Blazing New Atv Trails in Parkland

  • Advocates of special trails for ATV riding say the trails would reduce environmental damage from uncontrolled use. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Managers at state parks across the country are scrambling to figure out how to deal with a
rising demand for trails for All-Terrain Vehicles. Stephanie Hemphill reports park
managers are finding it’s not easy to satisfy both fans who have fun on four wheel drive
vehicles and people who want a quieter time in the park:

Transcript

Managers at state parks across the country are scrambling to figure out how to deal with a
rising demand for trails for All-Terrain Vehicles. Stephanie Hemphill reports park
managers are finding it’s not easy to satisfy both fans who have fun on four wheel drive
vehicles and people who want a quieter time in the park:


As the name suggests, All-Terrain Vehicles are built to travel rough. ATVs power over
rocks and logs. Their go-anywhere knobby tires grip the land and take their riders just
about anywhere they want to go, and a lot of them want to go to public parks.


Whether it’s forests, dunes, bogs or a desert, riders say four-wheeling can be a fun way to
get out into nature. The vehicles are popular. Dealers are selling close to a million ATVs
every year, and sales are growing steadily. With that many people looking for a place to
play, states are scrambling to accommodate them.


In Minnesota, the state decided a long ATV trail might be a good way to attract tourism
dollars to a struggling rural area in the state.


Ron Sluka jumped at the idea. He’s the trail coordinator for a local ATV club. He’d been
wanting for years to build a trail in his area. Then he heard the state would pay for a
“destination” trail so well-built and attractive, people would come from all over to ride it.
Sluka thought it would be great news for his area.


He and county officials worked up a plan, but when it hit the local news, Sluka says a
few people raised a ruckus:


“The way it was presented to the people, eminent domain would take over in cases if
need be, and there were going to be up to 20 feet of your land taken for this trail. None
of the above is true, totally none of it is true, absolutely zero. But it’s too late: once
things are rolling, it’s rolling.”


Sluka says now, it’s hard to get a rational discussion of the issues. Beyond property rights
issues and worries about the ATVs being too loud, there are other concerns:


“The residents have kind of been left out of the loop.”


That’s Deb Pomroy. She lives near the proposed ATV trail.


Pomroy says most of her neighbors don’t mind the local ATV riders. It’s that idea of
drawing ATVs from all over the state that freaks them out, and Pomroy has her own reasons
for opposing a trail here, where the Cloquet River has its beginning: wood turtles.
Pomroy is a biologist. She says this area is a refuge for the turtles. They’re endangered in
most of their range, and listed as a threatened species in Minnesota.


Wood turtles bury their eggs in sandy soil. Pomroy says they would love to bury their
eggs in soil disturbed by ATVs, but the eggs wouldn’t survive:


“Even stepping on a nest, which is buried in soil, don’t know there are eggs there, is
enough to destroy the eggs.”


The trail is on hold for now, while county officials and ATV riders try to come up with
an alternative. Concern about damage to sensitive environmental areas is one of the chief
reasons many environmentalists don’t like the idea of letting ATVs into parks.


Jason Kiely is with Wildlands CPR, a national non-profit group that works to prevent off-
road vehicle damage on public land. He says fights over ATV trails are inevitable, as
long as public agencies don’t involve all park users in a comprehensive planning process.


“Primarily because off-road vehicles affect every other use of the forest so significantly.
So we advocate for doing comprehensive travel and recreation planning, not just trying to
carve off the ATV piece, but multi-stakeholder planning efforts that offer something to
everyone.”


Kiely says the US Forest Service and many state agencies have a lot of work to do, to
find the right balance between preserving nature and allowing ATV riders to have their
fun on public land


For the Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Windmills Generate Jobs and Power

  • A windmill blade nearly 150 feet long is slung gently onto a flatbed at the Duluth port. A modified trailer is needed to transport the blade. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)

U.S. demand for clean energy is growing fast. In fact, wind energy developers are ordering so many windmills, they’re running into a supply problem. Windmill manufacturers overseas have been shipping their products to the booming U.S. market. That’s already created some jobs, and now there are plans to build factories to produce windmills here. It’s all happening in spite of inconsistent federal support. Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

U.S. demand for clean energy is growing fast. In fact, wind energy developers are ordering so many windmills, they’re running into a supply problem. Windmill manufacturers overseas have been shipping their products to the booming U.S. market. That’s already created some jobs, and now there are plans to build factories to produce windmills here. It’s all happening in spite of inconsistent federal support. Stephanie Hemphill reports:


At the Duluth Port Terminal, the BBC India is tied up to the dock. Two giant cranes slowly lower a silvery propeller onto a waiting truck. The blade is half as long as a football field. The extended bed of the eighteen-wheeler isn’t long enough to hold the entire length. A padded steel structure cradles the narrow end above the ground. There are 66 blades on the ship, three blades for each of twenty-two towers.


