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 failed to properly consider the environmental impact of an Upper Peninsula project that plans to turn 560,000 tons of pulpwood into ethanol each year, the Sierra Club stated in a lawsuit filed this week.
In September the state Dept. of Natural Resources granted an air permit to Frontier Renewable Resources, which plans to begin constriction on a wood to ethanol bio-refinery in Kinross, Michigan.
The Associated Press reports that the Sierra Club lawsuit charges that regulators did not consider the full amount of air pollution the plant would generate.
It contends the DNRE erred by evaluating the permit application under standards meant for facilities that are minor polluters, based on Frontier’s estimate that it will give off 95 tons of carbon monoxide a year – just short of the 100-ton threshold at which tougher requirements and reviews kick in.
That total was based on an expected annual output of 40 million gallons of ethanol. But the company’s site plan makes clear it intends to double production to 80 million gallons, which would push carbon dioxide emissions well past the regulatory threshold and boost other pollution as well, the lawsuit says.
The Sierra Club also contends that though the plant will ferment wood sugars into ethanol, the emissions estimated used in the permit are based on the fermentation of corn sugars into ethanol.
The Frontier project has received $49.5 million in state and federal grants as a renewable energy demonstration project, but the Sierra Club argues that the project is not sustainable and will deplete state forests.
Also, the group says, because the ethanol production process relies on non-renewable natural gas, the Frontier project will use 33 percent more energy than will be contained in the ethanol it produces.
A copy of the complaint is available on the Sierra Club website.
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