Environment & Science

The Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines have made national headlines, but could Enbridge's Line 5 under the Straits of Mackinac pose the biggest environmental risk of all?

That's the question posed by a documentary airing tonight on Detroit Public Television.

It's called "Beneath the Surface: The Line 5 Pipeline in the Great Lakes."

Piping plovers are little shorebirds, and they're an endangered species in the Great Lakes region. But they’re making a comeback thanks to conservation efforts and even some heroics.

Have you seen any stink bugs in your house? Over the last few years, the brown marmorated stink bug has invaded the southern half of the Lower Peninsula. The invasive species is more than just a nuisance. It’s a threat to crops, too.

Amy Irish-Brown, a senior educator at Michigan State University Extension, and Jim Engelsma, president of J. Engelsma Orchards, Inc., joined Stateside to discuss the characteristics of stinkbugs that make them so difficult to monitor, control, and predict.

As President Trump and Chinese leaders swap threats of trade tariffs, we've heard a lot of talk about what a 25 percent Chinese tariff might mean to soybean farmers in the U.S. and specifically in Michigan, one of the top soybean-producing states.

This truly is the winter of our discontent – even if spring officially arrived a month ago.

As challenging as the snow, ice, and flood advisories are across the Lower Peninsula, snow has really hammered the Upper Peninsula. In just one example, more than two feet of snow fell in Menominee over the weekend. Some drifts were ten feet high. And that snow is threatening deer in the U.P.

Protecting the Great Lakes and Michigan's natural resources is a crucial task that's best accomplished by Michiganders working together.

That means all Michiganders, including the First Peoples. How can non-Indigenous people be good allies to Indigenous people?

In Michigan, we have laws in place that give the state the power to essentially rope off polluted areas instead of cleaning them up. Instead, those laws tell the public: don’t drink the water or build your house here.

Late summer is when we wind up seeing those unwelcome blooms of cyanobacteria and algae in western Lake Erie.

But right now, spring, is when the blooms are set up by a sort of equation: fertilizer plus spring rain equals phosphorus loading, which leads to those late-summer algal blooms.

At more than 1,600 sites across the state of Michigan, you can’t drink the groundwater. Well, you could, but it wouldn’t be safe or legal.

There's been more than a little concern regarding Enbridge's oil and gas pipeline known as Line 5. It crosses under the Mackinac Straits near the Mighty Mac Bridge, and it's more than 60 years old.

Some of its protective coating is missing and there's been some interior corrosion, but Enbridge says Line 5 is safe.

But, recent vessel activity – presumably an anchor strike – damaged submerged electric cables and also dented Line 5 in three spots. 

Earlier this month, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality approved a permit that allows the Nestle Corporation to pump up to 400 gallons of groundwater per minute to feed its bottled water operations in Osceola County.

People who study birds are now using radar to make maps that can forecast migration at night. They say these maps could help by reducing the number of birds that collide with buildings and wind turbines.

Flame retardant chemicals are in our furniture, in carpet padding, electronics and car seats, but they don’t stay put. They leach out of these products and get into our bodies.

Some of these chemicals, called polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs, were phased out of use starting in 2004.

A new study in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology finds levels of PBDEs in kids' blood have been declining.

Now that the state has approved a permit for Nestle to remove more water from its Osceola County well, opposition is growing.

Among the critics: Macomb County Public Works Commissioner and former Republican congresswoman Candice Miller.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is now considering a proposal that could put Michigan in the forefront of potash mining. 

The Department of Environmental Quality has approved a permit for Nestlé Waters North America to boost the amount of groundwater it pumps from its well in Osceola County, near Evart.

Nestlé is now pumping up to 250 gallons per minute from that Evart well – water that is bottled under its Ice Mountain label.

The new permit allows it to pump up to 400 gallons a minute.

Jennifer Gilchrist moved from New York City back home to the Detroit suburb of Beverly Hills in 2016. She moved to help take care of her mom Joellen, a retired Detroit high school teacher, and to fix up her childhood home.

That’s when a plumber told them they had a lead service line.