Scientists have been able to harness energy from bacteria for several years. Now, some scientists have developed a more efficient system, using bacteria that feed on sugar. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has more:
Transcript
Scientists have been able to harness energy from bacteria for several years. Now, some scientists
have developed a more efficient system, using bacteria that feed on sugar. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has more:
It’s called a microbial fuel cell, and it works like this: the bacteria in the fuel cell feed on sugar in
food or lawn waste. In the process, they transfer electrons to an electrode, starting a flow of
electricity.
This new fuel cell is more efficient than older models, bringing the technology one step closer to
everyday use.
Derek Lovley designed the fuel cell. His research is published in the journal Nature
Biotechnology. He says because the U.S. consumes so much energy, he doesn’t think his fuel
cells will be used on a large scale here. But he says, in the future, consumers might be able to use
them in their backyards.
“Say you had an electric lawnmower and you clipped your grass clippings and threw them into
this type of system, and used it to charge up the battery to run your lawnmower the next
weekend.”
Lovley says it’ll be a while before anyone can buy a microbial fuel cell. Right now, the fuel cell
produces just enough energy to power a calculator.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.
For the last 23 years, the National Park Service and groups of volunteers have been trying to create a 46-hundred mile hiking trail. Once completed, the North Country National Scenic Trail would meander from New York to North Dakota. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports, organizers hope Congress will pass a bill that will make the trail easier to finish:
Transcript
For the last 23 years, the National Park Service and groups of volunteers have been trying to
create a 4,600 mile hiking trail. Once completed, the North Country National Scenic Trail would
meander from New York to North Dakota. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar
Charney reports, organizers hope Congress will pass a bill that will make the trail easier to finish:
The only way organizers can get land to build the trail on is if people donate it. The legislation
that created this project and a number of similar ones prevents the Park Service from buying land
for the trail, even if there is a willing seller.
Bob Papp is the Executive Director of the North Country Trail Association. He says a bill to let
the Park Service buy land for trails has passed the Senate, now they’re hoping it will pass in the
House.
“There are a number of trails that are involved and there’s a tremendously high percentage of
federal land ownership in western states and so there are a lot of private property rights groups
who see any effort to expand the federal governments ability to acquire land as a bad thing.”
Papp says in the meantime they’re finding ways of partnering with state governments and private
landowners to obtain the rights to continue work on the trail. So far, about 1,700 miles are ready
to be hiked.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.
Sludge being spread over a field with a manure spreader. (Photo by D. Seliskar, Halophyte Biotechnology Center, Univ. of Delaware)
The more people inhabit the earth – the more sewage there is. Something has to be done with it. Before chemical fertilizers were invented, farmers used human manure to improve their crops. Some still do. About three million dry tons of treated sewage – called sludge – fertilize sod, pasture land and even food crops every year in the United States. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Amy Tardif looks at what the practice may be doing to the environment:
Transcript
The more people inhabit the earth – the more sewage there is. Something has to be done with it.
Before chemical fertilizers were invented, farmers used human manure to improve their crops.
Some still do. About three million dry tons of treated sewage – called sludge – fertilize sod,
pasture land and even food crops every year in the United States. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Amy Tardif looks at what the practice may be doing to the environment:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says using treated human waste as fertilizer is the
most environmentally sound way to get rid of it. It used to get dumped in the oceans. The
pollution caused dead zones.
Now, using it on land is becoming controversial. As people move closer to rural areas, they
discover what’s happening. It smells. It might also cause damage. Tommy Drymon insists the
creek near his Florida home has changed because farmers near his house use sludge as fertilizer.
“This was the most beautiful place I’ve ever settled down to. And the creek just looks awful now.
It used to be clear and now it’s just black and mucky all the time.”
Drymon says not only has the color changed – there’s more icky residue on the shore. He rarely
sees otters, deer and other wildlife any more. He definitely stopped swimming in it. Drymon and
his neighbors think the human fertilizer nearby farmers use – known as sewage sludge – is to
blame.
Sludge is made at sewage treatment plants. The water people flush down their toilets gets pretty
clean with today’s methods. That means more of what’s leftover stays pretty dirty. It resembles a
thin pudding or a powder depending on how it’s treated. It can contain viruses, bacteria,
chemicals and cancer-causing heavy metals.
“Now this sewage sludge includes not just human waste, it includes Pine Sol if you clean your
toilet bowl with Pine Sol, or if you do oil painting and you flush the paints down the drain or if
you work in a chemistry lab….”
Eric Giroux is an attorney for Earthjustice. He’s handling a lawsuit for Tommy Drymon and his
neighbors. It claims sewage sludge dumped on farms there is wafting through the air making
them sick and running off into the creek.
There are federal, state and county rules meant to prevent runoff. There are buffer zones from
water bodies and rules to protect groundwater. But sludge is not always applied according to the
rules. And there are things missing from the rules – according to The Cornell Waste
Management Institute. They don’t deal with poisons such as flame retardants, the drugs we take
and toxic chemicals that harm fish and wildlife and inhibit plant growth.
But those who use sludge as fertilizer like it.
“It’s a product that has to have something done with it. And if it’s done properly there are no
problems.”
Dennis Carlton has used the free product on his cow pastures for ten years. He says the calves
raised on those pastures end up weighing more than others. Sludge saves him sixty to 160 dollars
an acre on expensive chemicals.
“It’s cost effective and it does a better job than the commercial fertilizer because it last longer
because of the slow release qualities.”
Sludge contains lots of nitrogen – which is food for plants. It’s organic. Plants absorb it very
slowly. And that’s good.
Since 1997, University of Florida Soil scientist Martin Adjei has compared typical commercial
fertilizer – ammonium nitrate – with sludge. He says his studies show the good stuff in sludge gets
into the plants very nicely, and he says plants don’t seem to absorb the heavy metals.
“We measured lead, barium, cadmium, nickel in the plant. They were all point zero, zero two or
something parts per million in the plant.”
That’s lower than the EPA says it has to be. Adjei says only trace amounts of metals sunk into the
groundwater. He doesn’t know yet whether the metals drift into the soil. But he found too much
of the nutrient phosphorous builds up in the soil when fertilized with sludge year after year. He
admits there are many more tests to be done.
This year the EPA responded to complaints about sludge. It plans to test it for 50 chemicals – far
more than ever before. Geff Grubbs is the EPA’s Director of Science and Technology.
“We’re focusing on a couple of things, one is beginning to ramp up some of the research
investments to strengthen our understanding of some of the processes and nature of the
contaminants that could be present in sludge and what risk they might or might not pose. And we
do have a number of things that are in the works both near and longer term that might lead to
changes in the underlying regulations about what can be in biosolids before they are applied to
land.”
And, the EPA and a few industry groups have created a best practices program for willing
utilities. They pledge to control the odor and dust as well as manage the nutrients in their sludge.
The utilities are then audited by impartial, independent, third parties. There are only 48
municipalities participating nationwide.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Amy Tardif.
People who come to the United States to escape persecution in their home country often face two major adjustments: Life in a new country, and life—for the first time—in a major city. A farm in Illinois takes part in a program designed to ease that transition. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:
Transcript
People who come to the United States to escape persecution in their
home country
often face two major adjustments: Life in a new country, and life—for
the first
time—in a major city. A farm in Illinois takes part in a program
designed to ease
that transition. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman
reports:
The demons of torture were threatening to rob Thaddee Essomba of his
life.
Essomba was a political activist in the West African nation of
Cameroon.
Someone evidently didn’t share Essomba’s views, and they wanted to make
him
pay.
Essomba fled Cameroon, leaving behind his home, his family, and
everything he
knew. He didn’t stop running until he arrived in Chicago.
Chicago was unlike anything Essomba had ever seen. Skyscrapers,
apartment
complexes and elevated trains were all new to him. Miles and miles of
concrete
and asphalt surrounded him. Adjusting to life in the city was almost
as difficult as
adjusting to life in a new country. All this, while trying to recover
from the
physical and psychological scars of torture.
Then, Thaddee Essomba discovered the farm.
(sound of farm fades in)
“For me to come here is really to go back to the source. Because when
you live in
the city, you know you get a little bit, you like to be in touch with
the nature. And
really I was missing that.”
(sound of goats)
The farm is called Angelic Organics. For the past decade it’s been
hosting visitors
from the Marjorie Kovler Center for Survivors of Torture in Chicago.
The Center
helps people fleeing persecution to recover and re-settle in the United
States.
People come to the center from all over the world. Many of them are
from rural
areas and aren’t used to living in a city.
Tom Spaulding is a former volunteer at the Kovler Center. He now works
at
Angelic Organics Farm. He says a visit to the farm can be a key stop
on the road
to recovery for torture victims.
