Environment & Science

Washtenaw and Livingston counties have been named "known risks" for ticks infected with Lyme disease.

That's according to an assessment by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Erik Foster is a state medical entomologist. He says the counties got this label due to residents being diagnosed with Lyme disease after tick bites.

“It’s really important knowing that the ticks are now in the area,” he said.

Foster says adult deer ticks – which are the size of an apple seed – are currently the main threat to residents.

DTE Energy says it will rely heavily on wind power double its renewable energy production by 2022.

The state’s largest utility submitted its latest plans to comply with Michigan’s renewable energy portfolio standards to the Michigan Public Service Commission Friday. Those standards require utilities to get 15% of their energy from renewable sources by 2021.

Michigan’s emergency operations center is being activated Thursday in preparation for this weekend’s expected crash landing of a Chinese space station.

It is highly unlikely that any part of the space station that survives the reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere will land in Michigan. But the Michigan state police is getting ready just in case.

A Cleveland company that’s trying to build the first offshore wind farm on the Great Lakes has been waiting since last July for the state of Ohio to certify its project. This month, the group filed more reports in the hopes of moving the Lake Erie project forward. 

The commissioners who run the Lansing Board of Water and Light have unanimously approved the construction of a new natural gas plant.

The public utility says the new plant will complement its renewable energy projects and will allow it to close its two remaining coal-fired plants, Eckert in 2020 and Erickson in 2025.

The new plant will be located at the Erickson Power Station facility in Delta Township. 

DTE Energy wants to put a new natural gas plant on the grounds of a Ford Motor Company research facility in Dearborn.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality held a public hearing about it Tuesday night.

Ford will shut down some boilers it currently uses to power the research facility. DTE will take over providing that power with the new plant, and provide additional energy it generates to the electrical grid.

State officials have given Enbridge Energy permission to install 22 more anchor supports along twin pipelines at the bottom of the waterway linking Lakes Michigan and Huron.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality issued a permit last week allowing the supports for Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac. Installing the additional anchor supports will minimize the span distance within the Straits of Mackinac.

According to the DEQ press release, each of the 22 anchors will be installed using 10-inch diameter screws with a total lake bottom impact of nine cubic yards.

People who battle sea lampreys are happy with the big spending bill President Trump signed on Friday.

Lampreys are an invasive fish that drink the blood and body fluids of fish like lake trout and salmon.

Marc Gaden is the communications director for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. 

“For lamprey control there’s $7 million [in] additional funds and that will be used primarily for lamprey infrastructure,” he says.

Gaden says that infrastructure includes things like barriers and traps.

The Lansing Board of Water and Light meets Tuesday to vote on issuing bonds for a new natural gas plant, but opponents plan to make a last-ditch effort to change the minds of board members.

The city-owned utility held public meetings before choosing a natural gas plant to replace two coal-burning plants. "But that was several years ago," says Rebecca Payne with the Lansing Environmental Action Team. "Things on the energy market are changing overnight."

Environmental groups are waiting to see what Ohio will do next, after the state finally declared the open waters of Lake Erie are "impaired."

Gail Hesse is with the National Wildlife Federation.

She says the declaration shows Ohio's leaders are no longer in denial about how badly the lake is polluted. 

"They've been dragging their feet and been recalcitrant in making this designation," says Hesse. "So this is an important step."

The University of Michigan now owns what is considered to be the only lifelike reconstruction of an extinct human relative that roamed southern Africa 2 million years ago.

The university’s Museum of Natural History commissioned a full-body, fleshed reconstruction of the Australopithecus sediba from the Daynès Studio in Paris.

The Daynès Studio has also produced several models for the Field Museum in Chicago, most notably the popular Australopithecus afarensis specimen commonly known as “Lucy."

A majority of Americans now say all levels of government need to act on climate change.

That’s one finding from the latest survey in a series of National Surveys on Energy and Environment.

Enbridge Energy has started drilling on property it owns on the north and south sides of Line 5, the oil and gas pipeline it owns under the Mackinac Straits.

Spokesman Michael Barnes says the company has agreed to look at ways to replace the aging pipeline. 

That could mean a new pipeline in a tunnel, inside a horizontally drilled tube, or in a trench.

"It tell us what the composition of the rock is, and so that will help both the state and us analyze what alternatives may be best possible for that area," says Barnes.

This week, Michigan lawmakers are scheduled to discuss a measure that would prevent communities from sterilizing wild animals to control their populations.

Last year, the Trump administration announced it would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, and repeal the Clean Power Plan, or CPP. That’s the Obama-era policy to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electric power generation by 32% by 2030, below 2005 levels.

But in a new study, a group of researchers found that the U.S. can meet its commitment to the international climate agreement without the Clean Power Plan.