With a smart
grid system, your house can talk back to you and the power station
(Source: Jdorwin at Wikimedia Commons)
The government is spending billions of taxpayer dollars on a new “smart grid.” Mark Brush reports the new grid could eventually save you money on your energy bills:
Transcript
The government is spending billions of taxpayer dollars on a new “smart grid.” Mark Brush reports the new grid could eventually save you money on your energy bills:
Right now – power just goes from point A to point B.
But with a smart
grid system, your house can talk back to you and the power station.
The
meter could tell you how much it costs to heat your water, for instance.
And the power company will be able to talk to you if they’re having a
problem.
So, if they’re headed for a blackout, they can text message you
or e-mail you and ask you to shut off your A/C.
Jesse Berst is the founding editor of Smart Grid News dot com. It’s a trade publication.
He says, if electric grids are updated across the country, it would cut
down on pollution and save money.
“And that means there’s billions, tens of billions of dollars of power
plants and lines that we wouldn’t have to build over the next couple of
decades.”
Upgrading the system won’t be easy.
Each state has regulatory agencies that oversee thousands of electric
suppliers.
Sally Maughan and her assistant John Knight (Photo by Sadie Babits)
The bears' enclosure (Photo by Sadie Babits)
A shy bear cub (Photo by Sadie Babits)
Many state wildlife agencies can’t
or won’t take in injured or abandoned
critters. They rely on a lot of volunteers
to do the job. One woman in Idaho has made
it her life’s work to give orphaned bear
cubs throughout the West a second chance.
Sadie Babits brings us this profile:
Transcript
Many state wildlife agencies can’t
or won’t take in injured or abandoned
critters. They rely on a lot of volunteers
to do the job. One woman in Idaho has made
it her life’s work to give orphaned bear
cubs throughout the West a second chance.
Sadie Babits brings us this profile:
Sally Maughan used to be known as the “squirrel lady.” As a wildlife
rehabilitator, she took in weasels, foxes, raccoons and a lot of
squirrels.
She had no intention of working with bears until one day the
Idaho Fish and Game Department called.
“And they kept calling because nobody else had an enclosure that could hold a bear.”
Maughan named that first bear cub Ruggles. That was twenty
years ago.
So far, she’s helped 189 orphaned bear cubs from around the
West. She runs a non-profit in Boise called the Idaho Black Bear
Rehabilitation Program.
(sound of outdoors and cars passing)
It’s a chilly afternoon but it’s sunny. So Maughan, her helper John Knight
and I sit outside on her front steps. It’s hard to ignore the smell as
we talk. You know that musty smell of animals and straw and well, bears. It’s kind of an
animal barnyard smell out here.
This place used to be surrounded
by pasture. Not any more. On one side there’s an upscale subdivision.
And on the other side, there’s another large subdivision. Maughan says
her neighbors don’t mind the bears and sometimes she’ll let them come
visit.
“We don’t want bears seeing people any more than they need to.
John just comes in and feeds and comes back out. And I do the bottle
feeding which is when they really attach so once they are weaned he
pretty much takes over from there.”
(sound of gate opening)
Sadie: “So who’s that?”
John: “That is one of the Oregon bears.”
The cub makes a bee line for his house the minute he spots us. Maughan’s
assistant John Knight explains this bear and two others are the only
ones here at the center.
The bear pokes his head out then ducks right
back inside as I check out the roomy enclosure. There are logs to play
on and green apples to eat.
John: “That’s their swim tub.”
Sadie: “They have a swim tub.”
John: “Yep. They like to break it often.”
Sadie: “Will they get in there during the winter?”
John: Yeah. Some bears do. It’s odd. One bear last year was in it everyday. It was
snowing – 30 degrees. He was in it.”
These cubs are orphans. We don’t really know what happened to their
mothers. They may have been killed by licensed hunters or even illegally killed.
Each year more orphaned cubs show up at Maughan’s place. She’s one of only
a few bear rehabilitators in the West.
