Environment

Artificial Reefs

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ARTIFICIALREEFS
By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Artificial reefs in all five Great Lakes and some of their tributaries are intended to improve sport-fishing, enhance fish habitats and reduce the impact of current and waves. But it’s uncertain whether they’ve been as successful as hoped in achieving those goals, according to a new study by scientists at the U.S. Geological Service’s Great Lakes Science Center in Ann Arbor. The problem is a shortage of long-term monitoring data on the region’s expanding number of artificial reefs. “Artificial reefs have been proven to attract fish and increase catch rates in recreational fisheries, but the ability of reefs to increase fish abundance is not well documented in freshwater and marine systems,” according to the study in the “Journal of Great Lakes Research.”
Among the reefs cited in the study are those near the Cook Nuclear Plant in Bridgman, J.H. Campbell Power Plant in Ludington, Hamilton Reef in Muskegon and ones in Thunder Bay and Port Huron. Some research shows increased spawning and fish feeding success, the study said, and sometimes the deposition of fish eggs has been greater on artificial than natural reefs.

Agriculture

Farmland Easement

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — A Bankruptcy Court judge in Detroit has cleared the way for a debtor to sell farm property despite a conservation easement owned by a local land conservancy. However, the purchaser must comply with the easement that bans non-farming use of part of the land and is intended to “protect the property’s natural resource and watershed values; to protect the property’s prime agricultural soils and to maintain and enhance the natural features of the property,” Judge Mark Randon ruled. In 2003, Legacy Land Conservancy paid Carolyn Strieter $195,000 for a conservation easement on 77 of her 96.6 acres of farmland in Freedom Township near Ann Arbor. Such easements limit how property can be used. Part of the money came from what was then the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program.

Parks & Recreation

Colonial cannons from Detroit River help solve historical mysteries

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING – The latest research about six 19th century British cannons recovered from the Detroit River is shedding new light on colonial-era militarization of the Great Lakes region, from the Straits of Mackinac to Indiana. It’s also an opportunity to solve at least three mysteries that date to when Detroit still belonged to the British, even after the American Revolution. In 1984, divers recovered the first cannon from a ridge called “Chicken Bone Reef” in the Detroit River just offshore from Cobo Hall. Others were found in 1984 and 1987. A Detroit police diving team discovered the sixth during a 2011 training exercise in the same location.

Environment

Court tosses elk farm’s damages suit against state

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING – The owner of an elk breeding facility that was shut down during a year-long chronic wasting disease – CWD – quarantine waited too long to sue the state for damages, the Court of Appeals has ruled. Ranch Rheaume LLC in Memphis, St. Clair County, also failed to follow the proper procedures to pursue its claim against the state, the court said. The dispute is rooted in the August 2008 discovery of CWD in one whitetail at a deer-breeding facility in Kent County. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) said it was the first such incident in Michigan.

Environment

Three contractors will pay $1 million in asbestos case

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING – Three people face possible prison terms after pleading guilty to illegally removing asbestos from a former Southwest Michigan power plant. They also agreed to reimburse the federal government for the approximately $1 million that the Environmental Protection Agency spent to clean up the contaminated facility in Kalamazoo County’s Comstock Township. Investigators believe the case “may be the largest asbestos release in Michigan since it was declared a hazardous air pollutant in 1971,” the U.S. Attorney’s office in Grand Rapids said. The trio’s illegal activity, spanning more than a year in 2011-12, imperiled the environment as well as the health of the public and laborers on the project, according to the EPA. Scientists have linked asbestos to serious health dangers such as lung cancer, mesothelioma, asbestosis and nonmalignant lung disorders.

Environment

Judge says landowner filed drilling suit too late

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING – An Alcona County man waited too long to sue an energy company that may have drilled a natural gas well too close to his property line, a federal judge has ruled. Much too long. U.S. District Judge Thomas Ludington said Richard Brilinski missed the deadline by waiting about 15 years to start the litigation. “Brilinski’s delay in bringing his claim is inexcusable,” Ludington said in his ruling. Brilinski’s lawyer, Corey Wiggins of Cadillac, said he doesn’t know yet whether there will be an appeal.

Public Safety

New technology helps nab child pornographers

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CAPITAL NEWS SERVICE
By ERIC FREEDMAN
LANSING – Massive amounts of electronic data. A worldwide web that stretches, literally, around the globe. A network of purveyors and viewers of child pornography. And grim, grim stories that reflect the high-tech ways that law enforcement agencies investigate such crimes. Using the latest forensics technology, federal and state agencies collaborate on many child exploitation cases through the Michigan Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, according to State Police Detective Sgt.

Public Safety

As child porn increases, so do arrests, sentences

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING – A Lowell man is sent to federal prison for 30 years for producing child pornography at his mother’s day care center. The ex-host of a Christian radio show in Grand Rapids gets a 40-year federal prison term and a 25-to-50-year state prison term on child pornography and sexual assault charges. A Williamston High School biology teacher is accused of possessing child pornography and using a school computer to commit a crime. A Traverse City-area man is slated for another court appearance on child pornography charges. They’re among a wave of recent arrests and prosecutions across Michigan, reflecting the priority that law enforcement agencies place on child pornography cases, officials say.

Environment

One invasive species may have found a niche

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING – Can invasive species be good news – rather than bad – for native fish in the Great Lakes? That sounds counterintuitive, but a new study shows that the invasive round goby has become an important food source for several native species, especially smallmouth bass, but with benefits also for yellow perch and walleye. Even so, there are still unknowns, including whether the round goby transports contaminants up through the food chain, said Derek Crane, the lead author and a research associate at Lake Superior State University. The study calls the round goby “one of the most successful aquatic invaders” in the Great Lakes. It’s a bottom-dweller originating in Eurasia.

Environment

Do the crime, pay fine – but what is a deer worth?

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CAPITAL NEWS SERVICE
By ERIC FREEDMAN
LANSING — Is a 21-point trophy buck worth 25,000 bucks? Not according to poacher John Baker Jr. who was convicted of illegally shooting one on property belonging to Valhalla Ranch, a private hunting resort in Grayling. Maybe — or maybe not — according to the Court of Appeals, which upheld Baker’s criminal conviction and prison sentence but ordered a Crawford County Circuit Court judge to reconsider the amount of restitution he owes the ranch. Valhalla promotes itself as “a premier hunting destination, nestled in one of the most picturesque locations in Northern Michigan” and as “a place of incredible whitetails with massive antlers and body size.”

The tangled tale of the poached buck’s price tag — and Baker’s legal woes — began in October 2012 when he and another man were hunting on a friend’s land adjacent to the ranch. A 10-foot fence surrounds the ranch.