Tag: new york

Saving Historic City Parks

  • In October 2006, a surprise snow storm did considerable damage to the trees in the Olmsted Park System. (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)

At one time, cities were little more than stone and brick. But in the mid-1800’s
Frederick Law Olmsted began changing all that. The landscape architect
designed some of the most important park systems in the country. But decades
of neglect and nature’s wrath are threatening Olmsted’s largest park system.
Joyce Kryszak has the story of plans to restore it:

Transcript

At one time, cities were little more than stone and brick. But in the mid-1800’s
Frederick Law Olmsted began changing all that. The landscape architect
designed some of the most important park systems in the country. But decades
of neglect and nature’s wrath are threatening Olmsted’s largest park system.
Joyce Kryszak has the story of plans to restore it:


You’ve no doubt heard of, and maybe even taken a stroll through New York’s
Central Park. It was Olmsted who created that 800 plus acres of sprawling urban
backyard. But Olmsted didn’t just carve out a magnificent green space. He also
carved out a reputation for himself, and a demand for his designs for parks all
over the country. Olmsted’s green thumb-print can be found all the way from
Boston’s Emerald Necklace to Yosemite National Park. Brian Dold is a
landscape architect from Buffalo, New York. He says even his profession is an Olmsted
creation.


“[He] came up with the term landscape architecture and really brought it to a
scale where he could do these major projects. So, he sort of grew
from getting work and the profession sort of took off from there.”


And Dold has plenty of work to do in Buffalo, New York. There, he is
maintaining Olmsted’s first, and one of his largest, integrated park systems.


Last October, a surprise snow storm dumped two feet of heavy snow on the still
leaf-covered boughs of Olmsted’s majestic trees. Many of them splintered under the
weight, leaving an amputated landscape. Ninety percent of the trees were
damaged and hundreds were lost. But devoted park lovers are volunteering to help
the non-profit conservancy plant new trees throughout the six parks and
parkway.


“Woo, that’s a lot of work. All right, you got it.”


John Penfold even climbs up on top of the shoulders of other volunteers to unlash the
branches of a newly planted maple. Penfold says they’re willing to do whatever it
takes to save the parks.


“When the storm hit, kind of saw all the trees fall, so, I think it brought the
community together to realize, we have these trees and we need ’em.”


Before the storm hit, the park system was already in crisis. American Elm
disease swept through, killing the stately trees. Then the city cut money for
maintenance. But now, the non-profit conservancy has come up with a twenty-
year master plan to restore the Olmsted park system. Executive Director
Johnathon Holifield says they have their work cut out for them:


“This system, at one time, was home to about 40,000 trees – 40,000. We’re
down to about 12,000,” said Holifield. “So, we have a long way to go to
truly recapture the Olmstedian glory.”


The sense of urgency is helping the conservancy raise the money and muscle
needs to fully restore Olmsted’s vision. The vision part is where landscape
architect Brian Dold comes in. Dold poured over Olmsted’s plans and he consulted
with other conservancies. It’s his job to make sure that the system returns to the
naturalistic setting Olmsted intended.


“He really tried to make it look like it had naturally occurred. He used like
large open meadows, and dense woodland and pathways through there,
sort of meandering through, sort of creating that Olmstedian landscape
that looks like it could have been there from the beginning of time.”


But Olmsted’s plan will get tweaked a bit. Dold says had some experiments that
didn’t work out so well. Over time, the Norway maples and the Common Buckthorn
trees pretty much took over. Dold says they won’t repeat the mistake:


“We’re not planting any of those trees that aren’t zone hardy and trees that
are put on invasive species lists. Those are pretty much eliminated from
anything we would ever do in these parks. And we are actually
physically removing many of them.”


Instead, Dold says they’ll plant native species. Lots of sugar and red maples,
service berries, eastern redbud and others. 28,000 trees over the next 20 years.
Executive Director Johnathan Holifield believes the new plan would meet
Olmsted’s approval:


“He would be pretty happy and particularly when you look out there and
you see the diversity of use in the park, the volunteer element that we
have. That’s what Olmsted was about – democratic,
egalitarian use and that certainly is represented today.”


So, if you happen to be in a Buffalo Olmsted park this summer, be sure to bring a
picnic basket and blanket, or maybe a shovel and some tree stakes.


For the Environment Report, I’m Joyce Kryszak.

Related Links

Discouraging Bottled Water

Over the last six years, bottled water consumption has gone up 60
percent in the United States. That means a lot of plastic bottles are
being thrown out. As Brad Linder reports, businesses and local
governments across the country are trying to encourage people to cut
back on bottled water:

Transcript

Over the last six years, bottled water consumption has gone up 60
percent in the United States. That means a lot of plastic bottles are
being thrown out. As Brad Linder reports, businesses and local
governments across the country are trying to encourage people to cut
back on bottled water:


Environmentally-conscious restaurants around the country have begun
removing bottled water from their menus. And the city of New York has
launched a new advertising campaign to convince citizens to drink tap
water. They tout it as “fat-free,” and “delicious.”


Susan Neely is the president of the American Beverage Association. She
says these campaigns miss the point:


“We need clean, accessible, safe tap water. But there’s great advantages
to bottled water, too. It’s portable, it’s convenient. And we can more
easily do what doctors and nutritionists are telling us to do, which is to drink more
water, particularly in these hot summer months.”


Neely says plastic bottles make up only one third of one percent of the
nation’s waste, and that’s not including the bottles that are recycled.


But not every bottle gets recycled. And it takes both energy and
petroleum to produce and distributed bottled water. That’s why cities
like New York are promoting tap water as an environmentally-friendly
alternative.


For the Environment Report, I’m Brad Linder.

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Oil Companies Serve Up Bio-Diesel

  • Tom Torre (pictured) is Chief Operating Officer at Metro Fuel Oil. (Photo by Brad Linder)

For years, environmental activists have been demonstrating that you don’t need gasoline to fuel a
car. Some people have been retrofitting cars with diesel engines that can be powered by
restaurant grease. But with the price of oil soaring in recent years bio-diesel’s been getting more
popular. Brad Linder reports that it’s moving from a fuel for hobbyists to an energy alternative
that’s even getting the attention of oil companies:

Transcript

For years, environmental activists have been demonstrating that you don’t need gasoline to fuel a
car. Some people have been retrofitting cars with diesel engines that can be powered by
restaurant grease. But with the price of oil soaring in recent years bio-diesel’s been getting more
popular. Brad Linder reports that it’s moving from a fuel for hobbyists to an energy alternative
that’s even getting the attention of oil companies:


From a distance, Metro Fuel Oil in Brooklyn, New York looks like an over-sized gas station. And
in a way, that’s what it is. Truckers pull up to a series of pumps, grab a hose and load their tanks
with oil. It’ll be distributed to heating oil and diesel customers throughout the area.


Tom Torre is Metro’s chief operating officer. He says starting next year, some of those trucks
will be topping off with a blend of oil and vegetable-based bio-diesel:


“Kind of like if you’ve ever seen a Sunoco gas station where they had the different octanes you
can buy, same thing with the bio. It’d be B5, B10, B20, B15s, whatever they might utilize.”


In other words, you can get a blend… For example, B20 is 80% diesel and 20% bio-diesel.


For more than six decades, Metro has provided oil to residential and commercial customers. A
few years ago, Metro began importing processed bio-diesel from nearby states to fuel its own
fleet of 40 trucks.


But next year, the oil company plans start taking in raw vegetable oil and processing it on-site.
Metro’s planned 110 million gallon bio-diesel processing facility will be one of the largest in the
country.


Torre says Metro doesn’t expect to get out of the oil business anytime soon. But the company
does see a future for domestically-produced fuels like corn-based ethanol and vegetable-based
bio-diesel:


“And it’s good for the economy as well. I mean, you know, the numbers are astounding as to
how much we spend a day, billions of dollars a day, that are being spent on foreign imported oils that are going back to the Arabs where… and
nothing against the Arabs, don’t get me wrong, but it’s money flowing out of the United States.”


When the processing plant opens, Metro will be able convert large quantities of soybean, palm,
and rapeseed oil into fuel. With a few modifications, the facility could also process restaurant
grease:


“I’ve been here, with the company, for 25, 26 years. Most exciting thing that’s happened in at
least the last 20, 25 years. We’re looking to push this thing going forward. And with our
association as well, the New York Oil Heat Association, to say, listen guys. We’d better start
thinking about this. We’d better be forward thinkers. Otherwise we’re going to be left behind.”


But as more and more facilities like Metro’s pop up around the country, what happens to the
nation’s food supply? Bill Holmberg heads the biomass division of the American Council on
Renewable Energy. As the demand for vegetable-based fuels rises, he says so could the price of
foods based on corn and soybeans.


“I think there will be an increase in price in those. But I think they’re beginning to level off now,
I think people are beginning to realize that you can find other resources to make those diesel- type
fuels.”


Holmberg says if you make bio-diesel out of soybean oil, there’ll be less soybeans available for
food processing. But that’s not the case if you use restaurant grease. And researchers are looking
at ways to cultivate algae as a fast-growing source of vegetable oil for bio-diesel.


If the economic impact of bio-diesel remains unclear, Holmberg says there’s no question it’s
more environmentally friendly than petroleum. Bio-diesel emits far less carbon monoxide, sulfur,
and particulate matter than petroleum-based diesel.


The U.S. bio-diesel industry is still young. Last year, it processed less than 300 million gallons
of fuel, which is just a drop in the 40 billion gallon transportation diesel market. Holmberg says
even large facilities like Metro’s aren’t going to change that overnight:


“We, in the world of bio-fuels, ethanol, and bio-diesel and other forms of bio-fuels, will be
making a major contribution if we just do not increase the amount of fuels used in the
transportation sector, which we’re doing now. If we can just keep that number steady for a few
more years, we’re providing a real service to the United States.”


Holmberg hopes that ten years from now, facilities will be in place to actually reduce the amount
of petroleum used. He says that could be from a combination of ethanol, bio-diesel, gas electric
hybrid vehicles, and other technologies that are just in their infancy.


Metro’s Tom Torre doesn’t think the oil industry is going away anytime soon. But he says the
company’s willing to invest 15 million dollars in its new processing plant to help the
environment and to get in on a growing industry.


It doesn’t hurt that Metro can sell bio-diesel for almost the same price as oil. The federal
government provides a tax incentive for bio-diesel producers like Metro, and the state of New
York offers a tax credit to residents who purchase bio-diesel. Currently, that means it’s cheaper
to heat your house with a bio-diesel blend than with 100% petroleum-based heating oil.


Without those incentives, Torre says Metro would still be opening a processing facility — just a
much smaller one:


“It would definitely not have been a 110 million gallon plant. You know, we could have started it
off with 5 million gallons, let’s say, and just utilize it for people that really wanted to be green.
But when we took a hard look at it and saw that it could be competitive, especially last year as
the price of petroleum just soared, is when we really started to say you know what? Instead of
doing the 5 million, let’s just go right to the 110 million.”


Metro’s new bio-diesel processing plant – one of the biggest in the country – is scheduled to open
next fall.


For the Environment Report, I’m Brad Linder.

Related Links

Lamprey Infests Lake Champlain

  • Two sea lampreys attached to a large fish. This predatory parasite is wiping out freshwater salmon and trout in Lake Champlain. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

Government biologists working on Lake
Champlain, between New York and Vermont, say
they’re losing the fight against the sea
lamprey, a parasite that targets freshwater
salmon and trout. The lamprey population has
surged in recent years. Brian Mann reports
scientists say the best solution might be to
turn the fight over to federal biologists
who have had greater success fighting
lamprey on the Great Lakes:

Transcript

Government biologists working on Lake
Champlain, between New York and Vermont, say
they’re losing the fight against the sea
lamprey, a parasite that targets freshwater
salmon and trout. The lamprey population has
surged in recent years. Brian Mann reports
scientists say the best solution might be to
turn the fight over to federal biologists
who have had greater success fighting
lamprey on the Great Lakes:


On a gorgeous April morning, charter boat captain Richard
Greenough went fishing. He didn’t like what he found on his line:


“I went out this morning, I got one fish. Looked like it had been
sitting in front of a machine gun. It was skinny. It looked sick.
And that was a good one, because it’s alive.”


Lake Champlain’s freshwater salmon and trout are being wiped out by a
predator called the sea lamprey. The parasites are awful creatures – long and slimy
with circular suckers used to clamp onto the side of fish.


Back in the early 90s, New York and Vermont partnered with the US Fish
and Wildlife Service on an experimental project to kill lamprey, but
since 1998, the parasites have come roaring back. Speaking at a sea lamprey summit
in Burlington, Vermont, Captain Greenough says his customers regularly catch fish
that are half-eaten and scarred:


“It’s almost an embarrassment right now. Two years ago, I thought it
was bad with a 13-inch lake trout with three lampreys on it. Well, it’s
got so good we got a 12-inch with five on it last year.”


State biologists in Vermont and New York concede that the lamprey
response here simply isn’t working. Doug Stang is chief of fisheries
for New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation:


“You see in our current effort, even though substantial and
significant, just isn’t cutting it. We need to put forth more effort. Or
we need to pick up our toys so to speak and go home.”


Government biologists say abandoning an intensive lamprey program
would mean a complete crash of lake salmon and trout populations.
The fish are in danger of being wiped out by the lamprey. Biologists also say the parasites would likely begin feeding on other
species. One possible solution, Stang says, is turning the lamprey battle over
to the federal government, modeling the effort here after a much larger
lamprey program on the Great Lakes:


“This would provide us with a more centralized approach and this would provide us with a more a coordination for funding
and sea lamprey control efforts.”


The sea lamprey program on the Great Lakes isn’t a complete success.
The program is struggling with proposed funding cuts… and some
critics say the lamprey population in the Great Lakes is still too high.


Despite those concerns, Dale Burkett says the feds are ready to do more on Lake Champlain.
He heads sea lamprey control operations for the Great Lakes Fishery
Commission and works for the US Fish and Wildlife Service:


“The expansion in dollar amount would be somewhere around $310,000 more than is
currently being spent by the collective. I think the Fish and Wildlife
Service has indicated that they are willing, if tasked with that
responsibility, to step up to the plate.”


Federal scientists say that new investment would help to save a $250 million sport fishery.
Even so, the Federal takeover would be controversial. The main weapon
in this fight is a kind of poison called TFM that’s used to kill sea
lamprey larva in rivers.


On the Great Lakes, the use of TFM has a long track record, dating back
to the 1950s, but in New York and Vermont the practice is still
controversial. Joanne Calvi is with a group called the Poultney River
Committee. She says the toxins could affect other native species, including
several varieties of freshwater mussels that are considered endangered or threatened by state biologists:


“I’m opposed to chemical treatment with TFM to control native sea
lamprey in the Poultney River. I feel it should be prohibited.”


A new wrinkle here is the growing scientific consensus that the lamprey are a native species
and might not be invasive at all. Green groups say the parasite’s growing numbers reflect a larger problem with Lake Champlain’s eco-system.


Rose Paul is with the Vermont Chapter of the Nature Conservancy:


“We need to manage the lake’s species and habitats in a more holistic
way, that would help us identify root causes of problems.”


Scientists are experimenting with other methods of controlling lamprey including nest destruction, the release of
sterilized males, and trapping. But in the short term, government resdearchers say lampricide poison is
the only cost-efficient way to prevent the parasite from destroying Lake Champlain’s fishery.


For the Environment Report, I’m Brian Mann in Burlington.

Related Links

Wasp Kills Pines

  • The Sirex woodwasp is killing pinetrees in New York, Pennsylvania and parts of Ontario and seems to be spreading. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Foresters are worried about a wasp that’s killing pine trees. The insect is
spreading through pine forests in northern states. Steve Carmody reports:

Transcript

Foresters are worried about a wasp that’s killing pine trees. The insect is
spreading through pine forests in northern states. Steve Carmody reports:


The female Sirex woodwasp injects a combination of a toxic mucus and a
fungus while laying her eggs in pine trees. The mixture feeds the eggs, but
kills tree cells, often further weakening stressed pines.


In the three years since it first appeared in upstate New York, the Sirex
woodwasp has spread to 25 New York counties, and two counties in
Pennsylvania and part of Ontario.


Bob Heyd, with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, says the Sirex
woodwasp is spreading:


“The wasp is actually very strong fliers. They can fly 70 or 100 miles, so what it
is here… it will disperse very quickly.”


In other countries, forestry officials have found an imported predatory
nematode from the wasp’s home range in Europe has been an effective
biological control. It’s unclear if officials in the US will try the same
tactic.


For the Environment Report, I’m Steve Carmody.

Related Links

Invasive Reeds Help Treat Wastewater

  • Phragmites, or "common reed," is being used to treat wastewater in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. (Photo by Adam Allington.)

Nature is often full of practical solutions to real-world problems. Take the case of sewage and wastewater treatment: for decades engineers have used mechanical means to process wastewater before disposing of the end product in landfills. It turns out that phragmites, a robust wetland reed, can do the job just as quickly and for a fraction of the cost. Adam Allington has more:

Transcript

Nature is often full of practical solutions to real-world problems. Take the case of sewage and wastewater treatment: for decades engineers have used mechanical means to process wastewater before disposing of the end product in landfills. It turns out that phragmites, a robust wetland reed, can do the job just as quickly and for a fraction of the cost. Adam Allington has more:


Brandee Nelson is wearing knee-high rubber boots. She’s wading out into a tiny patch of reeds gently swaying in the wind. They’re planted in a goopy substance that appears to be mud, but is actually…


“Sludge. We’re standing ankle deep in sludge. Sludge is the leftover solids from the conventional sewage treatment process. Things that are very organic in nature, but thin enough that you can’t really scoop it out with your hand. It’s not the consistency of yogurt, it’s more like a thin milkshake.”


That thin milkshake used to be the solid stuff that you flush down the drain. Brandee is an environmental engineer working for the village of Tivoli, New York. Today she is monitoring the growth of two recently planted reed beds. The reeds are an invasive wetland species called “phragmites,” or “common reed”. In most places these reeds are a problem because they crowd-out native plants, but here they’re doing a job.


“The whole reason to have the reed beds is really to get the largest volume reduction of your waste product. Because the sludge tends to have so much water in it, and phragmites sucks up an enormous amount of water. This bed, we’re standing in it now, this bed will be totally dry in one day.”


Even though Tivoli is relatively small at about 1000 residents, the village still produces 100,000 gallons of waste water every day. That waste water translates into a whole lot of sludge, which Tivoli then has to haul to landfills.


“We’ll probably be saving about $45,000 on hauling fees.”


Tom Cordier is deputy mayor for the village of Tivoli.


“At one point we had drying beds, and it took about a week for them to dry, and then we would come in with our backhoe and take out the dried material. But every time we got ready to do that, it would rain and we would have to start the whole process over again, and then in the wintertime it was always freezing, and finally we got to the point where we had to have it trucked away.”


Before they planted the reeds, Tivoli had to remove their liquid sludge once a month. When the reeds are fully grown, the village won’t need to haul anything away for over 10 years. But if reed bed technology is so efficient, why isn’t everyone using it?


The answer has a lot to do with the predictability of mechanics, versus the variables of biology.


“One of the issues with the reed beds is it’s a biological process. Engineers like to typically do things that are mechanical, things that fit into formulas.”


Dan Fleuriel is director of the wastewater treatment for the town of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. Shelburne Falls began experimenting with reed bed technology back in the early 1990’s. Unlike the short 3 foot reeds in Tivoli, the mature reeds in Shelburne Falls tower some 6 feet over us as we walk through them.


“We’ve been applying to these reed beds since 1993. It’s been very good for us because we’ve gone from a very time consuming process of de-watering sludge to something that we pretty much leave hands-off that we can rely on.”

Functionality and reliability: they’re fundamental to any civil engineering project. But Brandee Nelson notes that Tivoli’s reed beds also make sense from an environmental perspective.


“This waste product, 150,000 gallons of it, used to go to a landfill somewhere else and it wasn’t our problem any more. Now what we’re able to do is manage that waste product here on site in a relatively small footprint using a natural technology, a very low-energy technology, and in the end we’ll end up with a product that we can use for village landscaping projects.”


Tivoli’s reed beds are expected to reach full maturity by next summer. Success of the project is being followed closely by neighboring towns, who are also considering a switch to reed bed treatment plants.


For the Environment Report, I’m Adam Allington.

Related Links

Waspy Pest Seeking Out Pines

A new pest has the potential to do damage the nation’s pine forests.
Richard Annal reports it’s already damaging pines in two states:

Transcript

A new pest has the potential to damage the nation’s pine forests.
Richard Annal reports it’s already damaging pines in two states:


The Sirex woodwasp is believed to have made its way into the US
by infesting imported packing materials. The wasp was first
discovered in New York two years ago and has spread across a
large part of that state and into parts of Pennsylvania. The bug
destroys pine trees by laying eggs in them.


Jason Denim is a senior forester with New York’s Department of
Environmental Conservation. Denim says the wasp has proven to
be a major pest to pine forests around the world and has the
potential to do major damage to pines here in the United States:


“It’s been a major pest globally in pine plantations of North
American pine species primarily outplanted in other parts of the
world.”


To stop the spread of the wasp, foresters are asking loggers not to
take pine materials out of infested areas.


For the environment report, I’m Richard Annal.

Related Links

Easing Eel Passage to Fresh Water

The American eel migrates from the salty Sargasso Sea into the fresh waters of the eastern U.S. and Canada. But their numbers have dropped significantly. Now, the eel is getting help from dam operators. The GLRC’s Martha Foley explains:

Transcript

The American eel migrates from the salty Sargasso Sea into the fresh waters
of the eastern US and Canada. But their numbers have dropped significantly. Now, the
eel is getting help from dam operators. The GLRC’s Martha Foley
explains:


Fifty years ago, the American eel accounted for half the biomass in Lake
Ontario. Now it’s almost gone. Scientists don’t exactly know why, but some
researchers say dams are partially to blame.


Kevin McGrath is a scientist with the New York Power Authority. He’s been
looking for ways to help the migrating eels get past a dam in Massena, New York.
The dam is jointly operated by the US and Canada. McGrath helped design a
new eel passage that opened this summer. He says the new passage is working
well:


“The thing that is really amazing us is how quickly they’re going through
the system. They’re moving through the entire system in about an hour and a
half and we’re just incredibly pleased that it’s working as well as it is.”


McGrath says he wouldn’t be surprised if the new passage – and an older
one on the Canadian side – combine to pass 30,000 eels this season.


For the GLRC, I’m Martha Foley.

Related Links

Looking Back on the “Slick of ’76”

  • Officials placed containment booms around the barge. Most of them failed to prevent the oil from floating downriver, contaminating dozens of miles of pristine shoreline. (Courtesy of the NY State Dept. of Conservation)

30 years ago, an oil barge ran aground in the St. Lawrence River. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of thick crude oil coated the shoreline of northern New York state. The accident remains one of the largest inland oil spills in the United States. It’s a reminder that freighters haul millions of gallons of toxic liquids across the Great Lakes. And many people worry about another spill. The GLRC’s David Sommerstein talked to witnesses of the 1976 spill:

Transcript

30 years ago, an oil barge ran aground in the St. Lawrence River. Hundreds
of thousands of gallons of thick crude oil coated the shoreline of northern New
York State. The accident remains one of the largest inland oil spills in the
United States. It’s a reminder that freighters haul millions of gallons of toxic
liquids across the Great Lakes. And many people worry about another spill.
The GLRC’s David Sommerstein talked to witnesses of the 1976 spill:


It was really foggy that morning. Bob Smith awoke to two sounds:


“You could hear the anchor chains going down, and next thing we know
there was a young Coast Guard guy knocking on the front door.”


The Coast Guard guy had driven up, asking around for a missing barge.
Smith remembered the anchor chains echoing across the water that woke
him up. He went outside to look.


(Sound of walking outside)


Thirty years later, Smith lives amidst cozy cottages on manicured lawns in
the heart of the touristy Thousand Islands.


“Just right about straight out there. See where that boat’s coming up there
now?”


That’s where a barge carrying oil from Venezuela had dropped anchor after
running aground. That morning Smith watched crude as thick as mud drift
out of sight downriver:


“If you’re born and raised here on the river, you don’t like to see anything go
in the river that doesn’t belong there.”


The Coast Guard placed booms in the water, but the oil quickly spilled over.
It carried 50 miles downstream. It oozed as far as 15 feet into the river’s
marshes. Tom Brown was the point man for New York’s Department of
Environmental Conservation. He says the spill couldn’t have come at a
worse time for wildlife:


“All the young fish, waterfowl, shorebirds, furbearers, were coming off the
nests and were being born.”


Thousands of birds and fish suffocated in black goo. As images of
devastation flashed on national TV, the spill killed the tourism season, too.
It was a summer with no swimming, no fishing, no dipping your feet in the
water at sunset. Really, it was a summer with no river.


(Sound of river at Chalk’s dock)


30 years later, everyone still remembers the acrid smell:


“When I woke up in the middle of the night and I could smell oil, I was
afraid I had an oil leak in my house.”


Dwayne Chalk’s family has owned a marina on the St. Lawrence for
generations. Chalk points to a black stripe of oil on his docks, still there
three decades later, and he’s still bitter:


“The Seaway has done this area, well, I shouldn’t say that, it hasn’t done any
good. To me it hasn’t.”


The St. Lawrence Seaway opened the ports of the Great Lakes to Atlantic
Ocean freighters carrying cargoes of steel, ore, and liquid chemicals. It
generates billions of dollars a year in commerce, but it’s also brought
pollution and invasive species.


Anthropologist John Omohundro studied the social effects of the 1976 oil
spill. He says it helped awaken environmentalism in the Great Lakes:


“The spill actually raised people’s consciousness that the river could be a
problem in a number of areas, not just oil.”


Groups like Save the River and Great Lakes United began lobbying for
cleaner water and safer navigation in the years after the spill:


“If a vessel carrying oil or oil products were in that same type of ship today,
it would not be allowed in.”


Albert Jacquez is the outgoing administrator for the US side of the St. Lawrence
Seaway. The 1976 barge had one hull and gushed oil when it hit the rocks.
Today’s barges are mostly double-hulled and use computerized navigation.
Jacquez says a lot has changed to prevent spills:


“The ships themselves are different, the regulations that they have to follow are
different, and the inspections are different. Now does that guarantee? Well,
there are no guarantees, period.”


So if there is a spill, the government requires response plans for every part of
the Great Lakes. Ralph Kring leads training simulations of those plans for
the Coast Guard in Buffalo. Still, he says the real thing is different:


“You really can’t control the weather and the currents and all that. It’s definitely going to be a
challenge, especially when you’re dealing with a real live incident where
everyone’s trying to move as fast as they can and also as efficient as they
can.”


Critics question the ability to get responders to remote areas in time. They
also worry about spills in icy conditions and chemical spills that oil booms
wouldn’t contain.


(Sound of river water)


Back on the St. Lawrence River, Dwayne Chalk says the oil spill of 1976
has taught him it’s not if, it’s when, the next big spill occurs:


“You think about it all the time. Everytime a ship comes up through here,
you think what’s going to happen if that ship hits something.”


Chalk and everyone else who relies on the Great Lakes hope they’ll never
have to find out.


For the GLRC, I’m David Sommerstein.

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A More Efficient Way to Make Ethanol?

The cost of oil is topping out near 70 dollars a barrel and the nation is sending billions of dollars to unstable foreign countries to get it.
With that
in mind, many Americans have begun to think about biofuels from domestic crops. Biofuels such as corn ethanol and soy diesel are the most popular right now. But researchers are looking into plants that don’t require the fertilizers and pesticides those crops need. The GLRC’s Richard Annal reports on one crop that could make ethanol much more efficiently:

Transcript

The cost of oil is topping out near $70 a barrel and the nation is sending billions of dollars to unstable foreign countries to get it. With that in mind many Americans have begun to think about biofuels from domestic crops. Biofuels such as corn ethanol and soy diesel are the most popular right now, but researchers are looking into plants that don’t require the fertilizers and pesticides those crops need. The GLRC’s Richard Annal reports on one crop that could make ethanol much more efficiently:


(sound of pouring liquid)


Researcher Timothy Volk is showing me some liquid that is on its way to becoming biofuel.


“So what comes out of this is a brown liquid.”


This murky brownish substance contains sugars that have been extracted from wood chips. Separating sugars from organic materials is an essential part in the production of the biofuel ethanol, and a new method being developed at the School might revolutionize that process. This lab is at the School of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, part of the State University of New York system. Everybody just calls the school ESF. What makes the process at ESF different is the use of water instead of harsh chemicals as a means of extracting sugar and the use of wood from a type of willow as stock material.


The extracted sugars are then fermented and used to produce ethanol. Mix 85 percent ethanol with 15 percent gasoline and you’ve got E-85. Several models of cars can burn E-85. It burns cleaner than petroleum based products, and reduces the dependence on foreign oils.


ESF’s Timothy Volk says this method differs from others being used, creates several by- products, and leaves very little waste material.


“What’s left over still looks like a wood chip. That could go to the paper industry, and you could still make paper out of it, or you could use that wood chip to produce renewable heat and power. One of the beauties of this is that from a ton of hard wood chips from the forest or willow or where ever it comes from you’re making multiple products and there’s not a lot left.”


For stock material ESF researchers are experimenting with the use of the willow shrub tree. This plant is native and grows to over ten feet tall. The researchers say willow beats corn hands down. You have to burn fuel to plant corn every year. Corn requires fossil fuel-based fertilizers, and you only use the corn kernels rather than the whole plant to produce ethanol.


Jim Nokas is one of the lead researchers on the project. He sees the willow shrub as much more commercially viable than corn-based production.


“The best calculations we have for every unit of energy put into this process you get anywhere from 11 to 15 units of energy out. Compared to the best data available for corn, for every unit of energy put in, one would obtain 1.67 units of energy out.”


In other words, producing ethanol from willow is about ten times more efficient than using corn.


Tom Linberg is a commissioner with the New York State Department of Agriculture. Linberg says he’s excited by the prospect of wood-based ethanol production, and sees growing a low maintenance crop like willow as a way for farmers to earn extra cash.


“I think it’s something that could provide an option for a lot of farmers or land owners to use vacant land. Try and get some income off of it whereas they might otherwise not be getting income off the land. It’s a fairly low impact crop. You know, you plant it once and you don’t really need to do anything else with it, and this is something they could have on the side. Brings in some extra income and, again, helps keep that land productive.”


Willow can be harvested 6 to 7 times before replanting is necessary. It has a year long growing and harvesting season, and provides high yields. With about 2 million acres of dormant farmland in New York alone that could be dedicated to willow production, Volk believes growing willow for ethanol would have a positive effect on the local economy that buying foreign oil cannot offer.


“The real benefit here then is we build them here and it’s locally produced material, so you buy it from the land owners, or the farmers that are producing willow, the people that own wood lots. You buy all that material locally from the local community. You produce the ethanol and hopefully then we are using it locally in the community, and instead of sending energy dollars out of the state we cycle them around the local community and get lots of benefits associated with them.”


The researchers say the willow-to-ethanol process will be ready for commercial application within two years, and if it proves commercially viable the timing couldn’t be better. With ethanol plants being built across the nation, the wood method could become an efficient alternative to corn-based production in many states.


For the GLRC, I’m Richard Annal.

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