“They’re living now in Chicago in a huge metropolitan area, and they’re
from rural
backgrounds, and some of them are farmers. And to be on a farm that’s
somewhat
like what they were used to back home—because it’s a small farm, it’s
diversified
vegetables and livestock. And so it’s, maybe it’s just because it
touches a lot of
things from peoples’…what was familiar from back home. And maybe that
in a
sense helps.”
For many of the people here, it’s a familiar setting. John Fallah
fled a civil war in
Liberia two years ago. He had to leave his family behind when he
escaped.
While he says he enjoys life in Chicago because he doesn’t feel
threatened
anymore, Fallah says the farm reminds him of home…
“I’m very much impressed of what I am seeing on this farm. There is no
difference from how we do the farming in Africa and here.”
(sound of chickens, goats)
This was Fallah’s first visit to the farm. Some of the Kovler Center’s
clients have
made the 80-mile trip from Chicago many times. Thaddee Essomba says
the farm
has become an important part of his life.
“When I came here you know I feel myself very relaxed. I enjoy myself,
you
know, my soul was really in touch with the nature, and I feel very
happy you
know and why sometime every year I try to come back to be, to feel that
sensation.”
For Essomba and the other survivors of torture, that sensation can be
an important
part of the healing process.
Essomba has even found a way to give back to the community surrounding
the
farm. He’s been teaching area kids about life in his native country.
It’s a land far
away, a place the kids have probably even never heard of. But as
Essomba has
learned, the nation of Cameroon has some very important things in
common with
the rural Midwest.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris Lehman.
In the Great Lakes states, many of the original forests were cut down. They were cleared for homesteading, farming, and for the wood that fueled the age of steam. But over the past several decades, some of the forests have been growing back. Many of the new forests are confined to small patches or woodlots surrounded by farm fields. These woodlots are small havens for animals. But some foresters, biologists, and environmental groups are concerned that those forests are simply too small and too fragmented. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Cristina Rumbaitis-del Rio prepared this report:
Transcript
In the Great Lakes States, many of the original forests were cut down. They were cleared for
homesteading, farming, and for the wood that fueled the age of steam. But over the past several
decades, some of the forests have been growing back. Many of the new forests are confined to
small patches or woodlots surrounded by farm fields. These woodlots are small havens for many
animals. But some foresters, biologists, and environmental groups are concerned that those
forests are simply too small and too fragmented. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Cristina
Rumbaitis(rum-bite-us)-del rio (del-rhee-o) prepared this report:
(Natural sounds – walking through leaves underneath) & Thomas Grubb talking:
“This little woodlot is large enough to house one pair of downy woodpeckers and one pair of
white breasted nuthatches.”
Thomas Grubb is a Biology Professor at Ohio State University. Instead of lecturing to a classroom
today, he’s strolling through a small, private woodlot next to a cornfield in central Ohio. This is
one of the study sites where he looks at how forest fragmentation affects woodland bird species.
He says just as in many areas of the Midwest, Ohio’s forests are highly fragmented because
instead of having the forest concentrated in one big area, the forests are carved up into small
patches, scattered throughout a largely agricultural landscape. While 90% of Ohio was covered
with forest before European settlement, now less than a third of the state is considered forested.
And according to Grubb, this part of Ohio has even less forest.
“This plot is about 3% forested and that’s not much forest. This landscape is probably as little
forested as any you’re likely to find.”
Grubb and his students are working with woodlot owners to see if the size of a woodlot affects
the number of birds living there and their survival. He says bird survival is better in larger
woodlots than in smaller ones.
“One of the things we think is happening in these small woodlots, these permanent resident birds
that are there all winter- they can’t get out of the wind, and so they have tremendously high
metabolic rates trying to stay warm.”
Smaller woodlots may be colder than larger ones because there’s fewer trees to block the wind.
Smaller woodlots also have less food for birds, and in the winter birds may starve trying to get
enough food to stay warm.
(Natural sounds of leaves and birds)
“Oh that’s a Carolina Wren.”
Forestry officials, scientists, and environmental groups agree forest fragmentation is one of the
most serious problems facing Ohio’s forests. Fragmentation is a problem for a number of reasons
beyond the fact that it represents a loss of forest habitat. According to Ohio State University
Ecologist, Ralph Boerner, the smaller a forest patch is, the fewer number of species that can live
there.
“The smaller a forest patch, the less diverse it is. And you particularly lose species that need
large areas in which to gather food.”
Boerner says smaller patches may also have a harder time recovering from disturbances – like an
insect outbreak or a tornado.
“We also believe there is a link between how diverse an ecosystem is and how stable it is in the face of disturbnace, so when you lose diversity there’s the potential to lose stability, lose the ability to bounce back
from disturbance.”
Breaking up the forest into patches also isolates animal and bird species that can’t or won’t cross
agricultural fields to get from one forest patch to another, and that means less genetic diversity
because they can’t mate with animals outside of their forest patch. So some woodlots are just too
small for certain species to survive.
Fragmentation also makes managing forest land more difficult. Most of Ohio’s forested land is
privately owned. Ohio Division of Forestry official, Tom Berger, says this makes managing
almost an impossible task.
Well, you’ll have 10 people and they’ll have 10 different views on how to manage it or what’s
valuable to them and they all have that right.”
Division of Forestry officials can give landowners advice, but they can’t tell a landowner what
their priorities should be. Berger says this often means neighboring patches of forest are managed
for completely different interests. Berger wishes he had more tools at his disposal to get land
owners to manage their land collectively.
“I wish we could put together some programs or some incentives, monies available through the
state or federal government that would really encourage landowners to work together to form
blocks or units that would be managed in the same way.”
Managing isn’t the only challenge. Berger says keeping the land at least partially forested is
becoming a problem as people choose to build homes in woodlots, particularly in areas near
cities.
“Not only is the woods scattered that we have fragmented, but a lot of them continue to
disappear too, especially in the urbanized areas in Columbus and around the state.”
Ohio State University Biologist, Thomas Grubb, says there are may reasons for protecting
woodlots, but his favorite reason is because it’s a pocket of nature in a sea of developed land.
“This is worth preserving just because it’s like it is and we ought to just leave it alone. This enriches our lives.”
The average woodlot size in Ohio is 20 acres, and it changes hands frequently – every seven years on average. The small size and the quick turnover make it nearly impossible for the state to
encourage owners to establish any kind of useful management practices. That means there’s little
to be done to help keep the forests from further deterioration.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Cristina Rumbaitis-del Rio.
Marian Byrnes has been called the "environmental conscience of the Calumet." She has been a key leader in getting the city of Chicago, and the state of Illinois, to see the value of Calumet's natural areas. Photo by Mark Brush.
The Big Marsh is known as the jewel of the Lake Calumet wetlands. It's the largest in the Calumet Open Space Reserve. The closed Acme Coke Plant is on the horizon. Photo by Mark Brush.
Generations of families grew up with the steel industry, and instead of moving out, families often added on to their houses to make more room. These balloon frame houses can be found throughout the neighborhoods in the Calumet area. Photo by Mark Brush.
In an area in south Chicago you can see the remnants of a steel industry that has had better days – silent smokestacks looming on the horizon, empty parking lots, and for sale signs in front yards. The Calumet region was once a haven for big industry… and because of that it is also home to a list of seemingly endless environmental problems. Many people thought the problems were too great to overcome, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports… that attitude is changing:
Transcript
In an area in south Chicago you can see the remnants of a steel industry that has had better days – silent smokestacks looming on the horizon, empty parking lots, and for sale signs in front yards. The Calumet region was once a haven for big industry… and because of that it is also home to a list of seemingly endless environmental problems. Many people thought the problems were too great to overcome, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports…that attitude is changing:
If you’ve ever driven by Chicago’s south side, you’ve likely seen the smokestacks and factories that dot this old industrial area.
But when you get off the main highway and drive down the back roads of Calumet, you see something you wouldn’t expect – remnants of unique wetlands and prairies. It’s an area where thousands of migrating birds come each spring. Herons, egrets, and cranes carefully pluck their food from these marshes – marshes that are right next to chemical factories and toxic city dumps.
(Bring up sound of sparrows and outdoors)
The sun is setting in this part of the Calumet – some sparrows nearby are settling down for the night – and Marian Byrnes is showing me around the places she’s come to know from living and working here for more than 20 years.
“This land is mostly slag on the banks of Indian Creek, but it’s not considered hazardous.”
“How would the slag get here?”
“Oh, it was waste from Steel Mills – mostly Republic Steel which was north of here.”
(Fade her under + continue outdoor sound)
Marian Byrnes is a retired public school teacher. And at age 76, she volunteers her time as the executive director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force. She repeatedly meets with businesses, community groups, and city and state advisory boards – patiently delivering her message that the Calumet region is worth protecting.
And over the years Marian, and others like her, have steadily worked against a city that didn’t seem to care about the natural areas in Calumet. For many of them, it began more than twenty years ago, when they got a note from the Chicago Transit Authority in their mailbox. The note outlined the Transit Authority’s plan to build a bus barn on their neighborhood’s prairie:
“It was like having our own little forest preserve right behind our houses. You can walk out there, and when you get out – maybe a block or so – you’re not aware that you’re in the city at all. I mean you can’t even see the houses, so it’s just a wonderful place to be in touch with nature.”
They convinced the transit authority to build the bus-barn elsewhere. And in the years that followed they fought off other proposals such as plans to build a toxic waste incinerator, and plans to re-open old city dumps.
But despite those successes, big environmental problems still persist. And the list of contamination is intimidating – heavy metals, PCBs, and leaking landfills. The problems are so overwhelming that when planners in Chicago were thinking about spreading miles and miles of concrete for a new airport, Calumet was thought of as an ideal location.
Kathy Dickhut works in the planning department for the city of Chicago:
“The area does have a lot of environmental problems. Ten years ago the thinking was it was all dirty, environmentally dirty, and that was sort of across the board, …so one way to deal with that is, you know to cover the whole thing up.”
But local environmental and community groups became united in their opposition to the plan. And instead of an airport, the local groups asked the National Park Service to designate the area as an ecological park.
And slowly but surely, the city began to look at the area in a new light:
“I think people didn’t realize just how much opposition there would be to paving over this area. I mean the airport proposal was quite dramatic, and because it was quite dramatic, there was quite dramatic outcry about it – so once that played out – we had to look at it again in a different way. And what we’ve done is really look at the resources that we do have here, which are substantial, and how we can improve those.”
Today, the city appears to have a completely different attitude about the Calumet area. Chicago lawmakers recently passed a land use plan that calls for the best of both worlds. They want to protect and clean up the natural prairies and wetlands – while at the same time – attract new businesses to build on old industrial sites.
City planners hope to balance what may be seen as competing goals (attracting new industries AND cleaning up the environment) by prioritizing where to build and where to preserve. And when they do build – planners are encouraging green building practices. Practices that complement the surrounding natural areas rather than cover them.
Those involved with the project paint a pretty nice picture of what’s to come.
Lynn Westphal is a researcher for the U.S. Forest Service, and works closely with the city of Chicago on the Calumet project: “Imagine an industrial area with the buildings roofs are green. Where instead of turf around – you have native grasses and because of that you have more birds and butterflies… you’ve got bicycle access, people fishing on their lunch breaks…. And it’s not far from becoming a reality. This is all very doable. So it’s not totally hypothetical.”
And in fact, movement toward that new vision is already underway. The Ford Motor Company is building a new industrial park for its suppliers. And many of the green building practices Westphal describes will be used. And the Corps of Engineers is spending more than 6 million dollars to clean up an area known as Indian Ridge Marsh.
But those involved with the transition of this area say that leadership from the community will be the key to its eventual success.
Meanwhile, the Southeast Environmental Task Force will have a new executive director by this summer…
“…and that’ll be someone who’ll learn to do what I’ve been doing for past 20 years, cause I can’t keep on doing it indefinitely.”
“Do you have any advice for them?”
“Have a lot of patience…”
The same patience Marian Byrnes has used when riding a city bus to meeting after meeting, listening to the community, and working with city officials – all in an effort to create what she believes will be a better future for the people in Calumet.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.
In the mid-1960’s, the federal government started requiring metropolitan areas to come up with regional plans in order to get government grants for everything from highways to housing. That forced officials from large cities and from the suburbs to sit down at the same table (in many cases for the first time) and think about what was best for the entire region; not just their own town. From this effort, sprang the regional planning movement, but things aren’t always easy, and certainly don’t always go ‘according to plan.’ The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on one region’s attempt to plan for growth:
There are four major regional planning orgnizations in the Chicago metro area:
In the
mid-1960’s, the federal government started requiring metropolitan areas to come up with regional plans in order to get government grants for everything from highways to housing. That forced officials from large cities and from the suburbs to sit down at the same table — in many cases for the first time — and think about what was best for the entire region, not just their own town. From this effort, sprang the regional planning movement. But things aren’t always easy and certainly don’t always go ‘according to plan.’ The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on one region’s attempt to plan for growth:
If you were to gather around the coffee pot in the morning at just about any place of business in just about any suburb of just about any big city, the topic of conversation would probably not be the weather, or last night’s big game, or even politics. Nope. More than likely it would be about how long it took to get to work. Lots of people drive an hour, ninety minutes, or even longer to make the commute. So, why not move closer, you might ask. The answer could very well be “Can’t afford it.”
Housing costs in many suburbs are so high that the people who teach the kids, fight the fires, and fix the cars in the nice suburbs have to live in other less affluent communities where housing is cheaper. That’s because city officials in many suburbs encourage the building of expensive houses on big lots because it means a better tax base. But that also means many workers need to hop in their cars to get to work in those fancy suburbs.
Of course, when thousands of cars line up bumper to bumper to make the commute, you get traffic congestion.
“If you think it’s bad now, just wait. It’s gonna get worse.”
That’s Frank Beale. He’s the Executive Director of a group named Chicago Metropolis 2020. Metropolis 2020 put together a plan that looked at the Chicago area’s growth patterns and came up with some pretty dire forecasts. According to the study, if the Chicago region conducts business as usual, by the year 2030 there will be a 75-percent increase in auto miles traveled for work, shopping, and normal everyday trips. The time it takes to drive to work will be up 27-percent. And only about seven-and-a-half percent of housing units will be within walking distance of mass transit.
Beale says there’s seems to be a disconnect between local governments’ decisions to encourage big, expensive houses and the resulting need for more roads and additional lanes of traffic to handle all the commuters.
“More equitable
distribution of affordable housing and the employment centers would diminish the demand on the transportation systems. We seem to always only talk about roads. But, we only need roads because of how we’ve configured the land in the region.” Beyond the travel concerns, business as usual — according to the Metropolis 2020 study — means another 383 square miles of farmland will become subdivisions and strip malls in less than 30 years.
Organizations such as Metropolis 2020 are working together to try to educate and persuade the Chicago region’s 275 suburban mayors that the decisions they make will have an effect on the whole region.
Larry Christmas was once one of those mayors. He’s also spent his career running or working for regional planning agencies. He says as a mayor, it’s hard to think about the larger region when you are working to bring good growth to your town. It’s especially hard when regional planners want you to give up local control of land-use for the betterment of the larger region.
“And that’s something the communities don’t want to give up lightly even if there’s a regional argument that the collective local decisions may add up to bad regional development patterns.”
So, those looking at the big picture have their work cut out for them. The regional planners spend a lot of time at meetings with local officials, putting together roundtables to explain plans and trying to schedule meetings between antagonists.
One of the partners of Metropolis 2020 is the Metropolitan Planning Council. Executive Director Mary Sue Barrett says sitting down with those different interests and getting them to consider the reasons for bending a little here and there to adhere to a regional plan can pay off.
“To put it in practical terms, if you can get an environmentalist and a homebuilder and a mayor to agree on something, you can probably go get it done. And that’s what we try to do.”
And the regional planners try to get the mayors to listen on topics ranging from fair and equitable housing, to public transportation, and even taxing systems that sometimes encourage bad development with tax breaks.
But given the kind of expansive sprawl that continues to plague the Chicago metropolitan area, there’s still one question you have to ask of people such as Frank Beale with Chicago Metropolis 2020. That is: who’s listening?
“Well, the general assembly, the legislators are listening, the Mayor, the 275 suburban mayors are listening. They don’t always agree, but they’re listening.”
And as long as they keep listening, the people looking for better regional planning will keep trying to persuade the cities in the suburbs there’s a better way.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
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:
The Bush Administration wants authority over states to approve putting new power transmission lines where they’re needed. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports… some governors don’t think that’s necessary:
Transcript
The Bush Administration wants authority over states to approve putting new power transmission lines where they’re needed. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports some governors don’t think that’s necessary.
Right now, states have the right to approve where power lines are built. But energy secretary Spencer Abraham recently told governors if the states didn’t cooperate with the Bush Energy Plan to put up more power transmission lines, the President would ask Congress for federal eminent domain powers. That would give the administration the power to condemn land and take it over. Reports say many of the governors are resistant to the plan, saying the authority to site new power lines should be kept at state and local levels. But some governors agree that if states balk, the federal authority should be granted. The Bush Energy Plan calls for more power lines to eliminate so-called bottlenecks in the nation’s power grid.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
As of this month (Oct.), there are six billion people on the planet and
the population will keep rising. It’s predicted the population will hit
eight-and-half billion by the year 2025. But some experts say the demand
for food will rise even faster. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports… feeding the world will be one of the biggest
challenges of the coming century:
