Forestry experts throughout the Midwest have been experimenting with new ways to fight beech bark disease. The disease has already killed millions of beech trees in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Ontario and Michigan. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell has more:
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Forestry experts throughout the Great Lakes have been experimenting with new ways to fight beech bark disease. The disease has already killed millions of beech trees in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Ontario and Michigan. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell has more…
Beech bark disease is actually a deadly tag-team combination of an insect that invades a tree and a fungus that finishes it off. Michigan State University entomologist Deb McCullough is one of several scientists trying to stop the spread of the disease in Michigan…
“What we’re going to see in the forest is gonna be something like Dutch Elm disease, the biggest, oldest beech trees are most vulnerable to this insect and to the disease, and as beech bark disease moves through the state, those are the ones that are going to die out first.”
McCullough says researchers have had some limited success with injecting pesticides into infected trees. And scrubbing the trees with soapy water seems to work too. But she says such methods simply aren’t practical when you’re dealing with the millions of beech trees that inhabit the region’s forests. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Matt Shafer Powell.
A test well being dug in preparation for the construction of the Ice Mountain bottling plant. Perrier hopes to have the plant up and running by next spring. Photo by Patrick Owen/MLUI.
Is Great Lakes water for sale? That’s the issue on the table in Michigan right now, where the Perrier Group of America has begun construction on a 100 million dollar water bottling operation. Last year, government officials in Wisconsin rejected a similar proposal from Perrier. The Michigan plan has sparked local opposition and more. The start of the plant’s construction has given birth to concerns about whether groundwater in Great Lakes states should be considered part of the Great Lakes water basin. And if it is, some question whether it should be for sale. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell reports:
Transcript
Is Great Lakes water for sale? That’s the issue on the table in Michigan right now, where the Perrier Group of America has begun construction on a 100 million dollar water bottling operation. Last year, government officials in Wisconsin rejected a similar proposal from Perrier. The Michigan plan has sparked local opposition and more. The start of the plant’s construction has given birth to concerns about whether groundwater in Great Lakes states should be considered part of the Great Lakes water basin. And if it is, some question whether it should be for sale. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell reports.
Eight Mile Road in rural Mecosta County, Michigan is one of the area’s busier roads, one of the few ways to get to the interstate. It’s surrounded by thousands of acres of farmland. And at its peak, you can see the Little Muskegon River Valley as it stretches for miles across this point where Michigan becomes Northern Michigan.
(sound of construction)
When Perrier Group Project Manager Brendan O’Rourke saw this stretch of Eight Mile Road, he knew that it would be the perfect place for Perrier’s new Ice Mountain spring water bottling operation.
“Clearly, it’s a beautiful place to live and work, it has abundant natural spring water, the highway system allows for easy access to the marketplace, there’s an available work force and there’s high quality spring water.”
But local resident Terry Swier rarely uses Eight Mile Road anymore. She says it upsets her too much to see the walls of the Perrier plant rising out of what was once a cornfield. Swier is president of the group Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, a group that formed out of citizen opposition to the plant. Since December, Swier says her group has attracted more than 12-hundred local residents. Most of them are concerned about how local streams, rivers and lakes will be affected by an operation that plans to pump more than 700-thousand gallons of water a day from the ground. But despite her efforts to stop the plant’s construction, work has continued and the plant should be ready to begin operation next Spring.
“It’s just very frustrating how they have the arrogance to say that ‘we can proceed.’ It’s like not even paying attention to the people who are here in the area.”
Perrier officials insist the company has made every effort to listen to local residents and address their concerns. They say they’ve done studies that show the environmental impact will be minimal. And they say the extra 600-thousand dollars a year in tax revenue the plant will generate will go a long way in Mecosta County. Local government officials agree. But Mecosta Township Supervisor John Boyd says he’s more excited by the possibility that Perrier may bring up to 200 new jobs to the area.
“I’ve been to meetings and they say ‘Well, what’s the tax base, what’d you gain on the tax base?’ and I say ‘Hell, I ain’t even looked at it’, because basically, we’re looking for good jobs that sustain people, that will let our kids stay here, stay in the community, and last, we’re looking for a business that will be here tomorrow when we’re gone.”
But construction of the plant and local opposition to it are only the starting points for an issue that has reached far beyond the farmlands of Mecosta County. That’s because the natural springs that lie beneath the ground there feed into the Little Muskegon River, which in turn, feeds into Lake Michigan. Of primary concern to critics is a federal law that requires the approval of all eight Great Lakes governors for any water diversion from the Great Lakes basin. In September, Michigan’s attorney general concluded that the groundwater in Mecosta County should indeed be considered Great Lakes water, and its sale should be approved by the governors. Michigan’s Governor John Engler, though, disagrees on both points and has even offered Perrier nearly ten million dollars in tax breaks. That’s something that frustrates Keith Schneider, of the Michigan Land Use Institute.
