Tag: economics

Organics Rotting in Bad Economy

  • Shopping at organic foods stores is one thing consumers are cutting back on (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)

Watching paychecks shrink and
retirement funds dissolve is making people
change their buying habits. Many are
skipping things like natural foods because
they’re seen as luxuries. But Julie Grant
reports some analysts say this is just a
short term trend:

Transcript

Watching paychecks shrink and
retirement funds dissolve is making people
change their buying habits. Many are
skipping things like natural foods because
they’re seen as luxuries. But Julie Grant
reports some analysts say this is just a
short term trend:

Michelle DeSalvo’s daughter plans to go to college next
year. But her husband might need to take a pay cut just to
keep his job. So they’re trying to save money wherever
possible. That means no more shopping at the natural foods
store.

Michelle DeSalvo: “It’s definitely more expensive. You have
to go to things that are less expensive and natural is
definitely not that.”

Julie Grant: “So what has changed in your shopping habits?”

Michelle DeSalco: “I go to Wal-Mart. (laughs) Yeah, for
food. It’s cheaper.”

Not everyone is rushing to Wal-Mart.

Brenda Fisher says her family is struggling to pay for two
kids in college, and they’re looking for different ways to buy
food. She used to stop at the butcher shop at Whole Foods
– the national, natural foods supermarket. But not anymore.

“So I would buy their meats because their meats are
incredible. So um, I just can’t afford it. I would actually like
to buy a whole cow from a farmer, because they’re cheaper.
And I just have to get the money together.”

Okay, so not everyone wants to buy a cow. But a lot of
people are moving away from things that seem more
expensive – like natural and organic products.

In recent years, those foods have seen huge sales growth.
But as the economy has turned sour, so have their sales.
Whole Foods Store has seen a considerable sales drop at its
stores. And the company’s stock prices plunged more than
70% this year.

Nancy Koehn is professor of the history of retailing and
consumer behavior at the Harvard business school.
She says some people see upscale stores such as Whole
Foods as an indulgence – and that’s not what they’re
wanting.

“I think we will see, we are seeing, a rush away from a lot of
luxury right now.”

Koehn says that’s short term. She says consumers have
been floored by the tanking of the stock market and the
vulnerability of the financial systems. And they’ve done
something we haven’t seen in 25 years: they’ve stopped
buying.

But Koehn says this is just one moment. She says people
will walk back into stores. But they will have revised
priorities for their homes and families.

“There’s no way anyone’s coming out of this moment without
being effected by it. It’s a much more complicated story than
the rush to Wal-Mart.”

Koehn says natural foods stores, like Whole Foods, and
other environmentally-centered companies, are actually in
just the right place for the long term economic trend. When
consumers start buying again, she thinks, many will spend
money in places that are taking care of workers, animals,
and the environment.

“And I think we’re going to see that the same things that built
Whole Foods, that have made the environment and our
interconnectedness so important to people, and moved that
from item number 10 or 20 on people’s lists of important
issues up to the top 2 to 4. Those aren’t going away because
we’re in the trough of a business cycle.”

Koehn expects that many people will spend their holiday
money at big box discount stores. But she says many who
feel they’ve been treated badly in the economic downturn will
go back to the companies they think treat people and the
environment better.

Koehn expects that by early next year, companies that get
behind sustainable products will wind up being the economic
winners.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Economy Squeezes Environment Agenda


Many environmental advocates say
they’re excited about the upcoming Obama
Administration. But the nation’s economic
woes could stall many federal programs.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Many environmental advocates say
they’re excited about the upcoming Obama
Administration. But the nation’s economic
woes could stall many federal programs.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Environmental groups are touting the campaign promises of President Elect
Barack Obama. They predict he’ll be open to environmental clean-up and clean
energy programs.

Michael Kraft is a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay.
He’s adding a note of financial caution.

