Tag: george

Composting in the City

  • Backyard composting isn't quite as inticing a hobby in the wintertime. (Photo by Karen Kelly)

Composting has always been a part of farm life, but a growing number of city folks are trying it as well. The GLRC’s Karen Kelly is one of those city dwellers. And she found if composting isn’t convenient, it doesn’t get done:

Transcript

Composting has always been a part of farm life, but a growing
number of city folks are trying it as well. The GLRC’s Karen
Kelly is one of those city dwellers, and she found if composting
isn’t convenient, it doesn’t get done:


“So we’re going to put in our banana peels, and the oatmeal that
nobody ate, and I’m going to break some of this up because apparently
it breaks down faster if it’s in smaller pieces. So right now we’ve got,
half a scone, a bowl of oatmeal, some banana peel… ”


It’s just after breakfast and my kitchen is covered with dirty dishes.
Some of the food is heading into the garbage, the rest I’m going
toss into the composter. It kind of looks like a brown garbage can
with a lid, but it takes about half my garbage and turns it back into
soil.


I started about a year ago, when I finally got a small backyard
where I live here in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city. First, I asked
my friends Connie and Dan how they do it.


“How would you guys describe your approach?”


“Laissez faire.”


“Yeah. It’s really a shame that everybody doesn’t do this because it can
be really easy. Just put it in a box and let it sit there.”


I liked the sound of that hands-off approach, but I was also
wondering what to put in and what I needed to leave out. So, I gave
George Reimer a call. He’s the city of Ottawa’s composting expert.


“ust stick with kitchen scraps, vegetables, fruit scraps…plants that
you have from the gardening season, that type of thing.”


“Okay, okay. So no animal products basically?”


“Exactly.”


Once you have a good mix of kitchen scraps, leaves and grass, the
best thing for compost is to mix it around on a regular basis. When
you add that oxygen to the microorganisms already in the garbage,
it breaks the waste down even faster.


It’s not as easy as it sounds – especially if you compost in a plastic
drum. Just imagine sticking a pitchfork into your garbage can and
trying to flip over a pile of wet dirt.


So, armed with that information, I asked George if he could take a
look at our progress after our first week of composting. He stooped
over to pull open a sliding door at the bottom of the container.


“Oh, you haven’t got anything in there, have you?”


“Well I did put some things in there…”


“Yeah, you need to put a slab down or dig it into the ground
because obviously something’s gone in there and removed it all.”


“Yeah, there’s no food in there. Okay. All right then. That was
a week’s worth of squirrel feeding.”


“Yeah exactly.”


(Sound of bricks laying)


So, the next day we go to a big box store to get some bricks. We
lay them all around the base of the composter. The squirrels are defeated.
A few weeks later, I see a huge raccoon shuffling across the backyard.
It knocks the top off the composter and climbs in.


We drive back to the big box store and buy some flat, heavy bricks
to lay on top of the lid. We also buy a few bags of fertilizer, of
course because we still have no compost. I think, this is starting to
feel like work and to be honest – I find it disgusting.


(Sound of brick noise)


“So now, it’s even more challenging to do this.”


(Sound of dumping)


“Ewww. A lot of it is sticking to the pot, which is disgusting but
alright. Uhh, brick back up, auxiliary bricks, okay.”


Now that I had to move those bricks, I was less likely to run out
with just the dinner scraps, and we weren’t mixing the compost very
often, either. So, I tried to remind myself of why I started doing this.


For one, it seemed like a shame to throw vegetable scraps into a
plastic bag and send them to a landfill. Especially when landfill
space is so tight that some Canadian cities are shipping their
garbage to the U.S.


Plus, we have a garden, which could use the nutrients from the
compost. According to George Reimer, those nutrients stick
around a lot longer than the ones found in commercial fertilizer.


I knew all that, and yet, on a stinking hot day in July – and the
composter was stinking because we rarely turned it – I officially
stopped. For a while… for six months. Until recently, when my
guilty conscience prodded me out the door with a bowl of kitchen
scraps.


(Sound of walking in snow)


“We’ve got snow on the ground and a bowl of fresh vegetable
scraps. Umm, interesting. It’s about a third full so there must be
compost under there somewhere.”


Last time I looked, the container had twice that amount in it.
Which makes me think that most of the food has broken down into
something we can finally use on the garden. It gives me an
incentive to start over. Plus, in a few years, I’ll have to compost.


Ottawa will join at least 18 other Canadian cities where residents
are required to throw food scraps into a separate container, and
hey, if all else fails, there’s nothing like a new law to get you
motivated.


For the GLRC, I’m Karen Kelly.

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Turning Brownfields Into Greenfields

  • A former industrial site is being redeveloped with parks, wetlands and homes. Residents have high hopes the new development will boost the local economy. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

As the American economy shifts away from heavy industry, each closed factory risks becoming a brownfield. That’s a site that contains potentially hazardous materials. For the past decade, the federal government has provided help in assessing and cleaning these properties. It has proved to be one of the most popular environmental programs. It’s giving hope to small towns that need help in remaking their landscapes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports:

Transcript

As the American economy shifts away from heavy industry, each closed factory
risks becoming a brownfield. That’s a site that contains potentially
hazardous materials. For the past decade, the federal government has provided help in assessing and
cleaning these properties. It has proved to be one of the most popular environmental programs. It’s
giving hope to small towns that need help in remaking their landscapes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports:


When a Rust Belt city loses another factory, the townspeople don’t suffer
just from the loss of jobs. They’re often stuck with crumbling buildings or even polluted land. Not to mention, the local economy isn’t strong enough to fix them up.


It’s a dilemma familiar to East Moline, a small Illinois town that sits
along the banks of the Mississippi River. Since the early 80s, the town’s lost thousands of jobs in the farm machinery
industry. Rich Keehner is the City of East Moline’s assistant administrator. He says
there is a plan for the industrial riverfront.


“Right now there’s a movement to relocate or pull industrial uses from the
river. And then of course turn that riverfront property into bike paths or some
recreational activities to improve our quality of life. And that’s exactly
what we’re doing here.”


It’s a simple idea: move industry away from the river and work with
developers to make it an attractive place to play or even live. But it’s just not that easy. Keehner says developers won’t build on these sites until it’s clear what kind
of pollution, if any, might be there.


Testing the area’s soil and water can get expensive, so sites can remain
empty for years. Meanwhile, developers look for greener pastures. Really, they can just build on farmland instead.


During the past decade, the U.S. EPA’s paid for pollution testing at hundreds
of sites. The agency also funds some cleanup and other costs. East Moline’s used several grants to develop eighty acres of riverfront donated
by the John Deere Company.


With the Mississippi riverbank at his back, Keehner points out some new
houses developed on the site.


“It’s got some great amenitities, located next to the bike path. You
can just wake up any time night or day and look out at the river. And your
neighbors are very limited; it’s very peaceful.”


The district also boasts a small light house, a lot of park space, and some
wetlands areas. Keehner says brownfields grants funded about six percent of the project’s
total cost. That doesn’t sound like much, but the money’s played a key role. He says private money couldn’t be secured until there was progress on the
environmental front.


A lot of environmentalists and civic groups applaud the program even though
a lot of credit goes to someone they often criticize. Namely, President
George Bush. His critics admit the brownfields program is one of the brighter spots of
his environmental policy.


In 2002, President Bush signed legislation that expanded the program’s
funding and breadth. Alan Front is the vice president of the Trust for Public Land, a
conservation group.


“The administration, ever since signing that bill, has budgeted about 200
million dollars a year to make this program really vibrant and so not only
have they created the wallet, but they’ve filled it in a way that really
benefits communities around the country.”


Front says the expansion’s brought a tighter focus on the environmental
needs of smaller towns. Apart from the grants, there’s another reason for the program’s popularity. The EPA trains city administrators to use federal brownfield money to
leverage private dollars.


Charles Bartsch has been teaching such courses for ten years.
He says, to compete with larger cities, smaller towns need to show they
understand their local economies.


“I suggest to towns what they should do first of all is to decide what their
competitive economic niche is.”


That means, developing around a community asset, like East Moline’s tried
with its attractive riverfront. Bartsch says, for all the progress small town administrators have made, they’re still pretty isolated. He says they need to cast a wide social net, so
they can find the best advice.


“The key thing is less knowing how to do it yourself, but more knowing who to
reliably call to walk through ideas and walk through options.”


The brownfields program does have its critics. They say it’s tilted in favor
of land development over open space and they worry about how much oversight
there is of environmental testing.


Back at the East Moline site, it’s easy to see why small towns are
participating. Residents there now have more access to the river, bike paths, parks, and,
for some people, new homes. East Moline, and a lot of other small towns like it, are seeking even more brownfields money.


They’ve got a lot of other sites that want a chance at a new life.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Hunters and Anglers Disagree With Bush Policies

A group that generally considers itself to be conservative disagrees with many of the Bush administration’s policies on the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on a survey of hunters and anglers:

Transcript

A group that generally considers itself to be conservative disagrees with many of the Bush
Administration’s policies on the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports on a survey of hunters and anglers:


The National Wildlife Federation commissioned a nationwide survey of people who hold hunting or
fishing licenses. It revealed that hunters and anglers generally liked some of the Bush
conservation programs, but disagreed with the Bush approach to controlling mercury pollution,
drilling for gas on public lands, and changing how wetlands are protected. Brian Preston is with the
National Wildlife Federation. He says the survey shows hunters and anglers want to protect the
environment; not just their hunting and fishing rights.


“They’re not the ‘Bubba’ that just cares about filling a bag limit. They do care about their natural
resources, and based on those values, they’re not happy with some of the current policies put forth
by the White House.


More than two-thirds of the hunters and anglers voted for Bush in the last election, but an even
greater number disagree with some of the Bush policies on the environment.