Environmental Studies
Environmental Studies Resources
The U.S. Department of Justice announced a settlement Monday with Enbridge Energy Company that will incorporate portions of the state settlement over the 2010 oil pipeline rupture into the Kalamazoo River and require some additional work.
The settlement puts federal authority behind the state requirements that the company complete any remaining cleanup and restoration in the spill area, work the settlement estimates at $58 million. It then requires another $6 million in restoration efforts.
Among the new work under the federal settlement is replacing culverts and removing...
Continue reading "June 8, 2015 : Federal Settlement Reached On Enbridge Oil Spill"...Ohioans are experiencing a little taste of Standing Rock, right at home. Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the Texas company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) project in North Dakota, has spilled about two million of gallons of drilling materials in two separate accidents into two of Ohio’s few remaining wetlands in a rush to complete its Rover natural gas pipeline.
The accidents occurred on April 13 and 14 as workers employed the same drilling technique used to bore beneath the Missouri River to place pipeline for the DAPL. According to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency...
Continue reading "Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the Texas company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) project..."...The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a $6.3 million contract for a dam removal and river upgrade project in Traverse City.
Michels Corporation of Brownsville, Wisconsin, will remove the Boardman Dam and restore sections of the Boardman River.
Carl Platz of the Army Corps says the project will help rebuild the aquatic ecosystem and return the river’s natural flows toward Lake Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay.
It’s part of a broader environmental restoration initiative for the Boardman that includes upgrading fish passage and wildlife habitat, restoring wetlands and...
Continue reading "$6.3M contract awarded to remove Boardman River Dam"...Michigan environmental health regulators are asking for $4.9 million to staff-up and buy more equipment to address an influx of toxic vapor intrusion sites that began last year and is expected to escalate.
Vapor intrusion is a public health hazard caused when poisonous gases from soil and groundwater pollutants migrate through porous soils or underground piping corridors and enter poorly-sealed buildings.
The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality estimates there may be as many as 4,000 sites statewide where known spills of volatile organic compounds or petroleum has...
Continue reading "Map shows where Michigan DEQ is investigating vapor intrusion"...Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette is among a group of law enforcement officials asking U.S. Senate leaders to stop legislation that commercial shippers on the Great Lakes say will help business but which environmentalists believe could lead to more invasive species entering waterways.
Schuette is one of 10 state attorneys general who sent a letter last week to the Senate majority and minority leaders arguing that the bill – which gives authority for regulating the discharge of ballast water largely to the Coast Guard – could “dramatically weaken defenses against aquatic...
Continue reading "AG Bill Schuette says vessel discharge bill could threaten Great Lakes"...Officials with Canadian oil transport corporation Enbridge on Thursday denied reports that the company's twin, underwater, 64-year-old oil and natural gas pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac are losing their protective coating.
A work plan filed by Enbridge with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last September, now available on the company's website, references areas of "holidays," the oil and gas industry term for open areas on pipelines where anticorrosion protective coating has fallen off or is missing on the underwater portions of Line 5.
The twin pipelines carry...
Continue reading "Enbridge denies own report noting Straits oil pipeline losing coating"...A “significant public health threat” is brewing in Michigan because of chemical vapors that percolate up from the ground of former industrial or commercial sites and can leak into nearby homes, Department of Environmental Quality Director Heidi Grether said.
Grether told lawmakers during a Tuesday budget presentation that there could be 4,000 sites in Michigan, many in Metro Detroit, where potentially harmful vapors could pose a problem to human health. She asked legislators to consider beefing up the department’s 2018 budget request by $2.6 million to dedicate eight employees to...
Continue reading "Mich. DEQ chief: ‘Vapor intrusion’ poses health threat"...Opponents of Nestle Ice Mountain's stalled bid to pump more Michigan groundwater are praising a Department of Environmental Quality decision to subject the request to the strictest standard under Michigan law.
In a Jan. 17 letter, DEQ director Heidi Grether wrote that the agency will consider the entanglement between tie-barred state laws that regulate withdrawal of more than 200,000 gallons of water per day for bottling when reviewing the company's application to boost pumping on a production well in Osceola County.
Prior to Grether's letter, Nestle opponents like Jim Olson...
Continue reading "DEQ sets table for strict review of Nestle water bid"...Developing and Implementing Alternatives to Aging Pipelines in the Mackinac Straits is Key to Preventing Great Lakes Oil Spill Disaster
Just one to two propane rail cars or a few tanker trucks a day could replace the Line 5 pipeline’s Upper Peninsula propane capacity without risking energy security in the U.P. or a catastrophic Great Lakes oil spill, according to experts for FLOW (For Love of Water0, a water law and policy center dedicated to upholding the public’s rights to use and benefit from the Great Lakes.
FLOW’s latest research shows that Line 5 supplies only about one...
Continue reading "Research Identifies Viable Options to Enbridge’s Aging “Line 5” for U.P.’s Propane Supply and..."...Air quality and children’s health. Joint hearing before the Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety and the Subcommittee on Children’s Health and Environmental Responsibility of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, United States Senate, One Hundred Twelfth Congress, first session, June 8, 2011. United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Environment and Public Works. Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety. Washington: U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2017.
http://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo76616
Annual Report on the State of the DOE National Laboratories...
Continue reading "New Government Documents, January 2017"...