The federal government could soon promise a lot more money to help clean up the Great Lakes. Lawmakers from several states in the region are proposing a multi-billion dollar cleanup fund. More from the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland:
Transcript
The federal government could soon promise a lot more money to help clean up
the Great Lakes. Lawmakers from several states in the region are proposing a
multi-billion dollar cleanup fund. More from the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Michael Leland:
Lawmakers from states bordering the Great Lakes say previous cleanup efforts have been
uncoordinated and under-funded. The region’s U.S. Senators are sponsoring
a bill that would give Great Lakes states six-billion dollars in grants during the
next ten years. A similar bill in the House offers four billion over five years.
Andy Buchsbaum heads the National Wildlife Federation office in Ann Arbor. He says the
proposals are groundbreaking.
“Until now, all too often the approach has been to slow or, if we are very lucky, to stop the
degradation of the Great Lakes. But these bills really break the mold. They give the lakes a
chance to improve, to heal, to recover.”
The Senate bill would create a regional advisory board to recommend which projects should
receive federal money. Buchsbaum predicts presidential candidates hoping to win support in the
region will back the bills. Both measures are only authorization bills. Lawmakers in future years
would have to vote to actually spend the money.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Michael Leland.
Marian Byrnes has been called the "environmental conscience of the Calumet." She has been a key leader in getting the city of Chicago, and the state of Illinois, to see the value of Calumet's natural areas. Photo by Mark Brush.
The Big Marsh is known as the jewel of the Lake Calumet wetlands. It's the largest in the Calumet Open Space Reserve. The closed Acme Coke Plant is on the horizon. Photo by Mark Brush.
Generations of families grew up with the steel industry, and instead of moving out, families often added on to their houses to make more room. These balloon frame houses can be found throughout the neighborhoods in the Calumet area. Photo by Mark Brush.
In an area in south Chicago you can see the remnants of a steel industry that has had better days – silent smokestacks looming on the horizon, empty parking lots, and for sale signs in front yards. The Calumet region was once a haven for big industry… and because of that it is also home to a list of seemingly endless environmental problems. Many people thought the problems were too great to overcome, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports… that attitude is changing:
Transcript
In an area in south Chicago you can see the remnants of a steel industry that has had better days – silent smokestacks looming on the horizon, empty parking lots, and for sale signs in front yards. The Calumet region was once a haven for big industry… and because of that it is also home to a list of seemingly endless environmental problems. Many people thought the problems were too great to overcome, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports…that attitude is changing:
If you’ve ever driven by Chicago’s south side, you’ve likely seen the smokestacks and factories that dot this old industrial area.
But when you get off the main highway and drive down the back roads of Calumet, you see something you wouldn’t expect – remnants of unique wetlands and prairies. It’s an area where thousands of migrating birds come each spring. Herons, egrets, and cranes carefully pluck their food from these marshes – marshes that are right next to chemical factories and toxic city dumps.
(Bring up sound of sparrows and outdoors)
The sun is setting in this part of the Calumet – some sparrows nearby are settling down for the night – and Marian Byrnes is showing me around the places she’s come to know from living and working here for more than 20 years.
“This land is mostly slag on the banks of Indian Creek, but it’s not considered hazardous.”
“How would the slag get here?”
“Oh, it was waste from Steel Mills – mostly Republic Steel which was north of here.”
(Fade her under + continue outdoor sound)
Marian Byrnes is a retired public school teacher. And at age 76, she volunteers her time as the executive director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force. She repeatedly meets with businesses, community groups, and city and state advisory boards – patiently delivering her message that the Calumet region is worth protecting.
And over the years Marian, and others like her, have steadily worked against a city that didn’t seem to care about the natural areas in Calumet. For many of them, it began more than twenty years ago, when they got a note from the Chicago Transit Authority in their mailbox. The note outlined the Transit Authority’s plan to build a bus barn on their neighborhood’s prairie:
“It was like having our own little forest preserve right behind our houses. You can walk out there, and when you get out – maybe a block or so – you’re not aware that you’re in the city at all. I mean you can’t even see the houses, so it’s just a wonderful place to be in touch with nature.”
They convinced the transit authority to build the bus-barn elsewhere. And in the years that followed they fought off other proposals such as plans to build a toxic waste incinerator, and plans to re-open old city dumps.
But despite those successes, big environmental problems still persist. And the list of contamination is intimidating – heavy metals, PCBs, and leaking landfills. The problems are so overwhelming that when planners in Chicago were thinking about spreading miles and miles of concrete for a new airport, Calumet was thought of as an ideal location.
Kathy Dickhut works in the planning department for the city of Chicago:
“The area does have a lot of environmental problems. Ten years ago the thinking was it was all dirty, environmentally dirty, and that was sort of across the board, …so one way to deal with that is, you know to cover the whole thing up.”
But local environmental and community groups became united in their opposition to the plan. And instead of an airport, the local groups asked the National Park Service to designate the area as an ecological park.
And slowly but surely, the city began to look at the area in a new light:
“I think people didn’t realize just how much opposition there would be to paving over this area. I mean the airport proposal was quite dramatic, and because it was quite dramatic, there was quite dramatic outcry about it – so once that played out – we had to look at it again in a different way. And what we’ve done is really look at the resources that we do have here, which are substantial, and how we can improve those.”
Today, the city appears to have a completely different attitude about the Calumet area. Chicago lawmakers recently passed a land use plan that calls for the best of both worlds. They want to protect and clean up the natural prairies and wetlands – while at the same time – attract new businesses to build on old industrial sites.
City planners hope to balance what may be seen as competing goals (attracting new industries AND cleaning up the environment) by prioritizing where to build and where to preserve. And when they do build – planners are encouraging green building practices. Practices that complement the surrounding natural areas rather than cover them.
Those involved with the project paint a pretty nice picture of what’s to come.
Lynn Westphal is a researcher for the U.S. Forest Service, and works closely with the city of Chicago on the Calumet project: “Imagine an industrial area with the buildings roofs are green. Where instead of turf around – you have native grasses and because of that you have more birds and butterflies… you’ve got bicycle access, people fishing on their lunch breaks…. And it’s not far from becoming a reality. This is all very doable. So it’s not totally hypothetical.”
And in fact, movement toward that new vision is already underway. The Ford Motor Company is building a new industrial park for its suppliers. And many of the green building practices Westphal describes will be used. And the Corps of Engineers is spending more than 6 million dollars to clean up an area known as Indian Ridge Marsh.
But those involved with the transition of this area say that leadership from the community will be the key to its eventual success.
Meanwhile, the Southeast Environmental Task Force will have a new executive director by this summer…
“…and that’ll be someone who’ll learn to do what I’ve been doing for past 20 years, cause I can’t keep on doing it indefinitely.”
“Do you have any advice for them?”
“Have a lot of patience…”
The same patience Marian Byrnes has used when riding a city bus to meeting after meeting, listening to the community, and working with city officials – all in an effort to create what she believes will be a better future for the people in Calumet.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.
A watchdog group is out with its annual list of endangered rivers, and this year it’s placing most of the blame for damage to the rivers on one government agency. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
A watchdog group is out with its annual list of endangered rivers, and this year it’s placing most of the blame for damage to the rivers on one government agency. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
This year the American Rivers’ list of endangered rivers included a section devoted to criticizing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Melissa Samet is with American Rivers. She says this time they looked back at the past several years of the organization’s endangered rivers list.
“We revealed a pretty startling statistic, that 60-percent of the rivers that we have listed over the past 16 years as in danger were on the list because of the Corps of Engineers.”
The American Rivers report accuses the Corps of Engineers of destroying rivers and wasting taxpayers’ money by citing reports of whistle-blowers and independent analyses that charge the Corps exaggerates the cost-benefits of the projects it constructs on the rivers.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
A recent National Academy of Sciences report on the Missouri River suggested some of the river's natural meanders and access to the flood plain be restored. It also suggested sections of the river be reviewed to see if barge traffic might be closed for parts of the year or permanently.
Stephen Gloss chaired the committee that wrote the final version of the NAS report on the Missouri River. He and other members of the NAS committee are attending townhall meetings in the Missouri River basin to explain the report's findings.
The National Academy of Sciences has issued a report that calls for the restoration of the longest river in the United States. That report says the government needs to stop studying problems along the Missouri River and – with the help of residents – do something about them. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has the story:
Transcript
The National Academy of Sciences has issued a report that calls for the restoration of the longest river in the United States. That report says the government needs to stop studying problems along the Missouri River and – with the help of residents – do something about them. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
On the opposite bank from here, you can see the Big Muddy empty into the Mississippi River. I’m standing on the spot where Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery spent the winter before starting their historic expedition up the Missouri, across the Rockies and to the Pacific coast. If Lewis and Clark could see the Missouri today, there’s little that they’d recognize at this end of the river. Over the years it’s been straightened, walled-in by levees and channelized. Its braided river system of meanders, backwaters and eddies, once alive with wildlife are – for the most part – gone.
Seventy years ago as the government began huge civil engineering projects; it expected the Missouri River to be a major transportation means of getting grain from the farm fields of Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri to the markets. But as it’s turned out, almost all of the grain from those states is moved to market by truck or rail or in Missouri’s case on the Mississippi River. Only a tiny fraction less than one-half of one-percent of all the grain harvested in those states is moved by barge on the Missouri River.
According to the Army Corps of Engineers, barge traffic on the Missouri benefits the economy by saving about seven million dollars in transportation costs. But some years the Army Corps of Engineers spends that much maintaining the lower Missouri as a navigable river, and the taxpayers foot the bill.
The National Academy of Sciences – the NAS – was instructed to study the Missouri River and determine the best uses of the river and its flood plain. Stephen Gloss was the chair of the committee that wrote the final report. He says one thing’s certain; the condition of the Missouri River has been studied to death. Its problems are well documented.
“The people should understand the Missouri River ecosystem is in a significant state of decline. There’s been a lot of degradation of the ecological properties of the system. There’s ample scientific evidence to credibly demonstrate that and there doesn’t need to be any more research done to make that credible. The most important thing is to undertake some immediate action.”
The NAS report suggested that the people of the states along the Missouri River should start figuring out where some of the Missouri’s meanders could be replaced and where it could be allowed back into its old flood plain.
At a town hall meeting in Columbia, Missouri, three of the authors of the study, including Stephen Gloss, met recently with representatives of the barge industry, agriculture and government agencies along the Missouri River and with the public. A farmer from Oregon, Missouri, Lanny Meng, told the NAS committee members he’s heard this kind of talk for several years, and he didn’t much like it.
“When they talk about meanders of the Missouri channel and they talk about connectivity with the flood plain. And that flood plain’s my cornfield.”
“Well, I think that the flow change and the management change of the Missouri River’s gonna have a drastic negative affect on my farming practice, and my neighbor’s farming practice and my county. Things will change badly for our community?”
The farmers are not the only ones concerned about change on the Missouri River. The barge industry, which depends on keeping the water level artificially high and the channel deep doesn’t believe there’s enough water to keep the reservoirs full in the upper Missouri, make new diversions for wildlife backwaters and meanders, and keep the barges floating.
Chris Bescia is with the barge industry group Midwest Area River Coalition 2000, better known as MARC-2000.
“So, when the National Academy of Science report says that we want to have more cuts and alluvial deviations in the river, when they say that we want to re-connect the flood plain, when they say all these things, that’s essentially taking out the channel training structures that are designed to maintain a nine foot channel.”
Which the barges need to push their cargo up and down stream.
The NAS report indicates that the people along the river and the state and federal agencies that have authority can find a balance between the commercial and agricultural interests and that of those who want better hunting, fishing, or simply better habitat for the sake of the wildlife and the natural beauty.
Chad Smith is with the environmental group American Rivers. He says it will take some compromises, but it can be done.
“The Missouri is not even close to living up to its potential. And we’re missing out on a lot of quality of life benefits, but also on a lot of economic benefits by managing this river as a ditch and not as a river.”
Smith stresses that no one is calling for the end of barge traffic on the Missouri, or wants the end of farming in the flood plain. But Smith says there’s been just a little too much development of the river, and we need to restore parts of it here and there.
The chief author of the National Academy of Sciences report, Steven Gloss, says that work needs to begin quickly because it will take a very long time to fix the Missouri River’s problems.
“We’ve been at this for a long time, a hundred years or better and, you know, it’s gonna take several decades to get it back a little bit in the other direction. I think we really need to look at this as a long-term sustained process. It’s not something we can find a solution for in five years and walk away from it. We need to be at this for the rest of our lives and for future generations.”
But Gloss stresses this cannot be a job for the government alone. The NAS report says the Missouri can only find balance between the competing interests if the people along the Missouri River all have a seat at the table and share in the river’s wealth.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
A Findlay, Ohio-based oil company says it needs a new petroleum pipeline to help get gasoline and jet fuel products to market in the Great Lakes states. But Marathon-Ashland’s proposal has sparked opposition from environmentalists and some small business owners in Southeast Ohio who fear possible contamination of waterways and disruption of some pristine areas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tom Borgerding has the story:
Transcript
A Findlay, Ohio based Oil Company says it needs a new petroleum pipeline to help get gasoline and jet fuel products to market in the Great Lakes states. But, Marathon-Ashland’s proposal has sparked opposition from environmentalists and some small business owners in Southeast Ohio who fear possible contamination of waterways and disruption of some pristine areas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tom Borgerding reports.
The proposed 149-mile long pipeline will cross the Ohio River from Kenova, West Virginia and snake through parts of the Wayne National Forest and scenic Hocking Hills in Southeastern Ohio and South Central Ohio. Company spokesman Tim Aydt says the project will help stabilize gasoline prices in a region stretching from eastern Illinois to western New York.
“The existing pipeline infrastructure that serves us today is decades old and it was designed when there was only one grade of gasoline and one grade of diesel fuel. And it was designed to serve a population about half the size it is today. Over time, with the growth we’ve had in the Midwest we’ve outgrown that pipeline capacity and as a result we’ve witnessed the last two summers where we’ve had constrained supply that’s resulted in price spikes.”
The pipeline might help stabilize gasoline prices in the region by adding a second source of supply for refined petroleum products. Currently, The Great Lakes region is dependent solely on pipelines running out of refineries in the Gulf Coast states such as Louisiana and Texas. But, Marathon-Ashland’s proposal also presents a potential environmental risk. The pipeline will cross 363 streams, 55 wetlands, and parts of three watersheds. For some, the prospect of a pipeline carrying gasoline and jet fuel through environmentally sensitive areas has sparked fears. Jane Ann Ellis is a founder and trustee of Crane Hollow…. a privately owned, dedicated state nature preserve in the path of the pipeline.
“If this pipeline would be built and if there was any kind of leak this would decimate the clean water that we have. It is easier to keep your drinking water clean than it is to clean it up afterwards. And it’s cheaper in the long run for the general public.”
Michael Daniels also opposes Marathon-Ashland’s project. He owns a country inn that attracts tourists from Ohio and surrounding states. He says many of his customers come to the region to hear chirping birds, babbling brooks, and to see the fall foliage. Daniels says both construction and operation of the pipeline will have a negative effect on his business.
“Certainly! Who would want to come as a tourist and be exposed to that kind of noise and intrusion into their experience? So, there’s no question that it will impact my business.”
But company spokesman Tim Aydt says the pipeline route through parts of a national forest and other environmentally sensitive areas is the best possible route.
“We wanted to avoid population centers. We wanted to avoid residential or commercial developments and we wanted to avoid flood plains where we could. So, when all of that was put into the mix we came up with the best route overall. Obviously it’s not the cheapest route because it’s not a straight line between two points. But, about 80 percent of the route follows existing utility corridors or those areas that are less prone to development.”
Marathon-Ashland says without the pipeline the Great Lakes could soon face shortages of gasoline, lines at the pump and greater fluctuations in gas prices. The tension between the company and pipeline opponents turns on the question of whether Marathon-Ashland will be required to submit an “environmental impact statement.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is expected to make that decision early this year following a recommendation from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. Corps spokesman Steve Wright says there’s no question such a requirement will delay the project.
“That will take longer. You know they take varying lengths of time but certainly they can’t be done very quickly.”
Marathon-Ashland contends an environmental impact statement (EIS) is unnecessary. But, opponents of the plan say the EIS is critical since the pipeline puts so many streams and wetlands at risk for potential pollution.
For the Great Lakes radio Consortium I’m Tom Borgerding
Canada’s environment minister is recommending that road salt be classified as a toxic substance. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly has details:
Transcript
Canada’s environment minister is recommending that road salt be classified as a toxic substance. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports.
Approximately 5 million tons of road salt are used in Canada each winter.
And much of those salts eventually find their way into bodies of water.
The Canadian government recently completed a 5-year study of the environmental effects of road salts.
The scientists found water near some major highways contained as much salt as ocean water. And they concluded freshwater plants; fish and other organisms are being harmed. Canadian environment minister David Anderson has recommended road salt be added to Canada’s list of toxic substances.
But the government is not proposing a ban on salt. Officials are studying ways to reduce its use and improve snow removal techniques to minimize the amount of salt escaping into waterways. The public has 60 days to comment on the plan. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.
