State Agencies Concerned About Power Plant Upgrades

Recently, the Bush administration announced it will allow factories and power plants to make large upgrades without having to install anti-pollution technology. But that business incentive has state Environmental Protection Agencies worried about air quality. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has this report:

Transcript

Recently, the Bush administration announced it will allow factories and power plants to make
large upgrades without having to install anti-pollution technology. But that business incentive
has state Environmental Protection Agencies worried about air quality. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has this report:


For the last 30 years, under the Clean Air Act, power plants and factories have been required to
install pollution control devices whenever they made major improvements to their infrastructure.


Under the new federal rule, a plant can make improvements worth up to 20-percent of its value
without installing smoke-stack scrubbers. The U.S. EPA says the Bush administration’s rule
means plants will be able to modernize.


But Illinois state EPA director Renee Cipriano says modernizing a plant doesn’t necessarily mean
it will be cleaner.


“The cost of a modification does not necessarily equal the impact to the environment. The two do
not equal each other.”


Cipriano says the change jeopardizes the standards set by the Clean Air Act. The Illinois EPA
and the state’s attorney general will file a petition to block the change. Twelve other states have
filed similar petitions.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.

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Corn Ethanol Research Facility Up and Running

A new research facility will be testing scientific innovations in the field of ethanol production. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Kevin Lavery reports:

Transcript

A new research facility will be testing scientific innovations in the field of ethanol production.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Kevin Lavery reports:


The National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center will focus on developing new ways of producing
ethanol, a corn-based product that shows promise as a long-term alternative to fossil fuels. Each
year in the U.S., more than 2-billion gallons are produced. It’s hoped that figure will increase to 5
billion within 10 years.


Center director Rodney Bothast says projects performed at the new facility will help make that
happen.


“And it’s broader than just fuel ethanol. It means the co-products. They might be food products,
they might be industrial products, all interfaces into this scenario.”


While politicians hail ethanol as an environmentally-friendly fuel that reduces U.S. dependence
on foreign oil, critics argue that a single gallon of ethanol produces less energy than it takes to
manufacture it.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Kevin Lavery.

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Cargo Ships Oppose Proposed Ballast Rules

A proposed bill requiring ocean-going foreign vessels to dump their ballast water before they enter the Great Lakes is receiving strong criticism from shipping groups. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:

Transcript

A proposed bill requiring ocean-going foreign vessels to dump their ballast water before they
enter the Great Lakes is receiving strong criticism from shipping groups. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:


Helen Brohl of the Great Lakes Shipping Association agrees that the introduction of invasive
species into the lakes from ballast water is a problem. Zebra mussels alone have caused about a
billion dollars in damage since they got into the Great Lakes from foreign vessels in the
1980s. But Brohl says a bill proposed by a Michigan Congresswoman is too radical. She says
requiring ships to dump virtually all their ballast water before entering the Great Lakes would put
an end to international shipping in the area.


“When you have no cargo on a ship you have to use ballast water to even out the vessel in rough
weather. It’s a very dangerous thing not to have ballast water on board.


Brohl says a better approach is to require ships to use stringent ballast water management. That
includes regular flushing and keeping sediment out of the water.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tracy Samilton.

Pollution Breaks for Factory Farms?

Environmental groups allege the Bush administration might want to give large, so-called “factory farms” a break under the Clean Air Act and Superfund laws. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Environmental groups allege the Bush administration might want to give large, so-called “factory
farms” a break under the Clean Air Act and Superfund laws. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Environmental groups contend that the livestock industries have asked the EPA not to require
they comply with the Clean Air Act and Superfund hazardous waste laws.


Andrew Hanson is an attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates. He says the big farms
pump out large amounts of air pollutants like ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, volatile organic
compounds and particles.


“Those four categories of air pollution can be very harmful to people who live near these
operations, live near these manure pits and live near those free-stall barns that house thousands of
cows.”


A coalition of environmental groups has filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit, asking the Bush
administration to disclose any negotiations with the meat industry. But the White House says it is
not cutting any deals with the owners of large farms.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chuck Quirmbach, reporting.

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Asian Beetle Invasion Spreads

The infestation of Asian long-horned beetles is spreading in North America. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:

Transcript

The infestation of Asian long-horned beetles is spreading in North America. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:


An Asian long-horned beetle, about two inches long and black with white spots was found in an
industrial park outside of Toronto.


It arrived in packing material from Asia. And it burrowed into nearby trees – making this the first
infestation in Canada.


Forestry specialist Gordon Henry says the beetle poses a serious threat to Canada’s native
hardwoods.


“If it was to get into wild areas and attack maple trees, it would impact probably on tourism, it
would certainly pose a problem for anybody producing maple syrup, would also be a nuisance
pest for any homeowner who’s trying to grow one of the host trees.”


The beetle has also infested trees in Chicago, New York City and New Jersey.


Henry says it takes years to fully eradicate them.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.

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Gps Treasure Hunting in Public Parks

A new outdoor game has park officials worried. Geocaching is a high-tech scavenger hunt: one person hides something and records its location using its latitude and longitude. They post the coordinates on the Internet, and others are encouraged to go and look for it. Often these hidden treasures, called caches, are put in parks. Some park officials worry that the sport threatens plant and animal habitat. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Katherine Glover has the story:

Transcript

A new outdoor game has park officials worried. Geocaching is a high-tech scavenger hunt: one
person hides something and records its location using its latitude and longitude. They post the
coordinates on the Internet, and others are encouraged to go and look for it. Often these hidden
treasures, called caches, are put in parks. Some park officials worry that the sport threatens plant
and animal habitat. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Katherine Glover has the story:


A small tupperware container is hidden in the hollow of an old tree. The global coordinates of
the tree are posted on the Internet. Hundreds of individuals will download these coordinates and
then head out in search of this tupperware treasure. They will take one trinket from the
tupperware as a souvenir, and leave another in its place. This is geocaching.


Geocaching is an excuse to get outdoors. It’s a way to discover beautiful spots you might not find
on your own. And it’s a way to have fun using new technology. To find the hidden containers,
known as caches, you use a global positioning system, or GPS device.


Arol McCaslin is a park manager at Forestville Mystery Cave State Park in Minnesota. He
explains how global positioning systems work.


“There’s a bunch of satellites orbiting the earth, they relay a radio signal and your GPS unit
basically figures out where you are on the earth.”


GPS was originally set up for military use, but in 2000 the signal was made available to the
public. Within two days, the first geocache was hidden outside Portland, Oregon. Today there
are more than 67,000 caches hidden in nearly 200 countries. McCaslin discovered geocaching a
year ago when caches started turning up in State Parks.


“We weren’t quite sure what to make if it. We weren’t sure if a geocache hidden in one of these
areas would do damage to the resource, safety aspects, if these caches were being located at the
edge of cliffs or if they’d have to climb down – just a whole mess of stuff that we felt we had to
address before we could even think about letting geocachers into state parks.”


Minnesota was one state that banned geocaching in state parks shortly after learning the sport
existed. But in the next couple of months, they will begin issuing permits allowing a limited
number of caches to be placed once again within state park boundaries. Arol McCaslin was one
of three people who drafted the policy. He has also become a geocacher himself. We followed
him on a cache hunt just outside the park where he works.


“All right now, I’m looking at my GPS unit and it’s telling me we’re going in the right direction.”


McCaslin parked his truck a quarter mile from the cache. We strolled down a bike path along the
Rut River, following his hand-held GPS device.


AROL:
The Rut River is down on our right, highway and cliff is on our left. It’s hotter than heck today
and I’m sweating like a pig.”


Our search led us to a tunnel underneath the bike path.


“Well I would almost say that it’s through the tunnel here. (footsteps echoing in the tunnel) Oh,
this is cool, isn’t it? It’s actually cool in here!”


Once through the tunnel, McCasslin climbed up some rocks to look for the cache, but had a hard
time finding it.


We’ll return to his adventures in a moment, but first let’s look at how other states are handling
geocaching. In Wisconsin, some fans of the game formed the Wisconsin Geocaching
Association. T hey are working out their own geocaching policy with the Wisconsin DNR. Ken
Braband is President of the group. He says not everyone understands what geocaching is all
about.


“I think there are a lot of misconceptions on the part of some park officials. We knew that if we
wanted to keep from happening in Wisconsin what has happened in other states such as
Minnesota, where they’ve banned it in state parks, we needed to be proactive and work with our
local parks managers and let ’em know what geocaching is all about, let ’em know the value of it
for them.”


VOICE:
Braband says geocaching is a great way to draw more people into the parks. The majority of
geocachers, he says, enjoy nature and want to protect it. His group and similar groups around the
country promote responsible geocaching. Bryan Roth, who helps run the main geocaching
website, gives an example of what that means.


“You know, we’ve got a policy that’s called cache in, trash out. We encourage geocachers when
they go out geocaching to bring a trash bag and pick up some trash on the way out and leave the
park a little bit better than it was when you found it.”


