Author: Julie Grant

Footloose and Diaper-Free

  • Diaper-free parents say that their baby shows them signs when a bathroom break is needed. They call the dialogue "elimination communication." (Photo by Jessi Ziegler)

When most Americans have a baby,
the parents decide whether to use
disposable or cloth diapers. But
Julie Grant reports that there’s
another trend: no diapers at all:

Transcript

When most Americans have a baby,
the parents decide whether to use
disposable or cloth diapers. But
Julie Grant reports that there’s
another trend: no diapers at all:

Having kids without diapers might seem kind of far out. So,
who better to tell us about this then Willow Lune, of
Berkeley, California.

She remembers when her son was 3-months old. They
were at her mother-in-law’s house. Her husband took the
baby to the bathroom – and accidentally left the door open.

“And his mother came in and saw him holding our son over
the toilet. And she said, ‘what are you doing?’ And my
husband said, ‘well, he’s going to the bathroom, just like you
do.’ And it took her about a minute, and she said, ‘that’s so
cool.’”

Lune and her husband said it was normal to see babies
without diapers when they were traveling in Tibet and
Thailand. So, when their son was born, they decided to try
it. He’s was going to the toilet on his own by age 1 and a
half.

Now Lune teaches classes in Berkeley and other areas
around San Francisco.

She says diaper-free little ones can wear crotch-less pants –
or might not wear anything from the waist down.

And it’s up to the parents to pay close attention – or risk
having to reach for the cleaning supplies.

“There might be a little wiggle, or sometimes just the staring
at you. There’s just little subtle clues that they actually give
you from the time they’re born. So it’s our job to look at that,
listen for that, pick up on that. And then respond to it.”

Turns out, there’s a name for this little dialogue between
babies and parents. They call it elimination communication,
or E.C. Instead of using diapers – and then training them to
go in the toilet a few years later – Lune says parents can just
pay attention. They can show babies from the start what to
do when the need arises.

Lune says one of the reasons she and her husband do this
is because they are concerned for the environment.

Pampers and Huggies clog up the landfills. The other major
option – washing cloth diapers – takes more attention from
parents. But doing that can use a lot of water and electricity.

Jennifer Williams lives in the San Francisco area. She has
three children – all under age four.

Williams is also concerned for the environment. And she
wants to pay close attention when her 6-month old daughter
goes to the bathroom. She even uses cloth diapers.

“Even just with cloth diapers, you have to be way more in
tune to what’s going on with someone’s body. Where –
she’s in disposable right now – I’ll just forget about it for five
hours. You don’t have that option with cloth. Unless you
want to give her a horrible a rash. So, the whole EC thing is
really interesting, because you really have to be in touch with
what’s going on physiologically.”

But Williams works full time. Elimination communication just
is not practical for her family.

“Yeah, I mean, because you really do have to be available to
whenever the baby has to go to the bathroom. With one
baby, when I was home on maternity leave, I probably could
have done it. Once you have more than one running
around, it just doesn’t fit. Maybe I’m lazy. So be it.”

Supporters of the diaper-free lifestyle say it’s actually easier
then potty training kids when they’re older. And they say
parents don’t have to do it all the time. They can try it when
they do have time to pay close attention.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Atrazine in Our Water

  • Downstream view of Roberts Creek, IA, where USGS scientists conducted a study of the degradation of atrazine, a herbicide, in streams. (Photo courtesy of the USGS)

People have been concerned
about farm chemicals getting
into drinking water supplies
for a long time. A recent report
showed that the chemical atrazine
peaks, in many areas, in concentrations
much higher than previously thought.
Julie Grant reports there are
things you can do to protect your
family. But, finding out if you
have a problem is harder:

Transcript

People have been concerned
about farm chemicals getting
into drinking water supplies
for a long time. A recent report
showed that the chemical atrazine
peaks, in many areas, in concentrations
much higher than previously thought.
Julie Grant reports there are
things you can do to protect your
family. But, finding out if you
have a problem is harder:

Bob Denges is worried. His water is discolored. So he’s
called a water purification company to test it.

(sound of running water)

They’re running water in the basement utility sink. It’s kind
of orange-y looking. So, it’s an easy diagnosis: too much
iron.

