Category: Reports

Greenovation: Solar Panels Hit Some Red Tape

  • An artists rendering of the solar panels to be installed on Matt Grocoff's historic home. Matt is working to make his home the oldest net-zero-energy house in America, but he had to get by the historic district first. (Image courtesy of Matt Grocoff)

We’ve been following Greenovation TV’s Matt Grocoff recently in his attempt to make his home the oldest net-zero-energy house in America. That means the house would use no more energy that it produces. Reporter Lester Graham found out that Matt recently faced a big hurdle.

National Trust for Historic Preservation’s position statement on solar

American Solar Energy Society

More from the Greenovation Series

Transcript

Matt Grocoff already has done a lot to make his home energy efficient. He’s insulated, tightened, and installed really efficient heating and cooling in his 110 year old house in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Having reduced his energy use, he was ready to start installing a way to produce energy: solar panels.

But Matt faced an obstacle. His home is in a historic district. Before he could install solar panels, he had to get permission from the historic district commission.

Historic district commissions across the country have really balked at solar panels on the roof. Generally, they frown on modern elements that can be seen from the street. Matt wated to cover almost all of his south-facing roof with solar panels, and yes, they would be visible from the street.

He did his homework and sent detailed drawings and illustrations to the commission. Got the least obtrusive (and more expensive) kind of solar panels, and got the historic district’s attention. Lisa Rozmarek was the first commissioner to speak:

“It’s good for the environment. It’s good for our city. And I think we should promote sustainable building practices within our historic districts. It’s the only way we can move forward into the future instead of being accused of staying in the past.”

When Matt go up to testify, it was looking pretty good. He knew the commissioners were concerned about how it would look, but they seemed open to the idea of allowing renewable energy installations:

“And I’m really excited because not every historic commission has been this progressive. There have been some cases where historic commissions have demanded that someone remove a $60,000 system from the roof.”

The commissioners had some pretty good questions about different types of solar panels and their appearances and Matt had brought along the solar panel sales guy to handle some of those questions.

After the vote, the solar panels were approved. I caught Darren Griffith with Mechanical Energy Systems in the hall and asked are all historic district commissions were that receptive:

“I think as more commissions around the country realize that the energy savings really add money to preserve more structures, I think you’ll begin to see change loosening a little bit from some of the commissions.”

That might be a little optimistic, but the homeowner, Matt Grocoff, was pretty happy boy.

He thinks one of the things that worked in his favor was this: some homeowners want to put up the solar panels first, before they do what they can to make the home energy efficient, like fixing windows, adding insulation. The want what Matt calls “green bling.” Putting up those solar panels as a statement, letting everyone see they’re green. Matt says you have to reduce your energy consumption first:

“Reduce, reduce, and then produce.”

Lester Graham: “I think one of the key elements for them wasn’t so much the aesthetics or the appearance, but the fact that you weren’t going to be doing any permanent damage to the structure.”

Matt Grocoff:“And yet there’s a lot of historic districts throughout the country now who are actually denying people permits to put solar on the roof when you can see it from the street even though it’s not a permanent part of the structure and I think it’s a really bad way to go. And it’s a great thing here in Ann Arbor that we’ve got this very, very progressive commission that’s moving forward. And frankly, I think they’re going to be setting an example for the rest of the country on this.

Lester Graham, The Environment Report.

Wild Rice Harvest Restores a Native Tradition

  • Chloe Aldred is one of many kids learning the tradition of harvesting wild rice. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

For thousands of years, Native American tribes in the Great Lakes region have been harvesting wild rice. They call it manoomin.

But over the past few centuries, this tradition has been dying out. The rice beds have been shrinking, and the cultural knowledge has been disappearing. Many tribes were forced to relocate away from the wild rice beds. Starting in the 1870s, some children were taken from their families, into boarding schools. They were given English names and cut off from their culture and from the knowledge of how to harvest rice.

In Michigan, some people are trying to bring the tradition back.

Native Wild Rice Coalition

More about “The Good Berry”

The Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa

Video of the Manoomin Project for at risk teens

Transcript

Roger LaBine is a member of the Lac Vieux Desert band of Lake Superior Chippewa. He says manoomin is central to his ancestors’ migration story.

“And they were presented in visions with seven prophecies and we would know where our homeland would be when we found this food that grows on the water, which is the manoomin.”

(paddling sound)

Here, on Tubbs Lake near Mecosta, you can still find wild rice. The rice beds look like a bright green meadow growing on the water. It’s the perfect spot for Wild Rice Camp. About 50 people are here, young and old, tribal and non-tribal. They’re here to learn how to harvest and process the rice.

Barb Barton is one of the camp’s instructors.

“So to harvest rice you use cedar ricing sticks, they look like shortened pool cues. You pull rice over the boat and knock the rice into the boat.”

(snd of knocking rice)

After a couple hours on the lake, everyone heads back to camp to process the rice.

Charley Fox has been ricing since he was nine years old. He’s showing us how to soften the rice in a copper kettle.

(snd under)

“It takes the moisture out of the rice kernel, gets the outer shaft brittle to where you can roll it in your fingers. it’s a golden color, it’s ready to go, ready for the next stage where they dance on it!”

Saige Mackay is 11 years old. She’s in a little pit, wearing moccasins.

“I’m dancing on the rice. It shells the rice so you don’t have the husks on it, like husking corn.”

(dancing sound under)

Then it’s on to the winnowing stage. That’s where they use birch baskets to separate the husks from the rice. Then they clean the rice, and it’s finally ready to eat.

Zhawan Sprague is the daughter of a tribal chairman.

“My dad really wanted me to learn more about how to like, harvest rice, so I’m really excited how it’s going to end out.”

A lot of people here are first timers.

Roger LaBine says he loves having all the kids around.

He says to the Anishinaabe people, everything has a spirit. He says the spirit of the manoomin is glad to have them back.

“It’s been waiting for us. By us coming out here and harvesting this rice, it’s helping us to enhance it. Not only the rice bed but it’s a healing process for us, it gives us that incentive to carry it on. We need that. It’s our identity. It’s almost like a language, we lose our identity if we lose our language, if we lose our dance, if we lose our drum.”

LaBine says on the last day of camp, they’ll return one day’s harvest back to the water, to re-seed the rice beds for next year.

“And say thank you, Miigwetch, give us all that we need and no more than we need so that we can carry this on.”

Rebecca Williams, The Environment Report

Cleaning Up the Enbridge Oil Spill

  • A Great Blue heron covered in oil. (Photo courtesy of EPA Region 5)

It’s been more than a month since an estimated 800,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River. Enbridge Energy Partners, the company responsible for the pipeline leak, says it has cleaned up about 700,000 gallons of that oil.

But there’s still a lot of work to be done. The Environmental Protection Agency is just now starting to find out how much oil is at the bottom of the river

Peter Adriaens is an expert on oil spill cleanup, and he has consulted on the cleanups of the Exxon Valdez and first Gulf War oil spills. He’s a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Michigan.

More on clean-up efforts from the EPA

More on the response from Enbridge Energy Partners

More on Peter Adriaens

Transcript

Dr. Adriaens, how long do you think it’ll take to clean up this spill?

Adriaens: “So assuming that the 700,000 gallons that they’ve taken out, that that is a correct estimate because clearly what they had was a water oil mixture, so there were some uncertainties in the estimate. Now the cleanup of all the visible oil is probably pretty much completed. So now we get to the point of finding the oil in the sediments and finding where the oil constituents are in the water before that it’s cleaned up. So I mean this could take years.”


RW: Years?

Adriaens: “Yes, months to years.”

The EPA has issued an order to Enbridge. They have until September 27th to clean up all the oil. Is there any way they can possibly meet that deadline?

Adriaens: “I would say that is not feasible. Anything that is visible can probably be cleaned up by the 27th but that is not all the oil.”


How is it decided that the cleanup is done?

Adriaens: “It is a negotiated condition. Cleanup does not mean that everything will be removed from the environment. It means that all the exposure to toxic constituents of the oil has been stopped. And because we will not be able to find necessarily all of that oil I mean people will and kids might at some point in the future find some of these hot spots. We are finding hotspots from spills from a long time ago.”


RW: Kids might be digging in the sand and turn up oil even five, ten years from now?

“That is correct, yes.”


So what does that mean for the safety of recreation on the river?


Adriaens: “After all the visible oil has been cleaned up and after they’ve done the analysis in the water that most of the concentrations of oil, if they can find them in water, are sufficiently low for our exposure, we can probably resume our activities on the river, the boating on the river, the swimming in the river and whatnot. But, anybody who is on the river has to bear in mind that not all the oil is gone, that there will still be some residue even after EPA and the Department of Environmental Quality and everybody else has agreed that the site is cleaned up or contained. There is still residue.”


EPA is still and probably for a few months at least will be assessing the damage to the ecosystem. What’s your sense on what damage has been done?


Adriaens: “Clearly there was impact on wildlife. There was impact on birds. Once the oil sits in the sediments, in the sand of the river, now you start looking at something called bioaccumulation. Every time you go from organism to organism in the whole food chain, there is an accumulation of oil so we don’t know yet what the long term accumulation of that residual oil in the sediment and how that will build up in the local food chain what that will be. We don’t know that yet.”


Peter Adriaens is an expert on oil spill cleanup and a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Michigan.


Thank you so much.


Adriaens: “My pleasure. Thank you.”

That’s The Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Little Action After Lots of Green Talk

  • 72% of us say it's important to use public transportation or carpool, but only 12% of us do it. (Photo by Mike Hicks)

What are you doing to help the environment? Have you ditched the plastic water bottles and carry a reusable one instead. Maybe you bike to work a couple days a week. According to a recent study, there’s sometimes a big gap between what we say we should do and what we actually do. Reporter Tanya Ott knows all about it.

Check out the survey results

A related Environment Report story

Transcript

So I’ve got a morning routine in my house. The first thing I do is I brush my teeth.
I always turn off the water while brushing my teeth. I take a quick shower, get dressed and head downstairs. I might take out the recycling. Unless, the outside bin is full and we’re still a couple days away from pickup. In which case, I sometimes throw recyclables away. I grab my Diet Coke, in the plastic bottle, and get into my car, by myself, to drive to work.

I feel guilty about a lot of this stuff. And it turns out I’m not alone.

Out on the Diag at the University of Michigan, Michelle Kim says it’s important to save water and electricity and to recycle. She says it’s easy in Korea, where she’s from, because almost everything is recyclable, but it’s not so easy here in the states.

“In America you just need a little more effort, you know, to do it because you have to find your own place to recycle and I don’t think our apartment does it as much.”

Anthony Leiserowitz is the director of Yale University’s Project on Climate Change.

“Americans have very good intentions, but aren’t necessarily always following through on those good intentions.”

Along with colleagues from George Mason University, he surveys people on what they say is important to protect the environment and what they actually do.

72% of respondents say using public transportation or carpooling is important, but only 12% actually do it.

“Many people say, look, I would love to do this, but my community hasn’t provided me with public transportation options that affordable or clean or safe of even easily used. In other words the routes don’t go near where I live.”

Leiserowitz says that’s a societal constraint. Communities have invested much more money in roads and building up a car-based culture, but, he says, other conservation choices are more personal.

(Teddy Pendergrass song – “Turn off the lights”)

Teddy Pendergrass told us to do it, and so did our mamas. Still, 9% of survey respondents who say they should turn off the lights, don’t. Anthony Leiserowitz says they’re lazy, but technology like motion detector lights can help.

“Which makes it easy, the light comes on when somebody comes into a room and if there’s no motion in a room for ten minutes, the light automatically goes out. Problem solved!”

What about unplugging electronics? Even when a machine is off it still draws electricity, but more than half of people who say it’s important to unplug electronics don’t do it.

It’s not surprising that we tend to do the things that are easier. Any behavior change takes time. At first it’s hard to remember, but once you make it a habit it becomes second nature.

Anthony Leiserowitz says don’t overlook the bigger changes that will save you more energy and money. He says swapping traditional light bulbs for compact fluorescents is a great conservation move. So is upgrading the insulation in your attic. It’s not sexy, but it is smart.

Tanya Ott, The Environment Report

In Search of Quiet Places

  • Gordon Hempton uses a mic stand shaped like a human head to accurately capture the sounds we hear. (Photo by D Harrington)

There are very few truly quiet places left in this country. There’s noise pollution even in the wildest, most remote national parks.

Gordon Hempton has been traveling to some of those last quiet places and he wants to protect them. He’s an Emmy-winning professional sound collector. He’s traveled the world to record everything from city streets to howler monkeys. He’s the author of One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet. He’s joining me from Olympia National Park in Washington State.

You’ve said that you’ve found just 12 places so far in all of the U.S. where there’s an interval of at least 15 minutes without human noise. What do you think we’re missing out on if we lose those places?

AUDIO EXTRA: Hear more from Gordon Hempton

The Sound Tracker

Hempton on WBUR’s On Point

Hempton in Newsweek

Transcript

HEMPTON: In a quiet place in nature not only are we listening to many, many square miles, but we are connecting, we are re-connecting, with where we come from, who we are and how our bodies have evolved to take it all in.

RW: A documentary has been made about you – called Soundtracker – and in it, the thing that struck me the most was when you talked about having to trust your gut feeling. You were in Sri Lanka, it was dark and you were recording…


(sound of Hempton’s Sri Lanka recording comes up under)


HEMPTON: Right, I learned a very important lesson that morning in the Sri Lanka rainforest of Sinharaja. And I was there to record morning bird song and that means getting up early, so I was walking into the forest, in the dark, and started to roll. And then my good feeling changed to panic. I could honor my panic and simply leave my equipment running, and so I walked away. Months later, I’m sitting in my Seattle studio reviewing the tape… I hear my footsteps disappear and moments later, there’s the guttural growl of the leopard.


(leopard growling)


RW: I have to tell you I found that sound to be terrifying!


HEMPTON: (laughs) Yeah, yeah, I know. I hate to think what would’ve happened if I’d remained there.


RW: So you’ve recorded all over the world for 30 years. How do you find these true quiet places?


HEMPTON: You know, I’ve been looking at Michigan. The very first thing I do, I look at the nighttime view of the United States, and I looked in this case at the nighttime view of Michigan. The upper half of Michigan was surprisingly dark. Then I went to the FAA chart to see all the airways that are charted and I could see that most of Michigan was covered. But there were two areas that were not. So I went to Google Earth and zoomed in on those places and I could see there were quite a few roads. But there were two locations: Manitou Island, particularly a site on that island that is Perch Lake. And also Lily Lake on Isle Royale National Park.


RW: So what can we do to protect these places?


HEMPTON: There’s one action we can all participate in to save the vanishing quiet places of this country. And that is to pass a single piece of legislation that will create for the very first time these areas off limits to all aircraft over our most pristine national parks.


RW: Gordon Hempton is a professional sound collector and the author of: One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet. Thank you so much.


HEMPTON: Well, all right, thank you Rebecca.


RW: You can hear some of Gordon Hempton’s work and his favorites on our website: environment report dot org. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Underground Diner Supports Local Farmers

  • Breakfast volunteers: Lisa Gottlieb, Shana Kimball, Bridgette Carr, Jeff McCabe, and Maria Bonn. (Photo by Myra Klarman)

So what would you think about opening up your home to 120 people every week? Letting them come in with their shoes on, sit anywhere they wanted… oh and by the way they’ll be expecting a full breakfast.

Selma Cafe

Underground Eats on Selma

Myra Klarman blogs about Selma Cafe

Transcript

That’s what happens at Jeff McCabe and Lisa Gottlieb’s house in Ann Arbor. From 6:30 to 10am every Friday, their house is transformed. It’s kind of weird… you walk in and you know you’re in someone’s home, but it feels like you’re suddenly in a little diner.

“We call it a breakfast salon… because we’re not a restaurant. We’re making food for family and friends, people who are interested in supporting the local food economy, who want to come and have a good time on Friday morning before they go to work!”

The idea is, it’s locally grown food, cooked for you by local chefs, with all the proceeds going to support Michigan farmers.

Selma Café is on Ann Arbor’s west side. You can’t miss it. Their whole front yard is a giant garden, with onions and sweet potatoes and beets.

(sound of café)

And in case you’re thinking it’s just toast and eggs… here’s my server, Amy Moss.

“We have braised pork with polenta napoleon, rhubarb chutney with poached egg and we also have a strawberry bread pudding, so that’s on the menu today.”

(sound of kitchen: “Order up!” plates clanking)

There’s a hunk of prosciutto on the counter… and a guy with a little blow torch caramelizing the top of the bread pudding. Claire Rice is here for breakfast… and she also sometimes volunteers to wait tables.

“The food is fabulous, if the food was crap no one would ever come back!”

When you’re done, you pay for your meal by putting a donation into one of the jars on your table. In the winter, local fresh fruits and veggies just don’t happen in Michigan. With the money from the jars, Jeff and Lisa are trying to change that.

“We got a little crazy and decided to just start doing something regularly that we could do to try to change the food system here, create more four-season farming.”

Lisa and Jeff have raised 90-thousand dollars. A third of the money goes to buy the food from local farmers for the breakfasts… and the rest goes to build hoop houses. Those are lightweight greenhouses that allow a farmer to grow food year-round.

These hoop houses don’t have to be on farms. A couple have even been built in downtown Detroit. Kate Devlin is the master gardener at the Spirit of Hope church. Most of the food she grows goes to the church’s food pantry. She’s hoping her new hoop house will help get more fresh food to people in Detroit.

“There are no major grocery chains in Detroit anymore and even where there were, they were so spread out, people couldn’t get to them. Sounds crazy, but in the Motor City, 40% of the people do not have cars.”

Devlin built her hoop house with a loan from the money raised at Selma Café. Her hoop house, like all the others, was built in one day by volunteers recruited at the Café.
And some of the food grown in the hoop houses comes back to the Café. You might see greens on your plate in February.

Lisa and Jeff are both pretty unphased by the hundreds of diners who come into their house every week.

“It does open up its unique challenges of where does public and private begin and end (laughs) so we’ve had people kind of wander in at any time of day and say, is this the place? But in general, I think it’s been a really nice fit.”

And they say they’re happy to have even more people come over for breakfast.

Rebecca Williams, The Environment Report.

Emotions Run High Over Dam Removal Questions

  • The Argo Dam was first built as a hydroelectric dam in 1914. Detroit Edison decided it wasn't worth the investment and sold it to Ann Arbor in 1963. (Photo by Mark Brush)

There are close to two hundred hydroelectric dams in Michigan, and almost half of those stopped making power a long time ago. Many of these dams are getting old and they need attention. The communities that own these dams are faced with a decision: pay to fix them, or pay to take them down. As Mark Brush reports it’s a decision that often stirs people’s emotions.

Map of Hydroelectric Dams in Michigan (pdf)

The Ann Arbor Chronicle on Argo Dam

The City of Ann Arbor on Argo Dam

More about Rowing on Argo Pond (pdf)

“Why remove Argo Dam?” from the HRWC

“The Ballad of Argo Dam” by Dave Barrett

Transcript

(Sound of Argo Dam)

The controversy around Argo Dam in Ann Arbor started when the State’s Dam Safety Program said there were problems were with the embankment next to the dam. The repair costs were estimated to be up to $300,000.

Laura Rubin is standing next to the dam on the Huron River. Rubin is the executive director of the Huron River Watershed Council, and she wants to take this dam out. She says taking the dam out would save the city money in the long run. She says it will also return the river to a more natural state, and would be better for fish and wildlife. Rubin says when she looks at the pond made by the dam, she doesn’t see good things.

“When I look at Argo Pond I see really a stinky, stagnant, non-oxygenated pond. It’s not really functioning. Other people look at it as, you know, this beautiful pond that they go down to. And it’s really, that’s just one of perspective, and sort of your background and your training.”

The people who like the dam accused Rubin and the Watershed Council of overhyping the problems with the dam, and with Argo Pond. The people most outspoken were the members of a local rowing club.

Rubin and others in favor of taking the dam out said the rowers could find better places to row on the Huron River, and the city could pay for the move.

Mike Taft is a coach for the Huron High School rowing team. He and many of the other rowers said the other places just wouldn’t work.

“You know my kids grew up here and this is where we spent our time. So, you can find what you want on various stretches of this river, and this is a one of a kind the way it is.”

Some environmentalists accused the rowers of digging their heels in – of not considering other options. Taft feels that accusation is unfair.

“I think this is not about the rowers. I think it’s about the Watershed Council pursuing their absolute aim here, which is to take out this dam.”

People with the Watershed Council say they do want the dam out, but they say they respect the rowers concerns.

The city of Ann Arbor put together a committee to help them with the decision. They held meetings and heard from some experts. They came to agreement on a lot of other issues about the river, but on the Argo Dam they just couldn’t agree.

Steve Yaffee is an expert on ways to manage environmental conflicts. He’s written extensively about the Spotted Owl case out west and he facilitated some of the Argo Dam meetings. He says in hindsight, he felt like the process could have been better informed. He thought it would have helped to have outside experts weigh in on the questions about science and about the alternatives for rowers.

“Because I think the rowing interests weren’t convinced that there were environmental benefits. And the environmentalists weren’t convinced that there weren’t options for the rowers. And if you’re not convinced of that, why work with that.”

Yaffee says for communities facing these big controversies it’s important for all the parties to first sit down and talk broadly about what they want for their community. He says it’s also important to have some creative thinkers at the table. People who can articulate a vision for the future and can come up with solutions.

For now, the city is planning to keep the dam. If it does, taxpayers will probably have to pay close to half a million dollars in repair and maintenance costs in the next several years, and for many cities with tight budgets money is often what ultimately drives their final decision of whether or not to keep a dam.

For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Invasive Species and Toxic Chemicals

  • The round goby is an invader in the Great Lakes... and now scientists are discovering that toxins called PCBs are accumulating in round gobies... and then those toxins are getting into fish that we eat. (Photo by David Jude)

Invasive species and toxic chemicals…


This is The Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.


There are these chemicals called PCBs or polychlorinated biphenyls. They were found to be toxic decades ago. The Environmental Protection Agency considers them to be probable human carcinogens. They were banned in the 1970s, but they’re still all around us. They’re buried in the sediment at the bottom of some of our rivers and lakes. Now researchers are finding invasive species are passing these old, toxic chemicals up the food web.


David Jude is a research scientist and a fish biologist at the University of Michigan.


So you found that zebra mussels and round gobies are driving this problem. How so?

Transcript

“Well, the zebra mussels and the quagga mussels, which is a cousin of the zebra mussels, are filtering the water of algae and sometimes other detrital material and PCBs will absorb to that material. Therefore, they accumulate high concentrations of toxic substances including PCBs. So any organism that eats those organisms are going to accumulate PCBs in their bodies.”


RW: So the zebra mussels and quagga mussels are accumulating the PCBs…the round gobies are eating them and they’re stockpiling the PCBs in their bodies (DJ: “Exactly.”) and then here come the walleye and they eat the round gobies (“Exactly.”):


DJ: “So any walleyes that spend a lot of time in the Saginaw River eating round gobies are going to pick up a lot of PCBs because those fish are contaminated.”


RW: You studied Saginaw Bay in particular. Is this same zebra mussel, round goby, walleye connection happening in other parts of the Great Lakes?


“Yes, sometimes there may be a different top predator involved but all the Great Lakes have places where this particular food web is in operation, except for Lake Superior. And, the other point I think I should make is that, again, this study was done in a highly contaminated area. In other areas of the Great Lakes, for example in Lake Michigan, you would not see this sort of uptake of PCBs. It’s only in these contaminated areas of concern across the Great Lakes that we’re seeing this sort of a pattern.”


RW: So what does this mean for people who like to catch and eat walleye?


“The bigger the fish, which we found in this study, the more contaminants that they’re going to have. So you should be eating smaller fish and you should do everything you can to get rid of the fat.”


RW: And that’s because PCBs collect in fat, right?

DJ: “Yes, exactly right.”

RW: So this applies, what you’re finding applies to other kinds of fish as well?


“Well, I would think so. You could, by analogy, suggest that other fatty fish are probably picking up a lot higher levels than what we’re seeing in the walleyes.”


RW: So if I’m at the fish market, what kinds of Great Lakes fish would I be best off buying?


“Well, small fish. I’d get small fish first and then I would get yellow perch if I could do that. They would probably be the lowest contamination level of the ones that are there. Lake whitefish probably would be another good one for you to eat. They’re fairly low on the food chain and unfortunately they are starting to eat a lot of quagga and zebra mussels, but again, they’re eating them in areas where they’re not as highly contaminated as they would be in an area of concern. So, you possibly could get some that were eating these zebra mussels and quagga mussels in an area of concern so they could be contaminated but in general, I would say lake whitefish might be a good species to eat.”


RW: David Jude is a research scientist and a fish biologist at the University of Michigan. Thank you so much for coming in.


“My pleasure.”


That’s The Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Selling Asian Carp to China

  • Commercial fisherman Gary Shaw shows off his silver and big head Asian carp, just before handing them off to Big River Fish, an Illinois company that has landed a major contract to send carp to a Chinese food company. (Photo courtesy of Ross Harano)

This little Asian carp went to market….


This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.


You probably know Illinois wants to stop Asian carp from getting into Lake Michigan. Biologists say one solution would be to fish the carp out of the Illinois River at a big, commercial scale. That way they won’t expand their feeding range to Chicago, the Great Lakes and beyond – at least, they hope. Entrepreneurs in Illinois want to get rich off Asian carp.

A draft plan to control Asian carp
An Environment Report story about another Asian carp entrepreneur

More info about the new carp deal

Transcript

Shawn Allee tells us about the company that’s closest to grabbing the brass ring.


Last December, biologists got scared Asian carp were getting close to Lake Michigan, so they poisoned rivers near Chicago.

That’s when Ross Harano got a call. Harano is an international trade agent in Chicago.


“A friend of mine was in China, working for the largest beef processing company. He read about these fish being killed, poisoned, and wondered what the heck is going on because they’re a delicacy there.”

Harano’s friend works for the Beijing Zhuochen Animal Husbandry Company – it’s like the Kraft Foods of China.

“The company in china had decided to do a marketing study and they felt there was demand for a high-end, wild asian carp. Shawn: ‘Why would that be?’
All these fish they are getting now are raised in these rivers that are polluted and the farm-raised taste muddy, evidently. Shawn: ‘At least in China.’
At least in China. And so, they liked the idea of a fish that jumps out of the water and has all this energy.”


Harano’s friend asked if he could send Illinois’ perky Asian carp to China.


Harano just happened to know Big River Fish, a processor in Southwestern Illinois.


Harano said, have your company come see our fish.

“They sent a representative over who’s a food expert for their company and we cooked some Asian carp for him, according to his recipes.
Shawn: Down in southwestern Illinois.
Down in Pearl, Illinois. Mr. Yang is his name. He said this is the best Asian carp he’s had since he was a child. So, based upon that, Mr. Yang signed a memorandum saying, yes, we want to look into this further. They’re very interested in 30 million pounds of the fish. I said we don’t have that capacity, we could probably do ten.”


This meant trouble.


Harano says the Chinese company was firm: deliver thirty million pounds of carp – or no deal.


But Harano’s client, Big River Fish, would need a new factory.


And right here, Harano’s client hit a problem other Asian carp entrepreneurs hit: they’ve got ideas to sell Asian carp, but they don’t have money to expand or even start their business.

Big River Fish only had half the money … so it asked Illinois’ state government for two million dollars.


The state gave it.


“There was a gap and that’s where we step in to help meet the gap.”


This is Warren Ribley – the head of Illinois’ Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.


“Anything we can do to help reduce those populations is just a good thing not only from an environmental point of view, but helps create jobs.”


Well, Ribley’s dead-on with the jobs part, but he’s kinda right on the environmental argument.

Biologists say commercial fishing can help control Asian carp, but Illinois needs huge operations, and lots of them.

The Big River company’s deal with China starts this fall. It’s a big deal, but it’s the only deal.

In fact – it’s the only company on the Illinois River that’s gotten this much state help … even though other companies hope to turn carp into pet food, fertilizer, even carp patties to feed state prisoners.

“Those are not yet as proven… this was a case with a contract they had to be ready to enter into and to deliver as many fish as you can.

Ribley says his agency is conservative with grant money because it doesn’t want to subsidize carp businesses that will fail.

But there’s no other help for Asian carp start-ups.

So for now, any Asian carp gold rush in Illinois is just gonna have to wait.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.


A lot of environmentalists wonder whether it makes sense to build a business on a fish a lot of people hope disappears.


That’s the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Oil Spill Creates Manufacturing Boom

  • A truck loaded up with boom for the Gulf spill cleanup. (Photo by Nikki Motson)

The Gulf oil spill and a manufacturing boom…


This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.


When the BP oil spill started polluting the Gulf three months ago, a lot of unemployed workers in Michigan might not have guessed it would affect their daily lives.

But BP reached out to some Michigan companies to build oil boom for containment and cleanup efforts down in the Gulf.

Nikki Motson has more:

A related Environment Report story on the Kalamazoo River oil spill
An Environment Report story about seafood and the Gulf spill

Transcript

Marysville, Michigan in St. Clair County was once part of the thriving manufacturing belt. Now the region is scattered with empty factories that once supplied the auto industry.

The operations that are still running have found ways to innovate and be flexible to changing trends. Fagerdala USA is among them.


Fagerdala received good news last year when Wham-O toys moved their manufacturing of kids’ products from China back to the US.


The Marysville plant was chosen to take over production of items like the pool noodles kids play with in summer. But they still struggled.

In Grand Rapids, Prestige Products had a modest staff of five employees making vinyl awnings for businesses and homes. But in the depressed economy business was down.

Then oil started gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP oil spill. As the bad news was hitting residents along the Gulf states, good news came to Michigan.

BP was looking for people who could make enormous amounts of boom, and that meant Prestige and Fagerdala would hire as many people as their factories could hold.

The word spread quickly, and many unemployed workers in Michigan responded.

Each company hired about ten times more workers than their usual staff – within days. They moved quickly to transform themselves into major oil boom producers.

Charlie Cronenworth is plant manager at Fagerdala, USA.

“You know as unfortunate as it is, there’s also a bunch of people that are now working to help clean the thing up. We all feel for them, no differently than I’m sure they felt for us when the automotive industry went upside down.”

Josh Gierman was among the new hires. He has 2 kids, with another on the way. He had been looking for work since last winter.

“I was collecting unemployment. I really don’t have any free time anymore. Usually by the time I get home I’m pretty wore out. I don’t do much other than hang out with the kids.”

But Gierman says he didn’t mind working 56 hours a week, and doing work that might help the situation in the Gulf states.

Brian Rickel was the guy who first received the call from BP. He works in emergency response and leak repair. Rickel says he brought the multimillion dollar contract to Michigan because the manufacturing workforce is so strong.

“It’s hard to believe but you can go other places in the country and you can’t find the labor force. The labor force here has been phenomenal. And they all want to work. They really wanna work.”

As news of the BP oil spill worsened, production ramped up at both companies and boom was being pumped out 24/7.

Then the wellhead of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig was finally capped.

Brian Rickel had been watching the massive cleanup efforts in the Gulf and he was sure the demand for boom would continue. But the contract with BP was up in the air.

Last week, a second oil spill happened even closer to home. An oil pipeline from Enbridge Energy burst and released an estimated 1 million gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River.

Some people thought the new spill might be an opportunity to keep these Michigan companies hard at work. But Enbridge and the EPA reached out to a list of predetermined contractors for the boom needed to contain the spill.

Then the Michigan companies got more bad news. BP did not renew its contract.


Today, most of the new hires are once again among Michigan’s abundant unemployed.

But Fagerdala and Prestige now have all the equipment they need and a list of hard working people they can contact, if they have the opportunity to build boom again.

For The Environment Report, I’m Nikki Motson.