Tag: flow

Protecting Beaches From Gulf Oil Spill

  • Volunteers are 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. (Photo courtesy of the NOAA)

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:

Transcript

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.

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Clampdown on Obama’s Open Government

  • Climate scientist James Hansen says censoring science and controlling the message or restricting access is not unique to the Bush White House. (Photo courtesy of The White House)

The Obama administration has stressed openess and transparency in government. But Lester Graham reports, government employees, scientists and journalists say that transparency is not as clear as they’d like.

Transcript

The Obama administration has stressed openness and transparency in government. But Lester Graham reports, government employees, scientists and journalists say that transparency is not as clear as they’d like:

Federal government websites have started featuring plans for transparency. Go to the Environmental Protection Agency site and you’ll find the “Open Government Plan 1.0.” The Food and Drug Administration site has a “transparency tool.” You can click on the Department of Energy’s “open” icon. Nearly every federal agency has a similar openess and transparency plan.
But inside the agencies you’ll hear a different story.

James Hansen is a climate scientist in NASA’s Goddard Space Center. He was famously muzzled by the Bush administration because Hansen’s science on climate change did not match the Bush White House policy on climate change. But James Hansen says censoring science and controlling the message or restricting access is not unique to the Bush White House.

“It’s really both parties feel they control the offices of public affairs in the science agencies. And, they think that the news that comes out of the offices of public affairs should be supportive of the administration’s policies.”

It seems to be a carry-over from political campaigns. During the campaign, handlers work keep everyone “on message” to make there are no embarrasing statements. Then, they bring that same mentality with them when they’re rewarded with jobs in the government.

One career press officer who did not want to be identified told me about “exteme frustration” among his colleagues. Recently there’s been a quote “tightening of the screws” by political appointees overseeing the press officers. Instead of the press officers doing their job, helping journalists get in contact with the bureaucrats, and scientists within an agency… they’re inhibited, restricted by political appointees.

Journalists have been trying to work around the obstacles thrown up by the political appointees.

Christy George is a reporter and the President of The Society of Environmental Journalists. Full disclosure here– I am a member of the SEJ. She says the journalists have been fighting this battle against many presidential administrations.

“Politicians love to control their message.”

But with all the promises of transparency in government, some reporters thought things would change.

“When President Obama came in and pledged to greater transparency and open government, we thought that was going to be a good thing and dramatically different from the Bush administration. And it’s not dramatically different in certain agencies. It seems like things are just largely continuing on.”

Christy George is quick to note, the Environmental Protection Agency has addressed some of the journalists’ issues. But, there are still problems of getting access to key scientists and others who contribute to how laws are enforced.

“It becomes harder to get information out of government when people are trying to manage information.”

Darrell West is the vice president and director of Governance Studies at the think tank, the Brookings Institution. He says when political appointees work to control the message, it’s not helpful to anyone.
And West says some of this transparency that agencies are trumpeting is really a way to avoid the scrutiny of journalists and activists and present information directly to the public through the internet.

“There is a risk that the flow of information is going to be more restricted and people are going to be told only what the government wants them to hear.”

And if you’re only hearing what the government wants you to hear… there’s a significant risk you’re not going to hear all you need to know.

For the Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Mapping Underground Rivers

  • DNR hydrologist Jeff Green consults a high-resolution topographic map to figure out which sinkhole is ahead of him. The trees and grass that grow up around the sinkhole form a buffer, allowing water to soak into the soil and filtering any pollutants before it reaches the aquifer.(Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)

Spring in the north is a time of melting snow and running water. It’s the best time of year for people who study underground water flows. Those underground rivers are important, especially where surface water easily drains into bedrock. It can quickly carry pollution long distances. Hydrologists try to map these underground rivers to help protect fragile ecosystems. As Stephanie Hemphill reports, the first step in making these maps is a process called dye tracing.

Transcript

Spring in the north is a time of melting snow and running water. It’s the best time of year for people who study underground water flows. Those underground rivers are important, especially where surface water easily drains into bedrock. It can quickly carry pollution long distances. Hydrologists try to map these underground rivers to help protect fragile ecosystems. As Stephanie Hemphill reports, the first step in making these maps is a process called dye tracing.

When the snow is melting in the woods and fields, Jeff Green wants to know where it’s going.

“We’re going to hike back to two springs.”

Green is a hydrologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and an expert in the limestone geology of Southeast Minnesota.

Green climbs a fence and splashes through a stream that’s flooding a pasture. The stream is bordered by a natural wall of limestone.

Melting snow seeps into the limestone. It runs down vertical cracks to bigger horizontal openings that look like miniature caves. Jeff Green calls these “conduits,” and some are three inches wide.

“You can imagine a pipe that big — water would move very fast, like we’re seeing. So these conduits are what we’re dye tracing.”

Green has traipsed out to this pasture to put what he calls a “bug” in a spring. The ‘bug’ is a small mesh bag about the size of a cellphone, packed with charcoal. The charcoal will capture a dye that he’ll pour into melting snow in a sinkhole a few miles away. He’ll do this in several different spots.

By tracing the paths of different colors of dye, he’ll learn the sources of the water that feeds each spring. That will help him make what he calls a springshed map.

We slog across a corn field that’s dotted with small groves of trees. They’re growing around miniature canyons, about 20 feet deep. Here, you can see how this honeycombed water highway works, and this is where Jeff Green will pour the first dye.

“This is a place where there was a conduit, an opening in the limestone.”

Green climbs down carefully into the crevasse.

“Listen! … All right!”

He’s found some running water.

“Water’s running right here. I don’t know where it’s going but it’s going someplace. So I’m going to try pouring dye here.”

He pours a cup or so of a bright red fluorescent dye into the snow.

Green marks the spot with a GPS unit. This is a place where surface water and groundwater meet.

“That snow-melt is surface water, it’s going into this sinkhole and it’s becoming groundwater as you’re listening to it.”

That means what happens here on the land directly affects the quality of the groundwater.

“In this case, it’s pretty good, you’ve got conservation tillage, lots of corn stalks left to keep the soil from eroding, and then you’ve got grass, permanent cover, around the sinkholes. So this is actually really good.”

There are wonderful trout streams around here. The map Green is making will help protect those streams by pinpointing the source of the water that feeds them.

In a day or two, Green will check the “bugs” he put in the springs, and find out exactly where the dye from this sinkhole went.

He usually finds water traveling one-to-three miles underground before it surfaces.

When the springshed map is finished, he’ll share it with local governments, farmers, and people who want to protect the water in this landscape.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Greenovation: Low-Flow Toilets

  • Rudy Wilfong, on the left, distributes Coroma toilets. Matt Grocoff, right, is with Greenovation TV. (Photo by Thore Bergman)

The Environmental Protection Agency has
a new water saving program called Water
Sense. It’s similar to the Energy Star label
for electronics. To get the Water Sense
program’s endorsement, toilets must use less
water. But, people have been complaining
about the old style low-flow toilets since they
were first required in the mid-1990s. Lester
Graham reports on what’s changed since then:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency has
a new water saving program called Water
Sense. It’s similar to the Energy Star label
for electronics. To get the Water Sense
program’s endorsement, toilets must use less
water. But, people have been complaining
about the old style low-flow toilets since they
were first required in the mid-1990s. Lester
Graham reports on what’s changed since then:

The problem with those old low-flow toilets is the companies didn’t really re-design them – they just made the tank smaller. Some of them just didn’t do the job.

Hugh Maquire has one in his home. He’s had a bad experience with his.

Maquire: “I had to flush my low-flow toilet six or seven times. What is that saving you?”

Graham: “ Doesn’t save you much water that way does it?”

Maquire Doesn’t save you much water at all. Plus it’s annoying. It’s embarrassing, ‘cause everybody’s hearing you flush the toilet six or seven times, wondering what the heck’s going on in there.”

So, we asked Matt Grocoff with Greenovation TV to set up a demonstration for us. Behind the Bgreen Retail Store in Ann Arbor, Michigan three different models of these new Water Sense low flow toilets are set up on five-gallon buckets so we can see what gets flushed… and what comes out.