“If states are approving diversions of Great Lakes water, they need to consult each other. And the reason they need to consult each other is because we sit on the largest source of fresh water on the planet and this resource is getting ever more valuable. I mean we’re essentially the Saudi Arabia of water here.”
If it’s proven nothing else, the controversy over the Perrier plant has exposed the lack of solid, enforceable groundwater policy throughout the Great Lakes. But in Michigan, that may be changing. In the state capitol of Lansing, various legislative and environmental groups have already begun to unveil their own water control packages—they include everything from the abolishment of tax breaks for companies that bottle water to mandatory assurances that local water quality won’t be sacrificed by those companies. And some groups are calling for a law that would require companies that sell water to pay royalties in the same way that oil and gas companies do now. If it’s ever passed, such a royalty would put a definitive value on water as a natural resource. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Matt Shafer Powell in Mecosta County, Michigan.
Automotive analysts say a new arrangement between Ford and the EPA may signal a significant change in the car company’s relationship with the government. Ford and the EPA are teaming up to create a new hybrid engine that is expected to be more efficient than current hybrids. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell has more:
Transcript
Automotive analysts say a new arrangement between Ford and the EPA may signal a significant change in the car companies’ relationship with the government. Ford and the EPA are teaming up to create a new hybrid engine that is expected to be more efficient than current hybrids. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell reports.
One of the drawbacks to current hybrid vehicles is the electric batteries—they’re heavy and they’re expensive. But Ford and the EPA are working on a new model that uses pressurized liquid to store energy instead of batteries. Michael Flynn of the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute says this arrangement shows a departure from the contentious relationship the government and car companies have had in the past.
“There are problems and rather than hollering at each other, pointing fingers, trying to figure out who’s to blame and therefore, who gets hung out to dry, it makes much more sense to try to jointly resolve the problems.”
The EPA actually holds the patent for the pressurized liquid technology. Both Ford and the EPA say it should be available to the public in about ten years—possibly in an SUV. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Matt Shafer Powell.
In Michigan, the Perrier Group of America is building a water bottling plant near the town of Big Rapids. It’s a project that has raised the ire of local environmental groups, and it’s raised the question of whether groundwater in Great Lakes states should be for sale. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell has the story:
Transcript
In Michigan, the Perrier Group of America is building a water bottling plant near the town of Big Rapids. It’s a project that has raised the ire of local environmental groups. And it’s raised the question of whether groundwater in Great Lakes states should be for sale. Michigan Radio’s Matt Shafer Powell reports.
Perrier hopes to pump water from the ground, bottle it and sell it.
Terry Swier is President of the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation.
Despite assurances from Perrier, she worries that a plant that pumps more than 700-thousand gallons of water a day will steal water from the area’s lakes and wetlands…
“We are not just talking about the water for the people. We’re also talking about the water for the fish, the mosquitoes, the deer, all of the environment”
But the issue has grown beyond the local impact. Within a few weeks, officials from the Michigan Attorney General’s office hope to release a report on the topic. The question is whether federal law allows Great Lakes governors to prohibit the sale of groundwater-the way they can with Great Lakes water. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Matt Shafer Powell.
The assault against sea lampreys in the Great Lakes continues, as biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are combing the waters of West Michigan’s Lincoln and Pere Marquette rivers this week. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell has more on the government’s on-going attempts to keep this creature under control:
In 1984, a biologist from Harvard University coined the term “Biophilia” to describe man’s instinctive attraction to nature. Nearly twenty years later, designers and architects are increasingly using the Biophilia principle in office buildings and manufacturing complexes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell has this report:
Across the Great Lakes region, construction crews built about two thousandmiles of new roads in 1999. From conception to completion, building a roadcan be a long process that can easily take twenty years. Much of the workis done before bulldozers move a single mound of dirt. The Great LakesRadio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell has the story on one profession youmay not expect to see at a highway construction site:
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Across the Great Lakes region, construction crews built about 2-thousand miles of new
roads in 1999. From conception to completion, building a road can be a long process that
can easily take twenty years. And much of the work is done before bulldozers move a
single mound of dirt. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell has the
story on one profession you may not expect to see at a highway construction site.
Dave Ruggles works for the Michigan Department of Transportation, but he doesn’t
operate a backhoe, he’s not part of a survey crew, and he doesn’t direct traffic around a
construction site. Ruggles is an archaeologist.
“It’s not quite the Indiana Jones-fedora-bullwhip-and-.45 kind of approach. Although it
does a lot for Hollywood, it does nothing for Archaeology.”
Ruggles says it’s part of his job at the Department of Transportation to make sure that the
ancient history of an area is taken into consideration before a road goes through it.
“We work very closely with the engineers in helping them design a sensitive design that
accommodates all the needs that best can fit the need for the traveling public.”
Ruggles says it’s a delicate process, one that involves a series of judgment calls. Because
the archaeologists work for the Department of Transportation, they want to see the
project completed as quickly as possible. But they also have the responsibility to protect
the historical integrity of a site. Although they don’t have the authority to stop a project,
their input can slow it down. Dean Anderson says that’s just part of the job. Anderson is
an archaeologist for Michigan’s office of Archaeology. He is one of the many experts
consulted by the DOT.
“There’s a fascinating past to Michigan that’s not in history books but is out there
buried.”
Anderson says construction crews don’t just go into a site and start digging, especially if
they plan on using federal funds. It’s part of a procedure mandated by the government
under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. First, archaeologists determine
whether or not there are any sites along the proposed route that may be of historical
value. Then, those sites are tested to see if they can be deemed “significant”.
“Archaeology is all about understanding people and the past, and if there’s information
on those sites that can help us do that, the site is significant.”
A significant site may have been part of a major transportation route, such as a river or a
stream or it may have been part of an urban center. It may contain many relics, such as
pottery, animal bones, weapons or tools. And in some cases, it may contain human
remains.
Such was the case in 1998, when the New York State Department of Transportation
began to reconstruct one of the streets that ran through the heart of downtown Albany.
Archaeologist Mary Ivey says the project took place near a churchyard cemetery, one that
dated back to the 1600’s. In advance of digging, Ivey says the department took great
pains to identify the location of any graves. So she says it was a big surprise when the
remains of two people were uncovered.
“We were quite sure that we were outside of the cemetery area and in fact, we were. The
human remains that we encountered turned out to be those of some individuals who had
been reburied at some point, possibly taken out of the cemetery and reburied.”
The bodies were between 250 and 300 years old. One of them was still reasonably intact
and Ivey says department officials soon began to call the body “Pearl” after the street
under which she was found. She says archaeologists determined that Pearl lived among
Albany’s poor. They knew she had rickets and sinusitis, she had poor dental health, and
may have suffered from gout.
“To all of us I think it was incredible glimpse not into the history that we read about in
the history books, but the everyday existence for someone living at the time here in
Albany.”
In general, however, Ivey says the New York State DOT would like to avoid disturbing
any remains…or any artifacts for that matter.
“Archeology in its own way is a destructive science. You have to dig up the material to
get the story, but then the material is out of its context forever, so we really try very hard
to avoid the impacts wherever possible.”
In Michigan, the state has gone to considerable lengths to keep the location of these sites
from public eyes. Although they exist as state records, they’re considered so sacred,
they’re not even available under the Freedom of Information act. Dean Anderson says
that’s to keep amateur archaeologists from randomly digging around to enhance their
personal collections.
“which is like tearing pages out of a book to us. It really takes away information that
really helps us understand Michigan’s past.”
Anderson says he can personally understand the natural curiosity people have about what
lies beneath the ground. He says it’s that curiosity that got him involved in archaeology.
But he says it’s often a curiosity better left unfulfilled.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Matt Shafer Powell.
For years, auto companies have argued that making cars morefuel-efficient also meant making them smaller and more dangerous topassengers. But a new study by the General Accounting Office saysthat’s no longer true. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt ShaferPowell reports:
Transcript
For years, auto companies have argued that making cars more fuel-efficient also meant making
them smaller and more dangerous to passengers. But a new study by the General Accounting
Office says that’s no longer true. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell
Reports.
The recently released GAO report says such technologies as lean-burn engines make it easier to
produce more efficient cars without making them smaller. But a researcher who contributed to
the study says if the government were to increase mileage standards, it could still create the
temptation to cut corners on safety. David Greene says that’s why the government will need to be
vigilant.
“It’s possible that if you went about this the wrong way, it could be harmful to safety, but it’s not
necessary to degrade safety in order to improve fuel economy.”
Meanwhile, some environmental groups are hoping these findings will clear the way for stricter
government mileage regulations. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Matt Shafer
Powell.
