Tag: grass

Sea Levels Threaten Coastal Towns (Part Two)

  • A living shoreline near the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. The native grasses and sandy shore provide habitat for terrapins, the University of Maryland mascot. (Photo by Tamara Keith)

Scientists are pretty certain climate change is going to cause the sea level to rise. It’s
happening already, actually. In communities around the Chesapeake Bay, people are
getting a sneak preview. Tamara Keith reports some people there are trying to work with
nature rather than resist it:

Transcript

Scientists are pretty certain climate change is going to cause the sea level to rise. It’s
happening already, actually. In communities around the Chesapeake Bay, people are
getting a sneak preview. Tamara Keith reports some people there are trying to work with
nature rather than resist it:

(sound of kids planting)

It’s been raining in Woodland Beach. The community is just off of the Chesapeake Bay
in Maryland. The ground here is so soft you sink into it. Mud is everywhere. And that’s
just fine with the volunteers planting native grasses on a sloping hillside.

Stephen Hult is trying to keep things in order.

“And when we plant them we want them all the way down. I’m telling everyone twice.”

Hult heads up shoreline restoration projects for the local property owners association.
And there’s a lot of shoreline to restore.

“The shoreline, in parts of the community since the 1930s, have eroded 20 feet. Year to
year, one barely notices, but if you look at aerial maps of what it used to be like
compared to what it is, it really is quite dramatic.”

There’s been tons of erosion here. The land all along the mid-Atlantic coast is also
slowly sinking. Combine that with global sea level rise and you get erosion in overdrive.

Hult says the community is trying to restore the beach with rock and dirt and sand and
grasses to hold it all together. This is what’s called a living shoreline.

“We have now, with this project it will be well over half a mile of living shorelines that
we’ve installed.”

It’s a relatively new concept, a more natural approach to the gnawing problem of
shoreline erosion. Living shorelines create buffer between the water and homes. They are
kinda like the tidal wetlands that used to be here – before property owners started building
sea walls, also called bulkheads.

Jana Davis is associate director of the Chesapeake Bay Trust. It’s one of the organizations
funding this shoreline restoration. And Davis also happens to live here.

“It’s a wonderful alternative that provides just as good shoreline protection while also
providing a lot of really important habitat benefits that a bulkhead or rock sea wall does
not provide.”

Good for wildlife, and she says, it’s adaptive in the face of sea level rise.

“If sea level were to rise another foot, for example. The marsh could kind of migrate
inland, whereas if you had a bulkhead obviously there’s no migration because it can’t
move.”

But most of the people with bulkheads are NOT buying it. They want to protect their
property from the sinking land and rising water, and a lot of them don’t think a bunch of
rocks and grass are going to cut it.

Kevin Smith is chief of restoration services for the Maryland Department of Natural
Resources.

“There’s many places you can go and look at miles of shoreline and not see any natural
shoreline at all. It’s all armored off.”

Smith met me at a nature center along the bay. A few years ago, a stretch of bulkhead
here was replaced with a living shoreline. The natural ebb and flow of these shorelines
has made some property owners skeptical. They want the shoreline to stay put.

“If these types of projects don’t protect that shoreline from erosion, then homeowners are
not going to want to do it.”

But Smith insists these projects do work, and long term they’re going to be more
sustainable and more flexible than bulkheads – which over time will lose the battle
against the constant pounding of the rising sea.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

Related Links

Chairman Criticizes Climate Change Bill

  • Chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, Collin C. Peterson from Minnesota (Photo courtesy of the House Committee on Agriculture)

A dispute about bio-fuels could put passage of a climate change bill at risk. Lester Graham reports corn ethanol is at the center of a dispute among some Democrats:

Transcript

A dispute about bio-fuels could put passage of a climate change bill at risk. Lester Graham reports corn ethanol is at the center of a dispute among some Democrats:

Conventional wisdom in Washington these days is: it’s not a good idea to use food for fuel, so corn ethanol should be replaced by cellulosic ethanol – made from crops such as switchgrass.

The chairman of the Ag Committee, Democrat Collin Peterson, believes the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress are putting rules and legislation in place to put corn ethanol at a disadvantage to cellulosic ethanol.

He says they’re forcing changes on corn ethanol makers and farmers that could ruin the future of the bio-fuels industry.

