Bruce Beach Canada

The Detroit Historical Society is honoring lost mariners during its annual Lost Mariners Remembrance this weekend in Detroit, Michigan. It’s the 25th year the society has held the event, which also marks the anniversary of the sinking of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald. Read the full story by WXYZ-TV – Detroit, MI.

An anaerobic digester in Michigan was shut down after a liquid waste product called “digestate” escaped a nearby farm and flooded a neighboring home’s backyard. Environmentalists point to this incident as a prime example of what can go wrong if anaerobic digesters aren’t adequately regulated while lawmakers are pushing legislation that would expand the market for biogas produced by digesters and exempt them from certain regulations. Read the full story by MLive.

Lake Erie’s 2024 walleye hatch is being characterized as “low,” meaning that in two years, when the current crop grows to legal keeper size of 15 inches, something fewer than 10 million will be added. The most recent hatch and the only other rated low during the past 10 years happened in 2016. Read the full story by The Columbus Dispatch.

Michigan’s freshwater sand dunes make up the largest collection of freshwater dunes on the planet. A pair of West Michigan lawmakers seek to solve the problem of vague legal protections with planned legislation to protect the state’s most sensitive dunes, or those that were designated as “critical dunes” in 1989. Read the full story by Great Lakes Echo.

Huron Pines, a Northeast Lower Michigan organization, has reached a landmark $1 million fundraising goal as part of its Community-Driven Conservation fundraising campaign marking the organization’s 50th anniversary. Its funds will support public recreation opportunities, protect wild lands, and improve water quality. Read the full story by the Oscoda Press.

A complaint filed by a Michigan state employee with the Michigan Attorney General’s office Thursday alleges that state regulators have failed to stop chemical giant BASF from releasing toxic chemicals into the Detroit River from its Wyandotte facility over several decades. Read the full story by Planet Detroit.

According to a recent Canadian government study, the average water temperature of the St. Lawrence River is at a record high. At measurements of 300 meters deep, in 2022, the temperatures exceeded 44.6 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time ever. Read the full story by Spectrum News 1.

The University of Michigan recently received nearly $200,000 in state funding to figure out ways to make cargo shipping, recreational boating, commercial fishing, ports and ferries more sustainable. The project’s goals will be in line with the state’s MI Healthy Climate Plan that sets targets to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Read the full story by WCMU – Mount Pleasant, MI.

The wreck of the James R. Bentley, a 170-foot-long schooner, has sat 165 feet beneath the surface of Lake Huron since 1878. Within its hold was an unlikely treasure. A group of divers sponsored by a Northern Michigan distilling company aimed to retrieve a few scoops of 145-year-old rye seeds aboard the ship. Read the full story by The New York Times.