Scavengers in Dire Straights

  • Vultures can eat 20% of their own body weight in one sitting. And they have digestive systems with special acids that will dissolve toxic bacteria and viruses. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

For most people, the slow spiral
of airborne vultures means that
some unlucky animal has died. Now,
in some regions of the world, vulture
populations are dying. An American
scientist is part of an international
effort to save these massive scavengers.
Ann Murray has the story:

Transcript

For most people, the slow spiral
of airborne vultures means that
some unlucky animal has died. Now,
in some regions of the world, vulture
populations are dying. An American
scientist is part of an international
effort to save these massive scavengers.
Ann Murray has the story:

It’s hard to get too excited about an ugly bird that eats dead, rotting flesh. Let’s face it, vultures don’t have a good rep. But vultures are amazing animals. They can eat 20% of their own body weight in one sitting. And they have digestive systems with special acids that will dissolve toxic bacteria and viruses. Meaning, vultures prevent the spread of killer diseases like rabies and anthrax when they scarf down the carcasses of sick animals.

“With the meat goes the disease.”

That’s Todd Katzner, Director of Conservation and Field Research at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. Katzner says, sadly, with all the good vultures do, many species are in big trouble.

“Vultures are in dire conservation straits in much of the world because of things like habitat loss, poisoning and now these new problems like diclofenac.”

Diclofenac is a medicine given to sick livestock in central Asia. Vultures that eat livestock carcasses with traces of the drug almost always die of immediate kidney failure. It took scientists some time to figure that out. Katzner’s friend Vibhu Prakash, an Indian ornithologist, recognized the beginnings of this vulture die-off.

“This was almost 20 years ago that Vibhu started seeing vultures near Barrackpore, India. They were sitting in a tree with their heads hanging down .Eventually they’d just fall out of the tree and die on the ground.”

Since then, Indian white-backed vulture numbers have plummeted from 30 or 40 million birds to just thousands. This massive decline has left scientists scratching their heads about how many vultures are left in central and south Asia and other parts of the world. Because vultures move around a lot, it’s been hard to keep track of individuals. There’s never been an accurate total population count – anywhere. That’s where Katzner and the National Aviary come in.

For several years, Katzner and his field team have been traveling to mountainous grazing lands in Kazakhstan and the northern plains in Cambodia . Katzner says the one place vultures reliably congregate is at feeding sites.

“We ask people if any livestock have died .We drive up to those sites . Usually the vultures have been there. When vultures feed on the carcass they leave feathers everywhere. And when we go to the carcass, we’re able to pick up sometimes 500 or 1000 feathers.”

Once the feathers are collected, Katzner’s team extracts DNA from them to identify individual birds. The scientists will use this information to create population models. This new counting method is faster and more reliable than capturing, marking and recapturing birds.

Katzner expects researchers will use his feather- based system to count endangered vultures in other places. That includes here, in the United States, where California Condors are dying from lead poisoning.

(sound of a vulture eating)

Before I leave the Aviary, Katzner points out an American black vulture. She’s gobbling a breakfast of chick pieces and mice. Katzner hopes his work will help to keep other vultures happy and hungry. He says we all need ‘em on the job as nature’s cleanup crew.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Murray

Related Links

A Spark in Your Step

  • The brace can crank up to 20 watts with each step - that means ten minutes of walking can power a laptop for a half hour. (Photo courtesy of Bionic Power, Inc.)

When you think about alternative energy
sources, you probably don’t include people on your
list. But Ann Murray reports that scientists are
tapping into bionic people power:

Transcript

When you think about alternative energy
sources, you probably don’t include people on your
list. But Ann Murray reports that scientists are
tapping into bionic people power:

Today, we really do have bionic technology.

(Opening of the “Six Million Dollar Man”) “Gentleman, we can rebuild him. We have the technology.”

Okay, maybe not to turn you into
the Six Million Dollar Man. But how about a mobile power plant?

Let’s start with the back story.

About 15 years ago, a couple of young
scientists, Doug Weber and Max Donelan, worked together. Donelan wrote
his grad school dissertation on the energy people create when they walk.
He asked Weber, now a biomedical engineer at the University of
Pittsburgh, to run with his idea.

“He approached me with the idea of building a wearable device that could actually harvest
that energy. And not only generate electricity but potentially make it easier
to walk.”

Weber and Donelan put together a rough prototype in his garage. A lab
tested version of their early demo was just published in the journal Science.
The bionic gizmo looks pretty much like a knee brace with a power pack
attached. Weber calls up a video on YouTube to show me how it works. On
the screen, a guy with a brace on each leg is walking on a treadmill.

