The following guest post was provided by Clean Water Action in Michigan, our state’s top environmental watchdog and advocate for clean water. If you’re not familiar with State Rep. Lee Chatfield, I urge you to read the piece I wrote about him last week titled “Northern Michigan Republican Lee Chatfield can’t control his guns or his campaign“. If you’re unfamiliar […]

Last week, 550 gallons of coolant containing toxic organic solvents (alkyl derivatives of benzene, specifically) were released into Lake Michigan from an electrical transmission cable running under the Straits of Mackinac. It happened because a ship went through the Straits dragging its anchor. (UPDATE: It appears that it was a tugboat owned by VanEnkevort Tug & Barge.) Enbridge Energy clearly […]

Native Americans protest Enbridge’s Line 5 in shadow of the Mackinac Bridge Under the Straits of Mackinac, just west of our iconic Mackinac Bridge, there is a set of two pipelines known as Line 5 which are owned by the Enbridge oil company. They were built in 1953, making them 64 years old this year, and before the Great Lakes […]

The following guest post was written by Denny Green from Clean Water Action – Michigan. Enjoy Protest of Enbridge Line 5 pipeline in Mackinac City, summer 2015, photo by Anne C. Savage The U.S. Senate has just unanimously passed bipartisan legislation to reauthorize the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) through 2019, and improve pipeline safety and oversight. Introduced […]

Lon Johnson, the former Chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, has made shutting down Enbridge Oil’s notorious Line 5 oil pipeline the center of his primary bid for Michigan’s 1st Congressional District seat. The controversial pipeline runs under the Straits of Mackinac and the horror of it rupturing is nearly too horrible to contemplate. Imagine that it fails in the […]

The following guest post was written by Denny Green of Clean Water Action – Michigan. Enjoy. Anytime you hear that something or someone’s days are numbered, you get the idea that it’s a matter of grave significance — certainly something to be regarded with the utmost concern and action. Well, it’s been more than 140 days since Michigan Attorney General […]

This past weekend, protesters from around the state gathered at the Mackinac Bridge to call for the shutdown of Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline. The pipeline (actually TWO pipelines) are 62 years old and were built in a time when regulations were far more lax than they are now. Had the Great Lakes Submerged Lands Act been in place when the […]

The following essay is a guest post by Denny Green of Clean Water Action – Michigan. Enjoy. Stick that in your pipeline and smoke it! Anybody who’s ever visited Michigan’s Great Lakes has been taken aback by their inspiring splendor and breath-taking beauty, laid out for all to see. What you don’t see, however, are Enbridge’s two aging pipelines, known […]

A major oil spill in the Great Lakes would be devastating to Michigan’s natural resources, the health of our citizens, and our economy, and the boom in domestic oil drilling and Canadian tar sands makes such a spill a real possibility. But the potential for this kind of a catastrophe has been almost entirely missing from the national conversation about […]

At what point does climate change denial become a mental illness?

The Great Lakes are now at historically low levels. So low, in fact, that Governor Snyder was forced to prevail upon the legislature to pass emergency funding to dredge 58 harbors and bays so that ships and recreational vessels can continue to use them.

Yet, somehow, the corporate-funded climate change deniers still have a voice in what is no longer a debate about the reality of global climate change.

Much more after the jump.

The Chicago locks aren’t the only entry threat for invasive Asian carp entering the Great Lakes watershed: Yang, 52, the owner of a fish import company, pleaded guilty this week in Windsor to violating the federal Fisheries Act, and was ordered to pay a $50,000 fine. He was stopped Nov. 4 after crossing the Ambassador Bridge into Canada. Yang paid […]