Now that it’s summer, many of us long to be by the shore. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Bob Hamma nurtures a dream of a lakeside cottage, but reflects that he really wants something more than ownership:
Transcript
Now that it’s summer, many of us long to be by the shore. Great Lakes Radio Consortium
commentator Bob Hamma nurtures a dream of a lakeside cottage, but reflects that
he really wants something more than ownership:
I often dream of owning some land on the shore. Living less than an hour from Lake Michigan,
I think it would be wonderful to have a place to go to, not just in the summer, but throughout the year,
a place where the ever-changing patterns of the lake and dunes can become a part of me.
I remember reading a comment by the Native American writer Brenda Peterson about her love
for Puget Sound in Washington, “I may never own land even if one day I might afford it.” Her words
challenge me.
What do I really want? Is it a cottage with a view? A private beach? No, what I long for is
not ownership, but the opportunity to let the call of the shore sink more deeply into my soul.
Being at the shore fosters a certain quality of attentiveness to life, an ability to live in the present
moment. Perhaps it’s the fact that things are always changing there, yet in another way, they are always
the same. The color of the lake, the size of the waves, the strength of the wind, the patterns of the
clouds-all these change from hour to hour. Yet the lake is always there-timeless-almost awaiting
my return.
It’s as if it were calling me to take some time away from my life and gain a new perspective. But the
shore is not just a place of retreat. It is a place of encounter, where life’s incredible complexity, its constant
struggle, its subtle rhythms are ever present for one who looks. The call of the shore is an invitation to live
in the present, to see life each day in its richness and diversity.
I don’t need a cottage for that. I simply need to be there, to put some time aside and go. But it’s
a struggle to respond to that call, to break away from the busyness of my life. Indeed, the issue is not
whether the lake belongs to me, but whether I belong to it. To truly belong there, I must listen to its call,
I must be long there.
I can’t promise that I’ll never own a piece of the shore, but for now, I’ll try to practice the kind
of attentiveness to life that it calls me to. This way, if by some amazing luck I can afford it, I’ll be ready.
Host Tag: Bob Hamma is a writer who lives in South Bend, Indiana. He comes to us by
way of the Great Lakes Radio Consortium.
For years, biologists have warned that non-native zebra mussels threaten plant and animal species throughout the Great Lakes. Now, underwater archeologists say the mussels are also damaging historic shipwrecks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brian Mann visited an underwater museum on Lake Champlain and has our story:
Transcript
For years, biologists have warned that non-native “zebra mussels” threaten
plant and animal species throughout the Great Lakes. Now, underwater
archeologists say the mussels are also damaging historic shipwrecks. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brian Mann visited an underwater museum on Lake Champlain and has our story:
It’s mid-afternoon and a haze floats over the dark green water, as dive-master Doug
Jones ties his boat to a yellow buoy. New York’s Adirondack mountains rise in the distance, but our destination this morning lies below the waves. Forty feet down on the silty bottom sits the wreck of a ship known as the Burlington Bay Horse Ferry…
“I suggest you do a tour around the wreck. It is possible to duck underneath part
of the decking that’s there. Please don’t, okay. It’s very fragile, especially the spokes to the paddlewheels that are sticking out. So buoyancy control is really important.”
The horse-powered ferry is one of six ships in Lake Champlain’s Underwater
Historic Preserve. Underwater sites like this one are sprinkled throughout
the Great Lakes. From commercial barges to warships, archeologists say
these wrecks hold a vital part of the region’s history.
(Respirator check and dive master chatter)
Perched on the dive platform, I go through a final equipment check. I’m
sheathed from head to toe in a wet suit, insulation against the cold water.
(big splash)
“Now come on over here and hang onto the buoy.”
Here on the lake, each wreck has its own buoy and a network of guide ropes.
Before the ropes were installed, divers sometimes bumped against the ships’
fragile timbers. After a pause to get my bearings, I slip below the
surface.
(Air bubble ambience)
Looking down, I see the buoy chain dwindle away into shadow. As I descend,
the water is cold and thick. Forty feet down, I reach the bottom. A dozen
strokes with my flippers and there it is, a man-made shape forming itself
out of shadows and watery dust.
I glide slowly past the delicate spokes of the paddle wheel. I drift above
the intricate, exposed ribbing of the deck.
“The horse ferry is the only known example of this type of vessel in North
America.”
Chris Sabick is Director of Conservation at the Lake Champlain Maritime
Museum, where they’ve built a half-scale model of the ship and its complex
gears.
(Paddlewheel sound)
Sabick: “It was a vessel type that was fairly widespread during the
19th century. But it’s one of those vessel types that has slipped
through the cracks of history and just kind of faded away.”
The lake’s murky water preserved the horse ferry. The fresh water is cold
and calm. The silt actually protects artifacts from bacteria. In many parts of
the Great Lakes, ships like this one have rested for centuries, completely
intact.
(Shells rattling)
But now that’s changing. A box of tiny, brown and white shells has been
added to the Maritime Museum’s display. It’s a new organism – the zebra mussel.
They arrived in the Great Lakes in the late 1980s, carried in the ballast
tanks of ships. Zebra mussels have wreaked havoc on native fish and plant
species. But they’ve also coated hundreds of historic wrecks:
Sabick: “The enormous weight of hundreds of thousands of these
shells on water-logged wood can obviously cause things to collapse.”
Using wrecks like the Horse Ferry, scientists throughout the Great Lakes are
studying ways that zebra mussels actually change the water’s protective
chemistry:
Sabick: “It seems that the microenvironment that exists deep inside the mussel
layer or colony attracts a type of bacteria that accelerates the
degradation of the iron. And obviously all of these shipwrecks are fastened
with iron fasteners.”
Over time, the wrecks could literally come apart at the seams.
(water bubbles)
Back in the water, I draw close to the horse ferry’s bow. Thick layers of
shells coat the ribbing. In places, not an inch of wood is visible.
Researchers say they won’t know for several years how much damage has been
done. But as the zebra mussels continue to spread, scientists fear that
underwater museums like this one could be lost forever.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brian Mann on Lake Champlain.
The City Hall in Chicago is topped
with plants and trees to try to cool things down. The city
is working to reduce the heat island effect caused by so many blacktop roofs and parking lots. Photo by Lester Graham
On the nightly TV news in large cities, the meteorologist sometimes talks about the heat island effect. That’s where all the blacktop roofs and asphalt parking lots soak up the heat and increase the temperature on a hot summer day. One major U.S. city is trying to do something to reduce that effect. To set an example, the mayor decided to start with City Hall. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
On the nightly TV news in large cities, the meteorologist sometimes
talks about the heat island effect. That’s where all the blacktop roofs
and asphalt parking lots soak up the heat and increase the temperature
on a hot summer day. One major U.S. city is trying to do something to
reduce that effect. To set an example, the mayor decided to start with
City Hall. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Standing on the roof, eleven stories up, isn’t really far enough to escape
the noise of the city below. But this rooftop is an escape. It’s a garden, a
big one. There are even trees. Not in pots, but actually planted on… or…
in the roof.
Marcia Jiminez is the Commissioner of the City of Chicago’s Department of Environment. She says Chicago wants building owners to
do what they can to cool the city down… and planting gardens on the
roof is one way to do it. So that’s what the city did on top of City Hall.
“Well, the garden on the rooftop is addressing what we call an urban heat
island problem. By putting the garden with light colored pavers and the
green plants on top of the roof, we’re actually helping to use less energy
inside the building and it actually helps to keep the building cooler.”
Cooling down the building is just the beginning of this garden. Despite
being eleven stories up in the middle of downtown, the roof is alive with
bugs and butterflies.
“Actually birds and all of the insects, many of them, have found their
way up here. We’ve actually put up birdhouses to study what kind of
birds are coming to the rooftop garden. This is a place of
respite as well as a place to feed.”
The whole rooftop has become something of a lab. Scientists research
what animals have made a home here… and they’re monitoring how the
plants are spreading.
Kimberly Worthington worked on the City Hall project to see it go from
the drawing board to rooftop. She says they chose plants for color, form
and for survivability.
“The design that we went with was low maintenance, was what we were
looking for in our plant selection. And the landscape architects that were part of the design team focused on plants that would require less water. And they also wanted to keep as many native plants as possible. So, there are a lot of prairie plants up here.”
The Chicago City Hall rooftop project also reduces rain water runoff. 75-percent of a one-inch rain will be soaked up right here in the garden. That’s good because too much rain overflows sewers into Lake Michigan. If enough buildings in the city had rooftop gardens, stormwater runoff problems would be curtailed a bit.
While the city is touting the environmental benefits of its rooftop garden, in another part of the city a planned rooftop garden is all about people.
Brenda Koverman is with the Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital in Chicago. We’re up on the roof where she’s showing me landscape renderings of how the surrounding area will look once the planting begins. Stone paths, fountains, flower gardens and shrubs.
It’ll look beautiful. And it’ll probably cool things down up here. But Koverman
says this is for the patients who are learning to be mobile after disabling injuries. The hospital hopes that patients in rehabilitation will find the rooftop garden more pleasant and helpful than institutional tile floors and plastic obstacles as they learn to
manuever…
“You know, so, are patients more able to maneuver their wheelchairs in the community? Are patients able to use their hands better so they can cook better at home? Are patients able to stay out of the nursing home and go to their home? So, if we can get any kind of
those outcomes, then it’s a huge success.”
It might be more interested in the patients, but the hospital will still be helping Chicago reduce its heat island effect.
There aren’t very many of these projects in the city, so it’s hard to say whether the rooftop gardens could cool things down all that much. But Environment Commissioner Marcia Jiminez says all you have to do is go up on the roof on a hot day. City Hall sits right next to the County Building. In fact they look like the same building. But not from the roof. Only one side is garden.
“In last summer in 2001 on the hottest day, while it was about a hundred degrees on the city hall side, it was 165 on the opposite end of the building where’s there’s a blacktop roof.”
Even if you’re not interested in planting a garden on your roof, the city still requires some effort to cool things down. City ordinance calls for light colored material when a roof is replaced. And parking lots have to plant some trees before they can get a permit to resurface. Rooftop gardens aren’t mandated… but city officials say they’re learning first
hand that it’s a much better use of space in the city.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Over the years, people have stolen all kinds of items from shipwrecks in the Great Lakes including nameplates, portholes, and even toilets. One state is now offering people a chance to return these stolen things – no questions asked. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports:
To return an item or report a theft from a shipwreck call the Michigan Department of Natural Resources at 800-292-7800.
Transcript
Over the years, people have stolen all kinds of items from shipwrecks in the
Great Lakes including nameplates, portholes, and even toilets. One state is
now offering people a chance to return these stolen things – no questions
asked. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports:
Michigan, like many states in the region, has laws against removing artifacts
from a shipwreck. Penalties in the state can include up to two years in
prison or fines up to 5000 dollars. But for the next couple months, the
state just wants to get some of the stolen stuff back. Lieutenant Timothy
Burks is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources law enforcement
division.
“The divers refer to these wrecks as underwater museums.”
He says souvenir hunters, and people looking to make money selling shipwreck
artifacts are damaging the value of these sites
“If 10 or 20 people take one small porthole soon there’s nothing left.”
Anyone who returns items to the state of Michigan between now and July 31st
won’t be prosecuted. In the case of shipwreck artifacts taken from bottomlands
in other states or provinces, Burk says they’ll try to return them to
the place they came from.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.
