A growing number of institutions and governments are turning to renewable energy for their electricity. The GLRC’s Brad Linder reports:
Transcript
A growing number of institutions and governments are turning to renewable
energy for their electricity. The GLRC’s Brad Linder reports:
According to the EPA, the U.S. Air Force is the top buyer of renewable
energy in the country, with over a million megawatts of electricity
coming from wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal sources. Whole Foods Market, Johnson
& Johnson, and Starbucks also rank high on the
list.
The state government of Pennsylvania recently announced it would
double its purchase of wind and hydroelectric energy. State Environmental Secretary
Kathleen McGinty says the program will cost the state about half a million dollars. That’s
less than one percent of its total electric bill.
“So instead of us sending literally 30 billion dollars out of the state that Pennsylvanians
currently do to buy energy resources from abroad, we are investing in our own energy
resources here at home.
The doubling of its purchase makes Pennsylvania the biggest buyer of green energy
among state governments.
Across the country, nuclear power plants are running out of room to store nuclear waste. The GLRC’s Brad Linder reports temporary storage at some plants is decades old:
Transcript
Across the country, nuclear power plants are running out of room to store
nuclear waste. The GLRC’s Brad Linder reports temporary storage at some
plants is decades old:
With no consensus on a plan to store the nation’s spent nuclear fuel in
one location, power plants are storing the waste onsite. For example, in
Limerick, Pennsylvania officials say they’re concerned about the plans to
build concrete casks to store nuclear waste outside a power plant. For
decades, they’ve been using storage pools inside the plant.
The proposed casks are described as temporary, but Assistant County
Planning Commissioner Mike Stokes says temporary storage at the plant
doesn’t mean much:
“They’ve been the permanent storage facility for every ounce of fuel used
at the power plant since it was first opened 20 years ago. So we can’t
always believe that things will be temporary.”
A spokesperson for Exelon Power, the owner of the Limerick plant and many others, says
the concrete casks are safe. Exelon says the casks are designed to withstand tornado-
force winds, or strikes from projectiles.
Just outside the Greensgrow compound (photo by Brad Linder)
Greensgrow not only makes fresh produce available in the city but also makes a farm out of what once was a brownfield space. (photo by Brad
Linder)
A farm is a strange thing to see in the middle of a gritty, urban area.
But the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder recently visited a small
farm on what used to be a polluted site in an industrial neighborhood:
Transcript
A farm is a strange thing to see in the middle of an gritty, urban area.
But the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder recently visited a
small farm on what used to be a polluted site in an industrial
neighborhood:
One of the first things you notice about this one-acre plot in
Philadelphia is how out of place the farm looks. About a block away is a
busy interstate highway that jams up with rush hour traffic twice a day.
The farm itself is surrounded by rowhouses, a steel galvanizing plant, and
an auto detail shop.
Chino Rosatto runs the auto shop. About 8 years ago, he first met his new
neighbors – a small group of farmers.
”It was weird at first, you don’t see no farm in the city.”
But Rosatto says he got used to the farm started by Mary Seton Corboy
pretty quickly.
“It was an empty lot. Nothing there. Just fenced up, and that was it. She
came up, did something with it.”
Before it was an empty lot, this city block was a steel plant. In 1988
the building was demolished, and the EPA declared the site hazardous.
It was cleaned up, but Rosatto says it was nothing but concrete slabs
until Mary Seton Corboy and her small group of volunteers came and started
the farm they call Greensgrow.
Corboy moved to Philadelphia from the suburbs nearly a decade ago. With a
background as a chef, she’d always been concerned about how hard it was to
find fresh produce. So she decided to grow it herself.
“The question that just kept coming up over and over again was, is there
any reason why you have to be in a rural area to grow food, given the fact
that the market for the food, the largest market for the food, is in the
urban area?”
Corboy says usually food travels an average of 1500 miles from its source
to wind up on most Americans plates. And she says when it comes to flavor
– nothing is more important than how fresh the food is.
“If you eat strawberries that are commercially available,
you have no taste recognition of something that people 40 years ago would
say is a strawberry, because of the refrigeration, because of the way they
are picked underripe, because of the things they are sprayed with to give
them a longer shelf life.”
Corboy says her first choice for a farm wouldn’t have been an abandoned
industrial site. But the rent was cheaper than it would be at almost any
other spot in the city.
And even though the EPA and scientists from Penn State University
confirmed that there were no toxic chemicals left, Corboy doesn’t plant
anything edible in the ground.
She grows some plants in greenhouses. Others are planted in raised soil
beds. And she grows lettuce in PVC pipes that deliver nutrients to the
plants without any soil at all.
Corboy still regularly sends plant samples out for testing. The results?
“At one point Penn State sent us back a report, we talked to
them on the phone about it, and they said your stuff is actually cleaner
than stuff that we’ve seen grown on farms. Go figure that. We feel very, very comfortable
with the produce that we grow. Because, you know, I’ve been living on it
myself for 8 years.”
And restaurant owners say they’re happy to buy some of the freshest
produce available.
Judy Wicks is owner the White Dog Cafe, a Philadelphia
restaurant that specializes in locally grown foods and meat from animals
raised in humane conditions. She’s been a loyal Greensgrow customer for 8
years.
“As soon as we heard about Greensgrow, we were really excited
about the idea of supporting an urban farm on a brownfield – what a
dream! To you know, take an unsightly, unused block, and turn it into a
farm. It’s just a really exciting concept.”
Wicks says she’s never had a concern about the quality of the food,
because of the care taken to prevent it from touching the soil.
In addition to its restaurant business, Greensgrow sells fruit and
vegetables to Philadelphia residents at a farmer’s market twice a week.
The farm also operates one of the only nurseries in the city, which begins
selling plants this spring.
Mary Seton Corboy says running the farm has taught her a lot about food,
the environment, and waste. She says she doesn’t look at empty lots the
same way anymore. She’s learned to squeeze fruits, vegetables and flowers
out of every space of this city block. And she sees value in the things
other people throw out.
On a recent night Corboy was driving home with her farm manager Beth Kean,
and they spotted a pile of trash beside a building.
“But what they had dumped were all these pallets. And Beth
was with me in the car, and we both turned and looked at them and went,
Look at those pallets! Let’s come back and get them, they’re in great
shape!”
Urban farming is tough. Corboy originally had lofty goals for her farm.
Greensgrow was going to be a pilot project, something she’d expand to
include 10 farms throughout Philadelphia.
8 years later, Greensgrow is still anchored on its original one-acre site.
But by keeping her costs low and selling to loyal customers, Corboy sold
200-thousand dollars worth of produce last year. That was enough to make
2004 the farm’s first profitable year.
Work is now being done to reduce mercury emissions. Pennsylvania pioneers an incentive program for the removal of mercury switches from cars. (Photo by Davide Guglielmo)
One of the nation’s top sources of mercury emissions is
scrap automobiles. U.S. automobiles built before 2003 used mercury in light and brake switches. When those cars are recycled, the mercury can escape into the air. Now one state in the region is working to prevent that from happening. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:
Transcript
One of the nation’s top sources of mercury emissions is scrap automobiles.
U.S. automobiles built before 2003 used mercury in light and brake
switches. When those cars are recycled, the mercury can escape into the
air. Now one state in the region is working to prevent that from
happening. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:
Mercury is a neurotoxin that can be found in the air, water, and soil.
Pregnant women who eat fish with high levels of mercury might see
developmental delays in their children after they’re born.
Pennsylvania is the first state in the nation to offer a bounty on mercury
switches from cars. This month, the state started offering a dollar per
switch to automobile recyclers.
Kathleen McGinty heads the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.
She says the goal is to reclaim 350-thousand switches, or nearly 600
pounds of mercury over the next two years. The material will be sent to
mercury recyclers.
“They safely take that mercury, they clean it up, they put it back into some products where it is still essential that we still use mercury.”
McGinty says the mercury can be reused in products ranging from
fluorescent lighting to dental fillings. She says mercury emissions from scrap automobiles are second only to coal-burning power plants in Pennsylvania.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.
Joe and Brenda Cochran stand on their 213 acre farm in Northern Pennsylvania. The couple is suing the government over the national "Got Milk?" advertising campaign that they are required to pay into. (Photo by Brad Linder)
Dairy cows on Joe and Brenda Cochran's farm. (Photo by Brad Linder)
Dairy farmers across the country contribute part of their paychecks into a government program which pays for a national advertising campaign. Supporters say the “Got Milk?” and “3-A-Day” messages have helped keep the price of milk strong. But one small dairy farm is taking on the U.S. government. The farmers say their milk is different – and they don’t want to pay to advertise their competitors’ product. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:
Transcript
Dairy farmers across the country contribute part of their paychecks
into a government program which pays for a national advertising campaign. Supporters say the “Got Milk?” and “3-A-Day” messages have helped keep the price of milk strong. But one small dairy farm is taking on the U.S. government. The farmers
say their milk is different — and they don’t want to pay to advertise
their competitors’ product. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad
Linder reports:
Joe and Brenda Cochran wake up early every morning to milk the cows at 5:30. Joe says the 200 acre farm in Pennsylvania isn’t much, but it’s been home for him and his wife, Brenda and their 14 children since 1993.
“This farm here is just a basic dairy production facility. It’s nothing fancy whatsoever. It’s like most other farms in the country. But we do do things a little bit different. And we think that makes our milk a little bit different.”
Cochran says what distinguishes his milk from most of what winds up on
supermarket shelves is simple. His farm is what he calls “traditional.” No growth hormones for the cows. And when it’s warm out, they aren’t kept in a feedlot. They graze.
“It’s not organic, okay? But I think it is a better product. My family drinks milk out of that bulk tank straight. We don’t pasteurize it or touch it. We go up and get it and drink. And I’d like to think anybody could do that. I wouldn’t want to drink any milk that has this bovine growth hormone or a lot of the ways other people treat their cows
and treat their product.”
Like all dairy farmers, the Cochrans pay into the dairy checkoff program. For every hundred pounds of milk they sell, they pay 15 cents to a federal program. That amounts to about ten-percent of their profits. That money pays for dairy promotions, including the “Got Milk?” campaign, which made the milk-moustache famous.
The group that administers the advertising program and research into health benefits of milk is Dairy Management. Paul Rovey is the chairman. Rovey says the dairy checkoff was created in 1983 to raise demand for dairy products in response to falling milk prices.
“Each individual dairy farmer would not have that kind of opportunity to do the research, the advertising, and so by collectively together having this checkoff, where everybody contributes, and everybody benefits is how we can then afford to do the fantastic research we’ve done, to do the advertising.”
Rovey calls the program a success. Since Congress created the checkoff in
1983, the average person’s milk consumption has gone up by 12 percent.
But Joe and Brenda Cochran say the checkoff program hasn’t made any difference for their farm. Brenda says she doesn’t understand why they’re being forced to pay into a federal program which pays to advertise everybody’s milk, and not just their own.
“The government is forcing us to contribute materially to a program that gives consumers the message that food, in this case dairy products, are generic. And we’re saying that no food is generic. Especially our dairy products are not generic.”
The Cochrans says the dairy checkoff violates their freedom of speech, by
requiring them to pay for advertising that treats milk from their farm just like everybody else’s.
But Dairy Management’s Paul Rovey says that’s exactly how it should be
promoted.
“Generic promotion benefits and raises the demand for all dairy, including the Cochrans. Milk is milk, and when we help increase demand for dairy and milk, it does it for everybody, and they benefit, we all benefit from the generic programs.”
Rovey says most farmers he talks to are very supportive of the program. But Joe Cochran asks if they’re so supportive, why can’t the program just be voluntary?
The Cochrans recently won their case against the checkoff at the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals. An appeal is pending. But as long as a group of libertarian think tanks are willing to pay the legal costs, Joe Cochran says he’ll take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court.
Joe Cochran is a third generation farmer, but he says with milk prices
still low and the forced payments to the checkoff program, he wouldn’t be
surprised if this is the last generation of Cochran farmers. His kids
can’t make money staying on the farm.
“I’d love to see them go into dairy farming. As a matter of fact, my oldest son farmed with us here up until last March, a year ago. And the reason why he had to leave is because of the financial problems. He was getting married, and he had to have an income, and we could not provide it for him.”
If Cochran succeeds in ending the checkoff program, then the true trial
begins. That will be when farmers discover whether it costs more to
contribute to the federal advertising program – or if it costs more not
to.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.
Junk cars dumped on the banks of the Illinois River. (Photo
by Romy Myszka)
Americans generate 14-billion tons of waste each year. Most of that trash winds up in landfills, some of it is recycled. But some of it slips through the cracks, winding up in illegal trash dumps throughout the country. Environmental officials are cleaning up a 7-acre pile of waste that was overlooked for so long that it caught fire a few years ago – and kept burning. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:
Transcript
Americans generate 14-billion tons of waste each year. Most of that trash winds up
in landfills,
some of it is recycled. But some of it slips through the cracks, winding up in
illegal trash dumps
throughout the country. Environmental officials are cleaning up a 7-acre pile of
waste that was
overlooked for so long that it caught fire a few years ago — and kept burning. The
Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:
Tucked away in a non-residential section of South Philadelphia, just around the
corner from the
Philadelphia Airport, lies a heap of construction debris. The material was dumped
here years ago
by a demolition contractor, and left to rot…
Occasionally sparking up into flame, the densely packed wood, metal, carpet, and
other debris has
been smoldering below the surface for the past few years.
Down the street is a police impoundment lot, and the Water Department’s waste
treatment site.
And directly across from the dump is a series of community gardens.
Edward Burnabiel’s been tending vegetables here for two decades.
Burnabiel spends six days a week in his garden. He jokes that it would be seven if
his wife didn’t
drag him to church on Sundays.
A few years ago, he and his fellow gardeners noticed something unusual at the trash
pile across
the street. Every now and again, smoke would billow up from the site — and combine
with the
stench from the nearby sewer plant.
“The smell was awful when it started burning. It would stink, even to go by. It’s
bad enough we
have to smell the poop down there, but then we got to smell that too!”
The gardeners complained to the city. But the trash has been around for well over a
decade.
Kathleen McGinty is Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
Protection.
She says the contractor responsible for the mess has long-since disappeared. That
contractor,
Harold Emerson, also skipped out on a 5-million dollar fine for illegal dumping.
“About thirteen years ago, Mr. Emerson was contracted to take some houses down in
Philadelphia. As part of the deal, for a one year window of time, the agreement was
that he could
temporarily store some of that construction debris here. What Mr. Emerson
conveniently forgot
was the temporary part. And he just took off without ever having done that.”
Today, the trash pile is sometimes referred to as the “Emerson Dump.”
Environmentalists
worried that the burning trash could be a health risk. Construction debris can
include hazardous
chemicals like arsenic. But city Managing Director Phil Goldsmith says tests showed
the fumes
weren’t dangerous. Still, he says cleanup was long overdue.
“Fourteen years for something like this to be sitting around is far too long. And
it’s become a
nuisance. It’s been a place where our fire department has had to come to put out
fires. We should
not have allowed this to happen in the first place. And once it happened, we should
not have
allowed to have it continue here for so long.”
The Emerson Dump is hardly unique. There are illegal dumps all across the country.
But most
are hidden in forests or other out-of-the-way areas, and don’t have the high profile
that comes
with a flaming pile of trash in an urban setting.
Allen Hershkowitz is with the environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense
Council. He
says illegal dumping is often overlooked for more serious environmental concerns,
such as air
and water pollution, or global warming. But he says it’s still a problem
authorities must deal
with.
“In the next 10 years, this country will have to manage about 140-billion tons of
waste of
different types. More than 2/3rds are managed in ecologically inferiors ways,
landfills, surface
impoundments, or incinerators. When you illegally dump waste, you make it that much
harder
for that material to wind up being recycled or properly disposed of.”
Hershkowitz says illegal dumping is directly related to the cost of proper waste
disposal.
Dumping was most prevalent in the late 70s and early 80s, when strict environmental
regulations
led many landfills to close, driving up the costs of waste hauling. Illegal dumping
still occurs,
Hershkowitz says, but less frequently.
Pennsylvania officials are still hunting for demolition contractor Harold Emerson to
force him to
pay his 5-million dollar fine.
But in the meantime, state and city taxpayers are funding a 3-million dollar cleanup
effort. The
fire’s been extinguished, but cleanup efforts are expected to continue through the
end of the year.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.
Each fall, thousands of hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey fly hundreds of miles in search of warmer climates. And between August and December, nearly 70-thousand people will climb to the top of a bird sanctuary called Hawk Mountain to get a closer look at those birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:
Transcript
Each fall, about thousands of hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey fly hundreds of miles
in search of warmer climates. And between August and December, nearly 70-thousand
people will climb to the top of a bird sanctuary called Hawk Mountain to get a closer
look at those birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:
“Those of you haven’t found the osprey, it’s over there at owl’s head, naked eye here to
the right.”
On a clear day, the view from atop Hawk Mountain stretches for more than fifty miles.
But on this particularly hazy Saturday afternoon, bird-watchers are pushing their
binoculars and telescopes to the limits.
“Well, we’re making them out there, they’re coming in. It’s like you just gotta wait ’til
they get a little closer than what they typically do. They’ve been popping out of clouds
and haze all day for us.”
Doug Wood is a volunteer at Hawk Mountain in Eastern Pennsylvania. This afternoon,
he’s the official bird counter.
“We’re basically taking a lot of field information. Wind, weather, temperature, cloud
cover, wind direction. And then we’re basically monitoring the birds’ species, age, sex,
and recording it every hour.
“Look! An Osprey! And then fade to scene change.”
Researchers at Hawk Mountain have been keeping records of osprey and other migratory
raptors for more than seventy years, making it the oldest monitoring station in the world.
In the early twentieth century, hunters would shoot thousands of birds from the
mountainside each year. Today, people travel from all over the world to shoot birds with
their cameras.
Matt Wong came all the way from New Zealand to study at the sanctuary.
“Hawk Mountain is internationally renowned as a hawk watch site. And also a place
where big research actually happens. Now, not many of the locals around Pennsylvania
actually realize this, but it’s actually huge on the international scene. It’s world
recognized, and that’s one of the reasons why I came here.”
In Wong’s country, there are only two species of raptors. In America, he’s had a chance
to study dozens of varieties.
But even with so many different species populating North America, many people still
think of them as strangers or sometimes even as monsters.
“I still get, amazingly to me, a lot of people that think that these birds are out to get us.”
Volunteer Bob Owens has spent the last 20 years doing education programs at Hawk
Mountain.
“If you intrude into their territory when they have young in the nest, or something like
that, yeah, they’re probably going to chase you. As far as them killing babies and taking
them from baby carriages, this is all old wives tales. This just does not happen.”
Owens runs a small farm for a living, where he says hawks and barn owls help keep
rodents under control. But in a larger sense, Owens says there’s a lot people can learn
from these birds.
“Any three and a half pound bird that can apply four hundred pounds of pressure with its
talons is built to do what they’re doing. They are at the top of the food chain. And that’s
the other big thing that it shows us. It just opens up a door here as to all the reasons the
birds are either dropping or rising in population. What are we doing?”
Owens says in the seventy years researchers at Hawk Mountain have been counting birds,
they’ve seen populations rise and fall. Hawks and eagles are hardy birds. But even the
most successful predators can fall victim to environmental change.
Keith Bildstein is the sanctuary’s director of conservation programs. He says raptors are
like sensitive tools, telling researchers when something’s wrong with an ecosystem.
“Birds of prey are excellent biological indicators. In the middle of the last century they
told us that we were having a problem with our misuse of organochlorine pesticides,
specifically DDT. Today, they’re leading us in explorations of the spread of West Nile
Virus.”
Bildstein says because raptors are at the top of the food chain, when their numbers fall
it’s a pretty good sign that their food source is dwindling, their habitat could be
disappearing, or air quality might be suffering.
But for most of Hawk Mountain’s visitors, the birds are more than barometers of a
healthy ecosystem. According to birder Judy Higgs, they’re beautiful creatures,
especially when viewed from a great height.
“These birds are just majestic. And the other thing is that they go so far. You know,
some of these birds are going to South America!”
Higgs first climbed the mountain in 1970, when she was a student at nearby Kutztown
University. Before moving out of state, Higgs used to come to Hawk Mountain daily…
she stills visits on weekends whenever she can.
“I used to do work in the morning, come here in the afternoon, go home, and finish my
work at night so I could be here.”
By day’s end, Higgs and her fellow birdwatchers count more than 600 raptors. During
the fall season, as many as 70-thousand predatory birds, from vultures to falcons might
pass by on their way to distant points.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.
Most of the cattle raised in the Great Lakes region spend their lives in a feedlot, fattening up on corn and other grains before becoming dinner themselves… but there’s a growing number of organic farmers looking at putting their cows in the pasture. They say grass-fed beef is a healthy alternative. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder has more:
Transcript
Most of the cattle raised in the Great Lakes region spend their lives in a feedlot, fattening up on
corn and other grains before becoming dinner themselves. But there’s a growing number of
organic farmers looking at putting their cows in the pasture. They say grass-fed beef is a healthy
alternative. Brad Linder has more:
(Sound of cows mooing)
Here on Natural Acres Farm in Millersburg, in Central Pennsylvania, 120 cows have their heads
to the ground. They’re chewing on tender shoots of grass instead of ground corn or some mixture
of grain feed.
Steve Shelley is in charge of marketing beef for Natural Acres. He says cows are designed to eat
grass, but most farmers today find it cheaper and easier to buy commercial feed made from grains
like corn.
“You know farmers nowadays. Well that’s the way their dads did it, so they’re doing the same
thing. It’s much easier to go out and dump a bucket of feed into a pen for that animal to eat than
it is for that animal to be out, to get the best benefit from the soil.”
And Shelley says another reason most farmers use grain feed is that it takes longer to raise cattle
on grass. Grain-fed cows are ready for slaughter within a year, but Natural Acres cows can take
six months to a year longer to reach the same size.
But Shelley says that convenience for the farmer comes at a cost to the cattle. Shelley says cows
raised on corn get sick more often than grass-fed cattle. As preventative measures, cows
traditionally have antibiotics mixed in with their feed and require frequent visits from the
veterinarian.
Cows on organic farms are naturally healthier. And since Shelley’s marketing his product to
consumers interested in “healthier meat,” the animals also don’t receive growth hormones or other
chemicals often found in commercial beef.
Natural Acres runs an organic foods shop on-site. But Shelley says the market for such products
is pretty small in rural Central Pennsylvania. Most of the beef isn’t sold here. Instead, much of it
is shipped to restaurants and stores, where people are willing to pay premium prices.
“In a grocery store, you may pay anywhere from a $1.75/pound to $2.00 for a pound of beef.
Retail, we get $4.09.”
Being able to charge more for beef is only one of the perks to raising cattle on grass. The farmers
who raise grass-fed beef don’t have to pay as much to the veterinarian.
“The animals rarely get sick. And I have talked to hundreds of people who raise animals on
pasture.”
Jo Robinson is author of the book, “Why Grass Fed is Best.” She also runs the website
‘eatwild.com,’ which compiles research on grass-fed cattle.
“The big surprise, I think – and this wasn’t known until about 1998 – is that an animal raised on
pasture has five times the amount of cancer fighting fat called conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA.”
Robinson says CLA helps prevent cows from developing tumors. There is some evidence
suggesting CLA has the same effect on humans, but it’s not yet clear if eating grass-fed beef is a
way for people to fight off cancer.
Robinson does point out that CLA is just one of the reasons there’s a growing demand for grass-
fed beef.
“Some people gravitate towards pasture finished meat because it’s free of hormones and
antibiotics. Some people are aware of the nutritional benefits. They like the fact that it’s lower in
saturated fat, higher in omega 3 fatty acids, higher in vitamin E, and a number of other
substances. It’s simply a healthier product all around.”
Robinson says she first started looking for American grass-farmers in 1997, and only found about
sixty. Now, she says, the market has grown to include at least ten times that number, which still
only represents a small portion of the American Beef Industry.
Paul Slayton is director of the Pennsylvania Beef Council, the non-profit organization charged
with promoting the state’s beef industry. Slayton says less than 1% of the state’s beef production
comes from grass farms. But he says those farms do fill an important role.
“I see it being a very viable part of our production in this part of the country, because we have
such an eclectic consumer group. And there are some consumers that just won’t eat anything else
but organic. And somebody’s going to be providing their food.”
As the beef industry is recovering from public concern over mad cow disease and e. coli bacteria,
Slayton says anything that convinces people meat is safe is fine by him.
And as for the taste of grass-fed beef, Steve Shelley from Natural Acres Farm says it might be
more familiar than many people think.
“Many times when I go and do a taste test at a store or something, a lot of the older people, when
they try it, make the comment: ‘This tastes like beef used to taste.'”
Shelley says the meat is leaner and can be tougher if cows aren’t fed a little grain before slaughter.
But Natural Acres is experimenting with different types of grass that might lend a more
consumer-friendly texture to the beef.
Shelley says it’s a combination of taste and nutrition that gets most people interested, even some
people who had given up on commercial beef altogether. Shelley tells one story about a man
who’s wife had banned meat from their house for five years.
“So he bought a hamburger and finally got her to try it, and at the end of the day, he gave me a high five, and he said, ‘I can eat beef
again! She’s given me permission to bring beef into the house!’ Well, that really makes you feel
good.”
So grass-fed beef is entering households that hadn’t seen any beef in a while for environmental
reasons or because of health concerns. While the beef might be a taste of days gone by, organic
farmers are getting better prices for their meat than even in the best of days past.
(moo moo)
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.
Owls, eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey have it rough in the modern world. They have to navigate electric wires, cars, and loss of habitat. A handful of volunteers in the Midwest take on the responsibility of nursing injured birds back to health… The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder has the story of a wildlife rehabilitator in Pennsylvania:
Transcript
Owls, eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey have it rough in the modern world. They have to navigate electric wires, cars, and loss of habitat. A handful of volunteers in the (Great Lakes region/Midwest) take on the responsibility of nursing injured birds back to health… The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder has this story on a wildlife rehabilitator in Pennsylvania:
(natural sound fading up)
Wendy Looker’s back yard serves as a temporary home for 120 birds, and a variety of other exotic animals. Walking into a sixteen foot cage, Looker opens a box and tries to convince the two small birds inside that it’s dinner time.
“These are fledgling kestrels and they’re just learning to catch food. So we’re tossing baby mice in there just to mimic movement, they’re eating mealworms and crickets, and other things they’re learning to catch.”
By working primarily to rehabilitate birds of prey, or raptors, Wendy Looker has become something of an expert in the region. With a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and some graduate work in animal behavior, Looker has spent most of her life working with animals.
“I worked in zoos for a number of years, and I particularly developed an affinity for owls. I guess I, for whatever reason identify with cranky animal that seem to be misunderstood by people. And I just figured at some point in time, maybe I’d dabble with research, and dabbling became 24-7.”
Ten years later, Rehabitat – a 40-thousand dollar a year non-profit organization, run out of Looker’s back yard – is going strong. Each year Looker and a handful of local volunteers help hundreds of birds recover from injury. It’s often dirty and difficult work for no pay, but Looker says she feels a responsibility to the birds.
“Very few of these animals come in as a result of a failure to thrive, a natural selection sort of a thing. It’s almost always human related, so I feel very strongly that they deserve the opportunity to be given a chance to get back out there.”
Looker says many of the birds brought to her have been hit by cars, have flown into glass windows, or have been caught up in discarded fishing line. But the number one cause of injury for birds is what she calls CBC, or caught by cat.
Even a minor cat bite can be lethal as bacteria infect the wound. Looker says keeping house cats in the house would eliminate countless bird injuries each year.
Feeding the birds at Rehabitat takes 6-thousand dead rodents every week, donated from a local research facility. Looker says in nature, or living in the back of a barn, birds of prey are effective mouse hunters. A single barn owl could save farmers thousands of dollars in crop damage.
“The average owl out in the wild eats about a thousand rodents a year himself, so they’re incredibly efficient and valuable in controlling the rodent population. Eating a thousand rodents, and a single rodent can do about 28 dollars worth of damage to agricultural crops, so that’s a 28-thousand dollar bird, and that’s without him having a family.”
Looker says using rat poison to deal with rodents might not be as effective as having a few raptors around. And if there are birds of prey in the area, it’s likely that they could be susceptible to poison as well.
“Most rat and mouse poisons accumulate in the body of the rodent it takes several days for the rodent to die, and he’s wandering out in the open and it’s very easy pickings for the birds. So we get birds that come in here with what we call secondary poisoning, and they’re seizuring and sometimes we can turn them around and sometimes we can’t.”
“We must have had babies hatching… and let’s go check those babies out….”
While inspecting the newborn barn owls, Looker says some animals spend just a few months at Rehabitat, while others have become lifelong residents due to permanent wing or eyesight damage.
“Our standards for release are extremely high. These birds have a tremendously difficult life out in the wild and they need to be 100% perfect. Because just to have one feather missing compromises the feather next to it, throws them off balance, and may be the difference between life and death for them.”
Not every bird can make it in the wild. A few birds with disabilities such as amputated wings or partial blindness can be used for educational programs. But a number of birds have to be put down every year. Looker says it wouldn’t be difficult to find people willing to adopt injured birds, but Raptors are wild animals that don’t make good pets – and there are few locations with the proper facilities to care for non-releasable animals.
Birds of Prey are federally protected migratory birds, but rehabilitation is a private endeavor. With licenses from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Pennsylvania Game Commission, Rehabitat and similar facilities in the state do all the work of nursing injured wildlife back to health for release in the wild
“There are some restrictions in what rehabbers can and can’t do. Obviously we don’t do surgery, but pretty much everything else medically is done on site. It’s pretty grungy work and it’s pretty labor intensive, but it’s also extremely rewarding.”
(natural sound up)
Looker says she’d love to put herself out of business by convincing people to avoid activities which put birds at risk, such as using rodent poisons or letting housecats roam the neighborhood. But as long as there are birds in need of help, there will be people like Wendy Looker to take them in.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.
Principles of sustainable design, or “green building” have been around for years. These are designs that, among other things, reduce energy use and create more comfortable working environments. Yet they are often dismissed as costly, impractical, and experimental. But green design has come a long way in recent years. The construction cost of an environmentally-friendly office building today is comparable with the cost of more traditional methods, and the maintenance costs are often much lower. Architects and builders across Pennsylvania have learned that, and the result has been a major shift in how buildings are constructed. And the lessons learned there could eventually make their way across the entire Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:
Transcript
Principles of sustainable design, or “green building” have been around for years. These are designs that, among other things, reduce energy use and create more comfortable working environments. Yet they are often dismissed as costly, impractical, and experimental. But green design has come a long way in recent years. The construction cost of an environmentally friendly office building today is comparable with the cost of more traditional methods, and the maintenance costs are often much lower. Architects and builders across Pennsylvania have learned that, and the result has been a major shift in how buildings are constructed. And the lessons learned there could eventually make their way across the entire Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:
The Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum Marsh lies just around the corner from the Philadelphia International Airport. The refuge is also home to the Cusano Environmental Education Center, celebrating its first anniversary as what many consider to be the city’s greenest building.
The Center’s heating and cooling relies on a geothermal system. About five hundred feet below the Cusano Center, the temperature remains near 50 degrees all year round. Deep wells reach into the ground to borrow heat in the winter, and cool air in the summer.
(Natural sound marsh machine)
The Center also makes use of a “marsh machine,” to clean and recycle wastewater. Refuge Manager Dick Nugent says the machine uses natural processes to filter water through a “constructed wetland” of PVC pipes, gravel, and marsh plants. Nugent says the city water department delivers drinking water, but the marsh machine has a more important use.
“We wanted this here as an environmental education tool. It isn’t as if we needed it for the functionality of this building. The message to take home is that marshes serve a very important function.”
Cyrus Baym is a volunteer coordinator at the Cusano Center. He says people come expecting to learn about nature, but wind up getting something special out of the building.
“The people that are coming in, they see this fabulous building, a lot of space, a lot of glass, and then when you start explaining along with the exhibits the sustainable design features, the use of recycled materials, passive solar windows their eyes get even bigger. They get more excited and want to implement it in their own house.”
Refuge Manager Dick Nugent says there was some additional cost to innovations like the geothermal system and the southern wall of the building, which is made mostly of glass windows. But in the long run, many of those additions will wind up saving money on electricity and heating. And the overall goal isn’t to be frugal, but to teach.
On the other side of the state, another approach toward sustainable design is taking hold.
Pittsburgh is currently home to one-quarter of the nation’s buildings that have been certified as green by the U.S. Green Building Council. The non-profit national industry group represents design, construction, and environmental interests. The council also administers the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, rating system, which judges the overall environmental performance of buildings.
Unlike the Cusano Center in Philadelphia, many of Pittsburgh’s green buildings weren’t designed to be educational tools. The PNC Firstside Center in Downtown Pittsburgh provides workspace for 1800 employees in the bank’s technology and processing divisions.
Elmer Burger was one of the principle architects for the building. He says designing the largest LEED certified building in the country made sense for the project. The large floor space improved communication within business departments, and also allowed for extensive use of natural light.
“With a large floor plate, we had an opportunity to make the ceilings higher and bring daylight further into the building. So you can be as far as 125 feet away from the outside wall and still have daylight in a view.”
Burger says the building’s large windows give employees a view of the Monongahela River, and also save money by reducing the need for artificial light.
Rebecca Flora is director of Pittsburgh’s Green Building Alliance, a non-profit group working to encourage and facilitate environmentally friendly design in the city. She says some non-profit groups are interested in green buildings for ideological reasons, but also wind up getting long-term economic benefits.
“The life cycle value of doing a green building is actually quite significant in some cases. I know with Conservation Consultants, their building actually uses 60% less energy than a traditional building, which can have huge implications in terms of the small operating budgets that many non-profits have to work with.”
Flora says saving money is one of the main factors in getting major institutions like PNC to build green
“The myth that is out there is that green buildings cost more, and that’s one that we’re constantly trying to educate people around in that you get what you pay for. We’re trying to educate people around the fact that green building also adds value, and how do we equate that value with increased bottom line is a real key issue for most people.”
Flora says it’s important to convince clients, and not just architects of the benefits of green design. She says if the demand for LEED certified buildings increases, sustainable design techniques will become more common.
A number of other commercial and non-profit institutions in the city have also chosen green design. Both the Alcoa Corporate Center, and the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank are green buildings. And the new David L. Lawrence Convention Center is the first convention center in the country to earn LEED certification
With so many high profile green projects, sustainable design is starting to look like common sense to many architects and their clients. Elmer Burger says the success of the PNC Firstside Center has led the company to adopt a new policy. All of their new corporate buildings will be designed to meet LEED requirements.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.
