, and exposes the geographic uniqueness of the giant water bowls that surround us.

Echo

River advocates hint at de-listing for annually chastised Chicago River

By |

Every year American Rivers lists America’s Most Endangered Rivers, and every year the Chicago River is one of them. Well, that may change in 2012. American Rivers posts periodic updates about the dubious rivers they shame every spring, and the river advocacy group now says the Windy City’s twisting stream of sewage is cleaning up its image — and water. For years the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District has spewed bacteria-filled sewage into the river without disinfecting it by using ultraviolet light, which kills the germs. The EPA and environmental groups pushed the city for years to add the disinfection step — a step that almost every other major city does. But the notion was that no one used the river.

Echo

Professor decolonizes food

By |

Martin Reinhardt, member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and teacher at Northern Michigan University, is planning a Decolonizing Diet Project, where he and a group will only eat food that was available 300 years ago in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The project officially starts spring 2012, but Reinhardt is already collecting wild foods and developing recipes. He’s made wild rice milk and pectin, gathered cranberries, leeks and ferns and been hunting to stock his kitchen. Reinhardt has already tried out the decolonized diet with a week of eating indigenous foods.