“They are setting this up to guarantee there will never be second-generation ethanol or bio-diesel.”

Congressman Peterson says the Climate Change bill is just more of the same. He says he won’t vote for it and he doesn’t think any of the 46 members of the House Agriculture committee will either.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Whose Nature Are We Talking About?

  • Several neighbors near Cook County Illinois' Bunker Hill Forest Preserve are concerned about the loss of trees. Bathsheba Burmin is third from the left. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

When somebody says a natural area, does everybody have the same thing in mind? Some might see a park with baseball fields or a golf course as a natural area. But natural area means what it looked like for hundreds or thousands of years before humans started changing the landscape. Sometimes, that natural landscape was changed so long ago, when it’s restored to the way it looked oringally, it’s not very familiar to the people who live there now. Shawn Allee talked with some people who disagree about the idea of restoring natural areas:

Transcript

When somebody says a natural area, dose everybody have the same thing in mind? Some might see a park with baseball fields or a golf course as a natural area. But natural area means what it looked like for hundreds or thousands of years before humans started changing the landscape. Sometimes, that natural landscape was changed so long ago, when it’s restored to the way it looked oringally, it’s not very familiar to the people who live there now. Shawn Allee talked with some people who disagree about the idea of restoring natural areas:

If you go to the Bunker Hill Forest Preserve just outside Chicago, you find picnic spaces, bike trails, and woods – acres of woods.

If it’s the wrong day, though, a security guard will turn you back from the woods.

Guard: “Closed off for a while? It’s closed off for a while. They’re doing a controlled burn – they’re burning that field over there.”

Man: “What are you doing exactly? Burning?”

Guard: “Controlled burn.”

Forest preserve workers in sooty, yellow fire suits are burning brush and trees.

They say soil tests show this land was once savanna – a kind of grassland with a few trees mixed in.

They’re trying to restore it to that original landscape.

Volunteers help out with this restoration, but a small number of people want to stop it.

“Everything they burned today is area they’ve cleared over the past two years. We’re opposed to cutting our urban forests.”

Bathsheba Burmin shows me the site – after it’s cooled.

She wants me to see what it takes to turn woods into savanna.

Burmin: “It’s a little muddy, so…”

Allee: “It’s hard not to notice.”

(sounds of walking through mud)

Allee: “This place is being actively transformed.”

Burmin: “Yes.”

Allee: “You can see brush piles moved around, trees have obviously been cut because you can see the stumps, and obviously they burned just today.”

Burmin: “What it does is tell the story of what the restructuring of an ecosystem looks like.”

Burmin and a few of her neighbors have protested the transformation of these woods into savanna.

Some don’t believe this was ever grassy savanna in the first place.

Burmin says, even if it was savanna – it’s not now; it’s woodland – and she regrets losing the trees.

Burmin: “If you’re not familiar with the site and you hear there’s an increase in grassland species you must be doing something wonderful. Nobody talked about what happened to all the woodland species. The reason you have an increase in grassland species, but that’s because you took out all the forest.”

Habitat restoration can be violent.

It can involve poisoning or burning unwanted plants or maybe killing animals like deer that graze on more desirable plants.

Wildlife managers use restoration techniques all the time, but on occasion critics like Burmin ask tough questions about it.

When that happens, people like Stephen Packard rush to its defense.

“Now we’re standing in a place where all the brush was cut last year.”

Packard heads the Chicago chapter of the Audobon Society.

He’s offered to show me some restored savanna, about ten miles north of that Bunker Hill spot.

It looks kinda familiar.

Allee: “There’re stumps and sticks everywhere.”

Packard: “Is this ugly or is it not ugly? Here’s my perspective on it. To me it’s like a bunch of broken eggshells after someone made an omelet. I think this is a beautiful thing to see the first stage of recovery. It is stumps, it is bare ground, but from doing this, I know certain plants will start to come up and keep developing.”

Packard says no one restores savanna because they like chopping trees.

It’s just that some plants need open space and light – like in a savanna. Dense woods create too much shade for them.

He says if we let some natural areas literally run wild, a few aggressive species take over, and the rare ones lose out.

“You lose millions of years of evolution of these thousands of species that may be important to the planet, so why not have some places where we can take care of them?”

Packard says some natural areas are so unhealthy, that for now, we need to protect some parts of nature from others.

And if you don’t buy that – you don’t buy restoration.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Growing a Garden on Your Garage

  • David Lanfear recently ‘installed’ one on his own garage roof, so his neighbors could see the benefits (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)

When most people put a new roof on
their home they usually use standard asphalt
or tile roofing. But other people are going
for something more natural. They’re planting
grass and flowers on their houses. Joyce
Kryszak talked with one builder in
Western New York who planted a green roof on
his garage to show his neighbors how it works:

Transcript

When most people put a new roof on
their home they usually use standard asphalt
or tile roofing. But other people are going
for something more natural. They’re planting
grass and flowers on their houses. Joyce
Kryszak talked with one builder in
Western New York who planted a green roof on
his garage to show his neighbors how it works:

About 90% of all residential roofs are made out of manufactured
asphalt.

But builder David Lanfear knows that nothing tops mother nature.
He makes roofs out of gardens.

Lanfear recently ‘installed’ one on his own garage roof, so his
neighbors could see the benefits. There are beautiful flowering
plants visible over the edge of the flat roof. Lanfear says they’ve got
the whole birds and bees thing going on.

“We’ve noticed a big increase in insects, butterflies, birds all
sorts of new birds that I haven’t ever seen. They’re up there
eating something. Bugs? But its kind of nice to sit on the deck
and watch this nature in the city thing,” said Lanfear.

But the living roof isn’t a novelty. Lanfear says the roofs are more
eco-friendly. He says a living roof provides a whole cascade of
environmental benefits.

“Especially in a downtown when you get a hard rainfall the water
washes off all at once. There’s nothing to absorb it. If you had
a roof like this it absorbs the water and let’s it off slowly. So, it
not only slows the runoff, it cools the water and it starts to filter
the water. It filters some of the atmospheric crud out.
Otherwise, you get super heated water rushing off into the storm
sewer, and then out into the river or the lake and effecting the
environment there,” said Lanfear.

Once his neighbors understood the concept, they stopped thinking
Lanfear was crazy. A few even offered to give him a hand planting
his roof.

First the roof was reinforced with used lumber. Next are the
waterproof barriers – a rubber membrane, a root barrier made out of
old billboards and some old carpeting. Finally, recycled, crushed
concrete is shoveled on to be used as soil for the plants to grow in.

It’s all sustainable. And the native plants require very little water or
maintenance.

Neighbor Deborah Bach loves to garden. So, she was happy to
pitch in. Bach says the concrete soil needs to be doctored to enrich
it. But they have a reuse idea for that too.

“My son works at Starbucks and they give out free grounds for
gardens. So, we’re going to try doing that to try to balance this
out. You know, using recycled materials and things that have
already been used,” said Bach.

Another neighbor stopped by to help. Alex Sowyrda is a high school
technology teacher who’s interested in the science of green roofs.
He plans to share what he learns with his students.

“I try to bring it into my curriculum at school and, hopefully, the
kids graduating high school now take this knowledge with them
and are able to make responsible choices in the way they build
and the way they design in the future,” said Sowyrda.

The living roof builder David Lanfear says it’s a concept that can grow
on anyone. Even people who grew up with more traditional roofs. He
says to start small – with a garage roof – or maybe even smaller.

“We all have little expanses of roof in front of windows. And in
the summer you might notice that when the window is open the
hot air blows in, a lot of that heat comes from that little bit of
roof. If we could just put sections one square yard of living roof
outside of our windows on the porch roof, that would make a
drastic difference in cooling our house – simple,” said Lanfear.

And pretty cheap. Lanfear says the cost of materials is about the
same as an asphalt roof. But he says there’s savings in the long run
because the green roof can last three times as long.

And he says it’s a whole lot nicer to look at.

For The Environment Report, I’m Joyce Kryszak.

