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.
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.
Believe it or not, this is the hot new trend in seafood. The Patagonian Toothfish was given a more marketable name: Chilean Sea Bass.
(Photo courtesy of National Environmental Trust)
A popular fish at restaurants has become too popular. According to one environmental group, Chilean Sea Bass is being illegally overharvested. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
A popular fish at restaurants has become too popular. According to one environmental
group, Chilean Sea Bass is being illegally overharvested. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Chilean Sea Bass has been the fish of choice for many chefs’ signature dishes. That has
driven up prices for the fish. Andrea Cavanaugh is with the environmental group the National
Environmental Trust. She says the group has found evidence that illegal Chilean Sea Bass is
ending up on your plate.
“Pirate boats that are out on the high seas flaunt the guidelines, [do] not listen to quotas,
they can take fish where they’re not supposed to take fish and nobody is out there monitoring
what’s going on on individual vessels.”
Cavanaugh says besides needing tighter international and national guidelines on fishing, the best
way to deal with the problem is to get people to stop ordering Chilean Sea Bass.
“There’s such a wide range of fish to choose from for American consumers that there should
be a healthy balance out there.”
Cavanaugh says the Chilean Sea Bass is only the latest species to be overharvested to meet a
hot trend in food.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
A report by an environmental group says smokestacks on ships are becoming a larger source of air pollution in ports across the country. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports, the shipping industry says they’re in the process of cleaning things up:
Transcript
A report by an environmental group says the floating smokestacks on ships are becoming a larger
source of air pollution in ports across the country. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Mike Simonson reports, the shipping industry says they’re in the process of cleaning things up.
Environmental Defense says smog plagues big city ports…citing New York, Chicago, Detroit,
Cleveland and Toledo as having unhealthy levels. Jana Milford is a Senior Scientist with
Environmental Defense. She says diesel-operated ships don’t have as stringent regulation as
trucks; so while land-craft pollution is being reduced ship pollution remains the same. Milford says
in 25 years, ship smog will make up 28-percent of air pollution, four times higher than in 1996.
Glenn Neckvasil is with the Lake Carriers Association. He says ships are “green transportation”
compared to trucks and trains.
“On the U.S. side there are 65 U.S. flagged vessels working on the Lakes. They move about 125
million tons of cargo. I mean I don’t know how many thousands of locomotives and how many tens
of thousands of trucks are here in the region moving cargo.”
Neckvasil says ships are phasing in a new, low-sulfur fuel that will be required by 2010.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mike Simonson.
Two environmental groups have released a study that questions the benefits of allowing bigger boats on the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway. Save the River and Great Lakes United paid for the report because they fear deepening the channels and allowing ocean-going vessels on the Great Lakes would harm the ecosystem. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:
Transcript
Two environmental groups have released a study that questions the benefits of
allowing bigger boats on the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway. Save the River
and Great Lakes United paid for the report because they fear deepening the
channels and allowing ocean-going vessels on the Great Lakes would harm the
ecosystem. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:
Researchers at the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute critiqued a study done by
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The critique focused on the idea of making the
locks and canals big enough to handle container ships. These boats now dock on
the East Coast and their cargo comes into the Midwest by rail or truck. The new
report says there’s no evidence that it would be more efficient for container ships to
unload at Great Lakes ports.
Lead Author Evelyn Tomchick says moving containers into the Midwest by water
would be slower.
Also the longer transit times are usually associated with greater unreliability. That
is, there’s variation in the time of arrival, the actual time of arrival.”
Tomchick says unreliability has costs that weren’t calculated.
A spokesman for the Army Corps agrees further study is needed to know the costs
and benefits of any expansion. The Corps of Engineers is currently studying what
it will cost to maintain the locks and channels the way they are.
For The Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Peter Payette.
The haunting call of the Common Loon has become a symbol of wild northern lakes. But as homes, marinas, and resorts are built on these lakes, the loons are losing the places where they like to nest. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports, some people are hoping artificial nests might help:
Transcript
The haunting call of the Common Loon has become a symbol of wild
northern lakes. But as homes, marinas, and resorts are built on these
lakes, the loons are losing the places where they like to nest. As the
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports, some people are
hoping artificial nests might help:
The Common Loon doesn’t move around well on land, so they like to nest as
close to the water as possible. But this makes them vulnerable to being pushed
out by development and washed out by boat wakes and floods.
Dan Truscott of Ducks Unlimited recently helped a group of elementary school kids build
floating nest platforms out of PVC pipes and Styrofoam for loons in northern Michigan. Truscott
got started making artificial nesting platforms after he saw what happened to a pair of loons on a
lake near his home.
“They had nested and we had a large rainfall and the dam couldn’t keep up with the water so the
nests got washed out, and so I went home and built one and put it out and it
worked.”
Loon protection groups in the Northeast and the Great Lakes regions
promote the use of these platforms as one tool to help improve the breeding success
of the birds.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.
Two research vessels may be plying the shores of Lake Michigan next year using a unique form of biodiesel fuel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton has more:
Transcript
Two research vessels may be playing the shores of Lake Michigan next year using a unique form
of biodiesel fuel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:
The Annis Water Resources Institute at Grand Valley State University has two research and
educational outreach vessels. Engineer Robert Udell would like to see the boats running on some form of
biodiesel fuel by next season. The idea he favors the most is gathering up all the used fryer oil
that campus eateries use for making french fries, then processing it to fuel the boats. Udell says
there’s only one side effect he’s aware of.
“You quite often get a french fry exhaust odor. I’ve been close to engines running on diesel
from fryer oil and it’s really not that noticeable.”
Udell says the fuel could also be shipped in from Chicago, but he prefers having a small
processing plant on campus. He says it could make the fuel more cheaply, and provide hands-on
learning opportunities for chemistry and engineering students.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tracy Samilton.
Biologists release bass, gills laced with Higgin's Eye Pearly Mussel larvae, into the Mississippi River. Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Natural
Resources.
Biologists lock through a dam on the Mississippi River. Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Natural
Resources.
Up and down the Mississippi River, people once collected tons of mussels for the pearl button industry. Factories stamped out pearl buttons from the shells, sometimes wiping out 50,000 tons of mussels annually in the early part of the last century. In recent years, the biggest threat to local mussel species has come from the zebra mussel. That invasive species came to North America in the ballast water of ships and has since disrupted many local ecosystems. Today, there’s a new effort underway to bring back local species like the Higgin’s Eye Pearly Mussel, and it’s in an unlikely place. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby has this report:
Transcript
Up and down the Mississippi River, people once collected tons of mussels for
the pearl button industry. Factories stamped out pearl buttons from the shells,
sometimes wiping out 50,000 tons of mussels annually in the early part of
the last century. In recent years, the biggest threat to local mussel species
has come from the zebra mussel. That invasive species came to North America in
the ballast water of ships and has since disrupted many local ecosystems. Today,
there’s a new effort underway to bring back local species like the Higgin’s
Eye Pearly Mussel. And it’s in an unlikely place. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Todd Melby has this report:
Urban areas like Minneapolis-Saint Paul might seem like an unusual
location to boost the population of an endangered species.
But it’s here, below a busy bridge that spans the Mississippi River, that
biologists are searching for a safe place for their project. Divers have
just come up from the bottom of the river with a few mussel specimens.
“Well, we’ve got Big Toe, Maple Leaf, Three Ridge. Good enough I think.”
That’s Mike Davis rattling off the names of mussel species. Davis is
a biologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. The fact that
some mussels live in this part of the river makes Davis think that this
might be a good spot for the Higgin’s Eye. The Higgin’s Eye, which has an olive-
colored shell, has been languishing on the Endangered Species List since
1976.
Just two decades ago, this part of the river suffered from sewage runoff. The river is cleaner now and some mussels have returned. But not the Higgin’s Eye. And that has Roger Gordon worried. He’s a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“They function as the kidneys of the river, more or less. They siphon everything that
goes through the river. They are a very good indicator species if we have a problem in the environment. They are usually the first species to get hit hard and disappear.”
