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.
Patty Birkholz of Saugatuck Township, until recently the most prominent Republican environmental advocate in the legislature, has been tapped by Governor Snyder to direct the state Office of the Great Lakes.
In 2002, Michigan voters approved a proposal that made $1 billion in loans available to communities for projects to improve water quality. But despite a serious need for sewer and water system upgrades around the state, about $600 million in loans remain unused because many communities can’t afford to take on new projects.
If one Michigan senator gets her way, school districts with over 1,000 students and an administrative overhead above 28 percent of the district’s budget will see a five percent cut in state school aid funds. State Sen. Patty Birkholz, a Saugatuck Republican, is pushing the measure to “challenge” local districts to “make better spending decisions,” [...]
The wetlands program proposed by Republican State Sen. Patty Birkholz of Saugatuck Township last week would give the quasi governmental Michigan Economic Development Corporation a role in permit decisions, eliminate public hearings, and put the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to work scouting land for development by the cranberry industry, according to Great Lakes Blogger, [...]
If Congress does end up doubling the funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, as they are likely to do, the Detroit News reports that there are five primary areas where the money would go: invasive species containment; restoring wetlands; cleaning up contaminated rivers and streams; fertilizer and pesticide runoff from agricultural and residential lands; [...]
Updated, June 9, 3:38 p.m.
PLAINWELL — It might seem like just a small-scale cleanup in a gargantuan overall project to rid the Kalamazoo River of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, but state and federal environmental officials are hailing the next step in the cleanup of the river as the kind of sustained progress that has been sought for decades.
The yet-to-be announced $10 million project will take place at and behind a diversion dam about 2 miles upstream from Plainwell, which is about 10 miles north of Kalamazoo, said Jim Saric, remedial project manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
When the House takes up legislation to end the state’s wetland regulation program — proposed by Republicans and by the governor — it is unclear that the measure will receive support from some senior Republican lawmakers from Northern Michigan.
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