Michigan Retailers Importing Cherries

  • Smeltzer Orchards in northern Michigan had to import cherries - for the first time ever. (Photo by Bob Allen)

When you scoop up ice cream with cherries in it this summer or add a handful of dried cherries to your salad chances are the fruit won’t be from Michigan. Or even from the United States.


Extremely unusual weather this spring has crippled the state’s entire tree fruit industry. The bulk of the nation’s tart cherry crop is produced here. But as Bob Allen reports, not everybody in the industry is jumping to import fruit from overseas:


The official estimate for the size of the cherry crop won’t be in for a few more weeks.


Even the most optimistic projections for the amount of fruit on the trees amounts to less than ten percent of what the state typically grows.


Tim Brian is president of Smeltzer Orchards in Benzie County.


He grabs a stem from a tart cherry tree and with his thumbnail slices open several buds.


“And right there you can see that brown pistil right there, that’s cooked. There isn’t a single good one in this whole cluster.”


A bizarre stretch of hot weather in early March woke trees up from winter dormancy. That was followed by more than a dozen nights of hard freezing temperatures.


Brian thinks there will be entire orchards that won’t be harvested at all this year even if there is a scattering of fruit in them.


“I mean, with $4 fuel, even if there is only ten cherries on a tree that’s not going to be economically feasible to harvest.”


Smeltzer’s has been in the business for well over a century.


The company runs a medium sized processing plant that freezes and dries cherries.


Inside the plant, a dozen people are pitting and sorting sweet cherries.
The thing is… these cherries are from Chile.


“Normally we would not do this. This is actually the first time we’ve done something like this.”


Normally they would be Michigan cherries if not local. That’s because typically, a processor such as Smeltzer keeps a supply in the freezer.


But the crop was modest the last two years and demand for cherries was high. So the company sold most of what was in storage and now the cupboards are nearly bare.


That’s why Brian is scouring Europe for tart cherries right now. He’s got a big shipment coming in from Poland.


Some of that Polish fruit will go to Cherry Republic. The retailer sells everything cherry from dried fruit to jams, salsas to wine.


Owner Bob Sutherland was surprised when he couldn’t buy frozen cherries a couple of weeks ago. But he was able to bid on some Polish cherries in time to gear up his summer production. And he’s kept his sense of humor.


“Yes, and all four of our stores will be flying the Polish flag and our employees are going to be wearing the Polish emblem right on their shoulders. So, we’ll have fun.”


The imported cherries come at a higher price.


But Cherry Republic plans to stretch its supply and keep costs down by mixing other fruits into its products.


Sutherland thinks if the industry pulls together and keeps its head up it will weather this storm of bad luck.


“You know, we want to keep working. This is a $300 million industry up in northern Michigan…cherries. And we don’t want it to shut down.”


The cherry industry nearly came to a standstill back in 2002 after a devastating spring freeze basically wiped out that year’s entire crop.


Don Gregory is an owner of one of the largest fruit orchards in the north. And he’s also part of one of the region’s biggest processors of dried and frozen cherries.


He says the company hasn’t decided yet whether to go with imports this year.


“As growers we’ve always been afraid of imports. And boy we don’t want imports coming in and taking over our market.”


But Gregory thinks one thing is pretty sure, there will be fewer cherry products on store shelves for years to come.


In fact, some say the industry was just getting fully back on its feet after the crop was wiped out a decade ago.


For The Environment Report, I’m Bob Allen.

Interview: DEQ on the Safety of Fracking

  • A gas drilling rig in Appalachia. (Photo by User Meridithw / Wikimedia Commons)

Hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – is a method of drilling for natural gas.  Drillers use fracking to get to the gas that’s trapped in tight shale rock formations below the water table.  Fracking pumps a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into a well under high pressure to force open the rock and extract the gas. (You can check out this in-depth series by Michigan Watch's Lester Graham)

In Michigan, drillers have used the fracking method for more than 50 years and the state regulates the industry.  But they’ve been drilling vertical wells.

There’s been more interest lately in horizontal fracking – that’s where companies drill horizontally along the shale rock up to a mile or more.  That makes the well site much more productive.  It has lead to a boom in gas drilling and production and more jobs in some parts of the country.

But horizontal fracking also uses much more water. 

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality regulates fracking.

I spoke with Brad Wurfel, the Communications Director for the DEQ.  You can listen to the interview above.

Q: So – let’s start with water use.  With the more traditional, vertical, fracking we’re talking about tens of thousands of gallons of water – horizontal fracking uses millions of gallons.  This is water that’s contaminated and cannot be used again. What kinds of studies are being done to ensure water supplies are adequate for horizontal fracking in Michigan?

Brad Wurfel: With horizontal fracturing, they’re tens of thousands of feet down under the ground. So it does require more water, but it also requires fewer wells. Every user who uses a lot of water has to register that use as part of their permitting process.  And if it looks like the water withdrawal proposal is going to harm the environment, that permit gets denied.  Or the company gets sent back to the drawing board to find a new way.

Q: What happens to the contaminated fracking fluid when it comes back out of the well?

A: It’s handled very carefully because in other states where the regulation hasn’t been as good, that’s been one of the key problems with hydraulic fracturing.  The amount of chemical that’s in that water is really small – it’s one half of one percent.  We require that operators use steel tanks to contain it and that it’s sent to a deep injection well for disposal.

Q: A recent article in the Battle Creek Enquirer quoted MDEQ geologist Michael Shelton, who said that 6.7 million gallons of water can be used in a single fracking well.  So – one half of one percent of 6 million gallons is still 30,000 gallons of chemicals.

A: Well, when you figure the dilution, it’s not an eminent threat to the environment. That said, when you combine it with the saline that comes back up, it does make it something that we want to handle very carefully, and we do.

Q: A 2011 Congressional report found these chemicals can range from things considered harmless like salt and citric acid to chemicals that can pose serious health risks.  Things like benzene, formaldehyde and lead.   But that report also found that many of the chemicals or the chemical mixes were listed as trade secrets. What does the DEQ require companies to disclose about the chemicals they use? 

A: We get Material Safety Data Sheets, and in the event there was ever a problem with a hydraulic fracture in the state of Michigan, every component used and its percentage would be disclosed immediately to emergency responders.  We haven’t ever had a situation where we’ve needed to use it.  That said, most of what’s in hydraulic fractures is under trade secret for the mix, not the actual chemicals.

Q: But companies can still protect the mixes of chemicals they consider trade secret, right?

A: That’s correct.

Q: So, if you suspect there’s water contamination at a well site, how will you know what chemicals to look for?

A: Well, those chemicals would be… present in the environment.  And we could obviously look at what was used there and see if it was evident in say, a water supply.  That’s a pretty big hypothetical.  We’ve been hearing a lot from folks who’ve got fears about what might happen.  And I can’t speak to what might happen.  I can speak to the fact that in 50 years and 12,000 wells around the state, we’ve never had to respond to an environmental emergency with hydraulic fracturing. It’s been done safely.

Michigan Drilling Rights on the Auction Block

  • A map of the 23 counties where oil and gas drilling rights are up for auction today. (Image courtesy of DNR)

Starting at 9am this morning, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources will hold an auction to lease state-owned drilling rights for oil and natural gas. 

The state is offering drilling rights on more than 108,000 acres in 23 counties.  These auctions are usually held twice a year.  The minimum bid is $12 dollars an acre.

Mary Uptigrove is the acting manager of the DNR’s Minerals Management Section.  She says acquiring drilling rights is the first step in exploring for oil and gas.

“The lease is just a proprietary right that’s administered by our department. It does not give them the right to actually start drilling a well.  They have to seek other approvals from the Department of Environmental Quality for the drilling permit.”

The leases last five years, and the companies have the option to extend them.

Uptigrove says industry groups usually nominate parcels for the auction.  The state gets 1/6 of the royalties of any oil or gas that comes out of the ground.  That money is used to maintain state and local parks and to buy land.

Maryann Lesert lives near the Yankee Springs Recreation Area in Barry County. 

She’s worried the auction will lead to drilling under the park land… especially a kind of drilling for natural gas called horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

“It’s beautiful land, it has beautiful bodies of water and the environmental and water impact threats from fracking are of great concern.”

If drillers decide to go after oil and gas in this area, they won’t be able to set up their drills on the surface.  They’d have to drill from land nearby.

If they use horizontal fracking, they’d pump a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into a well under high pressure to force open rock and extract the gas.

Horizontal fracking can use millions of gallons of water per well.  After it’s used, that water is usually disposed of in deep injection wells. 

Maryann Lesert  is bothered by that idea.

“Those millions of gallons of water per well are never going to return to the area water table, to the area watersheds, to the Great Lakes basin. That’s water that’s gone forever.”

Before any of this can happen… companies first have to pay for the rights to drill and get state approval for their drilling operations.

The state is barred from auctioning drilling rights for some places, including Great Lakes bottomlands and critical sand dunes.

This story was informed by the Public Insight Network.

(music bump)

This is the Environment Report.

A private club in the Upper Peninsula has filed suit to stop the construction of a new mine in Marquette County.  It’s the first federal lawsuit to stop the project.  Peter Payette reports:

The nickel and copper mine, owned by Kennecott Eagle Minerals, has received permits from the state.  But the Huron Mountain Club says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needs to sign off too.

The club owns nearly 20,000 acres of forest downstream from the mine on the Salmon Trout River.

The lawsuit says sulfuric acid produced by sulfide mining could pollute the river, and the club is quote “horror-struck” by the prospect of the watershed collapsing because part of the mine will be dug directly underneath it.

The lawsuit also says the federal government needs to consider the potential for damage to Eagle Rock, a site near the entrance to the mine that is sacred to American Indians.

The mine has been under construction since 2010 and an attorney for the Huron Mountain Club expects Kennecott will argue that it is too late to bring up this issue.

But Rick Addison says it was the company’s decision to build the mine without the necessary permits.

"The lateness argument has no resonance to me, it’s simply the last refuge of the environmental scoundrel."

In a written statement, Kennecott says the mine has been extensively reviewed and already survived multiple legal challenges.

For the Environment Report, I’m Peter Payette.

And that’s the Environment Report for today. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Lead in Garden Products & Loosestrife Beetles

  • A warning label on the packaging of a garden hose. (Photo by Rebecca Williams/Michigan Radio)

The Ecology Center in Ann Arbor tested 179 kinds of garden products, including garden hoses, tools, gloves and kneeling pads.  They found 70% of the products contained levels of "high concern" of one or more toxic substances… including lead, cadmium and mercury.

From the report:

  • 30% of all products contained over 100 ppm lead in one or more component. 100 ppm is the Consumer Product Safety Commission Standard (CPSC) for lead in children’ products.
  • 100% of the garden hoses sampled for phthalates contained four phthalate plasticizers which are currently banned in children’s products.
  • Two water hoses contained the flame retardant 2,3,4,5-tetrabromo-bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (TBPH).

Jeff Gearhart is the Ecology Center’s research director.  He says the biggest concern is garden hoses – because a lot of people like to drink out of them on a hot day.

"We found that one-third of them contained lead in excess of the U.S. drinking water standards that apply to products like water faucets."

He says the problem is – garden hoses are not regulated.  Some hoses have warning labels telling you not to drink from them.

But Gearhart says they tested some polyurethane and natural rubber hoses and found they were lead-free.

"There’s a variety of polyurethane-based hoses that are made out of food-grade polyurethane and have lead-free fittings that are on the market. And there’s also natural rubber hoses we tested that don’t have the types of contaminants that are typical of the vinyl hoses."

He says they also did an experiment to see what kinds of chemicals might leach into water that's sitting in a hose, and left out in the sun.  Water sampled from one hose contained 0.280 mg/l (ppm) lead. This is 18 times higher than the federal drinking water standard.

The authors of the report have these recommendations:

  • Read the labels: Avoid hoses with a California Prop 65 warning that says “this product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects and other reproductive harm.” Buy hoses that are “drinking water safe” and “lead-free.”
  • Let it run: Always let your hose run for a few seconds before using, since the water that’s been sitting in the hose will have the highest levels of chemicals.
  • Avoid the sun: Store your hose in the shade. The heat from the sun can increase the leaching of chemicals from the PVC into the water.
  • Don't drink water from a hose: Unless you know for sure that your hose is drinking water safe, don’t drink from it. Even if it is labeled safe for drinking, flush it out first before sipping. It’s also a good idea to wash your hands after handling a hose since lead can transfer to your hands and then from your hands to your mouth when eating. Even low levels of lead may cause health problems.
  • Buy a Lead-free hose: One easy way to cut down on the amount of lead in your immediate environment is to get a lead-free garden hose. Not only will it drastically reduce the amount of lead being deposited in your yard, it will also virtually eliminate direct exposure when watering by hand or tending to the garden. A lead-free garden hose is also safe for children to get a much-needed drink or play in the sprinklers, and pets will also be spared of potential lead poisoning from water bowls filled from the hose. The hoses are often white with a thin blue stripe, and are commonly sold in marine and recreational vehicle (RV) stores. An RV lead-free garden hose can also come in a beige color with blue stripe, to match the beige paint of many RVs. Although sold for RV and marine use, these hoses serve as great lead-free garden hoses.
  • Test your soil: It's  a great idea to check the nutrient levels, but you can also check the levels of metals like lead. Another important source of lead includes lead paint.
  • It’s not just lead: Our test also detected phthalate plasticizers in both the PVC hose materials and in the water left standing in a PVC hose. Some of these phthalates are the same phthalates which have been banned in children’s products. We also detected bisphenol A (BPA) in water left standing in a PVC hose. BPA is used as an antioxidant in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics and as an inhibitor of end polymerization in PVC.
  • Avoid PVC: PVC needs potentially hazardous additives and stabilizers to make it “rubbery.” Instead, try a top-quality, food grade polyurethane hose that meets Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards or an old fashion natural rubber hose. Search on-line “polyurethane garden hose” or “rubber garden hose” for options.
  • Watch the brass: The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) limits lead in brass in residential water fixtures to no more than 2,500 ppm. Garden hoses ARE NOT regulated by the SDWA, and our tests show 29% of brass connectors contained greater than 2,500 ppm lead. Opt for a hose that is drinking water safe and lead free. Non-brass fittings (nickel, aluminum or stainless) are more likely to be lead-free.

 

This is the Environment Report.

Purple loosestrife is a widespread invasive plant. It’s taken over wetlands in every state in the U.S. except Florida. But now, Lindsey Smith reports scientists consider purple loosestrife an invasive species success story:

Purple loosestrife are those tall bright purple flowering plants you see mixed in with cattails lining the edge of many lakes and wetlands. It was first recorded in Michigan more than 160 years ago near Muskegon.


Doug Landis is a scientist at Michigan State University.


“But like many invasive plants, once they get a foothold they become much more aggressive invaders.”


Purple loosestrife can grow up to ten feet tall. And with each plant producing 2.5 million seeds a year, it quickly crowded out other native plants. People began to notice in the 1950’s that ducks, geese, and other waterfowl hate nesting in ponds overrun by loosestrife. And other native species have a hard time finding food.


“Basically every method to control purple loosestrife was tried and ultimately they decided that all the conventionally means were failing and they really needed to look at biological control.”


That means they had to find something to eat it.


(birds singing)


It’s mid-morning at Huff Park in Grand Rapids. Sunny, maybe 50 degrees, just warm enough for volunteers to begin spotting their targets moving around in the park’s wetlands.


“You have to kind of pick a spot, kind of watch it a little bit.”


That’s Jacqueline Bilello… she’s the stewardship coordinator at the Land Conservancy of West Michigan.


She crouches down in front of a newly budding purple loosestrife plant. She points out the tell-tale signs she’s looking for… little holes in the leaves.
“Got our first beetle.” (laughs)


Bilello carefully gathers the tiny black and red loosestrife beetle in a homemade bug trap. It’s passed around so the rest of the volunteers can see what they’re hunting for.


In a couple of hours the group has captured about 80 beetles… plenty to establish a new population at a nature preserve about ten miles away.


Entomologist Doug Landis says this beetle loves eating purple loosestrife. That’s all it eats in its native home in Europe. The beetle was first introduced in Michigan in 1994.


“The beetles become very abundant. They knock down the population of loosestrife but in doing so they’ve kind of eaten themselves out of house and home.”


So the beetles travel to find more purple loosestrife. Or, if they’re lucky, some people help them out. Landis says groups like this one in Grand Rapids regularly capture and release beetles to target specific areas.


So far, the beetle hasn’t adapted to eat any other plants. And Landis says it hasn’t caused any known secondary problems.


“15 years ago purple loosestrife was pretty much unchecked in southern Michigan. And now where I find purple loosestrife I almost always find the beetles.”


Landis says we can never get rid of purple loosestrife. But the beetles are keeping the plant under control most of the state.


For the Environment Report, I’m Lindsey Smith.

Report: Pipeline Laws Inadequate

  • The pipeline owned by Enbridge Energy that ruptured in July 2010. (Photo courtesy of NTSB)

A new report argues that our current laws are not strong enough to protect the Great Lakes from major oil spills. 

The National Wildlife Federation wanted to look at pipeline oversight after the massive tar sands oil spill in the Kalamazoo River in 2010.  The spill was the result of a ruptured pipeline owned by Enbridge Energy.  (The official cause of the spill is still under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board)

Sara Gosman is an attorney who wrote the report for the National Wildlife Federation.

"Federal laws are inadequate and states have not passed their own laws to fill in the gaps."

We’ve previously reported the spill ran through some of the highest quality wetlands in Michigan.

Sara Gosman says federal laws on oil pipelines do not protect all environmentally sensitive areas.  Instead, the laws cover something called high consequence areas.

"It’s a term of art used by the federal pipeline agency.  It’s a bunch of different areas.  For environmental purposes, it’s commercially navigable waterways, areas with threatened and endangered species and drinking water sources."

Gosman says federal government data show 44% of hazardous liquid pipelines in the country run through places that could affect high consequence areas.  She says that means companies have to do special inspections on those segments of pipelines… but not necessarily on the rest of the pipelines.

"This means 56% of hazardous liquid pipeline miles do not have to be continually assessed, have leak detection systems or be repaired on set timelines."

But she says it’s hard to find out exactly where the boundaries of these high consequence areas are.  That’s because after September 11th, the federal government started keeping the maps of these areas secret for national security reasons. 

The report identifies another problem with oversight of oil pipelines. 

Basically, pipeline companies do not have to ask the federal government for permission to site a new oil pipeline… unless the pipeline crosses an international border.  Individual states do have a say if they have laws on the books. 

In the Great Lakes region, Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois require permits for new oil pipeline construction. 

But Sara Gosman says the federal government is not paying enough attention to where new oil pipelines are built.

"At the federal level, we don’t have any oversight of routing of pipelines. For natural gas pipelines they do, but not for oil."

Gosman says the federal agency that’s in charge of pipelines – the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration – is specifically not allowed to regulate siting and routing of oil pipelines. 

Sara Gosman says the result of all this – is that the Great Lakes are not adequately protected from another big oil spill.

"Pipeline spills may well happen. Everyone agrees getting to zero is the important goal. Whether we can ever get to zero… hard to know."

We requested comment on the new pipeline safety report from industry groups.  Both Enbridge and the Association of Oil Pipelines said they were not able to respond to the report by our deadline.

In January this year, President Obama signed a new pipeline safety act into law.  It doubles the maximum fine for safety violations and it authorizes more government pipeline inspectors. 

Carl Weimer is the executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust.  His group has been pushing for better oversight of pipelines. 

"There’s a major significant incident on a pipeline somewhere in the country about every day and a half.  If you look at just the last five years, just on hazardous liquid pipelines, there have been over 1,700 incidents spilling more than 23 million gallons of liquid into the environment."

He says the new pipeline safety act is a start.

"But many of the most important sections of that bill just required more study and did not actually correct the problems."

That's the Environment Report. I'm Rebecca Williams.

We asked PHMSA for comment on the new pipeline report.  The agency sent this email statement:

PHMSA’s Response:  PHMSA will take NTSB’s findings about Marshall, Michigan very seriously. PHMSA is committed to improving pipeline safety and protecting the public and the environment. Pipeline safety requires a combination of enforcement, information sharing and transparency and public education. Secretary LaHood called on pipeline operators to repair, rehabilitate and replace the highest risk lines.  PHMSA has stepped up enforcement actions and proposed pipeline safety rulemakings and issued advisories covering damage prevention programs & increased penalties, expanding the use of excess flow valves and replacing cast iron pipelines. PHMSA held pipeline safety workshops in March on leak detection and remote controlled valves.

In addition, the President’s FY 2013 budget request will support PHMSA’s focus on enforcement and accountability by providing more resources to boost PHMSA’s capability in overseeing pipeline operators, including $177 million for pipeline safety to hire more pipeline inspectors, increase coordination with the states and increase public education efforts like calling 811 before digging.

-Jeannie Layson, PHMSA’s director for Governmental, International, and Public Affairs

 

Michigan Lawmakers Debate Future of Fracking

  • A gas drilling rig in Appalachia. (Photo by User Meridithw / Wikimedia Commons)

This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Hydraulic fracturing is getting some attention this week in Lansing.  You’ve probably heard it called fracking.  It’s a method of drilling for natural gas.

Drillers use fracking to get to the gas that’s trapped in tight shale rock formations below the water table.

Fracking pumps a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into a well under high pressure to force open the rock and extract the gas.

In Michigan, drillers have used the fracking method for more than 50 years and the state regulates the industry. 

But what’s new… is that drillers want to turn their drills and dig horizontally along the shale rock.  That makes the well site much more productive.  But it also uses a larger amount of chemicals and much more water – anywhere from a few million gallons of water to as much as eight million gallons of water per well.  After it’s used, that water is usually disposed of in deep injection wells.

Right now in Michigan, there are two experimental wells that are using the horizontal fracking method.

This week the Michigan House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Natural Gas put out a report encouraging more natural gas production in the state.

Rick Pluta is the State Capitol Bureau Chief for the Michigan Public Radio Network and he joins me now.  Rick, there’s been a lot of talk about fracking in the capitol this week.

Rick Pluta: "Yeah, there has.  Governor Rick Snyder did an online town hall yesterday, and he pointed out that there are thousands of wells in Michigan that have been fracked – using the traditional method.

'So I don’t foresee us having major issues over fracking. There are some other states that have had major problems because I don’t believe they have the same regulatory environment and the same business environment to make sure it was being done as well.'

The governor and many Republicans say more natural gas drilling in the state will be good for the economy." 

Rebecca:  One of the reasons fracking has been controversial is that drillers use a variety of chemicals.  There are more than 500 kinds of chemicals in use in various formulas.   

A 2011 Congressional report found these chemicals can range from things considered harmless like salt and citric acid to chemicals that can pose serious health risks.  Things like benzene, formaldehyde and lead.   But that report also found that many of the chemicals were listed as trade secrets and did not have to be revealed. (You can learn more from this ProPublica site: What the Frack is in That Water?)

In Michigan last year the state Supervisor of Wells issued new permitting instructions for drillers. Drillers will have to give the state Department of Environmental Quality safety information about the chemicals they’re using – but they do not have to report anything that’s considered a trade secret. 

Rick, this week, Democrats in the state House are discussing a package of bills that would add some additional restrictions to fracking.

Rick Pluta: "Yes, that’s right. Democrats want a moratorium; it would probably last for a couple of years while some state regulatory agencies conduct a study on the environmental impact of fracking.

State Representative Aric Nesbitt is the Republican chair of the House Subcommittee on Natural Gas. He opposes any moratorium on fracking.

'We’re hanging ourselves out to dry if we think we can remain competitive by shutting off a supply of energy here in Michigan.'

Representative Lisa Brown is a Democrat from West Bloomfield in Oakland County. She says the legislation that Democrats are calling for allows for public comment – on the whether a permit that would allow fracking is given to a driller.

'But it also protects trade secrets as well.  And along with another bill I introduced months ago this would actually help the companies doing the fracking to say here’s the list of chemicals we’ve used. If there is a problem, if there is a contamination somewhere, we didn’t use that chemical. It didn’t come from us.'"

RW: What kind of chance do you think this package of bills from the House Democrats stands?

Rick Pluta: "Well, almost zero. The benefit for Democrats in this is probably more of a political one – a wedge issue. But Republicans have substantial majorities in the House and the Senate. We have a Republican governor who supports the regulatory structure pretty much as it stands. So this is not going to be heading to Governor Snyder’s desk anytime soon."

Okay, thanks Rick.

Rick Pluta: "Oh, my pleasure, Rebecca."

Rick Pluta is the State Capitol Bureau Chief for the Michigan Public Radio Network.

I’m Rebecca Williams.

 

 

 

Climate Change & Extreme Weather

  • A mesocyclone tornado. More than two-thirds of Americans surveyed by researchers believe global warming made several recent extreme weather disasters worse. That's according to a new report by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)

You’ve probably noticed we’ve had a strange spring.

This March – the warm temperatures broke 15,292 weather records across the country.   And last year… there were 14 weather-related disasters that each caused $1 billion – or more – in damages.

A new study finds a large majority of Americans are now connecting specific extreme weather events to climate change.

The study is part of a long-term project called Climate Change in the American Mind.  It’s by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.

Ed Maibach directs George Mason’s climate change center and he joins me now to talk more about this.  Professor Maibach, you found that 82 percent of Americans personally experienced one or more types of extreme weather or natural disaster in the past year.  How are these experiences affecting people’s understanding of climate change?

Ed Maibach: “We know that most Americans believe the climate is changing, and now, this latest survey shows us that a lot of people are connecting the experience of the extreme weather they’re experiencing to the fact that the climate is changing.”

RW: How many people do you think understand the difference between weather and climate?

Maibach: “Not too many. Weather and climate tend to be confused as being one and the same. Of course, climate is defined as the average weather over a long period of time, often 30 years. Weather is by its very nature variable, but climate change is making weather even more variable and even more extreme and people are clearly picking up on that.”

RW: What happens to Americans’ belief in climate change when there’s an unusually cold winter or record snowfalls?

Maibach: “So, extreme weather events that fall outside of our expectations of global warming such as particularly cold or snowy weather will tend to undermine our belief in climate change. Whereas those unusual or extreme weather events that fall within our expectations of what a changing climate should look like, such as a drought or an extreme heat event, heat wave, those will tend to support or reaffirm our belief that the climate is changing.”

RW: So how does the way that meteorologists and TV weathercasters present what’s going on affect people’s beliefs?

Maibach: “Most TV weathercasters don’t spend much time talking about climate change and its relation to the weather. Although we have surveyed America’s TV meteorologists twice over the past two years and we found that a lot of them would like to start educating their viewers about the difference between climate and weather and about the ways in which climate change is affecting their weather. It’s a difficult thing to do, in the short period of time that weathercasters have on the air each day, but I think you’re going to start seeing it more and more as we go forward.”

RW: What are you seeing happen with the political divisions around the subject of climate change over time?

Maibach: “Yeah, unfortunately, the political divisions seem to keep deepening.  And the real question is, what are we going to do to try to bring Americans of all political parties back together onto the same song sheet, so we can stop debating something that the scientists answered a long time ago, which is – is climate change real? – and we can start talking about what we want to do about it.  The most serious misperception about climate change in America today is the belief that there’s a lot of disagreement among the climate scientists about whether or not climate change is real and human caused. Virtually all climate experts are in agreement that it is both real and human caused. Yet only about one out of three, maybe as much as 40% of Americans understand that to be the case.  So America’s climate scientists have got to do a better job of conveying the fact that they have in fact reached consensus.”

RW: Ed Maibach directs George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication.  Thank you for talking with me!

Maibach: “Thank you, Rebecca.”

That’s the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Stopping Hitchhikers in Ballast Tanks

  • Entry to a ballast tank in a ship's cargo hold.(Photo courtesy of the Great Lakes NOBOB Team)

This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.


Ships entering the Great Lakes can carry water from foreign ports. That water is held in their ballast tanks. It helps stabilize the ship.


Now, anytime you hear the term ballast water… do your eyes glaze over… maybe you start thinking about what you’re going to make for dinner? Okay, so it’s not the sexiest topic. But it matters because sneaky little invasive species can hide in the ballast water… and catch a ride across the ocean.


