Tag: diesel

Up Close and Personal With a Prairie Fire

  • Park managers determined that this area of land in southeast Michigan was historically a prairie. They're using fire to return it to that state, and to keep invasive plants and shrubs in check. (Photo by Mark Brush)

Some natural areas need fire. A number of prairie plants and pine trees must have fire for their seeds to pop open or germinate. But burning a natural area can quickly turn into a wildfire without a team to keep it under control. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush spent a day with a burn crew… and brings us this audio postcard:

Transcript

Some natural areas need fire. A number of prairie plants and pine trees
must have fire for their seeds to pop open or germinate. But burning a
natural area can quickly turn into a wildfire without a team to keep it
under control. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush spent a day
with a burn crew… and brings us this audio postcard:


(sound of walking through dry grass and birds)


“Good morning, Hi, How’s it going?”


“Little dry?”


“It’s pretty dry, it’s forecasted, I think to be twenty one percent humidity…”


“My name is David Mindell, and I am the burn boss for this project. I’m a contractor that does ecological restoration. The first step is we’ll take a quick walk through and rake some of the fuel around stuff we don’t want to burn. This is the kind of thing if fire got in here, it’d burn for hours and hours and just put out a lot of smoke…”


“My name is Lee Root, and I just am a burn crew member. I’m filling up what’s known as an ‘Indian tank. It’s a backpack frame that has a water tank and a hand pump. This is our little portable fire engine, is what it is. So, you see where the black top is? If that was our fire, and we didn’t want the fire to come onto the grass, we would just…


(sound of squirting)


“…spray like that, and that would prevent the fire from crossing over.”


“Well, my name is Ross Orr, and I’ve been working with David for a couple of years, and um, we’re wearing these crazy, screaming yellow body suits that are flame-retardant fabric, and also helps keep us cool from the radiant heat of the burn, and big, big cumbersome helmets with visors that flip up and down…


(Sound of visor plastic clacking)


“…we’ll ingite using drip torches, which are these canisters filled with a mixutre of diesel and gas. It’s got a wick on the end, a burning wick, and as you tip the canister, it dribbles gas-diesel mix across the wick, and trails fire as you go.”


(sound of fire crackling and wind)


“Okay, I’m gonna burn it up right next to you Lee. All right, here we go.”


(sound of crackling and walkie-talkies)


“Catherine, keep coming right around.”


“Is this one of the crabapples we wanted to save, or they’re on the other end?”


“I believe they’re on the other end, unless they’re crabapples there?”


“Nope, it’s a hawthorne.”


“My name’s Catherine Marquardt, and I do whatever they tell me to do…


(sound of laughter)


“…whether it’s lighting fires or putting them out. Um, I think it looks like a Dr. Seuss story, actually, sometimes when you burn and it’s all black. You don’t get to see this very often, it’s very cool. And then it greens up so quickly, that’s the other amazing thing, is that if you come back here in a couple of days, it’s already getting green. So, it changes so quickly.”


“You know, I’m guessing it took probably forty-five minutes for the backburn to go a third of the way through the unit, and I think the headburn will run through the other two-thirds in about three minutes.”


(sound of large flames fading out)


(sound of walking, rubber squeaking and metal clanging)


Mindell: “And we’re, basically just walking around looking for things that are still smoking. Got a juniper that’s smoking at the base…


(sound of spraying)


“And just spraying out the smoldering bits.


“Burning is extremely fun, but it’s also a great management tool for improving the ecological quality of natural areas.”


(sound of wind and bird chirping)


HOST TAG: “This audio postcard of a prairie burn was produced by the
GLRC’s Mark Brush. To see photos of the burn and learn more about fire
as a management tool, you can visit glrc dot org.”

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Report Says Diesel Soot Can Be Cut Faster

  • The health effects of diesel emissions can include increased risks for heart attacks, asthma, and early deaths. The Clean Air Task Force is asking states to do more to clean up these emissions. (Photo by Greg Perez)

A new report says the Midwest is one of the most polluted areas in the country when it comes to soot pollution from diesel exhaust. The environmental research and advocacy group The Clean Air Task Force says much
of this pollution could be cut using available technology. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Elizabeth Braun reports:

Transcript

A new report says the Midwest is one of the most polluted areas in the country when it comes to soot pollution from diesel exhaust. The environmental research and advocacy group the Clean Air Task Force says much of this pollution could be cut using available technology. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Elizabeth Braun reports:


Three Midwestern states: Illinois, Ohio and Michigan are in the Task Force’s top 10 worst states for diesel pollution. The task force says inhaling diesel soot leads to thousands of heart attacks, early deaths and asthma cases. But, they say the trend can be reversed by limiting the amount of exhaust that’s released into the air.


They say one way to do this is to retrofit schoolbuses to reduce emissions. Renate Anderson is with the American Lung Association. She says children are the most at risk from diesel exhaust.


“School buses… that is a specific danger zone. Children have developing lungs, they tend to breathe about fifty percent more per pound of body weight than adults do.”


The task force also recommends passing legislation to limit how long diesel-engine vehicles can idle. The state of Minnesota has a no-idling policy for school buses, and Illinois lawmakers are currently working on such a measure.


For the GLRC I’m Elizabeth Braun.

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Creating Particle Pollution Warning System

  • Smokestacks, diesel engines, and a number of other things cause particulate emissions, which can create some negative health effects, and aggravate existing health problems. (Photo by Kenn Kiser)

In the summer, local weather forecasts often
include information about dangerous ozone levels.
But scientists are learning more and more about
another type of pollution that can reach harmful
levels even in the winter months. And as the Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports… we
might be hearing more about this type of pollution in
our daily weather reports:

Transcript

In the summer, local weather forecasts often include information about dangerous ozone levels. But scientists are learning more and more about another type of pollution that can reach harmful levels even in the winter months. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports, we might be hearing more about this type of pollution in our daily weather reports:


Parts of the region recently reached “code red” for poor air quality. And
that had some people perplexed. Warnings about dangerous levels of ozone are
frequent on hot summer days, especially in urban areas. But this was the
middle of winter.


The warnings were for high levels of tiny particles that federal regulators
only recently began monitoring. They’re spewn from diesel engines,
factories, power plants, and fireplaces. Air monitors in Michigan,
Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Indiana recently registered unhealthy levels of
these particles – some of them for a few days straight.


Jim Haywood says the problem was an unusual weather event for this time of
year. Haywood is a meteorologist with the Michigan Department of
Environmental Quality. He says a high pressure system moved very slowly over
the Great Lakes region for several days. When you get high pressure, the air
below sinks, generating a layer of warm air that acts like a lid.


“So that warm air that was sinking effectively stops at a few hundred feet
from the surface of the ground. It acts like a cap. It does not let any of
the pollutants that are released at the surface pop up through that cap.”


So all the pollutants that would have gotten picked up and diluted by the
wind instead just hung out for days – building up, and reflecting sunlight
to create haze.


Eventually, a cold front pushed the high pressure system out of the way, and
took the pollution with it. But what about those few days when the Environmental Protection Agency was warning about unhealthy levels of particulate pollution? For people with
heart or lung disease, agency health officials say short-term episodes can
lead to asthma attacks or even heart attacks. And they say healthy children
and adults can experience throat and lung irritation.


Susan Stone is an environmental health scientist with EPA. She says
particle pollution warnings could soon become a staple of the daily weather
report – much like the familiar summer ozone warnings.


“With ozone, we have the network in place to be able to deliver those
forcasts, people are used to hearing that on TV, and we are working to
provide that same level of coverage for particle pollution.”


Stone says EPA is rolling out a new program called Enviro-Flash
nationwide. It sends real-time air quality information to people’s email
accounts or pagers. EPA is offering the service through state
environmental agencies. And beginning in 2010, areas that register
unacceptable levels of particle pollution will be required to clean up their
air.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.

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Will New Auto Technologies Lead to Job Losses?

  • Hybrid cars like the Honda Insight are becoming more popular with consumers. However, a study predicts a decrease in jobs if sales of hybrids increase sharply. (Photo by Paige Foster)

A new report says new automotive technology such as gasoline-electric hybrid engines could cost thousands of American jobs. Researchers say states with large numbers of autoworkers could be hurt the most. We have more from the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland:

Transcript

A new report says new automotive technology such as
gasoline-electric hybrid engines could cost thousands of American
jobs. Researchers say states with large numbers of autoworkers
could be hurt the most. We have more from the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Michael Leland:


Sales of gasoline-electric hybrids amounted to less than one-percent of all
the vehicles sold in the U.S. last year. But researchers at the University
of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute say hybrids, and vehicles
made with advanced diesel powertrains, could make up eleven percent of total
sales by 2009.


If that happens, the Institute projects it could cost the
U.S. about 200-thousand jobs. Pat Hammett directed the study. He says that
figure includes both actual jobs lost and new jobs not created.


“A lot of the hybrid components, for example, actually are new componentry
inside a vehicle. So, it isn’t necessarily that you are losing jobs in some
of that area, it could just be an example of not getting the growth.”


Hammett says auto-producing states like Michigan, Ohio and Indiana would be
affected more than others. The report says states could reduce jobs lost to
new technologies by offering tax credits to encourage production in the
United States.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Michael Leland.

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Divining Future of Fast Ferries

High-speed ferries have come to the Great Lakes. A ferry between Toronto and Rochester, New York, is scheduled to start this week – joining another ferry that started earlier this month between Milwaukee and Muskegon, Michigan. But transportation experts say it isn’t clear that the fast ferries will prosper. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

High-speed ferries have come to the Great Lakes. A ferry between Toronto, Canada,
and Rochester, New York, is scheduled to start this week, joining another ferry that
started this month between Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Muskegon, Michigan. But
transportation experts say it isn’t clear that the fast ferries will prosper. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


The privately owned Lake Express ferry between Milwaukee and Muskegon cuts across
Lake Michigan at nearly forty miles per hour. Four diesel engines drive high-powered
jets underneath the catamaran-style boat. The jets shoot huge plumes of water out the
back end of the nearly 200 foot-long vessel.


(sound of ferry)


It only takes two and half hours for the Lake Express to make a crossing, about half the
time of an older ferry that travels across northern Lake Michigan. A Milwaukee-based
passenger named Jack says the faster pace is what draws him to the new boat.


“This is quick… we’re all about being quick.”


The Lake Express also has room for 46 cars and smaller vehicles such as motorcycles. A
motorcycle passenger named Bobbie says using the ferry is a breeze, compared to driving
around Lake Michigan and fighting traffic in Chicago.


“Have you ever ridden a motorcycle and had a semi pull up behind you? I mean, it
seemed like he was that far away, maybe two feet, and it’s very frightening and it’s
happened to us several times.”


Some people who study ferries say less stress and time savings are just two of the appeals
of the boats. University of Delaware professor James Corbett says fast ferries have a
certain cachet for the upscale, leisure tourist.


“Fast ferries are very, very attractive first choices when people are considering new
routes… they look for the latest and greatest vessel designs.”


But Corbett says the ferries have several drawbacks. For one thing, the faster boats use
more energy and that helps push up ticket prices. Adult roundtrip fares for the
Milwaukee to Muskegon route start at 85 dollars.


Sue McNeil heads the University of Illinois-Chicago Urban Transportation Center. She
says the fares may scare off repeat business in certain markets.


“Just what I know about travel patterns and where people go, the Rochester-Toronto
seems to make more sense than the Milwaukee to Michigan.”


Still, McNeil says she hopes all the ferries succeed, because they provide another
transportation option. Federal, state and local governments are buying into the concept,
by offering some subsidies to promote the boats and build docking terminals. Chicago
and Cleveland are also looking at adding the faster moving ferries.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Study Highlights Cost-Benefits of Cleaner Buses

A new Harvard study indicates that of two new types of alternative fuels for urban buses, it might be better in the long run to go with the cheaper fuel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A new Harvard study indicates that of two new types of alternative fuels for urban buses, it might
be better in the long run to go with the cheaper fuel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:


Soot spewing diesel buses will soon be a thing of the past. But two different alternative fuels are
being considered for mass transit buses. One is compressed natural gas. The other is a low
sulfur-filtered diesel called emission controlled diesel.


A Harvard School of Public Health study of the fuel systems appears in the current issue of the
journal Environmental Science and Technology. Senior Researcher, Joshua Cohen says
compressed natural gas buses might be cleaner, but the health benefits cost six to nine times more
than the same health benefits of the clean diesel.


“If you spend your money on compressed natural gas buses, you’re not going to be able to buy as
many new clean buses as you could if you bought the clean diesel buses. So, that’s an important
consideration to keep in mind.”


So, while a single bus burning compressed natural gas might be cleaner, it’s so much more
expensive that, system-wide, it might be more beneficial to the environment to use the cheaper
clean diesel system in more buses.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

New Emission Control for Diesels

The company that fueled the innovation for cleaner auto exhaust is looking to do the same for diesel-powered trucks and buses. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:

Reining in Diesel Exhaust

  • The EPA is planning to regulate smoke from diesel engines in farm and construction equipment. Photo courtesy of NESCAUM.

