Later this year the Environmental Protection Agency is going to set court-ordered
standards for mercury pollution from cement kilns.
(Source: LinguisticDemographer at Wikimedia Commons)
The Environmental Protection
Agency is late in setting standards
for some smokestack emissions. Lester
Graham reports:
Transcript
The Environmental Protection
Agency is late in setting standards
for some smokestack emissions. Lester
Graham reports:
Maybe you’ve never seen a cement kiln. That’s where limestone and other materials
are baked using coal to make cement, used in concrete.
Later this year the Environmental Protection Agency is going to set court-ordered
standards for mercury pollution from cement kilns.
“It’s about time, isn’t it? I mean, the standards were due more than ten years
ago.”
That’s Eric Scheaffer. He’s with the Environmental Integrity Project.
The EPA had relied on self-reported estimates on mercury pollution from the cement
kilns. Turns out, after the EPA actually checked a few of the kilns, a lot of those
mercury pollution estimates were a little low.
“They’re now saying about 23,000 pounds a year. And that’s double the
previous estimates from EPA. So, the numbers are growing.”
Most states have issued advisories about mercury contamination of fish. Mercury
can cause neurological and developmental problems with fetuses and young
children.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
Overuse of salt can cause damage to concrete, steel and the environment. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Liquid salt (brine) works more quickly than road salt and ultimately means less salt in the environment. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Specialized equipment is used to clear sidewalks and roadways better, while using lower-salt solutions to melt ice. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Mountains of salt are dumped on highways. Some road crews are working to use salt more efficiently. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Each year about 118,000 people are hurt and 1,300 people are killed on
the roads during snowy and icy conditions. So, snowplows hit the
roads, scraping snow and ice off the surface… and spreading
incredible amounts of salt on highways, streets and roads to help keep
them clear. Lester Graham reports there’s some concern about the long-
term effects of all that salt:
Transcript
Each year about 118,000 people are hurt and 1,300 people are killed on
the roads during snowy and icy conditions. So, snowplows hit the
roads, scraping snow and ice off the surface… and spreading
incredible amounts of salt on highways, streets and roads to help keep
them clear. Lester Graham reports there’s some concern about the long-
term effects of all that salt:
This dump truck is getting ready for a load of salt for a coming
winter storm. Salt helps make icy roads safer. It helps prevent
people from slipping and falling on sidewalks. And… it’s pretty
cheap. But there are problems with salt. Salt pollutes and salt
corrodes.
Mark Cornwell has spent a good deal of his career trying to convince
highway crews that there are better ways to keep things safe and reduce
how much salt is dumped on roads and sidewalks:
“Salt basically damages just about everything it comes in contact
with. Salt moves through concrete and attacks structural steel,
bridges, roads, parking structures; it eats the mortar out of bricks
and foundations. It damages limestone, you know, just on and on and
on.”
So, even though salt is cheap, the damage it does costs a lot. It’s a
hidden cost that’s seldom calculated. Imagine the cost of having to
replace a bridge five years early because the structure is weakened by
salt. And then there are your direct costs: trying to keep salt
washed off your vehicle, and still seeing rust attack your car.
Cornwell says there are some cities and road commissioners working to
reduce the amount of salt spread on the roads. But in most places, the
political pressure to get the salt trucks out early, and laying it on
thick to keep drivers happy, outweighs any concerns about trying to
reduce the salt:
“I’m sure the public expects full attention to snow and ice. And they
have absolutely no understanding, however, of what it costs to provide
that.”
Nobody thought a lot about the damage salt was causing until the last
couple of decades. In a few places, the people responsible for keeping
the roads and walkways safe have been trying to reduce the amount of
salt they use and still keep public safety tops on the list of
concerns:
“So, this is our shops. The brine-maker is right here.”
Marvin Petway is showing me some of the tools in his arsenal to reduce
how much salt is used and still keep things safe. He works at the
University of Michigan, where there’s a goal to cut the amount of salt
used in winter in half. What they’ve learned is using innovative ways
of putting down salt can actually help melt snow and ice faster. One
way is to mix it with water to get the chemicals in salt working
a little more quickly:
“Why use 5 pounds of rock salt when you can use 2 gallons of liquid
salt? We’re able to get better coverage, quicker, better cost, and
we’re putting the material that is effective in reducing ice build-up
directly to the area where we don’t want ice located.”
The crews trying to reduce salt use computer assisted spreaders to
measure out only the salt needed, they mix in less corrosive chemicals
that make salt brine more effective, and even just wetting the salt in
dump trucks with chemicals all help to melt snow and ice faster and in
the end use a lot less salt.
Nothing is going to replace salt altogether, but those efforts can add
up to a lot less salt. That means less destruction of infrastructure.
But there are more reasons for reducing salt than the damage to
roadways and parking decks. Salt also damages the environment:
Mark Cornwell first noticed the effects of salt because he was a
horticulturalist. He’d work all spring, summer and fall planting
shrubs, make the grass green, tending beds of flowers. Then the winter
would come:
“Unfortunately what we were doing in six months of winter was
undoing everything we did in the other six months of the year.
If you’re going to get ahead, you’ve got to solve the problem
and in my mind, that was misuse of salt.”
Use too much salt and it kills plants. And it turns out the cost of
using all that cheap salt could be even greater than anyone guessed.
For decades, it’s been assumed that rain washed away most of the salt, but
studies in Ontario find that a lot of the salt doesn’t get washed
away.
Instead, a good deal of it is percolating down into shallow aquifers.
Researchers predict that in the future we’ll start find salt is getting
into the groundwater that supplies many of the wells where we get our
drinking water.
For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
The US EPA is reconsidering a decision to let cement plants off the hook when it comes to mercury emissions. Tests at several cement plants showed they were emitting up to ten times the mercury being disclosed. Tracy Samilton reports:
Transcript
The US EPA is reconsidering a decision to let cement plants off the hook when it comes to mercury emissions. Tests at several cement plants showed they were emitting up to ten times the mercury being disclosed. Tracy Samilton reports:
Cement plants emit mercury from both the coal they burn and from processing limestone, an ingredient of cement. But the EPA has never regulated the mercury emissions. The agency said it would be too costly for the industry. Cement manufacturers say they plan to voluntarily reduce mercury emissions over time.
But Michael Wall of the Natural Resources Defense Council says the EPA needs to exert control over the plants now.
“It would be as if we took a segment of the coal-fired power plant industry and just said ’emit mercury freely, we’re not going to do anything about it.’ That makes really bad policy and it’s really bad for our public health.”
An EPA spokesman says the agency is taking a second look at the issue, in light of stack tests showing some plants may have been grossly underestimating their mercury emissions.
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)
Birdseye view of Weldon Spring disposal cell, which contains 1.48 million cubic yards of radioactive waste. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy)
Another view of the disposal cell. The cell covers a massive 45 acres in Weldon Spring. (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.
Some people who escape to Promontory Point from the "concrete jungle" of Chicago are worried about the Point's future. (Photo by James Lin)
Cities along the Great Lakes often depend on sea walls to keep the crashing waves from eroding the shoreline. Some of those walls have been around for close to a century. One city wants to rebuild its protective walls. But the neighborhood near one popular section is not happy about it. They say the huge limestone blocks give the area character. They don’t want concrete to replace any of it. But the structure is deteriorating, and the city and Army Corps of Engineers want to shore it up. The plan for repairing the seawall is igniting an age-old debate between historic preservation and shoreline protection… and it’s got an entire neighborhood ready to fight. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lynette Kalsnes has more:
Transcript
Cities along the Great Lakes often depend on sea walls
to keep the crashing waves from eroding the shoreline. Some of
those walls have been around for close to a century. One city wants
to rebuild its protective walls. But the neighborhood near one popular
section is not happy about it.
They say the huge limestone blocks give
the area character. They don’t want concrete to replace any of it. But
the structure is deteriorating, and the city and Army Corps of Engineers
want to shore it up. The plan for repairing the seawall is igniting an
age-old debate between historic preservation and shoreline protection…
and it’s got an entire neighborhood ready to fight. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lynette Kalsnes has more:
(Sound of water)
Jack Reed stands on the edge of the huge limestone rocks that make up the seawall, drying himself off. He just swam a mile along the shore of Lake Michigan. He drapes a big flannel sheet over his head that he’s fashioned into a makeshift changing tent, and modestly gets out of his swimsuit.
The 67-year-old has been swimming off this rocky peninsula that juts into Lake Michigan for forty years now. He says the trees and the giant limestone rocks made him appreciate nature and realize how much he needs a break from the city.
“I sort of hate to leave and go back to the grind, ’cause when you’re out here, you can relax and look at the sky and get in the water and watch the birds and the clouds go by. It’s like a vacation trip, just as long as you have time for.”
The place where Reed comes to swim and relax is called Promontory Point. The point is lined with large limestone blocks that stretch along the water like a chunky, irregular staircase.
People come here to swim, fish and bicycle. They have picnics, walk their dogs and throw Frisbees.
The city and Army Corps want to replace a lot of the limestone with concrete. They say the limestone seawall is getting weak. They just overcame an important obstacle by winning approval for their concept from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency which recognizes the limestone wall as a historic part of Chicago. Jack Reed says replacing the limestone with concrete would make the Point seem sterile.
“The thing about concrete is it’s artificial. It’s manmade. We spend most of our lives inside buildings and buses and subway tunnels; that’s all manmade.”
Reed says he comes here to escape what he calls the “concrete jungle” of the city. He says the limestone makes a soft, naturalistic transition between land and water. But the lakeshore isn’t as natural as it looks.
Less than a century ago, this whole area was part of the lake. The point was created by dumping debris into the lake in the 1920s. Workers built the limestone seawalls on top of wood shorings. Now the wood is rotting, and the rocks are shifting. The city and the Army Corps say that’s dangerous for people and for the shoreline.
And the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency says there needs to be balance between safety and historic preservation and making the shoreline accessible to people with disabilities. David Blanchette is with the state agency. He says the wall has to be reconstructed to stabilize the shoreline.
“Our job is to make sure that this historical resource, which was built for a specific purpose quite some time ago, preserves as much hisotric character as possible, but still allows it to function for its intended use.”
The work at Promontory Point is part of a 300-million dollar project to replace miles of old limestone revetments along the city’s lakeshore, but the point has caused a snag in the plan. Community members and preservationists have stalled the work at Promontory Point for years now.
The Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois put the point on its list of ten most endangered historic places in the state, putting it at odds with the Historic Preservation agency.
And Council president David Bahlman says it’s one of the few spots left where the lakeshore hasn’t been hardened with concrete.
“Let’s say it’s an unacceptable compromise that moves closer to ensuring that two-thirds of the point is going to be destroyed.”
Most critics acknowledge something needs to be done to protect the shore from erosion. But they say it’s entirely possible to come up with a plan that preserves limestone on the entire seawall, not just part of it. A community group is now lobbying the U.S. Senate for legislation to prevent funding for construction unless the limestone wall is preserved much as it is. A similar measure has already passed the U.S. House.
In the United States, low-level nuclear waste is stored in landfills. An Ontario town is proposing to put Canada's low-level nuclear waste in an underground chamber a mile from Lake Huron. (Photo courtesy of the NRC)
In Canada, just across Lake Huron from
Michigan, a small town is offering to be the home of
Canada’s first permanent dump site for radioactive
material. The proposed site is a mile from Lake
Huron. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Ann
Colihan reports on the town’s work to
get the site and the concerns about putting it close
to one of the Great Lakes:
Transcript
In Canada, just across Lake Huron from Michigan, a small town is offering to be the home of Canada’s first permanent dump site for radioactive material. The proposed site is a mile from Lake Huron. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Ann Colihan reports on the town’s work to get the site and the concerns about putting it close to one of the Great Lakes:
Right now, Canada has nowhere to permanently store its low-level and intermediate-level nuclear waste. This waste is not spent nuclear fuel from power plants. It’s contaminated material that’s been exposed to radioactive substances. It could be anything from the protective clothing workers wear at nuclear power plants to parts from reactors, anything that’s been exposed to radioactivity.
The Ontario town of Kincardine – located about 250 miles north of Detroit – has proposed that it be the site of a nuclear waste dump.
So why would a beach town want a nuclear dump?
Kincardine is also a company town. It’s home to the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant. Eighty-percent of the folks who live there work in the nuclear industry. Larry Kraemer is the former mayor. He explains why the permanent dump is essential for the local economy.
“The Bruce nuclear power plant, which is the biggest nuclear power development in North America as well as the largest local employer and one of the largest Canadian investment in any industry that there is.”
Because Kincardine knows the nuclear industry, the residents aren’t afraid to take on these jobs.
But no one ever asked the question if burying nuclear waste a mile from Lake Huron was the best location in Ontario to put the waste site. Frank King is the Director of Nuclear Waste Management and Engineering Technology for Ontario Power Generation, also known as OPG. He says Kincardine does not have to be the best site for the dump.
“It’s not an issue of whether it’s the best. Nobody has to say it’s best. It just has to be shown that it’s safe; that it’s a good site. There is no requirement to show that it’s the best site.”
OPG already stores low and intermediate-level waste from all twenty Ontario reactors at the Bruce Power plant in Kincardine. But above ground storage is getting tight. OPG began looking at its options and with Kincardine’s “bring it on” attitude it seemed like a good place to start.
OPG paid for members of the Kincardine city council to visit nuclear waste storage sites around the world. Councillors came back especially impressed with how the Swedes do it. They bury their nuclear waste in solid granite.
But the stone below Kincardine is not granite. It’s limestone – and no place in the world uses limestone to contain nuclear waste. William Fyfe is Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences at the University of Western Ontario. He has spent decades studying geology and nuclear waste around the globe.
“Limestone can be much more porous than granite. It has no ability to absorb nasty elements, like you get with some clay minerals and things, to absorb all the dirty chemical species like uranium, for example.”
He does not like the idea of a man-made cavern full of nuclear waste near the Great Lakes.
“Just because you made the waste doesn’t mean you should put it in your backyard. There may be a better place.”
Local environmentalists agree. Given OPG’s record, they don’t trust that the waste dump will be safe. Jennifer Heisz is a founder of the public interest group, Woman’s Legacy, which is focused on the impact of the Bruce nuclear plant on Lake Huron. She says when she requested environmental records from Ontario, she found evidence that the regulators haven’t done a good job of stopping pollution at the plant.
“I received approximately 10 or 15 reports regarding leaking waste sites and the levels coming from the plant were very high – sometimes at 45 times the provincial level for chromium. Vanadium was also one of the chemicals that was contaminating the groundwater and it’s found to be mutagenic to animals.”
Heisz says if OPG is polluting at its existing dump sites, what’s to keep the agency from doing a poor job of storing nuclear waste underground? Ontario regulators say they plan to conduct an environmental assessment. Heisz and her environmental group are raising money for an independent review of deep nuclear storage. The geologist, Professor Fyfe, thinks Kincardine should hold an open house to get the opinions of experts.
“Before we start putting stuff away, let’s invite the bosses of the Swedish group to come and take a look. They are using hundreds of scientists, technicians, and engineers which we are not doing in Canada.”
Few outside the Kincardine area are aware of their nuclear waste dump plans… and fewer still know the site is planned for so close to Lake Huron.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Ann Colihan.
During the summer, lots of people visit the Lake Erie islands at the southwest end of the lake. But there’s one island you can’t visit. It’s the site of a historic home and reserved for scientific research. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant recently visited Gibraltar Island and files this report:
Transcript
During the summer, lots of people visit the Lake Erie islands at the southwest end of the
lake. But there’s one island you can’t visit. It’s the site of a historic home and reserved
for scientific research. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant recently visited
Gibraltar Island and files this report:
(sound of ferry)
Visitors taking the ferry to Lake Erie’s popular South Bass Island can see a castle-like
structure through the trees on Gibraltar Island across the bay. But they can’t go there.
The island is owned by Ohio State University and home to a research lab called Stone
Laboratory.
Recently, a few reporters got to go where usually only scientists go.
(sound on boat)
Lab Director Jeff Reutter is taking soil samples from the lake bottom to show some of the
latest concerns about blue-green algae… an algae that’s toxic to some aquatic life and
makes drinking water taste bad. It’s been appearing more frequently and scientists think
the zebra mussel might be causing it.
(more boat sounds)
Researchers and students from Ohio State and elsewhere study invasive species,
pollution, shoreline erosion, and other ecological lake issues at the lab.
(sound inside castle)
The scientists who worked in the lab used to live in the structure next door, known as
Cooke’s Castle. The large home was built in the 1860’s by the family of Jay Cooke.
Cooke was not a scientist. He was a banker and investment broker, and he played a
major role in raising money for the Union Army during the Civil War. Cooke came up
with the idea of selling war bonds and raised a billion dollars for the Union Army.
Cooke bought the seven-acre Gibraltar Island in 1864 and had his summer home built on
it. Ironically, while the Union fund-raiser was vacationing on his island, Confederate
soldiers were imprisoned on nearby Johnson’s Island.
Retired Ohio State Administrator John Kleberg has been researching Jay Cooke. He says
Cooke was an avid hunter and fisherman, so Kleberg suspects he would be pleased to see
the science lab there today.
“There is a penciled correspondence where Cooke is complaining about the reduction in
the population of the fish, the bass specifically, I think, because people are net fishing,
you know where they’re taking too many fish out of the lake and the bass population
therefore is decreasing. And that’s not the way you ought to protect the bass population.
So obviously in that context he was sensitive about the need for conservation and how we
fish and how we protect fish populations. So I suspect he would be very pleased with the
kind of work that’s being done.”
Cooke’s daughter sold Gibraltar in 1925 to Franz Stone, whose family donated it to Ohio
State.
Outside, the four-story limestone turret’s crenellated top gives the appearance of a castle.
The inner rotunda walls have held up surprisingly well over 140 years.
But after years of use, the building is in need of some major repairs. Lab Director
Reutter wants to renovate the 15 room building into a conference center.
“It’s interesting too, Cooke’s, one of his sons, was an amateur photographer, and we’ve
got great photos of how the place looked at that time, so obviously that’s our goal to take
it back.”
(ambient sound inside castle runs underneath this section.)
The castle includes a spiral staircase and there’s a gorgeous wood-paneled library that
overlooks the bay…
Reutter: “So, obviously, this would be my office…” (laughter)
Ohio State University is looking for money to make renovations. But that’s proved
challenging. The castle will never be open to the public. Lab Director Reutter says that’s
not its purpose…
“Oh no, this would not be used for tourists, this is an education and an outreach facility,
so it would be a conference center but it would be for research conferences, education
conferences, Great Lakes management, this will never be open to the public.”
It’ll cost two and a half million dollars to make the renovations. If they can find the
money, Reutter and the university say Cooke’s castle will become an even more
important research center. One he expects to draw scientists to study the problems facing
the Great Lakes.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.
This week (week of June 8th), an international group of scientists, policy-makers, and conservationists will gather in Tobermory (TOE-burr-mor-ee), Ontario to discuss strategies for protecting one of world’s rarest and least publicized habitats—the alvar. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Hammond reports:
Later this year the Environmental Protection Agency is going to set court-ordered standards for mercury pollution from cement kilns. (Source: LinguisticDemographer at Wikimedia Commons)