“You can probably see in the toilet, upstairs just on the first
floor, that there’s some brownish, reddish discoloration
around the toilets.”

That’s not great. But at least you can tell when there’s iron
in the water. You cannot see or taste other water
contaminants such as weed killers like atrazine.

Tom Bruusema is the water filter expert at the National
Sanitation Foundation. They test and certify water filtration
devices. He says the first place you can check is your local
municipality – the folks that monitor water in your area.

“That would be the place to start. They are required, by
federal law, to measure a number of contaminants, produce
an annual report for their consumers.”

But recently an investigative report by the New York Times
revealed water contamination can spike in some places –
and local water officials might not even know about it.

That weed killer – atrazine – is applied on farm fields and, in a
lot of places, you also find a lot of atrazine in the water
during that time.

If you’re looking for it at the right time.

Sometimes it spikes for longer than a month. But some local
water officials only test for atrazine once a month, or only
once a year, and often it’s not during that peak application
season.

So people can’t really find out about atrazine levels for their
drinking water in those places.

Some water systems are spending lots of money to treat
drinking water to get atrazine levels down to what the federal
government considers safe levels.

But that might not be enough, according to some of the new
scientific evidence about atrazine.

Five studies published in peer-reviewed journals recently
have found evidence suggesting that small amounts of
atrazine in drinking water causes health problems. Even at
levels considered safe by federal standards, atrazine might
be associated with birth defects. Things like low birth
weights in newborns. Skull and facial malformations and
misshapen limbs.

Forty-three water systems in six states — Illinois, Indiana,
Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi and Ohio — recently sued
atrazine’s manufacturers. They want to force the company
Syngenta and its partner Growmark to pay for removing the
chemical from drinking water.

Steve Tillery is an attorney in the lawsuit.

“Some of them have gone to the expense to cleaning it
completely out of their water supplies, so that it doesn’t exist
at all. And they should, in our view, be entitled to
reimbursement of expenses for cleaning it completely out of
their water supplies.”

But, some water systems are not cleaning out atrazine
completely. And, as we mentioned, there are times when
some don’t know they exceed the federal safe drinking water
levels.

There is something pretty easy you can do if you’re worried
about your water.

Tom Bruusema of the National Sanitation Foundation says a
simple carbon filter can remove atrazine. Those are the
filters you can attach to the faucet or the pitchers you refill.

“So it’s a good investment. Certainly can help them if they
have those kinds of concerns, and particularly those living in
an area that’s known to have potential contaminants in the
water supply.”

But first people have to be aware of a possible problem.
And, too often, they are not.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

A Look Into Coal Country

  • The filmmakers want more Americans to understand that when we flick on a light switch – it is not a meaningless act. It takes electricity. And that takes coal. (Photo courtesy of Coal Country)

When the Senate picks up debate
on the climate change bill, it
will be – in part – deciding the
future of coal as an energy source
in the U.S. About half the nation’s
electricity currently comes from
coal. And a lot of it comes from
the Appalachian region. A new
documentary film sets out to show
how mining for coal affects the people
who live in Coal Country. Julie Grant
spoke with the film’s producers:

Transcript

When the Senate picks up debate
on the climate change bill, it
will be – in part – deciding the
future of coal as an energy source
in the U.S. About half the nation’s
electricity currently comes from
coal. And a lot of it comes from
the Appalachian region. A new
documentary film sets out to show
how mining for coal affects the people
who live in Coal Country. Julie Grant
spoke with the film’s producers:

Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller set out to make the movie Coal Country
because they wanted to show how different people are affected by coal
mining.

They found lots of activists, and regular citizens, who would talk with
them. Plenty of people were willing to show the thick black water in their
toilet tanks. They wanted to show the black soot covering their cars.
They wanted to talk about the health problems they live with. And they all
blamed the coal industry.

Evans also wrote to coal supporters – to get their side of the story on
camera. The answer?

“No. That was their response. I sent out requests to the coal industry,
to coal companies and to suppliers of the coal industry.”

Evans brother is a coal miner. He supports mountain top removal.

(sound of explosions)

As we see in the movie, that’s when coal companies blow off the entire
top of a mountain to get to the coal. Many people consider it the most
polluting and environmentally devastating type of mining.

But Evans says not even her own brother would do an interview about it.

“And when I said, ‘why won’t you talk on camera? You feel so
passionately that coal is wonderful and mountaintop removal is actually for
the environment as well as the economy.’ And his response to me always
was, ‘oh I would never speak on camera without getting permission from
the company I work for.’”

The filmmakers heard that a lot. And no coal miners ever did get
permission to talk on camera.

In the movie, we do hear from Don Blankenship, head of Massey Energy. He
spoke at a public hearing about the need to ease environmental restrictions
on coal mining.

“We had nearly 800 employees up ‘til Friday. We had to lay 8 off. I
think that might be just the tip of the iceberg if we don’t our rules
changed how we mine in the state.”

Anti-coal activists at the public hearing explain how the coal companies
use that kind of intimidation to control miners.

“I think people are scared that they will lose their jobs and be flipping
burgers. You look out and that’s all you see. You see mining and
flipping burgers. And, I argue, that the coal companies want it that way.
They want that to be the only option. That’s the only way they could get
support for how they treat their workers and how they treat this land.
This would never happen in a place that wasn’t poor. Never.”

In the movie, some coal miners stand up at the public meeting to defend the
companies they work for. One explains the coal industry has provided him a
good salary.

Miner One: “For the last 14 years, the coal industry has supported myself
and my wife and my 3 children.”

Miner Two: “When the last one of you so-called environmentalists leave
the state, when the rest of us leave for North Carolina, turn out the
lights. Oh, wait a minute, there won’t be no lights. No coal, no
lights.”

(music)

The filmmakers want more Americans to understand that when we flick on a
light switch – it is not a meaningless act. It takes electricity. And
that takes coal.

And, as anti-coal activist Judy Bonds says in the movie, coal is tearing
apart West Virginia.

“It is a civil war; it’s families against families. It’s brother
against brother.”

Or – in the case of filmmaker Mari Lynn-Evans – brother against
sister.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

The ‘Burbs Aren’t Very Green

  • Some experts in the study say the U.S. could reduce emissions by up to 11% in the next 40 years - just by building housing closer together. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

When the Senate picks up debate on
the climate change bill, we’re sure to
hear a lot about how power plants and
cars are contributing to the problem.
But a new study finds that we should
also be considering where we live. Julie
Grant reports that living in the suburbs
can create extra carbon emissions:

Transcript

When the Senate picks up debate on
the climate change bill, we’re sure to
hear a lot about how power plants and
cars are contributing to the problem.
But a new study finds that we should
also be considering where we live. Julie
Grant reports that living in the suburbs
can create extra carbon emissions:

Most Americans live in or near big cities – but those in the suburbs have to drive a lot.

The National Research Council completed a study for Congress. It finds that building housing closer together near urban centers could reduce the amount people drive. That would save energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Marlon Boarnet is a professor at the University of California, Irvine. He was on the study committee.

“The best evidence out there leads us to believe that people who live in more dense development do in fact drive less. And we feel that the evidence can conclude that that’s a causal relationship.”

Even if single-family homes were built closer together, it would mean less greenhouse gases.

Some experts in the study say the U.S. could reduce emissions by up to 11% in the next 40 years – just by building housing closer together.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Shrinking a Rust Belt City

  • Mayor Jay Williams says that about ten years ago, they started holding community meetings to figure out how to make Youngstown run better for its smaller population. (Photo courtesy of Youngstown 2010)

Folks in lots of rust-belt cities
are used to hearing about the declining
population. Over the past thirty years,
people have been moving away from
cities such as Cleveland, Detroit,
and Indianapolis. Julie Grant visited
one city that’s embracing its newfound
smallness – and trying to un-build some
of its neighborhoods:

Transcript

Folks in lots of rust-belt cities
are used to hearing about the declining
population. Over the past thirty years,
people have been moving away from
cities such as Cleveland, Detroit,
and Indianapolis. Julie Grant visited
one city that’s embracing its newfound
smallness – and trying to un-build some
of its neighborhoods:

For decades, Youngstown, Ohio has been a city looking to its past. It was booming in the 1950s. The steel industry brought good paying, reliable jobs. City leaders back then planned for the population to blossom above 200,000.

It never got there. The steel mills closed, and people left. Youngstown lost a lot of people.

Mayor Jay Williams says that about ten years ago, they started holding community meetings. They wanted to figure out how to make the city run better for the 80,000 people who are still here.

“While it was an acknowledgement of the fact that we were going to be a smaller city, it also was an understanding that smaller didn’t have to be inferior. And that started a series of things that led us to where we are today.”

Now they are in the process of demolishing 2,000 abandoned homes and other buildings. They actually want the people to leave some areas – so the city doesn’t have to spend money on things like power, utilities and snow plows on those streets.

Mayor Williams says, in some neighborhoods, there are entire blocks that are abandoned, except for one or two houses.

“So from that standpoint, we do have a moral, and an ethical and legal obligation as a city to provide certain services. But what we’re trying to do is balance that with the fact that sometimes it doesn’t make economical or business sense.”

A lot of the times those holdouts are older folks, who don’t want to move – and might not accept that the city doesn’t plan to return to its former glory. The new leaders want to embrace the city’s new small-ness – and improve the quality.

Thing is, most of the leaders in Youngstown today are – young. The mayor is 37, the Congressman is 36, and Community Organizer Phil Kidd just turned 30. Kidd says his generation doesn’t really remember those glory days of the steel mills.

“So we don’t remember how things used to be. We’re not bitter about what happened. We are here by choice in Youngstown as young people. And when you bring that to the table, there’s a different type of lens in which you look at Youngstown, I think.”

Kidd says his generation can see that the infrastructure needs to be the right size for the people who live here now.
He says making the necessary changes will open up all kinds of new opportunities for Youngstown.

“And we look at it as almost a blank canvas, in a way, to really be progressive about being as kind of new urban pioneers, in a certain regard. But with respect for the history for this community.”

And that new vision is inadvertently attracting some young people back to the city.

Maggie Pence grew up in Youngstown, and like a lot of people, moved away after college. She needed a job. And some hope for a bright future.

“When I left, I thought, ‘this is just, nothing’s ever going to change.’ It’s always going to be lamenting the steel mills, waiting for the next big savior. It was the waiting, just waiting, to see what was going to happen.”

Today, Pence is swinging her 11-month old daughter at a park just north of downtown Youngstown. She and her husband are renovating what was a boarded up, foreclosed house nearby.

Pence largely credits city leaders for her decision. When she saw their plan, called Youngstown 2010, she decided it was time to move her family back from Brooklyn, New York, to Youngstown.

“Yeah, I mean, seeing 2010 and seeing what they were doing and having make sense to me made me realize that you could come home again, kind-of. I mean, okay, there’s a future.”

The city isn’t sure exactly what it’s going to do with all the new open space – once all the abandoned houses are demolished. Some people are planting trees and neighborhood gardens. Community leaders say the people who live here will have to decide what they want the new city to look like.

A lot of shrinking cities in the Rust Belt will have to figure that out. Sooner or later, shrinking tax bases won’t support all those barely used streets, sidewalks and water lines.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Company Trash, Classroom Treasures

  • Anita Gardner (right) and Shirley Ellington of the Discovery Center of Cleveland rummage through boxes at ZeroLandfill. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Furniture stores and architectural
firms get a lot of samples – of fabric,
tiles, and carpet. Those samples can
pile up. Usually, they get thrown in
the trash. But, in some cities, they
are starting to make unused design
samples available to artists and art
teachers. Julie Grant has more:

Transcript

Furniture stores and architectural
firms get a lot of samples – of fabric,
tiles, and carpet. Those samples can
pile up. Usually, they get thrown in
the trash. But, in some cities, they
are starting to make unused design
samples available to artists and art
teachers. Julie Grant has more:

(sound of Anita looking thru boxes)

Anita Gardner is rummaging through boxes of old tile samples. They’re still attached to those three-fold sample books you’d see at a design store. But she’s imagining what else the kids at her community center might make with them.

“You have to see it first, sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t come. It comes later and then you go, ‘we can do this and we can do that.’”

Gardner is at a special event called ZeroLandfill. Furniture stores, architects and design centers can drop off unwanted materials, and people like Gardner can take whatever they want – for free.

“This has been a godsend to us, because we really don’t have a lot of money to spend on arts and crafts.”

Last year, she found a lot of unused fabric – so she taught the kids at her center to sew quilts.

“And a lot of children in our community have never even threaded a needle. Now they’re learning to use sewing machines. They’re learning to piece all types of fabric together. They’re learning patterns and designs. They have no idea, they’re actually learning math.”

And in inner city neighborhoods, where kids can go to bed cold in the winter, Gardner is especially pleased that she’s started a quilt-making trend. It also warms the hearts of the folks who organize ZeroLandfill.

David Fox helps to run these events in Cleveland.

“A lot of samples end up just being discontinued and then, where does this all go? And it ends up being thrown out a lot of time. Or – they just have so much stuff they just keep hoarding and hoarding and hoarding.”

About five years ago, some folks at architecture and design firms around Cleveland, as well as a carpet company, all started talking about what to do with their unwanted material. They were spending a lot of money to send it to the landfill. So they held a one-day drop-off for companies to recycle it.

Fox says they soon realized their trash might be treasure to artists and art teachers.

“It was a program that started as a one-day thing. Firms were able to come and drop stuff off. But it has turned into a yearly process and now it’s even gone to other cities.”

Fox says they’ve already saved more than 100 tons of material from going to the landfill.

Arts and crafts teacher Anita Gardner says it’s also provided innumerable lessons for kids and teenagers at her community center.

“They see now that anything can be art. Anything can be a craft. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot to be beautiful.”

ZeroLandfill has been training architecture and design firms how to organize these events regularly. They’re now held annually in cities around Ohio – and new ZeroLandfills are being held in Minneapolis, Louisville and Boston this year.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Stimulus Funds for Home Weatherization

  • A fan is sized to the front door so they can de-pressurize the house. This helps them see where air is escaping - and where insulation may be needed. (Photo by Julie Grant)

The government stimulus package
included billions of new dollars
for home weatherization programs.
The money is used to help low income
folks make their homes more energy
efficient. But some critics say
it’s not a good use of federal tax
dollars. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

The government stimulus package included billions of new dollars for home weatherization programs. The money is used to help low income folks make their homes more energy efficient. But some critics say it’s not a good use of federal tax dollars. Julie Grant reports:

Chris Graham spends his days checking the energy efficiency of people’s homes.

Today he’s at Sandra Richards’ in Mogodore, Ohio.

Graham: “Hi Sandra.”

Sandra: “How are ya?”

Graham: “Wonderful. And you?”

Sandra: “Better.”

Graham: “Better?”

Sandra is 55. Her house is clean and neat. She was a nurse for many years, but today she’s sitting on the couch, watching TV. A broken foot spiraled into problems with her knee and hip – and other health problems.

“I mean I’ve just had so many things go on in such a little time. I was working 12 hour days, and one month later, I couldn’t work at all.”

Sandra qualified for the home weatherization program because she doesn’t have much in the way of income anymore.

Chris Graham says he’s been to a lot of homes where people are far worse off. They can’t get around, they don’t have money coming in, and their houses get cold in the winter.

Graham heads to the basement.

“The first thing we have to make sure is that the heating unit is not in terrible, dilapidated shape. And that it does not have more than a specified amount of carbon monoxide in the flu gasses.”

He turns on the furnace and sticks a probe into the flu pipe.

(sound of a tester)

Grant: “Looks like a receipt came out.”

Graham: “It kind of is. It tells you exactly what was going on there.”

Looks like Sandra’s furnace is running pretty well. 81% efficiency.

But Graham sees evidence of carbon monoxide on her old water heater.

“It’s 17 years old and it just plain needs changed. It’s got burnt, scorch all over it. So we’re gonna do that.”

That could cost more than $1,000.

But the home weatherization program can afford it these days. The stimulus packaged included $5-billion for this kind of work – compared with less than a quarter of a billion dollars last year. The new money has to be spent within two years.

