Energy

Carmakers fight hike in ethanol at gas pumps

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(MI) The Detroit News – A push by corn-producing states and alternative fuel proponents to increase federal rules boosting the amount of ethanol mixed into gasoline is being fought by automakers because it would be costly and could damage engines. By Dec. 1, the Environmental Protection Agency must decide whether to approve a request to increase the amount of ethanol that can be mixed with most gasoline sold at pumps to as much as 15 percent. More

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Specter of bovine TB haunts cattle producers in Indiana

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(IN) The Indianapolis Star – Indiana’s cattle producers — their billion-dollar-a-year industry threatened by an obscure bacterium — turn their eyes anxiously to Franklin County. There on a small farm lived a cow that had bovine tuberculosis. The disease was detected in the cow at a slaughterhouse in Pennsylvania in December. More

Echo

Something foul in standards for septic systems?

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(MN) Minneapolis Star Tribune – Carver County is skirting the same issue — a lack of adequate separation between drain field and groundwater — at a $2.5 million ballroom it bought at a park near Lake Waconia. The controversy has been roiling Carver for most of the year and heated up during the summer, when Workman insisted his that fellow commissioners do something about it. More

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Cormorant culling program by state seems to work

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(OH) Cleveland Plain Dealer – Since 2006, state wildlife officers have been shooting thousands of double-crested cormorants to prevent them from inundating several of the Lake Erie islands and denuding the landscape, threatening nesting egrets and herons and killing endangered plants. “When we saw what was happening with the deterioration on Middle Island in Canada, we wanted to stop the problem before it became so bad that the damage would be irreparable,” said Dave Sherman, a wildlife biologist with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources based at the Crane Creek Wildlife Research Station in Ottawa County.  More

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Illinois Solar Tour aims to show how systems can have impact

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(IL) Chicago Tribune – Jim Camasto, a Naperville homeowner who installed two kinds of solar energy systems in his home over the last few years, is generating so much power from those sources on some days that he sells the excess back to the city and gets credit toward his electric bill. Though not completely off the local power grid, Camasto and his wife, Kath, slashed their energy costs to about $1,000 last year compared with about $2,000 in 2001 before switching over to their new alternative energy sources. More

Land

Detroit, Oakland stall transit plan

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(MI) Detroit Free Press – Macomb County commissioners last week took the lead on transit — and regional cooperation — by approving a road map for a Regional Transit Authority. Unfortunately, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing are still largely MIA. Foot-dragging seems to be the one thing Michigan’s richest county and largest city can do in lockstep. While hardly unprecedented, their inaction in this instance is putting all of southeast Michigan at risk. More

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International research team cracks potato genome

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(MI) The Detroit News – A global team of researchers has mapped the genetic code of the world’s most popular vegetable – the potato. The draft of the potato genome released last week represents the work of more than 50 scientists from 16 institutions and will provide a starting point for other researchers to develop sturdier, more nutritious potatoes. More

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The Age of Eco-Angst

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(NY) The New York Times – Call it eco-angst, the moment a new bit of unpleasant ecological information about some product or other plunges us into a moment (or more) of despair at the planet’s condition and the fragility of our place on it. Eco-angst, it turns out, is but one version of a widely studied psychological phenomenon, one well-known in the world of retailing. Take a bargain bin cabernet, tell people it’s an expensive, estate-bottled varietal, and they’ll tell you they like it. They’ll even linger longer over their dinner, enjoying not just the wine but the rest of their food more. Now describe the same wine as a low-end variety from North Dakota, and they’ll tell you it’s not so good – and finish their meal faster, enjoying it less.

Echo

Lake Superior islands purchased for protection

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(WI) Duluth News Tribune – An eight-island archipelago on Lake Superior will be protected from development and mining and preserved for wildlife and rare plants under a $7 million international conservation deal to be unveiled today. The Wilson Islands, just off Rossport in Ontario waters near Nipigon Bay, have been purchased from private owners and will become a Canadian federal natural area under the joint deal backed by the Nature Conservancy, government of Canada and government of Ontario. More

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Proposed freshwater school site needs help

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(WI) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – The final stretch of Greenfield Ave., east of S. Barclay St., hosts UWM’s Great Lakes WATER Institute, where the university might build its School of Freshwater Sciences now that the former Pieces of Eight site on the lakefront downtown is no longer an option. But the street includes huge, unsightly coal piles, a railroad crossing so rough it rattles teeth, and a crumbling former factory that’s nearly 100 years old. The neighborhood might need an extreme makeover if the institute’s 8-acre grounds are to be considered for the freshwater school’s headquarters. UWM officials and other school supporters had once hoped to see it developed at the Pieces of Eight site, but UWM Chancellor Carlos Santiago dropped that proposal over control and design issues with retired business executive Michael Cudahy, who holds the lease for that site. The university is now looking for a new site, bringing attention to the institute and its immediate surroundings – an isolated area with a heavily industrial feel.