Revealing the relationship between the natural world and the everyday lives of people
More than a year ago – when an earthen wall broke at a power plant in Tennessee – 500-million gallons of toxic coal ash and water were spilled. If you compare it to other environmental tragedies – it was 50 times bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill. Half of the coal ash spill’s been cleaned up, but crews are still working to get the rest of it. And as Tanya Ott reports there are concerns about a new plan to deal with the ash:
The plan comes from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Clean-up crews would scoop up the ash and put it in the same pit it came from… but the pit’s been reinforced with concrete. What the plan doesn’t call for, though, is a liner to make sure no metals leach into groundwater. Tennessee law and even the EPA’s new proposed coal ash rules require liners.
Craig Zeller is the project manager for the EPA. He says because this pit isn’t new – or expanding – it doesn’t have to comply with the rules. Plus, he says, water testing in the area shows there’s no problem with leaching.
“If, in the future it does show that we need to add a groundwater mediation piece to this, we will!”
Adding a liner after-the-fact could be difficult and expensive. The new clean-up project will take four years and cost 268-million dollars.
For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.
Scientists have engineered bacteria to seek out and destroy a chemical that pollutes drinking water. Rebecca Williams has more:
Atrazine is a pesticide used on corn, sorghum and sugar cane. It’s one of the most common chemicals polluting water supplies in the US.
Justin Gallivan is a chemist at Emory University. His team genetically engineered a type of E. coli bacteria. They programmed it to seek out atrazine in a petri dish… and destroy it.
He says right now, this engineered bacteria is too weak to survive in the wild.
“It requires quite a bit of care and feeding, as you might say, to survive even in a petri dish. So if it were placed in a more harsh environment, it is extremely likely that these types of organisms would not survive.”
He says using this kind of genetically engineered bacteria to clean up pollution is still a long way off.
For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.
Oil from the big spill in the Gulf of Mexico is starting to turn up in places people did not expect.
That’s making it tough for cleanup crews to stay one step ahead of the oil.
Shawn Allee reports some scientists hope supercomputers might help.
Scientists want to put together a 3D picture of what the gulf oil plume looks like, and they’re using new computer code and supercomputers to do it.
The numbers are getting crunched at Argonne national laboratory outside Chicago.
Pete Beckman runs the computing center there.
He says satellites and water samples give us some information, but we could really use a more complete picture.
“If we know for example that, because of eddies and currents, that things will accumulate at a particular map location, well, that’s where you would send the booms to soak up the oil. If you can concentrate your resources in one place, you’re much more effective.”
Beckman says even with some of the fastest computers in the world, the model of the spill could take days to finish.
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.
Hurricane season starts soon. Experts predict an active season with four “major” hurricanes. What happens if a storm hits while there’s still an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Tanya Ott reports.
If a tropical storm hits while there’s still oil in the water, it could disastrous for the coastline and several miles inland. Mark Wysocki is a Cornell University climatologist.
“All that oil would get into the marshlands and some of the homeowners’ properties and so forth and that would make it very difficult then to remove that oil from those types of locations.”
When Katrina hit Louisiana it destroyed some of the oil distributor piping, and they’re still cleaning up in some of the wetland areas.
Wysocki says the one upside is that oil makes it harder for water to evaporate. Tropical storms need evaporation to build strength. So an oil spill might actually keep storms smaller.
For The Environment Report, I”m Tanya Ott.
Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman unveiled their climate and energy bill. It has support from some big fossil fuel industries. And several environmental groups say… it’s a good first step. But Mark Brush reports, critics are arguing it gives too much away to polluting industries:
The American Power Act sets a national goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And it would stop states from setting their own greenhouse gas standards.
It also provides billions of dollars to the coal industry to develop carbon capture technology. And it encourages more offshore drilling by offering states a share of royalties.
Kieran Suckling heads up the Center for Biological Diversity. He says by trying to attract more votes – Kerry and Lieberman are giving too much away to polluting industries:
“If all those giveaways and buyoffs got you the votes you needed, so you could actually pass the bill, you might hold your nose and say o.k. But it’s not even working. So you have all the giveaways and then you still get massive opposition.”