Roth’s website is where people can post or download the coordinates of where different caches
are hidden. The website, geocaching.com, provides guidelines for hiding caches in ways that
won’t threaten the safety of the environment or of other geocachers. People are encouraged to ask
for permission before hiding caches in parks. They are also asked to remove caches if heavy
traffic starts to wear a trail to a spot where a cache is hidden.


“It’s more likely on this side of the tunnel than the other side (crunching grass in background)
Look out, I’m coming down here, no telling how quick!”


Back on the geocaching trail with Arol McCasslin, he was unable to find the cache near the
tunnel under the bike trail, but he was successful in finding another cache a quarter mile down the
river.


“Right now in the cache there’s, it looks like there’s some kind of decal, we’ve got all kinds of
pens, we’ve got a little, an NFL trading card with Moe Williams on it.”


He noted his success in the cache’s logbook and later plans to get more information from the
website and go back for the cache he missed.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Katherine Glover.

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DRAWING THE LINE ON BEACHFRONT PROPERTIES (Short Version)

Some homeowners on Great Lakes coasts are concerned about how state governments decide where the lake ends and private property begins. In one state… landowners are pushing legislation to protect their private property rights. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Some homeowners on great lakes coasts are concerned about how state governments decide
where the lake ends and private property begins. In one state… land owners are pushing
legislation to protect their private property rights. The great lakes radio consortium’s julie grant
reports:


(sound of lake)


When the water of the Great Lakes batters shoreline property, it erodes the land. Homeowners
want to prevent that erosion. But there are lots of regulations on building shore protection
structures. Too many, according to Ohio homeowner jim o’conner. He says Ohio is regulating
land that he owns…


“They don’t have that right, but they’re doing it. And it’s a shame we have to try to get a bill to
say, ‘Hey, this is our property, don’t take it.'”


A bill in the Ohio legislature would push the state’s jurisdiction back toward the lake, so it would
have less authority over shoreline development. Other states are watching the issue because they
draw the line to same boundary as Ohio. The state says it might drop some regulations, but it will
not support turning public ownership over to private landowners.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.

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Drawing the Line on Beachfront Properties

Some homeowners on Great Lakes coasts are concerned about how state governments decide where the lake ends and private property begins. In one state… landowners are pushing legislation to protect their private property rights. But the bill worries recreation and environmental activists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Some homeowners on Great Lakes coasts are concerned about how state governments decide
where the lake ends and private property begins. In one state, land owners are pushing legislation
to protect their private property rights. But the bill worries recreation and environmental
activists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:


Dennis Bring is a big, burly guy who looks like he wouldn’t be scared of anything. But he says
he is scared. He’s afraid of the bureaucrats at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
They say the land he once owned is no longer his, simply because of the erosion caused by Lake
Erie’s waves.


It started more than twenty years ago. That’s when high waters on Lake Erie started to batter his
shoreline property and erode the bluff. Bring decided to use concrete and large limestone blocks
to protect it. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources required him to get surveys, pay for
engineering, and construction. It cost thousands of dollars. Then he was told he had to sign a
lease agreement, to lease the land that he thought he already owned.


“They said it wasn’t a big thing. But when we got it, we found out it was 17 to 20 pages long and
basically they had the rights to our property and we had basically no rights and they could come
on our property at any time.”


The cost of the lease isn’t that much, but Bring’s deed says he owns that land. It’s been in the
family for three generations and he pays taxes on it. But the state also wanted him to carry a
million dollars worth of liability insurance on the erosion protection structure.


So he called the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to complain. A state regulator told Bring
that he no longer owns the land because anything up to the high water mark, including the eroded
part that once belonged to Bring, actually belongs to the state.


“And I asked him, I said, ‘You’re telling me the lake is your property, correct?’ And he said ‘Yes,
that’s our property.’ And I said, ‘According to my gist on this, is that your property is damaging
my property. I’m trying to protect this property.’ But I said, ‘In turn you’re making me pay back
what is already mine.’ He said, ‘And we could tear your structure out if we wanted to.’ And then
I hung up the phone, and my wife and I were scared to death.


The state plans to enforce its claim that it owns up to the high water mark. But many lakefront
owners say the state is taking more than its share. They want Ohio’s jurisdiction pushed back
toward the lake – to the low water mark. The difference between the two adds up to thousands of
acres along Ohio’s 262 miles of coast.


Brian Preston grew up fishing in the marshes around Toledo. Speaking at a public meeting on
behalf of the environmental group, the National Wildlife Federation, he argued that the state is
right, anything the lake touches belongs to all the people, not just those who own the adjacent
private land.


