Lawn mowers pollute a lot more than cars. Proposed EPA rules will require small engine makers to reduce polluting emissions. It's been estimated that these changes will add about $25 to the price of a typical lawn mower. (Photo by Lester Graham)
In the next few years, lawnmowers, weed whackers and many boat engines
might cost a little more… but they’ll pollute less. Mark Brush
reports the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a new rule
aimed at cutting air pollution from these small engines:
Transcript
In the next few years, lawnmowers, weed whackers and many boat engines
might cost a little more… but they’ll pollute less. Mark Brush
reports the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a new rule
aimed at cutting air pollution from these small engines:
Today’s lawnmowers and boat engines put out a lot more air pollution than
your car. That’s because your car has a catalytic converter that burns
up a lot of harmful chemicals.
The EPA says that to meet its new rule, many small engine makers will
eventually add catalytic converters to their equipment. In the past,
small engine makers have complained that adding catalytic converters
will increase the risk of fire.
John Millett is a spokesman with the EPA. He says the EPA studied the
safety issue before drafting the proposed rule:
“We found no increase of risk of fire. In fact, several of the experts
that we consulted actually suggested that because of reducing the
amount of fumes that would escape from these engines we would actually
see improved safety.”
If the rule is approved, it’s estimated that consumers would pay around
$300 more for a new boat engine, and around $25 more for a new lawn
mower.
A federal judge says the Bush Administration broke the law when it opened up protected forestland to logging. A rule under the Clinton Administration kept nearly one third of all national forestland off limits to logging and new road building. But last year the Bush Administration repealed that rule. Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
A federal judge says the Bush Administration broke the law when it opened up protected
forestland to logging. A rule under the Clinton Administration kept nearly one third of all
national forestland off limits to logging and new road building. But last year the Bush
Administration repealed that rule. Mark Brush has more:
The federal judge said the Bush Administration did not comply with environmental laws
when it repealed the so-called Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
The Administration opened the door to more road-building and logging. And it
required states to petition the federal government if they wanted their roadless areas
protected.
Just last month in Oregon, the first protected roadless area was opened up to logging. The
trees were killed four years ago in a fire. Patty Burel is a spokesperson for the U.S.
Forest Service. She says the federal court’s ruling won’t affect the current timber sale:
“It’s our understanding, from what we’re hearing from our legal counsel, that nothing
prohibits us from continuing, so we’re continuing to proceed with the plan of operation
with these two fire salvage sales.”
It’s expected that the timber industry and some states like Idaho will appeal the judge’s ruling.
Some big city mayors and urban legislators say insurance rates are unfair to people who live in cities. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports, state legislatures are reluctant to change insurance rate structures in fear of angering suburban voters:
Transcript
Some big city mayors and urban legislators say insurance rates are unfair
to people who live in cities. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports, state
legislatures are reluctant to change insurance rate structures in fear of
angering suburban voters:
Insurance rates are higher in cities than they are in suburbs. Often
they’re much higher. Peter Kuhnmuench is an insurance industry
spokesman with the Insurance Institute of Michigan. He says there are
more risks and more insurance claims in the cities that drive up the costs.
“We see a higher incidence of fire and burglary and theft in the urban
areas typically than you do in the suburban areas.”
And although suburban residents typically drive their cars farther to
work, drivers in the city have more collisions and theft claims.
Legislators in cities want the insurance costs tp be spread out across a wider
population, but suburban legislators don’t want their residents to have to
subsidize urban insurance rates. Those in the city say the irony is:
through tax dollars, their residents are forced to subsidize more lanes of traffic for
the suburbanites who commute to work in the city.
A catalytic converter may be on its way to a lawn mower near you. (Photo by Karen Trilford)
Small gasoline engines—including those on lawnmowers and weed trimmers— are a major source of air pollution. But one Republican lawmaker says more testing is needed to ensure that proposed emission controls for the engines are safe. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Sepic reports:
Transcript
Small gasoline engines, including those on lawnmowers and weed trimmers, are a
major source of air pollution. But one Republican lawmaker says more testing
is needed to ensure that proposed emission controls for the engines are
safe. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Sepic reports:
Air quality advocates want the federal government to require catalytic
converters be put on all new small engines.
However, Missouri Republican Senator Kit Bond wants a safety study first. He
says extra heat from the devices could be a fire hazard. But William Becker, who heads a group of local and regional air quality officials, says that’s just a stalling tactic.
“Both California and the Environmental Protection Agency have done a lot of testing. And they show that engines with catalysts are no hotter than engines without catalysts. The issue of safety is really bogus.”
Becker says Senator Bond is just trying to protect Briggs & Stratton. The
engine maker has two plants in Missouri.
In 2003, Bond also pushed for a measure that blocks all states but
California from imposing small engine pollution regulations that are
stronger than federal rules.
Park managers determined that this area of land in southeast Michigan was historically a prairie. They're using fire to return it to that state, and to keep invasive plants and shrubs in check. (Photo by Mark Brush)
A burn crew member keeps an eye on a hot section of the 'burn unit.' (Photo by Mark Brush)
The blackened ground after the burn. The freshly burned ground traps heat causing soil temperatures to rise which encourages new plant growth. (Photo by Mark Brush)
Some natural areas need fire. A number of prairie plants and pine trees must have fire for their seeds to pop open or germinate. But burning a natural area can quickly turn into a wildfire without a team to keep it under control. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush spent a day with a burn crew… and brings us this audio postcard:
Transcript
Some natural areas need fire. A number of prairie plants and pine trees
must have fire for their seeds to pop open or germinate. But burning a
natural area can quickly turn into a wildfire without a team to keep it
under control. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush spent a day
with a burn crew… and brings us this audio postcard:
(sound of walking through dry grass and birds)
“Good morning, Hi, How’s it going?”
“Little dry?”
“It’s pretty dry, it’s forecasted, I think to be twenty one percent humidity…”
“My name is David Mindell, and I am the burn boss for this project. I’m a contractor that does ecological restoration. The first step is we’ll take a quick walk through and rake some of the fuel around stuff we don’t want to burn. This is the kind of thing if fire got in here, it’d burn for hours and hours and just put out a lot of smoke…”
“My name is Lee Root, and I just am a burn crew member. I’m filling up what’s known as an ‘Indian tank. It’s a backpack frame that has a water tank and a hand pump. This is our little portable fire engine, is what it is. So, you see where the black top is? If that was our fire, and we didn’t want the fire to come onto the grass, we would just…
(sound of squirting)
“…spray like that, and that would prevent the fire from crossing over.”
“Well, my name is Ross Orr, and I’ve been working with David for a couple of years, and um, we’re wearing these crazy, screaming yellow body suits that are flame-retardant fabric, and also helps keep us cool from the radiant heat of the burn, and big, big cumbersome helmets with visors that flip up and down…
(Sound of visor plastic clacking)
“…we’ll ingite using drip torches, which are these canisters filled with a mixutre of diesel and gas. It’s got a wick on the end, a burning wick, and as you tip the canister, it dribbles gas-diesel mix across the wick, and trails fire as you go.”
(sound of fire crackling and wind)
“Okay, I’m gonna burn it up right next to you Lee. All right, here we go.”
(sound of crackling and walkie-talkies)
“Catherine, keep coming right around.”
“Is this one of the crabapples we wanted to save, or they’re on the other end?”
“I believe they’re on the other end, unless they’re crabapples there?”
“Nope, it’s a hawthorne.”
“My name’s Catherine Marquardt, and I do whatever they tell me to do…
(sound of laughter)
“…whether it’s lighting fires or putting them out. Um, I think it looks like a Dr. Seuss story, actually, sometimes when you burn and it’s all black. You don’t get to see this very often, it’s very cool. And then it greens up so quickly, that’s the other amazing thing, is that if you come back here in a couple of days, it’s already getting green. So, it changes so quickly.”
“You know, I’m guessing it took probably forty-five minutes for the backburn to go a third of the way through the unit, and I think the headburn will run through the other two-thirds in about three minutes.”
(sound of large flames fading out)
(sound of walking, rubber squeaking and metal clanging)
Mindell: “And we’re, basically just walking around looking for things that are still smoking. Got a juniper that’s smoking at the base…
(sound of spraying)
“And just spraying out the smoldering bits.
“Burning is extremely fun, but it’s also a great management tool for improving the ecological quality of natural areas.”
(sound of wind and bird chirping)
HOST TAG: “This audio postcard of a prairie burn was produced by the
GLRC’s Mark Brush. To see photos of the burn and learn more about fire
as a management tool, you can visit glrc dot org.”
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.
Meredith Buhalis and her daughter Zoe. Meredith's breast milk was tested for PBDEs as part of a study by the Environmental Working Group. (Photo by Meredith Buhalis)
Couch cushions often have PBDEs in them... (Photo by Nicholas Sales)
...and so do TVs. Are there any health effects from being surrounded by these chemicals? (Photo by Craig Young)
Flame retardant chemicals help make our lives safer.
The chemicals are designed to keep plastics and foam from
catching on fire, but the flame retardants are worrying some
scientists because these chemicals are turning up in people’s
bodies, sometimes at alarmingly high rates. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
Flame retardant chemicals help make our lives safer. The chemicals are designed
to keep plastics and foam from catching on fire. But the flame retardants are
beginning to worry some scientists because these chemicals are turning up in
peoples’ bodies. Sometimes at alarmingly high rates. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:
If you take a look around your house, you can find a lot of things that have
flame retardant chemicals in them. They’re in your television set, the cushions
in your couch, and the padding underneath your carpet. They’re known as poly-bromiated-diphenyl
ethers, or PBDEs. And they’re either mixed in or sprayed on plastics and foam to keep a fire
from spreading.
Five years ago a Swedish study found these chemicals were accumulating in women’s breast
milk. Studies in the U.S. followed, and researchers also found PBDEs in Americans, but at
even higher levels. In fact, Americans have some of the highest levels ever measured. And
over time, the levels have been going up.
(sound of baby)
Meredith Buhalis was one of those people measured in a study by an envrionmental organization
called the Environmental Working Group. Buhalis and 20 other first time moms sent in samples
of their breast milk. When the samples were tested, all of them had some level of PBDEs in
them. Buhalis says when she read the results she didn’t know what to think.
“I guess I kind of read the results and the study was like, ‘Oh, well that sort of sucks.’
I wish I knew more about what that meant. ‘Cause I don’t. You know, they don’t know what
that means.”
Scientists don’t know how or if the chemicals affect human health. And some scientists
think the government and the chemical companies aren’t doing enough to look into PBDEs.
(sound of typing)
In his office at the University of Texas in Dallas, Dr. Arnold Schecter is working on an
article about the flame retardants. He’s been studying toxic chemicals for more than thirty
years. He and some of his colleagues think PBDEs are a lot like another type of chemical…
“It reminds us of PCBs. PCBs structurally are similar to the PBDEs. So there is the worry,
or the concern, that they may have many, if not all, the toxic effect that PCBs have on humans.”
So far the data on PCBs strongly suggest that the chemicals can cause cancer in humans as
well as other human health effects such as damage to the nervous and immune systems. The
companies that manufacture the flame retardants say it’s not fair to compare PBDEs with
PCBs. They say the chemicals are vastly different.
But no one really knows whether the chemicals are similar in the way they affect human
health. That’s because no one’s studied the human health effects of PBDEs.
“Unfortunately, there are no published human health studies and I don’t believe any have
been funded by the federal government to date. Nor by industry, nor by any foundations,
which is a bit different than the situation with PCBs and dioxins years ago when many
studies were being funded.”
Some animal studies suggest that the chemicals can permanently disrupt the hormone and
nervous systems, cause reproductive and developmental damage, and cause cancer. All that
makes scientists such as Dr. Schecter especially concerned about the most vulnerable
population – developing babies.
Because of the concerns, the biggest manufacturer of these chemicals in the U.S. has agreed
to stop making two of the PBDE formulations that were found to accumulate in people. Great
Lakes Chemical says production will stop by the end of this year. The chemicals will be
replaced with another type of brominated flame retardant.
The Bromine Science and Environmental Forum is a trade group that represents companies
that make the flame retardants. Peter O’Toole is the group’s U.S. Director. He says so
far the amount of chemicals found in people doesn’t concern the companies, but the upward
trend does.
“And again, it wasn’t of alarming numbers, but the manufacturer was concerned that these
numbers were going up nonetheless. And they thought it was prudent, and they talked to the
EPA and EPA thought it was prudent if there was some sort of mutual phase out of those materials.”
Dr. Schecter says he commends the company for taking this step. But he says even though these
two formulations will be phased out, the flame retardants are already in our environment now.
He says his research has found high levels of PBDEs by wiping the plastic casing on television
sets, and in the dust found in homes. He says what’s in our homes now isn’t going to vanish,
so we need to figure out how the chemicals get into us, so we can avoid potential health problems.
For its part, the U.S. Envrionmental Protection Agency says large-scale human health studies
take a long time to develop. An agency spokesperson says the EPA first needs to learn how a
person becomes highly exposed. After that, they say researchers will be able to ask the question,
“for the highly exposed people, are there any health effects?”
(sound of baby)
That leaves people such as Meredith Buhalis, with a lot more questions than answers.
“We are thinking of having another baby, and I think I would really like to know more about
PBDEs. I think about it when I think about that.” (to her daughter) “Oh thank you. Hi, baby.
Hi, Zoe.”
The Federal government doesn’t plan to regulate the chemicals anytime soon. But some states
aren’t waiting for more studies. A handful of states have placed restrictions on certain
types of PBDEs. And in other states, legislation is pending.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.
American chestnuts (left) are smaller than Chinese and European chestnuts. The Chinese and European varieties are also resistant to the blight, making the imports more desirable to growers. (Photo by Lester Graham)
American chestnuts were an important food source for wildlife because there was a more consistent crop each year than acorns. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Bill Nash of Nash Nurseries holds the spiny husks that hold the chestnuts. The American chestnut grove behind him is 20 years old and has not yet been hit by blight. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Food is always a big part of the holidays. But one
traditional food has – for the most part – disappeared from American tables. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Food is always a big part of the holidays. But one traditional food has – for the most part – disapeared from American tables. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
(Sound of Nat King Cole singing, “Chestnuts roasing on an open fire…”)
That old chestnut of a song romanticizes roasting chestnuts as a part of the holidays. But a lot of us have never even seen chestnuts, let alone roasted them on an open fire. Chestnuts used to be a major part of the Eastern hardwood forest. There were millions of them. In fact, 25 percent of all the mature trees were chestnuts. But a blight, imported with some Chinese chestnut trees, slowly wiped out the American chestnuts. Now, they’re gone.
Well… almost. Much of the root stock is still alive. Sprouts grow until the blight knocks them back again. A blight only hurts the standing tree where it branches out.
And, in a few isolated pockets in the Midwest, the blight hasn’t reached the trees. A few American chestnuts are alive and growing and some of them are free of the blight. At Nash Nursuries in central Michigan, owner Bill Nash is guiding us through a rare sight… a grove of American chestnuts.
“These are 20 years old and as you can see, they’re fairly good sized. The American chestnut is quite a rapid growing tree. It’s well-suited for our climate, so it doesn’t have any of the problems that some of the hybrids do as far as growing and cultural care you have to take care of them. The Americans, you get them started and they’re pretty much on their own.”
In a few places in Michigan and Wisconsin there are small groves of chestnuts. They’re prized trees. They’re great for shade. The hardwood is rot resistant and makes great furniture and fence posts. And the chestnuts are eaten by humans and wildlife alike. Bill Nash says the tree will be popular again if it ever overcomes the blight that’s hit it so hard.
“The American chestnut will make another big comeback in this country as a yard tree, as a timber tree, as a wildlife tree.”
That part about a wildlife tree is more important than just worrying about the squirrels and bunnies. Chestnuts were an important food source for all kinds of animals.
Andrew Jarosz is a plant biologist at Michigan State University. He says the loss of chestnuts has been hard on wildlife populations.
“Chestnuts shed nuts in a more regular pattern than oaks, which will have what are called mast years – where they’ll have major crops, massive crops one year and very small crops in other years – which means it’s either feast or famine if you’re depending on oaks.”
Since the blight first began hitting American chestnuts about a century ago, researchers have been looking into all kinds of ways to stop it. One way is to cross it with the Chinese chestnut which has a couple of genes that resist the blight. But it takes a long time to breed out the Chinese characteristics from the American chestnuts and still keep the resistant genes.
Another approach is genetic manipulation. Genetically modifying the American chestnut tree to make it disease resistant. Again, work is underway, but it takes a long time. And even after success, it’s likely some people won’t like the idea of releasing a genetically modified organism into the wild.
The final approach worked in Europe when the blight hit there. It seems there’s a naturally occuring virus that kills the blight. It spread naturally in Europe. There are a few groves in Michigan that have naturally acquired the virus and it’s working to keep the blight at bay. Andrew Jarosz is working on the research. He says the trick is figuring out how to get the virus to spread to other trees short of manually spreading it on cankers infected by the blight.
“If we’re literally talking about millions of trees across probably, you know, the eastern third of the country, we obviously can’t treat every canker on every tree. And we need to be able to figure out a way to deploy the virus in a way that it can spread.”
Even with all that hopeful research, it’ll be ten years at least before some practical solutions end up in the forests, and Jarosz believes a couple of centuries before the American chestnut holds the place it once did in the forests.
Bill Nash knows it’ll be a while before there are major changes, but he is optimistic about the American chestnut.
“Oh, I would think the tree has a bright future. There’s enough people working on that, enough programs going on now… So, I would suspect that in the not-too-distant future we should have some of this progress made. You know, Robert Frost in his poem predicted the comeback of the American chestnut, that something would arise to offset that blight. And we’re starting to see that.”
Frost put it this way: “Will the blight end the chestnut? The farmers rather guess not, It keeps smoldering at the roots And sending up new shoots Till another parasite Shall come to end the blight.”
Seems Frost was an optimist too.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Because mobile homes can be transported they're not taxed the way permanent homes are. They're taxed like vehicles (when they're bought and sold). Mobile home owners pay a small tax for the small plot of land they sit on. (Photo by Chris McCarus)
Some officials are saying mobile home owners don't pay their fair share of taxes. Mobile home advocates disagree. (Photo by Chris McCarus)
Mobile home parks like this one in mid-Michigan offer a housing option for low income families. (Photo by Chris McCarus)
People who live in mobile homes might be seeing their property taxes going up. Some government officials say it’s an attempt to tax for the services used and to discourage mobile home parks from sprawling across former farm fields. But others wonder if higher taxes aren’t a form of discrimination against this kind of affordable housing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:
Transcript
People who live in mobile homes might be seeing their property taxes going up. Some government officials say it’s an attempt to tax for the services used and to discourage mobile home parks from sprawling across former farm fields. But others wonder if higher taxes aren’t a form of discrimination against this kind of affordable housing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:
(sound of expressway traffic)
The Capital Crossings mobile home park sits on rolling farmland near an Interstate highway. The residents of the 15 homes have moved here either to retire or to make the 30 minute daily commute to nearby Lansing, Michigan. And more mobile homes are being pulled in.
(sound of construction)
Workers are building porches and attaching the skirting between the ground and the house. It’s supposed to show permanence, like a foundation. But mobile homes are not permanent. And mobile homes are not taxed the same way as other houses. They’re taxed like vehicles. Taxed when they’re purchased. Taxed when they’re sold. Still there are no property taxes on the homes. Only on the tiny lots on which they sit.
Some government officials say the $3 a month that these park residents have been paying for property taxes don’t cover the costs of police and fire protection or other government services. They want a tax hike to give local governments more money. Dave Morris is a farmer and the local township supervisor.
“We all have to pay our fair share for services such as sheriff, ambulance, fire department as well as schools. Schools is a big issue of course. And they aren’t paying their share. That’s all.”
But advocates for affordable housing say hiking taxes on mobile home residents is more likely just an attempt to discourage that kind of housing. They say zoning mobile homes out of existence has been tried, but taxing them out is a new idea. Higher taxes will likely lead to mobile home parks closing.”
John McIlwain is with the Urban Land Institute. He says as mobile home parks become more expensive to operate, their owners will sell off to subdivision or big box store developers.
“The numbers are going to be so attractive that the people who own mobile home parks are going to be much more interested in selling the land to a housing developer than in continuing to run the mobile home park. So in time the parks are probably going to disappear on their own anyway and trying to raise the taxes on them specifically is simply going to make that day come earlier.”
In Michigan there is a proposal to raise the taxes on mobile home sites four times higher. State Senator Valde Garcia says the $3 a month that mobile home park owners pay for each home site is not nearly enough.
“What we are trying to do is really change the tax structure so it’s fair to everyone. The system hasn’t changed in 45 years. It’s time we do so but we need to do it in a gradual manner.”
Senator Garcia’s colleagues in the state house have voted to raise the tax to $12 a month. He’d like to raise it to at least $40 a month. The mobile home park industry has hired a public relations firm to produce a video criticizing the tax increase.
“Site built homes pay sales tax only the materials used in their homes and don’t pay tax on resale. Manufactured home owners pay sales tax on materials, labor, transportation profit of a home and they pay sales tax every time a home is resold. ”
The two sides don’t agree on the math. Tim Dewitt of the Michigan Manufactured Housing Association says $3 a month sounds low because it doesn’t show hidden costs. The biggest cost comes when park owners have to pay the higher commercial property tax instead of the lower homestead tax. Dewitt says the park owners then pass the tax to the home owners whose average family income is only about $28,000 a year.
“That’s our worst fear. It could put people who could least afford any type of tax increase into a tough position.”
15 million people live in mobile home parks around the country. And different local governments have tried to find ways to increase taxes on mobile home parks. But Michigan is one of the first states to propose hiking taxes this much. State Senator Garcia says he is not trying to hurt the mobile home industry or make life harder for mobile home park residents. He dismisses the idea that he’s being pressured by wealthier constituents who don’t like to see the mobile home parks being developed.
John McIlwain of the Urban Land Institute says a bias against mobile home parks is part of the mentality that leads to sprawl. When people from the city and the suburbs move a little further into rural areas they want the look and feel of suburbia.
“The mobile home parks are no longer things that they want to see. And so they find ways to discourage those mobile home parks. The ones that are there try to see if they can be purchased, turned into stick built housing or otherwise discourage them and encourage them to move on elsewhere.”
But often the people who move in also want the shopping centers, restaurants and conveniences they once had instead of the mobile home parks.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris McCarus.
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security are considering removing hazardous material placards from freight trains. They say doing so will help protect people from terrorists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security are considering removing
hazardous material placards from freight trains. They say doing so would help
protect people from terrorists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:
Because of the September 11th terrorist attacks, officials see the potential for a
lot of things to be used as weapons. One of their latest fears is that shipments of
hazardous materials could be used by terrorists. In order to protect people from this
threat, the Department of Homeland Security says it might require the removal of the
diamond shaped placards from rail cars. Emergency workers use the placards to quickly
identify a hazard after an accident.
Richard Powell is the Executive Director of the Michigan Association of Fire Chiefs.
He says while the Department of Homeland Security is well-intentioned, removal of the
placards would put more people at risk:
“We need to protect our citizens. We need to keep that system in place. If we don’t know something is there, our people could not evacuate perhaps, as quick as we normally would.”
Homeland Security officials say they’ll consider other options that would help disguise the rail cars, but would still allow emergency workers to know what’s inside.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.
Lawn mowers pollute a lot more than cars. Proposed EPA rules will require small engine makers to reduce polluting emissions. It's been estimated that these changes will add about $25 to the price of a typical lawn mower. (Photo by Lester Graham)
