A ship discharging its ballast water (Photo courtesy of the US Geological Survey)
Congress might take a final vote soon on a bill
that would make foreign ships treat ballast water to
kill unwanted species, before entering US waters.
Many environmental groups support the measure, but some
worry about the loss of state control. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:
Transcript
Congress might take a final vote soon on a bill
that would make foreign ships treat ballast water to
kill unwanted species, before entering US waters.
Many environmental groups support the measure, but some
worry about the loss of state control. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:
Backers of the ballast water requirement, recently passed by the House, hope to reduce the
number of invasive species brought in by foreign vessels.
Dozens of non-native species, like the zebra mussel, are causing major problems in the
Great Lakes. But the group ‘Midwest Environmental Advocates’ is raising concerns.
Executive Director Karen Schapiro says the House bill would prevent states from
developing ballast water treatment standards that are tougher than federal law, or that
take effect sooner.
“You know we would like to see the most feasibly stringent standards on the table, on the books,
even if that’s done on a state by state basis.”
But the shipping industry says it doesn’t want a patchwork of state regulations. The
national ballast water language is part of a Coast Guard bill that still has to be reconciled
with a Senate measure.
Near record low water levels on Lake Superior are causing some headaches for
boaters. Mike Simonson reports:
Transcript
Near record low water levels on Lake Superior are causing some headaches for
boaters. Mike Simonson reports:
Great Lakes water levels have been low. It’s partially due to evaporation from
lack of ice cover in the winter. Two years of drought around Lake Superior hasn’t
helped. That lake is a foot and a half below its long-term average, and the lowest
since 1926. Apostle Islands National Lakeshore Superintendent Bob Krumenaker
says they’ve got problems:
“Our docks are generally high out of the water. Some of them
are hard to reach from a small boat. Some of them have spaces underneath that
none of us have ever seen before that are really not friendly places for small
boats.”
Except for taking the unusual step of dredging, Krumenaker says there’s not a lot
they can do:
“We’re all getting a good education this year that the old phrase “the Lake is the
boss” is indeed true.
Boaters can find the shallow water spots on the National Park Service Apostle
Islands website.
Today we’re presenting the first in an
occasional series about peoples’ connections to
the environment. Producer Kyle Norris asked a
range of people if they felt close to nature.
She begins by talking with her uncle, a professional
fly-fisherman:
Transcript
Today we’re presenting the first in an
occasional series about peoples’ connections to
the environment. Producer Kyle Norris asked a
range of people if they felt close to nature.
She begins by talking with her uncle, a professional
fly-fisherman:
My Uncle Mark has run a fishing guide service for twenty-nine years. He
floats down the Potomac River in a 14-foot aluminum raft that he
designed. He goes through Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, where the
Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers come together near the Blue Ridge
Mountains. My uncle says that for him, the thrill of fishing dates back
to his childhood in Michigan:
“You know, when I first started, it was like I’m going to catch fish
and as a little kid I liked to ride back home from the Detroit River
with a stringer across the handlebars of my bicycle, I was the great
hunter or great fisherman. And we took turns as buddies bringing fish
home on their bikes.”
I don’t get to see my uncle a whole lot. But when I was little, he took
my cousin and me fishing. He made us kiss the first fish that we
caught. Which was kind of silly and fun.
“Oh, you always kiss your first fish. Twenty-five years ago I had some
younger anglers in my boat. And one of them caught a fish and he gave it
a kiss and let it go and I looked at him and then I caught a fish I
think a little bit later and I didn’t kiss it and he goes, ‘What are
you doing?’ and I said, ‘Well, what do you mean?’ And he goes, ‘Oh, you
have to kiss your first fish.’ And I just said, ‘Well, that makes a lot
of sense.’ I think it sets the tone for the day.”
When you hold a fish up to your face and look closely at its glistening
scales and you kiss it, you definitely feel close to it.
“I fish a lot and I hardly ever kill any fish anymore. And in fishing
it’s really the most genteel of the blood sports. You know, you have all
the pleasures of the hunt but you don’t have to make the kill.”
When my uncle talks about nature, he gets this blissed-out look on his
face.
“The water colors can vary from, you know, coffee with cream if it’s
really been a lot of rain and it’s all stirred up to where it’s a
relative clear nice green to it. It can sometimes look like a trout
stream where it’s like gin-clear, you know. It depends on rainfall and the
time of year and stuff. And I love flowing water. ‘Cause it’s always
changing and it’s moving you. Especially when you wade in it. It runs
between your legs and it’s just, you feel like you’re a part of it.”
Some people talk about nature in spiritual terms. That’s something I
never talked about with my uncle but I wondered.
“Oh, it’s probably as spiritual as I get. Yeah, I think sometimes,
sure. You get a lot of respect for nature. And I guess um, spiritual quality…um, yeah. When you really try
to embrace the whole environment and you’re taking in all the flora and
fauna, you’re taking in all the trees and the aquatic vegetation and the
insects that live in that environment and then all the, all the
creatures that live in the environment, plus the fish I might be
pursuing and stuff and then how all that works together. And then how people impact that
too, and I always feel like, I never feel like I’m in control. I always feel like there’s a lot of
variables. I have an idea of what I’m doing but I never feel that I am
like I’m in control. And so I guess there’s a spiritual quality to
that. Got a lot of respect for nature. Got a lot of respect for water.
Flowing water especially.”
The way my uncle talks about the water and the words he uses really
paints a vivid picture in my head. I can hear the love in his voice.
When he talks like that, I feel closer to the places and the fish he’s
talking about. And hearing how he really feels makes me feel closer to
him.
The U.S. Coast Guard has abandoned its plan to conduct “live fire” weapons training on the Great Lakes. Steve Carmody has more:
Transcript
The U.S. Coast Guard has abandoned its plan to conduct “live fire” weapons training on the Great Lakes. Steve Carmody has more:
The Coast Guard had wanted to establish 34 “live fire” zones across the Great Lakes. The proposal ran into opposition partly involving concerns over the potential environmental impact.
Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak says thousands of rounds of spent ammunition would have been dumped onto the bottom of the Great Lakes.
“We’re not going to let the Coast Guard dump 7,000 pounds of lead in the Great Lakes. No other industry could do it, so they certainly were not going to be allowed to do it. And, they still really haven’t answered the real basic question, ‘why is it necessary to do it now?'”
In a written statement, the Coast Guard said it would reconsider its “live fire” proposal, including the location of water training areas and the use of “environmentally friendly alternatives to the lead ammunition” currently used.
Congressman Stupak says it will probably be several years before the Coast Guard tries to put forward a new “live fire” proposal.
Some say it's only a matter of time before the Asian Carp enters the Great Lakes. (Photo courtesy of the USFWS)
More than 160 kinds of foreign creatures are in the Great Lakes right now, and every few months, a new one finds its way into the Lakes. Those invasive species are considered the number one problem by the experts we surveyed. The outsiders crowd out native species and disrupt the natural food chain, and it’s likely more will be coming. Zach Peterson reports scientists are putting a lot of time and effort into figuring out which new foreign creatures might next invade the Great Lakes:
Transcript
There are new problems for the Great Lakes on the horizon. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham is our guide in a series that explains that new invasive species are one of the Ten
Threats to the Great Lakes:
More than 160 kinds of foreign creatures are in the Great Lakes right now, and every few months, a new one finds its way into the Lakes. Those invasive species are considered the number one problem by the experts we surveyed. The outsiders crowd out native species and disrupt the natural food chain, and it’s likely more will be coming. Zach Peterson reports scientists are putting a lot of time and effort into figuring out which new foreign creatures might next invade the Great Lakes:
(Sound of boat motor)
Jim Barta is a charter boat captain just above Lake Erie on the Detroit River. He says over the last decade, zebra mussels and other foreign species have altered the habitat of the walleye he fishes for.
Water that once had a brownish hue is now clear. That’s because Zebra mussels have eaten the algae and plankton that used to cloud the water, and that means Barta’s boat is no longer invisible to the fish he aims to hook.
“You could catch the fish a little closer to the boat because they weren’t as spooked by the boat. They weren’t as afraid of what was taking place.”
So Barta had to rethink his tactics. He now casts his lines out further, and he’s changed lures to continue catching walleye.
