Beech Bark Disease Survivors Are Resistant

  • Beech bark disease often causes the tree's bark to become scaly. (Photo courtesy of Michigan DNR)

Researchers might have a partial solution to the problem of beech bark disease. The disease has killed millions of beeches in the northeast and is advancing on the woodlands of the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton has this report:

Transcript

Researchers might have a partial solution to the problem
of beech bark disease. The disease has killed millions of beeches
in the Northeast and is advancing on the woodlands of the Midwest.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton has this report:


Beech bark disease happens when an insect infests beech trees. Then the
trees are killed or crippled by an opportunistic fungus. Where the
disease has struck, researchers found one to five percent of the trees had
natural resistance to the insect.


Jennifer Cook is a USDA Forest Service researcher.Her experiments found that seeds from two resistant parent trees produced progeny that are also resistant. That could set the stage
for reforestation and even pro-active plantings.


“People can plant them before the disease gets there and
therefore lessen the impact on their forest lands.”


Cook says if you’ve got a big beautiful beech tree you want to save, you
can scrub the tree’s bark with insecticidal soap once a year. Of course
it would be impossible to scrub every beech tree in the forests.


For the GLRC, I’m Tracy Samilton.

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White House Zeroes Out Amtrak, but States Don’t

  • States are trying to support Amtrak by approving funding for existing service routes. (Photo courtesy of Wisconsin DOT)

States in the Midwest are considering funding supplemental Amtrak routes… even though President Bush has zeroed out the Amtrak budget. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

States in the Midwest are considering funding supplemental Amtrak routes… even though President Bush has zeroed out the Amtrak budget. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


About a dozen states contract with Amtrak to provide passenger rail service routes in addition to the national rail network. Some state legislatures have already approved funding the routes for next year. Marc Magliari is a spokesperson for Amtrak. He says several states are looking at the issue right now.


“The legislatures in Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin are still at work on their questions.”


But Amtrak doesn’t really know if it will be around next year. The Bush administration did not put any money in the budget for Amtrak. The White House zeroed out the passenger rail service.


“Zero dollars equals zero trains.”


That means even if the states pay for supplemental service… there might be no trains because all of Amtrak would be eliminated. Neo-conservatives in the Bush administration feel the government should not be subsidizing passenger rail service and are pushing Congress to eliminate the funding.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

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States Graded on Sewage Spill Alerts

Environmental regulators in the 8-state Great Lakes region are getting mixed grades for their systems to notify the general public about potentially hazardous sewage spills. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Steve Carmody
reports:

Transcript

Environmental regulators in the 8-state Great Lakes region
are getting mixed grades for their systems to notify the general
public about potentially hazardous sewage spills. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Steve Carmody reports:


The Public Interest Research Group in Michigan reviewed each Great Lakes state’s system for reporting sewage spills, and graded its performance.


Study author Mike Shriberg says better public notification systems are needed, especially now, with many people planning boating holidays over the summer.


“Families heading to the beach this summer, families going out on their boats are actually being left in the dark about a major public health risk.”


Michigan topped the list, praised for its coordinated, quick public notification system, though also criticized for some reporting shortfalls.


At the bottom of the list, Ohio received a “D minus” for having no significant statewide system to report sewage spills.


For the GLRC I’m Steve Carmody.


HOST TAG: For more information on the PIRGIM report, go to their website
www.ProtectTheGreatLakes.org

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States Sue Over Mercury Cap-And-Trade Plan

  • Some states are worried that the EPA's Cap and Trade program will create mercury hot spots. (Photo courtesy of the EPA)

Several Midwest states have filed a second lawsuit against the Bush Administration’s plans to control mercury. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Several Midwest states have filed a second lawsuit against
the Bush Administration’s plans to control mercury. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


The newest court case takes aim on the EPA’s plan to allow coal-burning power plants to buy and sell pollution credits for mercury – much they way they do for sulphur dioxide. Tom Dawson is an Assistant State Attorney General in Wisconsin. He says the so-called cap and trade system would create mercury hot spots.


“The trouble with allowing for the trading of pollution credits allows certain emitters of mercury to go on emitting their current or slightly reduced levels of mercury thus resulting in hot spots that are immediately downwind of the sources.”