”It’s no surprise that the federal government is running a very large deficit this
year and that the national debt is very big and that the country is entering an
economic downturn. So, the challenge will be deciding how much we can afford
to spend and in what years we can afford to spend it. “

Kraft says that could affect funding for programs aimed at cleaning up pollution.
And it could also pinch environmental regulators from the US EPA.

Kraft also says new spending may have a better chance when backers can prove
it will help the environment and not hurt the economy.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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States Work to Reduce Emissions

  • States in the Northeast are trying to set an example for other states by reducing power plant emissions. (Photo by Lester Graham)

A recently uncovered document reveals that Northeast states plan pollution reductions beyond federal requirements. Many of these states have already sued Midwestern states over power plant pollution. Their new effort might put even more pressure on the region’s utility industry. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A recently uncovered document reveals that Northeast states plan pollution reductions beyond federal requirements. Many of these states have already sued Midwestern states over power plant pollution. Their new effort might put even more pressure on the region’s utility industry. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


A document brought to light by the New York Times revealed that nine Northeastern states are working on an agreement to reduce power plant emissions – including greenhouse gases – beyond the federal government’s restrictions.


Besides making significant reductions in pollution, it’s believed the Northeast states are trying to set an example for other states such as those in the Midwest where there are a lot of power plants. Doug Scott is the Director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. He says they’re working on the problem.


“We’re trying to work with the other twelve states in the Midwest Governors Association on long-range plans to try to reduce emissions. That really isn’t much different in concept than what the Northeastern states are doing.”


Scott says reductions might not reach the same levels as the Northeast states’ plan because of greater economic impact on the industrial Midwest.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Rethinking Water Runoff Design

  • Rainwater that falls on paved areas is diverted into drains and gutters. If the rainfall is heavy enough, the diverted water can cause flash flooding in nearby rivers and streams. (Photo by Michele L.)

Some planning experts are worried that the rapid development in cities and suburbs is paving over too much land and keeping water from replenishing aquifers below ground. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports:

Transcript

Some planning experts are worried that the rapid development in cities and suburbs is
paving over too much land and keeping water from replenishing aquifers below ground.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


In nature… when it rains… the water slowly soaks into the ground and makes its way
through the soil and rock to eventually be stored as groundwater. Some of it makes its
way underground to be stored in aquifers. And some of it slowly seeps through the rock
for a while and then resurfaces as springs to feed streams during times when there’s not a
lot of rain. It’s a natural storage system and a lot of cities rely on that water.


But when we build buildings and houses and parking lots and roads, a lot of the land
where the rain used to soak into the ground is covered up. Instead the rainwater runs off
the hard surfaces and rushes to stormwater gutters and ditches and then overloads creeks
and rivers. Even where there are big expansive lawns in the suburbs… the rain doesn’t
penetrate the ground in the same way it does in the wild. The grass on lawns has shallow
roots and the surface below is compact… where naturally-occurring plants have deep
roots that help the water on its way into the earth.


Don Chen is the Executive Director of the organization Smart Growth America. His
group tries to persuade communities to avoid urban sprawl by building clustering houses
and business districts closer together and leave more natural open space.


“With denser development you have a much lower impact per household in terms of
polluted runoff.”


Chen says the rain washes across driveways and parking lots, washing engine oil, and
exhaust pollutants straight into streams and rivers instead of letting the water filter across
green space.


Besides washing pollutants into the lakes and streams… the sheer volume of water that
can’t soak into the ground and instead streams across concrete and asphalt and through
pipes can cause creeks to rise and rise quickly.


Andi Cooper is with Conservation Design Forum in Chicago. Her firm designs
landscapes to better handle water…


“Flooding is a big deal. It’s costly. That’s where we start talking about economics. We
spend billions and billions of dollars each year in flood damage control.”


Design firms such as Cooper’s are trying to get developers and city planners to think
about all that water that used to soak into the ground, filtering and being cleaned up a bit
by the natural processes.


Smart Growth America’s Don Chen says those natural processes are called infiltration….
and Smart Growth helps infiltration…


“And the primary way in which it does is to preserve open space to allow for natural
infiltration of water into the land so that there’s not as much pavement and hard surfaces
for water to bounce off of and then create polluted runoff.”


