Tag: community

Returning Quality Food to Urban Areas

  • Chene Street, on Detroit's east side, was once a thriving retail corridor. Now, it's a decimated stretch of crumbling and burned-out buildings. (Photo by Marla Collum)

Finding a big supermarket is next to impossible in many inner-city
neighborhoods. That means a lot of people do their shopping at convenience
and liquor stores, where there’s rarely fresh produce. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports on one group’s efforts to get around
the grocery store problem – and help revitalize a neighborhood:

Transcript

Finding a big supermarket is next to impossible in many inner-city neighborhoods. That means a lot of people do their shopping at convenience and liquor stores, where there’s rarely fresh produce. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports on one group’s efforts to get around the grocery store problem and help revitalize a neighborhood:


(Sound of traffic)


Up and down this street as far as the eye can see are crumbling and burned-out buildings. This used to be a thriving business district. It’s where Vlasic Pickle, White Owl Cigar, and Lay’s Potato Chips grew into national brands. Today, the most evident sign of commerce is the prostitutes walking the street. Smack in the middle of this is Peacemaker’s International. It’s a storefront church where Ralph King is a member.


“Now if you look at it you see that there’s no commercial activity, no grocery stores within a mile of here. And our concern was that people had to eat.”


There are about seven liquor stores for every grocery store here on the east side of Detroit. Some people can drive to the well-stocked supermarkets in the suburbs, but many families don’t have cars, and King says the city busses are spotty.


“So they’re buying food at convenience stores or gas stations. And quite frankly, it just doesn’t seem a good fit that a community has to live off gas station food.”


That means processed, high-starch, high-fat diets that lead to illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Those are all problems that disproportionately hit African Americans, and public health researchers say those higher rates of illnesses are linked to the food availability problems in poor black communities.


Amy Schulz is with the University of Michigan, and she’s studied the lack of grocery stores in high-poverty neighborhoods.


“What we found, in addition to the economic dimension was that Detroit, neighborhoods like the east side that are disproportionately African American are doubly disadvantaged in a sense. Residents in those communities have to drive longer, farther distances to access a grocery store than residents of a comparable economic community with a more diverse racial composition.”


In other words, if you’re poor and white, you have a better chance of living near a grocery store than if you’re poor and black. Ralph King and the folks in this neighborhood want to get around that problem. So about three years ago, they decided to try and reopen a nearby farmer’s market. They turned to Michigan State University Extension for help. Mike Score is an extension agent.


“I thought it would just be the process of organizing some people, helping them buy some produce wholesale, setting up in the neighborhood, selling the food, and generating a net income that could be reinvested. And I was really wrong.”


The farmer’s market was a flop. Score says produce vendors set up in the neighborhood, but the fruits and vegetables sat all day, unsold. He says the problem was they were using the wrong currency. Most people in this neighborhood have very little cash on hand, and they need to use their food stamp cards to shop for groceries.


So, Score helped develop a plan for a neighborhood buyers’ club that can negotiate low prices by ordering in bulk. His business plan also calls for job training for people in the neighborhood.


“It’s going to give people who are chronically unemployed but who have some entrepreneurial skills access to food at a lower cost, and that enables them to think about starting restaurant businesses or smaller retail businesses. So that’s an important part of this project: in addition to getting people groceries, it also creates some job opportunities.”


It’s been a struggle to get the program off the ground. It took a long time to get approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a machine to read peoples’ food stamp cards. People have stolen some of the project’s meager resources, but Mike Score and Ralph King say they’ll stick with it until families in this neighborhood can put decent food on their tables. And they say they hope it can be a model that other low-income communities around the country can use.


For the GLRC, I’m Sarah Hulett.