But there are other problems the zebra mussel is causing. Eating all the plankton means it’s stealing food at the bottom of the food chain. And, that affects how many fish survive and how much the surviving fish are able to grow.
Anthony Ricciardi is trying to help Barta, and other people who rely on a stable Great Lakes ecosystem. He’s an “invasion biologist” at McGill University in Montreal.
Ricciardi looks for evidence that can predict the next non-native species that might make it’s way into the Great Lakes. He says species that have spread throughout waterways in Europe and Asia are prime candidates to become Great Lakes invaders.
“If the organism has shown itself to be invasive elsewhere, it has the ability to adapt to new habitats, to rapidly increase in small numbers, to dominate ecosystems, or to change them in certain ways that change the rules of exsistence for everything else, and thus can cause a disruption.”
Ricciardi says most aquatic invasive species are transported to North America in the ballast tanks of ocean freighters. Freighters use ballast water to help balance their loads. Some of the foreign species hitchhike in the ballast water or in the sediment in the bottom of the ballasts.
Ships coming from overseas release those foreign species unintentionally when they pump out ballast water in Great Lakes ports. Ricciardi says one of the potential invaders that might pose the next big threat to the Great Lakes is the “killer shrimp.” Like the Zebra Mussel, it’s a native of the Black Sea.
“And it’s earned the name killer shrimp because it attacks invertebrates, all kinds of invertebrates, including some that are bigger than it is. And it takes bites out of them and kills them, but doesn’t necessarily eat them. So, it’s not immediately satiated. It actually feeds in a buffet style: it’ll sample invertebrates, and so it can leave a lot of carcasses around it.”
Ballasts on cargo ships aren’t the only way foreign species can get into the Lakes. Right now, scientists are watching as a giant Asian Carp makes its way toward Lake Michigan. It’s a voracious eater and it grows to a hundred pounds or more.
This non-native fish was introduced into the Mississippi River, when flooding allowed the carp to escape from fish farms in the South. A manmade canal near Chicago connects the Mississippi River system to the Great Lakes.
If it gets past an electric barrier in the canal, it could invade. Many scientists believe it’s just a matter of time. Another invasive, the sea lamprey, also got into the Great Lakes through a manmade canal.
But, researchers don’t usually know when or where an invader will show up. David Reid is a researcher for the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor. He says they can’t predict the effect an invader will have when it arrives in its new ecosystem.
“That’s the problem. We don’t know when the next zebra mussel’s going to come in. We don’t know when the next sea lamprey type of organism is going to come in. Generally, if you look at the invasion history of the Great Lakes, you’re seeing about one new organism being reported probably about once every eight months.”
Knowing what the next invader might be could help biologists, fisheries experts, and fishermen know what to do to limit its spread. Invasional biologists hope that their work will help develop the most effective measures to limit harm to the Great Lakes.
Ship-watchers gather at places such as the Welland Canal which allows cargo ships to go around Niagara Falls. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Boat Nerds can see the boats up close at some of the locks and canals between the Great Lakes. (Photo by Lester Graham)
The American Narrows of the Saint Lawrence Seaway and the Sault Sainte Marie locks between Superior and Huron are also good places to see ships. (Photo by Lester Graham)
They look like birdwatchers. They stand with binoculars and notebooks and write down names. Or they travel to good spots for up-close viewing. But it’s not birds they’re looking for. They’re looking for ships. And they’re passionate about the huge boats that pass through the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Melissa Ingells has a look at the pastime of
ship-watching:
Transcript
They look like birdwatchers. They stand with binoculars and notebooks and write down names. Or they travel to good spots for up-close viewing. But it’s not birds they’re looking for. They’re looking for ships. And they’re passionate about the huge boats that pass through the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Melissa Ingells has a look at the pastime of ship-watching:
(Sound of sing-song shouting)
If you’ve ever been to the shores of the Great Lakes, or to the canals connecting some of the lakes, you’ve probably seen ship watchers. They’re the people with binoculars, trying to spot the name on a freighter’s hull.
It could be the romance of the sea, or a fascination with the storms or shipwrecks; something grabs people about it. Maybe it’s just because some Great Lakes ships are so huge. These kids on the St. Mary’s river near Sault Ste. Marie are trying to get the captain of a Great Lakes freighter to blow his whistle for them.
(Sound of horn, cheering)
Now, that’s big.
Sault Ste Marie isn’t the only seaway people visit to see the ships up close. At the other end of the lakes, in Thorald, Ontario, Ross McGimpsey watches the freighters. He’s come all the way from Northern Ireland to Lock Seven of the Welland Canal. He’s interested in the locks’ engineering, and in the size of the ships.
“I just came to see how they went up and down the locks, and to see how big it is and what it was like. You don’t really see this stuff when you go to Scotland, there sort of really small, just taking up, like little speedboats, but over here it’s full-sized ships, so it’s really different.”
McGimpsey’s one of the many people who travel for good ship-watching. Around the lakes, a cottage tourism industry has sprung up to serve the watchers. Terry Dow sees a lot of the tourists that come to the Welland Canal. She works at the locks viewing area in Thorald. Dow loves to talk to visitors about the ships.
“I love the ships. My office window is just, looks out here at lock 7, and you know, you can be typing away and there’s nothing in the lock and within ten minutes you have this huge ship in front of your window and I really enjoy them. My favorite is the John B. Aird from Algoma, she’s a great ship and I love watching her come through the locks, she’s also one of the largest ships that can come through, the biggest can come through is 740 feet, and I just like watching her come through. I love it here.”
Dow is a lucky ship-watcher; she works close to her hobby. She says some folks have actually moved to the area just to watch the ships. They call themselves the “boat nerds.”
“We have a lot of people here that live in Thorald that have retired from other areas, Toronto for instance, and they come because they love the ships so much, they buy a house along the canal and they are proud to be the “boat nerds” and they volunteer for me every day here in Thorald at the locks viewing complex.”
So, where do people like Dow and the boat nerds get their passion for the ships? Part of it is that people are just plain fascinated by the size of the vessels.
Lou Ann Kozma thinks many people first get interested in ship-watching because they hear some of the popular songs and stories about Great Lakes ships. Kozma organizes festivals in mid-Michigan that celebrate Great Lakes lore.
She brings in people who sing songs of life on the Lakes, tell stories of shipwrecks, and even make wooden models of the big boats people like to watch. Kozma says once a good ship story gets a person’s interest, they usually want to know the real facts behind the tales.
“In general, things like popular culture does romanticize it quite a bit like the Edmund Fitzgerald song, and perhaps shipwrecks, in particular hold that mystique, because ,there’s such a dramatic story, usually, behind each one, and then there’s the lure of just finding out about what happened, and people can discover that in so many different ways.”
Kozma says people find that ship-watching is another way to feel the adventure and romance of the lakes. Back at the Welland Canal, Terry Dow says even though she sees the ships every day, she and people like her never get tired of watching them.
“There’s a lot of people who love these ships. They love the magnitude of them. I’ve named them the “Quiet Giants of the Waterway,” because you can’t even hear them coming into the lock, and they’re so big that you just can’t believe that something of that magnitude you can hardly hear coming into the locks. So, there’s a lot of people, yes, who truly enjoy these ships.”
It seems like the romance of the Lakes and the marvel of engineering are what draw “boat nerds” to the water. And the number of ship watchers might be growing. Earlier in the day, Terry Dow spent time with a whole busload of folks who scheduled their stop just in time to see one of her Quiet Giants glide by right in front of them.
Dave Lemberg from Western Michigan University envisions not only opportunities for water sports, but also opportunities to see historical sites along waterways. (Photo by Tamar Charney)
If you traveled this summer, you might have noticed more and more cars with canoes or kayaks on top. Recreation associations say paddle sports are growing in popularity. And so are efforts to give paddlers places to go. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports some of these places benefit more than just the person in the boat:
Transcript
If you traveled this summer, you might have noticed more and more cars with canoes or kayaks on top. Recreation associations say paddle sports are growing in popularity and so are efforts to give paddlers places to go. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports, some of these places benefit more than just the person in the boat:
It just stopped raining, which has made the air even more thick and humid than it was before. But there’s a slight breeze coming off the water.