And some people think that’s just too much money – too fast. Leslie Paige is with a taxpayer watchdog group called Citizens Against Government Waste.

“There’s always a lot of waste in government spending anyway, but when you spend it quickly and there’s very little oversight, that’s almost a prescription for seeing a lot of that money go for waste and fraud and losing to abuse.”

That kind of criticism is shocking to David Shea. He’s director the Community Action Council of Portage County, Ohio – the organization that hires inspector Chris Graham.
The weatherization program has been around since 1976 and Shea says they have to report their spending in about a hundred different ways.

“It’s not like money is being thrown out at agencies and just say, ‘oh go out and do it.’ There are volumes and volumes of written regulations that have been around for a long time. We do so much sophisticated reporting; they know how every dollar is being spent. Always. Always.”

Shea’s office used to have one crew out weatherizing homes around the county. Since the stimulus money’s come in, he’s hired a second crew. But there are so many people wanting their services, the waiting list is still years long.

(sound of a fan)

Back at Sandra Richards’ house, inspector Chris Graham has sized a big fan into the front door. He’s depressurizing the house – so he can see where air is escaping. Graham says she’s going to need some doors sealed and new insulation in the attic.

He says Sandra will feel more comfortable, so she won’t need to turn up the heat in the winter. That means she’ll save on energy costs, and will use less fossil fuels.

That’s the whole idea of this project – to use less energy in the future, and to help millions of families that couldn’t afford to improve things on their own.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

When Animals and Airplanes Collide

  • Airport Operations Manager Todd Laps uses pyrotechnics - and sometimes just plain old honking the car horn - to harass birds and keep them away from the airport. (Photo by Julie Grant)

If you bite your nails every time
you’re on a plane – the increasing
number of bird strikes might give
you one more reason for concern.
Julie Grant reports on efforts to
prevent airplanes from hitting birds:

Transcript

If you bite your nails every time
you’re on a plane – the increasing
number of bird strikes might give
you one more reason for concern.
Julie Grant reports on efforts to
prevent airplanes from hitting birds:

Todd Laps probably never envisioned that he’d spend his days harassing
birds. He’s operations manager at the Akron-Canton Airport in Ohio.

(sound of a plane landing)

But for the past few years, he’s started doing everything he can to keep
birds off the runway.

(sound of a horn)

Sometimes he just chases them in a truck while honking the horn.

“If you chase them around enough, they get tired of it, and they leave.
But you may have to drive around blowing the horn for five minutes to get
them to leave.”

(sound of a horn)

It’s not that Laps hates birds. He’s actually trying to save them –
from getting sucked into plane engines. That’s pretty bad for the birds.
It can also damage the planes.

The Federal Aviation Administration says bird strikes have killed more than
200 people worldwide since 1988 – and cost the U.S. aviation industry
hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ever since geese took out both engines in US Airways flight 1549 earlier
this year – leading to that dramatic flight into the Hudson River –
more airports are paying attention to the surrounding wildlife.

Mike Begier is national coordinator of the Airport Wildlife Hazards Program
with the US Department of Agriculture.

He says populations of larger birds – such as geese – are increasing. At
the same time, there are more planes in the air then there used to be.

“So we’re competing for the same airspace. So it’s a probability.
The more times you fly, the more chances you have to strike something.”

Begier says most airports were built a little outside of the city, in
green, wet areas. And those places attract lots of birds and animals.

“Birds may want to stop over there and rest. Airports that do not have
adequate fencing wind up being a refuge for deer or coyote.”

At the Akron airport, they’ve recently cut down 40 acres of trees to make
the area less attractive to wildlife. They’ve also started mowing more
to discourage bugs. Without bugs, there are fewer small mammals and birds.
The folks in Akron think it’s made a difference reducing the number of
accidents.

Airports are not required to report wildlife strikes. Some do voluntarily.
When the FAA opened up its records on collisions between planes and birds
and coyotes and even alligators this year, it looked like the number of
accidents was on the rise at some airports.

But Begier says those numbers don’t provide an accurate picture.
Airports don’t have to report them, so as many as 80% of strikes still go
unreported.

