A New Clean Energy Corps?

Labor and energy groups say they want the federal government to create a Clean Energy Corps. The say the Corps would retro-fit and upgrade old buildings and, as Chuck Quirmbach reports, create a lot of jobs in the process:

Transcript

Labor and energy groups say they want the federal government to create a Clean Energy Corps. The say the Corps would retro-fit and upgrade old buildings and, as Chuck Quirmbach reports, create a lot of jobs in the process:

Some cities and states have programs that work on making older buildings more energy efficient.

Now, progressive think tanks have joined unions and alternative energy groups to ask for a national program.

Bracken Hendricks is with the Center for American Progress. He says it’s critical for the federal government to help pay to make older structures more efficient.

“For a long time, we’ve made great inroads on improving the energy efficiency and the performance of new buildings with tools like green building standards. But we really haven’t had a way to go and systematically block by block retrofit and weatherize homes.”

Hendricks says the clean energy corps would help the umemployed find work in the building and construction trades.

The coalition backing the corps says the money for the program could come from the stimulus package or other upcoming legislation.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Downtowns Make Room for Artists

  • James Abajian is an artist who lives in Elgin, Illinois. His entire apartment is stuffed with tools, paint, and works like this one. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

The stereotype of the
starving artist isn’t always true,
but, let’s face it, some artists
have a tough time finding affordable
places to both live and work. Shawn
Allee reports how one city’s
trying to solve this problem while
revitalizing its downtown:

Transcript

The stereotype of the
starving artist isn’t always true,
but, let’s face it, some artists
have a tough time finding affordable
places to both live and work. Shawn
Allee reports how one city’s
trying to solve this problem while
revitalizing its downtown:

The City of Elgin Illinois has a housing crisis – not so much for average residents, but for
some artists.

It’s not that they’re homeless, it’s just, well, to understand. It helps to meet an Elgin
artist.

“Come on in.”

“Are you James?”

“Yeah.”

This is James Abajian.

“Don’t really mind the house, I’ve been working on a couple of projects.”

When I get in, I’m dumbstruck.

Wood sculptures cover Abajian’s floor, and his dining room has stacks of paper and
canvas, and right where most apartments would have a TV, Abajian’s got an unfinished
drawing.

“It’s like a wine glass or a martini glass, and it’s on different angles.”

“Is it a charcoal drawing?”

“Yeah, it’s charcoal.”

Abajian started art eight years ago.

He says he’d like to make a living with it and rent a fancy studio, but he’s just not there
yet.

So, he lives where he works.

“My apartment is nothing but paintings and frames.”

“I think the major space that doesn’t have charcoal or something on it is your
couch.”

“Couch. That’s about it. Yeah.”

It can take a while for artists like Abajian to hone their craft, so, they make do with space
not meant for working.

It’s enough for the city of Elgin to step in and try to help at least some artists find better
quarters. Oh, and, by the way, the city thinks the solution might solve a problem it has,
too.

Ed Schock is Elgin’s mayor.

I find him downtown, outside a two-story brick building.

“So, where are we, Mayor?”

“We are looking at the Elgin Community College downtown campus building.”

Schock is considering whether this building might work as an artist colony – a place
where Elgin artists could afford to live and work.

“There are an unusual number of artists here who would like to continue to do their
art, but economic reality’s set in, one of the biggest one’s is housing. Plus, just
having 45-50 residents downtown is a big plus. One of our strategic goals is to
increase the number who reside in the downtown.”

Inside, Schock and I meet staffers from a non-profit group that’s helping Elgin develop
artist housing.

(sound of walking up stairs)

They’re with ArtSpace of Minnesota.

ArtSpace wants to see the building first-hand – they need to make sure it’s the best fit for
Elgin and the artists.

Wendy Holmes says lots of cities want artists to make older parts of town more attractive.

Holmes says it works for cities – but it doesn’t always work for artists in the long run.

“Artists have traditionally been displaced from their spaces because artists make
areas interesting and hip and desirable to move into and other people tend to move
in behind them. And those people can afford to pay higher rent therefore the artists
are usually forced out because their rents will be too high for the artists themselves
to afford.”

ArtSpace does something about that – it uses federal low-income housing credits, so rents
stay affordable, and struggling artists stick around.

Another staffer, Heidi Kurtze asks about public transit, grocery stores, and how much
light these windows get.

“You need natural light into your living space, but for artists in particular, natural
light is a critical piece for them to do the work they do.”

Kurtz takes this as seriously as a family buying a house – after all, this could be some
artists’ home for decades.

It could take two years for ArtSpace to finish its Elgin project.

Artists like James Abajain will have to make due until then.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Growing Upward, Not Outward

  • Valcent's vertical farm has hundreds of clear plastic sheets holding pockets of plants. These hang from moving racks. (Photo courtesy of Valcent)

It takes a lot of land to grow
crops. There are concerns there won’t
be enough land to grow all the needed
food for the rapidly growing population.
That’s why some researchers and business
people are creating what they call
vertical farms. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

It takes a lot of land to grow
crops. There are concerns there won’t
be enough land to grow all the needed
food for the rapidly growing population.
That’s why some researchers and business
people are creating what they call
vertical farms. Julie Grant reports:

On the outside, it looks like a big green house. Inside,
there’s an overhead conveyer system.

It looks kind of like a dry cleaner. Hanging from the moving
racks are hundreds of clear plastic sheets. Each has rows of
pockets. In each pocket, there’s a vegetable plant.

The conveyor moves them around to make sure the plants
get enough light, nutrients and water.

Glen Kertz is president of Valcent Products, which is building
its first commercial-scale vertical farm in Alberta, Canada –
where it can be expensive to truck in fresh produce.

“A couple of hundred years ago, they couldn’t get fresh
lettuce in the dead of winter. But do they want it today?
Yes.”

Kertz and others think we could vertical farm in cities in
skyscrapers.

But Kurtz says the farm’s heat, lighting and conveyor system
all run on fossil fuels and he wants to switch to renewable
energy.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Choking on Construction Dust

  • Scientists say that inhaling those fine particles often found at construction sites is bad for the lungs and the heart (Photo courtesy of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction)

For most of us, the dust kicked
up by a construction site seems like a
minor nuisance. But it can be a health
hazard. As Karen Kelly reports, construction
dust is one source of air pollution that’s
largely been ignored:

Transcript

For most of us, the dust kicked
up by a construction site seems like a
minor nuisance. But it can be a health
hazard. As Karen Kelly reports, construction
dust is one source of air pollution that’s
largely been ignored:

If you’ve ever had the good fortune of living near a construction site, you
probably know a bit about dust.


Here in Ottawa, Canada, Mahad Adam can tell you all about it.

(construction sound)

For the past year, he’s lived across the street from a construction site that fills
an entire city block.

And he says the air quality can be terrible.

“Sneezing a lot, yes. Since the dust comes in during the whole day that they’ve
been working, it was constant dust inside the room so it was like having an
allergy.”

Trucks and bulldozers drive in and out of the site all day. They’re tracking mud
on the streets and the air is filled with dust.

Once that dirt is on the pavement, it’s kicked back up by every car that passes
by.

The construction site’s supervisor, Brad Smith, says he’s received lots of
complaints about the dust from nearby residents, especially seniors.

“I’m used to the dust and the dirt, whereas some of the people with breathing
problems and stuff that live in the community will be affected negatively more
than we are.”

In fact, too much dust can even be dangerous for people with respiratory
illnesses such as asthma.

To keep it under control, he says his company flushes the dirt off the streets
twice a week and then vacuums the rest up with a special truck.

He says the amount of cleaning they do depends on who they’re working for.

“My client is the city of Ottawa and they wrote that into the contract during
tender time. Whereas other projects I’ve been on, it can get into a bit of an
argument because it costs us and we push back a little bit.”

Smith says his company could get a fine if they leave debris on the roads.

