Justin Gallivan and his team programmed a type of E. coli bacteria to seek out atrazine in a petri dish, and destroy it, but right now the bacteria is too weak to survive in the wild.
(Photo courtesy of the National Institutes of Health)
Scientists have engineered bacteria to seek out and destroy a chemical that pollutes drinking water. Rebecca Williams has more:
Transcript
Scientists have engineered bacteria to seek out and destroy a chemical that pollutes drinking water. Rebecca Williams has more:
Atrazine is a pesticide used on corn, sorghum and sugar cane. It’s one of the most common chemicals polluting water supplies in the US.
Justin Gallivan is a chemist at Emory University. His team genetically engineered a type of E. coli bacteria. They programmed it to seek out atrazine in a petri dish… and destroy it.
He says right now, this engineered bacteria is too weak to survive in the wild.
“It requires quite a bit of care and feeding, as you might say, to survive even in a petri dish. So if it were placed in a more harsh environment, it is extremely likely that these types of organisms would not survive.”
He says using this kind of genetically engineered bacteria to clean up pollution is still a long way off.
A diagram of the ballast-free ship (Photo courtesy of Professor Michael Parsons)
The stern of the model showing the two discharge locations on the ship. It was tested last summer. (Photo courtesy of Professor Michael Parsons)
Cargo ships move sea life around the world.
Moving aquatic life from one port to another can cause
environmental havoc. Lester Graham reports there’s a
new idea that could nearly eliminate the problem of
transporting sea life to foreign ports:
Transcript
Cargo ships move sea life around the world.
Moving aquatic life from one port to another can cause
environmental havoc. Lester Graham reports there’s a
new idea that could nearly eliminate the problem of
transporting sea life to foreign ports:
There is an invasion of every major port on the globe.
“Today, the world’s shores are under attack. Armies of aliens are secretly invading our coasts.”
If this video, Invaders from the Sea, from the International Maritime
Organization sounds a little over-dramatic, it’s really not. Invaders from far-flung
corners of the world are brought in by commerce. In their travels, cargo ships pick up the
hitchhikers.
Those hitchhikers can be fish, mussels – aquatic bugs of all kinds. They can become
pests. Out-compete native species for food and space. They can destroy the
native ecosystems and often damage the economic well-being of people.
Here’s how it happens. Ocean-going cargo ships dock at a foreign port. They pump in
water for ballast to keep the ship stable. They also pump in some of the living things in
the water. When they arrive at the destination port, they can pump out that water and
the critters that were sucked up with it.
In the US, ports from Chesapeake Bay to San Francisco have been invaded. But,
the Great Lakes have been hit especially hard by invasive species.
Michael Parsons is a professor of naval architecture at the University of Michigan. He
says when foreign ships were able to come in from the Atlantic and travel as far as
inland as Duluth, Minnesota; they brought a lot of invaders with them.
“With the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the ‘50’s, that led to increased
introduction of non-indigenous species such as the zebra mussel, and the round goby, and
the ruffe, and the various smaller creatures that have been brought in to the Great Lakes.”
Those creatures have damaged the ecosystem of the Great Lakes. And they’ve cost the economy.
By one Environmental Protection Agency estimate about five-billion dollars a year.
Parsons and his colleagues have been working to design a ship that has no need for
ballast. In the lab, a scale model has been tested in a long pool. Instead of pumping
water in and out of the ballasts, the water would flow through big
tubes that run the length of the ship.
“And so, that’ll create a slow flow through these trunks so that they’re always swept
clean of foreign water.”
“A ship like that is just what we need in the Great Lakes.”
Andy Buchsbaum runs the Great Lakes office of the environmental group, the National
Wildlife Federation.
“If you eliminate the need for ballast water altogether, then you’re eliminating the vast
majority of invasive species introductions that come in through the discharge of ballast.”
The ballast-free ship design is creating some excitement. Even the shipping industry is
paying attention because the ship also is more fuel efficient.
If someone decides to actually build the ballast-free cargo ship, it’ll be a while before
the first one is on the high seas.
Allegra Cangelosi has been working on the ballast and invasive species problem for
close to a decade. She’s a policy analyst with the Northeast-Midwest Institute.
“I think it’s a wonderful development. I don’t think there’s going to be any one answer
for all ships plying all waters throughout the globe. However, the more good answers
that are out there to choose from, the better for the environment.”
Some of those choices are filtering ballast water or killing organisms in the ballast with
chemicals. Those systems are expensive. And since fuel isn’t getting any cheaper, that
might make a more fuel-efficient ballast-free ship attractive.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
Natural wetlands that are developed are supposed to be replaced by man-made wetlands somewhere else. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Some man-made wetlands work well and soon become home to native plants and wildlife. (Photo by Lester Graham)
While some man-made wetlands work well (like the one above), there is much confusion about the purpose of wetlands. Many end up as ponds, which are not as helpful for various kinds of wildlife. (Photo by Lester Graham)
More than half of U.S. wetlands have been drained for
development, farmland, and other purposes. That’s 100
million acres now dried up. The Bush administration has
continued “no net loss” policy of any more wetlands.
So, when someone wants to drain a marsh or a swamp for,
say, a new housing development, they’ve got to build a man-
made wetland to replace it. But a new study is finding that
most of those man-made wetlands aren’t doing very well.
Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
More than half of U.S. wetlands have been drained for
development, farmland, and other purposes. That’s 100
million acres now dried up. The Bush Administration has
continued a “no net loss” policy of any more wetlands.
So, when someone wants to drain a marsh or a swamp for,
say, a new housing development, they’ve got to build a man-
made wetland to replace it. But a new study is finding that
most of those man-made wetlands aren’t doing very well.
Julie Grant reports:
(Sound of truck stop)
These 18-wheelers are lined up on a huge black parking lot
behind a truck stop off Interstate 80. Looking at it, this
wouldn’t seem like the ideal place to create a wildlife area.
But wetland ecologist Mick Micacchion has chosen this place
to show that man-made wetlands can be successful.
At the edge of the parking lot, we walk down into some
brush. The ground is mostly even, there’s no big ditches… just
some gentle slopes. The weather’s been dry the past few
weeks. But water starts seeping into my shoes:
(Mike:) “You getting wet?”
It might be bad for our shoes, but saturated soil is a good
sign for a wetland, and so are a lot of the plants we’re seeing.
As we walk, Micacchion stops at plant after plant…
Impatients, monkey flower, and lots of grass-like plants called
sedges. These all grow in wet soil:
“So even in sedge community, we’re seeing some diversity.
Which is unusal in a wetland that’s only been constructed for
a few years. But it tells you some good things are going on
here.”
Checking out what’s going on at wetlands like this one is a
new job for Micacchion. He works for the state government.
Federal officials used to take authority over wetlands as part
of the Clean Water Act. But a U.S. Supreme Court decision
six years ago took away some of that federal authority, and
left responsibility for these kinds of isolated wetlands up to
states.
That’s why Micacchion is studying man-made wetlands for
the Ohio EPA: to assess how well the state program is
working.
Wetlands that work are not only good for wildlife…they
provide a holding area for water when there’s heavy rain.
That helps prevent flooding. It also gives polluted sediments
time to drop out of the water, so it’s filtered, which means
it’s cleaner by the time it drains into streams, rivers and
lakes.
But this story of a successful man-made wetland is the
exception. A study Micacchion’s is conducting is finding that most are in fair
or poor condition.
The loss of functioning wetlands can lead to more flooding
and polluted waterways.
Micacchion says when developers drain natural wetlands,
they often don’t understand how to build artificial wetlands to
replace those original systems.
Our next stop is a good example of that. We pull into a parking lot just behind a busy street
of car dealerships. One company drained a wetland back
here to build an access road. And to replace it, they built a
pond.
Tom Wysocki walks out of the car dealership to see what
we’re up to out on his property:
“Is there someone in your office, who I mean, is this your
Beliwick in the office?”
“It would come to my desk.”
“You’re the wetlands expert at Klaben Ford.”
“I’m the expert on everything.”
Originally, this site might’ve correctly designed for a wetland. But
Wysocki decided it didn’t look right to him because it wasn’t
holding water. So he had it dug again to make a pond.
He and the actual wetlands expert definitely have a different
idea about what a successful wetland looks like. Micacchion
says a pond isn’t a wetland:
“Usually with natural wetland systems, the slopes
are very gentle. And you have to walk out maybe 15-20 feet
before you get a foot deep of water. Here, you could step in
and maybe immediately be in a foot to two feet of water. And then, the deep
water it becomes difficult for certain plants to grow.”
The area is dominated by a couple of kinds of plants. But
Micacchion says they’re both invasives. And they’re
crowding out the native wetland plants. Native plants would
provide habitat for wildlife:
“This is all reed canary grass. The biggest problem with it, it
comes in, and you can see it gets very thick. It’s pretty much
only species you see growing with just a few other things you see
poking their heads up here and there. This eliminates some
of diversity we might see otherwise.”
Micacchion says his study is finding that this is pretty typical.
Even if a developer starts out with right kind of plan,
somebody can make an arbitrary decision that defeats the
original purpose. But Micacchion says it doesn’t have to be
that way. Man-made wetlands can work if they’re designed
by ecologists and engineers who understand the details of
what makes natural wetlands so useful.
His office is creating wetlands guidelines. They want
developers to understand the natural wetlands they’re destroying and what they need to do to replace them.
A new process called alkaline hydrolysis is forecasted to be a cheaper, safer way to dispose of animal carcasses. (Photo by Dr. Beth Williams, University of Wyoming, courtesy of CWD Alliance)
Animal research labs usually get rid of carcasses by burning them in incinerators. Now, a new more environmentally friendly technology is being used to dispose of the diseased dead animals and the lab supplies they contaminate. The new method has worked well enough that hospitals are considering it as a way to dispose of medical waste. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert reports:
Transcript
Animal research labs usually get rid of carcasses by burning them in incinerators. Now, a new more environmentally friendly technology is being used to dispose of the diseased dead animals and the lab supplies they contaminate. The new method has worked well enough that hospitals are considering it as a way to dispose of medical waste. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert reports:
Until recently, the only safe way to destroy diseased tissue and other infectious waste was to burn it in an incinerator. But dangerous chemicals such as dioxins spew from the incinerator smokestacks, and burning leaves behind a toxic ash.
(sound of machine whirring)
Now, there’s an alternative to burning. Dr. Gordon Kaye stands in a spotless room beside one of the units manufactured at a company he helped found, WR Squared, in Indianapolis, Indiana. The unit will eventually be used to dispose of 5,000 pounds of dead animals – about the equivalent of five large cows – that were used for veterinary research.
But there will be no smoke. There’ll be no fire.
Kaye’s idea for a new type of disposal technology began 12 years ago when he was a pathology professor at Albany Medical College. He was frustrated with how much it cost to dispose of dead research animals. So, he started experimenting with a new technology. And alkaline hydrolysis was born.
“Well, there are no air emissions from it. It’s a sealed system. It takes place in a hermetically sealed pressure vessel. No dangerous products are produced in it because of the temperature which it takes place.”
Alkaline hydrolysis works like this: infectious waste goes into a tightly sealed vessel, along with strong alkalis which are very caustic. The waste is then cooked at temperatures well above boiling. A chemical reaction causes the waste to break down. The infectious components are neutralized. When it’s over, you end up with two products: a sterile, water-like solution, that can head to a sanitary sewer system, and sterile crushed bones, the consistency of powder, that can be used as fertilizer. Because the end products are clean, they don’t require complicated disposal, so the process is cheaper than incineration.
WR squared now has 60 units in 15 states, primarily at research facilities. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has purchased several of them. New York was the first state to allow use of the technology. Ira Salkin directed that state’s medical waste program when it approved WR squared’s process.
“It has less potential problems than is being found with incineration and the use of incineration in the U.S. is decreasing and therefore their system holds great promise. As the numbers of incinerators decrease, one finds they have this alternative to be used to treat pathologic material.”
Environmentalists agree with Salkin that the technology is sound. Horhay Emmanuel is with Health Care Without Harm. He notes that it’s especially effective for one troublesome type of waste, cattle dead from Mad Cow disease.
“Not only does it destroy infectious agents, but it also destroys prion-contaminated waste. And prions are what are believed to cause things like Mad Cow disease, which are difficult to destroy, even by incineration, so WR squared has been shown to destroy these prions in the contaminated waste.”
Last April, The Environmental Protection Agency approved alkaline hydrolysis, along with incineration, as a way to treat Mad Cow diseased waste. And WR Squared’s Gordon Kaye sees that as a big future market.
Horhay Emmanuel, with Health Care Without Harm, says while alkaline hydrolysis is generally good for the environment, there is one concern. The fluid that’s produced could overwhelm some small town’s sewer systems. The company says in communities with small sewer systems, the solution can be released more slowly or during off-peak hours.
So, alkaline hydrolysis process is cheaper, it pollutes less, government agencies like it, and environmentalists find little to criticize.
Now, the company is broadening its reach to treat hospital waste. Many hospitals are using smaller, not very efficient incinerators that pollute more.
WR Squared’s Gordon Kaye says he expects big growth with this new method to dispose of medical and infectious waste as labs and hospitals look for ways to replace their incinerators over the next several years.
The emerald ash borer has been destroying ash trees in Michigan, Ohio, Ontario, Virginia and Maryland – and the bug is spreading. Now, agricultural officials in Michigan are developing an early warning system. By detecting the insects early, they hope to slow or even prevent their spread. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:
Transcript
The emerald ash borer has been destroying ash trees in Michigan, Ohio,
Illinois, Maryland, and Ontario – and the bug is spreading. Now,
agricultural officials in Michigan are developing an early warning
system. By detecting the insects early, they hope to slow or even
prevent its spread. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton
reports:
Forestry agents will be designating a number of so-called trap trees in
every township in Michigan. The ash trees will act as sentinels. A
strip of bark will be removed from the trees, which stresses them and
makes them attractive to insects. A sticky substance called tanglefoot
will then be applied to the trees to catch the borers. Kara Bouchay is
with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
“Part of the struggle with having a borer that you can’t see most of
time because it’s underneath the bark, is when it’s in a low level
population, it basically flies under the radar. So the trap tree is a
way to bring it to a single location to detect it.”
If borers are found on a tree, all ash trees within a half-mile will be
destroyed to contain its spread. Bouchay says if the early detection
system proves itself, it will likely be implemented in other states as
well.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tracy Samilton.
The Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for burning this house under construction near Bloomington, Indiana in 1999. Photo courtesy Herald-Times, by Jeremy Hogan.
The Earth Liberation Front is an underground group that attacks institutions it believes harm the environment. During the past five years, its members have caused approximately $40 million in damages. E.L.F’s most notorious acts of destruction include torching a luxury ski resort, destroying the executive offices of a forest-product company, and setting on fire university labs involved in genetically-modified crop research. For some time, environmentalists and others have debated whether this sort of activity was simply a public protest, or acts of terrorism. But since September 11th, that debate has escalated with increased efforts to label those involved in such attacks as terrorists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby has this report:
Transcript
The Earth Liberation Front is an underground group that attacks institutions it
believes harm the environment. During the past five years, its members have caused
approximately $40 million in damages. E.L.F.’s most notorious acts of destruction include torching a luxury ski resort, destroying the executive offices of a forest-product
company, and setting on fire university labs involved in genetically-modified crop research. For some time, environmentalists and others have debated whether this sort of activity was simply a public protest, or acts of terrorism. But since September 11th, that debate has escalated with increased efforts to label those involved in such attacks as terrorists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby has this report:
On a cold, January night in St. Paul, Minnesota, one or more members of the Earth Liberation Front set fire to a construction trailer parked on the University of Minnesota campus. Flames quickly spread to an adjacent building, causing $40,000 in damages.
(Construction site sounds)
But while the Crop Research Building burst into flames, the real target was the university’s proposed Microbial and Genomics building – a $20 million undertaking.
(Construction sounds go silent)
The attack wasn’t a surprise to Peggy Leppick. She’s a state representative, who chairs the Higher Education Committee in the Minnesota House of Representatives.
“A lot of the research that goes on at the university is fairly obscure and people don’t know about it, but when you build a building that is essentially a monument to genomics and genetic engineering, it becomes a bulls-eye.”
That’s why university officials are asking the Legislature for nearly $4 million to beef up security. They’ve also ratcheted up the rhetoric. University of Minnesota president Mark Yudolf has no qualms about using the word “terrorist” to describe E.L.F. members who’ve attacked his campus more than once.
“People who blow up facilities and buildings and who may try to avoid risking human life, but almost inevitably something can go wrong: that is my definition of a terrorist, yes.”
But attaching labels to actions doesn’t come so easily for others. There’s a fine distinction for some between terrorist and protesters.
“The definition of terrorist is a very political definition.”
Katherine Sikkink is a political science professor at the University of Minnesota.
“In this country, we have words for it. It’s called ‘crime.’ We don’t have to jump to the term ‘terrorism.’ When people destroy property it’s called ‘crime.’ We have police forces that are here to deal with crime and I think they should do it.”
Not surprisingly, Leslie James Pickering, a spokesman with the E.L.F. press office in Portland, Oregon, agrees with Sikkink’s characterization.
“If they were terrorists they would be engaging in violent terrorist actions. What they do is sabotage property. They’ve never harmed anybody. They never will harm anybody because it is against their code.”
That code, Pickering says, ensures that human life will be protected. When E.L.F. activists set fire to a building, they say it’s searched before flames engulf the facility.
“They are vandals. They are arsonists. They are engaging in illegal activity, there’s no question about that, but there is a difference between sabotage and terrorism.”
But that distinction may be lost in the rush to deal with terrorism, both foreign and domestic. The government appears on the verge of adding environmental groups such as E.L.F to its “War on Terrorism.”
A top F.B.I. official has called E.L.F. “the most active eco-terrorist” group in the United States. A Congressional Committee recently subpoenaed Leslie James Pickering’s predecessor in the E.L.F press office to testify. When committee members weren’t satisfied with his answers, they threatened him with contempt of Congress.
And now U.S. Congressman Gil Gutknecht, a Minnesota Republican, is calling for the death penalty if politically-motivated arsons or other actions result in a fatality. Gutknecht also wants the federal government to establish an “eco-terrorism” clearinghouse so law enforcement officials can do a better job of tracking environmental activists involved in illegal activity.
These proposals have drawn the ire of Chuck Samuelson, the executive director of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union.
“September 11 has been a boon for people who are interested in making laws more strict, regulating society and limiting freedom.”
Samuelson says Gutknecht’s death penalty proposal won’t stop politically-motivated murders. And he’s also opposed to a federal clearinghouse that tracks E.L.F. members, saying it’s likely to be secret.
“The question that always comes up is about the privacy rights of people, how that information gets put in, who gets to change that information and who gets to use that information. If it’s secret and is not available to the public, so that you as a reporter couldn’t go see it or do an investigative piece on how they’re doing it, it’s got to scare you.”
Although Samuelson is quick to criticize the government’s proposed crackdown on E.L.F., he’s no defender of the group. He scoffs at the E.L.F. code, saying no matter their ‘no-harm-to-human-life’ intent, it’s only a matter of time before someone is killed.
Professor Sikkink also questions the group’s tactics. While some protest movements have historically engaged in property damage to score political points, she says it comes with a high price tag.
“So these tactics, you know, of destruction of government property are not unheard of, they’ve been around for a long time, but I do think they really run the risk of alienating the people you want to convince.”
Despite the increased pressure on E.L.F to halt the violence, Leslie James Pickering, the group’s spokesman, says he doesn’t expect its members to change its ways anytime soon. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Todd Melby in Minneapolis.
Justin Gallivan and his team programmed a type of E. coli bacteria to seek out atrazine in a petri dish, and destroy it, but right now the bacteria is too weak to survive in the wild. (Photo courtesy of the National Institutes of Health)