People such as Chen and Cooper are bumping up against a couple of centuries or more of
engineering tradition. Engineers and architects have almost always tried to get water
away from their creations as fast and as far as possible. Trying to slow down the water…
and giving it room to soak into the ground is a relatively new concept.


The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is trying to get communities to give the idea
some consideration. Geoff Anderson is the Acting Chief of Staff for the EPA’s Office of
Policy, Economics and Innovation.


“Anything you can do to keep that water on site and have it act more like it does in its
natural setting, anything you can do to sort of keep that recharge mechanism working,
that’s helpful.”


The EPA does not require that kind of design. It leaves that to local governments and the
private sector. The Conservation Design Forum’s Andi Cooper says sometimes getting
companies to think about treating water as a resource instead of a nuisance is a hard
sell…


“You know, this is risky. People tell us this is risky. ‘I don’t want to do this; it’s not the
norm.’ It’s becoming less risky over time because there are more and more
demonstrations to point to and say ‘Look, this is great. It’s working.’ ”


But… corporate officials are hesitant. Why take a chance on something new? They fear
if something goes wrong the boss will be ticked off every time there’s a heavy rain.
Cooper says, though, it works… and… reminds them that investors like companies that
are not just economically savvy… but also have an environmental conscience.


“A lot of companies are game. They’re open. If we can present our case that yes, it
works; no, it’s not risky; it is the ethical thing to do; it is aesthetically pleasing; there are
studies out there that show you can retain your employees, you can increase their
productivity if you give them open spaces to walk with paths and make it an enjoyable
place to come to work everyday.”


So… doing the right thing for the environment… employees… and making investors
happy… make Wall Street risk takers willing to risk new engineering to help nature
handle some of the rain and get it back into the aquifers and springs that we all value.


For the GLRC… this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

RETHINKING WATER RUNOFF DESIGN (Short Version)

  • Rainwater that falls on paved areas is diverted into drains and gutters. If the rainfall is heavy enough, the diverted water can cause flash flooding in nearby rivers and streams. (Photo by Michele L.)

An Environmental Protection Agency official wants local governments to take a broader view when making land use plans for their communities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

An Environmental Protection Agency official wants local governments to take a broader view
when making land use plans for their communities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:


Often planners don’t look past their own city borders when making decisions. Geoff Anderson
wants that to change. He’s the Acting Chief of Staff for the EPA’s Office of Policy, Economics
and Innovation. Anderson says city officials often look at land use planning one site at a time
instead of looking at how their decisions will affect the entire area…


“The two scales are very important and I think in many cases too much is paid to the site level
and not enough is given to the sort of broader regional or community context.”


Anderson says that’s especially important when planning for stormwater drainage. He says too
many communities think about getting the water to the nearest stream quickly without thinking
about how that rushing water might affect flooding downstream.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

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Audio Postcard: Food Bartering

  • These are "zooks." They're a form of currency used by the Zook Society, a group that barters for homemade products. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

People in search of homemade foods are finding an old-fashioned way to get them: bartering. Gardeners and cooks who have a special pasta sauce are trading with others who make homemade applesauce. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill recently attended a barter gathering and brings us this audio postcard:

Transcript

People in search of homemade foods are finding an old-fashioned
way to get them: bartering. Gardeners and cooks who have a special pasta
sauce are trading with others who make homemade applesauce. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill recently attended
a barter gathering and brings us this audio postcard:


“Hi, it’s nice to see you again.”


“Have mostly baked goods today.”


“Maple syrup, grape syrup, eggs.”


“Apple butter, squash soup, and frozen split pea soup. Um hm.”


“Worm juice! What the heck is worm juice?”


Buckley: “My name is Jenifer Buckley, and I’m one of the people who got the Zook Society together. This is an informal bartering group of people who home-process and garden.”


“We have lefse! We went down to the farm this part weekend, and Mary learned from her mom, so it’s totally homemade. And we would like two zooks for each bag.”


Buckley: “We decided on the zook as a unit of currency, because everybody agreed the Zucchini is easy to find. We wanted to make sure, for example if I have sauerkraut and somebody else has eggs and somebody else has jam, that we could all three of us barter for those things, so we decided on the zook as currency.”


“This is the three-generation salsa, my grandma’s salsa recipe. My grandma just died this summer. I made some with her last summer, but this summer I made it myself.”


“We have a pint of applesauce from this year’s crop, a good year for apples, and I guess this is about a three-zook item, does that sound fair?”


Buckley: “What often happens is that people are asking relatively little for their products, so people will say, ‘That’s not enough, you should ask for more for that!’ Because in general, I think people tend to undervalue what they do; a lot of time goes into baking and processing and so forth.”


Rhodes: “My name is Gina Temple Rhodes, and this time I brought some new things that I had never brought before. I brought Hinkelsteins, which are cookies made from oat flour, dates, So that was pretty popular. It’s a little strange – you bring things and hope they’ll sell because if they don’t you feel a little disappointed and have to take it home.”


Buckley: “It’s about bringing trade and economics down to the community level; it’s about trying new products. So in that respect there’s little bit of incubator going on here.”


“Try Paula’s? They’re a zook apiece.”


“Dave, are we supposed to eat these or plant these?”


Susie: “I’m Susie, and I brought worm juice, from our worm compost bin. It’s full of nutrients and you can use it to boost your house plants or in your garden. And I see nobody’s snapped it up yet, so I may have to go out and do promotion.”


Dawson: “I’m Katie Neff Dawson. We came away with some canned peaches – I’m kind of a peach freak so we got those. Cooper was into the peanut butter things, they look like Bit-O-Honey things, they’re really good. I think we all got lip balm because that was a good deal – lip balm for one zook. It’s a real diversity, and you come away with a wonderful meal, and it’s just a good community, good people getting together.”


“Bye, all! Thanks for the good food!”


HOST TAG: “Bartering home-made goods in Duluth, Minnesota. Stephanie
Hemphill produced that report for the GLRC.”

Related Links

Dilemmas for Wastewater Treatment Plants

  • Water contamination from sources that might include some wastewater treatment plants closes some beaches. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Municipal sewer plants are sometimes blamed for high E. coli bacteria counts that close beaches to swimmers. Some cities are working to find better ways to treat the water and put it back into nature. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:

Transcript

Municipal sewer plants are sometimes blamed for high E. coli bacteria counts
that close beaches to swimmers. Some cities are working to find better ways to treat the
water and put it back into nature. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus
reports:


(sound of cars moving along a small street and a few people talking)


A typical summer day by the lake: SUVs pull boats on trailers. People saunter from an
ice cream shop to the city beach. Jet skis and water skiiers slice through the waves.
Carpenters raise trusses on homes being built into the remaining lakefront lots.


Just a few years ago it seemed towns like this were just for loggers and locals. But now
people are flocking to the lakes around the Midwest and staying there. And that’s putting
a strain on local sewer plants.


(sound of machines inside the water treatment plant)


For 40 years, the treated waste water from the Boyne City, Michigan sewer plant has
been released into the big lake it was built on…Lake Charlevoix.


“It’s located right adjacent to a public swimming beach, park, marina and some valuable
waterfront property. We are only a block off the downtown district.”


Plant manager Dan Meads wants to stop mixing the end product with the water where
tourists and the locals swim and play. He tests daily for E. coli bacteria. He
doesn’t want anyone getting sick. But it’s still a concern, and there are other concerns.


In recent years, the United States Geological Survey has reported on new kinds of
contaminants that they’ve found in ground and surface water. The USGS says treated
wastewater from sewer plants can contain hormones from birth control pills, antibiotics,
detergents, fire retardants, and pesticides.


USGS microbiologist Sheridan Haack says the effects of all these compounds are still
unknown. Most are found in tiny quantities, but combined they could cause any number
of chemical reactions.


“There are many different chemical structures and it would be very difficult to state for
all of them what we would actually expect the environmental fate to be and how they
would actually be transported through the environment.”


Haack says the medicines people take don’t disappear. They eventually leave the body
and are flushed down the toilet. Those drugs have been tested for safe human
consumption, but the question is: what happens when those chemicals are mixed in with
industrial waste, accidental spills and nature’s own chemical processes? Haack says they
just might come back around to hurt humans, fish and wildlife.


The Boyne City solution is to build a new wastewater treatment plant two miles from the
beaches up the Boyne River. Officials say contaminants will be diluted by the time they
flow back down into Lake Charlevoix.


(sound of the Boyne River)


Larry Maltby volunteers for a group called “Friends of the Boyne River.” The group
doesn’t like the city’s plan to discharge treated wastewater directly into the river. It wants
them to consider some non-traditional methods. They say the new sewer plant could run
a pipe under a golf course or spray the treated water on farm fields… or let it drain into
wetlands to let nature filter it out.


“It will seep into the soils which are very sandy and gravelly underneath the golf course
and then the filtration through the ground will have a great deal of effect of continuing to
purify that water. Much more so than it would be with a direct deposit, straight into the
surface waters of Michigan.”


Lawyers for the Friends of the Boyne River have appealed to the state dept of
environmental quality and filed a lawsuit.


But wastewater treatment plant manager Dan Meads says the city doesn’t want to please
just one group and end up angering another…


“There isn’t any guarantee that you can satisfy everybody. We think we have the best
option available.”


As municipalities are short on funds and personnel, they don’t want to wait for decades
for the perfect solution. Still, nobody wants any amount of pollution to affect their home
or their recreational area.


Sheridan Haack with the USGS won’t take either side in this dispute. She says not only
are the dangers from contaminants unknown, the best way to deal with them is unknown.


“I am not aware of any consensus in the scientific community on the nature or types of
treatment for this broad range of chemicals.”


In the meantime… communities such as Boyne City have the unenviable task of trying to
dispose of their residents sewage without polluting the beaches, the fishing, and the
environment that brought folks there in the first place.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris McCarus.

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Sprawl Tough on New Farmers

  • J. and Kelly Williams farm 700 acres of corn and soybeans. They also both work full-time jobs off the farm. Supplemental income is necessary for many beginner farmers trying to break into the business. (Photo by Corbin Sullivan)

In a recent survey, young farmers said their biggest challenge is finding available land to farm. That’s because there’s so much competition for the land these days. Farmers compete with developers who have deep pockets to buy land for new subdivisions or retail centers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner has the story of one young farm couple trying to get started:

Transcript

In a recent survey, young farmers said their biggest challenge is finding available land to farm. That’s because there’s so much competition for the land these days. Farmers compete with developers who have deep pockets to buy land for new subdivisions or retail centers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner has the story of one young farm couple trying to get started:


J. Williams and his wife Kelly grow corn and soybeans. Their farm is relatively small, 700 acres in southern Michigan. They do all the work themselves – they plant, treat, harvest and market their own crops. It’s a lot of work for two people, especially since both J. and Kelly also have full-time jobs off the farm. He works at a bank and she works as a farm credit analyst.


They hope to one day be able to quit those jobs, and live off the farm income, but that might take awhile. The Williams had to take out big loans to buy land and equipment. They’re deep in debt, but they say farming is the life they want.


“Part of it’s entrepreneurial, it’s being your own boss, it’s making your own decisions and not being responsible to anyone but yourself for successes and failures. Part of it’s just natural attachment to nature and being outside and enjoying that, and part of it’s just simply independence.”


To achieve complete independence, J. says he needs to buy more farmland, but when he tries, he has to compete with a dozen or so other bidders, and they’re not all farmers. Some are developers looking for places to build homes or stores. The developers can afford to spend a lot more for the land because they’ll make a quick and substantial profit once the land is turned into neighborhoods or strip malls.


It’s a common scenario. In the last two decades, the United States has lost close to 50 million acres of farmland, most of it mid-size farms – which are typically family-owned. They’ve been chopped up and sold to developers or to sometimes gobbled up by factory farm owners.


Scott Everett is the Great Lakes regional director for America’s Farmland Trust. His group lobbies to preserve farmland. He says even when crop prices are at their highest, a sweet development deal is usually too good for some farmers to pass up.


“This generation, farmers today that own farmland today, have something much different than their fathers had. They’ve got this land that is worth so much more for development than it is for agriculture.”


Everett says farmland is often sold to developers at triple what it would be worth as agricultural land. That makes land prices high… and that means young farmers have a tough time getting loans.


Bruce Weir is with the U.S. Farm Service Agency. The agency offers loans to many beginner farmers who haven’t been able to get financing anywhere else.


“Right now it is tough for a young farmer, without a lot of collateral or capital to start with to start. It’s almost impossible. We don’t like to say that, but it is tough for them.”


A lot of beginning farmers know the odds are against them, but like J. Williams, the banker who wants to become a full-time farmer; they’re still hoping to expand their farms. Williams says he’d like to know that available land won’t simply go to the highest bidder. He wants farmland to remain farmland. He’s working with a group of local farmers to persuade government leaders to develop long-term land use plans.


“There are some areas in our county that are better suited for industrial use, some better for residential, some better for agricultural, and we believe at least that there should be a targeted approach, and a common-sense approach, to planning out our community so that we can maintain a proper balance.”


J. Williams says farming is going well for him and his wife so far. He says… just like the old saying goes, his corn was knee high before the Fourth of July, and the Williams’ fledgling farm is already turning a profit, but they still have to keep their day jobs. J. says it might be that way for some time, if government doesn’t protect farmland from the high price of development, and preserve it for agriculture.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.

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Seaway Navigation Study Raises Questions

The U.S. and Canada are about halfway through a major study of navigation in the Great Lakes. The scope of the study has changed since it was first proposed. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

The U.S. and Canada are about halfway through a major study of navigation
in the Great Lakes. The scope of the study has changed since it was first
proposed. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:


The Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway connect Midwest farms and
factories with the Atlantic Ocean. Its locks are aging, and big ocean-going ships can’t
squeeze through. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wanted to look at widening the
locks and deepening the channels.


But Canada wasn’t interested in that, and Congress directed the Corps to
scale back the study.


Wayne Schloop is the study manager.


‘There’s a lot of question marks as far as what does the bi-national system
need, in its entirety, not just the U.S. portion. There’s also a realization
there’s a lot of environmental sensitivity to the system, and you need to
address that in some manner before you can make any potential
recommendations about long-term improvements if they’re warranted, or if
they’re out there.”


Five public meetings are being held around the Great Lakes this summer, and
a final report is expected in fall 2005.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Coast Guard to Fine Ships for Ballast Violations

Later this summer, the U.S. Coast Guard will be able to fine cargo ships that don’t comply with ballast water reporting regulations. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on this new effort to stop invasive species from being introduced into the Great Lakes:

Transcript

Later this summer, the U.S. Coast Guard will be able to fine cargo ships that don’t
comply with ballast water reporting regulations. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports on this new effort to stop invasive species from being introduced
into the Great Lakes:


Ocean-going vessels have transported aquatic nuisances to the Great Lakes such as the
zebra mussel and the round goby in the ships’ ballast water. Those ships are now
supposed to take measures to prevent bringing in more problems. Beginning in mid-
August, the Coast Guard will have the authority to fine ships up to 27,500 dollars if they
don’t submit a report on the measures taken. Bivan Patnaik is with the Coast Guard’s
Environmental Standards Division…


“The movement of non-indigenous species from one area to another is a very important
environmental issue and we’re all working as hard and as fast as we possibly can.”


Critics say the government has not worked hard and fast enough. Patnaik says the Coast
Guard’s new penalties and other efforts to better manage ballast water are steps in the
right direction.


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

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