Tag: donation

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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Recycling Unused Medicine

Across the country, nursing homes destroy thousands of dollars in medicine at each facility every day. The medicine is still good. But destroying the drugs has been the traditional way to keep prescription medication out of the wrong hands. A new federal directive might encourage more nursing homes to recycle unused medicines for the use of the poor. The GLRC’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports:

Transcript

Across the country, nursing homes destroy thousands of dollars in
medicine at each facility every day. The medicine is still good. But
destroying the drugs has been the traditional way to keep prescription
medication out of the wrong hands. A new federal directive might
encourage more nursing homes to recycle unused medicines for the use
of the poor. The GLRC’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports:


In her nursing home room, Genevieve Barns gazes out the window. A
black rosary is draped over her lap. She’s 94 and an oxygen
concentrator, bubbles behind her to help her breathe. She says even this
late in life she’s still abiding by her mother’s lessons.


“It’s a matter of how we were raised, you never wasted anything.”


Barns was on a common medication called Mucinex, to keep her
throat clear, but her doctor took her off of it. Normally, her unused
Mucinex would be sent back to the pharmacy for destruction, but Barns’
nursing home contributes it to a so-called ‘drug repository.’ Barns says it
was a simple choice to give medicine she can’t use to needy seniors.


“Well, everything is so expensive, and when you waste… you’re just
squandering things that should be used by someone.”


Four years ago, Ohio became the first state to recycle sealed, unused
medicine to seniors in need. Ever since, its two drug repositories have
struggled to get more participation. The drugs can’t be redistributed until
there’s enough of any one drug to make a 30 day supply. Then it’s made
available to seniors who otherwise couldn’t afford it.


At Genevieve Barns’ nursing home, the administrator, Denise Day,
collects the drugs in a blue plastic tote…


“We don’t have a huge cliental in this building at this time, but the
amount of medications that get sent back is still quite incredible.”


The bin in Day’s office is filled with pills and bottles sealed in their
packaging. She says what’s here comes from patients covered by
Medicaid; unused medicines covered by Medicare or private insurance
must to go back to the pharmacy for incineration before patients can get
their refund. Day says still, about 2-thousand dollars worth a month,
from just 34 patients, are recycled by the group called Serving Our
Seniors.


Its director, Susan Daugherty, says if every nursing home in her county
donated from just half their patients, the results would be astounding.


“Honestly we could meet and probably exceed the need of older adults
who’ve needed access to drugs that are common to the aging
populations. It could do a whole lot of good with a whole lot of waste.”


The drugs in this region are taken to Buderer Pharmacy. It’s become the
local drug repository. In the backroom shelves of medication go all the
way to the ceiling.


Matt Buderer is the pharmacist. He says the drugs are checked for their
expiration dates and whether they’re eligible for donation.


“And then what we want to do is take these drugs and poke them out of
this thing into a bottle. Making sure that what goes on the bottle is the
lot and expiration date.”


Seniors who’ve signed a waiver and received a card from Serving Our
Seniors can then buy any medication for a flat fee of 7 dollars and 40
cents.


“You can dispense one tablet. You can dispense 15. You can dispense a
billion for $7.40.”


Ohio’s not the only state with a drug repository program. At least
nineteen other states have mimicked the idea. Some states have had
more success than others.


In North Carolina the Board of Pharmacy says it recycles 5 to 6 million
dollars of drugs paid by tax payers every year. That’s a lot more than
Ohio’s program.


Buderer says his state could be matching those numbers, if only there
were more participation.


“There’s good public knowledge out there that large quantities are picked
up daily and incinerated that could be used. So I’m sure that a large
institutional pharmacy knowing that… certainly isn’t saying ‘well, we
don’t care.'”


Buderer says liability is often the reason given for not participating in
the drug repositories. The state’s largest nursing home corporation and
wholesale pharmacy. Both declined to comment for this story.


But now, there might be a bigger incentive. In April, the federal government
announced it will hold nursing home facilities financially accountable for
medicines going unused by patients. The states can still redistribute medicines,
as long as documents show the federal government isn’t paying for the same item
twice, and this acknowledgement of waste with in the system, might just be the
national push drug repositories need to move into the mainstream.


For the GLRC, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

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