Some people say wastewater treatment plants might not be doing a good job taking out pollutants like household chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
(Photo courtesy of the US EPA)
A new study is looking at just
how well wastewater treatment
plants remove household chemicals
and pharmaceuticals from water.
Samara Freemark reports
on why some researchers are worried
that the plants aren’t doing a good
enough job:
Transcript
A new study is looking at just
how well wastewater treatment
plants remove household chemicals
and pharmaceuticals from water.
Samara Freemark reports
on why some researchers are worried
that the plants aren’t doing a good
enough job:
Most wastewater treatment plants clean water with a mix of chemicals and bacteria. But that process is decades-old. And it was designed mostly to deal with industrial pollutants.
Some people say treatment plants might not be doing a good job taking out other pollutants like household chemicals and pharmaceuticals. In fact, the treatment process can actually cause many of these pollutants to mutate – for example, some detergents break down into compounds that cause reproductive problems.
Anthony Hay is studying the issue at Cornell University.
“Hopefully they’re degraded into something non-toxic, but in some cases microbial degradation of some pollutants can actually make things worse. We need to understand what those changed products do, how they behave, and what risks they might pose.”
That’s what Hay hopes his study will help clarify.
Natural gas well drilling site. (Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)
A new drilling technique called
hydrofracking has opened up previously
inaccessible natural gas fields all
over the country and created a boom
in natural gas production. But it’s
also generated a lot of controversy,
since hydrofracking is exempt from
almost all federal regulations.
Samara Freemark reports
that legislation currently moving through
Congress would change that:
Transcript
A new drilling technique called
hydrofracking has opened up previously
inaccessible natural gas fields all
over the country and created a boom
in natural gas production. But it’s
also generated a lot of controversy,
since hydrofracking is exempt from
almost all federal regulations.
Samara Freemark reports
that legislation currently moving through
Congress would change that:
Hydrofracking involves pumping millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals a mile into the ground to break up rock and extract gas. But since 2005 the technique has been exempt from federal environmental legislation like the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act.
Now some members of Congress have introduced a bill to restore federal oversight over fracking. Kate Sinding is with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports the bill.
“So what has been proposed is known as the FRAC act. And what that would do is restore regulatory authority over hydrolic fracturing which means we would have some federal standards about how to regulate this activity. And it would require the public disclosure of the fracturing fluids that are used in fracturing fluids.”
That’s an important point for fracking opponents, who say those chemicals have contaminated wells and groundwater across the nation.
John Howe keeps bees on the roof of his Brooklyn townhouse.
(Photo by Samara Freemark)
Beekeeping is a growing hobby – there
are even a couple of hives on the White
House lawn. And beekeeping is even getting
popular in America’s largest, most urban
city – New York. The only problem is,
beekeeping is actually illegal in New York.
Samara Freemark went to find
out why some New Yorkers are doing it anyway:
Transcript
Beekeeping is a growing hobby – there
are even a couple of hives on the White
House lawn. And beekeeping is even getting
popular in America’s largest, most urban
city – New York. The only problem is,
beekeeping is actually illegal in New York.
Samara Freemark went to find
out why some New Yorkers are doing it anyway:
When I first got in touch with the Gotham City Honey Co-op and told them I wanted to do a story on beekeeping in New York, they were a little nervous about talking with me. They were worried about a New York City health code that makes urban beekeeping illegal. The city’s worried about people getting stung. The Honey Co-op didn’t want to blow anyone’s cover, but eventually they did hook me up with John Howe.
Howe keeps bees on the roof of his Brooklyn townhouse – which means every day – several times a day, actually – he climbs four flights of stairs and one shaky ladder to get up to his hives.
“I gotta go up the ladder. I’m getting tired of it.”
(sound of roof opening)
“Turned out to be a nice day.”
Howe keeps two hives. He says there could be up to 150,000 bees in them.
“You can see them all going in and out. Lot of bees, yeah.”
