Tag: donate

Fights Over Parkland

  • Ken Cheyne says trash piles like this one are evidence that the city of Detroit has abandoned Eliza Howell Park. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)

Have you ever given someone a
gift, only to have that person
break it, mistreat it, or take
it for granted? Well, the grandson
of a man who gave a big chunk
of land for a city park says
that’s exactly what’s happened
to his family’s gift. So he’s
going to court to get the land
back. Sarah Hulett has this story about the dispute –
which highlights a problem facing
many cities:

Transcript

Have you ever given someone a
gift, only to have that person
break it, mistreat it, or take
it for granted? Well, the grandson
of a man who gave a big chunk
of land for a city park says
that’s exactly what’s happened
to his family’s gift. So he’s
going to court to get the land
back. Sarah Hulett has this story about the dispute –
which highlights a problem facing
many cities:

Eliza Howell Park is an oasis from the blight, traffic, and hard-knocks neighborhoods that surround it. At almost 140 acres, it’s one of Detroit’s biggest parks. It has woods, and trails, and a pair of rivers that come together at the south end.

But it’s also got some problems.

“Those little red posts, that’s actually a picnic table. It’s all gone, people have stolen, broken everything. All the sewer grates in the park have been stolen. They maintain nothing.”

That’s Ken Cheyne. It’s his grandfather who deeded this park to the city more than 70 years ago, with the requirement that it be used “for park and recreation purposes.” Now, he says, the city has virtually abandoned it.

“There’s been burned out cars in here. On the south end there was a boat for over two years. Just this old, awful, derelict, broken boat.”

The city has also barricaded the park’s entrances at times. Cheyne says that also signals abandonment. But it’s open to traffic today. As Cheyne drives around the park, he’s got to steer around huge potholes in washed-out parts of the road. People have dumped trash in the park. And the grass is waist-high.

Cheyne says all this adds up to neglect. So he’s asking a judge to give the land back to the family. And Cheyne, who’s a developer, says, if that happens, he wants to build new retail stores on the land. He also says he’ll keep part of it a park that the public can use. But he says he’ll pay to have it maintained so it’s much more attractive than it is now.

“It’s a land grab.”

That’s Larry Quarles. He’s the head of a group formed to help fight Cheyne’s effort.

“It’s pure and simple. If the land goes back to him, he’s going to develop it and this park is gone forever. Kids from now on will never have a chance to play in this park. It’s the wrong thing to do just because this city has fallen on hard times.”

And Detroit is not the only city struggling to keep up its obligations when it comes to maintaining parks and vacant land.

“It’s happening all over.”

Robin Boyle is a professor of urban planning at Wayne State University.

“Many of these cities are facing similar problems. Nothing quite to the scale of Detroit. The story of what’s happening in places like Flint in Michigan, or Youngstown in Ohio – and these are just the poster children for this challenge.”

Last summer, the mayor of Toledo, Ohio asked residents to bring their lawnmowers to city parks, and spent several Saturdays cutting park lawns himself.

A recent audit of Milwaukee County’s park system suggests selling some parkland to help deal with a maintenance backlog.

And just two years ago, Detroit’s former mayor pitched a failed plan to sell 92 city parks to help close a budget deficit.

Detroit’s attorneys are trying to hold onto Eliza Howell Park. They say even if a park is barricaded to vehicles, or the grass isn’t mowed, it’s still a park.

George Bezenar agrees. He comes to the park with his dogs several times a week.

“Just because the lawn isn’t mowed all the time, that doesn’t matter to me because, to me, it represents more like a natural preserve, where you see birds, you see deer, you see fox. You see everything here.”

Including things you’d rather not see in nature, like bags of garbage, and rusted playground equipment.

Neighbors like Bezenar say they hope Detroit will someday have the money to properly maintain this park.

A judge is expected to decide this spring whether the city gets to keep the parkland.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sarah Hulett.

