Tag: land use

Food to Fuel Drives Wheat Prices

  • Mary Morran at Avalon International Breads in Detroit (Photo by Sarah Hulett)

Short supply and high demand for wheat means
prices are at record levels, and rising. But the high
cost of wheat is bad news for people who buy it. And
in North America, where most people’s diets are based
on wheat, that means just about everyone. Sarah Hulett
has this look at what’s behind the run-up in prices:

Transcript

Short supply and high demand for wheat means
prices are at record levels, and rising. But the high
cost of wheat is bad news for people who buy it. And
in North America, where most people’s diets are based
on wheat, that means just about everyone. Sarah Hulett
has this look at what’s behind the run-up in prices:

Jackie Victor is sitting on a stack of 50-pound bags of organic wheat flour inside the
bakery she co-owns. And these days, it’s a pretty expensive seat.

Victor says in the last year, what she pays for those bags of flour has doubled.

“So it’s a very scary time, and I don’t think just – really for the industry, although it is
scary for us – it should be a warning sign for the country that something here is amiss.”

In the fall, Victor raised her retail prices at Avalon International Breads in Detroit.

So a loaf of bread that comes out of this batch getting mixed by baker Kevin Boyer will
cost you 50 to 75 cents more today.

“This is the multigrain bread. This is our Motown Multigrain.”

Soon, one of those loaves will probably cost even more, because the price of flour keeps going up.

(forklift sound)

Avalon Bakery buys its flour from Dawn Food Products. Inside one of its central
warehouses, forklift operators move pallets of baking ingredients into tractor-trailors. It smells like a kitchen pantry. And that’s basically what this is: a gigantic
pantry full of baking ingredients that will be shipped all over the world.

Miles Jones points out a pallet full of wheat gluten, which is used in most commercially-produced baked goods.

“That’s vital wheat gluten there. The price of that vital wheat gluten, just as an example,
has about tripled here in the last six months.”

Jones is co-chairman of the board at Dawn Foods. He’s been in the baking industry for close to four decades, and he says he’s never seen prices so high.

There are several reasons for the spike in wheat prices. Drought and other bad weather
wiped out a lot of the global wheat crop over the past two years. And fast-developing countries like China
and India are consuming more food made from wheat.

And then there’s the ethanol factor. More farmers are planting corn to sell to ethanol
refineries. Jones says that’s gobbling up land that used to be planted with wheat and other
crops. And he says it’s put us on a dangerous path.

“The end results are in the paper every day. You can see the skyrocketing food prices. And when you start trading food for energy, that’s not a good trade long-term.”

With wheat prices at record levels, more farmers might decide to plant it this year. That would boost supply and bring prices down.

Bruce Babcock is an economist, and he heads the center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University. He says the test for that theory will be the amount of spring wheat that gets planted in April and May.

“The problem of course, for farmers, it’s not really a problem, it’s a great thing for farmers, is that they can pick wheat or soybeans or canola or any crop and the price is out of this world. So because the price of everything else is up so high, I don’t think we’ll see wheat increase as much as we would hope.”

Babcock says there is some good news on the global supply front. Australia and Argentina are expected to harvest a normal amount of wheat this year. Those are two major wheat producers that had a couple of years of terrible crops.

A big question will be whether farmers in the US and Canada will get the kind of weather they need and a bumper wheat crop this year.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sarah Hulett.

Related Links

Crop Prices Cut Into Conservation

  • Corn production in Colorado. (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service)

With grain prices hitting record highs, a lot
of farmers are removing land from the federal Conservation
Reserve Program. The CRP pays farmers to stop growing
crops on poor land and instead grow trees or grass cover.
That creates habitat for wildlife. The US Department of
Agriculture, which runs the program, says the CRP is still
in good shape. Katherine Glover reports some conservationists
disagree:

Transcript

With grain prices hitting record highs, a lot
of farmers are removing land from the federal Conservation
Reserve Program. The CRP pays farmers to stop growing
crops on poor land and instead grow trees or grass cover.
That creates habitat for wildlife. The US Department of
Agriculture, which runs the program, says the CRP is still
in good shape. Katherine Glover reports some conservationists
disagree:

When the Conservation Reserve Program started in 1985, David Schoenborn was among
the first on board.

He stopped farming some of his land and let natural cover grow. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture paid him. Usually land that wasn’t the best farmland or land that was prone
to erosion was set aside for the program.

Conservationists say CRP has been great for reducing soil erosion, improving water
quality and restoring wildlife habitat.

But this year, for the first time, Schoenborn is letting some of his CRP contracts expire.

“It’s not a bad program, but the payments have to be more to keep them in line with the
rest of the farming economy.”

Corn and other grain prices are at record highs. So a lot of farmers are taking land out of
CRP and plowing it up. The program lost more than two million acres last September.

It could have been much worse. Originally sixteen million acres were set to expire in ’07.
But, in 2006 the USDA offered landowners the option to renew their contracts. About 80
to 85 percent of the land was re-enrolled.

The USDA is focusing its conservation efforts towards environmentally sensitive lands
and critical wildlife habitat.

Perry Aasness is the state director for the USDA Farm Service Agency in Minnesota.

“We’re not enrolling whole fields of land anymore, but there are still conservation
programs which we call the continuous CRP and that primarily focuses on really
targeting buffer strips, waterways, and that sort of thing.”

The targeted programs pay more than the general CRP contracts, making them more
attractive to farmers. Schoenborn, for example, is reenrolling eligible lands in these
targeted programs.

Altogether, the various programs have about 34 million acres enrolled. This is slightly
above the average enrollment for the past ten years, but less than the 39 million acres
authorized by Congress. Aasness says the program is still in good shape.

“I think the overall percentage of land going into production from CRP is pretty
minimal.”

But conservationists have a different perspective. They want to see as much land as
possible enrolled in CRP.

Dave Nomsen is with the conservation group Pheasants Forever:

“Frankly I think the program is more in doubt than it ever has been. It’s great that
farmers are benefiting from record crop prices but it’s making it a real challenge to keep
conservation as part of that agricultural landscape.”

And political pressure is part of that challenge.

The American Bakers Association even asked the government to let CRP contracts expire
early so farmers can plant more grain. This would hopefully lower the price of flour.

But a huge reduction in CRP acres is unlikely. Both Republicans and Democrats support
CRP.

Dave Nomsen with Pheasants Forever says the problem is finding enough money to make
it worth it to farmers.

CRP payments do change over time depending on the market. But Nomsen says they
haven’t kept up.

“It’s been lagging behind by several years. We just don’t have the money to raise it up to
an equal basis, but if we can get those payments high enough the long-term nature of the
contracts, the many, many other benefits of the program will hopefully sell the program
for farmers and landowners.”

Farmer David Schoenborn says payments vary, but generally he gets between 75 and 90
dollars an acre. By planting corn, he thinks he could make at least $400 an acre. But he’d
stay in CRP if payments increased just 30 percent.

That’s not likely. So chances are that more farmers will be putting land that’s set aside
for wildlife back into crops.

For the Environment Report, I’m Katherine Glover.

Related Links

City Debates Use of Urban Park

Big city residents expect a lot out of urban parks. They want open space, things to do there, and literally, a place to breathe. But if the park’s beautiful, it’s bound to attract out of town visitors, who might make it crowded. Shawn Allee meets one man who wants to expand the welcome mat in his park:

Transcript

Big city residents expect a lot out of urban parks. They want open space, things to do
there, and literally, a place to breathe. But if the park’s beautiful, it’s bound to attract out
of town visitors, who might make it crowded. Shawn Allee meets one man who wants to
expand the welcome mat in his park:


Grade-schoolers are busy romping around Chicago’s Grant Park. At first blush,
it doesn’t seem odd at all, but the sight surprises Bob O’Neill, a local parks advocate:


“When you think of a park, a lot of times you do think of children. Grant Park actually is
underrepresented in that demographic.”


But O’Neill wants to change all that and get more children in the park. One way would
be to bring one of the city’s biggest tourist attractions here. The Chicago Children’s
Museum lures half a million children each year, but its success has caused growing pains.
It’s outgrown its space on an isolated, tourist trap on Chicago’s lakefront and O’Neill
wants the museum’s kids in Grant Park.


“As they grow up their memories will be having gone to, and interacted with, and learned
from a premier children’s museum in Chicago’s front yard, surrounded by the high rises,
and using the outdoor space. I think it’s wonderful.”


O’Neill sees it like this: city high rises are an efficient use of land, but museum visitors
from the suburbs never see that. So, if the museum’s in the park, maybe kids will fondly
remember the urban landscape, but when he pitches this idea of moving the Children’s
Museum:


“You might think that a toxic waste dump was proposed for Grant Park on its north end,
not a children’s museum.”


And what’s got him stumped most is who opposes it, namely, local parents.
Vicky Apostolis is one of them. She’s bringing her daughter to a field house for an art
lesson:


(Daughter) “I made a flower…”


Apostolis says, when her neighbors got wind of the museum’s move, they sprung into
action. Before long, they’d gotten the local alderman and civic groups to oppose the plan.


For Apostolis, this park’s enormity is misleading. Developers are building more high
rises here, and each one will house hundreds of additional kids. She says, if you add the
museum’s visitors, the neighborhood will be awash in children and the park will be
overcrowded. Apostolis says people are drawn by the quality of life here, and this quiet
stretch of park is part of it:


“Everyone who has a family who has children, they know the value of going to a safe,
secure location that we can take our children, we can trust the people around there.
And there’s not a lot of car traffic either, that’s safe to get to.”


Apostolis says, if half a million annual visitors arrive, she and her daughter might get
squeezed out:


“We have tourist attractions all over the city of Chicago, which are perfect – we love
tourists. However, we also want our neighborhoods, too.”


But parents groups aren’t the only ones watching this fight. Preservationists and urban
planners are taking note, too. Land-use expert John Crompton says Chicago should take
a hard look at the proposal:


“If these things are good things, and they obviously are, then they should find their own
niche in the world and not take it from parks.”


Crompton says green space is always on the defensive in public parks. There’s pressure
to fill it with something, say, a sports venue or, maybe, a museum:


“They see it as inexpensive land, and since it’s
leisure, we’ll put it there. I think that’s a totally wrong mindset. This is very expensive
land, it’s a very scarce and precious resource downtown, and in a hundred year’s time, what will
people think of us giving this up?”


Bob O’Neill is confident no one has to give up anything. After all, the museum would be
underground. But the parents fear out-of-town kids would still crowd the park, especially
in the summer. Again, O’Neill says it’s worth a try:


“The more that we can have children experience a downtown urban environment and all
the good and even some of the bad that goes with that, the better.”


On the other hand, the park’s high rise neighbors say they’re already living the urban good
life and they resent sacrificing today’s urban garden for a more crowded one in the future.


For the Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Mega-Churches Clash With Local Governments

Religious groups are suing local governments across the country for denying permits to build religious buildings. Part of the reason is that many churches are building bigger buildings that take up acres of land. And many of the disputes are between rural neighborhoods, and so-called mega-churches, with buildings over 50 thousand square feet. A federal law limits the power of local governments to say “no” to buildings designed for religious use. The GLRC’s Linda Stephan reports:

Transcript

Religious groups are suing local governments across the country for denying permits to
build religious buildings. Part of the reason is that many churches are building bigger
buildings that take up acres of land. And many of the disputes are between rural
neighborhoods, and so-called mega-churches, with buildings over 50 thousand square feet.
A federal law limits the power of local governments to say “no” to buildings designed for
religious use. The GLRC’s Linda Stephan reports:


Bay Pointe Community Church prides itself on a contemporary worship style.


(Sound of singing, “Show your power, oh Lord our God, oh Lord our God”)


Members believe it’s their job to reach out to the world, and to the local community.
(Sound of singing, “to Asia and Austrailia, to South America and to the United States.
And to Michigan and Traverse City”)


But some people in the community think the church would be a bad neighbor. Right now,
the church in northern Michigan meets in a high school auditorium. But members have big plans for a
building of their own. It’ll be 58-thousand square-feet. That’s plenty of room for
Sunday school classes, a gym/auditorium, and even space enough to rent out to a
charter school on weekdays.


A year ago local township officials shot down those plans. They said the building’s
“too big,” that it would clash with the area, and that it would cause too much traffic.
Then the church sued, claiming religious discrimination.


The church has some unhappy neighbors in the rural area where it plans to build.
At a public hearing, resident Brian Vos told local officials NOT to back down,
regardless of the lawsuit.


“This isn’t about a church, this is about future development. Heck, Wal-Mart
could come in on East Long Lake. And if they had church on Sunday, you’d have to approve it.”


But, rather than spend hundreds of thousands of dollars defending itself in federal
court, the township settled out-of-court. It agreed to let the church build its building,
and even to let it expand to more than 100 thousand square feet within a few years.


Many residents are NOT happy with the deal and they’ve threatened to recall
the entire township board.


There are similar cases across the country. A recent federal law limits the ability of
zoning boards to say “no” to churches and other religious groups who want to build,
or to expand. Jared Leland represents the Washington-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
The group is bankrolling lawsuits on behalf of churches across the nation. Leland says
the law was created because zoning boards have used bogus arguments to deny permits
to religious groups they don’t like:


“For instance, a Buddhist meditation center was being restricted from existing in a
particular district because they would generate too much ‘noise.’ They
were silent meditation Buddhists. There would absolutely be no noise coming from such.”


Leland says because of the law, today, a municipality needs a
“compelling government interest” to deny a religious building project.
That’s a serious issue that has to do with health, safety, or security.
He says municipalities are usually worried about how a building will look,
or about parking. And he says that’s not enough:


“For instance, if they say, well, something this large is gonna generate too
much traffic, it’s gonna cause parking concerns in the residential district,
those are not compelling government interests.”


But some say putting a mega-church in an area where the community
wants to preserve farmland or keep sprawl away from greenspace should be enough.


“The question is: What is valuable to Americans?”


Marci Hamilton is an expert on church-state law at Cardozo Law School in New York City.
She argues that residential neighborhoods should have some say about what’s being built
next door, through their local government.


Hamilton says the law that Congress passed, RLUIPA, the Religious Land Use and
Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, is an unprecedented Congressional power grab
from local governments. She says people expect local officials to protect their
neighborhoods from problems like traffic, and noise.


Hamilton says since just the threat of a federal court case is often
enough to force a settlement, there’s an incentive for churches to sue
local governments. Even where the case has no merit under RLUIPA:


“What we’re seeing is almost anything appearing on the mega-church campuses.
We have one in Texas that has a McDonald’s on campus. We have a mega-church in
Pennsylvania that has an automobile repair. I think it’s hard to argue that
those largely commercial activities appropriately fall under RLUIPA.”


Hamilton says she believes the Supreme Court will eventually rule
that the law violates state’s rights. But the High Court has yet to hear a
land use case under this law.


For the GLRC, I’m Linda Stephan.

Related Links

Supreme Court to Hear Landmark Wetlands Case

  • The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a case that will determine how much power the federal government has over isolated wetlands - wetlands that aren't adjacent to lakes or streams. (Photo by Lester Graham)

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments that could decide which wetlands the federal government can regulate. The case before the court involves a couple of construction projects in the state of Michigan, but it’s being followed closely throughout the country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland has more:

Transcript

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments that could
decide which wetlands the federal government can regulate. The case
before the court involves a couple of construction projects in the state of
Michigan, but it’s being followed closely throughout the country. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland has more:


The federal Clean Water Act is supposed to stop people from polluting
streams, wetlands and other waterways that are connected to the
country’s major lakes, rivers and coastal areas, but what if the wetland in
question is located 20-miles from the nearest major waterway? Is it
covered by the Clean Water Act? That’s the question the court will
consider.


In the 1980’s John Rapanos started moving sand from one part of
property he owned in Michigan to another, to fill in some wetlands. He
wanted to sell the land to a shopping mall developer. Trouble is, he
didn’t get permits from the Army Corps of Engineers to fill in the
wetlands. The government says he should have.


“The property has a drainage ditch that runs through it…”


Robin Rivett is a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation. It’s a
property-rights group that is representing Rapanos.


“And because of the movement of the sand on the property, which is
characterized as wetlands, the government came in and has prosecuted
him for actually discharging fill material into the navigable waters.”


Rapanos was charged with violating the Clean Water Act. Washington is
demanding 13-million dollars in fines and fees, and wants him to set
aside about 80-acres as wetlands.


In another case, that’s been combined with the Rapanos matter,
developers in Southeast Michigan were denied permits to fill in wetlands
so they could build a condominium complex. That site is about two
miles from Lake St. Clair, which lies between lakes Huron and Erie.


In both cases, the federal government says the sites fall under the Clean
Water Act because they’re located near navigable waters. Actually, that
term – navigable waters – has evolved over the years and come to mean
“interstate or intrastate waters,” along with their wetlands and tributaries.


The plaintiffs, their attorneys and supporters say the land should be
governed by state environmental regulations, rather than the federal
Clean Water Act, but on the side of the government in this case is 35
state governments, along with many environmental and conservation
groups.


Jim Murphy is a lawyer for the National Wildlife Federation. His group
has filed briefs on behalf of more than a dozen organizations that support
the federal position.


“What is at stake here is the ability of the act to protect the vast number
of tributaries that flow into navigable waters and the wetlands that
surround and feed into those tributaries. If those tributaries and wetlands
aren’t protected under the federal Clean Water Act, it becomes difficult if not
impossible under the Clean Water Act to achieve its goal to protect water
quality.”


Murphy says if the Supreme Court rules that Congress did not intend to
protect wetlands like the ones in this case, then about half the wetlands in
the country could lose their federal protection. Murphy and others on his
side worry that wetlands could begin disappearing more quickly than
they already do today.


Scott Yaich directs conservation programs for Ducks Unlimited – a
wetlands protection group.


“The landowners who have those wetlands would no longer be subject to
getting the Corps of Engineers to review, so essentially they could do
anything they wanted.”


The lawyers for the landowners don’t see it that way. The Pacific Legal
Foundation’s Robin Rivett says individual states would have something
to say.


“I believe there are 47 states that have their own clean water programs.
If it is clear that the federal government doesn’t have jurisdiction over
local waters, the states will step in to protect those waters.”


Maybe they will; maybe they won’t, say environmental groups. They
fear a patchwork of water protection laws. They say it could mean
polluted water from a state with weaker laws could flow into a state with
stronger water protection laws.


Jim Murphy of the National Wildlife Federation.


“The Clean Water Act provides a floor. It provides comprehensive
protection, a floor beyond which states must maintain that level of
protection.”


Those who support the property owners in this case say it’s about more
than clean water – it’s also about land use. They say if the court rules
that waterways and wetlands are interconnected and all deserving of
protection under the Clean Water Act, then what could be left out?


Duane Desiderio is with the National Association of Home Builders,
which has filed briefs supporting the property owners.


“All water flows somewhere. Every drop of water in the United States,
when it goes down the Continental Divide, is going to drain into the
Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, or the Gulf of Mexico. Pretty much.”


Both sides are hoping the Supreme Court provides a clear definition of
which wetlands and tributaries Congress intended to protect when it
passed the Clean Water Act. A decision is expected this summer.


For the GLRC, I’m Michael Leland.

Related Links

Study: Land Use Patterns Altering Earth

  • Everybody has basic needs: food, water, and shelter. A study says that these needs are rapidly changing the earth we live on. (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Some scientists contend that land use by humans has become a top threat to the planet’s ecosystems. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Some scientists contend that land use by humans has become a top threat to the planet’s ecosystem. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports.


People in cities and towns often spend hours debating local land use issues, but a group of scientists says there should also be a focus on the larger topic of widespread conversion of natural landscapes to uses like urban development and agriculture.


Jonathan Foley is a climatologist at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and lead author of a new study published in the journal Science. He says the Midwest sees its share of large land use changes.


“We grow a lot of corn and soybeans and other crops. But we do so, unfortunately, with quite a bit of damage to some of our environment: water quality, leaching of nitrogen and phosphorus into our lakes and groundwater and streams.”


Foley says the Midwest could look at changing farm subsidy programs to help farmers use better environmental practices. Globally, he says six billion people are competing for food, water, and shelter, and their land use decisions are transforming the planet.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

IS IT SPRAWL? OR URBAN ABANDONMENT? (Part II)

  • Urban sprawl doesn't just alter the land in the suburbs. Central cities are affected by the loss of investment when people leave the cities and tax dollars are instead invested in building roads and sewers in the surrounding areas. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Concern about urban sprawl is often limited to the loss of farmland, traffic congestion, and unattractive development. But urban sprawl has other impacts. Building the roads and sewers to serve new subdivisions uses state and federal tax money, often at the expense of the large cities that are losing population to the suburbs. In the second of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham looks at the divide between city and suburb:

Transcript

Concern about urban sprawl is often limited to the loss of farmland, traffic
congestion, and unattractive development. But urban sprawl has other impacts.
Building the roads and sewers to serve new subdivisions uses state and federal tax
money, often at the expense of the large cities that are losing population to the
suburbs. In the second of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
looks at the divide between city and suburb:


What some people call urban sprawl got started as the federal government’s answer to
a severe housing shortage. There wasn’t a lot of building going
on during the Great Depression. At the end of World War II, returning GIs needed
houses.


Reynolds Farley is a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Population
Studies Center. Farley says the federal government offered veterans low-interest
loans and developers started building modest homes on green lawns on the edge of
cities. But because of discrimination, the loans didn’t as often make it into the
hands of African-American veterans. Instead of segregated neighborhoods in the
city, segregation lines were newly drawn between city and
suburb.


“Very low-cost mortgages accelerated the movement of whites from the central city
out to the suburbs… built upon the long racial animosity that characterized cities
beginning at the time of the first World War and continuing, perhaps up to the
present.”


With segregation, there was a shift of wealth. Farley says jobs and purchasing
power were exported to the suburbs with the help of the interstate highway system.
And big new shopping centers displaced retail in downtowns.


People with low-incomes, often people of color, were left behind in cities of
abandoned houses and vacant storefronts that often didn’t have enough tax base to
maintain roads and services.


John Powell is a professor at Ohio State University. He’s written extensively on
urban sprawl and its effects on urban centers.


“So, we move jobs away, we move tax base away, we move good schools away and then
the city becomes really desperate and they’re trying to fix the problems, but all
the resources have been moved away.”


With no way found to fix the cities, whites have been moving out of cities to the
suburbs for decades. And now, middle-class blacks are moving out too. For some
metropolitan areas, leaving the city has become a
matter of income… although Powell says even then African-Americans have a more
difficult time finding a way out.


“Race never drops out of the equation. In reality, even middle-class blacks don’t
have the same mobility to move to opportunity that even working-class whites do
because of the way race works in our society.”


So, segregation continues. But now the line is drawn between middle-class blacks in
the older, inner-ring suburbs, whites in the outer-ring suburbs… and for the most
part in cities such as Detroit, poorer blacks left behind in the central city.


Smarth Growth advocates say part of the answer to urban sprawl is finding a way to
get more money back into the central-cities to make them more attractive to
everyone. That’s worked in cities such as Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis-St.
Paul. But those cities and their suburbs are predominantly white. For Northern
cities with greater racial divides, cities such as Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St.
Louis and Detroit it’s different. A lot of white suburbanites don’t want tax
dollars going to blacks in the city. And African-Americans in the city don’t see
urban sprawl as their issue, so ideas such as tax revenue sharing for a metropolitan
region are not a priority. The issue of regional tax equity that
works in predominantly white regions… becomes muddied by racial animosity in
segregated regions.


“Buzz’ Thomas is state senator in Michigan who has taken on the issue of urban
sprawl and its counterpart, the deterioration of city centers. Senator Thomas says
if state legislatures can’t find an answer to help cities, sprawl in the suburbs
will continue, paving over green space and farmland.


“You know, poverty and jobs and access to health care and access to quality
education are very realistic issues for cities like Detroit. But, a reality is they
go hand-in-hand with sprawl. As your black middle-class moves out of the inner city
because they’re not satisfied with those resolution to those issues. You know, it
links sprawl.”


Senator Thomas says legislators from rural areas and from urban areas are beginning
to realize they have a common issue. But before they can get to discussions of
regional tax equity, they first have to talk about the more difficult issue of
race…


“And have a discussion that might make me uncomfortable, that might make those
that I discuss it with uncomfortable. Only then, I think, can we really adequately
figure out how long it’s going to take us to resolve that issue.”


In the meantime, many cities are still losing population and revenue. Suburbs
continue to sprawl. And farms are becoming subdivisions, retail strip malls and
fast food restaurants.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

RACE’S ROLE IN URBAN SPRAWL (Part I)

  • Urban sprawl sometimes conjures up images of subdivisions sprouting up in cornfields. But land use experts say the term should also include a focus on the central cities that are left behind. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Experts seldom talk about one of the driving forces behind urban sprawl. White flight began the exodus of whites from city centers, and racial segregation is still a factor in perpetuating sprawl. In the first of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on the issue that’s often overlooked:

Transcript

Experts seldom talk about one of the driving forces behind urban sprawl. White
flight began the
exodus of whites from city centers, and racial segregation is still a factor in
perpetuating sprawl.
In the first of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on the issue that’s often
overlooked:


Land use advocates argue that urban sprawl and deteriorating inner cities are two
sides of the
same coin. The tax money that pays for new roads and sewer systems for sprawl and the
investments that pay for new strip malls is money that’s spent at the expense of
city centers
because it’s not invested there.


For the most part, all of that investment is made in communities that are
overwhelmingly white.
Those left behind in the cities are often people of color who are struggling with
high taxes to pay
for the deteriorating infrastructure and government services designed for
populations much larger
than are left today.


White flight was aided by government and business institutions. Government home
loans for
veterans of World War II that made those nice subdivisions possible didn’t seem to
make it into
the hands of black veterans. Banks often followed a practice of redlining. And
real estate
brokers also worked to make sure the races remained segregated.


Reynolds Farley is a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Population
Studies
Center. Farley says today, when planners and government officials talk about white
flight and
segregation, they talk in the past tense. They don’t like to acknowledge that
racism like that
still exists…


“Well, I think there is a lot of effort to underestimate the continued importance of
racial
discrimination and the importance of race in choosing a place to live. There’s been
a modest
decrease in segregation in the last 20 years. Nevertheless, it would be a serious
mistake to
overlook the importance of race in the future of the older cities of the Northeast
and Midwest.”


Farley says as recently as two years ago a federal government study looked at real
estate
marketing practices and found there were still “code phrases” that indicated whether
neighborhoods were white or black.


“Subtle words would clearly convey to white customers the possibility that there are
blacks
living there, the schools aren’t in good quality. And the subtle words could convey
to blacks
that they wouldn’t be welcomed in living in a white neighborhood.”


In the North… racism has evolved from overt to covert. It’s a wariness between
the races not talked about in polite society. It becomes more evident as solidly
middle-class blacks begin to move into older suburbs and whites flee once again to
newer
subdivisions even farther from the city core.


Land Use and ‘Smart Growth’ advocates say it’s time to face up to the continuing
practice of
segregation. Charlene Crowell is with the Michigan Land Use Institute. She says it
starts by
talking about the fears between white people and black people.


“By not addressing those fears, the isolation and the separation has grown. So,
until we are able
to talk and communicate candidly, then we’ll continue to have our problems.”


But it’s uncomfortable for most people to talk about race with people of another
race. Often we
don’t talk frankly. Crowell says we’ll be forced to deal with our feelings about
race sooner or
later. That’s because as more African-Americans join the middle-class, the suburbs
are no longer
exclusively white…


“My hope is that those who feel comfortable in moving further and further away from
the urban
core will come to understand that they cannot run, that there are in fact black
homeowners who
are in the suburbs and moving into the McMansions just as many whites are. And we
all have to
look at each other. And we all have to understand that this is one country and we
are one
people.”


In cities such as Detroit, white flight led to rampant urban sprawl in the
surrounding areas
and left huge pockets of poverty and streets of abandoned houses in the inner city.
Heaster
Wheeler is the Executive Director of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP. He says
while his
constituents often worry about more pressing urban issues, he knows that it’s
important that
African-Americans living in the city recognize farmland preservation and urban
revitalization
are connected. The investment that paves over a corn field is investment that’s not
going to
rebuild the city. But… black politicians largely have not been
involved in land use issues and usually they’re not asked to get involved…


“There is a racial divide on this particular issue. Often times African-Americans,
people of color and folk who live in the urban centers are not present at the
discussions about
Smart Growth.”


Wheeler says policymakers on both sides of the racial divide need to recognize that
land use
issues are as much about abandoned city centers as they are about disappearing
farmland…
which could put urban legislators and rural legislators on the same team. That’s a
coalition
that could carry a lot of sway in many states.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Rare Warbler Makes Comeback

  • The Kirtland's Warbler is listed as an endangered species. Its numbers are up these days in Michigan, due to a devastating fire that had positive consequences for warbler habitat. (Photo courtesy of Michigan Department of Natural Resources)

New census figures show the population of one of the rarest songbirds in North America is at a record high. Biologists say the tiny Kirtland’s Warbler is one of the lesser-known success stories of the Endangered Species Act. But the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sally Eisele reports that success has not come without a price:

Transcript

New census figures show the population of one of the rarest songbirds in North America is at a
record high. Biologists say the tiny Kirtland’s Warbler is one of the lesser-known success
stories of the Endangered Species Act. But the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sally
Eisele reports that success has not come without a price:


To find the bird at this time of year, there’s only one place to go—the pine forests of
northern Michigan.


“Hear anything out there yet? No, we may need to take a walk.”


Forest Service biologist Joe Gomola hikes off in search of a Kirtland’s Warbler. He’s
armed with binoculars and a bird watching scope that looks like a bazooka. But he’s
really using his ears.


(forest sounds)


He doesn’t need to go far.


Quietly, he sets up his scope and focuses on a small pine about twenty feet away. There,
a bluish-gray bird—head thrown back, yellow breast puffed out—warbles the loudest
song in the forest.


(Kirtland’s Warbler singing)


“He has to know we’re here… and he just sits unperturbed. Just gorgeous.”


This is the only part of the world where Kirtland’s Warbler are known to nest, drawn to
the scrubby young jack pine that reseed in forest fires.


Logging and fire prevention efforts brought the bird close to extinction. In 1987,
researchers counted only 167 singing males. Ironically, a tragic accident marked a
turning point for the warbler. In 1980, what had begun as a small controlled burn to
create nesting ground for the bird turned into a massive wildfire, killing a Forest Service
worker and engulfing the small village of Mack Lake. But Rex Ennis, head of the
Warbler Recovery Team, says the disaster eventually created 25,000 acres of ideal
warbler habitat. Unexpectedly the bird began to thrive.


“There was loss of life, loss of property which were all tragedies when you looked at
that… but the end result of that was it created an ecological condition we saw the warbler
respond to. Those things we learned from that wildfire made our current management
strategy very successful.”


That strategy involves state and federal agencies working together under the Endangered
Species Act to control predators and create warbler habitat by clear-cutting and
reforestation. The goal is to replicate conditions once created naturally by wildfire.


After the Mack Lake disaster, researchers realized much larger managed habitat areas
were needed. Today, 150,000 acres of state and federal land have been identified as
potential habitat. It’s a massive, multi-million dollar effort and not everybody likes it.


(store ambience)


Linda Gordert and her husband own Northern Sporting Goods in Mio, the heart of
warbler country. She says folks resent the warbler program because it restricts access to
the state and national forests.


“More complaints from hunters and just everybody… when they come in and say you
can’t go into this area because it’s Kirtland Warbler management area. They’re taking up
thousands and thousands of more acres of this because of the Kirtland management area
and that’s the complaints we hear.”


The bird supporters counter the warbler benefits the region. The forestry program
generates jobs and revenue and a yearly Kirtland’s Warbler Festival attracts thousands for
a glimpse of the rare, pretty songbird. But there will always be competition for the land.
And the recovery team says it needs more acreage, not less, to replace habitat as it
matures and becomes unsuitable for the bird.


(Warbler sings)


His scope still on the warbler, Joe Gomola says some worry about the danger of a fire
like the Mack Lake burn, happening again in the flammable jack pine they now plant.


“But it’s part of the ecosystem that was here before us…same with the Kirtland’s and
we’re charged with managing habitat for this endangered species. And that’s what we’re
doing. (SE: “Is that the same bird?”) Same bird. We’re probably close to the center of
his territory, he’s made almost a full circle around us.”


This year’s census found 1,340 singing males—a record that has started talk of eventually
changing the warbler’s endangered status. But the recovery program has become the
bird’s life support system. 90 percent of the birds were counted in man-made plantations,
indicating habitat management must also continue indefinitely if the bird is to survive.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sally Eisele.

Related Links

Anglers Competing With Cormorants

  • The cormorant population is booming in the region, and some anglers say they're competing too hard with the birds for fish. (Photo courtesy of Steve Mortensen, Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe)

Anglers around the Great Lakes are eager for a summer of fishing. Everyone wants to catch the big one. But they’re getting some competition. It comes in the form of the double-crested cormorant. The big black birds with long necks are fish eaters. Cormorants were nearly wiped out by the now-banned pesticide, DDT, in the 1970’s. But now cormorants are back in big numbers. Some anglers feel there are too many cormorants now. And they say the birds are eating too many fish. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports on one experimental effort to control cormorants:

Transcript

Anglers around the Great Lakes are eager for a summer of fishing. Everyone wants to
catch the big one, but they’re getting some competition. It comes in the form of the
double-crested cormorant. The big black birds with long necks are fish eaters.
Cormorants were nearly wiped out by the now-banned pesticide, DDT, in the 1970’s. But
now cormorants are back in big numbers. Some anglers feel there are too many
cormorants now, and they say the birds are eating too many fish. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports on one experimental effort to control
cormorants:


(sound of waves)


Robin Whaley often fishes here on Knife River. It’s the biggest spawning ground for
rainbow trout on the north shore of Lake Superior. But today she’s watching the
cormorants on Knife Island, a quarter-mile offshore.


The cormorant population is booming. About a hundred cormorants lived on the island
last year.


“I guess they’re just coming up into this area in the last few years and becoming a
problem, for degrading habitat and for eating little fish.”


Cormorants are native to this area, but they haven’t been around much in the last few
decades, because of poisoning from the pesticide DDT.


The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources stocks rainbow trout here. This year
they put 40,000 young fish into the river. Anglers like Robin Whaley hope the little fish
will grow big enough for them to catch someday.


The little fish face a lot of predators and hazards and the cormorants are one more threat.
Some people would like to reduce that threat. It’s illegal to kill cormorants. They’re
protected by law because they’re a migratory bird.


But a new federal rule says if they’re threatening a resource, people can fight back in a
different way.


Bill Paul runs the Agriculture Department’s Wildlife Services Program in Minnesota. He
sent workers onto Knife Island to try to keep the cormorants from nesting. Their methods
are experimental – but they’re pretty basic.


“We put up some flapping tarps in wind, a couple of yellow raincoat scarecrows, we also
put up ten flashing highway barricade lights, we also have a light siren device out there
that goes during the night.”


The workers also used special firecrackers shot by guns at passing birds to scare them
away.


They did this for two weeks during the cormorants’ nesting season. Bill Paul says even
with all that noise and commotion it wasn’t easy to scare them away.


“They seem to be fairly smart birds and real persistent at coming back to Knife Island.
So we’re uncertain yet whether our activities are actually going to keep them off there
long-term.”


As part of their study, researchers had permission to kill 25 cormorants to find out what
they’d been eating. They wanted to see how much of a threat the birds were to game fish
like the rainbow trout.


They found fish in the cormorants’ stomachs all right. But not the kind most people like
to catch and eat.


Don Schreiner supervises the Lake Superior fishery for the Minnesota DNR. He says
he’d need more than just a few samples to really know what the birds are eating.


“My guess is that cormorants are opportunists and if there’s a small silver fish out there
and he’s just hanging out and the cormorant has that available to eat, he’ll eat it. The
question becomes, is this a significant part of the population that they’re consuming, or
isn’t it?”


Despite the concerns of some anglers, researchers have been studying cormorants for
years, and so far they haven’t been able to prove the birds are harming wild fish
populations.


John Pastor is an ecologist at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He says the study at
Knife River won’t prove anything useful either.


He says it ignores the bigger picture. Pastor says you can’t just look at one predator and
come to any firm conclusions. There could be lots of reasons why there aren’t many
steelhead, or rainbow trout.


“Changes in land use. All the adult steelhead out there eating the young of the year
steelhead. Maybe it’s some pollutant in the lake. You never know. But it’s easy to fix on
the predator as the problem, because people see a cormorant dive down and come up with
a fish, and they say to themselves, I could have caught that fish.”


Pastor says even if the cormorants are eating lots of young rainbow trout, it doesn’t
necessarily mean the birds are hurting the overall trout population.


And even for an angler like Robin Whaley, the concern about the trout is mixed with a
feeling of respect for the cormorant.


“I admire the bird very much, but human beings, we’re in the business of controlling
habitats and populations, and this is just another case of that.”


For many anglers, the ultimate question in this competition between predators is simple.
It’s about who gets the trout – cormorants or humans.


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

Related Links