Nuclear Loans Guaranteed

  • If all goes according to plan, the nuclear reactors will go up in six to seven years and cost around 14 billion dollars. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

The Obama Administration
announced that it will back
the cost of constructing two
new nuclear reactors. Mark
Brush reports, if they’re
constructed, they’ll be the
first reactors built in the
country in nearly three decades:

Transcript

The Obama Administration
announced that it will back
the cost of constructing two
new nuclear reactors. Mark
Brush reports, if they’re
constructed, they’ll be the
first reactors built in the
country in nearly three decades:

The Southern Company plans to build the reactors in Georgia. They say, if all goes well, they’ll go up in six to seven years and cost around 14 billion dollars.


Investors have seen nuclear energy as a risky bet. But now that the President says the government will guarantee the loans, Wall Street might be enticed back to nuclear energy.

And then there’s the question of safety. President Obama’s Energy Secretary is Steven Chu. He says these new generation reactors are safe.

“We expect that the newer generation reactors will be ideally completely passively safe. Which means that, uh, you don’t actually need to control the reactor. If you lose control of it, it will not melt down.”

Some environmentalists say nuclear energy is not worth the costs – and there’s still no permanent place to store nuclear waste that’s radioactive for thousands of years.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Congressman Proposes Clean Water Trust Fund

A proposed national clean water trust fund will be debated in Congress over the next year, with help from a leading House Republican. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach has the story:

Transcript

A proposed national clean water trust fund will be debated in Congress
over the next year, with help from a leading House Republican. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach has the story:


Sewage treatment agencies and some environmental groups have been
pushing for a dedicated national fund to help control sewer overflows
and protect regional waters like the Great Lakes.


Recently, House Water Resources Sub-Committee Chair John Duncan,
Junior introduced the Clean Water Trust Act. The Tennessee Republican
says the nation’s water infrastructure needs more federal money, but it
isn’t clear where Congress would find the 38 billion dollars over five
years.


Ken Kirk of National Association of Clean Water Agencies says he
doesn’t know yet who would pay.


“But I think if you would poll the American people, I think you would
find at least two things. One, clean water is a high priority, and
two, they are willing to pay more.”


Kirk contends a clean water trust fund would be similar to programs
financing highways and airports.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Ten Threats: Sewage in the Lakes

  • Workers build Toledo's wet weather treatment system. The system is expected to go online next fall. It will treat water in the event of a storm. (Photo by Mark Brush)

Point source pollution means just that. It’s pollution that comes from a
single point; usually out the end of a pipe. It’s easy to identify. Since
the passage of the Clean Water Act more than 30 years ago, most of that kind
of pollution has been cleaned up, but today, there are still some pipes dumping
pollution into lakes and rivers, but Mark Brush reports stopping that remaining
pollution isn’t that easy:

Transcript

We’re continuing our look at Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. Lester Graham
is our guide through the series. He says the next report is part of coverage
of a threat called point source pollution.


Point source pollution means just that. It’s pollution that comes from a
single point; usually out the end of a pipe. It’s easy to identify. Since
the passage of the Clean Water Act more than 30 years ago, most of that kind
of pollution has been cleaned up, but today, there are still some pipes dumping
pollution into lakes and rivers, but Mark Brush reports stopping that remaining
pollution isn’t that easy:


(Sound of the Maumee)


We’re on the banks of the Maumee River near Toledo, Ohio. Sandy Binh
brought us here to describe what she saw in the river several years ago when
she was out boating with some friends.


“When there was a heavy rain maybe five years or so ago this is where we saw
a sea of raw sewage in this whole area. It was like, I mean it was like chunks
everywhere. It was just disgusting.”


Binh reported it and found that the city couldn’t do anything about it. That’s
because Toledo’s sewage treatment plant is at the end of what’s called a combined
sewer system. These systems carry both storm water from city streets, and raw
sewage from homes and businesses. If too much water comes into the plant, a
switch is flipped, and the sewage goes straight into the river.


