Who Should Watch Big Farms?

  • Hog manure being injected into the ground and tilled under. The manure fertilizes the crops, but if too much is applied it can foul up waterways. (Photo by Mark Brush)

Big livestock operations can raise thousands of cows, chickens or pigs
under one roof. It helps keep the price of food lower. But neighbors
complain the government’s not doing a good enough job of monitoring the
pollution these farms produce. Rebecca Williams reports there’s a
debate heating up in several states over who should be regulating these
big farms:

Transcript

Big livestock operations can raise thousands of cows, chickens or pigs
under one roof. It helps keep the price of food lower. But neighbors
complain the government’s not doing a good enough job of monitoring the
pollution these farms produce. Rebecca Williams reports there’s a
debate heating up in several states over who should be regulating these
big farms:


The days of small farms with different kinds of livestock grazing in
the pasture are fading from the landscape.


They’re being replaced by farms that specialize in one kind of animal –
and raise thousands of them. They’re called concentrated animal
feeding operations, or CAFOs.


There are battles in several states right now over who should be keeping an eye
on the CAFOs. Usually, the state departments of environmental
protection have power under the federal Clean Water Act to enforce laws
and issue permits. But in the Midwest, in states such as Ohio and
Michigan, and in the West, in states such as Oregon and Idaho, they either have transferred or are working to transfer oversight power to the state agriculture departments – and get U.S. EPA approval.


Jerry Van Woerkom is a Republican state senator in Michigan. Right
now, the state Department of Environmental Quality – or DEQ – has the
oversight powers. But Senator Van Woerkom is sponsoring a package of
bills that would put most of the state’s big livestock farms under the
Department of Agriculture:


“Those people tend to be supportive and come with the attitude of we’re
going to try to work together to solve this problem. Whereas when they
work with the DEQ the attitude is more like we’re coming with a
hammer and if we find anything you’ve done that’s out of line, we’re
going to wop you with it.”


The CAFOs are in the spotlight because they can produce tens of
thousands of gallons of urine and manure each day. That liquefied
manure is eventually spread onto farm fields.


The Environmental Protection Agency says that waste can wash from
fields into streams and creeks. That can cause fish kills. Animal
waste has also gotten into drinking water and made people sick.


Lynn Henning runs a small farm. She says there are 13 CAFOs within a
10 mile radius of her Michigan farmhouse. She says the manure odors
are overwhelming:


“We can’t hang laundry when the emissions are in the air. We have
severe fly outbreaks. We’ve had family farmers that have been diagnosed with hydrogen
sulfide poisoning from emissions from the CAFOs.”


Henning says the current oversight system is weak. She says the
Department of Environmental Quality doesn’t have enough funding to
monitor the CAFOs. So that job often falls to residents like her. She
says putting the Department of Agriculture in charge of oversight would
make the problems even worse:


“The MDA has no enforcement authority and they promote agriculture in
Michigan. It’s like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.
You can’t give authority to punish to an agency that’s promoting.”


But it could become a wider trend if the states that are proposing the
switch now actually make it happen.


Karla Raettig is an attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project.
It’s a group that’s been critical of weakening environmental laws.
She’s been tracking trends in enforcement of livestock farms:


“I think the Farm Bureau and other really large industry advocates are
seeing a chance to get regulation that is perhaps more cooperative,
less regulatory and less on the enforcement side. It isn’t totally
nefarious but I think it could have outcomes that are not anticipated.”


Raettig says you have to wonder what will happen without the threat of
enforcement from an environmental agency.


But Senator Jerry Van Woerkom from Michigan argues that farmers are
more likely to do the right thing if they’re overseen by a friendlier
agency, as he proposes:


“I mean you’re not able to cover up problems that happen, it gets in
the newspaper, people know when problems happen. But I believe that the
agriculture department will work with people, especially if people are
getting a bad reputation. I think they will work with them and if
those people do get out of line, it’s back to the DEQ.”


Environmentalists and small farmers are worried about the idea of
states handing off oversight of CAFOs… from their environmental
watchdog agencies to their agencies in charge of promoting the business
of agriculture.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Ethanol Part 1: Running the Well Dry?

  • Ethanol is starting to bring prosperity to some rural communities. But there are also concerns about whether adding this new industry to other industries - and cities - that draw on groundwater supplies will cause local shortages of water. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

It’s no surprise that the Corn Belt is the heart of the ethanol boom.
Two main ingredients you need to make ethanol are corn and water.
There’s no shortage of corn of course, and in most places it’s assumed
there’s also plenty of water. But as Rebecca Williams reports, even
people in water-rich states are getting concerned about ethanol’s
thirst for groundwater:

Transcript

It’s no surprise that the Corn Belt is the heart of the ethanol boom.
Two main ingredients you need to make ethanol are corn and water.
There’s no shortage of corn of course, and in most places it’s assumed
there’s also plenty of water. But as Rebecca Williams reports, even
people in water-rich states are getting concerned about ethanol’s
thirst for groundwater:


Bob Libra can tell a lot about water by looking at rocks. We’re in his
rock library – it even has a Dewey decimal system. Libra’s holding up
one of the 35,000 chunks of rock in here.


(Sound of scraping on limestone core)


“This for example is a core from a well. You can look at this and say well this is
what the plumbing system’s like down there.”


Libra’s a state geologist with the Iowa Department of Natural
Resources. Part of his job is to figure out how healthy his state’s
water supplies are. Any time a test well is drilled for a new ethanol
plant, rock samples get sent here.


Outside the rock library, there are three red pipes sticking up out of
the ground. These are observation wells that tap into sources of
groundwater far underground, called deep aquifers:


“A lot of people refer to it as Paleo-water or fossil water. It’s been
down there tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of
years.”


Libra says the water in those deep aquifers is pumped out for
everything from drinking water to ethanol plants. But as it’s pumped
out, it’s not replaced right away. It could take hundreds or thousands
of years to replenish the aquifers.


Geologists use the observation wells and rock samples to figure out how
much water is in those aquifers. But here at the rock library, those
samples are piling up into small mountains in the storage room. Bob
Libra says his state is way behind. Iowa hasn’t updated its groundwater
maps for 20 years:


“I think Iowa’s in the same kind of situation that a lot of states that
tend not to think of themselves as ‘water poor’ are finding themselves.
We haven’t paid attention to it for 20 years and suddenly BANG we’re
using an awful lot. And we have people every day going I’m interested
in putting a plant here – how much water can I get over here? And it’s
happening very rapidly.”


Each state has its own way of managing its groundwater. In Iowa, you
have to have a permit if you’re withdrawing more than 25,000 gallons of
water per day from a well or stream. Libra says the ethanol boom has
overwhelmed the state office where permits are handed out for the
asking:


“I’m at this location, I’m drilling into this aquifer, I’m going
to extract this amount of water. Here’s my $25 for a 10-year permit.”


Libra says nobody’s really checking to see if all these water
withdrawals will work for the next few decades.


How much water ethanol plants consume depends on who you talk to. But
on average, it takes between three and four gallons of water to make
one gallon of ethanol. Bob Libra says here in Iowa, adding new ethanol
plants is like adding a bunch of new towns out in the cornfields:


“A lot of ethanol plants they’re building now are on the order of 100
million gallon per year capacity so they’d be using about 400 million
gallons of water a year which is roughly as much as a town of 10,000
people.”


In some drier states, new ethanol plants are running into opposition.
Mark Muller is with the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy. He
says groundwater is local. So, what works in one place might be a
crisis in another:


“We’ve already seen it in Southwest Minnesota where a plant was denied because
of a lack of water resources. There’s a couple big fights going on in
Kansas right now over water availability. I think this is going to
probably one of the big drivers that’s going to make the industry look
further East rather than in the Midwest/Great Plains.”


The ethanol industry argues that it has already cut back on water use.
Lucy Norton is the managing director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels
Association. She says it’s in the industry’s best interest to be
careful with water:


“We’re not going to see a plant built somewhere where it’s an iffy
situation as to whether 10 years from now we’re going to have enough
water. You don’t put $200 million investment into a location that’s
not going to be able to sustain itself 10 years from now.”


But even if the water supplies could last 50 years, once the water is
gone from the aquifers, it’s gone for a long time.


There are a lot of
test wells going in these days, with 123 plants in operation and more
than 80 under construction around the country.


The growing political pressure for more and more ethanol is making
state officials eager to figure out exactly what’s underground, instead
of just assuming there’s enough water.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Banned Firewood for Sale

  • Logs from ash trees that had to be cut down after they were infested with emerald ash borer beetles. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

In more and more places, you can’t bring firewood with you when you go
camping. That’s because officials are worried about a destructive
beetle that people are spreading by moving firewood all over the
nation. Scientists say the best thing you can do is buy firewood where
you camp. But as Rebecca Williams reports, even then… you can’t
always know if the wood you’re buying is safe:

Transcript

In more and more places, you can’t bring firewood with you when you go
camping. That’s because officials are worried about a destructive
beetle that people are spreading by moving firewood all over the
nation. Scientists say the best thing you can do is buy firewood where
you camp. But as Rebecca Williams reports, even then… you can’t
always know if the wood you’re buying is safe:


(Sound of crackling fire)


There’s something sort of magical about a fire. Without it, there’d be
no roasted marshmallows, no ghost stories. And it would get pretty cold at
night. That’s why a lot of people toss some firewood in their car on
the way to camp out. It’s just habit.


But lately it’s gotten risky to move firewood. That wood could be
carrying tiny stowaways with big appetites. Especially a metallic
green beetle called the emerald ash borer.


The ash borer eats through the living layer of ash trees, so the trees
starve to death. It’s thought to have gotten into the States in wood
packing material from China. So far, it’s killed more than 20 million
ash trees in the upper Midwest and Ontario. That’s costing
millions of dollars in lost trees and wood.


People can move the beetle long distances unknowingly by moving
firewood, because the bug hides underneath the bark.


Elizabeth Pentico is trying to stop people from moving that infested
wood. She’s with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She supervises
USDA inspectors looking for people moving firewood out of quarantined
states:


“If someone has a shipment of logs that’s fairly easy to see, but 25
pieces of firewood in the back of a pickup truck with a camper is a
whole different issue. The firewood pathway is very difficult because
it is so low profile and because everyone moves firewood.”


Pentico says the best thing to do is buy firewood locally… and burn it
all up. But she says a lot of times, if you buy it from a gas station,
supermarket, or home improvement store, there won’t be any way to know
for sure if the firewood is safe.


Recently, that’s been a problem. Firewood from a company in Illinois
was shipped to Menard’s home improvement stores in 10 states. Illinois
is under a federal quarantine for emerald ash borer. So no hardwood
firewood can cross state lines, unless it’s been treated to kill
emerald ash borer larvae.


But somebody messed up.


Jane Larson is a spokesperson with the Wisconsin Department of
Agriculture. She says in this case, the firewood company had an
agreement with the federal government to ship firewood across state
lines:


“Part of that agreement is they’d sell wood that had the bark removed,
or it would be ‘debarked.’ And we were finding here that the wood was not
debarked.”


Larson says a nationwide recall was put in place. But she says a few
Menard’s stores were still selling the firewood a week after the recall
notice was issued.


In a written statement to The Environment Report, a Menard’s
spokesperson says quote – “Menard’s was in complete cooperation with
the USDA firewood recall and has obtained a new vendor.”


But officials say this incident shows how easily the ash borer can
spread.


USDA’s Elizabeth Pentico says even if you buy a firewood
bundle that says it’s from Texas, that doesn’t mean that’s where the
firewood came from:


“We had a distribution center here in Michigan. The broker for the
firewood was in Texas. The wood itself came out of Missouri and the
wood was distributed to Ohio and Indiana.”


So you can see, firewood can travel around a lot.


You can even buy firewood on eBay, by the semi-load. Pentico says her
inspectors have to watch the Net closely:


“They’ve even come across some firewood chatrooms that have firewood sales.
You can indicate that firewood is illegal. The officers stopped a sale
of Michigan firewood going to California by just typing in and saying
you know, that’s an illegal movement.”


But Pentico says officers do have to catch the wood actually crossing
state lines before the laws can be enforced.


Some people in the firewood industry agree it’s like hide and seek for
inspectors.


Jim Albring is a firewood dealer who’s been in the business for more
than 25 years:


“A lot of firewood business is done by little individuals, guys that
cut on the weekends and so forth, and you try to change the mindset of those people
and say you can’t cut ash, you can’t sell ash, well they’re going to
cut what they want to cut. They’re individuals… and if there’s ash in
it, so there’s ash in it.”


The inspectors say it’s very hard even for a trained eye to tell the
difference between ash wood that might be infested and any other kind
of wood that’s safe. So they say the best thing to do is to not move
firewood at all. Buy local and burn it up as soon as you can.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Growers Cover Up Local Produce

  • If the hydroponics trend continues, strawberries could be available locally everywhere. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

It’s the middle of winter and you’re craving some fresh,
juicy strawberries. Go to your local grocery store and
you’ll find lots of packaged strawberries shipped from the
west coast or down south. For locally grown strawberries,
you have to wait till June if you live in the Midwest. But
that’s starting to change. Jennifer Guerra has the story:

Transcript

It’s the middle of winter and you’re craving some fresh,
juicy strawberries. Go to your local grocery store and
you’ll find lots of packaged strawberries shipped from the
west coast or down south. For locally grown strawberries,
you have to wait till June if you live in the Midwest. But
that’s starting to change. Jennifer Guerra has the story:


I like strawberries. A lot. There’s strawberry rhubarb pie
for starters, strawberry and spinach salad, strawberry
shortcake. But I’ve been on this kick lately of trying to
buy only locally-grown produce, which is admittedly hard to do when you
live in the Midwest, especially with strawberries. Most of
the year, they’re shipped in from Florida and California,
but there is one place in Michigan were you can still pick
strawberries as late as October.


(Guerra:) “The redder the better…that’s too green”


It’s snowing out. I’ve got on the winter coat, the hat, the gloves,
and I’m picking strawberries with Kelly Bowerman.


(Guerra:) “So, which one is this?”


(Bowerman:) “This is a tribute. We have aroma, diamante, and
tribute. Aroma is a nice big berry, diamante’s even a bigger berry,
but it just don’t turn red, it’s oranged-colored, and tribute is smaller with a lot more
flavor.”


(Guerra:) “Alright, let’s get all three. Let’s get a
variety.”


Bowerman calls his strawberries three finger berries, which
he says are roughly the same size as the ones shipped in
from California


(Bowerman and Guerra try strawberries)


And frankly, the strawberries better taste
good, seeing as how Bowerman spent 60,000 dollars on them.


Well, not on the actual berries themselves, but on the
hydroponics system he uses to grow the berries. With
hydroponics, he still grows his strawberries outside, but
instead of planting them in the ground, the runners sit in
pots above the ground in a solution of warm water and
minerals. And since there’s no soil, the strawberries can
grow from June to October without the roots freezing over at
the first sign of cold weather. Still, there’s only so much
a hydroponics system can do on its own:


“He’s gonna find out that people want strawberries at
Christmastime, and so the next step will be to put a
greenhouse over that system and then we have 12 months.”


Merle Jensen is a professor of plant science at the
University of Arizona and he knows his hydroponics. He
knows growers all across the country who’ve started moving
their hydroponics systems inside greenhouses so they can
artificially light the crops. That way, they can produce
year round. But wait, there’s more:


“All of our leafy vegetables – high value fruits like
strawberries – will all be under cover in the next 5 years.
I’m sure of that. It’s a rapid expansion, not only in the
United States, but we see it in Canada, Mexico. So, this is the wave
of the future.”


A future that Jensen swears will taste delicious:


“You know what? I can say that because we can control the
nutrition, the salinity within the root system such that we can
program that product to have more acid and more sugars and better
flavor, and we can do that through hydroponics at will. And local growing is
becoming bigger and bigger all the time. It’s just got an
image of being better.”


Of course in the Midwest, “local” is still pretty relative.
Our Michigan farmer, Kelly Bowerman, says he gets people
from up to 50 miles away to pick his strawberries:


“One guy bought $28 worth of strawberries, and he said that ain’t
no big deal cause it cost me $40 worth of gas to
get here and back.”


And he’ll have to continue putting in that kind of travel
time if he wants to eat locally grown strawberries in the
middle of winter. Unless of course Jensen’s right and
hydroponic greenhouse systems really are the wave of the
future. If so, it might not be too long before Bowerman’s
strawberries show up year round at your supermarket.


Oh, and by the way, I liked the tribute strawberries the
best. They were my favorite.


For the Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

Related Links

New Front Line in Ash Borer Fight

The emerald ash borer is killing millions of ash trees, and the destructive beetle continues to show up in more and more places. Rebecca Williams reports one state is cutting down trees even though the beetle hasn’t been found there yet:

Transcript

The emerald ash borer is killing millions of ash trees, and the destructive beetle continues to show up in more and more places. Rebecca Williams reports one state is cutting down trees even though the beetle hasn’t been found there yet:


The emerald ash borer has killed more than 20 million trees in several Midwestern states and Ontario. The beetle kills trees by eating through the living tissue underneath the bark.


But it takes a tree a few years to show signs of infestation. So foresters sometimes have to cut down trees and strip the bark away to look for the beetles.


Wisconsin officials say they’ll be cutting down about 6-thousand trees to look for the ash borer.


Jane Larson is a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture.


“Well for many years we used to think, well if it gets here, but I think we’ve realized it’s not a matter of if but when it’s going to arrive.”


Larson says officials hope to get a jump start on containing the ash borer if they find it. The borer has cost homeowners, states and industries tens of millions of dollars.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Cougars Paw Their Way East

When you think of cougars, you usually think of the big cats roaming mountains in the West. But researchers say evidence of cougars in the Midwest has increased considerably over the last fifteen years. So far, scientists say, the big cats have not settled permanently in the region.
Bob Allen has more:

Transcript

Researchers say confirmed evidence of cougars in the Midwest has
increased considerably over the last fifteen years, and the number of
unconfirmed sightings by the public ranges into the hundreds. But so
far, scientists say, the big cats have not settled in the region. Bob Allen
has more:


The Eastern Cougar Network tracks hard evidence of cougars in
Midwestern states. That means photos, DNA samples or a carcass
confirmed by an expert.


Clay Nielsen is a wildlife researcher at Southern Illinois University in
Carbondale. He’s the scientific advisor for the Cougar Network and he
thinks cougars likely are dispersing from Western states where their
population is growing but their habitat shrinking. He says carcasses
found in the Midwest mostly turn out to be young males:


“And so a major limitation of getting populations to become established
has a lot to do with females getting here. Because some of the habitat in
the Midwest especially the forested areas the big woods are going to be
probably good habitat for them.”


Wildlife scientists say there’s no confirmed breeding population of
cougars east of the Dakotas.


For the Environment Report, I’m Bob Allen.

Related Links

Battle Over the Right to Grow Rice

  • Roger LaBine winnows the wild rice. (Photo by Michael Loukinen, Up North Films)

Since European settlers first came to this country they have had serious conflicts with Native Americans. The GLRC’s Sandy Hausman reports on one modern-day dispute between a Native American tribe and communities in the upper Midwest:

Transcript

Since European settlers first came to this country they have had serious conflicts with
Native Americans. The GLRC’s Sandy Hausman reports on one modern-day dispute
between a Native American tribe and communities in the upper Midwest:


(Sound of Ojibwe music)


The Ojibwe tribe first came to the north woods of Michigan and Wisconsin hundreds of
years ago. They say their migration from the east coast was guided by prophets. Those
prophets told them to keep moving until they came to a place where food grows on the
water. Roger Labine is a spiritual leader with the tribe. He says that food was wild rice:


“This was a gift to us. This is something that is very, very sacred to us. This is very
important, just as our language. This is part of who we are.”


For hundreds of years, wild rice was a staple of the tribe’s diet, but starting in the 1930s,
private construction of hydroelectric dams pushed water levels in rice growing areas up.
High water killed most of the plants and took a toll on wildlife. Bob Evans is a biologist
with the U.S. Forest Service. He says fish, bird and insect populations dropped
dramatically:


“Black tern is a declining, threatened species that is known to use wild rice beds,
Trumpeter swans. They’re a big user of rice beds. Um, just a whole lot of plants and
animals. It’s really a whole ecosystem in itself.”


So in 1995, the tribe, the U.S. Forest Service and several other government agencies
demanded a change. A year later, the federal government ordered dam operators to drop
their maximum water levels by 9 inches. The dam owners appealed that decision, but in
2001 a federal court ruled against them.


That fall, the Ojibwe who live on Lac Vieux
Desert harvested nearly 16 acres of wild rice and this summer, the tribe is tending more than 55 acres.
But the resurgence of rice beds comes at a price. Lower lake levels have left docks in this
boating community high and dry, created muddy shorelines and made long-time residents
and summer boaters angry:


“I used to come here and dock all the time. We picnicked here. I had to walk in 50 feet,
because there wasn’t enough water to float a pontoon, and it’s that way all around the
lake.”


Ken Lacount is president of the Lac Vieux Desert homeowners association. He first
came here in the 1940s and doesn’t see why his cultural traditions should take a backseat
to those of the Ojibwe:


“My grandfather built one of the first resorts. I fished in Rice Bay my entire life. That
was his favorite place to take me.”


Lacount is bitter. He and his neighbors feel powerless to change the situation, since a
federal court has ruled for the Ojibwa. Defenders of that decision say water levels are
especially low because of a prolonged drought in region. When that ends, they predict
lake levels will rise, and homeowners on Lac Vieux Desert will be happier.


(Sound of paddling)


Such conflicts are nothing new. Ron Seeley is a reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal. He’s covered Native American issues for more than 20 years. Paddling through the rice beds, he recalls an earlier battle
over fishing rights. In the late 80s, a court ruled the Ojibwe were entitled by treaty to
spear fish each spring. Local fishermen worried the practice would destroy their industry:


“Sometimes thousands of people would show up at the landings on a spring night. Tribal
members from all over the upper Midwest would come to support the spearers and drum
and chant. The anti-Indian forces were arrested for using wrist rockets or real powerful
sling shots to shoot pellets at the tribal members while they were out spearing. It was a
violent time up here.”


As court after court upheld the rights of native spear fishermen, and as commercial
fishermen continue to prosper, hostilities subsided and now, as the Native Americans prepare for
their biggest rice harvest in more than 50 years, the Ojibwe hope that the controversy over water levels
will also die down. Tribal leader Roger Labine says wild rice is a symbol of the Ojibwe’s survival:


“This is an endangered species. It’s something that we’re fighting to save, just like the
eagle, just like the wolf. We were put here to care for Mother Earth and all the gifts that
the creator gave us.”


And having won the first battle to restore rice beds, Labine is hoping to secure even
greater protection for these wetlands by asking the federal government to declare the rice
beds historic.


For the GLRC, I’m Sandy Hausman.

Related Links

Plant Disease Creeps Into Midwest

A plant disease that could threaten oak trees has moved
from California to the Midwest. The GLRC’s Chris Lehman
has more:

Transcript

A plant disease that could threaten oak trees has moved
from California to the Midwest. The GLRC’s Chris
Lehman has more:


The disease was discovered in California in 1995 and has
mainly been confined to the Pacific Northwest. The
scientific name is Phytophthora ramorum. It
attacks some types of oak trees and shrubs.


Scientists say it could threaten large portions of eastern woodland.
Symptoms of the disease are hard to spot with the un-
trained eye, and some trees survive for years after
becoming infected.


The Indiana Department of Natural Resources says the
disease was discovered on a shrub that was shipped to a
hardware store from the state of Oregon.


Officials hope the early discovery of the disease means it won’t immediately
spread. But they say the incident is an example of how
easily deadly plant diseases can move from one part of the
country to another.


For the GLRC, I’m Chris Lehman.

Related Links

Cities Cope With Pesticide Pollution

  • Farmers are using fewer pesticides these days. (photo by Don Breneman)

Today, we continue our series on pollution in the heartland. Farm pollution is one of the biggest contamination problems in the country. But unlike other industries, there are very few pollution restrictions on agriculture. In the second story of our week-long series, the GLRC’s Lester Graham reports when cities clean up pollution from pesticides, the cost ends up on their citizens’ water bills:

Transcript

Today, we continue our series on pollution in the heartland. Farm pollution is one of the biggest
contamination problems in the country. But unlike other industries, there are very few pollution
restrictions on agriculture. In the second story of our week-long series, the GLRC’s Lester
Graham reports when cities clean up pollution from pesticides the cost ends up on their citizens’
water bills:


Every city in the Corn Belt that gets its water from surface supplies such as lakes and rivers has to
deal with pesticide contamination. For the most part, the pesticide levels are below federal
standards for safe drinking water. But water treatment plants have to test for the chemicals and
other pollutants that wash in from farm fields.


Some cities have had to build artificial wetlands or take other more expensive measures to help
reduce pollution such as nitrogen, phosphorous and pesticides.


Craig Cummings is the Water Director for the City of Bloomington, Illinois.


“Well, you know, it is an expense that, you know, we would rather not bear, obviously. We
don’t, you know, particularly like to pass that on to our customers. But, again, it’s understood
that we’re not going to have crystal clear, pristine waters here in the Midwest. But, that’s not to
say that we should stick our head in the sand and not work with the producers. At least here in
our little neck of the woods we think we have a great working relationship with the producers.”


Part of that working relationship is a liaison with the farmers.


Jim Rutheford has worked with farmers in the area on soil conservation issues for decades. He’s
showing me the artificial wetlands that the City of Bloomington is monitoring to see if it can help
reduce some of the contaminants that end up in the city’s water supply. The wetlands reduce
nitrogen runoff and filter out some of the pesticides such as atrazine that otherwise would end up
in Bloomington’s lake.


“The atrazine was used back several years ago in high concentrated amounts. Its effects were if
you get a flush of rain after your atrazine is put on, it comes into the lake.”


Rutherford says for a very long time atrazine has been popular with corn farmers.


“It’s the cheapest, but it’s also gives more problems as far as water quality is concerned.”


Because atrazine has been so popular, a lot of farmers use it and it’s polluted some lakes to the
point they exceeded safe drinking water standards.


In one test during spring applications of atrazine, National Oceanic and Atmospherica
Administration scientists found so much of the chemical had evaporated from Midwest farm
fields that rain in some parts of the East Coast had atrazine levels that exceeded safe drinking
water levels.


But atrazine levels have been going down. It’s not so much because of artificial wetlands or
because farmers are concerned about pesticide pollution, although some of them have expressed
concern. Atrazine has not been as much of a problem because more and more farmers are
switching to genetically modified crops such as Round-Up Ready soybeans and more recently
Round-Up Ready corn. The Monsanto seed is genetically altered so that the Monsanto pesticide,
Round-Up, can be applied to the fields and not hurt the crops. And Round-Up doesn’t cause the
kind of water pollution that atrazine does.


Mike Kelly is a farmer who’s concerned about reducing storm water runoff from farm fields.


“A lot of the herbicides that we’re using attack the plant, not the soil. For example, Round-Up
does not hang around in the soil. Now, I do still use atrazine. It does attach to soil particles. But
there’s where the advantage of no-till–the soil staying put in the field–as you said, we’re not
getting as much erosion, so it stays put and breaks down the way it’s supposed to.”


Kelly use a conservation tillage method that doesn’t plow up the soil the way traditional methods
do. That means less soil erosion so pesticides aren’t as likely to end up in waterways. And Kelly says low-till and no-till methods are beginning to get a hand from nature:


“Definitely conservation tillage and no-till is going to help keep herbicides in the field. Again, he
do see increased infiltration through better soil structure and also through earthworms coming
back, creating holes about the size of a pencil three to four feet deep in our soils. That is a nice
avenue for water to infiltrate rather than run off.”


And if more of the water percolates down into the soil, less of it is going to end up polluting
water supplies such as the City of Bloomington’s lake.


Water Director Craig Cummings says they city encourages voluntary efforts like Mike Kelly’s.
Cummings says the city depends on the farming community too much to point a finger, accusing
farmers of pollution.


“We recognize that we’re in the breadbasket of the world here. And we’re going to see with the
kind of agricultural practices that we have here in the Midwest or United States, we’re going to
see some of these contaminants.”


Cummings says it’s not a matter of eliminating pesticide contamination at the source, but
rather a matter of the city keeping levels low enough that the water is safe to drink.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Toning Down Train Horns

  • The sound of train horns is loud and makes your cover your ears. Now, there is a different kind of horn, the wayside train horn, that could make all that sound a little less noisy. (Photo courtesy of the Department of Transportation)

The sound of a train blowing its horn is an unavoidable part of life in many communities. One town is taking steps to make trains a little less intrusive on the lives of people who live near the tracks. The GLRC’s Chris Lehman reports:

Transcript

The sound of a train blowing its horn is an unavoidable part of life in
many communities. One town is taking steps to make trains a little less
intrusive on the lives of people who live near the tracks. The GLRC’s
Chris Lehman reports:


About 80 freight trains roll through this crossing every day. They’re not
subtle.


(Sound of train horn)


That’s what a Union Pacific locomotive sounds like as it rolls through
this city in northern Illinois.


Now, here’s a different kind of train whistle:


(Sound of a wayside train horn)


That’s something called a wayside horn. The City of DeKalb is seeking
permission to install these horns at four of the seven street crossings
along the main Union Pacific east-west tracks through the city. The
other streets would have upgraded crossing gates. The goal would be to
eliminate the need for most engines to blow their horns as they pass
through town.


The wayside horns themselves aren’t much quieter than a regular train
horn. After all, they’re not supposed to be quiet. Cars and pedestrians
would still be warned about oncoming trains. The difference is that a
train sounds its horn as it approaches the crossing.


The wayside horn stays at the crossing. The theory is that a wayside
horn directs its sound down the street…it’s not the indiscriminate
blasting that interrupts people who live in houses that happen to be near
the tracks but nowhere near a crossing.


(Sound of walkie-talkie)


DeKalb City Engineer Joel Maurer recently set up a wayside horn and
walked through a residential neighborhood to test the theory. This is
what a wayside horn sounds like a block away from the tracks, but on the
same street as a crossing:


(Sound of wayside horn)


Now, this is what a wayside horn sounds like a block away from the
tracks, but on a street where there isn’t a crossing. You’ll have to listen
closely:


(Sound of walkie-talkie, then faint sound of horn)


If you’re having trouble hearing it…well, that’s kind of the point.


Now, here’s what a train horn sounds like at that same street corner:


(Sound of train horn)


The City’s tests found that in areas a block or more away from the tracks,
the wayside horns measured some ten decibels lower than train horns,
but the wayside horns won’t make a difference in just residential
communities.


Jennifer Groce is director of Main Street DeKalb, a downtown advocacy
organization. Her office is about a block from the tracks. She says she’s
looking forward to the switch to wayside horns…


“Any help to help deafen the sound a little bit is definitely an
improvement to what we have now. With 80 trains a day, it’s a huge
influence on our businesses. We talk with all different kinds of people
throughout the day, and you can hear us on our phones, you can hear that
train, all the time. It’s a great factor for us to be able to deafen it a
little bit. Especially for the residents that are down here and have to
hear it. A lot of times we can’t open our windows, you can’t
have your car window rolled down…so to be able to stand here freely
without having to plug your ears, is a very nice thing.”


It could be a while before Groce can unplug her ears, though. The City
has to get the wayside horn plan cleared by a web of state and Federal
agencies, but DeKalb does have precedence on its side. Wayside horns
have been installed in about 60 communities nationwide, with the highest
concentration in the Midwest. Some towns have banned train whistles
altogether. But new, stricter Federal regulations now make that all but
impossible in many locations. That might make the wayside horns ever
more popular.


For the GLRC, I’m Chris Lehman.

Related Links