The Environment Report

The partial federal government shutdown could have wide-ranging consequences for the Great Lakes. There already are some problems, but things could get worse if the shutdown drags on.

Some cities in Michigan could lose half of all their trees due to disease or pests. Foresters are working to reduce the potential devastation. “So, I just wanted to show you, this is a neighborhood with old maple trees," Kerry Gray said as she led the way down a tree-lined street in Ann Arbor. She's the urban forester for the city. She’s worried about losing a lot of the city’s trees to a pest or disease. It’s happened before.

Soon, you’ll start seeing your energy bills start to rise each month because of the cold weather. That’s never fun. But, you might be paying a lot more than necessary to heat your home. We decided to look into whether a new efficient furnace adds up to much in the way of energy savings.

The State of Michigan is finding industrial chemicals known as PFAS in the tissue of fish. So it's been issuing “Don’t Eat the Fish” advisories along lakes, rivers and streams. But there are concerns about whether state officials are doing as much as they should. Before we get too far into the story, we have to start with a little science. The reason PFAS chemical contamination in fish is such a concern is because of something called bioaccumulation . If there is a toxic substance in the river,

UPDATE: This story was updated at 3:53 p.m. This week, the Environment Report is looking at industrial chemicals called per- and polyfluoralkyl substances – or PFAS. People all over Michigan have questions about these chemicals that are being found in their drinking water.

This week, we’re looking at PFAS chemicals: they're industrial chemicals that have contaminated water sources around the state. PFAS chemicals are used to make a lot of products stain and water resistant.

One of the contaminated PFAS sites first documented in Michigan was in Oscoda Township near the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base. The base has been closed for years. Firefighting training there used a fire suppressant foam containing a PFAS chemical.

There have been more news stories in recent months about water contamination from a group of industrial chemicals. PFAS chemical pollution seems to have come out of nowhere. That’s not exactly true. PFAS contamination has been known to be a problem. What's different is we’re discovering the problem is bigger than imagined.

In recent months, the State of Michigan has found several places where drinking water and fish are contaminated by a class of chemicals called PFAS. This pollution is coming from a variety of sources.

When Peter Annin , director of the Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation at Northland College, was completing research for an updated version of his book The Great Lakes Water Wars , he discovered a detail about Great Lakes water diversions that had gone unnoticed for 8 years. According to his findings, the state of Wisconsin never announced that in 2010, it approved the village of Pleasant Prairie's request to extract seven million gallons of water per day from Lake Michigan, the largest water