Honey bees can fly up to three miles from their hives, looking for flowers to pollinate. Howe’s bees probably buzz by thousands of his neighbors every day. I asked him if anyone ever complained about them or called authorities to turn him in for illegal beekeeping. Howe said his neighbors are actually pretty cool with the bees.
“I give them free honey, so that helps. People just raise their eyebrow or shrug and say, ‘that’s neat.’ They call me bee man. I walk down the street, they say, ‘hey bee man, you got any honey?’”
Across town, Roger Repahl raises honeybees in the garden of a church in the South Bronx. He started beekeeping ten years ago, when local gardeners noticed that their vegetables weren’t getting pollinated.
“The community gardeners were complaining that they were getting a lot of flowers but very little fruit. So Greenthumb – that’s the community gardening wing of the parks department – Greenthumb said that’s because you don’t have enough pollinators in the South Bronx.”
So Repahl trucked some hives down from Vermont, and he says the bees pretty much solved the neighborhood’s pollination problem.
Now, this is the kind of story that gets beekeepers like John Howe pretty steamed up about New York’s anti-beekeeping laws. Like a lot of cities, New York is doing just about everything it can to encourage community gardening. But to grow your own food, you need insects to pollinate your plants. John Howe says banning honeybees is like banning local food.
“The best reason for making bees legal is that they pollinate so many plants. The more bees that we can raise and keep, the more chance we have of having food.”
It’s not quite that clear cut. At least, that’s what James Danoff Burg says. He studies insects at Columbia University. He says there are native bugs that do plenty of pollinating. Beetles, for example, and other kinds of bees like honeybees. And those native species are being driven out by honey bees, which are originally from Europe.
“I think it’s a mixed bag. They have benefits to people, for certain. And from a human perspective, if all you’re concerned about is that your plants get pollinated and you can get the fruits that come from that, it’s a pure positive bag. The negative part of that mixed bag comes when you start to think about native biodiversity.”
But Danoff Burg says preserving native biodiversity maybe doesn’t matter so much in a place like New York. The city’s ecosystem has already been changed so much, and there are other, more wild places where native insects can thrive.
So even though NY is America’s biggest city, it might also be the best place in the country to raise bees. As long as you keep them out of sight of the law.
The Good Guide website's turkey rating page.
(Image by Jessi Ziegler)
There’s a new way for consumers to find
out more about the products they buy.
Samara Freemark has the story
of a new online guide that lets you look
up how good products are for you and for
the environment:
Transcript
There’s a new way for consumers to find
out more about the products they buy.
Samara Freemark has the story
of a new online guide that lets you look
up how good products are for you and for
the environment:
The website is called the Good Guide, and it lets consumers get a pretty in-depth look at more than 60,000 foods and household products. The site ranks products by their impacts on health, the environment, and society.
The Good Guide is the brainchild of Dara O’Rourke. He’s a professor of environmental policy at the University of California at Berkley. O’Rourke says consumers don’t have easy access to the information they need to make smart buying decisions.
“What we’re trying to do is bring the best available science, put it in an easy accessible and free format, then get it to people whenever and wherever they make a decision about a product or a company.”
That’s where the Good Guide iphone application comes in. Shoppers can scan barcodes at the store to get instant product information.
That application, and the site, can be found at goodguide.com
One NYC artist recruited arborists and neighbors to record messages about the city's trees. She placed markers in the cement listing numbers to call to hear the recordings. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
Trees along big city streets have a rough
life. Between pollution, development,
and vandalism, street trees die off at
a pretty alarming rate. One New York
artist thinks if people knew more about
street trees, they’d appreciate them more –
and treat them better. Samara Freemark reports from New York’s “Tree
Museum”:
Transcript
Trees along big city streets have a rough
life. Between pollution, development,
and vandalism, street trees die off at
a pretty alarming rate. One New York
artist thinks if people knew more about
street trees, they’d appreciate them more –
and treat them better. Samara Freemark reports from New York’s “Tree
Museum”:
When artist Katie Holten was commissioned to do a piece commemorating Grand Concourse boulevard in the Bronx, the first thing she thought of was trees. The Concourse, after all, is lined with them. The problem was, no one else seemed to notice they were even there.
