Tag: housing

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.

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Heat Leak Detecting Raygun

  • The light beam changes to blue when it hits a spot of colder temperature (Photo courtesy of Black & Decker)

Soon, you’ll be able to buy
a sort of raygun to detect heating
leaks in your home. Jessi Ziegler reports on a Thermal Leak
Detector:

Transcript

Soon, you’ll be able to buy
a sort of raygun to detect heating
leaks in your home. Jessi Ziegler reports on a Thermal Leak
Detector:

This tool looks like a little toy raygun, and it shines beams of light
that read the temperature around your house.

Scott Pollard is the Senior Product Manager at Black and
Decker, which makes the tool. He says it’s really easy to use.

“Shine it on the wall, it starts off with a green light, and as they
move it from their wall to their window, or door, or around pipes,
or floor, or ceiling, the color will change to red if it hits a hot spot,
or blue if it hits a cold spot.”

And, if you think you the little leaks don’t really matter, well,
Pollard’s research shows that if you add up all the little cracks
and leaks in a typical home, it equals a hole the size of a
basketball.

The EPA says that homeowners can save 20% on their heating
and cooling costs if they seal air leaks and insulate their houses.

For The Environment Report, this is Jessi Ziegler.

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African Americans and Affordable Energy

  • Wendell Rice points to the new CFLs in Stephanie Bradford’s home (Photo by Jori Lewis)

The cost of heating your home is going
up this winter. It went up last year. It will
go up next year. For some people it’s an
inconvenience. For others it’s a real problem.
Jori Lewis reports Black communities are hit
especially hard:

Transcript

The cost of heating your home is going
up this winter. It went up last year. It will
go up next year. For some people it’s an
inconvenience. For others it’s a real problem.
Jori Lewis reports Black communities are hit
especially hard:

Like a lot of Americans, Darlene Manswell has been struggling. Her Brooklyn, home is
in foreclosure. And she’s been behind on her electricity bills – almost $3,000 behind.

And so the power company, they came a-knockin.’

“They basically came to shut it off and I’m, you know, just bargaining with people.
They wanted the full amount. I didn’t have the full amount. I gave them whatever I
could afford to give them. And they said that’s not, we’re still going to shut it off.”

The price of energy has become a huge burden for many people, but Black communities,
like Darlene Manswell’s, are especially vulnerable.

Andrew Hoerner researches energy use in minority communities for the sustainability
think tank Redefining Progress and the Environmental Justice and Climate Change
Initiative.

Hoerner says Black people pay more of their incomes on home energy and heating
expenses than other people. He says there are a couple of reasons why. First, Black
people, on average, have lower incomes.

“Energy is like food or shelter. It’s a necessity. And people at lower incomes spend a
higher percentage of their income on necessities.”

But, Hoerner also found that Black people at middle and higher income levels still spend
more of their incomes on energy than non-Blacks in all but the highest income brackets.

“I think we’re safe in saying that it has to do with lower quality housing stock for
African American communities.”

It all goes back to a history of residential segregation has left many Black people in older
areas with less well-maintained houses. Those buildings might have loose windows or
poor insulation. And that means they are leaking heat and wasting energy.

Hoener also notes Black people are more likely to be renters instead of owners. And
renters have less control over repairs or improvements.

All of these factors have forced Black communities to find ways to adjust.

Stephanie Bradford certainly wants to. She owns a home in a traditionally Black
neighborhood of Brooklyn.

“These times are serious. So whatever way you have to do to save money, you have
to save it. This winter was horrible. It was a matter of either heating the house or
eating. And it was really a choice.”

She made it through okay. But she knows she has to do better this winter. And lucky for
her, she found a way.

Bradford qualified for low–income weatherization assistance. She’s been able to install
new windows, add insulation and put in new energy-efficient compact fluorescent light
bulbs.

Wendell Rice is the director of the weatherization program. He says making these
changes can help people like Stephanie Bradford weather the economic the downturn.

“She’s doing the right thing, she’s not dodging the bullet by getting the house
weatherized. And if we do what we’re supposed to do here, her bills got to be
cheaper.”

Rice says he wishes he could help everyone. But these programs have a waiting list a
year or two long.

But Rice notes that if he could help more people lower their energy bills, the money left
over could help them save their homes from the bank and their stuff from the repo man
and just go a long way in healing this systemic bias.

For The Environment Report, this is Jori Lewis.

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Winter’s Chill to Bring Bigger Bill

  • Due to the price of natural gas and crude oil, it is predicted that it will cost you much more to heat your home this winter (Photo by John Ferguson, courtesy of FEMA)

As summer winds down, you’re
probably not thinking about your
heating bill. But that’s something
market analysts are thinking about
right now. And reporter Kyle Norris
finds the predictions of what it will
cost to heat your home are going up
in a big way:

Transcript

As summer winds down, you’re
probably not thinking about your
heating bill. But that’s something
market analysts are thinking about
right now. And reporter Kyle Norris
finds the predictions of what it will
cost to heat your home are going up
in a big way:


This year the average cost of heating your home is going to cost a good
chunk more than what it did last year.

Doug MacIntyre is an analyst with the US Energy Information
Administration.

“We’re estimating that, on average, the household using natural gas to
heat their home will be spending 24% more than last year. For heating
oil we think the increase will be even higher with house holds spending
about 36% more than they did last year.”

Those predications are made by looking at the cost of things like natural
gas and crude oil. And by analyzing the weather forecast for the up-
coming winter.

MacIntyre says he does not expect these expensive heating costs to go
away anytime in the next few years.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

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Green Insurance for Your Home

  • Homeowners can now purchase green insurance (Source: Immanuel Giel at Wikimedia Commons)

Some homeowners are paying a little
extra for a green insurance policy. Mark
Brush has more:

Transcript

Some homeowners are paying a little
extra for a green insurance policy. Mark
Brush has more:

Fireman’s Fund Insurance says it’s the first company to let you buy this extra coverage.

If your home is destroyed, they’ll pay to build you a new one using standards certified by
the U.S. Green Building Council.

That means things like using wood that is certified
sustainable, energy efficient appliances, and recycling the materials from your old house.

Don Soss is with Fireman’s Fund. He says the decision to offer the green insurance
policy was driven by the market.

“We’re very interested in offering products and services around sustainability. And there
was customer interest for it, so this was really in response to customer demand.”

Soss says their insurance policy will also cover homeowners for partial losses.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Teaching an Old House New Tricks

Environmentally friendly architecture is
becoming very common. Architects are designing
innovative, cutting edge, energy-efficient homes,
using renewable resources. But, Lester Graham
reports on another approach that recycles an
entire house:

Transcript

Environmentally friendly architecture is
becoming very common. Architects are designing
innovative, cutting edge, energy-efficient homes,
using renewable resources. But, Lester Graham
reports on another approach that recycles an
entire house:

You know, we’re always hearing about new green building construction – new homes with all the
latest. That’s nice, but it’s a little ironic to think about all those resources being used to
build new to save resources.

That’s why I kinda got interested when I read about Matt
and Kelly Grocoff. They bought a modest, century-old house and started making
energy-efficient changes. A lot of them as Matt showed me in the bathroom.

“We have the motion-sensor light. We have the compact fluorescent bulbs. We have a
dual-flush toilet that will use only (flushing sound) use point-eight gallons for a flush.
This is actually a one-gallon-per-minute shower head. It will save you at least $100 in
electricity your first year of having that because of the eleven-thousand gallons of hot
water that you’re going to be saving. (faucet sound) This faucet aerator is also point-
five-gallons-a-minute. It’s plenty of water to wash your hands. Most people will never
notice that they’re using two-gallons-per-minute less in this faucet than another faucet.”

(stairs sound)

And that’s just the bathroom. As the couple took me upstairs, they told me about the really,
really efficient geo-thermal heat. They insulated everywhere. It’s tight. But everything
was off-the-shelf. None of that, ‘oh this is custom, you can’t buy it anywhere’, type
stuff.

Kelly Grocoff says if your house is a statement about you, then having a low-impact on
the earth’s resources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is part of the statement they
want to make.

“For us, we proclaim loud and clear this is where our values are. And this is where we’re
going to spend our time and it’s incredibly important to us.”

And with all the efficiencies, all the updates, the house looked normal, comfortable. And
the Grocoff’s say that’s the way it should be.

Matt: “One of the things with building green, everyone thinks that you’re going to sacrifice
something, you’re going to spend more money and you’re not going to be as
comfortable. And that is completely not true anymore.”

Kelly: “We have made zero sacrifices. We have gained enormously. And we have no
time to waste. Your house is the number one place where you can make a significant
impact on a daily basis. For me there’s no other choice to be made.”

Matt and Kelly Grocoff say doing something about reducing energy use, reducing the
emissions that are causing global warming, and re-using old lumber and this old house
is just a start for them. They want to help other people do it too. That’s why they’re
launching an online site for do-it-yourselfers called ‘GreenovationTV.com’

Matt: “Uh, through Greenovation TV, we’re going to take everything that we’ve learned from
this house and teach others about it.”