Truck fleet owners are scrambling to order diesel trucks before new environmental regulations go into effect this fall. Since the beginning of the year, orders for new diesel trucks have gone up nearly seventy percent over the same period last year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell has more:
Transcript
Truck fleet owners are scrambling to order diesel trucks before new
environmental regulations go into effect this fall. Since the beginning of
the year, orders for new diesel trucks have gone up nearly seventy percent
over the same period last year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt
Shafer Powell has more:
The biggest reason for the sharp jump in orders is that truck fleet owners
are trying to buy as many trucks as possible before October 1st. That’s
when the EPA is going to require that trucks use newer, cleaner-burning
engines in them. Trucking industry analyst John Stark of “Stark’s News” says
these new engines will cost anywhere from three to five thousand dollars
more per truck.
“The trucking fleets are making a decision to try to beat the EPA
standards, not so much trying to be non-compliant with EPA standards, but
to avoid major price increases with these diesel engines.”
Last month, the EPA began to investigate claims that some engine
manufacturers were encouraging trucking companies to buy up the old-style
models. If true, that would be a violation of an agreement the
manufacturers made with the EPA back in 1998.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Matt Shafer Powell.
Old growth logs left on the bottom of the Great Lakes continue to attract interest. The dense wood is prized by people who make instruments and fine furniture. A few states (Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York) have permitted salvage operations. But in Michigan, permits are on hold until officials resolve how removal of the logs affects fish habitat. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Allen has more:
Transcript
Old growth logs left on the bottom of the Great Lakes continue to
attract interest. The dense wood is prized by people who make instruments
and fine furniture. A few states (Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York) have permitted salvage
operations. But in Michigan, permits are on hold until officials resolve
how removal of the logs affects fish habitat. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Bob Allen has more:
The submerged timber has been abandoned since the heyday of logging in the
late 1800’s, but cold fresh water has preserved the wood. To retrieve it,
salvagers need two permits. One from the state, another from the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers. Michigan has issued 12 permits. But the Army Corps
wants to be sure there’s no adverse impact on fish. Randy Claremont is a fish
biologist with the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians. He’s been
documenting how fish use a proposed salvage pile in Lake Michigan off
the city of Petosky.
“Those logs… you know… at least every time we visited we saw fish
utilizing them because there’s very little habitat structure around so if
you remove those logs, you will definitely affect fish community
negatively.”
The Army Corps wants to be sure salvagers replace lost habitat with
rock or brush piles. Details are being worked out before permits
are issued. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bob Allen.
The Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park is an outdoor art museum that aims to blend art and nature. This piece is a work by Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro. Photo courtesy of the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park.
Recently, a new sculpture park opened in the Great Lakes region. This new outdoor art museum exhibits 24 pieces by acclaimed modern sculptors. Eventually, 80 pieces will be on view and the park is expected to become a regional arts destination. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney has a look at how the sculpture park at the Frederik Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids mixes art and nature:
Transcript
Recently, a new sculpture park opened in the Great Lakes region.
This new outdoor art museum exhibits 24 pieces by acclaimed modern
sculptors. Eventually 80 pieces will be on view and the park is expected
to become a regional arts destination. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Tamar Charney has a look at how the sculpture park at the Frederik Meijer
Gardens in Grand Rapids mixes art and nature:
The pieces in the 30 acres sculpture park are spread out amid hills,
paths, and nooks. There’s an area with stone and bronze works from the
early modern masters like Rodin, Lipchitz, and Henry Moore. In a hollow
there’s an enormous red gardening trowel by Claus Oldenburg and Coosje van
Bruggen. And suspended just inches over a pond is a kinetic or moving
piece by George Rickey. Just downstream from the pond are 15 gigantic
ceramic eggs. A blue robin’s egg, a speckled killdeer’s egg… they are all
enlarged versions of eggs laid by birds you can find at the park. It’s a
work by Carolyn Ottmers, a sculptor from Chicago. She says the sculpture
park meshes the visual arts with the wonders of nature.
“I think in the way they have chosen to arrange the sculptures, and
integrate within the park… created this arena for encounters which for
me is a similar experience echoed when you walk through nature.”
As you move through the park you catch a glimpse of a piece here, a
suggestion of a work there through the trees, around the bend, or across the
pond. Officials with the gardens say the collection is the most
significant one in the Midwest. But it’s not your typical sculpture park,
with formal manicured gardens adorned with sculpture.
“The sculpture is not a decoration of a garden.”
Magdalena Abakanowicz is a sculptor from Poland. Her bronze piece called
“Figure on a Trunk” is a headless, shoeless person. It’s hidden in an alcove
made of young trees. Abakanowicz rails against the idea of art decorating
a garden, but she says nature can create the right space in which to see
sculpture.
“Spaces to contemplate, spaces to meditate, spaces in which we are
confronted to our own scale and the scale of the world.”
These are spaces that change with the weather, the time of day and the
season. Joseph Becherer is the sculpture curator for the Frederik Meijer
Gardens and Sculpture Park. He says it’s the natural setting that may just get more
people interested in looking at art.
“I think there are many, many people… the majority of Americans that are
very intimidated by a traditional museum or gallery but there is something
welcoming, inviting and warm about coming to a garden.”
And some of the things on exhibit in the botanical section of the gardens
can help people understand some of the things on exhibit in the sculpture
section. It’s something Italian sculptor Arnoldo Pomodoro is well aware
of. At the gardens, his piece called “Disk in the Form of a Desert Rose”
sits on a small grassy field next to a waterfall. After the dedication
ceremony, he was strutting around, greeting the people admiring his piece
when he was approached by a young boy with his buddies from school in tow.
Child: “Um, they want to know what the sculpture is supposed to be… like… about.”
Pomodoro: “In the gallery down is a real rose of the desert so the inspiration
comes from this rose which is a stone very beautiful.”
Pomodoro encourages the children to go into the conservatory to see a real desert rose
to start understanding and discovering the connections between art and nature,
and sculpture and the environment.
“You go and see it’s an homage to the nature. Ciao.”
Kids: “Ciao.”
In the coming years, more than 50 new sculptures will be added to the Frederik
Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.
It’s no secret that the Great Lakes are cleaner than they were 25 years ago. But some of the wildlife that’s rebounded because of the cleaner water is causing some problems for people who live near the lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Paul Cox explains:
Transcript
It’s no secret that the Great Lakes are cleaner than they were 25
years ago. But some of the wildlife that’s rebounded because of the
cleaner water is causing some problems for people who live near the
lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Paul Cox explains:
(sound of waves and seagulls)
It won’t be long before a sleeping multitude awakes in the Great Lakes.
Millions of mayfly larvae have been burrowed in the muddy bottom of the
lakes. Soon, they will rise, take wing and fly off in search of a mate.
Often, they end up on shore. There they get on everything.
Breck Coombs has seen them invade the car dealership he manages in
Port Clinton, Ohio on Lake Erie.
“I have bugs all over the whole building. It’s almost like you’ve got to
have a second set of clothes when you come into work a lot of times.
You sit down and they make a big mess on your clothing. It’s pretty bad.”
During mayfly season his workers have to wash every car in the lot every
day so the bugs and their droppings don’t mar the paint.
The mayor in Port Clinton is Tom Brown. He says since the mayfly has
been increasing in population the insect has caused some bizarre
events. The way he describes it, it sounds as though it’s like living in an
Alfred Hitchcock thriller. He remembers once getting hit by the bugs
while he was at a drum and bugle corps competition.
“We were watching the show and all of a sudden I looked to the sky
and I saw a black cloud. The mayflies came onto the field, they began to
swarm. I was covered with mayflies from head to toe.”
Aside from the mess they make, the mayflies are – for the most part –
harmless. Fred Snyder is an aquatic biologist with the Ohio State
University Extension Service. He says the mayfly is a bug with no bite.
“Mayflies do not have working mouths. This is a mouthless insect. It has no stinger.”
But Snyder says the mayfly is still something of a nuisance because they
don’t smell very good.
“One evening just coming back into town I noticed a very,
very disagreeable smell. The place stunk. Sort of like dead fish, but
different. But very strong.”
And… the sheer numbers of the mayflies are a problem because the
insects not only fly by the millions, they die by the millions.
Mayor Brown says when that happens… the dead bugs can be a bit of a
hazard.
“When they were heavy we had signs on the streets: ‘Slippery, mayfly hatch.’
And there were a couple of accidents from people sliding around on those mayflies.”
As you might imagine… millions of smelly, messy and dead mayflies are
bad news for any town… but especially so in a tourist town such as Port
Clinton.
But biologist Fred Snyder say the mayflies are also good news. The huge
mayfly population means the lake is environmentally healthier.
“Mayflies have a high need for oxygen. So when you find
good numbers it tells you that the oxygen level in the water is very
good.”
It’s not always been that way. Pollution in the lake took its toll. Oxygen
levels dropped. And the mayflies almost disappeared by the 1950’s.
Dr. Carl Richards, with the Minnesota Sea Grant program, says the
presence of organisms such as the mayfly can be a better indicator of
the lake’s health than testing for polluting chemicals.
“It’s often very expensive and difficult to measure chemicals.
And the ultimate reason we’re interested in chemicals is because of
the organisms. It’s the fish, the birds and the plants we’re concerned
about. So the idea is if the fish and the birds and the plants are
healthy, then the environment must be healthy.”
And a recent federal grant will help scientists look further into the
connection between the health of organisms such as mayflies and the
environmental state of the Great Lakes.
Lake Erie near Port Clinton is not the only example of rebound in the
mayfly population. There’s also been a sharp mayfly population increase
in the waters immediately near Erie, Pennsylvania.
It’s not only good news for the mayflies. It’s good news for fish too.
Some fish feed on the mayfly larvae. So, with more mayflies, there’s
more food for fish.
But, people still have to deal with the annual mayfly onslaught. In
places such as Port Clinton, that means trying to find ways to reduce the
invasion. One thing the city does is turn off streetlights and ask
residents to turn off as many exterior lights as possible in hopes of
attracting fewer bugs during the peak season.
The mayflies that do make it ashore and die are picked up with street
sweepers and composted. In fact, the city got a grant to build the only
licensed landfill in the U.S. for mayflies. There, they compost the
carcasses. Biologist Fred Snyder cooked up the recipe.
“It’s basically sawdust that is mixed about two to one with the
mayflies that are picked up by the street sweepers and brought to
the composting site.”
After several months the mayfly compost is used for gardens and lawns
all over town.
(sound of waves)
Now, Mayor Brown is trying to convince the townspeople to look beyond
the nuisance factor and embrace the mayfly as the standard-bearer for a
cleaner lake.
“We even came up with a theme: Come to Port Clinton where
your dreams may fly.”
It might not offer much comfort to those afflicted by the annual mayfly
invasion… but hey, it’s catchy.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Paul Cox.
Some motorcycle riders are concerned that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is unfairly targeting bikers with a proposal to reduce motorcycle emissions. Illustration courtesy of ABATE of Illinois.
The Environmental Protection Agency is considering new rules to reduce pollution from motorcycles. The EPA says street bikes pollute far more than cars or even SUVs:
Transcript
The Environmental Protection Agency is considering new rules to reduce
pollution from motorcycles. The EPA says street bikes pollute far more
than cars or even SUVs. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports:
The EPA’s proposal would require new motorcycles to substantially
reduce exhaust emissions. The EPA says the average new motorcycle
pollutes 20 times more than the average new car. Don Zinger is with the
agency’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality.
“The motorcycle standards have been in place since 1980. In
other words, they have not been changed in 22 years now. So, we think it’s
appropriate to consider more stringent standards for motorcycles.”
Bikers are concerned that the emissions restrictions will affect the
performance of motorcycles. They also say the EPA is trying to take
away their right to change how their bikes sound. Many bikers feel the
rumble of their motorcycle is a statement of their individuality. EPA
officials say they just want the motorcycles to pollute less.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Some motorcycle riders are concerned that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is unfairly targeting bikers with a proposal to reduce motorcycle emissions. Illustration courtesy of ABATE of Illinois.
The Environmental Protection Agency wants to clean up pollution from motorcycles. Motorcycle enthusiasts don’t want the government telling them how to operate their street bikes. It’s become a battle between bikers and bureaucrats. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
The Environmental Protection Agency wants to clean up pollution from
motorcycles. Motorcycle enthusiasts don’t want the government telling
them how to operate their street bikes. It’s become a battle between
bikers and bureaucrats. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:
(pipe sound #1)
Bikers turn their heads when they hear a pair of exhaust pipes cackling
by. The sound catches their attention as much as the style and chrome on
the motorcycle. Bikers such as Neil Toepfer say making changes such as
with exhaust pipes are a part of the culture of motorcycle enthusiasts.
“That’s how we express ourselves, making changes on the bike that make
it even more fuel efficient or perform the way that we the rider want it to perform.”
And the sound of the bike is a big part of identity for many riders.
(pipe sound #2)
But motorcycle riders such as Toepfer say they’re concerned about an
Environmental Protection Agency proposal that would crack down on
motorcycle exhaust systems. Toepfer and others have gone so far as to
ride their bikes to Washington to let Congress know they oppose the
EPA messing around with their freedom to modify their bike pipes.
“The thing with the EPA… and I’m probably going to get
somebody’s nose out of joint when I say this… but the EPA is just a
government agency. They don’t answer to the people. They don’t listen to
the people. They’re bureaucrats that have their own agenda.”
Toepfer is being mild compared to what some other bikers are saying
about the EPA. There seems to be a bit of a culture clash. A poster on
the internet by one motorcycle riders association depicts a mock-up of
an assault rifle toting EPA official in riot gear. The caption reads “He’s
from the Government, but he’s not here to help.” It goes on to read “He’s
here to take your heritage. He’s here to take your freedom. He’s here to
take your motorcycle.”
Many bikers say they don’t understand why the EPA is going after their
motorcycle exhaust pipes…
(pipe sound #3)
Mike Hayworth is the owner of Watson’s Wheels of Madness, a custom
motorcycle shop in Alton, Illinois. He suspects the problem is either the
government bureaucrats don’t have enough to do… or do-gooders who
can’t mind their own business…
“These environmentalist people, they want to rule our lives
and they’re going to take and do whatever they can to say ‘We got to stop
this and we got to stop that.’ What kind of pollution does a motorcycle –
there’s not enough motorcycles in the United States to pollute anything.”
That same argument is being made in Washington, D.C. Thomas Wyld is
a lobbyist with Motorcycle Riders Foundation. He says a study by the
California Air Resources Board found that street bikes were only
responsible for six one-thousandth of a percent of all motor vehicle
emissions.
“And if you took that pollution inventory of motor vehicles and
made it equivalent of a 100-yard football field, street motorcycles would
occupy a quarter of an inch on that field.”
Wyld adds that motorcycles are fuel efficient, reduce traffic congestion,
and take up less parking space. Wyld says those are things the EPA
should be encouraging instead of pestering bikers with exhaust
emissions restrictions.
(pipe sound #4)
The EPA is a little baffled by all the noise about the emissions proposal.
Don Zinger is with the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality.
He says the bikers don’t understand the proposal…
“These new requirements will have absolutely no effect on
existing motorcycles.”
Zinger says any new restrictions on exhaust systems would only affect
new motorcycles that come off the assembly line after the restrictions are
implemented… probably four years from now.
And Zinger notes… motorcycles pollute a lot more than most people
realize.
“A typical motorcycle built today produces about 20 times as
much air pollution as a new car today over every mile that’s driven. 20
times. That’s pretty significant.”
So, the EPA says street motorcycles should be made to pollute less, as
the EPA has required many other types of vehicles to do.
Many bikers believe the EPA is targeting street motorcycle riders
because they’re a small segment of society with a reputation of being on
the wild side. EPA officials say bikers won’t notice a difference in the
sound or performance of the bikes under the proposed emissions
restrictions… but it will mean they’ll pollute less.
(bike pipes leaving the scene)
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
