Tag: falcons

Part 1: Tidal Power in the Pacific

  • Research teams are looking for turbines that make tidal power work without harming sea life, like this one. (Photo courtesy of Charles Cooper with Oceana Energy)

For decades, people in the Pacific Northwest have relied on hydropower
for most of their electricity. But dams hurt salmon runs and river
ecosystems. That’s sent Washington utilities on a quest for new, cleaner
sources of power. As Ann Dornfeld reports, some are looking for new ways
to harness the power of flowing water:

Transcript

For decades, people in the Pacific Northwest have relied on hydropower
for most of their electricity. But dams hurt salmon runs and river
ecosystems. That’s sent Washington utilities on a quest for new, cleaner
sources of power. As Ann Dornfeld reports, some are looking for new ways
to harness the power of flowing water:


It’s a brilliant day outside. Craig Collar is perched on a rocky outcropping
overlooking rushing green water swirling and eddying below. Collar says
the water is moving so quickly because this is one of only two spots where
the Pacific Ocean flows into Puget Sound:


“As the tide comes in, it comes into this constrained passageway at
Deception Pass. Y’know, all that energy gets channeled, focused
through this very narrow area. So that’s what results in these rapid
tidal currents that we’re seeing right here.”


Collar researches new power sources for Snohomish County Public Utility
District. His goal is to use a sort of underwater windmill to convert some of
this water’s energy to electricity and funnel it onto the power grid. It’s called
“tidal power.”


Collar says there are dozens of underwater turbine designs to choose
from. Some look like a standard wind turbine with three big blades; others
look like a metal donut or a fish tail.


The Utility District is considering putting underwater turbine farms at half a
dozen locations around Puget Sound. It estimates tidal energy could power
at least 60,000 homes. Collar says the technology has a lot going for
it. It doesn’t emit carbon dioxide or other pollutants. He says underwater
turbines can be much smaller than wind turbines because they’re so
efficient:


“And that’s just as a result of the higher density of water. Water’s
roughly 800 times denser than air, so it contains a lot more energy.”


Unlike the wind, tides aren’t really affected by the season. You know the
saying: “predictable as the tides.” Collar says lunar phases let you forecast
the tides for decades into the future:


“Where with wind, you’re doing good if you can forecast hours or
even a little bit ahead. That really helps utilities like us integrate that
power into the power grid.”


Collar acknowledges there are a lot of questions about the impact of tidal
turbines on marine ecology.


These questions worry nearby Native American tribes. The Tulalip
reservation is close to Deception Pass, and they fish throughout Puget
Sound. Darryl Williams is the tribes’ environmental liaison:


“Five species of salmon, orca, grey whales, eagles, hawks, falcons…
y’know, we have numerous species of fish and marine mammals and
migratory birds that use the areas that are being proposed for these
turbines, and the studies really haven’t been done yet to show what
the impacts may or may not be.”


Along with the marine environment, Williams says the tribes are worried
that tidal turbines could scare away fish or get tangled in fishing nets.


“For the tribes, the fisheries aren’t only an economic source but
they’re also part of the tribes’ culture. Most of our cultural activities
are centered around salmon, and if we can’t catch the salmon, then
that part of our culture really goes away.”


A research team at the University of Washington is looking for ways to
make tidal power work without harming sea life. Brian Polagye is a
mechanical engineering graduate student whose focus is renewable
energy. His team is working with the oceanography department to look at
the ecological risks of tidal power. But Polagye says there are a lot of
misconceptions about what those risks are.


“The most obvious one is the question of ‘Oh! So you’re going to put
these rotors in the water and you’re gonna make sushi in addition to
electrical power.’ People view these turbines kind of as almost a
propeller that’s moving through the water so rapidly that if anything
gets near it it’s gonna get chopped to pieces. In practice, you can’t
actually run the rotors that fast. The maximum speed that the tip of
the rotor can turn at is about 25 miles an hour. Which is actually
relatively slow.”


Polagye says one of the biggest risks is that removing some of the energy
from the tidal currents will change the ecology downstream. He’s studying
how much power can be extracted from an estuary before it has a
noticeable effect on the ecosystem.


Back at Deception Pass, Craig Collar with the utility district says even if
there is a small ecological impact, it’s key to look at the overall picture:


“At the end of the day the thing that’s compelling about tidal energy
for us is there just aren’t very many opportunities for clean,
renewable, emission-free energy that’s both predictable and close to
the loads. And all those things are true for tidal energy in the Puget
Sound region, and there simply is no other renewable for which all
those things are true.”


The utility is working with the University of Washington to figure out
whether tidal power is viable in Puget Sound. If so, it could help reinvent
hydropower on the Pacific Coast for the next generation.


For the Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

Related Links

Historic Court Case Still Affecting Polluters

  • A cover photo from the Twin Citian Magazine. From 1955 to 1980, Reserve Mining dumped tons of waste rock into Lake Superior every day. The court case that ended the pollution set new rules for industry. (Image courtesy of Twin Citian Magazine)

Thirty years ago this month, a court case changed the rules about how the government deals with pollution. The decision established the principle that the government can force industry to clean up its mess. And if industry refuses, the government can shut it down. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

Thirty years ago this month, a court case changed the rules about how the government deals with
pollution. The decision established the principle that the government can force industry to clean
up its mess. And if industry refuses, the government can shut it down. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:


Arlene Lehto grew up on Lake Superior. Her parents operated a resort near Silver Bay, 50 miles
up the shore from Duluth.


As a child, she liked to throw pebbles into the water. She’d try to get them to land on boulders,
15 feet under the waves.


“But I left in 1957, came back 1968, took my son down to show him how to play the game, and
we could no longer see the boulders.”


Lehto blamed Reserve Mining Company for muddying Lake Superior. Reserve built a processing
plant near Silver Bay in 1955. Huge machines crushed the rock, and separated the useable iron
from the waste.


Reserve dumped the waste rock in Lake Superior.


Lehto and some of her neighbors got together to try to stop the dumping. They asked the state
and federal governments for help.


In the early 1970s, the federal Environmental Protection Agency was brand new. One of the first
things it did was take Reserve Mining Company to court. The trial and appeals went on for years.


That was a tough time for the people in Silver Bay. Jim Kelly worked at the plant his whole life.
He says he and his neighbors didn’t believe for a minute there was any harm in the waste rock
they were dumping in the lake. And he says nobody’s ever proved it did cause a problem.


“We worked there. We worked with it every day. And if we thought it was detrimental to
ourselves and our families, we wouldn’t submit them to that. I know I wouldn’t. I would speak
out against it or move my family out of here.”


But in the middle of the trial, EPA scientists suddenly discovered something that scared a lot of
people down the shore, in Duluth.


In 1973, Phil Cook, an EPA chemist, found microscopic fibers in Duluth’s water supply. He
suspected the fibers could cause cancer. The fibers were similar to asbestos, and asbestos was
known to cause cancer.


“At that time the Duluth water supply was essentially unfiltered, because Lake Superior water
was very low in suspended solids. And I was surprised to find that every day this material was in
the water supply.”


The EPA put out a warning about the asbestos-like particles in the water. The government
installed special filters in schools and fire halls. Families began hauling water from the fire halls
to use at home.


The discovery of a possible carcinogen in the water supplies of cities along the North Shore of
Lake Superior turned the case into a major event. The New York Times and national network
television covered it.


The judge was Miles Lord. As the trial dragged on and on, Lord began to believe Reserve was
hiding evidence.


“I couldn’t believe a thing they said, because they were way out in left field. You had to be there
to realize how spacey this thing was, how out of focus some of this testimony was, by the
defense. There was no credibility to them at all.”


Eight months after the trial began, Judge Lord instructed both sides to sit down and try to work
out a solution. But those negotiations failed.


Finally, Lord took it on himself to try to arrange a settlement. In April 1974, he called Reserve’s
chairman, C. William Verity, to the stand. Lord accused Verity of stalling and dragging out the
court case in order to squeeze the last dollar of profit out of the operation.


“I said to him, ‘Now, can you get this thing out of the water? Can you stop poisoning the people
downstream, and the air and so forth? Can you figure out a way not to make so much dust?'”


Lord was furious with Verity’s response. “He said, ‘We don’t have to, we won’t.'”


That afternoon, Lord ordered Reserve Mining Company to stop dumping its waste in Lake
Superior, effective immediately.


Some 3,000 people were suddenly out of work. The United States lost one-twelfth of its supply
of iron ore.


It was the first time a judge had shut down a major industrial plant to protect the environment.


Reserve appealed the next day, and the appeals court allowed the plant to reopen. The court said
Reserve would have to stop polluting the lake eventually, but it could keep dumping in the lake
until it built an alternative.


Reserve built that alternative — a disposal area on land. Starting in 1980 it piped its waste to the
new pond, several miles away from Lake Superior.


Scientists have still not decided once and for all whether the fibers from the mine can make
people sick.


But the court case set new ground rules for the debate over the environment.


Industry and the government still fight about how much pollution is acceptable.


But in the Reserve case, the government showed it can shut down an industry that pollutes too
much.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Birders Flock to Hawk Mountain

Each fall, thousands of hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey fly hundreds of miles in search of warmer climates. And between August and December, nearly 70-thousand people will climb to the top of a bird sanctuary called Hawk Mountain to get a closer look at those birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:

Transcript

Each fall, about thousands of hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey fly hundreds of miles
in search of warmer climates. And between August and December, nearly 70-thousand
people will climb to the top of a bird sanctuary called Hawk Mountain to get a closer
look at those birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:


“Those of you haven’t found the osprey, it’s over there at owl’s head, naked eye here to
the right.”


On a clear day, the view from atop Hawk Mountain stretches for more than fifty miles.
But on this particularly hazy Saturday afternoon, bird-watchers are pushing their
binoculars and telescopes to the limits.


“Well, we’re making them out there, they’re coming in. It’s like you just gotta wait ’til
they get a little closer than what they typically do. They’ve been popping out of clouds
and haze all day for us.”


Doug Wood is a volunteer at Hawk Mountain in Eastern Pennsylvania. This afternoon,
he’s the official bird counter.


“We’re basically taking a lot of field information. Wind, weather, temperature, cloud
cover, wind direction. And then we’re basically monitoring the birds’ species, age, sex,
and recording it every hour.


“Look! An Osprey! And then fade to scene change.”


Researchers at Hawk Mountain have been keeping records of osprey and other migratory
raptors for more than seventy years, making it the oldest monitoring station in the world.


In the early twentieth century, hunters would shoot thousands of birds from the
mountainside each year. Today, people travel from all over the world to shoot birds with
their cameras.


Matt Wong came all the way from New Zealand to study at the sanctuary.


“Hawk Mountain is internationally renowned as a hawk watch site. And also a place
where big research actually happens. Now, not many of the locals around Pennsylvania
actually realize this, but it’s actually huge on the international scene. It’s world
recognized, and that’s one of the reasons why I came here.”


In Wong’s country, there are only two species of raptors. In America, he’s had a chance
to study dozens of varieties.


But even with so many different species populating North America, many people still
think of them as strangers or sometimes even as monsters.


“I still get, amazingly to me, a lot of people that think that these birds are out to get us.”


Volunteer Bob Owens has spent the last 20 years doing education programs at Hawk
Mountain.


“If you intrude into their territory when they have young in the nest, or something like
that, yeah, they’re probably going to chase you. As far as them killing babies and taking
them from baby carriages, this is all old wives tales. This just does not happen.”


Owens runs a small farm for a living, where he says hawks and barn owls help keep
rodents under control. But in a larger sense, Owens says there’s a lot people can learn
from these birds.


“Any three and a half pound bird that can apply four hundred pounds of pressure with its
talons is built to do what they’re doing. They are at the top of the food chain. And that’s
the other big thing that it shows us. It just opens up a door here as to all the reasons the
birds are either dropping or rising in population. What are we doing?”


Owens says in the seventy years researchers at Hawk Mountain have been counting birds,
they’ve seen populations rise and fall. Hawks and eagles are hardy birds. But even the
most successful predators can fall victim to environmental change.


Keith Bildstein is the sanctuary’s director of conservation programs. He says raptors are
like sensitive tools, telling researchers when something’s wrong with an ecosystem.


“Birds of prey are excellent biological indicators. In the middle of the last century they
told us that we were having a problem with our misuse of organochlorine pesticides,
specifically DDT. Today, they’re leading us in explorations of the spread of West Nile
Virus.”


Bildstein says because raptors are at the top of the food chain, when their numbers fall
it’s a pretty good sign that their food source is dwindling, their habitat could be
disappearing, or air quality might be suffering.


But for most of Hawk Mountain’s visitors, the birds are more than barometers of a
healthy ecosystem. According to birder Judy Higgs, they’re beautiful creatures,
especially when viewed from a great height.


“These birds are just majestic. And the other thing is that they go so far. You know,
some of these birds are going to South America!”


Higgs first climbed the mountain in 1970, when she was a student at nearby Kutztown
University. Before moving out of state, Higgs used to come to Hawk Mountain daily…
she stills visits on weekends whenever she can.


“I used to do work in the morning, come here in the afternoon, go home, and finish my
work at night so I could be here.”


By day’s end, Higgs and her fellow birdwatchers count more than 600 raptors. During
the fall season, as many as 70-thousand predatory birds, from vultures to falcons might
pass by on their way to distant points.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.

Rescuing Injured Raptors

Owls, eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey have it rough in the modern world. They have to navigate electric wires, cars, and loss of habitat. A handful of volunteers in the Midwest take on the responsibility of nursing injured birds back to health… The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder has the story of a wildlife rehabilitator in Pennsylvania:

Transcript

Owls, eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey have it rough in the modern world. They have to navigate electric wires, cars, and loss of habitat. A handful of volunteers in the (Great Lakes region/Midwest) take on the responsibility of nursing injured birds back to health… The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder has this story on a wildlife rehabilitator in Pennsylvania:


(natural sound fading up)


Wendy Looker’s back yard serves as a temporary home for 120 birds, and a variety of other exotic animals. Walking into a sixteen foot cage, Looker opens a box and tries to convince the two small birds inside that it’s dinner time.


“These are fledgling kestrels and they’re just learning to catch food. So we’re tossing baby mice in there just to mimic movement, they’re eating mealworms and crickets, and other things they’re learning to catch.”


By working primarily to rehabilitate birds of prey, or raptors, Wendy Looker has become something of an expert in the region. With a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and some graduate work in animal behavior, Looker has spent most of her life working with animals.


“I worked in zoos for a number of years, and I particularly developed an affinity for owls. I guess I, for whatever reason identify with cranky animal that seem to be misunderstood by people. And I just figured at some point in time, maybe I’d dabble with research, and dabbling became 24-7.”


Ten years later, Rehabitat – a 40-thousand dollar a year non-profit organization, run out of Looker’s back yard – is going strong. Each year Looker and a handful of local volunteers help hundreds of birds recover from injury. It’s often dirty and difficult work for no pay, but Looker says she feels a responsibility to the birds.


“Very few of these animals come in as a result of a failure to thrive, a natural selection sort of a thing. It’s almost always human related, so I feel very strongly that they deserve the opportunity to be given a chance to get back out there.”


Looker says many of the birds brought to her have been hit by cars, have flown into glass windows, or have been caught up in discarded fishing line. But the number one cause of injury for birds is what she calls CBC, or caught by cat.


Even a minor cat bite can be lethal as bacteria infect the wound. Looker says keeping house cats in the house would eliminate countless bird injuries each year.


Feeding the birds at Rehabitat takes 6-thousand dead rodents every week, donated from a local research facility. Looker says in nature, or living in the back of a barn, birds of prey are effective mouse hunters. A single barn owl could save farmers thousands of dollars in crop damage.


“The average owl out in the wild eats about a thousand rodents a year himself, so they’re incredibly efficient and valuable in controlling the rodent population. Eating a thousand rodents, and a single rodent can do about 28 dollars worth of damage to agricultural crops, so that’s a 28-thousand dollar bird, and that’s without him having a family.”


Looker says using rat poison to deal with rodents might not be as effective as having a few raptors around. And if there are birds of prey in the area, it’s likely that they could be susceptible to poison as well.


“Most rat and mouse poisons accumulate in the body of the rodent it takes several days for the rodent to die, and he’s wandering out in the open and it’s very easy pickings for the birds. So we get birds that come in here with what we call secondary poisoning, and they’re seizuring and sometimes we can turn them around and sometimes we can’t.”


“We must have had babies hatching… and let’s go check those babies out….”


While inspecting the newborn barn owls, Looker says some animals spend just a few months at Rehabitat, while others have become lifelong residents due to permanent wing or eyesight damage.


“Our standards for release are extremely high. These birds have a tremendously difficult life out in the wild and they need to be 100% perfect. Because just to have one feather missing compromises the feather next to it, throws them off balance, and may be the difference between life and death for them.”


Not every bird can make it in the wild. A few birds with disabilities such as amputated wings or partial blindness can be used for educational programs. But a number of birds have to be put down every year. Looker says it wouldn’t be difficult to find people willing to adopt injured birds, but Raptors are wild animals that don’t make good pets – and there are few locations with the proper facilities to care for non-releasable animals.


Birds of Prey are federally protected migratory birds, but rehabilitation is a private endeavor. With licenses from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Pennsylvania Game Commission, Rehabitat and similar facilities in the state do all the work of nursing injured wildlife back to health for release in the wild


“There are some restrictions in what rehabbers can and can’t do. Obviously we don’t do surgery, but pretty much everything else medically is done on site. It’s pretty grungy work and it’s pretty labor intensive, but it’s also extremely rewarding.”


(natural sound up)


Looker says she’d love to put herself out of business by convincing people to avoid activities which put birds at risk, such as using rodent poisons or letting housecats roam the neighborhood. But as long as there are birds in need of help, there will be people like Wendy Looker to take them in.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.


(natural sound out)