“I had conversations with people who were sitting under the trees for the shade. And I’d ask them about what they thought of the trees. And they would say, ‘oh, there aren’t any trees on the concourse.’ But they were sitting underneath one.”
And if people did notice the trees, they weren’t always thrilled they were there.
“Kids told me that trees should all be chopped down because they couldn’t see the view. A teacher told me that all trees were the same, that there was only one kind of tree.”
People didn’t pay much attention to the trees. When they did, they often abused them – which is pretty common treatment for the trees that line city streets. People pin street trees with flyers. They spray trees with grafitti. They chain their bikes around trees, stripping their bark. City buses jump curbs and plow into trees. And developers chop them down to put up new buildings.
“You can’t just stick a tree in the ground and hope for the best. It’s a really tough environment.”
In fact, half of all trees planted in New York City die.
Holten figured one way to protect street trees was to get people to understand all the good that trees do.
So she recruited arborists and neighbors to record messages about the Grand Concourse’s trees. She placed markers in the cement listing numbers to call to hear the recordings. And she called the whole thing the Tree Museum.
“There are 100 trees along the 4 miles. And each of the trees gets a small marker. So we can walk up here to 165th street and I’ll show you one. Here’s one of the markers- nice and dirty.”
(sound of dialing in)
We dial and hear…
“I’d like to a moment to say thank you to this tree. This tree is busy cooling the air and helping to keep the river clean. The leaves in the canopy above are pulling water out of the air, reducing humidity, like an AC.”
It’s not really clear how many people are actually calling in to the museum, or whether the recordings are changing anyone’s mind. But it’s a start.
Joyce Hoagy lives further up the Concourse. She recorded a message for tree number 31. And now she feels kind of possessive of it.
“This is my tree. It’s a honey locust and I’m identified by it.”
Hoagy says Bronx trees have been under particular threat lately. This year the city cut down hundreds of mature oaks to make room for the new Yankees stadium.
“One street had these giant oaks, and they formed this canopy. And on the hottest day of the year you could walk down…people didn’t know what they had till it was gone.”
So now Joyce Hoagy’s spreading the word about the Tree Museum too. She hopes it will give her neighbors a hundred reasons to care about trees around them – and watch out for them.
The program is supposed to identify new viruses in animals before they spread to humans.
(Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
A new coalition wants to set up an
early warning system for diseases
that pass between animals and humans.
Samara Freemark reports
some research institutions and conservation
groups are launching the PREDICT program:
Transcript
A new coalition wants to set up an
early warning system for diseases
that pass between animals and humans.
Samara Freemark reports
some research institutions and conservation
groups are launching the PREDICT program:
Organizers hope the program will help prevent the spread of diseases like avian flu, ebola, and swine flu. PREDICT researchers will work in disease ‘hotspots’ overseas.
Program director Stephen Morse is an epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York. He says the program will identify new viruses in animals before they spread to humans.
“We don’t even know how may emerging viruses, let alone other infectious organisms there are out there in nature, but the number must be large.”
The PREDICT program will also create better global disease warning systems.
“This is really essential to our survival as well as something very important to understand if we want to be able to control infections in the future.”
Morse hopes the program will help governments stop local outbreaks before they become global pandemics.
19 states have passed ‘take back’ laws that require manufacturers to take back old electronics and pay to recycle them. But manufacturers are challenging these laws. (Photo source: dirkj at Wikimedia Commons)
The City of New York is being sued
by the electronics industry. Samara
Freemark reports it’s over recycling
electronic waste, such as cell phones
and computers:
Transcript
The city of New York is being sued by the electronics industry. Samara Freemark reports it’s over recycling electronic waste such as cell phones and computers:
Electronic waste contains all sorts of hazardous chemicals, but safely recycling it is expensive.
So 19 states have passed ‘take back’ laws that require manufacturers to take back old electronics and pay to recycle them.
Now manufacturers are challenging these laws. Two industry groups have sued New York City. They want the city’s take back law overturned.
Kate Sinding is a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. That group has joined New York in the suit. She says a decision in the case could have consequences beyond electronics take backs.
“There are a lot of deeper questions that are raised by the lawsuit, including issues of corporate responsibility. If somebody’s going to produce something that has toxic components, what is their ongoing responsibility to deal with that, even after it’s sold into the market?”
The pod docked at the Worlds Fair Marina in Queens.
(Photo by Samara Freemark)
Mary Mattingly and Ian Daniels working inside the covered dome they built as common space on the pod. It's made of a steel structure covered with old, salvaged billboards. Hence the big faces on the walls.
(Photo by Samara Freemark)
Solar panels and a power-generating stationary bike provide energy – enough to power
the lights and the fridge and their laptop computers.
(Photo by Samara Freemark)
The artists been surviving almost entirely on
what they can make, grow, or gather on the 3000 square foot barge.
(Photo by Samara Freemark)
So, maybe you think you do good
by the environment. Maybe you buy
local, maybe you go to the farmers’
market, maybe you even walk to work.
But you’ve probably got nothing on
the crew aboard the Waterpod – a
converted barge anchored in New York
City. Samara Freemark
went to the Pod to see just how
sustainably people can live:
Transcript
So, maybe you think you do good
by the environment. Maybe you buy
local, maybe you go to the farmers’
market, maybe you even walk to work.
But you’ve probably got nothing on
the crew aboard the Waterpod – a
converted barge anchored in New York
City. Samara Freemark
went to the Pod to see just how
sustainably people can live:
When I caught up with the Waterpod barge, it was docked at a marina right next to
Laguardia Airport.
(sound of a plane)
That’s the sound of people and products moving all around the world.
But on board the Waterpod, four artists have spent the summer living locally – about as
locally as a group of people can possibly live. They’ve been surviving almost entirely on
what they can make, grow, or gather on a 3000 square foot barge.
Which is where I found artist and Waterpod creator Mary Mattingly.
“Hi.”
Last spring, Mattingly and some friends rented the barge and spent a month converting it.
They built a kitchen, 4 bedrooms, gardens, and a whole lot of alternative energy and
water systems. They wanted to see whether they could create a floating self-contained
ecosystem – one that could adapt to a future where resources were scarce and rising sea
levels had swamped coastal regions.
“We’re probably going to need to find new ways to make land that’s usable. So can you
just recreate it on a platform like this? So what’s the answer? I think so.”
Waterpod launched in June. It’s been traveling to docks in the New York City area since
then. The barge is towed around by tugboats – not exactly a sustainable energy source,
true, but the crew does pretty well producing just about everything else.”
We have 33 vegetables and 2 fruits. In this garden we’re growing kale, potatoes,
tomatoes.”
There’s also a coop for 4 chickens, which each produce an egg a day.
“Their names are Gilly, Rizzo, Marble and Bonzai.”
Between the chickens and the gardens, Mattingly says Waterpod is almost self-sufficient
for food. The barge gets its water from collected and purified rain.
“We get enough water barely. We are very close to not having enough water. We only
use a 55 gallon jug of water a day. So split between four people that’s about maybe 10
gallons a day at the most. So we’re taking really short showers.”
Solar panels and a power-generating stationary bike provide energy – enough to power
the lights and the fridge and an impressive collection of laptop computers. The crew uses
those to collect and analyze data on how their various survival systems are functioning.
Crew member Ian Daniels says the data could eventually be used not just by people
embarking on radical living experiments – but also by regular folks who just want to
make their homes a little more sustainable.
“We have 3000 square feet here. So what would happen if you cut that in half? Or a
third? What can I use that space for? Maybe you’re growing food on your roof or in your
window. Maybe you just take this example and take it down a notch, just do what’s
plausible in your own world.”
The Waterpod experiment is ending. So, I asked the crew for the biggest lesson they
learned this summer about living sustainably. Was it about energy conservation? Or, a
new method for collecting rainwater? Actually, Mattingly told me, it was mostly about
getting along with other people.
“I guess I didn’t really consider what it would be like to live in such a small space for
such a long time with other people and the psychology of that became a really interesting
part of the day to day life, and how we managed to make that work and how we would
have to have that dinner every night to reconnect and get back together.”
Which, she says, is a lesson that translates pretty well back on land.
JD Willson holding a juvenile python. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
Python enclosure at the Savannah River site, near Aiken, SC. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
Rick Bower, a student volunteer from Davidson College, tracking the pythons in the enclosure. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
Foreign animals that get released
in the wild usually don’t spark that
much interest. But when that species
is a giant snake, well, most people
sit up and take notice. That’s the
problem facing the state of Florida,
where Burmese pythons have moved in
to Everglades National Park. Now,
scientists are trying to figure out
if the snakes could spread to the
rest of the country. Samara Freemark reports:
Transcript
Foreign animals that get released
in the wild usually don’t spark that
much interest. But when that species
is a giant snake, well, most people
sit up and take notice. That’s the
problem facing the state of Florida,
where Burmese pythons have moved in
to Everglades National Park. Now,
scientists are trying to figure out
if the snakes could spread to the
rest of the country. Samara Freemark reports:
Meet South Florida’s newest invasive species – the 20 ft long, 200 lb,
Burmese python.
“They’re impressive animals. They’re really impressive animals. And
they’re breeding
like crazy out there.”
That’s python researcher JD Willson. He says the pythons probably started
off as pets –
until their owners got bored of them and dumped them in the Everglades. Now
those pets
have procreated their way into a huge wild population.
“Certainly thousands. Certainly tens of thousands. Some people have gone
as far as to
say hundreds of thousands.”
Willson says most pythons won’t attack humans. But they do pose a big
threat to local
ecosystems.
“These are snakes that are top predators. They eat alligators, they got a
bobcat record, a
couple of white tail deer. These are a predator that native wildlife are
just not prepared to
deal with. They’re not used to having a giant snake around.”
Florida lawmakers are considering putting a bounty on the pythons – paying
hunters to
kill them. And people in neighboring states just have their fingers crossed
that the
pythons won’t spread north.
But no one really knows enough about the snakes to come up with a good
control plan.
Willson and some other researchers are trying to change that.
“This is the python enclosure.”
They’ve built a little artificial habitat in South Carolina, surrounded
it with a really tall
wall, and filled it with 10 pythons. The researchers want to learn more
about how the
snakes behave in the wild, and see if they can make it through a winter
with freezing
temperatures.
(sound of door opening)
The snakes are tagged with radio transmitters, so the scientists can track
them and record
data on how they’re doing.
Freemark: “It’s safe to be in here?”
Bower: “Oh yeah, they’re not aggressive.”
Inside a student volunteer, Rick Bower, is tracking the snakes with a radio
receiver.
“As you sweep it across, you can see how the signal strength changes and
you get an idea
of where the strongest signal is coming from.”
The receiver tells us we’re basically standing right on top of one of the
pythons.
“Yeah, he’s right at our feet. Yeah, he’s down there.”
But we don’t see anything, even when Willson starts jabbing a stick at
the source of the
beeping.
“Somewhere within an 8 foot radius of where we are, there’s an 11 foot
snake. And he’s
hiding in this aquatic vegetation. And not only can we not see him, but
poking in the
vegetation doesn’t seem to be eliciting too much of a reaction.”
He’s a really sneaky snake.
Whit Gibbons is also working with the crew. He says that if the scientists
have so much
trouble tracking down their pythons, in an enclosed cage, using radio
transmitters –
there’s no way bounty hunters could make even a dent in the Everglades
python
population.
“So they find a hundred, so what. There’s a hundred thousand left. No
one’s going to find
100,000. I mean, we’ve got ‘em in a small enclosure, 10 big snakes,
over 75 feet of snake
if you add them up. And you can’t find them.”
