Tag: michigan state university

Saving Rattlesnakes From Development

  • Veterinarian Dr. Tara Harrison operates on an Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake to implant a radio transmitter for tracking in the wild. (Photo by Chris McCarus)

The Eastern Massassauga Rattlesnake used to be found all over the Midwest. Now there’s only one state where the population is fairly healthy, but even there it’s threatened by rapid development. A group of scientists is trying to protect the snake before all of its habitat is gone.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:

Transcript

The Eastern Eastern Massassauga Rattlesnake used to be found all over the Midwest. Now there’s only one state where the population is fairly healthy. But even there, it’s threatened by rapid development. A group of scientists is trying to protect the snake before all of its habitat is gone. The GLRC’s Chris McCarus reports:


(Sound of snake rattling)


A team of veterinarians and researchers is pulling an Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake from a bag. They put the snake on an operating table. Then the doctor snips open the skin.


“Okay, so I’m into the abdominal cavity.”


She’s putting a radio transmitter the size of a AA battery into the snake’s belly. This will allow them to track the snake’s movement in the wild for the next two years.
Kristin Wildman is a graduate student at Michigan State University. She catches and tracks the snakes. She’s involved in a project with federal, state and university biologists. They’re trying to protect the Massasauga.


She thinks of the snakes as being much like herself. She identifies with their personalities. Wildman says these snakes are just modest. They don’t like to attract attention and don’t like to hurt anybody.


“Like with this snake, she’s one of the bitier snakes I have in this study. And she only strikes the tongs – the snake tongs – because I’m grabbing her with the snake tongs. It just kind of gives you an idea. They don’t really strike unless you’re messing with them, unless they have a really good reason to, or unless they’re harassed enough that they feel they need to.”


Although it would rather avoid you, if you’re bitten by a Massasauga Rattler, its venom can kill you.


But it can’t fight people destroying its habitat.


Mike DeCapita is with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He and other experts say rapid development is the snake’s biggest enemy. It’s not only destroying the snake’s habitat, it’s also destroying other wildlife habitat.


“The Massasauga is sort of an indicator species or a keystone species; perhaps that if we adjust so that we protect the needs of the Massasauga then all those species that use that same type of habitat also are protected.”


The onslaught of development has made the Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake a candidate for the endangered species list, though it’s not on the list yet.


(Sound of hammering and cement mixing)


A new subdivision is being built in suburban Detroit. It’s just beyond the gate of a park where the research team came to study Massasauga habitat.


(Sound of people walking on a trail and talking)


Andy Hertz works for the State Department of Environmental Quality. He has the authority to refuse a building permit to anyone who could hurt Massasaugas.


“This is part of an effort of making us more aware of the habitat the Massasauga’s found in, so hopefully, we can direct developers and landowners to stay away from these more sensitive areas.”


In the winter, the Massasauga joins the frogs and turtles. They hibernate in marshes about two feet underground. Then, in spring and summer, they’ll seek higher ground for feeding. They can’t survive if they can’t move back and forth between their summer and wintering grounds. The research team has figured out this rule for minimizing damage to the snake’s habitat: don’t tamper with wetlands in winter nor the uplands in summer.


The team is focusing on Michigan to see why the population is the healthiest there. Then perhaps they can understand how to protect the rattlers in the rest of the Midwest where they’re nearly wiped out.


While she’s looking for more snakes, graduate student Kristin Wildman laughs about how a woman once called her to take a Massasauga away from the side of her house.


“We said, ‘Well, we’ll come out and we’ll move it for you.’ And we usually just move it down into the nearest wetland, down the hill. We pull in and she lives on Rattlesnake Drive. I didn’t expect to move out here and have all these rattlesnakes and stuff. It’s like, you live on Rattlesnake Drive. It’s called that for a reason.”


Wildman says when people come into conflict with wildlife, the wildlife almost always loses. If the Massasauga Rattler is going to survive it will take constant attention from all kinds of experts. They’ll have to stop developers from building over the snake’s habitat and threatening its existence.


For the GLRC, I’m Chris McCarus.

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Farmers Watch for Soybean Rust

  • Soybean rust spreads quickly and easily, and Midwest farmers are worried that the disease may spread upward from the South. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

All eyes are on the south right now for signs of a potentially
devastating fungus that attacks soybeans. A serious outbreak there could
bring soybean rust to the Midwest where most of the nation’s soybeans
are grown. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton
reports:

Transcript

All eyes are on the south right now for signs of a potentially
devastating fungus that attacks soybeans. A serious outbreak there could
bring soybean rust to the Midwest – where most of the nation’s soybeans are
grown. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:


Soybean rust spores are carried on wind currents, so it is easily spread.
So far this year, only Georgia has had a small outbreak.


Ray Hammerschmidt is a plant pathologist at Michigan State University. He
says every step is being taken to protect soybean crops, including dotting
the Midwest with what are called sentinel plots.


“And once a week, starting in a few weeks, each of these plots will be scouted very intensively, looking at at least a hundred plants, looking for any signs or symptoms of the disease.”


Advance warnings will allow farmers to apply fungicide to their crops as
soon as possible. Soybean rust can’t overwinter in the cold north.
So if southern states have good luck – or do a good job treating it – it’s less
likely to make it here.


For the GLRC, I’m Tracy Samilton.

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Heirloom Seeds Preserved in Gardens

  • The produce we see in stores today are bred for uniformity in color and size. Heirloom seeds grow vegetables that look different, and those who grow them say they taste better too. (Photo by Deon Staffelbach)

Planting a seed has a pretty obvious purpose: once you put it in the ground, if you’re lucky, a few weeks later something pretty or useful pops up. But for some people, seeds are a lot more than that. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has this report:

Transcript

Planting a seed has a pretty obvious purpose: once you put it
in the ground, if you’re lucky, a few weeks later something pretty
or useful pops up. But for some people, seeds are a lot more than
that. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has this report:


Greenfield Village is a historical village that’s part of the Henry Ford
Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The village has one of those “living history”
farms where people do things like shearing sheep and chopping wood, while
dressed in 19th century clothing.


They try hard to make the farm authentic,
and part of this has to do with the seeds they plant — they’re the very same
kinds that 19th century farms in this part of the country would have used.
They’re called heirloom seeds. Jim Johnson is the manager of special
programs at Greenfield Village. He says that the vegetables that heirloom
seeds produce aren’t what people are used to seeing.


“They’re lumpy and bumpy and sometimes have a strange look to them, but some of these varieties have a taste that cannot be compared to the things you can find on the supermarket shelves today. Most of the things you can find today in the standard produce section, they’re grown to be uniform, they look appealing to the eye, but typically they don’t have a very good taste and have been around for a while.”


Johnson says that it’s important to use seeds that are authentic. That’s
because what people plant, can show a lot more about them than just what
they eat. Laura Delind is an anthropologist at Michigan State University;
she says that even the names of seeds, can say a lot about a group. She
points to a seed grown by traditional farmers in Africa, that has a much
more telling name than what you’d see on a seed packet at your local
hardware store.


“It grew at a time when a majority of other beans didn’t. And what I found compelling is the seed was called ‘So the Grandparents Can Survive.’ Inherent in the seeds is a whole set of social relationships, responsibilities, cultural understandings, and a collective wisdom about how to manage, live well in a particular place.”


Delind says that in the U.S. we’ve lost a lot of this. But for many people, growing heirlooms isn’t just a thing of the past or something that people do in far-off countries.


Heirloom gardening has become more popular in recent years. In part that’s
because of the taste. It’s also because people have become more concerned
about commercially developed seeds, which are sometimes genetically
modified. Royer Held offers classes about heirloom seeds. He says that
planting, saving and sharing heirloom seeds, are important for a lot of
reasons, especially now when the food we eat comes from fewer and fewer
places.


“People are giving up the cultivation of these varieties they’ve maintained over centuries and millenia. We’re basically at risk of losing a lot of very unique agricultural material. And what we’re trying to do here in Ann Arbor is to encourage the gardening community here to take on as their personal responsibility the maintenance of these varieties.”


Although Royer Held is a long-time gardener, he can’t say that he’d given
that much thought to spreading the word about heirlooms until a couple of
winters ago. When bad weather kept him inside, he passed the time reading.
In one book he found that that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, kept
supplies of lots of heirloom seeds that weren’t widely available.


He requested several kinds of potato seeds from the agency. When they arrived
he and his friend Marcella Troutman planted them along with some other
heirloom seeds. They saved the seeds and cuttings from the new plants, and
now they’re making these available as well as trying to get people used to
the idea of saving their own seeds. She says that people can be a little
intimidated by the idea.


“They almost think it’s not going to be as good as having bought seeds in a packet from a reputable seed company.”


She hopes that in time, people will get over this. Royer Held adds that saving seeds and sharing them with your friends are all part of what makes gardening rewarding.


“If you grow heirlooms, you should save the seeds, because it’s only by saving the seeds that you can allow the plants to grow and develop and adapt to particular growing conditions. And if you do, save enough for your friends because they might want some too. And if they take time, they’ll probably wind up liking them better, which gets us back to why we all garden.”


They hope that in the end, people will get comfortable enough to start creating and sharing their own varieties.


For the GLRC, I’m Nora Flaherty.

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Ash Borer Threatens Native American Traditions

  • The emerald ash borer is rapidly destroying ash trees around the Midwest, impacting not only forests but humans as well. (Photo courtesy of invasivespecies.gov)

The emerald ash borer is an invasive beetle that has killed millions of trees in the Great Lakes region. As if that weren’t bad enough, the borer is now starting to threaten Native American customs. For them, the ash trees are more than just landscaping. They’re also used for making traditional ash baskets, canoe paddles, and medicine. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Melissa Ingells has the story:

Transcript

The emerald ash borer is an invasive beetle that’s killed millions of trees in the Great Lakes region. As if that weren’t bad enough, the borer is now starting to threaten Native American customs. For them, the ash trees are more than just landscaping. They’re also used for making traditional ash baskets, canoe paddles, and medicine. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Melissa Ingells has the story:


When I first saw Walpole Island, it was green and misty, out in the middle of the St. Clair River.


I had to take a ferry to get there. Walpole Island sits between the U.S. and Canada, but it doesn’t really belong to either one. It’s owned by the tribes. And they’ve lived there for close to six-thousand years. The island’s full of beautiful old trees, and has a lot of native plants and animals. Quite a few of which are rare.


After the ferry ride, it’s not too far to the Walpole Island Heritage Center. Inside, Kennon Johnson shows off the collection of baskets at the center. He’s the supervisor of the island’s Resource Protection Program.


“These would’ve been working baskets, this would’ve been used for collecting berries, mushrooms, all sort of things, and then some would’ve been for storage, and that’s typically your smaller ones.”


These baskets aren’t just museum pieces. People still make them and sell them. The stronger ones carry food and laundry, and the brightly colored ones are for gifts.


Reta Sands still makes the baskets. She’s a tribal elder. She learned basket making from her grandmother. The wood to make the baskets came from ash trees.


“My grandmother, when she needed money, that’s the time she decided she would go into the bush and chip, the ash trees that were there. She took a chunk out of the tree and looked at it and some way, somehow, she figured out which ones were good, which ones were the best ones to make whatever kind of baskets she was going to make.”


But now the basket-making tradition might be in trouble. The black ash trees in the Great Lakes region are being attacked by the emerald ash borer. The ash borer is an invasive pest that has shown up within the past decade. And it’s spreading like wildfire.


The insect hasn’t invaded Walpole Island yet, but the island is near some infested spots in Michigan and Canada. Kennon Johnson is already thinking about the possible effects of the bugs, when they arrive on the island.


“So we’re talking about some pretty scary issues here if we do get emerald ash borer, if it does what they say it does, if it’s going to wipe out all the ash trees five, ten years down the road, we’re looking at some more scary issues in that we’re going to be culturally impacted.”


Kennon says the tribes don’t know if they’ll have to end their tradition of making the baskets, or if they’ll be able to find a way to fight off the pest. Controlling the ash borer is a work in progress. There hasn’t been enough research on the pest and no one really knows how to get rid of it.


The native people want the freedom to try some of their own solutions on their land—not just at Walpole Island, but other places the tribes manage the forest. Nick Reo is trying to help the tribes be part of the decision making. He’s the American Indian Liason for Michigan State University’s Extension program.


“Basically tribes have been left out of the process, and we’re used to that, I mean that’s the way things happen. People tend to work around us not with us, and I don’t think I’m overstating that. So, I’m trying to get us to the table. Somebody has to push the issue. That’s not just me, but I could be one of the people that’s pushing the issue.
Where the progress is really happening is within the tribal communities. Those are the people who are really going to make a difference.”


Reo says the native communities have centuries of experience with the trees. He says they know the ashes better than anyone else, and he feels someone ought to take advantage of that expertise.


“We have sophisticated natural resource and environmental departments in our tribal communities, we have cultural departments and historic preservation departments, we have basket makers and traditional folks who are going to be the champions, hopefully, in helping to factor in to figuring out solutions for this problem.”


For now, the tribes are waiting, and watching to see the extent of the damage as the emerald ash borer moves through the region. They’re brainstorming some of the ways they might fight the pest as the invasion gets worse.


For the GLRC, I’m Melissa Ingells.

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Environmental Journalism School Scores Major Funding

  • Thanks to a large grant, an environmental journalism school will now be able to offer a "boot camp for environmental reporters." (Photo by Andrew Eldridge)

An environmental journalism program that trains college students and professional reporters has won a multi-million dollar grant to expand. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

An environmental journalism program that trains college students and professional reporters has won a multi-million dollar grant to expand.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


The 2.2 million-dollar grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation was awarded to the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University.


The Knight Center trains students and journalists to research, report, and write about environmental issues. Knight Center director Jim Detjen says the money will allow the program to set up a national “boot camp” for environmental reporters.


“These are complicated issues, scientific issues often, that have legal aspects to it as well, so it’s critical to train journalists about these very important issues fairly, accurately, and have a good strong scientific basis to what they’re saying.”


The Knight Center also plans to expand its international programs, develop online courses, and create a textbook for college students about environmental reporting.


For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.

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Sewage Blending Stirs Up Debate

  • Many environmentalists fear the practice of sewage blending would become more routine if a new EPA policy is enacted. (Photo by M. Vasquez)

Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are considering a new policy for sewage treatment plants. Many environmentalists say if the policy is adopted, it will lead to increased water pollution and greater risk to public health. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports on the debate over sewage blending:

Transcript

Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are considering a new policy for sewage treatment plants. Many environmentalists say if the policy is adopted, it will lead to increased water pollution and greater risk to public health. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports on the debate over sewage blending:


(sound of water in sewer)


Some sanitary sewers are tied in with storm sewers. So when there’s a big rainstorm, or when there’s a fast snowmelt, all that water can inundate some sewage treatment plants. To tackle this problem, some treatment plants have adopted a practice known as “blending.” The excess sewage is re-routed around the slower parts of the treatment plant. The dirty water is then mixed with the water that’s been cleaned. It’s sometimes given a shot of chlorine, and then released into creeks, rivers, and lakes.


Kurt Heise oversees the operation of a sewage treatment plant on the Detroit River. He says the practice of blending is necessary in order to keep the plant from being overwhelmed.


“When you have a wet weather event, an extreme wet weather event, if we were to allow all of that combined water in through the normal process the treatment process would be ruined.”


Sewage blending has been around for a long time. To plant operators, it’s a necessary step in handling large amounts of dirty water. But to some people, blending is not seen as a good option. They want the practice to stop.


Instead, they say, cities should invest in their systems to make sure they can fully treat all the water that comes to the plant. Kurt Heise says, if his plant were required to do this, it wouldn’t make sense economically.


“It would almost result in doubling the size of our plant and spending just untold amounts of dollars for an event only happens a few times a year.”


Sewage treatment plant operators say you have to weigh the costs and the benefits before spending hundreds of millions of dollars on expanding the treatment plants. The decision of whether or not to allow blending has been left up to state and local regulators. But recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has weighed in on the subject. And ever since they suggested new guidelines for allowing blending, environmentalists have been critical of their plan. Mike Shriberg is the Great Lakes advocate for the Public Interest Research Group. It’s an environmental consumer activist organization.


Shriberg says the draft blending policy, the way it’s written now, is too broad. And will allow the practice of blending to become routine.


“Our fear is that when you’ve got a treatment plant that uses blending, they’re never going to upgrade to full treatment sewage. And so if a treatment plant is allowed to blend they’re not going to go up to full treatment capacity they have no incentive to do that anymore. It’s sort of the cheap way out.”


Sewage treatment operators say blending is better than seeing the raw sewage overflow into waterways. And they say it’s better than spending large sums of money to fix a problem that only occurs a few times a year. But critics say the EPA doesn’t have a good handle on how often blending is used, and what kind of health risks are associated with the practice.


Some initial studies have been done on blended sewage and how it might affect public health. Joan Rose is a water microbiologist at Michigan State University. She’s written a report on the health risks associated with blended sewage.


“So what I found was that if people were actually swimming in the water and there was a discharge of a blended sewage upstream, that their risk of getting sick, actually getting sick with a virus or a parasite was about a hundred times greater – when there was a blended discharge as opposed to if the water was fully treated.”


Rose says some of these viruses, such as Hepatitis-A, are highly contagious. At this point, there are no good estimates on how many people get sick from blended sewage each year. It’s never been studied, so the impact of blending on public health is unclear. Ben Grumbles is the Assistant Administrator for water at the EPA. He says the EPA is considering the billions of dollars at stake in expanding the nation’s sewer treatment plants versus the risk to public health.


“What we’re trying to do is to clarify what’s legal and what isn’t legal and to recognize the economic realities that sewage teatment plants face across the country in terms of their infrastructure needs, but foremost and above all what leaves the facility has to meet Clean Water Act permit limits.”


But the Clean Water Act permit limits don’t measure all the viruses, bacteria, and parasites found in blended sewage. And so some environmentalists and scientists say meeting the limits doesn’t necessarily mean protecting public health. Grumbles says officials are still reviewing the tens of thousands of comments they received after releasing the draft blending policy.


He says he doesn’t know what the final rule will look like, or if they’ll issue a rule at all. One thing is likely, if the policy is finalized the way it’s written now, it’s expected that environmental groups will take the EPA to court.


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

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Breaking Down Groundwater Pollution

  • While the idea of cleaning up the water with bacteria may be oxymoronic, Michigan State University is saying that it works. (Photo courtesy of the National Science Foundation)

Scientists in the Great Lakes region are seeing good results from a new method that fights groundwater pollution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner has more:

Transcript

Scientists in the Great Lakes region are seeing good results from a new method that fights groundwater pollution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner has more:


Researchers at Michigan State University are using a process that introduces microbial bacteria into contaminated aquifers. Over time, the microbes break down hazardous waste, usually from industrial spills. Before this new technology, the most common cleanup technique was called “air stripping.” That requires groundwater to be pumped to the surface, where toxic chemicals are basically blown out of the water and into the air.


Professor Mike Dybas says the new process doesn’t leave pollution in the ecosystem.


“It’s treatment actually occurring where the pollution is, and it is physically destructive of the contaminant. So at the end of the day, the contaminants are broken down into harmless end products.”


Dybas says the process could be used in any type of industrial or agricultural spill. He says since the microbes move with the water, cleanup could stretch for miles underground.


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

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Romancing the American Chestnut

  • American chestnuts (left) are smaller than Chinese and European chestnuts. The Chinese and European varieties are also resistant to the blight, making the imports more desirable to growers. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Food is always a big part of the holidays. But one
traditional food has – for the most part – disappeared from American tables. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Food is always a big part of the holidays. But one traditional food has – for the most part – disapeared from American tables. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


(Sound of Nat King Cole singing, “Chestnuts roasing on an open fire…”)


That old chestnut of a song romanticizes roasting chestnuts as a part of the holidays. But a lot of us have never even seen chestnuts, let alone roasted them on an open fire. Chestnuts used to be a major part of the Eastern hardwood forest. There were millions of them. In fact, 25 percent of all the mature trees were chestnuts. But a blight, imported with some Chinese chestnut trees, slowly wiped out the American chestnuts. Now, they’re gone.


Well… almost. Much of the root stock is still alive. Sprouts grow until the blight knocks them back again. A blight only hurts the standing tree where it branches out.


And, in a few isolated pockets in the Midwest, the blight hasn’t reached the trees. A few American chestnuts are alive and growing and some of them are free of the blight. At Nash Nursuries in central Michigan, owner Bill Nash is guiding us through a rare sight… a grove of American chestnuts.


“These are 20 years old and as you can see, they’re fairly good sized. The American chestnut is quite a rapid growing tree. It’s well-suited for our climate, so it doesn’t have any of the problems that some of the hybrids do as far as growing and cultural care you have to take care of them. The Americans, you get them started and they’re pretty much on their own.”


In a few places in Michigan and Wisconsin there are small groves of chestnuts. They’re prized trees. They’re great for shade. The hardwood is rot resistant and makes great furniture and fence posts. And the chestnuts are eaten by humans and wildlife alike. Bill Nash says the tree will be popular again if it ever overcomes the blight that’s hit it so hard.


“The American chestnut will make another big comeback in this country as a yard tree, as a timber tree, as a wildlife tree.”


That part about a wildlife tree is more important than just worrying about the squirrels and bunnies. Chestnuts were an important food source for all kinds of animals.


Andrew Jarosz is a plant biologist at Michigan State University. He says the loss of chestnuts has been hard on wildlife populations.


“Chestnuts shed nuts in a more regular pattern than oaks, which will have what are called mast years – where they’ll have major crops, massive crops one year and very small crops in other years – which means it’s either feast or famine if you’re depending on oaks.”


Since the blight first began hitting American chestnuts about a century ago, researchers have been looking into all kinds of ways to stop it. One way is to cross it with the Chinese chestnut which has a couple of genes that resist the blight. But it takes a long time to breed out the Chinese characteristics from the American chestnuts and still keep the resistant genes.


Another approach is genetic manipulation. Genetically modifying the American chestnut tree to make it disease resistant. Again, work is underway, but it takes a long time. And even after success, it’s likely some people won’t like the idea of releasing a genetically modified organism into the wild.


The final approach worked in Europe when the blight hit there. It seems there’s a naturally occuring virus that kills the blight. It spread naturally in Europe. There are a few groves in Michigan that have naturally acquired the virus and it’s working to keep the blight at bay. Andrew Jarosz is working on the research. He says the trick is figuring out how to get the virus to spread to other trees short of manually spreading it on cankers infected by the blight.


“If we’re literally talking about millions of trees across probably, you know, the eastern third of the country, we obviously can’t treat every canker on every tree. And we need to be able to figure out a way to deploy the virus in a way that it can spread.”


Even with all that hopeful research, it’ll be ten years at least before some practical solutions end up in the forests, and Jarosz believes a couple of centuries before the American chestnut holds the place it once did in the forests.


Bill Nash knows it’ll be a while before there are major changes, but he is optimistic about the American chestnut.


“Oh, I would think the tree has a bright future. There’s enough people working on that, enough programs going on now… So, I would suspect that in the not-too-distant future we should have some of this progress made. You know, Robert Frost in his poem predicted the comeback of the American chestnut, that something would arise to offset that blight. And we’re starting to see that.”


Frost put it this way: “Will the blight end the chestnut? The farmers rather guess not, It keeps smoldering at the roots And sending up new shoots Till another parasite Shall come to end the blight.”


Seems Frost was an optimist too.


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

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Dry Urinals Aim to Save Water

  • "Look! No handle." Jim Fashbaugh shows off one of the waterless urinals Michigan State University is installing in new buildings. It uses no water. (Photo by Lester Graham)

There’s a change happening in certain restrooms across the country. With growing concerns about wasting water, companies have been looking at ways to use less water to flush… and now a new product uses no water at all. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

There’s a change happening in certain restrooms across the country. With growing concerns about wasting water, companies have been looking at ways to use less water to flush… and now a new product uses no water at all. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Alright… this is a story for the guys. I mean, you women might be interested, but this is really a guy thing. They’re taking the flush away from us. You’ve probably noticed that urinals have been changing from manual flush to some kind of automatic or motion-detecting sensor flush. Now a few companies are producing urinals with no handle, no button, no sensor. Companies such as Sloan Valve Company, Waterless Company and Falcon Waterfree Technologies are making urinals without flushers.


Bruce Fleisher is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Falcon Waterfree Technologies.


Fleisher: “Literally there is zero water consumption with the use of this urinal product.”


Graham: “Well how do you flush it?”


Fleisher: “Well, in fact, it’s the no-flush urinal.”


No flush. No water. The urine just goes down the drain, past a sealant and it’s trapped there. All the no-water urinal companies use similar technology.


“Because it’s a dry surface, that prevents the urine from breeding bacteria rather quickly. And, as a result, you have no odor.”


Hold it. What did he just say?


(sound of rewinding tape)


“And, as a result, you have no odor.”


Now, I couldn’t let that one go… so I asked Mr. Fleisher to explain how that works.


“The odor that people would typically experience in a urinal derives from the combination of the urine and the water creating a breeding ground for bacteria. Bacteria then generates ammonia gas. Ammonia gas is what most people are picking up. That’s what smells.”


I remember from some high school science class that urine, when it’s expelled, is sterile. So, it kinda makes sense. But hey, this guy’s in charge of sales. So I called up a nephrologist. Nephrologists study kidneys so they know something about urine. Dr. Akinolu Ojo is the director of nephrology outpatient services at the University of Michigan. He explained why urine smells.


Ojo: “The odor that one gets from the urine comes from exposure to atmospheric air and water moisture. As that happens there is decomposition of some of the compounds in the urine. One of the by-products is ammonia. And so you get at that point an ammonia smell.”


Graham: “So, this mixture with water, it becomes a better breeding ground for bacteria?”


Ojo: “That’s correct.”


Graham: “And then the chemical reaction in addition to that also could cause some odor?”


Ojo: “You are correct.”


Glad we got that cleared up. In fact, when I went to see the Assistant Manager of the Physical Plant and Maintenance Services at Michigan State Univesity, Jim Fashbaugh said an odor problem with flush urinals is what prompted that univeristy’s first experiment with no-flush urinals.


“We’d heard about the waterless urinals. We thought we’d give them a chance to see how they would work. And we installed it and it took care of the odor problem, but we also realized we were saving water at that point, so we thought we’d take a look at other applications.”


So, they had one installed in the bathroom in the building where the top maintenance guys work.


(sound of men’s room door opening)


We took a peek at it.


Fashbaugh: “It’s one of the first ones that we ended up trying out. That’s basically it.”


Graham: “It looks like it’s broken, like there’s-”


(sound of laughing)


Fashbaugh: “Yeah. As you see, there’s no flush valve. There’s no- anything else happning. It just goes down through the ports there and there’s a blue liquid that allows the urine to go through and it separates it out. Frankly, we have hard water here at MSU; we’ve got those deep water wells. And it eliminates that lime buildup and whatever that we had to clean up before. So it saves us on products to have to do that issue too.”


Fashbaugh says the janitors love them. Instead of disinfectant, water and a lot of scrubbing, it’s more of a spray and wipe procedure. The no-flush, no-water urinals have been around in Europe for a long time, and they became popular in the drier areas of the American Southwest a few years ago. Now, universities, stadiums, and airports among others all across the country are installing them.


Guys… it could be that this sound…


(sound of flushing)


…might soon be flushed down the drain of water-wasting history.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham


(sound of restroom door opening)


Fashbaugh: “Do a lot of interviews in restrooms?”


Graham: “Uh, not – I think that might be a first for me.”


Fashbaugh: “Yeah, really. I was glad we didn’t have to do a demonstration.”


(sound of laughing)

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Tighter Regs on Future Ge Foods?

A recent study from a group of scientists suggests the government should keep a closer eye on genetically modified foods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tom Weber reports:

Transcript

A recent study from a group of scientists suggests the government
should keep a closer eye on genetically modified foods. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tom Weber reports:


The study is from the National Academy of Sciences. Authors found
there’s nothing inherently hazardous about the way foods are
genetically altered today.


Tim Zacharewski is with Michigan State University. He’s one of the
scientists who helped write the report. He says the report is a
response to points raised in the ongoing debate over genetically
modified foods…


“There’s growing concern within the consumer market, as well as with
trading partners, that these products may actually not be safe. At
this time there’s no evidence to support that.”


But Zacherewski says the study also notes there is a potential that
future products could be unsafe… especially as newer technology
allows more and more types of food to be altered. And the study’s
authors say that the government should focus its regulations on those
newer technologies.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tom Weber.

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