Energy

The green road ahead

By |

(IN) The Indianapolis Star – In mid-August, President Barack Obama visited Northern Indiana to announce $2.4 billion in stimulus funds to benefit the green vehicle industry. The money will go to companies and institutions to develop advanced batteries and other components used to increase the number of hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles. Our share, Obama announced, will include $416 million in grants to Hoosier companies and universities. Indiana is the second-largest recipient of funding for advanced vehicles; Michigan is the first. More

Echo

Cash leaves Mich. on dove wings

By |

(MI) The Detroit News – Nationwide, 1 million dove hunters will spend more than $1 billion on lodging, licenses and supplies. None of it will be spent in Michigan. Forty states allow dove hunting. And while Texans are the most fanatical, the dove season is a much anticipated gateway to fall hunting in many other places.  More

Echo

Great Lakes watchers anxious to fill EPA post that’s key to restoration initiative

By |

By Allison Bush, bushalli@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Aug. 14, 2009

Great Lakes officials are anxious for the Obama Administration to appoint the region’s top Environmental Protection Agency administrator. “The appointment is always important, but for (the Great Lakes states), right now it’s absolutely critical,” said Andy Buchsbaum, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes region. “For the first time in history, we could get millions and millions of dollars from Congress, and the administrator is important to making sure the money is spent well.”

The Chicago-based Region 5 administrator is responsible for the Great Lakes program under the Clean Water Act. Region 5 includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Echo

Departments to Toughen Standards for Mining

By |

(NY) New York Times – The Obama administration said Thursday that it would toughen standards for mountaintop-removal coal mining but would not end the practice as some environmental groups had hoped. Officials from four agencies said they had agreed to order a more rigorous legal and environmental review of pending and future applications for mountaintop mining in Appalachia. The technique involves blasting the tops off mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams. The practice has buried hundreds of miles of streams and has polluted water throughout the region. More

Echo

Stimulus Funds Spent to Keep Sun Belt Cool

By |

(NY) The New York Times – The federal government is spending $5 billion in stimulus money to weatherize homes across the country. That is almost as much as it has spent on weatherization since the program was created in the 1970s to cut heating bills and conserve oil for low-income people. An unusually large share of the money will be spent not on keeping cold air out but on keeping cold air in. As a result of a political compromise with Sun Belt lawmakers last decade, the enormous expansion of the weatherization program will invoke a rarely used formula that will devote 31 percent of the money, nearly double the old share of 16 percent, to help states in hot climates, like Florida, save on air-conditioning.  More

Echo

Environmental group’s leader named Great Lakes czar

By |

(MI) Detroit Free Press – Cameron Davis, leader of a Chicago-based environmentalist group, has been appointed to oversee President Barack Obama’s initiative to clean up the Great Lakes. Davis is president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, one of many organizations that have pushed for a restoration program expected to cost more than $20 billion. He was appointed by Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency. More

Echo

Great Lakes lawmakers ask EPA for answers on BP emissions

By |

(MI) Detroit Free Press – Members of Congress’ Great Lakes Caucus are asking the Environmental Protection Agency to review all of British Petroleum’s emissions, after reports that a BP facility in Whiting, Ind., has been violating clean-air standards. In a letter, 18 members of Congress from Illinois, New York, Wisconsin and Michigan asked EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to closely examine BP’s emissions. More

Echo

Drinking water legislation inspired by Crestwood issue sent to Quinn

By |

(IL) The Chicago Tribune – Legislation inspired by a controversy over tainted water in Crestwood went to the desk of Gov. Pat Quinn today as House lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to ensure citizens are notified when their drinking water is contaminated. The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Frank Mautino (D-Spring Valley), followed Tribune revelations that Crestwood village residents unknowingly drank water drawn from a contaminated well for more than two decades. Current law requires owners and operators of a water system to be notified when water is contaminated, but it does not require citizens using the water to be notified, according to Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, whose office is investigating the issue and worked with Quinn on the proposal. More

Echo

Water watchers call for new rules to ensure protection in coming century

By |

(ON) The Hamilton Spectator – As Canada and the United States prepare to mark the centennial of the Boundary Waters Treaty, key thinkers and organization leaders from both countries are calling for a new, 21st-century vision to protect and prevent further degradation of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River system over the next 100 years. They’re frustrated that neither Canada nor the U.S. has responded to the International Joint Commission’s call to rewrite the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1972. More

Echo

House energy bill will increase green jobs

By |

(MI) The Detroit News – While Michigan struggles with a 12 percent unemployment rate — one of the highest in the nation — great strides are being taken to retrain our work force for the green jobs of the future and get us back to work. And these efforts will have lasting impacts on the quality of our land, air and water. Driving investment in clean energy technologies will create tens of thousands of high-paying American jobs — jobs that can’t be outsourced. And we need those jobs now more than ever. Michigan’s recently released Green Jobs Report shows we already have 109,067 green jobs.