Tag: tom

Straining Water Supplies in the Southwest

  • Nancy and Dave Tom bought this home near Apache Junction, Arizona. They have to haul all the water they use with their pickup truck, so they quickly learned how to conserve. (Photo by Mark Brush)

Many areas in the Southwest are booming. With all this new
development, pressures on water supplies are growing. Mark Brush takes
a look at the lengths people go to, to get water in the desert:

Transcript

Many areas in the Southwest are booming. With all this new
development, pressures on water supplies are growing. Mark Brush takes
a look at the lengths people go to, to get water in the desert:


Nancy and Dave Tom used to get their water from a city water supply.
That was back when they owned a home in Tempe, Arizona. Like a lot of
people in the area, they had a pool, plants that needed water year
round, and a green lawn out back. Not exactly a desert scene. It took
a lot of water to support their lifestyle.


But life in Tempe was getting crowded. And when somebody rang their
doorbell and offered to buy their house for almost twice what they paid for
it, they jumped at the chance to move to a smaller town.


(Sound of birds)


They found a house for sale just outside of Apache Junction. It’s a
small city in the desert about an hour’s drive from Phoenix. The house
is at the foot of a dry mountain range and has spectacular views. But
the house didn’t have city water service:


“When we saw this piece of property we pretty much fell in love with it
immediately. And it was stated in the multiple listings that you did
have to haul water. And that the water trailer conveyed with the
property (laughs).”


(Sound of hooking up the truck)


To get their water, Dave Tom hooks up a trailer with a big plastic
water tank. He tows the trailer about 4 miles into Apache Junction.
There’s a water filling station here. He gets about 90 gallons of
water for each quarter dropped into the machine:


(Sound of truck parking)


“I’ve got my four quarters here – we’re going to put it in the vending
machine and have at it.”


(Sound of quarter and water rushing)


He makes about two trips a week, so he figures they’re using about 600
gallons of water a week. That’s quite a bit less than the 6000 gallons
they were using in Tempe.


Some of the things they did to cut back were obvious. Since they no
longer had a pool – and they didn’t water a green lawn – that helped.
But in their new place, they also bought a high efficiency washer and
dishwasher. And, when they don’t have guests around, they cut down on
the number of times they flush the toilet.


And they’re not alone in trying to cut back on water use. Even their
neighbors who have a well are really careful with their water. Phil
Reinhart lives just up the road. He’s rigged up a system of gutters
and pipes to catch rain water:


“You see it drains the front of my house and it comes down these
gutters into these storage barrels. And then I have a little pump that
I use and a little twelve volt battery that I use to pump my washing
machine full and then my washing machine then discharges into my citrus
trees – this is a lemon – here, take a lemon back with you.”


Reinhart is careful with his water. And he’s worried that the
population boom will put a strain on his well.


(Sound of water)


The tank on David Tom’s trailer is full. He tries to shut the water
off:


“Alright we’ll push the shutoff button – and watch out, you’re going to
get wet… no the shutoff isn’t working. We’re going to dump 25 to 30, maybe 40,
gallons of water, which to me it’s a shame they need to come down and
fix this.”


(Sound of water flowing)


A lot of this water spilling onto the ground has traveled a long way to
get here. The Central Arizona Project pumps water from the Colorado
River 230 miles away.


“Rather than a river than runs downhill by gravity, we’re a river that
runs uphill by pumps. We’re the largest electric consumer in the state
of Arizona.”


Sid Wilson is the general manager of the Central Arizona Project. He
says most of the water pumped into this region is used for farming.
But with rapid development, that’s expected to change. More water will
be used to service the new homes sprawling out into the desert.


“The CAP right now provides 40% of the water to this area, 40%, and that will increase
some over time.”


Wilson says people are going to continue to move to the Southwest. So,
future water supplies will have to be developed.


Back at their home near Apache Junction, Dave Tom has finished filling
up their underground storage tank. It’s taken him two trips with the
trailer.


(Sound of gurgling)


His wife Nancy says their new home has changed the way they think:


“Life out here in the desert has given me a greater appreciation for
water. There’s a part of me that says this is how everybody should
live in the desert. That they should have that awareness of their
water usage and embrace the fact that you live in the desert rather
than trying to change it into a lush tropical paradise.”


For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Tapping Into Real Maple Syrup

  • A very unscientific blind taste test found most people prefer grocery store syrup rather than real maple syrup. (Photo by Lester Graham)

In some parts of the country, it’s time to tap maple trees to make
syrup. Lester Graham went out to see how it’s done and conducted a
little taste test to see whether real maple syrup stands up to the name
brands you find at the grocery store:

Transcript

In some parts of the country, it’s time to tap maple trees to make
syrup. Lester Graham went out to see how it’s done and conducted a
little taste test to see whether real maple syrup stands up to the name
brands you find at the grocery store:


This story started out to be just a little walk in the woods to see
what all the fuss was about. Tapping sap from maples seems like a
quaint old-fashioned idea. After all, doesn’t syrup come from the
grocery store?


Well, anyway, Tom Jameson straightened me out about that. Early in the morning
he led the way through the woods until he found one of the maples he
wanted to tap. First, he drilled a small hole, then drove the tap – or
spline – into the tree:


“We are using an old bit and brace to drill a hole about a half in diameter and an inch and a half to two inches deep. Okay, now I need to just clean that whole little bit. I’ll be ready to drive in the tap, using a hammer to tap it into place. And, already the sap is beginning to run out.”


And that’s it. Sap started dripping right away into a covered bucket
hanging from the tap, or spline.


(Sound of dripping)


It takes a long time to get enough sap, and you need a lot of sap:


“Well, especially with these red maples, you’d need at least 40 gallons
to make one gallon of syrup.”


“So, if you’re doing it commercially, absolutely you want to stick to
sugar maples or hard maples. For the backyard guy that wants to try it,
any maple will work.”


You just have to boil it down sap from soft maples like the red maple
for a lot longer because there’s more water in the sap. And boiling down 40
gallons down to get one gallon of syrup takes a long time, like a good part of a
day or longer.


Jameson says for a lot of people, this is a family event. Empty the
buckets of sap into a big pan over an open fire and keep it boiling. And
a lot of the time you sit around listening to a favorite uncle tell
stories between nips of a flask that keeps getting passed around.


Jameson says it’s a good time, and worth the time spent because real
maple syrup is so good. Well, at least some people think it’s really
good. Jameson admits it’s not what some folks expect:


“Young people that have been raised on the grocery product sometimes
they don’t even like the real thing because it just tastes different to
them. It doesn’t have the extra butter in it or whatever it is. It’s
an acquired taste.”


With that in mind, we decided to do a little taste test. I got some
waffles, some real maple syrup, then three name brand grocery store
syrups… and just to throw everyone a curve, some dark corn syrup.
Then, we got five volunteers at the Environment Report headquaters.
Now, I’ll let you in on a little secret, the real maple syrup was
sample number three.


(Taster 1:)”Three is disgusting. I wouldn’t feed it to anyone. Awww,
gawd!”


(Taster 2:) “Three and four both have sort of a smoky flavor to them
which makes me think maybe it was boiled over a wood fire.”


(Taster 3:) “I think one, I think one is definitely store-bought, but
it’s really good. If two is the maple syrup, I’m really disappointed
because it’s awful. I hate it.”


(Taster 4:) “I chose three as the real one.”


(Taster 1:) “Three? If three is the real one, oh, my goodness.”


(Taster 4:) “I know. But, we’re so used to the imitation. And that’s
maybe why we don’t like it, because it is so real in flavor.”


(Taster 1:) “I’m hoping that two is the real one.”


Number two… was the corn syrup. Four of the five volunteers did guess
that number three was the real maple syrup, but none of them liked it
much.


Tom Jameson says a lot of people wouldn’t have anything but real maple
syrup. And a lot of people really enjoy going out to see
demonstrations of tapping trees for the sap and to watch the sap boil
and boil for hours and hours:


“Well, I think it’s a tie back to the good old days. And when people
can kind of make a connection to back to the way things used to be,
there’s something comforting about that.”


So, every year a lot of folks head out into the woods, hauling buckets
and drills and splines, and take advantage of what they think is one of
nature’s sweetest gifts.


For the Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

The Price of Global Warming

  • Some industries are working with government to voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions. People who are worried about their personal CO2 emissions can buy carbon offsets, but there are dozens of programs, making it confusing. (Photo by Lester Graham)

There’s evidence that the Earth is changing
because of global warming. Glaciers are receding.
Polar ice caps are melting. Weather patterns are
altered. That’s prompted some people to look
for ways to reduce their personal contribution to
global warming. Rebecca Williams reports there
are many new companies that claim to help you do
that… for a price:

Transcript

There’s evidence that the Earth is changing
because of global warming. Glaciers are receding.
Polar ice caps are melting. Weather patterns are
altered. That’s prompted some people to look
for ways to reduce their personal contribution to
global warming. Rebecca Williams reports there
are many new companies that claim to help you do
that… for a price:


Whenever you drive, fly, or ride, you’re emitting carbon dioxide. And it’s not just the way you get around. It’s also any time you turn on lights or plug into an electrical outlet. More than half of the electricity in the U.S. comes from power plants that burn
coal and that’s another major source of carbon dioxide.


It’s a problem because carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas.
The vast majority of scientists agree all this carbon dioxide
that people produce is trapping heat in the atmosphere and making
the planet warmer.


David Archer is a climate scientist at the University of Chicago:


“The problem with fossil fuels is that the cost of that climate
change isn’t paid by the person who makes the decision to use
fossil energy so it’s sort of like a bill we’re leaving to future
generations.”


Some people say there’s a way to pay that bill now. About three
dozen companies and nonprofits have sprung up in the past few
years. They’re selling carbon offsets.


The idea of a carbon offset is to balance out the carbon dioxide
that you emit. In theory, you can do this by investing in
something like tree planting or energy projects that don’t emit
greenhouse gasses, such as wind or solar power.


First, you can go to one of the group’s websites and calculate
your carbon footprint. That’s all the carbon dioxide you produce
by driving, flying, and so on, in a year. North Americans have
especially big footprints.


The companies assign a price per ton of carbon that’s emitted.
You can decide how much of your carbon-emitting you want to
balance out. Then you type in your credit card number and voila… no more guilt.


Well, that’s the idea anyway.


But what if you buy a carbon offset
but you don’t change your behavior? If you keep driving and
flying and using electricity just as much as before, or maybe
more than before, you’re still a part of the problem.


“You’re absolutely still emitting the carbon. The idea is that
you’re balancing it out through reductions elsewhere.”


Tom Arnold is a cofounder of Terrapass. It’s a carbon offset
company:


“Now this isn’t the optimal solution of course – you should stop
driving. But it’s a good way that we can get you involved in the
dialogue and help you reduce emissions somewhere else.”


And you can get a little sticker for your car to show you’re in
the offsetting club. But Tom Arnold admits there aren’t a whole
lot of drivers of huge SUVs buying offsets.


“We have this nice little SUV sticker – it’s pretty expensive and
a horrible seller. Most of our members already drive passenger
cars, very efficient cars. They’re just looking for a tool to
balance the rest of their impact out to zero.”


Erasing your carbon footprint sounds pretty positive, but there
are quite a few critics of the carbon offset industry. They
point out there aren’t any agreed-on standards for what an offset
is, and prices are all over the map. So it’s not always clear
what you’re getting for your money.


Mark Trexler is president of Trexler Climate and Energy Services.
He’s a consultant who reviews the groups selling carbon offsets.
He says you do have to ask questions about what you’re buying:


“Am I putting my money into something that wouldn’t have happened
anyway? Because if somebody would’ve built that windmill anyway
or if they would’ve done whatever it is you’re putting money into
anyway, you’re really not rendering yourself climate neutral.”


Trexler says there are certification programs in the works so
consumers can know more about what they’re buying. But the people
who are buying offsets now say it feels like they’re making a
difference.


Kate Madigan bought offsets. She started thinking about it when
she was awake at night worrying about the world her new baby
would live in:


“Some people say oh, global warming, it’s going to change the
world in 100 years, but I’ll be gone by then. But I think that’s
a horrible way to look at things because we’re leaving the world
to a lot of people that we love.”


Madigan says she doesn’t think carbon offsets alone will really
solve the problem. She says she thinks it’ll take a lot of
harder choices too, like driving less and using less electricity.


Supporters say that’s the real power of offsets. It’s getting
people to talk about the role they play in global warming.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

The Invasion of the Quaggas

  • A close-up of the quagga mussel. Quaggas have spread in all of the Great Lakes except Lake Superior. (Photo courtesy of the Michigan Sea Grant Archives)

Whitefish is a main dish for everything from fish boils to fancy dinners all around the Great Lakes region. But in some areas of the Great Lakes, whitefish aren’t doing so well. Rebecca Williams reports on what’s happening to the fish many people love to eat:

Transcript

Whitefish is a main dish for everything from fish boils to fancy dinners all around the Great Lakes region. But in some areas of the Great Lakes, whitefish aren’t doing so well. Rebecca Williams reports on what’s happening to the fish many people love to eat:

(sound of knives getting sharpened and fish being filleted)

Mike Monahan sells fish from all over the world at his seafood market. But he says whitefish is a very popular seller.


“It’s been there forever, and everybody just expects it to be there, and it’s inexpensive. But really it’s a great fish, as far as a nice light delicate fish, I’d put it up against the soles and flounders.”


Monahan says he’s still getting good supplies of whitefish. So, for now, he’s happy.


But some of the people who catch whitefish are worried. Commercial fishers have been hauling in skinnier whitefish in some parts of the lakes. It’s taking whitefish longer to grow to a size worth selling. And in some cases, the fish aren’t fat enough to make a good fillet.


(sound of shorebirds)


Paul Jensen fishes for whitefish in Lake Michigan. He says lately, he’s had to move his boat to deeper waters. That’s because whitefish are hungry and they’re swimming out deeper. They aren’t finding their favorite food. It’s a little shrimp-like creature called Diporeia.


“Diporeia are probably like a Snickers bar to whitefish; they were high in fats, high in lipids and it was their main food – it was very nutritious for them and it affected their growth rate. Eating Diporeia a fish could reach maturity maybe in 18 months or 2 years. Now we’re looking at fish that may take 5 years to get there.”


Whitefish are not eating Diporeia because it’s vanishing. In some places, researchers used to find 10-thousand of the little critters in a square meter of sediment. Now there are very few, or none at all.


Tom Nalepa has been trying to figure out why. Nalepa is a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab.


“It’s a real scientific puzzle as to why Diporeia is declining. It’s definitely related to the spread of quagga mussels and zebra mussels but that exact negative relationship is kind of elusive at this point in time.”


But Nalepa says he’s sure the invasive mussels are to blame. The mussels got into the Lakes in the ballast tanks of foreign ships. And they’ve spread in all the lakes except Superior.


Tom Nalepa says he’s seen populations of Diporeia crash right around the time the mussels were booming. Nalepa says now, Diporeia’s gone from large areas in most of the Lakes.


That’s bad because Diporeia is an important food source for most of the fish in the Great Lakes.


But for whitefish it’s really crucial. Back in the good old days, Diporeia made up about 80% of their diet.


Tom Nalepa says whitefish are trying to find something else to eat. He’s seeing them switch to a snack food that could make them even skinnier.


They’re starting to eat quagga mussels.


“When whitefish feed on quagga mussels they have to deal with the shell which has no energy content at all and it has to pass the shells through its digestive system so basically the fish feels full when it’s not getting any energy source.”


Nalepa says to the fish, quagga mussels must seem like good food, because there are lots of them.


He says quagga mussels are booming, because they can live in harsher conditions than zebra mussels can. So biologists are predicting quaggas will be even worse for the lakes than zebra mussels.


“Where are things ultimately going to end up? People may just have to get used to fewer fish. Because basically now we’re trading the fish community for the mussel community. The lakes are loaded with mussels instead of fish now. It may be just the way it’s gonna be.”


Some fishermen are already seeing things change. One day last season, Paul Jensen pulled in some of his nets. He was expecting fish.


“It was kind of startling because the amount of quagga mussels that came up with those nets far exceeded the catch of fish. And we hadn’t really equipped the boat with a snow shovel to shovel quagga mussels out of the boat. The impacts are startling because you begin to wonder, if our little net caught these, how many are there and what are the impacts going to be down the road?”


Jensen says he wishes the invaders had never gotten into the lakes in the first place, because there’s no way to predict what effect they’ll have next.


But some scientists worry these changes at the bottom of the food chain will lead to a major collapse of the fish stocks that many people depend on.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Regs to Force Cleaner Lawn Mower Engines

A leading maker of small engines says it can adjust to a clean-air decision regarding sales in California. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

A leading maker of small engines says it can adjust to a clean-air decision regarding sales in California. Chuck Quirmbach reports:


The US EPA is letting California require highly polluting small engines to be sold with catalytic converters that cut smog emissions by roughly 40%.


Wisconsin-based engine maker Briggs and Stratton, and politicians who represent some communities with Briggs factories, had fought California’s regulation. They contended it would be hard to make one set of engines for California and another for the rest of the country.


But company vice-president Tom Savage says Briggs has been anticipating the regulation and can handle it through segregating the firm’s inventory.


“Most of our products are sold through the big boxes. There are systems set up so that we can get inventory to the right spot.”


Savage says they’d already been expecting the EPA to require tougher pollution controls on small engines nationwide over the next one to five years.


For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Forest Service Breaks Bank Fighting Fires

A new report from the US Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General shows the US Forest Service is spending too much money fighting fires. It suggests the feds get some help paying the bills from state governments. Mark Brodie reports:

Transcript

A new report from the US Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General shows the US Forest Service is spending too much money fighting fires. It suggests the feds get some help paying the bills from state governments. Mark Brodie reports:


The Inspector General report says the Forest Service went over budget four times in the last six years, spending more than a billion dollars in each of those years.


The service blames the cost increase in part on housing developments. They say more homes are being built farther into the forest.


Tom Harbour is the Forest Service’s Fire Chief.


“All of us treat protection of life as our certain first priority, and then treat the protection of communities and values on public lands as our second, and you bet it does make things more difficult.”


But some state foresters say the real difficulty comes from issues like changes in the weather and too much fire fuel on federal land. They say downed trees and excess brush make it difficult for the forest service to contain fires.


Both sides say they’ll bargain hard when it comes time to pay the bill for fighting fires.


For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brodie.

Related Links

Invasive Die-Off Stirs Fishery Debate

  • A naturally reproduced wild lake trout fingerling. (Photo courtesy of MI DNR.)

The fisheries in the Great Lakes are seeing dramatic changes. In one lake, an invasive species that has become part of the food chain has collapsed. But some native fish are doing better because of that collapse. Lester Graham reports some fishery managers are debating what to do next:

Transcript

The fisheries in the Great Lakes are seeing dramatic changes. In one lake, an invasive species that has become part of the food chain has collapsed. But, some native fish are doing better because of that collapse. Lester Graham reports some fishery managers are debating what to do next:


When we started digging canals, connecting the lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, things changed a lot for the fish in the Great Lakes.


First, the sea lamprey got into the lakes through the Welland canal that bypasses Niagara Falls.


The lamprey is an eel-like parasite that nearly wiped out the big fish in the Great Lakes by attaching to them and sucking the life out of them.

Also slipping through the canals was a smaller fish, the alewife. Since the lamprey wiped out most of the predator fish in the lakes, the alewife population exploded. They out-competed native fish for food. It got so bad, that by the mid 1960s, if you weighed all the fish in Lake Michigan, more than 80% of the weight would have been alewives.


So, once wildlife managers got the sea lamprey under control, they had to figure out what they could do to get alewives under control. The fish biologists decided to introduce new predators, trout and salmon, to prey on the alewives. These fish were not native to the Great Lakes. Expensive nurseries were built by federal and state game agencies to keep supplying new trout and salmon every year to prey on alewives.


Forty years later, in Lake Huron, the alewife population collapsed, and in Lake Michigan alewives are declining rapidly. Mission accomplished, right?


Well, in that 40 years, a whole recreational fishing industry has grown up around fishing for those introduced trout and salmon. Some fishery managers now say we have to find a balance of the right amount of alewives to sustain the introduced trout and salmon fishery. So, recently states have cut their trout and salmon stocking programs to give alewives a chance to recover.


Tom Trudeau [who] operates a fish nursery for the state of Illinois says it would cause trouble to try to take the Great Lakes back to native fish only.


“We do have this industry that we have pressure to keep. You know, you’re putting a lot of people out of business if you get rid of it.”


And Trudeau says because of ecological damage, many of the smaller native fish on which big predators used to feed have been wiped out.


“So, I mean, of the six or seven species in that category, we only have one. And a couple of them are extinct. So, I mean, we could talk about going back to the ideal situation of pure native species, but we’ve disrupted the habitat so much.”


So, the argument goes, the invasive alewives are now needed. But something unexpected happened when the alewives disappeared from Lake Huron. The native fish, walleye, yellow perch, and lake trout started doing better.


Dave Fielder is a fisheries research biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.


“We’ve long known that adult alewives were a predator and a competitor on newly hatched perch and walleye fry. We just didn’t realize how substantial that effect was until finally the adult alewives were removed from the system and now we’re enjoying some greatly increased reproductive success. Walleye, particularly in Saginaw bay, are at some of the highest levels that we’ve seen in a long time.”


But, after 40 years, people are used to fishing for those introduced trout and salmon. And some fisheries managers are wondering what will happen to all those expensive nurseries that provide their jobs.


What happens to all of those charter boat fishing operations, fishing tourism, if the government were to stop stocking those trout and salmon? Would they switch to fishing for native fish? And, can the native fish even survive in the long-run since so many of the smaller native prey-fish are no longer around?


Dave Fielder says it’s hard to say.


“So, we’re kind of in the middle of a change – it’s really a paradigm shift in many ways – and that’s always scary because nobody really knows how we’re going to end up, but I prefer to be optimistic. I think there are a lot of reasons to be hopeful in regards to the benefits that we’re seeing for our native species.”


But some fisheries managers say the debate of whether to go all native or to try to find the right mix of native and non-native fish is not over. Since invasive species, pollution, and habitat destruction have changed the Great Lakes so much, wildlife managers think they’ll still have to keep stocking one kind of fish or another to keep the recreational fishing industry going. If that’s the case, does it matter whether it’s native fish, or the introduced fish that anglers have grown to like so much?


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Invasives Destroying Great Lakes Food Chain

  • Biologists sorting fish. The populations of smaller fish that game fish eat have collapsed in Lake Huron. (Photo courtesy of MI DNR)

Although zebra mussels have been affecting the ecology of the Great Lakes since they were first found in 1988, researchers are continuously surprised at how much damage they’ve caused. Now, biologists are wondering if zebra mussels and the more recently arrived quagga mussels are to blame for a collapse of the fishery in one of North America’s largest lakes. Lester Graham reports the researchers are also wondering if this collapse is a preview of what will happen to all of the Great Lakes:

Transcript

Although zebra mussels have been affecting the ecology of the Great Lakes since they were first found in 1988, researchers are continuously surprised at how much damage they’ve caused. Now, biologists are wondering if zebra mussels and the more recently arrived quagga mussels are to blame for a collapse of the fishery in one of North America’s largest lakes. Lester Graham reports the researchers are also wondering if this collapse is a preview of what will happen to all of the Great Lakes:


It’s off-season for charter boat fishing and Captain Wayne Banicky asked if we could meet at a local watering hole called the Boat Bar. Captain Banicky takes people out fishing on Lake Huron. Well, he used to. The past few years he’s been charter boat fishing in Lake Michigan. He says fish started to become more scarce on Lake Huron, and he was forced to make the move.


“Economics, pure and simple. Dollars and cents. Once you start seeing a decline and being on the water every day and you see those declines in your numbers, it’s just a matter of time before financially you can’t afford to stay there. Those dock fees aren’t given up free. That’s an expensive tab to pay every year.”


Fishing for most species in Lake Huron is not good. But the story is not just a matter of not stocking enough fish or just a bad year, it’s a matter of a collapse of the bottom of the food chain. It’s not just the fish sport fishers like to catch that are down, it’s their prey: the smaller fish those big game fish eat. Prey fish stocks have collapsed, and supplies of the food those small prey fish eat, the plankton, have also collapsed.


Jim Johnson is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Alpena Fisheries Research Station.


“There was a huge decline in the amount of nutrients available to zooplankton and phytoplankton in the middle of Lake Huron. These are the basic nutrient bits that fish eat. And it appears now to most of us in the scientific community that a large portion of the nutrients that used enter Lake Huron are now being trapped by zebra and quagga mussels and not finding their way to alewives and other prey fish.”


Scientists from different government agencies and universities in the U.S. and Canada had been noticing changes, but things have gone seriously wrong very quickly in Lake Huron, and it might go wrong other places.


Tom Nalepa is with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab. He says tiny aquatic food sources for fish, such as a shrimp-like organism called diporeia, are declining dramatically in other Great Lakes.


“All the players are in place for it to happen in these other lakes too, you know, the loss of diporeia, the expansion of quagga mussels. And maybe Lake Huron is the first to show a collapse in the prey fish. What does it mean? Well basically, you know, there’s not going to be many fish out there for the sport fisherman to catch anymore.”


And sport fishing is multi-billion dollar industry in the Great Lakes. Back at the Boat Bar, charter fishing boat captain Wayne Banicky says fishing is still good in Lake Michigan, but he worries when he thinks about what happened in Lake Huron.


“I think that the fishery as a whole in the Great Lakes is in serious jeopardy right now. Something’s got to be done.”


But the question is what? What can be done when invasive species are changing an entire ecosystem to the point the fishery collapses?


“I don’t know to be honest with you. I don’t think any one of us knows. It’s scary, that much I will admit to you. It is scary right now.”


And guys like Captain Banicky aren’t the only ones worried.


Jim Johnson at Alpena Fisheries Research Station says you can’t undo the damage that’s already done. It’s just a matter of waiting to see how nature responds to the invasive zebra and quagga mussels and other invaders. Johnson says the key is to prevent more invasive species from being introduced to the lakes.


“The best we can do right now, I think the single most effective thing we as managers can do, is to make it understood by the decision makers just how disruptive the invasive species are and try to put a stop to those.”


The source of many of these invasive species is the ballast tanks of foreign ships entering the Great Lakes. Some regulations have reduced the chance that more invasive species will hitchhike to the Great Lakes, but more are still getting in. In the meantime, agencies such as the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Coast Guard say Congress hasn’t given them the authority to regulate foreign ships strictly enough to stop new invasive species from entering.


So, fishery managers can only watch the other Great Lakes for more signs of a collapse of the fisheries as they’ve only been able to stand by and watch happen in Lake Huron.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Cleaning Up Coal-Fired Power Plants

  • Tom Micheletti (right), and Excelsior Energy Vice President of Environmental Affairs, Bob Evans (left). They are locating where the proposed power plant will be built near the town of Taconite, Minnesota. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)

Acid rain, mercury pollution, and huge amounts of the heat-trapping gas carbon-dioxide are the down sides of burning coal in electric power plants. And yet, some energy experts are saying America should be using more coal. They say new coal technology can produce electricity with few of the pollution problems of traditional coal power plants. Bob Kelleher reports:

Transcript

Acid rain, mercury pollution, and huge amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide are the down sides of burning coal in electric power plants. And yet, some energy experts are saying America should be using more coal. They say new coal technology can produce electricity with few of the pollution problems of traditional coal power plants. Bob Kelleher reports:


Coal has a well deserved bad reputation. Typical coal burning power plants release mercury, sulfur, nitrogen oxides, and lots of carbon dioxide. Those releases mean toxins in the air, soot, acid rain, and many believe global warming. But Tom Micheletti says there’s a way to use coal with very little pollution.


Using heat, steam, pressure, and oxygen, coal can be broken down to a relatively clean gas, and a handful of other chemical products. The gas is burned, to turn generators and produce electricity. The technology is called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle. Micheletti says, the technology isn’t new, but applying it this way is.


“All we’re doing is marrying the gasification technology, with a technology that’s been well established, the combined cycle gas technology – power plant technology. And all we’re doing is simply putting those two technologies together.”


Micheletti is Co-President of Excelsior Energy, a company formed to build the nation’s first large scale coal gasification electric power plant in northeast Minnesota. At 600 megawatts, it would dwarf demonstration plants now online in Indiana and Florida.


Some experts say coal gasification is not only promising, it’s more practical than nuclear power, natural gas, solar or wind. Daniel Schrag is a climatologist and head of the Harvard University Center for the Environment.


“We have a lot of coal in the US. We’re very fortunate that way. The problem is that coal produces more carbon dioxide per unit energy than any other fossil fuel. And so, when we burn coal and make electricity, it’s really bad for the climate system.”


Schrag says there’s more carbon dioxide around us now than humans have ever experienced. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Most scientists believe it blankets the earth, forcing temperatures higher.


Schrag says, when used to generate electricity, coal gasification has big advantages over conventional power plants, because it can capture CO2.


“You get more energy for the amount of coal you put in, and that’s good for carbon emissions. The other thing is that it seems to be cheaper in an IGCC plant, or a gasification plant, to capture the carbon dioxide after one extracts the energy from the coal, and then makes it much easier to capture it and inject it into a geological reservoir.”


The key, Schrag says, is a process called sequestration. You capture, and then sequester it, or lock that carbon dioxide away, where it won’t escape into the atmosphere. It’s already being done.


This is the Dakota Gasification Company, just outside Beulah, North Dakota. Here they turn coal into a burnable gas and almost a dozen other products. They also produce plenty of carbon dioxide, but the CO2 is not vented into the air; it’s trapped and compressed. That’s the noise.


The CO2 is piped more than 200 miles into Canada where it’s pumped into oil wells, forcing the last oil out and leaving the CO2 underground. Near oceans it can be pumped under deep ocean sediments, where it stays put.


And that’s all very good, but others say even good power plants might be a bad idea.


Ross Hammond is with the Minnesota based organization Fresh Energy. Hammond says gasification’s proponents are overlooking conservation and the opportunities for clean energy.


“When we’ve exhausted all the clean options including biomass and photovoltaics, and wind and the other options, then we need to look at coal.”


But Harvard’s Daniel Schrag says it’s not as simple as pushing money toward pollution free energy.


“And the answer is complicated. The answer is perhaps not. It may be that coal is so cheap that even the extra cost of capturing the carbon and storing it underground may still make it cheaper than the alternatives, than wind and solar.”


Schrag says we’ll need it all – nuclear, hydro, wind and biomass. But to satisfy the nation’s hunger for energy, he says we’ll need coal – best used in coal gasification.


For the Environment Report I’m Bob Kelleher.

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Utilities Use Fish to Test Water

Some major U.S. cities are adding a new type of watchdog to
their drinking water systems. Rebecca Williams reports that watchdog
is a fish:

Transcript

Some major U.S. cities are adding a new type of watchdog to their drinking
water systems. Rebecca Williams reports that watchdog is a fish:


New York City and San Francisco are two of the cities making room for fish
tanks in their water treatment plants. They’re using a common fish called
bluegill to test for toxins in the water supply.


Tony Winnicker is with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. He
says the system sends pre-treated water through the tank where the bluegill are swimming
around.


“If something unusual enters their gill system, particularly bluegill, which
are highly sensitive, they cough, their body reacts to it and the sensors
pick that up.”


The sensors hooked up to the tank trigger emails to water plant workers to
let them know the fish are acting funny. The system also automatically takes water
samples at the moment the fish react.


Winnicker says the system detects anything from a change in clarity to
toxins that could be very harmful to people.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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