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.
Mark Durno, assistant onsite incident commander for the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency working on the Enbridge oil spill in Calhoun County, says authorities have detected trace levels of both mercury and nickel in water and sediment samples along the river.
This is the first time the EPA has released information about metal contaminates found in the oil and its presence in Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River. The two water sheds were filled with Cold Lake Crude oil, a thick oil from Alberta, when Enbridge Energy’s Lakehead Pipeline 6B burst on or about July 25 spewing an estimated one million gallons into the Calhoun area waterways. Cold Lake Crude is a form of tar sands oil which is known to have heavy metal contamination.
Durno said that while the samplings, which began in late July, have detected trace levels of the metals they do not pose a threat to the public. The mercury levels were found to be under one part per billion, while the nickel levels were found to be about 20 parts per billion. Durno said that testing is only occasionally capturing the trace levels of the heavy metals and it is not a frequent occurrence.
Durno also said the teams are testing for more than a dozen other trace metals, although they are unaware of what trace metals might have been present in the original crude spilled because the EPA did not test the oil for it.
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