Four Great Lakes states have some of the most severe cases of mercury contamination in the country. That’s according to a recent report by the group Environmental Defense. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner has more:
Transcript
Four Great Lakes states have some of the most severe cases of mercury contamination in the
country. That’s according to a recent report by the group “Environmental Defense.” The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner has more:
Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania made the group’s top 10 list of places with the worst
mercury pollution. Mercury can cause brain damage in babies whose mothers eat contaminated
fish. The report says mercury in the ground and water often comes from local sources, such as
power plants.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is working on new mercury rules for power plants.
But Michael Shore, of Environmental Defense, says the rules aren’t strong enough.
Other sectors have been required to reduce their mercury pollution by 90 percent. These
standards would only reduce mercury pollution by 70 percent. Also, these standards wouldn’t be
in place until 2018.
The EPA’s policy could use a market-based approach. That allows companies to buy pollution
credits from others that have emission controls in place. Environmentalists say instead, the EPA
should force all power companies to pollute less.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
Power companies say there's no great demand
from consumers for alternative energy sources such as
wind-powered generators. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Many public power companies across the country have begun so-called “green power” programs. They offer customers energy produced from something other than coal, such as wind or water – if customers agree to pay higher rates. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports, many utilities are having a tough time getting people interested in green power:
Transcript
Many public power companies across the country have begun so-called “green power” programs.
They offer customers energy produced from something other than coal, such as wind or water, if
customers agree to pay higher rates. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner
reports, many utilities are having a tough time getting people interested in green power:
There are two-thousand public power utilities in the United States. They’re run by local
governments, and are essentially owned by their customers – instead of by investors. A handful of
public utilities have begun offering special “green power” programs. And some of them are working
quite well.
In Minnesota, Moorhead Public Service built a second wind turbine because its “Capture the Wind”
program has been so successful. But that’s not been the case for many municipal-owned utilities.
(power plant sound up/under)
The Board of Water and Light in Lansing, Michigan, is the largest public utility in the Great Lakes
region. It began buying green power two years ago – half of it is made from landfill gas, the rest is
hydro power produced at dams in northeast Michigan. Customers can get half their power from
those sources for an extra seven-dollars-and-fifty-cents a month.
But the program hasn’t been as popular as the utility had hoped. Spokesperson John Strickler says
only 700 of the company’s 100-thousand customers have signed up for it.
“We were a little bit surprised and a little bit disappointed that we didn’t have more
customers subscribe to that product.”
It’s a problem many power companies are having. Joe Nipper is with the American Public Power
Association. He says for one reason or another, people just don’t seem to be willing to pay more
for cleaner energy.
“For many folks the power bill is a significant part of their bills every month and they watch
that closely. I think maybe another part of it is despite the effort by Lansing and others to
make the public aware of the benefits of these programs, still, in all, in some cases, little is
understood about them.”
Some environmentalists say power companies need to tell people that burning coal in power plants
pollutes the air they breathe. And that green power doesn’t release harmful emissions. David Gard
is with the Michigan Environmental Council.
“People don’t understand generally that there is a very close connection between smog and
soot pollution that come mainly from power plants and very severe health impacts that we
end up paying for as a society in very major ways. We have lots of evidence that the kinds
of pollutants that come out of coal-fired power plants are causing childhood asthma,
mercury poisoning of fish, which are then eaten by people, and other kinds of diseases.”
Gard commends the Lansing Board of Water and Light for attempting to sell cleaner energy, but he
argues the green power program will never be successful the way it’s set up now. Gard says
instead of a voluntary program, all customers should share the cost of green power.
But the Board of Water and Light’s Nick Burwell says the utility won’t raise rates unilaterally for a
service people are not demanding.
“We basically have a dual role. One in providing electricity and the other in protecting our
owners and working for our owners. And basically whatever they want is what we will
provide. If out of the blue they were to suddenly say we want you to spend this much money
and become, oh I don’t know, some new technology and triple our bills, that would be great
with us because they own us. They drive what we do and the actions we take.”
And so far, rate payers have shown they’re not that interested in buying green power. Lansing
Board of Water and Light officials say they take their responsibility to the environment and to the
health of their customers very seriously. But they say unless more people become willing to pay for
cleaner energy, they likely won’t expand the program any further.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
California could be on the forefront of a new scientific approach that tests people for pollution. A measure in the state legislature would require the state to monitor mothers’ breast milk for dangerous toxins, such as pesticides or PCBs. Supporters of the legislation are hoping “biomonitoring” will catch on in other states too. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
California could be on the forefront of a new scientific
approach that tests people for pollution. A measure in the state
Legislature would require the state to monitor mothers’ breast
milk for dangerous toxins, such as pesticides or PCBs.
Supporters of the legislation are hoping “biomonitoring” will
catch on in other states too. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Biomonitoring is based on the suspicion that environmental
pollutants play a part in many cancers and other diseases. The
California program would focus on women’s breast milk, since
many chemicals can be found in fat cells located in the breasts.
The Breast Cancer Fund is a major backer of the California
biomonitoring effort.
Jeanne Rizzo is the group’s executive director.
“We’ve spent 30 billion dollars to look at treatment and
to look at a cure for breast cancer. We have spent very
little, a very small amount of money to look at what could
be contributing to the causes. Biomonitoring will give us
an opportunity to measure the synthetic chemicals, the
pollution in people, in the target organ for breast cancer.”
Some critics of biomonitoring fear it could cause women to
stop breast feeding. Or that insurance companies or employers
might use the information against people.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consoritum, I’m Erin Toner.
Pull out a map and you’ll find the Great Lakes area holds resources that no other place can claim. The region is rich in lakes and forests and scenic views. But a road map just covers the surface. We know much less about what’s under the earth. Now, a team of geologists is working to map the resources under the ground. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
Pull out a map and you’ll find the Great Lakes area holds resources that no other
place can claim.
The region is rich in lakes and forests and scenic views. But a road map just
covers the surface.
We know much less about what’s under the earth. Now, a team of geologists from the
Great
Lakes states is working to map the resources under the ground. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Look outside – look out your car window or into your backyard and try to erase
everything you
see. Take away the playgrounds and the concrete parking lots. Strip away the trees
and the grass
and the topsoil in your garden.
This is the way Kevin Kincare imagines the world. A picture of nothing except naked
landforms
– massive hills and cavernous valleys. All created by gigantic pieces of ice that
gouged and
ground their way down the globe from Canada. This would be the picture of Great
Lakes states
about 15-thousand years ago. It’s the picture Kincare is slowly putting down on paper.
“This is a big chunk of granite and you can see this one side is flat and looks
polished. The
glacier was moving across. There’s grooves right here. So this is the direction
the ice was
moving.”
Kincare is a glacial geologist with the Michigan Department of Environmental
Quality. Six years
ago, he helped start the Central Great Lakes Geologic Mapping Coalition. It’s a
group of
geologists from four states – Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio – and the U.S.
Geological
Survey. They’re working to put together a 3-D digital map of the region’s glacial
geology.
They’ll map everything down to the bedrock, which can be hundreds of feet below the
Earth’s
surface.
The first step in geologic mapping is compiling information from local maps. After
that it’s out
to the field.
At Tacy Brother’s Gravel Pit, a massive machine is sorting big scoops of earth into
piles of sand,
gravel and rocks.
Kincare is now working on mapping a small county on Lake Michigan. He says looking
at a
gravel pit is like looking at nature’s record of thousands of years of changes to
the planet’s
surface.
“That starts to pull the whole story together. How the ice retreated across the
county from east to
west and where all the rivers that were carrying the melting glacier ice and
depositing thick
sections of sand, and where the glacial lakes were, where all the silt and clay was
dropping out.”
Geologists say one of the most important uses for the maps is locating water
resources.
Nationally, Michigan ranks first in the number of people who use household wells to
get their
drinking water. Illinois, Ohio and Indiana rank among the top 15 in the nation for
household
water well use.
Gary Witkowski’s job is to protect the environment in his county in southwest
Michigan. He says
the first step in protecting groundwater is knowing exactly where it is.
“It’d be a tremendous help for us if we could just go to a resource like this and
pull that
information. Not only to us, but, I mean, even to the developer, it would be a
major plus that they
could look at.”
Knowing exactly what’s under the ground also helps planners build in the right
places. And it
helps them avoid building in the wrong places. For example, planners can put
neighborhoods
close to supplies of groundwater. They can discourage development on land rich in
minerals and
construction materials, such as sand and gravel. And they can make sure they don’t
build
industrial plants in places that are especially vulnerable to pollution.