So far – despite the concessions – no republicans have stepped forward to support the bill.
For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.
A bill to make the food system safer is stalled in the Senate. Lester Graham reports… the bill’s supporters in the House say they hope for a Senate vote soon.
Representative Bart Stupak, a Democrat from Michigan, has investigated food contamination problems from peanut butter to spinach. The House has already passed a bill Stupak supported to keep track of food in case there is a contamination problem.
“Traceability from the time it’s planted in the field, harvested in the field, processed at the warehouse, shipped to the store that traceability is a big part of it.”
“There’s been a lot of concern about overlap of agency responsibility and gaps in responsibility. Will the legislation address that?”
“I think some of those gaps have been closed. Not all of them! But, I think some of them have been. I would still rather see us limit where food enters this country so you can have some control over it and by control I just mean inspection.”
Stupak says the Senate will likely take it up the food safety bill once the Senators finish with Wall Street financial overhaul legislation.
For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.
It’s been weeks since oil began gushing from a broken underwater well in the Gulf of Mexico. As BP continues to try to stop the leak, many coastal communities are scrambling to prepare for the oil that threatens their shorelines. As Tanya Ott reports, volunteers in Alabama are taking some low-tech steps to get ready:
Within days of the oil rig explosion, Casi Callaway’s phone started ringing off the hook.
“I have hundreds of volunteers calling every minute.”
Okay – well maybe not every minute. But Callaway’s group, Mobile Baykeeper, has been very busy organizing volunteers. In the past week more than 7-thousand people have flocked to the white sands of the Alabama coast hoping to help.
They’re combing every inch of the shoreline, picking up trash and raking driftwood and sticks into the dunes. Normally they’d let the natural debris stay on the beach. But if it gets coated with oil it becomes hazardous waste and has to be shipped to a local landfill. So volunteers are working round the clock to move the material. Tom Herder is with the Mobile Bay Estuary Program. He says they have to be careful because this is nesting season for wading birds like Plovers and Terns.
“You know we were the dumb transgressors the first day. I was throwing stuff in the dunes. And we were just moving stuff up and I wasn’t looking for Plover nests and the Audobon Society kinda got on my case – and it’s good, they educated us. And we’re educating our volunteers.”
They’ve been training volunteers on how to remove debris without disturbing wildlife. But Herder says the clock is ticking and there’s still lots of work to do. So they’re balancing the need to protect wildlife with the need to get the beaches ready. Herder says to do that they’ve been bending the rules a little bit.
“People have to be 18 years old to take part in our volunteer efforts. Shoot – that’s, that’s not necessarily the way people do things here. And we tell people, if you live on the Western shore of Mobile Bay don’t wait for us. Get down there and clean it up yourself. You know. And that’s not rogue.”
While volunteers work to get the beaches ready for oil, BP says it’s working to keep the oil from reaching the shore. It’s using what are called chemical dispersants – basically it’s industrial detergent – to break up the oil deep under the surface. But critics say the chemicals could kill off the larvae of fish that use the Gulf of Mexico for spawning grounds… fish like the Atlantic bluefin tuna. It could also hurt oysters and mussels. But BP’s Steve Rinehart says there’s always a tradeoff.
“Nobody wants an oil spill. We have an oil spill. You need to make judgments about limiting the damager where you can.”
Rinehart says a group of state and federal spill responders, including environmental scientists, has determined that dispersants pose the least risk.
“If the choice is oil going to shore or using dispersant off shore, using dispersant off shore causes less environmental impact. That’s not to say there won’t be some, but it’s less harmful to the environment than having the oil go to shore.”
So basically, it could be an “either/or” – protect the beach with dispersants and you might risk the fish. Tom Herder — with the Estuary Program — says it’s a no win situation.
“I’ve almost been making deals with God. And I can’t bribe God, but he knows I’ll follow through.”
Right now, Herder’s just praying for good weather – and more time – to get the coasts prepared.
For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.
No one really knows how many thousands of barrels of oil have gushed from the British Petroleum pipeline on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. But, the environmental damage is expected to be astounding. Lester Graham reports… Gulf Coast groups are preparing for the worst.
The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana is a consortium of environmental groups trying to coordinate volunteers to help clean up the environmental damage to hit the coast.
Steven Peyronnin is Executive Director of the group.
“There is the potential that we may need volunteers for extended periods of time–for weeks, but certainly there are challenges to arranging logistical and housing support for that. So, in the interim we are looking for people who are locally based, who are easily within driving distance and may be able to contribute a day’s worth of work.”
Right now they’re in need of people with HazMat training, but anyone can register to volunteer. The website is crcl.org.
You can also volunteer for clean-up at volunteerlouisiana.gov.
They’ll likely be looking for volunteers for months.
For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.
The next time you’re near your cupboard, check for kosher food items.
The packages have specials symbols, like a “U” or a “K” with a circle around it.
The kosher label shows Jewish people the food was prepared with ingredients that meet religious guidelines.
Shawn Allee learned rabbis had to work overtime to keep kosher food separate from the byproduct of an alternative fuel.
The world of futuristic alternative fuels got tangled up in ancient Hebrew food laws.
To understand how, I talk with a rabbi in the know … Sholem Fishbane of Chicago’s Rabbinical Council.
To start, I admit I don’t understand the key word: ‘Kashrut’ in Hebrew … or ‘kosher’ in English.
“How about your Yiddish?”
“Not so good.”
“Not so good, OK.”
“The word kosher means straight, correct. So when it comes to consumer items, and especially food, how does this play out?”
“The basic concept is that you are what you eat. You become the character of what you’re consuming.”
For example, in the Hebrew Bible, pigs are unclean, so pork’s not kosher.
But even some ‘clean’ foods are not kosher if you mix ’em …
“A very big thing in kosher is not to eat, uh … milk and meat together. meat representing death. milk representing life. Those are things that shouldn’t be coming together.”
So, you separate kosher food foods from non-kosher foods and even each other at times.
Well, Rabbi Fishbane’s job is to keep all this straight at big food factories.
He inspects food equipment and ingredients.
If everything’s kosher, he lets factories use the little “K” character on packages.
So, a few years ago, Rabbi Fishbane was at this factory, inspecting paperwork.
“All of a sudden you see an increase amount of glycerin receipts and hey, what’s going on? You usually have X amount a month and now it’s tripled.”
Glycerin is a common food ingredient, so Rabbi Fishbane thought, ‘no big deal.’
Until … he saw glycerin prices plummet, and his factories substituted it for more expensive ingredients.
“This is now a pattern. When we see a pattern, that’s when we get nervous.”
So, Rabbi Fishbane dialed up a teleconference with other rabbis.
They noticed the same thing … loads of cheap glycerin hitting the market.
The rabbis started sweating.
“glycerin has always been a kosher-sensitive item.”
This is one of the other rabbis on that conference call – Abraham Juravel of the Orthodox Union.
Glycerin keeps food sweet or moist.
It’s a clear, slick goo … and it’s made from oil or fat.
“The fat can be from animal or that fat can be from vegetable. and so automatically, there’s kosher glycerin and non-kosher glycerin. As a food ingredient it’s very common in all kinds of products. They actually use glycerin as a sweetener in certain candies.”
Rabbi Juravel started tracking down the source for all this new glycerin.
After some detective work, he found it was coming from factories that make biodiesel.
Biodiesel is an alternative fuel made from oil or fat.
You chemically process the fat … and you get fuel for cars and trucks, but …
“What you’ll also get is very crude glycerine, which is the waste product.”
Several years ago, new biodiesel factories were popping up and they looked for whatever fat they could find … kosher or otherwise.
“So, they buy used oil that you fried french fries in, and who knows what else you fried in there. if you made french fries and then you also made southern fried chicken in that oil, then that oil’s not kosher.”
Again, if the oil’s not kosher … neither is the glycerin and whatever food glycerin goes into.
There is a happy ending here.
Rabbis worked overtime to keep non-kosher glycerin out of the kosher food supply, but they actually made biodiesel operations part of the solution.
Some factories switched to all-kosher oils, so now their waste guarantees a steady supply of religiously pure, kosher glycerin.
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.