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.
Opponents of Canadian trash being hauled into Michigan for disposal may just have a new weapon in their fight against the practice.
The Port Huron Times Herald reports that while there are no hard numbers, officials believe a majority of major, interstate-closing truck accidents in the last year have involved trash hauling trucks from Canada.
Port Huron and Port Huron Township are major transit points for the trucks because they are located at the entrance to the Blue Water Bridge, an international crossing between the state and Canada.
The newspaper found “at least six” major accidents in the last year in which Canadian trash haulers were involved in accidents which snarled traffic, shut down interstates and cost local municipalities thousand of dollars in emergency responder costs.
“It does seem to be a consistent problem,” St. Clair County Sheriff Tim Donnellon said, calling the trash trucks a “humongous bother.”
“The common denominator (in many of the accidents on the interstates) is a Canadian trash hauler.”
And Donnellon is fighting back. He said the accidents played a significant role in prompting a new sheriff department program that monitors tractor trailers driving on local roads.
Republican lawmaker Phil Pavlov of St. Clair Township said it was time for a ban on Canadian trash haulers in the state.
“The way to stop it is to have an outright ban on Canadian trash coming in to the United States,” he said. “We’d like to see (the federal government) exercise that right.”
The issue of importing Canadian trash consistently flairs up around elections. A 2006 deal would phase out Canadian trash by the end of this year. And a report released in January of 2009 found import trash from Canada was down 11 percent since 2006, reported MLive.com at the time.
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