In the tradition of Live Aid and Farm Aid comes Great Lakes Aid, which will be a concert series to raise money for environmental issues concerning the Great Lakes. (Photo by Jenny W.)
A group of Great Lakes conservationists say
they’ll use a concert series to raise money for the
Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Jenny Lawton has more:
Transcript
A group of Great Lakes conservationists say they’ll use a concert series to raise money for the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has more:
Like “Live Aid,” and “Farm Aid” after that, organizers hope a concert series on behalf of the Great Lakes will be a hit. “Great Lakes Aid,” as it will be called, hopes to feature big-name headliners and local groups, all raising millions of dollars for environmental issues. Tom Fuhrman is President of the Lake Erie Regional Conservancy and organizer of the event. He says supporting a good cause isn’t the only thing that will attract artists to participate.
“They look at things like this as exposure furthering their careers – I mean, there’s 40 million people who live in the Great Lakes basin so these events are going to touch a lot of people.”
Fuhrman says the group is still looking for a headliner to encourage other artists to get on board.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is already a committed partner in the project. As is the George Gund Foundation.
Fuhrman says he expects the event to generate at least two-million dollars in its first performance slated for the summer of 2006.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.
The EPA has rescinded some safety constraints on rodenticides. Some fear this may harm children, because they might now be more likely to ingest rat poison. (Photo by Geovani Arruda)
Plaintiffs in a case before a New York Federal Court accuse the
Environmental Protection Agency of being too soft on protecting children
from poisonous rat pellets. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny
Lawton reports:
Transcript
Plaintiffs in a case before a New York Federal Court accuse the Environmental Protection
Agency of being too soft on protecting children from poisonous rat pellets. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton reports:
The poisonous pellets aren’t just tough on rats. Some environmentalists say they’re
injuring young children as well. The Natural Resources Defense Council says more than
fifty-thousand children in the U.S. below the age of six have been sickened by rat poison
this year. In 1998, the EPA made a rule that required manufactuers to put a bitter taste
and a special dye in the pellets to keep children from eating them.
But three years later, the agency rescinded that mandate.
It said it had come to a “mutual agreement” with the rodenticide industry that those precautions
might be making the pellets less effective. But critics say that has put kids back in harm’s way.
Especially those living in low-income areas where rat infestation is a common problem.
Although the EPA won’t comment directly on the case, an agency report from 2001 argued that
when rodenticides are used correctly, and children are supervised around them, fewer accidental
ingestions happen.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.
With its ability to breathe out of water and wriggle its way over land during dry spells, the media has dubbed the northern snakehead "Frankenfish." Its appearance in Lake Michigan is scary to scientists. (Photo courtesy of USGS)
A few weeks ago, a Chicago fisherman caused a stir when he found a northern snakehead fish. The discovery set off a frantic search to find out if yet another invasive species is threatening the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has this report:
Transcript
A few weeks ago, a Chicago fisherman caused a stir when he found a northern snakehead fish. The find set off a frantic search to find out if yet another invasive species is threatening the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has this report:
Just before Halloween, the so-called Frankenfish reared its ugly head… filled with sharp teeth… in Chicago’s Burnham Harbor on Lake Michigan. And it’s still a mystery as to just how it got there.
Although the snakehead is arare item in some Asian cuisines, there’s a more common suspicion amongst local experts and hobbyists. That snakehead was probably a pet that outgrew its tank, and instead of the traditional farewell down the toilet, it was set free in Lake Michigan. Free to eat through the Lake’s food web.
Local pet store manager Edwin Cerna says that’s why he stopped selling the fish years before they were banned by U.S. Fish and Wildlife. He remembers one day, when he was adjusting a tank, he accidentally got in between a snakehead’s lunch and its mouth.
“He bit me in the hand… made me bleed. It hurts. It’s got a nice strong jaw and that’s why it’s so dangerous because it can kill big fish, literally cut them in half. It’s almost like a big old killer whale, like a miniature version of it.”
But why on earth would anybody buy a vicious fish that can grow up to three feet long in the first place? Jim Robinett is with the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. He says he’s a fish geek.
“I gotta say, as a little fish, when you first buy them, they’re really attractive; they’re neat little animals, but they eat like crazy. They’re voracious.”
Robinett knows not to be fooled by the little guys because what happens next is the perfect plot for a B-horror movie. He says the snakehead fish grows quickly, eventually eating everything in its tank. If it doesn’t die from overgrowing that tank, its owner might be tempted to dump it into a nearby body of water where it will keep eating its way up the food chain. Robinett says that’s the fear in Lake Michigan.
“They could potentially start picking off small salmon and lake trout, which is native to these waters here, they’re not real discriminating, they’ve been known to take things as large as frogs, some small birds, even small mammals that happen to get in the way there close to shore. They’ll eat anything they get their mouth on.”
Most hobby fish don’t last long in Chicago’s cold water. But the northern snakehead is different. The snakehead is native to northern Asia, and the Lake Michigan Federation’s Cameron Davis says that makes the fish feel right at home around here.
“It’s a lot like us Midwesterners, it just kind of hunkers down and… that’s part of the problem with the snakehead is that it can live under very extreme conditions. Which means it’ll out compete those other fish, and that’s a tremendous problem.”
Snakeheads have another edge on other species. The fish guard their eggs, giving their young a better chance of reaching maturity. But perhaps the most peculiar thing about snakeheads is that they can breathe. In addition to its gills, they have an organ that works like a lung and allows it to breathe air. It’s able to live up to three days as it uses its fins to wriggle across land in search of another body of water.
But looking down into the murky waters at Burnham Harbor, Davis says we shouldn’t run screaming yet. It’s not exactly a horror film scenario.
“I don’t think that the snakehead is going to come and grab our children out of schools and eat them or anything like that. But it is a problem for those of us who like to fish for yellow perch and whitefish and some of the things that make the Great Lakes so fantatstic, could really be threatened by this fish getting into Lake Michigan.”
Other invasive species cause an estimated 137-billion dollars of losses and damages in U.S. waterways each year. Cameron Davis says simply banning the local sale of fish like snakeheads hasn’t been enough to keep the Great Lakes safe.
“We’ve got to stop imports of these kinds of fish into the United States. We can’t protect the Great Lakes unless we’re checking these things at the door when they come into the country. It’s that simple.”
Davis is pushing for the passage of the National Aquatic Invasive Species Act. The bill would allocate a total of 174-million dollars to develop new technology for identifying and eliminating the invaders if and when they arrive.
So far, local authorities ahven’t found another snakehead near the banks of Lake Michigan, but Cameron Davis says the initial find just proves how hard it is to regulate what comes into the country’s largest body of fresh water.
Standing on the dock at Burnham Harbor, Davis looks out over the dark waters and shakes his head.
“It’s just an indicator that we’re in a race against time right now. Let’s hope that if there are more than one out there, that they haven’t hooked up.”
If they have, he says, it could truly be the stuff horror movies are made of… at least, for the other fish in the Great Lakes.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton in Chicago.
Some see national struggles with the availability of the flu vaccine as a measure of our readiness for an act of bioterrorism. (Photo by Pamela Roth, courtesy of creatingonline.com)
A new study finds the nation is still not prepared for a biological terrorist attack… mainly because it could take us years to respond to it. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has this report:
Transcript
A new study finds the nation is still not prepared for a biological terrorist attack –
mainly because it could take us years to respond to it. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Jenny Lawton reports:
The study found that viruses specially manufactured by terrorists – or even a rare, natural
virus – could be devastating to the country. That’s because as it stands now, it takes
nearly a decade to develop vaccines against them. Mark Lister is one of the authors of the
report, published by the Sarnoff Corporation and the Center for Biosecurity of the University
of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He says the recent scramble over the shortage of flu vaccines
just proves the point…
“If we are fairly ill-prepared for an annual flu vaccination process, how prepared are we
going to be if a bioterrorist event occurs on a large scale?”
Lister says the government needs to coordinate its efforts more closely with drug and
biotech companies. That, he says, could help new drugs of all kinds hit the market faster.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.
An environmental watchdog group says the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District has dumped one billion gallons of raw waste into Lake Michigan over the past eight years. Now it’s taking its case to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton reports:
Transcript
An environmental watchdog group says the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District has
dumped 1-billion gallons of raw waste into Lake Michigan over the past 8 years. Now it’s taking
it’s case to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny
Lawton reports:
The Chicago-based Lake Michigan Federation says bacterial waste released from Milwaukee
continues to threaten Lake Michigan’s beaches.
The problem stems from Milwaukee’s underground sewage system…which isn’t big enough to
accomodate the city’s waste.
The Sewerage District has plans to upgrade the system by 2010.
But the Federation says that’s not soon enough.
Executive director Cameron Davis wants the Court to force the sewerage district to make the
changes by imposing fines.
“As long as there aren’t financial incentives to do that, what we’re going to see is kind of this
incremental, small step to small step approach sewage overflows in the region. And that’s simply
not acceptable.”
But last month, a Milwaukee federal district court dismissed a similar lawsuit… saying state
agencies had enforced the laws diligently.
Now the Federation hopes to prove to the U.S. Court of Appeals that Milwaukee has racked up
over 100 federal Clean Water Act violations in the past few years.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.
Recently, the Bush administration announced it will allow factories and power plants to make large upgrades without having to install anti-pollution technology. But that business incentive has state Environmental Protection Agencies worried about air quality. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has this report:
Transcript
Recently, the Bush administration announced it will allow factories and power plants to make
large upgrades without having to install anti-pollution technology. But that business incentive
has state Environmental Protection Agencies worried about air quality. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has this report:
For the last 30 years, under the Clean Air Act, power plants and factories have been required to
install pollution control devices whenever they made major improvements to their infrastructure.
Under the new federal rule, a plant can make improvements worth up to 20-percent of its value
without installing smoke-stack scrubbers. The U.S. EPA says the Bush administration’s rule
means plants will be able to modernize.
But Illinois state EPA director Renee Cipriano says modernizing a plant doesn’t necessarily mean
it will be cleaner.
“The cost of a modification does not necessarily equal the impact to the environment. The two do
not equal each other.”
Cipriano says the change jeopardizes the standards set by the Clean Air Act. The Illinois EPA
and the state’s attorney general will file a petition to block the change. Twelve other states have
filed similar petitions.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.
Some low-income suburbs of major metropolitan areas are dumping grounds for used tires. But who’s dumping the tires continues to stump the authorities. In one state, authorities hauled off more than 40,000 used tires last year… and more keep showing up. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has this report:
Transcript
Some low-income suburbs of major metropolitan areas are dumping grounds for used tires. But
who’s dumping the tires continues to stump the authorities. In one state, authorities hauled off
more than 40-thousand used tires last year… and more keep showing up. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has this report:
Today’s job is a small one — inspectors from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
have been called in to remove about 3-thousand tires buried in an overgrown junkyard in a remote
corner of Blue Island, a suburb south of Chicago.
The state is paying for this clean-up, because tires are more than a nuisance, they’re a public
health problem.
This unpenned junkyard is overgrown with weeds and swarming with mosquitoes.
State EPA tire inspector George Skrobuton swats a big one from his elbow as he directs his crew.
“You’ve got all these tires here right now. They’re mixed between mattresses, garbage, clothes,
trash, leaves… See what they do is they get these tires out of the trees, the bushes, and the trash –
and they put them in a nice big pile, and they load the piles into the truck – it’s easier that way.
So, I mean, we’ll do the best we can, we’ll try to get every tire off the ground, if possible. And
hopefully, it’ll stay this way.”
The head of a back-hoe pushes aside a heap of garbage and its jaws close on a pile of almost a
dozen tires. Water streams from the knot of rubber as its lifted and dumped into an open semi
truck.
Skrobuton and his team have been called in to remove thousands of tires across the state, piles left
by rogue transporters who are paid to take them away, but pocket their fee instead of taking them
to be processed legally.
Some speculate the dumpers come from as far as Indiana to dump semi-truck-loads of the tires
under the cover of darkness.
Because these tires are on public land, Skrobuton’s team is cleaning them up for free as part of the
state EPA’s tire removal program.
But Skrobuton says this is a problem that just won’t go away.
“We can’t keep cleaning up these tire sites – it costs a lot of money. Y’know especially out here in
the south suburbs, I mean, there are so many forest preserves, and nooks and crannies like this,
that they could dump tires forever. And we don’t know where they’re coming from and that’s a
problem. Y’know, and unlesss they catch them in the act, we’re stuck with this problem.”
Over the last two years, dumpers left over 35-thousand tires in suburban Dixmoor.
With a population of less than 4-thousand, this poor suburb doesn’t have the money to remove the
tires… or fund a police force to keep the dumpers at bay.
So dumpers left their loads in alleys, vacant lots, even behind a school for years.
Village trustee Jerry Smith says the town was helpless until the state EPA came in and removed
all 18-truck-loads of tires last month.
“It’s just horrible, y’know – you go out there one day and it’s clear. And then you come back the
next day, you got 10,000 tires facing you. Well, what are you going to do with them? You can’t
pay the money to dispose them because you don’t have the money to dispose of them. There’s
nothing in our budget we got in there to dispose of tires what’s been dumped. So it’s just a burden
on us.”
But the state EPA’s Todd Marvel says the town had to move the tires because they’re a health
hazard.
He says the mounds of used tires draw more dumpers. And when tires catch fire, they produce a
toxic smoke, and Marvel says spraying water on them just makes things worse.
“So when that tire burns and you put that water on it, you’ve got a pretty contaminated run-off
there, a very oily run-off. And any surface water that’s in the area can be immediately
contaminated if that oily sheen is not contained properly.”
And, of course, there are mosquitoes. Marvel says each tire off its rim can breed thousands of
them, so these dumps are a breeding ground for West Nile.
Because of health concerns in the past, the state started a program to help get rid of these tires.
The state’s used tire clean-up program was created as a way to get the tires out of the state’s
junkyards, and into a useable industry.
People who purchase tires in Illinois pay a fee of $2.50 for each tire, new or used, which goes to
fund clean-ups and put back into the state’s used tire industry.
Most of the tires are shredded and mixed with coal to burn in power plants. Shredded tires can
also be used as the surface for everything from football fields to highways to playgrounds.
Marvel says the program has been so successful, Illinois’s demand for used tires actually exceeds
its generation rate.
“In fact, Illinois is a net importer of used tires. And the state of Illinois is constantly looking at
other markets and developing those markets to ensure that all of the used tires that we generate
and that all of the used tires that we clean-up through the dumps throughout the state have
someplace to go.”
But not all the tires end up where they’re supposed to go. Even though dumpers charge the fees
to process them properly, some of them steal the money and dump them in places such as
Dixmoor.
Dixmoor trustee Jerry Smith says once the tires show up in his town, they don’t have the money
to process them.
He says one company quoted him a price of $6 a tire. Multiply that by thousands.
So for now, he’s hoping the state EPA’s clean-up will last the town a long time.
Although the state EPA has offered Dixmoor support for added surveillance, Smith says a few
well-placed boulders and barricades seemed to do the trick.
Until last week, when 15 truck tires showed up in an alley.
Smith is cautiously optimistic this most recent find won’t multiply overnight.
“Let’s hope not. (laughs) I hope not. I really hope they don’t.”
But Dixmoor’s a small town and can’t afford a large enough police force to stop all the dumpers.
That means, chances are, abandoned tires will start showing up in back alleys and vacant lots
again soon.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.
Scientists are comparing the effects of West Nile virus to Polio, because they share similar symptoms. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has more:
Transcript
Scientists are comparing the effects West Nile Virus to Polio because they share
similar
symptoms. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has more:
Researchers say both the West Nile virus and Polio can live in the body for years
before
launching an attack against the nervous system. And there’s evidence both can lead
to other
medical problems years after the initial illness.
In the case of polio, this delay is known as “PPS,” or “post polio syndrome.”
Science journalist, Janet Ginsburg, says those kinds of outbreaks begin with a range
of symptoms.
“And a lot of people had a flu-like illness, just like West Nile fever. These
people today are
showing up with PPS. So you have this model of polio.”
Ginsberg says more research needs to be done before a connection is certain.
There have been fewer than a couple of dozen cases of the West Nile virus in the
Great Lakes
States so far this year.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.
The Environmental Protection Agency is looking at a market-based attempt to reduce water pollution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton explains:
Transcript
The Environmental Protection Agency is looking at a market-based
attempt to reduce water
pollution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton explains:
The EPA says a market-based approach to reducing water pollution would
save the government
billions of dollars in enforcement measures and result in cleaner
rivers and lakes.
It would work like this… companies that clean up wastewater beyond
the EPA standards would
get credits. Then those companies could sell their credits to
companies that cannot meet EPA
standards.
Some environmentalists worry that system will legitimize polluters, so
long as they can pay the
price.
But the EPA’s Tracy Mehan calls the trade a means to an end…
“And the end is the attainment of water quality standards. That is part
of the landscape under
the Clean Water Act already, or the watershed, if you will. In other
words, our policy does not
allow any trading that would exceed those water quality standards.”
But targeting water pollution is complicated. It can come from farm
fields or pesticides from your
neighbor’s lawn.
They’ll have to figure out how to measure that before a water pollution
credit market can be
established.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.
Elected officials say politics and mismanagement have led to the decay of forest preserves around one of the Great Lakes region’s largest cities. They say a shift in control of the forest preserves and 100-million dollars will correct the problems. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton reports:
Transcript
Elected officials say politics and mismanagement have led to the decay of
forest preserves around one of the Great Lakes region’s largest cities. They
say a shift in control of the forest preserves and 100-million dollars will
correct the problems. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton reports:
Cook County’s Forest Preserve District manages 68-thousand acres of
forest preserves in and around Chicago. Commissioner Forrest Claypool
says something needs to be done soon because years of mismanagement
have left the land and its facilities in horrible condition.
“How can you possibly serve in the summertime these thousands of
families who come into the forest preserves and not provide decent
restrooms – not to mention bridges that are about to fall apart, not
to mention picnic shelters that are burned and falling down, and so
covered with gang graffiti that they’re intimidating and create an
impression of this unsafe place to be.”
Claypool says the Cook County Forest Preserve has been a dumping
ground for political patronage… including a recent financial scandal
which cost the agency almost 20-million dollars.
Three county commissioners say they have a 100-million dollar plan to
fix the dilapidated facilities and clean up the forest preserves… all
without raising taxes. The plan calls for borrowing the money by issuing
bonds. But that means they’ll need the Illinois governor’s approval.
County officials say they would save money by gutting that “bloated”
administration of the Forest Preserve District and turning over many
of its responsibilities to the county.
But nature advocates are wary that the shift in control might compromise the forest
preserve’s mission of holding and acquiring natural land.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.
In the tradition of Live Aid and Farm Aid comes Great Lakes Aid, which will be a concert series to raise money for environmental issues concerning the Great Lakes. (Photo by Jenny W.)
