Tag: acid mine drainage

Seniors Find Niche in Environmental Work

  • In the forefront, Evelyn Kolojejchick, Ivan Pettit, and John Lundquist help to improve water quality as part of the Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement. (Photo by John Kolojejchick)

Environmental work isn’t just for young professionals anymore. Retired engineers, former biology teachers, and others with time on their hands are working on environmental problems as volunteers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan reports on how senior citizens are keeping environmentally active:

Transcript

Environmental work isn’t just for young professionals anymore.
Retired engineers, former biology teachers, and others with time on their hands are working on

environmental problems as volunteers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan

reports on how senior citizens are keeping environmentally active:


(Sound of bird)


75-year-old Ivan Pettit is officially retired from his job as an environmental regulator, but he

hasn’t stopped monitoring streams, promoting recycling, and solving a nagging safety issue in his

state.


(Sound of walking)


On a sunny day in Oil Creek State Park in northeast Pennsylvania, he drops a stone down a corroded

pipe.


“Okay, go.”


(Sound of rattling, splash)


Pettit is estimating the depth of this remnant of an old oil well. It’s one of thousands of

abandoned oil wells in this region. The wells date as far back as 1859. Pettit and a team of senior

volunteers regularly hunt for old wells. The seniors’ work improves water quality and safety for

hikers and hunters, and Pettit says it helps keeps him fit.


“It is work that I have always enjoyed doing as well as getting you outdoors and being able to

observe the things that’s going on around you, that is not a sedentary task whatsoever.”


Pettit belongs to the national Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement. The group claims

members as young as fifty-five. Pennsylvania has the third highest number of residents older than

sixty among U.S. states. Its active Senior Environmental Corps is touted as a national model, and

has been honored by the United Nations Environmental Program.


But senior groups across the nation are working on environmental problems. In Cape Cod, they

monitor West Nile virus. Seniors clean hazardous waste sites in Indiana. Michigan volunteers

install solar water heaters on poor peoples’ homes.


It’s a fast growing program. In 1993, 26 older adults made up the Senior Environment Corps. A

decade later, over 100 thousand were involved in work across the country.


Ivan Pettit’s work looking for old oil wells is the kind of effort that makes a real difference.

Besides being a hazard for hikers and hunters, some of the old wells seep oil into the ground and

it gets into streams.


In less than two years, the seniors have found almost two hundred wells. Environmental Alliance for

Senior Involvement president Tom Benjamin compares that to two college interns who worked full-time

one summer, and found fewer than fifty.


“Most of these individuals that were volunteers know that community and know the area. They grew up

there, they hunted those woods, they know what a oil well looks like, so they have some instant

recognition.”


(Sound of forest)


Every other week, from spring to fall, the well hunters line up horizontally, twenty feet apart,

and comb a section of forest. Some well holes are several feet across and twenty feet deep. Others

have narrow openings, but drop as deep as a thousand feet. Evelyn Kolojejchick and her husband John

lead Ivan Pettit and other volunteers in seeking out the wells and marking coordinates.


“Ok, longitude is?”


“Seventy-Nine.”


For both Evelyn and John Kolojejchick, well-hunting and other environmental projects are an

extension of teaching high school science for thirty years. Evelyn once aimed to spark interest in

many young minds. Now she feels she’s working on a smaller scale, but hopes to remain effective.


“I belong to Audubon, used to belong to a lot of other environmental organizations and it just

seemed like you needed… you needed to do something that was going to make a difference. I never

had any money to donate to all of these causes and you just you know, you want to do something that

an individual can do.”


Recently, the seniors saw results of well-hunting. They found sensitive species in a stream that

had once been polluted. Several oil wells nearby had been sealed with cement to keep acid mine

drainage out of the water.


“The first year we tested it for aquatic life, there was almost nothing there. And yesterday when

we were there, we had better diversity in that stream than we have in some of our streams that we

test all along that we know don’t have those kinds of problems. So they have made a significant

difference on that stream by plugging those wells. It’s remarkable.”


And it’s the kind of reward that these senior citizen volunteers had hoped for: making a difference

in their part of the world.


For the GLRC, I’m Jennifer Szweda Jordan.

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New Mining Operation Worries Neighbors

  • Resistance to the proposed sulfide mine project is strong in Big Bay, Michigan. It's the largest town (population 500) near the area. (Photo by Chris McCarus)

A multinational mining company is planning to mine for nickel near the shore of Lake Superior. But some mining experts and the community don’t want the mine to be built. They say there’s no way to make sure the mine won’t damage the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:

Transcript

A multinational mining company is planning to mine for nickel near the shore of Lake Superior. But some mining experts and the community don’t want the mine to be built. They say there’s no way to make sure the mine won’t damage the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports.


The price of nickel has tripled in recent years. It’s needed for electronic produces such as computers. It’s used to produce cars. And nickel is even used in air pollution control equipment. If it’s approved, this would be North America’s only active nickel mine.


Kennecott Minerals Corporation says it’ll mean 120 jobs for local workers over a 10-year period. The state of Michigan has been lagging behind the rest of the nation in job recovery and in the northern reaches of the state good jobs are really hard to find.


The mine will cost 100 million dollars to set up. But the value of the nickel ore in the ground is somewhere between one and three billion dollars. So the company could make hundreds of millions in profit.


Scientists and activists say that this nickel mine could be even worse than the iron and copper mines of the past.


That’s because it would require mining through sulfide minerals. When they mix with water and oxygen, they can become sulfuric acid, just like battery acid. The industry calls the problem acid mine drainage. It can kill fish and wildlife and pollute water.


Michelle Halle is a lawyer for the National
Wildlife Federation and a local resident. She’s got one question.


“I’m always interested in the answer to the question about whether he believes that a mine can exist with 100% perfect track record.”


It’s a rhetorical question. She’s confident that the company won’t be able to meet the newer, stricter standards for getting a permit to mine.


“No human error, no design flaws, no natural disasters that are going to cause an impact… I don’t think that any company can say yes to that honestly.”


The mining company says there’s always some risk. John Cherry works for Kennecott Minerals Corporation. Cherry insists the company’s design is the best, and the safest. Although he says it’s impossible to guarantee against accidents at the mine.


“We can get in a crash on the way home today too. You design it with a safety factor built into your design. You have a very robust design. That’s your first step. You make your system as structurally competent as you can. Make it as bulletproof as you can.”


Cherry says the next steps are to install a monitoring system to detect the smallest problems. And if there are any problems, the mine will have a contingency plan with the right materials and properly trained people on hand.


State law requires the company to pay all of its accident insurance up front. They can’t just pay in installments. That way, the company will pay to clean up any mess, not the state or the community. Minnesota has a similar law. And In Wisconsin, People Against Mining got the state to establish a moratorium on sulfide mining


David Chambers used to work as a geologist for a mining company. And now he works for the Center for Science in Public Participation. He says, at the nickel mine planned in Michigan, groundwater contamination is possible and would be dangerous.


“Probably the most likely event is an accidental release from the mine. All mines have problems. It’s likely that somebody won’t turn a valve the right way or a big storm comes and there’s an overflow.”


Chambers says a mine collapse would be the most destructive. But, he says, even for the accidents that will not devastate the environment, the company and the community should plan, because they will happen.


(Sound of trucks)


On the road leading into the wilderness area where the mine would operate, local road crews are doing routine maintenance. Right now, most people who use the road are hikers, kayakers and fishermen. The pristine waters of Lake Superior and surrounding lakes and streams attract them here.


Kristy Mills is a store owner. She thinks a sulfide mine would only mean heavier traffic of trucks carrying away nickel ore. She says it wouldn’t bring in the tourist dollars the area needs.


“We don’t like to see that kind of growth. I think it’s a poor way of investing into our future. You know, we need to encourage tourism and visitation, not mining and hauling ore around in big trucks. It’s gonna be interesting.”


Many local residents and environmental activists feel the area should have learned lessons from the region’s past mining heritage. The precious ore is removed. People somewhere else get rich. And the legacy of pollution is all that remains when the mines are closed. So now, they’re hoping if it comes, this mine will be different.


For the GLRC, I’m Chris McCarus.

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