I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Michigan lawmakers reached a bipartisan compromise on water withdrawals yesterday. A coalition of environmental groups hailed the deal, but one clean water advocacy group called it a failure.
The measure sets regulations for in-state water use and is tied to the Great Lakes Compact, legislation designed to codify regional control of Great Lakes water resources.
The House and Senate had been at odds for months over different versions of the bill with environmentalists and conservation groups mostly supporting the House bill that emphasized that water should be held in public trust for the benefit of all, and industry groups supporting the Senate bill which did not refer to the public trust and set more lax permitting requirements.
Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak and former Govs. James Blanchard and William Milliken urged lawmakers to reject commercialization of water by adopting a bill with public trust language.
The compromise bill does not contain an explicit statement that water is a public trust, but it requires permits for water withdrawals of over a million gallons per day (the Senate bill had set the level at 2 million gallons per day) and creates an online tool for evaluating the impact of planned withdrawals.
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The bipartisan pact is “not perfect, but a key win for Michigan citizens,” according to a coalition of over 60 Michigan environmental organizations. In a statement the Great Lakes Great Michigan Coalition said the bill “establishes important and concrete protections for Michigan’s streams and makes water conservation an integral part of the state’s water stewardship efforts.”
Not everyone is satisfied.
“We are extremely disappointed that the legislature failed to strengthen our important public trust protections, which affirms that water is a public resource that belongs to Michiganders and not to corporations or profit-takers,” Cyndi Roper of Clean Water Action said in a statement. “We intend to revisit this issue.”
Here’s the Detroit Free Press report on the bill.
Photo: Photo by Trinitas Imaging / Ooodit at Flickr.com
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