Kelly: “We need that kind of resource there as we’re going through this process. And so there was hours upon hours spent researching things. And that’s kind of the goal with this station.”

Matt: “Once you have the knowlege to do it, it’s really, really easy.”

The Grocoff’s say the one thing holding people back from making their homes more
environmentally friendly is they feel like they have to do it all or it won’t be right. They
say just take the first step. Even if it’s just changing to a lower-energy compact
fluorescent bulb, it’s a good start.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Chester the Molting Monk Seal

  • Hawaiian Monk Seal on Sandy Beach (Photo by Ann-Marie Kirk)

This story is about Chester. Chester is one of the
most endangered marine mammals in the US. He’s a Hawaiian
Monk Seal. This year, Chester decided his annual molt will
take place on a popular beach. Anne Keala Kelly
reports:

Transcript

This story is about Chester. Chester is one of the
most endangered marine mammals in the US. He’s a Hawaiian
Monk Seal. This year, Chester decided his annual molt will
take place on a popular beach. Anne Keala Kelly
reports:

Chester is among only 1200 Hawaiian Monk Seals alive today. Most of them live in the
Northwest Hawaiian Islands.

They’re called Monk Seals because they’re solitary animals.
They prefer their own company to socializing with each other, especially during a
molt. Molting is a process that renders them weak and vulnerable.

“This animal is on the beach because it is going through a huge physiological change
right now.”

That’s David Schofield. He’s the marine mammal response coordinator in Honolulu for
NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“It’s shedding all of its skin and fur in a relatively short period of time, keeping
his behavior very minimal. So he is actually not getting into the water, he is not
swimming; he is not expending a lot of energy.”

He says Chester has
chosen to molt on Kailua, an East Oahu beach that attracts thousands of visitors. It’s not a very safe place for a defenseless seal. Because of budget cuts, NOAA relies almost
completely on volunteers to help protect seals when they come on shore. They keep
curious people and their pets away from Chester.

Chester is known here. He’s been seen on a number of Oahu beaches over the years.
Usually he stays along isolated stretches. But he’s never been seen on the busy east side. In
fact, he is the first Monk Seal anyone recalls seeing on Kailua Beach.

DB Dunlap coordinates volunteers for NOAA. He says this is not the first time he’s seen
Chester.

“I met Chester in 2002. And he was emaciated and skinny, I didn’t think he was gonna
make it through the day he was so pathetic looking. Now I realize that he had just
finished a molt, just exactly like he’s doing here and during that process they lose a lot of
weight.”

The molt takes a while. About two weeks into his molt, Chester went missing. He’d rolled into the water. He
probably went into the ocean to eat. A couple of hours later he was back on the beach
about half a mile farther down. The volunteers quickly reassembled the yellow crime
scene tape around him fifteen feet in each direction.

Now, going into day 19, he appears even more lethargic. And… he smells bad if you’re
downwind. Half of his fur is hanging in dying patches on his now loose skin. David
Schofield, with NOAA, describes where Chester is in his molt.

“His belly and his face are pretty much done. That nice silvery coat is the new fur and
the brown stuff on the back is the old molt. So we’re saying right now he’s at about the
50% mark.”

One of the volunteers watching over Chester is a Hawaiian man named Eric Poohina. He
says though the Kumulipo, the Hawaiian
creation chant, native Hawaiians have spiritual ties to seals like Chester. Poohina refers to him as Kalaheo.

“I’m not naming him, I’m just referring to him as a Kalaheo, a Kalaheo is a verb, it’s not a
noun. Kalaheo is a proclamation, a urgent global proclamation. That animal is doomed.”

As Poohina explains the Hawaiian cultural relationship to this animal, he’s also
expressing the frustration many feel over political and economic values that have brought
the Monk Seal to the brink of extinction.

In the main Hawaiian Islands, military and real estate interests have over-developed the
coastline. They’ve been taking over the seal’s habitat. And in the Northwest Hawaiian
Islands where most of the seals live, young seals become easily entangled in fishing
industry debris. The young seals often drown. And, military maneuvers disrupt normal
breeding and nursing of healthy pups.

Schofield: “If this population is gonna recover, it’s gonna take all of us. We need 2900
of them for 20-years to get them off the endangered species list.”

