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.
Nine Michigan counties exceed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s allowable levels for soot particles in the air, though pollution levels have been on the decline for two years.
The EPA announced Tuesday that Michigan must develop a plan to reduce fine particulate pollution in seven southeastern Michigan counties and in Kent and Ottawa counties in central-west Michigan.
Kent and Ottawa counties in West Michigan are new to the EPA list of air-quality violators and news channel WMMT reports that the EPA attributes the pollution in these counties to coal-burning power plants in Ottawa county.
Jim Haywood, meteorologist with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) air-quality division, issued an air-quality advisory for both ozone and elevated particulate levels through this weekend.
Though air pollution is anticipated in much of Michigan through this week, Haywood told the Michigan Independent that the EPA’s announcement about the particulate levels in Michigan air comes as the levels have already begun to decline as a result of actions taken to reduce ozone formation.
“Detroit is considered to be in trouble according to the standard, and we are trying to come up with a statewide plan to reduce particulate levels,“ he said.
“But over the last two years, particulate levels have been coming down because measures that were taken to reduce ozone formation — reduction of nitrogen dioxide emissions from power plants and reformulating gasoline — have had the added benefit of reducing the formation of fine particles.”
“Every time you do something good,” he said, “it has a ripple effect.”
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