Power plants take in a lot of cooling water. Fish and other aquatic life are sucked into intake pipes and die. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Politicians extended Daylight Saving Time to save energy, but critics say it’s not worked other places. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Hundreds of electric power plants might have to find alternate
methods of cooling in the future. As Tracy Samilton reports, a federal
appeals court judge says the plants are killing too many fish:
Transcript
Hundreds of electric power plants might have to find alternate
methods of cooling in the future. As Tracy Samilton reports, a federal
appeals court judge says the plants are killing too many fish:
For electric power plants located near water, it’s cheap and efficient
to run lots of water through the plants for cooling. But untold
numbers of fish and other aquatic life are killed in the process.
Eddie Scher is a spokesman for the environmental group Waterkeeper
Alliance. He says overall, the industry might kill a trillion fish or
more each year.
“It’s funny that we sit around and talk about other
problems with our fisheries – there are other problems with our
fisheries – but – this is big one!”
A federal appeals court recently ordered the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency to change its rules regarding cooling systems, and to
place fish first and costs to the industry second. The electric power
industry says new cooling systems could cost millions per plant, and
instead, they should be allowed to restock fish to replace the ones
they’ve killed.
The Kaskaskia River has been low lately because of lack of rain. But nearby power plants also draw a lot of water from the river... making residents who depend on the river nervous. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
"Smitty’s at the Marina." Right on the Kaskaskia River, near New Athens, Illinois. Smitty's been wondering whether a nearby coal-fired power plant has been using too much river water... making it tougher for boats to launch from his marina. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
A train from the Peabody Coal Company. Peabody Coal Co. wants to build a new power plant. It’s a big energy company that used to have a large coal operation near New Athens. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
The U.S. will need more electricity in the next few decades. To keep pace with demand, companies plan to build more power plants. Battles over power generation usually involve air quality or even how much fossil fuel is used to generate electricity. But one community’s facing a fight over how much water a new power plant might use. It’s a debate more of us might face in the future. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports:
Transcript
The U.S. will need more electricity in the next few decades. To keep pace with demand, companies plan to build more power plants. Battles over power generation usually involve air quality or even how much fossil fuel is used to generate electricity. But one community’s facing a fight over how much water a new power plant might use. It’s a debate more of us might face in the future. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports:
(sound of boat motor starting up)
A bearded guy by the name of Smitty is helping fisherman heave off from his riverside marina. On this sweltering afternoon, the marina’s hosting a big fishing tournament. The tournament’s bringing in lots of business, but Smitty’s got a problem. The area’s been hard up for rain recently, and the water’s pretty shallow.
“It makes quite a bit of difference. A lot of the access areas, the small river channels that lead into here aren’t accessible when the water gets low. It’d affect our business, mean a lot less people being able to use it.”
Smitty wonders whether there’s something else keeping this river, the Kaskaskia, shallow. Lately, he’s been asking whether a coal-fired power plant has been using too much river water. The Baldwin power plant, just east of the St. Louis metro area, is owned by Dynegy – a big power company.
Baldwin cools its generators with water from the Kaskaskia. Now another company, Peabody, is building its own power plant nearby. And that new plant will need river water to cool its generators, too.
Several environmental groups and local activists oppose the project. They say the Kaskaskia doesn’t have enough water for a new power plant. They say wildlife, boaters, and city drinking supplies already use the Kaskaskia. The Peabody Company says the plant won’t endanger the river’s water levels. The company will use the latest technology to conserve water.
But, even with hi-tech equipment, Peabody wanted to pump about 30 million gallons each day from the Kaskaskia. State regulators said no, and restricted the plant to 13 million gallons a day. That’s still about as much water as a town of 85,000 people uses, and only 10 percent of the water is ever returned to the river, the rest just evaporates.
Kathy Andria is with a local Sierra Club chapter. She says the project’s water needs are surprising, and worrisome.
“They have water battles out in the West. We haven’t had it before here, but this is really showing what’s in the future for us.”
Andria’s fears could apply not just to this river, but everywhere. The power industry’s already the biggest user of water in the United States, but it’s likely to need even more water soon. In the next few decades, electric companies plan to build at least 100 power plants that will need lots of water.
