Tag: golf courses

Turning Nuke Waste Sites Into Playgrounds

  • Grassland prairie flowers from Weldon Spring, part of the Department of Energy's restoration effort to control erosion and add aesthetic beauty to the area. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy)

Across the U.S., there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear weapons programs.
The government is trying to return these Cold War relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much like public parks. The GLRC’s Kevin Lavery visited one that was recently opened to the public:

Transcript

Across the US, there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the
nation’s nuclear weapons programs. The government is trying to return these Cold War
relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much
like public parks. The GLRC’s Kevin Lavery recently visited one that was recently
opened to the public…


A thick grove of trees opens up to a clearing that reveals a white mound of limestone
rock. It rises like a tomb from some long-forgotten civilization, were it not for the water
towers and golf courses on the horizon.


Mike Leahy and his 9-year-old son Cameron came to this rock dome to catch the view
atop its 75 foot summit. But the real attraction was what they did not see:


“We read the sign and saw what was buried and how they did it, and – it’s kind of
disturbing, what’s in there.”


Beneath their feet lay more than a million cubic yards of spent uranium, asbestos and
PCB’s. The 45 acre mound is a disposal cell, where the government buried thousands of
barrels and tons of debris. That history didn’t bother young Cameron:


“It’s really cool. They keep all that nuclear waste under all that and it can’t harm
anybody.”


The Weldon Spring site, 30 miles west of St. Louis, Missouri began during World War
Two as an Army TNT factory. In the 1950’s, the plant refined yellow cake uranium for
later use in nuclear weapons. All that stopped in 1966 and all the radioactive waste just
sat there. Weldon Spring became an EPA Superfund site in 1987. After a 900 million
dollar cleanup, the site was opened to tourists in 2002.


(Sound of frogs)


Today, frogs sing in a native prairie at the foot of the cell. In April, officials opened a
hiking trail adjacent to a once-radioactive landfill. The route connects to a state park.


Weldon Spring is not a park per se, but project manager Yvonne Deyo says urban sprawl
prompted them to think like one:


“There’s subdivisions and lots of infrastructure going in…and that just kind of hits home
how important green space is, and that’s kind of what we’re trying to do a little bit of
here at the site.”


Weldon Spring is one of about 100 such sites the Department of Energy is converting to
what it calls “beneficial re-use.” Many are becoming recreational venues. Another
closed uranium plant near Cincinnati is adding horseback riding trails. In Wayne, New
Jersey, a former thorium processing facility is becoming a baseball field. And a national
wildlife preserve is in the works at Rocky Flats, the site outside Denver that made the
plutonium cores of nuclear warheads.


The Department of Energy says Weldon Spring is safe for visitors – though some residual
contamination remains.


(Sound of Burgermeister Spring)


Burgermeister Spring runs through a 7-thousand acre state reserve adjacent to the site.
This is where uranium-laced groundwater from Weldon Spring rises to the surface.
Though the spring exceeds the EPA’s drinking water quality standard, there’s no warning
sign here. Officials say the contamination is so low that it poses no immediate public
hazard. The spring feeds into one of the most popular fishing lakes on the property.
Most visitors are surprised to hear that:


“Huh.”


Jeff Boeving fishes for bass four or five times a month:


“(Does that concern you to hear that?) Yeah – absolutely…I mean, they’ve got a great
area out here and they’re kind of messing it up if they’re going to have contaminants, you know, going into it.”


The government’s vision of post-nuclear playgrounds is not without its critics. Arjun
Makhijani heads the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park,
Maryland. He says recreational sites near urban development zones risk losing their
original purpose:


“Institutional memory tends to be very short; after 30, 40, 50 years people forget, they
begin to develop the land, and pretty soon you could have houses, farms and schools in
the area. So it’s not necessary that it will stay recreational forever.”


Recreation is only one option the Department of Energy is considering for all of its sites.
In the last two years, the agency’s budget has doubled with the addition of nearly a dozen
radioactive properties. Officials say Congress has so far supported its fiscal requests.
And with the future of a proposed permanent nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain still
in doubt, even more tax dollars will likely be spent converting the nuclear dumps in
America’s backyards to a place where families play.


For the GLRC, I’m Kevin Lavery.

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Wily Coyotes in the City

  • Coyotes have started to lose their wildlife habitat, and now they are adapting to cities and suburbs. (Photo courtesy of Michigan Department of Natural Resources)

As wildlife habitat is displaced by subdivisions, some animals are adapting to their new surroundings. That’s created new food for some kinds of predators, such as coyotes. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports on how their range is expanding:

Transcript

As wildlife habitat is displaced by subdivisions, some animals are
adapting to their new surroundings. That’s created new food for some
kinds of predators, such as coyotes. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports
on how their range is expanding:


Wile E. Coyote hasn’t always had the greatest life out in the wild.


(Sound of Roadrunner)


So… some coyotes are moving into the city, and why not? There’s a
smorgasbord for coyotes in the city.


(Sounds of ducks and geese)


We’re in Lincoln Park in downtown Chicago. Coyotes are occasionally
sighted around here. Rob Curtis has seen one in his neighborhood a few
miles north of here, but the wildlife photographer had a close encounter
with a coyote here in Lincoln Park.


“Well, I knew that it was living there because people had seen it before,
but I hadn’t seen it. And then, I was trying to photograph a rare bird that
was in front of the fence there and I was camouflaged and it came up
right in front on the other side of the fence without it noticing me, and
then it just walked on.”


The coyotes eat just about anything they can get a hold of: rats, young
geese, squirrels… and… sometimes pets. In the Chicago suburb,
Arlington Heights, coyotes have been a problem.


Police Sergeant Nick Pecora says sometimes coyotes are pretty brazen.


“In the last 18 months Arlington Heights has lost one Yorkshire Terrier,
taken off the patio in the owners presence, and in one case the dog had an
electronic collar on and when the coyote took it, it received a shock and
dropped the animal and ran away.”


Pecora says some Arlington Heights residents haven’t been too keen on
what some see as an intruding predator.


“Coyotes are indigenous to the area and – maybe it’s the perception that
this is a large animal and the bunnies, the skunks, the squirrels, that’s
what Arlington Heights is used to, and a 35-pound animal walking
through your yard, I think they’re perceived as the big, bad wolf, if you
will.”


And… although there hasn’t been a documented case of a coyote
attacking a human… some worry that they might.


Not too far away researchers are putting radio collars on coyotes to see
where they’re going and what they’re doing.


(Sound of tires on gravel)


Justin Brown is with a research project out of Ohio State University.
He’s just located the spot where a coyote is hiding. We can’t see him,
but we know he’s there because of the signal his collar is emitting.


“We very rarely see them, especially during the day. At the night —
during the night, occasionally we’ll get good visuals, but for the most
part during the day times you never see them.”


Brown and his colleagues are trying to figure out why there are more
coyotes in the suburbs and cities. One of the reasons is car and deer
accidents. Coyotes feed on the carcasses. The huge increase in Canada
geese is another reason.


“Food ranges from deer to geese to even just dog food people leave out.
There’s definitely a high variety of foods available to them. For habitat,
it can be anything, any little wood lot, anywhere that they can find a little
hiding spot for the daytime and then during the evenings they run (in) a
lot of areas you wouldn’t expect such as residential areas and
commercial parking lots. They pretty much run it all, anywhere that they
might come across a meal.”


You’d think there wouldn’t be that many places for a coyote to hide in
the city and suburbs. But, Brown says they hide in parks, golf courses, in
wood lots, graveyards… anyplace with a little cover. Brown’s research team
leader, Stan Gehrt, estimates there are something like two-thousand coyotes
in the Chicago metro area.Justin Brown says the truly amazing thing is that
coyotes have learned to adapt so well… and even survive a lot of automobile
traffic.


“We’ve actually seen animals where they’re actually figuring out traffic
patterns. They know which roads are going which ways. We’ll see them
cross roads where they’ll actually look only the direction traffic should
be coming and then go and then stop in the middle and look in the other
direction for traffic and then go. So, they’ve definitely figured out how
the road systems work. It’s just amazing to see how they survive in this
environment.”


And, the experts say, the coyotes are probably here to stay. Most
residents don’t want the police to shoot the animals. So some
municipalities tried to trap and relocate the animals to a more rural area,
but coyotes are very territorial, and they immediately head back to the
place where they were trapped. Often they’re hit by cars on the journey
back, but sometimes they make it home, and the predator in the suburbs
is back and hungry.


For the GLRC, I’m Lester Graham.

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Golf Course Goes Green, Neighbors See Red

Long known for their expanses of shorn grass and highly manicured grounds, some golf course owners are taking a second look at their landscaping practices and striving to become more environmentally friendly. In the process, however, they seem to have made a few enemies. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Julia King explains:

Transcript

Long known for their expanses of shorn grass and highly manicured grounds,
some golf course owners are taking a second look at their landscaping practices and striving to become more environmentally friendly. In the process, however, they seem to have made a few enemies. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Julia King explains:


In a nutshell, here’s the story: Golf Course Goes Green, Neighbors See Red.


Golf course owner Tony Krebs recently saw the environmental “light” and decided to reduce his use of pesticides, gasoline, and water. He wants to mow less, grow wildflowers, re-introduce native grasses and attract wildlife. The neighbors – instead of cheering – have filed formal complaints with the city.


Golf courses have long been havens for precision landscaping, places where the great outdoors are shaped into forms… well, unfamiliar to Mother Nature. So to some residents around golf courses, a new, more natural landscape looks suspiciously like neglect. But it’s not.


For a little over a decade, the Audubon Society has been helping to “green” golf courses with their Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program. While any course can become a member and receive environmental tips and guidelines, members earn certification by completing projects in specified areas. Out of an estimated 20,000 golf courses in the U.S., a select 2,300 have achieved certification.


In other words, the movement towards greater sustainability in the golf world is still young. And old standards of beauty die hard. According to an Audubon source, it’s not uncommon for bordering property owners to balk at a golf course’s naturalization. Just as one man’s treasure is another’s trash, apparently one man’s “wildflower” is another man’s “weed.”


But this is more than a beauty-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder tale. Health officials have linked weed killers to everything from childhood leukemia, to gender malformation in frogs. Yet here we have well-to-do citizens banding together to fight for such chemicals.


“We live in a community,” one concerned resident said. “We have to be accountable to one another.” But he was talking about standards of property upkeep, not about public safety or about the delicate ecosystem we share.


He’s right, though, we are accountable to one another. And not only to one another, but to those who come long after we’re gone. There is a price to be paid for that so-called “perfect” landscape, and it’s a price we will all have to pay. It’s time for responsible citizens not only to tolerate sustainability, but to demand it.


Host Tag: Julia King lives and writes in Goshen, Indiana. She comes to us by way of the Great Lakes Radio Consortium.

Golf Course Erodes Support (Part 1)

The Great Lakes boast some of the finest beaches in the country…
and
more and more developers are snapping up lake shore property to build
everything from condominiums to golf courses. But coastline development
presents some challenges and potential risks to the lakes. In the first
of a two part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson
reports on one small community that’s struggling with change:

Golf Course Drives Legislation (Part 2)

A controversy over lake shore development on the coast of Lake Michigan
is creating a heated debate over how to handle erosion. In the second of
a two part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson
reports that how this case is resolved may have implications throughout
the Great Lakes:

Landfill Golf Takes Off

For years, developers have been have been re-using old dumps by buildingover them. Some of these projects have been successful. The HarborsideInternational Golf Center in Chicago, built over a landfill, is one of themost popular in the city. But other cities have been forced to CLOSElandfill golf courses. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie GrantCooper reports on the first landfill golf courses in Ohio, and the lessonsits developers are learning from older projects: