The Detroit News. March 28, 2018
Take action to keep students safe
The March for Our Lives on Saturday brought out hundreds of thousands of protesters (many of them young people) advocating for gun control and increased school safety. Protests were held in more than 800 locations, including in Michigan. While those events got significant media attention, another initiative underway in this state has the potential to offer students boosted security without running into political roadblocks.
At least that’s what a broad coalition of law enforcement and school leaders is hoping. It announced its proposal last week, ahead of the marches, and the group is working with lawmakers so that Michigan can take action in fighting school violence. It’s a sound approach.
“School shootings and bomb threats dominate the headlines,” said Ingham County Sheriff Scott Wrigglesworth in a statement. “Violence is followed by mourning, outrage and calls for reform - before the cycle repeats itself, without any meaningful change.”
The coalition wants to end that cycle, and it expects legislation to be introduced in April. It says legislative leaders on both sides of the aisle have already shown support.
“There’s been a lot of interest,” says Peter Spadafore, director of government affairs for the Michigan Association of School Administrators.
The Michigan School Safety Reform Plan requests $120 million for new grant programs for personnel and other safety measures, including:
(asterisk)More resource officers working in schools.
(asterisk)Additional school mental health professionals to identify problems early.
(asterisk)Grants to ensure safer school buildings.
(asterisk)Mandatory reporting of threats and graduated penalties to help prevent violence.
The proposal has the backing of many groups. The Michigan Sheriffs’ Association, the Michigan Association of School Administrators, the Michigan Association of School Boards, the Michigan Association of School Psychologists, the Michigan Association of School Social Workers, the Michigan School Counselors Association, the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police and the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan are all on board.
St. Clair County Sheriff Tim Donnellon says something all schools can do to improve safety is to have a designated officer, who becomes familiar with the school community and has a better vantage point to identify problems before they happen.
The coalition points to a lack of school counselors, social workers and psychologists as a major problem in schools today. The ratio of students to counselors, for instance, is 750 to 1 and those ratios are even more imbalanced for the other personnel.
“We’ve come up with something tangible that can be done at a reasonable and achievable cost to make communities safer,” says Mark Reene, Tuscola County prosecutor and past president of the state Prosecuting Attorneys Association.
A similar discussion is taking place nationally. On Wednesday, the White House commission on school safety, chaired by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, held its first official meeting behind closed doors. DeVos met with the three other cabinet secretaries on the commission, who will be responsible for making recommendations on improving school safety. The commission has plans to meet with law enforcement, school counselors, parents and teachers.
Change on the federal level is more elusive, however, so it’s smart for state lawmakers to look at what they can do to ensure students are safe at school. And this plan from leaders directly involved offers a solid blueprint.
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The Mining Journal. March 28, 2018
Larry Nassar scandal fallout continues
The fallout from the Larry Nassar scandal continues.
A Michigan State University official who oversaw Nassar, the former MSU sport doctor who will serve the rest of his life in prison after molesting patients under the guise of treatment, is facing criminal charges.
William Strampel, who was dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine until late last year, was arraigned Tuesday with a felony, a high court misdemeanor and two misdemeanors. He allegedly touched a student inappropriately and stored nude photos of female students on his work computer.
He also told police last year he never followed up after ordering Nassar in 2014 to have a third person present when providing treatment to “anything close to a sensitive area,” The Associated Press reported.
Numerous girls and women have sued MSU, Strampel and other current and former university officials, USA Gymnastics and others in connection with the Nassar scandal.
Strampel’s arrest, though, marked the first time a person other than Nassar was charged in the sexual abuse case.
What makes the entire case particularly insidious is that apparently prior investigations of Nassar were insufficient, with a campus police probe of Nassar resulting in no charges being filed. A Meridian Township police investigation also resulted in no charges.
It is hoped authorities are taking a closer look at any person suspected of being involved in a criminal way in the Nassar case. However, one has to wonder how many people had knowledge of Nassar’s behavior, either at MSU or through USA Gymnastics.
There also appears to be a systemic problem at MSU, or maybe even the medical community in general.
In an SI.com article posted Monday, it was reported that In October 2016, two weeks after MSU fired Nassar, Strampel told a group of students and administrators that he did not believe Nassar’s accusers, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article.
“This just goes to show that none of you learned the most basic lesson in medicine, medicine 101, that you should have learned in your first week: don’t trust your patients,” Strampel said, according to a written account of the meeting obtained by the Journal. “Patients lie to get doctors in trouble. And we’re seeing that right now in the news with this Nassar stuff. I don’t think any of these women were actually assaulted by Larry, but Larry didn’t learn that lesson and didn’t have a chaperone in the room, so now they see an opening and they can take advantage of him.”
It must be noted that the Strampel case has to go through the legal system to try to determine his guilt.
However, who knows how many other Nassar-related cases will emerge?
We hope authorities continue to vigorously investigate these cases, much more than has been done in the past. It would send a strong message and keep predators away from potential victims.
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Times Herald (Port Huron). March 27, 2018
Keep yard waste out of dump
St. Clair County is seeking permission to ignore the state ban on landfilling yard wastes. Before state lawmakers finish demolishing the Department of Environmental Quality, the agency should say no to the request.
Landfill operators’ chemistry is correct. Adding more green wastes to the mix buried in the Smiths Creek Landfill will increase the amount of methane the landfill generates. The county is running an ongoing experiment to generate and sell methane gas from the landfill. When decomposing garbage alone was not generating enough gas to interest commercial customers, the county started adding septage - excrement and other waste material removed from septic tanks. Now it wants to add yard waste to increase methane gas output.
Methane gas is one of the reasons states ban yard wastes from landfills. Methane is not only flammable and explosive, it is also a potent greenhouse gas with 20 times the heat-trapping capacity of carbon dioxide.
The Smiths Creek Landfill bioreactor does capture some of the gas for its trash-to-energy experiment. But it cannot and does not capture all of it. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says the best methane generating landfills capture about 75 percent of the gas, allowing a quarter of the gas to leak into the atmosphere. Most capture no more than half, meaning they generate tons of greenhouse gases that can be reduced by controlling what goes into the landfill.
Waste-to-energy facilities are supposed to be good for the environment. Ones that generate unnecessary and avoidable wastes are not.
Composting yard waste, on the other hand, removes the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by sequestering it in the resulting product. And the process does not generate methane.
The main reason, though, that states began banning yard waste from landfills three decades ago is that it is an unthinkably expensive way to get rid of grass clippings and fall leaves. Paying to dig an enormous hole, paying to line it with impermeable clay, paying to fill it with leaves and sticks and then paying to monitor it for 30 or 40 years is absurd.
Which brings up another reason the Smiths Creek Landfill has caught the attention of environmental groups. The county is asking the state for $120,000 to study how the landfill will age after the bioreactor is unplugged. It’s a reasonable request. What the county is doing at Smiths Creek is not exactly unique, but it is a new way to generate energy from garbage.
Without a long history, it is in the state and county’s interest to know whether and how the bioreactor processes will affect the dump in the decades after it is closed. The methane-capture practice is likely to spread. We need to know its long-term effects.
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Traverse City Record-Eagle. March 28, 2018
State must demand proof of Line 5 condition
Seeing is believing and we simply haven’t seen enough to trust Enbridge’s statements regarding Line 5 where it runs through the Great Lakes at the Straits of Mackinac.
For some reason, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality seems content to continue green-lighting the pipeline company’s applications to modify the 65-year-old twin oil pipelines despite substantial concerns over the company’s history of withholding information about the line’s condition.
Such apparent amnesia is quite concerning considering it has been only five months since Michigan regulators publicly chastised the company for downplaying the size and extent of damaged areas on the pipeline’s protective enamel coating. The disclosures reversed the company’s long-espoused contention that the pipes were in “great” shape.
In August, Enbridge spokesman Ryan Duffy described the damage as “two or three” areas and indicated one was “Band-Aid-sized.”
Those descriptions were discredited later when inspections showed at least eight damaged spots on the line’s coating, all but one of them larger than 7 inches in diameter. Worse, company officials acknowledged they knew about some of the damage since 2014. And at least one of those wounds to the pipeline’s protective coating was inflicted by contractors installing anchors.
That’s why assertions related to MDEQ’s move to grant Enbridge permission to add 22 new anchors along the 4-mile stretch of submerged pipe should have us all scratching our heads.
The agreement the company struck with the state six decades ago requires the twin pipes be supported either by the lakebed or anchors at least every 75 feet. Duffy said those 22 new anchors will be installed “proactively” in areas where strong current may erode the lakebed and leave the pipes unsupported.
The move certainly sounds preemptive, but Michiganders have little reason to believe the rosy assertions from Enbridge representatives. Meanwhile, state officials don’t seem like they’re providing the type of vigorous oversight promised last fall when they released strong statements.
“The DEQ is going to take this revelation very seriously and will conduct a thorough assessment of the information to consider during our continued review of the permit application,” said MDEQ Director C. Heidi Grether in a statement released in October.
Yet the new permit continues to rely on the company to self-report problems with the pipeline’s condition.
Why should we suddenly trust statements and information released by company officials who less than six months ago seemed blindsided by their own reports detailing damage to the line’s coating?
The fact is, seeing is believing when it comes to Line 5 and Michiganders simply can’t afford any more blind trust.
The issue: State officials green-light more Line 5 anchors
Our view: MDEQ appears set to continue relying on Enbridge to self-regulate
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