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RECONNECTING FARMERS TO LOCAL MARKETS (Part 2)

  • Many of the crops being grown in the U.S. don't end up in the produce aisle. In fact, they usually aren't even sold to people in neighboring areas. (Photo by Rene Cerney)

Some experts think farmers could do a lot better for themselves if they changed what they’re growing. They say growing corn and soybeans subsidized by the government doesn’t do much for the farmer and almost nothing for the local economy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports on efforts to change that:

Transcript

Some experts think farmers could do a lot better for themselves if they changed what they’re growing. They say growing corn and soybeans that are subsidized by the government doesn’t do much for the farmer and almost nothing for the local economy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports on efforts to change that:


It can be hard to find locally-grown broccoli, milk, or beef in most grocery stores, even in the middle of farm country. In some states, ninety percent of the land is farmed, but ninety-eight percent of food people eat is shipped in from other parts of the nation or other countries.


The local farmers are growing commodities: corn and soybeans harvested for cattle-feed or processed foods, not stuff that winds up in the produce aisle. But ag economist Ken Meter wants to see that change.


“Farmers have doubled their productivity since 1969, and yet, they’re not making more money, they’re actually losing more money after doubling productivity.”


Meter has studied the economics of farm communities. In one area, he found that nearly all of the farm fields there were used to grow corn and soybeans for the commodities market, but farmers were losing money. At the same time, nearly all of the food people bought there was shipped in from other places.


“The economy we’re in right now is extremely efficient at taking any money that you or I earn in our neighborhood or in our daily lives and basically pulling it into a big global network that very efficiently takes that money and helps other people elsewhere make some value from it.”


It hasn’t always been this way. Richard Pirog is food systems researcher at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Iowa. Eighty years ago, he says, most farms grew a lot of different
products and processed them to be sold locally or within the region.


“Iowa back in the 1920’s had fifty-four canneries. We were the canned sweet corn capital of the world in the mid-1920’s. Fast forward to today, there isn’t a single cannery in Iowa. So that infrastructure is gone.”


Pirog says you could tell similar stories in farm areas across the U.S. Back during World War Two, the federal government encouraged farmers to grow commodities, such as corn and soybeans. The government starting paying them subsidies to grow those crops.


These days, Pirog says a lot of farmers wouldn’t even think about risking those subsidies to grow something besides corn and soybeans. Economist Ken Meter says that might be a mistake. He says many farmers don’t realize there’s a growing market for local ag products.


“All of us get focused on whatever we’re paying attention to, and as a farmer you get focused on producing quite well. I’ve spoken with farmers who’ve told me that they really didn’t have any clue that that their neighbors would be looking for different foods, because they just haven’t heard of the tremendous increase in demand we’ve had for things like organic milk or higher quality meats or fresher produce.”


There has been an organic explosion of local farm markets in recent years, because customers want to buy fruit, vegetables, milk, and meat directly from the farmers who produce them. But government policy and farm subsidies mainly still support the commodity production of corn and soybeans.


Richard Pirog hopes that changes, but it’s unclear if growing produce for the new local markets is always economically viable. No one has studied the phenomenon.


“It has to make economic sense for a community and a region. We believe it will, which is why it’s spread so rapidly. But it’s sort of like, the real numbers, the quantification hasn’t caught up with all the growth and explosion and the interest.”


Pirog says he’d like to push the process along. He says it would make more sense for the government to shift subsidies from corn and soybean production to the farms that produce food for their local communities.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

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‘Water Trails’ Mark Region’s History

  • 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.


For the GLRC, I’m Tamar Charney.

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Neighborhood Science Lessons for Teachers

Some teachers say today’s students know very little about where their food comes from, or why they should worry about the health of local fish and wildlife. And they say that makes subjects like biology and ecology boring. It also reduces students’ interest in protecting the environment. These teachers are finding a way to bring science home. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Linda Stephan reports:

Transcript

Some teachers say today’s students know very little about where their food comes from, or why they should worry about the health of local fish and wildlife, and they say that makes subjects like biology and ecology boring. It also reduces students’ interest in protecting the environment. These teachers are finding a way to bring science home. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Linda Stephan reports:


(waves)


In the Great Lakes region, home is never far from the water…


(teachers yelling to each other)


And these science teachers aren’t far from home either. They’re at the Lake Michigan shoreline pulling out a 150 foot net to catch fish. The teachers are getting an in-depth look at environmental issues near their homes in Michigan. And in return, they’ll weave those topics into their lessons this fall.


