Report for America

An electrical transformer caught fire earlier this afternoon and spread to the Karn generating facility in Essexville. A mineral oil spill into the Saginaw River also took place during the fire. It's unclear how much oil has been spilled.

Researchers and government organizations recently addressed the federal Great Lakes Task Force, urging congressional members to support funding for Great Lakes science and restoration.

STARBASE is a program run by the Department of Defense that hosts sessions for students to learn about science, math and engineering through applied practice.

Ice shanties dot the horizon as the sun rises over the frozen Black Lake. It’s only 4'F out, but hundreds of people have gathered here — all because of the elusive, prehistoric lake sturgeon.

Roughly 400 homes can decide to connect to the main in the first phase of the project. The township plans to eventually extend the line out to Lake Margrethe — reaching up to 1,000 households affected by PFAS plumes largely from Camp Grayling.

The big challenge is that hydrogen likes to bond to other elements — think H2O — so it takes a lot of energy to isolate hydrogen into a usable form. But there may be large deposits of naturally-occurring hydrogen gas in Michigan, according to a new map from the U.S. Geological Survey.

The case stems from a lawsuit filed in 2019 by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, and the intention was to void a 1953 easement that allowed Enbridge to run the dual pipelines across the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac.

WCMU’s David Nicholas spoke with environmental reporter Teresa Homsi about state testing and what people need to know if their community becomes a "place of interest."

Safe Harbor of Grand Traverse spoke with Grand Traverse County commissioners during their meeting Wednesday morning, in hopes of finalizing a plan to extend their services year-round.

A northern Michigan homeowner was surprised to see a hummingbird at his feeder in the middle of winter. But the intrigue only increased when the little bird turned out to be a species that's native to the West Coast.