Latest news with #AGreenerMitten
Yahoo
20-04-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Why Ottawa County is short on water and what's being done about it
OLIVE TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — Ottawa County is running out of water. 'We have residents that are literally running out of water. People don't necessarily believe it,' Paul Sachs, director of strategic impact for Ottawa County, said. 'That has been one of the biggest challenges that we are dealing with: the general public understanding of what is happening.' A Greener Mitten: Watch the special You may have wondered how it's possible. With streams, inland lakes and of course Lake Michigan, it seems like the seventh largest county in Michigan should be overflowing with water. But with 306,575 people, Ottawa County is one of the fastest-growing counties in the state. In rural areas, farms, businesses and new homes are dependent on water drawn from wells. 'About 3 billion gallons of water a year are used in Ottawa County to simply irrigate turf grass,' Sachs said. 'We are one of the top agriculture producer counties in the state, if not the country.' For years, Sachs has been trying to inform and educate people in Ottawa County about what's happening below their feet. 'Does it have to get worse for it to get better? And that's what we need to get in front of,' he said. Inside A Greener Mitten There are two ways people in Ottawa County get their water: through municipal systems, which use water from Lake Michigan; or from private wells, drawing water from underground aquifers. Because there are a lot of rural areas, most people use well systems. Many of them get their water from the glacial aquifer, which refills itself naturally from the rain. In some places, the glacial aquifer is too shallow, so wells have to be drilled deeper, reaching into the Marshall aquifer, which is separate from Lake Michigan and takes a very long time to refill. Ottawa County has 15 well monitoring sites that collect data and materials to see what's happening with the water system. 'When it rains; how is the Marshall charging; when we're pumping water, what does that do with the static water levels? And we can start to do scenario planning,' Sachs said. As demand continues to rise, the water is drying up. Wells need to be drilled deeper, reaching lower into the Marshall aquifer, where mineral content is high. The deeper you go, the more gravel you get. Then at 250 feet, you reach all rock. 'That is impermeable. Water can't get through that. And look at the depth, this is a very large clay lens preventing water from getting any deeper,' Sachs said. 'You can make a difference': Kalamazoo refill store aims to cut down on plastic waste Steve Hecksel, owner of Hecksel Brothers Well Drilling near Coopersville, knows what's going on below. His company has received plenty of calls over the years from people having water problems. 'The typical call we get is somebody calls up (and says), 'Yeah, our water was working fine yesterday, but (we) woke up this morning and we don't have any water,'' Hecksel said. Hecksel said his company has already had to return to some wells it drilled in the last 10 years and place pumps deeper. 'A lot of those areas where we see a lot of development, new homes,' he said. He showed News 8 how it works on one recent call. 'We are trying to reconstruct this well to make it more useable, and hopefully spring rains and everything brings back the table up to where it should be,' Hecksel said. There are solutions, Sachs said, like turning more to the big lake: 'We have access to fresh water. Lake Michigan is a few miles to the west from us. We could extend municipal supply to residents that need it, and as new developments rise, we could connect them to municipal water supply,' he said. The problem is that extending infrastructure is costly. 'In order for local governments to pay for that infrastructure, you have to have more and more connection on it,' he said. West Michigan dairy farm turns manure into profit The county is urging residents to be more water wise as it searches for a large-scale solution that makes sense. Sachs said the county is leading by example on landscape design. At its Fillmore Street Complex, it removed a majority of the turf grass and planted native grasses and plants. 'We have saved, just in our landscape project in the county, 227,000 gallons of water. We've also saved $6,000 in landscape maintenance,' he said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Kent County skips landfill, moves forward with new method of waste management
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A project in Kent County that has been on hold for more than a year is moving forward with the goal of finding a better way to manage waste. The Sustainable Business Park, which is planned for the property adjacent to the South Kent Landfill, came to a standstill when the county cut ties with the anchor tenant, , over financial concerns. Inside A Greener Mitten The county issued the request for proposals for the project in 2020, during the pandemic. Director of Public Works Darwin Baas said it took about six months to go through the review process, which included a financial review. 'We were always looking at a public-private approach to doing this work because it is costly. And having the long-term stability of the county along with some of the best thinking in the private sector, we always thought that was the best approach,' Baas explained. 'So that's why we pumped the brakes. It was a pricey project. It was not inexpensive, but knowing that there could have been some financial problems, we thought it would be best to take a step back, even though that meant we had to slow the process down a little bit.' Now, he said, the county is ready to move forward with building the infrastructure for the park as part of a three-step process. After the infrastructure is in place, ask the Board of Public Works for permission to build a new South Kent Transfer Station on the property to sort through the waste. Baas said the design phase for the infrastructure should wrap up this year and construction should begin in the spring of 2026. It will take about a year to complete. 'While we're constructing the business park, we'll go into design and permitting for the transfer station so that can start almost at the same time and be ready to be installed as soon as the business park is built,' he said. Kalamazoo refill store aims to cut down on plastic waste The South Kent Landfill will be ready to close in the next five years, so it's crucial for the county to have another method of waste removal in place before then. Baas said the goal is still to find a company to run a biodigester and other companies to attach to the new transfer station and take in the materials that are sorted there, like rubbers and construction materials. The organic matter that is sorted would go into the biodigester and become renewable natural gas, which the county could sell. 'When we look at the amount of food waste and organics that are in the trash, one of the major challenges we have is, how do you process it when you there's forks and plastics and all the other materials that get mixed in?' Baas said. 'Once you pull out the organics, traditional composting doesn't work, and that's where anaerobic digestion we think is the better solution. So we'll be looking for mixed-waste processing, because you have to sort everything out first, and then you take that organic or food waste piece and send that over to (the digester) for future processing, and that's where you can generate the renewable natural gas.' West Michigan dairy farm turns manure into profit Artificial intelligence should help the county move forward with a more sustainable waste management system. The county is already using AI robots in the recycling center to pick out plastics and metals and plans to utilize the same technology at the future transfer station. 'There's nearly a million tons of trash generated a year in Kent County, which is significant. About 600,000 tons can be processed as mixed municipal solid waste. We can handle about 200,000 tons at the waste-to-energy facility. That leaves about 400,000 tons that could be processed. And the only way you can begin to pull the commodities out and recycle those is you have to be able to sort them out,' Baas said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