Related Links

Growing Grass for Ethanol

  • Eric Rund raises corn and soy on his Illinois farm but is experimenting with 'Miscanthus x giganteus', a hybrid grass that could become a major feedstock for cellulosic ethanol - if the market ever matures. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

The US is in the middle of an
ethanol revolution, or at least it’s
supposed to be. Scientists want to
develop ethanol that doesn’t use corn
– so food prices won’t go up. They’ve
found a tall grass called miscanthus that
can produce loads of ethanol – but they
haven’t perfected it yet. Shawn Allee reports some are trying to grow
miscanthus before the ethanol revolution
arrives:

Transcript

The US is in the middle of an
ethanol revolution, or at least it’s
supposed to be. Scientists want to
develop ethanol that doesn’t use corn
– so food prices won’t go up. They’ve
found a tall grass called miscanthus that
can produce loads of ethanol – but they
haven’t perfected it yet. Shawn Allee reports some are trying to grow
miscanthus before the ethanol revolution
arrives:

You won’t find much miscanthus near Decatur, Illinois.

Nope. Corn is crop number one.

But all this corn-growing has a downside.

Agronomist Stephen John offers to show it to me.

Shawn Allee: “Where are we?”

Stephan John: “Well, we’re near the upper end of Lake Decatur, looking across at
the city’s dredge. Right now that dredge that is sucking up sediment from the lake
bottom.”

John says corn can leave ground bare, and rain washes dirt and fertilizer pollution into
this lake.

“Some of that nitrogen gets into streams and ditches into Lake Decatur, which had
to develop a facility to protect drinking water.”

John wants farmers to protect soil from erosion and use less fertilizer.

One option is to grow grasses that hold soil and use less nitrogen. One candidate is that
miscanthus grass the ethanol industry’s interested in.

Problem is, no one buys miscanthus yet.

“So, the trick is how do you make it economically viable to get those grasses onto the
land, how do you make that attractive?”

John says people are working on that problem.

Farmer Eric Rund stands near a patch of miscanthus grass. He’s a pretty tall guy, but the
grass is even taller.

Shawn Allee: “I’m putting my hand through here.”

Eric Rund: “It’s like a jungle in there, it’s like bamboo growth or something.”

Rund says corn farmers get kinda freaked out by miscanthus. It doesn’t grow from seed,
and unlike corn, it takes years to produce.

He says farmers need to experiment with it.

“And if we do that now, when ethanol production comes along, we will then have a
reliable source of biomass for the ethanol plant.”

Rund says some farmers would grow miscanthus just to protect water and soil. But to
make it mainstream, it’s gotta be profitable.

“That’s the key. No farmer’s going to plant much of it unless there’s a market for it
and there’s no market for it unless there’s a steady supply of it, so the two are going
to have to grow together.”

But what if that takes a while for the ethanol industry to come knocking? Who would use
Rund’s miscanthus?

I meet a guy who’s working on a solution.

Gary Letterly: “What would you like to do, where would you like to start?”

Shawn Allee: “I want to see your furnace.”

I’m with Gary Letterly. He works with the University of Illinois.

He says in corn country, some people heat their homes with corn pellets.
That gave him an idea on how to heat his office.

“And what you see here, it was a corn furnace, and we thought it would be just
great if we could use that furnace and burn grass pellets.

Right next to the modified furnace, there’s a plastic hopper full of miscanthus pellets.

They look like rabbit or hamster food, and they smell like grass.

“Look at high energy costs. This was very competitive with natural gas, and the very
nice thing is being able to keep this value very close to home. The grass was
produced within fifteen miles, the furnaces were produced within five miles, and the
grass was processed into a pellet within 30 miles.”

Letterly says miscanthus offers enough local economic and environmental benefits that
people should look into it now.

It already has potential to be a kind of super-star plant, with or without help from an
ethanol industry may never come.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Growing Food – Not Lawns

  • Aileen Eilert and her plastic wagon loaded with tomato and pepper starter plants, headed for the subdivision one block over to campaign (Photo by Ashley Gross)

Many environmentalists knock the suburbs. They don’t like how

dependent suburbs are on cars. They don’t like the sprawl, the large

houses and huge lawns. They think it’s a waste of land. Ashley Gross

reports… one woman is on a campaign to see some of those expansive

lawns turned into something a little more productive:

Transcript

Many environmentalists knock the suburbs. They don’t like how

dependent suburbs are on cars. They don’t like the sprawl, the large

houses and huge lawns. They think it’s a waste of land. Ashley Gross

reports… one woman is on a campaign to see some of those expansive

lawns turned into something a little more productive:

(sound of movie music)

Ever since soldiers returned from World War II, the suburbs have been portrayed as
the family-friendly ‘good life.’

“And so they joined the stream of family life in the suburbs. Soon to become part of
its familiar sights. Soon to absorb its familiar sounds.”

One of the most constant of those familiar sounds is a lawnmower.

(sound of lawnmower)

That noise just grates on Aileen Eilert’s nerves. Her goal is to live a more
environmentally-friendly life in the suburbs.

(sound of opening door and walking outside)

She does have a lawn. But she and her husband are converting much of it to
vegetable garden plots.

“So I have some snow peas growing here and here’s you know four tomato plants
and Bruce planted some peppers all the way down here.”

Eilert says gardening means she drives less often to the grocery store – and she’s
not buying produce shipped in from a different continent.

That’s important to her. Eilert says she decided to use less oil after her nephew was
killed in Iraq in 2005.

“You know, we’re fighting over there and it was about oil, and so I just thought I’ve
got to do something. I mean, it’s too late for me to do anything about my nephew,
and he was such a good kid. I’d like it to be where people – oh we don’t need to buy
oil from countries that may not be friendly to us or may not be stable.”

Eilert is not alone. People in the suburbs are beginning to think about their lifestyles
in a different way.

Evan McKenzie is a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago He researches the
politics of suburbia.

“The stuff that was planned and put in place in the 60s and 70s and even the 80s, I
think in some cases is giving way to new ideas. I mean they’re selling and giving
away rain barrels in the suburbs so people collect rainwater to water their plants
with. I never heard of that before.”

Not everyone is onboard with the environmental movement in the suburbs yet. Last
year Americans spent almost 11 billion dollars on do-it-yourself lawn care just to
keep the grass green.

Aileen Eilert wants to change that. She calls her new campaign “Grow Food, Not
Lawns.”

Her approach is one-on-one. Today she’s pulling a plastic wagon loaded with
tomato and pepper starter plants. She’s headed for the subdivision one block over.

(sound of wagon)

Eilert approaches Tim Lakis as he mows his lawn. He gives him a pepper plant.
Then comes the pitch.

Eilert: “Lawns actually use a lot of chemicals if you put chemicals on your lawn and
that gets into the water system.”

Lakis: “Okay.”

Eilert: “And then also your lawn mower has way more emissions than a car would,
not that I’m saying that…”

Lakis: “Okay, I’ll look it over.”

Aside from some strange looks, that went pretty well.

But Eilert learns pretty quickly there’s way more gardening going on here in this
neighborhood she thought. She’d pegged it as a lawn-addicted wasteland. But this
subdivision’s residents are kinda green.

Eilert: “I assume you use a gas mower?”

Man: “No. Electric.”

Eilert: “Do you? Oh you are just the perfect person to talk to today.”

Woman: “I mean, every year I grow my tomatoes and peppers and zucchinis.”

Second Man: “Every year I try to get rid of more grass and put in more plants.”

Eilert even gets a recipe for cooking dandelions. She leaves the subdivision
encouraged.

“People were concerned and people did think it was a good idea to have gardens
and they’d be willing to make a little more of a sacrifice to make the earth a little bit
better.”

She’ll be visiting more subdivisions soon, trying to get more people to turn those
suburban lawns into gardens. And maybe get them thinking, just a little about other
things they could do.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ashley Gross.

Related Links

Keeping Your Lawn From Bugging You

  • There's a movement to stop using pesticides and sprays on your lawn (Photo by Ilja Wanka)

A lot of us have a love-hate relationship
with our lawns. We love them when they’re lush.
We hate them when they’re full of dandelions and
dead patches. It’s easy to have someone come out
and spray pesticides to take care of weeds and bugs.
But some people say it’s not necessary and could
do more harm than good. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

A lot of us have a love-hate relationship
with our lawns. We love them when they’re lush.
We hate them when they’re full of dandelions and
dead patches. It’s easy to have someone come out
and spray pesticides to take care of weeds and bugs.
But some people say it’s not necessary and could
do more harm than good. Rebecca Williams reports:

So, you might be using pesticides on your lawn right now. And of
course, the pesticide industry says that’s okay.

The industry says the chemicals are safe to use on the lawn if you use
them correctly.

Alan James is president of Responsible Industry for a Sound
Environment, or RISE. It’s a trade group for pesticide companies.

“If individuals or professional applicators read the labels and follow
labels, the likelihood of misuse of pesticides is virtually zero because the
labels provide all the information a consumer or professional needs to
apply products both efficiently and safely.”

But the problem is, not everybody reads the label.

Alan James says if you’re hiring someone to spray your lawn you should
make sure they’re certified and insured. You should also take your kids’
and pet’s toys off the lawn before they spray.

But a lot of people say there’s no point in using chemicals just to make
your lawn look good.

Jay Feldman is with the group Beyond Pesticides. He says of the 30
most common lawn pesticides, most of them are suspected by the
Environmental Protection Agency to cause cancer, birth defects or other health problems.

“There’s a range of adverse effects that are indicated as a part of the
pesticide registration program at EPA. EPA knows this information.
Why not remove pesticides from the equation, especially in light of the
fact that they’re not really necessary?”

There’s a movement to stop using pesticides in North America. Both
Ontario and Quebec have banned the sale and cosmetic use of
pesticides. And Home Depot in Canada recently said it will stop selling
traditional pesticides all together by the end of the year.

So if you’re not going to use pesticides, what do you do?

That’s a question Kevin Frank gets a lot. He’s an extension agent at
Michigan State University and an expert on lawns.

“I love to mow my lawn on the weekends because nobody can call me on
the phone or email me with questions.”

He’s been showing me green, healthy test plots of grass and some that
look sad and neglected. The scientists here have been working to find
ways to have good-looking lawns without a lot of chemicals.

Back in his office, Kevin Frank says he tells people they shouldn’t be
afraid to experiment.

“Do you have it in you to let it go for one season and see what happens?
And it could be ugly, so you’ve got to be prepared for that!”

He says a healthy, dense lawn is actually really good at fighting off
weeds and pests all on its own. So, how do you get a healthy, dense lawn
without a lot of chemicals? Frank says it might take a couple years to get
there. And it means going against conventional lawn advice.

“We’ve done a great deal of research here at Michigan State that runs
contrary to what I call ‘turf dogma’. You know: water deeply and
infrequently – and we’ve shown if you do it on a more frequent basis you
end up with a healthier plan overall.”

He recommends watering lightly – just 10 minutes – every day instead
of soaking the lawn once a week. Frank says it’s also good to fertilize
twice a year, use a mulch mower, and mow high instead of giving the
grass a buzz cut.

He says that could make your lawn so healthy, it might mean you won’t
need to spray or hire someone to spray your lawn.

He says the biggest adjustment in reducing pesticide use is managing
your expectations, and deciding how many weeds and bugs you can live
with.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Gasoline From Grass

  • James Dumesic of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his former student George Huber, now at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, are breaking new ground in the development of an alternative fuel called "green gasoline." (Photo by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, courtesy of the National Science Foundation)

Emerging research is proving gasoline and jet
fuel don’t have to be made from petroleum. Lisa Ann
Pinkerton reports the next generation of fuel might
just grow on trees:

Transcript

Emerging research is proving gasoline and jet
fuel don’t have to be made from petroleum. Lisa Ann
Pinkerton reports the next generation of fuel might
just grow on trees:

Researchers from the National Science Foundation say they’re using switchgrass
and agricultural waste, such as corn stalks, to make liquids very similar to gasoline and
jet fuel.

Spokesman John Regalbuto says, unlike ethanol, these new systems
don’t result in a 30% drop in mileage and the fuels can be distributed by today’s system.

“So you can use them in your car right now with no alteration of the engines. You
can ship them in pipelines, you
can use them in existing petroleum refineries.”

It might be 5 to 10 years before green gasoline or jet fuel make it to mass
production, but Regalbuto says the research published in this month’s Journal of
Chemistry & Sustainability shows that it can be done.

For the Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton

Related Links

Corn Ethanol: More Water Pollution

  • Corn requires more fossil fuel-based nitrogen fertilizer than many other crops. Tanks of pressurized anhydrous ammonia fixes nitrogen in the soil, but heavy rains can wash nitrogen into waterways. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Government-funded programs that pay for
conservation on farmland have done a lot to
improve the environment over the past twenty
years. The federal government has paid farmers
to take some cropland and set it aside to protect
waterways and wildlife habitat. In the second of
our two-part series on ethanol, Julie Grant reports
that some of that conservation is being stalled:

Transcript

Government-funded programs that pay for
conservation on farmland have done a lot to
improve the environment over the past twenty
years. The federal government has paid farmers
to take some cropland and set it aside to protect
waterways and wildlife habitat. In the second of
our two-part series on ethanol, Julie Grant reports
that some of that conservation is being stalled:


A good hard rain can wash a lot of valuable soil off a farm field.
John Wallbrown grows corn and soybeans on his farm. He says losing
soil is just like losing money. The soil carries with it all the
nutrients he’s put in the fields to help the crops grow, things such as
nitrogen and phosphorous. Wallbrown says he’s put in a good number of
grass waterways through the fields to help filter the water and hold on
to that soil:


“And so when you put in a grass waterway, it dramatically reduces the
amount of erosion. And it is just better for the water supply, better
for our crop. We’re keeping our soil in our field as opposed to it
getting put away.”


What Wallbrown calls nutrients in the field are considered pollution
once they wash into rivers and lakes. So Wallbrown says planting grass
near waterways is good for everyone. Except it means he’s got to use
land that otherwise could be growing crops, and that’s a loss of
income.


Wallbrown has gotten various government assistance to offset those
losses. The largest program, is called the Conservation Reserve Program, known as the
CRP for short.


John Johnson is with the US Department of Agriculture. He says when
you add up all the farms like John Wallbrown’s around the country, the
CRP is making a huge difference in reducing agricultural runoff into
waterways:


“Over 450 million tons of topsoil annually are prevented from eroding
because of CRP. We’ve got lots of really good benchmarks and measurements of
success of CRP, in both water quality, soil erosion and wildlife
habitat.”


But that set-aside land is in demand these days. There’s been a huge
call for bio-fuels to help reduce American dependence on foreign oil.
Bio-fuels are made from crops such as soybeans and corn, especially
corn. So Johnson says the government has decided to stop enrolling
new farmland into the conservation program:


“The overriding concern was that there is a need for a larger supply of
corn and soybeans and wheat production right now, so given the need for
that production, let’s just take a pause right now from enrolling large
acreage of additional farmland into the CRP.”


Corn is used to make ethanol, a fuel that’s now commonly blended with
gasoline. That’s caused corn prices to nearly double so farmers say
they’re planting 12 million acres more corn this year than last year.
That’s the most corn grown in the US in more than 50 years.


Ralph Grossi, director of the American Farmland Trust, says corn needs a
lot more nitrogen fertilizer than other crops. And when it rains,
nitrogen moves quickly from the fields to the waterways. That’s
especially true when grass strips don’t filter the runoff.


Grossi says that nitrogen drains into creeks and rivers from 36 states
into the Mississippi River and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico. There
it causes huge algae blooms that then die, sink, and the decaying
matter causes low oxygen in the water called hypoxia. That’s why the
Corn Belt has been blamed for creating a huge dead zone in the Gulf of
Mexico each year:


“If you increase corn production and don’t add the conservation practices
it will add nutrients and exacerbate problems in the gulf with hypoxia.
But it’s not just in the gulf, it’s problems for every local water
district that has to purify water for drinking and other urban
purposes. As they have to contend with more nutrients, that increases
their costs of cleaning the water.”


Grossi says the best place to clean the water is at the source. He
says that’s why the government must continue to help farmers pay for
grass waterways and buffer strips – those things prevent farm nutrients
from getting into the water in the first place. He says the need for
grass waters is even greater now that so much farmland is being planted
in corn to meet the demand for more ethanol.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Greener Ways to Get a Green Lawn

  • For some people, lawn care is a choice between burning calories or burning fossil fuel. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Polls indicate the majority of people want to do better toward the environment. One of the most polluting activities at many homes is lawn care. Lawn mowers spew out emissions that pollute at a higher rate than cars. Lawn sprinklers can use massive amounts of water. And over-use of fertilizer can pollute nearby streams. The GLRC’s Lester Graham looks at simple things you can do to reduce pollution and still have a green lawn:

Transcript

Polls indicate the majority of people want to do better toward the
environment. One of the most polluting activities at many homes is lawn
care. Lawn mowers spew out emissions that pollute at a higher rate than
cars. Lawn sprinklers can use massive amounts of water. And over-use
of fertilizer can pollute nearby streams. The GLRC’s Lester Graham
looks at simple things you can do to reduce pollution and still have a
green lawn:


It figures that the day I went to talk to a turf expert about mowing and
lawn care… it would be raining.


