Tag: land use

Interview: Carl Pope Criticizes Bush Administration

  • Carl Pope is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club. (Photo courtesy of the Sierra Club)

As the political campaigns get into full swing this presidential election year, the environmental record of George W. Bush is being scrutinized. The big environmental groups are very critical of the Bush administration. In the first of two interviews about the Bush White House approach to environmental protection, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham talks with the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, Carl Pope. Pope and the Sierra Club are critical of the Bush administration’s record on environmental protection:

Transcript

As the political campaigns get into full swing this presidential election year, the
environmental record of George W. Bush is being scrutinized. The big environmental
groups are very critical of the Bush administration. In the first of two interviews about
the Bush White House approach to environmental protection, the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham talks with the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, Carl Pope.
Pope and the Sierra Club are critical of the Bush administration’s record on environmental
protection:


POPE: “The biggest environmental problem this country faces right now is the policies of this
administration. It’s kind of stunning too, when you add it all up, just how much damage they
have quietly managed to set in motion in only three years.”


LG: “Now, we’ve listened to folks in the Bush administration who indicate that what they’re
really doing is bringing some balance to dealing with the economic issues the nation faces and
how it relates to the environmental issues that we face.”


POPE: “Well, let’s look at three trends. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was President, we began
cleaning up toxic wastes dumps in this country with the Superfund. In 2003, for the first time
because the Bush administration both allowed the Superfund to run out of money and allowed
companies to start dumping new kinds of toxins on the landscape, the American landscape
became more polluted. We started going backwards after 20 years of progress.


1972, under Richard Nixon, another Republican, we made a national commitment under the
Clean Water Act to clean up our rivers and lakes. In 2003, because the Bush administration cut
funding for clean water clean-up and because they exempted large factory feedlots from clean
water regulation, EPA had to report for the first time in 30 years America’s waterways had gotten
dirtier.


And finally, in 1902, Theodore Roosevelt, a third Republican, created Grand Canyon National
Monument. And every president since Theodore Roosevelt left us with more of the American
landscape protected than he found it. And in only three years uniquely, singularly and in the
violation of the entire trend of the entire 20th century, this President Bush has stripped
environmental protection from 235 million acres. It’s an area as big as Texas and Oklahoma that
is now open to development which was protected when George Bush became President. I don’t
think that’s balance.”


LG: “I assume that you’re not all that chummy with everyone in the White House these days….


POPE: “That’s a safe assumption.”


LG: …but I’m trying to get an insight into what you think the thinking might be behind some of
the decisions that the Bush administration makes.”


POPE: “Well, in 1970 we made a national compact in this country. It was a national
environmental compact which was: we were environmental optimists and we believed that as a
nation that we could clean up every waterway, we could modernize every power plant and we
could remedy every toxic waste dump. We said as a nation ‘You know, everybody in this country
is going to have water that’s safe to drink. Everybody is going to live in a community where the
air doesn’t give their kids asthma. And we’re going to take time to do it. The federal government
is going to help everybody. And we’re all going to do it as a community.’ I think the fundamental
problem with that compact from the point of view of this administration is the ‘everyone’ part of
it. They really don’t believe that the community should do very much. They believe individuals
should take care of themselves. If you want to have safe drinking water, get yourself your own
supply; buy bottled water. If you want to breathe clean air, move somewhere where the air is
cleaner. They really don’t believe in the idea that every American ought to enjoy certain basic
environmental amenities simply as a consequence of being an American.


And, I think what motivates them is their concern that if it’s the federal government that
is cleaning up our toxic waste sites, then people will have faith in the federal government. And
they don’t have faith in the federal government. In fact, one of their chief advisors says he wants
to shrink the federal government down to a size where he can drown it in a bathtub. And I think
it’s the fact that the environmental compact in this country was based on the idea of an
environmental safety net for everyone that they find antithetical to their view that we all ought to
be tough, we all ought to be competitive, we all ought to be self-reliant and on our own. And
they don’t like the fact that the environmental compact says wait a minute, we’re all in this
together and we’re going to solve it together.”


HOST TAG: Carl Pope is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club.

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Moviemaker Lampoons Sprawl

  • Characters in the upcoming film Barn Red. Ernest Borgnine plays a farmer, who's struggling to keep his 240-acre fruit farm in the face of development pressures.

People worried about land-use issues usually don’t laugh about them. But a Michigan filmmaker has made a romantic comedy about development pressures on America’s farmland. Director Rich Brauer hopes the humor of his movie “Barn Red” will make the issue more accessible for the general public. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:

Transcript

People worried about land-use issues usually don’t laugh about them. But a
Michigan filmmaker has made a romantic comedy about development pressures
on America’s farmland. Director Rich Brauer hopes the humor of his movie
“Barn Red” will make the issue more accessible for the general public. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:


You might call Micheal Bollini puzzled at the beginning of the movie, “Barn
Red.”


The old fruit farmer played by actor Ernest Borgnine is a picture of rugged self-
reliance. But he’s bewildered by the pressure he’s under to get out of farming.


“Did you ever get that feeling that you’re going too fast and you pass a police car
and he’s got his radar at you. That’s how I feel when they talk about selling the
farm and everything. It gives me butterflies in my stomach. Terrible.”


Bollini can’t comprehend developer Paul Haight, played by actor Wayne David
Parker. In their first meeting, Haight tells Bollini he figures Bollini has to sell his
farm. Haight wants to build a subdivision there called Oak Wind. In a
conversation with his assistant, Haight calls Bollini’s 240- acre family farm a
bonanza.


HAIGHT: “So you go in here, drive up this way, turn here and your home.”


ASSISTANT: “Oak Winds is a good name. Bollini has a ton of oaks up there.”


HAIGHT: “Actually we’ll cut those down and plant this… it’s a
juniperous…something. They grow faster and there’s no leaves, no messy yards,
no leaves to clean up. So they’re perfect, no lousy squirrels.”


He goes onto say they’ll plant purple loosestrife for ground cover in Oak Wind.
Purple loosestrife is an invasive species that chokes out other the naturally
occurring plants.


Haight can’t figure out why loosestrife is so cheap.


A lot of the humor in “Barn Red” lampoons characters with their own lack of
understanding.


Bollini, the farmer, doesn’t open letters from the IRS that say he owes hundreds
of thousand of dollars in estate taxes.


Haight, The developer, gets poison ivy while trespassing on Bollini’s property.


In this scene a woman notices him scratching himself.


WOMAN: “Look’s like a pretty nasty rash you got there.”


HAIGHT: “I don’t know what the heck it is. I’m doing all I can not to scratch it,
but it seems to be spreading.”


WOMAN: “Looks like poison ivy to me. Good thing you put that pink stuff on
it.”


HAIGHT: “Oh, yeah, I sure hope it clears it up. I don’t know where I could have
gotten it at.”


The Filmmaker, Rich Brauer, says he made his movie entertaining so people will
pay attention to an issue he cares about.


Brauer lives in a rural part of northern Michigan. The region is under as much
development pressure as just about any place in the Midwest.


And Brauer’s been involved with land-use issues for years. He says he didn’t
have to invent the antics of the developer from scratch. He just had to tell about
some of the things he’s seen.


“I’ve seen these guys and I thought they were kidding. But they weren’t. Therein
lies comedy. So all I did…I just sort of created a character that echoed what I
had experienced in real life…This isn’t just completely off of a blank sheet of
paper…I was inspired by reality.”


The developer isn’t the butt of every joke.


In one scene the township clerk gets out their master plan to show to a friend of
Bollinis. She tells how it cost the township 150 thousand dollars and then the
plan just sat on the shelf for last five years.


People unfamiliar with planning and zoning might miss the sarcasm here.


But Larry Mawby didn’t. Mawby owns a vineyard in the township where “Barn
Red” was filmed. He’s been involved in local government there for twenty years.
Mawby says the county put together a state-of-the-art master plan in the mid-90s.
Mawby says people came from other parts of the state to see what they had done.


“That master plan has been totally and completely ignored. The Board of
Commissioners doesn’t pay attention to that master plan at all. Where they’re
citing the jail is contrary to their master plan. None of their facilities questions
have they ever looked at that master plan or paid attention to it. It’s like, what’s
the point here?”


The point of laughing about it in a movie may be to get everybody to lighten up.


Glenn Chown is the executive director of the Grand Traverse Regional Land
Conservancy.


Brauer consulted with Chown while writing the script for his movie.


Chown thinks the levity of “Barn Red” will help the image of environmentalists.


“Sometimes we can be accused of being all gloom and doom. And the sky is
falling and it’s all falling apart and we’re all doomed. And I think we need to
lighten up a little bit. If we do lighten up a little bit, we’ll reach people more
effectively.


But… the film ends with a little gloom and doom.


Between the end of the movie and the credits a figure from the American
Farmland Trust appears on the screen. It says America loses more than 1.2
million acres of farmland to sprawl each year.


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

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“Lifestyle Centers” Smarter Shopping?

  • Shoppers take a coffee break at Eastwood Towne Center near Lansing, Michigan. The outdoor shopping mall is one of a growing number of "lifestyle centers" in the United States. (Photo by Erin Toner)

For decades now, people have done most of their shopping at sprawling, suburban malls that offer plenty of free parking and shelter from the weather. But now, people are heading back outside to shop, to places reminiscent of quaint downtowns. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

For decades now, people have done most of their shopping at sprawling, suburban malls that offer
plenty of free parking and shelter from the weather. But now, people are heading back outside to
shop, to places reminiscent of quaint downtowns. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin
Toner reports:


It’s a sunny day in March. But, as anyone who lives in the Midwest knows, a sunny day this early
in the Spring is rarely warm day. Today’s temperature’s in the 30s. But that’s apparently no reason to
stay indoors, when there’s shopping to be done.


The stores just opened at Eastwood Towne Center on the outskirts of Lansing, Michigan and the parking lot is
slowing filling up. Shiny minivans unload mothers, and babies and old ladies. They disappear into
Pottery Barn, Ann Taylor Loft and the Yankee Candle Company. They march from one store to
another to the sounds of soft-rock drifting out of speakers perched on lamp posts outside.


Eastwood Towne Center is one of a growing number of so-called “lifestyle centers.” There are
several in the Great Lakes Region – in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and Pennsylvania. Lifestyle centers
are outdoor malls built to look like old-time downtowns. They have pseudo Main streets, that
weave through upscale stores with brick or stone-facades. Shoppers or their bored husbands can
take a rest on wrought-iron benches in neatly-manicured courtyards, or in cozy chairs at Starbucks.


Lifestyle centers also usually have popular chain restaurants and movie theaters.


Beverly Baten shops and works at Eastwood Towne Center. She says people are coming to
Eastwood to do what they used to do in city centers.


“They’re coming here to socialize. They’re coming to have lunch, to maybe see a movie, and
shopping is always a part of that experience because right here, at Eastwood Towne Center, we
have the stores that people want. And that’s so important. Whoever built this mall, did their
homework.”


Cincinnati-based Developer Jeffrey R. Anderson built Eastwood Towne Center. The company also
has lifestyle centers in Kentucky, Ohio and Illinois. And it’s opening four more in the next four
years.


The company’s Mark Fallon says shopping malls took most of the retail out of real downtowns a
long time ago. But he says now, people are looking at getting to the mall as a hassle. Fallon says
lifestyle centers offer the best of both worlds. He says they re-create the feeling of friendly
downtowns, and have the free parking and the good stores that malls offer.


“It’s really the closest thing to what was free-standing shops, that ended up next door to each other,
or in a neighborhood and you’re kind of recreating that feel, and getting back to a more pleasant
and convenient shopping environment that really, the mega-mall or the regional shopping mall that
you’re used to, the enclosed behemoth, that’s usually outside of town that you have to drive to
doesn’t provide these days.”


But that convenience sometimes comes at a cost. The developer covered old farm fields and a
small wetland to build the new shopping center. But it’s just across the street from older city
neighborhoods and infrastructure. Some criticize places like Eastwood for adding to urban sprawl.
But planning experts say many lifestyle centers actually fit into so-called “smart growth.”


Marya Morris is with the American Planning Association in Chicago. She says many developers
are locating lifestyle centers close to existing suburban development – and typically not in big
fields outside of town. Morris says incorporating new development into communities is what
“smart growth” is all about.


“It’s generally building in areas, in already-developed areas through redevelopment or
intensification of development, particularly in the suburbs right now. Many suburbs grew up
without any specific center or town square or downtown. And lifestyle centers, in many
communities, have helped create such a downtown, along with other things like new city halls, or
libraries, or new public greens.”


Developers say lifestyle centers are more attractive to retailers than real downtowns because they
can build exactly the store they want from the ground up. In older cities, retailers would have to
pay to retro-fit existing storefronts. And in real downtowns, there’s usually limited parking that
customers have to pay for. Lifestyle centers also often let retailers pack up and leave — no strings
attached — if business starts to slide.


But it seems pretty hard to imagine that a business would fail at Eastwood Towne Center, as the parade
of cars and shoppers grows this morning.

There are 20 new lifestyle centers set to open around the country over the next two years.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links

Farm to Wetlands Program to Be Scaled Back?

A popular federal program that pays farmers to restore wetlands on their property is underfunded in President Bush’s budget proposal. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein has more:

Transcript

A popular federal program that pays farmers to restore wetlands on their property is underfunded
in President Bush’s budget proposal. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein
has more:


The 2002 Farm Bill called for turning 250,000 acres a year of marginal farmland into wetlands.
Wetlands on farms help control pesticide run-off, replenish aquifers, and provide wildlife habitat.
And the effort gives farmers some extra cash in lean times. The Bush Administration wants to
downsize the program by 50,000 acres a year. But critics say it’s too popular to reduce.


“For every acre that gets enrolled, there are five acres waiting to get enrolled.”


Julie Sibbing is the wetlands policy specialist for the National Wildlife Federation. She says millions
of acres of wetlands nationwide are under threat from development. And farm conservation
programs are a crucial way to preserve them.


“There’s been a lot of talk about how the farm programs have expanded under the Bush
Administration. It’s really not been the great expansion that we would have liked to have seen.”


Last year, the program helped convert 213,000 acres of unused farmland into wetlands, short of the
250,000 acre goal.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.

Related Links

Report Analyzes Economic Benefits of Wetlands

70 billion dollars – that’s how much the world’s wetlands are worth in annual goods and services, according to a report from the World Wildlife Fund. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

Seventy-billion dollars – that’s how much the world’s wetlands are worth in
annual goods and services, according to a report from the World Wildlife
Fund. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has more:


The report says wetlands provide goods and services such as water filtration,
habitat, flood control and food production. The authors analyzed all the
studies that have been done on the economic value of wetlands.


They say billions of dollars are spent each year to drain wetlands for
immediate economic benefits.


Chris Williams is a conservation manager with the World Wildlife Fund. He
says decision-makers don’t always understand the long-term benefits of
wetlands.


“And if you’re, say, an official in a local jurisdiction, you’re thinking,
what is the immediate return of developing this area? There might be tax
revenues, there might be employment benefits, there might be increased
housing. Now those are important, and those should be thrown into the mix.
What we are mainly saying is, fine, but when you’re balancing those short-term returns, balance
them with the long-term value of the resource that
you’re developing.”


Williams says governments might try to restore wetlands when an area has
been paved over. But he says it’s much more expensive to build a wetland
from scratch than to take steps to preserve it.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Cities Look to Golf Courses to Raise Money

Throughout the region, financially-strapped cities and counties are looking for ways to generate revenue. One idea – converting publicly owned park land into golf courses. Environmentalists hate the idea. But at least some government officials say a golf course is a way to make money and ease the burden on taxpayers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Stucky reports on a battle over whether to turn part of a hardwood forest near Lake Superior into a golf course:

Transcript

Throughout the Great Lakes region, financially strapped cities and counties are looking for ways
to generate revenue. One idea, converting publicly owned park land into golf courses.
Environmentalists hate the idea. But at least some government officials say a golf course is a way
to make money and ease the burden on taxpayers. Mary Stucky reports on a battle over whether
to turn part of a hardwood forest near Lake Superior into a golf course:


(natural sound)


On a cold winter day, the air is still and quiet on Spirit Mountain, on the western side of Duluth,
Minnesota, a town on Lake Superior. There is a chalet and downhill ski area on one side of the
mountain, but for the most part, the forest is undeveloped.


“We’ll just walk up here a bit so you can see into the forest a bit more.”


Nancy Nelson is a local environmentalist who’s horrified at the thought of a golf course here.


“So, if the golf course were to be built that would all be clear cut and turned into turf grass.”


Spirit Mountain is owned by the city of Duluth. It has a unique mixture of ecosystems. There are
wetlands and small streams. Wildflowers cover the ground in the spring and there is old growth
forest including sugar maple, yellow birch and red oak. Outgoing Duluth Mayor Gary Doty
thinks the golf course is a good idea. The course would have taken 250 acres of the 2 thousand
acre forest.


“I saw this as a responsible activity with safeguards put in place to prevent problems with water
run-off and wetlands and trees and all those kinds of things.”


The Mayor says it would have been an environmentally responsible project. Environmentalist
Nancy Nelson disagrees.


“Once you clear cut an area it all starts over. It takes hundreds of years, at least, to get to the
stage that this forest is at. I just don’t think it’s a fair tradeoff to destroy something that’s taken
that long to develop just so we can build a golf course.”


But experts say building golf courses in natural areas is tempting for cash-strapped cities and
counties throughout the Great Lakes region. Brett Hulsey works with the Sierra Club to fight
plans for golf courses on government park land.


“Across the Great Lakes we see golf courses threatening our national parks, local parks, wetlands
and forests. They destroy habitat for wild animals, fish and wildlife. They increase
run off pollution and they also close off access to public areas.”


Hulsey says trees are cut down, lawn chemicals are used and to even walk through the area you
have to pay greens fees. The Sierra Club website keeps track of places where parkland is
threatened by golf course development.


But as for the course on Spirit Mountain, Mayor Doty says it’s been stopped, at least for now,
stopped by what Doty calls extreme environmentalists who blindly oppose development.


“I don’t think we should take every tree down and build parking lots and hotels and
condominiums every place in town. But I looked at what was good for the community. And
what was good for the community was to develop an environmentally sound golf course and it
still leaves a lot of wooded lands that people would be able to enjoy outside of using the golf
course.


But environmentalists say the world doesn’t need a another golf course. They say, there are too
many now. Since the Spirit Mountain course was first proposed 9 years ago, the popularity of
golf has waned, according to the Sierra Club’s Brett Hulsey, with the supply of golf courses now
outstripping demand.


“We’re seeing a lot of golf courses struggling. The bloom is definitely off the golf course rose
and local governments should take a real hard look at whether this is the best way for them to
raise local money.


And so some experts say that in the future, the battle over turning park land into golf courses
might be won by environmentalists by default.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Stucky.

Related Links

City Battles Sprawl With Greenbelt

Environmentalists scored a huge victory at the polls earlier this month, when a Midwestern city and its surrounding townships agreed to a tax to preserve a belt of green space. The plan marks one of the first locally funded efforts in the Midwest to fight sprawl. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert takes a look at whether this plan will fulfill its promise to curb unplanned growth:

Transcript

Environmentalists scored a huge victory at the polls earlier this month, when a Midwestern city and its
surrounding townships agreed to a tax to preserve a belt of green space. The plan marks one of the first
locally funded efforts in the Midwest to fight sprawl. Sprawl often occurs when developers pave over
farmland and other natural resources to create strip malls and subdivisions. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Julie Halpert takes a look at whether this plan will fulfill its promise to curb urban sprawl:


Voters in Ann Arbor, Michigan gave the nod to a 30 year tax to preserve roughly 8,000 acres of land. It’s
one of the first measures in the Great Lakes states to set up a major regional funding plan for curbing
growth. Sprawl is prominent in the area and Ann Arbor and its surrounding townships will share the
preservation costs. The proposal will allow the city to purchase easements on land. That will prohibit the
land’s future development and preserve it.


Elizabeth Humphrey is the director of the Growth Management Leadership Alliance in Washington, D.C.
She says citizens are fed up with seeing houses overtake park lands. So anti-sprawl initiatives, like Ann
Arbor’s, are gaining popularity among all political parties.


“I think the loss of open space is the one thing that we all see as the big threat of sprawl. It’s tangible.
You can see it in the field you used to play in when you grew up. It disappears and that’s visceral. And I
think that appeals to everybody who’s really concerned about how we’re growing.”


Humphrey says that Ann Arbor’s program is a good approach, since it focuses on regional development.
And while scenic areas like Boulder, Colorado and Portland, Oregon have greenbelts in place, the
Midwest generally hasn’t followed. But that could all change now, according to Mike Garfield. He’s
director of The Ecology Center, which spearheaded the plan.


“I think that what we did Tuesday in Ann Arbor and Ann Arbor township could lead to a wave of new
conservation easement programs and farmland programs around Michigan and throughout the Great
Lakes Region.”

Garfield says his group’s win showed it was possible to successfully trounce a formidable opponent: the
homebuilders. Homebuilders feared the plan would limit housing choices. They spent a quarter of a
million dollars to fight it. Garfield’s hopeful that this victory will help preserve Ann Arbor’s high quality
of life and its vital downtown. In a mere ten minutes, he’s able to walk to work without fighting traffic.
And he thinks the ‘yes’ vote indicated that Ann Arbor residents value that kind of living. But Garfield
realizes not everyone in Ann Arbor agrees with him.


“And of course there were some people in town who are not developers and home builders who opposed
it because it was a tax or because they believed some of the arguments or they didn’t trust city hall or
something like that.”


Niki Wardner is one of those people. She lives in a ranch on an acre of land overlooking a public golf
course in Ann Arbor’s wooded residential section. A handful of vote no signs are perched against her
door. Wardner lobbied heavily with other citizens against the Ann Arbor plan. She thinks 30 years is
way too long for a tax.


“They’re going to bond this issue, this proposal, i.e., take a mortgage out. We can never change it.
There’s no accountability. How do we know 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 30 years, what’s going on with
it?”


Wardner’s concerned that this plan was rushed to the ballot without details on how it would work and
what kind of land will be purchased. She thinks something needs to be done about sprawl. But she’s not
sure this is the solution. And she also thinks residents won’t agree to the increased development that will
likely occur downtown and where she lives.”


“Personally, you know, I bought my piece of property because I live on a park and you know, we all like
trees and green space and I don’t think anyone wants townhouses or condos or a five story building in
their backyard.”


And building more homes downtown is a central part of the plan. Doug Kelbaugh is Dean of The
University of Michigan’s College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He says that to avoid sprawling
out, more people need to live in the city’s center.


“There aren’t enough people living downtown. It’s the living downtown, the downtown residential
development, that will do the most to decrease sprawl, decrease the number of commute trips, decrease
the length of commute trips, increase the walkability, increase the livability and the urbanity of Ann
Arbor lifestyles.”

Kelbaugh says if that denser development occurs, that means houses will have to be built on smaller lots.
That could curb housing price spikes by adding to housing supply. He said that if carried out responsibly,
Ann Arbor’s plan could be a small, but important first step in attacking sprawl.


“As long as gasoline is so cheap and farmland is so cheap, we will tend to have sprawl in America. This
is a major model that’s prevailed in America for 50 or 60 years, if not a little longer and it’s going to take
a little while to turn it around. But this is a significant beginning.”


Other towns are looking to preserve green space just like Ann Arbor’s doing. They’ll be closely watching
to see if it works.


For The Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Halpert.

Related Links

Prairie Plants Rescued in Farm’s Twilight

There were millions of acres of prairie in the Midwest when white settlers arrived in the early 1800s. Today, only a tiny fraction of these native grasslands remain. In recent years, there’s been renewed interest in restoring old prairies and creating new ones. But when financial realities conflict with land protection efforts, even the most devoted prairie lovers must make a difficult choice. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tom Springer reports:

Transcript

There were millions of acres of prairie in the Midwest when white settlers arrived in the early
1800s. Today, only a tiny fraction of these native grasslands remain. In recent years, there’s
been renewed interest in restoring old prairies and creating new ones. But when financial realities
conflict with land protection efforts, even the most devoted prairie lovers must make a difficult
choice. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tom Springer reports:


This is not a sight that Bev Villareal ever wanted to see. On her restored prairie near Plainwell,
Michigan, there’s a dozen men and women armed with shovels and buckets. They’re digging up
native plants by the hundreds and carting them off in a pick-up truck.


Bev Villareal settles into her favorite chair and lights up a Capri Super-Slim cigarette. The scene
from her back window would look familiar to a 19th century pioneer. It’s a real prairie, with
plenty of rare flowers and enough tall grass to fatten a buffalo. But with her chronic lung disease,
Villareal can’t get out much to enjoy it.


“Well, my health has been going down, and I do have some bad habits, health-wise. So I know
that it’s in my will that’s the kids are to sell the farm, so, yeah, because I know this place will be
developed and that’s it.”


Villareal says she bought the farm “for a steal” in the early 1960s. Back then, she spent her days
cooped up in a meat-packing plant. And this was her country retreat. She loved outdoor work.
She built a fieldstone wall with her own hands. And she especially loved to raise flowers. She’d
sell cut daffodils, iris and zinnias from a little table in her driveway.


“I belong to gardening club here in Plainwell, and I always tell them I’m not a gardener, I’m a
flower grower.”


Then in 1990, Villareal’s daughter introduced her to Bob Pleznac. At first, they weren’t exactly
kindred spirits. Bev Villareal’s a blue-collar type. She likes flowers because they’re pretty. Bob
Pleznac’s a bankruptcy attorney. He calls plants by their Latin names. And he knows more than
you’ll ever want to hear about prairies. Yet when Pleznac visited Villareal’s land, he saw the
potential for a new kind of natural garden.


“Just looking at the property and seeing what it looked like, and knowing Bev’s love for flowers,
I knew that the prairie plants would love this land and that Bev would love the prairie plants.”


And he was right – Bev loved the idea. When Bev and Bob first planted their prairie, it covered
an area the size of a small house. Today, it spreads across about seven acres of rolling hillside.
On this fall afternoon, clumps of native grass the color of buckskin tremble in the breeze. Dried
stalks of purple, yellow and orange wildflowers linger on as reminders of summer’s glory.


And now, autumn has come for Bev Villareal and her prairie. Neither she nor anyone else she
knows can afford to save it. Once the property’s sold, it will probably sprout quarter-million-
dollar houses instead of black-eyed susans.


But the volunteers out in her backyard are working to see that this prairie survives. Christy
Chapman is with the Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy. She’s pulling out clumps of
wildflowers and stuffing them into a plastic trash bag.


“Yeah, It’s like prairie in a box, we box up something and we might have three or four good
plants all living together and we dig up the plug, put in a bag, cart it down the street and plop it
back in. So it should do real well.”


The volunteers are excited by their work. Yet Bob Pleznac just can’t bring himself to pick up a
shovel. For him, it’s a necessary, but bittersweet undertaking.


“I hate to think about this beauty being paved over, but we’ve got a terrific opportunity now.
This is harvest time. It’s time to get the seed off this prairie, as much as we can, with all the
volunteers that have come in here from the Wild Ones Club and from the Southwest Michigan
Land Conservancy, and we’re going to be able to do with these plants what we set out to do.”


The plants are being moved to the Chipman Preserve. It’s a rolling, 180-acre parcel near
Kalamazoo. It’s owned by the Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy. It doesn’t look like a
prairie yet, but Bev Villareal’s plants will help change that. Nate Fuller is a Conservancy staff
member. In his mind’s eye he can see a prairie here. He also envisions an oak savanna, a wild
grassland dotted with trees.


“Well, here we’re standing on the edge of what is going to be the boundary between our savanna
and prairie. You can see there’s some oaks up here, you might hear the wind going through those
leaves there, there’s some staghorn sumac around, there’s also quite a bit of scotch pine hanging
on, a bunch of black cherries. But mostly it’s pretty open, you can see some rolling landscape,
and we’re gonna keep this pretty open.”


Survey records from the 1800s show that this site was once a prairie. With careful management,
that age-old landscape will return. For Nate Fuller and his transplant crew, the hard part is
knowing when to stop.


“It’s kind of like being a kid in a candy store, with free rein, I tell ya (laughs) there’s so many
neat plants. It’s ‘Oh, we gotta get that one, we gotta get that one, we can’t stop now!’ and
watching all the volunteers go, I’m trying to tell them, ‘The trucks loaded, we gotta go,’ and they
say ‘No, we can’t leave any behind! And it’s ‘will be back, will be back, don’t worry.'”


Some prairie plants can live to be 100 years old. And the lands protected by the Southwest
Michigan Land Conservancy are permanently restricted from development. So the flowers and
grasses from Bev Villareal’s property will be safe here. And at this new address, her prairie
legacy will bloom for generations yet to come.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tom Springer.

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Reviving Inner Cities and Slowing Sprawl


Many large and midsize cities in the Great Lakes region are fighting an uphill battle when it comes to revitalizing the city center and preventing unfettered development in the surrounding suburbs. There is one place, however, where a progressive mayor has turned a once deserted downtown into a lively place, full of urban amenities and street life. At the same time, he’s teamed up with nearby villages and townships to slow down the widening circle of unplanned development around the city. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen Millich reports:

Transcript

Many large and midsize cities in the Great Lakes region
are fighting an uphill battle when to comes to revitalizing the city
center and preventing unfettered development in the surrounding
suburbs. There is one place, however, where a progressive
mayor has turned a once deserted downtown into a lively place, full of urban amenities and street
life. At the same time, he’s teamed up with nearby villages and townships to slow down the
widening circle of unplanned development around the city. Gretchen Millich of the Great Lakes
Radio Consortium reports:


On the list of the most sprawling cities in the United
States, Grand Rapids, Michigan is right in the middle. Over the
last 10 years, the metropolitan area has seen a huge increase in
roads, subdivisions, shopping malls and industrial parks.


But Grand Rapids and neighboring villages and townships
started planning years ago to rescue the city from the problems
that accompany sprawl. And that planning is starting to pay off.


A key factor in Grand Rapids’ success has been the
mayor, John Logie. He’s retiring this year after 12 years in
office. Logie has lived in Grand Rapids for most of his life. He
recalls how the city looked when he returned after serving in the
Navy.


“When I came back to Grand Rapids in the late 60’s, I could have taken my bowling ball in any
downtown street at 5:18 PM and hurled it down the sidewalk as hard as I could, secure in the
knowledge I’d never break an ankle, because nobody was there.”


Logie realized then that his beloved city would not survive unless something was done to revitalize
the downtown and encourage people to live there. In the 1970’s, he helped
write a state law that allowed local governments to set up historic districts. Grand Rapids now has
five historic neighborhoods, including Heritage Hill, where Logie lives in a
Queen Anne style home.


“And also I had read Jane Jacobs book years ago, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”
and she talks in there about the need to preserve what you’ve got. And
the need to find adaptive re-use when a buggy whip manufacturing company goes out of business
because the automobile has replaced the horse-drawn carriage. There’s a building there that needs
new life.”


To that end, Logie helped write another state law setting up Renaissance zones in inner cities where
businesses and residents could get substantial tax breaks for re-using old
buildings. Grand Rapids now has seven Renaissance districts. The city also changed the zoning on
several old warehouses and industrial buildings to encourage what Logie
calls “layer cakes” – retails stores, restaurants, offices and apartments – all in the same building.
Some of the old furniture factories have been renovated, including the Burkey and Gay building –
built in the late 1800’s. Burkey and Gay went out of business in the 1950’s.


“It had been sitting cold iron for 50 years. And now it’s all back to life. Two-hundred sixty middle
of the road apartments, and some offices.


“We got tired of the quiet life and wanted a little diversity.”


Connie Thompson and her husband Jim used to live in a
new suburb north of Grand Rapids. About a year and a half
ago, they moved into an apartment in the Burkey Gay building.


“We like the downtown city feel, which is really fun. We can walk to a bakery, we can walk to
shopping.”


“Grand Rapids has almost got kind of a European feel to it. There’s a couple of little side walk
cafes – during the summer – it doesn’t work too well in the winter. But, yeah, we
like it. I think we’re more city people than the country people we tried to be for a while there.”


But it wasn’t enough just to work within the city limits. Grand Rapids Mayor John Logie knew he
had to work with planners in the surrounding suburbs to promote better land-use
policies. He convinced local officials in 47 different jurisdictions to set limits on how far their
communities would grow around Grand Rapids.


“We invited each of them to draw a line somewhere in the middle of their real estate. And you
decide where that line should go. And then we’ll create a formula together that you’re going to
encourage future growth inside that line and discourage it out until you get to a certain level of
density – at which point you can move the line.”


Logie says the growth boundaries have kept the population closer to the inner city, cutting down on
long commutes, pollution and preserving at least some of the farmland
around the metropolitan area.


As he prepares to step down as mayor at the end of the year, Logie says he’s proud of what he’s
accomplished. He says it’s not rocket science – just common sense about what
makes a city a good place to live.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Gretchen Millich.

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Drawing the Line on Beachfront Properties

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

Transcript

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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