But it’s hard to find a specific law – whether here in Canada or in the U.S. –
either at the national level, the state level, or even the local level that deals
directly with the dust coming off of construction sites.

The officials I talked to said that’s because it’s a temporary nuisance.

But what got me thinking about it was the research from Professor Brian
McCarry at McMaster University in Ontario.

He drove around his city measuring air pollution at different sites and he found
the cloud of dust kicked up when you pass a construction site is not something
you want to be breathing.

“In some cases you’re kicking up so much dust that the fine particles –
the things that cause health effects – are at levels that are there for concern.”

Scientists say that inhaling those fine particles is bad for the lungs and the
heart.

But McCarry says keeping the air clean around a construction site is actually
not that hard.

“It’s just housekeeping, it’s nothing more complex than that, and if you tell
them the housekeeping is higher in this area than elsewhere, they’ll do it.”

That can mean spraying down dusty roads with water or a sticky pine
substance.

Or using the vacuum truck more frequently in areas where there’s construction.

When companies started doing that, McCarry says there was a big drop in the
air pollution at those sites.

Now, local laws require that cleanup.

McCarry argues those laws should be everywhere.

For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

Related Links

Getting Solar From Your Windows

  • Marc Baldo, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science (left) and Shalom Goffri, postdoc in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics (right) hold examples of organic solar concentrators. (Photo by Donna Coveney at MIT, courtesy of NSF)

Some researchers say they’ve found a way to make every window

in a building gather solar energy. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Some researchers say they’ve found a way to make every window

in a building gather solar energy. Lester Graham reports:

MIT engineers say they can coat plastic or glass to redirect sunlight to the edges of a
window – to solar cells.

Instead of using a whole panel of expensive solar cells, the cells could just be aligned
just along the edges. The system could be used for solar panels, or could be used as
windows on tall glass paneled buildings.

Marc Baldo is the team leader at MIT.

“We think that this is a very practical and simple technology. It just relies on simple
coating processes. We have to develop techniques to, you know, manufacture and
integrate solar cells on the edges. But we’re optimistic that this might be useful within,
sort of, two to three year time frame.”

The researchers outlined their findings in the journal, Science. They say the focused
light at the edges really increases the electrical power obtained from each solar cell.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Urban Beekeepers Creating a Buzz

  • Beekeeper Rich Wieske started with two hives in downtown Detroit. Now he manages more than one hundred throughout the city and its suburbs. (Photo courtesy of Rich Wieske, by Rebecca Cook)

Honeybees are dying. Sometimes entire hives
are dying and scientists can’t figure out exactly why.
Some people are trying to help, and one of the ways
they’re helping is by becoming beekeepers. Rebecca
Williams reports there are some beekeepers who actually
raise bees in big cities:

Transcript

Honeybees are dying. Sometimes entire hives
are dying and scientists can’t figure out exactly why.
Some people are trying to help, and one of the ways
they’re helping is by becoming beekeepers. Rebecca
Williams reports there are some beekeepers who actually
raise bees in big cities:

Some people call them guerrilla beekeepers. They like to keep their hive locations a secret. That’s
so the neighbors won’t get worried about 60,000 bees living next door.

There are white beehive boxes on rooftops in Paris, Chicago, Manhattan. And there are beehives
tucked into open lots in the middle of downtown Detroit.

(traffic and other neighborhood sounds)

Rich Wieske has been raising bees here for eight years.

“You think of cities as buildings. Detroit’s a little different because there’s been a lot of homes
bulldozed and torn down so there’s a lot of open fields – great for bees!”

Bees have a lot to eat in the city. They love the pollen and nectar from backyard gardens.

Rich Wieske’s just gotten a shipment of bees from California. Today he’s installing new worker
bees and queens into his hives in the corner of an empty lot. He’s one of the people trying to
replace the bees that are mysteriously dying.

This shipment of bees comes packed in wooden boxes – sort of like big shoeboxes – and there are
about 9,000 bees to a box.

(Buzzing)

“Don’t move fast but be warned okay?”

Wieske gives the box a big shake. No kidding – he’s shaking the box of 9,000 bees. They pour
into the hive in a bright orange stream. The bees buzz by our heads, and land in my hair, and fly
up my sleeves.

(buzzing)

But Rich Wieske promises the honeybees are not out to get us. They’d actually rather not sting,
because then they die.

Wieske has a hive he suspects is a little worked up. So he gets out the smoker. It looks like the
love child of a watering can and a miniature accordion. It sends out little puffs of white smoke.

(puffing noises)

“I use lavender, sage, any dried herbs. Also those
chips you find in the bottom of a gerbil cage.”

He waves the smoker around the hive before he lifts the cover off. He says the puffs of smoke
calm the bees down. It covers up the alarm pheromone bees give off, which apparently smells like
bananas if you’re unlucky enough to smell it.

Wieske got into beekeeping with two hives, and now he’s got more than a hundred.

“You’ve got to watch beekeepers. A lot of them become missionaries. You can tell a beekeeper because they love talking about bees, and they’ll talk to anybody about bees
and try to get them to become beekeepers.”

Wieske has a lot of apprentices.

(goose honking)

The next stop on our bee tour is a working farm – right in the middle of downtown Detroit.

Rich Wieske is helping his understudies install new bees in the hives. He’s giving Adam Verville
the same lesson he gave me earlier.

“This is the sort-of scary part.”

(shaking box and buzzing)

Verville says a lot of his friends keep bees in the city.

“People don’t have much money. These projects supplement our incomes essentially by giving us
food and honey.”

There is a lot of honey in beekeeping. Not a whole lot of money though. But the beekeepers say
they feel like they’re part of something bigger.

Stephen Buchmann is a bee expert. He coordinates the group Pollinator Partnership. He says
honeybees pollinate a third of the food grown in the United States. So every beekeeper replacing
disappearing bees helps.

“By having
thousands of people all over the country doing this they have a significant impact on pollinator
declines.”

Buchmann says you don’t have to raise bees in your backyard to help out. He says you can plant
flowers that bees like – like sunflowers and lavender. You can cut down on pesticides in your
yard or use none at all. And you can support your own urban beekeepers by buying local honey.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Geothermal at Home

  • Swimmers in Iceland enjoy the toasty Blue Lagoon hot springs. (Photo by Kurt Holtz)

You might be hearing about geothermal energy more and more. But what exactly is geothermal energy? The new federal Energy Act calls for more research and investment into the alternative energy source. Robbie Harris has more on this long used, but little known technology, for tapping the earth’s heat:

Transcript

You might be hearing about geothermal energy more and more. But what exactly is geothermal energy? The new federal Energy Act calls for more research and investment into the alternative energy source. Robbie Harris has more on this long used, but little known technology, for tapping the earth’s heat:


(“Now look at that!” “Wow!”)


(whooshing of geyser)


In Iceland, where geysers gush from the ground and steam rises from the bays, geothermal is the number one source of energy. This island nation in the north Atlantic burns virtually no fossil fuel to heat or cool its buildings.


“You will probably not see a building that is not heated by geothermal
energy during your visit here.”


Pall Valdimarsson is Director of Research and Development with Enix. It’s Iceland’s largest geothermal consulting firm.


“And I myself, I have never lived in a house in Iceland without geothermal
energy, not in my whole life and I am not the youngest one as you can see.”


Valdimarsson says Iceland has used a special technology to tap earth-generated heat since the 1930s. And why not? It’s everywhere on this volcanic island. The first settlers here in the eighth century saw what they called “smoke” rising from the hot springs.


Today, steam blasts from hot water wells at Iceland’s newest, state of the art geothermal plant. The steam spins turbines to make electricity. The superheated water is piped directly into buildings where it gives up its heat. This heat exchange is the core concept behind geothermal technology.


Hans Bennimidgel is a spokesman for the power plant. He says the benefits for Iceland are simple:


“Clean energy and dirt cheap.”


Few places have the hot water resources Iceland has. But according to the Geothermal Resource Council, superheated water is available virtually anywhere in the world, if you drill deep enough.


The U.S. already taps this underground hot water to produce more geothermal electricity than Iceland does. And that’s expected to grow sharply, but for decades Americans have also used a different form of geothermal energy to heat
and cool buildings.


Erik Larson is a vice-president of Indie Energy. He calls it the other geothermal, which is, basically:


“Free heat from the earth and an extremely efficient way to eject heat from
the building in the summer time.”


Larson says geothermal, or geo-exchange systems, are comparable to traditional
heating, ventilation and cooling systems. But they use the earth’s constant underground temperature — around 55 degrees in most of the U.S. — to take the edge off a building’s heating and cooling load:


“Geothermal heat pump technology like we’re talking about can be done
anywhere in the country. Anywhere where there is ground to drill we can
put in our closed loop wells to draw heat from the earth to provide an HVAC
system.”


For a long time in rural areas, large horizontal loops several feet
underground captured and released heat. But in urban areas, there wasn’t
enough land. Now Larson says Indie Energy uses a new drilling technique
known as a vertical closed loop system. He says they can be installed under
almost any building. Pipes inside wells hold a fluid, which continuously
circulates between the ground and the building — creating a heat exchange.
Larson says a geothermal system saves owners money:


“We are a system that you would fully own through the ground loops or these
wells that we put in…through the distribution which is basically happening
within your building. So it adds value to your property, you control it and you
take advantage of all the savings.”


Larson says geothermal systems for buildings cost anywhere from 50 to 100 percent more than a typical heating, cooling, and ventilation system. But he says, most pay for themselves in five to eight years with the energy savings.


Business is booming. Larson says Indie Energy plans to expand in two new locations this year. Four months ago, they installed a large geothermal system at Boocoo Community Center in Evanston, Illinois. During the installation, they helped train new workers in geothermal technology. It was a joint project between Indie Energy and Boocoo. They’re training workers for a new green industry they hope will not only save resources, but create new jobs.


(Sound of hammers in Community Center)


For the Environment Report, I’m Robbie Harris.

Related Links

Rain Barrels and Rain Runoff

  • One city is asking people to use rain barrels like this one to prevent rain runoff that can overload drains and creeks. (Photo courtesy of the Huron River Watershed Council)

As cities cover more and more surface with pavement and buildings,
it’s taking a toll on the environment. Heavy rains flood off the
impervious surfaces and overload drains and creeks. Some cities are
trying new methods to control the problem. As Tracy Samilton
reports, Ann Arbor, Michigan is asking its residents to play a role by
catching their home’s rainwater in rain barrels:

Transcript

As cities cover more and more surface with pavement and buildings,
it’s taking a toll on the environment. Heavy rains flood off the
impervious surfaces and overload drains and creeks. Some cities are
trying new methods to control the problem. As Tracy Samilton
reports, Ann Arbor, Michigan is asking its residents to play a role by
catching their home’s rainwater in rain barrels:



Miller’s Creek in Ann Arbor is not a pretty creek. Part of it runs
alongside a congested four-lane road in one of the most developed
areas of the city. Since there’s almost no place left for rain to seep
slowly in the ground, it pours off the road and parking lots and
rooftops right into the creek:


“What you can see is all the roots that are exposed and very high
banks…”


Laura Rubin is head of the Huron River Watershed Council. Miller’s
Creek is part of the watershed. She says rain storms carry pollutants
and sediment into the creek, and sweep away animal and plant
species that might otherwise live here:


“This is not a healthy creek we call this impaired when they get flows
they’re so strong that they’re tearing away the banks.”


Rubin would like Miller’s Creek to be vibrant with life again one day.
But a lot of changes will have to happen first. She says nearby
businesses will have to build wetlands to retain their storm water.
The city will have to repave the roads to allow more drainage. And in
such a heavily populated area, residents will have to do something
too. Rubin says the first step is teaching people that a single point
source of pollution like a big factory is no longer the biggest threat to
water in their neighborhood:


“Now the main source of pollution is non-point pollution and that’s
us.”


Rubin says rain barrels could play a significant role in healing Miller’s
Creek. Rain barrels are just like they sound: big barrels that collect
water from a home’s rain gutters, to be dispersed later onto lawns or
gardens. One rain barrel can retain up to thirty percent of storm
water falling on a house. Under a dark grey sky that bodes rain,
Dave Aikins shows off his:


“It’s a big, uh, green trash can-like object…aesthetically, uh, I’m not
prepared to defend it.”


Aikins owns a medium-size house in downtown Ann Arbor. Now, with
a rain barrel installed on one side, he’ll catch half the rain that falls on
the house. He uses it to water his garden, but says someday he
might rig it so he can use the water for his laundry machine. A
neighbor kiddy-corner from him has installed one too, and they’ve
had neighborly arguments about proper installation and usage. He
likes how the rain barrel makes him feel.


“Living in an urban area, there’s no direct impact on you whether it
rains or not and this puts you back connected to natural environment,
so you start to care about whether you get your rain today.”

Aikins and other city residents have more than environmental
reasons to install rain barrels. The city water department is using a
carrot and stick approach to encourage their adoption. Installing a
rain barrel gets you a modest discount on the City of Ann Arbor’s new
storm water rates. Tom McMurtry is head of the new program:


“Under the old system, we charged one flat rate for every single
household whether you were an 800-square foot home in the city or a
5,000 square-foot mega-mansion.”


Now, the city will charge four different rates depending on the amount
of impervious pavement and size of the roof on the house. The
highest rate is three times more than the former flat rate, to better
reflect a big home’s impact on the city’s drains and creeks.
McMurtrie says about (blank) people have installed a rain barrel and
applied for the credit. He’d like to see at least 3,000 rain barrels
installed throughout the city. He doesn’t know how long it will take
to accomplish that:


“But every little bit helps.”


It’s an experiment in progress to see if having lots of rain barrels
around Miller’s Creek will help restore it. According to Laura Rubin
of the Huron River Watershed Council, it took about fifty years to
damage the creek this badly. It could take another fifty to bring it
back to health.


For the Environment Report, I’m Tracy Samilton.

Related Links

Urban Blight Gets a Paint Job

  • One of the abandoned houses that a group of artists has covered in "Tiggerific Orange" paint to get the attention of city officials in Detroit. (Photo courtesy of the artists... who wish to remain anonymous)

Football fans are gearing up for the bright lights and glitz of this year’s Superbowl in Detroit. One event that won’t make the halftime show is a tour of the city’s dilapidated and abandoned buildings. They’re everywhere. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jennifer Guerra reports on a group of artists sneaking around late at night hoping to draw attention to the urban decay:

Transcript

Football fans are gearing up for the bright lights and glitz of this year’s Superbowl in Detroit.
One event that won’t make the halftime show is a tour of the city’s dilapidated and abandoned
buildings. They’re everywhere. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jennifer Guerra reports on
a group of artists sneaking around late at night hoping to draw attention to the urban decay:


When you drive around Detroit, you can’t help but notice the abandoned buildings. Houses with
caved in roofs and charred out insides line the streets. I met up with Christian, an artist who’s
been living in Detroit for the past 15 years. He says when people from the suburbs drive into
Detroit… they don’t see a city so much as a burnt out chasm, and that’s not the kind of symbol
he wants associated with his hometown.


“I just think that the symbol of a burnt out abandoned house is a horrible symbol to grow up
around for the kids in the city. Some people have to look at beaches and mountains, these people
have to live with this sort of symbol of defeat. You almost feel like a social responsibility to do
something about it, you know.”