The EPA and White House say they will vigorously defend the mercury rules, arguing that now is the time to move against mercury emissions.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuch Quirmbach.

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Interview: Children’s Book Author on Great Lakes Woes

  • The new book outlines a cause of Great Lakes water levels dropping while entertaining kids with silly, though not entirely improbable outcomes. (Photo courtesy of Mackinac Island Press)

The Great Lakes were flowing with water
On every Great Lakes Day;
Until something frightful happened
And made the Great Lakes drain away.

That’s how the new children’s book, “The Day The Great Lakes Drained Away” begins. The author is Charles Ferguson Barker and he recently spoke with the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Charity Nebbe:

Transcript

The Great Lakes were flowing with water
On every Great Lakes Day;
Until something frightful happened
And made the Great Lakes drain away.

That’s how the new children’s book, The Day The Great Lakes Drained
Away
begins. The author is Charles Ferguson Barker and he recently
spoke with the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Charity Nebbe:


Nebbe: “Charles, in your book, all of the water disappears from the Lakes and you take us on a tour of all the lakebeds, so we see landforms and shipwrecks and a whole lot of mud… What gave you the idea to show kids what the Lakes would look like without water?”


Barker: “Well, actually, it was from looking at some maps that are put out by the National Geophysical Data Center that show, basically, what’s on the lake floors, and I, for one, had not given it much thought ’till seeing these maps. But these maps have some really cool features like ridges of rock and all kinds of neat stuff and I thought this would be a great idea for a children’s book.”


Nebbe: “What do you think some of the coolest features that you’ve been able to put into the book are?”


Barker: “Um, well, there’s a suspected meteor impact crater on the east side of Lake Ontario, and it’s not confirmed as a meteor impact crater, but a lot of other things it could be have been ruled out. So that’s pretty neat. There’s also, to me, what’s most exciting is the ridge of rock, or ridges of rock underneath Lake Huron, that, in some cases, have maybe four hundred feet of relief. And most of the maps we see of the Great Lakes are basically just a flat blue, so seeing what’s under the Lakes I thought was really exciting.”


Nebbe: “When I was reading the book, I thought, you know, if I were a kid, this would be pretty scary to me because all the water goes away from the lakes and, you know, there are fish dying in at least one picture. Why did you decide to show us the bottom of the Lakes in that way?”


Barker: “Well, actually, that’s pretty much how… the only way I could figure out how to show them, I mean, if we’re talking about features that are on the lake floors, then somehow we’ve got to get rid of the water to see those, and sort of… it’s a fanciful sort of draining away of the Lakes, if you will. The purpose of the book is almost twofold: one is to show that the lake floors are pretty cool, and there’s some neat features under there, but also to sort of reinforce that hey, we’d better make sure this never happens, you know, so it goes to the protection of the Lakes as well.”


Nebbe: “The culprit in your book is water usage among communities in the Great Lakes Basin and there are rules that govern water usage among those communities, one of them is that they have to return the amount of water that they use and that communities outside the basin can’t use the water without approval. Why did you pick that as the culprit?”


Barker: “Well, that’s a good question and it sort of goes back to the original manuscript draft, and I thought, well, gosh, the villain could be actually just everybody taking a little bit of water thinking that it doesn’t matter, but the cummulative effect of that mindset causes a problem, and I think that’s true, I work in environmental consulting, and I can attest that that’s basically how major contamination sites are created is that everybody thinking, ‘Oh well this one little thing won’t matter, this little drop of tetrachlorethyline won’t matter,’ but if everybody has that mindset, then, yeah there’s going to be a problem.”


Nebbe: “You’ve been talking to some of the kids who are reading the book, do you think that message is getting across?”


Barker: “Yeah, I think, you know, initially, they really kind of like to sort of see the pictures and hear and learn about the lake floors and whatnot, but I think it’s important to, you know, relay to kids that they’re actually going to be the ones making decisions down the road about Great Lakes withdrawals and whatnot, and recently, I was just talking to somebody and remembering back to when I was a kid, we used to sail a lot on the Great Lakes, and I remember being in the middle of Lake Erie, sort of out of the sight of land, and sailing through soap suds. It was terrible. I mean, Lake Erie was horrible. This was in the early seventies. And it was like you’re in a bath tub with soap suds. That’s more of a water quality issue, but I think it sort of became a problem because of nobody really, um, paying much attention. So, I think the more attention we pay to the Great Lakes, in terms of just making sure no wacky ideas about withdrawal go through, then that’s good. That’s what we need to do.”


Nebbe: “Charles Ferguson Barker, thank you so much.”


Barker: “Thank you.”


HOST TAG: Charles Ferguson Barker, author of The Day the Great Lakes Drained Away speaking with the GLRC’s Charity Nebbe.

Related Links

Heirloom Seeds Preserved in Gardens

  • The produce we see in stores today are bred for uniformity in color and size. Heirloom seeds grow vegetables that look different, and those who grow them say they taste better too. (Photo by Deon Staffelbach)

Planting a seed has a pretty obvious purpose: once you put it in the ground, if you’re lucky, a few weeks later something pretty or useful pops up. But for some people, seeds are a lot more than that. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has this report:

Transcript

Planting a seed has a pretty obvious purpose: once you put it
in the ground, if you’re lucky, a few weeks later something pretty
or useful pops up. But for some people, seeds are a lot more than
that. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has this report:


Greenfield Village is a historical village that’s part of the Henry Ford
Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The village has one of those “living history”
farms where people do things like shearing sheep and chopping wood, while
dressed in 19th century clothing.


They try hard to make the farm authentic,
and part of this has to do with the seeds they plant — they’re the very same
kinds that 19th century farms in this part of the country would have used.
They’re called heirloom seeds. Jim Johnson is the manager of special
programs at Greenfield Village. He says that the vegetables that heirloom
seeds produce aren’t what people are used to seeing.


“They’re lumpy and bumpy and sometimes have a strange look to them, but some of these varieties have a taste that cannot be compared to the things you can find on the supermarket shelves today. Most of the things you can find today in the standard produce section, they’re grown to be uniform, they look appealing to the eye, but typically they don’t have a very good taste and have been around for a while.”


Johnson says that it’s important to use seeds that are authentic. That’s
because what people plant, can show a lot more about them than just what
they eat. Laura Delind is an anthropologist at Michigan State University;
she says that even the names of seeds, can say a lot about a group. She
points to a seed grown by traditional farmers in Africa, that has a much
more telling name than what you’d see on a seed packet at your local
hardware store.


“It grew at a time when a majority of other beans didn’t. And what I found compelling is the seed was called ‘So the Grandparents Can Survive.’ Inherent in the seeds is a whole set of social relationships, responsibilities, cultural understandings, and a collective wisdom about how to manage, live well in a particular place.”


Delind says that in the U.S. we’ve lost a lot of this. But for many people, growing heirlooms isn’t just a thing of the past or something that people do in far-off countries.


Heirloom gardening has become more popular in recent years. In part that’s
because of the taste. It’s also because people have become more concerned
about commercially developed seeds, which are sometimes genetically
modified. Royer Held offers classes about heirloom seeds. He says that
planting, saving and sharing heirloom seeds, are important for a lot of
reasons, especially now when the food we eat comes from fewer and fewer
places.


“People are giving up the cultivation of these varieties they’ve maintained over centuries and millenia. We’re basically at risk of losing a lot of very unique agricultural material. And what we’re trying to do here in Ann Arbor is to encourage the gardening community here to take on as their personal responsibility the maintenance of these varieties.”


Although Royer Held is a long-time gardener, he can’t say that he’d given
that much thought to spreading the word about heirlooms until a couple of
winters ago. When bad weather kept him inside, he passed the time reading.
In one book he found that that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, kept
supplies of lots of heirloom seeds that weren’t widely available.


He requested several kinds of potato seeds from the agency. When they arrived
he and his friend Marcella Troutman planted them along with some other
heirloom seeds. They saved the seeds and cuttings from the new plants, and
now they’re making these available as well as trying to get people used to
the idea of saving their own seeds. She says that people can be a little
intimidated by the idea.


“They almost think it’s not going to be as good as having bought seeds in a packet from a reputable seed company.”


She hopes that in time, people will get over this. Royer Held adds that saving seeds and sharing them with your friends are all part of what makes gardening rewarding.


“If you grow heirlooms, you should save the seeds, because it’s only by saving the seeds that you can allow the plants to grow and develop and adapt to particular growing conditions. And if you do, save enough for your friends because they might want some too. And if they take time, they’ll probably wind up liking them better, which gets us back to why we all garden.”


They hope that in the end, people will get comfortable enough to start creating and sharing their own varieties.


For the GLRC, I’m Nora Flaherty.

Related Links

Land Swap: Steel Mill Jobs for Forests?

  • The expansion of an existing steel mill could mean more jobs but less forest. (Photo courtesy of AmericasLibrary.gov)

Everybody has different ideas about how land ought to be used. Lately, the fight’s been about whether to allow expanding retail development on farmland. But a different fight’s going on right now, too. It’s a fight between two long-time rivals – heavy industry and open space. It’s also about jobs and preservation. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has this report:

Transcript

Everybody has different ideas about how land ought
to be used. Lately, the fight’s been about whether to allow
expanding retail development on farmland. But a different
fight’s going on right now, too. It’s a fight between two
long-time rivals – heavy industry and open space. It’s also
about jobs and preservation. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Shawn Allee has this report:


(Sound of train)


The town of Riverdale’s a kind of industrial crossroads. It’s near a Great Lakes port, heavy trucks lumber through its streets, and in some areas, rail crossings are as common as stop signs. At one time, this village just south of Chicago was known for more than just moving industrial goods – thosands of workers used to make things here, especially steel.


(Sound of birds)


Today, there are only a few hundred steel jobs left in Riverdale. Most are at one plant that sits near a stretch of Cook County Forest Preserve, a place called Whistler Woods. The remaining steel mill wants to expand. It wants to swap twenty one acres of Whistler Woods for thirty one acres of its own wooded land. Supporters hope the move will bring jobs to the town.


Jim Bush grew up in the area and is with the region’s chamber of commerce. He supports the deal, saying the area is fighting for its economic future.


“So you can see, it’s pretty hard to keep your schools up to standards and all your city services when you’re faced with a declining tax base.”


Bush says this is urgent. The Riverdale plant was recently bought out by Mittal Steel, the world’s largest steel company. Bush says to keep the mill attractive to the new owners, the county needs to make the company happy now.


“Mittal USA has plants all around the world. If they don’t do this expansion here, they’re talking about taking it to Ohio. We can’t let other states take business away from Illinois without doing something.”


Besides, he says, critics of the land swap should just do the math.


“Thirty-one acres for twenty-one acres. Sounds like a no-brainer to the business community.”


But not everyone’s buying into that calculation. To understand why, I meet with Benjamin Cox. He’s with Friends of the Forest Preserves, an advocacy group. Cox and I are traveling along the bike path leading to the field the company wants to acquire.


“As you’re walking along here, you can hear many, many birds. We just saw some deer. There are wonderful native plants here.”


Cox says the forest preserve district could use an extra ten acres, but the company’s offering land that’s half a mile away and across a river. Cox says that land won’t help these woods. He also doesn’t have much faith in the company’s new owners.


“The part of this that nobody’s talked about yet is that they have not committed to actually bring these jobs here or do this project.”


The company confirms this, saying it can’t make promises about jobs even if it could expand the plant. Cox adds the proposal flies in the face of Forest Preserves history. During the past ninety years, it’s only sold or traded land a handful of times and the last time it did, it go burned. A few years ago, it let go of two acres so Rosemont, a Chicago suburb, could build a casino parking lot. The parking lot got built, but the casino project never got started.


Now Cox fears if this deal goes through, it’ll be open season on Forest Preserve land.


“As soon as you start nibbling away at the corners, a little acre here, a little acre there, twenty acres here. All of a sudden, it’s ‘You did it for them, you should do it for me.'”


The plan’s supporters say they don’t want to sell off the preserves, they just want a little flexibility.


Cook County Commissioner Deborah Sims represents Riverdale and surrounding communities. She says opponents are typically from more affluent parts of the county, places that have an easy time attracting new businesses. There, she says,


“All you have to do is build a few houses and everybody will come. We don’t have that luxury. So, any economic development we have, we can’t afford to lose.”


So the land swap seems a small price to pay for a little economic security.


A tall chain-link fence separates the woods from the Riverdale steel plant. Despite the division, both parcels of land have something in common – their boosters are motivated by fear.


The area’s steel industry is, in many ways, a diminishing, precious resource. The Cook County Forest Preserve District also faces a crossroads, but a more political one. It holds tens of thousands of acres of open land, but it’s not clear whether it can always fend off demands made by a land-hungry economy.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Epa Drops Sewage Blending Proposal

The Environmental Protection Agency has dropped its plans to adopt a controversial policy for sewage treatment plants. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency has dropped its plans to
adopt a controversial policy for sewage treatment plants. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports:


The EPA was planning to sanction a practice known as sewage blending.


Sewage blending is used when treatment plants are hit with large volumes of
storm water. Partially treated sewage is blended with fully treated
sewage, and then released into nearby waterways.


Mike Shriberg is with the Public Interest Research Group. He says the
announcement is a positive step for clean water.


“What would’ve happened if this policy had passed is that sewage blending
would’ve become the end game. It would’ve been what wastewater treatment
plants do to treat sewage anytime that it rains. Now that option is gone.
So the plants that are doing it now have just been told that they need to
fully treat sewage in the future.”


The EPA said it dropped its proposal after receiving more than 98,000 public
comments. The announcement came shortly before Congress
was to vote on a bill to stop the sewage blending proposal.


For the GLRC, I’m Mark Brush.

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Will Chestnut Trees Make a Comeback?

  • Due to a blight, American chestnuts are now rare in the Midwest. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

In the first half of the last century, there were millions of American chestnut trees ranging from the Eastern seaboard to the Upper Midwest. Now, there are virtually none… because a fungus killed them. A campaign is being launched to bring back a blight-resistant version of the chestnut… and it’s being planted here in the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen
reports:

Transcript

In the first half of the last century, there were millions of
American chestnut trees ranging from the Eastern seaboard to the Upper
Midwest. Now, there are virtually none because a fungus killed them.
A campaign is being launched to bring back a blight-resistant version of
the chestnut, and it’s being planted here in the Midwest. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:


Sprouts from diseased chestnut trees don’t get the killer fungus until
they’re 4 inches tall, so researchers like Brian McCarthy of Ohio
University have had plenty of raw material to breed a new version of the
chestnut tree.


“Fifteen-sixteenths pure American chestnut and one-sixteenth Chinese
chestnut. And that one-sixteenth of the genome confers blight resistance.”


Ohio is now planting hundreds of the new seedlings on top of abandoned strip
mines. McCarthy believes they may help reclaim the land.


“It’s not that chestnuts like this kind of soil. It’s that probably that chestnuts can
tolerate this type of soil better than other broadleaf tree species can.”


McCarthy hopes that a century from now, the blight-resistant chestnut
trees will once again be prominent in forests, providing high-quality
lumber and food for wildlife.


For the GLRC, I’m Bill Cohen in Columbus.

Related Links

Forest Service Needs Better Planting Goals

  • The Government Accountability Office says the U.S. Forest Service isn't providing sufficient data on forest restoration. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Government Printing Office)

The U.S. Forest Service reports more of the lands it manages are in need of reforestation. But a Congressional watchdog agency says the Forest Service doesn’t keep track of things well enough to know exactly what needs to be done to do the job correctly. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The U.S. Forest Service reports more of the lands it manages
are in need of reforestation. But a Congressional watchdog agency
says the Forest Service doesn’t keep track of things well enough to
know exactly what needs to be done to do the job correctly. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


For the last five years, the Forest Service has seen a trend. The amount of acreage that needs to be reforested has been increasing. But that’s all it really knows.


The Government Accountability Office says the Forest Service doesn’t have the right data to know how much forest needs to be restored, which sites take priority, or to even estimate a budget. The Forest Service says part of the reason it’s having a hard time figuring out reforestation needs is that it used to calculate reforestation by the amount of trees cut down.


But recently more natural disasters such as wildfires, insect infestations and disease have complicated the calculations. The GAO recommends adjusting Forest Service data collection and policies so that trees can be planted where and when they need to be.


If there’s a delay, the harvested areas become overgrown in scrub brush. And that can cost the Forest Service more money because it has to clear the land before it can be planted in the trees that benefit wildlife and the timber industry.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

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