In Michigan, a state official further confuses the problem of dioxin in the Saginaw River Basin:
The city of Bay City and a local General Motors plant may share the blame for dioxin contamination in the lower Saginaw River and Bay, a state official says.
http://www.mlive.com/news/bctimes/index.ssf?/base/news-4/111192212317830.xml
This is the "message discipline" that the state supposedly seeks by shushing lower-level officials? The fact is, the vast majority of the dioxins in the river basin upstream of Bay City are likely to have come from Dow Chemical Company -- and wherever it comes from, it needs to be cleaned up.
In Minnesota, the Legislature trims back a program virtually everyone supports to buy and protect wildlife habitat:
A proposal to significantly boost Minnesota's wildlife management area system -- popular public wildlife lands heavily used by hunters -- was whittled down last week at the Legislature.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/531/5313453.html
This is the most apt reaction: "We understand it's a tight budget. But it's always habitat or the environment that gets cut first," said Lance Ness, president of the Fish and Wildlife Legislative Alliance.
But it is spring, and there is still hope for the renewal of the political process as well as the natural world.