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.
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.
The Conservation Resource Alliance works with property-owners to repair their rivers from problems such as erosion (Photo courtesy of the Conservation Resource Alliance)
(Photo courtesy of the Conservation Resource Alliance)
American rivers have gone
through a lot in the last century.
Their twists and turns have been
turned into straight channels.
Their banks have been washed away.
And pollution is still flowing off
farm fields and city streets. Fixing
these rivers is a big challenge. A lot
of the land that rivers run through is
privately owned. So that means – to
fix a river, you often have to work with
landowners. Rebecca Williams has the story
of one group that thinks they’ve found
the secret to winning people’s trust:
Transcript
American rivers have gone
through a lot in the last century.
Their twists and turns have been
turned into straight channels.
Their banks have been washed away.
And pollution is still flowing off
farm fields and city streets. Fixing
these rivers is a big challenge. A lot
of the land that rivers run through is
privately owned. So that means – to
fix a river, you often have to work with
landowners. Rebecca Williams has the story
of one group that thinks they’ve found
the secret to winning people’s trust:
(bird sound)
Di Rau is the fourth generation of her family to farm this land in Northern
Michigan. Her grandpa homesteaded the land and set up a sawmill.
“It was the primary industry – I mean there was logging camps just
everywheres you turned.”
Back then the rivers were the only way to get those logs downstream. But
years of rolling logs down the bank into the river were causing serious
erosion. Huge trees were crashing into the water.
Rau says she didn’t know any of her family’s legacy until one day, when a
local group gave her a call. The more she learned about the problems, the
more she felt, well…
“Guilt! (laughs) Because of my ancestors. It’s like practicing medicine. It’s
always evolving and you don’t really know lots of times what you’re doing
wrong until another generation comes along and tells you this is what
you’ve created. Then it’s like okay let’s do something about it.”
So Rau let construction workers on her land. And now, ten years later, she
says it’s beautiful.
“Go down and just listen to creatures. You have deer come splashing
through, we have a bear around here, he likes to visit, couple bobcat.
There’s a lot of wildlife – it’s pretty cool.”
The woman who won Di Rau over is Kim Balke. She’s a biologist with the
group Conservation Resource Alliance. She says working with Di Rau was
pretty easy. But not everyone opens their doors so quickly.
There was the divorced couple who still owned land together, the fighting
brothers, the neighbors who nobody liked.
“Other people have said you know don’t go to their house they’ll greet you
with a shotgun!”
So far, no shotguns. Balke says she’s learned not to listen to what neighbors
say about each other. She approaches each person one by one, and talks to
them about what’s at stake. Her sales pitch? We’re just here to help – and
hey, we’ll pay most of the bill.
“You know a lot of our projects are erosion control, when banks are
completely falling into the stream – landowners, it’s not hard for them to
realize they’re losing property.”
But Balke says, still, you can’t just rush in and tell people what to do. She
says it can take months or even years to warm homeowners up to the
project.
That’s because fixing rivers is serious work. If a riverbank is eroding or an
old bridge is falling into the water, we’re talking about heavy construction
equipment. You have to be willing to have bulldozers and port-a-johns on
your lawn for a long time. And you might have to lose a tree.
“Things can look a little rough when you’re doing construction and some
people are a little worried about change.”
Balke says she just takes her time. She sends letters, sits down for coffee,
lets people think it over.
And it’s not just homeowners who Balke’s group needs to win over. There
are road commissions, tribes, sportfishers, and environmentalists. People
who sometimes just don’t trust each other.
Amy Beyer directs Conservation Resource Alliance. She says her group has
gotten all those people together.
“Yes they have been historically mortal enemies and that doesn’t mean all of
the baggage falls away but I can tell you it feels awfully good to go around
the circle when we complete a project and hear all the different voices and
how they’re celebrating that success.”
Beyer says this is not a quick and easy process – it can take years to get
people to actually find some little thing to agree on. But she says you can
fix a river without ever going to court.
Both Obama and McCain say they support fixing the Great Lakes (Photo by Lester Graham)
Barack Obama and John McCain
are greening up their effort to win
some battleground states in November.
The Obama campaign has released a five
point plan for protecting the Great Lakes.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
Barack Obama and John McCain
are greening up their effort to win
some battleground states in November. The Obama campaign has released a five
point plan for protecting the Great Lakes.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Great lakes advocates have been urging Washington to approve a 20 billion dollar restoration package for the lakes.
Illinois senator Obama says he’s willing to come up with an additional 5 billion dollars. He’d get the money by rolling back tax breaks for oil and natural gas companies.
Michigan Democratic senator Debbie Stabenow is helping promote Obama’s plan. She says it goes well beyond the Bush Administration’s unmet promises to pay for lakes cleanup.
“What we are seeing through this plan is actually putting the dollars into a trust fund so the dollars would be there.”
Senator Obama also wants a coordinator of Great Lakes programs to tackle toxic hot spots, invasive species and enforcing a compact to protect the lakes from large water withdrawals.
The McCain campaign says Senator McCain supports fixing the Great Lakes, but he’s not
ready to commit to an amount yet.
An endangered holiday darter. Darters are among the most threatened Southeastern fish; they have been likened to aquatic canaries. (Photo by Noel Burkhead, courtesy of USGS)
A new study shows things are getting
worse for fish in North America. Lester
Graham reports water pollution is the problem:
Transcript
A new study shows things are getting
worse for fish in North America. Lester
Graham reports water pollution is the problem:
The U.S. Geological Survey finds nearly twice as many kinds of fish are now listed
as imperiled today than just 20 years ago. 61 types of fish have gone extinct.
Howard Jelks is the lead author of the study.
He says the decline in fish is because most streams, rivers, and lakes are in worse
shape because of sprawling development, farmers’ chemicals, and pollution washed
off parking lots and streets.
Even if you don’t go fishing, or really even care about the fish, Jelks says there’s a
reason you should care.
“You know, at a certain point, it’s a quality of life issue. If it’s not good enough for
some of these fish, it’s probably not good enough for your kids to swim in.”
And the experts say that means we all have to think about what’s going down the
drain and what chemicals we’re putting on lawns, and on farms.
Toronto is now getting its beaches certified as safe by an international program called 'Blue Flag'
(Photo by Julie Grant)
A group of swimmers head to the blue-flagged Woodbine Beach, on the east side of Toronto
(Photo by Julie Grant)
Beaches on the Great Lakes have
been closed a lot this summer because of
pollution. But instead of raising the
white flag of surrender, in Canada, they’re
starting to raise a blue flag. Julie Grant
reports the Blue Flag Programme certifies
a beach is safe:
Transcript
Beaches on the Great Lakes have
been closed a lot this summer because of
pollution. But instead of raising the
white flag of surrender, in Canada, they’re
starting to raise a blue flag. Julie Grant
reports the Blue Flag Programme certifies
a beach is safe:
(sound of beach)
It’s a clear, cool summer morning by Lake Ontario. Some
people are playing volleyball, others are walking along the
boardwalk at Woodbine beach, on the east side of Toronto.
Nobody is swimming in the lake.
Beach person 1: “No I don’t swim here.”
Beach person 2: “I grew up here, and I’ve never actually
swam in Lake Ontario. Sometimes they were closed and it
was always off and on, so it never seemed like a good thing
to do.”
Beach Person 3: “It’s gross, man. It’s pretty nasty. One
time I found a couple of Band Aids. After that, I was like, ‘I’m
not going back in this water.’”
City leaders say those views are outdated.
Lou DiGeranimo is Toronto’s general manager of water.
He’s in charge of everything from drinking water to sewers
and storm water runoff.
DiGeranimo says the Lake’s bad reputation lingers
from the time when Toronto was a major port for lumber, for
shipbuilding, and for foundries.
“When you talk to certain people in the city, they remember
the old industrial heart of our city and they think that Lake
Ontario is polluted and you shouldn’t swim in it. Well we beg
to differ. You can swim in it and our water quality is actually
quite good.”
DiGeranimo is trying to change the public image of Lake
Ontario one beach at a time. So far he’s been able to get six
Toronto beaches certified as safe by an international
program called Blue Flag. DiGeranimo says the blue flag
shows that someone besides the city is checking up on the
beaches.
“There’s an external group, Environmental Defense, that
actually, we work with. And they themselves are part of a
larger international group who come round and audit to
make sure that we are following the program accordingly.”
Thousands of beaches in The Caribbean, Europe and South
Africa fly blue flags. Toronto has some of the first beaches
in Canada to be certified by the program. The city has to
test water quality every day. It also has to provide
lifeguards, recycling containers, and environmental
education programs.
But water quality is usually the biggest obstacle for beaches
trying to get a certification.
(sound of beach)
A blue flag waves in the wind at Toronto’s Woodbine beach.
But not without considerable cost. The sewer used to
overflow regularly here into Lake Ontario. The city built
underground retention tanks to store sewage overflow until it
could be sent to a treatment plant.
But multi-million dollar sewer fixes usually are not possible
for many cities.
So DiGeranimo says people also need to take action at
home. Toronto has been trying to educate people to be
careful what they wash down the drain. And DiGeranimo
says Toronto banned the use of some lawn chemicals
because they were polluting the Lake.
“If I took a bag of chemicals and then just dumped it in the
river, I could charge you for impairing the water quality. But
if you dumped it on your lawn first, and then it ended up in
the creek, that would be okay. So in the city we passed a
bylaw that restricted the use of certain chemicals.”
That kind of ban would be a tough sell in most U.S. cities. It
wasn’t easy in Toronto either.
But Jody Fry says it’s helped the city earn Blue Flags at
many beaches. Fry is Canada’s national Blue Flag program
coordinator. She says people on all shores are starting to do
the work to certify their beaches.
“It raises awareness both at the beach and throughout the
community of what actions people can take to help improve
the water quality. Which, I think, people are looking for,
because they want to help contribute to protecting the
environment.”
The city of Toronto hopes to raise Blue Flags at five more
beaches soon. For now, they want to spread the word – if
you see a Blue Flag flying at the beach, it’s a signal that you
can trust that the water is clean for swimming.
The beach looks beautiful... until you stumble on dead birds and fish killed by Type E botulism.
(Photo by Rebecca Williams)
A poisoned seagull on a Lake Erie beach.
(Photo by Lester Graham)
Researcher Dr. Brenda Moraska LaFrancois and the team getting ready to head out on Lake Michigan to investigate the avian botulism mystery. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Researcher Dr. Hans Van Sumeren holding the Little Benthic Vehicle – a remote operated machine that allows the dive team to take photos and collect samples from the bottom of Lake Michigan. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
A deadly toxin is spreading across
the Great Lakes, killing fish and birds.
Rebecca Williams reports scientists are
trying to put the puzzle together as quickly
as they can:
Transcript
A deadly toxin is spreading across
the Great Lakes, killing fish and birds.
Rebecca Williams reports scientists are
trying to put the puzzle together as quickly
as they can:
(sound of waves lapping the beach)
It’s one of those perfect beach days. Not too hot, not too crowded. Everything’s
just right.
Unless you don’t like rotting fish and dead birds full of maggots.
Hunter Brower is hanging out at this Lake Michigan beach. He says he’s seen a
lot of dead gulls here in recent years.
“It’s disgusting. We’re out here to enjoy our time and it’s just not right.”
The birds and fish are being killed by Type E botulism. Basically, it’s food
poisoning. For about a decade now, botulism has been killing huge numbers of
birds in the Great Lakes.
We’re talking about more than 75,000 birds – and scientists think that’s probably
a very conservative estimate. That’s because birds could be dying and not
reaching the shore. And it’s very hard to know how many fish are getting killed.
They’re harder to diagnose.
“It’s really one of nature’s most potent toxins.”
Mark Breederland is with Michigan SeaGrant. He says some studies show the
toxin can paralyze fish.
“They can actually lose their orientation and be bobbing up and down vertically
and that would be easy pickin’s if you’re a loon.”
Loons and other birds eat those poisoned fish, or, even grosser, they’ll eat the
maggots in dead birds on the beach, and get sick. The toxin can make birds lose
control of their neck muscles. Their heads fall in the water and they drown.
Beaches full of dead fish and birds aren’t great for tourism. But scientists are
more worried about what this means for endangered species – from the giant lake
sturgeon to the tiny piping plover.
Mark Breederland says they’re also worried about the thousands of migratory
birds that get killed on their way south in the fall.
“They’re just driving down their migratory highway, pulling over for a rest stop to
get something to eat, and that’s their last and final resting spot.”
So scientists are trying to pin down what’s going on.
There’s one main hypothesis. It involves some nasty little critters: invasive zebra
mussels and their cousins, the quaggas. They got into the lakes in the ballast
water of foreign ships.
Both mussels suck in lake water and filter it. They’ve made the lakes a lot clearer
than they used to be.
The clearer water means more sunlight can reach the lake bottom, and that
kick-starts algae growth. When the algae die, it sucks oxygen out of the water.
And, all of that is perfect for a bacterium that produces the botulism toxin to go forth
and multiply.
Okay, now, remember those pesky mussels? Scientists suspect they can take in
the toxin but they’re not affected by it. But fish that eat the mussels get sick.
One fish in particular loves to eat mussels. It’s the invasive round goby. And
there are lots and lots of gobies in the Lakes. That could mean lots of poisoned
snacks for bigger fish and birds.
Researchers have a bad feeling about all this, and they’re trying to confirm their
hunches.
(sound of boat engine starting up)
Brenda Moraska LaFrancois is headed out on Lake Michigan to investigate. She’s
part of a team that’s collecting samples from the lake bottom.
She says this is a tough mystery to unravel.
“These are really complicated systems and unfortunately they’re continuing to
change.”
As soon as scientists think they have a handle on what’s going on, some new
invader gets in and messes everything up again. So it’s really hard to know what
could be done to stop the outbreaks.
The experts say, if you go to the beach, it’s safe to swim. But you shouldn’t eat any
fish or waterfowl that seem sick.
Your local wildlife managers might tell you: don’t touch it, but get something to
bury the dead animal down in the sand, so other birds won’t feed on it and spread the
toxin.
Lake Superior's South Shore, Wisconsin (Photo by Dave Hansen, courtesy of the EPA)
Congress might vote this fall
on a plan to triple the amount of money
for cleaning up pollution hot spots
around the Great Lakes. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:
Transcript
Congress might vote this fall
on a plan to triple the amount of money
for cleaning up pollution hot spots
around the Great Lakes. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:
The Great Lakes Legacy Act is supposed to remove contaminated sediment from harbors.
But, clean-up has been slow because there’s not enough money.
Although tens of millions of dollars have been authorized in the past, Congress and the
Bush Administration have not actually spent much of it on clean up projects.
EPA regional administrator Lynn Buhl says despite the history of the Legacy Act, more
money should be authorized.
“First of all, there needs to be an appreciation of how many players are involved in these
projects. They don’t come together overnight. I think we’ve done well to have completed
five already.”
Congress could increase the amount of authorized spending from 54 million dollars a
year to 150 million per year.
The EPA acknowledges a potential tripling of the funds for the Great Lakes Legacy Act
might not sit well with some Congressional budget hawks.
Signs of VHS, from the Michigan DNR (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
A common treatment in fish hatcheries may slow – or even stop –
the spread of an invasive virus that’s killing fish across the Great Lakes.
Jonathan Brown has more:
Transcript
A common treatment in fish hatcheries may slow – or even stop –
the spread of an invasive virus that’s killing fish across the Great Lakes.
Jonathan Brown has more:
It’s called Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia. Humans can’t catch it, but it
causes internal bleeding in fish.
The virus is hurting the region’s multi-billion-dollar sport fishing industry.
Now, researchers are finding that adding iodine – a common practice in fish
hatcheries – could prevent the virus from spreading.
Steve LePan is a biologist for the state of New York. He says a study at
Cornell University found Walleye eggs treated with an iodine solution were
not infected with VHS.
“We can’t say for sure that it’s exclusively the iodine that kills it. There may
be other things we do to the eggs that also affect the virus, as well.”
Those ‘other’ treatments include bathing Walleye eggs in Tannic Acid for a
few minutes before incubation.
LePan says there’s still a lot to learn about VHS, but he’s cautiously
optimistic that hatcheries can breed fish uninfected by the disease.
Children playing on Indiana Dunes Beach
(Photo by Lester Graham)
A mother looking over the risks of swimming in the contaminated water
(Photo by Lester Graham)
The number of days beaches were
closed due to pollution last year was
the second highest on record. Mark Brush
reports, that’s according to a new report
by an environmental group:
Transcript
The number of days beaches were
closed due to pollution last year was
the second highest on record. Mark Brush
reports, that’s according to a new report
by an environmental group:
The National Resources Defense Council says beaches across the country were closed to
swimmers for more than 22,000 days last year.
Sometimes the beaches were closed when sewer plants would overflow.
Nancy Stoner is with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
She says most of the time beaches were closed after a big rainstorm
That’s because rain washes pollution into the water.
“I’m more cautious now after swimming after a heavy rainfall. And the other thing about
it is that the ocean beaches in general tend to be cleaner than beaches that are in bays
and sounds and other protected areas, so it makes me want to go to the ocean.”
Ocean waves tend to wash away the pollution a lot faster.
Beach closings along the Great Lakes were twice as high as the national average.
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)