(Sound of splashing, scraping, and paddling)
Dave Lemberg from Western Michigan University slides his yellow kayak into the St. Joseph River in Southwest Michigan.
“There’s a heron off to the right.”
We’re at the beginning of a water trail he’s helped to create. It is one of two pilot trails for The Michigan Heritage Water Trail Program.
His idea is that mapped-out water trails will lead you to places where you can put in and take out your boat, places to stop and stretch your legs for a moment, and places where you might want to stop and check out a historical bridge or museum you pass by. Lemberg wants to see these kinds of
water trails created all across the state.
“We are looking at this as a type of heritage tourism. Every river, every piece of coastline in the Great Lakes has a story to tell.”
As we paddle down the river, signs guide us from point to point. Along the way the signs tell about the history of the area, and refer to a trail guide that contains even more information.
“The country was settled on water trails; we just didn’t call them that.”
Water trails are popping up all over the country. Paul Sanford is with the American Canoe Association. Last month, the organization launched an on-line database of trails. There are more than four hundred of them. He says people new to the sport like them because they tell you where to go. And he says these days you don’t just find water trails in beautiful areas.
SANFORD: “You see more and more trails being developed in urban areas as a way to change public attitudes about a waterway that might have historically been pretty industrialized, pretty uninviting to local citizens as a recreational resource that folks are saying, ‘Hey wait a minute, we can have fun on this river.'”
LEMBERG: “Let’s see, let’s back up and go over there this channel seems to have disappeared.”
On the St. Joseph River, the water trail passes ruins of bridges, old mills, and other remnants of early settlements dating back to the 1800’s. There used to be bustling communities along rivers like this, but many riverside towns were left behind when the interstates took a different route. Dave Lemberg thinks water trails can be a way to revitalize some of these bypassed communities.
“So the vision is people paddling from bed and breakfast to bed and breakfast, eating in local restaurants, browsing in local stores. There’s where well be eating, on the deck up there, overlooking the river.”
After a morning on the river, we arrive eight miles downstream from where we started. One of the signs directs us up a creek to the Mendon Country Inn.
(Sound of door)
Gerard Clark is the chef and owner of this historic inn. He says the water trail has been good for business.
“Since the inauguration which was in August last year, we’ve a seen a three-fold increase in our canoe business which has impacted on lodging and as well as our dining facilities. We have a lot of city folk who come in who are so stressed out you can’t believe it, after a couple days on river and good food they unwind.”
Clark says the trail is drawing people from all over the region, and the hope is, paddle trails like this one will become a tourist draw in other places as well.
In Everette Smith's three story barn, a replica of a 1910 era racing boat is taking shape. The wood boat's deck is Spanish cedar that will gleam once the boat is finished. (Photo by Lester Graham)
The popularity of antique wood power boats from the first half of the 20th century has resurged. The gleaming wood and craftmanship is appealing to the visitors to the Antique Boat Museum exhibit in Clayton, New York. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Everette Smith still builds wood boats. He's piloting a replica of a 1910 era racing boat that he built. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Some people dream of making things with their hands while they spend their days at the office shuffling papers. Others know from early on that they’re supposed to create with their hands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham profiles a man who knew his art would be of wood and water:
Transcript
Some people dream of making things with their hands while they spend their days at the office shuffling papers. Others know from early on that they’re supposed to create with their hands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham profiles a man who knew his art would be of wood and water:
(ambient sound)
At just about any large of expanse of water, you’re likely to find a boat owner who’s found an old wooden powerboat and restored it. The gleaming mahogany or cedar deck is so shiny it looks like plastic.
Here at the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton, New York, thousands of people visit every year, but especially when the antique boat owners gather to show off their craft. John MacLean is the Executive Director of the museum.
“These antique boats are extraordinary pieces of furniture. People would pay a fortune to have this kind of craftsmanship in their furniture in their houses. They have to be fabricated so well and the craftsmanship has to be so good because they have to be watertight.”
The wood powerboats were built from the beginning of the 20th century into the 1940’s. But there are a few wood boats that are not nearly that old. A handful of people are still building the boats. Some are replicas of old designs and some are new designs that look like they might have been built 75 years ago.
