The number of environmental reporters at newspapers and other mainstream media has been decreasing rapidly in recent years, in Michigan and elsewhere. One result is a public that is less informed about the basic facts needed to understand the government and business policy choices that affect their lives. Now new alternatives -- including student journalism -- are starting to fill the gap.

"Isle Royale in Lake Superior used to be too cold for deer ticks. But not anymore."

As a kid, Gary Mechanic didn’t think twice about playing along the banks of the Chicago River, just a half block from his home, despite the sewage and industrial runoff that fouled the waterway when it rained.

"Ohio's state parks will be open for oil and natural gas drilling for the first time under legislation the state Senate passed on Wednesday."

"WOODSTOCK, Ill. -- The paving industry closely is watching McHenry County as its officials consider a ban on toxic asphalt sealants commonly used on driveways."

"The Obama administration is ordering an ambitious cleanup of the Chicago River, a dramatic step toward improving an urban waterway treated for more than a century as little more than an industrialized sewage canal."

"Federal pollution authorities have quietly stepped in to help Minnesota force a huge sugar beet processor near Renville to end its long history of fouling streams that lead to the state's most troubled river."

"A few momentary blasts, flashes of orange light, and the Mississippi River began pouring through a wide hole in a Missouri levee, intentionally blown open by the Army Corps of Engineers in the hope of saving a small Illinois town."

"Federal and state officials are cracking down on a smelter in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood after tracing high levels of toxic lead in the air outside an elementary school less than two blocks away."

"Wild rice is sacred to the Ojibwe of Minnesota, but that may not be enough to protect it from the promise of jobs that a new copper-nickel mining industry would bring to the state."

Air pollution is worsened in Chicago by the Fisk coal-burning power plant built in 1903. It is grandfathered against Clean Air Act requirements for modern pollution controls. Will EPA cave in to Republican pressure to let its pollution keep harming health of Chicagoans?

"Average lead levels at [Chicago's] Perez Elementary School were at or above federal limits during three three-month periods in 2010, the data show."

Minnesota's Pollution Control Agency is trying to address the impact of dissolved chlorides in Twin Cities lakes -- road salt harming aquatic life. It may require changes in what it means to be a good neighbor in the snowy state.

"The federal government has agreed to step up its efforts to force freighters sailing on the Great Lakes to begin treating their biologically contaminated ballast water discharges like any other industrial pollutant."

"Green roofs have become increasingly popular in the United States as a way to beautify and insulate buildings and reduce heat pollution in urban areas, but last week one drew attention for a far different reason: it collapsed."