Grocoff: “I always joke there were three things that set back the environmental movement: there was the original low-flow shower head, the original low-flush toilet and Jimmy Carter’s sweater. ‘Cause what that said to everybody was ‘You’re going to pay more for it; it was going to be less comfortable and you were going to have to sacrifice and it wasn’t going to perform as well.’ And with these new generations of redesigned toilets, you’re getting a higher quality product than even the existing one-point-six gallon or even a three gallon per flush toilet”

Graham: “Let’s see it.”

These toilets all have dual flush capabilities. A full flush is 1.28 gallons. A half flush – just 0.8. To prove how well they work, he’s just using the point-eight gallon flush. Matt’s got tennis balls, potatoes, and little rubber duckies.

Grocoff: “We got three duckies.” (flush sound)

Graham: “ Well, that seemed to work. No duckies. What’d you think of that, Hugh?”

Maquire: “I felt sorry for that ducky, but it was a great demonstration.”

And, again, that was the half-flush at 0.8 gallons, half of what the old low-flow standard was. Matt upped the ante.

Grocoff: “Two tennis balls and two potatoes. This is going to be the real challenge.” (flush sound)

Then more potatoes.
(flush)

And more duckies.
(flush)

Now, Matt’s demonstration is hardly scientific, but of the three brands we tested – a Kohler, a Toto and a Coroma – it appeared to me the Coroma worked best, at flushing duckies and potatoes anyway.

Rudy Wilfong is a dealer for Coroma. The toilet is made in Australia. He says Australia has had one-gallon-per-flush restrictions for 30 years, so they’ve designed them to work.

Wilfong: “And they don’t plug. They flush better than the 1.6 gallon toilets with half the water.”

And compared to the old low-flow toilets, you can expect to save about 1,000 gallons, per person, per year. They do cost more, but the pay back compared to a regular low-flow is about 2 to 2.5 years. If you’ve got one of those three-gallon-per-flush models, or even an old 6 gallon model, your payback will be a lot faster.

Graham: “Alright, Matt, I’m going to give you one more chance to impress me. What have you got here?”

Grocoff: “Alright. So, here we’ve got a full t-shirt. (flush) Very nice.”

Maquire: “Hey, Matt. I had a black t-shirt. Do you see it anywhere?” (laugh)

Graham: “Well, this was pretty impressive. Where can I get some more information about this?”

Grocoff: “Of course, you can go to Greenovation-dot-TV and you can see a video and some photographs of some of these toilets.”

Graham: “ Alright. Matt Grocoff of Greenovation-dot-TV. Thanks very much.”

Grocoff: “Alright. Thanks, Lester.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Taking Down Levees in Louisiana

  • The Mollicy Farms River Forest Levee (Keith Ouchley, Louisiana Nature Conservancy)

Man made levees line the banks
of the Mississippi River and its
tributaries. They protect towns
and they allow farmers to plow
the bottomlands. But levees come
at a price: habitat destruction
and worse flooding downstream.
Now, more people are calling for
taking down levees and returning
floodplain areas to their natural
state. Samara Freemark
reports from Louisiana – the end
of the line for the water that
drains from the middle of the nation:

Transcript

Man made levees line the banks
of the Mississippi River and its
tributaries. They protect towns
and they allow farmers to plow
the bottomlands. But levees come
at a price: habitat destruction
and worse flooding downstream.
Now, more people are calling for
taking down levees and returning
floodplain areas to their natural
state. Samara Freemark
reports from Louisiana – the end
of the line for the water that
drains from the middle of the nation:

The Mollicy Farms site in Northern LA provides a striking example of just how dramatically a levee can remake a landscape.

“Here comes the river down through here.”

Keith Ouchley is with the Nature Conservancy, and he’s showing me an aerial photo of Mollicy Farms. The site is split in half by a river. On the west side, there’s 30000 acres of primeval forest. On the east side, a swath of cleared land.

“Once, it was forest in the lower area of tupelo and in the upper areas of sweet gum. And every year the river would overflow and flood the forest.”

In the late 1960s, soybean farmers cleared the area built levees to hold back the annual floods – giant earthen walls, 150 ft wide at the base and 30 feet tall. Ouchley grew up in the area. He remembers the first time he saw the site after the clearing.

“I thought at the time you could almost see the curvature of the earth, looking across this massive clearing up there.”

Levees protect a lot of land for farming. But some people are starting to wonder if they’re worth the cost – not just the money it takes to build and maintain them, but the damage they do to ecosystems.

Denise Reed is a geologist at the University of New Orleans. She says hundreds of species depend on floodplain habitats- and without flooding, those habitats vanish.

“The river is the lifeblood of floodplain and delta ecosystems. When you build levees and you cut it off, we cut off those habitats from the river. And essentially they just degrade and die. Putting it back would definitely be a good thing.”

Levees might also raise the chances of truly catastrophic flooding downstream. Whenever there’s a lot of water in the river – say, there’s heavy rain upstream – that water shoots straight down the channel with enormous force. And it sometimes breaks through downstream levees that protect homes.

If you take down levees upstream some of that water has somewhere else to go – out into the forest or wetlands, where it spreads out across thousands of acres.

All of which is why Denise Reed says, instead of building more levees, it might be a good idea to take some down.

“Just because we’ve had levees on the river for the last hundred years or so doesn’t mean to say we’re always going to have levees on the river. The challenge for us is letting nature do its thing while still allowing us to navigate on the river and bring ships in, and that kind of things, and for us to live places where we’re not going to be flooded out. We can do that.”

After catastrophic flooding in 1993, the federal government started buying up levee-protected land along the Mississippi and its tributaries with an eye towards restoring floodplains. But the memory of that flood faded and funding for the program fell off.

That left private groups like the Nature Conservancy to take up the effort.

This summer they’ll punch holes in the levee at Mollicy Farms. As the water rises in the spring, it will gradually seep out onto the landscape, restoring the floodplain.

“50 years, 100 years, you’ll be able to take a boat out through nice, mature, bottomland hardwood floodplain forest. You know, see water moccasins and catch bluegill brims and alligators floating on logs and that kind of thing.”

Ouchley says he’d like to see the program replicated in floodplains all over the country.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

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Greenovation: Whole House Fan

  • Matthew Grocoff says a whole house fan gives the same comfort as you would have with an air conditioning system. (Photo courtesy of Greenovation TV)

Energy efficiency is on the mind
of a lot of homeowners. They’re
starting to question everything
about their homes, even the need
for air conditioning. Lester
Graham met with some homeowners
and an energy-efficiency expert
to talk about a different approach
to cooling a house:

Transcript

Energy efficiency is on the mind
of a lot of homeowners. They’re
starting to question everything
about their homes, even the need
for air conditioning. Lester
Graham met with some homeowners
and an energy-efficiency expert
to talk about a different approach
to cooling a house:

For some people, air-conditioning just feels a little unnatural. I mean, it’s a refrigerated room, right?

There are older ways of cooling a house that are cheaper and use a lot less electricity.

Matthew Grocoff is with Greenovation TV. His website suggests all kinds of ways to make homes more green.

We met at a house in a tree-lined neighborhood of century-old homes in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

(sounds of house and stairs)

He wanted to show me an idea that’s like throwing open the windows and pulling in a cool summer breeze.

It’s called a whole house fan.

Grocoff: “We’re at the home of Jacinta Beehner and Thore Bergman. Thore actually installed this fan himself. It cost about $250 – about $9500 less than the quote that they got to install an air conditioning system in their house. And, this summer, they have not had to turn on their window units at all.”

Now Thore is not a carpenter. He’s a university researcher who studies monkey vocalizations. But, he decided he’d try to install the big fan in his ceiling on his own.

Bergman: “It was fairly easy. It took a couple hours. The tricky thing was – we have an older house that had layers of plaster and wood in the ceiling. So, cutting through that to make the hole took a little more work that it might in some houses. But it wasn’t too bad.”

Beehner: “I have to admit, I didn’t really believe that maybe he could install it himself. And yet, he did a great job. And I am the biggest fan of the whole house fan.”

Grocoff: “So, you’ve got the Beehner-Bergman fan club here. And this is interesting, because the goal, for most homeowners, is to get the house to a comfortable 72 degree temperature. And, it’s kind of strange that when it’s 65 degrees outside, and it’s 80 degrees inside your house, that we’re turning on an air conditioning unit when the air outside is actually colder than the air conditioning unit.”

(sound of fan turning on)

Bergman: “One drawback is the noise. Which, we’ve gotten used to. We kind of like it for sleeping – it blocks some of the street noise. We’re standing right underneath it, and it’s kind of hard to talk.”

Beehner: “But, we also have a baby. So the whole house fan serves as white noise, which really helps us move around upstairs while he’s asleep.”

Grocoff: “Those people who are not looking for that white noise sound, like Jacinta and Thore are for their baby, they’re going to be able to get something that’s quieter, more efficient, more insulated, that’s going to be virtually silent, at the higher price points.”

There have been some surprises along the way.

Jacinta says, you have to keep in mind – anything in the night air will be drawn into the house.

Beehner: “One night, we actually did turn it on, and within about one minute, our entire house was filled with the smell of skunk.

Grocoff: “So, if you’ve got really good, deep skunk smell, you know the fan is working. Another possible drawback is, with the air, you’re bringing in any kind of dust, pollen, anything else like that.”

But, Grocoff says, overall, this big sorta-box fan in the ceiling really pulls the hot air out of the house and pulls the cool air from outdoors into the house.

Now, these fans don’t work everywhere.

If you live in an extremely humid area, or a region where it never really cools down at night or in the morning, it might not be a good fit.

But for areas that enjoy cooler mornings and evenings in the summer, Grocoff says this is a good alternative.

Grocoff: “With a whole house attic fan, you’re going to get the same comfort as you would with an air conditioning system. But, on a dollar-for-dollar basis, the cost for running an air conditioning system is 20 cents to 30 cents every hour that you have that turned on. For a whole house attic fan, you’re talking about a penny to a nickel an hour.”

There are all kinds of designs besides the big box fan types.

You can go to a home improvement store, your heating and cooling installer, or do some research online at greenovation.TV or just type in whole house fan in Google. You’ll find plenty of places wanting to sell you there version of a newly popular old idea.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Canadian Air Pollution Has U.S. Sources

  • Ontario is trying to fight air pollution, but is calling for action on the U.S. side to help. (Photo by John Hornak)

A government study released by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment confirms what Canadian officials have long suspected that the majority of Ontario’s air pollution comes from U.S. sources. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Cwiek reports:

Transcript

A government study released by the Ontario Ministry of the
Environment confirms what Canadian officials have long suspected:
that the majority of Ontario’s air pollution comes from U.S. sources.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Cwiek reports:


The study found that more than half of Ontario’s air
pollution originates in the U.S. The study’s authors say air
pollution flows across the border in both directions, but the
predominant flow is from the U.S. into Canada.


Arthur
Chamberlain is spokesperson for the Ontario Environment
Ministry. He says southern Ontario feels the greatest impact.


“There’s a fairly wide regional impact. Obviously, it’s a
greater issue particularly in the Windsor area because it’s
closer to Detroit. In Toronto, being a larger city, probably
only about half of the pollution that we would have on a bad
pollution day would be transboundary pollution.”


Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty recently hosted a conference
in Toronto promoting transnational efforts to improve Great
Lakes air quality.


McGuinty says the province is currently
taking aggressive steps to combat air pollution, but stresses
action on the U.S. side is vital as well.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Sarah Cwiek.

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Streamside Forests Play Role in Pollution Cleanup

Scientists have known for years that streamside forests help stop certain pollutants from entering the waterway. But new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that those forests have added benefits. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:

Transcript

Scientists have known for years that streamside forests help stop
certain pollutants from entering the waterway. But new research
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
shows that those forests have added benefits. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:


Steams that flow through forests tend to be wider and slower than those
that flow through meadows or urban areas. Scientists say that creates
an environment that can actually help clean up a polluted waterway.


Bernard Sweeney is the director of the Stroud Water Research Center in
Pennsylvania. He says their research points to a direct relationship
between woods and water.


“You put a forest along a small stream, it creates a more natural and
wider stream channel; that in turn provides more habitat, more
available ecosystem which in turn enables a stream to do more work for
us like processing nitrogen and organic matter.”


Sweeney says government programs that offer incentives to create
natural streamside buffers should do more to specifically encourage
reforestation. He says grass buffers don’t have the same cleansing
effect on waterways.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris Lehman.

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