Month: April 2009

Turning the Ski Slopes Green

  • Ski resorts are one of a growing number of businesses trying to be more sustainable (Photo by Baileypalblue, source: Wikimedia Commons)

Back in February, President Obama proposed $150 billion to employ people in “green collar jobs.” The idea was to create jobs that benefited the environment. But he also wanted to boost the economy. A ski resort wanted to be one step ahead. So it hired a new employee to help its 2,500 acres “go green.” Irene Noguchi reports:

Transcript

Back in February, President Obama proposed $150 billion to employ people in “green collar jobs.” The idea was to create jobs that benefited the environment. But he also wanted to boost the economy. A ski resort wanted to be one step ahead. So it hired a new employee to help its 2,500 acres “go green.” Irene Noguchi reports:

(sound of rustling cans)

Ross Freeman crawls into a giant recycling container. His legs are sticking out.

He holds a long rake and shuffles the cans inside.

“We actually fill this thing up to the brim with recycling. Ends up being 2,000 or 2,500 pounds of recycling we send off the mountain every 10 to 12 days.”

(sound of mixing cans around)

This is part of his job. Ross Freeman is the eco-steward at Stevens Pass. It’s a ski resort tucked in the Cascade Mountains in Washington state.

His official title is “Environment and Sustainability Manager.” Stevens Pass created that position last year, when it wanted to make itself more eco-friendly.

John Meriwether is director of planning and environmental services at the resort. He’s worked here for 16 years.

“The ski industry has changed a lot. And really, the biggest change I think is them realizing how much global warming is affecting their business. The industry as a whole makes a lot of snow and one degree difference in the climate can change that.”

Meriwether says ski resorts are pushing more money into fighting global warming.

Stevens Pass pledged to offset all its emissions with energy credits. It’s the only resort in the Pacific Northwest that does this.

Ross Freeman’s work is on the ground. He drags out furniture that can’t go in the landfill. He recycles rubber wheels from the ski lifts.

“Then the next moment I’m up in the office designing a policy for vehicle idling, then I’m applying for grants, applying for industry awards, then I’m out in the food and beverage world, talking to cooks and chefs in the kitchens to figure out how we can be more efficient and waste less food.”

All this is part of the resort’s efforts to meet the national “green” standards. The National Ski Areas Association has 21 environmental guidelines it wants resorts to follow. It’s called Sustainable Slopes. The Ski Association says 190 resorts endorse it, including Stevens Pass.

Ryan Bidwell is the executive director of Colorado Wild. It’s an environmental group that grades ski resorts. He says endorsing the Ski Association’s Sustainable Slopes guidelines is different than actually following them.

“To be a part of the Sustainable Slopes program, a resort just has to say, ‘Yeah, we agree with these principles.’ They don’t actually have to take any action. Sustainable Slopes contains a whole laundry list of fantastic ideas that
resorts can and should be doing, but there’s no accountability in the program.”

Bidwell’s group grades ski resorts on everything from recycling to the effect on old growth forests. So how “green” was Stevens Pass on the environmental score card?

“Stevens received a ‘C’ because it has some expansion plans that would extend the resort into currently undeveloped areas and would impact those sensitive areas. So they lose a few points on that side.”

But Bidwell says hiring an eco-steward like Ross Freeman is a step in the right direction.

(sound of feet crunching the snow)

Freeman says there are only a few jobs like his. But he hopes more ski resorts will start hiring folks like him when they go green.

For The Environment Report, I’m Irene Noguchi.

Related Links

Interview: Carbon Cap and Trade

  • If proposed energy legislation passes in Congress, renewable energy sources like wind an solar will become more competitive with fossil fuels. (Photo by Erin Toner)

Congress is considering a carbon cap-and-trade program that would make fossil fuels more expensive and give renewable energy an advantage. The U.S. is in the middle of a huge transition in where we get energy and how we use it. Some businesses leaders predict these changes will be disastrous for the economy killing jobs and making energy expensive. Lester Graham discussed some of those concerns with Tom Lyon, the Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise.

Transcript

Congress is considering a carbon cap-and-trade program that would make fossil fuels more expensive and give renewable energy an advantage. The U.S. is in the middle of a huge transition in where we get energy and how we use it. Some businesses leaders predict these changes will be disastrous for the economy killing jobs and making energy expensive. Lester Graham discussed some of those concerns with Tom Lyon, the Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise:

“I think it’s important to think about who you’re hearing these things from. Because there are certain industries who are really opposed and scared and they’re making a lot of noise. And it’s essentially the fossil fuel people; it’s the coal industry and then after that, the oil industry. And they have a very special-interest stake in this. So you gotta take what they say with a big grain of salt. Probably electricity prices will increase: not by a lot, not by fifty percent. They’ll go up slightly—depends what kind of region of the country you are in. If you’re in an area dominated by coal-fired power, your costs will go up some because coal is dirty, coal’s been getting a free ride for a long time. The price of coal should go up. If you’re in an area that’s already shifted towards renewables, you’re costs won’t go up much.”

And you mean wind turbines and…

“Wind turbines, hydroelectric power, biomass, solar.”

And what about jobs? Are we going to see this being a job killer?

“It’s going to be a transition device; it’s going to allow us to move towards a 21st century economy. So it’s going to allow us to put people on the ground building wind turbines, installing and maintaining wind turbines, putting in solar cells, and I think there are going to be a lot of jobs in the energy efficiency sector. It’s going to transition our automobile sector towards plug-in electric vehicles and things that might sell in a future economy that’s going to be climate constrained and that’s going to face higher energy prices.”

So it sounds like coal miners should be thinking about job training or retraining.

“Coal miners should definitely be thinking about retraining! You know, that’s just, it’s just an inevitable thing—where the economy is going, retraining is an important thing but this puts us on the right path toward the future.”

Now the President, and some environmentalists, and some leading businesses say, “We’ll be more energy independent, we’ll have clean wind and solar power, we’ll be much more energy efficient because of retrofitting these buildings, we’ll lead the world in renewable, clean energy. How’s that benefit me, at home?

“I think the first thing is, it benefits you because you’re helping to move the planet in the right direction. You’re making the planet a better place for your kids, for your grandkids, and you’re averting the risk that we go over the climate cliff. Because that’s very much a real risk.”

So global warming really is going to be as disastrous as we hear some of the alarmists say.

“It could be. We don’t know for certain. There’s a whole lot of uncertainty around this. However, I think most people who’ve thought about this agree we need to move in the direction of solving the climate problem because the news is always bad. Every new report that comes out of modern science shows the planet’s warming faster than we thought, sea level is rising faster than we thought; the whole thing is moving much more quickly than people thought even five years ago. So there’s no news that’s pointing in the other direction. The urgency just keeps increasing.”

There’s likely to be a huge fight in Washington and Congress is going to be terribly divided on carbon cap-and-trade: what do you think the likely outcome is?

“I think we’re gonna pass something. The Obama folks are very committed; they’ve staffed up with very smart people who understand the issue, who’ve been working on it for years. There’s a lot of political commitment within the congress already and Obama has taken this on as a signature issue.”

Tom Lyon is the Director of the Erb Institute of Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan. He spoke with The Environment Report’s Lester Graham.

Related Links

Trading in Your Clunker

  • A proposed program would allow car owners to trade in their gas-guzzling clunkers and get a cash incentive towards a new, more efficient car. (Photo by Martin Hans, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

A proposed cash for clunkers program might jump start the auto industry and help the environment at the same time. Tamara Keith reports the idea is getting some traction in Washington DC:

Transcript

A proposed cash for clunkers program might jump start the auto industry and help the environment at the same time. Tamara Keith reports the idea is getting some traction in Washington DC:

The idea is: if you bring in your old gas guzzler, you’d get money to buy a new fuel-efficient car. The gas guzzler? Straight to the junk yard , getting older, smog belching vehicles off the road. John McEleney is the chairman of the national automobile dealers association. He says how much you’d get would be based on how fuel efficient the new car is. For instance, if you bought a car that gets 27 miles to the gallon:

“They might qualify for say a $3500 incentive. If they instead purchased a vehicle that was rated at 33 miles a gallon that incentive could then go to $5000.”

One big question is whether only American-made cars would qualify. That’s one of the issues congress and the white house will have to work out– Oh, along with figuring out where the money would come from. For the Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

Related Links

Rocket Fuel Chemical in Baby Formula

  • The CDC has found perchlorate, a chemical from rocket fuel, in baby formula. (Photo courtesy of TSA.gov)

Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control have found perchlorate in baby formula. It’s a chemical used in rocket fuel. It’s been linked to thyroid problems and it can interfere with a baby’s development. Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

The Centers for Disease Control has found perchlorate in baby formula. It’s a chemical used in rocket fuel. It’s been linked to thyroid problems and it can interfere with a baby’s development. Rebecca Williams has more:

The CDC researchers tested 45 samples of baby formula and perchlorate turned up in all of them. They found it in really small amounts. But they did find formula made from cow’s milk had the highest levels and soy-based formula and synthetic formula had much lower levels.

Perchlorate has also been found in breast milk.

Dr. Josh Schier is one of the study’s authors.

“CDC still recommends that mothers’ breast milk is the best nutrition for a developing infant. Now the Food and Drug Administration, you have to remember, requires infant formulas to contain iodine and iodine can potentially help to offset effects of perchlorate on the thyroid.”

The American Thyroid Association says women who are pregnant or nursing should check with their doctor about taking an iodine supplement.

For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Questions About New Water Disinfectant

  • Karen Lukacsena owns an aquarium store outside of Pittsburgh. She's recommending that customers filter their tap water. This is because Chloramine, a new chemical more utility companies are using to purify water, kills the fish (and could be toxic to humans, too). (Photo by Katherine Fink)

The way your tap water is disinfected might be changing. Federal regulations to improve water safety are leading water utilities to switch the kind of chemicals they use. But Katherine Fink reports one of those chemicals might do more harm than good:

Transcript

The way your tap water is disinfected might be changing. Federal regulations to improve water safety are leading water utilities to switch the kind of chemicals they use. But Katherine Fink reports one of those chemicals might do more harm than good.

Elmer’s Aquarium has tanks and tanks of fish.

“These are all freshwater; these fish come from all over the world.”

Karen Lukacsena is the Vice President of Elmer’s Aquarium here in a suburb of Pittsburgh.

“Elmer’s has been here for 40 years, and Elmer was my father.”

A lot has changed since Elmer started the business. For instance, there are different products that purify tap water for aquariums:

“Because we don’t really know when someone comes in here what their water’s treated with–whether it’s chlorine or chloramine. And they can always call and check, but to be safe, we just think everyone should go ahead and treat their water.”

Chlorine poisons fish. But if you set water out for a few days, the chlorine will dissipate. Chloramine is different. It’s what you get when you mix chlorine and ammonia. And it does not dissipate. It sticks around.

That’s one reason drinking water providers like it. Paul Zielinski is with Pennsylvania-American Water:

“We don’t see the decay through the distribution system reaching our furthest customers like we do with chlorine; it tends to stay longer in the system and provide a higher disinfectant level, if you will.”

That means even if the water stays in the underground pipes for a long time, chloramine will still be doing the job, disinfecting the water. Until recently, only about one-fifth of water providers used chloramine. Soon, two-thirds of them might be using it. That’s because of new federal rules that take effect in 2012. The Environmental Protection Agency found when organic matter—such as vegetation—mixes with chlorine, it increases the risk of bladder cancer and reproductive problems. So Zielinski says water providers like his are being ordered to limit that risk:

“So one of the ways to do it is obviously to switch from chlorine, which generates these byproducts, to chloramines, which doesn’t.”

But all disinfectants have their downside. For one thing, chloramine corrodes lead and copper pipes. Many water providers add other chemicals to prevent that from happening. But a few years ago, when Washington D.C. switched to chloramine, lead got into the water. Lead is toxic. It can cause learning disabilities. So much lead got into the tap water that researchers believe some young children lost IQ points.

The EPA’s regulatory arm says chloramine’s safe. But an EPA chemist, Susan Richardson, says she’s not so sure:

“Personally, as a private citizen, I would be a little bit concerned myself, and might have a filter on my faucet.”

Richardson’s research found that chloramine also creates byproducts in drinking water. And those byproducts appear even more toxic than the ones created by chlorine:

“I’m really hoping that some of the toxicologists at EPA carry this further to really help us assess that.”

“And in the meantime, we’re going to be drinking this water.”

Susan Pickford is an attorney who doesn’t want her town’s water to be disinfected with chloramine.

“Bathing in it, using it in cooking, and exposing ourselves to huge toxins until the EPA gets around to regulating them.”

Pickford is fighting plans to use chloramine in her central Pennsylvania town. She says there’s a better way to reduce toxic byproducts, and no one’s talking about it: filtering the water.

“If they could filter, and they can, there is filtration available that would help them filter 70 to 80 percent of those organics out of the source water, then when the chlorine cleans the water, it wouldn’t be creating all these byproducts.”

But better filtration systems are expensive. And utilities say water bills would go up for customers. That’s not popular. So they say it’s a matter of customers deciding how much of a risk they’re willing to take, and how much they’re willing to pay.

For the Environment Report, I’m Katherine Fink.

Related Links

Who’s to Blame for the Dead Zone

  • It is predicted that the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the size of the state of Massachusetts (Photo courtesy of NASA)

About 40% of the continental U-S drains into the Mississippi River. It sends water – and pollution – from across the country into the Gulf of Mexico. A new study shows just who the worst offenders are. Gabriel Spitzer has the story:

Transcript

About 40% of the continental U-S drains into the Mississippi River. It sends water – and pollution – from across the country into the Gulf of Mexico. A new study shows just who the worst offenders are. Gabriel Spitzer has the story:

All the pollution creates a dead zone in the Gulf nearly the size of New Jersey.

Nitrogen and Phosphorus pour in and fertilize big algae blooms.

When that stuff decays, it sucks oxygen out of the water, and makes it impossible for most fish to live there.

US Geological Survey researchers say most of the problem comes from farm runoff, but the single biggest source is sewage from Chicago.

Albert Ettinger with the Environmental and Law Policy Center says Chicago water managers have to catch up with their neighbors.

“They’re gonna have to look at treatment systems which take nitrogen out of the water, and bring phosphorus down to one milligram per liter. It’s done in Milwaukee, it’s done in Cleveland, it’s done in Detroit.”

Chicago’s Metropolitan Water Reclamation District say they haven’t had a chance to look closely at the study yet, so they don’t want to comment on it.

But they don’t like being singled out.

For The Environment Report, I’m Gabriel Spitzer.

Related Links

Interview: Why Private Forests Matter

There are 751 million acres of forest lands in the United States. More than half of it – 56% – is privately owned. Some of that land is owned by big timber companies. But the majority is owned by individuals and families. The American Forest Foundation represents those private landowners. Until last week, Larry Wiseman was CEO of the group. Lester Graham talked with Wiseman just before he left the organization. Wiseman says privately owned forests are at risk.

Transcript

There are 751 million acres of forest lands in the United States. More than half of it – 56% – is privately owned. Some of that land is owned by big timber companies. But the majority is owned by individuals and families. The American Forest Foundation represents those private landowners. Until last week, Larry Wiseman was CEO of the group. Lester Graham talked with Wiseman just before he left the organization. Wiseman says privately owned forests are at risk.

Larry Wiseman: “One of the great paradoxes that most folks don’t quite get is that the largest part of the productive forest land in the United States is owned by families and individuals. Some 5 million folks who own more than 10 acres of land, some of them as long as 300 or 400 years – land has been in their family since before the United States was actually created.”

Lester Graham: “There’s a lot of concern these days because as the demand for things like newsprint, the demand for lumber is down because of the economy, there’s some concern that some pretty large tracts of land might be sold for things like development, just simply because they’re not making as much money off of this land. Is there a real risk of that?”

Wiseman: “Absolutely. The risk of conversion of forest land to development has accelerated over the past decade, to the point that we’re losing a little bit over one million acres a year. To put that in perspective, that’s about the size of the Everglades National Park every year. One of the primary pressures on forest owners, whether they own 1,000 acres or 100, is that they can’t do the kind of conservation work they want to do unless they have some cash. You know, cash is really the cornerstone of conservation when you’re talking about private property. People have to pay taxes, people have to buy liability insurance, people have to invest in the future of their forests, and if there’s no cash flow at the end, then it becomes very hard for them to say ‘no’ when a developer comes calling. This isn’t to say that all of these 4 or 5 million folks are growing timber for profit – very few of them actually do. But, by the same token, most of them have to develop cash flow, or, over time, it becomes very hard for them to keep their land as forests.”

Graham: “There has been suggestion that carbon offsets by planting more forest land, or that forest land owners should get some sort of compensation for the service that a forest would do – but there’s a lot of debate about the net-gain of a forest sequestering carbon dioxide. I’m wondering what your members feel about that issue?”

Wiseman: “There’s no doubt that on a net-net basis the forests in the United States currently absorb about 10% of the carbon dioxide upload as a nation.”

Graham: “Should your members be compensated for that?”

Wiseman: “Well, let me get to that in a minute. I believe they should be compensated. But our organization takes the position that healthy growing forests that are being managed for a suite of values – including carbon sequestration, water quality, wildlife habitat – provide a wide range of services to the public that the public doesn’t understand that it’s getting. These folks are volunteers; they’re providing clean water, cleaner air, wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation, and green space – for free! And, the great paradox is that the public doesn’t understand that they have a stake in the future of these forests, just as the owners do. Accordingly, that’s why our organization has long stressed the need to create streams of income that reward people for the stewardship investments they make that benefit the public as a whole.”

Tom Lyon is the Director of the Erb Institute of Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan. He spoke with The Environment Report’s Lester Graham.

Related Links

Spit Polishing Military Sites

  • The US Military claims that it is exempt from cleaning up polluted former military sites. Neighbors contest this claim. (Image courtesy of the US Department of Defense)

The military has long gotten breaks on some environmental laws. Chuck
Quirmbach reports Congress might put a limit on those exemptions for the
military:

Transcript

There are thousands of old military sites in need of environmental cleanup. But, work on many has been slow partly because of disputes over the defense department getting waivers from some
environmental laws.

More than 80 community groups are supporting the so-called Military Environmental Responsibility Act. The measure would eliminate the long-term breaks from environmental laws. Laura Olah lives near a former army ammunition plant. She says the bill would force the military to act faster in cleaning up the properties.

“It’s a win-win. I mean, it’s gonna save a lot of tax dollars because it’s
gonna motivate clean ups in a timely manner and that’s when we save money.”

Olah says it saves money because once the land is cleaned up, it can be
reused.

The US military has said the long-term exemptions are needed for national
security.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Organic Meat Hard to Find

  • Organic steak is hard to find, partly because so few slaughterhouses are certified organic. (Photo by David Benbennick, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Organic farmers would love to have you dig into more of their pork, chicken and beef. It’s not just because they’re proud about how they raise their animals – it’s because certified organic meat fetches high prices. But organic meat is harder to find than you’d expect, and it’s partly because there are few organically-certified slaughterhouses.
Shawn Allee found a farming community that came up with a solution:

Transcript

Organic farmers would love to have you dig into more of their pork, chicken and beef.

It’s not just because they’re proud about how they raise their animals – it’s because certified organic meat fetches high prices.

But organic meat is harder to find than you’d expect, and it’s partly because there are few organically-certified slaughterhouses.

Shawn Allee found a farming community that came up with a solution:

Dennis and Emily Wettstein turned their Illinois farm organic a while ago, mostly because conventional farming wasn’t practical for them.

“All the money seemed to go to pay for the fertilizers and the chemicals. And then I was more or less allergic to the chemicals. And so we were interested in getting away from that, especially if we were going to raise a family out here.”

The Wettsteins didn’t just raise grain organically – they kept chemicals and hormones out of their cattle.

“We started raising meat for ourselves and our families. Then, pretty soon, just word of mouth, friends and neighbors wanted meat.”

And, they found people who’d pay top dollar for their meat.

“We sell at the Oak Park farmers market.”

That’s just west of Chicago.

“Right. The Oak Park market managers, they are working on all the farmers to go towards organic.”

And that worked for the Wettsteins – they had USDA certified organic chicken.

“There’s one other meat vendor there – it’s not organic. So, we have no competition. We feel that, with that label on there, we can set our price to where we can make a profit.”

But Emily Wettstein says that term – organic – gave them trouble when it came to beef and other meat.

“We were getting a little bit pressured from other people, ‘Well, you can’t call your item organic. You don’t have a processing facility with the term of certified organic.'”

Here was the problem: For meat to get labeled USDA certified organic, it’s gotta be certified from the farm to the slaughterhouse.

The Wettsteins had someone to process organic chicken, but they were out of luck with pigs and cows.

There was no certified slaughterhouse for beef or pork in Illinois.

So, the Wettsteins and some relatives prodded meat lockers to get certified.
There was one taker.

“I’m inside a meat locker that’s about a fifteen minute drive from the Wettstein farm. It’s owned by Scott Bittner, and I’m here to understand what organic certification means for his business. How do I put this, there’s a headless, hoofless, skinless cow hanging from your ceiling. Where are we exactly?”

We’re on the kill floor. We had seventeen, eighteen cattle today. Seven of those were organic.

So, walk me through how you have to treat that organic cow differently.

It’s the first thing we did this morning – that’s one thing. Other than that, it’s segregating it in the cooler from the non-organic product and then processing it at a later time, which, again, you have to do first thing in the morning.

So, the basic idea is segregation?

Yeah, it is. The whole way through. Exactly.

Bittner’s simplifying things, but not much.

He has to clean or swap equipment between batches of organic and conventional meat.

There are rules on the kinds of chemicals he can use. And he hires a certification company to monitor his paper work.

Bittner says overall, it’s easy, and he’s surprised more slaughterhouses haven’t done it.

“Here we’re doing all our fabricating – grinding sausage, ground beef. Cutting some chops, ribs.”

“How does it feel to be the only guy who can process an organic side of beef?”

“I want to keep it quiet – I don’t want too many people to get started doing what I’m doing because it’s nice. I get two or three customers every year that I didn’t have before. When you go to bed at night and think about this economy being the way it is, every little bit helps.”

Bittner says farmers drive animals up to four hours to slaughter their animals here.

He says he’s proud of his work but can’t take too much credit; he knows he’s got a local organic slaughtering monopoly going.

That might change some day, but for now it’s reason enough to keep his knives sharp.

For the Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links