Instead, Gibbons says people could opt for a harm reduction strategy- focus
on limiting
the spread of the snakes, try to protect species they threaten.
“One position is, ‘okay, they’re here, here’s what they can do to
us, or to our pets, or to
the wildlife. Let’s learn to live with them.’”
The South Carolina python study ends next summer. JD Willson says he’s
not sure what
they’ll do with the snakes afterwards. But he does know one thing –
they’re not going to
release them back into the wild.
Pam Dashiell is with the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development. The Lower 9th Ward is in the background. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
There are various green houses and developments in the 9th being constructed by several different groups - including GoGreen and the Make it Right Foundation. Note the solar panels, raised houses, and odd roof lines. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
Four years ago, Hurricane Katrina
hit New Orleans. The city still
hasn’t figured out how to protect
itself. Most of the conversation
focuses on rebuilding the city’s
levees. But some people in New
Orleans are starting to think beyond
levees. They call their strategy
resilience planning. And they think
New Orleans can become America’s
leader in it. Samara Freemark reports:
Transcript
Four years ago, Hurricane Katrina
hit New Orleans. The city still
hasn’t figured out how to protect
itself. Most of the conversation
focuses on rebuilding the city’s
levees. But some people in New
Orleans are starting to think beyond
levees. They call their strategy
resilience planning. And they think
New Orleans can become America’s
leader in it. Samara Freemark reports:
When Pam Dashiell moved back to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, she couldn’t believe what people were saying about her neighborhood.
“People were saying, well, the 9th Ward should be a drainage ditch. There’s no way it can possibly come back.”
Dashiell is the co-director of the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development. And after the storm, she became one of the leaders demanding the city be built back exactly as it had been before. New houses put up wherever old ones had been knocked down. Social services restored to all neighborhoods. And most importantly, levees. Levees big enough and strong enough to protect the city from anything a hurricane could throw at it.
“That was the fundamental argument and discussion back then. That was the battle.”
But Dashiell’s thinking has changed over the past couple of years. The levees that were promised after Katrina still haven’t been completed. Dashiell says eventually she gave up on them and started looking for other solutions.
“You’ve got to move. You’ve got to go forward. At this point we are not protected. So we gotta act like that and deal accordingly.”
“Levees and stuff like that are great, but they’re not going to be the salvation of this area.”
That’s Marco Cocito-Manoc. He’s with the Greater New Orleans Foundation. They’re one of the groups involved in rebuilding the city.
“We can’t just lobby for bigger walls, higher walls. The truth is that New Orleans can never be sufficiently protected from flooding. So everyone has to adopt what in this area is a brand new mindset.”
Cocito-Manoc calls that new mindset “resilience planning”. That’s making small, local changes to help the city manage flood water, rather than trying to hold it back at all costs.
It’s a strategy that’s being implemented in the Lower 9th Ward by Pam Dashiell’s group and others. A lot of these groups have moved away from pushing for more levees. Instead, they’re building raised houses on higher ground, and making sure they’re properly weatherized. They’re perfecting evacuation plans, so when evacuations do happen, they’re quick and orderly. And they’re installing permeable surfaces and rain gardens to reduce surface water. These kinds of changes won’t prevent flooding, but they’ll limit the devastation that sometimes goes along with it.
Cocito-Manoc says measures like these could actually set an example for other cities that will face rising sea levels in the next century. Think New York, or Miami, or Boston.
“I know that it’s difficult to see New Orleans as leading in much. But I think this is really our opportunity to become a global center for learning how to cope with water, and use water as an asset rather than as something that threatens our existence.”
As for Pam Dashiell, her focus right now is on the Lower 9th Ward. I asked her how she imagined the future of her neighborhood.
“I would see rain gardens. Strong green infrastructure. I see a new sewer system. I see the lower 9th ward recognized as a community that helped lead the way to a more sustainable future. (Laughs) I got good dreams.”
Some people say wastewater treatment plants might not be doing a good job taking out pollutants like household chemicals and pharmaceuticals. (Photo courtesy of the US EPA)