Today, their task is to catch a sample of fish, identify them by species, and to figure out whether those types of fish can survive in polluted waters. In the end, they’ll decide whether to let a hypothetical development group build a marina here. Michigan Department of Natural Resources biologist Todd Kalish built the scenario based on proposals he’s seen.


“This is a diagram of the proposed marina. They’re going to have to dredge about eighty cubic yards of sediment, and they’re also going to construct seawalls.”


Kalish says dredging will stir up sediment that can hurt some types of fish. Simply labeling fish will get some students’ attention, but Kalish says teachers can get more interest from more students by combining that lesson with his marina proposal. And it will also teach students how the environment is affected when we build things.


This training is the brainchild of Mary Whitmore, a curriculum developer. She’s using students’ local communities to inspire them to care about science, and she’s using science to inspire students to care about their communities. Whitmore’s setting up similar trainings in a lot of towns. She says investigating each community separately is a lot of work, but it’s necessary.


“My attitude has shifted completely from focusing solely on teachers – which I did for many, many years – to suddenly realizing that unless communities become meaningfully engaged with their schools, educating young people is going to become an increasingly difficult problem.”


Whitmore says that’s particularly true with life sciences. She says the subject’s ultimately about diagnosing and solving problems. And just talking about what some scientist has already figured out or simply labeling a fish misses the critical point for students. Who cares?


Whitmore says that’s especially true today when fresh water seems to come from bottles, instead of from a stream or a creek and produce at the grocery store rarely comes from a local farm. She says these days we’re not really connected with the environment that keeps us alive. But Whitmore says with the help of local environmental groups and other community partners, teachers can fit those lessons into the standard curriculum.


“As a high school teacher, I know I have to teach about, let’s say, ecology. And so, what I’m going to do is use water as a theme for my teaching about ecology. And I’m going to still be teaching the state standards and benchmarks in science. But I’m going to be doing it in a way that is much more meaningful for my students.”


Whitmore says teachers who attended her first training last year changed how they teach. They’re doing projects that mean something to students. One’s working with students to build rain gardens, others are raising salmon.


Teachers here today say it was already their goal to incorporate local issues in the classroom, but some say they couldn’t effectively teach on local issues because they didn’t understand those issues themselves. Christie Jenemabi Johnston teaches seventh through twelfth grade. She was impacted by a tour of the local wastewater treatment plant.


“Yes, I know how water treatment is done, and the essentials and the mechanics of it. But I never really took it to heart as far as what it meant in my immediate surroundings. And it just – it makes a big difference now.”


And she says knowing those things can help her students to get involved in their community. Of course in the end, if this model is to be truly successful it has to grab the attention of students, not just teachers. While the teachers were taking fish from the nets, a couple elementary-aged children were swimming nearby and they came over to see what was caught.


“Come on and look!”


“Wanna see ’em?”


“How big?”


“Oh, just little baby ones.”


“I don’t know are they all baby fish just because they’re little?”


If these kids are any indication of student response in the classroom, the programs just might work.


For the GLRC, I’m Linda Stephan.

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Eminent Domain Debated

  • The intersection of Devon and Broadway in Chicago, just a few blocks from Lake Michigan. Alderman Patrick O'Connor is concerned that this corner is a bad use of space - not as walkable as the rest of the neighborhood. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Cities are always coming up with projects to improve land or even create jobs, and sometimes existing buildings just don’t fit into those plans. Often, owners of such property won’t sell to make way for new development. The U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on the legality of one tool cities use to force reluctant landowners to sell. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one politician’s use of this legal power:

Transcript

Cities are always coming up with projects to improve land
or even create jobs, and sometimes existing buildings just don’t fit
into those plans. Often, owners of such property won’t sell to make
way for new development. The U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on the
legality of one tool cities use to force reluctant landowners to sell. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one
politician’s use of this legal power:


This big-city neighborhood is the kind of place where shoppers usually park their cars and walk around. Brick store fronts and restaurants are usually just a few feet from the sidewalk.


But there’s a corner that looks different, though. A lot different.


It’s home to three fast-food buildings. The first business is a popular donut shop. Next door, there’s a fried chicken drive-through. And the last building was once a burger joint, but today it’s home to a car title lender.


To hear the alderman, Patrick O’Connor, tell it, the strip looks like a piece of suburbia landed right in his big-city ward.


“There’s no symmetry, no walkability, it’s all car-related and it’s all basically parking lot. There’s more asphalt than there is building in those places.”


He says this corner on Chicago’s North Side is a bad use of space, and he’s hoping to attract new, more pedestrian-friendly businesses or buildings. But what’s to be done about it if these shops are already there and don’t want to sell? One of O’Connor’s options is to have the city force the owners to sell their properties and then redevelop the land.


The power to forcibly buy property is called eminent domain, and O’Connor says the city’s using it to speed redevelopment throughout Chicago. But O’Connor’s concerned time may run out on the use of this power.


Governments have long-used eminent domain for public use. For example, a city or state might condemn a whole neighborhood, buy out the homeowners, and level the buildings to make way for a road or airport.


But the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case called Kelo versus New London, is considering just how far government can go when using eminent domain to bolster private development.


O’Connor hopes the court sides with local governments.


“In our community there’s not too many open spaces. So what we look to do is to enhance what we have to try to utilize space to the maximum effectiveness. That’s really where the court case hinges, you know, Who’s to say one use is better than another?”


And that question – who decides the best use of a property – is the rallying cry of critics who say cities abuse eminent domain powers.


Sam Staley’s with the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think-tank. He says the Supreme Court case is really about fairness.


“Those people that know how to use the system and know the right people in city council really have the ability to compel a neighbor or another property to sell their property whether they want to or not.”


Staley and other property rights advocates are also convinced that cities don’t need eminent domain for economic development. Staley says local economies can improve without government interference.


“The private sector’s just gotten lazy. They no longer want to have to go through the market, so they don’t come up with creative ways of accommodating property rights of the people that own the pieces of land or building that they want to develop.”


Staley says, instead, developers find it easier to have cities use eminent domain.


But most urban planners and some environmentalists say a court decision against this use of eminent domain could threaten redevelopment of both cities and aging suburbs. John Echevarria is with Georgetown University’s Environmental Law and Policy Institute.


“If you don’t have the power of eminent domain, you can’t do effective downtown redevelopment. The inevitable result would be more shopping centers, more development on the outskirts of urban areas, and more sprawl.”


Alderman O’Connor says constituents will always push urban politicians to put scarce land to better use. He says that won’t change if the court strikes down the broadest eminent domain powers; cities will just have to resort to strong-arm tactics instead.


“The alternative is the city then has to become harsher on how they try to enforce laws. They have to try and run sting operations and go after businesses that are breaking the law and then try to close them down and live with empty places until the sellers get tired and they sell.”


The small business community finds this attitude outrageous. They say as long as they improve their businesses and people frequent them, the market should decide whether they stay or go.


On the other hand, urban planners say the market doesn’t always make best use of land. They say local governments need eminent domain powers to control development, and they’re looking to the court to protect those powers.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Legal Battles Over Oil and Gas Drilling

  • Oil drilling rigs similar to this one are popping up all over northeastern Ohio, and many residents and local governments are opposed to the drilling. (Photo by Tammy Sharp)

In some states, local governments have been able to stop developments they thought might be bad for the area or damaging to the environment. But across the nation, state governments have been taking some of those decision-making powers away from local governments. The latest battle is over drilling for oil and natural gas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

In some states, local governments have been able to stop developments they thought might be bad for the area or damaging to the environment. But, across the nation state governments have been taking some of those decision-making powers away from local governments. The latest battle is over drilling for oil and natural gas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:


A year ago Joel Rudicil, owner of Bass Energy Company, couldn’t drill an oil and gas well in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. He had a property owner with more than twenty acres who was willing to deal. But city officials would not permit it.


“I had met with city council here on many occasions dating back to 1998 and they simply did not want well-drilling to occur in their community. So we were really at a point of just walking away from this opportunity, or litigation.”


Instead, he joined the oil and gas industry to lobby for a bill that would take authority to regulate drilling away from local communities.


(Sound of pounding)


Today, his workers are placing piping down well number three on the Knollwood Cemetery property in Mayfield Heights. Once the oil and gas bill became law last fall, all local laws pertaining to oil and gas drilling were scrapped and the state took sole authority.


“In our case, we’ve drilled 28 wells since the bill was signed into law.”


Eight of the communities where Bass Energy dug those wells had had regulations or outright bans on oil and gas drilling.


“Of those 28 wells that I just mentioned, we would not have been able to drill 20 of those wells.”


Mayfield Heights has become the poster child for Ohio’s battle for control of oil and gas drilling. Margaret Egensperger is the city’s mayor.


“Our area’s all built up here. Anywhere you’re going to build a well, you’re going to hurt our residential areas.”


Northeast Ohio is the most densely populated part of the state, but also has much of the oil and gas companies want to extract. Mayor Egensperger says one of the wells Bass Energy dug at Knollwood Cemetery was next to townhouses, condominiums, and the street.


Egensperger: “And they are right up by the condos and the noise was absolutely awful. I believe they drilled for 5 or 7 days there. We have a noise ordinance. The city was told that if, once they start to drill, if we stop them, that we’d have to pay 5-thousand dollars a day. So, of course we didn’t enforce the noise ordinance. That’s a lot of money.”


Niehaus: “It is what’s called state pre-emption…”


Republican state senator Tom Niehaus sponsored the bill that gives the authority to the Ohio Division of Mineral Resources.


Niehaus: “The state has exercised its right to say that this is an important state resource. I personally feel, and my fellow legislators felt, that the state division was in the better position to evaluate whether or not drilling should be permitted in certain areas.”


Grant: “What to do you say when they say ‘we know our issues, we know our citizens, we know the land here and our planning better then the state could ever know it’?”


Niehaus: “I probably would agree that they know their local community better, but I would argue that they do not know the best way to tap the natural resources that exist underneath the land.”


Many local governments are like Mayfield Heights; they want to fight the state law in court, but worry it would cost too much money.
Some homeowners are also concerned that oil and gas wells will reduce their property values. But the oil and gas industry feels there are bigger issues at stake. Tom Stewart, Director of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, says the nation needs energy.


“And you see how emotionalism is stifling what we need to do in this country to find the energy sources we need. And obviously we’re not doing the job, because you’re paying $2.30 for a gallon of gas. Right? We’re not doing the job. And we’re fighting wars. Meanwhile, we have this wonderful resource base in the United States, and every hole is a fight.”


It’s arguable whether the relatively small amount of natural gas or oil reserves left in the continental United States will make any real difference in the price of gasoline at the pump. Many city officials believe the trend tonward bigger government control will have much larger costs.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

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Searching for Salamanders at Old Nuke Site

  • Salamanders are a good indicator of wetland health. (Photo courtesy of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife)

Government workers are slogging around in man-made wetlands.
looking for salamanders. Back in the 1950’s, the United States government
selected a plot of land to be the home of its newest uranium processing plant.
Since the end of the Cold War, the now-closed nuclear processing plant has
been undergoing the long and arduous task of returning to its natural wetland
state. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tana Weingartner reports on the search for salamanders at the site, and why
their presence is so important:

Transcript

Government workers are slogging around in man-made wetlands looking for salamanders. Back in the 1950’s, the United States government selected a plot of land to be the home of its newest uranium processing plant. Since the end of the Cold War, the now-closed nuclear processing plant has been undergoing the long and arduous task of returning to its natural wetland state. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tana Weingartner reports on the search for salamanders at the site, and why their presence is so important:


It’s a cold, windy day in late March as specialists from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency head out to check their traps at the Fernald Nuclear Plant. The 1050-acre facility sits in a rural area just 18 miles north of Cincinnati. Although the EPA is in charge of cleaning up the uranium contamination here, today they’re on a different mission. Today they’re hunting salamanders.


“Salamanders basically are a sign of an established wetland usually, and in this case would show that we put a wetland in a location where salamanders need additional breeding habitat.”


In other words, Schneider says the presence of salamanders indicates the first level of success for these manmade wetlands. The wetland project is one of several ways the EPA is ensuring Fernald is properly restored to its natural state.


“Well, we’re looking forward to the day when we get the site cleaned up, and it can be like a land lab, and people can bring kids out here and do environmental education on the importance of wetlands, and it’s going to make a great contrast with what used to be here and the environmental contamination with the environmental benefit the facility is providing down the road.”


Today, the site is 70 percent certified clean, and officials expect to finish the cleanup by June 2006. Creating healthy wetlands full of insects, amphibians and salamanders is one of the first steps to success.


“So the method here is to set ten traps equidistant, hopefully, around the perimeter of the wetland. And they’re passive traps, whereby animals that are moving over the course of the 24 hours or so that the traps have been in, will bump into the traps and it’s a funnel that directs them into the center part of the trap, and they’re held in there until we release them.”


(splashing sound)


Schneider and his team laugh and joke as they pull the traps up by brightly colored ribbons. Train horns and construction noises mix with bird calls – one a reminder of what has been, the other a sign of what’s to come.


“That’s probably a one-year-old bullfrog there and then these big guys are dragonfly larvae and these other guys are back swimmers. Mayfly larvae and dragonfly larvae are both good indicators of high water quality.”


The third pond, or vernal pool, turns up 46 tadpoles and a tiny peeper frog, but no salamanders.


(truck door slams)


So it’s back in the truck and on down the dirt road to where several more wetland pools sit just across from the on-site waste dump. That dump will be Fernald’s lasting reminder of its former use. These pools are younger and less established, but they do offer hope. Last year, adult salamanders were found in the one closest to a clump of trees.


Each spring, as the snow melts away and temperatures rise, salamanders venture out in the first 50-degree rain to begin their search for a mate. Schneider had hoped warm temperatures in late February and early March prompted “The Big Night,” as it’s known.


“So, no salamanders today?”


“No salamanders today. I think we learned a little bit about the difference between wetlands that are three years old. We saw a lot more diversity in the macroinvertebrates, the insect population, than we have down here.”


Perhaps the salamanders haven’t come yet, or maybe they have already come and gone, leaving behind the still un-hatched eggs. Either way, the team will check back again in April and a third time in late May or June.


“And we have high hopes, high hopes, high apple pie in the sky hopes. That’s the kind.”


(sound of laughter)


For the GLRC, I’m Tana Weingartner.

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Living Out Aldo Leopold’s Legacy

  • Aldo Leopold found fame by writing "A Sand County Almanac"... but even sixty years after his death, scholars say his theories about living in harmony with nature are influencing conservation practices today. (Photo courtesy of the Aldo Leopold Foundation Archives)

If you feel you just cannot live without wild things, you have something in common with a conservationist who’s still influencing conservation practices almost sixty years after his death. Scholars say the theories of Aldo Leopold continue to help shape wildlife management and land preservation, especially in the Upper Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

If you feel you just cannot live without wild things, you have something in
common with a conservationist who’s still influencing conservation practices almost
sixty years after his death. Scholars say the theories of Aldo Leopold continue to help shape wildlife management and land preservation, especially in the Upper Midwest. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Aldo Leopold is probably best known for writing A Sand
County Almanac. That’s a collection of essays about finding harmony
with nature. His ideas about preservation changed while working for the
Forest
Service in the southwestern U.S. Rick Stel of the Aldo Leopold
Foundation
says one day in the early 1900’s Leopold shot a wolf thought to be a threat
to
cattle. The female had pups with her.


“And he says he got there in time to see the
fierce green fire die in her eyes… and it was at this time he realized
we’re going about this in the wrong way… we really need to look at all
creatures and everything as a community.”


Leopold’s epiphany led to writings that won him national attention. he
eventually moved to Madison, Wisconsin – first to work in forest
research and later at the University of Wisconsin. There, he taught the
nation’s
first course in game management.


In 1935, he bought an abandoned farm in the sandy floodplain of the
Wisconsin River. It became the inspiration for many of the essays in A Sand County
Almanac.


(sound of unlocking door)


Most tours of the site start at an old chicken coop that was the only
building left when Leopold bought the place and is the only structure
now. The shack, as Leopold called it, has no electricity or furnace.


(sound of fire)


On chilly days tour guides light a fire in the fireplace and talk about
the ideas Leopold developed while visiting the shack with his family.
The Leopold Foundation’s Buddy Huffaker says Leopold worried about
becoming disconnected from nature.


“His February essay talks about the two spiritual dangers of
not owning a farm. One is to assume food comes from a grocery store, and the second is that heat comes from a furnace.”


Outside the shack Leopold and his family worked to return the land to its
pre-agricultural state. They planted thousands of pine trees. The also undertook
one of
the first prairie restorations. The Leopold family spent a lot of time
discussing how
people were damaging the environment.


(sound of brushing)


About one hundred yards from the shack Buddy Huffaker brushes off
a plaque that’s set in the ground. at this spot, Leopold sawed apart a
lightning-damaged oak tree that he called the good oak. He wrote
about the experience in a famous essay that Huffaker says is really
about natural history.


“As he and his family saw through the growth rings of the oak, he
goes back in time to see how people have disregarded other natural
elements in the landscape – the decimation of turkeys and other
species that we hunted into extinction locally or entirely.”


But turkeys, sandhill cranes and a few others species have come
back–in part because of Leopold’s conservation ethic. Now his
followers are trying to protect more things.


To spread Leopold’s message some groups have started sponsoring
readings of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. At a library in Lake
Geneva
Wisconsin Jim Celano reads from the essay about the good oak.


“Now our saw bites into the 1920’s the Babbittian
decade when everything grew bigger and better in heedlessness and
arrogance – until 1929 when stock markets crumpled. If the oak heard them
fall, its
wood gives no sign.”


Celano is a former commerical real estate developer who now heads
a land conservancy group. He says he’s trying to convey Leopold’s
ideas to other developers.


“That we’re not here to say no to development… but to ask
they be sensitive to what they’re developing. And when you step on
their parcel, after their development is done, that the first thing you
notice is what they’re preserved and protected.”


(sound of woodpecker and traffic)


But even Aldo Leopold’s famous land around the shack is not immune
from modern threats. As a woodpecker hammers overhead, the noise
from a nearby interstate highway intrudes into the scenery. The
Leopold foundation’s Buddy Huffaker says Aldo Leopold knew the future
would bring new threats to the natural world.


“But I think that’s Leopold’s challenge to us. He
understood progress was going to continue. He just wanted us to
contemplate what we wanted that progress to be. And how far it
should go.”


And with sales of A Sand County Almanac bigger now than when it was
published in 1949, it ‘s a future Aldo Leopold might be helping to
shape.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Designing a Green Neighborhood

  • "Green" single family homes built by GreenBuilt in the Cleveland EcoVillage. (Photo courtesy of Cleveland EcoVillage)

In recent decades, rust-belt cities have seen neighborhoods deteriorate and surrounding suburbs sprawl with little restraint. Now, formerly industrial cities are looking to redevelop old neighborhoods and attract new people. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton looks at how one old neighborhood is using sustainable ideas to attract new residents:

Transcript

In recent decades, rust-belt cities have seen neighborhoods deteriorate and surrounding suburbs sprawl with little restraint. Now, formerly industrial cities are looking to redevelop old neighborhoods and attract new people. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton looks at how one old neighborhood is using sustainable ideas to attract new residents:


(sound of street)


The morning sun is peaking through an overcast sky along a street lined with simple Victorian style homes. In this Cleveland neighborhood, two of these homes are brand new. Unlike their century old neighbors, they’re green buildings… built with the environment in mind.


One, is the home of David and Jen Hovus. It was built to actively conserve resources and to have a low impact on the environment. For example, all of the lights are on timers.


“I had to go out of my way to find timers that would control compact fluorescent lights, so that I wasn’t wasting too much electricity.”


Even the fan venting moist air from the bathroom… is on a timer. The furnace too, is a high-efficiency unit.


(sound of walking)


Hovus’s environmentally friendly surroundings don’t stop at the backyard gate. He lives in a special neighborhood called the Cleveland EcoVillage. And on his way to work, he sees green building principles and sustainable practices all along the way. Like the community garden, where even the tool shed is made of recycled material.


“There was a 120-year-old maple tree that was cut down. Folks brought a portable saw mill and they sawed it into lumber and that’s what they used for the framing. It’s actually a strawbale construction as well.”


The idea to revive a struggling neighborhood with sustainable solutions, started with the city’s environmental planning organization, EcoCity Cleveland. Back in 1997, they investigated dozens of the cities neighborhoods. And choose the west side neighborhood where Hovus lives, because it was close to transit, had a strong Community Development organization and had support of the local councilman.


David Beach is EcoCity Cleveland’s Executive Director. He says besides environmentally sound buildings, the neighborhood gives the option of a car-free life.


“Where everything you need is with in walking distance. So you’re living space, your work place, and some of your shopping can be right in that one neighborhood. And then you hop on that rapid transit and in five minutes your downtown or you’re at the airport.”


Everything within a half-mile radius of the transit station is in the EcoVillage.
Resident David Hovus stands at the entrance, with fierce wind coming off of Lake Erie.


“This used to be… there was literally a set of stairs leading down to the platform. There was essentially a bus shelter on the platform and that was it. And if you didn’t actually know where the entrances were, you’d never know there was a train station here.”


So EcoCity Cleveland and the neighborhood convinced Cleveland’s Transit Authority to spend nearly $4 and a half million dollars on a new station, based on environmentally sound principles. It’s the only Green Transit Station in Ohio.


“And now we’d got a nice warm building that uses passive solar heating and a lot of green building features.”


Mandy Metcalf is the EcoVillage Project Director. She continues our tour of the neighborhood down a walking path.
Four blocks later, twenty new green-built town homes come into view. In the same simple Victorian style of the neighborhood, they blend right in. They’re also very energy efficient.


“One resident said that his January bill was only forty dollars for gas, which is pretty impressive.”


But, the majority of the homes in the EcoVillage are more than a century old and very energy inefficient. While they’re considered “affordable housing,” a mortgage payment on top of a heating bill of more than $300 dollars makes them difficult to afford. So Metcalf’s organization helped homeowners discover where their energy was being wasted.


“What the best things, the most cost effective things that they could do to retrofit their houses. And now we’re going to match them up with loan programs and encourage them to go through with it.”


While older homes are being updated, the Ecovillage is making plans to improve the green space surrounding the local rec center. And within two years, they hope to entice a green building grocery store to the area.


For the GLRC, this is Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

Related Links

Teflon Chemical Lawsuit Finalized

The makers of Teflon could have to pay out more than 440-million dollars as the result of a recently settled water contamination lawsuit. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Fred Kight has the story:

Transcript

The makers of Teflon could have to pay out more than 440 million dollars as the result of a
recently settled water contamination lawsuit. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Fred Kight
has the story:


The DuPont company was sued in a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of 80-thousand residents
whose drinking water contains trace amounts of a chemical known as C8. The chemical is used
to make Teflon… and manufactured at a plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia.


DuPont officials say C8 does not pose any health risk but Joe Kiger isn’t so sure. Kiger was the
lead plaintiff in the case. He says the most important part of the settlement is an independent
medical study that will be done to determine if C8 can make people sick…


“I’m concerned about my health as well as my familiy’s health, my wife’s and the people in the
community because this is a major thing.”


DuPont will have to pay 107 million dollars for the study, new treatment equipment for local
water utilities and legal fees and expenses for the residents who sued. It could have to pay
another 235 million for environmental clean up and health monitoring if C8 is found to be toxic.


For the GLRC, I’m Fred Kight.

Related Links