Jon Rachael works for the Idaho Fish and Game as a wildlife manager. He says they have
to turn to people like Maughan.
“We simply don’t have the personnel or resources to handle all
of that.”
Just in the last year, Sally Maughan took in 53 bears. It was a bad
year
for berries and there were a lot of wildfires around
the West.
“What are you going to do? Say, ‘I’m sorry I can’t take you – just die?’ Uh-uh. Can’t do
that. So, hopefully, eventually, there’ll be some more rehab-ers
for bears. It’s a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of energy.”
The World Society for the Protection of Animals covers most of Maughan’s
expenses. She relies heavily though on donations. It’s still not enough.
Anything left from her paycheck as a travel agent goes back to the bears.
She’s even wiped out her retirement just to get these black bears back
into the wild where they belong.
The city of Chicago has hired the company Camp Dresser and McKee to dig through residents' trash and figure out what
exactly people are throwing away (Photo by Michael Rhee)
Chris Martel is an engineer, and a solid waste
expert (Photo by Michael Rhee)
Large cities in the US are still
struggling to find ways to recycle their trash.
That’s because you can’t use the same program
for every high-rise, office building or condo.
One city is trying to attack this problem by
digging through the garbage. Mike Rhee reports:
Transcript
Large cities in the US are still
struggling to find ways to recycle their trash.
That’s because you can’t use the same program
for every high-rise, office building or condo.
One city is trying to attack this problem by
digging through the garbage. Mike Rhee reports:
(sound of trucks beeping)
This is a waste transfer facility on Chicago’s South Side. It’s kind of a temporary dump.
Garbage trucks pick up trash from people’s homes and pile it up here. The piles are then packed
onto even bigger trucks and hauled to landfills far away.
Chris Martel looks over the mounds of trash here. Martel is an engineer, and a solid waste
expert.
“There’s a lot of different paper types here, there’s a plastic bottles, all things that are recyclable.”
But they’re probably not going to be recycled. They’re going to a landfill. That’s why Martel is
here.
He works for a consulting firm called CDM, or Camp Dresser and McKee.
The city of Chicago has hired the company to dig through residents’ trash and figure out what
exactly people are throwing away. Martel has been doing waste sorts like this for more than a
decade.
As we walk to another part of the building, he remembers his first one fondly.
“That’s where I fell in love with my wife, after giving her flowers out of the trash and stuffed
animals out of the trash.”
She didn’t mind they were recycled.
We get to the waste sorting area. There’s a group of workers surrounded by dozens of large and
small bins.
(BOOM)
(laughs) “That boom was the tipper dropping the waste load.”
A rugged, yellow loader dumps about 300 pounds of garbage at our feet. It’s a sample from one
of the large piles in the facility.
A team starts sorting through the garbage.
Scott Keddy is one of them. He picks up a plastic garbage bag.
“We just open it up and see what kind of surprises lie inside, like it could be this #1 plastic PET
bottle, or this rigid, plastic thinga-ma-jobber that did something for somebody at some point,
which is different from that.”
They’re sorting them into 81 different containers. Each one is for a kind of paper, plastic, metal,
food or some other piece of trash.
The point is to figure out how much of each material people are throwing out. And where it’s all
coming from.
Suzanne Malec-McKenna is commissioner for Chicago’s Department of Environment.
She says the tough thing about creating a recycling program in a city like Chicago is the diversity.
Not only do you have residents and businesses creating waste, but restaurants, prisons,
manufacturers for car parts. Each of these creates a different kind of garbage.
The city has been trying to come up with a recycling program that works for everyone for 20
years. Malec-McKenna says the study will help the city decide how to manage it all.
“You can’t have a cookie cutter approach for a city this diverse. You’ve got to come up with a
range of different kind of program options for it. We’ll come up with the right mix.”
But while the city figures recycling out, the garbage will keep piling up in landfills.
Martel, the waste expert, says he hopes that waste is reduced soon. He says most people don’t
understand the sheer quantities of garbage that are out there.
“Unless you physically see and touch it you don’t realize what a large amount it is and what the
implications are and how easy it is to divert these materials.”
Big cities around the country are realizing this, and working on a solution.
The Energy Star Program is "a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy helping us all save money and protect the environment through energy efficient products and practices" (Photo courtesy of Energy Star)
The federal government’s Energy
Star program is supposed to highlight
products that save you energy and money.
Rebecca Williams reports some independent
testers found Energy Star might be falling
a bit short:
Transcript
The federal government’s Energy
Star program is supposed to highlight
products that save you energy and money.
Rebecca Williams reports some independent
testers found Energy Star might be falling
a bit short:
The magazine Consumer Reports tests all kinds of products to see how they
stack up. They were testing refrigerators when they stumbled on something
odd.
Steven Saltzman is a Deputy Editor with Consumer Reports. He says the
Energy Star program relies on government standards that are outdated in some
cases. For example, one standard is to test a refrigerator’s energy use with the
icemaker off.
“But we found that when you turn the icemaker on – the refrigerator actually
used twice as much energy as it would with the icemaker off.”
Saltzman is not saying you can’t trust the Energy Star label. But he says the
tests need updating. And there’s a dark Energy Star secret, manufacturers get
to do their own testing in most cases – so there’s not a whole lot of third party
checking going on.
Gerry Moore’s the CEO of Island Waste Management – the company that runs the waste program on Prince Edward Island. He’s pointing at an aerial shot of the compost facility. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)
Gordon Smith’s the facilities supervisor for ADI – the company that runs the compost facility on PEI. He’s standing next to a pile of compost that’s still curing. It’s around 130 degrees in this warehouse. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)
Everywhere on the island, there are at least three or four waste options. Even public trash receptacles in town have three slots for waste, recyclables, and compost. This one’s at a public campground. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)
The recycling and composting rate
in the United States runs just around thirty
percent. That means seventy percent of our
waste still goes to landfills. Government
officials and others in charge of recycling
programs say we’re doing pretty well with
what we have available. But there’s a
community that’s challenging that assumption.
Kinna Ohman reports:
Transcript
The recycling and composting rate
in the United States runs just around thirty
percent. That means seventy percent of our
waste still goes to landfills. Government
officials and others in charge of recycling
programs say we’re doing pretty well with
what we have available. But there’s a
community that’s challenging that assumption.
Kinna Ohman reports:
Prince Edward Island’s one of those places where people who grow up here, stay here.
And it’s no wonder. The island’s off Canada’s eastern coast. It’s covered with rolling
green farmland, dark forests, and copper-red beaches. It’s Canada’s smallest province –
about the size of Delaware.
Prince Edward Island has a population of only 160,000. There seems to be enough room
for everyone.
But not for every thing.
Around ten years ago, the residents of Prince Edward Island saw their landfills filling up.
That meant digging more. They wanted to do something about it – and fast.
So they started an aggressive recycling and composting program.
Gerry Moore’s the CEO of Island Waste Management – the company that runs the
program. Moore says to make it happen quickly,
“We had to make this mandatory. It wasn’t something that we could go out and ask
people, ‘well, listen, this is the right thing to environmentally.’ We made it
mandatory.”
Moore says they had to be tough. If people didn’t separate their compost and recycling
from their waste, the company refused to pick it up. That was a difficult time for
politicians.
“And, to be quite honest with you, in the initial stages, it was fairly painful. But, if
we didn’t do what we did, when we did it, the landfill we have now would be totally
full and we’d have to have another one. We’re recycling everything we totally
possibly can.”
(sounds of a compost facility)
And they are. People and businesses on Prince Edward Island recycle and compost 65%
of their waste. That’s more than double the average in the U.S.
A lot of the former waste now goes to the island’s composting facility. The facility takes
care of miscellaneous garbage that can’t be recycled – things such as certain types of
paper and food scraps.
(sound of door closing)
Gordon Smith shows me the compost curing warehouse. We’re now sealed in with
steaming mounds of dark compost that almost reach the ceiling. It’s muggy and hot.
About 130 degrees.
“So this is our finished compost you’re looking at right here. This large pile. And
that large pile over there as well.”
Smith’s the facilities supervisor for ADI – the company running the composting plant.
The facility handles 30,000 tons every year.
And with all that, you’d think Prince Edward Islanders would say ‘job done.’ Right? But
they’re trying to reduce landfill waste even more.
They want businesses to start using packaging that can be composted or recycled. Many
local businesses have switched.
But there’s a problem. Big multinational chain stores bring goods to Prince Edward
Island in packaging that cannot be recycled or composted. It all ends up in the island’s
landfill.
Gerry Moore knows his province is too small to really influence these companies. So
that’s where he hopes other communities will help out and join in.
“There will be initial pain with that in the front end. And a lot of politicians and
public figures don’t want to go through that pain. But, you know, we only have one
earth. And whether you’re from New York, or Prince Edward Island, or all over
the globe, anything we can remanufacture and reuse is only going to extend the life
of the planet.”
And Prince Edward Island officials think if they can do it, other places can too – if they
have the political will.
The classic photograph of the Earth, taken by the Apollo 17 crew on December 7, 1972 traveling toward the moon (Photo courtesy of NASA-JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth)
Climate change is already affecting crops,
forests, water and wildlife. That’s according to
a new government report. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Climate change is already affecting crops,
forests, water and wildlife. That’s according to
a new government report. Lester Graham reports:
Climate change is not something that’s coming. It’s here, according to a report from the
U.S. Climate Change Science Program.
Peter Backlund is one of the chief authors of the new report.
“What was really striking was just how many different changes have been documented
and how much is changing more rapidly than we would have expected ten or fifteen
years ago. And we’re seeing widespread impacts sooner than we expected.”
The report basically says for every good thing climate change brings, there’s something
bad.
Faster growing crops, but more crop failures. Warmer winters mean livestock
survive better, but then hotter summers will be harder on the animals. And there are already
more forest fires and more insects killing trees.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
A proposed national clean water trust fund will be debated in Congress over the next year, with help from a leading House Republican. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach has the story:
Transcript
A proposed national clean water trust fund will be debated in Congress
over the next year, with help from a leading House Republican. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach has the story:
Sewage treatment agencies and some environmental groups have been
pushing for a dedicated national fund to help control sewer overflows
and protect regional waters like the Great Lakes.
Recently, House Water Resources Sub-Committee Chair John Duncan,
Junior introduced the Clean Water Trust Act. The Tennessee Republican
says the nation’s water infrastructure needs more federal money, but it
isn’t clear where Congress would find the 38 billion dollars over five
years.
Ken Kirk of National Association of Clean Water Agencies says he
doesn’t know yet who would pay.
“But I think if you would poll the American people, I think you would
find at least two things. One, clean water is a high priority, and
two, they are willing to pay more.”
Kirk contends a clean water trust fund would be similar to programs
financing highways and airports.
Construction along the shorelines can put a strain on natural systems. (Photo by Carole Swinehart/Michigan Sea Grant Extension)
One of the more subtle but relentless threats to the Great Lakes is
coastal development. Condos, ever larger and nicer beach homes
and buildings and parking lots in the watershed all have an
impact on the Lakes. As the population grows and the suburban
lifestyle keeps spreading, the health of the lakes is compromised
in countless tiny ways. Reporter Peter Payette finds those tiny
ways all add up:
Transcript
We’re continuing our look at ‘Ten Threats to the Great Lakes.’
Lester Graham is our guide through the series. He says the
experts who were surveyed to determine the threats say rapid
development is among the problems affecting the lakes:
One of the more subtle but relentless threats to the Great Lakes is
coastal development. Condos, ever larger and nicer beach homes
and buildings and parking lots in the watershed all have an
impact on the Lakes. As the population grows and the suburban
lifestyle keeps spreading, the health of the lakes is compromised
in countless tiny ways. Reporter Peter Payette finds those tiny
ways all add up:
Greg Reisig is standing at the edge of a 20-acre construction site
just down the street from the shore Lake Michigan.
Below him is a man-made pond a few hundred feet long. It was a
dry summer around here, but the pond is full.
In fact, Reisig says the water level is always the same.
“And that indicates there’s a lot of ground water flowing
here…there’s a lot of water in this pond and you can see what
was a whole big wetland complex…there’s a lot of cedar and red
osier dogwood…all the wetland plants.”
There are no wetlands here now.
The site in northern Michigan was excavated for homes a few
years ago.
But now the Army Corps of Engineers says the wetlands that
were here need to be restored. A few acres likely will be
restored. But Reisig says almost the whole site was wetlands
once. He expects it will soon be a subdivision with not much
more than a drainage ditch connecting it to Lake Michigan.
“What will that do to the amount of flow of water going into the
bay? Because of hard road surfaces, hard driveways, roofs,
buildings and supposedly fertilized lawns. What will happen to
the water and how will that increase the flow to the bay?”
The developer’s attorney says this is nonsense. Matt Vermetten
says this land was heavily farmed and mined for clay.
“There are pockets of quote unquote wetland and those are there
because of excavation for clay. So is this a wetland complex of
the nature we speak of when we typically speak of such a thing? I
think not.”
Disputes like this are becoming more common around the Great
Lakes. John Nelson is the baykeeper with the Grand Traverse
Bay Watershed Center. The bay off Lake Michigan and attracts a
lot of people. But Nelson says development doesn’t have to be a
problem.
He says the problem is people don’t think about the ecology of
the lakes. For example, east of Traverse City, Michigan, resorts
dominate the coastline. Along the beach, thick stands of sedges
and rushes extend out a few hundred feet. But the sections of
dark green marsh alternate with stretches of clean sand and white
lawn chairs.
(birds calling on beach)
Nelson grew up here and says this part of the lake was never a
sugar sand beach.
“They’ve located in a coastal marsh. Instead of celebrating and
dealing with that they’ve chosen to see it as they would like to
have it and then change it.”
The impacts of the changes are cumulative. Fish and wildlife
habitat is fragmented. The natural filtering properties of the
wetlands are gone.
So every time the city gets a rain shower all the dust and grime
and pollution are washed right into the lake.
Census data show people are leaving many of the Great Lakes
coastal cities and spreading out along the coastline. But it’s not
clear how local governments should plan for the growth.
Mike Klepinger studies land use planning for the Michigan Sea
Grant program. He says it’s hard to make direct connections
between a healthy lake and particular land uses.
“We are getting more planning along the shoreline than we had
thirty years ago in the state. The number of counties and number
of townships that have a plan has gone up, for example. But we
don’t know whether those plans are really doing any good.”
And it’s hard to implement good planning on a broad basis. In
any area, dozens of different local governments might have
independent control over development.
Multiply that by the number cities, townships and counties along
the coasts of the Great Lakes… and it’s hard to see how it all can
be managed so that enough coastline habitat is preserved.
The wind is up, and so is interest in wind power development. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Wind power is a small, but fast-growing segment
of the U.S. energy market. Right now, energy companies are scouring rural America for the best spots to put up wind turbines. But wind is not enough – these companies need land, too. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one wind developer’s search for its next wind farm:
Transcript
Wind power is a small, but fast-growing segment of the U.S. energy market. Right now, energy companies are scouring rural America for the best spots to put up wind turbines, but wind is not enough – these companies need land, too. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one wind developer’s search for its next wind farm.
The search for wind power could turn into a modern-day gold rush. Wind’s becoming a profitable way to meet growing demand for clean energy, but wind power companies face an obstacle: they can’t just find a windy spot and throw up some wind turbines.
They’ve got to sign a contract with a landowner, usually a farmer, who’s willing to rent out some breezy land. Mike Donahue is Vice President of Midwest Wind Power. His main job: find windy land and the farmers who own it. Donahue says the job’s changed recently.
“The biggest difference is the level of knowledge and sophistication that local elected officials and landowners have gotten regarding windpower. I mean, when we first started, they were like, ‘Wind what? Wind turbine? What’s that?’ They didn’t even know what a wind turbine looked like, let alone whether they wanted one in their field or not.”
For their part, savvy farmers aren’t waiting around for companies to call them. They’re taking the initiative. David Coffey farms hundreds of acres in Illinois. A few months back, he did a little investigating.
“First of all, I just had got the information from the Farm Bureau Magazine and what was going on in other areas. And I just got it in my mind, I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got a ridge here, what’s it worth?'”
So Coffey got equipment from a university and tested the wind along his ridge. The initial results were promising, and the university posted the data online. Donahue’s company noticed the results, and gave David Coffey a call.
Which leads us to today. Coffey’s agreed to give the company a tour of the area. After some quick introductions, Donahue, his partner Tim Polz, and I, squeeze into Coffey’s white pickup.
(Sound of door shutting)
Coffey drives us along a maze of gravel-lined back roads and soy bean fields. Soon, we see the ridge that brought Donahue’s company here. It’s not that spectacular, really. It’s just a big, rolling hill, but it spreads to the horizon.
DONAHUE: “Just eyeballing this, it looks like this ridge runs how many miles, would you say, from east to west?”
COFFEY: “Well, I would say it’s going to be close to… I’d say eight to ten.”
DONAHUE: “And then it’s roughly a mile across it?”
COFFEY: “Yeah, or a little better, if you’re gonna stay right on top of it, I’d say.”
Midwest Wind Power wants a large site like this, because it’s hard to turn a profit on smaller ones. Several farmers own bits of this ridge, so Donahue might have to deal with all of them, and that could be a headache.
David Coffey says some locals are worried about helping out. Landowners who build support for the project might not have enough wind on their own farms to qualify for a turbine and a rental
contract. Donahue says there’s a way to smooth that over. If someone’s been helpful but is left out…
“We actually do offer a kind of good neighbor compensation package to them as well.”
Of course, maybe other companies noticed David Coffey’s wind data, too. Donahue’s assistant, Tim Polz, broaches the subject.
“Have you guys had any of the other developers give you any type of financial offers?”
Coffey says yes, but doesn’t elaborate. Donahue makes his pitch. He says his company offers more than good rent, it offers other benefits attractive to farmers.
“Along those lines, we grant a great deal of flexibility to the landowners to have input into turbine locations, access road locations, cabling routes.”
Even with this flexibility, though, money counts. The company will pay farmers about seven thousand dollars each year for every turbine on their property. That’s a lot for an Illinois farmer. On average, they make only thirty thousand dollars in farm income each year.
Soon the conversation shifts away from money. Donahue asks whether Coffey’s neighbors are mostly farmers.
“If you’re in an area that has a number of non-farming residential homes, maybe built in wood lots, or people who want to live in the country, they’re less accepting of having wind turbines developed in view of their homes.”
Coffey assures him nearly everyone’s a farmer out here. And with that, he ends the tour.
“Well, what do you think of the area?”
Donahue says the company needs to run more wind tests along the ridge, but overall…
“The first impressions are very favorable as to the site and its potential. We’re looking forward to meeting with your other landowners and then ultimately, meeting some elected officials as well.”
It’s not clear what will come of today’s meeting. Maybe another company will land a contract, or perhaps there’ll never be turbines here, but the chances for success improve with each encounter.
In the forefront, Evelyn Kolojejchick, Ivan Pettit, and John Lundquist help to improve water quality as part of the Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement. (Photo by John
Kolojejchick)
These senior volunteers help their environmental communities by searching for abandoned oil wells, which can leak oil into the ground. (Photo by John Kolojejchick)
Environmental work isn’t just for young professionals anymore. Retired engineers, former biology teachers, and others with time on their hands are working on environmental problems as volunteers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan reports on how senior citizens are keeping environmentally active:
Transcript
Environmental work isn’t just for young professionals anymore.
Retired engineers, former biology teachers, and others with time on their hands are working on
environmental problems as volunteers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan
reports on how senior citizens are keeping environmentally active:
(Sound of bird)
75-year-old Ivan Pettit is officially retired from his job as an environmental regulator, but he
hasn’t stopped monitoring streams, promoting recycling, and solving a nagging safety issue in his
state.
(Sound of walking)
On a sunny day in Oil Creek State Park in northeast Pennsylvania, he drops a stone down a corroded
pipe.
“Okay, go.”
(Sound of rattling, splash)
Pettit is estimating the depth of this remnant of an old oil well. It’s one of thousands of
abandoned oil wells in this region. The wells date as far back as 1859. Pettit and a team of senior
volunteers regularly hunt for old wells. The seniors’ work improves water quality and safety for
hikers and hunters, and Pettit says it helps keeps him fit.
“It is work that I have always enjoyed doing as well as getting you outdoors and being able to
observe the things that’s going on around you, that is not a sedentary task whatsoever.”
Pettit belongs to the national Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement. The group claims
members as young as fifty-five. Pennsylvania has the third highest number of residents older than
sixty among U.S. states. Its active Senior Environmental Corps is touted as a national model, and
has been honored by the United Nations Environmental Program.
But senior groups across the nation are working on environmental problems. In Cape Cod, they
monitor West Nile virus. Seniors clean hazardous waste sites in Indiana. Michigan volunteers
install solar water heaters on poor peoples’ homes.
It’s a fast growing program. In 1993, 26 older adults made up the Senior Environment Corps. A
decade later, over 100 thousand were involved in work across the country.
Ivan Pettit’s work looking for old oil wells is the kind of effort that makes a real difference.
Besides being a hazard for hikers and hunters, some of the old wells seep oil into the ground and
it gets into streams.
In less than two years, the seniors have found almost two hundred wells. Environmental Alliance for
Senior Involvement president Tom Benjamin compares that to two college interns who worked full-time
one summer, and found fewer than fifty.
“Most of these individuals that were volunteers know that community and know the area. They grew up
there, they hunted those woods, they know what a oil well looks like, so they have some instant
recognition.”
(Sound of forest)
Every other week, from spring to fall, the well hunters line up horizontally, twenty feet apart,
and comb a section of forest. Some well holes are several feet across and twenty feet deep. Others
have narrow openings, but drop as deep as a thousand feet. Evelyn Kolojejchick and her husband John
lead Ivan Pettit and other volunteers in seeking out the wells and marking coordinates.
“Ok, longitude is?”
“Seventy-Nine.”
For both Evelyn and John Kolojejchick, well-hunting and other environmental projects are an
extension of teaching high school science for thirty years. Evelyn once aimed to spark interest in
many young minds. Now she feels she’s working on a smaller scale, but hopes to remain effective.
“I belong to Audubon, used to belong to a lot of other environmental organizations and it just
seemed like you needed… you needed to do something that was going to make a difference. I never
had any money to donate to all of these causes and you just you know, you want to do something that
an individual can do.”
Recently, the seniors saw results of well-hunting. They found sensitive species in a stream that
had once been polluted. Several oil wells nearby had been sealed with cement to keep acid mine
drainage out of the water.
“The first year we tested it for aquatic life, there was almost nothing there. And yesterday when
we were there, we had better diversity in that stream than we have in some of our streams that we
test all along that we know don’t have those kinds of problems. So they have made a significant
difference on that stream by plugging those wells. It’s remarkable.”
And it’s the kind of reward that these senior citizen volunteers had hoped for: making a difference
With a smart grid system, your house can talk back to you and the power station (Source: Jdorwin at Wikimedia Commons)