(Sound of treatment plant)


Steve Hallett manages engineering at the wastewater treatment plant for the
city of Toledo. He says a rainstorm can bring twice as much water as the
plant can handle.


“And when hydraulically you can only take about 200 million of it – where’s
the other 200 hundred million go?”


“Where does it go?”


“Uh, it’s by-passed. Limited treatment possibly and then it would be
by-passed to the Maumee River”


Toledo is not alone. More than seven hundred cities across the country have
combined sewer systems that often overflow, cities such as Milwaukee,
Detroit, Buffalo, Chicago, and Cleveland. Every year billions of gallons of
raw sewage are dumped into the Lakes from cities with these old combined systems.


The sewage can cause problems for the environment, but the biggest concern
is that people might get sick. Some of the bugs found in sewage can cause
liver problems, heart disease, and can even cause death.


Dr. Joan Rose is a microbiologist with Michigan State University. She’s
been studying sewage in water for more than 20 years. She says sewage
contains viruses and other nasty microorganisms that can hang around in the
environment.


“Up here in the Great Lakes region with the cool temperatures we have –
these organisms can survive for months, and also these organisms
accumulate.”


Rose says what’s unique about the microorganisms in sewage is that it only
takes a few of them to cause diseases in humans, and once contracted they
can be contagious.


The Ohio EPA sued the city of Toledo. It wanted the city to clean up its
act. After a long battle, the city and the state reached a settlement, and
officials agreed to spend more than 450 million dollars to try to do
something about the problem.


(Sound of construction)


Back at the wastewater treatment plant we’re standing on the edge of a deep
pit. Down at the bottom sparks are flying as welders climb over towers of
green rebar. They’re building a new system that’s designed to treat water
quickly when there’s a heavy rainstorm. The water won’t be fully treated,
but the solids will be settled out and the water will be chlorinated before it’s
released into the river. It’s a compromise the city and the state EPA agreed
upon.


Steve Hallett says to fully treat every drop of water that comes to the
treatment plant in a big storm would require a project four times this size.


“You’d need massive amounts of storage to hold every drop here. You know, that’s
extremely costly and I think, uh, is deemed not feasible.”


Toledo’s project will mostly be paid for by a steady hike in water and sewer
rates over the next fifteen years. The increase was approved by voters
three years agom, and officials plan to go after federal grants and loans
to help defray the costs, but federal dollars are getting scarce. Big cuts
have been made to the federal low interest loan program many cities use to
finance these projects.


The demand for financing is likely to increase. The cost of upgrading the
nation’s combined sewer systems will cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
The question is, who will pay to stop one of the biggest sources of water
pollution left in the country?


For the GLRC, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

RACE’S ROLE IN URBAN SPRAWL (Part I)

  • Urban sprawl sometimes conjures up images of subdivisions sprouting up in cornfields. But land use experts say the term should also include a focus on the central cities that are left behind. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Experts seldom talk about one of the driving forces behind urban sprawl. White flight began the exodus of whites from city centers, and racial segregation is still a factor in perpetuating sprawl. In the first of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on the issue that’s often overlooked:

Transcript

Experts seldom talk about one of the driving forces behind urban sprawl. White
flight began the
exodus of whites from city centers, and racial segregation is still a factor in
perpetuating sprawl.
In the first of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on the issue that’s often
overlooked:


Land use advocates argue that urban sprawl and deteriorating inner cities are two
sides of the
same coin. The tax money that pays for new roads and sewer systems for sprawl and the
investments that pay for new strip malls is money that’s spent at the expense of
city centers
because it’s not invested there.


For the most part, all of that investment is made in communities that are
overwhelmingly white.
Those left behind in the cities are often people of color who are struggling with
high taxes to pay
for the deteriorating infrastructure and government services designed for
populations much larger
than are left today.


White flight was aided by government and business institutions. Government home
loans for
veterans of World War II that made those nice subdivisions possible didn’t seem to
make it into
the hands of black veterans. Banks often followed a practice of redlining. And
real estate
brokers also worked to make sure the races remained segregated.


Reynolds Farley is a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Population
Studies
Center. Farley says today, when planners and government officials talk about white
flight and
segregation, they talk in the past tense. They don’t like to acknowledge that
racism like that
still exists…


“Well, I think there is a lot of effort to underestimate the continued importance of
racial
discrimination and the importance of race in choosing a place to live. There’s been
a modest
decrease in segregation in the last 20 years. Nevertheless, it would be a serious
mistake to
overlook the importance of race in the future of the older cities of the Northeast
and Midwest.”


Farley says as recently as two years ago a federal government study looked at real
estate
marketing practices and found there were still “code phrases” that indicated whether
neighborhoods were white or black.


“Subtle words would clearly convey to white customers the possibility that there are
blacks
living there, the schools aren’t in good quality. And the subtle words could convey
to blacks
that they wouldn’t be welcomed in living in a white neighborhood.”


In the North… racism has evolved from overt to covert. It’s a wariness between
the races not talked about in polite society. It becomes more evident as solidly
middle-class blacks begin to move into older suburbs and whites flee once again to
newer
subdivisions even farther from the city core.


Land Use and ‘Smart Growth’ advocates say it’s time to face up to the continuing
practice of
segregation. Charlene Crowell is with the Michigan Land Use Institute. She says it
starts by
talking about the fears between white people and black people.


“By not addressing those fears, the isolation and the separation has grown. So,
until we are able
to talk and communicate candidly, then we’ll continue to have our problems.”


But it’s uncomfortable for most people to talk about race with people of another
race. Often we
don’t talk frankly. Crowell says we’ll be forced to deal with our feelings about
race sooner or
later. That’s because as more African-Americans join the middle-class, the suburbs
are no longer
exclusively white…


“My hope is that those who feel comfortable in moving further and further away from
the urban
core will come to understand that they cannot run, that there are in fact black
homeowners who
are in the suburbs and moving into the McMansions just as many whites are. And we
all have to
look at each other. And we all have to understand that this is one country and we
are one
people.”


In cities such as Detroit, white flight led to rampant urban sprawl in the
surrounding areas
and left huge pockets of poverty and streets of abandoned houses in the inner city.
Heaster
Wheeler is the Executive Director of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP. He says
while his
constituents often worry about more pressing urban issues, he knows that it’s
important that
African-Americans living in the city recognize farmland preservation and urban
revitalization
are connected. The investment that paves over a corn field is investment that’s not
going to
rebuild the city. But… black politicians largely have not been
involved in land use issues and usually they’re not asked to get involved…


“There is a racial divide on this particular issue. Often times African-Americans,
people of color and folk who live in the urban centers are not present at the
discussions about
Smart Growth.”


Wheeler says policymakers on both sides of the racial divide need to recognize that
land use
issues are as much about abandoned city centers as they are about disappearing
farmland…
which could put urban legislators and rural legislators on the same team. That’s a
coalition
that could carry a lot of sway in many states.


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

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IS IT SPRAWL? OR URBAN ABANDONMENT? (Part II)

  • Urban sprawl doesn't just alter the land in the suburbs. Central cities are affected by the loss of investment when people leave the cities and tax dollars are instead invested in building roads and sewers in the surrounding areas. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Concern about urban sprawl is often limited to the loss of farmland, traffic congestion, and unattractive development. But urban sprawl has other impacts. Building the roads and sewers to serve new subdivisions uses state and federal tax money, often at the expense of the large cities that are losing population to the suburbs. In the second of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham looks at the divide between city and suburb:

Transcript

Concern about urban sprawl is often limited to the loss of farmland, traffic
congestion, and unattractive development. But urban sprawl has other impacts.
Building the roads and sewers to serve new subdivisions uses state and federal tax
money, often at the expense of the large cities that are losing population to the
suburbs. In the second of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
looks at the divide between city and suburb:


What some people call urban sprawl got started as the federal government’s answer to
a severe housing shortage. There wasn’t a lot of building going
on during the Great Depression. At the end of World War II, returning GIs needed
houses.


Reynolds Farley is a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Population
Studies Center. Farley says the federal government offered veterans low-interest
loans and developers started building modest homes on green lawns on the edge of
cities. But because of discrimination, the loans didn’t as often make it into the
hands of African-American veterans. Instead of segregated neighborhoods in the
city, segregation lines were newly drawn between city and
suburb.


“Very low-cost mortgages accelerated the movement of whites from the central city
out to the suburbs… built upon the long racial animosity that characterized cities
beginning at the time of the first World War and continuing, perhaps up to the
present.”


With segregation, there was a shift of wealth. Farley says jobs and purchasing
power were exported to the suburbs with the help of the interstate highway system.
And big new shopping centers displaced retail in downtowns.


People with low-incomes, often people of color, were left behind in cities of
abandoned houses and vacant storefronts that often didn’t have enough tax base to
maintain roads and services.


John Powell is a professor at Ohio State University. He’s written extensively on
urban sprawl and its effects on urban centers.


“So, we move jobs away, we move tax base away, we move good schools away and then
the city becomes really desperate and they’re trying to fix the problems, but all
the resources have been moved away.”


With no way found to fix the cities, whites have been moving out of cities to the
suburbs for decades. And now, middle-class blacks are moving out too. For some
metropolitan areas, leaving the city has become a
matter of income… although Powell says even then African-Americans have a more
difficult time finding a way out.


“Race never drops out of the equation. In reality, even middle-class blacks don’t
have the same mobility to move to opportunity that even working-class whites do
because of the way race works in our society.”


So, segregation continues. But now the line is drawn between middle-class blacks in
the older, inner-ring suburbs, whites in the outer-ring suburbs… and for the most
part in cities such as Detroit, poorer blacks left behind in the central city.


Smarth Growth advocates say part of the answer to urban sprawl is finding a way to
get more money back into the central-cities to make them more attractive to
everyone. That’s worked in cities such as Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis-St.
Paul. But those cities and their suburbs are predominantly white. For Northern
cities with greater racial divides, cities such as Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St.
Louis and Detroit it’s different. A lot of white suburbanites don’t want tax
dollars going to blacks in the city. And African-Americans in the city don’t see
urban sprawl as their issue, so ideas such as tax revenue sharing for a metropolitan
region are not a priority. The issue of regional tax equity that
works in predominantly white regions… becomes muddied by racial animosity in
segregated regions.


“Buzz’ Thomas is state senator in Michigan who has taken on the issue of urban
sprawl and its counterpart, the deterioration of city centers. Senator Thomas says
if state legislatures can’t find an answer to help cities, sprawl in the suburbs
will continue, paving over green space and farmland.


“You know, poverty and jobs and access to health care and access to quality
education are very realistic issues for cities like Detroit. But, a reality is they
go hand-in-hand with sprawl. As your black middle-class moves out of the inner city
because they’re not satisfied with those resolution to those issues. You know, it
links sprawl.”


Senator Thomas says legislators from rural areas and from urban areas are beginning
to realize they have a common issue. But before they can get to discussions of
regional tax equity, they first have to talk about the more difficult issue of
race…


“And have a discussion that might make me uncomfortable, that might make those
that I discuss it with uncomfortable. Only then, I think, can we really adequately
figure out how long it’s going to take us to resolve that issue.”


In the meantime, many cities are still losing population and revenue. Suburbs
continue to sprawl. And farms are becoming subdivisions, retail strip malls and
fast food restaurants.


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

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Environmental Practices Affect Stock Values

A new report has found that utilities with the best environmental practices have higher values on the stock market. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:

Transcript

A new report has found that utilities with the best environmental practices have higher values on
the stock market. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:


The New York-based financial research firm Innovest found a correlation between sound
environmental management and strong financial performance among companies.


The firm compared 26 utilities on environmental factors such as toxic releases.


Researcher Carla Tabossi says they found the companies with the highest environmental scores
outperformed others on the market.


“The environmental quality of corporations turns out to be a very good proxy for the overall
management quality of firms, which happens to be the primary determinant of stock market
performance.”


Tabossi has also found that a growing number of asset managers are considering environmental
issues when constructing investment portfolios.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.

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