“With each step he takes on the treadmill power is generated when the
knee is swinging in extension. It’s during that extension phase that we turn
on the generator and as the traces below the video show, generate large
peaks in power.”

Those peaks in power show up as the hamstring muscle “brakes” to keep
the leg from going too far forward. That’s when the bionic brace kicks in. It
grabs that potentially wasted energy and turns it into electricity.

The brace can crank up to 20 watts with each step. That means ten
minutes of walking can power a laptop for a half hour. No other lightweight
people-powered generator can top that.

Yad Garcha’s betting that people
will be intrigued. He’s the CEO of Bionic Power, a company formed to
market the brace. With some product tweaking, he envisions a world of
alternative energy possibilities. Especially for people who have to depend
on batteries or don’t have much access to electricity. His list includes
millions of people in developing countries, amputees, and soldiers.

“It is a green product primarily for the military because of the number of
batteries that they throw away.”

Garcha says, for example, Canadian soldiers carry up to 20 pounds of
disposable batteries.

“And these throw-away batteries cost a lot of money for them to get them into the
theatre or wherever they’re doing their fighting.”

Garcha’s already been talking to Canadian military reps about field tests.
But the brace probably won’t be ready for another year or two. The
prototype still needs to be quieter, lighter, and more efficient before it makes
its way into the hands – or rather, the legs – of consumers. Better move over
Steve Austin!

(“Six Million Dollar Man” theme music)

For The Environment Report, this is Ann Murray.

Related Links

Nature and Ice Wine

  • Vidal blanc grapes used in ice wine. The vines are netted to protect the grapes from high winter winds and animals. (Photo courtesy of Mario Mazza)

When you think about wine you might think about sunny Italy or warm
Napa Valley in California. But one wine is the product of cold
weather. Ann Murray has the story:

Transcript

When you think about wine you might think about sunny Italy or warm
Napa Valley in California. But one wine is the product of cold
weather. Ann Murray has the story:


Today, the weather and the sales are brisk at the Mazza Winery and
Vineyards.


Sales Person: “Did you want these in a bag?”


Mary Ventura: “Yes, this is all going to the same spot.”


Mary Ventura is buying small bottles of wine that she describes as
“liquid candy.” Ventura and the sales clerk chime in when I ask her
what she’s talking about:


“This is ice wine. It’s not something you can find on all the shelves.
And so we came across this little winery and it’s great.”


Mazza’s is one of the few wineries in the United States that sells and
produces ice wine. More and more people are discovering this rare,
super sweet dessert wine:


“We’re going to head out right behind the winery, actually.”


Mario Mazza is a third generation grower. He says their vineyard’s
location along the Lake Erie shoreline in Pennsylvania makes ice
wine production possible. For vineyards in this region, the Great Lake
changes the local climate:


“In the spring it keeps the shore a little bit cooler, keeps the grapes
from budding too early, which is a good thing… prevents them from
getting hit from the later spring frost. In the fall, we have the reverse
happen. In September and even in October we have a little bit more
warmth along the lake shore here.”


But the real ticket to producing ice wine is a final burst of cold winter
weather. In December or January, winds off Lake Erie can bring the
temperature to well below freezing. As snowflakes whip around the
vineyards, Mazza stands next to rows of grapes still on the vine. The
rows are netted by hand to protect the vines from high winter winds
and hungry animals:


“These vineyards we’re looking at here are vidal blanc grapes.
They’re a great variety because they have a relatively thick skin and
can hold up to the colder climate, to the colder weather and leaving
them on the vine for an extra two months.”


Natural ice wines require a hard freeze to occur sometime after the
grapes are ripe. If a freeze doesn’t come fast enough, the grapes
might rot and the crop will be lost. If the freeze is too severe, no juice
can be extracted.


(Sound of bottling inside winery)


Back inside the winery, Mazza helps out with bottling. During a break,
he says that catching the right sustained freeze means that workers
must be ready to roll out of bed early to pick the grapes used in ice
wine:


“When we go out there and pick ’em about 5:00 in the morning with
headlights down the rows, you’re actually picking these grapes at
about 18 degrees Fahrenheit so they’re actually frozen, just like a marble.
You get very, very sweet juice when you press that out.”


Ice wines are very sweet because the grapes dehydrate the last two
months on the vine. That concentrates the sugar and the flavor:


“The sugars are twice that we get in a normal harvest date in October. And
the flavors are just so much more intense and concentrated.”


Murray: “So you don’t end up with a lot of juice then?”


Mazza: “Hence the rarity, the sale in a smaller bottle and the price
tags on ice wines. A lot of people look at them and say wow, those are
awfully expensive. When they learn about the extensive effort put into
making these wines, they then understand that it’s well worth it.”


At $40 dollars a half-bottle, ice wine generally is worth the extra work
for growers. It might take months to completely ferment ice wine.
Regular wines take days or weeks. Each year, the Mazzas produce
only about 250 gallons of ice wine — a tiny amount compared to other
wines.


Worker: “There should be about a case down there.”


Upstairs, customers continue to stream in and out of the Mazza wine
shop, some of them eyeing the small bottles of liquid gold that nature
and patience help make possible.


For the Environment Report, this is Ann Murray.

Related Links

More Scrap Tires Reused

  • A variety of products using crumb rubber, which is manufactured from scrap tires. (Photo courtesy of Liberty Tire)

Americans get rid of almost 300 million scrap tires every year.
Historically, a lot of used tires have ended up at the bottom of
ravines or in huge tire piles. These piles have created eyesores,
toxic fire traps and places for mosquitoes to breed. But Ann Murray
reports that the days of widespread illegal dumping and monster tire
piles are waning:

Transcript

Americans get rid of almost 300 million scrap tires every year.
Historically, a lot of used tires have ended up at the bottom of
ravines or in huge tire piles. These piles have created eyesores,
toxic fire traps and places for mosquitoes to breed. But Ann Murray
reports that the days of widespread illegal dumping and monster tire
piles are waning:


Michelle Dunn is making her way through shoulder high knotweed to
show me an urban tire dump:


“This is the start of the tires. They’re all entwined in here.”


About 300 tires have been chucked over the hill in this quiet
Pittsburgh neighborhood. Dunn’s with a non-profit that helps
communities clean up old dump sites. She says illegal tire dumping is
still a problem but not the gargantuan problem it used to be:


“I don’t think you’re seeing new major piles appearing. The regular
Joe isn’t dumping as many tires because people are now becoming
educated. They have a service they can take their tires to have them
disposed of properly.”


In many states, the place to take old tires is now the neighborhood
tire store. Since the early 1990s, about 35 states have required tire
dealers to collect small fees to dispose of used tires. Now fewer
people dump tires and about 4 out of 5 scrap tires have been
cleaned up. Numbers have nosedived from a billion stockpiled tires to
less than 200 million.


Not all states have had equal success reducing their cache of old
tires. Some states such as Alaska, Wyoming and Nevada are still
struggling. Their rural landscapes have made it hard to catch illegal
dumpers and collect tires. Many other states have stepped up
enforcement. They now make dumpers pay to clean up waste tire
sites and register scrap tire haulers. But Matt Hale says new laws
aren’t the only reason scrap tire programs are working. Hale directs
the division of solid waste for the US Environmental Protection
Agency:


“In many cases a successful program is the result of being near
markets for tires. In the southeast for example, tires are in demand as
a fuel use and that certainly makes state tire programs in that part of
the country easier.”


Stricter waste tire laws have made it easier for the tire
recycling industry to take hold. Dave Quarterson is a senior director
with Liberty Tire. Liberty’s the biggest tire recycling company in the
country:


“It has been difficult for companies like ours in the past to look at
having to invest 5 or 10 million dollars into a facility to recycle tires
and then to have to compete on the street with a guy with a $1000
pickup truck who’s rolling ’em down an embankment somewhere.”


In 1990, very few of the 300 million scrap tires generated each year
were re-used. Today about 90 percent are recycled. A majority of
these tires are chipped and shipped to cement kilns and paper mills
to be burned for fuel. A fuel source that US EPA says is relatively
safer than burning coal but environmental groups say is still polluting.


Tire recyclers like Liberty Tire are now in big demand. Liberty uses
almost 75 million scrap tires a year. Their headquarters
plant specializes in making “crumb” rubber. Crumb’s used in
everything from football field turf to brake lining. It’s made from
shredded tires that are frozen with liquid nitrogen and then pulverized
into various sized bits.


Dave Quarterson, says tire recyclers are starting to move away from
producing tire chips for fuel to making newer products like crumb
rubber:


“We’ve got a lot more money into producing it but it’s a lot more
rewarding financially.”


States are also encouraging new uses for the decades old tires that
still remain in big, abandoned piles. Even with this backlog of old
scrap tires, states and recyclers are optimistic that growing markets
and new laws mean more and more scrap tires will have a useful
second life.


For the Environment Report, this is Ann Murray.

Related Links

Prescription: Enviro-Knowledge for Doctors

Chances are your doctor doesn’t know much about environmentally-related
illnesses. Ann Murray looks at why most US doctors and nurses aren’t even
talking about environmental connections to their patients’ health and what’s
being done to remedy the situation:

Transcript

Chances are your doctor doesn’t know much about environmentally-related
illnesses. Ann Murray looks at why most US doctors and nurses aren’t even
talking about environmental connections to their patients’ health and what’s
being done to remedy the situation:


In 1999, Jo Ann Meier was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was shocked
to discover she had the disease. No one in her family had a history of cancer.
And she only had one of the standard risk factors for the illness:


“Of course, you always speculate when you have a disease like this. Was it
something I did or was it something that I was exposed to?”


Meier says her doctors never talked to her about possible environmental
links to her illness. Today, Meier is cancer free and runs a non-profit that
raises money for breast cancer research. She hears similar stories about other
primary care physicians from the breast cancer patients she works with every
day.


“There’s a great deal of anger about the misinformation or lack of
information given to them in general. I mean, it would be great if your PCP would
say you have to look at what you’re doing on a day-to-day basis that might
be affecting your health.”


Jo Ann Meier’s experience isn’t unusual. Experts agree that most doctors and
nurses aren’t ready to deal with the environmental links to dozens of
illnesses like cancer or lung disease. Sometimes crowded doctors’ schedules
or fear of being seen as an environmental advocate get in the way. Leyla
McCurdy directs the Health and Environment Program at the National
Environmental Educational and Training Foundation in Washington, DC.
McCurdy says medical providers don’t know much about environmental
health issues because training is so hard to come by.


One of the challenges that we are facing in terms of integrating environmental
health is the lack of expertise in the area. There are very few leaders who
are willing to take the time and create their own materials to educate the
students at the medical and nursing schools:


“As a result of this small pool of experts, and an already crowded set of
courses, most med students get only about seven hours of environmental
health education in four years of school. Established doctors and nurses have
even fewer training options.


A small but growing number of health care institutions, non-profits and
agencies are stepping in to fill the training gap. On this morning, medical
residents and staff doctors crowd into a hospital lecture hall.


“Welcome to medical grand rounds. Our speaker today is Doctor Talal ElHanowe,
who is going to talk to us about estrogenic pollutants in the environment and
the risk they pose to people.”


“Can these chemicals, which resemble estrogen, in one way or the other, cause an increase in the risk
to develop cancer? And the answer is yes.”


ElHanowe is a medical doctor and research scientist. He works with the
University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Environmental Oncology. The Center
is developing environmental health training for doctors and nurses. After his
seminar, ElHanowe says response to the program has been good. But his job
of relating environmental health risks can be tough because doctors aren’t
used to treating diseases with causes that are hard to pin down.


“In the scientific community, we can’t prove everything. Many things are
very difficult to prove.”


ElHanowe’s boss, Devra Davis, says medical providers will have to be
satisfied with substantial evidence, not absolute proof, that certain
environmental toxins increase the risk of illnesses, and steer patients to safer
alternatives. Davis is a nationally known epidemiologist. She says
environmental medicine’s emphasis on prevention is the shot in the arm
American health care needs:


“Because no matter how efficient the health care system becomes at finding
and treating disease, if we don’t reduce the burden of the disease itself, we’ll
never be able to improve the health of Americans.”


But to make environmental medicine standard issue in schools and practice,
a lot more doctors and nurses will need to be educated. And that means a lot
more funding. It’s hoped as medical providers make the connection between
environmental exposures and public health, funding sources will open up
and environmental medicine will make its way into mainstream health care.


For the Environment Report, this is Ann Murray.

Related Links

Horses Bring Logging Back to the Future

  • A horse logger directing his team through a forest. (Photo courtesy of Troy Firth.)

Some forest owners are going back to past practices to do less damage to their land. Commercial horse logging is finding a viable niche in woodlands around the country. Ann Murray has this story:

Transcript

Some forest owners are going back to past practices to do less damage to their land. Commercial horse logging is finding a viable niche in woodlands around the country. Ann Murray has this story:


In a hardwood forest, Troy Firth points out trees he’s marked for cutting.


“We put a blue slash on the trees that are designated as log trees.”


Firth is a sawmill owner in Northwestern Pennsylvania. He’s an advocate of sustainable forestry and says it takes excellent silviculture and mechanics to harvest timber.


“Silviculture has been defined as the art and science of growing trees. Mechanics is the way the logs are moved out of the woods once they’re cut.”


Firth believes the best way to get logs out of the woods is with horses. He contracts about a dozen men who use workhorses to haul or “skid” logs to road sites. One of his long time horse loggers is Ray Blystone, a brawny guy with a long ponytail. Today, Blystone and his team of Belgian horses are working with Jeremy Estock, an experienced chainsaw operator.


“I just need to bring the horses to come around and get ’em hooked up and out onto the skid road.”


The chainsaw is really, really loud, but Blystone’s well-trained horses calmly munch on leaves. The massive caramel colored animals are harnessed to a small open-ended cart called a log arch. Once Estock has cut down a tree and sawed it into useable lengths, Blystone hammers spikes into one of the logs. Then he attaches the timber to his cart with chains.


“It’s basically just to get the front end of the log off the ground. It makes it so much easier for the horses.”


Blystone stands in the cart. He looks a lot like a Roman gladiator. He gently urges the horses back to shorten the chain and then signals them to get going.


“Git up Billy, Kate.”


The surprisingly agile Belgians step around chopped wood and low bushes. The horse-drawn cart and log make a trail through the woods that’s barely six feet wide. There aren’t any visible ruts.


Troy Firth, who’s on site, says that’s one reason he prefers horses over heavy mechanized skidders. He motions toward another skid road in the forest just a few feet away.

“We have a skid road that was used by a rubber tired log skidder on a previous logging job and the tracks are still here from 30 years ago.”

“So damage could last for 30 years? That’s how much they’re compacting the soil?”


“It will last longer than that.”


Firth says when mechanized skidders compact the soil, it can make it harder for tree roots to grow, and these big machines can do a lot of damage to nearby trees that aren’t cut. But, that kind of power also means that motorized equipment can haul timber much faster than horses and with less cutting.


“Simply because you have so much power, you can bring a whole tree out at once. It’s the mechanics of getting through the woods.”


Getting trees out of the woods faster can mean a cost savings of nearly 25% over horse driven skidders. But Ray Blystone says he has more work than he can handle. He’s found that more and more landowners recognize the long-term low-impact benefits of horse logging. And besides all that, he really likes his job.


“It means a lot to me. I enjoy being around horses, and it’s important to me that I do something for a living that’s environmentally friendly.”


Although no one seems to have an accurate count, there are hundreds of commercial horse loggers in the United States. Most work in the northeast and the Pacific Northwest. They’re part of a small but growing movement going back to logging’s roots.


For The Environment Report, this is Ann Murray.

Related Links

Developing Countries Get Hospital Castoffs

  • A street in Havana, Cuba. After more than 40 years of a U.S. economic embargo and more than a decade after the loss of their Soviet trading partners, Cubans have learned to improvise and make do with old stuff - cars, machines, and even medical equipment. (Photo by Ann Murray)

Tons of medical materials that normally would end up in U.S. landfills are being rescued, repackaged and sent to other countries. An aid group is working with local hospitals and volunteers to get surplus medical supplies to Latin America and the Caribbean. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray takes us on the trip from salvage to salvation:

Transcript

Tons of medical materials that normally would end up in U.S.
landfills are being rescued, repackaged and sent to other countries.
An aid group is working with local hospitals and volunteers to get
surplus medical supplies to Latin America and the Caribbean. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray takes us on the trip from
salvage to salvation.


(Sound of warehouse activities)


In a warehouse near Pittsburgh, Global Links staffers are preparing to load a shipment of medical aid into a forty-foot container bound for Cuba. Workers haul pallets of dialysis kits, mattresses, waiting room chairs and gurneys to the loading dock. Everything here has been carefully sorted, evaluated, and matched with requests from the Cuban Ministry of Health.


Kathleen Hower founded Global Links with two friends back in 1989. It used to operate out of their houses. Since then, Global Links has sent $110 million worth of medical aid, all of it requested by the receiving countries. About two-thirds of that has gone to Cuba.


“Cuba’s unique in so many ways; they’re very advanced medically, they do transplant surgery, they have a lot of doctors. There’s no shortage of physicians there. They’re very different than other countries.”


What Cuba shares with other developing countries is critical shortages of equipment and supplies.


(Sound of busy street)


Here in Havana, the streets are filled with Eisenhower-era cars and lined with shops that repair everything from pots to paperbacks. After more than forty years of a U.S. economic embargo and more than a decade after the loss of their Soviet trading partners, Cubans are masters of improvisation.


The same is true for the island’s medical community, says Sebastion Pererra, the former director of Cuba’s Center for Electromedicine.


PERERRA/TRANSLATOR: “The embargo has been like a school for us. It taught us how to keep working with the same machines and not have the identical parts to replace them.”


Pererra says parts and technical information from Global Links have helped keep old medical equipment going. They’ve also supported new programs in breast cancer screening and dialysis research.


MURRAY: “Has the equipment that Global Links sent to you saved lives?”


PERERRA/TRANSLATOR: “It is undeniable.”


Global Links sends materials to Cuba that other countries can’t use. That’s because medical care is not as advanced in many other developing countries.


Doctor Armando Pancorbo uses the salvaged equipment for minimally invasive surgery at the aging hospital where he works. He and his team have done nearly four thousand operations, using equipment and supplies that were thrown out by U.S. hospitals.


