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.
The Michigan Supreme Court has already heard oral argument in a case that could reinterpret the state’s most important environmental law governing access to the state’s freshwater resources, but whether they will rule before a new, more conservative court is sworn in remains to be seen.
Elevated levels of chemicals have been detected in water samples from residential wells near the site of Enbridge Energy’s million gallon oil spill in Calhoun County. Kalamazoo County health officials say that trace amounts of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and
Last year the Detroit sewage system dumped 34 billion gallons of untreated sewage and storm water into the Detroit and Rouge rivers which flow into Lake Erie. Detroit collects and treats the waste from 77 area communities and is the largest sewage system to discharge into the Great Lakes but economic problems has forced it [...]
The New York state Senate has passed a bill that would ban hydrofracking until next May. Hydraulic fracturing or “hydrofracking“ is a drilling technique that fractures deep underground shale in order to release natural gas deposits.
Michigan officials have been quick to file lawsuits to stop invasive carp from reaching Lake Michigan so they should be ready to take action to get to the bottom of this week’s Enbridge oil spill, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley told reporters yesterday. The Chicago Tribune reports that Daley said the million gallon oil spill that [...]
Heavy rains over the last month washed more than 3.5 billion gallons of raw and partially treated sewage and industrial waste into the lakes rivers and streams around metro Detroit, the Detroit Free Press reports. Ten area beaches were closed due to contamination, and two had levels of E. coli bacteria more than 1,000 times [...]
State Rep. Sarah Roberts (D-St. Clair Shores) has introduced a bill (HB4472) that would require the state to do annual unscheduled inspections of companies that hold permits to discharge pollutants into Michigan waters. Amanda Skalski of the Michigan Policy Network writes that the bill deserves recognition and support.
The 5,000 cow Vreba-Hoff dairy operation in Hudson violated its water discharge permit hundreds of times in 2008 and 2009 by spraying inadequately treated animal waste at multiple locations, according to the Dept. of Environmental Quality. Yesterday DEQ announced it’s fourth lawsuit against the company for failure to responsibly manage waste.
The Department of Environmental Quality says that amidst declining resources its Water Bureau is trying to meet its most critical obligations by prioritizing five goals and spelling out how to measure whether they are achieved. The Water Bureau’s “Measures of Success” document, released this month, describes the top goals as: to ensure safe drinking water, [...]
In June, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agreed to test the municipal water systems for Saginaw, Midland and Bay City for a range of contaminants. The move, as Michigan Messenger reported, was a response to citizen concerns that navigational dredging in the Saginaw River could stir up dioxin-contaminated sediments that could contaminate city water supplies that draw from Saginaw Bay. Dioxins and furans from Dow Chemical’s Midland plant are known to have contaminated the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers and the bay.
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