Budget Trimmers Target Ethanol

  • CEO of Growth Energy, Tom Buis argues ... we spend plenty of money for overseas oil ... why not support home-grown ethanol?(Photo courtesy of the NREL)

President Obama’s visit to the Corn Belt is highlighting a tough debate about the future of corn-based ethanol used in our cars.

Transcript

President Obama’s visit to the Corn Belt is highlighting a tough debate about the future of corn-based ethanol used in our cars.

Congress is looking to cut the federal budget and one target is a key ethanol subsidy.

It’s a tax credit of about 4 and a half billion dollars, and it runs out by the end of the year.

Ethanol trade groups are fighting to extend that credit.

Tom Buis is CEO of Growth Energy.

He argues … we spend plenty of money for overseas oil … why not support home-grown ethanol?

“We create jobs, jobs that can’t be outsourced. I don’t know why we want to fund economies of foreign governments. We should be looking at spurring our own economic development here in the United States.”

Last year the Government Accountability Office questioned whether we need this particular ethanol tax credit, since the government requires gasoline refiners to blend-in billions of gallons of ethanol anyway.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Citizen Scientists Help Uncle Sam

  • Citizen scientist divers brave the chilly waters of Washington State to count the marine life below. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)

As governments tighten their belts,
it’s getting harder for them to pay
scientists to monitor the health of
the nation’s ecosystems. So increasingly,
they’re turning to citizens who do
that kind of work for free. Ann Dornfeld
reports on the growing influence of these
“citizen scientists”:

Transcript

As governments tighten their belts,
it’s getting harder for them to pay
scientists to monitor the health of
the nation’s ecosystems. So increasingly,
they’re turning to citizens who do
that kind of work for free. Ann Dornfeld
reports on the growing influence of these
“citizen scientists”:

It’s the kind of cloudy, wet day that most people spend indoors. But the cold and wet doesn’t matter as much when you’re planning to spend your day at the bottom of a Puget Sound fjord.

(sound of divers splashing into water)

About 75 miles from Seattle, these scuba divers are conducting volunteer surveys for REEF, an organization that monitors fish populations around the world. The data help researchers understand where fish live, and in what kind of numbers. It’s the kind of information governments need to understand how fishing and pollution are affecting waterways.

Back on the boat, surveyor Janna Nichols has just emerged from the 48-degree water. She pulls out her survey and goes down the list marking off what she’s just seen.

“Sunflower stars, definitely, many of those – saw a lot of those around. No sand dollars, no sea urchins. Ah! Ooh! Ah! Here’s an exciting one! I saw a giant nudibranch! A very small giant nudibranch. But those are very cool to see – a treat!”

Identifying fish can be tricky, because the same species can have different coloration depending on its age, gender, or even time of the year.

“Black-eyed gobies were everywhere. I would say under a hundred of them. And – they were mating! Because I don’t know if you noticed, they had black pelvic fins. And they kind of hover around and say “Hey, baby baby, look at me!”

As much fun as these “citizen scientists” have, professional scientists take the data these divers collect seriously. Last summer volunteer surveyor David Jennings went diving in Washington’s Olympic National Park Marine Sanctuary. He was excited to see the colorful tiger and china rockfish he’d heard were abundant at the park. But when he got there, he only saw a couple. So he looked at the past six years of REEF survey data to see how the rockfish populations had changed.

“One of the best sources was someone that wrote up a diving experience he had in 2002 where he saw dozens of tigers and many chinas. Whereas I in a week of diving saw two tigers and just three chinas. so it was a very big contrast to what people saw in the past.”

Jennings took the data to the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife. That’s the agency that decides fishing limits. Greg Bargmann is a department fisheries biologist who’s working on next year’s catch limits for rockfish. He says even though the REEF divers aren’t as highly-trained as the state biologists, the data they collect are more current and cover a wider area.

“The REEF survey shows a very dramatic decrease in abundance over the last five years. Our state surveys don’t show that, but we have a lot of imprecision in our surveys so we’re relying on the REEF surveys to look for changes in population.”

That’s because the state can’t afford to send its biologists out as often or to as many sites as the volunteers dive.

“We really appreciate the interest of our citizens to spend time going out there and using their own transportation costs and their own equipment to go out and collect data, and to listen to us and collect things that are not easy to do sometimes.”

You don’t have to dive to be a citizen scientist. In Ohio, citizens track everything from salamanders to spiders. In California, tighter budgets mean more poaching – and not enough game wardens. So states are training volunteers to do more work. And across the country, the Environmental Protection Agency relies on citizens to monitor water quality in lakes and streams.

Bargmann says while governments rely on citizen scientists more during budget crunches, he sees programs like these becoming increasingly important for keeping track of the health of the environment.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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Who’s Monitoring Pollution?

  • The famous photo of the Cuyahoga River fire that appeared in Time Magazine. The photo is not of the 1969 blaze, but rather of another fire on the river in 1952. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)

Federal and state governments have cut
back on monitoring some big sources of
pollution, and small sources are rarely
monitored. Lester Graham reports it’s a
problem that’s even tougher when state
budgets are cut:

Transcript

Federal and state governments have cut
back on monitoring some big sources of
pollution, and small sources are rarely
monitored. Lester Graham reports it’s a
problem that’s even tougher when state
budgets are cut:

Industry does not pollute like it did in the 1960s or 70s. Today, regulators monitor most of those big factories.

Tom Lyon is the Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan.

“Big smokestack industries we have a fairly good eye on, but there are a lot of areas that we still don’t have a good handle on.”

Like small businesses which collectively can release a lot of toxins, and farms that use pesticides and fertilizers on millions acres.

Jennifer Sass is a Scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. She says, under the Bush Administration, pollution monitoring of big industry was cut back. Sass says that monitoring needs to be restored and expanded to smaller sources.

“If we quit our monitoring programs, then we don’t really know. It’s a lot like putting our head in the sand.”

But many state agencies say they don’t have the resources to keep track of all those sources of pollution.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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National Parks Get a Little Green

  • Junior Rangers-to-be explore the beach at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

There was a time – not that long ago –
when a lot of the National Parks in the
country were strapped for cash. They
were cutting staff and cutting services.
But, Mark Brush reports, now Congress
is investing more in the parks:

Transcript

There was a time – not that long ago –
when a lot of the National Parks in the
country were strapped for cash. They
were cutting staff and cutting services.
But, Mark Brush reports, now Congress
is investing more in the parks:

It started changing in the last year or two of the Bush Administration. The Bush White House realized that the National Park System was coming up on its 100th Anniversary in 2016.

No one wanted the Centennial marred by crumbling roads or Parks that were understaffed. So Washington pledged to increase the overall budget for the National Park Service by 100 million each year until the Centennial.

And folks like Tom Ulrich say Congress has been making good on that pledge. He’s the deputy superintendent at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on Lake Michigan.

“A few years ago our discussions weren’t, you know, ‘Well, we got a little bit of extra money how are we going to spend that?’ They were, ‘We have to cut from last year. What are we going to cut?’ And so it’s nice to have those discussions change.”

Ulrich says a lot of National Parks are also getting some money from the stimulus package passed earlier this year.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Funding for Hydrogen Vehicles Hit Hard

  • Mercedez-Benz A-Class F-Cell at the 2009 Washington DC Auto Show (Photo source: IFCAR at Wikimedia Commons)

The Department of Energy wants to cut funding for the development of hydrogen powered vehicles. Mark Brush reports the Energy Secretary has decided that cars powered by hydrogen are too far off:

Transcript

The Department of Energy wants to cut funding for the development of hydrogen powered vehicles. Mark Brush reports the Energy Secretary has decided that cars powered by hydrogen are too far off:

Six years ago, President George W. Bush proposed spending 1.2 billion dollars to develop hydrogen power cars.

Now, Stephen Chu, President Obama’s Energy Secretary, says hydrogen powered cars aren’t yet practical for today’s market.

Chu says they’d rather spend money on things like plug-in cars and cars powered by biofuels. Things that can hit the road now instead of 20 years from now.

People working on hydrogen powered vehicles aren’t too happy about the cuts.

Patrick Serfass is with the National Hydrogen Association.

“I’d say the hydrogen industry is perplexed. The administration has a lot of smart people in it and they have done a lot of great things for many parts of the renewable energy sector. But the proposal to eliminate the hydrogen vehicle program is a mistake.”

Serfass says hydrogen powered cars are not as far off as the Energy Secretary might think. He and his group are trying to persuade members of Congress to put research money back into the budget.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Budget Money for Big Lakes

  • The EPA and other agencies want to spend $475 million on the Great Lakes (Photo by Karen Holland, courtesy of the EPA)

The Environmental Protection
Agency’s budget has a lot of
money for green energy projects,
dealing with climate change and
creating green jobs. But Lester
Graham reports the EPA will also
deal with old fashioned environmental
issues such as pollution:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection
Agency’s budget has a lot of
money for green energy projects,
dealing with climate change and
creating green jobs. But Lester
Graham reports the EPA will also
deal with old fashioned environmental
issues such as pollution:

Cleaning up air and water pollution almost seem passe’ after hearing about all of President Obama’s shiny green plans.

But cleaning up past messes is still a priority.

The EPA’s budget is 10.5 billion dollars. In a release, the agency highlighted a plan for the Great Lakes.

The EPA and other agencies want to spend 475-million dollars to clean up polluted bays, stop raw sewage from spilling into the lakes and deal with other ongoing problems.

Andy Buchsbaum heads up the Great Lakes office for the National Wildlife Federation. He says early signs indicate this item in the President’s budget will stick in Congress.

“They haven’t given final approval, but both the House and the Senate approved budget resolutions that include this 475-million dollars for the Great Lakes.”

And there’s also money to work on the Chesapeake Bay, San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound, and other big bodies of water around the nation.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Obama’s Budget Address & Green Recovery

  • President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress on February 24 (Photo by Pete Souza, courtesy of the White House)

President Barack Obama outlines his budget tonight before a joint-session of Congress. Lester Graham reports many people will be watching for more investment in what’s be called the “green recovery”:

Transcript

President Barack Obama outlines his budget tonight before a joint-session of Congress. Lester Graham reports many people will be watching for more investment in what’s be called the “green recovery”:


The stimulus package includes money for making government buildings and some homes more energy efficient… and pursuing alternative energy such as wind and solar power.

Robert Heilmayr is a research analyst with World Resources Institute. He says so far the Obama administration has recognized there are long term payoffs in green investments.


“The key next step that I think is missing and I’ll really be paying attention to as Obama addresses Congress is whether he recognizes the stimulus is only the first step, that comprehensive energy and climate policy is necessary and should be a priority moving forward as a follow-up to the stimulus is a big question.”


Heilmayr says the long-term savings in energy conservation will help businesses and everyone else by keeping fuel prices lower in the short-term and give us a step up when the world markets start taking greenhouse gas emissions seriously.


For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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President Calls for Profitable Green Energy

  • President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress on February 24 (Photo by Pete Souza, courtesy of the White House)

Health care and education are always
top priorities in a Presidential budget.
But last night President Barack Obama
told Congress in his budget address,
“It begins with energy.” Lester Graham
reports:

Transcript

Health care and education are always top priorities in a Presidential budget. But last night President Barack Obama told Congress in his budget address, “It begins with energy.” Lester Graham reports:


The President reminded us the recent stimulus package included doubling the supply of renewable energy in the next three years, investments in basic research – including energy, a better power grid and making buildings and homes more energy efficient.


“But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy.”


And to do that the President called on Congress to pass legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution. A carbon cap and trade program would make fossil fuels more expensive… and encourage solar, wind and other renewable energy.


Climate change legislation opponents say a carbon cap-and-trade program would be a jobs killer. By tying it to creating new green jobs, President Obama hopes to challenge that argument.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Economy Squeezes Environment Agenda


Many environmental advocates say
they’re excited about the upcoming Obama
Administration. But the nation’s economic
woes could stall many federal programs.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Many environmental advocates say
they’re excited about the upcoming Obama
Administration. But the nation’s economic
woes could stall many federal programs.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Environmental groups are touting the campaign promises of President Elect
Barack Obama. They predict he’ll be open to environmental clean-up and clean
energy programs.

Michael Kraft is a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay.
He’s adding a note of financial caution.

”It’s no surprise that the federal government is running a very large deficit this
year and that the national debt is very big and that the country is entering an
economic downturn. So, the challenge will be deciding how much we can afford
to spend and in what years we can afford to spend it. “

Kraft says that could affect funding for programs aimed at cleaning up pollution.
And it could also pinch environmental regulators from the US EPA.

Kraft also says new spending may have a better chance when backers can prove
it will help the environment and not hurt the economy.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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More Money for Polluted Hot Spots?

  • Lake Superior's South Shore, Wisconsin (Photo by Dave Hansen, courtesy of the EPA)

Congress might vote this fall
on a plan to triple the amount of money
for cleaning up pollution hot spots
around the Great Lakes. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Transcript

Congress might vote this fall
on a plan to triple the amount of money
for cleaning up pollution hot spots
around the Great Lakes. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

The Great Lakes Legacy Act is supposed to remove contaminated sediment from harbors.
But, clean-up has been slow because there’s not enough money.

Although tens of millions of dollars have been authorized in the past, Congress and the
Bush Administration have not actually spent much of it on clean up projects.

EPA regional administrator Lynn Buhl says despite the history of the Legacy Act, more
money should be authorized.

“First of all, there needs to be an appreciation of how many players are involved in these
projects. They don’t come together overnight. I think we’ve done well to have completed
five already.”

Congress could increase the amount of authorized spending from 54 million dollars a
year to 150 million per year.

The EPA acknowledges a potential tripling of the funds for the Great Lakes Legacy Act
might not sit well with some Congressional budget hawks.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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