Weird

Bright Idea

Recompose, a company in Kent, Washington, now offers an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional burial -- human composting. The Seattle Times reported that on Dec. 20, the first bodies were “laid in” -- placed in steel cylinders full of soil, where decedents rest for 30 days, covered with wood chips and straw. After that, they’re moved to a “curing bin” to finish releasing carbon dioxide, and then remains can be returned to family or donated to an ecological restoration project near Vancouver. According to Recompose, the “finished soil is very similar to the topsoil bought at a local nursery.” “This is a very controlled process, completely driven by microbes,” explained CEO Katrina Spade. “It’s fueled by plant material and monitored in a very rigorous way.” The entire process costs $5,500 and includes an optional service.

Mistaken Identity

Lisa Boothroyd, 48, of Rugby in Warwickshire, England, got a shock when the handful of popping candies she ate turned out to be small novelty fireworks used as noisemakers instead. The box of Fun Snaps was shelved among other candies at her local Costcutter store, she told the Daily Mail on Jan. 18, and the packaging was similar, but the result was painful: Boothroyd reported chemical burns on her lips and gums and a cracked tooth. “That moment I crunched down was terrifying,” Boothroyd said. “I felt explosions in my mouth followed by burning pain.” A spokesperson for Costcutter said the Fun Snaps would be “(removed) from the confectionery section with immediate effect.”

A woman in Cajeme, Mexico, identified only as Leonora R., faces charges of domestic violence after repeatedly stabbing her husband when she found photos of him having sex with a younger, thinner woman on his phone, according to police. Local media reported the husband was eventually able to disarm his wife and clarify that it was HER in the photos, which were taken when they were dating. The New York Daily News reported on Jan. 26 that police responding to neighbors’ calls for help arrived and arrested her.

News You Can Use

Japanese entrepreneur Shota Ishida, 30, has zeroed in on a way to relieve the anxiety felt by a narrow niche of people: the roughly 1% of the population, he says, who worry about body odor. “It’s something they can’t bring up with friends or family,” he told CBS News, so they turn to his company, Odorate, for a scientific analysis to determine whether they are emitting offensive odors. Customers create a smell sample by wearing a plain white T-shirt enhanced with odor-absorbing activated charcoal for 24 hours, then mail it to Ishida’s lab north of Tokyo. For about $150, Ishida will subject the sample to GCMS analysis (a technology used to identify unknown chemicals) and produce a report, which can include such descriptions as “oldage smell” or “onions starting to rot.” He says about half of his customers are given the all-clear, with no obvious offensive odors. “Getting the facts is a huge relief for (clients),” he said.

Weird Science

In a first for paleontologists, the perfectly preserved anus of a dinosaur has been found in China. Psittacosaurus, a Cretaceousperiod relative of the Triceratops, was about the size of a dog, and researcher Jakob Vinther of the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom described the discovery as “unique” to Live Science. “It’s like a Swiss Army knife of excretory openings,” used for pooping, peeing, breeding and egg laying. It was not clear to the researchers whether the dinosaur was male or female.

Antisocial Skills

Trevor Savok, 20, is suspected of stealing underwear and AirPods on Jan. 17 from a group of young women staying at a Las Vegas area hotel, and leaving behind a note illustrated with a hand-drawn heart in one of their bags reading, “Text me if you want your panties back,” according to court documents. The women contacted Savok, who said he would return the underwear if they sent pictures of their private parts, KTNV-TV reported. Police arrested Savok, who worked at the hotel, and are asking the public’s help in finding more possible victims.

Least Competent Criminal

As paramedics in Houston responded to a call on Jan. 21, Renaldo Leonard, 36, jumped into their Houston Fire Department ambulance and drove, emergency lights flashing, about 4 miles to a Jack in the Box, where he got in the drive-thru lane, according to police. The Smoking Gun reported the ambulance was tracked to the restaurant, and Leonard was arrested and charged with felony theft of the vehicle, which is valued at more than $150,000.

Creepy

Monica Green noticed a few things out of order when she returned to her home in Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia, on Jan. 18: The back door was open, the air conditioner was running and a half-cooked meal of chicken nuggets was left in her kitchen. Green called police, who discovered an attic opening was partially removed, but instead of finding someone hiding up there, they determined someone had been living there, perhaps for some time, News.com.au reported. “I felt shocked, terrified, scared,” said Green, a mother of three children. “Being alone in the home scares me.” Green said she had noticed food missing and her security camera disabled in the days before the discovery, but she thought they were just coincidences or her imagination. Police have not caught the intruder.

Oops

The Monroe Township (Michigan) Fire Department launched a rescue mission on Jan. 26 after receiving a call about a goose or duck possibly injured and in distress on the frozen River Raisin. Firefighters suited up and headed out on the ice, WXYZ-TV reported, but realized upon closer inspection that the bird was just a hunting decoy. “It ended up being a good training session, actually,” said Chief Mark Cherney. “In the end, we can sleep well at night. A bird is not suffering.”

Recent Alarming Headlines

Police in Rome, New York, responding to an animal cruelty complaint on Jan. 13, arrived at a home to find a man cooking a canine on an outdoor grill, police said. The unnamed man cooperated with police, saying the animal was a coyote -- which would be legal in New York, as hunting and trapping the canines is allowed with a license, WNBC-TV reported. Animal control officers took the carcass to Cornell University for testing to determine its species.

THE BATTLE OVER MICHIGAN’S WATER

Water advocates fighting a Nestle water-withdrawal permit are frustrated by the environmental regulators under Gov. Whitmer’s watch.

By Patrick Sullivan

After two years and more than $200,000 in litigation spent to stop Nestlé Waters from ratcheting up the amount of spring water it pumps from a well in central Michigan, water advocates are flummoxed; the state’s environmental regulator shot down their objections.

In late January, Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation and the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians filed suit in Ingham County to reverse a decision by the director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy that dismissed MCWC’s case.

EGLE Director Liesl Eichler Clark, dismissed the case on technical grounds, arguing in her decision that MCWC didn’t have legal standing to raise objections and her department didn’t have the legal authority to act on them.

In announcing its lawsuit, MCWC called Clark’s decision “punitive, illegal and totally unjust,” and said it amounts to permission to corporations to take water without any say from citizens, a precedent with potentially disastrous consequences for the state.

“It’s just getting batted around. It’s very discouraging to have that continually happening.

“… They’re still busy defending their staff left over from the old administration,” said Peggy Case, MCWC board president. “And they’re busy defending their own personal records and they’re not dealing with what they’re supposed to as an agency.”

“The case keeps getting kicked around and handed to what we call the gatekeepers, the people who are maintaining the status quo and still defending the old machine.”

A CASE OF BAIT AND SWITCH?

The latest filing from MCWC — a petition for judicial review of Case’s order — is just the latest development in a saga that began decades ago when Nestlé announced plans to bottle Michigan water. The dispute flared up in 2018 when it was discovered that EGLE (then called the Department of Environmental Quality) approved a new permit that would allow Nestlé to increase its withdrawal from an aquifer near the headwaters of two coldwater creeks in Osceola County, from 250 gallons per minute to 400 gallons per minute.

The revelation caused an uproar and opposition delayed the permit’s approval.

At that time, opponents of Nestlé were not surprised that the DEQ under the Rick

Snyder administration would approve the permit. By the time Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer took office in 2019, opponents expected that the newly renamed EGLE would be more receptive to their objections.

MCWC challenged the permit on the basis that it had been granted based on computer models that predicted what the environmental impact of the increased withdrawal would be rather than basing the assessment on real-world data.

Ross Hammersley, a Traverse City attorney who represents MCWC, said what’s so frustrating about Clark’s decision is that it never even addressed the arguments they raised against the Nestle well.

What’s more, Hammersley said, is that early on, EGLE invited the administrative challenge. Hammersley said that if MCWC had simply sued Nestle in state court to begin with, Nestlé could have had the cased dismissed because MCWC hadn’t exhausted all of their administrative options. So, they proceeded through an administrative challenge, which Clark dismissed after two years.

Early on, EGLE asked the parties to submit briefs on the standing issue that Clark would later use to dismiss the case, lulling Hammersley and MCWC into thinking they were on the right track.

“They invited this contest and then after it progressed, they shut it down,” Hammersley said.

In the end, Hammersley said, Clark and EGLE sided with Nestlé.

“I would characterize it as siding with Nestlé for sure,” Hammersley said. “I was surprised, and I know that members and, particularly, the board of MCWC were surprised by that.”

“THERE IS SCIENCE BEHIND OUR PERMIT”

An EGLE spokesman, Scott Dean, said the department had no additional comment regarding MCWC’s legal filing or its statement.

“We have nothing new to say on the matter,” Dean said.

Back in November, when Clark released her “final decision” that dismissed MCWC’s challenges on technical grounds, EGLE issued a press release that defended Clark’s decision and maintained that the Nestlé operations in Osceola and Mecosta counties are among the most scrutinized and monitored water withdrawals in the state.

The statement also pointed out that much of the public ire over Nestlé Water is that under Michigan law, Nestlé can tap the state’s water virtually for free even as it sells it as bottled water for hundreds of millions of dollars.

“We appreciate the calls from the petitioners and other members of the public for water withdrawal royalties on bottled water payable to the state, but that is currently outside of EGLE’s statutory authority,” Clark said in the press release. “EGLE supports the calls from lawmakers to take action to prevent private parties from profiting off our state’s water resources.”

A Nestlé Waters spokesman also had no additional comment and instead emailed Northern Express a written statement that defended the company’s environmental record and praised Clark’s decision.

“We have confidence in the science behind our permit, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE)’s thorough review, and the 18 years’ worth of environmental data collected near the site since beginning our operations in Michigan,” the statement read, in part. “As such, we firmly believe this appeal has no merit and that EGLE’S decision to approve our permit application was appropriate.”

NOT EXPECTED FROM WHITMER

Case guesses that Clark didn’t want to consider the merits of her organization’s arguments against the permit because she didn’t want to go up against EGLE staff, whom she inherited from the previous administration.

“I think Clark is motivated by the desire to solidify and defend her staff,” she said. “The case keeps getting kicked around and handed to what we call the gatekeepers, the people who are maintaining the status quo and still defending the old machine.”

As for Clark’s contention that the legislature should consider charging bottled water manufacturers for the water it takes from the state, Case agrees, but she doesn’t see that happening any time soon, and she believes that EGLE could enforce existing laws to force a company like Nestlé to take less water.

“Well, of course, we think that legislature needs to do something, but this legislature is not going to do anything,” she said, referring to the current Republican-controlled body. “There are water bills out there that could be passed. There are loopholes to the Great Lakes Compact that could be closed. There’s a lot of legislation that has been sitting dead in committee for years, because the legislature will not bring those things forward.”

In the meantime, Case said, it shouldn’t be up to a rag-tag nonprofit to ensure that a company like Nestlé doesn’t harm the environment in it water bottling operations.

“She [Clark] also told us we should have taken it directly to circuit court, spending another couple $100,000 in circuit court. We don’t think that it’s our responsibility to implement the laws of the state when it comes to environmental complaints. We think that that’s the responsibility of EGLE,” Case said. “And if people are breaking the law, then it’s the responsibility of the attorney general to go after them. You know, we shouldn’t have to spend a couple of $100,000 to pursue environmental justice. We’re just a little bunch of citizens with no money.”

Jim Olson, an environmental attorney who works for Traverse City-based FLOW or For the Love of Water, and who helped put limits on Nestlé Water’s Michigan operations when they began in the 2000s, said it also concerns him that EGLE is forcing a nonprofit to do the job of protecting the state’s water.

“This was probably expected under the Snyder administration to be honest with you,” Olson said. “It was not what anybody expected under the Whitmer administration and came as quite a shock.”

Nonetheless, Olson said he believes water should be a nonpartisan issue.

“If anything is important to the people of Michigan, I don’t care what party you’re in, it’s water,” he said.

BACK TO FUNDRAISING MODE

Meanwhile, as MCWC embarks on a new phase of expensive litigation, Case said the group’s attention must turn to fundraising, despite the challenges of doing that amid a pandemic.

Case lives near Traverse City, but many members of MCWC live in either Osceola County or Mecosta County, where the well is pumping or where the water is being bottled. Some members live near two creeks — Twin Creek and Chippewa Creek — that critics charge have already been seriously impacted by the water withdrawal, a fact that Case believes should give MCWC a say on what happens with Nestlé’s permits.

Neighbors have been documenting impacts for years, she said, while Nestlé pumps 150 gallons or 250 gallons per minute, which makes them worry what’s going to happen when Nestlé gets the goahead to pump 400 gallons per minute.

“There’s already been damage,” Case said. “We don’t know what they’re actually pumping out right this minute, but, in theory, they shouldn’t be pumping at 400 yet. They can’t implement that permit until the monitoring system is in place. And I don’t think it is yet.”

But Case said she’s visited dry creek beds and walked into woods where ponds have disappeared.

A well driller who has worked in the area for decades has documented how the aquifer in Evart has in recent years gone down 14 feet and is not being recharged to come back to its historic level, she said.

“We’ve submitted our information and our photographs to EGLE, and we’ve been basically ignored,” she said. “We gave them all these places, these people to contact, and submitted some of the data that we have collected ourselves. They never went there. If they claim they did, then they should be showing us the results of their investigation. We haven’t seen any of that.”

YOUR LOCAL DELTA PPO & BCBS DENTAL PROVIDERS

THREE LOCATIONS FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE

638 WILLOW DR., BELLAIRE, MI 49615 | 231-533-5001 • WWW.BELLAIREDENTALHEALTHCAREMI.COM 4480 MT. HOPE RD., SUITE A, WILLIAMSBURG, MI 49690 | 231-486-6878 • WWW.ACMEDENTALHEALTH.COM 2120 M-137, INTERLOCHEN, MI 49643 | 231-276-9051