Dennis O’Leary is with the U.S. Geological Survey. He’s helping Kevin Kincare with
the map.
“Those kinds of decisions that involve competing interests really can’t be made
rationally unless
there’s a body of knowledge, of fact, that relates to just what the question’s all
about and that’s
what these maps provide.”
But it could be awhile before people have access to maps this detailed. The four
states in the
mapping coalition and the Geological Survey all have to share 500-thousand dollars a
year for the
project. That means Kevin Kincare can map only one county every three years. It
would take
two centuries just to finish his state.
“We’d have to have a lot of medical breakthroughs for me to finish this project.”
Kincare says the maps are too important to wait that long. He says they need
20-million-dollars a
year from Congress. With that money, they could put together a complete geologic
map of the
Great Lakes region in about 16 years. Kincare says he’s not optimistic they’ll get
that kind of
money.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
Scientists say they’ve found a fungus that kills the Emerald Ash Borer. The tiny green beetles have devastated ash tree populations in parts of Michigan, Ohio, and Canada. Now, the Emerald Ash Borer is moving farther west. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
Scientists say they’ve found a fungus that kills the Emerald Ash Borer. The tiny green
beetles have devastated ash tree populations in parts of Michigan, Ohio, and Canada. Now the Emerald Ash Borer is moving farther west. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner has more:
Researchers with the U.S. Forest
Service and Michigan State University
say a product called “BotaniGard”
kills the Emerald
Ash Borer in lab tests. But they say
it isn’t clear yet whether the product
is effective against widespread
infestation.
BotaniGard is produced
by Emerald BioAgriculture
Corporation. Company President
John McIntyre says
it’s safe for people and animals.
“That’s one of the nice things about
biological pesticides. They oftentimes
are, and in the case of
BotaniGard, certainly is something
that is not harmful to the environment
or to the user.”
BotaniGard is not a new product.
Farmers have been using it since the
late 1990’s. The company plans
to donate some of the product to local
governments dealing with
Emerald Ash
Borer infestation.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
An artist's rendition of the Diagnostic Center for Population and Animal Health (image courtesy of DCPAH).
A new animal laboratory in the Great Lakes region will be certified to work with deadly biological agents and infectious diseases. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
A new animal laboratory in the Great Lakes region will be certified to work with deadly
biological agents and infectious diseases. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin
Toner reports:
When it opens early next year, the new animal lab at Michigan State University will be
certified as a Biosafety-Level 3 facility. That means it’ll be able to test for deadly
communicable diseases, such as Chronic Wasting Disease, and bioterrorism agents, such
as anthrax.
Randall Levings is director of the National Veterinary Services Laboratory. He says the
new facility adds to a growing network of sophisticated labs able to deal with serious
outbreaks.
“It could be crucial in terms of quickly defining what areas have it and which ones don’t
so that you can start putting your control measures in place to contain the outbreak and
limit its impact.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention won’t say how many other Biosafety-3
labs there are in the Midwest because of security concerns. However, two others are
reportedly in Ohio.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
An artist's rendition of the Diagnostic Center for Population and Animal Health (image courtesy of DCPAH).
A new animal diagnostic laboratory being built in the Great Lakes region will help farmers and veterinarians get quicker answers about what’s making their animals sick. The lab will also be one of only a handful in the Midwest certified to work with potentially lethal biological agents and infectious diseases. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
A new animal diagnostic laboratory being built in the Great Lakes region will help
farmers and veterinarians get quicker answers about what’s making their animals sick.
The lab will also be one of only a handful in the Midwest certified to work with
potentially lethal biological agents and infectious diseases. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Construction crews are putting the finishing touches on a huge cream-colored building
with green windows. It’s nestled among corn fields and campus dairy farms. When it
opens early next year, Michigan State University’s new animal diagnostic lab will test
thousands of animal samples every week. It’ll be one of the first lines of defense against
animal diseases that are spreading quickly through the Midwest. Testing for Chronic
Wasting Disease, West Nile Virus and Bovine Tuberculosis has already clogged many
labs in the region.
(ambient sound)
Right now, Michigan State’s ten animal diagnostic services are scattered in outdated labs
all across campus. Every day, the labs take in hundreds of samples from all over the
region. Some are entire animals – dead because of some disease or infection. Others are
just parts of animals – a liver or a piece of muscle.
These veterinary students are trying to find out why two pigs from two different farms
died. One had swollen joints and a high temperature. The other one was anorexic.
(ambient sound: “So have you taken your specimens already?”)
William Reed is the director of Michigan State’s Diagnostic Center for Population and
Animal Health. He says the current labs were built 30 years ago, and were never designed
to be used in the way they are now.
“For example, we need state of the art laboratories that have special air handling
capability. We have to be concerned about protecting the workers, we have to be
concerned about containment of the different pathogens that we work on. And it’s just not
proper to continue to run the kind of analyses in the kinds of facilities that we have.”
Besides dealing with various communicable diseases, the new laboratory will also help
the country build up its defense against bioterrorism. The lab will be one of only a few
facilities in the Midwest that’s classified Biosafety-Level 3. That means scientists are
certified to work with deadly biological pathogens and viruses, such as anthrax and
smallpox. Lab Director William Reed says it’s important there are more labs to handle
biological threats to animals and people.
“We will be able to address some of the agents of bioterrorism and it’s likely that we
would join forces with the federal government in addressing any introduction of a foreign
animal disease, whether intentionally or by accident. Particularly, some of the agents that
terrorists would want to use to harm animal agriculture in the U.S.”
University officials say the new Biosafety-3 lab would be safe and secure. People who
work in the high-containment area get special training and have to follow strict safety
guidelines.
There’s been strong opposition to similar bio-defense labs in other parts of the country.
So far, there’s been no sign of opposition to the Michigan State lab.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention won’t say exactly how many Biosafety-3
labs there are in the region because of security concerns. But there are reportedly two in
Ohio, and several others are being considered in the Midwest.
Randall Levings is the director of the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames,
Iowa. He says the Michigan State University lab will help the federal government build a
bigger network of labs that can quickly deal with a serious outbreak.
“And the whole concept behind that is to have not only more laboratories that can work
with some of these agents, but the concept is also that it would be better to have a
laboratory with that kind of capacity close to the outbreak.”
Levings says another biosafety lab in the Great Lakes region makes sense. That’s because
of the large number of livestock farms, and the proximity to Canada, where there have
been recent outbreaks of animal and human diseases.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
People who suspect they’re sick because of something they ate can go to a new Web site to find out if others are having similar symptoms. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner has more:
Transcript
People who suspect they’re sick because of something they ate can go to a new Web site to find
out if others are having similar symptoms. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner has
more:
The Web site was created at Michigan State University’s National Food Safety and Toxicology
Center. It started as a pilot project in three mid-Michigan counties. But now it’s being expanded
because people from all over the country are logging on. Holly Wethington manages the project.
“If they became sick and they thought that they had eaten something that was bad or maybe
something didn’t taste right, and then they started to experience either vomiting or diarrhea, they
would log on to the Web site and report their symptoms and food that they had eaten, to see if
others had reported those too.”
Wethington says state and local health agencies check the site regularly. The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention say about 5000 people die of food poisoning every year in the U.S. The
Web site is the letters R-U-sick and the number two, RUsick2.msu.edu.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
The Emerald Ash Borer is destroying hundreds of thousands of ash trees in Southeast Michigan and in nearby Ontario. The Asian insect likely made its way to North America in wood packing materials. (Photo courtesy of David Cappaert, Michigan State University)
Ash has become an extremely popular tree to plant along streets in the United States. It’s being used in many cases as a replacement for the American Elm. Stately Elm trees lined streets for more than a century in many towns. But that’s changed since the 1930’s when Dutch Elm Disease wiped out millions of Elms throughout the country. Now the Elm’s replacement, the Ash, is facing a similar fate from a new tree killer, the Emerald Ash Borer. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
Ash has become an extremely popular tree to plant along streets
in the United States. It’s being used in many cases as a
replacement for the American Elm. Stately Elm trees lined
streets for more than a century in many towns. But that’s
changed since the 1930s when Dutch Elm Disease wiped out millions
of Elms throughout the country. Now the Elm’s replacement, the
Ash, is facing a similar fate from a new tree killer, the
Emerald Ash Borer. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Erin Toner reports:
In Michigan, a grounds crew is surveying dozens of trees spray-
painted with big, orange X’s. The trees are dead or dying because
of disease. They’ll get chopped down, chipped up and hauled away.
(sound of chainsaw)
At Michigan State University, the campus loses about 100 trees every year.
And officials here see that as a big blow to the university’s appeal.
So campus leaders are especially worried about the potential devastation
caused by a little metallic green beetle.
The Emerald Ash Borer is eating its way through trees in the upper
Midwest. Deb McCullough is a professor of entomology at Michigan State.
She’s part of a team of federal, state and local officials working on the
Emerald Ash Borer problem.
“It’s like a tidal wave, I mean there’s just so many of these beetles and Ash is
everywhere. Once you start looking for it, and you notice it. It’s the tree
that’s along roadsides, it’s along railroad rights of ways, it’s in woodlots.
It’s amazing how dominant Ash has become.”
So dominant, that Emerald Ash Borers have plenty to chew on. They’ve already
killed or are killing five-and-a-half million ash trees in the Great Lakes region.
McCullough says by next summer, that number will double, to nearly 11
million dead ash trees.
“Local communities are basically spending their entire forestry and
street-tree budgets on cutting down and destroying Ash right now. That
means no money is going into planting and pruning or the kinds of activities
that they would normally be doing. Other communities don’t have those kinds of
resources and they’re just watching their Ash trees die.”
(sound of wood chipper)
The Emerald Ash Borer was first discovered in the United States about five years
ago. Researchers say it probably came here with wood used to pack imported goods from
Asia. That’s the way many invasive pests have been transported to the U.S.
Frank Telewski is a plant biology professor at Michigan State. He says so far,
researchers have not found any Ash varieties that are resistant to the Emerald Ash Borer.
And right now there is no insecticide proven to kill the beetles.
“When an organism is introduced to a brand new environment where the trees
haven’t been evolving with the disease or with the insect pest, then that
organism just has a free reign, it’s dinnertime.”
There’s currently a quarantine around the infested areas. That means no one can
transport any ash trees, lumber or firewood outside several counties in Michigan, Ohio
and Ontario, Canada.
Entomologist Deb McCullough says the quarantine alone won’t stop the Emerald
Ash Borer from spreading to new states. It’ll take money – a lot of it – to
pay for a plan to stop the beetle. McCullough says a long-term plan to wipe
out the disease would likely cost more than 60 million dollars. And she says time
is wasting. The adult beetles start emerging in a few months, ready to lay
eggs in new trees.
“This is not just a Michigan problem. I mean, everybody’s got Ash. If
we don’t stop it here, Ohio is going to be the next one, Indiana, Wisconsin.
This thing will certainly spread and they’re going to be dealing with the
same situation.”
State and federal governments have put together an Emerald Ash Borer
eradication plan. It includes surveys to see if the disease has spread,
methods to manage the existing outbreak, and telling people about the problem.
But right now, there’s no guaranteed funding for the plan. Anna Cherry is
with the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
“Whenever there are situations like this, there’s always discussion about
whether or not it’s appropriate or necessary to seek emergency funding,
there’s questions about what’s available in local and state governments.
You know, it’s always a mix of resources and you can’t rule one out or count on
one at this particular point in time.”
Michigan’s governor and the state’s Congressional delegation are working to get
federal money for the fight to stop the Emerald Ash Borer.
(sound of chainsaw)
Without some money soon, cities in the Midwest will likely be cutting down
millions more dead ash trees in coming years.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
An increase in the number of households throughout the world is threatening the environment, according to new research in the scientific journal Nature. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner explains:
Transcript
An increase in the number of households throughout the world is threatening the environment,
according to new research in the scientific journal Nature. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Erin Toner explains:
Researchers studied what they call “hotspot countries” – places where native species are
threatened by human activity. They counted 155-million more households since 1985. The study
says the reason for the increase is because fewer people are living under one roof. The number of
households grew even in countries where the population is going down.
Michigan State University researcher Jack Liu took part in the study. He says households with
fewer people aren’t necessarily more efficient.
“For example, in a two person household you would have one refrigerator. In a four-person
household you also have one refrigerator. So the energy efficiency in the two-person household
would be lower.”
Liu says reasons for the increase in households include the high divorce rate and a drop in the
number of generations living under the same roof.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
