Letter From Michiana: Indiana’s DNR keeps its head in the sand

Instead of helping towns like Long Beach explain to property owners what the Supreme Court ruling means regarding their property or, for that matter, even fully informing themselves and their staff members about the state’s history and law, let alone enforcing that law, the DNR has buried its head in the sand.

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Letter From Michiana: DNR AWOL

This week, the DNR will hold public hearings in Michigan City regarding the plowing of dunes and other construction impinging on public trust land and potentially violating the Federal Clean Water Act. It will be interesting to see who shows up.

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Letter From Michiana: Marram grass

We’re fortunate at our end of the beach. We still have foredunes, the deep banks of marram grass-covered sand that serve as a buffer between the beach, where the lake level has reached a record-setting height, and peoples’ lakefront homes. 

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Letter From Michiana: Invasive species

As I weed, I am reminded again about the extent to which nature has become a design proposition, dependent on human agency and, I hope, humility. For, when it comes to invasive species, we are the most invasive of them all.

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Letter From Michiana: Plastics!

Microplastics, the unnervingly sturdy specks left behind by our packaging, are circulating through the food chain. They are, in other words, inside of us  — second nature indeed.

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Letter From Michiana: The Fair Oaks Farms Fiasco

(I) watched the surreal spectacle of cows being milked by machines as the creatures rotated on a stainless steel lazy susan the size of a flying saucer.

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Letter From Michiana: Legalizing Cannabis in Indiana (Don’t Hold Your Breath)

Hoosiers like to say that Indiana waits. Waits, that is, for other states to make changes and adopt new-fangled ideas so that we don’t have to. This attitude is promoted by many of our reigning elected officials, who like thinking of Indiana as the cracker barrel philosopher of states, the winking codger who spits and […]

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Letter From Michiana: Weird Spring, weird climate

The lake’s cycles can seem hard to predict. They happen and people get used to them, forgetting that things are bound to change. Now, though, there’s a wild card that’s put the old certainties in a new light — make that a strobe light: climate change.

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