Old growth logs left on the bottom of the Great Lakes continue to attract interest. The dense wood is prized by people who make instruments and fine furniture. A few states (Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York) have permitted salvage operations. But in Michigan, permits are on hold until officials resolve how removal of the logs affects fish habitat. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Allen has more:
Transcript
Old growth logs left on the bottom of the Great Lakes continue to
attract interest. The dense wood is prized by people who make instruments
and fine furniture. A few states (Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York) have permitted salvage
operations. But in Michigan, permits are on hold until officials resolve
how removal of the logs affects fish habitat. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Bob Allen has more:
The submerged timber has been abandoned since the heyday of logging in the
late 1800’s, but cold fresh water has preserved the wood. To retrieve it,
salvagers need two permits. One from the state, another from the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers. Michigan has issued 12 permits. But the Army Corps
wants to be sure there’s no adverse impact on fish. Randy Claremont is a fish
biologist with the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians. He’s been
documenting how fish use a proposed salvage pile in Lake Michigan off
the city of Petosky.
“Those logs… you know… at least every time we visited we saw fish
utilizing them because there’s very little habitat structure around so if
you remove those logs, you will definitely affect fish community
negatively.”
The Army Corps wants to be sure salvagers replace lost habitat with
rock or brush piles. Details are being worked out before permits
are issued. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bob Allen.
The Sierra Club is suing the U.S. Forest Service to block logging of aspen in national forests in three Great Lakes states. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
The Sierra Club is suing the U.S. Forest Service to block logging of aspen on national forests in three Great Lakes states. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports.
The lawsuit asks a federal court to force the Forest Service to stop cutting aspen on its land in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The Sierra Club’s Anne Woiwode says the Forest Service favors aspen production at the expense of a healthy forest, and a healthy economy.
“When they choose to keep aspen at very high levels, they choose not to bring back forests that may be of greater economic value, may actually produce many more jobs than aspen does for the amount of wood produced.”
Woiwode says clear cutting aspen prevents white pine and hardwood forests from growing back.
The Forest Service says it manages forests for a variety of types and ages of trees, and doesn’t try to encourage aspen where it would not grow naturally.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill in Duluth.
A just-released study by two environmental groups has found high levels of arsenic on the surface of pressure-treated wood products. The Environmental Working Group and the Healthy Building Network tested pressure-treated wood purchased from home improvement stores in 13 cities. In releasing their findings, the groups are calling for a ban on the use of the lumber in construction. Their findings add to the growing concern about the safety of the chemicals used to treat this wood. Those chemicals are now being re-evaluated by both the Canadian and American governments. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, the two governments are approaching the issue differently:
Transcript
A just released study by two environmental groups has found high levels of arsenic on the surface of pressure-treated wood products. The Environmental Working Group and the Healthy Building Network tested pressure-treated wood purchased from home improvement stores in 13 cities. In releasing their findings, the groups are calling for a ban on the use of the lumber in construction. Their findings add to the growing concern about the safety of the chemicals used to treat this wood. Those chemicals are now being re-evaluated by both the Canadian and American governments. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, the two governments are approaching the issue differently.
For years, Don Houston at the Canadian Institute of Child Health has been calling for warning labels on pressure-treated wood. The lumber is used in playground structures and picnic tables throughout North America. And it’s treated with a preservative called Chromated Copper Arsenate, which protects the wood from insects and fungi. The preservative is made from arsenic, chromium and copper. And Houston says children who are exposed to the wood may be exposed to those chemicals, as well.
“It’s not just children’s play structures. I’d rather suspect even more problematic is the deck that’s on the back of their house because often times children spend more time there. It’s all sorts of structures that are put in outdoors – decks, balconies, retaining walls; even the telephone pole that might be in a schoolyard might be problematic.”
Houston says the problem arises when arsenic and chromium, which are both carcinogens, remain on the surface of the wood. A study of ten playgrounds conducted by Health Canada in the late 1980’s detected both substances on the surface of play structures made with pressure treated wood. Arsenic and chromium were also found in the nearby soil. Health Canada warns people who work with pressure-treated wood to wear gloves and a mask and to thoroughly wash clothing and exposed skin once they’re finished. The agency also warns against burning pressure treated wood. But Houston says there are still no guidelines for children.
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense for the guy who’s building it to use gloves and then the child ten minutes after it’s built to be walking over it and running on it barefoot and having greater potential health impact from the exposure.”
But scientists at Health Canada say the research findings have been mixed. They point to studies conducted by the U.S. EPA in the late 1980’s that found minimal health risks. Now, fifteen years since they last evaluated these chemicals, both Health Canada and the EPA are taking another look. The update is required by law in both countries. Richard Martin is a toxicologist at Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency. He says the presence of arsenic is not always a cause for concern.
“Although there’s a number of reports out there of arsenic being found in soil, and although they’re useful, arsenic is found in all soil. So we need to go the extra step to determine to what extent there’s potential for exposure to children and that type of thing.”
Martin says his agency is reviewing research to determine the effect of exposure on both adults who work with cca-treated wood and children who play near it. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is taking the review a step further. Jim Jones, the deputy director of the EPA’s office of pesticide programs, says they’re concentrating on the exposure to children first.
“It was the children’s exposure through cca-treated wood we think are the most important to look at as they’re the group in the population that is likely to have the greatest exposures, just because of the way in which they interact with playground equipment and on decks.”
The EPA also plans to take soil samples near cca-treated wood structures in 75 playgrounds around the United States. And it’s considering a recommendation that people apply sealants to pressure-treated wood in the interim. The EPA’s scientific advisory panel suggested the agency take that measure. The EPA and Health Canada are collaborating on the re-evaluation – sharing their findings and their recommendations. Don Houston of the Canadian Institute of Child Health hopes that will lead to legislation in both countries that will restrict the use of this lumber in places where children play. The EPA and Health Canada are expected to announce their recommendations next spring.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.
A disease that’s destroying trees is spreading through parts of the Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
A disease that’s destroying trees is spreading through parts of the Great Lakes Region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.
Beech bark disease has been damaging beech trees in eastern Canada and New England for a century. The disease has been creeping westward across the upper sections of U.S. since then. Last year Beech bark disease was discovered in the upper peninsula of Michigan. The disease is caused by two pests. First an insect called the wooly beech scale attacks the tree and open wounds. Then a fungus enters the bark, killing the trees. Often the beech trees are knocked over by high winds because of the damage done to them. Not all beech trees succumb to the disease. Scientists are now studying trees that appear resistant to beech bark disease, and they’re also looking for natural predators of the scale insect or the fungus that damages beeches. In the meantime, forest officials are cutting down beeches damaged by the disease. Before the trees fall down on someone unexpectedly.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
From a distance a cordwood building looks deceptively like it’s made
of
stone. But if you take a closer look you’ll see that what you thought
were stones actually are the ends of short logs laid widthwise to form
a
wall. In Europe, cordwood homes, sometimes called "poor mans’
architecture", have existed for over a thousand years. In North
America
the technique arrived with the early pioneers. Today, in the United
States, cordwood masonry is experiencing a renewed interest as
affordable housing because it’s cheap, easy to build, and energy
efficient. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Linda Anderson has more:
Transcript
On the far end of a pond, in upstate New York, a group of people are working away, busy as
beavers. The comparison works nicely here, because like beavers, these people are building with
logs and a mud-like mortar.
To one side, a group of men vigorously mix mortar in a wheelbarrow. When they get it just right,
it’s delivered to another group of people whoa re busy stacking 6-8 pound logs. Carefully and
methodically, men, women, and children take the mortar and slather it around each sixteen inch
log. It looks like they’re stacking a wall of firewood. Only this wall is designed to last more
than one season. It’s designed to last a lifetime.
Rob Roy has been building with cordwood for over twenty years. He says there are areas in northern
Greece and Siberia where one-thousand-year-old cordwood structures still stand. Roy and his wife
Jaki discovered cordwood masonry during the energy crisis in the 1970’s.
“My wife and I just needed low cost shelter. This was back in 1975. We had worked on a log
building of heavy pine logs in Arkansas, and we found we just couldn’t heft these large logs by
ourselves. About that time there was an article in National Geographic that showed two pictures,
one interior and one exterior, of a cordwood wall… and we said jeez that makes sense. We can do
that. You are not handling anything more than a six to eight pound log end.”
No literature was available, so Roy and Jaki did their own research. They build their house,
learned from their mistakes, and wrote a book about it: The Complete Book of Cordwood Masonry
Housebuilding. Now they teach workshops at their home near Plattsburgh, New York and speak at
conferences. They’ve become missionaries of cordwood masonry.
“Cordwood makes use of waste wood which is unsuitable for other building uses. Logs which, for
example, are not strait enough to take to the saw mill. perhaps dead wood that has been fire
killed or disease killed on your property. I have even heard of people using driftwood or peeler
cores left over from plywood plants. All sorts of sources of so-called junk wood is perfectly fine
when you cut it into sixteen inch pieces.”
Roy says depending on how resourceful you are, materials can cost between ten to twenty dollars
per square foot. Roughly half of the cost of a standard frame building. Roy says a properly made
cordwood home will be energy efficient. It’s easy to heat in the winter and stays cool in the
summer.
“It has this wonderful combination of insulation and thermal mass. The mortar joint between the
log ends does not pass through the wall. There is insulated space. That space can be filled with
loose insulation such as vermiculite or pearlite. We use sawdust treated with lime. It’s equal to
about R3 insulation value per inch of thickness, roughly the same as fiberglass.”
Not only is cordwood masonry easy on the environment, Roy says it’s easy on people as well.
Light-weight logs allow an ease of construction that invites everyone to participate, including
Grandma. Although it’s probably unlikely you’ve ever seen one, Rob Roy says cordwood construction
is on the rise. Today there are three times as many cordwood homes in the United States as there
were a decade ago. Most can be found in Wisconsin and New York.
Eight years ago, in Cambridge, New York, Scott Carrino built a cordwood home with his family. Like
many cordwood homes, his is round. Colored glass bottles have been placed in patterns in the
walls. When the sun shines, it looks like stained glass. Carrino became interested in cordwood
masonry after reading Rob Roy’s book.
“I had actually visited Rob Roy pretty quickly after seeing this book, and saw some of his
buildings and really connected with it, and just fell in love with this building technique.”
TO keep his costs down, Carrino used lots of recycled materials, scavenging old windows, tubs and
sinks. He says many people look at his house and think it was an enormous amount of work. But his
friend, Jon Carlson, says that’s relative.
“It is a lot of work, but all building of homes is a lot of work. When you lay up a cordwood wall
its finished. Don’t have to come back and paint it. Don’t have to come back and side it. So not
only are you finished, but also you are creating something that is pretty maintenance-free.”
Cordwood builders, like Carlson and Carrino, love living in a home made of strong, natural
materials built by their own hands. Rob Roy says with the right materials and friends, anyone can
have that experience. And just like beavers, they’ll be experts in no time.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Linda Anderson in Cambridge, New York.
With summer here, odds are you’ll be spending your free time in your back yard. Great Lakes Radio Consortium Commentator Bob Lilienfeld has a few ways for you to relax without putting a big strain on the environment: