Environment

Lake fish, even with some mercury, good for your health

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Eating Great Lakes fish that contain mercury may threaten your health, but the nutritional benefits may outweigh the risks, according to a new study of lake trout and lake whitefish consumption by members of Native American tribes with high rates of obesity, diabetes and other diseases. “Great Lakes fish should be considered for their nutritional importance relative to contemporary options, even when adjusting for risks of mercury toxicity,” according to the researchers from the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority’s Inter-Tribal Fisheries and Assessment Program in Sault Ste. Marie and the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. The findings come from the assessment program’s 25 years of studies of whitefish and lake trout from lakes Huron, Superior and Michigan. Authority members come from five Ottawa and Ojibwa tribes — known collectively as the Anishinaabe– in the Upper Peninsula and Northern Lower Peninsula and represent fisheries’ interests.

Environment

Of wolves, deer, wildflowers and maples

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Grey wolves are good for wildflowers like the nodding trillium and the Canada mayflower in the Great Lakes region. They’re also good for young red maples and sugar maples. That’s because white-tailed deer are bad for both wildflowers and maple saplings. And wolves are bad for deer. With the resurgence of wolves in the region, smart deer are learning to keep away from areas with many of the predators, meaning that wildflowers and young maples there have a better chance of survival, according to a recent study by scientists from the University of Notre Dame and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR).

Environment

Can cormorants help control Great Lakes invaders?

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Double-crested cormorants are the bane of many Great Lakes anglers, devouring prize game fish and damaging the sport and commercial fishery. At least that’s a widely held belief about these birds — and a generally wrong one, Northern Illinois University researchers say. Cormorants’ fish-stealing rep may be a bum rap — and the truth is more complex, as the first dietary study of cormorants in southern Lake Michigan shows. Even better news: The cormorants are chowing down instead on invasive species — mainly alewife, round goby and white perch — which together accounted for 80 to 90 percent of their diet. “Because this is the first such study to be completed in southern Lake Michigan, its results will help to inform discussion among local stakeholders and will provide valuable data to other researchers studying cormorant diet in the region,” said lead author Patrick Madura, who led the study as a master’s student.

Government

New proposal would add deposit to water bottles

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — There’s another move underway in the Legislature to expand Michigan’s 40-year-old beverage deposit law to include water and juice containers. But prospects for passage this year appear unlikely. The latest effort would add the current 10-cent deposit requirement on metal, glass and plastic carbonated beverage containers to include noncarbonated drinks, with exceptions for milk, other dairy products, unflavored soymilk and unflavored rice milk. The major additions would be water, juice, wine and liquor containers. The law that voters approved in 1976 covers containers of one gallon or less of “soft drinks, soda water, carbonated natural or mineral water or other nonalcoholic carbonated drink; beer, ale or other malt drinks of whatever alcoholic content or a mixed wine drink or a mixed spirit drink.” It took effect in 1978.

Agriculture

Role of inland fisheries often underreported, undervalued, study says

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Inland fisheries and aquaculture account for more than 40 percent of the world’s reported fish production but their harvest is frequently under-reported and ignored in the Great Lakes region and elsewhere, a new study says. “The central role of inland fish in aquatic ecosystems makes them good indicators of ecosystem change,” said the study by scientists at Michigan State University, the U.S. Geological Survey, Carleton University in Canada and the University of Hull in the United Kingdom. Ecosystem change includes threats from agriculture, hydropower projects and deforestation, as well as overfishing and invasive species. Although the study focused primarily on inland fisheries in the developing world, it also addressed the situation in the Great Lakes and the region’s inland waters. “Fish respond directly to some environmental stressors such as toxic and thermal pollution, flow change and climate change,” according to the first global review of the value of inland fisheries and fish.

Business & Economy

Workplace violence affects health workers, study says

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Workers in hospitals and other health care facilities are at higher risk of becoming victims of workplace violence than employees in other jobs, a new federal study found. Kicking, hitting and beating are the most commonly reported forms of on-the-job violence that caused health care employees to miss days at work, according to the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO), a nonpartisan investigative agency of Congress. The Michigan Nurses Association, which represents unionized hospital nurses, cited two such incidents. In one, a professional wrestler being treated at an Alpena emergency room twisted a nurse’s arm and damaged her shoulder. In the other, a nurse who was eight months pregnant was kicked in the stomach.

Government

Court: Cities can lease drilling rights under parks without citizens’ vote

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Citizens have no legal right to vote on whether to approve leases for drilling for oil and gas under city-owned parks and cemeteries, the Court of Appeals has ruled. A three-judge panel unanimously rejected a challenge by the nonprofit Don’t Drill the Hills Inc. to a decision by Rochester Hills to lease underground oil and gas rights to one company and to allow another company to relocate an oil pipeline. City attorney John Staran said the decision is significant to local governments across Michigan because the court found a lease is not a “sale” of parkland that would trigger a public vote. “The court applied common sense and the plain and ordinary meaning to ‘park’ and ‘open space,’” Staran said. “Park means park.

Environment

Coldwater bacteria threatens Great Lakes salmon

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — A bacterial disease that sickens fish whether raised in captivity or in the wild is imperiling popular salmon species in the Great Lakes Basin, a new study shows. The findings are based on testing lake, brook, brown and rainbow trout and Coho, Atlantic, chinook and steelhead salmon from the Lake Huron, Lake Michigan and Lake Superior watersheds, as well as fish used for breeding at state hatcheries in the Upper Peninsula and northern Lower Peninsula. Bacterial coldwater disease “threatens wild and propagated members of the salmon family worldwide” and can cause substantial economic damage, according to the study by scientists at Michigan State University. It’s the first comprehensive examination of the prevalence of the bacterium in the Great Lakes Basin. The disease is caused by a bacterium known as Flavobacterium psychrophilum, which has been associated historically with more fish deaths “than all other fish pathogens combined” at state hatcheries, according to the study.

Environment

Snyder confuses public relations with public health solutions

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
(This commentary originally appeared in Domemagazine.com). LANSING — Gov. Rick Snyder remains under heavy fire for the amount of time it took for him to become publicly concerned with Flint’s escalating unsafe water crisis and to act decisively on those concerns. But the governor is certainly making up for lost time – if you measure concern by the number of press releases flooding from his office. That deluge of pronouncements, announcements, advisories and denouncements reflects a misperception that better PR is – if not a solution to the poisoning of a city– at least a priority deflection of too-slow-to-act criticisms and of the unfavorable and unwelcome international media attention the crisis continues to draw. By my rough tally, for example, his office issued 11 press releases and advisories between Feb.