Western Wind Farms & Urban Farming in Detroit

  • Wind turbine near Pigeon, Michigan (Flickr photo by user ~jettagirl~).

There’s been a lot of talk in West Michigan lately about how wind power could boost the region’s economy. As Lindsey Smith reports, the area could be home to several potential wind projects:

Transcript

There’s been a lot of talk in West Michigan lately about how wind power could boost the region’s economy. As Lindsey Smith reports, the area could be home to several potential wind projects.

About 60 people gather at an auditorium in Saugatuck – a tourist town on the Lake Michigan shore. Farmers, business owners, and residents want to learn more about the wind farms that could begin to pop up in the region both on and offshore. These are large scale wind farms with industrial turbines that would tower 300 to 400 feet tall.

Mike Obrien has worked for companies looking to build offshore in the Great Lakes. For years he’s been trying to convince governments, businesses and residents that Michigan’s manufacturing base is perfect for the wind power industry:

“We ought to own this. We ought to own it in the Great Lakes because we can ship this stuff by water much more effectively than we can by trucks and rails. So we ought to own that. And we ought to put people back to work. It’s not the only reason we should do wind, but it’s a hell of an important one.”

But there are still a lot of people like Michael Johnson who don’t feel that way. Johnson lives and owns businesses in Saugatuck:

“I don’t think anybody would argue with you that we need this renewable energy. The only problem is I don’t want it in my backyard.”

Ann Erhardt is with the West Michigan Environmental Action Council. She admits getting people to think regionally about energy has been a struggle:

“There’s those governmental borders and entities not wanting to work together. You know, ‘this is my pond and that’s your pond, keep your fish over there.’”

Erhardt says people and governments have to be more open to work together to bring wind farms to the region. Otherwise, she warns the jobs and economic investments won’t come.

Right now, the city of Holland is testing wind conditions at a potential site in Allegan County. Muskegon County has already tested land it owns and is now taking proposals for a wind farm there.

As for any offshore wind farms… those are likely a long way off because Michigan lawmakers still have to approve regulations for them.

For nearly two years, entrepreneur John Hantz has been working to turn a blighted swath of Detroit into what he calls “the world’s largest urban farm.”

But as Sarah Cwiek reports…the project’s been slow to get off the ground, which shows Detroit’s mixed feelings about the project…and the whole idea of city farming:

City officials have just approved a deal to let Hantz Farms buy 20 city lots—about five acres—adjacent to their headquarters.

The company plans to clean up the land and create some small orchards. There are some pretty big catches, though. For starters, they can’t sell anything they grow there.

Also, large-scale farming would require re-zoning for agriculture. That brings the Michigan Right to Farm Act into play.

That law is meant to protect farmers from people who complain about the sounds and smells of regular farming. But some people worry it would give Hantz Farms’ neighbors little recourse if there are problems.

Then there’s Mayor Dave Bing’s effort to create a master land use plan for Detroit. Until that’s finalized…the city is being tight-fisted about its vacant land.

And then, there’s fairly widespread skepticism about the idea of large-scale urban farming. Councilman Kwame Kenayatta is one of the skeptics.

“I understand that we got a lot of land. And some of that land can be used as greenspace, that’s true. But this whole idea of turning vacant Detroit into an urban farm is not necessarily one that I have bought into.”

Hantz Farms hails the land acquisition as “a milestone.” They also say it’s “just the beginning.”

Asian Carp Update

  • Charter boat captain Eric Stuecher says Asian Carp will likely ruin his business. (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)

A big monster of a fish is at
the center of a US Supreme Court
case. Asian Carp are making their
way up the Mississippi towards the
Great Lakes. Michigan’s Attorney
General filed a lawsuit asking the
Court to close a Chicago canal in
order to keep the carp out. The
shipping industry says, ‘no can do.’
Jennifer Guerra has
a closer look at what’s at stake:

Transcript

A big monster of a fish is at
the center of a US Supreme Court
case. Asian Carp are making their
way up the Mississippi towards the
Great Lakes. Michigan’s Attorney
General filed a lawsuit asking the
Court to close a Chicago canal in
order to keep the carp out. The
shipping industry says, ‘no can do.’
Jennifer Guerra has
a closer look at what’s at stake:

There’s one way to look at this as a purely economic story. In one corner you’ve got the people who ship cargo by water.

“Lynne Munch, senior vice president regional advocacy of the American Waterways Operators.”

She says, if the Illinois is forced to close two of the locks in the Chicago canal permanently, more than 17 million tons of cargo will have to be shipped by truck instead of barge, and hundreds of jobs will be lost.

“One company alone has reported that they will lose 93 jobs next year if the locks are closed. One of our towing companies estimates they’ll lose more than 130 jobs if the locks are closed.”

In the other corner, you’ve got the seven billion dollar tourism and fishing industries.

“Oh hi, I’m Eric Stuecher, I own a company called Great Lakes Fishing Charters.”

Stuecher takes people out on the Great Lakes and in rivers across Michigan. Salmon, Trout, Perch, you name it, he’ll help you fish it. But if the invasive Asian Carp get into the Great Lakes?

“It would probably cost me the business. They’ll eat anything they can get in their mouths, to the demise of so many of our other game fish.”

So that’s the economic side of the story. But what if we told you there’s more at stake here than dollars and cents.

“In terms of environmental impact, the Asian carp have the potential to seriously disrupt the Great Lakes ecosystem.”

That’s Marc Gaden with the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission. He says there are already a lot of pests in the Lakes.

“There are 180 non-native species in the Great Lakes, many of which came in accidentally. Precisely two of them can be controlled. That’s it. So that’s why biologists and others are very, very concerned about the Asian carp. Once they get in, the cat’s out of the bag.”

Asian Carp were first brought to the states by Southern catfish farmers. The carp escaped the South in the 1990s because of flooding and have been making their way north ever since. These fish are huge. They can grow to four feet and weigh up to 100 pounds, and they reproduce like crazy. In some areas, they reproduce so much that by weight they account for more than 90 percent of the fish in the Mississippi River system.

So you can see why people around the Great Lakes don’t want them.

That’s why Gaden and a lot of other scientists say we should somehow block the man-made canal that connects the big rivers to the Great Lakes for barges carrying cargo.

“We need to be open to saying, just because we’ve been moving goods on the canal by barge for decades and decades, doesn’t mean we need to continue to do it that way. Is there a better way to do it? Can we shift it to rail?”

Gaden and others have been arguing for 15 years to get some kind of permanent barrier built in order to stop invasive species from moving from one ecosystem to another.

“The government agencies that are responsible for doing things on that canal are not moving at the speed of carp, they’re moving at the speed of government. And we don’t have a minute to spare.”

That’s because new DNA tests suggest that Asian carp have moved well beyond the electric barrier meant to keep them out of Lake Michigan.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

Related Links

O Christmas Tree

  • Lauren and her potted tree. It will stay outdoors until Christmas Eve, when it will be brought in for 14 hours. (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)

It’s the holidays… which for some
of us means time to deck the halls
with boughs of holly and, oh yeah,
pick out a Christmas tree. We sent
reporter Jennifer Guerra to find out which tree is greener –
real or artificial:

Transcript

It’s the holidays… which for some
of us means time to deck the halls
with boughs of holly and, oh yeah,
pick out a Christmas tree. We sent
reporter Jennifer Guerra to find out which tree is greener –
real or artificial:

Lauren Northrop and her husband Tom are big fans of Christmas.

“We love celebrating it, I love decorating, but we always have this dilemma: what do we do about a tree?”

They didn’t want a plastic tree because it’s, well, plastic. And they didn’t like the idea of bringing a live tree into their house, only to have it die and then drag it out to the curb to be recycled.

So they skipped the Christmas tree thing altogether for the last four years. But then, their son Will was born in January.

“We decided that we have to have a tree because it’s, like, his first Christmas, and we want to have those family videos of him having his Christmas morning by the Christmas tree and opening his gifts, and just the whole experience because that was important to us growing up and we always had that.”

They bought a live, baby Christmas tree with its roots still intact. That way, when Christmas is done and the ground thaws, they can plant it in their backyard.

“I was planning to keep the tree inside until December 25th so that we could decorate it and put lights on it. When we went to buy it they said if you do that, it probably won’t survive. So keep it outside so the temperature is more consistent, bring it inside only for a short period of time. (Like how short?) As in December 24th. Will goes to bed, Tom and I are gonna be up decorating that tree and bringing it inside for about 14 hours.”

That’s probably way too much hassle for 14 hours of Christmas cheer. So a lot of people go for real, cut trees. Pat Fera would love to have a real cut Christmas tree in her house.

“But I’m very afraid of them. I had a friend of mine, this was back in the 60s, and she and her mother had gone to midnight mass and her father was home and he was sleeping on the couch and what woke him up was the sound of the tree just going wooosh.”

Apparently the TV shorted, it ignited the tree, tree caught on fire and the dad just made it out of the house. Fera says the ceiling was charred black and the whole place was smoke-damaged.

“Well yeah, if you’re not careful that’s certainly, yeah, a real tree is a hell of a fire hazard!”

That’s Bob Schildgen. He writes an environmental advice column for the Sierra Club called Hey, Mr. Green. So I called him up and asked him…

Guerra: “Hey, Mr. Green. Which is more environmentally friendly? Why don’t we tackle one at a time: let’s go with plastic trees. What do you think about those”

Schildgen: “Well, I don’t think they’re environmentally friendly for a number of reasons. One is that they’re made out of materials that use petro chemicals and metals and so forth. They get eventually tossed in the landfill, they have a life of about 9 years and then they’re tossed. They can’t be recycled.”

And since most plastic Christmas trees are made in places like China, they have to be shipped a very long way to end up in your family room.

So plastic is out.

Schildgen does like the idea of live bulb trees, but their survival rate once you plant them in the ground isn’t that great. So he says – aside from the fire hazard mentioned – real cut trees are a much greener option than plastic. With a real tree you’re using a renewable resource; the trees are raised on tree farms, so you’re not contributing to any deforestation. And they’re completely recyclable.

“I think another feature that I like about them is that, and this is not exactly an obvious environmental issue, but I think it’s very good for children to see something fresh, green, real, alive, and then watch it cycle as the needles fall off and it goes into its natural demise. I think that’s good for people.”

Schildgen says some farmers use pesticides on their tree, so if you’re concerned about that, you should look for local organic trees.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

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Solar Panel Prices Drop

  • Experts say one of the main reasons solar is cheaper is because of Spain. (Photo courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

There’s a big push to find alternative sources of energy. Problem is, a lot of alternative energy is just too darn expensive. The cost of solar energy, however, is on the decline. Jennifer Guerra reports:

Transcript

There’s a big push to find alternative sources of energy. Problem is, a lot of alternative energy is just too darn expensive. The cost of solar energy, however, is on the decline. Jennifer Guerra reports:

The price of solar panels took a huge drop this year.

Experts say one of the main reasons solar is cheaper is because of Spain.

The country is a big buyer of solar panels, or what are called PV modules, largely because Spain offers generous incentives for people who buy them.

Galen Barbose is with a federal research lab in Berkley, California. He says, because of the economic crisis, Spain had to slash those incentives.

“And so demand in Spain dropped fairly significantly. And so what we’ve seen over the past year is a glut in the global supply of PV modules. And that has led to a fairly significant drop of the wholesale price of PV modules.”

The cost of solar still isn’t on par with conventional energy, but Barbose says things are headed in that direction.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

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The Summer BBQ: Gas or Charcoal?

  • Neal Fisher only uses charcoal for his summer grilling (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)

Summertime and the grilling is easy… but how environmentally friendly is it? We sent reporter Jennifer Guerra to find out which type of grill is greener: gas or charcoal:

Transcript

Summertime and the grilling is easy… but how environmentally friendly is it? We sent reporter Jennifer Guerra to find out which type of grill is greener: gas or charcoal:

Neal Fisher thinks he’s an environmentally friendly kind of guy. He and his wife recycle, they use compact fluorescent light bulbs in the house, they walk most places and hardly ever use their car.

But when it comes to outdoor grilling… it’s charcoal all the way.

“It may be a little decadent when you’re taking the environment into consideration, but I do it.”

(sound of grilling)

On tonight’s menu, it’s burgers, Jamaican jerk chicken, onions, and asparagus. Everything is grilled on basic, 22 ½ inch Weber kettle.

“Nothing fancy, no frills.”

To get the fire started, Fisher throws about 7 or 8 pounds of hardwood lump charcoal into a chimney starter.

“I don’t use the lighter fluid, I just use the charcoal chimney. I figure if I’m going to be cooking wood, I don’t want to cook a lot of chemicals too. So that’s something. I don’t kid myself that this is at all healthy for the world. I sometimes joke about it, too, well there goes my carbon footprint. Suddenly I’m carbon Sasquatch.”

To find out if Fisher really is a carbon Sasquatch, I called up Eric Johnson in Switzerland.

“Basically the footprint of using charcoal is about 3 times higher than the footprint of gas.”

Johnson just published a study in the journal Environmental Impact Assessment Review. In it, he compared the carbon dioxide emissions – or carbon footprint – of the two most popular types of grills: charcoal and propane gas.

When it comes to straight up carbon emissions – gas grills win hands down. Run your gas grill for an hour; emit 5.6 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air. Use charcoal briquettes for an hour of grilling; emit a whopping 11 pounds of CO2.

Fair enough.

But what if we look at the total carbon cycle of propane gas, a fossil fuel and charcoal, which is a bio fuel?

For that answer, we’ll turn to Bill Currie. He’s a professor in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan.

“You have to think about, can we replace the carbon back in the pool that charcoal came from? Can we replace it biologically over a reasonable period of time? And with charcoal, the answer is yes, we can re-grow those trees.”

That’s because charcoal is made out of wood, which is a renewable energy source. So if charcoal is harvested locally in a sustainable way, the re-grown trees can absorb the CO2 – which makes charcoal essentially carbon neutral. So charcoal made out of wood which is renewable. Propane gas on the other hand is made from oil. Not renewable.

“Fuels that are based on coal, oil, petroleum based fuel, it’s not possible to put that CO2 back where it was biologically in a reasonable amount of time. And that’s the big difference.”

But does any of this really matter? I mean, how important is grilling in the overall environmental scheme of things. Well Currie says it’s definitely not a big-ticket item like, say, the size of your house or the number of cars you have.

“It’s probably a small factor in the whole analysis. But at the same time, we make dozens or hundreds of these choices a day. And if we know that one alternative is better than another, these little things do matter because they add up.”

Especially when you consider that Americans are expected to use more than 60 million grills – both charcoal and gas – on July 4th. That’s the carbon equivalent of 900,000 trees. Now that’s a Carbon Sasquatch.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

Related Links

Doctors Release Statement on Urban Sprawl

  • The statement sites urban sprawl as one of the main causes of childhood obesity because often kids can’t walk to parks or schools (Photo courtesy of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)

Turns out there’s more to childhood
obesity that junk food and bad genes.
A national group of doctors places
some of the blame on urban design.
Jennifer Guerra has more:

Transcript

Turns out there’s more to childhood
obesity that junk food and bad genes.
A national group of doctors places
some of the blame on urban design.
Jennifer Guerra has more:

The American Academy of Pediatrics puts out so-called ‘policy statements’ all the time. Usually they’re for other doctors to read.

But this time, the doctors group is taking aim at lawmakers.

The group issued a statement in Pediatrics Magazine that basically says urban sprawl is one of the main causes of childhood obesity because often kids can’t walk to parks or schools.

June Tester is the lead author. She says the statement was a little controversial within the group.

“A lot of time, physicians are too busy or feel uncomfortable about being in the role of an advocate. But it’s a shame, because when physicians are actually motivated enough to speak to legislators, it can actually make a big difference.”

Tester says the response from the urban planning community has been really positive. Now she hopes lawmakers keep the research in mind when it comes time to vote for legislation that will affect a community’s design.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

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Stimulus Funds Give Steam a Boost

  • "Power house mechanic working on steam pump" By Lewis Hine, 1920 (Photo courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Work Projects Administration)

Steam plants haven’t been en vogue since Thomas Edison’s day. But now, they’re back in the spotlight thanks to the Obama administration. The Department of Energy just got 106-million dollars worth of stimulus money to fund steam-related projects. Jennifer Guerra takes us back to the future:

Transcript

Steam plants haven’t been en vogue since Thomas Edison’s day. But now, they’re back in the spotlight thanks to the Obama administration. The Department of Energy just got 106-million dollars worth of stimulus money to fund steam-related projects. Jennifer Guerra takes us back to the future:

(sound of steam)

You hear that? That’s the sound of efficiency.

It’s what you get when you combine steam pipes with a giant jet engine.

These steam systems are called combined heat and power, or CHP, and the government wants to see more of them.

Getting energy from coal-burning power plants isn’t very efficient. Most CHP systems, on the other hand, use natural gas and are more than 80% efficient.

The DOE says that’s like taking 45 million cars off the road.

Neal Elliot is with the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

“So whether you’re concerned about local air quality or whether you’re talking about global climate change gasses, the more efficient the system, the lower the emissions.”

And if you’re worried about seeing a giant CHP plant pop up in your backyard – don’t worry, most CHP systems are underground.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

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Getting Crafty for the Holidays

  • Student Kate Doyle makes a sweatshirt as a holiday gift (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)

The economy is on the fritz,
unemployment is way up – so this holiday
season: cheap is the new black. And who
better to give tips on how to stretch
a dollar than students. Some crafty
college kids share their more unique
ideas for homemade gifts:

Transcript

The economy is on the fritz,
unemployment is way up – so this holiday
season: cheap is the new black. And who
better to give tips on how to stretch
a dollar than students. Some crafty
college kids share their more unique
ideas for homemade gifts:

“Hi, I’m Dani Davis.”

“Meghann Rotary.”

“I’m Kate Doyle and I’m crafting currently as we speak. I’m cutting up some old
sweatshirts and I’m creating them into Christmas gifts. The bottoms and the sleeves of
old sweatshirts you get this really nice stretchy material and you can make a woven detail
to put on the front of a new sweatshirt and give it to somebody. Ideally, you’re using the
person who’s receiving the gifts their favorite colors. And what not. This is actually a test
drive to make sure it looks good because I saw this pattern in the stores actually but it
was like $135 dollars. So these two sweatshirts were given to me. But if I were to buy
these at Salvation Army or something, I would say the project would cost 5-8 dollars.”

“For Christmas this year I think my big crafty endeavor for my boyfriend. My friend lent
me a taxidermy ram head which is currently on my wall in my bedroom. And my
boyfriend thought it was really cool and even at the Salvation Army they’re like $150 or
something and they’re missing chunks of hair. So I was like, oh, out of fluff and fabric,
probably like old curtains or something, I could make him a taxidermy in quotations deer
head. You guys can’t tell him!”

“A few years ago I decided – well, I was broke first of all, so I didn’t know what I was
going to do for a gift. So I decided I was going to make marshmallows and package them
really nicely.”

“Basically it’s just gelatin, corn syrup, confectioners’ sugar, granulated sugar – lot of
sugar – and water. And they only take about 20 minutes to make. So I’ll buy a bunch of
dark chocolate and white chocolate and melt that down and then dip the marshmallows in
that and then dip the chocolate in nuts and peppermint. And then put them in little boxes
and sometimes I’ll cover the boxes in nice papers or wrapping paper. So it’s pretty cheap.
Yeah. And if you’ve never had a homemade marshmallow you’re missing out.”

“I’d like to get some of your marshmallows this Christmas.”

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Eco-Films Debut on Festival Circuit

  • Environmentally-themed movies are hitting the festival circuit hard (Source: Sailko at Wikimedia Commons)

If you think Al Gore’s movie, ‘An
Inconvenient Truth,’ is one of the only
environmental films out there, think again.
There are so many movies about the environment
that entire festivals have been created to
showcase them. Jennifer Guerra has more:

Transcript

If you think Al Gore’s movie, ‘An
Inconvenient Truth,’ is one of the only
environmental films out there, think again.
There are so many movies about the environment
that entire festivals have been created to
showcase them. Jennifer Guerra
has more:

Science films have come a long way from this.

(sound of old science film)

Now, they’ve got flashy trailers, famous narrators and edgy music. There are hundreds of
these environmentally-themed movies and they’re hitting the festival circuit hard. Korea,
Italy, Israel, DC, Colorado, Michigan.

Susan Woods got to choose which movies to include in Michigan’s first ever Green on
the Big Screen film festival.

“It was quite daunting in the beginning, to tell you the truth, when I started looking
up all these films. I thought oh my goodness, how can I select them. There’s too
many to select.”

She eventually settled on about 30 films, including King Corn. Curt Ellis produced the
documentary, which is all about – yup, you guess it – corn and our dependence on it for
almost everything we eat.

(sound from movie)

“When you’re telling a story about the natural world, you really have to be able to
transport people to the place you’re talking about.”

And Ellis thinks the best way to do that – short of lecturing people in a cornfield in the
middle of Iowa – is to show them a film.

“The reason we make documentaries – Lord knows it’s not for the profit – the
reason we make film is because we believe film can make a difference.”

“My opinion of media effects in terms of film actually producing social action is
pretty limited.”

That’s Daniel Herbert. He teaches film at the University of Michigan. You could say he’s
got a healthy amount of skepticism when it comes to films’ impact on environmental
change.

“Unless you have policies in your city government without recycling, what does it
matter if you’ve watched An Inconvenient Truth? If Al Gore’s telling you to buy
$30 light bulbs and you make 9 bucks at Starbucks, what’s it matter?”

Plus he says you run the risk of having audiences think that just because they watched the
film they’ve somehow participated in solving the problem.

That said, if he had to choose between showing an environmental film at a festival, a
commercial movie theater or on TV? Herbert says he’d pick the festival. Sure, there’s
probably a greater audience to be had with television, and it’s a little more convenient to
just Netflix the film and watch it from home, but you lose something that way.

Susan Woods – she’s from the Michigan film festival – she says a festival can provide a
whole different experience.

“The difference is that these people are sitting home in a dark room as opposed to
being with a group of people who have the same mind set. And I think that’s the big
difference.”

And, she says, at a festival, if you feel inspired by one of the films, you can go up to a
director afterward and ask questions, or talk with a climate change expert about solutions
or sign up with a local environmental group.

Something you definitely wouldn’t be able to do sitting at home alone in the dark with
your TV.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

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U.S. Gets an ‘Eco-Checkup’

  • Wetlands, such as these in Michigan, have decreased, according to a report on the country's ecosystems (Photo by David Kenyon of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources)

A new report about the state of the nation’s ecosystems was recently released. And the results are so-so. Jennifer Guerra has the details:

Transcript

A new report about the state of the nation’s ecosystems was recently released. And the results are so-so. Jennifer Guerra has the details:

Think of the report as the environmental equivalent of an annual physical exam.

Here are the results: the number of wetlands in the country is down and virtually every stream contains contaminants. On the plus side, it looks like soil erosion has decreased. And farmers are able to produce more food on less land.

Robin O’Malley plans to take those results to federal lawmakers. O’Malley is with the Heinz Center. It’s the non-partisan think tank responsible for the report.

“In the same way the chairmen of the federal reserve comes up and reports to congress about how our nation’s economy is doing, we think we need to do that kind of thing at a national scale for the environment.”

In addition to the report, the Heinz Center also included a little roadmap of sorts to help the lawmakers along.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

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