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Bike Shop in a Box

  • A mechanic works on the bikes to make them as compact as possible - removing pedals, kickstands, and turning the handlebars (Photo by Karen Kelly)

So many of us have an old bike collecting
dust in the garage. More often than not,
they end up in the garbage. But, as Karen
Kelly reports, one group has found a unique
way to recycle them:

Transcript

So many of us have an old bike collecting
dust in the garage. More often than not,
they end up in the garbage. But, as Karen
Kelly reports, one group has found a unique
way to recycle them:

(sound of banging)

“That’s a sweet ride!”

A volunteer drops a bike into a pile at the back of a huge shipping container in Ottawa, Canada.
The bikes are stacked one on top of the other.

(sound of tools)

Just outside, a mechanic is stripping the bikes down to make them as compact as possible.

“If it has a kickstand, we have to remove it. We take the pedals off and turn the handlebars.”

In a few hours, this cargo container will be jammed with hundreds of donated bicycles, bike parts, and backpacks.

The gear is collected by a group called Bicycles for Humanity.
They have 20 chapters, most of them in North America.

Each chapter raises a couple of thousand dollars to buy a shipping container.
They pack it full of donated gear, and send it off to a community in Namibia, Africa. The shipping cost – another several thousand dollars – is also raised by the group.

A volunteer group there turns the container itself into a locally-run bike shop that provides jobs and transportation.

Some of the bikes are donated to health care workers who use them to pull patients on a stretcher.

Others are piled high with stacks of food and household items that defy gravity.

Martin Sullivan points to some of the pictures on display.

“These are the bakers who are able to sell their bread. And also wood, you can stack wood. It’s just amazing what they do, how they make use of these bikes that we take for granted. We throw them out, and they can do so much with them.”

(sound of traffic)

In Namibia, cars – and even bicycles – are scarce. Sullivan says these bikes make life easier for people who are used to walking miles to get to school, work, or to find the basic necessities.

Seb Oran is the co-founder of Bicycles for Humanity in Ottawa.

This is the fourth container of bikes that she’s sent to Africa.
Each one supports a local community group.
Sometimes its a hospital, sometimes an orphanage, sometimes a women’s empowerment group.
She remembers one run by former prostitutes.

“Six of them became bicycle mechanics now. And now, they don’t have to sell their bodies to put food on their plate.”

But there are some challenges.

Michael Linke runs the Bicycle Empowerment Network.
He helps the Nambians set up the bicycle shops.

“Because this is the first time a lot of these people have had formal ongoing work, it’s often difficult to get people to understand a long-term ongoing business.”

But with some mentoring, they’ve been able to make it work.
There are now 13 successful projects, with more containers filled with bikes on the way.

The group estimates that these bikes will last another 20 or 30 years in Africa. They might be junk to us, but in Namibia, they’re a precious resource.

For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

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Hard Times and Heating Homes

  • 31% of low-income people said they kept their home so cold it felt unsafe. 20% said they had their electricity or gas shut off for some amount of time. (Photo by Gerald Downing, courtesy of FEMA)

Now that the price of oil has
dropped, the cost of heating your home
won’t be as high as experts were predicting
this summer. But millions of Americans
are still struggling to pay their heating
bills. Rebecca Williams reports in some
rare cases having your heat shut off can
mean being evicted from your home. And,
in the worst case, it can even mean losing
your children:

Transcript

Now that the price of oil has
dropped, the cost of heating your home
won’t be as high as experts were predicting
this summer. But millions of Americans
are still struggling to pay their heating
bills. Rebecca Williams reports in some
rare cases having your heat shut off can
mean being evicted from your home. And,
in the worst case, it can even mean losing
your children:

Demetria Salinas has three kids. Money is tight and she’s worried about
getting through the winter.

“I’m kinda nervous because I mean what if we don’t have enough to pay the
bills, then what do we do?”

She says she tries to save on heat by putting extra sweaters on her kids, and
turning the furnace off.

“Put the gas on for a little bit and turn it off, and when it gets a little bit
colder, put it back on. But it does definitely mean layering up, even in the
house.”

She says that’s hard on her kids.

Many parents are in these impossible situations. The National Energy
Assistance Director’s Association has found low-income people often have
to choose between paying their heating bills and feeding their kids.

31% said they kept their home so cold it felt unsafe. 20% of low income
people said they had their electricity or gas shut off for some amount of
time.

Phil Thompson works for Capital Area Community Services in Lansing,
Michigan. His agency helps people pay their bills and talks with utility
companies to buy people more time. He says usually utilities won’t shut
heat off in the coldest days of winter.

“Most utility companies are sympathetic to the situation of not having heat
in the wintertime. There’s always those horror stories of a senior or
handicapped individual who froze because their utility was turned off.
They’re going to do everything they can to keep that from happening.”

But Thompson says he sees a lot of people get their heat shut off in the
spring, and it can still get cold then.

Now, in some states, if the heat is shut off – even for just a little while – you
can be evicted.

“In some cases where there’s small children it’s very possible that Child
Protective Services would get involved and possibly remove the kids from
the household when there’s no utilities.”

That’s right – the state can take kids away if the utilities are shut off.

We talked with foster care workers in several states, and they all said that
this is rare. They said they do everything they can to keep families together,
and they can sometimes help pay heating bills. But they also said a home
with no heat is often a sign that something else is wrong.

Andrea Yocum is an investigator with Child Protective Services north of
Detroit.

“Typically there’s other reasons why they’re removed for example, if the
family’s just not willing to pay their bills because they’re using the money
for other things like drugs or alcohol.”

But Yocum says sometimes it’s just not the family’s fault.

“I have had families that were evicted as a result of their landlord not paying
their bills, and utilities turned off the same because the landlord’s not taking
care of what’s happening within the home.”

If families are evicted, it can be temporary, maybe just a couple days until
the heat’s back on. But for families living in poverty, having the heat turned
off again can happen as soon as the next bill is late.

There is some good news this year. There’s federal money that states use to
help people pay their heating bills. Because fuel prices were expected to go
up, Congress doubled that pot of money this year. Most states are reporting
they’re in a better position to help people now.

But winter is just beginning and they’re already getting a lot more people
asking for help with their heating bills than in the past.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Recent Deer Hunts Help Feed the Poor

  • Overpopulation of deer is causing problems for forest understory, farmers, and increased car/deer accidents. Some programs are encouraging hunters to take an extra deer and donating the meat to charity. (Photo by Lester Graham)

The hunting season for deer has ended or is about to end in most states. But the deer are still plentiful. Overpopulation of deer has led to an increase in deer-and-car crashes. Too many deer also damage the understory of forests. In some states, though, the deer overpopulation also means more deer meat is made available to low-income people. That’s because hunters, meat processors and food banks are working together to get venison to the poor. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Skye Rohde
reports:

Transcript

The hunting season for deer has ended or is about to end in most states. But the deer are
still plentiful. Overpopulation of deer has led to an increase in deer and car crashes. Too
many deer also damage the understory of forests. In some states, though, the deer
overpopulation also means more deer meat is made available to low-income people.
That’s because hunters, meat processors and food banks are working together to get
venison to the poor. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Skye Rohde reports:


It’s only been in the last decade or so that states have begun allowing hunters to donate
wild game to charitable organizations. In New York, meat processors and hunters started
the Venison Donation Coalition in 1998. Starting out, they gave a thousand pounds of
deer meat to food pantries in two counties.


Kathy Balbierer handles the coalition’s public relations. She says since that first thousand
pound donation, the program has grown…


“Last year, we had 108,000 pounds of venison donated, which on the average is, you
know – a deer is 40 pounds. It was approximately 27,000 deer. This year we have 119
participating processors throughout the state serving 52 counties.”


It’s an idea that hunters and meat processors across the nation are embracing. There are
venison donation programs in almost every state. Some, such as those in New York and
Illinois, are administered by state government. Others, like Michigan’s and Minnesota’s,
are run by private organizations.


Here’s how it works. First, a hunter who wants to donate meat takes it to a participating
processor. Ed Tanguey operates a meat processing facility in Kirkville, New York. He
says it’s a pretty simple process.


“Once the hunters show up to the building, we’ll have them come into our skinning room.
We’ll have them fill out some paperwork and once it’s brought in, we’ll start to skin the
deer, remove the hide and trim off any meat that’s not edible. We’ll bring the deer into
our cutting room.”


Butchers section the deer into shoulder, torso and hindquarters.


(sound of grinder starting up)


Then Tanguey sets up the grinder and grabs the meat from the cooler.


He packs the ground meat into five-pound black-and-white tubes and slaps a label on
with his name and the hunter’s license number on it.


Tanguey has processed 250 deer so far this season, 44 of them for the Venison Donation
Coalition. The coalition pays him a reduced rate, about a dollar a pound. Once there’s
enough meat in Tanguey’s cooler, he calls the Food Bank of Central New York to pick it
up.


Tanguey says this is his way of giving back to his community.


“When I see a hunter bringing in his son or grandson and they’re giving a second deer or
a third deer to the food bank, I think it’s going to pass it on to them. And years from now
we’ll keep the coalition supplied with some more food for the food bank.”


Jim Giacando is operations manager at the Food Bank of Central New York. He says
200 of the 600 agencies he works with ask for venison.


“In our freezer, we have almost 1,000 lbs ready to distribute, and it’s already committed
to a number of agencies throughout our 11-county area. And we’ll be distributing it this
week and next week, and then hopefully we’ll receive more in and fill more orders.”


The food bank will receive venison up until January. But Giacando says the greatest
challenge is keeping up with the demand for deer meat. A lot of people want it.


“I think we actually may have to get to a point where we might have to say ‘you know,
you can’t order that much. We have to keep it for all the other programs.'”


(ambient sound in church)


One of the food pantries asking for the deer meat is the University United Methodist
Church in Syracuse, New York. Norma Goel ordered venison from Giacando’s food
bank. The church’s food pantry feeds about 150 people every week.


Goel says she can’t buy as much food for the pantry as she’d like to because of the
church’s limited budget and an increase in the number of poor people asking for food.
She says farm-raised meat is a high-priced commodity…


“We’re always looking for a way to provide meat to participants in the pantry. And it’s
become increasingly difficult to buy frozen meat that the food bank has. By and large,
we’re not purchasing frozen meat from the food bank because we can’t afford it.”


So the deer meat is a cheaper alternative. Last year, Goel ordered venison too late to
receive any. This year she got all she could for the pantry: 60 pounds. She only has to
pay the handling costs – the coalition covers processing.


Goel says she’ll encourage people to use the deer meat in place of ground beef because
it’s high in protein and low in fat. She says the 60 pounds will feed a lot of hungry people
in her community.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Skye Rohde.

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Pollution Credits as Stocking Stuffers

Here’s a last-minute gift idea for a green-thinking loved one. A New York-based environmental group will retire a pollution credit in someone’s honor. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein explains:

Transcript

Here’s a last-minute gift idea for a green-thinking loved one. A New York-
based environmental group will retire a pollution credit in someone’s honor.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein explains:


The Environmental Protection Agency issues pollution credits to power
plants. Each one allows them to emit one ton of sulfur dioxide from their
smokestack.


Several years ago, one power company donated 10,000 of the credits to the
Adirondack Council. The group’s a non-profit working to reduce acid rain.
Instead of trading them on the open market, where they can fetch up to 800
dollars apiece, the Council decided to retire the credits. Spokesman John
Sheehan says for 50 bucks, the group will send someone a gift certificate.


“That certificate will show that that person has removed essentially one ton
of sulfur dioxide from the atmosphere permanently and that that pollution
will never go up a smokestack anywhere in the country, and it will help
clean up the Adirondacks and the rest of the United States at the same time.”


Sheehan says the Adirondack Council has about 3,000 credits left. His staff
will be around until Thursday to help people give the gift of cleaner air this
Christmas.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.

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