More than 90 colleges across the country are locked in a competition. Only this competition isn’t played with a ball it’s played with trash. The GLRC’s Fred Kight explains:
Transcript
More than 90 colleges across the country are locked in a competition.
Only this competition isn’t played with a ball it’s played with trash. The
GLRC’s Fred Kight explains:
The competition is known as Recycle-mania and it started five years ago
when officials at two rival schools in Ohio decided they needed to do
something about the amount of trash being generated on their campuses.
Over a period of several weeks, the two competed to see who could
recycle the most.
The next year, more colleges signed up… and now the number
participating is up to 93. They’ve joined in to reduce waste and save
money but Ohio University organizer Ed Newman says there’s more to it
than that…
“We’re cranking out citizens from this place… and if they could take
some of these better habits and expand on them… transfer these ideas to
the community… I think that’s part of our role as an educational
institution.”
The winning school will be crowned after the competition ends on April
8th.
The lynx was recently considered extinct in Michigan until a
trapper caught one. (Photo courtesy of USFWS)
For years, federal and state governments have cut funding for wildlife protection. That’s led to complaints from biologists who say they don’t have enough money to adequately do their jobs, but it’s also led to a new movement. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports on how citizens are starting to take over duties once performed by trained scientists:
Transcript
For years, federal and state governments have cut funding for wildlife
protection. That’s led to complaints from biologists who say they don’t
have enough money to adequately do their jobs, but it’s also led to a new
movement. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee
reports on how citizens are starting to take over duties once performed by
trained scientists:
Ray Rustem says wildlife biologists these days are often chained to their
desks.
“Years ago, when I first started with the Department of Natural
Resources, wildlife habitat biologists spent quite a bit of time in the field
actually doing fieldwork. With the types of things that are going on now,
they’ve become much more in getting the planning done and we’ve had
to shift some of that fieldwork done to the technician level. Frankly,
yeah, we could always use additional people out there.”
Rustem is with the Wildlife Division of the Michigan Department of
Natural Resources. He says state funding has fallen steadily for years,
and one way he’s made up the difference is by involving Michigan
citizens. Rustem says the DNR uses dozens of volunteers for its frog and
toad survey in the early part of the summer.
“This is our tenth year and we’ve got at least 120 people who’ve been
doing this all ten years. That’s a tremendous amount of data that’s being
provided for us on information about species and where they’re located.”
Many groups are now using so-called citizen scientists to collect data.
Sally Petrella is a biologist who works with the non-profit organization
the Friends of the Detroit River.
“We’ve cut out so much of the funding for regular science that there’s a
real lack, and citizen scientists can cover far more areas than
professionals can, at a much lower cost.”
Petrella is standing beside the murky, reed-choked waters of the Rouge
River Watershed. It’s home to six species of frogs and toads. Every
summer, Friends of the Detroit River enlists the help of 700 people to
listen for the creatures as they call to each other from the marshy
grasses.
Petrella is standing beside one of her more loyal volunteers… Al Sadler.
Sadler admits that part of the appeal is the walk along the banks of the
river… but he also believes that public participation in wildlife
protection has become an absolute necessity.
“I think that it’s required if we plan on keeping any wildlife areas
around. I think that if citizens don’t get involved, I think that people
won’t know what they’re going to miss, and before we know it, there
won’t be much wild places left.”
Sadler is a fairly typical citizen scientist. He has a day job as an engineer
and volunteers in his spare time, but there are also people with advanced
degrees in biology and wildlife management who are called citizen
scientists simply because they don’t work for the government.
Dennis Fijakowski is one of those people. He’s the executive director of
the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy.
“We can’t count on the government to do everything for us. We have to
be a part of the solution.”
Fijakowski says ordinary people have made important contributions to
wildlife conservation. He says the lynx was considered extinct in
Michigan until a trapper caught one, and a rare Great Gray Owl was
discovered on a national wildlife refuge last spring by a photographer.
“You look back at the conservation history of our state and it was citizen
led. All of the important, the milestone decisions, legislation… it was
citizen led.”
John Kostyack with the National Wildlife Federation says involving
citizen scientists is great, but…
“They’re not really a substitute for having staff in the wildlife agencies…
state and federal and tribal. Because they are the ones who are going to
take this initial data, which is going to be very rough from volunteers,
and then use it to decide upon where to take the research next.”
And there have been cases in which citizen scientists have clashed with
state and federal governments. They are consistently at odds with government
officials over issues related to global warming and the Michigan Wildlife
Conservancy is locked in a bitter battle with state biologists over whether
the state is home to a viable cougar population.
The Conservancy’s Dennis Fijakowski acknowledges that the union
between government biologists and citizen scientists may not always be
an easy one, but he says the involvement of residents in the protection of
their state’s wildlife can only be a good thing.
“Because all anyone of us wants is that we pass on a wild legacy to our
children and grandchildren… and we’re not going to if we don’t get our
acts together.”
Many organizations offer citizens the opportunity to get involved in data
collection, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security are considering removing hazardous material placards from freight trains. They say doing so will help protect people from terrorists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security are considering removing
hazardous material placards from freight trains. They say doing so would help
protect people from terrorists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:
Because of the September 11th terrorist attacks, officials see the potential for a
lot of things to be used as weapons. One of their latest fears is that shipments of
hazardous materials could be used by terrorists. In order to protect people from this
threat, the Department of Homeland Security says it might require the removal of the
diamond shaped placards from rail cars. Emergency workers use the placards to quickly
identify a hazard after an accident.
Richard Powell is the Executive Director of the Michigan Association of Fire Chiefs.
He says while the Department of Homeland Security is well-intentioned, removal of the
placards would put more people at risk:
“We need to protect our citizens. We need to keep that system in place. If we don’t know something is there, our people could not evacuate perhaps, as quick as we normally would.”
Homeland Security officials say they’ll consider other options that would help disguise the rail cars, but would still allow emergency workers to know what’s inside.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.
Most of the Great Lakes states are taking advantage of a federal program to get money to help make creeks, rivers, and lakes cleaner. But one state has not found a way to get the federal dollars. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Most of the Great Lakes states are taking advantage of a federal program to get money to help
make creeks, rivers, and lakes cleaner. But one state has not found a way to get the federal
dollars. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program is making
hundreds of millions of federal dollars available to states if they come up with matching funds of
about 20-percent. The money would go to private landowners to take measures to reduce soil
erosion and pesticide and fertilizer runoff. Seven of the eight Great Lakes states have signed
agreements with the federal government, each earmarking tens of millions of dollars to leverage
much more from the federal government. The state of Indiana has a proposal before the USDA,
but instead of tens of millions of dollars set aside as the other states have done, according to a
report in the Star Press newspaper, Indiana so far only has set aside 120-thousand dollars.
Conservationists in that state are calling on the legislature to tax bottled water and bagged ice as a
way to come up with the matching funds to leverage the federal money.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Funding has dried up for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study designed to show where, when, and how often it might flood along the Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri rivers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rich Egger reports:
Transcript
Funding has dried up for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study designed to show where, when, and how often it might flood along the Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri rivers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rich Egger reports:
After a whistleblower revealed the
Corps overstated the economic
benefits of its projects, Congress cut
the agency’s budget. That’s meant a
shortage of money for research, such
as this flood study. Supporters of the
research believe another large flood
is inevitable.
Heather Hampton-Knodle is with the
Upper Mississippi, Illinois, and
Missouri Rivers Association. She
says it’s important to finish the study:
“It’s the notion that we need to build the Ark before the flood…and be prepared to protect our citizens and keep our economy flowing in the case of that sort of major
disaster. This is one disaster we can
plan for.”
Funding was frozen this summer just
before the report was completed. Researchers
say they need just another $142,000
to finish the eight-and-a-half million
dollar study.
For the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium, this is Rich Egger.
An Ohio jury has awarded neighbors of a large factory farm $19.7 million in damages. People living near Buckeye Egg Farm in central Ohio have complained for years of fly infestations and odors. The outcome is seen as a victory by those living next to large-scale farm operations throughout the region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston has the story:
Transcript
An Ohio jury has awarded neighbors of a large factory farm 19.7 million dollars in damages. People living near Buckeye Egg Farm in Central Ohio have complained for years of fly infestations and odors. The outcome of the lawsuit may or may not affect similar cases in other states. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports.
(Natural sound of locusts, wind, dog barking in the distance)
Freda Douthitt’s house sits at the end of a gravel lane. The driveway is surrounded by trees and wild flowers. She’s always liked it here because it’s secluded … she’s a couple miles from a rural road. She likes to sit on the multi-tiered back patio that overlooks a small pond. That’s where she grades composition papers from her Freshman English class at Ohio University.
(sound of flies)
But she has also had to swat at flies for the past ten years. Douthitt collects flies in a container that is nearly the size of a gallon milk jug. She estimates this one has about 2-3 inches worth of decomposing flies and maggots collected since August 22.
“It smells out here. That’s the flytrap. That keeps some of them from getting in the house. Today there’s a few flies out here. There are days when that wall would be just polka dotted with them.
Douthitt has frozen the containers of flies and collected them over the years. She took them to court with her to prove the problems she deals with living near a factory farm.
That’s what helped her win a 1.2 million dollar share of a settlement with Buckeye Egg Farm. It’s one of the world’s largest egg-laying producers. Douthitt’s house is three-quarters of a mile from one of the company’s egg-laying plants. The flies come from the vast amounts of manure produced by millions of chickens housed at the company’s barns. The manure gets spread on farm fields that surround Douthitt’s house after harvest season in the fall. Since then … she has watched as run-off from Buckeye Egg properties killed tens-of-thousands of fish in a nearby creek. She has even seen the creek water turn purple.
She says she never expected to win in court against the company when she began the legal battle 9 years ago.
“I never thought about suing. Until one of the neighbors I’d been working hard with trying to get the EPA to do something … trying to get the county health department interested … um, we were both frustrated at that point. She called up one evening and said we’re ready to call a lawyer, are you? And I said, yeah, I’ll meet with you.
As the years went by I became pretty frustrated, and wondered what would make a difference.”
Douthitt and 20 of her neighbors won a 19.7 million dollar lawsuit against Buckeye Egg.
This win has other people in Great Lakes states hopeful they too can win in court against large factory farms.
Julie Janson of Olivia, Minnesota knows Douthitt’s story all too well. Janson has been fighting hog factory farm owner Valadco for 6 years. Her house sits sandwiched between two of the company’s hog barns. Janson and her husband filed a lawsuit this spring against the company. They are asking for close to 200-thousand dollars because Janson says her family of eight gets sick from manure odors.
Janson says she took her 11-year-old daughter to a specialist in California to prove she has brain damage from smelling hydrogen sulfide.
Decomposing manure creates hydrogen sulfide gas and ammonia that smells like rotten eggs.
“Sometimes it’s enough to gag a maggot. The stink is putrid. And, it penetrates through your house, through the windows and doors. Every little crack in your home.”
Janson says her family has spent one hundred thousand dollars to fight Valadco.
She had to close her daycare center, which she ran from her home, partly because of the stench. Her husband is supporting the family with his truck-driving job that brings in nearly 38-thousand dollars a year.
She says a win over Buckeye Egg farm in Ohio is a victory that can help her cause.
“There’s finally been some justice served. Some of these people have been fighting for over ten years. And … to me … it just says no matter how long and painful it is, you need to fight for justice because if us citizens don’t fight it’s never gonna happen.”
Both Janson and Douthitt say it’s not the money that will make them happy.
Douthitt says she will probably never see the money that she is owed.
But … she says the county judge may force the company to clean up its farms and the surrounding communities.
“How can they have that many animals and that much manure and let it just pour out and not treat it? They let it just pour out onto the land.”
Buckeye egg farm officials have said they may appeal the verdict. The company says it has already spent millions of dollars to try and clean up its facilities. Earlier this year, Buckeye Egg settled a multi-million dollar lawsuit with Ohio’s attorney general’s office. The state sued the company for dumping dead chickens in a field and polluting creeks by spilling contaminated water. The state has since filed seven sets of contempt charges against Buckeye Egg for not correcting the problems. It’s still undecided whether Buckeye Egg will file for bankruptcy following the verdict.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Natalie Walston.
