Tag: homes

School Districts Encouraging Urban Sprawl?

  • School districts tend to like bigger homes on larger lots because the districts rely so heavily on property taxes. (Photo courtesy of USDA)

Each year, Americans build a staggering one and a half million new homes. A lot of environmentalists say too many of these houses are big, single family homes on spacious lots. They say that wastes farmland and natural areas. But suburban planners say they’re forced to build that way by local governments, such as school districts. The GLRC’s Shawn Allee has more:

Transcript

Each year, Americans build a staggering one and a half million new
homes. A lot of environmentalists say too many of these houses are big,
single family homes on spacious lots. They say that wastes farmland and
natural areas, but suburban planners say they’re forced to build that way
by local governments, such as school districts. The GLRC’s Shawn
Allee has more:


Jamie Bigelow makes a living building houses in suburbia. He takes a
dim view of his profession. For Bigelow, most suburbs don’t let
neighbors be… well, good neighbors. After all, homes are too far apart
for people to really meet one another and everyone has to drive far for
work or to just go shopping. According to Bigelow, families are looking
for something better.


“We believe there’s a growing market for people who want to be
interconnected and live in interconnected neighborhoods and housing,
primarily in the suburbs, no longer supplies that.”


So, about ten years ago, Bigelow and his father tried building one of these
interconnected neighborhoods in a Chicago suburb. They wanted shops
and parks nearby. They also wanted to close some streets to cars, so kids
could play safely near home, but one detail nearly derailed the project.


Under the plan, houses would sit close together on small lots. The local
zoning board hated this idea. According to Bigelow, they said small houses
would break the local school district’s budget.


“They want large houses on large lots, because for the school district,
that will give them a lot of taxes with not as many kids because there’s
not as many houses.”


The planners wanted Bigelow to build bigger, pricier houses. Bigelow and his
family fought that and eventually won. They did build that compact suburban
neighborhood, but victories like that are rare. Often, the area’s local
governments try to protect schools’ tax revenue by promoting large homes and lawns.


“They’re actually behaving, or reacting, very rationally.”


That’s MarySue Barrett of the Metropolitan Planning Council, a
Chicago-based planning and advocacy group. She says growth
sometimes overwhelms schools, and it can catch taxpayers and parents
off guard.


“They don’t have the revenue from their local property tax to pay for
hiring new teachers, so their class sizes become thirty-two, thirty-three.
And that family who said, Wait a minute, I came out here for good schools, now
I’m going to an overcrowded school? It’s the last thing I thought was
going to happen.”


From the schools’ perspective, larger lot sizes solve this problem. Big
lots mean fewer kids per acre. Larger houses bring in more property
taxes. That means higher taxes cover costs for the few kids who do
move in.


Barrett says the trend’s strongest in states like Illinois, where schools rely
heavily on property taxes. She says in the short term, the strategy keeps
schools flush, but it also pushes the suburban frontier outward, into rural
areas. That wastes land and hurts our quality of life.


(Sound of kids coming out of school)


The day’s over for this high school in Northern Illinois. A throng of
teens heads toward a line of thirty yellow school buses. Some of them
spend up to three hours per day riding between school and home.


Inside, Superintendent Charles McCormick explains what’s behind the
long rides. He says the district’s large size is partly to blame, but there’s
another reason. The area’s subdivisions are spread among corn fields,
far from existing towns and from each other.


“Well, the land use pattern itself disperses the students, so when you look
at what bus routing means, the position of one student can add ten to
fifteen minutes to a route.”


McCormick says local governments in his school district encouraged big
homes and lots, but even his schools can barely keep up with the costs of
educating new students. He says suburban planners just can’t risk
bringing in smaller homes and more kids.


“Well, if you were to run a business the way growth affects school districts,
you’d be broke because you cannot keep up with rapid growth that produces
for every student, a deficit.”


That’s because even high property taxes don’t fully pay for each
student’s education.


Land use experts say reliance on property taxes for education puts
suburbs in a tight spot. Some want to try allowing smaller homes or
even apartments, but school funding’s a stumbling block.


Like other reformers, MarySue Barrett has been pushing for an
alternative. She wants state government to kick in a bigger share of
education dollars. The idea’s to have enough funding for each kid, regardless
of how large or expensive their home is.


“And if we have a different way of paying for our schools that’s less
dependent on the property tax, we’ll begin to move away from this
problem that’s put a choke hold on so many communities.”


It will be an uphill fight, because states are reluctant to change their tax
structures, but Barrett says it’s the worth the political cost. She says, if
we want alternatives to suburban sprawl and its traffic congestion, we
need new ways to pay for education.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Bed Bugs Biting Again

Health officials across the country say some nasty night critters are making a comeback. Bed bug cases are up. And in 2005, they were reported in 43 states. The GLRC’s Tana Weingartner reports:

Transcript

Health officials across the country say some nasty night critters are
making a comeback. Bed bug cases are up, and in 2005, they were reported
in 43 states. The GLRC’s Tana Weingartner reports:


It turns out your mother knew what she talking about, when she
reminded you to “sleep tight” and “don’t let the bed bugs bite.” The
blood-sucking insects are popping up in hotels and homes around the
country.


Steve Chordas is a public health entomologist with the Ohio Department
of Health. He blames increases in travel and the banning of some
pesticides for the bed bug resurgence, but, he says, the bugs are more of
a nuisance than a public health threat.


“There’ve been some diseases that have been isolated from the bed bugs,
but it’s not been shown, scientifically at least, that these are able to be
vectored by the bed bugs or transmitted from the bed bugs to a new
victim.”


Bed bugs are like tiny hitchhikers that can hide in your luggage and
clothing if you stay in an infested hotel room. Extensive cleaning and
insecticides are usually needed to get rid of a bed bug infestation.


For the GLRC, I’m Tana Weingartner.

Related Links

States Struggle to Control Ash Borer

  • The emerald ash borer is killing ash trees in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Ontario... and scientists say all the ash in North America is at risk if the beetle can't be stopped. (Photo courtesy of USFS)

A tiny green beetle is killing millions of ash trees. And so far nobody’s
found a way to stop it in its tracks. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports cities and states are struggling to find money to keep the beetle from spreading:

Transcript

A tiny green beetle is killing millions of ash trees. And so far nobody’s
found a way to stop it in its tracks. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams
reports cities and states are struggling to find money to keep the beetle
from spreading:


Once emerald ash borers chew their way into your ash trees, there’s
pretty much only one thing you can do.


(Sound of chainsaw and tree cracking and falling)


Crews here have been sawing down and chipping up trees six days a
week. In some places, crews are cutting down both dead and live trees.
Dead trees are a safety hazard. Cutting live trees near infested areas can
help contain the beetles.


The emerald ash borer is native to China. Scientists think it got in on
wood packing crates more than ten years ago. The emerald ash borer eats
through the living part of the tree just underneath the bark. The beetles
cut off the tree’s water and food supply… so it starves to death. 15
million ash trees are dead or dying in Michigan. Hundreds of thousands
are dying in Ohio, Indiana and Ontario, and it could spread to other states
soon.


Some cities have been hit really hard. For example, some of the trees in
Ann Arbor, Michigan have been dead for a couple of years. Kay
Sichenader is the city’s forester. She says she’s worried about limbs
breaking off trees, or bark falling off in 80 pound chunks.


“There’s some terrifically bad ones out there. Nothing will make me
happier than when those trees are down, I gotta tell you.”


This isn’t the first time cities have lost big shade trees. Dutch elm
disease almost wiped out American elms in the 1960’s and 70’s. It’s a
little ironic: people planted ash trees to replace the elms because they
thought ash trees were invincible.


That love of ash trees means cities are losing 20 or 30 percent of their
trees, and they’re spending millions of dollars to take trees out.


Forester Kay Sichenader says her city normally takes out a thousand old
trees a year. Now, she’s got ten times as many trees to cut down.


“If I never bumped it up, and we just remained with our thousand a year,
we would never change because it would take me ten years to get the ash
out. In the meantime I’d have 10,000 more dead trees to deal with. It’s
sobering.”


Sichenader says the city’s trying to get the dead ash trees out as fast as
they can. She’s contracted five extra crews to saw down trees. She
hopes they’ll be done by the end of the year, but it might be longer.


Many homeowners are getting impatient. They’re worried about big
branches falling on their cars or homes. Or worse, falling on their kids.


Laura Lee Hayes lives in a cul-de-sac with four infested ash trees. She
points out a big branch on her neighbor’s dead tree.


“This whole piece is just laying here, ready to pull off, and there are
small children that play in this yard. That’s why I look to my city to get
over here and get these trees down. There’s a real frightening aspect to
that.”


Hayes says she tried to pay to take the trees down herself, but she found
out it would’ve cost more than a thousand dollars.


In Indiana, homeowners now have to spend their own money to get rid of
dead trees in their yards. State officials say they can’t afford to keep
cutting down live ash trees to slow the infestation. The state won’t be
giving money to help cities cut down dead trees either. That could mean
the emerald ash borer will spread unchecked.


At first, the federal government sent states several million dollars to fight
the beetle, but now the money’s just trickling in. In 2004, Michigan
Governor Jennifer Granholm asked President Bush to declare the state a
federal disaster area. That request was denied. Recently, officials in
Ohio and Michigan said they’ll have to cut back on containing new
infestations.


These trends worry scientists.


Deb McCullough is a forest entomologist at Michigan State University.
She says states barely have enough money to monitor how far the beetle’s
spreading, and she says a lot more money’s needed for ad campaigns to
tell people to stop moving firewood. The beetle spreads fastest when
campers or hunters move infested wood.


“You have to look down the road, and either you spend millions of
dollars today to try to contain emerald ash borer or we’re going to be
looking at losses in the tens of billions of dollars in the future, and it’s not
too distant of a future.”


McCullough says if more funding doesn’t come in states might need to
have timber sales to take ash out before the beetle kills it. And cities will
still be paying millions of dollars to take out dead trees. That means
people who live in those cities might see cuts in other programs or have
to pay higher taxes.


Deb McCullough says the economic impacts are serious… but the
environmental impacts could be even worse. She says it’s hard to know
how wildlife might be affected if we continue to lose millions of ash
trees.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Lead Paint Rules, Too Little Too Late?

  • The lead paint on the inside of this apartment window is decades old. Toddlers who swallow lead paint chips risk behavioral disorders, lowered intelligence, and neurological damage. The dust created by opening and closing the window is also toxic. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Some environmental issues are so old, they almost seem dead. One of those issues is lead paint. It got a lot of press in the 1970’s, but even today there are nearly 300,000 kids with high lead levels. Now the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants to protect children when older homes get a facelift. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has this look:

Transcript

Some environmental issues are so old, they almost seem dead. One of those issues is lead
paint. It got a lot of press in the 1970’s, but even today there are nearly 300,000 kids with
high lead levels. Now the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants to protect
children when older homes get a facelift. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn
Allee has this look:


The 1970’s were filled with horror stories of toddlers eating lead paint chips. It was
pretty serious stuff. Children became mentally retarded or even died from it.
You don’t read those stories much anymore.


(sound of kids playing)


But for Chicago lead inspector Earl Coleman, lead paint’s still a daily reality. Today he’s
at this house because a child here tested high for lead. It’s a high priority inspection –
there are eleven children living here… and that’s not all.


“This particular stop’s also a daycare, so we get extra benefits from the fact that it’s not
just a child in the house. All those that come here and get service will benefit from this
inspection.”


Coleman sets up his lead detector.


(beep)


And starts in a children’s room. It’s decorated with Disney knickknacks and pink paint.
As he checks the walls, he explains lead chips aren’t the only danger.


“What happens is, with lead, once it begins to deteriorate, it creates dust, and from that
moment on dust then is spread very easily.”


This invisible dust gets on furniture, clothes and toys, and to a kid, any of these is
fair game for chewing. Coleman eyes the window nearby.


If it’s got lead paint, opening or closing it could spread toxic dust. Two grade-school
girls comb their dolls’ hair while sitting just below the window. Coleman leans over
them to get a reading.


“If a child’s been cooped up in the house all day long and they want to know what’s
going on outside, the best place to look is through the window, so you touch the window,
you sit in the window, and yes, we have lead here.”


A minute ago, this was just a play area, but with this simple check, the girls now are
playing under an official lead hazard. Ingesting dust could be as easy as forgetting to
wash their hands before lunch. The other windows test positive, too.


Luckily, the homeowner qualifies for a free program to replace the windows, but
programs like that don’t reach everybody. That’s why the EPA wants home contractors to
get training before they repair older homes.


Coleman supports the idea. He says, if just opening a window creates a threat, think of
what sanding one can do.


One time, he was called to a building that had just been totally rehabbed.


“It was ready for show. Anybody that would walk through the place would say this place
is beautiful, but he had so much dust still there, that there was fine, fine film in that
place, and the kid got sick because there was still lead dust, all over everything.”


He says the contractor had a great reputation, but just didn’t know any better. Coleman
says that’s pretty common, but some rehab industry reps say the rules aren’t needed.


Vince Butler’s with the National Association of Home Builders. The group also
represents home rehabbers. Butler worries contractors will have trouble paying for
mandatory training. He says those training costs will be passed on to consumers, and
that’ll mean higher prices.


“The concern is that you get frustrated and decide, heck, I’ll just do it myself and do the
best I can. Or, you hire somebody that comes in there and, god forbid, starts sanding
things and burning things to get rid of that paint, and makes the problem much worse
than had a professional had come in and employed what we know to be safe work
practices.”


Butler says unprofessional repairs could leave even more lead dust around.


The EPA doubts that. It says homeowners will still hire professionals because repair
prices won’t rise much.


Meanwhile, advocates support the rules. Anita Weinberg heads a group called Lead-Safe
Illinois. She says children’s health shouldn’t be left to the rehab industry’s voluntary
training. When Weinberg tries making that point to politicians, she often gets frustrated.
Just like everyone else, politicians feel the problem’s ancient history.


“When we go and talk to legislators they often wind up saying, I thought the problem was
solved, and in fact, the problem is that lead doesn’t disappear.”


And Weinberg says even the EPA’s been slow to fight the problem. Congress asked for
these new rules for rehab contractors thirteen years ago.


The EPA will hear comments on the home repair rules over the next few months. In the
meantime, Weinberg and other advocates will push to keep the strongest provisions.
They’ll also ask the EPA to improve follow-up testing.


That way, homeowners can be sure no lead dust was left behind after a rehab.
Weinberg’s not sure whether to be heartened by the EPA’s proposal.


“It’s not depressing in that we really know what we should be doing about it and can
make those efforts. It is depressing that we’re not yet doing it sufficiently.”


That’s even after decades worth of research showing lead poisons children.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Coastal Development Pressures

  • Construction along the shorelines can put a strain on natural systems. (Photo by Carole Swinehart/Michigan Sea Grant Extension)

One of the more subtle but relentless threats to the Great Lakes is
coastal development. Condos, ever larger and nicer beach homes
and buildings and parking lots in the watershed all have an
impact on the Lakes. As the population grows and the suburban
lifestyle keeps spreading, the health of the lakes is compromised
in countless tiny ways. Reporter Peter Payette finds those tiny
ways all add up:

Transcript

We’re continuing our look at ‘Ten Threats to the Great Lakes.’
Lester Graham is our guide through the series. He says the
experts who were surveyed to determine the threats say rapid
development is among the problems affecting the lakes:


One of the more subtle but relentless threats to the Great Lakes is
coastal development. Condos, ever larger and nicer beach homes
and buildings and parking lots in the watershed all have an
impact on the Lakes. As the population grows and the suburban
lifestyle keeps spreading, the health of the lakes is compromised
in countless tiny ways. Reporter Peter Payette finds those tiny
ways all add up:


Greg Reisig is standing at the edge of a 20-acre construction site
just down the street from the shore Lake Michigan.


Below him is a man-made pond a few hundred feet long. It was a
dry summer around here, but the pond is full.


In fact, Reisig says the water level is always the same.


“And that indicates there’s a lot of ground water flowing
here…there’s a lot of water in this pond and you can see what
was a whole big wetland complex…there’s a lot of cedar and red
osier dogwood…all the wetland plants.”


There are no wetlands here now.


The site in northern Michigan was excavated for homes a few
years ago.


But now the Army Corps of Engineers says the wetlands that
were here need to be restored. A few acres likely will be
restored. But Reisig says almost the whole site was wetlands
once. He expects it will soon be a subdivision with not much
more than a drainage ditch connecting it to Lake Michigan.


“What will that do to the amount of flow of water going into the
bay? Because of hard road surfaces, hard driveways, roofs,
buildings and supposedly fertilized lawns. What will happen to
the water and how will that increase the flow to the bay?”


The developer’s attorney says this is nonsense. Matt Vermetten
says this land was heavily farmed and mined for clay.


“There are pockets of quote unquote wetland and those are there
because of excavation for clay. So is this a wetland complex of
the nature we speak of when we typically speak of such a thing? I
think not.”


Disputes like this are becoming more common around the Great
Lakes. John Nelson is the baykeeper with the Grand Traverse
Bay Watershed Center. The bay off Lake Michigan and attracts a
lot of people. But Nelson says development doesn’t have to be a
problem.


He says the problem is people don’t think about the ecology of
the lakes. For example, east of Traverse City, Michigan, resorts
dominate the coastline. Along the beach, thick stands of sedges
and rushes extend out a few hundred feet. But the sections of
dark green marsh alternate with stretches of clean sand and white
lawn chairs.


(birds calling on beach)


Nelson grew up here and says this part of the lake was never a
sugar sand beach.


“They’ve located in a coastal marsh. Instead of celebrating and
dealing with that they’ve chosen to see it as they would like to
have it and then change it.”


The impacts of the changes are cumulative. Fish and wildlife
habitat is fragmented. The natural filtering properties of the
wetlands are gone.


So every time the city gets a rain shower all the dust and grime
and pollution are washed right into the lake.


Census data show people are leaving many of the Great Lakes
coastal cities and spreading out along the coastline. But it’s not
clear how local governments should plan for the growth.


Mike Klepinger studies land use planning for the Michigan Sea
Grant program. He says it’s hard to make direct connections
between a healthy lake and particular land uses.


“We are getting more planning along the shoreline than we had
thirty years ago in the state. The number of counties and number
of townships that have a plan has gone up, for example. But we
don’t know whether those plans are really doing any good.”


And it’s hard to implement good planning on a broad basis. In
any area, dozens of different local governments might have
independent control over development.


Multiply that by the number cities, townships and counties along
the coasts of the Great Lakes… and it’s hard to see how it all can
be managed so that enough coastline habitat is preserved.


For the GLRC, I’m Peter Payette.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Wetlands – Where Life Begins

  • Great Lakes coastal wetlands filter water, give lots of wildlife a place to live and help prevent erosion. These wetlands are also greatly responsible for feeding the fish of the Great Lakes. (Photo by Lester Graham)

The Ten Threats to the Great Lakes were identified for us by experts from all over the region.
Again and again they stressed that the shores and wetlands along the lakes were critical to the
well-being of the lakes and the life in them. Great Lakes coastal wetlands filter water, give lots of
wildlife a place to live and help prevent erosion. But the coastal wetlands are also greatly
responsible for feeding the fish of the Great Lakes. Biologists are finding that when people try to
get rid of the wetlands between them and their view of the lake, it hurts the fish populations.
Reporter Chris McCarus takes us to where life begins in the lakes:

Transcript

We’ve been bringing you the series, Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. One of the
keys to the health of the lakes is the connection between the lakes and the land.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham is our guide through the series:


The Ten Threats to the Great Lakes were identified for us by experts from all over the region.
Again and again they stressed that the shores and wetlands along the lakes were critical to the
well-being of the lakes and the life in them. Great Lakes coastal wetlands filter water, give lots of
wildlife a place to live and help prevent erosion. But the coastal wetlands are also greatly
responsible for feeding the fish of the Great Lakes. Biologists are finding that when people try to
get rid of the wetlands between them and their view of the lake, it hurts the fish populations.
Reporter Chris McCarus takes us to where life begins in the lakes:


(sound of walking in water)


About a dozen researchers have come to Saginaw Bay off of Lake Huron. They walk from the
front yard of a cottage into some tall grass and black mud out back. The coastal wetland is wide
here.


Don Uzarski is a professor from Grand Valley State University. He wants to see just how many
different kinds of microorganisms live in this wetland. He asks a colleague to dip a fine mesh net
into the muck.


“Why don’t you give us your best scoop there…”


The net’s contents are poured into a tray. The water and muck is pushed aside and tiny animals
are revealed. None of them is any bigger than an inch.


“There are a lot organisms right there. That’s a lot of fish food. Lot of water boatmen. We have
scuds swimming through here. We have snails. Probably a bloodworm. I don’t see it. But the
red thing.”


Uzarski says this is a healthy patch of wetland. It’s where Great Lakes life begins.


“The whole community starts here. And we’re talking about everything from the birds and fish
and all the things that people tend to care about more. But without this stuff we don’t have
anything.”


These microorganisms are at the bottom of the food chain. Lake trout, walleye and salmon are at
the top. But this natural order has been disturbed by humans. Only parts of the wetland are able
to work as nature intended. The bugs, snails and worms are supposed to be everywhere here. But
Uzarski says they’re not.


“Look at if we take 20 steps over there we’re not going to find the same thing. It’s gonna be
gone. And where’s that coming from? It’s coming from these disturbed edges. Which were
disturbed by? It was the spoils from dredging out that ditch right there.”


The dredging material is piled along the edge… a bit like a dike. Uzarski says that’s one of the
three main threats to coastal wetlands.


The dikes stop the natural flow of water. Farm and lawn fertilizers, sediment and chemical
pollution are not filtered out when they run off the land. Dikes also stop the water from carrying
food for fish out into the lake… and in the other direction, water can’t bring oxygen from the lake
into the wetlands. They’re at risk of becoming stagnant pools.


A second threat to the wetlands is alien invasive plants. Ornamental plants intended for gardens
have escaped. Phragmites, purple loosestrife, and European water milfoil among others all choke
out the native plants that help make the wetland systems work.


But… the greatest threat to the coastal wetlands is construction. We’ve been building homes,
buildings and parking lots right over the top of some of the Great Lakes’ most critical wetlands.


Sam Washington is Executive Director of the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, the state’s
largest hunting and fishing advocacy group. He says we need healthy wetlands if we want to
keep fishing the Great Lakes.


“If we didn’t have wetlands, if we didn’t have the ability to regenerate the bottom foods in the
food cycle of these animals, we wouldn’t have the big fish that people go out in the Great Lakes
to catch everyday. They just wouldn’t be there.”


Washington says the way to fix the problem is easy… but it will require us to do something that
comes really hard…


“The best thing human beings can do for wetlands, even though we really believe we know how
to fix everything, is just to leave ’em alone.”


Sam Washington gets support from the biologists who tromp out into the wetlands. They say
we’ve got to protect the whole food chain… so we should leave wetlands alone and just let nature
do its job.


For the GLRC, I’m Chris McCarus.

Related Links

Military Base Closure Contamination

Environmental issues may slow the re-development of
some of the military bases that are scheduled to close over the next several months. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Environmental issues may slow the re-development of some of the military bases that are
scheduled to close over the next several months. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck
Quirmbach reports:


The defense department says many of the military bases to be shut down may have leaking fuel
tanks, construction debris, heavy metal contamination and other problems. The department’s
office of economic adjustment works with communities to sort through the long list of legal,
financial and environmental issues. These issues must be solved before a base can be re-developed.


Spokesperson Lynn Boese promises the defense department won’t just abandon the sites.


“The federal government can’t transfer the property until it’s been remediated so that there’s no
danger to human health or the environment.”


But Boese cautions that the feds typically only pay for clean up to so-called similar use standards.
If the bases are re-used for things such as homes or day care centers more clean-up would be
needed… and those costs could be passed on to someone else.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Prospecting for Wind

  • The wind is up, and so is interest in wind power development. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Wind power is a small, but fast-growing segment
of the U.S. energy market. Right now, energy companies are scouring rural America for the best spots to put up wind turbines. But wind is not enough – these companies need land, too. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one wind developer’s search for its next wind farm:

Transcript

Wind power is a small, but fast-growing segment of the U.S. energy market. Right now, energy companies are scouring rural America for the best spots to put up wind turbines, but wind is not enough – these companies need land, too. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one wind developer’s search for its next wind farm.


The search for wind power could turn into a modern-day gold rush. Wind’s becoming a profitable way to meet growing demand for clean energy, but wind power companies face an obstacle: they can’t just find a windy spot and throw up some wind turbines.


They’ve got to sign a contract with a landowner, usually a farmer, who’s willing to rent out some breezy land. Mike Donahue is Vice President of Midwest Wind Power. His main job: find windy land and the farmers who own it. Donahue says the job’s changed recently.


“The biggest difference is the level of knowledge and sophistication that local elected officials and landowners have gotten regarding windpower. I mean, when we first started, they were like, ‘Wind what? Wind turbine? What’s that?’ They didn’t even know what a wind turbine looked like, let alone whether they wanted one in their field or not.”


For their part, savvy farmers aren’t waiting around for companies to call them. They’re taking the initiative. David Coffey farms hundreds of acres in Illinois. A few months back, he did a little investigating.


“First of all, I just had got the information from the Farm Bureau Magazine and what was going on in other areas. And I just got it in my mind, I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got a ridge here, what’s it worth?'”


So Coffey got equipment from a university and tested the wind along his ridge. The initial results were promising, and the university posted the data online. Donahue’s company noticed the results, and gave David Coffey a call.


Which leads us to today. Coffey’s agreed to give the company a tour of the area. After some quick introductions, Donahue, his partner Tim Polz, and I, squeeze into Coffey’s white pickup.


(Sound of door shutting)


Coffey drives us along a maze of gravel-lined back roads and soy bean fields. Soon, we see the ridge that brought Donahue’s company here. It’s not that spectacular, really. It’s just a big, rolling hill, but it spreads to the horizon.


DONAHUE: “Just eyeballing this, it looks like this ridge runs how many miles, would you say, from east to west?”


COFFEY: “Well, I would say it’s going to be close to… I’d say eight to ten.”


DONAHUE: “And then it’s roughly a mile across it?”


COFFEY: “Yeah, or a little better, if you’re gonna stay right on top of it, I’d say.”


Midwest Wind Power wants a large site like this, because it’s hard to turn a profit on smaller ones. Several farmers own bits of this ridge, so Donahue might have to deal with all of them, and that could be a headache.


David Coffey says some locals are worried about helping out. Landowners who build support for the project might not have enough wind on their own farms to qualify for a turbine and a rental
contract. Donahue says there’s a way to smooth that over. If someone’s been helpful but is left out…


“We actually do offer a kind of good neighbor compensation package to them as well.”


Of course, maybe other companies noticed David Coffey’s wind data, too. Donahue’s assistant, Tim Polz, broaches the subject.


“Have you guys had any of the other developers give you any type of financial offers?”


Coffey says yes, but doesn’t elaborate. Donahue makes his pitch. He says his company offers more than good rent, it offers other benefits attractive to farmers.


“Along those lines, we grant a great deal of flexibility to the landowners to have input into turbine locations, access road locations, cabling routes.”


Even with this flexibility, though, money counts. The company will pay farmers about seven thousand dollars each year for every turbine on their property. That’s a lot for an Illinois farmer. On average, they make only thirty thousand dollars in farm income each year.


Soon the conversation shifts away from money. Donahue asks whether Coffey’s neighbors are mostly farmers.


“If you’re in an area that has a number of non-farming residential homes, maybe built in wood lots, or people who want to live in the country, they’re less accepting of having wind turbines developed in view of their homes.”


Coffey assures him nearly everyone’s a farmer out here. And with that, he ends the tour.


“Well, what do you think of the area?”


Donahue says the company needs to run more wind tests along the ridge, but overall…


“The first impressions are very favorable as to the site and its potential. We’re looking forward to meeting with your other landowners and then ultimately, meeting some elected officials as well.”


It’s not clear what will come of today’s meeting. Maybe another company will land a contract, or perhaps there’ll never be turbines here, but the chances for success improve with each encounter.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

The Dark Side of Bright Lights

  • Most of us are using 125-year-old technology to light our homes. 95-percent of the energy used by a light bulb is heat. Only five-percent actually is used to produce light. (Photo courtesy of the National Museum of American History, gift of the Department of Engineering, Princeton University, 1961)

Many of us say we want to be good environmentalists. But we often make choices based on other desires. One of those choices is lighting. Most of us use lights that are very inefficient… and the trend in home lighting is moving toward using more energy… not less. As part of the series, “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham takes a look at light bulbs… and starts at the beginning:

Transcript

Many of us say we want to be good environmentalists. But we often make choices based on other desires. One of those choices is lighting. Most of us use lights that are very inefficient, and the trend in home lighting is moving toward using more energy, not less. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham takes a look at light bulbs and starts at the beginning:


We’re getting a behind the scenes look at a pretty significant historical artifact. Marc Gruether is pulling back a plastic tarpaulin that covers a row of file cabinets.


Gruether: “We are in one of the storage areas in the Henry Ford Museum. And drawer eleven has this light bulb in it which I will very carefully remove. It’s certainly one of the oldest Edison light bulbs that’s in existence. This is one of the lamps that was used in the December 1879 demonstration at Menlo Park.”


Graham: “Now, looking at it, I can see that it’s got that kind of bulbous shape, I can see the filament, I mean, I would recognize this easily as a light bulb.”


Gruether: ““Absolutely. It’s a recognizable light bulb. You’re exactly right. That all looks forward to the kind of lamp forms that became common and that we’d recognize today.”


And that’s not all that’s the same. Just like the first light bulbs, the incandescent bulbs most of us use in our homes today, waste energy. 95% of the energy used is expended in heat. Only five-percent actually makes light. That means everytime you switch on the light – if it’s an incadescent bulb – you’re wasting 95% of the electricity your paying for. In our homes, not much has changed in the last hundred years or so. But in commercial buildings, things have changed a lot.


Commercial builders and industrial architects learned a long time ago that energy efficiency is important. Most of the new office building and factories built today use passive sunlight and high-efficiency lighting that not only saves energy but uses the right spectrum of light to get the best output from their employees.


Moji Navvab teaches about light in architecture at the University of Michigan. He says you can learn a lot about good energy efficient light too. He says with the wide variety of fluorescent, LED, and spot lighting, you can get the right kind of light for whatever you’re doing and use a lot less electricity compared to a house lit only by traditional incandescent bulbs. It’s about using the right light for the right place. Navvab says, really, it’s pretty simple and you can get a lot of information about proper lighting on the Internet.


“If you really are focusing on healthy lighting or you want to save energy, if you go search on the web right away, you can get the information and then you can go to your local stores and they can match it for you.”


But at the local store, most of the time buyers are not very well-informed at all.


Beverly Slack is a salesperson at Kendall Lighting in Okemos, Michigan. She says unless they ask, she doesn’t push energy efficient lighting. And when she does mention fluorescent lighting, which uses about one-fourth the energy that incadescent bulbs use, customers grimace.


“Right. But, they don’t realize the difference in the fluorescent lamps, how they’ve changed, how the different colors have changed in the fluorescents. They’re still thinking of the old standard cool white so, people don’t want them because of that fact.”


Slack says what customers really want is dramatic lighting, and lots of it. They want trendy, recessed lights and track lights that often use extremely hot burning bulbs in a way that’s interesting, but not often very useful.


“They want decorative, decorative, decorative. I mean, it’s amazing. Because I can just see their light bills going sky high.”


Slack says the trend in home lighting in recent years has been just the opposite of commercial lighting. At home, people are using more light, more fixtures, and less energy efficient bulbs. With the trend in new houses being larger, requiring more lights, and homeowners wanting decorative lighting to show off their big new houses, conservation at home is often just being ignored.


It’s no longer about turning off the light when you leave the room, it’s about lighting up the showplace. And as long as the power bill is lower than the mortgage, it’ll probably stay that way.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Harvesting the Wind (Part 1)

  • Wind turbines can be both a blessing for farmers, as a source of extra income... and annoying to the neighbors. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Wind farms of huge turbines are springing up along coastlines,
windy ridges and blustery farmland. Most of us see them from a distance.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman recently visited some
of them up close… and has the first of two reports on wind energy:

Transcript

Wind farms of huge turbines are springing up along coast lines, windy ridges and
blustery
farmland. Most of us see them from a distance. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Chris
Lehman recently visited some of them up close… and has the first of two reports on
wind energy…


If you can imagine the sight… there are 63 wind turbines scattered across the
prairie farmland,
their huge blades sweeping around, capturing energy from the wind. Each turbine is
213 feet
high. You can see them from miles around. But it isn’t until you stand directly
underneath the
80-foot long blades as they rotate in the wind that you begin to appreciate their size…


(sound of wind from underneath turbine)


“This is probably a typical day. They’re probably producing at about 30 percent of
what they are
rated at, and probably on average, for a year, this is what you’d expect.”


Christopher Moore is Director of Development for Navitas Energy. The Minnesota- based
company opened the Mendota Hills Wind Farm in northern Illinois just over a year ago.


Q: “What are some of the highest levels that you’ve reached?”


“Each turbine is capable of producing 800 kw, and there are times when we’ve had the
windfarm
working at about maximum.”


Moore says the Mendota Hills Wind Farm produces enough electricity to power about 15-
thousand homes per year. It’s the first wind farm in the state of Illinois.


Brian Lammers is a Project Manager for Navitas Energy. He says the location is
ideal since it’s
windy here nearly all year long…


“The wind here is more robust in the fall, winter and spring. So we have more
production during
those months than we do during June, July, August.”


Unfortunately, the summer months are the months that most often experience peak
demand for
electricity. Because of that, and because it takes so many windmills to generate
lower amounts of
power, it’s unlikely that current wind energy will completely replace fossil fuel
generated power.


(sound of turbines)


On the flat prairies of Illinois, the giant turbines are the tallest structures for
miles around. You
begin to wonder about things like lightning strikes…


“We might have experienced one or two last year. The turbines are protected from
lightning. The
entire wind farm is grounded, so if there is a strike typically it will just be
grounded down to the
ground grid. There’s typically no long-term damage associated with a lightning
strike. But as you
can imagine, they’re the tallest structures around so there are periodic lightning
strikes.”


Q “What about a tornado? This is tornado country…what would happen if one came
through
here?”


“I don’t know. These turbines are built to withstand everything but a direct strike
from a tornado,
so I think the same thing would happen to a wind turbine that would happen to any
large
structure if they were struck by a tornado. You’d probably have some significant
damage.”


(fade up sound inside turbine)


Inside the turbine, there’s a distinct hum as the blades whirl away at the top of
the hollow shaft.
It’s about ten feet across at the base, and a metal ladder allows anyone brave
enough to climb all
the way to the top.


Despite the hum of the turbine’s blades up close, the sound fades away just a few
dozen feet from
the tower. But noise isn’t much of a concern for this wind farm. It’s in the
middle of a soybean
field and there are no neighbors nearby.


Noise is just one of the aesthetic concerns for neighbors of wind farms. Appearance
is another.
The Mendota Hills turbines are coated with a special paint that appears white in
bright sunshine.
But when the sun’s not out, the turbines appear grey, and seem to blend in with the
cloud-covered
sky.


Dennis Cradduck has 19 of the turbines on his corn and soybean farm. He says the
wind farm
hasn’t been a problem. Of course, he’s getting paid by Navitas for allowing the
turbines on his
land. But he says the wind farm has led to an unexpected benefit: getting to meet
people from
across the country who pull off the highway for a closer look…


“We get people almost on a daily basis that drive by on the interstate and see them,
and stop and
want to look at them, and they’re amazed at them, and most—about 99 percent of them
have been
positive comments. In fact, one fellow from North Carolina stopped the other day
and said ‘I wish
we’d build more of these around the country because we need renewable energy.'”


The prospect of more renewable energy is appealing to most environmentalists. But
some worry
that wind farms can be deadly to birds. A study by the National Wind Coordinating
Committee
found that wind turbines kill an average of two birds per year.


Another concern is that windmills disrupt the scenery. But the only view around
here is farmland
as far as the eye can see. And on this brisk day, it isn’t just corn and soybeans
being harvested: it’s
the power of wind.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris Lehman.

Related Links