Tag: pollution

Coal: Dirty Past, Hazy Future (Part 2)

  • The coal industry hopes the federal government will help them find a way to catch and store the carbon coming from smokestacks.

The coal industry got hit with expensive
pollution restrictions almost two decades ago. Now, the government’s considering putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. Coal companies think they have a technological solution in a test project called FutureGen. In the
second part of our series on the future of coal, Shawn Allee looks at why they
have such high hopes for it:

Transcript

The coal industry got hit with expensive
pollution restrictions almost two decades ago. Now, the government’s considering putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. Coal companies think they have a technological solution in a test project called FutureGen. In the
second part of our series on the future of coal, Shawn Allee looks at why they
have such high hopes for it:

The last time the federal government put a price on coal pollution was in 1990.

Power plants had to start paying for sulphur dioxide that came out of smoke stacks and caused acid rain.

To clean up, many burned cleaner coal.

That was bad news for Illinois miner Chris Nielsen.

He happened to mine some of the dirtiest coal.

“A good portion of the economy around here was built on coal industry. And coal mining jobs not only paid a good wage, they had terrific benefits. And as the industry went soft, people lost the best jobs they ever had.”

Cleanup technology improved, but it took nearly two decades to make burning the highest-sulpher coal economical again.

Nielsen says today, coal executives worry they’ll lose profits if the government prices carbon dioxide.

And coal miners worry they’ll lose jobs again.

The industry wants new plants that do two things: first, they capture carbon dioxide while burning coal, and then bury, or sequester this carbon dioxide – so it stays out of the atmosphere.

Nielsen says there’s a plant like that in the works, it’s called FutureGen.

“We can burn the coal in a clean, environmentally friendly manner. The FutureGen project where they were going to sequester the carbon dioxide was a terrific opportunity to show that.”

Well, Nielsen’s jumping the gun.

FutureGen hasn’t proved anything; it’s not even built.

The coal industry and the government were supposed to design and fund FutureGen, then build it in Central Illinois.

The government and coal companies fought over how much the plant would cost but now, it’s likely to move forward.

Even with a sketchy history though, the industry’s got almost no choice but to be hopeful for FutureGen.

The industry wants carbon dioxide capture and sequestration to work – otherwise, it’s gonna pay big for carbon pollution.

Not everyone’s so confident in the technology.

“We can not depend on carbon capture and sequestration to achieve greenhouse gas emissions reductions because we don’t know whether it’s going to work.”

That’s Ron Burke, with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

He says FutureGen is worth testing but it shouldn’t distract us from technology we know is low-carbon.

“There are ways to meet the greenhouse gas reductions targets that we need to meet without carbon capture and sequestration. We can do it, it’s primarily through in investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency in the near term.”

There’re energy researchers who aren’t so sure enough renewable energy like wind and solar will be available soon enough.

One is of them is Ernest Moniz at MIT.

“We have a ways to go for let’s say, solar, to scale up. Right now, it’s less than point 1% of our electricity.”

Coal generates nearly half our electricity.

Moniz says it won’t be easy to replace, but it might be possible to improve it.

He says its likely carbon dioxide capture and sequestration can work technically.

But he says we need to build FutureGen to answer whether it works efficiently and economically.

“Well, if we are going to establish a new technology, like sequestration, and be able to have it not only demonstrated but then deployed and implemented, that means we would need to start, preferably yesterday, but at worst, today.”

For Moniz, FutureGen could be clean coal’s first major test – not just of whether it works – but whether it’s too expensive.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Coal: Dirty Past, Hazy Future (Part 5)

  • Protestors are lobbying for aging coal plants to be shut down--they are some of the nation's dirtiest plants (Photo by Arnold Paul, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming are driving power companies to a decision. They can move away from burning coal altogether or they can work on technology to eliminate their CO2 emissions someday. While they’re making that decision, some of the nation’s oldest, dirtiest coal-burning power plants still run. In the final part of our series on the future of coal, Shawn Allee looks at why they billow dangerous air pollution– stuff most people think we cleaned up long ago:

Transcript

Carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming are driving power companies to a decision. They can move away from burning coal altogether or they can work on technology to eliminate their CO2 emissions someday. While they’re making that decision, some of the nation’s oldest, dirtiest coal-burning power plants still run. In the final part of our series on the future of coal, Shawn Allee looks at why they billow dangerous air pollution– stuff most people think we cleaned up long ago:

I’ve seen plenty of environmental protests.

“Clean up the coal power plants. Save lives, save our city. Show your support – sign the petition!”

But this one has me intrigued.

It’s not because of what the protestors want. They want to shut down two coal-burning power plants in Chicago. I’d heard that before, and I’d heard their statistics too – like how each year, air pollution from these kinds of power plants causes 17,000 Americans to die early from smog and other hazards.

Now, what strikes me is that these teenagers are singing Bob Dylan.

“Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand. For the time’s they are a changing.”

Their parents – or maybe grandparents – could have sung this.

But, however old the song is, the power plants they’re trying to shut down? They’re even older and they’re still allowed to create more pollution than newer plants.

Brian Urbaszewski has one answer to why so little’s changed. He’s with the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago.

“People ask, ‘well, why is it taking so long to clean up the power plants?’ Well, it’s expensive to clean up an old power plant and the people who own them don’t particularly want to spend the money to do that.”

This isn’t the way it was supposed to work. Urbasewski says when Congress enacted the Clean Air Act in 1970, it gave old power plants a pass.

“The basics are that old power plants were not expected to have to meet the same standards as new power plants.”

But there was a catch. The old power plants wouldn’t have to clean up – if they kept the same equipment and didn’t pollute any more than before.

Urbaszewksi says the industry treated this like a loophole.

“A lot of these plants had major parts replaced and they were restored almost to original working order. The companies didn’t add those pollution controls.”

The federal government, industry, and environmentalists are stuck in court over which improvements at old, coal-burning power plants should trigger new pollution controls.

President George W. Bush sided with industry on this so-called new source review issue.

But now, President Obama might reverse that and the industry’s worried.

In terms of new source review, we remain in limbo.

Dan Riedinger handles public relations for the Edison Electric Institute. It represents private power companies.

“Still, you know, decades later, we still don’t have the type of written guidance we need, about what types of changes we can make at power plants.”

An overhaul of “new source review” is coming at a bad time for Riedinger’s industry. The government’s clamping down even harder on soot and the pollutants that cause smog. And they’re new rules to protect fish and other animals from mercury emissions.

But future carbon caps are a wild card. Congress might make power plants slash carbon dioxide emissions.

Riedinger says burning coal could become expensive – and the smallest, oldest power plants might not make the cut.

“We may be required to retire some coal plants prematurely and to replace them with natural gas. A natural gas produces half as much CO2 as does a coal plant.”

If the power industry shifts away from coal and toward other fuels for the sake of carbon, we might also get some of the quickest cutbacks in air pollution in decades at the same time – a kind of clean-air two-fer.

The times, maybe they are a-changin’.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Coal: Dirty Past, Hazy Future (Part 1)

  • (Photo courtesy of This Is Reality campaign)

You are being targeted by lobbyists. The coal industry and environmentalists are both trying to influence what you think. In the first part of our series on the future of coal, Lester Graham looks at the campaigns for-and-against coal:

Transcript

You are being targeted by lobbyists. The coal industry and environmentalists are both trying to influence what you think. In the first part of our series on the future of coal, Lester Graham looks at the campaigns for-and-against coal:

You probably don’t buy coal directly. But you do0 pay for it when you pay your power bill. 50% of the nation’s electricity comes from coal-burning power plants.

The problem with that is, coal pollutes.

Not as much as it used to. Some traditional pollutants have been reduced by 77% since the 1970 Clean Air Act.

Although the government forced it to reduce some some of the pollution, the coal industry brags about the progress and encouarges you to believe in the future of “clean coal.”

American Coalition for Clean Coal advertisement:

“I believe. I believe. We can be energy independent. We can continue to use our most abundant fuel cleanly and responsibly. We can and we will. Clean coal: America’s power”

Joe Lucas is the man behind that ad. He’s with the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. Lucas says the meaning of the phrase “clean coal” is always evolving.

“Ah, the use of the term ‘clean coal,’ it is a term of art. Up until now it has been technology that has reduced traditional pollution emissions and increased the efficiency of power plants and going forward we’re rapidly approaching the point to where it will be technologies for capture and storage of carbon.”

But right now, no power plant captures carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas contributing to climate change.

That’s why environmentalists scoff at the coal industry’s use of ‘clean coal.’

Cohen brothers advertisement:

“Clean coal harnesses the awesome power of the word ‘clean’ to make it sound like the cleanest clean there is!” (coughing)

The guy behind that ad is Brian Hardwick. He’s the spokesman for the “This is Reality” campaign.

“In reality today there is no such thing as ‘clean coal.’ There is no commercial coal plant that captures its carbon pollution not to mention the other environmental impacts that the coal industry has – from burning coal and the runoff and the extraction of coal. So, we launched an effort to try to bring out the truth about coal in response to the marketing campaign that the coal industry had so that people could come to their own conclusions about whether or not they thought coal was indeed clean.”

Clean or not, we have a lot of coal here in the U.S. It’s relatively cheap. And when pushed, a lot of environmentalists concede we’ll need to rely on coal for electricity generation for some time to come.

During last year’s Presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama aknowledged that to people at a rally in Virginia, but indicated we need to find a way to really get to ‘clean coal.’

“Why aren’t we figuring how to sequester the carbons from coal? Clean coal technology is something that can make America energy independent.” (applause)

And President Obama has followed up on that. In the stimulus plan, 3.4 billion dollars was set aside to find ways to make coal clean.

There’s more to clean up. Sulfur dioxide, or SOx, contributes to acid rain. Nitrogen Oxides, or NOx, helps cause smog. Those have been reduced, but not eliminated. And then there’s toxic mercury and particulate matter – or soot. All of it harms the environment and public health.

President Obama’s Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, is a big proponent of cleaner energy sources such as wind and solar. But he says we do need to find a way to use coal.

“Right now as we’re using coal it’s not clean. But, I firmly believe that we should invest very heavily on strategies that can take a large fraction of the carbon dioxide out of coal as well as the SOx the NOx, the mercury, particulate matter.”

But until that technology is in place, ‘clean coal’ is no more than what the coal industry calls an “evolving term of art.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez

  • A NOAA scientist surveying an oiled beach to assess the depth of oil penetration soon after the spill (Photo courtesy of NOAA)

Twenty years ago this week, an oil tanker ran aground on a rocky reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The Exxon Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil. It’s considered to be perhaps the biggest ecological disaster in US history. Ann Dornfeld has this look at how oil spill prevention and preparedness have changed in the two decades since Valdez:

Transcript

Twenty years ago this week, an oil tanker ran aground on a rocky reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The Exxon Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil. It’s considered to be perhaps the biggest ecological disaster in US history. Ann Dornfeld has this look at how oil spill prevention and preparedness have changed in the two decades since Valdez:

The call came in just after midnight.

“Ah, evidently leaking some oil and we’re gonna be here for a while.”

Court records indicate Captain Joseph Hazelwood was likely drunk when the Exxon Valdez ran aground.

There was hardly any clean-up equipment on hand. No plan for action. The location was remote.

Oil polluted a stretch of Alaskan coastline the length of the entire west coast of the U.S. The oil killed fish, sea otters, harbor seals and an estimated quarter of a million birds. Today, there is still oil on some beaches.

Twenty years later, a cargo vessel has just reported a spill of 160
gallons of oil in Washington state’s Commencement Bay. Investigators
have filled the “Spill Situation Room” in the state Department of Ecology.

“Who’s responsible for actually maintaining
the bow thruster, when was the last time they performed maintenance on it?”

“You mean one of the staff on board?”

“Yeah.”

Spill Response Manager David Byers says coastal states learned a lesson from Exxon Valdez, and developed rapid response systems like this.

“We’ve got crews headed up in a helicopter to do on-
water observations, we’ve got response resources on the water headed out to do containment when we find the location of the oil.”

Byers says the state handles dozens of spills this size each year, making it somewhat of a well-oiled machine.

After the Exxon Valdez, the state of Washington put in place some tough prevention standards. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the state.

The court ruled the state was making safety demands of oil companies that only the federal government could make.

Mike Cooper is Chairman of the state’s Oil Spills Advisory Council. He says that ruling is one reason why small oil spills are common in Washington’s bays. He says other states have come up against the same restrictions.

“When the Massachusetts legislature passed strict laws,
the United States Coast Guard and the industry did the same thing that they did to the people of Washington state. They sued the people of the state of Massachusetts and said, ‘We’ll decide if industry has to pay.'”

The federal Oil Pollution Act did raise industry’s liability and the amount of federal money available in the event of a spill. It also requires oil tankers and barges in U.S. waters to be double-hulled by 2015. The Exxon Valdez’ single hull was easily gouged open when it ran aground.

Today, most U.S.-flagged tankers and barges are double-hulled. Most foreign tankers aren’t yet.

But there’s no law requiring a second hull on cargo ships. Bruce Wishart is Policy Director for People for Puget Sound. He says it’s cargo vessels that are most likely to spill oil.

“It’s commonly assumed that oil tankers pose the
single greatest threat in terms of an oil spill. There are actually many, many more cargo vessels plying our waters that pose a very significant risk simply because they carry a lot of fuel on board.”

In 2007, the cargo vessel Cosco Busan spilled 53,000 gallons of oil into San Francisco Bay. Thousands of birds died, including endangered species. A fully-loaded cargo ship can contain 40 times more oil than what leaked from the Cosco Busan.

So, while oil tankers have become safer in the two decades since the Exxon Valdez, the nation’s waterways still remain at risk of a major spill.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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Cap and Trade Program Hits a Snag

A regional carbon cap-and-trade program was supposed to be a model for the nation. Lester Graham reports now environmentalists are hoping it doesn’t set a bad example for the federal government:

Transcript

A regional carbon cap-and-trade program was supposed to be a model for the nation. Lester Graham reports now environmentalists are hoping it doesn’t set a bad example for the federal government:

Ten northeastern states have been working for years on an agreement to reduce the emissions that cause global warming.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative limits the amount of carbon dioxide power plants will be allowed to emit and puts a price on carbon allowances.

But, the Governor of New York, David Paterson, is changing the rules for his state.

The New York power generators complained existing contracts don’t include all the costs of the allowances. So, Governor Paterson plans to give those power generators some free allowances. That puts the other nine states’ power companies at a disadvantage.

Luis Martinez is with the environmental group the Natural Resources Defence Council.

“You know, I’m wishing, I’m hoping that he changes his mind once he realizes how important this is not only for the people of New York, but as a precedent for federal policy-making.”

Martinez hopes the other governors in the Northeast don’t follow Paterson’s example.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Getting People to Stop Burning Trash

  • Robert Olsen used to burn his trash. Now he drives his trash into town. (Photo by Todd Melby)

Getting rid of your trash in the city
is easy. Take it to the curb on pickup
day and the city does the rest. In rural
areas, many people don’t have garbage pickup.
So they burn their trash. And that causes
pollution. Todd Melby tells us about one
place that’s trying to change its burning
habits:

Transcript

Getting rid of your trash in the city is easy. Take it to the curb on pickup day and the city does the rest. In rural areas, many people don’t have garbage pickup. So they burn their trash. And that causes pollution. Todd Melby tells us about one place that’s trying to change its burning habits:


Robert Olsen lives out in the country. He used to burn his garbage. But not any more.


(Pickup hatch opens)


On this windy morning, Olsen has driven his pickup into town to dump his trash.


“I think this is probably a week’s worth for us.”


He grabs the blue plastic bin from the back of his pickup and dumps it into a green Dumpster.


“Not too difficult.”


Olsen runs the environmental office here in Lincoln County, Minnesota. It was his idea to set-up nine Dumpsters throughout this sparsely populated county. He did it because he knows that burning garbage pollutes.


“The issue is that when you burn garbage at home, in the country, the first people or persons who are going to experience any harmful effects from that garbage are going to be you.”


That’s because a lot of trash — including even plain old paper — contains chlorine that produce dioxins when burned at home. Plastic is even worse.


Mark Rust is a solid waste expert with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.


“If you’re using a burn barrel or fire pit or you’re burning garbage in any way on your own property, you’re creating a perfect factory for producing dioxins.”


Smoke from burn barrels and fire pits are now the leading source of dioxins in air pollution. Some studies have connected dioxins to cancer. Burning garbage is especially bad because there are no anti-pollution scrubbers on do-it-yourself burners.


“With a burn barrel, it’s all right there.”


Melby: “It all just goes right up into the air?”


“Into the air, into the soil. Ultimately, we’re going to be taking it in on the dinner table.”


Most states still allow people living in the country to burn their garbage. In Minnesota, only farmers and those without access to affordable garbage pickup can burn. A 2005 survey found that about half of the people living in rural Minnesota burn at least occasionally.


Which is why the state offered rural counties some start up money to get people to burn less.


Rural residents in Lincoln County, Minnesota have had access to drop-off sites for seven months now. When the program started, haulers took away about 8 tons of trash every month. Now it’s up to 15 tons.


Back at one of the county’s drop-off sites, Clarence Lietz is getting of his Buick and grabbing newspapers for the nearby recycling bin. What doesn’t get recycled, gets burned, he says.


“What garbage we have like small things for the yard we just burn right at home, you know. I’d say about a five-gallon pail full or something like that.”


Another elderly customer — she didn’t want her name used — says she burns junk mail and envelopes at home.


“Papers. That’s all you can burn. I don’t burn garbage.


Melby: “And why don’t ya?”


“It’s not right to burn garbage. It don’t burn any good anyway.”


Melby: “Why isn’t it right to burn it?”


“You know why, don’t cha?”


I do now.


For The Environment Report, I’m Todd Melby.

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Water Pollution Feminizing Fish

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

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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New Dishwashing Detergent Ban

  • Phosphorus has been banned from laundry detergents, but has not been banned from dishwasher detergents (Source: Piotrus at Wikimedia Commons)

Add another state banning the
use of a pollutant in dishwashing
detergent. Rick Pluta reports it will
help clear up environmental problems
in rivers and lakes:

Transcript

Add another state banning the
use of a pollutant in dishwashing
detergent. Rick Pluta reports it will
help clear up environmental problems
in rivers and lakes:

Well, there are dead zones in other places, including the Great Lakes.

One of the big culprits is phosphorus. It seeps into the water, and promotes the growth of
algae that chokes out other species.

Phosphorus was removed from laundry detergent back in the 1970s. But that was back
before there were a lot of automatic dishwashers, so dishwasher soap wasn’t part of the
ban.

Now, regulators are starting to catch up.

Michigan just joined at least 8 other states that have ordered phosphorus to be phased out
of dishwasher detergent.

The manufacturers aren’t arguing – some have already started eliminating phosphorus in
their products.

But there are still plenty of other ways that phosphorus is leeching into lakes, rivers, and
streams. The most common cause is agricultural fertilizers.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rick Pluta.

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Volunteers Testing the Waters

  • Volunteers across the country gather samples and data for biologists who don't have the resources to get into the field. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Most of us assume the government is keeping track of environmental
issues such as pollution in water. In reality, most pollution problems
are first detected by citizens. Lester Graham reports in some parts of
the nation, volunteers step in to make sure their local streams and
lakes are clean:

Transcript

Most of us assume the government is keeping track of environmental
issues such as pollution in water. In reality, most pollution problems
are first detected by citizens. Lester Graham reports in some parts of
the nation, volunteers step in to make sure their local streams and
lakes are clean:


Rochelle Breitenbach and Mary Bajcz are trudging through the snow,
winding their way through a thicket to find a small creek. It’s 14
degrees above zero. And they plan to go wading. They’re lugging in a
fine-mesh net, some hip boots, and an orange 5 gallon bucket of trays and
specimen jars.


Breitenbach says they’re headed for a pristine creek that eventually
becomes a river, the Huron River in southeast Michigan:


“One thing about this spot is that it’s really close to the headwaters
of the Huron River. So, it’s a really good indicator of what they’re
going to find downstream too. This has traditionally been one of the
best spots to collect in the entire watershed.”


They’re just one team of many that take samples up and down the river.
They’re looking for a certain kind of bug, stonefly larvae. Stoneflies
are good fish food and they are very susceptible to pollution. They’re
considered an indicator species. If stoneflies are there and healthy,
it’s a good indication the stream is healthy:


“Their food source is on decomposing leaves, so that’s
where you find them. And then, I will get some of the leaf packs in
the net and then I’ll dump it in the tray. And then we’ll add a little
warm water so they don’t freeze. And then we’ll sort through the leaf
packs and then look for stoneflies.”


Breitenbach cautiously makes her way down the bank, across the ice and
into the water.


She’s taking her first sample in this open water. Bajcz steps out onto
the ice, holding a plastic tray so Breitenbach can empty the net’s contents
into the plastic tray. But… the ice can’t take the weight.


Luckily Bajcz did not fall into the water. In these temperatures, that
would have been bad. They scramble up the snowy bank and start
sorting through the debris in the trays to find stonefly larvae.


Stoneflies have two tails. Mayflies have three tails. So, they’re
squinting to see what they’ve got:


Mary: “Oh, there’s one! Right there. Right, Rochelle? That one?”


Rochelle: “I left my glasses in the car.”


Mary: “Okay. I’m going to collect it. I think it is.”


Rochelle: Yes, go ahead and take it.”


Mary: “Oh look! That’s a mayfly. Three.”


Rochelle: “Yeah, see all the tails.”


Mary: “Look at that one! That’s two. That’s got two. See?”


Rochelle: “Yep.”


Mary: “Wow. (whisper) That’s gigantic.”


Rochelle: “That’s why we love this site (laughs).”


Once they find one, they drop the bug into a jar of alcohol. After the
thrill of finding the stoneflies, they hate to kill them, but they have
to preserve the samples for biologists.


Rochelle: “The whole jar goes back and Jo goes through and identifies
everything.”


Jo is Jo Latimore. She’s the Huron River Watershed Council’s
ecologist. She says without the volunteers’ efforts all along the
river, they’d never be able to monitor this river system as well, but
there are drawbacks to using volunteers.


“The first impression is that volunteer data may not be as trustworthy
as anyone else’s, any trained professional’s data. But, our volunteers
have been trained and then we also do quality control checks, just like
the government would do with their agencies where we’ll go out side-by-
side and send professionals out with the volunteers and compare their
results to make sure that they’re trustworthy.”


Latimore says the end result of volunteer surveys like this one is a
steady monitoring program that fills in the blanks left by government
agencies that can’t do the work.


“The agencies that do have the responsibility for checking the quality
of our waterbodies really have very limited budgets, very limited
staff. For example, in Michigan, the professional biologist from the
DEQ can only get to a particular watershed every five years. And to
really be able to stay on top of the conditions in a stream, you need
to monitor more often than that.”


Voluntary watershed organizations all across the nation assist government agencies in
monitoring the streams and lakes. But in many parts of the nation,
there are no volunteer agencies. The water quality is rarely checked,
and the only time anyone realizes there’s a problem is when there’s a
huge fish kill or other pollution problems that get the attention of
people who live nearby or people who fish the streams. And nearly
everyone agrees that’s not a very good way to keep water clean.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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The “Enviropig” Cuts Pollution

  • Researcher Cecil Forsberg created the first Enviropigs in 1999. Their meat may soon be available at American supermarkets. (Photo by Julie Grant)

At factory farms, cows and
pigs produce a lot of manure, and
that sometimes causes a lot of
pollution. Julie Grant reports that
one scientist says he’s got a solution:
genetically modify pigs so they produce
less pollution. But to be successful,
people have to be willing to eat
genetically modified meat:

Transcript

At factory farms, cows and
pigs produce a lot of manure, and
that sometimes causes a lot of
pollution. Julie Grant reports that
one scientist says he’s got a solution:
genetically modify pigs so they produce
less pollution. But to be successful,
people have to be willing to eat
genetically modified meat:

Murray Borrello says pig and cow poop is killing everything
in some of the water he studies. He’s a geologist and has
been researching water pollution with chemists and
biologists at Alma College in Michigan. Borrello says there’s
no fish in parts of the river – because of all the animal feces
running off of nearby farms.

“It’s very obvious. It’s this kind of brown, mucky,
murky looking substance.”

That poop is full of phosphorous, nitrogen, and other things
that cause pollution problems. It creates algae that clogs up
waterways and sucks out all the oxygen.

Borrello says some of the farms house more than
10,000 hogs. Farmers sometimes hold 20 million gallons of
pig manure in lagoons. They liquefy it and spray it on the
fields for fertilizer. But Borrello says it’s too much manure,
so it runs off the land and into the waterways.

In some places, it’s the same water is used for drinking
water. And the same rivers drain into the Great Lakes.

On the northern side of the Lakes, a Canadian scientist says
he’s found a possible solution to this pig pollution problem.

(sound of a pig barn)

It’s called the Enviropig.

Cecil Forsberg has genetically modified pigs so they produce
less pollution in their waste.

I met him at his research barn at the University of Guelph in
Ontario.

There are no windows – just a ventilation system. And,
wow, it’s hard to concentrate – the smell of pig waste is so
strong.

He introduces me to a group of Enviropigs, they’re about a year and
a half old. He says they have no detectable difference from
regular pigs.

“They have four legs, two ears, a snout, and they like to dig
in the shavings.”

But while most pigs poop out a lot of polluting phosphorous,
Forsberg has made the Enviropig into a much better
machine for digesting phosphorous.

He’s no Dr. Frankenstein. But to do it, he did use DNA from
a mouse. He says it’s considered a safe technique, but he
knows it makes people cringe.

“There’s no mouse in these pigs, except for a little fragment
of DNA.”

The mouse DNA allowed Forsberg to add a bacterial gene to
the pigs. It’s that bacteria that triggers the pig’s salivary
glands to start the digestion of phosphorous.

Forsberg says the waste from these pigs does a lot less
damage to the environment than most pigs.

“There’s a reduction in the phosphorous in the manure by up
to 60%. And that’s important because phosphorous is the
component in manure that is the first one that’s problematic.”

And it’s part of what chokes the oxygen out of the waterways –
killing fish and other aquatic species. Forsberg wants to see
Enviropigs bred on the global scale to reduce pollution from
the growing number of large scale hog farms.

Back in Michigan, water specialist Murray Borrello
says reducing phosphorous pollution from giant hog farms
will benefit water quality, but he does not think a genetically
modified pig is the answer.

“The problem is that does not address the issue of all the
other stuff that is very concentrated going into surface water
and ground water.”

Stuff, such as nitrogen and ammonia.

Borrello says a better solution is to reduce the size of hog
farms, so there aren’t so many pigs concentrated in such
small spaces.

But the Enviropig is starting to get some traction.

When Forsberg and his colleagues created the first
generation of Enviropigs, nearly 10 years ago, the question
was: could they do it?

Today, seven generations of pigs later, the question is: will
people eat it?

Until recently, the US government hadn’t allowed the sale
of genetically modified meat. But, the Food and Drug
Administration recently published guidelines for it. And
some industry analysts say you could be eating pork from
animals like the Enviropig as soon as 2011.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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