Echo

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

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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

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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

Local wetlands programs in limbo as state seeks to shed regulatory authority and costs

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Jeff Gillies, gilliesj@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo

Whether local governments in Michigan will still regulate small wetlands is murky after Gov. Jennifer Granholm proposed returning the state regulatory authority to the federal government. Michigan and New Jersey are the only states authorized to enforce the section of the national Clean Water Act requiring a permit for filling wetlands. Under that authority local communities can enact even stricter rules for protecting wetlands valued for providing wildlife habitat and sponging up storm water runoff. Since 1984, anyone seeking to drain, dredge, fill or build in a wetland must apply for a permit from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. In other states federal regulators oversee such permits.

Echo

VIDEO: Shine on, shine on capitol lights?

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By Amanda Peterka
Great Lakes Echo

LANSING – The lights usually dim at 6 p.m. in Michigan’s Capitol. The schedule is meant to reduce energy use in Lansing’s historic centerpiece. But when lawmakers are trying to pinch the state’s pennies late into the night during budget crises, lights glow long into the night, wasting energy and the very dollars that the Legislature is trying to save. “The last budget crunch — for a week straight — the lighting wasn’t reduced at all until 1 a.m.,” said Steve Benkovsky, the Capitol’s operations manager who oversees the building’s energy use. Spotlights and incandescent bulbs keep the chambers glowing warmly through the night – to mimic the Capitol’s original gas-lit rooms.

But maintaining appearances is costly.