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-based DTE Energy has received $84 million in stimulus grant money despite a history of violating federal environmental law.
In NEPA Exemptions: The Dirty Dozen List, the Center for Public Integrity reports that despite a pattern of Clean Air Act violations at the company’s coal plants, DTE’s grant-funded “smart grid” activities were granted a categorical exclusion from federal environmental law.
Detroit Edison Company
Stimulus grant: $84 million
Project: upgrading 55 circuits and installing such new equipment as 600,000 smart meters and other “smart grid” technologies on existing distribution lines.
NEPA exemption: Dated July 2009, a programmatic “categorical exclusion” for such “smart grid” activities as “additions or modifications to electric power transmission facilities that would not affect the environment beyond the previously developed area,” and “actions to conserve energy.”Past violations:
Aug. 2010 — Federal environmental regulators have sued Detroit Edison alleging the company evaded permitting requirements under the clean-air law at its coal plant in Monroe, Mich., thus releasing illegal emissions of smog, haze, and soot for years; in September, both the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed motions to intervene in the case.
July 2009 — Detroit Edison received a still-pending notice-of-violation action from federal environmental regulators alleging five of its Michigan coal plants have violated the clean-air law.
Dec. 2006 — Federal environmental regulators fined Detroit Edison a $144,412 penalty for failing to immediately report releasing more than 10,500 pounds of the hazardous chemical sodium hydroxide at its coal plant in River Rouge, Mich., into the neighborhood, which the company settled for $52,333 the following month. Sodium hydroxide can burn skin, eyes, and the gastrointestinal tract.
Jan. 2001 — Detroit Edison agreed to pay nearly $11.5 million to settle an air-pollution lawsuit filed by federal and state environmental regulators for evading permit requirements at a coal plant.
Contacted by the Center for Public Integrity, DTE spokesman John Austerberry defended the company’s record, pointing out that is has received a clean corporate citizen designation from the state of Michigan.
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