Tag: maine

Making Boat Washing Mandatory

  • Sarah and Mike Litch rake the bottom of Little Glen Lake, identifying plants to make sure there are no new foreign invaders. They want to catch problems early before they spread and completely take over this lake. (Photo by Linda Stephan)

Aquatic plants and animals can cling to the bottom of
recreational boats. That’s one way invasive species are spread. A couple of hitchhiking zebra mussels, or a plant
caught in the propeller are enough to alter the ecosystem of an
entire lake. One resort region has passed laws requiring boaters
to wash their boats before putting them into their local lakes.
But some state officials don’t like the new laws, and that
might make it impossible to enforce them. Linda Stephan
reports:

Transcript

Aquatic plants and animals can cling to the bottom of
recreational boats. That’s one way invasive species are spread. A couple of hitchhiking zebra mussels, or a plant
caught in the propeller are enough to alter the ecosystem of an
entire lake. One resort region has passed laws requiring boaters
to wash their boats before putting them into their local lakes.
But some state officials don’t like the new laws, and that
might make it impossible to enforce them. Linda Stephan
reports:


Little Glen Lake is known for unpredictable winds, and clear
blue waters… at times the lake is turquoise. It sits against
glacial dunes that lead to the eastern coast of Lake Michigan.
Sarah Litch retired here with her husband Mike:


“It was kind of a toss-up between New England and here. Miss
the mountains, but we love the water here. Although there are
so many water issues now. I don’t know.”


Those water issues include foreign invasive plants that could
take over Little Glen Lake:


On a pontoon boat, the Litch’s zig zag across the lake, raking up
aquatic plants at the bottom. If there are any invaders, they
want to find them early.


One of the bad guys they’re looking for is Eurasian water
milfoil. That’s a long, thin plant with feather-like green leaves.
Another invader is Hydrilla. You’ve probably seen it in
aquariums. It’s taken over lakes from California to Indiana, and
on to Maine. Both plants grow very quickly, they choke out native
fish habitat, and form a green carpet on the lake surface:


“And then it can be all – you’re trying to boat in all this tangle
of aquatic plants, or swim. So it just ruins a lake.”


These invaders have likely spread from lake to lake across the
US hitchhiking on boats pulled out of one lake, and headed for
another.


Some states such as Maine and Minnesota now require boaters
to make sure crafts and trailers are free of aquatic nuisances
before they drive down the road with them, possibly
endangering other lakes. And in those states, officials inspect
boats, too.


But other states, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, have NOT
taken those steps, and Michigan borders four of the five Great
Lakes.


Since the state hasn’t passed laws to prevent boats from moving
invasive species from one lake to another, some local officials
have.


Sarah Litch designed a local law that requires boats to be washed
before going into local inland lakes, and it easily passed in two
adjoining communities. So around here, it’s a 500 dollar fine if
you don’t wash your boat.


Homeowners provide a free wash station at the main point of
entry to Little Glen Lake, a state-owned boat launch, but a few
boaters had refused the voluntary local inspections. That
frustrated Sarah Litch enough to fight for new local laws:


“Just to give people that are working at the boat wash a little more
backup when they have a refusal. So that they can inform the
individual and take their license if they refuse.”


But the local governments might end up in a power struggle
with the state agency that controls the boat launch, the
Michigan Department of Natural Resources. The state
agency doesn’t like this new local law.


Jason Fleming – who’s with the agency – says the homeowners’
boat wash has been successfully running on state property for a
decade, but only because the state allows it with special
permission:


“When we established that with the association, it was based on
a voluntary basis. So we’d have to review the terms and the
language of that agreement.”


In other words, if workers at the wash station start reporting
boaters to the local sheriff for refusing their services. Fleming
says the state might kick them off the state-owned boat launch
property. He says a voluntary approach is enough.


State officials don’t believe the local law applies to the state-
owned boat launch.


Chris Bzdok is an environmental lawyer. He says state courts have repeatedly ruled that local
governments can make laws like this one… and they can enforce them:


“The localities have a right to protect these resources – whether
they’re being accessed through a road end, through a private
marina, or through a state facility. The larger question is why
the DNR has a problem with it. What would be any good-faith,
genuine, substantive reason for opposing that?”


Scanning the lake from the boat launch, Sarah Litch talks of
what to do when – not if – the next invading plant or aquatic
animal arrives.


She says the best way to protect the lakes is to enforce the local
law, to make sure boats don’t bring in new invaders.


For the Environment Report, I’m Linda Stephan.

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Deer Devouring Wild Ginseng

  • As deer populations increase, the amount of vegetation they consume also increases. Included in their diet is the endangered wild ginseng. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Researchers say deer populations are threatening wild ginseng. They say the therapeutic herb could disappear from the American landscape within the next century. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shamane Mills has more:

Transcript

Researchers say deer populations are threatening wild ginseng.
They say the therapeutic herb could disappear from the American landscape
within the next century. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shamane
Mills has more:


Ginseng is a wild herb believed to boost energy and improve
concentration. The plant inhabits eastern deciduous forests from Maine to
Georgia.


James McGraw is a biologist at West Virginia University. He studied the
health of wild ginseng plants over the course of four years, and published his
findings in the journal Science. He found that increasing deer
populations threaten to eventually wipe out the plant.


“What we found was that populations were depressed because affects
of browsing. They weren’t reproducing; plants would begin to die and they
weren’t recruiting new plants into the population.”


McGraw says maintaining the wild herb is not only important for
ecological reasons. It’s also important to people who depend on it for
income; wild ginseng roots sell for hundreds of dollars a pound.


To control the deer population, McGraw suggests a change in hunting regulations or introducing more deer predators.


For the GLRC, I’m Shamane Mills.

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Companies Push for Forest Certification

  • Magazine publishers and other companies are thinking ahead and getting their paper from forests that have been certified. But what does this really mean? (Photo by Stanley Elliott)

Officials in the Midwest want to prove they’re not damaging their state forests. States that sell timber to paper companies are spending thousands of dollars to earn a certificate that says they’re managing the forests in a sustainable way. Paper producers are demanding that state foresters earn certification because officials want to stave off protests from consumers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:

Transcript

Officials in the Midwest want to prove they’re not damaging their state forests. States that sell timber to paper companies are spending thousand of dollars to earn a certificate that says they’re managing the forests in a sustainable way. Paper producers are demanding that state foresters earn certification because officials want to stave off protests from consumers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:


It’s lunchtime and employees on break from Compuware in downtown Detroit are browisng through the magazine racks at Borders. Melody Kranz says she reads three different magazines every month. She says she is an avid recycler and an impassioned environmentalist, but never considered what kind of paper was going into her magazines.


“I don’t know why I haven’t thought about it, I just haven’t. I will now. Because I’m a gardening nut, I love to garden. So yeah, I just never really thought about it.”


But executive David Refkin is betting that Franz and others like her would think twice before picking up Time Magazine if they thought a forest was demolished to make the paper. Refkin is the Director of Sustainable Development for Time Incorporated. He says he’s noticed a strong surge in environmental awareness over the past two or three years.


“We don’t want people looking at a magazine and feeling guilty that a stream has been damaged and the fish are dying in there, or that habitats aren’t being protected because people are practicing bad forestry practices.”


Refkin says his company wants to take action now, before consumer groups decide to boycott its magazines over ecological issues. Time uses more coated paper for its publications than any other company in the U.S. The company is asking that 80 percent of all paper products Time buys be certified by 2006.


To the average consumer, that may not seem like big news. But for paper producers and foresters, it’s earth shattering. Larry Pedersen is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Pedersen says getting certified means years of work for state employees. The government has to prove to investigators that its management standards take into account issues such as biodiversity, water quality, soil erosion and wildlife habitat. Pedersen says the state is also required to provide records for each tree from the moments it’s planted or inventoried to the time it’s cut down and then made into planks or paper. But he says it’s worth the effort.


“A number of wood and paper-using companies brought it to our attention that they needed to have certified products because their consumers were demanding those. And with us having four-million acres of state forestlands, we saw the writing on the wall that we needed to jump on this.”


State forests in the region generate a lot of revenue. Wisconsin’s forests earn two and a half million dollars from timber sales and Ohio pulls in almost three million. Michigan’s forests bring in 30 million dollars annually. Earlier this year, Michigan’s Governor Jennifer Granholm announced that all state forests will be certified by January 1st of 2006. And the Great Lakes State is not alone… New York, Wisconsin, and Maine are also pursuing certification and Ohio and other states are considering it.


Andrew Shalit, with the environmental activist group Ecopledge, says he’s glad Time Warner is encouraging paper companies and state governments to get certified. But he says that doesn’t necessarily mean the paper is produced in an environmentally friendly way.


“It’s great to say that they’re going to get all of their paper from certified forests. The question is, who is certifying? And in the case of Time Warner, a lot of the forests are certified by a group called SFI, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and their standards are so weak as to be almost meaningless.”


There’s a heated debate over just what certification means. There are currently two groups that certify forests in the U.S. The Sustainable Forestry Initiative, or SFI, was originally founded by the timber industry but is now an independent body. The Forest Stewardship council, or FSC, came out of the environmental movement… or more specifically, out of the effort to protect South American rainforests. Shalit says he doesn’t think SFI certification is as rigorous or as comprehensive as FSC.


“It really is a problem for the consumer because you see something in the store and it has a little green label on it with a picture of a tree and it says sustainably certified, and you think you’re buying something good. It’s hard for the individual consumer to keep up with that.”


Shalit says several states, like Michigan, have solved the dilemma of rival certification programs by getting dual certification. he says although the system has flaws, it will improve if consumers demand more stringent forestry regulations.


Executives at Time Warner hope they can avoid boycotts and pickets by taking action preemptively. The company is leading the push for forest certification in the U.S., and environmentalists say the federal government may have to bow to pressure eventually and get the national forests certified as well.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Celeste Headlee.

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Report: E-Waste Piling Up

As electronic devices are becoming faster, smaller and cheaper, many consumers are opting to scrap their old, outdated computers and televisions for the latest technologies. But as a recent report shows, as people throw out these products, a new legacy of waste is piling up. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erika Johnson reports:

Transcript

As electronic devices are becoming faster, smaller and cheaper, many consumers are opting to
scrap their old, outdated computers and televisions for the latest technologies. But as a recent
report shows, as people throw out these products, a new legacy of waste is piling up. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erika Johnson reports:


Electronic waste – or e-waste – is what ends up in landfills when people throw away electronic
devices such as computer monitors and television sets. The report by the Silicon Valley Toxics
Coalition tracked the amount of e-waste that ends up in landfills. Researchers found there’s more
e-waste than waste from beverage containers and disposable diapers. Electronic products can
threaten human health because they contain toxic heavy metals.


Sheila Davis headed up the Coalition’s report:


“People are starting to sit up and take notice and especially when you start having large volumes
of the material. So many states are taking notice. For example, California, Massachusetts,
Minnesota and Maine have all banned these products from landfills, e-waste from landfills.”


Yet Davis says many people in other states end up pitching their used electronics because many
recycling programs are often inconvenient and expensive.


But for now, Davis suggests people contact their local governments for more information on
where to take their used electronics.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erika Johnson.

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Commentary – Nuke Plant for Sale: On-Line

Maine’s Yankee Rowe is the one of the first decommissioned nuclear plants to be dismantled and sold off. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Suzanne Elston discovered, all parties are welcome: