Tag: ontario

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

Lessons From Insect Infested Wood

  • A team of horses drags a dead ash tree through the woods to be milled into usable lumber. Tens of millions of ash trees have been killed by a bug imported from China called the emerald ash borer. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Ash trees are dying by the millions because of an infestation of a
foreign bug. In one town, they’re using the dead wood to help build a
library. Lester Graham reports the wood beams and flooring will be a
permanent exhibit to remind visitors of the trees that were once there
and the cost of imported pests:

Transcript

Ash trees are dying by the millions because of an infestation of a
foreign bug. In one town, they’re using the dead wood to help build a
library. Lester Graham reports the wood beams and flooring will be a
permanent exhibit to remind visitors of the trees that were once there
and the cost of imported pests:


Craig Novotney is driving a team of black draft horses, some young
Percherons, through a wood lot. They’re dragging a pretty good sized
log out into the open to be trucked away and turned into lumber. They
could have used a bulldozer to do this job, but that would have damaged
a lot of the other trees in these woods:


“It’s a lot less impact on the forest floor. You don’t ruin near as
much stuff, you know, getting it out with horses. It’s a kind of
lighter approach to it.”


Sixty ash trees have been cut down on this four-acre piece of land.
They were all dead, killed by a bug called the emerald ash borer. The
wood from these dead trees will be used to make flooring, wood trim,
and to be support beams for a new branch library.


The architects knew they wanted to use ash, as a way of reminding
people of this disappearing natural resource. But it was the flooring
contractor who suggested the ash wood they needed was on the very
property where the library is to be built.


John Yarema owns Johnson Hardwood Floors:


“We were originally came out to look at flooring and ash. And when we
told them we could use the material off the site, they were excited.”


Rather than just flooring, Yarema suggested the architects use the dead
ash trees for some of the structure of the building, so that people
could see the damage the emerald ash borer had done, a sort of
permanent exhibit.


“One wall – it’s a 90 foot wall facing the woods – all glass. So, in
front of that, we’re going to have trees, emerald ash borer-killed
trees supporting that wall.”


The trees will still bear the marks of the damage done by the bug.
The ash tree is a popular tree, but like this place where they’re
chopping down the trees, city after city has had to cut down all of
their ash trees in an effort to stop the spread of the emerald ash
borer.


Despite efforts to quarantine infested areas, the emerald ash borer
is spreading. It was first detected in Michigan in 2002. It probably
came in shipping crates from China. The pest already has spread to a
half dozen other states and Ontario. The bug is being spread in part by people
hauling firewood with them on vacation and hunting trips, and in some
cases by nursery stock being shipped out of the area.


Josie Parker is the Director of the Library District in Ann Arbor,
Michigan where this new branch library is being built.


“Because it’s a public building, it will tell the story of what can
happen and did when there’s an infestation. This building will always
be here. The emerald ash borer tracings will be evident in the wood.
So, we’ll be able to explain (to) science classes and anyone who’s
interested what happened to ash trees and why we need to be more
careful about insect infestations.”


A lot of the dead ash has been cut up for firewood. But some people
have felt that the wood shouldn’t be wasted. It should be preserved
somehow. John Yarema says it makes him sad, seeing the ash tree
disappear. But, he likes the idea of using these ash trees in a way
that might serve as a lesson:


“It’s nice in the sense that it’s in an educational facility and not
chopped up into firewood. So, in that way, you feel better than
burning it in a fireplace. If we can make a statement and maybe
somebody will look at it, maybe a child will look at it and say, you
know, ‘Wow, this is…’ because (in) 40 years there aren’t going to be
any. The only ash trees that’ll be around will be in the flooring, the
walls, the ceiling and in the structure. I think we just all need to
open our eyes and hope for the best, I guess.”


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Road Salt Damage

  • Overuse of salt can cause damage to concrete, steel and the environment. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Each year about 118,000 people are hurt and 1,300 people are killed on
the roads during snowy and icy conditions. So, snowplows hit the
roads, scraping snow and ice off the surface… and spreading
incredible amounts of salt on highways, streets and roads to help keep
them clear. Lester Graham reports there’s some concern about the long-
term effects of all that salt:

Transcript

Each year about 118,000 people are hurt and 1,300 people are killed on
the roads during snowy and icy conditions. So, snowplows hit the
roads, scraping snow and ice off the surface… and spreading
incredible amounts of salt on highways, streets and roads to help keep
them clear. Lester Graham reports there’s some concern about the long-
term effects of all that salt:


This dump truck is getting ready for a load of salt for a coming
winter storm. Salt helps make icy roads safer. It helps prevent
people from slipping and falling on sidewalks. And… it’s pretty
cheap. But there are problems with salt. Salt pollutes and salt
corrodes.


Mark Cornwell has spent a good deal of his career trying to convince
highway crews that there are better ways to keep things safe and reduce
how much salt is dumped on roads and sidewalks:


“Salt basically damages just about everything it comes in contact
with. Salt moves through concrete and attacks structural steel,
bridges, roads, parking structures; it eats the mortar out of bricks
and foundations. It damages limestone, you know, just on and on and
on.”


So, even though salt is cheap, the damage it does costs a lot. It’s a
hidden cost that’s seldom calculated. Imagine the cost of having to
replace a bridge five years early because the structure is weakened by
salt. And then there are your direct costs: trying to keep salt
washed off your vehicle, and still seeing rust attack your car.


Cornwell says there are some cities and road commissioners working to
reduce the amount of salt spread on the roads. But in most places, the
political pressure to get the salt trucks out early, and laying it on
thick to keep drivers happy, outweighs any concerns about trying to
reduce the salt:


“I’m sure the public expects full attention to snow and ice. And they
have absolutely no understanding, however, of what it costs to provide
that.”


Nobody thought a lot about the damage salt was causing until the last
couple of decades. In a few places, the people responsible for keeping
the roads and walkways safe have been trying to reduce the amount of
salt they use and still keep public safety tops on the list of
concerns:


“So, this is our shops. The brine-maker is right here.”


Marvin Petway is showing me some of the tools in his arsenal to reduce
how much salt is used and still keep things safe. He works at the
University of Michigan, where there’s a goal to cut the amount of salt
used in winter in half. What they’ve learned is using innovative ways
of putting down salt can actually help melt snow and ice faster. One
way is to mix it with water to get the chemicals in salt working
a little more quickly:


“Why use 5 pounds of rock salt when you can use 2 gallons of liquid
salt? We’re able to get better coverage, quicker, better cost, and
we’re putting the material that is effective in reducing ice build-up
directly to the area where we don’t want ice located.”


The crews trying to reduce salt use computer assisted spreaders to
measure out only the salt needed, they mix in less corrosive chemicals
that make salt brine more effective, and even just wetting the salt in
dump trucks with chemicals all help to melt snow and ice faster and in
the end use a lot less salt.


Nothing is going to replace salt altogether, but those efforts can add
up to a lot less salt. That means less destruction of infrastructure.


But there are more reasons for reducing salt than the damage to
roadways and parking decks. Salt also damages the environment:


Mark Cornwell first noticed the effects of salt because he was a
horticulturalist. He’d work all spring, summer and fall planting
shrubs, make the grass green, tending beds of flowers. Then the winter
would come:


“Unfortunately what we were doing in six months of winter was
undoing everything we did in the other six months of the year.
If you’re going to get ahead, you’ve got to solve the problem
and in my mind, that was misuse of salt.”


Use too much salt and it kills plants. And it turns out the cost of
using all that cheap salt could be even greater than anyone guessed.
For decades, it’s been assumed that rain washed away most of the salt, but
studies in Ontario find that a lot of the salt doesn’t get washed
away.


Instead, a good deal of it is percolating down into shallow aquifers.
Researchers predict that in the future we’ll start find salt is getting
into the groundwater that supplies many of the wells where we get our
drinking water.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Seed Bank Hopes to Save Trees in Peril

  • Examples of ash tree seeds that are part of the collection effort. (Photo by Lester Graham)

People have been saving seeds for thousands of years. Gardeners save
seeds of their favorite plants. Governments save seeds to protect
their food crops. Now, some people are freezing the seeds from trees.
That’s because the trees are being destroyed by an insect pest.
Rebecca Williams reports they’re hoping a gene bank will protect the
trees’ DNA and some day help bring the trees back:

Transcript

People have been saving seeds for thousands of years. Gardeners save
seeds of their favorite plants. Governments save seeds to protect
their food crops. Now, some people are freezing the seeds from trees.
That’s because the trees are being destroyed by an insect pest.
Rebecca Williams reports they’re hoping a gene bank will protect the
trees’ DNA and some day help bring the trees back:


Seeds are a pretty amazing little package. They might be small, but
they’re tough. They can live through very dry and very cold
conditions.


(Sound of seed being shaken out of a paper bag)


These seeds are from ash trees. In some parts of the Upper Midwest and
Ontario, ash trees have been wiped out. The seeds are all that’s left.
That’s because of the emerald ash borer. It’s a tiny green beetle that
got into the US in cargo shipped from China. So far, the beetles have
killed 20 million ash trees. No one’s been able to stop the beetles
from spreading.


David Burgdorf works for a lab with the US Department of Agriculture.
He says people might not even know they had ash trees until the trees
got attacked:


“If your lawn was filled with the ash tree and you had all this great
shade and your energy bills were low, but now the ash tree’s gone, you
only miss it when it’s gone.”


Burgdorf says a lot of people love ash trees for their gold and purple
fall colors. They grow fast and hold up well under ice storms. Native
American tribes depend on black ash for making baskets and medicine.


David Burgdorf is trying to make sure ash trees won’t disappear completely
if the beetle spreads across the country. He’s gathering ash seeds
sent in by volunteers. He’s hoping to build a collection that
represents the entire ash tree gene pool:


“We want to try not to have to bring something back. We don’t want it
to be extinct. It’s important we at least save the seed so we can maybe cross
it, or do something, breed in resistance to the tree and have it
available to come back.”


Burgdorf says he thinks of the seeds as an investment for the future.
The seeds are definitely being treated like a precious commodity.
They’re sorted and they’re X-rayed to make sure the living embryos in
the seeds haven’t been damaged.


Then, the very best seeds in the bunch are off to a high security
government vault:


“We kind of joke that it’s the Fort Knox for seeds.”


Dave Ellis is the seed curator at the National Center for Genetic
Resources Preservation. It’s a giant seed bank. Ellis says the ash
seeds are dehydrated and frozen at 0 degrees Fahrenheit. These steps
put the seeds into a deep sleep:


“In a dehydrated state, degradation of DNA happens much more slowly,
over a course of tens of years or hundreds of years.”


Ellis says the ash seeds should be viable for at least 25 years, if not
longer. He says researchers might be able to use the stored genetic
material to breed new pest-resistant ash trees in the future. Ellis
sees gene banks as a safeguard against a world that’s changing fast.


Scientists say wild plants and crops we depend on will face many new
threats. Climate change might bring more drought.
Escalating global trade could mean importing more pests.


Deb McCullough studies insect pests at Michigan State University. She
says any time you import cargo, you’re running the risk of also
importing pests that can run up huge bills. She says in North America,
one of the big concerns is imports from China:


“If you look at the latitude where China occurs, if you look at the
northern and southern latitude and you overlay that on top of the US and
Canada, it matches up almost perfectly. So you can figure that pretty
much any kind of climate or habitat you find in China, there’s going to
be something similar in the US.”


McCullough says not everything that gets in will turn out to be a pest,
but she says as China’s huge trade surplus with the US grows, there’s a
greater risk more pests will come in.


She says there are some new regulations in place, but restricting
international shipping is a tricky proposition. McCullough says seed
collecting might be one way to preserve plants we rely on:


“People who are molecular biologists, the gene jockeys, have gotten
very good at enhancing or producing resistant varieties of different
kinds of plants. So, that may be something that becomes an option in the
future, maybe not the too distant future.”


McCullough points out there will be serious debate about introducing a
genetically modified tree into the wild. Some people don’t like the
idea of manipulating the genetic makeup of plants or animals.


There are a lot of questions about what might be done with the frozen
seeds, but the seed collectors say regardless, they need to bank up the
DNA of plants that we’re in danger of losing.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

The 100 Mile Meal: A Homegrown Thanksgiving

  • Reporter Dustin Dwyer found all the ingredients for his Thanksgiving dinner within 100 miles of his house, including the turkey (poor thing). (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)

Thanksgiving is about family, friends, and ridiculous amounts of food. But the food we buy can have a big impact on the environment, and a lot more people are starting to look for local ingredients to put in their meals. One movement encourages people to get all their food from within 100 miles of their home. Dustin Dwyer tried to find out how practical that could be for his Thanksgiving feast:

Transcript

Thanksgiving is about family, friends, and ridiculous amounts of food. But the food we buy can have a big impact on the environment. And a lot more people are starting to look for local ingredients to put in their meals. One movement encourages people to get all their food from within 100 miles of their home. Dustin Dwyer tried to find out how practical that could be for his Thanksgiving feast:


I like to look at labels on my food. I don’t care so much about the nutritional info, I just want to know where it came from.

But there’s a problem with that. Even if I know where something is packaged, I still have no idea where the actual ingredients come from. I mean, where the heck do they make partially hydrogenated soybean oil?

I have no idea. And so, for one meal, for the most important meal of the year, I decided to try to get all my food, and all the ingredients in my food, from within 100 miles of my apartment in Southeast Michigan.

If you’re impressed by my ingenious and creative idea, don’t be. I stole it from someone else. Alisa Smith and her partner James MacKinnon were on a 100 mile diet for a year, and they’re writing a book about it. I called up Alisa for some help.

Dwyer: “So my wife and I are going to do the 100 mile Thanksgiving, and I want to ask some advice.”


Smith: “Oh, great! For doing a single meal you picked a very good time to do it because it’s the harvest bounty, so that makes life a lot easier.”


I’m thinking, excellent, this could be a piece of cake. But I’m worried about a few tough ingredients, such as salt. Alisa says salt is a problem for a lot of people.


“I think in the end, you probably will find that salt isn’t available. And not being able t o make it yourself you might just say ‘okay salt is going to be an exception for us.'”


Ok, fine, but I still wanted to make as few exceptions as possible. I’ve got to have a challenge here, somehow.


That said, our menu would be simple: just turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and pumpkin pie. Turkey turned out to be easy.


“Roperti’s Turkey Farm.”


Christine Roperti has been living on her family’s turkey farm in suburban Detroit all her life. Farms like this one are getting crowded out more and more by suburban sprawl. There’s even a brand new subdivision next door to Christine’s place. There have been offers for her land too.


“Yeah, but I don’t want to go anywhere. I like the farm, and like raising my turkeys.”


I liked knowing that Christine actually enjoys this, and cares about it. It made me feel good. And that’s important, because I was also paying a lot more for her turkey than the store-bought stuff.


Anyway, I was flying high, and things were going really well. My list of exceptions was firming up, and it was mostly spices: salt plus all the spices for the pumpkin pie.


Then, while I was bragging at work about how I’d be able to get almost everything but salt for my local dinner, someone reminded me that there are actually salt mines under the city of Detroit.


Like a good journalist I looked into it, and ended up on the most absurd shopping trip of my life.


“Okay I’m headed over the Ambassador Bridge, going from Detroit to Windsor, Ontario. They do have salt mines in Detroit, but they don’t sell that salt as food salt in the US, they only sell road salt. So in order to get food salt that’s made within a hundred miles of my house, I have to go to Canada.”


Because of some trade regulation I don’t understand, table salt from this mine can’t be commercially shipped into the US. So I ended up in a city I barely know, looking for a grocery store. I went into the first, and then the second without finding the right brand of salt. Then an hour or so later, in the third store…


“Finally! Windsor salt.”


So, I wasted a lot of fuel putting this dinner together. It’s probably still an improvement over what the Sierra Club says is an average two thousand miles of driving that goes into each ingredient for my usual dinner.


But here’s the thing: if all this local stuff is available, I think I should be able to get it at the grocery store down the street. I should probably let them know that, and let them know I’m willing to pay more for it. I mean, that’s better than driving to Canada for salt, anyway.


But making that happen would take a lot more effort, a lot more voting with my pocketbook, and a lot more than just checking labels.


For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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

States Fail to Stop Insect Pest

States are failing to stop the spread of an invasive insect that’s killing millions of ash trees. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

States are failing to stop the spread of an invasive insect that’s killing
millions of ash trees. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports:


People are spreading the emerald ash borer into new areas. The destructive
pest was first discovered killing ash trees in southeast Michigan four years ago.
Moving infested wood has spread the bug to Ontario, Ohio and Indiana. Now,
Illinois officials say the ash borer is infesting trees west of Chicago.


Researchers say moving infested firewood is the fastest way the beetle spreads.
Several states have banned moving firewood from quarantined areas. States
as far away as South Dakota are warning out-of-state campers to keep firewood at
home.


Critics argue states are too lenient in enforcing the bans.


State officials say they’re struggling to keep up, as federal funding to
stop the ash borer is cut.


Researchers warn the ash borer could wipe out billions of ash trees if it’s not stopped.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

States Struggle to Control Ash Borer

  • The emerald ash borer is killing ash trees in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Ontario... and scientists say all the ash in North America is at risk if the beetle can't be stopped. (Photo courtesy of USFS)

A tiny green beetle is killing millions of ash trees. And so far nobody’s
found a way to stop it in its tracks. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports cities and states are struggling to find money to keep the beetle from spreading:

Transcript

A tiny green beetle is killing millions of ash trees. And so far nobody’s
found a way to stop it in its tracks. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams
reports cities and states are struggling to find money to keep the beetle
from spreading:


Once emerald ash borers chew their way into your ash trees, there’s
pretty much only one thing you can do.


(Sound of chainsaw and tree cracking and falling)


Crews here have been sawing down and chipping up trees six days a
week. In some places, crews are cutting down both dead and live trees.
Dead trees are a safety hazard. Cutting live trees near infested areas can
help contain the beetles.


The emerald ash borer is native to China. Scientists think it got in on
wood packing crates more than ten years ago. The emerald ash borer eats
through the living part of the tree just underneath the bark. The beetles
cut off the tree’s water and food supply… so it starves to death. 15
million ash trees are dead or dying in Michigan. Hundreds of thousands
are dying in Ohio, Indiana and Ontario, and it could spread to other states
soon.


Some cities have been hit really hard. For example, some of the trees in
Ann Arbor, Michigan have been dead for a couple of years. Kay
Sichenader is the city’s forester. She says she’s worried about limbs
breaking off trees, or bark falling off in 80 pound chunks.


“There’s some terrifically bad ones out there. Nothing will make me
happier than when those trees are down, I gotta tell you.”


This isn’t the first time cities have lost big shade trees. Dutch elm
disease almost wiped out American elms in the 1960’s and 70’s. It’s a
little ironic: people planted ash trees to replace the elms because they
thought ash trees were invincible.


That love of ash trees means cities are losing 20 or 30 percent of their
trees, and they’re spending millions of dollars to take trees out.


Forester Kay Sichenader says her city normally takes out a thousand old
trees a year. Now, she’s got ten times as many trees to cut down.


“If I never bumped it up, and we just remained with our thousand a year,
we would never change because it would take me ten years to get the ash
out. In the meantime I’d have 10,000 more dead trees to deal with. It’s
sobering.”


Sichenader says the city’s trying to get the dead ash trees out as fast as
they can. She’s contracted five extra crews to saw down trees. She
hopes they’ll be done by the end of the year, but it might be longer.


Many homeowners are getting impatient. They’re worried about big
branches falling on their cars or homes. Or worse, falling on their kids.


Laura Lee Hayes lives in a cul-de-sac with four infested ash trees. She
points out a big branch on her neighbor’s dead tree.


“This whole piece is just laying here, ready to pull off, and there are
small children that play in this yard. That’s why I look to my city to get
over here and get these trees down. There’s a real frightening aspect to
that.”


Hayes says she tried to pay to take the trees down herself, but she found
out it would’ve cost more than a thousand dollars.


In Indiana, homeowners now have to spend their own money to get rid of
dead trees in their yards. State officials say they can’t afford to keep
cutting down live ash trees to slow the infestation. The state won’t be
giving money to help cities cut down dead trees either. That could mean
the emerald ash borer will spread unchecked.


At first, the federal government sent states several million dollars to fight
the beetle, but now the money’s just trickling in. In 2004, Michigan
Governor Jennifer Granholm asked President Bush to declare the state a
federal disaster area. That request was denied. Recently, officials in
Ohio and Michigan said they’ll have to cut back on containing new
infestations.


These trends worry scientists.


Deb McCullough is a forest entomologist at Michigan State University.
She says states barely have enough money to monitor how far the beetle’s
spreading, and she says a lot more money’s needed for ad campaigns to
tell people to stop moving firewood. The beetle spreads fastest when
campers or hunters move infested wood.


“You have to look down the road, and either you spend millions of
dollars today to try to contain emerald ash borer or we’re going to be
looking at losses in the tens of billions of dollars in the future, and it’s not
too distant of a future.”


McCullough says if more funding doesn’t come in states might need to
have timber sales to take ash out before the beetle kills it. And cities will
still be paying millions of dollars to take out dead trees. That means
people who live in those cities might see cuts in other programs or have
to pay higher taxes.


Deb McCullough says the economic impacts are serious… but the
environmental impacts could be even worse. She says it’s hard to know
how wildlife might be affected if we continue to lose millions of ash
trees.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Mapping Wooly Mammoth Genome

Wooly mammoths stopped roaming the Great Lakes region 10,000 years ago. But a Canadian scientist has made a breakthrough in reviving their prehistoric genetic code. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:

Transcript

Wooly mammoths stopped roaming the Great Lakes region 10,000 years
ago, but a Canadian scientist has made a breakthrough in reviving their
prehistoric genetic code. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David
Sommerstein reports:


Scientists have studied ancient DNA in the past, but only in fragments.
Geneticist Hendrik Poinar got well-preserved DNA from a wooly
mammoth found in the Siberian permafrost. Poinar is an assistant
professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He and
colleagues at Penn State University have found a way to map the entire
mammoth genome.


“So, it’s really having a Kodak moment on the genes of the past, really,
as they were evolving, and being able to answer fascinating questions
about what makes a mammoth a mammoth, or what makes a Neanderthal a
Neanderthal, and how they differ from a human.”


So far, they’ve completed just one percent of the genome.


Poinar says the discovery begs tough ethical questions, like bringing
extinct animals back to life.


“Creating Pleistocene Park, basically.”


Poinar published the discovery in a recent issue of the Journal Science.


For the GLRC, I’m David Sommerstein.

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Ten Threats: Demand for Drinking Water Increasing

  • Water diversion is an increasing threat to the Great Lakes. As communities grow so does the demand. (Photo by Brandon Bankston)

We’re continuing the series, Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. Our field guide through the series is Lester Graham. He says our next report looks at where the demand for water will be greatest:

Transcript

We’re continuing the series Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. Our field
guide through the series is Lester Graham. He says our next report looks
at where the demand for water will be greatest.


Right around the Great Lakes is where there’s going to be more demand
for drinking water. Water officials say as cities and suburbs grow, so
does the need for water. Some towns very near the Great Lakes say they
need lake water right now, but in some cases they might not get it. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports:


People who live around the Great Lakes have long used the lakes’ water
for transportation, industry, and drinking water. Most of the water we
use, gets cleaned up and goes back in the lakes.


That’s because the Great Lakes basin is like a bowl. All the water used
by communities inside that bowl returns to the lakes in the form of
groundwater, storm water runoff, and treated wastewater, but recently, thirsty
communities just outside the basin—outside that bowl—have shown an
interest in Great Lakes water.


Dave Dempsey is a Great Lakes advisor to the environmental group
“Clean Water Action.”


“We are going to be seeing all along the fringe areas of the Great Lakes
basin all the way from New York state to Minnesota, communities that
are growing and have difficulty obtaining adequate water from nearby
streams or ground water.”


Treated water from those communities won’t naturally go back to the
basin. Treated wastewater and run-off from communities outside the
Great Lakes basin goes into the Mississippi River system, or rivers in the
east and finally the Atlantic Ocean.


The Great Lakes are not renewable. Anything that’s taken away has to be
returned. For example, when nature takes water through evaporation, it
returns it in the form of rain or melted snow. When cities take it away, it
has to be returned in the form of cleaned-up wastewater to maintain that
careful balance.


Dave Dempsey says the lakes are like a big giant savings account, and
we withdraw and replace only one percent each year.


“So, if we should ever begin to take more than one percent of that
volume on an annual basis for human use or other uses, we’ll begin to
draw them down permanently, we’ll be depleting the bank account.”


Some of the citiesthat want Great Lakes water are only a few miles from
the shoreline. One of the most unique water diversion requests might come
from the City of Waukesha, in southeastern Wisconsin. The city is just 20 miles
from Lake Michigan. Waukesha is close enough to smell the lake, but it
sits outside the Great Lakes basin. Waukesha needs to find another
water source because it’s current source – wells—are contaminated with
radium.


Dan Duchniak is Waukesha’s water manager. He says due to the city’s
unique geology, it’s already using Great Lakes water. He says it taps an
underground aquifer that eventually recharges Lake Michigan.


“Water that would be going to Lake Michigan is now coming from Lake
Michigan…. our aquifer is not contributing to the Great Lakes any more,
it’s pulling away from the Great Lakes.”


Officials from the eight Great Lakes states and Ontario and Quebec
recently approved a set of rules that will ultimately decide who can use
Great Lakes water. The new rules will allow Waukesha—and some
other communities just outside the basin—to request Great Lakes water,
and drafters say Waukesha will get “extra credit” if it can prove it’s
using Lake Michigan water now.


Environmentalists are still concerned that water taken from the Lakes be
returned directly to the Lakes, but some say even that could be harmful.


Art Brooks is a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of
Wisconsin- Milwaukee. He says the water we put back still carries some
bi-products of human waste.


“No treatment plant gets 100 percent of the nutrients out of the water,
and domestic sewage has high concentrations of ammonia and
phosphates. Returning that directly to the lake could enhance the growth
of algae in the lake.”


That pollution could contribute to a growing problem of dead zones in
some areas of the Great Lakes. Brooks and environmentalists concede
that just one or two diversions would not harm the Great Lakes, but they
say one diversion could open the floodgates to several other requests, and
letting a lot of cities tap Great Lakes water could be damaging.


Derek Sheer of the environmental group “Clean Wisconsin” says some
out-of-basin communities have already been allowed to tap Great Lakes
water under the old rules.


“The area just outside of Cleveland–Akron, Ohio– has a diversion
outside of the Great Lakes basin, so they’re utilizing Great Lakes water
but they’re putting it back.”


There are several communities that take Great Lakes water, but they, too,
pump it back. The new water rules still need to be ok-ed by the legislature of
each Great Lakes state, and Congress. Since the rules are considered a
baseline, environmental interests throughout the region say they’ll lobby
for even stricter rules on diversions.


For the GLRC, I’m Christina Shockley..

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