“Invasive species, scientists think, are the worst problem facing the Great Lakes. They threaten the Great Lakes health, they threaten to crash the ecosystem, they threaten our economy.”


That’s Andy Buchsbaum. He directs the Great Lakes office of the National Wildlife Federation. He says when ships dump their ballast water in the Great Lakes, the invaders can get out.


“And if they find each other and fall in love, you have families of those critters and you actually have some real population problems like zebra mussels going wild in the Great Lakes.”


Zebra mussels have caused all kinds of havoc with Great Lakes ecosystems. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates 30 percent of the invasive species in the Great Lakes have come in through ballast water.


The EPA and the Coast Guard have been trying to solve this problem. One of the main approaches is for ships to exchange ballast water with saltwater before entering the Great Lakes.


“It kills some of species in that ballast water but not all of them.”


So… now, the Coast Guard and the EPA are taking things a step further. The Coast Guard has issued a final rule… and the EPA has proposed a new standard. They both require ships to install on-board technology to treat ballast water to kill invasive species.


It might be a chemical treatment, something like chlorine. Or they could use ultraviolet light on the critters and then starve them of oxygen.


Andy Buchsbaum says…these new regulations are a good start. But he says they’re still too weak.


“If you have a thousand critters in your discharge which is allowed by some of these standards, you certainly could have a breeding population. It’s not good enough to be close to protective you actually have to be protective. You have to get down close to zero critters in your discharge before you can really protect the Great Lakes.”


But a spokesperson for the Coast Guard argues they had to start somewhere. Lorne Thomas is with the Ninth Coast Guard District based in Cleveland.


“We need to get a standard out there that industry can meet now. It’s probably better to get the treatment systems on ships right now instead of putting a higher standard, be it a hundred or thousand times standard out there and then postponing the implementation of that standard by several years until that technology was ready.”


It’s worth noting there’s an exemption in the rules. Ships that stay within the Great Lakes are called Lakers. Those ships can also move invasive species around in their ballast water. But under the new federal rules, they don’t have to treat their ballast water.


“All the Lakers carry quantities of ballast water ten to twenty times what’s normally carried on other vessels. So there aren’t that many systems in fact there might not be any that can handle the ballast carried aboard the thousand footers, which can be upwards of 30,000 tons of ballast.”


Lorne Thomas says he expects the Coast Guard will require some kind of ballast treatment on Lakers… when there’s technology that will work.


The shipping industry generally likes the new federal regulations.


Stuart Theis is the executive director of the United States Great Lakes Shipping Association. He says the industry wants one clear standard.


“You know, there are eight Great Lakes states and we’ve had to deal with what you’d call a crazy quilt of regulations that every time a ship went to a different port, whether it was Ohio or Michigan or Minnesota, each of the states had their own requirements.”


But shippers might still have to work with a patchwork of rules. States with stricter standards on the books can keep them.


The Great Lakes states have until the end of June to decide whether they want the EPA’s ballast water rules to have more teeth.


That’s the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Electric Vehicle Emissions & Champion Trees

  • Clones of the Buckley elm - the first tree that David Milarch cloned. (Photo by Peter Payette)

Do electric cars run cleaner than hybrids?  It depends on where you live.

This is the Environment Report.  I'm Rebecca Williams.

A new study says electric cars produce fewer global warming emissions than hybrids – in some regions.  Tracy Samilton reports:

The Union of Concerned Scientists says electricity in California and New York isn't as reliant on older, coal-burning power plants as other regions.

"Driving an electric vehicle in those areas has lower global warming emissions than even the best, most fuel efficient hybrid gasoline vehicles that are currently on the market."

Don Anair wrote the report.  He says in other regions, electric cars are at least as clean as the most fuel-efficient regular cars.  But other studies predict low consumer demand for electric cars for a long time, because they can’t go that far before they have to be recharged, and they cost more.

For the Environment Report, I'm Tracy Samilton.

(music bump)

This is the Environment Report.

There’s a new book out today about an unusual conservation project based in northern Michigan.  For most of the last two decades, a man from Copemish has been cloning old trees around the world.  David Milarch believes the genetics of these trees are superior and could be useful in the era of climate change.  The author of the book says he might have a point.  Peter Payette reports:

Back in the year 2000, an elm tree not far from David Milarch’s home was diagnosed with Dutch elm disease.  It was not just any elm.  It was the National Champion American elm at the time.  That means it was the largest known elm in the country.

Milarch tried to heal the tree with a soil treatment but it died.  He did manage to clone the Buckley elm.

Today at the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, there are about a dozen copies of the tree.

"Here’s the Buckley elm, the greatest elm in America.  And it’s living on and it can be utilized. That’s really what it’s all about."

David Milarch is feeling pretty vindicated these days, with the record-breaking warm weather we just experienced in March.

He decided global warming was a dire threat twenty years ago because he thought the forests looked sick.

He thinks what we need are some better trees.

Trees take carbon out of the atmosphere and do a host of other things to regulate ecosystems.

But as Milarch sees it, the trees around today are garbage.

That’s because loggers take the best trees first and places like Michigan have been pretty heavily logged.

"They always went in and took the biggest, straightest, clearest log, and left the crooked, the branchy, the sick or the puny behind.  The money wasn’t in it. So that’s what’s been allowed to reproduce."

That’s why Milarch has spent the last couple decades trying to clone big old trees.  So the genetics will be preserved.

Meryl Marsh runs the day to day operations here, and she sometimes climbs trees hundreds of feet tall to gather buds.  Marsh says old trees are hard to clone.

"It’s like asking your grandparents to produce offspring, or a really old horse to breed."

Archangel has cloned 48 different tree species.  And this work has been big hit with the media.  After all, cloning an ancient tree makes a good story.  And now to the mountain of news clips Milarch can add a book about his project.

Jim Robbins is a regular contributor to the New York Times.  He says forest ecology is not the most well understood science and little is known about tree genetics.

"And David has said, well, since we don’t know, let’s save these proven survivors and let’s plant them and protect them in other places in case something happens. And if those genetics are important, and of course genetics are important in every other field, then we’ll have those protected. And that was a good idea according to a lot of scientists I talked to."

Robbins lays out the science of trees and David Milarch’s story in his new book, The Man Who Planted Trees.

For the Environment Report, I’m Peter Payette.

Crews Search for Oil in the Kalamazoo River

  • This is a stretch of Talmadge Creek that's about a half mile downstream from where the Enbridge Energy pipeline ruptured in 2010. Enbridge diverted the creek, excavated the contaminated creek bed, and reconstructed the creek in this initial phase of restoration. (Photo by Rebecca Williams/Michigan Radio)

This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.


We’re coming up on two years since a pipeline owned by Enbridge Energy ruptured. More than 840,000 gallons of tar sands oil spilled into Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River.


The Environmental Protection Agency says most of the oil has been removed from the creek and the river. But there’s still oil at the bottom of the Kalamazoo River. This spring, the company, the state and the EPA will be figuring out how much oil is left… and where it is.


(traffic sound, birds singing)


“The pipeline break location was approximately a half mile upstream from here.”


Mark DuCharme is with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. We’re standing on a two-lane road looking out at Talmadge Creek.


“Shortly after the spill, you couldn’t actually even see the creek. If you were down at this location, all you could see is oil. These banks were heavily oiled as well, so just catastrophic damage.”


He says things have come a long way at this site. Enbridge moved the creek out of its normal path… they actually diverted it and ran it through a pipeline. Then, they dug up the contaminated creek bed. Now, the creek is back in place. Enbridge put in clean soil, and then added seeds from native wetland plants.


Little green shoots are pushing up through the ground.


But there’s still a long road ahead. Mark DuCharme says Enbridge has more restoration work to do at Talmadge Creek… and then the DEQ will require long-term monitoring.


“Can we replace it to the exact condition it was prior? Probably not. Can we go back and put something back that will be an acceptable ecosystem? That’s the expectation.”


DuCharme says tar sands oil is very heavy, and very thick – and that has made the cleanup more difficult.


“We’re writing the book on how to clean up oil sands out of cold water streams in freshwater systems. We’ve been looking elsewhere, we’ve been trying to find other examples – they’re just not there.”


The work crews have had an ongoing struggle of trying to find – and remove – oil from the bottom of the Kalamazoo River.


Ralph Dollhopf is an on-scene coordinator with the EPA.


“We can tell there are smaller and smaller amounts of submerged oil in the river. We just need to be careful that as we continue to tease that out of the river that we don’t hurt the river or the river sediments or the animals and plants of the river any more.”


Talmadge Creek and parts of the Kalamazoo River are still closed to recreation. The local county health departments hope to reopen portions of the river sometime this spring or summer.


Ralph Dollhopf says the EPA estimates more than 1.1 million gallons of oil have been removed from the creek and the river. That includes oil that soaked into soil and covered plants. Now – that number is quite a bit higher than what Enbridge says was initially spilled: which is roughly 843,000 gallons.


“But I can’t comment on that difference, because the amount that was estimated to have been released is the subject of a number of ongoing investigations.”


The EPA has an official investigation. And the National Transportation Safety Board is also investigating.


Enbridge has its own investigation into the cause of the pipeline break.


Jason Manshum is a company spokesperson.


“We have not released those results. You know, everything really is hinging on the results of the NTSB study which has been delayed until later this year.”


He says Enbridge won’t release those results until after the federal government issues its findings.


Manshum says Enbridge is committed to trying to get the area back to the condition it was in before the spill.


The cleanup… restoration… and monitoring could continue for several more years.


That’s the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.