(chanting)

Volunteer Eric Poohina is chanting about the sacredness of Chester’s ordeal. 26-days after
he started, Chester has finished his molt. It’s a process that has remained virtually
unchanged in his species’ genetic code for more than 15 million years. Imagine, once a
year, no matter where you are or what you’re doing, nature demands that you just have to
stop and let it all go.

Poohina: “What the chant means is we acknowledging the laws of the universe, yeah.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Anne Keala Kelly.

Related Links

Home Deconstruction vs. Demolition

  • The deconstruction method can preserve many of a house's resources in order to decrease waste from demolition. (Photo courtesy of Buffalo ReUse)

Every year, cities across the country spend millions of dollars tearing down condemned
houses and hauling away tons of debris to landfills. But progressive engineers and
community activists have found a way to reverse that wasteful process. A demolition
method called “deconstruction” uses human power instead of the wrecking ball to
preserve and reuse everything from floor joists to the kitchen sink. Joyce Kryszak puts
on her hard hat and takes us to one deconstruction site:

Transcript

Every year, cities across the country spend millions of dollars tearing down condemned
houses and hauling away tons of debris to landfills. But progressive engineers and
community activists have found a way to reverse that wasteful process. A demolition
method called “deconstruction” uses human power instead of the wrecking ball to
preserve and reuse everything from floor joists to the kitchen sink. Joyce Kryszak puts
on her hard hat and takes us to one deconstruction site:



This is not your typical demolition site. There are no wrecking balls or back hoes carting
away splinters of this once grand two-story home. Instead there are walls, lying
everywhere, and workers are taking them apart. A neat stack of harvested hemlock
beams grows on the vacant lot next door. There are cabinets, doors, books, furniture,
and dishes scattered all around them. There’s even a pile of dusty wine bottles retrieved
from the cellar. Deconstruction technician John Markle is covered in the dirt and grime
of the 100-year-old colonial. That’s because he’s taking this house apart with his
bare hands:


“Yeah, you won’t see a wrecking ball on our job site, but you will see a telescopic
forklift…And as you can see right there, we cut the house literally into big pieces,
and just take it apart, piece by piece.”


Markle does have some help. A crew of seven is busy carefully lifting off walls, pulling
apart beams and setting aside the spoils of their painstaking work. With a standard
demolition, about fifteen tons of usable building materials and supplies would have gone
to a landfill. Instead the materials are resold to builders, and at a discount to low-income
families so they can make repairs to their own homes. Dave Bennink is a deconstruction
consultant from Seattle. He’s spent the last fourteen years teaching communities this
sustainable method. And Bennink loves his job:


“We’re creating jobs, we’re keeping things out of landfill, we’re saving energy,
saving resources and we’re helping lower-income families…I mean, how could you not
like it every day.”


And he says the idea is slowly catching on. Bennick has clients in 21 states. Some of
them are private developers. Some are local governments. Right now, he’s working in
Buffalo, New York. He says when city officials learn they can deconstruct a house for
about the same cost as a demolition, in about the same time, the idea sells itself:


“I think they’re looking to make responsible choices, but they’re still looking to
make good decisions with the taxpayers’ money. So, when I can offer them both, I
think that’s more and more appealing.”


But sometimes a good idea needs a push. Michael Gainer is a former teacher and
community activist who needed little convincing. He sought out Bennink to help his city
get a deconstruction not-for profit business started.


Gainer is pretty young and strong, but he was still struggling to open the huge overhead door
that’s slipped off its tracks. This warehouse is where they keep all their salvage and then later sell it . And there’s plenty to choose from:


“We have a pretty big selection of doors, sinks, clawfoot tubs…”


And all of that from only a few months in the deconstruction business. The not-for profit
has already salvaged several houses on private contracts and has contracts with the city to
deconstruct about a dozen houses that were slated for demolition. And all with little to
no start-up money. Gainer says they’ve gotten a few grants, but so far they haven’t seen a
dime. They keep going with contracts and proceeds from sales. He pauses from telling
story to pull back a hair that’s strayed from his pony tail. His bandaged fingers leave a
smudge of dirt on his face. Gainer says the work isn’t easy, but he was eager to dig in:


“You know you gotta get out there and do it though. You gotta do the work. You
know, we talked about this for a year and I was about going bonkers, because I said,
I’m tired of talking about stuff. Let’s just go to work and get it done.”


Gainer is even more eager about the impact on the community. They’ve trained and hired
five, full time employees, a few part-timers, and are paying them all a living wage. They
get full medical coverage too, including the volunteers who pitch in. Gainer says it’s
possible because they’re not just throwing away resources:


“I was looking at wasteful expenditure of a hundred to two hundred million dollars
in a city to throw things in a landfill, and I’m like, this doesn’t make any sense. My
goal is to divert money from wasteful demolition and put young people to work,
improving their community.”


But Gainer says he’d really prefer not to take apart houses. His crew spruces up and
boards up abandoned houses that could still be saved. And he says if someone comes
along who has the vision to rehab it, they’ll help with that too.


For the Environment Report, I’m Joyce Kryszak.

Related Links

Watching Artificial Wetlands

  • Natural wetlands that are developed are supposed to be replaced by man-made wetlands somewhere else. (Photo by Lester Graham)

More than half of U.S. wetlands have been drained for
development, farmland, and other purposes. That’s 100
million acres now dried up. The Bush administration has
continued “no net loss” policy of any more wetlands.
So, when someone wants to drain a marsh or a swamp for,
say, a new housing development, they’ve got to build a man-
made wetland to replace it. But a new study is finding that
most of those man-made wetlands aren’t doing very well.
Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

More than half of U.S. wetlands have been drained for
development, farmland, and other purposes. That’s 100
million acres now dried up. The Bush Administration has
continued a “no net loss” policy of any more wetlands.
So, when someone wants to drain a marsh or a swamp for,
say, a new housing development, they’ve got to build a man-
made wetland to replace it. But a new study is finding that
most of those man-made wetlands aren’t doing very well.
Julie Grant reports:


(Sound of truck stop)


These 18-wheelers are lined up on a huge black parking lot
behind a truck stop off Interstate 80. Looking at it, this
wouldn’t seem like the ideal place to create a wildlife area.


But wetland ecologist Mick Micacchion has chosen this place
to show that man-made wetlands can be successful.
At the edge of the parking lot, we walk down into some
brush. The ground is mostly even, there’s no big ditches… just
some gentle slopes. The weather’s been dry the past few
weeks. But water starts seeping into my shoes:


(Mike:) “You getting wet?”


It might be bad for our shoes, but saturated soil is a good
sign for a wetland, and so are a lot of the plants we’re seeing.


As we walk, Micacchion stops at plant after plant…
Impatients, monkey flower, and lots of grass-like plants called
sedges. These all grow in wet soil:


“So even in sedge community, we’re seeing some diversity.
Which is unusal in a wetland that’s only been constructed for
a few years. But it tells you some good things are going on
here.”



Checking out what’s going on at wetlands like this one is a
new job for Micacchion. He works for the state government.
Federal officials used to take authority over wetlands as part
of the Clean Water Act. But a U.S. Supreme Court decision
six years ago took away some of that federal authority, and
left responsibility for these kinds of isolated wetlands up to
states.


That’s why Micacchion is studying man-made wetlands for
the Ohio EPA: to assess how well the state program is
working.



Wetlands that work are not only good for wildlife…they
provide a holding area for water when there’s heavy rain.
That helps prevent flooding. It also gives polluted sediments
time to drop out of the water, so it’s filtered, which means
it’s cleaner by the time it drains into streams, rivers and
lakes.


But this story of a successful man-made wetland is the
exception. A study Micacchion’s is conducting is finding that most are in fair
or poor condition.


The loss of functioning wetlands can lead to more flooding
and polluted waterways.


Micacchion says when developers drain natural wetlands,
they often don’t understand how to build artificial wetlands to
replace those original systems.


Our next stop is a good example of that. We pull into a parking lot just behind a busy street
of car dealerships. One company drained a wetland back
here to build an access road. And to replace it, they built a
pond.


Tom Wysocki walks out of the car dealership to see what
we’re up to out on his property:


“Is there someone in your office, who I mean, is this your
Beliwick in the office?”


“It would come to my desk.”


“You’re the wetlands expert at Klaben Ford.”


“I’m the expert on everything.”


Originally, this site might’ve correctly designed for a wetland. But
Wysocki decided it didn’t look right to him because it wasn’t
holding water. So he had it dug again to make a pond.


He and the actual wetlands expert definitely have a different
idea about what a successful wetland looks like. Micacchion
says a pond isn’t a wetland:


“Usually with natural wetland systems, the slopes
are very gentle. And you have to walk out maybe 15-20 feet
before you get a foot deep of water. Here, you could step in
and maybe immediately be in a foot to two feet of water. And then, the deep
water it becomes difficult for certain plants to grow.”



The area is dominated by a couple of kinds of plants. But
Micacchion says they’re both invasives. And they’re
crowding out the native wetland plants. Native plants would
provide habitat for wildlife:


“This is all reed canary grass. The biggest problem with it, it
comes in, and you can see it gets very thick. It’s pretty much
only species you see growing with just a few other things you see
poking their heads up here and there. This eliminates some
of diversity we might see otherwise.”


Micacchion says his study is finding that this is pretty typical.
Even if a developer starts out with right kind of plan,
somebody can make an arbitrary decision that defeats the
original purpose. But Micacchion says it doesn’t have to be
that way. Man-made wetlands can work if they’re designed
by ecologists and engineers who understand the details of
what makes natural wetlands so useful.


His office is creating wetlands guidelines. They want
developers to understand the natural wetlands they’re destroying and what they need to do to replace them.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Migrant Workers: Still Harvest of Shame?

  • Most migrant labor camps provide housing only for single men, but the Zellers farm in Hartville, OH allows entire families to migrate and, for those of age, to work together in the fields. (Photo by Gary Harwood )

It might sound obvious, but America needs to grow and harvest food. The problem is
that many Americans don’t want to work on farms anymore. That’s why some farm
owners recruit workers from Mexico and other places. During the growing season,
nearly 300 workers and their children live in migrant camps around the K. W. Zellers
family farm in rural northeast Ohio. Julie Grant spent some time at the Zellers’ farm this
fall and has this story:

Transcript

It might sound obvious, but America needs to grow and harvest food. The problem is
that many Americans don’t want to work on farms anymore. That’s why some farm
owners recruit workers from Mexico and other places. During the growing season,
nearly 300 workers and their children live in migrant camps around the K. W. Zellers
family farm in rural northeast Ohio. Julie Grant spent some time at the Zellers’ farm this
fall and has this story:


For many Americans, just tending a small garden can be too much labor. But the
Mexican workers on the Zellers Farm in Hartville, Ohio are moving quickly down rows
of lettuce hundreds of yards long.


One man crouches down and cuts four heads of romaine. He’s leaning over the plants all
day long. It’s backbreaking work, but he moves spryly to the next row, and the next, and
the next. He’ll only make about 3 cents per head, so he wants to cut as many heads as
quickly as possible. Another worker follows him, loading the lettuce into boxes, then
lifting the 30 to 40 pound boxes and throwing them on to a flatbed truck, one after
another.


Farm owner Jeff Zellers says most people who live around here don’t want to do this:


“No. We can probably hire ten people and one of them will last more than a week, who
will stay here work, and work through it.”


Out in another field, a different crew is working in the harshest heat of the day. They get
a little protection from straw hats and some are wearing rubber pants. They need to protect
their legs from the hot, black, mucky soil. The temperature of the dirt can get up to 110
degrees.


Two generations of the Soto family of Mexico work together thinning lettuce. They
work down the long rows using a hoe, or crouching down and pulling out weeds by hand.
25-year-old Ivan Soto has become an expert, after thinning lettuce at the Zellers farm for
the past nine years:


“We don’t do other jobs, only one job.”


Ivan Soto pretty much taught himself English. He’s gone through the process to become
a US citizen. Now his wife has joined him and his family on the lettuce-thinning crew.
Other crews specialize in growing cilantro, parsley, and radishes. Zellers says the farm
depends on this expertise:


“We have to deliver
product on a daily basis that is as good or better then our competitors. And if we do not
have a trained labor force to do that, we’re not going to long term be in business.”


The Zellers farm pays less then some others because it has set up temporary homes
around the perimeter of the farm. Most of the homes look like small trailers. But they
come furnished and the farm pays most of the workers’ living expenses. Most migrant
farm workers make 11 to 14 thousand dollars a year. Ivan Soto says it’s hard, boring
work, but they make a good enough living that when they return to Mexico they can
afford to rest for awhile.


That’s a big reason their family, including his wife and young son, his parents, four
siblings, an aunt and uncle, have traveled from their home outside Mexico City to this
small northeast Ohio town for going on a decade now:


“When we are here, we say, well, we are now in our second home, because over there is our first home this is our home because here in Ohio is our second home for us.”


While most farms provide migrant housing only for single men,
Jeff Zellers allows entire families to migrate and work together in the fields. He hopes
his own children understand all the labor it takes to provide a meal:


“When we return thanks before we eat dinner, we pray for the people that prepared and produced the food. If my childen do nothing else but understand that their food did not show up in the grocery store because that’s where it was, it just came off an assembly line, I would want them to do that.”


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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