Tag: landfill

Developing Countries Get Hospital Castoffs

  • A street in Havana, Cuba. After more than 40 years of a U.S. economic embargo and more than a decade after the loss of their Soviet trading partners, Cubans have learned to improvise and make do with old stuff - cars, machines, and even medical equipment. (Photo by Ann Murray)

Tons of medical materials that normally would end up in U.S. landfills are being rescued, repackaged and sent to other countries. An aid group is working with local hospitals and volunteers to get surplus medical supplies to Latin America and the Caribbean. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray takes us on the trip from salvage to salvation:

Transcript

Tons of medical materials that normally would end up in U.S.
landfills are being rescued, repackaged and sent to other countries.
An aid group is working with local hospitals and volunteers to get
surplus medical supplies to Latin America and the Caribbean. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray takes us on the trip from
salvage to salvation.


(Sound of warehouse activities)


In a warehouse near Pittsburgh, Global Links staffers are preparing to load a shipment of medical aid into a forty-foot container bound for Cuba. Workers haul pallets of dialysis kits, mattresses, waiting room chairs and gurneys to the loading dock. Everything here has been carefully sorted, evaluated, and matched with requests from the Cuban Ministry of Health.


Kathleen Hower founded Global Links with two friends back in 1989. It used to operate out of their houses. Since then, Global Links has sent $110 million worth of medical aid, all of it requested by the receiving countries. About two-thirds of that has gone to Cuba.


“Cuba’s unique in so many ways; they’re very advanced medically, they do transplant surgery, they have a lot of doctors. There’s no shortage of physicians there. They’re very different than other countries.”


What Cuba shares with other developing countries is critical shortages of equipment and supplies.


(Sound of busy street)


Here in Havana, the streets are filled with Eisenhower-era cars and lined with shops that repair everything from pots to paperbacks. After more than forty years of a U.S. economic embargo and more than a decade after the loss of their Soviet trading partners, Cubans are masters of improvisation.


The same is true for the island’s medical community, says Sebastion Pererra, the former director of Cuba’s Center for Electromedicine.


PERERRA/TRANSLATOR: “The embargo has been like a school for us. It taught us how to keep working with the same machines and not have the identical parts to replace them.”


Pererra says parts and technical information from Global Links have helped keep old medical equipment going. They’ve also supported new programs in breast cancer screening and dialysis research.


MURRAY: “Has the equipment that Global Links sent to you saved lives?”


PERERRA/TRANSLATOR: “It is undeniable.”


Global Links sends materials to Cuba that other countries can’t use. That’s because medical care is not as advanced in many other developing countries.


Doctor Armando Pancorbo uses the salvaged equipment for minimally invasive surgery at the aging hospital where he works. He and his team have done nearly four thousand operations, using equipment and supplies that were thrown out by U.S. hospitals.


This morning, the O.R. is busy. Anesthesiologists prepare a middle-aged patient for gallbladder surgery while nurses set up sterilized instruments.


Back in Global Links’ Pittsburgh office, volunteers help with the labor-intensive job of packing supplies for shipping. Kristin Carreira says this work is helpful on two fronts.


“Our mission here is both humanitarian and environmental. Environmental because all of our medical supplies that we’re working on would have been put in an incinerator or landfill and so we’re really recycling in that sense.”


The American Hospital Association estimates that U.S. hospitals produce about three million tons of waste every year and they pay about three billion dollars to dispose of it. Many of the supplies that end up in the trash are opened but unused. Worries about liability, changes in technology, and a rash of government regulations account for much of the still-useful materials being thrown out.


Vicky Carse is a nurse who traveled to Cuba as a volunteer.


“Seeing people re-washing gloves where we just would open gloves and throw them away, drapes that we just open up and throw away. To see these people harbor these items, re-wash them and re-wash them because they don’t have supplies, just makes you value what you have.”


The medical community is beginning to take notice. More and more US hospitals are contacting aid organizations. Laura Brannen directs a joint environmental program for the American Hospital Association and the U.S. EPA. She says Global Links and similar groups offer hospitals much needed guidance.


“They provide the infrastructure around what can be used around the world. And without those guidelines, hospitals would be tossing this kind of materials because they don’t know where else to send it.”


Global Links founder Kathleen Hower is happy to set up the guide posts. She says we have to realize that we are all members of a much broader community – one that could use our help, even when it’s a matter of just sharing stuff we’d normally throw away.


For the GLRC, this is Ann Murray reporting.

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Capturing Wasted Methane From Landfills

  • A landfill is full of things people don't consider useful anymore. One group begs to differ. (Photo by Roberto Burgos S.)

The landfill is often seen as the end of the line… the burial ground of our trash. But one company says there’s still something to gain from that buried garbage. It’s planning to build a new plant to retrieve one final product from all of our trash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kasler has the story:

Transcript

The landfill is often seen as the end of the line… the burial ground of our
trash. But one company says there’s still something to gain from that buried
garbage. It’s planning to build a new plant to retrieve one final product from
all of our trash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kasler has the
story:


You probably don’t think of landfills as “green.” But Steve Wilburn does.
Wilburn is the president of FirmGreen. He says he knows different ways to
turn byproducts of landfills into useful energy.


First, capture the methane that’s produced when all that garbage stews
underground. Second, use it as fuel to generate electricity. Third, turn it into compressed gas for trucks. And finally, mix
it with soybean oil to make soy diesel.


Steve Wilburn says it’s an ambitious project.


“This is the first of its kind in the world. The Green Energy Center concept is
something I came up with about four years ago, and as we explored for ways to
implement it, we needed a centerpiece, a technology that was missing, and that
was to clean up the landfill gas in a very cost-effective way.”


FirmGreen is building what it calls its Green Energy Center right next to the
landfill in Columbus, Ohio. Mike Long is with the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio – SWACO for short. Long says right
now, there’s no practical use for the methane and carbon dioxide produced by the rotting garbage in the landfill.


“Currently, SWACO’s control technology is to have a flare where we burn off the
gases to keep it from getting up into the atmosphere. But the new technology,
we will take that gas and make it into energy and consumer products rather than
just simply burning it and exhausting it.”


Instead of burning those landfill gases, they’ll be redirected a small
electric generator operated by FirmGreen. The electricity will be sold back to
SWACO to power its main office and its fleet garage. That’ll start in just a
few months.


Later, FirmGreen will convert methane into compressed natural gas. That will
be used to fuel SWACO’s vehicles, which could save the waste authority an
estimated 100 thousand dollars a year.


FirmGreen’s President, Steve Wilburn says the final part of the project is the
real profit maker for his company: turning methanol into biodiesel.


“When we create
methanol, we then have the bridge to the hydrogen economy because ethanol is an
excellent hydrogen carrier. It’s also used in the manufacture and production of
biodiesel. Ohio is a large soybean producing state. So we’ll take our green
methanol and we’ll blend that with the soy oil and we’re going to create
biodiesel.”


When the FirmGreen biodiesel processing facility is up and running, it will
need 69 thousand acres of soybeans to produce 10 million gallons of biodiesel
annually. FirmGreen already has a contract with Mitsubishi Gas Chemical
Company to provide 6 million gallons of biodiesel a year. FirmGreen also hopes
to interest the growing hydrogen fuel cell industry.


“Biofuels” have their critics, who are concerned that it takes as much energy
or more energy to create biofuels than they produce. Mike Long at SWACO says
he’s heard that before, but it doesn’t apply to this project.


“The
energy is already here, and is being flared off right now at our landfill. There’s no recovery of the energy, no beneficial
use. So for those who argue that this process would be a consumer of energy, it’s not a net consumer, and right now, we’re wasting energy.”


Long and Wilburn point to statistics from the U.S. EPA. They says the data show
the Green Energy Center will have the same effect as reducing oil consumption by
more than twenty thousand barrels a year. They say that’s like taking 2,000 cars off the road.


Sam Spofforth is with the Central Ohio Clean Fuels Coalition. He says even
when factoring in the fuel used by trucks transporting the methanol to the
remote biodiesel processing facilities, the project still looks green to him.


“In terms of biodiesel, it’s about three point two energy units out for every one energy
unit in. What is even more exciting about this project – methane
gas is about twenty times as potent as a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. So the
fact that they’re using methane that would otherwise be vented into the air
makes the net emissions of those greenhouse gas even more positive.”


The Green Energy Center in Ohio is the first in the nation, but a second one
is planned to be built near Saint Louis, Missouri. With giant landfills venting
off methane in places around the country, if these two make money, it’s a
pretty sure bet others will be built in the near future.


For the GLRC, I’m Karen Kasler.

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Re-Using Land to Meet City’s Changing Needs

  • Don Mikulic with the Illinois Geological survey hunts for the fossilized brachiopods and snails available in the quarry. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Some of America’s grandest city parks were built when urban areas still had room to grow. But today, older cities wanting new parks face shortages of space, money, or both. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one major city’s development of a park … from below ground
level:

Transcript

Some of America’s grandest city parks were built when urban areas still had room to grow. But today, older cities wanting new parks face shortages of space, money, or both. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one major city’s development of a park from below ground level:


At first blush, an old quarry site doesn’t seem to be a good candidate for a new city park, especially this one.


For the past fifteen years, the city of Chicago has used this quarry as a landfill. The site, called Stearns Quarry, lies off the beaten track, in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, more than two miles southwest of downtown.


Right now it’s kind of ugly. Tractors are patting down a mound of debris and dirt that’s piled up thirty-feet above the nearby street.


(Sound of trucks)


I find the project manager, Claudine Malik inside the site’s construction trailer. She’s hovering over a map of what the park might look like by next year.


“It’s a twenty-seven acre site. It’s roughly a square and if you think of it as broken up into about four separate areas, that helps you map it out mentally. As you come in, there’s an athletic field, It goes down to a pond, which will be stocked for fishing. The majority of the section is a sledding mound. And along the back wall, which is a long preserved quarry wall, is a series of wetland cells that lead down into the pond.”


That’s a lot of different uses to cram into the site’s 27 acres. It’s hard to imagine a stone quarry turned into a landfill and then turned into a city park. To get a better idea of how it will be transformed, Malik and her team take me on a ride around the site.


(Sound of truck starting)


The plan puts every inch of ground to use because there aren’t many chances to put new parks in the city. Malik says rising land values in Chicago make even small land purchases pricey. And everybody seems to have ideas for the park.


Local residents, the state of Illinois and the city gave designers a tall order to fill. Since they’re all putting money into the five million-dollar project, everybody gets something they want.


Soon we spot Don Mikolic, a scientist with Illinois’ Geological Survey. He’s checking the quarry walls before the park’s complete.


(Sound of tapping)


“There’s part of a snail right there.”


Turns out, the quarry’s produced some of the best aquatic fossils in the Midwest.


“In fact you can probably find specimens from this specific quarry sitting in some of the biggest museums around the world.”


And some of the limestone exposed by quarrying will be left for park visitors to view. These walls offer more than just natural history though. Stearns Quarry is part of the region’s architectural history too. The quarry opened in 1833, a few years before Chicago became a city. Its limestone strengthened Chicago harbor and can be found in historic Midwestern churches.


Malik says the site’s history will find its way into the design as well. Just another thing for the planners to work into the park. Which makes you wonder, what’s driving a park to be all these things at once? To get some perspective, I head to the offices of the American Planning Association.


The APA is a professional organization for urban planners. Megan Lewis researches parks for the APA. Lewis says parks like Stearns Quarry face bigger challenges than the grand old parks designed in the 19th century.


“Now, you can’t really approach park planning especially in a city in the same way, because you don’t have the luxury of having all of that land available to you. So you sort of have to see what is there that can become a park and what do we do with it?”


Lewis says the mix of recreation, open space, even history, has a lot to do with the demands from so many competing interests. To see how thing have changed, she gives the example of Frederick Law Olmsted. He’s most famous for developing New York’s Central Park, a hundred and fifty years ago.


“The planning was sort of done in isolation. He would come up with his grand idea and he maybe only had a few people involved. But I think that now, so many people are empowered to say, This is what I want this place to be like, that planning doesn’t really happen in isolation anymore. Which is good, because you want it to be a democratic process.”


(Sound of quarry)


Back at Stearns Quarry, you can see just how those demands are being incorporated. Meeting all those different needs in a relatively small area with a relatively small budget is played out in each square foot.


This new use of the site is again reflecting the city’s needs. The little piece of land has evolved as the city has evolved. First it provided stone for building the city. Then it was a dumping ground. And now it’s a break from the asphalt and concrete, a place to play and rest in a bit of nature.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Crafting a House From Scrap Lumber

  • Kelvin Potter on the third floor of the house he's building with scrap lumber. (Photo by Chris McCarus)

One man and a few of his friends are using some old-fashioned methods and some cutting edge techniques to build an environmentally friendly house. The builders are also using a lot of material that other people would throw away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:

Transcript

One man and a few of his friends are using some old-fashioned methods
and some cutting edge techniques to build an environmentally-friendly house.
The builders are also using a lot of material that other people would throw
away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:


Four men are raising a timber frame house on an old farm
in central Michigan. Several feet up in the air, they’re piecing together
some beams, 12 feet long and 12 inches thick with some help from a small
crane.


(Sound of engine)


“Cable it! Cable it! Cable it? Yes!”


(Sound of tool dropping)


The framing is like assembling giant Lincoln Log toys. Neighbor Nick
Van Frankenhuyzen is holding a rope attached to some beams.


“Look at that. Look at how far that is extended. We lifted one of
those beams yesterday by hand and they’re not light. Now this wall has to
come back. This has to pop out again to make that one fit and I don’t
know how that’s gonna happen.”


Facing these kinds of challenges is what people in the green building
movement seem to relish. Kelvin Potter owns this farm. He’s using materials
that most builders overlook.


Potter: “Yeah we saved all these timbers, developers were burning all these.
So. These were all going up in smoke. And some of these logs came off my
neighbor’s property. They had died and were standing. We dragged ’em over here. He planted them. He’s
standing right there.”


Van Frankenhuyzen: “Yeah we’re standing on them. And then Kelvin
said I sure could use them. Because they’re the right size. Go get ’em. So he did. And here they are. Can’t believe it. Much better than firewood.”


Kelvin Potter’s home is one example of a growing trend in green building.
The U.S. Green Building Council includes 4000 member organizations. It’s
created standards for protecting the environment. The standards include
reusing material when it’s possible, using solar and wind energy, renewable
resources, and non-traditional materials. Sometimes from surprising
places.


(Sound of truck)


A city truck dumps wood chips onto a municipal lot. On other days it
dumps logs like sugar maple, oak and pine. The trees came from routine
maintenance of parks, cemeteries and streets.
Kelvin Potter is also here, checking for any fresh deliveries. While other
guys come here to cut the logs with chainsaws for firewood, Potter says he
makes better use of it as flooring or trim. Even saw mills don’t take advantage of this kind of wood. That’s because
trees cut down in backyards often mean trouble for the mills.


“Sawmills typically aren’t interested in this material because there is
hardware, nuts, bolts, nails, clothes lines, all sorts of different things
people have pounded into them by their houses. ”


Potter says sawmills use big machines with expensive blades that get
destroyed. So THEY throw the logs away. Potter instead keeps the logs and
throws away his blades. He uses cheap ones, making it worth the risk.
When it’s finished, Kelvin Potter will have an environmentally friendly
house, even if it doesn’t meet all the criteria to be certified as a “green
building.”


Maggie Fields works for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
She says there are many ways to build green. Anything that helps the
environment is a big improvement on the status quo.


“Every material that we reuse is a material that doesn’t have to be cut
from the woods, if that’s where it’s coming from, or remanufactured. And that means that the pollution that’s associated with that material getting
to that use state isn’t having to be created. So, it doesn’t matter if they
get the green seal. If they’re taking steps along that that’s great.”


(Sound of climbing ladder)


Kelvin Potter is climbing a ladder to the belfry of his new house. He
shows off his shiny steel roof, the kind now covering barns. He compares it
to asphalt shingles.


“It lasts 100 years versus 15, 20 years. We actually fill a lot of landfills with shingles. They don’t compress. They don’t decompose. Steel will
go right back into making more roofing or cars or what not. It’s a win-win
situation. It’s a lot cheaper all around and I can’t see why it’s not a lot
more popular.”


The point Potter and other green builders are trying to make is, good
building material isn’t just the stuff marketed at lumberyards. They say, “Look around. You might be surprised what you can use.”


For the GLRC, I’m Chris McCarus.

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Roadblocks to Closing Toxic Waste Loophole

  • Trash and toxic waste cross the U.S.-Canada border every day, and untreated toxic waste often ends up at the Clean Harbors facility. Some are trying to restrict this practice and purge the idea that waste is a commodity.

There’s only one place in North America that still dumps
toxic waste straight into the ground without any kind of pre-treatment. A legislator from Ontario, Canada wants this landfill to clean up its act. But trade in toxic waste is big business. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Ann Colihan follows some trucks to learn more:

Transcript

There’s only one place in North America that still dumps toxic waste straight into the ground without any kind of pre-treatment. A legislator from Ontario, Canada wants this landfill to clean up its act. But trade in toxic waste is a big business. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Ann Colihan follows some trucks to learn more:


(Sound of trucks)


6,000 trucks cross the Blue Water Bridge every day between Canada and the United States. Just under the bridge, Lake Huron funnels into the skinny St. Clair River on its way to south to Lake Erie. The Blue Water Bridge connects Port Huron, Michigan with Sarnia, Ontario. This is the second busiest truck crossing between the United States and Canada. With post 9/11 security, the border can get backed up for miles in both directions. A lot of these trucks are carrying garbage back and forth across the border. Canadian trash and toxic waste is going to the U.S. and American toxic waste is going to Canada.


During her first month in office, Ontario Member of Parliament for Sarnia-Lambton, Caroline Di Cocco, found out just how much toxic waste was coming into her district.


“In 1999 that year, it was over 450,000 tons. To put it in perspective, the Love Canal was 12,000 tons.”


Di Cocco went on a five year crusade to change the Ontario laws that govern the trade in toxic waste. She adopted the U.N. resolution known as the Basel Agreement, as her model.


“The notion from that Basel Agreement is that everybody should look after their own waste and it is not a commodity.”


Di Cocco is not alone in her fight to slow or stop the flow of garbage and toxic waste from crossing the border. Mike Bradley is the mayor of Sarnia, Ontario. He can see the backup on the Blue Water Bridge every day from his home.


“One of the ironies on this is that while Michigan is very much upset, and rightly so, with the importation of Toronto trash, there are tens of thousands of tons of untreated toxic waste coming in from Michigan crossing the Blue Water Bridge into the Clean Harbors site.”


The Clean Harbors facility is the only place in North America that does not pre-treat hazardous waste before it dumps it into its landfill. Frank Hickling is Director of Lambton County Operations for Clean Harbors. He says imports from nearby states in the U.S. accounts for about forty percent of its volume.


“It’s from the Great Lakes area. We do reach down and take waste that our facility is best able to handle. We’re right on the border.”


Rarely do lawmakers on both sides of the border agree on an environmental issue. But pre-treatment of hazardous waste is the law in all fifty states, Mexico and every other Canadian province and territory except Ontario. Pre-treatment reduces the amount of toxic waste or transforms it into a less hazardous substance. But Hickling says disposing hazardous waste in Clean Harbors is a better economic bet.


“Obviously, if you don’t have to pre-treat it, it is cheaper there’s no doubt about that. But what isn’t obvious is the security of the site. Pre-treating waste doesn’t help immobilize the material forever.”


Clean Harbors’ company officials say their landfill won’t leak for 10,000 years. They say that the U.S. pre-treats hazardous waste because they expect their landfills to leak in hundreds of years or less. Hickling says the blue clay of Lambton County that lines Clean Harbors landfill gives them a competitive edge as a toxic dump.


“The facility is in a 140-foot clay plain and we go down about 60 feet. So there’s 80 feet below.”


But Clean Harbors has had big environmental problems. When volume was at its peak in 1999 the Clean Harbors landfill leaked methane gas and contaminated water. Remedial pumping of the landfill is ongoing.


Caroline Di Cocco found other ways to deal with toxic waste rather than simply dumping it in her district.


“First of all, there has to be a reduction of the amount of generation of this hazardous material. The more expensive you make it for industry to dispose of it, the more they are going to find creative ways to reduce it. Then there are what they call on-site treatments and closed-loop systems. You see technology is there but it’s expensive and again we go to the cost of doing business. And so a lot of the hazardous waste can be treated on site in a very safe way. And then what can’t be, well then you have to have facilities to dispose of it. But I believe that the days of the mega dumps have to end.”


Meanwhile, Clean Harbors looks at what the new Ontario regulations for pre-treatment will cost them.


“Certainly when you’re making the investment in pre-treatment and you’re adding all that cost for no additional environmental benefit we’re going to have to be getting larger volumes to ensure its profitability.”


Until we see a reduction in the loads of toxic waste that need to be dumped in Clean Harbors, it’s likely the trucks will roll on down the highway.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Ann Colihan.

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Cost of Taking Eagle Off Endangered Species List

  • The American Bald Eagle has made a remarkable recovery. It's done so well, it might soon be taken off the Endangered Species list. (Photo courtesy of USFWS)

With more than 7600 breeding pairs in the continental United States alone, the American Bald Eagle has made a remarkable comeback. A new proposal to remove the bird from the Endangered Species list is expected soon. But that means removing a powerful safety net that can affect future research, monitoring and habitat protection. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sally Eisele reports:

Transcript

With more than 7600 breeding pairs in the continental United States alone, the
American Bald Eagle has made a remarkable comeback. A new proposal to remove the
bird from the Endangered Species list is expected soon. But that means removing a
powerful safety net that can affect future research, monitoring and habitat protection.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sally Eisele reports:


In the history of the Endangered Species Act, only a dozen or so of the more than 1200
plants and animals listed as threatened or endangered have actually recovered. The eagle
may be the latest to join that little group.


(Young birder: “I see a big birdie…”)


This is a pretty unlikely spot for an eagle — a manmade wetland by a landfill in a busy
airport flight path on the outskirts of Detroit. But state wildlife biologist Joe Robison
shows this young visitor the bulky nest across the marsh where two adult birds are
teaching their gangly fledglings to fly.


“Something just landed in the tree out there. Oh. That’s the other juvenile. This is the
first time I’ve seen them flying this year. They look like they’re flying good though.”


These birds are among more than 400 pairs in Michigan monitored by state and federal
wildlife officials. The eagles are banded, the nests are watched and when a bird dies it
ends up in the freezer of wildlife pathologist Tom Cooley.


(sound of Cooley opening the freezer)


“Lots and lots of ’em. You can see that one was a road kill along I-75…”


Right now, Cooley’s freezer is brim full of dead birds stacked like frozen Thanksgiving
turkeys in plastic bags. Road kill has become the leading cause of death among eagles
he examines, but Cooley says they still investigate suspicious looking deaths for the
heavy metals and pesticides—like DDT—which once caused the eagles’ demise.


“Birds that kind of send up a red flag to us are adult birds that are in poor condition and
you don’t see a reason why they could be in poor condition. Those are the ones that we
especially look at for pesticide analysis because there are still the organochlorines out
there. The DDTs are still picked up by eagles or still contained in eagles. Those
pesticides can cause real problems for them and actually kill them.”


Cooley sends tissue samples to another state lab for analysis. But the testing is
expensive. And with the eagle on the way to recovery, it’s not as urgent. Right now, he
says all the samples he sends are being archived—shelved basically. That means the
testing won’t be done until the money is available.


“I never like archiving anything if I can help it. You’re probably not missing anything
but that kind of data is always nice to have if you can get it right away and look at it right
away.”


The question is, if it’s hard to get funding for monitoring and testing now—while the bird
is still on the Endangered Species List—what happens when it’s taken off the list? The
reality, say state and federal wildlife experts, is that budget priorities change as a species
recovers. Ray Rustem heads Michigan’s non-game wildlife program.


“There’s not enough money for every species. So you try to take a species to a level
where you feel comfortable with and you take money and apply it to another species to
try to recover.”


The federal Endangered Species Act requires the Fish and Wildlife Service to monitor
what it terms a delisted species for five years. After that, responsibility largely shifts to
the states. That concerns groups like the National Wildlife Federation. Attorney John
Kostyak questions whether states can really afford to protect fragile species and their
habitat over the long term.


“That’s going to be an issue with any delisting. A tough question that we’re going to
always be asking is: all right assume you go forward with delisting—how are you going
to be sure the species doesn’t turn right around and go back toward extinction again?”


With some species, that means habitat management. With others, like the recovering
gray wolf, it means public education—teaching people not to kill them. With the eagle, it
means ensuring that the birds are not threatened by the pesticides, heavy metals and
newer chemicals that contaminate the fish the eagles eat. Because of the bird’s
importance as an indicator species, Fish and Wildlife biologists are hopeful banding and
testing programs will continue after delisting. But it will likely mean finding new ways
to pay for them.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sally Eisele.

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Trash Import Laws Heading to Court

Michigan and Pennsylvania are among the top trash-importing states in the nation. In both cases, it’s because both states have lots of capacity and low dumping fees. In Michigan, lawmakers are trying to reduce trash imports, but their efforts are headed to court. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland has more:

Transcript

Michigan and Pennsylvania are among the top trash-importing states in the nation. In both cases,
it’s because both states have lots of capacity and low dumping fees. In Michigan, lawmakers are
trying to reduce trash imports, but their efforts are headed to court. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Michael Leland has more.


In March, Governor Jennifer Granholm signed bills aimed at limiting out-of-state waste in
Michigan landfills. The new laws impose a two-year moratorium on landfill construction. State
inspectors can also now turn back trucks bound for Michigan landfills with items like soda cans,
beer bottles and tires – all things state residents can’t put in their own trash.


“If you dump in Michigan, you have to abide by our rules. You cannot put things in our waste
stream that we would not put in our waste stream.”


The National Solid Wastes Management Association has filed a lawsuit to block Michigan’s
laws. Bruce Parker is the organization’s president. He says they unlawfully limit interstate
commerce.


“The United States Supreme Court has said many times that garbage should be afforded the same
constitutional protection as food, automobiles, you name it. It’s an article of commerce.”


About a fourth of the trash in Michigan’s landfills comes from out-of-state. Most of that
imported amount comes from Toronto.


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

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Epa Declares Love Canal Clean

Its discovery 25 years ago led to the creation of the EPA Superfund Program for the cleanup of toxic waste sites. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency says cleanup work is finished at the infamous Love Canal dumpsite in Niagara Falls, New York. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bud Lowell has more:

Transcript

Its discovery 25 years ago led to the creation of the EPA Superfund Program for the cleanup of
toxic waste sites. Now the Environmental Protection Agency says cleanup work is finished at the
infamous Love Canal dumpsite in Niagara Falls, New York. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Bud Lowell has more:


The Love Canal neighborhood became a national symbol for the problems of toxic waste in 1978.
Nine hundred families were evacuated. An elementary school and two streets of homes were
bulldozed. The remaining landfill was sealed off.


Today, EPA says the 70-acre site can come off the Superfund List but Mike Schade with a
Buffalo-based group called the Citizens Environmental Coalition isn’t so sure. He says about 22-
thousand tons of World War II era chemical byproducts remain buried at the Love Canal site.


“Now, while the EPA and Occidental are monitoring the landfill, time will prove that landfill will
eventually leak. It’s really, inevitable.”


Schade believes the EPA announcement seeks to defuse criticism of a recent U.S. Senate vote.
That vote blocked reauthorizing a law taxing oil and chemical companies to support the
Superfund program.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bud Lowell.

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Report: E-Waste Piling Up

As electronic devices are becoming faster, smaller and cheaper, many consumers are opting to scrap their old, outdated computers and televisions for the latest technologies. But as a recent report shows, as people throw out these products, a new legacy of waste is piling up. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erika Johnson reports:

Transcript

As electronic devices are becoming faster, smaller and cheaper, many consumers are opting to
scrap their old, outdated computers and televisions for the latest technologies. But as a recent
report shows, as people throw out these products, a new legacy of waste is piling up. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erika Johnson reports:


Electronic waste – or e-waste – is what ends up in landfills when people throw away electronic
devices such as computer monitors and television sets. The report by the Silicon Valley Toxics
Coalition tracked the amount of e-waste that ends up in landfills. Researchers found there’s more
e-waste than waste from beverage containers and disposable diapers. Electronic products can
threaten human health because they contain toxic heavy metals.


Sheila Davis headed up the Coalition’s report:


“People are starting to sit up and take notice and especially when you start having large volumes
of the material. So many states are taking notice. For example, California, Massachusetts,
Minnesota and Maine have all banned these products from landfills, e-waste from landfills.”


Yet Davis says many people in other states end up pitching their used electronics because many
recycling programs are often inconvenient and expensive.


But for now, Davis suggests people contact their local governments for more information on
where to take their used electronics.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erika Johnson.

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State Tries to Stem Flow of Trash

Two Great Lakes states – Pennsylvania and Michigan – top the list of destinations in North America for solid waste disposal. In Michigan, that designation is spurring action to slow the pace of trash being shipped to its landfills. We have more from the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick Pluta:

Transcript

Two Great Lakes states – Pennsylvania and Michigan – top the list of destinations in North
America for solid waste disposal. In Michigan, that designation is spurring action to slow the
pace of trash being shipped to its landfills. We have more from the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Rick Pluta:


A new report says one-quarter of the trash going to Michigan’s landfills comes from out-of-state.
Some of it is from neighboring Midwest states such as Illinois and Indiana, some it from as far
away as the east coast. Most of Michigan’s out-of-state waste comes from Canada.


Landfill space is abundant in Michigan and dumping costs are low. But there’s a movement afoot
to try and slow the pace of trash headed to Michigan landfills.


Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm.


“We have sited so many landfills over the past decade or so that we have literally become the
dumping ground of North America.”


Legislation is pending to limit the types of waste that can be dumped in the state’s landfills, and
to make dumping more expensive.


Those efforts have been dealt a setback. A court has ruled transporting trash is a form of
interstate commerce that can only be regulated by the U.S. government.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Rick Pluta.

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