Everette Smith is among the contemporary boat builders. He started building boats in 1971… when almost no one was building them. He remembers thinking every step in the process seemed to be a major accomplishment.
“I had finished putting my first plank on. I was so proud of it. I pulled the clamps off and I stood back. And it just went ‘pshhkt’ – it sprung off in a bunch of fragments. So, by the time you really get done with it, you know you’ve accomplished something. It’s a pretty remarkable thing. I think the moment, though, is the moment you first get in it on the water. I mean that is a magic moment.”
Well, that kind of seems like an invitation.
(sound of boat starting up)
I asked if we could take one of his new, but old-looking boats – a long racing boat – out on the water.
“We’re in the Saint Lawrence River in the middle of the Thousand Islands just off Clayton, New York. We’re in a reproduction of a 1910 Lierre number boat designed by Charles Mauer. There were originally twenty of them built, so this is number twenty-one. Top speed’s about thirty-five. You know, it’s a smooth ride, but it’s not fast.”
Fast enough. Water splashes the skipper and passenger every time the racing boat hits a wave. Smith jokes about how the original boats quickly added some windshields. Not this one.
Smith says, as a kid, he was inspired by a great uncle who used to carve canoe paddles for the kids in the family. His grandfather and father taught them to maintain and varnish the wood boats that they had then, and his father used to buy boat kits for Smith and his brother to build.
“I am sort of aware of how the older generation might be looking down and thinking about what we’re doing, and there are times I’m really happy because I know that my Great-Uncle George and my grandfather would love the canoe stuff and the small boat stuff. I think they would really dig that.” (laughs)
And Smith’s contemporaries also dig it. Rebecca Hopfinger is curator of special events at the Antique Boat Museum. She says wood boat builders are admired for their craftsmanship, and their determination to pursue their art.
“Well, I think some of the people wish they were Everette. You know, I’ve heard so many guys come through the front doors of the museum and say, ‘Oh, when I have some more time, I’m just going to work in my shop and try and build a boat.’ And, you know, Everette lives it, breathes it every day. So, there’s maybe a little bit of jealousy in a sense, but there certainly is a desire to the work like Everette does.”
Everette Smith says building wood boats just came naturally in a way that a lot of people who came of age in the 1960’s embraced. Smith says he recently read Bob Dylan’s autobiography and it stirred some of the old feelings that lead him to his career.
“And I realized, reading his autobiography, that the wooden boat thing for me was just sort of a natural progression from that time. It was interest in something that was wholesome and demanding and interesting and useful, you know. And it all seems to fall right in place. It was ‘Of course.’ I didn’t have to think it over, ‘Well, am I going to do this?’ It was just like, this is obvious. This is what I want to do. This is what I got to do.”
And apparently, he’ll keep doing it. Because in his shop: nautical hardware, long boards of hardwood, and parts of salvaged antique boat motors – all seem to promise that Everette Smith will be putting a lot more gleaming wood boats on the water.
Bruce Banninger's RV replete with solar panels in California. (Photo courtesy of Bruce and Yvonne Banninger)
With the return of summer comes the return of Recreational Vehicles, or RVs, from their winter homes in the South. Nicknamed “road whales,” most of those homes on wheels have a bad reputation as gas guzzlers, but some of them are saving energy once they’re parked.
Solar systems mean the RVs don’t plug in to use electricity. Instead, they get some of their power from the sun. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Cari Noga reports:
Transcript
With the return of summer comes the return of recreational
vehicles – RVs – from their winter homes in the South. Nicknamed
“road whales,” most of those homes on wheels have a bad reputation as
gas guzzlers. But some of them are saving energy once they’re parked.
Solar systems mean the RVs don’t plug in to use electricity. Instead,
they get some of their power from the sun. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Cari Noga reports:
Michigan RV owners, Bruce and Yvonne Banninger, take all the comforts of home along when they hit the road. Their big RV has a flat screen TV, surround sound, and even an electric bread maker. But they don’t have to hook up to power at an RV park, or start up a portable generator. To run all those appliances from the remote places they like to park, the Banningers rely on three solar panels mounted on the roof of their RV. Bruce Banninger says he wouldn’t want to motor home without the panels.
“We do a lot of boondocking, they call it, or not being plugged in. We like to just park out along a stream or a lot of places like that and you need power, and I don’t like running the generator all the time. And so the solar panels pretty much take care of it. On a sunny day.”
The Banningers have had solar since they got their first RV in 1992. Bruce Banninger says the fairly low cost, lack of maintenance, and the environmental benefit are the biggest reasons why RV owners like solar.
“I figure that for every panel that we have – solar panel – we can save running the generator one hour a day. And so when you figure out long term, that’s quite a savings. And you’re not burning a non-replaceable fuel. The sun, hopefully, will shine a long time yet.”
The Banningers have relied on their solar panels everywhere from California to the Everglades and on up into Canada. They found most U.S. National Parks don’t have electrical hookups, making solar pretty handy there.
“There’s something neat about being able to park out anywhere, and have all the power you need. It’s a good feeling; you’re self-sufficient.”
There’s not a lot of data on how many RVs use solar panels. But solar suppliers and RV manufacturers agree that it’s an option more RV-ers are choosing these days. The independent Michigan supplier who sold Banninger his panels has seen it. John Heis says most of his work is on homes, but people in his line of work in the South can earn a living just off the RV market.
“There’s a quite a market there to be done with RV people, certain parts of the United States where RV-ers live year-round, there are people that do make a living doing just that.”
Besides small dealers like Heis, large companies are finding a niche in RV solar too. Randy Bourne works at ICP Solar, a Canadian company that makes mobile solar products, like panels for RVs and boats. He says RVs are the company’s biggest market.
“Business has at least doubled over the past three to four years.”
Bourne says both consumers and manufacturers are demanding solar. One Oregon manufacturer, Monaco Coach, now offers a solar panel standard on its top-of-the-line model. Solar panels are optional on other Monaco models. They all come pre-wired so solar can be added later.
On RVs, solar panels charge the batteries that support the typical electrical systems. As RVs get bigger and more elaborate, new kinds of appliances and alarm and safety systems require power even when not in use. Randy Bourne says solar’s perfect for that.
“Solar and batteries go hand in hand. What the solar panels are doing now is putting in a small trickle charge to keep that battery well-maintained for a longer period of time.”
Cost depends on the extent of the system. Banninger estimated it cost him two thousand dollars for the panels and controller he installed five years ago. Today, Bourne says basic one-hundred watt panels cost between seven-hundred and nine-hundred dollars installed. That’s a relatively inexpensive option to add to high-end RVs, which can carry a price tag well into six figures.
RVs still use a tremendous amount of fuel going down the highway, but more and more, RVs are using the sun’s energy once parked, and some owners think in the long run, the solar-powered RV ends up using a lot less than driving from hotel to hotel. And the Banningers say that once they’re boondocked in the desert, with their solar panels catching the sun’s free rays, life is good.
Ferries on the Great Lakes are getting faster; but some ferries are not experiencing the same speed in their ticket sales. (Photo by Anne-Marie Labbate)
Two high speed ferries that began operation on the Great
Lakes this year have shut down for the winter. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports that for each of the boats, the first season did not go according to plan:
Transcript
Two high speed ferries that began operation on the Great Lakes this year have shut down for the winter. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports that for each of the boats, the first season did not go according to plan:
The Lake Express Ferry that crossed Lake Michigan between Milwaukee and Muskegon exceeded predictions and carried more than 120-thousand passengers. But the boat cancelled its November and December schedule because of a low number of bookings. Lake Express President Kenneth Szallai insists the problem is not people being reluctant to cruise the lake in cold weather. He says the company just didn’t do enough to market the late-season service.
“People are used to the traditional ferries ending up in October… and because we didn’t do our part of it… they didn’t realize we’d be operating and so our sales were kind of flat for those two months.”
Szallai says the Lake Express will again carry passengers next spring. Another high speed ferry between Toronto and Rochester, New York abruptly shut down in early September. A Rochester newspaper reports problems include, quote, questionable business decisions, bad luck and lack of cash. It’s unclear when the boat will resume service.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.
A ship discharging its ballast water (Photo courtesy of the US Geological Survey)