“So when we see these high numbers of strikes, it’s important to
realize that the airports are actually being proactive, that they’re
reporting their strikes – which is a very good thing.”

Begier gives the example of JFK airport in New York. It’s in the top ten
airports nationwide reporting the most wildlife strikes. That sounds bad.
But because JFK voluntarily reported accidents, biologists were able to
figure out part of its problem. When the nearby bayberry bushes were ripe,
they were attracting lots of birds. By removing the bushes, they reduced
the number of accidents.

Researchers are also experimenting with higher tech solutions at airports.
They’re trying laser lights to harass birds away from hangars, using
small radar units to track birds and warn planes of approaching danger, and
using pulsating lights on planes to mimic bird predators.

But for USDA wildlife biologist Rebecca Mihalco, the old fashioned methods
are the most rewarding – at least today. She works at the
Cleveland-Hopkins airport and just caught a red-tailed hawk.

“I’m always excited when I catch a hawk. I guess I’m a kid that
way.”

Mihalco drove the hawk far away from the airport and released it.

But to avoid so many accidents with wildlife, airports will have to do
better than catching them one at a time or chasing after birds and honking
at them.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Tomato Blight Spreading

  • The blight hitting tomatoes is actually the same blight responsible for the Irish potato famine in the mid-19 century. (Photo by T. A. Zitter, courtesy of Cornell University)

If you’ve been waiting all season
for that quintessential taste of
summer – a juicy, ripe tomato from
the garden – you might be disappointed.
This year a tomato blight has swept
across the Northeast and is moving
into Midwestern gardens and farms.
Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

If you’ve been waiting all season
for that quintessential taste of
summer – a juicy, ripe tomato from
the garden – you might be disappointed.
This year a tomato blight has swept
across the Northeast and is moving
into Midwestern gardens and farms.
Julie Grant reports:

Walk around this outdoor farm market in Cleveland and just say the words ‘tomato blight’ – nearly anyone in earshot has a story to tell.

Susan Myers says her home garden has given over to what she thinks is late blight.

“But it’s pretty serious. I mean, it’s like wiping out everything. I have lots of tomatoes and all the leaves are dropping. I’ve never, ever had that before.”

It doesn’t look like the farmers here are having trouble with tomato blight. Most tables are piled high with bright reds and yellows.

Skip Conant has a beautiful display of heirloom tomatoes – but he’s not sure how many more weeks he’ll have fruit to offer.

Conant: “We definitely have tomato blight. It’s been a cool, wet spring, so, yeah. There’s a fair amount tomato blight.”

Grant: “What does it look like?”

Conant: “You’ll see a yellowing and curling on the leaves and then the stem will turn brown. The plant will become a very brown. Die from basically the inside out or the bottom up.”

It’s hard to tell yet if these Midwestern growers are starting to see the same blight that decimated the northeast tomatoes.

Bill Fry is a plant pathologist at Cornell University. He’s studied late blight for 35 years. Fry says it looks like irregular shaped black spots, and can appear on the leaves or the fruit. It can destroy an entire crop in just a few days.

This is the same blight responsible for the Irish potato famine in the mid-19 century. Growers have seen late blight since then. But Fry says, not at these epidemic proportions.

“The fact that it’s just everywhere is, I think, is the major difference from previous years.”

This wasn’t the first cool, wet spring on record. So, why has the blight so bad this year?

It’s kind of ironic. Fry and his colleagues have been studying the problem and think it’s probably because so many people are gardening. Millions more than just last year. And lots of those people bought tomato plants at stores like Home Depot, Kmart, Lowe’s and Wal-Mart.

“Infected plants were sold throughout the northeast in the box stores. They were transplanted to home gardens and from there the pathogen disbursed to other home gardens, to conventional and organic farms.”

Fry says you might not even notice at the supermarket. Commercial tomato growers spray lots of fungicide to keep away the blight. But organic tomatoes are getting harder to find.

But chefs and tomato lovers who’ve waited all season for those locally-grown heirloom – and especially organic – tomatoes aren’t finding what they want in markets in the northeast.

Back at the Cleveland market, chef and restaurant owner Karen Small has been waiting for tomato season – and it finally hit. She depends on this market for her produce and stops at just about every stand.

But as Small hears farmer after farmer describe what they think is late blight – she’s worried about the weeks to come.

“We’re accustomed to having tomatoes well into September, and maybe that’s not going to happen this year.”

Small plans to go home and rip out the tomato plants in her home garden – after hearing late blight described so many times, she’s pretty sure her tomatoes are infected.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Nuclear Careers to Heat Up?

  • Until recently, there hasn’t been an order for a new nuclear plant in 30 years. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Some Senate Republicans want the climate
change bill to focus on building new nuclear
power plants. They’re calling for as many as
100 new plants in 20 years. But the industry
has been in decline for so many years now,
there’s concern there might not be enough
nuclear engineers to do the job. Julie Grant
reports:

Transcript

Some Senate Republicans want the climate
change bill to focus on building new nuclear
power plants. They’re calling for as many as
100 new plants in 20 years. But the industry
has been in decline for so many years now,
there’s concern there might not be enough
nuclear engineers to do the job. Julie Grant
reports:

There’s a lot of new interest in nuclear energy and technology these days. But there’s a problem.

The American Nuclear Society estimates they need 700 new nuclear engineers per year to keep up with growing the demand. It’s enough to give long-time nuclear supporters whip-lash. Until recently, things looked gloomy for the nuclear industry.

William Martin is chair of the nuclear engineering department at the University of Michigan. Ten years ago, he says no new plants were being designed or built. And he was having a tough time finding students.

“A student entering the field, what you could tell them was, ‘well, there’s a big focus on waste.’ That’s not hardly something that excites young students to enter the field.”

Martin remembers standing on the stage at graduation in the mid 1990s to call the names of his graduates. Other engineering departments had so many students, it took an hour to call them all. But Martin only had a few names to call.

“Our students trip across in about ten seconds.”

Lots of nuclear engineering programs didn’t make it through the down times. There are less than half the university programs today than there were 30 years ago.

Nuclear got a bad name starting in 1979 – with the meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. That was followed by the deadly nuclear accident at Chernobyl, Ukraine in the ‘80s.
By the early 1990s, President Clinton announced he would eliminate funding for nuclear power research and development.

Until recently, there hasn’t been an order for a new nuclear plant in 30 years.

Vaughn Gilbert is spokesman for Westinghouse Electric Company, which focuses on nuclear energy.


He says Westinghouse laid off a lot its engineers in the down years. A decade ago, those who were left were heading toward retirement. So, Gilbert says, the company started working with universities to train engineering students to run its aging nuclear plants.

“Simply because we knew we would need to attract new people to maintain the existing fleet and then also to work with our customers to decommission the plants as they came offline.”

Westinghouse and other nuclear companies started giving lots of money to maintain university programs.

And then, everyone started worrying about climate change – and looking for ways to make energy that wouldn’t create more greenhouse gases. Nuclear power has started making a comeback.

Gilbert says new plants are in the works again – and Westinghouse needs engineers. The company’s designs will be used in six new U.S. plants.

The timing is pretty good for 25 year old Nick Touran. He’s a PhD student in nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan. He knows there’s a negative stigma to nuclear power – because he’s asked people about it.

“I just say, ‘so what do you think about nuclear power?’ Just to passersby on the street. And one person said, ‘I only think one thing – no, no, no, no, no.’”

But Touran says the negative stuff mostly comes from older people. When Three Mile Island melted-down, Touran wasn’t even born yet. He says most people his age are much more accepting of nuclear power.

“It’s the people who remember Three Mile Island and remember Chernobyl and remember World War II, who have all these very negative associations with nuclear weapons and Soviet reactors that were built incredibly wrong. And stuff like that.”

Touran says much of his generation just sees a power source that doesn’t create greenhouse gases.

Of course, there are greenhouse gases created in the process of manufacturing nuclear fuel rods. And then there’s that pesky problem of that spent nuclear waste. There’s still no permanent place to dump it.

Touran says he started studying nuclear power because he was amazed by it. But as the number of students in his department grows, he says more are choosing nuclear because it’s a smart career choice.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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