Environment & Science

The Biden administration is reversing Trump administration cuts to the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).

Payments to farmers to set aside land were reduced by the previous former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue. With lower payments, some farmers left the program and plowed under land that was once set aside for conservation.

The Michigan Public Service Commission will consider the environmental impact of greenhouse gasses in its decision on the future of Enbridge Energy’s Line 5. That’s part of an order issued Wednesday.

The Public Service Commission decision is one of several administrative and legal challenges faced by Enbridge. The company wants approval for a plan to bury a replacement section of the pipeline inside a tunnel, and continue to use it to convey petroleum products beneath the Great Lakes.

“Water is life, water is power, water is a right.”

So said Chicago Reverend Marilyn Pagan-Banks, to the sound of lapping waves on Lake Michigan, during a recent webinar promoting a proposed ordinance that would ensure drinking water access for all Chicagoans during the pandemic and beyond.

The Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) is launching a new initiative to increase recycling in Michigan. It’s called NextCycle Michigan.

EGLE, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, cities, and individual companies have agreed to collaborate on the effort.

Michigan put in place drinking water standards for the chemical family of PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in August 2020. Those are among the most stringent in the country.

Nearly eight months later, the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy says it's been seeing a lot of success in getting public water systems in compliance with the new rules. Michigan has roughly 2,700 public water works, and EGLE reports that most of those systems are in compliance.

• Building, maintaining, and operating a water and sewer system is generally the most expensive item on a small town’s budget.

• The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Water and Waste Disposal Program is a lifeline for rural communities, providing Michigan towns with $963.8 million in loans and $307.1 million in grants between January 2008 and November 2020.

• The affordability of rural water service is a “monstrous elephant in the room” when it comes to long-term rural financial viability.

This week the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) is holding the first of two online sessions to listen to people’s thoughts what to do about climate change. Governor Gretchen Whitmer wants Michigan to be carbon neutral by 2050. EGLE — with input from the Council on Climate Solutions — has to come up with a plan.

The Department of Natural Resources is warning landowners about a tree-killer that pops up this time of year. It’s called oak wilt. If you have oak trees you can help prevent the spread of the fungus.

Dana Serafin still hauls in 20,000-pound boatloads of whitefish to supply regional restaurants and markets, but in recent years, the Saginaw Bay fisherman has found it more difficult to fill his orders.

Native whitefish, the main livelihood for Serafin and other Great Lakes commercial fishers, have been in decline for years amid changes to the food web, replaced in Serafin’s nets by healthier populations of walleye and lake trout that he’s not allowed to keep.

Michigan members of Congress are once again pushing legislation to speed the cleanup of sites contaminated with PFAS.

PFAS are a family of industrial chemicals linked to serious human health problems. PFAS can be found in a variety of commercially-produced products, ranging from housewares to firefighting foam.

The Environmental Working Group says there are 2,337 PFAS contamination sites in 49 States. There are 162 sites in Michigan.

The plume of 1,4 dioxane in Washtenaw County's groundwater is one step closer to getting federal help with its cleanup. The Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy requested today that the Environmental Protection Agency initiate the assessment of the site for the National Priorities List of Superfund sites.

It appears the United States Air Force is in no hurry to abide by Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s request to use Michigan’s standards for cleaning up PFAS contamination at a former Air Force base.

A group opposed to wolf hunting in Michigan has sued the Department of Natural Resources. The lawsuit claims appointments to the Wolf Management Advisory Council are heavily in favor of wolf hunting in Michigan.

“The appointments to the council are clearly stacked in the favor of wolf hunting – and don’t get me wrong, wolf hunters have a voice too – but this is grossly in favor of wolf hunters,” said Karol Miller, President of the wolf advocacy group The 06 Legacy.

Wisconsin regulators are investigating why it took Enbridge Energy more than a year to report the full extent of a petroleum product spill.

Enbridge did report a spill of 1.3 gallons of from a valve in its Line 13 pipeline, 30 miles southeast of Madison in April of 2019.

Fifteen months later, Enbridge reported a different amount.

Apparently, people are using a lot more personal wipes and baby wipes during the pandemic. Then, they’re flushing them down the toilet. Officials in Macomb and Oakland counties say those so-called “flushable” wipes are wreaking havoc on sewer pipes and pump stations.

“A couple of years ago, we had about 70 tons of these things, but just recently we completed a cleanup that was 270 tons. So just a huge increase,” said Candice Miller, the Public Works Commissioner of Macomb County.

Diminished surface ice is just the beginning: Climate change is warming Lake Michigan and other big lakes all the way down to their chilly depths, according to new federal research.

In a first-of-its kind study, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory have used the only known long-term dataset of deep-lake temperatures to determine that Lake Michigan’s temperature is slowly increasing over the past 30 years.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer is hoping that a federal law will be able to help speed up Department of Defense cooperation with cleaning up contamination from per- and polyfluoralalkyl sybstances, or PFAS, in Oscoda Township near Wurtsmith Air Force Base.

In 2020, the National Defense Authorization Act included section 332. It allows a governor to request changes or an entirely new cooperative agreement over remediation at sites by PFAS as a result of DOD activities.

The floodwaters have receded from Jefferson Chalmers for now, but evidence of the neighborhood’s recent crisis is hard to miss:

Dried algae on the sidewalks. Appliances bolted to basement walls to keep them dry. Water lines on the sides of buildings. And massive orange “tiger dams” snaking through backyards, waiting for the water to rise again.

The neighborhood — a labyrinth of canals leading to the Detroit River on the city’s far east side — is often called Detroit’s version of Venice. But for the past two summers, as Great Lakes water levels reached record highs, it has looked more like a floodplain.

Updated March 25, 2021 at 5:29 p.m.

The University of Michigan is pledging to achieve "net zero" carbon status for its $12.5 billion endowment by 2050. The board of regents approved a plan Thursday that calls for shifting investments away from companies that produce fossil fuels and toward those generating renewable energy.

It pledges $140 million in new investments in wind and solar power and projects to limit carbon emissions. It would continue the current practice of not investing in the top 200 oil, gas and coal companies or those that extract tar sands oil.

A circuit court judge has scheduled new hearings for May that will likely result in more aggressive cleanup of a source of pollution in Washtenaw County.

The case involves a plume of contamination from Gelman Sciences that's been spreading in the groundwater for decades.  

Michigan recently dramatically lowered the standard for 1,4 dioxane in groundwater.  That's the chemical in the plume spreading in the Ann Arbor and Scio Township areas.