For the past decade or so, it’s been the zebra mussel that’s been hitting the Higgin’s Eye. But the zebra mussel hasn’t made it to this part of the river. That’s why biologists are on a small flotilla of boats on this morning with 800 large-mouth bass. The bass and the Higgin’s Eye have a strong connection. Attached to the gills of those bass are thousands of Higgin’s Eye larvae.
“Right now, we’re counting fish in the cage. We have a known number of fish, 25 in
this case, that we’re going to place in these cages. And hopefully over the next several weeks, they’ll drop off and we’ll have clams in the river.”
Melby: “You’re putting them in the bucket?”
“Right now we’re putting them in a bucket and placing them in the cage over the
side of the boat.”
(sound of buckets banging and water sloshing)
The bass are put in cages so they don’t swim somewhere that’s not a good home for the Higgin’s Eye. In the wild, adult females mussels shoot embryos at unsuspecting fish swimming overhead.
“The larvae have a chemo-receptor in them. When they touch flesh, they actually shut. It’s a one-shot deal. If that fish clamps on a fin or an eyeball or a lip, it’s a no-go. He’s not going to develop. But if he’s lucky, and he just happens to be going through a gill arch of a fish and it’s the right fish, the right species of fish and the right size fish, it
will shut on that gill.”
But the Higgin’s Eye population is too low to leave to chance.
(Bubbling sounds of fish hatchery)
So Gordon and his colleagues bumped up the number of mussel larvae
per fish here at a federal fish hatchery in Genoa, Wisconsin. Instead of just a
few larvae per fish, the bass dropped into the Mississippi have several dozen
larvae attached to their gills.
That prep work took place inside the “Clam Shack,” which is really
just a metal pole barn that biologists built themselves.
“We didn’t have any money to do this. We scraped up and saved up at the end
of the year. We had seven or eight-thousand dollars. The hatchery guys just got together and built this little building.”
Since beginning their work two years ago, they’ve added approximately
12,000 mussel-rich fish to rivers in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota.
“We’re probably going to have to build another little building
like this. But we’ll scrape along and do what we can.”
Back on the river, Mike Davis of the Minnesota DNR calls the return
of the Higgin’s Eye historic. But with the zebra mussel closing in on native
mussel species like the Higgin’s Eye, he’s also a bit wistful.
“The former dead zone of the Mississippi may become
one of the last refuges for the Mississippi’s mussel species.”
In September, divers return to that same spot to check on the Higgin’s
Eye. They hope to find thousands of young clams nestled safely in their new
home. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Todd Melby.
A freighter navigates the American Narrows in the St. Lawrence River. Expanding the system’s locks and channels would mean even bigger ships could enter the Great Lakes.
A new study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says Midwest ports and shippers – and the businesses they work with – stand to gain billions of dollars from an expansion of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway system. Building wider locks and deeper channels from Minnesota to Montreal would make way for bigger “container” ships that have become the norm of international trade. But critics say expansion would have dire environmental consequences, and they say the Corps’ study is full of flaws. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:
Transcript
A new study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says Midwest ports and shippers – and the businesses they work with – stand to gain billions of dollars from an expansion of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway system. Building wider locks and deeper channels from Minnesota to Montreal would make way for bigger “container” ships that have become the norm of international trade. But critics say expansion would have dire environmental consequences… and they say the Corps’ study is full of flaws. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:
The St. Lawrence Seaway began as a dream – to make the Great Lakes as important a shipping destination as the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico seaboards. In fact, Seaway boosters used to call the Great Lakes the “Fourth Coast” of the United States. But when the array of locks and channels was built in the 1950s, Congress assured East Coast interests that a shipping route between the Atlantic Ocean and America’s heartland wouldn’t hurt their business. Minnesota Congressman Jim Oberstar:
“The Seaway locks would be built to no greater dimension than the largest inland waterway locks of the 1930’s.”
In other words, the Seaway was outdated before it was built. Today less than thirty percent of the world’s cargo ships can squeeze into the Seaway.
The Army Corps of Engineers’ study is a first step to change that. It says the Seaway could generate up to one and half billion dollars a year more than it is now if larger ships – the ones that carry containers that fit right onto trucks and trains – could reach ports in the Midwest. Oberstar says that would mean an economic boon for Great Lakes states.
“Those are good jobs. Those are longshoreman jobs. And that economic activity means significant business for Great Lakes port cities.”
So along with other politicians and shippers in the Midwest, Oberstar wants the Corps to take the next step – a more detailed study, called a feasibility study – that would look at the nuts and bolts of expansion. It would cost some 20 million dollars.
But downstream, on the St. Lawrence River in northern New York, critics say any plans for expansion have a fatal flaw.
(sounds of water and fueling a boat)
Under a blazing sun in the part of the St. Lawrence River known as the Thousand Islands, Stephanie Weiss fuels up her boat at a gas dock.
(gas filling, and motor starting)
She pushes off and weaves among literally thousands of pine-covered islands that give the region its name.
“You can see how narrow things are and how close the islands are to each other.”
Weiss directs the environmental group Save The River that’s trying to stop Seaway expansion.
(motor slows and stops)
We stop in the part of the river channel called the American Narrows. It’s like the Seaway’s bottleneck. Ocean-going freighters the length of two football fields thread through here. To make room for anything bigger, Weiss says, might mean blasting away some of these islands and the homes perched on them.
“I can’t help noticing that there’s this enormous rock in between the Great Lakes and the Ocean. It’s the Laurentian Shield and it is what makes these islands. To pretend that this is just a coast that needs to be developed is unrealistic.”
Weiss says the idea of a Fourth Coast, with ports like Chicago and Duluth rivaling those of New York and San Francisco, is ridiculous.
Environmental groups in the U.S. and Canada, like Great Lakes United and Great Lakes Water Keepers, are also opposing expansion. And they say the Corps’ study frames the debate unfairly. It doesn’t factor in environmental and social effects the groups say would make the project seem less attractive: things like rising pollution, sensitive wildlife habitat, plummeting water levels. The Corps’ project manager Wayne Shloop says those things would be addressed in the feasibility study. Stopping before that, he says, means letting the system’s locks and channels waste away.
“So somebody needs to make a decision… is it in the federal interest to let the system degrade or is it in the federal interest between the United States and Canada to make some improvements?”
In the U.S., that somebody is Congress. Congress would need to appropriate half of the 20 million dollars for the study. Lawmakers could take up the issue in September.
New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton recently took a boatride down the American Narrows to learn more. She disembarked with questions, about oil spills, accidents, and the hazards of winter navigation.
“This isn’t by any means an easy decision, a cost-free decision, that there are tremendous consequences associated with it, so give me your pictures, give me your information, because I’ll use it to be in conversations with people who think it’s just an open and shut issue.”
The issue will be shut rather quickly if the Corps’ study can’t persuade Canada to join in. Canada would have to foot the other half of the bill for the feasibility study. But officials from Transport Canada say they’re in the “very preliminary stages” of studying the issue. And they’re listening to everyone from shippers to environmentalists to recreational boaters before they make a decision.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.
The heightened security following last week’s terrorist attacks is extending to the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:
Transcript
The heightened security following (Tuesday’s/last weeks) terrorist attacks is extending to the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:
The U-S Coast Guard is increasing patrols, and closely monitoring every ship that is navigating the Great Lakes. It is also adding patrols to the St. Lawrence Seaway and the St. Mary’s River.
There are no specific new regulations in place, but the Coast Guard is evaluating each vessel on a case-by-case basis. The Guard also has the authority to restrict any movement or remove ships from ports.
The Coast Guard is also increasing security at its own ports, and has restricted access to all Coast Guard Buildings and vessels.
The Secretary of Transportation gave the increased authority to the Coast Guard shortly after the attacks. There is no timetable for how long the heightened security measures will be in place. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.
A ship discharging its ballast water (Photo courtesy of the US Geological Survey)