“We’re not talking about their land; proximity doesn’t imply ownership. Those 262 miles in the
land going into the water is our land. Just because it’s in front of their house doesn’t make it their
land”.


But property owners disagree. They’ve pushed a bill in the Ohio legislature to move state
ownership back toward the lake. It would also take away much of the state’s authority to regulate
the shoreline. The private land owners say the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers already monitors
the Great Lakes shoreline. Homeowner Jim O’conner says that’s enough regulation.


“For years, shoreline structures have been built along the lake and have been fine. The Army
Corps has kept a pretty close eye on it. But now this program has turned into a radical mess by a
few people that have extreme radical views on what private property owners, shoreline owners,
should relinquish. In order to live on the lake you’ve got to relinquish your property.”


The state says without its additional regulation there would be all kinds of problems. That’s
because in the past houses and other structures have been built too close to the shore and
eventually storms eroded the dirt from underneath them and they fell into the lake. Some
scientists are also concerned that the engineered structures that protect the land from erosion end
up destroying public property. State geologist Don Guy says erosion provides the sand size
material that builds Ohio’s beaches.


“And by armoring the shore, we’re eliminating that source of beach-building material. And as
waves continue through natural processes to carry sediment, at least along this part from east to
west, eventually the sand is eroded from the beach at a given site and there’s nothing to replenish
that beach. So that’s maybe the hidden impact of all the shore protection.”


And that’s one reason the Ohio Department of Natural Resources wants to protect the beach.
State representative Tim Grendell sponsored the bill that would change the boundary from the
high water mark to the low water mark. He says it won’t have any negative impact on the
lakeshore or the environment. He says the state has taken control over more land than it should.
He notes that property deeds often say landownership stretches to the low water mark. Grendell
says state shouldn’t regulate beyond that.


“It recognizes what the Ohio constitution recognizes, that a government agency of the state has no
power to take away people’s property by redefining what they own.”


But most Great Lakes states regulate to the same boundary as Ohio. They say state ownership is
at the high water mark. The state of Ohio says it’s willing to drop some of the things it mandates.
For example, it might drop insurance requirements and help pay engineering costs of shoreline
structures it approves. But Ohio says it will not support turning public ownership over to private
landowners.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.

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Report: Shipping Expansion Won’t Help Economy

Two environmental groups have released a study that questions the benefits of allowing bigger boats on the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway. Save the River and Great Lakes United paid for the report because they fear deepening the channels and allowing ocean-going vessels on the Great Lakes would harm the ecosystem. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:

Transcript

Two environmental groups have released a study that questions the benefits of
allowing bigger boats on the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway. Save the River
and Great Lakes United paid for the report because they fear deepening the
channels and allowing ocean-going vessels on the Great Lakes would harm the
ecosystem. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:


Researchers at the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute critiqued a study done by
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The critique focused on the idea of making the
locks and canals big enough to handle container ships. These boats now dock on
the East Coast and their cargo comes into the Midwest by rail or truck. The new
report says there’s no evidence that it would be more efficient for container ships to
unload at Great Lakes ports.


Lead Author Evelyn Tomchick says moving containers into the Midwest by water
would be slower.


Also the longer transit times are usually associated with greater unreliability. That
is, there’s variation in the time of arrival, the actual time of arrival.”


Tomchick says unreliability has costs that weren’t calculated.


A spokesman for the Army Corps agrees further study is needed to know the costs
and benefits of any expansion. The Corps of Engineers is currently studying what
it will cost to maintain the locks and channels the way they are.


For The Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Peter Payette.

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Concern Grows Over Flame Retardant Chemicals

A class of potentially toxic chemicals, known as PBDEs, is being found in higher levels in people in North America. The chemicals are used to prevent fires in everything from couch cushions to televisions. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

A class of potentially toxic chemicals, known as PBDE’s, is being found in
higher levels in people in North America. The chemicals are used to prevent
fires in everything from couch cushions to televisions. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:


PBDE’s are used extensively throughout North America. In Europe and Asia
the chemicals are hardly used at all for this purpose. To date, four studies have
indicated that North Americans have considerably higher levels of the
chemicals in their bodies, than do Europeans and Asians. The most recent
study tested the breast milk of 47 women in Texas.


Linda Birnbaum co-authored the study published in the journal Environmental Health
Perspectives. She says while these chemicals were created to save lives,
other chemicals should be developed that won’t be absorbed by human tissue:


“Personally I’m concerned about chemicals that persist and bio-accumulate.
They eventually get to a point be that they can be a problem.”


Some animal tests have shown that the chemicals can be toxic. That’s why the
European Union and the state of California enacted a ban on certain types of PBDE’s.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.

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