“The three blades will bolt into a hub, and then the hub attaches to the nacelle, the generator package, that’s the actual turbine, and the nacelle sits on top of the tower.”


Andrew Holdrup is the port captain for the shipping company. He was here in Duluth a year and a half ago, when the port handled its first ever shipment of windmills.


Holdrup says the demand for windmills is huge in the U.S.


“We have four ships; all they do is run from Denmark to Houston with Siemens windmills. We discharge them in Houston, the ship sails back empty to go pick up the next lot. Multiply that by all the other ports, and all the other windmill manufacturers, and it’s a huge business.”


It’s great business for Duluth’s port. Unloading the windmills requires iron workers to cut the steel where the pieces have been welded to the ship, and crane operators, and longshoremen. And truckers are staying in town waiting to pick up their loads. They’ll haul the windmills to wind farms being built in Mower County, Minnesota, and Oliver County, North Dakota. The port has also handled equipment for wind farms in Manitoba.


The boom in wind was primed in the early 1990s, when Congress set up a production tax credit for wind power. It allows a 1.9 cent-per-kilowatt-hour tax credit over ten years, for electricity produced by wind.


But the tax credit only runs for two years at a time. Ron Johnson is in charge of marketing for the Duluth Port Authority. He says that on-again, off-again approach has made it hard for businesses involved in wind energy to plan and grow.


“It’s kind of start up again, stop, start up again, stop. If you’re a trucking company with these specialized trailers, you don’t want to go out and buy fifty more of them if there’s a chance your whole fleet’s going to sit until Congress decides what to do.”


Johnson says there’s a lot of support in Congress for the tax credits, and he expects them to be renewed.


Steve Stengel works for FPL Energy, the company building the wind farms where these windmills are headed.


“It is part of the business, we understand that. And it does cause kind of starts & stops, if you will.”


But he says it’s possible to work around the periodic breaks in the tax credit because it takes a long time to plan a wind project anyway.


“Permitting issues, land lease issues, transmission issues. We have to plan as if the tax credit is going to be there.”


In fact, wind is growing dramatically in spite of the iffy nature of federal support. Several states now require utilities to invest in renewable energy, or offer incentives for wind power development. And as the cost of fossil fuels goes up, the relative cost of wind goes down.


It all adds up to a lot of demand, and recently, tight supplies.


The American Wind Energy Association’s Susan Sloan says orders are already in place for 2008 and beyond.


“Because of this boom and bust cycle but also because of this new acceptance of wind, we are seeing a tighter supply, and we need to have the manufacturing capabilities catch up.”


And that’s what’s happening.


It took two weeks for the Siemens windmills to sail from Denmark to Duluth. Now the company is building a factory in Fort Madison, Iowa. Siemens says it will employ 250 people, and start producing in the first half of 2007.


And in Pipestone, Minnesota, Suzlon, a company based in India, is about to start producing three blades a day, and the nosecones to go with them. The company plans to manufacture the electronic controls, and eventually employ up to 300 people. Suzlon says it has orders for the next two to three years.


For the Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Windmills Generate Jobs and Power (Wrap)

  • A windmill blade nearly 150 long is slung gently onto a flatbed at the Duluth port. A modified trailer is needed to transport the blade. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)

US demand for clean energy is growing so fast, supplies of generating systems are getting tight. Stephanie Hemphill reports on a challenge that could lead to more jobs in the US:

Transcript

US demand for clean energy is growing so fast, supplies of generating systems are getting tight. Stephanie Hemphill reports on a challenge that could lead to more jobs in the US:


Overseas manufacturers of wind generating systems are shipping them here as fast as they can. Now, several companies are building wind generator factories in the US.


Siemens is building a plant in Iowa. Suzlon is about to start production in Minnesota. Plants in Texas produce blades and towers.


It’s all happening in spite of inconsistent federal support. A production tax credit is in place, but it expires every two years.


Ron Johnson is with the port of Duluth, which handles windmill imports. He says the on-again, off-again support makes it hard for companies to plan and grow.


“Well, the deadline’s coming at the end of next year, and people are planning their projects, so we’re all anxious to see what Congress does.”


The American Wind Energy Association says producers are installing enough wind power this year to power the entire state of Rhode Island.


For the Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Keeping Invasive Species Out

  • Ballast holds can carry aquatic species from foreign ports to U.S. ports. Those species can cause severe damage to the ecological system of harbors, lakes and rivers. (Photo courtesy of NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory)

Harbors in the United States risk biological pollution every time a foreign ship comes into port. The ships often carry foreign aquatic animals that can cause environmental and economic damage. Lester Graham reports the problem is known, acknowledged, and still the government has not taken the measures needed to stop the problem:

Transcript

Harbors in the United States risk biological pollution every time a foreign ship comes into port. The ships often carry foreign aquatic animals that can cause environmental and economic damage. Lester Graham reports the problem is known, acknowledged, and still the government has not taken the measures needed to stop the problem:


Ships use water for ballast to keep the ship balanced and level. But taking up ballast water in a foreign port also takes up aquatic hitch-hikers, such as zebra mussels.


Most cargo ships on the Great Lakes are American or Canadian and just travel within the lakes. Ships from overseas only make up a small fraction of the cargo traffic to ports in the Great Lakes, but those ships have brought in dozens of invasive species that have hurt the ecology of the lakes. Some invasives eat the eggs of native fish. They compete for food. They cause disruptions that have led to massive die-offs of fish and waterfowl such as seagulls, loons, and terns.


It has also cost industry, and ultimately you. For example, it costs to clean out zebra mussels from water intake pipes, and some fish have become more scarce.


Jennifer Nalbone is with the environmental organization Great Lakes United. She says it’s a real problem.


“One of the greatest tensions that exists in the Great Lakes today is between commercial navigation development and the invasive species that are being brought into the region by a small subset of ships that are operating on the Great Lakes.”


Nalbone says government agencies could require ships from overseas to install filters or treatment systems that would stop the aquatic nuisances from being brought on board. But those agencies have not done anything. They say Congress hasn’t instructed them to do anything.


And Jennifer Nalbone says many in Congress don’t understand much about invasive species and ballast water.


“It’s very difficult to get things done in D.C. when key federal leaders and committees are not from the Great Lakes region, and they want their own projects advanced first.”


You can imagine if you’re a Congressman from Oklahoma, or Idaho, or Arizona, invasive species from ballast water likely are not at the top of your to-do list.


The only thing that is required is overseas ships have to exchange their ballast water with ocean water once they’re at sea. The idea is to flush out the invasives. It’s not been entirely effective because new invasive species have been brought into the Great Lakes since the policy went into effect.


Allegra Cangelosi is a senior policy analyst with the Northeast-Midwest Institute. She’s been working on the Great Lakes Ballast Technology Demonstration Project for a decade now, trying to find solutions to the ballast treatment problem.


Cangelosi says since the ballast water exchange policy was put into effect, not much else has been done. She says the hold up now is because some government officials don’t want to do anything until a perfect standard is set for ballast treatment. Cangelosi says it doesn’t have to be perfect.


“No, I mean, I’ve been in this business, I’ve been following this issue since 1989 and this is the worst stalemate I’ve ever experienced on this issue area. And, I think what we need to do is just get real and start to require ships to use treatments that are available. So, if we can get ships to use even an imperfect treatment system that is better than what we’re doing now, that’s the road to getting to the perfect treatment system, and it’s the road to improving prevention in the near term.”


The overseas shipping industry says it’s working on the problem. The International Maritime Organization has set a standard for ballast water treatment, but, it’s voluntary. Almost no foreign ships have volunteered because they don’t want to choose a system that might not meet the standard the U.S. government will someday set.


Adolph Ojard is the Executive Director of the Duluth, Minnesota Seaway Port Authority. He says ballast treatment will happen, eventually.


“I don’t have a timeline right now, but I tell you what, we know the problem is contained within the ballast tank of a ship. So, it’s identified. I would think within the next few years we would have a system that is effective, and then we’ll go through an implementation phase.”


But those who are concerned about damage to the Great Lakes fishery and the entire ecological system say right now more invasives are being introduced by foreign ships every year.


Jennifer Nalbone with Great Lakes United says those foreign organisms have caused enough damage already.


“We certainly have enough information to take action. We know that there are tremendous impacts. So, we don’t need to have yet another species come into the lakes before we say ‘let’s do something now.'”


The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been ordered by a judge to treat ballast water like pollution. It’s unclear whether the EPA will accept or challenge that ruling. Meanwhile, quietly, some economists and others are wondering if the price the invasives cost the economy is worth the commerce that the relatively few foreign ships bring to Great Lakes ports.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Storm Water Gardens: Good for City Growth?

Cities around the country are trying to figure out how to encourage economic growth, and protect the environment at the same time. Stephanie Hemphill reports on one case where both could be winners:

Transcript

Cities around the country are trying to figure out how to encourage economic growth, and protect the environment at the same time. Stephanie Hemphill reports on one case where both could be winners:


Like a lot of cities, runoff from this city’s streets – polluted with salt, oil, and fertilizer – flows into a waterway. In Duluth, Minnesota, the waterway is Lake Superior.


A local group wants to turn some vacant land near a popular downtown park into a storm water garden that would clean up runoff.


But city councilor Jim Stauber says by state law, the publicly-owned land must be used for economic development.


“We have been very, very clear, and our city attorney staff has been very clear, you can’t put it here.”


Advocates such as Jill Jacoby say that’s a narrow view of economic development.


“Tourism is economic development, and what we’re creating is recreation and tourism.”


And increasingly, experts say environmental benefit often also benefits the economy.


For the Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Defense Dept. To Clean Up Military Mess?

The Defense Department will be paying for a study to find ways to remove ammunition barrels the military dumped into Lake Superior during the Cold War. For 30 years, environmentalists have been asking the government to clean up the mess. Mike Simonson reports that the federal government is now paying for a study to find ways to remove the barrels:

Transcript

The Defense Department will be paying for a study to find ways to remove ammunition
barrels the military dumped into Lake Superior during the Cold War. For 30 years,
environmentalists have been asking the government to clean up the mess. Mike
Simonson reports that the federal government is now paying for a study to find ways to
remove the barrels:


The Red Cliff band of Lake Superior Chippewa will study ways
to remove the barrels of munitions. Documents show that between 1959
and 1962, the Department of Defense had 1,437 drums dumped into Lake
Superior. It amounts to about 400 tons of munitions containing toxic chemicals such as
PCBs, mercury, lead, chromium, benzene and even uranium.


Patricia DePerry is the Red Cliff Tribal Chairwoman. She says the barrels must be
removed:


“Not only the time is of essence, it’s the not knowing what the contaminants have been
doing at the bottom of the lake.”


DePerry says not only is the ecology of the lake at risk, but the barrels of munitions lie
within a quarter mile of Duluth, Minnesota’s drinking water intake.


For the Environment Report, I’m Mike Simonson.

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Wetlands to Slow or Grow Global Warming?

  • John Pastor is trying to figure out how climate change will affect bogs and fens like this one. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)

In northern Minnesota, a researcher says wetlands like bogs could be key to how fast the climate changes worldwide. And the areas like the upper United States and Canada in the bull’s eye for rapidly changing temperatures and rainfall. The GLRC’s Bob Kelleher reports:

Transcript

In northern Minnesota, a researcher says wetlands like bogs could be key to how fast the
climate changes worldwide. And the areas like the upper United States and Canada in the
bull’s eye for rapidly changing temperatures and rainfall. The GLRC’s Bob Kelleher
has more:


What have wetlands, like fens and bogs, got to do with global warming? John Pastor says,
plenty.


Pastor is a professor and researcher with the Natural Resources Research Institute of the
University of Minnesota-Duluth. When Pastor straps on his hip waders, he goes where
almost no one else dares to go: into northern Minnesota’s fens, where water can be
several feet deep, and onto the bogs, where the mass of plant material is so thick it floats
on standing water.


A seven year-long study has revealed that fens and bogs can either help slow global
warming, or accelerate it. Pastor says all cards are off the table if temperatures keep
rising:


“The one problem in science that has the most ramifications throughout all of science – it’s
global warming.”


We’re in a swamp north of Duluth, Minnesota. Actually, it’s a fen, and it borders some
higher landscape nearby that’s a bog. What fens and bogs have in common is water and
peat, the not quite decomposed stuff left over when plants die. Pastor says peat lands are
one of the world’s significant bank accounts for carbon. They keep carbon out of the
atmosphere.


“Peat lands cover only 3% of the earth’s surface, but they contain 30% of all the carbon
that’s in all the soil in the world, locked in that partially decomposed organic matter, that
peat.”


Minnesota has vast peat lands that have been storing carbon for 10,000 years, but even
the size of Minnesota’s peat lands pales compared to those further north – around
Canada’s Hudson Bay, or in the Russian republics – all regions Pastor says that are facing
higher temperatures.


“All of the global climate models, one thing they all agree on, is that the greatest amount
of warming will occur in areas from Minnesota northward, and then inland – mid-
continent areas. So here we are. We’re sitting right now, right in the bullseye of the
greatest amount of warming that will happen on the face of the earth.”


This is the question: Will higher temperatures help trap more carbon in bogs, or force
more carbon into the atmosphere?


In this bog, Pastor’s been trying to figure out how warmer weather will affect bogs and
fens, and, in turn, what role the wetlands will play in global change. One thing he’s
found: the results depend largely on the water table, and that’s going to depend on
rainfall.


In some combinations, say with additional heat and additional rainfall, bogs could thrive,
trapping more carbon. That would be good. In other conditions, say with more heat but
less rainfall, bogs and fens could die and decompose, releasing even more carbon into the
atmosphere. That, Pastor says, would be bad:


“Now we have kind of a double whammy. Not only are we putting carbon dioxide from
fossil fuel into the atmosphere, the warning from that could cause the carbon from the
peat land also to go into the atmosphere and accelerate the warming.”


Predicting an outcome becomes mind numbing. Pastor’s working with new mathematical
theory to try to determine at what point global warming has gone too far.


“And so what seems to be happening is the temperatures of the earth have crossed some
kind of a threshold, where all the sudden, before that they crossed that threshold, the old
earth that we grew up with was stable. Now, it’s becoming very unstable, and ice sheets
are collapsing, birds and plants are migrating – everything’s happening very, very
quickly. And we’re going to enter into a new kind of earth that has a different kind of
stability – a different stable endpoint.”


Pastor says there’s no more complicated problem in all of science than global warming,
and no more important problem. Global warming, he says, changes everything, from the
forests to the wetlands. Pastor’s hoping the new mathematical models will provide more
definitive answers in time to do something about the outcome.


For the GLRC, I’m Bob Kelleher.

Related Links

New Research Center for Ballast Treatment

Foreign, invasive species often get into US waters by
hitching a ride in the ballast water of ocean going ships. Now,
a new research center will work to stop the spread of these invasive species. The research center hopes to develop new treatment systems aimed at catching the critters before they get out. The GLRC’s Stephanie Hemphill has more:

Transcript

Foreign, invasive species often get into U.S. waters by hitching a ride in the ballast water
of ocean-going ships. Now, a new research center will work to stop the spread of these
invasive species. The research center hopes to develop new treatment systems aimed at
catching the critters before they get out. The GLRC’s Stephanie Hemphill has more:


The new research center will be built on the edge of the Duluth-Superior port in
Wisconsin. It’ll include storage tanks to represent ballast tanks on freighters. Researchers can introduce exotic species into the tanks, and test various treatments
designed to kill the pests.


Duluth port director Adolph Ojard says currently, ships are exchanging ballast water in
the ocean before entering U.S. ports:


“We have found that it is effective, but we want to be more effective, and the only way
we can do that is to develop full treatment systems on board the ship.”


Systems to be tested include filters, centrifuges, ultra-violet light, and chemicals. Ojard says it’s likely a combination of treatments will be most effective. He says
researchers will be looking for systems that can work in both older and newer ships.


For the GLRC, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Upgrading Tired Hospital Food

  • Two gourmet chefs managing the kitchen at St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth are adding organic vegetables to the menu. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Some hospitals are trying to heal the food that they serve. The GLRC’s Stephanie Hemphill takes us to one hospital that’s making efforts to spice up their menu:

Transcript

Some hospitals are trying to heal the food that they serve. The GLRC’s
Stephanie Hemphill takes us to one hospital that making efforts to spice
up their menu:


(Sound of elevator)


St. Luke’s is the smaller of Duluth’s two hospitals. Their motto could be
“we try harder.” Several years ago, the hospital put two chefs in charge
of the housekeeping, laundry, and food.


In the kitchen, there’s the usual industrial stoves and dishwashers, and a
long assembly line where workers fill the trays for patients, based on
what they’ve ordered.


“The patient fills out the menu, I’ll have this entrée and that salad and this
beverage; then as the tray moves down the conveyor belt, they look at the
menu and put on the appropriate products.”


Mark Branovan was a gourmet chef at restaurants in California’s wine
country. In that part of the world, they take their fresh fruits and
vegetables very seriously.


“We did very little of our produce buying from the big distributors; we
had local guys that would grow lettuce for us, and herbs for us, and tomatoes…
anything we wanted. So that just kind of rolled over for us into, if
we can do it for a restaurant, why can’t we do it for a hospital?”


It’s harder to do in this part of the country, where you can grow lettuce
for about half the year and you’re lucky to get a tomato at all. But
Branovan and his colleague, LeeAnn Tomczyk, decided not to let that
stop them.


Tomczyk was a chef in a trendy restaurant in Wisconsin before she took
the job at the hospital. She says when she first came here, she was
appalled at some of the things on the menu.


“YOu know the patient was able to pick a jell-o salad and a piece of cake.
Well, to me jell-o is a dessert but to them it was their salad and that
was their vegetable, and that wasn’t right.”


Tomczyk and Branovan started to add more fruits and vegetables,
including organic items, to the menu, but they learned to pick their
battles.


“When I tried to change some of the casserole dishes, and some of the
traditional northern Minnesota fare, I was met with some serious
resistance from our customers and our patients who said, ‘Yeah, we have
tater tot hot dish on our menu because we like it.'”


One of the first items to change was the milk. Now the hospital serves
hormone-free milk to patients in the rooms and workers in the cafeteria.
Tomczyk says she’s convinced hormone-free milk and organic food are
healthier. She says an organization devoted to helping people heal, like a
hospital, needs to think about healing in broad terms, even globally. She
says buying local food avoids long-distance transportation, with its heavy
reliance on polluting fossil fuels.


“And the introduction of pesticides and herbicides, and that getting into
our water systems, it’s that whole cycle, and we’re using more and more
these days, and I think it’s just got out of hand.”


The hospital is also committed to reducing waste. It freezes unused
portions and gives them to soup kitchens and homeless shelters. It sends
its food waste to the city compost pile.


St. Luke’s is a member of a hospital buying group that negotiates prices
with big producers like Pillsbury. Each hospital is supposed to buy a
certain percentage of its food through the buying group. When Branovan
and Tomczyk asked the distributor for hormone-free milk, the distributor
didn’t carry it.


“We had to actually get a waiver that says they will allow us to buy off-
contract.”


Branovan got a similar waiver to buy organic fresh fruit, and greens for
the cafeteria salad bar. He hopes to add more organic and locally-grown
foods.


Branovan says St. Luke’s is the first hospital in the region to ask the
buying group to supply hormone-free milk and organic vegetables, but
hospitals and schools on the west coast and east coast are doing it on a larger
scale.


James Pond is editor of Food Service Director, a trade magazine.
He says the movement will grow.


“The pricing advantages will in some ways level out, where if it becomes
important enough to the clientele, the food service operators will respond
by providing products in this manner.”


Some hospitals organize a farmer’s market to serve their workers, as a
way to introduce them to organic and local foods. Then they add those
foods to the cafeteria and patient meals. At St. Luke’s, they feature
organic food at company parties.


For the GLRC, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Expanding the Seaway

  • A freighter leaving the Duluth harbor in Minnesota. (Photo courtesy of EPA)

One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes identified by many of the experts we surveyed
is dredging channels deeper and wider for larger ocean-going ships. In the 1950s, engineers
carved a shipping channel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence
River. The St. Lawrence Seaway was to make ports in cities such as Chicago and Duluth main
players in global commerce. Today, the Seaway operates at less than half its capacity.
That’s because only five percent of the world’s cargo fleet can fit through its locks and
channels. For decades, the shipping industry has wanted to make them bigger. David
Sommerstein reports:

Transcript

We’re continuing our series Ten Threats to the Great Lakes with a look at the idea of
letting bigger ships into the lakes. Lester Graham is our guide through the series.


One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes identified by many of the experts we surveyed
is dredging channels deeper and wider for larger ocean-going ships. In the 1950s, engineers
carved a shipping channel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence
River. The St. Lawrence Seaway was to make ports in cities such as Chicago and Duluth main
players in global commerce. Today, the Seaway operates at less than half its capacity.
That’s because only five percent of the world’s cargo fleet can fit through its locks and
channels. For decades, the shipping industry has wanted to make them bigger. David
Sommerstein reports:


(Sound of rumbling noise of front-loaders)


The port of Ogdensburg sits on the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State.
When the Seaway was built, local residents were promised an economic boom. Today
what Ogdensburg mostly gets is road salt.


(Sound of crashing cargo)


Road salt and a white mineral called Wallastonite – the Dutch use it to make ceramic tile.
Front-loaders push around mountains of the stuff. In all, the port of Ogdensburg
welcomes six freighters a year and employs just six people.


Other Great Lakes ports are much bigger, but the story is similar. They handle low-value
bulk goods – grain, ore, coal – plus higher value steel. But few sexy electronic goods
from Japan come through the Seaway, or the gijillion of knick-knacks from China or
South Korea.


James Oberstar is a Congressman from Duluth. He says there’s a reason why. A
dastardly coincidence doomed the Seaway.


“Just as the Seaway was under construction, Malcolm McLean, a shipping genius, hit on
the idea of moving goods in containers.”


Containers that fit right on trains and trucks. The problem was the ships that carry those
containers were already too big for the Seaway’s locks and channels.


“That idea of container shipping gave a huge boost of energy to the East Coast, Gulf
Coast, and West Coast ports, and to the railroads.”


Leaving Great Lakes ports behind ever since the regional shipping industry has wanted to
make the Seaway bigger.


The latest effort came in 2002, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers studied the
economic benefits of expansion. The study said squeezing container ships through the
Seaway would bring a billion and a half dollars a year to ports like Chicago, Toledo, and
Duluth. But if you build it, would they come?


“Highly doubtful that container ships would come in. Highly doubtful.”


John Taylor is a transportation expert at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.
He’s studied Seaway traffic patterns extensively. He says there would have to be “a sea
change” in global commerce.


“Rail is too competitive, too strong moving containers from the coast in and out say from
Montreal and Halifax and into Chicago and Detroit and so on, too cost-effective for it to
make sense for a ship to bring those same containers all the way to Chicago.”


The expansion study sparked a flurry of opposition across the Great Lakes. It failed to
mention the cost of replumbing the Seaway — an estimated 10 to 15 billion dollars. It
didn’t factor in invasive species that show up in foreign ships’ ballasts. Invasives already
cost the economy 5 billion dollars a year, and environmentalists said it glossed over the
ecological devastation of dredging and blasting a deeper channel.


Even the shipping industry has begun to distance itself from expansion. Steve Fisher
directs the American Great Lakes Ports Association.


“There was quite a bit of opposition expressed through the region, and in light of that
opposition we took stock of just how much and how strongly we felt on the issue and
quite frankly there just wasn’t a strong enough interest.”


Most experts now believe expansion won’t happen for at least another generation.
Environmentalists and other critics hope it won’t happen at all.


So instead, the Seaway is changing its tactics. Richard Corfe runs Canada’s side of the
waterway. He says the vast majority of Seaway traffic is actually between Great Lakes
ports, not overseas. So, the Seaway’s focus now is to lure more North American shippers
to use the locks and channels.


“Our efforts have to be towards maximizing the use of what we have now for the benefit
of both countries, the economic, environmental, and social benefit.”


Today, trucks and trains haul most goods from coastal ports to Great Lakes cities.
Shippers want to steal some of that cargo, take it off the roads and rails, and put it on
seaway ships headed for Great Lakes ports.


For the GLRC, I’m David Sommerstein.

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