Congressman Tries to Stop Garbage Imports

In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled that state governments could not prevent waste management companies from importing garbage across state lines. That has upset residents in states like Michigan, who complain that hundreds of trucks are hauling garbage into their state every day. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, a Michigan congressman is using a new tactic in his battle to stop the imports:

Transcript

In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled that state governments could not prevent waste management companies from importing garbage across state lines. That’s upset residents in states like Michigan, who complain that hundreds of trucks are hauling garbage into their state every day. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, a Michigan congressman is using a new tactic in his battle to stop the imports:

Last year, 3.6 million tons of garbage were imported into Michigan landfills. That equals about a football field of garbage piled a mile high. Half of that waste came from Canada on the more than 160 trucks that cross the U.S.-Canada border every day. That number is expected to increase to 250 a day when the city of Toronto begins exporting all of its waste into Michigan at the end of the year. Michigan congressman John Dingell says the rise in garbage imports has angered his constituents.

“I am outraged that the amount of trash from Canada is going to increase above the 150 percent increase that it’s already undergone in the last few years and I’m troubled that our government is not protecting our cities and states from unwanted trash coming in from other countries.”

For several years, Dingell has introduced legislation in the House to give states more control over trash imports, but it has never passed. So, he’s trying a new tactic. His staff discovered a 1986 agreement signed between the U.S. and Canada, which requires both countries to notify the other of hazardous waste imports. It’s called the Agreement between Canada and the U.S. Concerning the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste. And it was amended in 1992 to include notification of nonhazardous waste imports, or garbage. Once notified, the recipient country has 30 days to respond, approve or reject the shipments. Canada and the U.S. do notify each other about shipments of hazardous waste. But Dingell says garbage continues to cross the border unnoticed.

“The Canadians have not once notified the U.S. nor has the U.S. questioned this oddity. Quite frankly, it’s outrageous that it has not taken the steps necessary to control the handling of this waste from Canada under an effective administrative process now in place.”

However, officials at Environment Canada contend they are complying with the treaty. They point to a clause that states the agreement is contingent upon both countries passing legislation that creates a notification system. Joe Wittwer of Environment Canada says they are only now in the process of creating those regulations.

“I think both Canada and the U.S. take this agreement seriously. And I don’t think you can fault either country for not notifying right now because both countries need to put the appropriate regulations in place before this notification mechanism can be implemented.”

In order to achieve that in Canada, Wittwer says the regulations were included in an overhaul of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which was completed in 1999. The revisions took 11 years.

Now, Environment Canada is developing draft regulations on garbage imports, which will soon be made available for public comment. It expects the new notification tracking system will become law sometime in 2003. But Congressman Dingell says it shouldn’t have taken 10 years to implement such a system. He maintains the Canadian government is ignoring its obligations and he’s asking the EPA to step in.

“I’ve sent a letter to the administrator of the EPA demanding that administrator insist that no more Canadian trash or hazardous waste be permitted into the U.S., until both the states affected and the local units of government have agreed to that importation.”

The agreement doesn’t give state governments veto power over garbage shipments. But Dingell says EPA Administrator Christine Whitman could grant them that power – enabling residents of border states to stop the flow of garbage into their communities. EPA officials say they’re considering the request.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly in Ottawa.

Unique Industrial Land Seen in New Light

  • Marian Byrnes has been called the "environmental conscience of the Calumet." She has been a key leader in getting the city of Chicago, and the state of Illinois, to see the value of Calumet's natural areas. Photo by Mark Brush.

In an area in south Chicago you can see the remnants of a steel industry that has had better days – silent smokestacks looming on the horizon, empty parking lots, and for sale signs in front yards. The Calumet region was once a haven for big industry… and because of that it is also home to a list of seemingly endless environmental problems. Many people thought the problems were too great to overcome, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports… that attitude is changing:

Transcript

In an area in south Chicago you can see the remnants of a steel industry that has had better days – silent smokestacks looming on the horizon, empty parking lots, and for sale signs in front yards. The Calumet region was once a haven for big industry… and because of that it is also home to a list of seemingly endless environmental problems. Many people thought the problems were too great to overcome, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports…that attitude is changing:

If you’ve ever driven by Chicago’s south side, you’ve likely seen the smokestacks and factories that dot this old industrial area.

But when you get off the main highway and drive down the back roads of Calumet, you see something you wouldn’t expect – remnants of unique wetlands and prairies. It’s an area where thousands of migrating birds come each spring. Herons, egrets, and cranes carefully pluck their food from these marshes – marshes that are right next to chemical factories and toxic city dumps.

(Bring up sound of sparrows and outdoors)

The sun is setting in this part of the Calumet – some sparrows nearby are settling down for the night – and Marian Byrnes is showing me around the places she’s come to know from living and working here for more than 20 years.

“This land is mostly slag on the banks of Indian Creek, but it’s not considered hazardous.”

“How would the slag get here?”

“Oh, it was waste from Steel Mills – mostly Republic Steel which was north of here.”

(Fade her under + continue outdoor sound)

Marian Byrnes is a retired public school teacher. And at age 76, she volunteers her time as the executive director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force. She repeatedly meets with businesses, community groups, and city and state advisory boards – patiently delivering her message that the Calumet region is worth protecting.

And over the years Marian, and others like her, have steadily worked against a city that didn’t seem to care about the natural areas in Calumet. For many of them, it began more than twenty years ago, when they got a note from the Chicago Transit Authority in their mailbox. The note outlined the Transit Authority’s plan to build a bus barn on their neighborhood’s prairie:

“It was like having our own little forest preserve right behind our houses. You can walk out there, and when you get out – maybe a block or so – you’re not aware that you’re in the city at all. I mean you can’t even see the houses, so it’s just a wonderful place to be in touch with nature.”

They convinced the transit authority to build the bus-barn elsewhere. And in the years that followed they fought off other proposals such as plans to build a toxic waste incinerator, and plans to re-open old city dumps.

But despite those successes, big environmental problems still persist. And the list of contamination is intimidating – heavy metals, PCBs, and leaking landfills. The problems are so overwhelming that when planners in Chicago were thinking about spreading miles and miles of concrete for a new airport, Calumet was thought of as an ideal location.

Kathy Dickhut works in the planning department for the city of Chicago:

“The area does have a lot of environmental problems. Ten years ago the thinking was it was all dirty, environmentally dirty, and that was sort of across the board, …so one way to deal with that is, you know to cover the whole thing up.”

But local environmental and community groups became united in their opposition to the plan. And instead of an airport, the local groups asked the National Park Service to designate the area as an ecological park.

And slowly but surely, the city began to look at the area in a new light:

“I think people didn’t realize just how much opposition there would be to paving over this area. I mean the airport proposal was quite dramatic, and because it was quite dramatic, there was quite dramatic outcry about it – so once that played out – we had to look at it again in a different way. And what we’ve done is really look at the resources that we do have here, which are substantial, and how we can improve those.”

Today, the city appears to have a completely different attitude about the Calumet area. Chicago lawmakers recently passed a land use plan that calls for the best of both worlds. They want to protect and clean up the natural prairies and wetlands – while at the same time – attract new businesses to build on old industrial sites.

City planners hope to balance what may be seen as competing goals (attracting new industries AND cleaning up the environment) by prioritizing where to build and where to preserve. And when they do build – planners are encouraging green building practices. Practices that complement the surrounding natural areas rather than cover them.

Those involved with the project paint a pretty nice picture of what’s to come.

Lynn Westphal is a researcher for the U.S. Forest Service, and works closely with the city of Chicago on the Calumet project: “Imagine an industrial area with the buildings roofs are green. Where instead of turf around – you have native grasses and because of that you have more birds and butterflies… you’ve got bicycle access, people fishing on their lunch breaks…. And it’s not far from becoming a reality. This is all very doable. So it’s not totally hypothetical.”

And in fact, movement toward that new vision is already underway. The Ford Motor Company is building a new industrial park for its suppliers. And many of the green building practices Westphal describes will be used. And the Corps of Engineers is spending more than 6 million dollars to clean up an area known as Indian Ridge Marsh.

But those involved with the transition of this area say that leadership from the community will be the key to its eventual success.

Meanwhile, the Southeast Environmental Task Force will have a new executive director by this summer…

“…and that’ll be someone who’ll learn to do what I’ve been doing for past 20 years, cause I can’t keep on doing it indefinitely.”

“Do you have any advice for them?”

“Have a lot of patience…”

The same patience Marian Byrnes has used when riding a city bus to meeting after meeting, listening to the community, and working with city officials – all in an effort to create what she believes will be a better future for the people in Calumet.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.

Cleanup on Mohawk Tribal Land

  • St. Regis Mohawks used to fish and swim in this cove of the St. Lawrence River. Today, it's contaminated with PCBs from General Motors' landfill, which rises in the background. Photo by David Sommerstein.

The federal government has identified almost 50 toxic landfills that continue to contaminate the Great Lakes and their major tributaries. Thousands more may pollute smaller creeks and rivers upstream. Almost all of them have affected the way people live. In northern New York, General Motors and a native tribe have spent two decades fighting over how to clean up one of those sites. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports… the lack of progress is caused by differing approaches to a permanent solution:

Transcript

The federal government has identified almost 50 toxic landfills that continue to contaminate the Great Lakes and their major tributaries. Thousands more may pollute smaller creeks and rivers upstream. Almost all of them have affected the way people live. In northern New York, General Motors and a native tribe have spent two decades fighting over how to clean up one of those sites. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports… the lack of progress is caused by differing approaches to a permanent solution:

Dana Lee Thompson and her sister, Marilyn, walk along the St. Lawrence River. They teeter as they step over driftwood and tufts of grass. This part of the shoreline belongs to the St. Regis Mohawk tribe.

When the sisters were kids, they used to splash and play in the river. Their father landed walleye and bass for dinner. And when the sisters had children of their own, this is where they taught them to swim…

“…it’s all flat rocks and stuff like that…”

“…And just down there, there used to be a tiny little falls and it was all sand and we used to swim.”

Thompson brushes her long black hair out of her eyes. The smile fades from her face…

“Never knew that what we were swimming in was one of the most toxic things, y’know, toxic pools.”

Just on the other side of a chain link fence that marks the end of tribal land, a hill rises above their heads. Its grass is cut short like the tenth green on a golf course.

It’s General Motors’ old landfill. Drums of used factory oil are buried just under the manicured lawn. The oil contains PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls. PCBs were used as a coolant in many factories until scientists found they cause cancer.

The federal government banned PCBs in 1977. A couple years later, workers covered the landfill with a temporary cap. But the PCBs had already seeped into the water where the sisters’ kids were swimming…

“I get emotionally disturbed. Mental anguish. Anger. My children have a lot of health problems, which gets me upset.”

The sisters aren’t alone. Tribal members who have grown up near the dump have high rates of thyroid disease, diabetes, and respiratory disorders – all suspected to be linked to PCBs. The Thompsons – and the tribal government – want General Motors to dig up the chemicals. And they want GM to truck them away…

“We’re just looking out over the cove. These are some homes and businesses of the Mohawks and to our right is the industrial landfill.”

Jim Hartnett stands on the GM side of the chain link fence. He’s managing the clean up for the company. He says the Environmental Protection Agency ordered GM to do three things: put a permanent cap on the landfill, monitor it for PCBs indefinitely, and dredge the PCBs from the river.

Hartnett says GM has wanted to move ahead with that plan for a decade. He says that would make the water clean again…

“My hope is that as we complete this clean-up, that people will come and use the cove and that it will be accessible and that people will be comfortable using it.”

David: “Do you think it’s realistic that within our lifetimes that the cove could be used for swimming?”

“I’m hoping that in the next two years we can have it ready to go. I’m not talking within our lifetime, I’m talking about as soon as we get access to that cove, we want to go in and remedy it.”

But the tribe won’t give them access. The St. Regis Mohawks say cleaning the cove isn’t the right answer. Ken Jock, the tribe’s environment director, has technical concerns with the plan.

But in the end, Jock says, the disagreement is more than technical. The tribe sees environmental cleanups differently. The EPA plans 30 to 50 years ahead. But the Mohawk tradition is to plan seven generations ahead…

“And so when you make a decision to clean up or to cover up at a site, you have to think is this area, are the PCBs going to be contained for the next 250 years. We have to think that way because this is the only land that we have left.”

The EPA wants everyone to stand behind the same solution. Anne Kelly is the EPA project manager of the site. She has commissioned more technical studies to try to prove the containment plan won’t poison the river in the future. She’s reassured the tribe the dump will be monitored in perpetuity.

“But that’s where we get into a sort of difficulty between our interpretation of time and the tribes. They don’t trust that we’re always going to be here, you know, that the EPA as it stands will not be what it is now. But they know they’re going to be there. So we say, ‘we’re going to monitor that forever’. They say, ‘you may not be here forever. Where are our guarantees?’ ”

Meanwhile, traces of PCBs are still leeching into the river. But the St. Regis Mohawks’ Ken Jock says he’ll wait on a clean up if it will ensure clean water and healthy fish for his grandchildren’s grandchildren.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.

Mercury Consumption Levels Raised

A U-S agency says it’s safe to ingest higher levels of mercury. Some
environmental groups say the agency is making a mistake. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Genetically Altered Trees Eat Mercury

In an article in the journal "Nature Biotechnology" researchers saythey’re developing plants that clean up mercury contamination. TheGreat Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Gizmo Pest Control

As more people become interested in alternatives to pesticides, theconcept of Integrated Pest Management is growing. The idea started inagriculture as a way for farmers to reduce or eliminate pesticides. ButIntegrated Pest Management – or I-P-M – is making inroads in the home.One group of products that are becoming more popular are specialtydevices that use things like negative ions and ultra-sonic waves torepel pests. But how well do they work? The Great Lakes RadioConsortium’s Wendy Nelson investigates: