Tag: lakes

How the West Was Warned

  • Wen Baldwin, a volunteer with the National Park service, pulls a non-stick teflon frying pan out of Lake Mead, the reservoir of Hoover Dam. Quagga mussels smothered the pan in a matter of weeks. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

A tiny aquatic pest called the
quagga mussel is invading lakes
and streams across the country.
It’s even clogging up pipes in
some big-city water systems, dams,
and power plants. When environmental
disaster strikes, sometimes people
scratch their heads and ask: how
could this happen? Shawn Allee reports, in the case of
one quagga mussel invasion, people
got plenty of warning:

Transcript

A tiny aquatic pest called the
quagga mussel is invading lakes
and streams across the country.
It’s even clogging up pipes in
some big-city water systems, dams,
and power plants. When environmental
disaster strikes, sometimes people
scratch their heads and ask: how
could this happen? Shawn Allee reports, in the case of
one quagga mussel invasion, people
got plenty of warning:

n 2007, biologists declared that quagga mussels had infested infested Lake Mead just outside
Las Vegas.

But years before that, park staff and volunteers like Wen Baldwin told folks how to avoid the
problem.

Baldwin says some people helped – most people told him to just drop it.

“Oh, it won’t happen to us. That’s the American theory – fire, cancer, whatever. Oh, it
won’t happen to me.”

But it did happen, and here’s how it went down.

Baldwin went to this conference out East where biologists explained how quaggas clog pipes at
water treatment centers and power plants.

“There was a presentation about them and I realized, hey, they could get in here and they
could cost me money, you money, everybody money. They could raise havoc as they have in
the Great Lakes.”

Baldwin got worried.

Quagga mussles hitchhike on boats, and Lake Mead is a boating hot spot.

Baldwin warned people – wash down your boat before you put it in the lake!

“I put on a lot of programs trying to get people on board. Just didn’t work that well.”

Now, quagga mussels are making a mess of Lake Mead – and Web Baldwin can show how.

Baldwin tests how well quagga stick to different material.

We’re on this dock one morning, and he pulls a rope out of the water.

The rope’s covered with shells that look like fingernail-sized clams.

Allee: “I reckon you have to be pretty careful with your hands, there.”

Baldwin: “Boy, they’ll cut you to ribbons. I go home looking like my hands went through a
meat grinder.”

At the end of the rope – he’s tied a skillet.

Baldwin: “They’ll stick to teflon.”

Allee: “They’ll stick to teflon. Your eggs won’t stick to teflon all that well, but quagga
mussels will.”

Baldwin: “They will. And anywhere they attach the glue they use will hasten the
deterioration of the surface they attach to.”

A quagga-coated teflon pan is a shocker – but what does a quagga invasion mean?

Well, for one, if you dock your boat at Lake Mead – you’ve gotta scrape it all the time.

Swimmers wear shoes to protect their feet from quagga-coated rocks.

And quagga are getting costly.

Zegers: “We’ve been monitoring water quality in the lake pretty extensively.”

Roefer: “These are the six locations we collect samples at.”

I’m with Ron Zegers and Peggy Roefer. They’re with the Southern Nevada Water System. It
provides water to Las Vegas and other cities.

They walk me through slides divers took near water intake pipes – deep in Lake Mead.

Roefer: “And this is where our intake is, on Saddle Island. This is actually the inside of the
rock structure you can see the quaggas on the inside of that. Quagga mussels were
approximately two inches thick.”

Zegers and Roefer say they’re trying plenty of things to keep quagga out of the water supply.

The first is the old stand-by: chlorine.

But too much chlorine can make people sick.

Zegers: “More of those disenfection byproducts form, which puts us closer to our
regulatory compliance issues, so we also have to be concerned about that also.”

Roefer: “You know we’re watching the alternative control strategies, the bio-bullets and
pseudo-flourence and those kinds of things.”

Allee: “Sounds like an arms race.”

Roefer: “Yeah, who can get there first. The annual for this is one to four million dollars.”

Allee: “One to four million dollars. You know, you could clean a lot of water if you didn’t
have to deal with these critters.”

Zegers: “That’s correct. Now it’s just an anticipated expenditure that certainly wasn’t
budgeted for when they first appeared, and now it’s just gonna be a way of life.”

And it could become a a way of life for more lakes if we don’t stop quaggas from spreading
around.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Learning to Live With Less Water

  • Ellen Peterson has lived in Florida for many years and this is the first year her well went dry. (Photo by Arthur Cooper)

Droughts are nothing new for the Western US.
But lately, even some parts of the country
surrounded by water have gotten a taste of
droughts. Rebecca Williams reports as our
population grows, some experts say we’re going
to have to learn to live with less water:

Transcript

Droughts are nothing new for the Western US.
But lately, even some parts of the country
surrounded by water have gotten a taste of
droughts. Rebecca Williams reports as our
population grows, some experts say we’re going
to have to learn to live with less water:

(sound of birds)

Even in swampy, muggy Florida, people have been running out of water.

“This is the first time the well has ever gone dry.”

Ellen Peterson remembers water gushing out of her artesian well when she’d hook up the hose. These days she’s stuck with rusty water from her shallow well.

(sound of faucet turning on)

“Now if I let that sit it would settle out orange.”

We visited Peterson at the tail end of this year’s dry season. In the weeks since then, Florida’s been pummeled by major thunderstorms. But Florida water managers say it’s too early to know how much the rain will help.

This was the driest dry season Florida’s felt in more than 75 years. And it’s the third year in a row of serious drought. That’s meant some changes for people who live here.

Many cities put rules in place that limit watering lawns to one or two days a week. One woman actually ended up with a warrant out for her arrest after she watered her lawn on the wrong day and didn’t pay the fine.

Some cities in Florida are talking about adding a drought surcharge to bills for people using the most water.

Ellen Peterson says local water managers have even been capping wells in her area. Peterson may be 85 years old, but that didn’t stop her from telling her local official to back off.

“They told me they were going to cap my well and I threatened the guy with his life if he ever came back. (laughs) It hasn’t happened yet.”

So it’s not such an easy sell to get people to cut back on water.

(sound at a lake)

But that’s Gary Ritter’s job. He’s a water manager in the Lake Okeechobee area. It’s a giant lake – 35 miles wide – and it’s nicknamed the liquid heart of the Everglades. The lake level is 2.5 feet below average.

“For water to get to the Everglades it has to come from Lake Okeechobee. Now we have a juggling act as to how we manage this water in the system you know for multiple users for the water supply and for the ecosystem.”

The lake’s the center of a huge tug of war. Farmers and cities need the water, and the lake’s also a big tourist draw. And the Everglades are in major trouble – mostly because the water flow to this fragile area has been cut off by people.

Some experts say these kinds of conflicts are just going to get worse.

Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute. It’s a nonpartisan group that studies water issues.

“Places we didn’t think were vulnerable to water shortages in the past are now increasingly vulnerable. As our population continues to grow and our water supply doesn’t. As more and more people try to share that fixed resource there’s going to be growing competition for water and more natural and manmade drought.”

And he says we just don’t know what’s in store for us as the climate changes because of global warming. We could get a one-two punch.

First, from weird new weather patterns. And second, from more and more people moving into dry areas.

People have expected these kinds of problems for cities in the desert Southwest. But nobody really saw this coming in the Southeast.

Peter Gleick says even if you live in a place surrounded by water now, you shouldn’t expect to always have plenty of it.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Budget Money for Big Lakes

  • The EPA and other agencies want to spend $475 million on the Great Lakes (Photo by Karen Holland, courtesy of the EPA)

The Environmental Protection
Agency’s budget has a lot of
money for green energy projects,
dealing with climate change and
creating green jobs. But Lester
Graham reports the EPA will also
deal with old fashioned environmental
issues such as pollution:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection
Agency’s budget has a lot of
money for green energy projects,
dealing with climate change and
creating green jobs. But Lester
Graham reports the EPA will also
deal with old fashioned environmental
issues such as pollution:

Cleaning up air and water pollution almost seem passe’ after hearing about all of President Obama’s shiny green plans.

But cleaning up past messes is still a priority.

The EPA’s budget is 10.5 billion dollars. In a release, the agency highlighted a plan for the Great Lakes.

The EPA and other agencies want to spend 475-million dollars to clean up polluted bays, stop raw sewage from spilling into the lakes and deal with other ongoing problems.

Andy Buchsbaum heads up the Great Lakes office for the National Wildlife Federation. He says early signs indicate this item in the President’s budget will stick in Congress.

“They haven’t given final approval, but both the House and the Senate approved budget resolutions that include this 475-million dollars for the Great Lakes.”

And there’s also money to work on the Chesapeake Bay, San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound, and other big bodies of water around the nation.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Interview: Book Blames Coast Guard for Invaders

  • Ships sometimes bring unwanted travelers with them (Photo by Lester Graham)

Invasive species hitchike on foreign cargo ships and end up in US waterways. Lester Graham talked with the author of a new book about why the government has done so little to stop these aquatic invaders that are damaging the environment:

Transcript

Invasive species hitchike on foreign cargo ships and end up in US waterways.
Lester Graham talked with the author of a new book about why the government has done so little to stop these aquatic invaders that are damaging the environment:

Lester Graham: “Maybe you’ve heard about Zebra Mussels. The thumbnail-sized mussels have invaded freshwater lakes, rivers, clogged water intake pipes, and damaged the environment across a good portion of the US – and they’re still spreading. The Zebra Mussel is just one of dozens and dozens of invasive species brought into the US by foreign cargo ships entering the Great Lakes though the St. Lawrence Seaway, which connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. What happens is ships in Europe or Africa or Asia take on ballast water, sucking up millions of gallons of water from a foreign port. Aquatic life is sucked up with it. Then, as the ships take on cargo in the Great Lakes, the ballast water is discharged, and with it things like Zebra Mussels and other foreign pests. Many of those species have spread from the Great Lakes into the Mississippi River system, and then transported by recreational boating in every direction from there. Jeff Alexander has written a book that chronicles not only those invasions, but the utter failure of the government to do anything effective to stop these introductions. Jeff, you make the argument that these invasive species, biological pollution if you will, amount to a more serious environmental disaster than the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Alaska. How’s that?”

Jeff Alexander: “Well the Valdez, there’s no discounting the severity of the Valdez oil spill. But oil spills, over time, can be cleaned up to a certain extent, and the ecosystem can recover. In the Great Lakes, ocean freighters have brought in 57 species, they’ve caused billions of dollars in damage, and they’ve transformed the entire ecosystem.”

Graham: “There are eight states that border the Great Lakes, and members of Congress are aware of this problem, why haven’t they taken action to ensure this problem is dealt with once and for all?”

Alexander: “The shipping lobby has been very effective at keeping regulations at bay, the Coast Guard, which is the lead agency in the US, has just totally dropped the ball on this issue. They’re the ones who’re supposed to be the guardians of the Great Lakes when it comes to ships, and the Coast Guard is very close to the shipping industry. They have social events together every year. A lot of people blame the shipping industry for this problem, but I tend not to. They certainly have fought the regulations but, in the end, the reason that we have regulatory agencies is to protect public health and the environment. And our regulatory agencies haven’t done the job, and our politicians haven’t done the job – no one seems to have the backbone to stand up to the shipping industry and deal with this problem.”

Graham: “Are the foreign ships that bring in this cargo and take away grain or the other things from the Midwest so economically valuable that it is worth this economic and environmental cost?”

Alexander: “There is some debate on that, but the best economic study estimated if we kept these ocean freighters out of the Great Lakes, made them offload their cargo in Montreal and put it on trains and trucks, it would cost us an extra $55 million a year to move that cargo. That’s compared to the estimate of $200 million a year that foreign species are costing us in terms of economic and environmental damage. It’s not a stretch to make the case that the environmental and economic costs have far exceeded the economic benefits.”

Graham: “Jeff Alexander’s new book is ‘Pandora’s Locks: The Opening of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway’. Thanks, Jeff.”

Alexander: “Thank you.”

Jeff Alexander spoke with The Environment Report’s Lester Graham.

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Water Pollution Feminizing Fish

  • Chemicals in the water are mixing up fish's gender (Photo courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Scientists already know estrogen from things like ‘The Pill’ is getting into the water and causing reproductive problems for fish. Male fish are picking up female attributes. Some males are even growing eggs. Now a study finds there are other chemicals getting into water that might be messing with fish gender even more. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

Scientists already know estrogen from things like ‘The Pill’ is getting into the water and causing reproductive problems for fish. Male fish are picking up female attributes. Some males are even growing eggs. Now a study finds there are other chemicals getting into water that might be messing with fish gender even more. Rebecca Williams reports:

This study’s found a group of chemicals that block the male hormone testosterone is getting into rivers.

Charles Tyler is the lead author of the paper in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

He says they don’t know exactly where these chemicals are coming from, but some medicines and pesticides can block testosterone. So, add that to the estrogen…

“And so it’s very likely they’re going to have interactive and additive effects, if you like, to induce a double whammy on the poor fish.”

Tyler says they don’t know if what’s happening in fish is also happening in people.

Human male fertility has been declining. But there might be other chemicals contributing to the problem.

And besides, there’s a difference. Fish can’t get away from these testosterone blocking chemicals or the estrogen in the water – they live and swim in them. So Tyler says they’re getting a much higher dose.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Interview: Keeping Alien Invaders Out

  • Asian Carp is one species that is very dangerous to the Great Lakes ecosystem (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Nature never made a connection between the nation’s big rivers and the Great Lakes. But Chicago did. A canal was dug connecting the Mississippi River system – including the Missouri, the Ohio and all their tributaries – to all of the Great Lakes at a point on Lake Michigan. It opened up commercial shipping to the interior of the nation.
But it also opened up both bodies of waters to aquatic life you don’t want traveling back and forth. Invasive species such as the zebra mussel have traveled from one to the other. Asian Carp have already caused havoc in the Mississippi. Some biologists worry the Asian Carp will destroy the four-billion dollar fishing industry in the Great Lakes if it gets in. There’s an electric barrier in place, but some people don’t think that’s enough.
Joel Brammeier is with the environmental group Alliance for the Great Lakes. His group is proposing a barrier that will separate the Mississippi system from the Great Lakes completely, to stop those invasive species. He talked with Lester Graham about the barrier:

Transcript

Nature never made a connection between the nation’s big rivers and the Great Lakes. But Chicago did. A canal was dug connecting the Mississippi River system – including the Missouri, the Ohio and all their tributaries – to all of the Great Lakes at a point on Lake Michigan. It opened up commercial shipping to the interior of the nation. But it also opened up both bodies of waters to aquatic life you don’t want traveling back and forth. Invasive species such as the zebra mussel have traveled from one to the other. Asian Carp have already caused havoc in the Mississippi. Some biologists worry the Asian Carp will destroy the four-billion dollar fishing industry in the Great Lakes if it gets in. There’s an electric barrier in place, but some people don’t think that’s enough. Joel Brammeier is with the environmental group Alliance for the Great Lakes. His group is proposing a barrier that will separate the Mississippi system from the Great Lakes completely, to stop those invasive species. He talked with Lester Graham about the barrier:

Joel Brammeier: Well, ecological separation means no species moving between
the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. When you consider the problem of
invasive species, unlike chemical pollution, which you can reduce to a certain
safe level, there is no safe level of invasive species. Once two get in, they can
reproduce, and the damage is done, and there’s no going back. So, an
ecological separation means stopping fish, and eggs, and other critters from
moving back and forth between the two systems.

Lester Graham: How do you do that when there’s so much commercial traffic
and recreational boating, and just the water flowing through?

Brammeier: Well, in our research, we found that tech fixes – electrical barriers,
sound barriers, blowing bubbles through the water to try and deter fish from
moving – those things can reduce the risk. But for invasive species, risk
reduction really isn’t enough – you need 100% protection. And to do that, we’re
probably looking at some physical barrier that prevents water and live organisms
from moving between those two great watersheds.

Graham: I can imagine the commercial shippers are not thrilled about that.

Brammeier: Well, I think it remains to be seen. Nobody’s quite sure where the
best place is to put a barrier. We discussed about half a dozen different
scenarios under which you could implement that kind of separation. The
Chicago waterway system does support about 25 million tons, give or take, a
year of commercial commodity traffic – and that’s a significant amount. The
reality is that most of that cargo is internal to the Chicago waterways. So, there
isn’t a huge exchange of cargo between the Chicago waterway and the Great
Lakes. And that’s a good thing. That means we have opportunities to actually
split the system back to the way it historically was, and at the same time, solve
our invasive species problem.

Graham: Now, we can see how that would benefit the environment, but how
would it affect the economy?

Brammeier: Well, again, going back to this issue of commercial navigation. If we
create a separation in this system that has a minimal impact on most of the cargo
in the Chicago waterway, we’re really talking about potentially a very small
impact. And, frankly, there’s an opportunity here to create a benefit for
commodity movements as well. A lot of the cargo transfer facilities on the south
side of Chicago are outmoded, outdated, and not competitive. And, any
investment in this kind of project that changed that and also allowed cargo to
move more efficiently and created new port facilities, could have that kind of
benefit, besides protecting the Great Lakes from invasive species.

Related Links

Throwing the Big Fish Back

  • Fishing laws in Canada and US states often protect small fish and are less restrictive with big ones. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

People who love to fish spend plenty of money on gear, license fees and even gas for their boats. It’s enough to make anglers think, maybe they’re entitled to keeping the biggest fish for trophies or the frying pan, right? Shawn Allee met a researcher who wants you to throw back your biggest catch:

Transcript

People who love to fish spend plenty of money on gear, license fees and even gas for their boats. It’s enough to make anglers think, maybe they’re entitled to keeping the biggest fish for trophies or the frying pan, right? Shawn Allee met a researcher who wants you to throw back your biggest catch:

This is the guy who wants to change how a lot of people fish.

“My name is Paul Venturelli and I study fisheries biology at the University of Toronto.”

Venturelli’s disturbed by how many fish species are on the brink of collapse – either in oceans or in fresh water.

He hopes to grow fish stocks – with this fishing advice.

Toss the big ones back.

And what’s he got to back that up?

“I’ve got about ten pages of notes here. Nah, I’m kidding. I’m kidding.”

Actually, he says the idea is pretty simple.

“A ton of big, old fish will produce more new fish than a ton of smaller, younger fish. And this is because the bigger, older fish tend to produce offspring that have a higher chance of survival.”

Venturelli studies mostly ocean-species, but he says the principal should apply to North American freshwater fish like pike and walleye, too.

But Venturelli’s got a problem spreading this idea around.

Fishing laws in Canada and a lot of US states often protect small fish and are less restrictive with big ones.

I asked one of the head guys in Illinois fisheries, Joe Ferencak, why that is.

“Essentially what you’re doing with that minimum size limit is protecting one or two year classes of reproductive age fish so they can successfully spawn or reproduce.”

Ferencak says, fisheries science has stood behind the ‘protect the small fish’ theory for decades – with some exceptions.

He says to change laws, Venturelli would need to do more studies.

Plus, Ferencak says no state would want to completely keep people from big fish – that’s just not much fun.

“We want to maintain and enhance these fisheries for the benefit of the fishing public, the angler. And it’s kind of counter-intuitive to not allow them to take these larger fish.”

Well, I figure it wouldn’t be fair to talk about big fish without talking to outdoorsmen, so I spent some time in Griffith, Indiana.

It’s about ten miles from Lake Michigan.

Fishing and hunting outlets are all around – and there’s this place.

Allee: “So what’s the establishment.”

Leap: “American Natural Resources.”

Edward Leap Senior runs American Natural Resources – it’s a taxidermy shop – with stuffed deer, fox, and fish filling every nook and cranny.

I figure Leap would rush to the defense of catching big fish, but, you know what? He doesn’t bite.

Allee: “If you get a whole bunch of fish in your boat, I mean, you want to show off the big one. Most people do, right?”

Leap: “Yes and no, though. When you get talking about the conscientious outdoorsman, no, he’s not going to be thinking this way. He’s going to say, ‘I got this fifteen pound walleye, a super-trophy fish. It took a lot of years to grow this fish, I’m going to take a picture of it and I’m going to release it.'”

And, to prove the point, he reaches back and pulls a fish trophy off the shelf.

“For the trophy part of it, we’ll do a reproduction of it that you can’t tell from the real thing. And the fish now is out there spawning, and making eggs, and continuing its species.”

Leap says more and more fishermen are having him make fake fish – or, reproductions, as he calls them.

So, from his vantage, scientists like Paul Venturelli won’t have too much trouble with the advice to ‘throw back the big ones.’

Leap says you don’t have to keep fish you catch, and in his experience, smaller fish make better eating anyway.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Asian Carp Barrier on Low

  • Asian Carp can grow up to 110 pounds (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

A stronger electric barrier
to keep an invasive fish out of the
Great Lakes is set to be turned on.
But people who travel past the
underwater barrier are worried about
electric shocks. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Transcript

A stronger electric barrier
to keep an invasive fish out of the
Great Lakes is set to be turned on.
But people who travel past the
underwater barrier are worried about
electric shocks. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

This barrier is supposed to keep Asian carp from getting into the Great Lakes.

Those fish escaped from Southern fish farms years ago. They’ve spread up the Mississippi river.
Now they’re near a canal that connects the Mississippi system with the Great Lakes.

Biologists worry the big fish would ruin Great Lakes fishing and the Lakes’ ecosystems. Start up
of ‘The Stronger Barrier’ was delayed because of concerns the electric current could hurt crews
on barges and people on recreational boats as the vessels passed by.

U.S. Coast Guard Captain Bruce Jones recently gave thumbs-up to running the new barrier at
low power.

“ We believe it will continue to keep the Great Lakes protected from carp through the winter, until
spawning season starts.”

But biologists don’t think the barrier will work well enough at low power. And barge operators
don’t want it on at all. They’ll be discussing the concerns at a meeting in Chicago in January.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Stripping Energy From Slow Water

  • Michael Bernitsas, professor in the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, stands before a prototype of his VIVACE hydrokinetic energy device. (Photo by Scott Galvin, courtesy of the University of Michigan)

Some scientists think that
the future of energy is in water.
More specifically, it’s in slow-
moving water. Kyle Norris has more:

Transcript

Some scientists think that
the future of energy is in water.
More specifically, it’s in slow-
moving water. Kyle Norris has more:

Michael Bernitsas is really excited about using water to generate electricity.

“Marine renewable energy is huge. Water is the best natural medium for
storing energy.”

Bernitsas is a Professor of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at the
University of Michigan. And he’s made this machine. Basically it’s a
cylinder that bobs up-and-down in a tank of slow flowing water. The
cylinder creates these swirls of water that hit a generator. And it turns the
kinetic energy into electricity.

Bernitsas thinks there’s a lot of potential to create clean, renewable energy
from flowing water. He says people could eventually put machines, like this
one, in rivers and power houses.

And he says bigger versions of the machine could go into oceans and rivers.
And generate as much electricity as a small coal-burning power plant.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Paddling Through Pollution

  • Dredgers, a group that gets together to canoe on the Gowanus, hope that if people see the state of the canal, they'll be inspired to help clean it up (Photo by Samara Freemark)

A group of New Yorkers is trying
to convince people to get out on one of
the most polluted bodies of water in the
country – literally out there, in canoes.
Samara Freemark reports that they hope once
people see the water up close, they’ll
realize just how dirty it is. And maybe
then they’ll help clean it up:

Transcript

A group of New Yorkers is trying to convince people to get out on one of the most
polluted bodies of water in the country- literally out there, in canoes. Samara
Freemark reports that they hope once people see the water up close, they’ll realize
just how dirty it is. And maybe then they’ll help clean it up:

(sound of water, paddling)

You wouldn’t believe the stuff people have pulled out of the Gowanus Canal.
Refrigerators. Bathtubs, rusted cars. A 5000 pound dead whale. A suitcase full of
human body parts. Sewage floods into the canal all the time. So you see everything
people flush down their toilets. The water itself is a sickly, opaque green.

And that’s just the stuff you can see. The canal used to be a dumping ground for the
factories that line it. And the sediment at the bottom is still full of a laundry list of
toxic chemicals: cyanide, mercury, lead, asbestos. Scientists found strains of
gonorrhea in a water sample just last year.

And I’m sitting in a canoe in the middle of it.

(water noise, “Ewww, oh, God, gross. It’s like a subway down here.”)

The Gowanus is a 2 mile long trough of murky water that flows into the New York
Harbor – though the word ‘flowing ‘ is a bit optimistic, since the water mostly just sits
there.

You wouldn’t think anyone would want to canoe in this kind of water – much less
see it as a good way to spend a lazy summer afternoon.

(Laughs.) “ My first day was like, hell no. I knew it was going to be nasty.” (Laughs.)

That’s Alex Kovaleski. She’s a Dredger, a member of a group that gets together to
canoe the Gowanus.

“But I’m always looking for an adventure or a way to see things from a new
perspective, so I went out. And then I started having dreams about it, and it was all
over.”

Kovaleski knew she had to do something.

So almost every summer weekend she and the Dredgers gather at a makeshift pier
and paddle up and down the canal.

They invite others along. Anyone who shows up can jump in a borrowed canoe and
take it for a paddle. They get a lot of first-timers, New Yorkers who have heard about
the trips and come for the novelty or to get a taste of nature in this most urban of
cities.

That’s why Stephen Kline and Beatrice Aranow came. This is their first time at a
Dredgers event. I speak with them on the pier, before they step into a canoe. They
say they came because they love nature, they love being out on the water, and they
want to see their city from a whole new perspective.

Stephen and Beatrice are in for a big surprise. Twenty minutes later, they had their
new perspective.

(talking over each other) “ There were like dead rats, turds. It was a lot worse than I
could have ever imagined. It wasn’t that mysterious. I actually thought I was going
to have a pleasant time going out but it was pretty intense. It was repulsive.”

This doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement of the Dredgers.

But Alex says Stephen and Beatrice’s reaction isn’t that bad – it’s actually kind of the
point.

“Part of it is just being out there with the poop and the trash, like, hah, here it is,
there’s no getting away from it. When you’re in it, you’re naturally longing to see it
restored.”

A week later I came back to the Gowanus canal for another Dredgers event. This
one’s a cleanup day, and volunteers are out with rubber gloves and bags, picking up
trash. It’s kind of a festive scene- there’s music and free pizza. And there’s a group of
high schoolers who came to spend the day canoeing and helping out.

(students talking about canoeing, cleaning)

Alex says those students are who the Dredgers really want to reach. The Gowanus
isn’t going to be clean anytime soon. But those kids are going to grow up, and they’re
going to be tax payers and voters. Soon they’re going to make the decisions that
decide the future of the canal.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

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