You see them every time you pass a construction site: big machines belching thick diesel smoke. The smoke isn’t just annoying. It causes major health and environmental problems. Now, after years of dealing with other issues, the EPA is taking on this major source of uncontrolled pollution: emissions from farm and construction equipment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert looks at the challenges the EPA faces in this far-reaching regulatory effort:

Transcript

You see them every time you pass a construction site. Big machines belching thick diesel smoke. The smoke isn’t just annoying. It causes major health and environmental problems. Now, after years of dealing with other issues, the EPA is taking on this major source of uncontrolled pollution: emissions from farm and construction equipment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert looks at the challenges EPA faces in this far-reaching regulatory effort.


Emissions from diesel engines create problems for both the environment and people’s health. Diesels release nitrogen oxides, which are a factor in acid rain and smog. They also spew very fine particulates that can lodge deep in the lung when inhaled. And that causes respiratory problems.


Controlling these emissions is no easy task. That’s because most diesel engines still burn fuel containing high amounts of sulfur. The sulfur clogs up existing pollution control devices. And that makes it a lot tougher to come up with ways to reduce emissions. But Christopher Grundler, deputy director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality in Ann Arbor, Michigan, says its an important challenge.


“In the year 2007 we estimate that off road or non-road emissions will make up over 40% of the air pollution from mobile sources or transportation sources, so it’s a big deal.”


In tackling air pollution, EPA’s first job was to clean up gasoline car emissions. Now its moving onto diesels. The agency’s first challenge came when they issued a rule for highway trucks last year. That plan drops sulfur content in diesel fuel from 500 parts per million to 15 parts per million. It also reduces overall diesel emissions by 90% by the year 2007. The EPA now wants to use this rule as a model for farm and construction equipment as well. But the agency is likely to face opposition from refiners, who are fighting the on road rule. Jim Williams is with the American Petroleum Institute.


“We feel that the ability of the refining industry to make sufficient volumes of 15 ppm in the timeframe that EPA wants us to is highly questionable, whether we can do that. We’ve done some studies that show there will be supply shortfalls with the 15-ppm limit.”


Williams is pushing to phase in the requirement over a longer period. He says that would give refiners more time to produce the necessary quantities of low sulfur fuel. Until then, refiners also want to continue providing high sulfur fuel.


But Engine Manufacturers don’t like that idea. They’ve agreed to support tough standards only if the switchover to low sulfur fuel happens quickly. Jed Mandel runs the Engine Manufacturers Association. He’s worried that if cheaper, low sulfur fuel remains abundant; users could continue relying on the dirtier fuel.


“If there are dual fuels available — if there’s cleaner fuel on the marketplace for some time, as well as higher sulfur dirtier fuel, and there’s a price differential in that fuel, there will be a disincentive for users to buy the cleanest engines.”


Mandel says that could cause a delay in purchasing these engines for several years.


Like Mandel, Jason Grumet, executive director of the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, also wants tight standards. Northeast states, plagued with acid rain and smog caused largely by these diesels, are pushing the EPA to develop the tightest standards possible to meet clean air goals and also to better protect equipment operators.


“The particles from diesel emissions can lodge very deep within the human lung and we know that these particles are carcinogens, so for folks who work with construction equipment every day or on construction sites, for people who farm or plow fields for several hours a day, we think that the emissions of diesel pollutants cause a very substantial and real threat to their health.”


(sound of tractor)


Herb Smith isn’t worried about his health. Smith hops off his tractor and stands on the land that his family has farmed in Ida Township, Michigan since 1865. Despite years of inhaling diesel fumes, Smith said he’s in perfect physical condition. Though he supports regulations to control diesel emissions, he’s worried that the EPA will place undue hardship on farmers.


“I am concerned about fuel costs because our margin in farming is very slim and anything we add to fuel costs, we have to absorb it.”


Smith fears that some of the smaller farmers may not be able to bear higher fuel and engine costs and could go out of business.


Despite the many different viewpoints on the issue, EPA’s Grundler is confident that his agency can develop a rule that will bring tremendous public health benefits at a reasonable cost.


“We’ve shown we can do it for cars and SUVs. We’ve shown it can be done for heavy duty on highway engines. I’m absolutely certain it can be done for these sorts of engines as well.”


The agency expects to issue a technical report outlining emission control options by the end of the year. A proposal is due by the middle of next year. For The Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Halpert.

Cleaning Up the Dirty Diesels

The rule in driving these days seems to be that bigger is better, with
light trucks and sport utility vehicles overtaking the road. But as
automakers bask in their high profits from the pricey vehicles, a new
challenge looms…how to make them more fuel efficient. The trucks guzzle
substantially more gas and emit more pollutants than passenger cars and
the government is putting pressure on automakers to clean them up. Now,
an unlikely candidate is emerging to solve the problem. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Julie Edelson Halpert reports: