ModeShift

Michigan’s New Rules To Protect Water From Manure Attacked By Lawmakers

by Keith SchneiderOctober 15, 2024October 15, 20240

FREMONT, MI. – Anticipating a surge of funding for building manure biodigesters that capture methane for electricity and transportation fuels from millions of tons of farm animal wastes Michigan’s environmental agency last year drafted more rigorous operating rules to protect state waters from a new tide of farm-based pollution. The action by the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy gained powerful legal justification in late July when the Michigan Supreme Court decided that EGLE …

Environmental Groups Face Off With EPA to Control Manure Pollution

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 13, 2024October 15, 20240

For the third time in two decades the Environmental Protection Agency appeared in federal Appellate Court this week to defend its admittedly flawed approach to regulating the billions of pounds of manure running off into the nation’s waters from large industrial animal feeding operations. But unlike the previous Appellate Court cases in 2005 and 2011, when the plaintiffs were the major agricultural trade organizations seeking to weaken or eliminate agency regulations, this time the case …

Ontario’s Lake Superior Shoreline: Wolves, Eagles, Trackless Forests

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 5, 2024September 5, 20240

WAWA, ONTARIO — This town of 2,700 hosted gold miners at the turn of the 20th century, iron ore miners in the decades that followed, and was only reachable by plane until 1962 when the 145-mile segment of Trans Canada Highway 17 opened from Sault Ste. Marie. Even now, well into the 21st century, Wawa feels like an outpost. More than 1,400 residents have departed since the early 1990s. Storefronts are dark. Dust swirls around …

North Shore Minnesota’s Rocky Kiss To Lake Superior

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 3, 2024September 5, 20240

SILVER BAY, MINN. — Where land meets the cold waters of Lake Superior north of Duluth is where 4 billion year-old basalt, granite, sandstone, and shale welled up from volcanic fires in the years of Earth’s formation to eventually declare a treacherous truce with mankind. The shoreline is all hard rock and freshwater spray, a long ribbon of impenetrable defense against the sort of fierce storm surges and steady erosion that wash away homes and …

Near Ashland, Bicycle Takes A Beating

by Keith SchneiderAugust 31, 2024September 5, 20240

ASHLAND, WI – A great big thank you on Saturday morning to Nick Pechacek and Eric Schultz, expert bike mechanics. Nick works at Bay City Cycles here in Ashland. Eric works just up the road 10 miles north at Washburn Hardware in Bayfield, which also is a Specialized bike dealer. I encountered these patient men of the Upper Midwest following one of the stupidest oversights of my life on Thursday. Following a short stop at …

Around Lake Superior, World’s Largest Sweetwater Sea

by Keith SchneiderAugust 29, 2024September 5, 20240

MARQUETTE, MI – Circling Lake Superior. The world’s largest lake. Just 200 miles north of our home in Benzonia. It’s not been a lifelong desire. And over the years since my life started in Michigan in 1990, I’ve visited much of the Lake Superior shoreline in my home state, and a good bit in Wisconsin and Minnesota as well. It’s just this: what’s happening on the Canadian shoreline? We had a nice break in our …

Jason Rowntree’s Cattle Grazing Practices Enhance Water and Environmental Quality

by Keith SchneiderAugust 16, 2024August 16, 20240

LAKE CITY, MI – Two facts about Michigan agriculture are scarcely recognized outside the fences and beyond the drainage ditches of the state’s 45,000 farms. The first: farming is among the most technologically sophisticated industrial sectors in Michigan and every other state. Second: livestock farms are the state’s largest source of water pollution from toxic nitrates and phosphorus, and air pollution from methane, a powerful climate change gas. Here on Michigan State University’s 1,100-acre livestock …

Movement To Limit CAFO Pollution Emboldened By Michigan Court Ruling

by Keith SchneiderAugust 15, 2024August 15, 20240

A recent state court decision has the potential to significantly transform how animal agriculture is regulated in Michigan and could influence how other states and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency oversee the industry’s mammoth waste stream, said environmental lawyers and activists. On July 31 , in a case that pit the administration of Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer against the state’s Farm Bureau, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that he Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and …

Breaking Through Big Ag’s Shroud of Resistance to Environmental Protection, Michigan Supreme Court Sets Stage For Curbing Mammoth Tide of Farm Waste

by Keith SchneiderAugust 2, 2024August 2, 20240

In a rare rebuke to the industrial farm sector, the Michigan Supreme Court this week ruled that state environmental regulators have full authority to require big livestock and poultry operations to improve their handling of billions of pounds of manure that contributes to serious contamination of state waters. The 5-2 decision issued Wednesday is one of the most significant environmental protection measures in Michigan in years. It comes after four years of battles between state …

Platte River Park, A Natural Resource Treasure, Opens in Benzie County

by Keith SchneiderMay 21, 2024May 30, 20240

HONOR, Michigan — From the place where it slips out of Lake Ann in Benzie County’s northeast corner, Platte River haunts a landscape of forest and open fields, steals past this village of 330 residents, crosses a mighty and silent wetland, fills a big lake, and then, nearly 30 miles from where it started, reaches a curved sand inlet where it empties into Lake Michigan. One of the 49 blue ribbon trout streams in Michigan’s …