Tag: fire

From Industrial Waste to Raw Materials

  • A Conesville, OH smokestack. The Cuyahoga Valley Initiative has found a way to turn potential pollutants into money. (Photo by Kenn Kiser)

The Rust Belt regions of the United States are looking at new ways to make industrial prosperity and environmental recovery work hand-in-hand. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shula Neuman reports on an effort that could be a model for industrial areas throughout the nation:

Transcript

The Rust Belt regions of the United States are looking at new ways to make industrial
prosperity and environmental recovery work hand-in-hand. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Shula Neuman reports on an effort that could be a model for industrial
areas throughout the nation:


(sound of birds)


This area of Cleveland near the Cuyahoga River is where John D. Rockefeller first set up
his Standard Oil empire. The Cuyahoga is infamous for being the river that caught fire in
1969 and it became a symbol of the nation’s pollution problem.


Cleveland businesses and industries still live with that legacy. But through a new effort
called the Cuyahoga Valley Initiative, they’re trying to overcome it – although on the
surface it doesn’t look like there’s much happening.
Today, smoke stacks from steel plants still tower above head … below, like a jumble of
twisted licorice sticks, railroad tracks run through the meadows alongside the Cuyahoga.
Silos and old brick buildings line the banks of the river.


For Paul Alsenas, it’s an amazing place — not so much for what it has now, but for what it
can become. Alsensas is the director of planning for Cuyahoga County, the lead
organizer of the Cuyahoga Valley Initiative. The idea of the initiative is not to abandon
industry, he says, but to incorporate environmental and social principals into industry,
which could attract new businesses.


One of the more progressive aspects of the Initiative is something called “industrial
symbiosis.” Alsenas says industrial symbiosis works like natural ecology…


“An ecology of industry where nutrients flow from one form of life to another and make
it tremendously efficient and so therefore we have a competitive advantage. The
Cuyahoga Valley Initiative is not just about sustainability; it’s also whole systems
thinking, it’s also competitive strategy.”


Here’s how it works: waste from one company—a chemical by-product perhaps—is
used by a neighboring company to create its product. And that company’s product is then
sold to another company within the valley—and so on.


Alsenas says it’s already started: some companies located in the Cuyahoga Valley have
been sniffing out opportunities for sharing resources before anyone heard of the
Cuyahoga Valley Initiative. Joe Turgeon, CEO and co-owner of Zaclon, a chemical
manufacturer in the valley, says the Initiative sped things up.


“We pull all the members together and say, ‘OK, this is what I’ve got, this is what you’ve
got; here are some of the materials I need, here are some of the assets I have.’ And an
asset can be anything from a truck scale to a rail siding to by-product energy to
chemicals.”


Zaclon and its neighbor General Environmental Management have already begun their
symbiotic relationship. GEM now buys a Zaclon by-product, sulfuric acid, and in turn
Zaclon purchases a GEM byproduct. GEM president Eric Loftquist says the benefits go
beyond simply saving his company money.


“You know, we do business all over the country… but when you look around you see that
for every dollar you keep in this county, that generates taxes, generates jobs and the
benefits just keep rolling down. So you always want to look within.”


Loftquist says the Cuyahoga Valley Initiative encourages that effort. He says it’s
remarkable that it’s all coming together at the right time and with the right stakeholders.
It brings businesses together with government and area non-profits—including some
environmental groups—in a way not thought possible by industry and environmentalists
in the past.


Catherine Greener is with the Rocky Mountain Institute, a non-profit think tank that
studied the Cuyahoga Valley and is helping to get the initiative off the ground. She says
this area of the river—known as the regenerative zone could put Cleveland on the world’s
radar as a new business model.


“Cleveland has been known for being one of the seats of the industrial revolution and
what we’re seeing is a new industrial model that can emerge. How can you create
manufacturing jobs, industry jobs without jeopardizing the health and welfare of all the
people involved and also, to overuse a word, to ‘green’ the area around it?”


Greener says industrial symbiosis is a workable, practical solution because it makes
business sense… not just environmental sense…


“Sometimes I think about it as finding money in your pocket after you’ve washed your
pants. It’s always a bonus and you’ve always had it. And the resources that you have
here you’re just reinvesting in them and finding them and looking at them differently.”


The participants agree that “industrial symbiosis” won’t solve all the waste problems, but
it’s one part of a movement that’s making industrial cities re-think their relationship with
business and the environment.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Shula Neuman.

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Concern Grows Over Flame Retardant Chemicals

A class of potentially toxic chemicals, known as PBDEs, is being found in higher levels in people in North America. The chemicals are used to prevent fires in everything from couch cushions to televisions. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

A class of potentially toxic chemicals, known as PBDE’s, is being found in
higher levels in people in North America. The chemicals are used to prevent
fires in everything from couch cushions to televisions. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:


PBDE’s are used extensively throughout North America. In Europe and Asia
the chemicals are hardly used at all for this purpose. To date, four studies have
indicated that North Americans have considerably higher levels of the
chemicals in their bodies, than do Europeans and Asians. The most recent
study tested the breast milk of 47 women in Texas.


Linda Birnbaum co-authored the study published in the journal Environmental Health
Perspectives. She says while these chemicals were created to save lives,
other chemicals should be developed that won’t be absorbed by human tissue:


“Personally I’m concerned about chemicals that persist and bio-accumulate.
They eventually get to a point be that they can be a problem.”


Some animal tests have shown that the chemicals can be toxic. That’s why the
European Union and the state of California enacted a ban on certain types of PBDE’s.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.

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Geologists Mapping Underground Resources

Pull out a map and you’ll find the Great Lakes area holds resources that no other place can claim. The region is rich in lakes and forests and scenic views. But a road map just covers the surface. We know much less about what’s under the earth. Now, a team of geologists is working to map the resources under the ground. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

Pull out a map and you’ll find the Great Lakes area holds resources that no other
place can claim.
The region is rich in lakes and forests and scenic views. But a road map just
covers the surface.
We know much less about what’s under the earth. Now, a team of geologists from the
Great
Lakes states is working to map the resources under the ground. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


Look outside – look out your car window or into your backyard and try to erase
everything you
see. Take away the playgrounds and the concrete parking lots. Strip away the trees
and the grass
and the topsoil in your garden.


This is the way Kevin Kincare imagines the world. A picture of nothing except naked
landforms
– massive hills and cavernous valleys. All created by gigantic pieces of ice that
gouged and
ground their way down the globe from Canada. This would be the picture of Great
Lakes states
about 15-thousand years ago. It’s the picture Kincare is slowly putting down on paper.


“This is a big chunk of granite and you can see this one side is flat and looks
polished. The
glacier was moving across. There’s grooves right here. So this is the direction
the ice was
moving.”


Kincare is a glacial geologist with the Michigan Department of Environmental
Quality. Six years
ago, he helped start the Central Great Lakes Geologic Mapping Coalition. It’s a
group of
geologists from four states – Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio – and the U.S.
Geological
Survey. They’re working to put together a 3-D digital map of the region’s glacial
geology.
They’ll map everything down to the bedrock, which can be hundreds of feet below the
Earth’s
surface.

The first step in geologic mapping is compiling information from local maps. After
that it’s out
to the field.


At Tacy Brother’s Gravel Pit, a massive machine is sorting big scoops of earth into
piles of sand,
gravel and rocks.


Kincare is now working on mapping a small county on Lake Michigan. He says looking
at a
gravel pit is like looking at nature’s record of thousands of years of changes to
the planet’s
surface.


“That starts to pull the whole story together. How the ice retreated across the
county from east to
west and where all the rivers that were carrying the melting glacier ice and
depositing thick
sections of sand, and where the glacial lakes were, where all the silt and clay was
dropping out.”


Geologists say one of the most important uses for the maps is locating water
resources.
Nationally, Michigan ranks first in the number of people who use household wells to
get their
drinking water. Illinois, Ohio and Indiana rank among the top 15 in the nation for
household
water well use.


Gary Witkowski’s job is to protect the environment in his county in southwest
Michigan. He says
the first step in protecting groundwater is knowing exactly where it is.


“It’d be a tremendous help for us if we could just go to a resource like this and
pull that
information. Not only to us, but, I mean, even to the developer, it would be a
major plus that they
could look at.”


Knowing exactly what’s under the ground also helps planners build in the right
places. And it
helps them avoid building in the wrong places. For example, planners can put
neighborhoods
close to supplies of groundwater. They can discourage development on land rich in
minerals and
construction materials, such as sand and gravel. And they can make sure they don’t
build
industrial plants in places that are especially vulnerable to pollution.


Dennis O’Leary is with the U.S. Geological Survey. He’s helping Kevin Kincare with
the map.


“Those kinds of decisions that involve competing interests really can’t be made
rationally unless
there’s a body of knowledge, of fact, that relates to just what the question’s all
about and that’s
what these maps provide.”


But it could be awhile before people have access to maps this detailed. The four
states in the
mapping coalition and the Geological Survey all have to share 500-thousand dollars a
year for the
project. That means Kevin Kincare can map only one county every three years. It
would take
two centuries just to finish his state.


“We’d have to have a lot of medical breakthroughs for me to finish this project.”


Kincare says the maps are too important to wait that long. He says they need
20-million-dollars a
year from Congress. With that money, they could put together a complete geologic
map of the
Great Lakes region in about 16 years. Kincare says he’s not optimistic they’ll get
that kind of
money.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.

Region at Greater Risk for Wildfires

Wildfires burned through more than 7 million acres in the U.S. last year. Fire managers think this year won’t be as bad. But the risk for wildfires is still high, even in the Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

Wildfires burned through more than 7 million acres in the U.S. last year. Fire managers think this
year won’t be as bad. But the risk for wildfires is still high, even in the Great
Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports:


Federal fire experts say brush fires are more likely than usual in the region this spring.


Heavy rainfall last year made wild grasses grow, and because the region has had below-average
snowfall this winter, those grasses are still standing. As the snow melts, those tall, dry grasses could
ignite easily.


Steve Marien is a meteorologist with the Eastern Area Coordination Center. It’s a federal agency
that sends fire crews from the Midwest to big wildfires anywhere in the country.


“The higher fire potential over the Great Lakes may mean not sending fire crews to different parts
of the country if we have a day where we potentially could see strong winds and low
relative humidity. It may mean holding crews back and things like engines and aviation resources.”


Marien says the fire risk is especially high for much of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Remembering Deadly Firestorm

  • Many families attempted to escape the Peshtigo firestorm of 1871 by hiding under wet blankets. Most people did not survive. Painting by Mel Kishner, courtesy of Deana C. Hipke (used with permission).

Everyone’s heard of the Chicago Fire, back in the 1800’s. According to folklore, it was started by Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. It incinerated the city in a single night, killing three hundred people. But another fire – on the same night – was much worse. It wiped out the booming mill town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin. About two thousand people died. The Peshtigo Fire was the worst in American history. It happened because people were utterly careless in the way they treated the environment. And even afterward, they didn’t learn their lesson. Two books about the Peshtigo Fire have recently come out. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

Everyone’s heard of the Chicago Fire, back in the 1800s. According to folklore, it was started by
Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. It incinerated the city in a single night, killing three hundred people. But
another fire – on the same night – was much worse. It wiped out the booming mill town of
Peshtigo, Wisconsin. And about two thousand people died. The Peshtigo Fire was the worst in
American history. It happened because people were utterly careless in the way they treated the
environment. And even afterward, they didn’t learn their lesson. Two books about the Peshtigo
Fire have recently come out. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:


Peshtigo in 1871 was a small town on the Peshtigo River, that flows into Green Bay. It was just
like other mill towns in the upper Midwest.


Lumberjacks cut the trees and left the branches in huge tangles in the woods. Mill workers sawed
the logs and made great piles of slabs and sawdust. Settlers burned the stumps to clear land for
farming. And the men clearing a route for the new railroad burned whatever was in their way.


1871 was a very dry year.


“There were fires burning all summer and into the fall,” says Peter Leschak, author of Ghosts of
the Fireground, a reflection on the Peshtigo Fire and his own experiences of firefighting.


“Slash and burn agriculture, land clearing, the railroad guys clearing line. And nobody put out
fires in those days,” Leschak adds.


The branches left in huge piles everywhere turned to tinder, ready to burn hot and long. Small
fires were burning all around, but people saw fire as a good thing.


Denise Gess, author of Firestorm at Peshtigo, a detailed history of the disaster, says the farmers
were used to fire.


“Even the immigrants who came from Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Germany – they knew this is
how you clear land. They saw fire as an ally.”


People were used to fires, even when they got out of control. But no one was prepared for what
happened at Peshtigo that day.


“The big trees they were cutting were red pine and white pine,” Peter Leschak says. “And when
that stuff gets to be red slash as it’s called, when it dries out, it’s incredibly volatile.”


On October 8th, a huge cold front swept in from the west.


Furious winds fanned prairie fires all over the region. In the cut-over timberlands, the big brush
piles and the dry conditions combined to create a conflagration.


“Basically at one point or another,” Leschak says, “several small fires join into one huge fire, and
it becomes more or less stationary over Peshtigo.”


The blazes developed into a fire storm. The heat generated by the burning trees and buildings
caused a column of hot air to rise over the town. Cold air rushing in to take its place fanned the
flames. That caused more hot air to rise.


The town was at the center of a tornado of flame. The fire was coming from all directions at
once, and the winds were roaring at a hundred miles an hour.


Some people struggled to the river. They stood in the water for hours while the flames whirled
in a fury over their heads. Some of them survived.


“They are witnessing something that very few people have ever witnessed and lived to tell the
tale,” says Leschak. “They’re at the center of this hurricane of flame. And small wonder their
hair was bursting into flame if they didn’t keep ducking their heads into the water. To have
survived that is just amazing, just amazing.”


Most people weren’t so lucky. Karl Lamp and his wife were German immigrants. Denise Gess
says as she was doing the research for her book, this couple came to represent the fortitude of
immigrant settlers, and the tragedy they faced


“She was pregnant with their fourth child when the fire struck,” Gess explains. They all piled
into their wagon.


“They thought they could run for it, but you can’t run from a fire that’s moving that quickly. The
wagon wheel fell off, Lamp saw the family was still safe, the horse went up in flames, and he
turned around for a second and turned back and there was his whole family, in flames.”


Leschak estimates the ambient air temperature at 500-700 degrees.


“Which means that they weren’t going to live very long anyway,” he says. “If your clothes are
bursting into flame, you are also doing extreme damage to your respiratory tract. I think there
was a lot of intense pain that went on. And I think that’s why for example there’s the account of
the one man who slit the throats of all his children to spare them this death by fire.”


The fire went out when it had burned up everything in Peshtigo. No one knows exactly how
many people died, but it was close to two thousand. More people than in any other fire in
American history. The survivors rebuilt the town, but it wasn’t a booming mill town anymore.
The trees were gone.


But that wasn’t the end of the monstrous fires.


As the lumber camps and railroads and settlers moved west, the fires moved with them. Peter
Leschak says the timber companies were making too much money to quit.


‘It wasn’t worth it to them to treat the slash, to log in a way that would not create such fuel. And
essentially that era ended when all the big timber was gone.”


Forests in the Great Lakes region wouldn’t burn so disastrously today, because the trees aren’t as
big and the forests don’t hold so much fuel. But the real lesson of the Peshtigo Fire might be that
it’s a mistake to ignore signs of disaster just because, at the moment, we’re getting what we want
from nature.


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

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Cracking Down on the E.L.F.

  • The Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for burning this house under construction near Bloomington, Indiana in 1999. Photo courtesy Herald-Times, by Jeremy Hogan.

The Earth Liberation Front is an underground group that attacks institutions it believes harm the environment. During the past five years, its members have caused approximately $40 million in damages. E.L.F’s most notorious acts of destruction include torching a luxury ski resort, destroying the executive offices of a forest-product company, and setting on fire university labs involved in genetically-modified crop research. For some time, environmentalists and others have debated whether this sort of activity was simply a public protest, or acts of terrorism. But since September 11th, that debate has escalated with increased efforts to label those involved in such attacks as terrorists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby has this report:

Transcript

The Earth Liberation Front is an underground group that attacks institutions it
believes harm the environment. During the past five years, its members have caused
approximately $40 million in damages. E.L.F.’s most notorious acts of destruction include torching a luxury ski resort, destroying the executive offices of a forest-product
company, and setting on fire university labs involved in genetically-modified crop research. For some time, environmentalists and others have debated whether this sort of activity was simply a public protest, or acts of terrorism. But since September 11th, that debate has escalated with increased efforts to label those involved in such attacks as terrorists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby has this report:


On a cold, January night in St. Paul, Minnesota, one or more members of the Earth Liberation Front set fire to a construction trailer parked on the University of Minnesota campus. Flames quickly spread to an adjacent building, causing $40,000 in damages.


(Construction site sounds)


But while the Crop Research Building burst into flames, the real target was the university’s proposed Microbial and Genomics building – a $20 million undertaking.


(Construction sounds go silent)


The attack wasn’t a surprise to Peggy Leppick. She’s a state representative, who chairs the Higher Education Committee in the Minnesota House of Representatives.


“A lot of the research that goes on at the university is fairly obscure and people don’t know about it, but when you build a building that is essentially a monument to genomics and genetic engineering, it becomes a bulls-eye.”


That’s why university officials are asking the Legislature for nearly $4 million to beef up security. They’ve also ratcheted up the rhetoric. University of Minnesota president Mark Yudolf has no qualms about using the word “terrorist” to describe E.L.F. members who’ve attacked his campus more than once.


“People who blow up facilities and buildings and who may try to avoid risking human life, but almost inevitably something can go wrong: that is my definition of a terrorist, yes.”


But attaching labels to actions doesn’t come so easily for others. There’s a fine distinction for some between terrorist and protesters.


“The definition of terrorist is a very political definition.”


Katherine Sikkink is a political science professor at the University of Minnesota.


“In this country, we have words for it. It’s called ‘crime.’ We don’t have to jump to the term ‘terrorism.’ When people destroy property it’s called ‘crime.’ We have police forces that are here to deal with crime and I think they should do it.”


Not surprisingly, Leslie James Pickering, a spokesman with the E.L.F. press office in Portland, Oregon, agrees with Sikkink’s characterization.


“If they were terrorists they would be engaging in violent terrorist actions. What they do is sabotage property. They’ve never harmed anybody. They never will harm anybody because it is against their code.”


That code, Pickering says, ensures that human life will be protected. When E.L.F. activists set fire to a building, they say it’s searched before flames engulf the facility.


“They are vandals. They are arsonists. They are engaging in illegal activity, there’s no question about that, but there is a difference between sabotage and terrorism.”


But that distinction may be lost in the rush to deal with terrorism, both foreign and domestic. The government appears on the verge of adding environmental groups such as E.L.F to its “War on Terrorism.”


A top F.B.I. official has called E.L.F. “the most active eco-terrorist” group in the United States. A Congressional Committee recently subpoenaed Leslie James Pickering’s predecessor in the E.L.F press office to testify. When committee members weren’t satisfied with his answers, they threatened him with contempt of Congress.


And now U.S. Congressman Gil Gutknecht, a Minnesota Republican, is calling for the death penalty if politically-motivated arsons or other actions result in a fatality. Gutknecht also wants the federal government to establish an “eco-terrorism” clearinghouse so law enforcement officials can do a better job of tracking environmental activists involved in illegal activity.


These proposals have drawn the ire of Chuck Samuelson, the executive director of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union.


“September 11 has been a boon for people who are interested in making laws more strict, regulating society and limiting freedom.”


Samuelson says Gutknecht’s death penalty proposal won’t stop politically-motivated murders. And he’s also opposed to a federal clearinghouse that tracks E.L.F. members, saying it’s likely to be secret.


“The question that always comes up is about the privacy rights of people, how that information gets put in, who gets to change that information and who gets to use that information. If it’s secret and is not available to the public, so that you as a reporter couldn’t go see it or do an investigative piece on how they’re doing it, it’s got to scare you.”


Although Samuelson is quick to criticize the government’s proposed crackdown on E.L.F., he’s no defender of the group. He scoffs at the E.L.F. code, saying no matter their ‘no-harm-to-human-life’ intent, it’s only a matter of time before someone is killed.


Professor Sikkink also questions the group’s tactics. While some protest movements have historically engaged in property damage to score political points, she says it comes with a high price tag.


“So these tactics, you know, of destruction of government property are not unheard of, they’ve been around for a long time, but I do think they really run the risk of alienating the people you want to convince.”


Despite the increased pressure on E.L.F to halt the violence, Leslie James Pickering, the group’s spokesman, says he doesn’t expect its members to change its ways anytime soon. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Todd Melby in Minneapolis.

Keeping Resources Safe From Terrorism

Terrorism prevention experts say the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., are reminders of how vulnerable the U.S. is. However, they say utilities and cities can take simple steps to safeguard natural resources such as forests and water resources against terrorist attacks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Terrorism prevention experts say the attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. are reminders of how vulnerable the U.S. is. However, they say utilities and cities can take simple steps to safeguard natural resources such as forests and water sources against terrorist attacks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


The terrorist attacks prompted alarm across the nation, and even people in areas that will likely never be the targets of terrorism are wondering aloud about their vulnerability.


Peter Beerings is the terrorism prevention coordinator for the city of Indianapolis, and speaks on the subject across the nation. Beering says because the U.S. has such great wealth well beyond its cities, it is vulnerable.


“We have vast expanses of natural resources, forests, parks, things that we consider to be natural treasures are just as easily national targets. But, it is important, I think, to remember that while we are vulnerable by virtue of our size, that this is not particularly something of interest other than to, perhaps, a single issue aggressor.”


By single issue aggressor, Beering means these areas aren’t likely to be the targets for international terrorists, but are occasionally targeted by fanatics for single causes. For example, forest fires have been ignited to protest development near wilderness areas, and an extortionist threatened to poison the water in Phoenix.


A small town about 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis also has been a target of a terrorist group. Dave Rollo sits on the Bloomington, Indiana Environmental Commission. Last year, environmental terrorists repeatedly hit Bloomington, destroying highway construction equipment, burning a house under construction in a sensitive watershed, and spiking trees in a nearby state forest to prevent logging.


“It really brought terrorism home to a small town such as
Bloomington when this sort of activity usually takes place elsewhere. So, I think that public officials, especially, had to rethink many things about how we– how Bloomington has to safeguard the community from these acts.”


Rollo says one thing is certain. Bloomington lost its complacency about the possibility of terrorism. After a period of fear and confusion, the city is now struggling with the proper security measures.


“How does one go about safeguarding a forest from deliberate arson, or how does one go about safeguarding a water supply the size of Lake Monroe which is the largest lake in Indiana. It’s an enormous challenge.”


And it’s a challenge that governments have been unwilling to talk about publicly, at least until now.


Jim Snyder is a researcher at the University of Michigan. At the direction of the President’s commission on critical infrastructure protection, he co-authorized a report on protecting water systems, possibly the most vulnerable target. But instead of getting information to the water purification plants across the nation, the government buried it, fearing that it might cause panic or give radical ideas.


“Some ten years ago we wrote a manual on how to secure water supplies for the EPA, but because they’re always worried about getting that notion into the public eye –which of course now any of these things are in the public eye– but they basically decided not to distribute that manual.”


Snyder says the manual outlined simple things, such as an emergency response plan, locking gates in sensitive areas and securing wells, and having guards on duty at water plants, things that would dissuade vandals or disgruntled employees. However, Snyder says, there’s little to prevent a determined terrorist with the right knowledge from poisoning a water system, undetected with contaminants small enough to fit in a backpack.


“It is certainly possible to put something in the water (which would go) which would be odorless, colorless, tasteless, uh, and not detected. And, your best indication that you have a problem are sick people or dead people.”


The terrorism prevention experts say no one can predict or prevent all acts of terrorism. But cities and utilities can make it more difficult, and that might be enough to dissuade some of these single-issue aggressors. Peter Beering in Indianapolis says natural resources have one more thing going for them.


“The good news is that these are comparatively uninteresting targets to an aggressor. And, as we learned, unfortunately, in New York and in Washington, that certainly there are much higher profile targets that are of much greater interest to people who are upset with the United States.”


Beering adds that should not be an excuse to ignore the risks to natural resources. He recommends every municipality assess its risks and take proper measures to secure its vulnerable areas.

KEEPING RESOURCES SAFE FROM TERRORISM (Short Version)

Terrorism prevention experts who’ve been calling for better security at vulnerable targets now have the public’s attention. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Terrorism prevention experts who’ve been calling for better security at vulnerable targets now have the public’s attention. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


The experts say although a determined attack by a terrorist probably cannot be stopped. Security measures can be taken that would cause them to look for an easier target. Jim Snyder at the University of Michigan has co-authorized reports on water protection for the defense department. He says natural resources such as community water supplies and forests can and should be better protected.


“There’s lots of security measures that can be taken that are, compared to the value of the asset, is relatively minor expense. So, I suspect, because of this latest incident in New York and Washington, that there probably will be a renewed attention to all kinds of infrastructure.”


Snyder and other terrorism protection experts urge local governments to assess their risks and secure vulnerable areas. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

City Ignites Green Space

Many cities create parks to try to incorporate green space into theirurban landscapes. But maintaining them can be expensive and laborintensive. Now, one city has created a unique solution–addingnaturalbeauty while saving money. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tasya Rosenfeld has the story:

Wilderness Area to Be Torched

Last summer a violent storm struck down nearly half a million acres of
trees in and around the boundary waters canoe area. The boundary waters
is a pristine wilderness area in northeastern Minnesota. No motorized
vehicles are allowed and the U-S Forest Service does minimal management,
leaving it in its natural state. But now officials are worried about
the fire danger, and they’re planning some measures that normally aren’t
allowed. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill has
more: