Lone Tree Council

As promised last summer, the U.S. Environmental Protection agency has announced new, more stringent rules for cleanup of dioxin, a highly toxic byproduct of the chemical manufacturing process that has contaminated the Saginaw River watershed.
In a New Year’s Eve announcement EPA called for public comments on a plan to change the preliminary remediation goals for [...]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is seeking public review of a proposed agreement with Dow Chemical that establishes a process for evaluating dioxin contamination in Saginaw Bay, the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers and their floodplains.

A coalition of environmental groups is asking state and federal regulators to take a careful look at the potential wetlands impact of a coal-fired power plant planned by Consumers Energy along Saginaw Bay.

The Lone Tree Council, one of the state’s leading environmental organizations, has put up a website devoted solely to the issue of the EPA’s takeover of negotiations with and cleanup of Dow Chemical’s dioxin pollution in the Saginaw and Tittabawassee river basins and the Saginaw Bay. They have dubbed the issue the Clean Watershed Campaign.
As [...]

As a resident of the infamous Niagara Falls, N.Y., neighborhood Love Canal in the 1970s, Lois Gibbs led the fight to clean up dioxin contamination and relocate people who were being exposed to it. Now she is warning that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to spend more time reviewing its decades-old draft report on the human health effects of dioxin is the misguided continuation of a plan established by the administration of former President George W. Bush.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has started a project to remove contaminated sediments from the Saginaw River without safety measures requested by the state, a move that sparked worry because toxins such as dioxin could make their way into the water supplies for Saginaw and Bay City, which don’t test for the toxins.

Fresh off a listening tour in Michigan last week, officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency laid out three options for the cleanup of dioxin in the Saginaw Bay area — but some of the options may be off the table without support from Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

Chemical company agrees to clean up Saginaw Township park after more than a year of pleas from officials.

Obama plan may fund new Soo lock and Saginaw River dredging opposed by environmentalists