“Well we needed it. So, I guess that’s the good thing about it.”


Tom Smith is the Executive Director of the Michigan Turfgrass
Foundation. He’s got all kinds of recommendations for how to properly
prep soil for lawns… but we wanted to limit this story to some simple,
practical things we can do with an existing lawn to reduce the impact to
the environment.


“One of the first things and easiest things you can do is mow high. In
fact, I tell most consumers, most residential facilities mow as high as you
can set your mower. Because, what that will do is you’ll get a better root
system, you’ll get more shading of that soil and you’ll have less water
loss.”


Smith works closely with the Michigan State University’s turf grass
research program. One of the things they’ve learned there goes against
some of the advice you might have heard in the past about watering. In
research that’s been going on since 1982, they’ve let Mother Nature take
care of one plot… another gets deep waterings a couple of times a
week… and a third gets daily watering, light rates, in the middle of the
heat of the day. The plot that looks best year after year… the one that
gets light watering, daily during the middle of the day. Most of the water
evaporates… but it reduces the heat stress on the grass… so it doesn’t go
dormant and brown. And Smith says it actually uses less water…


“In that research, we were able to reduce water use by about half by
doing daily watering at light rates in the middle of the day compared to
that deep infrequent watering.”


“Now, there are going to be some people who say ‘Look, I don’t want to
use water in a cosmetic way at all.’ Is there a grass that doesn’t use the
kind of water that most grasses we know do?”


“Actually there is one of our grasses that we recommend called Turf
Type Tall Fescue. Turf Type Tall Fescue is our most drought tolerant
grass. In most summers it will stay green without any supplemental
water.”


Smith says before you start spreading fertilizer on your lawn… you
should get a soil test to see exactly what you need. It’s an eight to ten
dollar test that can be done by your county extension office… and it’s
good for about three years. If you put fertilizer down without knowing…
you’re probably adding to the phosphorous and nitrogen pollution
problems in the streams and lakes in your area and beyond.


Keeping your equipment running well also helps reduce pollution. An
oil change in the lawn mower… and sharpening your mower blades.


(Sound of grinder)


Mark Collins maintains the turf plots at Michigan State University’s turf
grass program. His crew sharpens their blades every third mowing… but
they’re probably mowing a lot more than you do…


“Probably a homeowner should at least once a month. Just keep the
blade sharp. That’s the biggest thing. If it’s a sharp blade, then it cuts
the grass cleanly and you don’t get a frayed edge on the grass blade.”


And Collins says a mulching mower is best because it cuts the grass
blades into tiny bits that help fertilize the lawn… and reduces the need
for bagging your clippings.


And while we’re on the topic of mowers… recent years, lawn mower
manufacturers have been making more efficient, cleaner burning
machines… although they’ve resisted the idea of catalytic converters
which would greatly reduce emissions.


At Midwest Power Equipment, John Brown says there’s not a lot of
consumer pressure to make lawn mowers more environmentally
friendly…


“Nobody asks about environmentally friendly – or very, very few. Most
people want to know about power, they want to know about ease of use.
As far as environmentally friendly, it’s probably the last question that
comes up.”


But if you are interested… Brown says there’s a little bit of information
on emissions right on the mower.


“Yeah, there’s a little sticker that’s actually on – like on the ones I have
on the floor here – it’s wrapped around the gas tank. It says an air index
quality and it’s a one-to-ten scale, one being the best, ten being the worst.
So, you could look at it, kind of judge for yourself.”


So, using less water, planting hardy grass, using only the fertilizer you
need, keeping your machinery in good working order and buying the
least polluting models all help. But… there are soulutions… such as
planting more drought resistant shrubs and trees so that there’s not as
much grass to mow… and if you’re really adventurous… you can get a
manual reel mower… one with no engine… it just uses the energy you
provide by pushing it.


(Sound of a reel mower)


For the GLRC, I’m Lester Graham.

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