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Because of state grants announced, Napoleon officials look forward to replacing a junkyard with a manufacturing facility.

In Sandusky, planners expect to knock down three decrepit, 19th century factory buildings along Lake Erie and erect condominiums in their place.

And in Toledo, an industrial waste site eventually will be cleaned and used for riverfront housing.

Those are among 18 projects receiving a total of almost $40 million from the Clean Ohio Fund, which voters approved three years ago as a way to rehabilitate polluted, abandoned industrial sites. Read the rest of this entry »

They were hoping for more — a lot more — but parties working to preserve a prime piece of duneland in Saugatuck say they’re still happy with the $900,000 allocation awarded to the project Wednesday by the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund.

“Every bit helps,” Saugatuck City Manager Gordon Gallagher said.

However, the allocation is just a small portion of the $10.7 million conservationists had hoped for as they compete with developers to purchase about 413 acres of duneland with a value estimated between $25 million and $40 million.

The property, which includes more than a mile of Lake Michigan shoreline, is owned by the Gertrude Denison Trust and the estate of Frank Denison, a Saugatuck Yacht builder who died in 2000. Read the rest of this entry »

Ottawa and Sandusky county officials are opposing construction of a $49 million private water network near Camp Perry, saying the system is unnecessary and a waste of taxpayer money.

Northern Ohio Rural Water wants to ship Lake Erie water through underground pipes from eastern Ottawa County to Sandusky County. There, the Norwalk-based water authority plans to completely encircle Fremont with water lines, branching outward like bicycle spokes to serve customers in surrounding areas.

Fremont Mayor Terry Overmyer didn’t like that idea. His city’s water treatment plant will soon receive a $12.8 million upgrade, and he said he wants to sell water to Sandusky and Ballville townships to generate revenues.

Sandusky County Commissioner Brad Smith also opposes the NORW plan. Read the rest of this entry »

Oregon was awarded $204,000 in state funds last week to help cover the cost of purchasing 57 acres along Wynn Road to relocate a ditch, and, in the process, create a buffer for wetlands.

Moving the ditch, which runs between Cedar Point and Bay Shore roads, would include establishing a wetland system that will flow into two existing ponds, city officials said.

Ponds created by the project will allow sediment to settle, preventing it from running into Maumee Bay and eventually Lake Erie, said Thomas Hays, assistant city law director. Environmentalists and city officials have long cited the need for better wetlands buffering. Read the rest of this entry »

Even when times are hard and state dollars are difficult to find, there are some commitments that must be met. The quality of our water is one of them, and state officials didn’t let us down.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality gave St. Clair County more than $750,000 to protect our waterways from pollution. The grant represents public dollars well spent.

The county’s Illicit Discharge Elimination Program is a vital weapon in the fight against water pollution. Part of a larger DEQ campaign against illegal sewage and other discharge pipes, the county effort is identifying these non-point sources of contamination and correcting them. Read the rest of this entry »

Both sides of a debate about whether to put a water treatment facility in Saugatuck Dunes State Park will have their say Monday night.

The Holland Area League of Women Voters will host a forum 7 p.m. at Herrick District Library to discuss proposals by the city of Holland and Laketown Township to build a water treatment facility on about an acre of land near the shore, with an intake pipe running underground to Lake Michigan.

Scheduled speakers will include Holland Mayor Al McGeehan, Holland Board of Public Works General Manager Tim Morawski, Laketown Township Manager Al Meshkin, Concerned Citizens for Saugatuck Dunes State Park co-chair people David and Alison Swan, and Dave Dempsey of the Michigan Environmental Action Council. Read the rest of this entry »

A 22-square-mile area north of Fort Wayne is the most mercury-contaminated spot in the country, according to a report from a national environmental group.

An Environmental Protection Agency study, used to determine mercury “hot spots,” did not identify the source of the pollution. But Michael Shore, a senior policy analyst with Environmental Defense, said power plants in northwest Indiana and the Chicago area are probably behind much of the mercury in Indiana’s hot spot. Read the rest of this entry »

Toronto can push its urban agenda forward by working with Great Lakes cities on both sides of the border, Mayor David Miller said yesterday at the end of a two-day trip to Chicago.

“One of the positive outcomes was a little bit of the strengthening of the relationships,” he said in a telephone interview about his first foreign trip since taking office.

Mr. Miller, who had lunch yesterday with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, also attended a meeting there of mayors of Great Lakes cities from the United States and Ontario.

“We agreed collectively to work on cleanup issues affecting the Great Lakes, including invasive species,” Mr. Miller said, adding that cities on both sides of the border are lobbying their respective senior levels of government for financial help. Read the rest of this entry »

The Common Council is to get its first look tonight at an $8.2 million plan to reduce radium in city drinking water, an effort on which the Waukesha Water Utility has worked nearly 10 years.

The utility commission approved the plan.

Drafts of the plan have received conceptual approval from the state Department of Natural Resources, which has placed the city and nearly 50 other water utilities in the state under an order to comply with federal water regulations.

The DNR is acting as the enforcement arm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to bring water utilities into compliance with federal radium standards. Radium occurs naturally in many deep wells, and the federal government has determined that it is a cancer risk.

According to a Water Utility report released Monday, radium levels vary among the city’s 10 wells from 5.7 to 17.1 picocuries per liter. Federal radium standards allow no more than 5 ppl. Read the rest of this entry »

Mercury that spews into the air from Ohio power plants could translate into gold for Sid Nelson Jr.’s Twinsburg-based Sorbent Technologies, which has developed a way to filter the toxic metal out of smokestack emissions.

But the future of Nelson’s company depends on the outcome of a politically charged debate over how and when coal-burning plants will have to reduce emissions of mercury, which harms human brains. Airborne mercury that gets into waterways has led to warnings against eating mercury-laden tuna and any fish caught in Ohio waters. Read the rest of this entry »