Right now, no one’s sure what will happen when they start drawing water from lakes, rivers and underground wells. In the meantime, the power industry is looking at ways to better use water.
Robert Goldstein is with the Electrical Power Research Institute, an industry research group. He says the industry’s improving systems that use no water at all, but those are very expensive. In the meantime, though, demands on water continue to rise. And Goldstein says the industry is aware that it has to compete for water.
“It’s not a question of how much water is there. It’s a question of how much water is there, versus what all the various stakeholders want to do with that water, what their aggregate demand is.”
He says even in regions that seem to have a lot of water, communities need to look closely at their future water needs. Goldstein says everyone, not just the power industry, will need to plan water use better.
People outside the industry are also watching how much water power plants use. Dr. Benedykt Dziegielewski is finishing a federal study on the subject. He worries about situations where several power plants draw from the same river or other water source at the same time.
“If you locate another plant, more water will be diverted from the system and at some point it will pre-empt other uses in the future from that same source.”
He says many areas could see more of these kinds of fights over water. Until we know more about demands for water, Dziegielewski says the industry should be as efficient as possible.
“As we go into the future, there is a need to control or reduce the amount of fresh water that is used for electricity generation.”
Environmentalists say that’s the least that can be done. They’re asking why coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants have been allowed to use so much water already. But not all power sources do.
Wind power and other alternatives use little, if any, water. A U.S. Department of Energy report recently made that point.
But given the political clout of the fossil fuel industry, it’s still easier and cheaper to generate power that needs lots of water.
If only your electricity meter could talk... (Photo by Kenn Kiser)
If the summer heat’s had you cranking up the a/c… you might be anxious about getting a big bill in the mail. Imagine if your house could send you an email to warn you that you’re spending a lot… before the bill arrives. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams explains:
Transcript
If the summer heat’s had you cranking up the A/C, you might be anxious about
getting a big bill in the mail. Imagine if your house could send you an
email to warn you that you’re spending a lot before the bill arrives. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams explains.
In the future, your electricity meter could talk to you.
You’d be able to type into your computer how much you want to spend on lighting and cooling
your house each month. Using wireless technology, your utility meter would
then send you an email when you’re going over those goals.
It’s a system created by mechanical engineering students at the University
of Michigan. Professor Steven Skerlos advises the team.
“As a recent homeowner, it was very obvious to me that even I had little
awareness of the impact that I was having and the consumption of course
until it was way too late. The bill comes a couple months later and you
can’t go back in time and turn down the thermostat or use less water.”
Skerlos says the system can also be used in water and gas meters.
But it might be several years before you can get the new system. Skerlos
says he’s had interest from the companies that make the meters, the next
step is getting utility companies to buy in.
It takes a lot of water and a lot of grain to brew a good beer. And once that beer is made, there’s a lot of spent material and water left over. This excess is usually just considered waste. But two guys in the Great Lakes region decided to start a brewery that would focus on reducing pollution and waste and then re-using whatever was left over. They wanted to show how helping the earth could also help business. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports:
Transcript
It takes a lot of water and a lot of grain to brew a good beer. And once
that beer is made, there’s a lot of spent material and water left over. This
excess is usually just considered waste. But two guys in the Great Lakes
region decided to start a brewery that would focus on reducing pollution
and waste and then re-using whatever was left over. They wanted to
show how helping the earth could also help business. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports:
(ambient pub noise)
It’s a busy summer night at The Leopold Brother’s of Ann Arbor
Brewery. People have shown up to unwind after a long week. Some are
here to listen to the live band. Others to play a rowdy game of Pictionary
in the beer garden.
But mostly, people are here to drink the beer.
Brothers Scott and Todd Leopold own and run the brewery. A family resemblance is
obvious between the brothers.
But their roles in the business are totally different. Todd Leopold brews the beer. He’s a
big, friendly guy who seems at home in a comfortable-looking pair of old
overalls. Todd went to the Siebel brewing school in Chicago and got hands-on
training in four different German breweries. He uses techniques he learned over there in
his own facility.
His brother Scott Leopold is an environmental engineer, educated at
Northwestern and Stanford. Scott spent years helping big companies
save money by using environmentally sustainable business techniques.
But four years ago he decided to put his money where his mouth was.
One night, at a bar in Colorado, the two brothers came up with the idea
to combine their talents and start the world’s first zero-pollution brewery.
They wanted to build the model, then show people that it could really work.
Their idea was met with some skepticism by family and friends. Simply put, they
thought Scott and Todd were nuts. And Scott says they weren’t all wrong.
“Most of the entrepreneurs who are out there will tell you if they knew what they were
getting into before they got into it…they probably wouldn’t have done
it. We might not be alone in that.”
But so far the idealistic business venture has proved to be a success. Scott and
Todd have reduced the volume of a typical brewery’s waste by 90 percent.
To accomplish this, Scott and Todd designed a brewery where every detail was taken into
account to conserve resources.
“What we wanted to do was put science ahead of marketing…to ensure that anyone could
look within our production processes to ensure that it would stand up to the rigors of
science within the environmental engineering world.”
(ambient sound of brewery)
In the brewhouse, stainless steel machines gleam like they’ve just been washed. They’re
not brewing today… that only happens about once a week. But the factory computer is on
and its small, colorful graphics are showing everything that’s happening in the facility.
The computer helps cut down on the brewery’s waste by tracking and regulating all
energy and water use. So there’s always an accurate record of what was
produced versus how much of the raw materials and energy was consumed.
Todd Leopold says this helps him brew better beer.
“When you know everything that’s going in and everything that’s going out, if suddenly
that changes or there’s a spike you know there’s a problem and you’re able to track it
down. So it’s really helped me run a much tighter ship.”
All the other devices in the brewhouse are specially tailored to reduce waste. In fact,
they’re so efficient that Leopold Brothers generates 25 percent less solid waste residue
and buys 25 percent less grain than most small breweries.
That means they’re saving money.
Scott Leopold says their profit margins are nearly a quarter higher than they would have
been if they hadn’t made the investment in better equipment early on. But even with all
the complex equipment, there’s still some spent grain and water left over.
It’s all put to good use. The used organic malt and hops make great food for
animals at organic farms. Excess water from the brewing process is used in the
greenhouse in the back.
Pots of basil for the menu and moonflowers for the beer garden grow in there.
Conservation even extends beyond the brewhouse to the brewery’s decor.
Fat vinyl green tubes with zippers up the sides snake across the ceiling. They’re part of a
more energy-efficient heating and cooling system. And old doors hammered together
make up the bar.
The Leopold Brothers pay the same attention to detail when it comes to marketing their
product. The labels are made from vegetable-based inks. And they use recyclable
cardboard boxes as packaging.
But the brothers want to have an impact on brewing beyond just their own facility.
Todd says they have to start off small.
“We’d love to see the larger, world class…well, not world class, but world size breweries
that distribute their beer internationally to adopt some of the things that we do. It’s just
very difficult to infiltrate the corporate culture as opposed to where there’s one or
two owners. You sit down with them, have a beer, and say this is how you need to do
things. It’s much easier to have an impact on that level, I believe.”
Scott and Todd Leopold say the big breweries have adopted some conservation
techniques simply to save money…but they still generate a lot of waste water.
Scott thinks they could reduce the amount by introducing new machinery and changing
their cleaning techniques.
But U.S. Environmental Protection Agency environmental scientist Erik Hardin says the
big breweries will have to be shown that trying more new things will help the bottom
line.
“With most any big business, pollution prevention steps seem to be incorporated after the
people in charge have been convinced thoroughly that these things can actually save them
money.”
And the Leopold Brothers say that is the exact mission of their brewery …to show, by
example, that sustainability means profitability.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Annie
MacDowell.
The City Hall in Chicago is topped
with plants and trees to try to cool things down. The city
is working to reduce the heat island effect caused by so many blacktop roofs and parking lots. Photo by Lester Graham
On the nightly TV news in large cities, the meteorologist sometimes talks about the heat island effect. That’s where all the blacktop roofs and asphalt parking lots soak up the heat and increase the temperature on a hot summer day. One major U.S. city is trying to do something to reduce that effect. To set an example, the mayor decided to start with City Hall. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
On the nightly TV news in large cities, the meteorologist sometimes
talks about the heat island effect. That’s where all the blacktop roofs
and asphalt parking lots soak up the heat and increase the temperature
on a hot summer day. One major U.S. city is trying to do something to
reduce that effect. To set an example, the mayor decided to start with
City Hall. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Standing on the roof, eleven stories up, isn’t really far enough to escape
the noise of the city below. But this rooftop is an escape. It’s a garden, a
big one. There are even trees. Not in pots, but actually planted on… or…
in the roof.
Marcia Jiminez is the Commissioner of the City of Chicago’s Department of Environment. She says Chicago wants building owners to
do what they can to cool the city down… and planting gardens on the
roof is one way to do it. So that’s what the city did on top of City Hall.
“Well, the garden on the rooftop is addressing what we call an urban heat
island problem. By putting the garden with light colored pavers and the
green plants on top of the roof, we’re actually helping to use less energy
inside the building and it actually helps to keep the building cooler.”
Cooling down the building is just the beginning of this garden. Despite
being eleven stories up in the middle of downtown, the roof is alive with
bugs and butterflies.
“Actually birds and all of the insects, many of them, have found their
way up here. We’ve actually put up birdhouses to study what kind of
birds are coming to the rooftop garden. This is a place of
respite as well as a place to feed.”
The whole rooftop has become something of a lab. Scientists research
what animals have made a home here… and they’re monitoring how the
plants are spreading.
Kimberly Worthington worked on the City Hall project to see it go from
the drawing board to rooftop. She says they chose plants for color, form
and for survivability.
“The design that we went with was low maintenance, was what we were
looking for in our plant selection. And the landscape architects that were part of the design team focused on plants that would require less water. And they also wanted to keep as many native plants as possible. So, there are a lot of prairie plants up here.”
The Chicago City Hall rooftop project also reduces rain water runoff. 75-percent of a one-inch rain will be soaked up right here in the garden. That’s good because too much rain overflows sewers into Lake Michigan. If enough buildings in the city had rooftop gardens, stormwater runoff problems would be curtailed a bit.
While the city is touting the environmental benefits of its rooftop garden, in another part of the city a planned rooftop garden is all about people.
Brenda Koverman is with the Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital in Chicago. We’re up on the roof where she’s showing me landscape renderings of how the surrounding area will look once the planting begins. Stone paths, fountains, flower gardens and shrubs.
It’ll look beautiful. And it’ll probably cool things down up here. But Koverman
says this is for the patients who are learning to be mobile after disabling injuries. The hospital hopes that patients in rehabilitation will find the rooftop garden more pleasant and helpful than institutional tile floors and plastic obstacles as they learn to
manuever…
“You know, so, are patients more able to maneuver their wheelchairs in the community? Are patients able to use their hands better so they can cook better at home? Are patients able to stay out of the nursing home and go to their home? So, if we can get any kind of
those outcomes, then it’s a huge success.”
It might be more interested in the patients, but the hospital will still be helping Chicago reduce its heat island effect.
There aren’t very many of these projects in the city, so it’s hard to say whether the rooftop gardens could cool things down all that much. But Environment Commissioner Marcia Jiminez says all you have to do is go up on the roof on a hot day. City Hall sits right next to the County Building. In fact they look like the same building. But not from the roof. Only one side is garden.
“In last summer in 2001 on the hottest day, while it was about a hundred degrees on the city hall side, it was 165 on the opposite end of the building where’s there’s a blacktop roof.”
Even if you’re not interested in planting a garden on your roof, the city still requires some effort to cool things down. City ordinance calls for light colored material when a roof is replaced. And parking lots have to plant some trees before they can get a permit to resurface. Rooftop gardens aren’t mandated… but city officials say they’re learning first
hand that it’s a much better use of space in the city.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Power plants take in a lot of cooling water. Fish and other aquatic life are sucked into intake pipes and die. (Photo by Lester Graham)
