Natural gas well drilling site. (Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)
A new drilling technique called
hydrofracking has opened up previously
inaccessible natural gas fields all
over the country and created a boom
in natural gas production. But it’s
also generated a lot of controversy,
since hydrofracking is exempt from
almost all federal regulations.
Samara Freemark reports
that legislation currently moving through
Congress would change that:
Transcript
A new drilling technique called
hydrofracking has opened up previously
inaccessible natural gas fields all
over the country and created a boom
in natural gas production. But it’s
also generated a lot of controversy,
since hydrofracking is exempt from
almost all federal regulations.
Samara Freemark reports
that legislation currently moving through
Congress would change that:
Hydrofracking involves pumping millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals a mile into the ground to break up rock and extract gas. But since 2005 the technique has been exempt from federal environmental legislation like the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act.
Now some members of Congress have introduced a bill to restore federal oversight over fracking. Kate Sinding is with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports the bill.
“So what has been proposed is known as the FRAC act. And what that would do is restore regulatory authority over hydrolic fracturing which means we would have some federal standards about how to regulate this activity. And it would require the public disclosure of the fracturing fluids that are used in fracturing fluids.”
That’s an important point for fracking opponents, who say those chemicals have contaminated wells and groundwater across the nation.
Officials placed containment booms around the barge. Most of
them failed to prevent the oil from floating downriver, contaminating dozens
of miles of pristine shoreline. (Courtesy of the NY State Dept. of Conservation)
Dwayne Chalk at his marina on Fisher's Landing near Alexandria Bay,
NY. In the background, you can see a black stripe of 30-year-old oil on the
dock. The St. Lawrence River has recovered, but Chalk and many others worry
about another spill. (Photo by David Sommerstein)
Blue herons and thousands of other wildlife were victims of the
oil spill of 1976. (Courtesy of the NY State Dept. of Conservation)
30 years ago, an oil barge ran aground in the St. Lawrence River. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of thick crude oil coated the shoreline of northern New York state. The accident remains one of the largest inland oil spills in the United States. It’s a reminder that freighters haul millions of gallons of toxic liquids across the Great Lakes. And many people worry about another spill. The GLRC’s David Sommerstein talked to witnesses of the 1976 spill:
Transcript
30 years ago, an oil barge ran aground in the St. Lawrence River. Hundreds
of thousands of gallons of thick crude oil coated the shoreline of northern New
York State. The accident remains one of the largest inland oil spills in the
United States. It’s a reminder that freighters haul millions of gallons of toxic
liquids across the Great Lakes. And many people worry about another spill.
The GLRC’s David Sommerstein talked to witnesses of the 1976 spill:
It was really foggy that morning. Bob Smith awoke to two sounds:
“You could hear the anchor chains going down, and next thing we know
there was a young Coast Guard guy knocking on the front door.”
The Coast Guard guy had driven up, asking around for a missing barge.
Smith remembered the anchor chains echoing across the water that woke
him up. He went outside to look.
(Sound of walking outside)
Thirty years later, Smith lives amidst cozy cottages on manicured lawns in
the heart of the touristy Thousand Islands.
“Just right about straight out there. See where that boat’s coming up there
now?”
That’s where a barge carrying oil from Venezuela had dropped anchor after
running aground. That morning Smith watched crude as thick as mud drift
out of sight downriver:
“If you’re born and raised here on the river, you don’t like to see anything go
in the river that doesn’t belong there.”
The Coast Guard placed booms in the water, but the oil quickly spilled over.
It carried 50 miles downstream. It oozed as far as 15 feet into the river’s
marshes. Tom Brown was the point man for New York’s Department of
Environmental Conservation. He says the spill couldn’t have come at a
worse time for wildlife:
“All the young fish, waterfowl, shorebirds, furbearers, were coming off the
nests and were being born.”
Thousands of birds and fish suffocated in black goo. As images of
devastation flashed on national TV, the spill killed the tourism season, too.
It was a summer with no swimming, no fishing, no dipping your feet in the
water at sunset. Really, it was a summer with no river.
(Sound of river at Chalk’s dock)
30 years later, everyone still remembers the acrid smell:
“When I woke up in the middle of the night and I could smell oil, I was
afraid I had an oil leak in my house.”
Dwayne Chalk’s family has owned a marina on the St. Lawrence for
generations. Chalk points to a black stripe of oil on his docks, still there
three decades later, and he’s still bitter:
“The Seaway has done this area, well, I shouldn’t say that, it hasn’t done any
good. To me it hasn’t.”
The St. Lawrence Seaway opened the ports of the Great Lakes to Atlantic
Ocean freighters carrying cargoes of steel, ore, and liquid chemicals. It
generates billions of dollars a year in commerce, but it’s also brought
pollution and invasive species.
Anthropologist John Omohundro studied the social effects of the 1976 oil
spill. He says it helped awaken environmentalism in the Great Lakes:
“The spill actually raised people’s consciousness that the river could be a
problem in a number of areas, not just oil.”
Groups like Save the River and Great Lakes United began lobbying for
cleaner water and safer navigation in the years after the spill:
“If a vessel carrying oil or oil products were in that same type of ship today,
it would not be allowed in.”
Albert Jacquez is the outgoing administrator for the US side of the St. Lawrence
Seaway. The 1976 barge had one hull and gushed oil when it hit the rocks.
Today’s barges are mostly double-hulled and use computerized navigation.
Jacquez says a lot has changed to prevent spills:
“The ships themselves are different, the regulations that they have to follow are
different, and the inspections are different. Now does that guarantee? Well,
there are no guarantees, period.”
So if there is a spill, the government requires response plans for every part of
the Great Lakes. Ralph Kring leads training simulations of those plans for
the Coast Guard in Buffalo. Still, he says the real thing is different:
“You really can’t control the weather and the currents and all that. It’s definitely going to be a
challenge, especially when you’re dealing with a real live incident where
everyone’s trying to move as fast as they can and also as efficient as they
can.”
Critics question the ability to get responders to remote areas in time. They
also worry about spills in icy conditions and chemical spills that oil booms
wouldn’t contain.
(Sound of river water)
Back on the St. Lawrence River, Dwayne Chalk says the oil spill of 1976
has taught him it’s not if, it’s when, the next big spill occurs:
“You think about it all the time. Everytime a ship comes up through here,
you think what’s going to happen if that ship hits something.”
Chalk and everyone else who relies on the Great Lakes hope they’ll never
have to find out.
The new book outlines a cause of Great Lakes water levels dropping while entertaining kids with silly, though not entirely improbable outcomes. (Photo courtesy of Mackinac Island Press)
The Great Lakes were flowing with water
On every Great Lakes Day;
Until something frightful happened
And made the Great Lakes drain away.
That’s how the new children’s book, “The Day The Great Lakes Drained Away” begins. The author is Charles Ferguson Barker and he recently spoke with the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Charity Nebbe:
Transcript
The Great Lakes were flowing with water
On every Great Lakes Day;
Until something frightful happened
And made the Great Lakes drain away.
That’s how the new children’s book, The Day The Great Lakes Drained
Away begins. The author is Charles Ferguson Barker and he recently
spoke with the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Charity Nebbe:
Nebbe: “Charles, in your book, all of the water disappears from the Lakes and you take us on a tour of all the lakebeds, so we see landforms and shipwrecks and a whole lot of mud… What gave you the idea to show kids what the Lakes would look like without water?”
Barker: “Well, actually, it was from looking at some maps that are put out by the National Geophysical Data Center that show, basically, what’s on the lake floors, and I, for one, had not given it much thought ’till seeing these maps. But these maps have some really cool features like ridges of rock and all kinds of neat stuff and I thought this would be a great idea for a children’s book.”
Nebbe: “What do you think some of the coolest features that you’ve been able to put into the book are?”
Barker: “Um, well, there’s a suspected meteor impact crater on the east side of Lake Ontario, and it’s not confirmed as a meteor impact crater, but a lot of other things it could be have been ruled out. So that’s pretty neat. There’s also, to me, what’s most exciting is the ridge of rock, or ridges of rock underneath Lake Huron, that, in some cases, have maybe four hundred feet of relief. And most of the maps we see of the Great Lakes are basically just a flat blue, so seeing what’s under the Lakes I thought was really exciting.”
Nebbe: “When I was reading the book, I thought, you know, if I were a kid, this would be pretty scary to me because all the water goes away from the lakes and, you know, there are fish dying in at least one picture. Why did you decide to show us the bottom of the Lakes in that way?”
Barker: “Well, actually, that’s pretty much how… the only way I could figure out how to show them, I mean, if we’re talking about features that are on the lake floors, then somehow we’ve got to get rid of the water to see those, and sort of… it’s a fanciful sort of draining away of the Lakes, if you will. The purpose of the book is almost twofold: one is to show that the lake floors are pretty cool, and there’s some neat features under there, but also to sort of reinforce that hey, we’d better make sure this never happens, you know, so it goes to the protection of the Lakes as well.”
Nebbe: “The culprit in your book is water usage among communities in the Great Lakes Basin and there are rules that govern water usage among those communities, one of them is that they have to return the amount of water that they use and that communities outside the basin can’t use the water without approval. Why did you pick that as the culprit?”
Barker: “Well, that’s a good question and it sort of goes back to the original manuscript draft, and I thought, well, gosh, the villain could be actually just everybody taking a little bit of water thinking that it doesn’t matter, but the cummulative effect of that mindset causes a problem, and I think that’s true, I work in environmental consulting, and I can attest that that’s basically how major contamination sites are created is that everybody thinking, ‘Oh well this one little thing won’t matter, this little drop of tetrachlorethyline won’t matter,’ but if everybody has that mindset, then, yeah there’s going to be a problem.”
Nebbe: “You’ve been talking to some of the kids who are reading the book, do you think that message is getting across?”
Barker: “Yeah, I think, you know, initially, they really kind of like to sort of see the pictures and hear and learn about the lake floors and whatnot, but I think it’s important to, you know, relay to kids that they’re actually going to be the ones making decisions down the road about Great Lakes withdrawals and whatnot, and recently, I was just talking to somebody and remembering back to when I was a kid, we used to sail a lot on the Great Lakes, and I remember being in the middle of Lake Erie, sort of out of the sight of land, and sailing through soap suds. It was terrible. I mean, Lake Erie was horrible. This was in the early seventies. And it was like you’re in a bath tub with soap suds. That’s more of a water quality issue, but I think it sort of became a problem because of nobody really, um, paying much attention. So, I think the more attention we pay to the Great Lakes, in terms of just making sure no wacky ideas about withdrawal go through, then that’s good. That’s what we need to do.”
Nebbe: “Charles Ferguson Barker, thank you so much.”
Barker: “Thank you.”
HOST TAG: Charles Ferguson Barker, author of The Day the Great Lakes Drained Away speaking with the GLRC’s Charity Nebbe.
Rainwater that falls on paved areas is diverted into drains and gutters. If the rainfall is heavy enough, the diverted water can cause flash flooding in nearby rivers and streams. (Photo by Michele L.)
Some planning experts are worried that the rapid development in cities and suburbs is paving over too much land and keeping water from replenishing aquifers below ground. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports:
Transcript
Some planning experts are worried that the rapid development in cities and suburbs is
paving over too much land and keeping water from replenishing aquifers below ground.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
In nature… when it rains… the water slowly soaks into the ground and makes its way
through the soil and rock to eventually be stored as groundwater. Some of it makes its
way underground to be stored in aquifers. And some of it slowly seeps through the rock
for a while and then resurfaces as springs to feed streams during times when there’s not a
lot of rain. It’s a natural storage system and a lot of cities rely on that water.
But when we build buildings and houses and parking lots and roads, a lot of the land
where the rain used to soak into the ground is covered up. Instead the rainwater runs off
the hard surfaces and rushes to stormwater gutters and ditches and then overloads creeks
and rivers. Even where there are big expansive lawns in the suburbs… the rain doesn’t
penetrate the ground in the same way it does in the wild. The grass on lawns has shallow
roots and the surface below is compact… where naturally-occurring plants have deep
roots that help the water on its way into the earth.
Don Chen is the Executive Director of the organization Smart Growth America. His
group tries to persuade communities to avoid urban sprawl by building clustering houses
and business districts closer together and leave more natural open space.
“With denser development you have a much lower impact per household in terms of
polluted runoff.”
Chen says the rain washes across driveways and parking lots, washing engine oil, and
exhaust pollutants straight into streams and rivers instead of letting the water filter across
green space.
Besides washing pollutants into the lakes and streams… the sheer volume of water that
can’t soak into the ground and instead streams across concrete and asphalt and through
pipes can cause creeks to rise and rise quickly.
Andi Cooper is with Conservation Design Forum in Chicago. Her firm designs
landscapes to better handle water…
“Flooding is a big deal. It’s costly. That’s where we start talking about economics. We
spend billions and billions of dollars each year in flood damage control.”
Design firms such as Cooper’s are trying to get developers and city planners to think
about all that water that used to soak into the ground, filtering and being cleaned up a bit
by the natural processes.
Smart Growth America’s Don Chen says those natural processes are called infiltration….
and Smart Growth helps infiltration…
“And the primary way in which it does is to preserve open space to allow for natural
infiltration of water into the land so that there’s not as much pavement and hard surfaces
for water to bounce off of and then create polluted runoff.”
People such as Chen and Cooper are bumping up against a couple of centuries or more of
engineering tradition. Engineers and architects have almost always tried to get water
away from their creations as fast and as far as possible. Trying to slow down the water…
and giving it room to soak into the ground is a relatively new concept.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is trying to get communities to give the idea
some consideration. Geoff Anderson is the Acting Chief of Staff for the EPA’s Office of
Policy, Economics and Innovation.
“Anything you can do to keep that water on site and have it act more like it does in its
natural setting, anything you can do to sort of keep that recharge mechanism working,
that’s helpful.”
The EPA does not require that kind of design. It leaves that to local governments and the
private sector. The Conservation Design Forum’s Andi Cooper says sometimes getting
companies to think about treating water as a resource instead of a nuisance is a hard
sell…
“You know, this is risky. People tell us this is risky. ‘I don’t want to do this; it’s not the
norm.’ It’s becoming less risky over time because there are more and more
demonstrations to point to and say ‘Look, this is great. It’s working.’ ”
But… corporate officials are hesitant. Why take a chance on something new? They fear
if something goes wrong the boss will be ticked off every time there’s a heavy rain.
Cooper says, though, it works… and… reminds them that investors like companies that
are not just economically savvy… but also have an environmental conscience.
“A lot of companies are game. They’re open. If we can present our case that yes, it
works; no, it’s not risky; it is the ethical thing to do; it is aesthetically pleasing; there are
studies out there that show you can retain your employees, you can increase their
productivity if you give them open spaces to walk with paths and make it an enjoyable
place to come to work everyday.”
So… doing the right thing for the environment… employees… and making investors
happy… make Wall Street risk takers willing to risk new engineering to help nature
handle some of the rain and get it back into the aquifers and springs that we all value.
Rainwater that falls on paved areas is diverted into drains and gutters. If the rainfall is heavy enough, the diverted water can cause flash flooding in nearby rivers and streams. (Photo by Michele L.)
An Environmental Protection Agency official wants local governments to take a broader view when making land use plans for their communities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
An Environmental Protection Agency official wants local governments to take a broader view
when making land use plans for their communities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:
Often planners don’t look past their own city borders when making decisions. Geoff Anderson
wants that to change. He’s the Acting Chief of Staff for the EPA’s Office of Policy, Economics
and Innovation. Anderson says city officials often look at land use planning one site at a time
instead of looking at how their decisions will affect the entire area…
“The two scales are very important and I think in many cases too much is paid to the site level
and not enough is given to the sort of broader regional or community context.”
Anderson says that’s especially important when planning for stormwater drainage. He says too
many communities think about getting the water to the nearest stream quickly without thinking
about how that rushing water might affect flooding downstream.
You might gather a few stones as you walk along the beach, or buy some
at the hardware store to use in landscaping. But if you want to get a
good idea of the wide variety of stones, you might make a visit to the
Stone Zone. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson reports:
Natural gas well drilling site. (Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)
