Tag: cost

Aftermath of Chronic Wasting Disease

Wildlife managers in Wisconsin are facing a daunting task… how to dispose of thousands of potentially infectious deer carcasses. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gil Halsted reports:

Transcript

Wildlife managers in Wisconsin are facing a daunting task… how to dispose of thousands of potentially infectious deer carcasses. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gil Halsted reports:


Eighteen deer have tested positive for chronic wasting disease in an area of southwestern Wisconsin. To keep the disease from spreading, the state plans to kill 30-thousand deer in the area. But because the disease is related to mad cow disease, county landfills are refusing to bury the deer carcasses. The fear is that the mutant protein known as a prion that causes the disease could seep out of the landfill and pose a threat to human health.


Topf Wells is a spokesperson for Dane County, one of several counties that have refused to accept carcasses.


“The problem that many people are concerned about is that these prions are probably not destroyed by the forces in a landfill that lead to the decomposition of a lot of material.”


If counties don’t change their minds, the state may have to store thousands of deer carcasses in cold storage units during this fall’s hunt. Incinerating carcasses is another option. But at 75 dollars a deer it could prove too costly.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Gil Halsted.

Canada Debates Revival of Nuclear Power

At a recent meeting in Detroit, the G-8 energy ministers were looking for alternatives to non-renewable resources such as oil and gas. Nuclear energy was high on that list of alternatives. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, at least, renewing the drive towards nuclear power is becoming too costly:

Transcript

At a recent meeting in Detroit, the G-8 energy ministers were looking for alternatives to non-renewable resources such as oil and gas. High among those alternatives was emphasis on nuclear energy. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, at least, renewing the drive towards nuclear power is becoming too costly:


The nuclear power plant at Pickering, on the shores of Lake Ontario, holds some of the oldest reactors in North America. Environmentalists have long argued that the 30-year-old reactors in the Pickering power plant should be mothballed. But a couple of years ago, Ontario Power Generation said it would completely overhaul the reactors, estimating a cost of about one billion dollars Canadian.


But the costs, complexity, and time it would take to do the work turned out to be more than anyone expected. The scheduled re-opening has now been twice delayed …and the cost of doing the work has already soared to more than two billion dollars.


While environmentalists in the Great Lakes region may take heart at the delays and the increased
costs, the Ontario government is sticking with it.


Senior officials at the plant say no matter what the costs, re-furbishing is by far the best option for the province. They say even carrying the two billion dollar price tag, it would be competitive with other energy sources such as gas and oil. And, in that context, they say, it still makes commercial sense.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Dan Karpenchuk.

Farming With Computers

You probably have a computer in your car, on your desk and maybe even in your stove. It seems like there are computers everywhere these days helping with everything from our checking accounts to our turkey roasts. Now researchers want to install computers in another place, where most of us would least expect it – in Old MacDonald’s tractor. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Daniel Grossman has this story:

Wind Power Cheaper Than Gas and Coal?

A new study suggests wind power is cheaper to produce than coal or natural gas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

Transcript

A new study suggests wind power is cheaper to produce than coal or natural gas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports.


The report from Stanford University shows creating electricity using wind power costs about three and a half cents per kilowatt-hour. That compares to coal and natural gas costs of almost four cents per kilowatt-hour. Mark Jacobson is an engineering professor at Stanford, and the author of the study. He says the government needs to pursue using more wind power over coal and natural gas.


“ …and also, wind energy is more efficient than solar, or other renewable energy sources. So all of the renewable energy sources, you would want to exploit wind first.”


Jacobson says wind power is even a better deal when the environmental costs of pollutants from coal and gas plants are taken into consideration. But there is a downside. To convert two thirds of the nation’s coal generated electricity to wind power would take an up front investment of more then 330-billion dollars. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.

What’s an Ecosystem Worth?

A lot of things found in and around the Great Lakes can be bought and sold – from drinking water to lakefront property. Still, some features of the lakes – like its ecosystem – are not for sale. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jim Meadows reports… a new study tries to measure the value of something many consider priceless:

Transcript

A lot of things found in and around the Great Lakes can be bought and sold, from drinking water to lakefront property. Still, some features of the lakes — like its ecosystem — are not for sale. The Great Lakes Consortium’s Jim Meadows reports a new study tries to measure the value of something many consider priceless.


The Lake Michigan Federation says there’s no commodity price for healthy fish and birds living around Lake Michigan — but that people are willing to pay to preserve them. A study prepared for the Federation at the University of Illinois at Chicago estimates how much people would pay — the so-called “natural capital” value of the southern Lake Michigan shoreline. Anna Cooper, who worked on the study, says their numbers could play a role in future decisions about the lake. Just one example she gives is the decision in Chicago to close a small airport along the lakeshore. Meigs would be closed, and the land used for other purposes.


“You know, if it could be shown that having that area as a natural preserve or changing it back into a wetland or something like that, if that could be shown to be basically cost-effective, that people … would value those species and that habitat more than they would value that land put to another use.”


The study estimates Chicago area residents are willing to pay 117 to 197 dollars per household to preserve the lakeshore ecosystem – for a total natural capital value of roughly three to five billion dollars per year, but it’s only an estimate. The Lake Michigan Federation’s Joel Brammeier says they couldn’t afford to do an actual survey of residents — so they extrapolated.


“In this study, we employed a technique called benefits transfer, which is the transferring of data from one study with a similar species and situation to a new region, in this case the Chicago region.”


Still, Brammeier says their study is a good conservative estimate of how much Chicagoans value the lakeshore ecosystem, and he believes other parts of the Great Lakes would also benefit from a valuation of their natural capital. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jim Meadows.