The Karner blue butterfly is an endangered species. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
There are several groups in the region working to protect and restore the endangered Karner blue butterfly. Now these efforts could be helped by a new computer mapping and statistical modeling technique. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach has more:
Transcript
There are several groups in the region working to protect and restore the
endangered Karner blue butterfly. Now these efforts could be helped by a
new computer mapping and statistical modeling technique. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach has more:
Habitat maps for endangered species can be based on broad general
estimates. But some scientists hope a combination of computer
software and data such as soil type and vegetation will lead to
more accurate information on where the Karner Blue butterfly lives.
David Mladenoff is a professor of Forest Ecology at the University of
Wisconsin – Madison. He says having a better idea of the butterfly’s
habitat might save companies money on things like surveying costs.
“In other words, if they say we’re planning on doing work on this utility
right away or potentially harvest this area of forest, is this even
a place we have to be concerned about for the Karner Blue butterfly
occuring?”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a state agency, and some power
companies are funding a computer mapping project in Wisconsin.
Scientists say the same technique could be used in other states.
A former industrial site is being redeveloped with parks, wetlands and homes. Residents have high hopes the new development will boost the local economy. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
A riverfront park is part of the redevelopment.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Brownfield redevelopers are hoping to entice people to live along the riverfront, too. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
As the American economy shifts away from heavy industry, each closed factory risks becoming a brownfield. That’s a site that contains potentially hazardous materials. For the past decade, the federal government has provided help in assessing and cleaning these properties. It has proved to be one of the most popular environmental programs. It’s giving hope to small towns that need help in remaking their landscapes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports:
Transcript
As the American economy shifts away from heavy industry, each closed factory
risks becoming a brownfield. That’s a site that contains potentially
hazardous materials. For the past decade, the federal government has provided help in assessing and
cleaning these properties. It has proved to be one of the most popular environmental programs. It’s
giving hope to small towns that need help in remaking their landscapes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports:
When a Rust Belt city loses another factory, the townspeople don’t suffer
just from the loss of jobs. They’re often stuck with crumbling buildings or even polluted land. Not to mention, the local economy isn’t strong enough to fix them up.
It’s a dilemma familiar to East Moline, a small Illinois town that sits
along the banks of the Mississippi River. Since the early 80s, the town’s lost thousands of jobs in the farm machinery
industry. Rich Keehner is the City of East Moline’s assistant administrator. He says
there is a plan for the industrial riverfront.
“Right now there’s a movement to relocate or pull industrial uses from the
river. And then of course turn that riverfront property into bike paths or some
recreational activities to improve our quality of life. And that’s exactly
what we’re doing here.”
It’s a simple idea: move industry away from the river and work with
developers to make it an attractive place to play or even live. But it’s just not that easy. Keehner says developers won’t build on these sites until it’s clear what kind
of pollution, if any, might be there.
Testing the area’s soil and water can get expensive, so sites can remain
empty for years. Meanwhile, developers look for greener pastures. Really, they can just build on farmland instead.
During the past decade, the U.S. EPA’s paid for pollution testing at hundreds
of sites. The agency also funds some cleanup and other costs. East Moline’s used several grants to develop eighty acres of riverfront donated
by the John Deere Company.
With the Mississippi riverbank at his back, Keehner points out some new
houses developed on the site.
“It’s got some great amenitities, located next to the bike path. You
can just wake up any time night or day and look out at the river. And your
neighbors are very limited; it’s very peaceful.”
The district also boasts a small light house, a lot of park space, and some
wetlands areas. Keehner says brownfields grants funded about six percent of the project’s
total cost. That doesn’t sound like much, but the money’s played a key role. He says private money couldn’t be secured until there was progress on the
environmental front.
A lot of environmentalists and civic groups applaud the program even though
a lot of credit goes to someone they often criticize. Namely, President
George Bush. His critics admit the brownfields program is one of the brighter spots of
his environmental policy.
In 2002, President Bush signed legislation that expanded the program’s
funding and breadth. Alan Front is the vice president of the Trust for Public Land, a
conservation group.
“The administration, ever since signing that bill, has budgeted about 200
million dollars a year to make this program really vibrant and so not only
have they created the wallet, but they’ve filled it in a way that really
benefits communities around the country.”
Front says the expansion’s brought a tighter focus on the environmental
needs of smaller towns. Apart from the grants, there’s another reason for the program’s popularity. The EPA trains city administrators to use federal brownfield money to
leverage private dollars.
Charles Bartsch has been teaching such courses for ten years.
He says, to compete with larger cities, smaller towns need to show they
understand their local economies.
“I suggest to towns what they should do first of all is to decide what their
competitive economic niche is.”
That means, developing around a community asset, like East Moline’s tried
with its attractive riverfront. Bartsch says, for all the progress small town administrators have made, they’re still pretty isolated. He says they need to cast a wide social net, so
they can find the best advice.
“The key thing is less knowing how to do it yourself, but more knowing who to
reliably call to walk through ideas and walk through options.”
The brownfields program does have its critics. They say it’s tilted in favor
of land development over open space and they worry about how much oversight
there is of environmental testing.
Back at the East Moline site, it’s easy to see why small towns are
participating. Residents there now have more access to the river, bike paths, parks, and,
for some people, new homes. East Moline, and a lot of other small towns like it, are seeking even more brownfields money.
They’ve got a lot of other sites that want a chance at a new life.
Many gardeners feel that there's nothing as satisfying as growing and eating your own vegetables. (Photo by Daniel Wildman)
Not as many people are planting vegetable gardens these days… but the few who do are really passionate about it. And it’s not just because they swear their own vegetables taste better than anything you can get at a store. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams explores the obsessions of vegetable gardeners:
Transcript
Not as many people are planting vegetable gardens these days… but the few who do
are really passionate about it, and it’s not just because they swear their own
vegetables taste better than anything you can get at a store. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams explores the obsessions of vegetable
gardeners:
In Connie Bank’s former life, she recruited attorneys and engineers. She’d be
on the phone until ten every night. She’d spend entire weekends with clients.
She calls herself a true Type A – working at full speed, making a lot of money,
until she just had enough of it all.
Now vegetable gardening is her whole life.
“You’re controlling a tiny little nourishing world of your own, where the rest
of our world is sort of crazy, politics are crazy, the world is going nuts… it’s
America, it’s fast fast fast fast fast. This vegetable gardening thing is a way to take a
deep breath, slow yourself down, and just watch the garden grow.”
But Bank admits she’s still intense. She throws herself into gardening. She
says if the little plastic labels say to plant things twelve inches apart, she gets
impatient and packs them in six inches apart.
People like Connie Bank are sort of rare. A survey by the National Gardening
Association found that not a lot of people are into vegetable gardening these
days. Compared to five years ago, seven million fewer households are growing
vegetables. You have to weed and water every day and fend off the squirrels.
Most Americans would rather plant flowers or just not bother with any of it.
So these days, instead of recruiting professionals, Connie Bank’s trying to
recruit as many new gardeners as she can. She teaches classes to people on
their lunch breaks. Today, she’s going after daycare kids.
(Sound of watering)
BANK: “Who here likes vegetables? What kind do you like?”
KIDS: “Watermelon! Oranges! Strawberries!”
BANK: “Okay, that’s good you guys, except those are fruits.”
KIDS: “Corn on the cob is good!”
A lot of serious vegetable gardeners got their first taste of it as kids.
(Sound of trowel digging)
Earl Shaffer farmed as a kid in Indiana, and when he left at 17 he swore he’d
never grow anything again. But Earl says twenty years later, his wife Marie
tempted him back into the garden. Today, they’re tending to their lettuce,
tomatoes and zucchini. He says their house is too big for just the two of them
now, but he can’t move and leave his garden behind.
“As you get older, I think some of the things that were a part of your youth
kind of return in importance in some way. I was very fond of my grandparents,
especially my grandmother, and gardening was part of her life, I think that also made it
important to me to return to it.”
Shaffer says farming did give him a feel for growing things, but like everyone
else, he still has to read the plant labels. He says we’re losing the
knowledge of how to live off the land.
For gardeners, growing even just a couple tomato plants can feel like
reconnecting to our farming roots. Ashley Miller curated an exhibit on
vegetable garden history at Cornell University. She says the motives for these
gardens have changed a lot over the last three centuries. Sometimes people have
gardened to make money, sometimes they’ve grown food to support a war effort,
and sometimes people have just done it as a challenging hobby, but there’s one
major thread.
“Growing vegetables is as close as we can get to a seasonal ritual.
There is something primal about putting a seed in the soil and tending it, and
harvesting it and eating it.”
A lot of gardeners agree that growing vegetables is a sensual experience. They
talk about the way the scent of tomato plants fills the whole yard, or the
blue-green color of baby broccoli. Gardener Lee Criss says she can’t wait to
get into her yard in the spring and get her bare hands in the dirt.
“I don’t garden with gloves because I need to feel what the soil feels like, the
texture. You use senses in gardening that you don’t in most everything else
that you do. You feel things, you smell. It’s a different way of sensing the
world around you, I think.”
It’s hard to walk away from these people’s backyards and shake off their
enthusiasm. Every single gardener I talked to told me to call them when I
started my own garden. And if they think you’re considering gardening at all,
watch out: they’ll fill your head with visions of their juiciest cherry
tomatoes, they’ll try to fill your car with seedlings, anything to get you
hooked.
Due to a blight, American chestnuts are now rare in the Midwest. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)
In the first half of the last century, there were millions of American chestnut trees ranging from the Eastern seaboard to the Upper Midwest. Now, there are virtually none… because a fungus killed them. A campaign is being launched to bring back a blight-resistant version of the chestnut… and it’s being planted here in the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen
reports:
Transcript
In the first half of the last century, there were millions of
American chestnut trees ranging from the Eastern seaboard to the Upper
Midwest. Now, there are virtually none because a fungus killed them.
A campaign is being launched to bring back a blight-resistant version of
the chestnut, and it’s being planted here in the Midwest. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:
Sprouts from diseased chestnut trees don’t get the killer fungus until
they’re 4 inches tall, so researchers like Brian McCarthy of Ohio
University have had plenty of raw material to breed a new version of the
chestnut tree.
“Fifteen-sixteenths pure American chestnut and one-sixteenth Chinese
chestnut. And that one-sixteenth of the genome confers blight resistance.”
Ohio is now planting hundreds of the new seedlings on top of abandoned strip
mines. McCarthy believes they may help reclaim the land.
“It’s not that chestnuts like this kind of soil. It’s that probably that chestnuts can
tolerate this type of soil better than other broadleaf tree species can.”
McCarthy hopes that a century from now, the blight-resistant chestnut
trees will once again be prominent in forests, providing high-quality
lumber and food for wildlife.
Just outside the Greensgrow compound (photo by Brad Linder)
Greensgrow not only makes fresh produce available in the city but also makes a farm out of what once was a brownfield space. (photo by Brad
Linder)
A farm is a strange thing to see in the middle of a gritty, urban area.
But the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder recently visited a small
farm on what used to be a polluted site in an industrial neighborhood:
Transcript
A farm is a strange thing to see in the middle of an gritty, urban area.
But the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder recently visited a
small farm on what used to be a polluted site in an industrial
neighborhood:
One of the first things you notice about this one-acre plot in
Philadelphia is how out of place the farm looks. About a block away is a
busy interstate highway that jams up with rush hour traffic twice a day.
The farm itself is surrounded by rowhouses, a steel galvanizing plant, and
an auto detail shop.
Chino Rosatto runs the auto shop. About 8 years ago, he first met his new
neighbors – a small group of farmers.
”It was weird at first, you don’t see no farm in the city.”
But Rosatto says he got used to the farm started by Mary Seton Corboy
pretty quickly.
“It was an empty lot. Nothing there. Just fenced up, and that was it. She
came up, did something with it.”
Before it was an empty lot, this city block was a steel plant. In 1988
the building was demolished, and the EPA declared the site hazardous.
It was cleaned up, but Rosatto says it was nothing but concrete slabs
until Mary Seton Corboy and her small group of volunteers came and started
the farm they call Greensgrow.
Corboy moved to Philadelphia from the suburbs nearly a decade ago. With a
background as a chef, she’d always been concerned about how hard it was to
find fresh produce. So she decided to grow it herself.
“The question that just kept coming up over and over again was, is there
any reason why you have to be in a rural area to grow food, given the fact
that the market for the food, the largest market for the food, is in the
urban area?”
Corboy says usually food travels an average of 1500 miles from its source
to wind up on most Americans plates. And she says when it comes to flavor
– nothing is more important than how fresh the food is.
“If you eat strawberries that are commercially available,
you have no taste recognition of something that people 40 years ago would
say is a strawberry, because of the refrigeration, because of the way they
are picked underripe, because of the things they are sprayed with to give
them a longer shelf life.”
Corboy says her first choice for a farm wouldn’t have been an abandoned
industrial site. But the rent was cheaper than it would be at almost any
other spot in the city.
And even though the EPA and scientists from Penn State University
confirmed that there were no toxic chemicals left, Corboy doesn’t plant
anything edible in the ground.
She grows some plants in greenhouses. Others are planted in raised soil
beds. And she grows lettuce in PVC pipes that deliver nutrients to the
plants without any soil at all.
Corboy still regularly sends plant samples out for testing. The results?
“At one point Penn State sent us back a report, we talked to
them on the phone about it, and they said your stuff is actually cleaner
than stuff that we’ve seen grown on farms. Go figure that. We feel very, very comfortable
with the produce that we grow. Because, you know, I’ve been living on it
myself for 8 years.”
And restaurant owners say they’re happy to buy some of the freshest
produce available.
Judy Wicks is owner the White Dog Cafe, a Philadelphia
restaurant that specializes in locally grown foods and meat from animals
raised in humane conditions. She’s been a loyal Greensgrow customer for 8
years.
“As soon as we heard about Greensgrow, we were really excited
about the idea of supporting an urban farm on a brownfield – what a
dream! To you know, take an unsightly, unused block, and turn it into a
farm. It’s just a really exciting concept.”
Wicks says she’s never had a concern about the quality of the food,
because of the care taken to prevent it from touching the soil.
In addition to its restaurant business, Greensgrow sells fruit and
vegetables to Philadelphia residents at a farmer’s market twice a week.
The farm also operates one of the only nurseries in the city, which begins
selling plants this spring.
Mary Seton Corboy says running the farm has taught her a lot about food,
the environment, and waste. She says she doesn’t look at empty lots the
same way anymore. She’s learned to squeeze fruits, vegetables and flowers
out of every space of this city block. And she sees value in the things
other people throw out.
On a recent night Corboy was driving home with her farm manager Beth Kean,
and they spotted a pile of trash beside a building.
“But what they had dumped were all these pallets. And Beth
was with me in the car, and we both turned and looked at them and went,
Look at those pallets! Let’s come back and get them, they’re in great
shape!”
Urban farming is tough. Corboy originally had lofty goals for her farm.
Greensgrow was going to be a pilot project, something she’d expand to
include 10 farms throughout Philadelphia.
8 years later, Greensgrow is still anchored on its original one-acre site.
But by keeping her costs low and selling to loyal customers, Corboy sold
200-thousand dollars worth of produce last year. That was enough to make
2004 the farm’s first profitable year.
Rainwater that falls on paved areas is diverted into drains and gutters. If the rainfall is heavy enough, the diverted water can cause flash flooding in nearby rivers and streams. (Photo by Michele L.)
Some planning experts are worried that the rapid development in cities and suburbs is paving over too much land and keeping water from replenishing aquifers below ground. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports:
Transcript
Some planning experts are worried that the rapid development in cities and suburbs is
paving over too much land and keeping water from replenishing aquifers below ground.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
In nature… when it rains… the water slowly soaks into the ground and makes its way
through the soil and rock to eventually be stored as groundwater. Some of it makes its
way underground to be stored in aquifers. And some of it slowly seeps through the rock
for a while and then resurfaces as springs to feed streams during times when there’s not a
lot of rain. It’s a natural storage system and a lot of cities rely on that water.
But when we build buildings and houses and parking lots and roads, a lot of the land
where the rain used to soak into the ground is covered up. Instead the rainwater runs off
the hard surfaces and rushes to stormwater gutters and ditches and then overloads creeks
and rivers. Even where there are big expansive lawns in the suburbs… the rain doesn’t
penetrate the ground in the same way it does in the wild. The grass on lawns has shallow
roots and the surface below is compact… where naturally-occurring plants have deep
roots that help the water on its way into the earth.
Don Chen is the Executive Director of the organization Smart Growth America. His
group tries to persuade communities to avoid urban sprawl by building clustering houses
and business districts closer together and leave more natural open space.
“With denser development you have a much lower impact per household in terms of
polluted runoff.”
Chen says the rain washes across driveways and parking lots, washing engine oil, and
exhaust pollutants straight into streams and rivers instead of letting the water filter across
green space.
Besides washing pollutants into the lakes and streams… the sheer volume of water that
can’t soak into the ground and instead streams across concrete and asphalt and through
pipes can cause creeks to rise and rise quickly.
Andi Cooper is with Conservation Design Forum in Chicago. Her firm designs
landscapes to better handle water…
“Flooding is a big deal. It’s costly. That’s where we start talking about economics. We
spend billions and billions of dollars each year in flood damage control.”
Design firms such as Cooper’s are trying to get developers and city planners to think
about all that water that used to soak into the ground, filtering and being cleaned up a bit
by the natural processes.
Smart Growth America’s Don Chen says those natural processes are called infiltration….
and Smart Growth helps infiltration…
“And the primary way in which it does is to preserve open space to allow for natural
infiltration of water into the land so that there’s not as much pavement and hard surfaces
for water to bounce off of and then create polluted runoff.”
People such as Chen and Cooper are bumping up against a couple of centuries or more of
engineering tradition. Engineers and architects have almost always tried to get water
away from their creations as fast and as far as possible. Trying to slow down the water…
and giving it room to soak into the ground is a relatively new concept.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is trying to get communities to give the idea
some consideration. Geoff Anderson is the Acting Chief of Staff for the EPA’s Office of
Policy, Economics and Innovation.
“Anything you can do to keep that water on site and have it act more like it does in its
natural setting, anything you can do to sort of keep that recharge mechanism working,
that’s helpful.”
The EPA does not require that kind of design. It leaves that to local governments and the
private sector. The Conservation Design Forum’s Andi Cooper says sometimes getting
companies to think about treating water as a resource instead of a nuisance is a hard
sell…
“You know, this is risky. People tell us this is risky. ‘I don’t want to do this; it’s not the
norm.’ It’s becoming less risky over time because there are more and more
demonstrations to point to and say ‘Look, this is great. It’s working.’ ”
But… corporate officials are hesitant. Why take a chance on something new? They fear
if something goes wrong the boss will be ticked off every time there’s a heavy rain.
Cooper says, though, it works… and… reminds them that investors like companies that
are not just economically savvy… but also have an environmental conscience.
“A lot of companies are game. They’re open. If we can present our case that yes, it
works; no, it’s not risky; it is the ethical thing to do; it is aesthetically pleasing; there are
studies out there that show you can retain your employees, you can increase their
productivity if you give them open spaces to walk with paths and make it an enjoyable
place to come to work everyday.”
So… doing the right thing for the environment… employees… and making investors
happy… make Wall Street risk takers willing to risk new engineering to help nature
handle some of the rain and get it back into the aquifers and springs that we all value.
Rainwater that falls on paved areas is diverted into drains and gutters. If the rainfall is heavy enough, the diverted water can cause flash flooding in nearby rivers and streams. (Photo by Michele L.)
An Environmental Protection Agency official wants local governments to take a broader view when making land use plans for their communities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
An Environmental Protection Agency official wants local governments to take a broader view
when making land use plans for their communities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:
Often planners don’t look past their own city borders when making decisions. Geoff Anderson
wants that to change. He’s the Acting Chief of Staff for the EPA’s Office of Policy, Economics
and Innovation. Anderson says city officials often look at land use planning one site at a time
instead of looking at how their decisions will affect the entire area…
“The two scales are very important and I think in many cases too much is paid to the site level
and not enough is given to the sort of broader regional or community context.”
Anderson says that’s especially important when planning for stormwater drainage. He says too
many communities think about getting the water to the nearest stream quickly without thinking
about how that rushing water might affect flooding downstream.
For years, a big chemical company has been negotiating
with government officials on cleaning up an area contaminated with dioxin. Environmentalists say Dow Chemical has used its power and influence to drag out the talks. The chemical company has agreed to plan for some kind of clean-up… but it’s still not clear how far that clean-up will go. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick Pluta reports:
Transcript
For years, a big chemical company has been negotiating
with government officials on cleaning up an area contaminated
with dioxin. Environmentalists say Dow Chemical has used its
power and influence to drag out the talks. The chemical company
has agreed to plan for some kind of clean-up… but it’s still
not clear how far that clean-up will go. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Rick Pluta reports:
Dow Chemical is a huge employer in Michigan, it employs almost 60 thousand people, not including outside suppliers. In a state that has lost a lot of manufacturing jobs, a big company like Dow is important. The state of Michigan has been negotiating with Dow for nearly a decade over cleaning up dioxin downstream from the company’s big plant in the central part of the state. Just recently Dow and the state struck a deal on the next phase of coming up with a clean-up plan. But it’s not clear how long it will take to design the plan and it’s not clear exactly how far the plan will go to clean up the contamination.
The people who live in the floodplain of the Titabawassee River, downstream from the Dow Chemical plant in Midland, Michigan, say they’ve waited long enough for a cleanup plan. Almost a decade has passed since dioxin was first discovered in the river sediment.
(sound of river)
At Immerman Park in the town of Freeland, downriver from Dow, signs dot the riverbank. They warn parents to keep their children from playing here, because there’s dioxin in the soil.
(sound of hand-washing)
An earlier agreement with the state led Dow to put handwashing stations up here for children to clean up after playing in the dirt. Mary Whitney lives nearby. She says the sinks and faucets in the hand-washing stations are too high and too complicated for children to use, and they’re located too far from the banks of the river. She doesn’t think the kids are getting the dioxin contamination off their hands let alone off their shoes and clothes. She says it’s typical of how the dioxin question’s being handled in Michigan.
“It’s like, well, let’s do a little bit to show we’re doing something, but let’s not maybe address the whole issue. We’ll do just a little but to keep the peace and to keep everybody from not getting so much up in arms. But I think, they’re trying to do, Dow is, trying to do some things to help. But it’s just putting a little Band-Aid on the whole issue. It’s not fixing the main problem.”
For decades one of the by-products of the chemicals Dow produced was dioxin. It’s believed dioxin has been in the soil around Midland since the early 20th century. The fact that dioxin contaminated the sediment along the river downstream was only discovered within the last decade.
Studies have linked dioxin to health problems, including cancer and damage to the nervous system. The state says dioxin has spread to the environment round the Titabawassee River to the point that it issued warnings to hunters to limit how much wild game they eat from the area. That’s because the state says deer, squirrels and other game might be contaminated with dioxin.
Dow and its supporters say the risks posed by dioxin are being overstated. Dow officials say there’s no evidence that the dioxin levels in the Titabawassee floodplain pose a threat to the public health. Dow researcher Jim Collins says the company has six decades of research on employees who’ve been exposed to high levels of dioxin, and the worst health effect is a mild form of chloracne in some of the company’s employees.
Chloracne is the skin condition that disfigured Ukraine’s president, Victor Yushchenko, after he was poisoned by a large dose of dioxin.
“We’ve studied heart disease, diabetes, immunologic effects, reproductive effects, and cancer. And other than some increased risk of chloracne in these workers, we find no health effects that have been related to dioxin exposures.”
Backers of the company say critics should be careful about calling for penalizing Dow. Janee Valesquez is the the local economic development group “Midland Tomorrow.” She says Dow’s impact on the local economy amounts to almost a billion dollars a year.
“So Dow is absolutely… an anchor for mid-Michigan.”
Businesses and workers don’t want to damage relations with the chemical giant. Jim Ballard is an economist at Michigan State University. He says there is some risk that Dow could abandon Michigan. Texas is the new home of the chemical industry, he says, because energy’s cheap and it doesn’t burden industry with a lot of environmental regulations.
“I think Dow might consider leaving if they felt the business regulatory climate in Michigan was excessively onerous. On the hand, it would be very costly for them to leave. They’ve got a large investment in infrastructure and human capital in the Midland area, and to reverse would be a decision that I’m sure they would not take lightly.”
But critics of how the dioxing clean-up has been handled think the economic concerns should not be more important than the health risks to people who live nearby – people such as Mary Whitney. She and others filed a lawsuit seeking a lifetime of medical tests paid for by Dow. That case is before the state Supreme Court. Whitney says she’s afraid a cleanup plan will get bogged down in talks, or delayed by studies.
“We want them to clean it up. Take responsibility for what they’ve done and clean it up and make it safe for all of us. Now I’m not sure what all that would entail. Surely maybe dredging the river to make it deeper. Shoring up the shores, so it doesn’t flood any longer. And fill in the yards with clean soil. And that’s going to be a big thing to do.”
Many critics of the state’s handling of the dioxin clean-up believe anything less than an extensive clean-up is putting business and jobs ahead of the health of the people in Midland and downstream along the Titabawassee River.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Rick Pluta.
Solar panels aren't just for rocket scientists anymore. Consumers are now starting to use solar and other alternative energies to power their homes. (Photo courtesy of NASA.gov)
With no power lines in sight, one western Pennsylvania couple lives pretty much like the rest of us. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray has this story of a home “off the grid”:
Transcript
With no power lines in sight, one western Pennsylvania couple lives pretty much like the rest of us. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray has this story of home “off the grid”:
Ted Carns is busy hanging art in the foyer of his house. While he holds a picture in place against the wall, he plugs in an electric drill.
(sound of drill)
Ted and Kathy Carns’ entire two-bedroom house uses electricity powered by the sun or wind. Their rustic stone and plank home sits on top of a steep wooded hill, miles from the nearest neighbor.
“There’s no water, there’s no soil, there’s no public utilities up here. So everything that we designed, you have to keep in mind, was done in this harsh condition.”
It’s taken the Carns twenty years to design and expand their alternative energy system. Ted, a self-described scrounger and handyman, has found many components through flea markets and friends. In fact, Kathy says their off-grid system began with a gift of shoebox-sized batteries.
Kathy: “Somebody gave us a bunch of batteries-nickel cadmium batteries. And then we started thinking about how to recharge the batteries. Thinking wind. The windmill came first.”
Ted: “It took me eight climbs to install the new windmill, I had a different one up there. The bottom of the tower I built.”
Murray: “How tall is that?”
Ted: “Seventy-six feet.”
(sound of chimes)
The metal tower now looms over the house, outbuildings and organic garden. As the wind whips the chimes at its base, the turbine blades whirl and drive an alternator to generate electricity. The electricity is stored in a bank of batteries.
Murray: “Is the wind consistent here?”
Carns: “Winter good. Summer not. Then in summer the solar panels kick in. So it just sort of balances out.”
The Carns’ rooftop solar panels accept sunlight into silicon chips and convert the light into electricity. Because it’s sunny today, Kathy can run their specially manufactured clothes washer with solar energy. First, she pushes a button on the living room wall and a red light starts to blink. The light indicates that stored electricity is being converted from a DC to AC current.
“That means the house is on 110 power. Turn the water on and then just… It’s on.”
The Carns also vacuum when the sun shines or the wind blows. They run their TV, stereo and lights off 12-volt DC batteries, much like a car. They heat their water with solar energy in the summer and wood in the winter. And warm their house with a wood stove. They also capture air from underground and use it to refrigerate food and cool their house. All told, Ted and Kathy have spent about 3,000 dollars to upgrade their alternative energy system. Ted says, except for burning wood, the system is nonpolluting. He believes it’s also pretty much hassle free.
Carns: “There’s no inconvenience that we’ve seen… There’s maybe two or three days that we don’t have ample hot water. The nice thing about that is that it – you never stop appreciating the conveniences because periodically for a very short time sometimes you have to do without.”
Perez: “More and more people are discovering that they can power their homes and small businesses using solar and wind.”
Richard Perez is the founder and publisher of Home Power Magazine. Perez says states are doing far more than the federal government to encourage the residential use of renewable energy.
“There are tax credits, there are rebates, there are buy-downs. Every state has a slightly different scheme but most states have some sort of financial incentive for installing small-scale renewables in your home.”
Perez says homeowners don’t have to wait wait for government support to set up a system. Ted and Kathy Carns agree.
(sound of plates and silverware)
As the couple gets ready for dinner, Kathy says they want to inspire the many people who come to see how they live off-grid.
“We have a friend who has a solar lawnmower now. We have friends in Philadelphia that took some solar panels; it’s not their total system, but it’s a little part of their system. If we get enough company and enough people have been here, it sort of branches out, and goes off.”
An estimated 180 thousand households in the United States generate some or all of their own electricity. But alternative energy systems aren’t for everybody. For people who are downright afraid of technology or inconvenience, life off the power grid isn’t a real option just yet.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Ann Murray.
Vegetables are a great way to get vitamins and minerals. But studies show techniques for faster-growing and bigger vegetables could be producing plants that actually have less of these health benefits. (photo by Justin Richards)
Vegetables are less nutritious than they were 50 years ago. That’s according to a new study that tested 43 different garden crops. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:
Transcript
Vegetables are less nutritious than they were 50 years ago. That’s the finding of a new study that tested 43 different garden crops. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:
Researchers analyzed U.S. Department of Agriculture nutrition data from the past 50 years. They found that levels of several vitamins and minerals decreased by as much as 38% in garden crops over the time period. Don Davis is the lead author of the study. He’s with the University of Texas Biochemical Institute. He says the decline could be the result of decades of breeding plants to produce more and bigger vegetables.
“There’s emerging evidence that when you genetically select for higher yields, you get a plant that grows bigger and faster but it isn’t necessarily able to produce nutrients or uptake minerals from the soil at the same faster rate.”
Davis says despite the fact that vegetables have fewer nutrients in them, he says they’re still the most efficient way to get vitamins and minerals into your system.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris Lehman.
The Karner blue butterfly is an endangered species. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
