Tag: municipalities

Saving Farmland From Sprawl

  • DeKalb County, close to Chicago in Illinois, is facing rapid urban sprawl. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Some counties near big cities are trying to save farmland from being developed into sprawling suburbs. Lester Graham reports the problem is finding money to fund programs that would preserve the rural character of an area:

Transcript

Some counties near big cities are trying to save farmland from being developed into
sprawling suburbs. Lester Graham reports the problem is finding money to fund
programs that would preserve the rural character of an area:


The real value of land as farmland is a lot less than what a developer will pay for the land
to use it to build strip malls, big box retail stores, or subdivisions of wallboard mansions.
Farmers are tempted to sell when it means they’d make more money off the land selling it
to developers than they would farming for the rest of their lives, but many feel they’re forced into the situation. They don’t really want to give up life on
the farm. They just feel they’d be foolish to keep farming when they could make so much
money selling to a developer.


Some counties that want to preserve the rural character of their area are putting together a program
that helps farmers by paying them some of that difference between farmland value and
development value. It’s called the purchase of development rights.


Usually, local governments, sometimes state, pay farmers to waive that right to develop
the land forever. No one can build on it. The land has to be kept as open space.


There are lots of reasons state, county and city and township governments might want to
do that. Some politicians want to make sure their communities continue to be surrounded
by scenic green space. Some want to preserve the rural character of their community.
Some want to make sure they have a source for locally grown food.


Scott Everett is with the American Farmland Trust. He says it can come down to simple
economics. Some politicians like purchase of development rights for lower taxes:


“Because we won’t have to add public services. Cows don’t go to school. Chickens don’t
dial 9-1-1. Corn, wheat and soybeans need a lot less fire and police protection than
residential development.”


Everett says purchase of development rights is a long term plan and if a county sees its
farmland might be threatened in the future, it better get busy now:


“In an urban-influenced county, you know, there’s a county next door to a big
metropolitan area maybe like Chicago, one of the things that really ought to be happening
to counties that are next to that county is some planning needs to take place. It
takes a very long time for a purchase of development rights program to take ahold.”


We found a place that fits that description exactly. DeKalb County is on the fringes of
the Chicago metropolitan area. The counties between it and the city are seeing incredible
development pressures. Farmland is being gobbled up at a rate almost unparalleled in the
nation. DeKalb County is trying to draw a line that would stop urban sprawl and allow only
carefully planned growth.


Pat Vary is a DeKalb County board member. She’s watched as counties closer to
Chicago have gone from farmland to urban sprawl in almost no time. She doesn’t want that to happen to
DeKalb County and she says most of the towns don’t want that:


“Most of the municipalities have said, ‘We want to grow this far, but we want to keep
green space around us and we don’t want to go much further than that.’ There’s lots of
pressure from developers right now.”


Vary, who’s also a biologist, says as the population grows and farmland is lost, she sees a
moment in the future where land that produces food is going to be a lot more valuable
than it is today:


“I really think that in about thirty years, forty years from now, that an acre of farmland in
DeKalb County will be worth more than an acre of downtown Chicago. You can’t eat
buildings. You can’t eat pavement. People are going to need to eat. I really believe it’s
critical, it’s vital to do something fairly fast.”


But, as we heard earlier, it takes a while to get a purchase of development rights program
rolling. It has to be funded, usually from several levels of government, and then you
have to persuade farmers that dedicating their land to only growing crops is the right
thing to do.


Scott Everett with American Farmland Trust says successful purchase of
development rights start out slowly, but gain popularity after everyone sees how it works:


“It’s one of these programs where once one farmer does it, the other farmers next door
and the neighboring farmers really start taking a look at it and saying to themselves ‘You
know, if they’re going to make the commitment, I will, too.'”


But Everett warns, if your county is one of those urban-influenced counties, if a
purchase of development rights program isn’t put in place and funded soon, your
farmland will be gobbled up by gridlock, strip malls, and dotted with residential suburbs
that often cost the government more in infrastructure and additional services than the new
real estate taxes will ever pay for.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Dilemmas for Wastewater Treatment Plants

  • Water contamination from sources that might include some wastewater treatment plants closes some beaches. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Municipal sewer plants are sometimes blamed for high E. coli bacteria counts that close beaches to swimmers. Some cities are working to find better ways to treat the water and put it back into nature. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:

Transcript

Municipal sewer plants are sometimes blamed for high E. coli bacteria counts
that close beaches to swimmers. Some cities are working to find better ways to treat the
water and put it back into nature. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus
reports:


(sound of cars moving along a small street and a few people talking)


A typical summer day by the lake: SUVs pull boats on trailers. People saunter from an
ice cream shop to the city beach. Jet skis and water skiiers slice through the waves.
Carpenters raise trusses on homes being built into the remaining lakefront lots.


Just a few years ago it seemed towns like this were just for loggers and locals. But now
people are flocking to the lakes around the Midwest and staying there. And that’s putting
a strain on local sewer plants.


(sound of machines inside the water treatment plant)


For 40 years, the treated waste water from the Boyne City, Michigan sewer plant has
been released into the big lake it was built on…Lake Charlevoix.


“It’s located right adjacent to a public swimming beach, park, marina and some valuable
waterfront property. We are only a block off the downtown district.”


Plant manager Dan Meads wants to stop mixing the end product with the water where
tourists and the locals swim and play. He tests daily for E. coli bacteria. He
doesn’t want anyone getting sick. But it’s still a concern, and there are other concerns.


In recent years, the United States Geological Survey has reported on new kinds of
contaminants that they’ve found in ground and surface water. The USGS says treated
wastewater from sewer plants can contain hormones from birth control pills, antibiotics,
detergents, fire retardants, and pesticides.


USGS microbiologist Sheridan Haack says the effects of all these compounds are still
unknown. Most are found in tiny quantities, but combined they could cause any number
of chemical reactions.


“There are many different chemical structures and it would be very difficult to state for
all of them what we would actually expect the environmental fate to be and how they
would actually be transported through the environment.”


Haack says the medicines people take don’t disappear. They eventually leave the body
and are flushed down the toilet. Those drugs have been tested for safe human
consumption, but the question is: what happens when those chemicals are mixed in with
industrial waste, accidental spills and nature’s own chemical processes? Haack says they
just might come back around to hurt humans, fish and wildlife.


The Boyne City solution is to build a new wastewater treatment plant two miles from the
beaches up the Boyne River. Officials say contaminants will be diluted by the time they
flow back down into Lake Charlevoix.


(sound of the Boyne River)


Larry Maltby volunteers for a group called “Friends of the Boyne River.” The group
doesn’t like the city’s plan to discharge treated wastewater directly into the river. It wants
them to consider some non-traditional methods. They say the new sewer plant could run
a pipe under a golf course or spray the treated water on farm fields… or let it drain into
wetlands to let nature filter it out.


“It will seep into the soils which are very sandy and gravelly underneath the golf course
and then the filtration through the ground will have a great deal of effect of continuing to
purify that water. Much more so than it would be with a direct deposit, straight into the
surface waters of Michigan.”


Lawyers for the Friends of the Boyne River have appealed to the state dept of
environmental quality and filed a lawsuit.


But wastewater treatment plant manager Dan Meads says the city doesn’t want to please
just one group and end up angering another…


“There isn’t any guarantee that you can satisfy everybody. We think we have the best
option available.”


As municipalities are short on funds and personnel, they don’t want to wait for decades
for the perfect solution. Still, nobody wants any amount of pollution to affect their home
or their recreational area.


Sheridan Haack with the USGS won’t take either side in this dispute. She says not only
are the dangers from contaminants unknown, the best way to deal with them is unknown.


“I am not aware of any consensus in the scientific community on the nature or types of
treatment for this broad range of chemicals.”


In the meantime… communities such as Boyne City have the unenviable task of trying to
dispose of their residents sewage without polluting the beaches, the fishing, and the
environment that brought folks there in the first place.


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

Related Links

Mayors Push for Larger Role in Great Lakes Future

Mayors from around the eight Great Lakes states met in Chicago this month and delivered a unified message: They want a voice in the future of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports:

Transcript

Mayors from around the eight Great Lakes states met in Chicago this month and delivered a
unified message: They want a voice in the future of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports:


The winter meeting of the Great Lakes Cities Initiative was hosted by Chicago Mayor Richard
Daly. Thirty-five Great Lakes mayors voted to push Congress to pass a 4-billion dollar clean-up
bill pending in the House. Superior Mayor Dave Ross says only the federal government has the
resources to do the job right.


“It’s a great burden on local governments and municipalities to take on the burden of water
quality because in any small cities such as Superior, that would be an enormous financial burden.
We certainly need financial help from outside sources, and of course the federal government
would be the prime source.”


Ross says mayors will lobby their members of Congress to support similar legislation in the
Senate.


“We can’t do it ourselves. We can’t do it alone. One new invasive species is being found in the
Great Lakes system each year. If this continues at the rate it is, we’re going to destroy the Great
Lakes.”


The mayors say until now local governments have been bypassed in Great Lakes decisions. Now
the mayors say they want to be part of the federal Great Lakes Advisory Board.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mike Simonson.

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Canada’s Plans to Battle Farm Pollution

Seven people died and more than two thousand were made ill when E. coli bacteria contaminated Walkerton, Ontario’s water supply more than two years ago. The contamination came from cattle manure that had leeched into the ground. Now, the government of Ontario has come out with its plans in an attempt to prevent another tragedy like Walkerton. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports:

Transcript

Seven people died and more than two thousand were made ill when E. coli bacteria
contaminated Walkerton, Ontario’s water supply more than two years ago. The contamination came from cattle manure that had leeched into the ground. Now, the government of Ontario has come out with its plans in an attempt to prevent another tragedy like Walkerton. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports:


Ontario is considering two new laws to make its drinking water safer. The new regulations would affect everything from manure-spreading to barn construction.


The first, the Nutrient Management Act, would bind all farmers by the same curbs
on agricultural waste that contributed to the contamination of Walkerton’s water
supply.


The second, the Safe Drinking Water Act, would enshrine in law the right of people
in Ontario to clean and safe drinking water. It would also establish a water council to
conduct research, advise the government and set up a registry so consumers could
check the water quality in their area.


Paul Muldoon is with the Canadian Environmental Law Association. He says it’s too
early yet to say if the new rules go far enough..


“Our view is that we’re hopeful it’s going to do the right thing and we’re going to do anything in our power to point it in the right direction, once we see the details.”


There will likely be some opposition from farmers to the new rules. But they and the
municipalities will be given a chance to voice their concerns during public meetings
across Ontario this fall.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Dan Karpenchuk.

Big City Recycling Faces Challenges

The recycling programs in big cities often are not as successful as
their suburban neighbors. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports… some recycling advocates believe big cities can have
better recycling programs if they make recycling a higher priority: