Echo

Phytofilters: Turning brownfields green

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By Sarah Coefield, coefield@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Aug. 13, 2009

Some Great Lakes brownfields will turn green if Congress passes a $475 million restoration package. Literally. The U.S. Forest Service seeks $2 million of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative to transform  unusable industrial lots into parks and trailways – and clean up some contaminants in the process. While the forest service has  long restored natural vegetation and has an urban forestry division, this will be its first foray into phytoremediation, said Steven Davis, a watershed specialist with the forest service’s Northeastern Area State and Private Forestry division.

Echo

Great Lakes fish consumption advisories rise slightly; researchers question extent of mercury risk

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Allison Bush, bushalli@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
July 17, 2009

Those looking to enjoy a meal of Great Lakes’ fish are best off going to Lake Superior, according to a recent Canadian study. The report compared the number of fish consumption advisories for each of the Great Lakes in 2009 to the number in 2007. Lake Superior had the least restrictive advisories, said Mike Layton, author of the report by Environmental Defence, a Toronto-based nonprofit that focuses on improving health and the environment. Consumption advisories indicate the presence of chemical contaminants in fish. Lake Superior does not have any advisories that are considered “most restrictive,” where zero meals of certain fish are recommended.  All the other lakes have at least three; Lake Ontario has 18.

Echo

Residents want DEQ to remove tannery lagoons

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(MI) Muskegon Chronicle – The material in the six contaminated lagoons on the former Whitehall Leather Co. tannery site likely won’t be removed, based on comments Wednesday night by environmental consultants and state Department of Environmental Quality officials. Many of the 100 or so residents who turned out for a public meeting at the Howmet Playhouse voiced concerns about the proposed plan that would leave the lagoons in place. The proposal is expected to be part of a final cleanup plan for the entire 33-acre site polluted by more than a century of leather-tanning operations. A developer wants to turn the site into condominiums. More

Echo

PR isn’t the problem

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(WI) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel -No amount of burnishing will change the fact that the chemical BPA isn’t worth the risk to public health. It should be banned. The “holy grail” for food packagers and chemical industry lobbyists was a pregnant woman endorsing bisphenol A, according to a Journal Sentinel Watchdog report. More

Echo

Study on Lake Huron bacteria points to agriculture

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(MI) Bay City Times – A university study says agriculture is the main contributor of E. coli bacteria to Lake Huron. The study by the University of Guelph and Ontario’s Environment Ministry looked at the Canadian side of the lake. But a Michigan regulator says the same thing could be happening in the Thumb – home to numerous large livestock operations and ongoing problems with beach muck, or dead algae, fouling shorelines. More

Echo

Battle to clean up arsenal site is far from over

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(IL) Chicago Tribune – To walk the grounds of the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant in 2009 is to see nature’s best effort to heal the scars of a once-heralded manufacturing empire. Rich, green grass has returned to the small ridge known simply as “the burning grounds,” where TNT and old munitions were melted and recast decades ago. Lush cottonwood and hackberry trees now stand on the high grass where smoke stacks spewed noxious fumes into the air. Beavers and birds cool themselves in the winding creek that was a dumping ground for harmful solvents and chemicals. But below ground, the picture is different.

Echo

Feds, Georgia-Pacific agree on Kalamazoo River PCB landfill containment plan

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(MI) Michigan Messenger – Federal environmental officials recently announced an agreement with Georgia-Pacific Corp. to begin work on capping a Kalamazoo Township landfill filled with material laden with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, part of a federal Superfund cleanup of the Kalamazoo River. Design work on the $13 million project will begin this year and be complete sometime in 2010, said Michael Berkoff, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s project manager in charge of landfills on the Superfund project. More

Echo

Heading to Texas, Hudson’s Toxic Mud Stirs Town

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(NY) New York Times – There are not many towns in America that would welcome the 2.5 million cubic yards of toxic sludge being dredged from the bottom of the Hudson River in New York, but to hear Mayor Matt White tell it, Eunice is one of them. Storing waste nobody else wants means more jobs, Mr. White said, and the oil workers here are used to living with hazards. After all, there are several oil wells in the town itself. One of them is a block from City Hall.

Echo

Mercury found in local fish

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(ON) The Sarnia Observer – Toxic chemicals are putting some species of fish at risk in the St. Clair River, a wildlife ecologist says. Kim Wells of Environ International Corp. delivered that message Wednesday to the annual general meeting of the SarniaLambton Environmental Association. Wells was involved in a recent study designed to determine the impact mercury and octachlorostyrene are having on fish, mammals and birds along an 8.3-kilometre stretch of the Canadian side of the international waterway.

Nearshore

To weed or not to weed is the question around West Michigan lakes

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(MI) Grand Rapids Press – When Ron Myszak’s four fishing buddies came to his home on Myers Lake for the start of bass season Saturday, he hoped for pristine boating and angling conditions. “I like to fish, so I like to see a few weeds,” said Myszak, 71, who has lived on the Courtland Township lake for more than four decades. “Yet they do a good job of keeping it clean after they treat the lake.” Weed-control crews were on Myszak’s lake last week for the first of several herbicide treatments, a process that hundreds of local lakes and ponds will undergo this spring as boaters, swimmers and fishing enthusiasts return to the water. More