Tag: bulldozer

Choking on Construction Dust

  • Scientists say that inhaling those fine particles often found at construction sites is bad for the lungs and the heart (Photo courtesy of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction)

For most of us, the dust kicked
up by a construction site seems like a
minor nuisance. But it can be a health
hazard. As Karen Kelly reports, construction
dust is one source of air pollution that’s
largely been ignored:

Transcript

For most of us, the dust kicked
up by a construction site seems like a
minor nuisance. But it can be a health
hazard. As Karen Kelly reports, construction
dust is one source of air pollution that’s
largely been ignored:

If you’ve ever had the good fortune of living near a construction site, you
probably know a bit about dust.


Here in Ottawa, Canada, Mahad Adam can tell you all about it.

(construction sound)

For the past year, he’s lived across the street from a construction site that fills
an entire city block.

And he says the air quality can be terrible.

“Sneezing a lot, yes. Since the dust comes in during the whole day that they’ve
been working, it was constant dust inside the room so it was like having an
allergy.”

Trucks and bulldozers drive in and out of the site all day. They’re tracking mud
on the streets and the air is filled with dust.

Once that dirt is on the pavement, it’s kicked back up by every car that passes
by.

The construction site’s supervisor, Brad Smith, says he’s received lots of
complaints about the dust from nearby residents, especially seniors.

“I’m used to the dust and the dirt, whereas some of the people with breathing
problems and stuff that live in the community will be affected negatively more
than we are.”

In fact, too much dust can even be dangerous for people with respiratory
illnesses such as asthma.

To keep it under control, he says his company flushes the dirt off the streets
twice a week and then vacuums the rest up with a special truck.

He says the amount of cleaning they do depends on who they’re working for.

“My client is the city of Ottawa and they wrote that into the contract during
tender time. Whereas other projects I’ve been on, it can get into a bit of an
argument because it costs us and we push back a little bit.”

Smith says his company could get a fine if they leave debris on the roads.

But it’s hard to find a specific law – whether here in Canada or in the U.S. –
either at the national level, the state level, or even the local level that deals
directly with the dust coming off of construction sites.

The officials I talked to said that’s because it’s a temporary nuisance.

But what got me thinking about it was the research from Professor Brian
McCarry at McMaster University in Ontario.

He drove around his city measuring air pollution at different sites and he found
the cloud of dust kicked up when you pass a construction site is not something
you want to be breathing.

“In some cases you’re kicking up so much dust that the fine particles –
the things that cause health effects – are at levels that are there for concern.”

Scientists say that inhaling those fine particles is bad for the lungs and the
heart.

But McCarry says keeping the air clean around a construction site is actually
not that hard.

“It’s just housekeeping, it’s nothing more complex than that, and if you tell
them the housekeeping is higher in this area than elsewhere, they’ll do it.”

That can mean spraying down dusty roads with water or a sticky pine
substance.

Or using the vacuum truck more frequently in areas where there’s construction.

When companies started doing that, McCarry says there was a big drop in the
air pollution at those sites.

Now, local laws require that cleanup.

McCarry argues those laws should be everywhere.

For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

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FIGHT FOR AMERICA’S LONGEST RIVER (Part 3)

  • Finding a balance between natural habitat and commerce on America's rivers is causing problems. (Photo by Lester Graham)

When Lewis and Clark traveled up the Missouri River 200 years ago, they
recorded the abundant wildlife they saw along their way. Fur trapping was a
thriving industry on Frontier Rivers. But it took another 100 years of over-hunting
for the US to realize it was wiping out its wildlife. Today, conservation,
commerce and tourism all intersect on the nation’s big rivers. Each of those
industries relies on a steady supply of water. In the last of three reports, Kevin
Lavery looks at how all of those interests share – and struggle – over water:

Transcript

When Lewis and Clark traveled up the Missouri River 200 years ago, they
recorded the abundant wildlife they saw along their way. Fur trapping was a
thriving industry on Frontier Rivers. But it took another 100 years of over-hunting
for the US to realize it was wiping out its wildlife. Today, conservation,
commerce and tourism all intersect on the nation’s big rivers. Each of those
industries relies on a steady supply of water. In the last of three reports, Kevin
Lavery looks at how all of those interests share – and struggle – over water:


The Missouri River is known as the Big Muddy. Sure, it’s muddy at its mouth
where it joins the Mississippi River near St. Louis. But a thousand miles
upstream, the Missouri cuts a gleaming blue ribbon through Bismarck, North
Dakota. It looks like paradise to Mike Peluso… and with a broad smile, he rushes
his boat smack into the middle of it.


Peluso grew up fishing on this river. It’s a place brimming with history. Lewis
and Clark camped here in 1804. As he’s fishing, Peluso points to a frontier-era
fort that now sits within a state park:


“That’s actually where Custer started off, right up there before he went to his final… Here’s
a bite!”


Peluso lands a 4-pound walleye. It’s the most abundant fish species in the upper
Missouri system, and he wants to keep it that way:


“Just going to let her go down. You know, hopefully my kids at some point in time will get
to enjoy the same thing I just did. (SPLASH). Oh yeah… she took off. Perfect.”


Fishing on the Missouri River is crucial to North Dakota’s economy. In the 1950’s
the Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River 80 miles north of
Bismarck. The formation of Lake Sakakawea gave rise to a 150 million dollar
annual recreation industry.


That industry largely exists because of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The
Garrison Dam National Fish Hatchery breeds 80% of the state’s game fish.
There’s about 70 million walleye eggs in one building alone. But officials here
also care for fish that are never meant to be caught.


Rob Holm is with the Fish and Wildlife Service. He watches several pallid
sturgeons circling an 8,000 gallon tank. Each five-foot fish weighs about 60
pounds. The pallid has survived for 70 million years. But Holm says threats to
its habitat have made it an endangered species:


“If we can change things just enough to give them a fighting chance, I think it’s a good
thing. They’ve been around since the time of the dinosaurs. If we miss a beat on it now…
they’re not going to be there in 10 years.”


The pallid sturgeon was harvested for its caviar before it was federally protected.
But illegal catches still happen. Environmental groups see the pallid as a
barometer that gauges the overall health of the Missouri River. Chad Smith runs
the Nebraska field office of American Rivers:


“We lose the pallid sturgeon, that’s an indication that we may start to see problems with
the catfish and the paddlefish and the mallards and the bass, and then people are really
going to start screaming.”


The pallid sturgeon needs deep water to lay its eggs. In 2006, the Army Corps of
Engineers released extra water from a South Dakota reservoir to mimic the flood
pulse that cues the fish’s reproduction. It was a highly controversial act 15 years
in the making:


“I’m uncomfortable with the Corps playing God.”


Paul Rhode is with the national shipping advocacy group Waterways Council,
Incorporated. He says the artificial rise meant dropped water levels later in the summer.
That hurt commercial barge operators. Rhode questions the Corps’ methods:


“I hope there are studies going on to try to capture whatever it is that they’re doing to justify
having a spring rise. In past years it was to stimulate least tern and piping plover
populations, and then it was discovered that there was no science behind that. That was
just guesswork.”


The interior least tern and the piping plover are two birds that are also protected
by the Endangered Species Act. Spokesman Paul Johnston says the Corps has
evidence that its methods are working:


“Near Ponca, Nebraska we dredged out an old channel that had been closed off to create
shallow water habitat for the sturgeon and created an island. It was still being groomed
when the terns and plovers began nesting on it. We had to shut the bulldozer operator
down.”


The Corps says it understands the needs of all the different interests along the
Missouri River. That’s why it’s agreed to pay for an independent scientific study
of its habitat construction program. That study is expected to begin this fall. The
Corps says it’s still committed to trying to find a balance between nature and
business on America’s longest river. But barge owners, sportsmen and
environmentalists will try to tip that balance in their favor.


For The Environment Report, I’m Kevin Lavery.

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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

Stricter Rules for Heavy Equipment Emissions?

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing new clean-air standards for some diesel-powered equipment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing new clean-air standards for some diesel
powered equipment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


The EPA’s new rules would cut the soot and pollution that’s belched by off-road diesel vehicles
such as bulldozers and farm tractors. Frank O’Donnell is with the environmental group Clean Air
Trust.


“Currently there are very minimal controls on big diesel heavy equipment and the fuel itself is
extremely dirty. It’s virtually unregulated. And this EPA proposal will go a long way, over time,
making a significant reduction in the diesel pollution coming from heavy equipment.”


The EPA projects the new rules will prevent almost ten-thousand premature deaths each year
once the standards are fully phased in. But, that’ll take a while with the last of the dirty vehicles
probably taken out of service around the year 2030.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.