(IN) Indianapolis Star Tribune - Environmental activists who are upset about Indiana’s water pollution rules say they’ll ask the federal government to take action against the state.

(WI) Green Bay Press Gazette - A federal judge on Wednesday threw out a lawsuit filed by papermakers Appleton Papers Inc. and NCR Corp. to diffuse the $1 billion to $1.5 billion cost of cleaning up PCB contamination in the Fox River.

(MI) The Detroit News - Citizens have one more day to offer opinions on a proposed road map for the planned cleanup of dioxin contamination near the Dow Chemical Co. plant in Midland. The public comment period began in October and ends Thursday.

(WI) The Associated Press - Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said Wednesday he wants to know more about the threat Asian carp pose to the Great Lakes.

(ON) CBC - Navigational dredging along the St. Clair River in southwestern Ontario has contributed to a drop in water levels in the upper Great Lakes basin, but it’s not an ongoing problem and doesn’t require immediate action, a panel of U.S. and Canadian experts has found.

(MI) Detroit Free Press - Sooner or later, Mother Nature is going to pick sides. Temperatures will rise, fall or remain relatively stable. Ocean levels either will rise precipitously, swamping coastal areas worldwide, or they won’t. Changing weather patterns will render vast swaths of currently arable land uninhabitable, or not.

(MI) The Detroit News - Lt. Gov. John Cherry has launched a new tax trial balloon. Cherry, for now the top Democratic contender to succeed Jennifer Granholm as governor, wants to tax water bottlers in Michigan to fund higher education scholarships.

By Sarah Coefield
Dec. 17, 2009
Gibson Lake, built by one of the world’s largest coal-fired power plants to store wastewater, has attracted birds and fishermen to its shores for years.
But after years of wastewater discharge, the Indiana lake contains high levels of selenium that threaten hundreds of species of birds, including the endangered least tern, and render fish unsafe to eat.
Selenium is an essential nutrient, but in wildlife and people excess amounts can be dangerous.

(MI) Detroit Free Press - In blunt terms, members of an international study panel said the idea that a widened St. Clair River is losing billions of gallons of water each day, causing the levels of Michigan and Huron lakes to drop, is bunk.

(WI) Green Bay Press Gazette - The latest invasive species to threaten the Great Lakes is a brute called the Asian carp. The Wisconsin Legislature should take an opportunity today to act swiftly against the threat.