A new report from the US Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General shows the US Forest Service is spending too much money fighting fires. It suggests the feds get some help paying the bills from state governments. Mark Brodie reports:
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A new report from the US Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General shows the US Forest Service is spending too much money fighting fires. It suggests the feds get some help paying the bills from state governments. Mark Brodie reports:
The Inspector General report says the Forest Service went over budget four times in the last six years, spending more than a billion dollars in each of those years.
The service blames the cost increase in part on housing developments. They say more homes are being built farther into the forest.
Tom Harbour is the Forest Service’s Fire Chief.
“All of us treat protection of life as our certain first priority, and then treat the protection of communities and values on public lands as our second, and you bet it does make things more difficult.”
But some state foresters say the real difficulty comes from issues like changes in the weather and too much fire fuel on federal land. They say downed trees and excess brush make it difficult for the forest service to contain fires.
Both sides say they’ll bargain hard when it comes time to pay the bill for fighting fires.
The US Senate has approved building a wall along a
stretch of the US-Mexico border. Supporters say it’ll prevent
illegal immigrants from coming north. But some environmentalists worry the wall will cause problems for wildlife. The GLRC’s Mark Brodie reports:
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The US Senate has approved building a wall along a stretch of the US-Mexico border.
Supporters say it’ll prevent illegal immigrants from coming north. But some environmentalists worry the
wall will cause problems for wildlife. The GLRC’s Mark Brodie reports:
The proposal would wall off 370 miles of the US’s almost 2,000 mile border with
Mexico. But some environmentalists say the wall would be an environmental disaster.
Daniel Patterson is a Desert Ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. He
doubts the wall would have the desired effect:
“People will always find their way around these walls, but endangered species, such as
the sonoran pronghorn, the cautus fruginous pigmy owl, the Mexican gray wolf, the jaguar, the
ocelot…will not.”
Patterson would prefer the government set up vehicle barriers along the border. He says
they would allow wildlife, and admittedly people on foot to cross, but would prevent
smugglers from driving people into the US. So far, the US House and Senate have been
unable to agree on immigration reform measures, including the wall, and it’s possible
they won’t before the end of the year.
Zebra mussels have been colonizing North American lakes and rivers since 1991. Scientists have looked at many of the ways mussels affect those ecosystems. But a new study underway shows how those effects are moving up the food web…and are having two very different results. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brodie reports:
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Zebra mussels have been colonizing North American lakes and rivers since 1991. Scientists have looked at many of the ways mussels affect those ecosystems. But a new study underway shows how those effects are moving up the food web…and are having two very different results. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brodie reports:
Between 50 and 5-hundred billion zebra mussels now live in New York’s Hudson River. That’s a lot of hungry mouths to feed on the river’s zooplankton and phytoplankton. The problem is the mussels are not the only ones that like to dine on the microscopic plants and animals. A new report suggests the mussels are stealing food from some of the river’s fish.
That’s forcing those fish to look elsewhere for their meals. Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer is the director of the Darrin Freshwater Institute, and a biology professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. She says the zebra mussels can dramatically alter an ecosystem.
“They’re very rapid filter feeders, and as such, they’re able to remove tremendous amounts of phytoplankton, algae, bacteria in the water column. As such, the phytoplankton serves as food sources for other organisms so you really are impacting the entire food web.”
Nierzwicki-Bauer says those impacts go all the way up to fish. David Strayer is a freshwater ecologist at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies, and a lead author of the report on the Hudson River. He says his team studied fish populations in the Hudson both before and since zebra mussels colonized there.
“In open water fish species, we saw a decline in abundance, we saw declines in growth rates, and we saw that the populations of those fish tended to shift downriver compared to the period before the zebra mussel invasion.”
That means some of the most common and popular fish in the Hudson are no longer where they used to be…among them American shad, herring, and white perch. That’s because the zebra mussels are eating those fish’s food…forcing the fish to go elsewhere.
But Strayer says while some fish have had to move away from the mussels…some species have welcomed their new neighbors.
“In the same period of time, we saw populations of fish that live in the weed beds…we saw those populations increase, we saw growth rates of those fish increase, and we saw the populations of those weed bed fish shift upriver into the area where the zebra mussels lived.”
These forage fish have more to eat because the plants at the river’s bottom are growing more. That’s because the zebra mussels clear up the water, which allows more sunlight to reach the plants. Strayer says the zebra mussels have changed almost everything about the Hudson’s ecology.
But he says some of those changes have been difficult to predict, and the changes may not apply to all bodies of water where the mussels have colonized. This is one of the first studies using long term data that looks at the zebra mussels’ affect on fish populations…but there is some evidence that other bodies of water are dealing with similar situations. There have been reports that zebra mussels may be affecting smelt and chub in Lake Michigan…these smaller fish are food for larger species, such as trout and salmon. But while the results are comparable, David Strayer says the changes in the Hudson River are more pronounced than changes elsewhere.
“This isn’t because we have more zebra mussels in the Hudson than in the other places, but it’s because there are differences in the structure of the ecosystem between the Hudson River and the Great Lakes and other places that have been invaded. So, you have to be a little cautious extrapolating from one body of water to the next.”
That sentiment is shared by Andy Kahnly. He’s a fishery scientist with the Hudson River fishery unit of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. He also worked on the new study. Kahnly warns for now, the results only apply to young fish…and not adults. That’s because fish can live up to 30 years, and the data don’t go that far back.
“Quite often, changes in early lifestages will take some time to translate into changes in fish populations and then to changes in fish communities. So it takes a lot of data, a lot of years of data to see a change.”
Kahnly says that means anglers in the Hudson might begin to notice some changes over the next few years… and he says the study did find a dramatic decrease in many of the species that people catch.
“If these changes in production of young persist into the future, then definitely there will be a decrease in the abundance of the adults which people are fishing for.”
But that depends on what you’re fishing for. The Institute of Ecosystem Studies’ David Strayer says your perspective might change depending on that you’re trying to catch.
“If you’re concerned about shad populations, if you’re a shad fisherman, then you might be concerned with the zebra mussel invasion and think it’s a bad thing. If you like the weed beds, if you’re a duck hunter or a large mouth bass fisherman this might be regarded as a positive thing.”
Strayer says the study shows zebra mussels are capable of having a tremendous impact on an ecosystem. He says it also shows the importance of being careful to prevent the introduction of invasive species…like zebra mussels…into an ecosystem.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brodie.
Environmentalists say upstate New York’s six million acre Adirondack Park is suffering the most damage from acid rain in the country. To help control that, the state could soon pass the toughest power plant emission regulations in the U.S. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brodie reports, some critics say the new regulations will not solve the problem:
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Environmentalists say upstate New York’s six million acre Adirondack Park is suffering the most damage from acid rain in the country. To help control that, the state could soon pass the toughest power plant emission regulations in the U.S. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brodie reports, some critics say the new regulations will not solve the problem:
The new regulations would force New York power plants to reduce emissions of the two leading causes of acid rain. The plants would have to cut sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions by more than half of 1990 Clean Air Amendment levels. John Sheehan is the spokesman for the advocacy group, the Adirondack Council.
“We feel that New York is setting an example for the rest of the United States…this was the step that we needed to show the Midwest that we were willing to take in order to ask them to do the same thing.”
But many power plant owners in the state feel singling out New York’s facilities will put them at a competitive disadvantage. They also say reducing New York’s emissions will not prevent acid rain from reaching the Adirondacks. To do that, they say power plants across the country would have to adopt similar regulations. The New York state Department of Environmental Conservation is currently reviewing the draft proposal and public comment. The agency expects to have a final decision sometime this fall.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brodie.
More and more Americans have been taking recycling seriously over the last two decades. So much so that today, the EPA says about 30% of the trash Americans produce in their homes is recycled. And the recycling rate for most Midwest states is near that average, but while the agency expects that number to continue to rise, not everyone thinks more recycling is better for the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brodie takes a look at the economics of recycling:
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More and more Americans have been taking recycling seriously over the last two decades. So much so that today, the EPA says about 30 percent of the trash Americans produce in their homes is recycled. And the recycling rate for most Great Lakes states is near that average. But while the agency expects that number to continue to rise, not everyone thinks more recycling is better for the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brodie takes a look at the economics of recycling.
A small bulldozer collects materials that have sprawled out across the floor of this recycling center…. it then pushes the mound up against a wall. The glass and plastic pile up almost to the ceiling of the building … some ten feet in the air. Welcome to the tipping floor, where workers collect and sort recyclables from the Albany, New York area. Joe Gieblehaus is the solid waste manager for the city. He says Albany officials hope to recycle between 30 and 35 percent of the city’s waste…
“The 30 to 35 gives us I guess the best bang for our buck, basically, recycling is a situation of declining marginal returns. If we try to go after another product in the waste stream, it just costs us more money, and more money, and more money and more money. 30 to 35 seems to give us an economic benefit, the best economic benefit available.”
Albany’s recycling target is similar to that put out by the EPA… and is about the limit that one former EPA assistant administrator says is necessary. Doctor J. Winston Porter was instrumental in starting curbside recycling in the United States in the 1980’s…. but now he says people are taking a good thing too far.
“The last few years, I’ve been somewhat concerned that people are, if anything, aiming too high. You know, I set a 25% goal and there’s nothing wrong with going to 30 or 35 or 40% if you can. But I think many states have set goals of like 50% and I think what we’re doing, we’re getting into an area that’s very non-cost effective and may even hurt the environment because you’re in effect trying to use too much energy and too much processing to recycle too much trash.”
One of those states that’s right about at porter’s limit is Wisconsin. Greg Swanson of the state’s department of natural resources says Wisconsin recycles about 40 percent of its waste. He says the state’s laws call for beneficial re-use. That means the state does not want to spend more energy recycling something than it took to make it in the first place. Swanson says that makes decisions about what to recycle and what not to recycle a little easier.
“You’d like to be able to recycle everything that’s recyclable, but you have to keep in mind the political and economic realities of being able to actually do something with it once you collect it.”
Swanson says that end result is crucial for recycling programs to survive. He says Wisconsin has budgeted more than 24 million dollars for recycling programs this year. That money goes to pay for trucks, drivers, and people who sort the recyclables, among other things. If a state or city recycles something, it has to be able to sell it. If the costs of recycling are higher than the profits from selling the materials, the city or state loses money on the deal. But not everybody believes more recycling hurts the economy. Will Ferrety is the executive director of the national recycling coalition. He says the more Americans recycle, the better it is for both the environment…. and the economy.
“At its fundamental basis, recycling is helping us eliminate the notion of waste because if we can turn what would otherwise be a discarded product into a useful product, we’re making for a more efficient system.”
Ferrety says states should try and recycle as much as possible. He says it’s preferable to many of the alternatives.
“When you look at that entire system, and compare that to what I would call a one-way system where we extract resources, make a new product, use them up, and simply throw them away in a landfill, hands down, there’s less energy used, there’s fewer air pollutants, there’s fewer water pollutants that result from that recycling system when compared to that one way system.”
Among Great Lakes states, Minnesota and New York have the highest recycling rates…at more than 40 percent each of their total waste. The EPA says other Great Lakes states recycle between 20 and 29 percent. Albany, New York’s Joe Gieblehaus says even though many officials on the state and local level would like to recycle more…. the green of the environment sometimes has to take a back seat to the green in the wallet. He says the market drives decisions about whether or not to recycle something. He says the city can only recycle materials that can then be sold to offset the cost of collecting them in the first place.
“There are so few end uses to close the loop; it’s hard for us at the beginning of the loop to find a market for this material…a sustainable market for this material.”
Gieblehaus says his trucks collect about 13 thousand tons of recycled materials a year. He says that’s just enough to help keep the environment green…. without putting the city into the red. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brodie.
Upstate New York will soon be the home of a clean energy business park. It’ll be one of the first business parks in the U.S. specifically designed for companies that develop clean energy technology. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brodie has more:
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Upstate New York will soon be the home of a clean energy business park. It’ll be one of the first business parks in the U.S. specifically designed for companies that develop clean energy technology. The Great Lakes Consortium’s Mark Brodie reports.
The Saratoga Technology Energy Park, or step, will be housed on land owned by the New York state energy research and development authority.
Nyserda President, William Flynn, says the agency had been looking for a way to use the 280 acres for several years.
“Maybe this is a little pie in the sky, but I hope to envision something along the lines of what happened out in the Northwest and out in California in Silicon Valley. I think NYS has a great opportunity to cluster these new clean energy technology businesses in one location so they can all feed off of each other.”
Flynn expects both the energy technology sector, and the market for clean energy technology to grow in the near future.
He says the state is courting companies that develop and promote the use of alternative forms of energy…including solar and wind power. For the Great Lakes Consortium, I’m Mark Brodie.