"Patsy Hirsch and her husband moved to an Elgin subdivision nearly three decades ago, drawn by a backyard thicket of oak, hickory and cherry trees so dense the canopy blotted out the sun."
"Walmart and Reynolds Consumer Products have agreed to stop selling certain plastic bags in Minnesota for two and a half years, after the state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, argued in court that the companies had falsely marketed them as recyclable."
"Brian Harrington entered the Illinois Department of Corrections system in 2007 at age 14, sentenced to 25 years in prison. ... He remembers the toilet water being brown—and sometimes the drinking water, too. He recalls the tap water’s sewer smell and the black specks swirling, then settling, in his cup."
"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 livestock and poultry operations to improve their handling of billions of pounds of manure that contributes to contamination of waterways."
Meet SEJ member Anna Sysling! Anna is a multimedia storyteller and lifelong Michigander. She is currently a producer for Detroit PBS' Great Lakes Now. She focuses on solutions-oriented environmental stories as a reporter. Anna has worked as a reporter, anchor, host and producer in both commercial and public media since 2013. Her areas of focus include climate, culture, access and social equity.
"Hundreds of people in a southern Illinois town were ordered to evacuate Tuesday as water rolled over the top of a dam, just one perilous result of severe weather that raged through the Midwest overnight with relentless rain and tornadoes and hit the Chicago area especially hard."
"On a twilight so calm the red and white pines are reflected in the waters of northern Wisconsin’s Chippewa Flowage, John Baker plans to go spearfishing — a traditional Ojibwe method of harvesting walleye. But before he sets out, he detours his boat to land on a sandy shore, hops out and crosses the tree line, crunching through dead leaves. “This is my sanctuary,” he says, recalling childhood visits in his dad’s rowboat."
"Rising waters on the Blue Earth River in Minnesota washed out a portion of the Rapidan Dam near the town of Mankato, 50 miles southwest of Minneapolis, as floods inundated parts of the Midwest."
"Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s lawsuit seeking to shut down part of a petroleum pipeline that runs beneath the Straits of Mackinac belongs in state court, a federal appellate panel ruled Monday."
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