This morning, the O.R. is busy. Anesthesiologists prepare a middle-aged patient for gallbladder surgery while nurses set up sterilized instruments.


Back in Global Links’ Pittsburgh office, volunteers help with the labor-intensive job of packing supplies for shipping. Kristin Carreira says this work is helpful on two fronts.


“Our mission here is both humanitarian and environmental. Environmental because all of our medical supplies that we’re working on would have been put in an incinerator or landfill and so we’re really recycling in that sense.”


The American Hospital Association estimates that U.S. hospitals produce about three million tons of waste every year and they pay about three billion dollars to dispose of it. Many of the supplies that end up in the trash are opened but unused. Worries about liability, changes in technology, and a rash of government regulations account for much of the still-useful materials being thrown out.


Vicky Carse is a nurse who traveled to Cuba as a volunteer.


“Seeing people re-washing gloves where we just would open gloves and throw them away, drapes that we just open up and throw away. To see these people harbor these items, re-wash them and re-wash them because they don’t have supplies, just makes you value what you have.”


The medical community is beginning to take notice. More and more US hospitals are contacting aid organizations. Laura Brannen directs a joint environmental program for the American Hospital Association and the U.S. EPA. She says Global Links and similar groups offer hospitals much needed guidance.


“They provide the infrastructure around what can be used around the world. And without those guidelines, hospitals would be tossing this kind of materials because they don’t know where else to send it.”


Global Links founder Kathleen Hower is happy to set up the guide posts. She says we have to realize that we are all members of a much broader community – one that could use our help, even when it’s a matter of just sharing stuff we’d normally throw away.


For the GLRC, this is Ann Murray reporting.

Related Links

Exploring a Great Lakes Salt Mine

  • Salt is an essential resource for all people, especially those who live in areas where the roads get icy. (Photo by Lucian Binder)

Ever wonder where road departments get the mountains of salt they use each winter? Here in the Midwest, the answer can be found deep under Lake Erie. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray has the
story:

Transcript

Ever wonder where road departments get the mountains of salt
they use each winter? Here in the Midwest, the
answer can be found deep under Lake Erie. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Ann Murray has the story:


Orvosh: “Step right in there.”


Murray: “Ok, thanks.”


For Don Orvosh, an elevator ride nearly 2000 feet underground is just part of the daily grind.


(sound of clanking)


“It’s about a four and a half minute ride to the bottom. 1800… about 1800 feet.”


Orvosh supervises the Cleveland salt mine owned by Cargill Corporation. It’s one of only eleven active salt mines in the country. The mine lies beneath the northern edge of Cleveland and extends about four miles under Lake Erie.


Orvosh: “Most people in the city don’t even realize there’s a mine right here.”


Murray: “Are you all the way down?”


Orvosh: “We’re at the bottom right now. This is it.”


(sound of opening air-lock door)


A few feet from the elevator, Orvosh walks through a series of air-locked metal doors. They rotate to reveal a subterranean repair shop. Massive dump trucks and cranes are fixed here. The cavernous room is also the starting point for hundreds of miles of tunnels. These tunnels connect a honeycomb of old and active areas in the mine. Everyday, 150 workers travel this salt encrusted labyrinth by truck or tram.


“We’re going to get in this little buggy here now and in a couple minutes we’ll be under the lake.”


Lake Erie is a geological newcomer compared to the salt buried below it. This bed – extending from upper New York to Michigan – was formed 410 million years ago. That’s when an ancient sea retreated and left behind its brine. Oil drillers accidentally discovered the deposit in the 1860’s. As Orvosh drives north through the dark passageways, he says salt wasn’t extracted here until many years later.


“This shaft was sunk in the late fifties and the actual mining of salt occurred, started in the early sixties so it’s been here 40 plus years.”


In the last four decades, the mining process has stayed pretty much the same. Orvosh compares it to the room and pillar method used in underground coal extraction. He points up ahead to a brightly lit chamber. Machine generated light bounces off the room’s briny, white walls. Its 20 foot high ceiling is bolstered by pillars of salt the size of double-wide trailers.


Orvosh: “This is an active production section. This is where we are mining salt.”


Murray: “What’s happening here?”


Orvosh: “He’s drilling the face here.”


A miner sits atop a machine with a large needle nosed drill. It bores six holes into the seam. Later in the day, workers will load explosives in the holes and blow out big chunks of salt. Farther into the mine, the loose salt from last night’s blasting is being scooped up by front-end loaders and dumped into a crusher. All of the big chunks are broken into small pieces. Then the salt is loaded on conveyor belts and sent to the mine’s three-story-high underground mill. Salt is crushed, sized, screened and sent to the surface by elevator.


All told, the crews at the Cleveland mine produce two million tons of salt a year. A sizable chunk of the 15 million tons of salt used on icy US roads each winter. Demand for road salt has skyrocketed since it was introduced as a de-icer in the early 1950s. But Robert Springer, a 27- year veteran at this operation, says each mine fights for a market share.


Springer: “It is a competitive market. There’s another salt mine just in the Cleveland area, out there in Morton, Morton Salt.”


Murray: “We needed you today. The roads were really icy. Do you look forward to icy days to keep production up?”


Springer: “I guess you could say we look forward to bad weather. We enjoy the bad weather because we know there’s going to be salt used.”


(sound of radio and weather report)


Back on the surface, Bob Springer has gotten his wish… Cleveland has just been hit with a winter storm. At least a dozen trucks swing through the mine’s loading dock to pick up tons of salt. Later in the day, salt will be dumped onto barges and transported across the Great Lakes to places like Chicago and Toronto. This is high season for road salt. The crews here know that come March, they’ll start rousing salt from its ancient bed for the winter of 2006.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Ann Murray.

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Living Entirely Off the Grid

  • Solar panels aren't just for rocket scientists anymore. Consumers are now starting to use solar and other alternative energies to power their homes. (Photo courtesy of NASA.gov)

With no power lines in sight, one western Pennsylvania couple lives pretty much like the rest of us. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray has this story of a home “off the grid”:

Transcript

With no power lines in sight, one western Pennsylvania couple lives pretty much like the rest of us. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray has this story of home “off the grid”:


Ted Carns is busy hanging art in the foyer of his house. While he holds a picture in place against the wall, he plugs in an electric drill.


(sound of drill)


Ted and Kathy Carns’ entire two-bedroom house uses electricity powered by the sun or wind. Their rustic stone and plank home sits on top of a steep wooded hill, miles from the nearest neighbor.


“There’s no water, there’s no soil, there’s no public utilities up here. So everything that we designed, you have to keep in mind, was done in this harsh condition.”


It’s taken the Carns twenty years to design and expand their alternative energy system. Ted, a self-described scrounger and handyman, has found many components through flea markets and friends. In fact, Kathy says their off-grid system began with a gift of shoebox-sized batteries.


Kathy: “Somebody gave us a bunch of batteries-nickel cadmium batteries. And then we started thinking about how to recharge the batteries. Thinking wind. The windmill came first.”


Ted: “It took me eight climbs to install the new windmill, I had a different one up there. The bottom of the tower I built.”


Murray: “How tall is that?”


Ted: “Seventy-six feet.”


(sound of chimes)


The metal tower now looms over the house, outbuildings and organic garden. As the wind whips the chimes at its base, the turbine blades whirl and drive an alternator to generate electricity. The electricity is stored in a bank of batteries.


Murray: “Is the wind consistent here?”


Carns: “Winter good. Summer not. Then in summer the solar panels kick in. So it just sort of balances out.”


The Carns’ rooftop solar panels accept sunlight into silicon chips and convert the light into electricity. Because it’s sunny today, Kathy can run their specially manufactured clothes washer with solar energy. First, she pushes a button on the living room wall and a red light starts to blink. The light indicates that stored electricity is being converted from a DC to AC current.


“That means the house is on 110 power. Turn the water on and then just… It’s on.”


The Carns also vacuum when the sun shines or the wind blows. They run their TV, stereo and lights off 12-volt DC batteries, much like a car. They heat their water with solar energy in the summer and wood in the winter. And warm their house with a wood stove. They also capture air from underground and use it to refrigerate food and cool their house. All told, Ted and Kathy have spent about 3,000 dollars to upgrade their alternative energy system. Ted says, except for burning wood, the system is nonpolluting. He believes it’s also pretty much hassle free.


Carns: “There’s no inconvenience that we’ve seen… There’s maybe two or three days that we don’t have ample hot water. The nice thing about that is that it – you never stop appreciating the conveniences because periodically for a very short time sometimes you have to do without.”


Perez: “More and more people are discovering that they can power their homes and small businesses using solar and wind.”


Richard Perez is the founder and publisher of Home Power Magazine. Perez says states are doing far more than the federal government to encourage the residential use of renewable energy.


“There are tax credits, there are rebates, there are buy-downs. Every state has a slightly different scheme but most states have some sort of financial incentive for installing small-scale renewables in your home.”


Perez says homeowners don’t have to wait wait for government support to set up a system. Ted and Kathy Carns agree.


(sound of plates and silverware)


As the couple gets ready for dinner, Kathy says they want to inspire the many people who come to see how they live off-grid.


“We have a friend who has a solar lawnmower now. We have friends in Philadelphia that took some solar panels; it’s not their total system, but it’s a little part of their system. If we get enough company and enough people have been here, it sort of branches out, and goes off.”


An estimated 180 thousand households in the United States generate some or all of their own electricity. But alternative energy systems aren’t for everybody. For people who are downright afraid of technology or inconvenience, life off the power grid isn’t a real option just yet.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Ann Murray.

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Lake Shoreline Preserved From Development

  • The Coho site, a 540-acre tract of undeveloped land along Lake Erie, was intended to be used for power plant development. When those plans fell through, conservation groups rallied to buy the land. They're now celebrating a successful purchase. (Photo by Cathy Pedler)

In an ongoing study on the health of the Great Lakes, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified shoreline development as one of the biggest threats to the health of the five Lakes. Conservation groups have continually worked to slow the spread of shoreline development. And now along a stretch of Lake Erie, they’ve scored a major success. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray has more:

Transcript

In an ongoing study on the health of the Great Lakes, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
has identified shoreline development as one of the biggest threats to the health of the five Lakes.
Conservation groups have continually worked to slow the spread of shoreline development. And
now along a stretch of Lake Erie, they’ve scored a major success. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Ann Murray has more:


Tom Furhman and Cathy Pedler with the Lake Erie Region Conservancy have come to what’s
called the Coho site to celebrate.


(champaign bottle cork pops)


(laughs) “Coho ho ho ho!”


This 540-acre tract was named after Coho salmon. It’s the largest undeveloped and unprotected
parcel of land left along Pennsylvania’s Lake Erie shoreline. There were plans to build a power
plant here. Those plans were abandoned and the conservation groups have been trying to get a
hold of it. It’s taken five long years to buy the land.


“We organized a group in ’98 to try to get the utility company to sell it and really there was no
interest to sell that parcel so we partnered with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and most
recently with the Conservation Fund to buy it. And when we thought about the best use we got a
hold of the state and said this could be a great state park.”


After finishing their Champaign, Furhman and Pedler hike down to the western front of the Coho
parcel. Here, the property’s 90-foot cliffs loom over the water’s edge for more than a mile. Pedler
says most of Pennsylvania’s 43-mile long Lake Erie shoreline is privately owned. And
development has contributed to erosion and damage to bluffs. She stands on the property’s
narrow rock strewn beach and admires the unfettered view.


(sound of water)


“You can see just how magnificent this is with the water running over the slate and the high cliffs
and the bare magenta trees and an eagle. Yeah, I think we kind of want to keep that! Laughs.


(sound of waves fade under)


“It is a very significant site.”


Charles Bier is a conservation biologist with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.


“It’s really that narrow band of land that’s sometimes less than a half a mile wide. That’s this very
unique interface between Lake Erie and the mainland of Pennsylvania.”


As part of a larger project, the Conservancy performed a natural history inventory of the Coho
property. The site has high bluffs, wetlands and old growth forests. Inland dunes formed 15,000
years ago when glacial movement made the lake elevation higher.


“All of these habitats come together for 11 species of plants that are considered to be very rare
and unusual.”


Back on site, Cathy Pedler points out that this parcel of land is also historically important. Pedler
and her husband, Dave, are archeologists. This afternoon, they trudge up a thickly wooded hill
above an access area to Elk Creek, one of the state’s best fishing spots.


“Oh, we’ll go this way.”


At the top of the hill, the trees give way to a large plowed field. The farmer who has leased this
land has unearthed fragments of stone tools and pottery. The Pedlers believe that an ancient
village was located here.


This is really a special property archeologically. It’s not just a site. We think it’s a pretty
significant complex of them.


Six archeological sites on the Coho property have already been inventoried. Some are at least
10,000 years old. The Pedlers think the best way to protect these historic locations and sensitive
natural areas will be to make the land a state park. In the next few months, the Conservancies
plan to transfer the parcel to the state of Pennsylvania.


But some local government officials have raised questions about making the lake front site public
land. They say the stretch of land could be developed and property taxes collected. If it’s put into
parkland, the local government loses that tax money. Gretchen Leslie is spokesperson for the
Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Leslie says despite the loss of
property taxes, she sees the acquisition of this parcel as a smart move for the region.


“We believe this property has economic value and that you can locate industrial developments or
business parks in many, many different locations throughout the region. But there are only a few
locations that have such special natural qualities to them that they will serve an important tourism
role. And this is one of them.


(sound of waves)


And the cliffs above Lake Erie are unique. Pennsylvania is a large state, but only a small piece of
the state sits on the Great Lake. And many think that the one-mile stretch of shoreline that Coho
covers is worth preserving.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Ann Murray.

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