Environment

Oh, buoy! Info from webcams helps anglers on lakes Michigan, Erie

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By CELESTE BOTT
Capital News Service
LANSING — A newly activated webcam on a Lake Michigan buoy can help forecasters and anglers get a better sense of weather and water. The buoy is the first of its kind in the Great Lakes, said Edward Verhamme, a project engineer with LimnoTech, the Ann Arbor-based engineering firm that will maintain the buoy through 2015. Every 10 minutes the buoy reports the average wind speed, direction, gusts, air temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, wave height and water temperature. Additional sensors measure and report rainfall and hail intensity. The webcam is a new feature that helps verify the data that the buoy measures.

Environment

Debate over meeting Holland’s energy needs

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By MICHAEL GERSTEIN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Holland is looking to reduce its dependency on fossil fuels after years of litigation about a failed multimillion dollar proposal to expand its coal plant. It’s not feasible to meet the city’s energy needs without fossil fuels, said Dan Nally, the business services director for the Holland Board of Public Works. But environmentalists worry about a city council vote looming Nov. 28 that could result in a new natural gas plant for the city. Holland recently approved two contracts with wind farms to meet Michigan’s 2015 deadline for 10 percent clean electrical energy.