So Christian, along with his friends Jacques, Greg and Mike grabbed some smocks, a bunch
of rollers, and gallons of orange paint, but not just any orange paint… this is the shockingly
bright, stop-you-in-your-tracks kind of orange paint that you can’t help but notice… it’s called
Tiggerific Orange. And with that, the artists headed out in the middle of the night to paint their
first abandoned house. It should be noted here that what the guys are doing – trespassing and
vandalizing property – is illegal. So they’ve asked that their last names not be used…


Around 3 a.m. – while painting their first house – Christian noticed that they had some
company… the police:


“Well I was outside and they came by and he said ‘what are you doing?’ And I said we’re painting
the house. And he said ‘why?’ And I said because it needs a paint job, and he said ‘Have at it
bro!’… and he drove away… and it was like all right, cool!”


From there the guys went on to paint eight more houses around the area. They’re very choosy
about which houses to paint. The structures have to be residential and clearly abandoned. Also,
they have to be in a high traffic area.


(sound of cars driving by)


Mike – one of the painters – took me to a side street above two freeways. There, the artists had
recently slathered Tiggerific Orange paint on six abandoned houses clustered together.


“You wanna go closer? Just watch your step…”


From pretty much every angle along the freeways you can see all six houses. Each has fallen
victim to arson. Tires, wood planks and garbage cover what was once somebody’s front yard.
Even some of the debris is splashed with orange paint.


“There’s part of the floor that is fallen and is now perpendicular to the ground…so we painted
the underside of that floor…”


Through the windows you can see dirty, old-looking stuffed animals litter the floor. Mike says he
sees that kind of stuff left behind all the time.


“Families used to live in these buildings and now the buildings are not worth enough to tear it
down, the property’s not worth enough to bulldoze, and that’s not a judgment on the city or anything. I wish
it was worth someone’s time to bulldoze. If I had the resources to do that I guess I would, but all
I can do is spend a couple hundred bucks on paint.”


Mike would need a lot more than a couple hundred bucks to bulldoze those houses. Amru Meah
– the Director of Detroit’s Building and Safety Engineering Department – estimates the average
demolition cost for a residential building to be somewhere around 5500 dollars.


“No city could actually effectively demolish every building that became an eyesore or in bad
shape because you could actually have a situation where you gotta whole bunch of buildings… so
you’d run around and try to demolish two, three, four thousand buildings a year. That’s not
realistic.”


But the Tiggerific Orange paint is working. Of the nine houses painted so far, two have been torn
down, and according to Jacques – one of the guys with the orange paint – putting pressure on
city officials and creating awareness are huge motivators.


“People will drive by the houses on the highways and they’ll kind of catch a glimpse of it, but
they’re on the highway so they just drive right by. So the next time they go down the highway
they might remember, ‘oh my god, I want to look for that orange house!’ And so as they’re
looking for the orange house, they’re looking for all the other houses in turn. What that does is
that that raises sort of an awareness of what’s going on, and as we’ve already seen as two houses
have been destroyed: awareness brings action.”


But, as Jacques points out, four guys can only paint so many houses on their own:


“One of the beautiful things about the project is that it’s such a simple move. All we’re doing is
taking a roller, taking a paintbrush and painting the façade of a house orange, and it’s already
had so many ramifications. So, you know actually we would encourage anyone out there who feels the desire
to do it to just go pick up a roller and paint a house.”


But keep in mind… just because the police let the orange painters off the hook the first time…
doesn’t mean they’ll be so lucky in the future.


For the GLRC, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

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Farmland Goes Up in Value

Farm real estate values are at record levels in the region, according to the
U-S-D-A’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

Farm real estate values are at record levels throughout the region, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


The value of farmland and buildings in the Great Lakes region averages close to three thousand dollars an acre. That’s an all-time high in most states. In some places, the value of farmland went up fourteen percent from last year.


The USDA report says low interest rates and competition for land is helping to drive up prices. Dave Lehnert is with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Michigan. He says farmers are facing competition from developers who are buying up valuable agricultural land near cities.


“The closer you get to cities, people are more willing to drive further, people are even driving an hour and a half to work, they just like to be out in the country so they have to compete with people who want to by farmland for housing developments.”


Lehnert says he’s seeing a lot of small and mid-size farmers selling their land to large farming operations, and to developers.


For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.

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