Oil companies and environmental groups are working together to press the Canadian government to support renewable energy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly has more:
Transcript
Oil companies and environmental groups are working together to press the Canadian government
to support renewable energy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly has more:
It’s not often that an environmental group like Pollution Probe finds itself in the same camp as
companies like Shell Canada and Suncor Energy. But they agree on one thing: Canada is lagging
behind other developed countries in its financial support for renewable energy projects.
Diane Humphries is with the oil company Suncorp.
The company’s investing in wind power.
But electricity is so cheap in Canada, Humphries says such projects need government help to
make them affordable.
“Canadians are enjoying least cost electricity… We need additional incentives to be put in place to
match, or become more competitive with the current price of electricity.”
Humphries believes the combined voices of environmentalists and business people will convince
the federal government to increase its investment.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.
Mayors from around the eight Great Lakes states met in Chicago this month and delivered a unified message: They want a voice in the future of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports:
Transcript
Mayors from around the eight Great Lakes states met in Chicago this month and delivered a
unified message: They want a voice in the future of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports:
The winter meeting of the Great Lakes Cities Initiative was hosted by Chicago Mayor Richard
Daly. Thirty-five Great Lakes mayors voted to push Congress to pass a 4-billion dollar clean-up
bill pending in the House. Superior Mayor Dave Ross says only the federal government has the
resources to do the job right.
“It’s a great burden on local governments and municipalities to take on the burden of water
quality because in any small cities such as Superior, that would be an enormous financial burden.
We certainly need financial help from outside sources, and of course the federal government
would be the prime source.”
Ross says mayors will lobby their members of Congress to support similar legislation in the
Senate.
“We can’t do it ourselves. We can’t do it alone. One new invasive species is being found in the
Great Lakes system each year. If this continues at the rate it is, we’re going to destroy the Great
Lakes.”
The mayors say until now local governments have been bypassed in Great Lakes decisions. Now
the mayors say they want to be part of the federal Great Lakes Advisory Board.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mike Simonson.
According to the USDA, 40% of the corn grown this year in the U.S. has been genetically modified. Some researchers fear there's not enough oversight on the rapidly growing biotech industry. A program at the University of Minnesota wants to create a new profession - the 'Biosafety Engineer.' (photo courtesy of the USDA)
Genetic engineering – especially when it comes to food – is a battleground. On one side: people who fear a world of contaminated food, harming humans and the environment. The other side fears we’ll miss an opportunity to prevent hunger and disease. Now there’s a ground breaking initiative that might produce compromise. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Stucky reports that some researchers think safety can be built into the bio tech industry:
Transcript
Genetic engineering – especially when it comes to food – is a
battleground. On one side: people who fear a world of contaminated
food, harming humans and the environment. The other side fears
we’ll miss an opportunity to prevent hunger and disease. Now, there’s
a ground breaking initiative that might produce compromise. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Stucky reports that some researchers
think safety can be built into the bio tech industry:
To remove a gene from one organism and transfer it to another…
that’s genetic engineering. Genetically modified or GM crops are
easier to grow, according to bio tech supporters and in the future
might be more nutritious. But they also might contain hidden
allergens, because they use genes from a plant or animal that
people might be allergic to. And there are concerns that GM crops
might harm the environment by crossbreeding with natural plants in
the wild. And so the University of Minnesota is proposing a
solution – an entirely new profession – call them biotech safety
engineers – along with a new science of bio safety. Anne
Kapuscinski is a researcher at the University of Minnesota and a
force behind the initiative called Safety First. Kapuscinski says
rather than regulating the industry after a new product is developed,
companies should prove safety first.
“It will mean that some ideas that will be on the lab bench won’t go
any further in development because the developers
will realize there are safety concerns that we don’t know how to
mitigate, or how to prevent from happening or how to address.”
And that could save companies money… by avoiding costly mistakes
such as the Starlink corn debacle. That’s when genetically modified
corn accidentally mixed with conventional corn and got into dozens of
foods. Kapuscinski says it was common knowledge in the industry that
the corn could get mixed up because of the way it’s transported and
stored… which might have been avoided with uniform safety standards
and government oversight. But until now, industry has resisted that.
They’ve been touting the benefits rather than the risks such as this
ad campaign put out by a group called the Biotechnology Industry
Organization.
(music under)
“Biotechnology, a big word that means hope.”
But one expert says if the industry wants to inspire public
confidence, it should support the Safety First initiative. John
Howard is the founder of a Texas based biotech firm called
ProdiGene. Not all biotech companies support the University of
Minnesota effort, but Howard thinks it has a good chance of
alleviating public concerns.
“The problem is, however, if you do it yourselves, what
credibility do you have as a company promoting your own safety
assessment? So an independent agency or source that comes out
and says, ‘Look, this is now credible, we’ve looked at all the safety
issues,’ that’s great, and if they find something that we’ve missed
then fine, we want to do it that way.”
John Howard says his company is working to bio-engineer corn to
deliver drugs. For instance, if you need insulin you could have it
in your breakfast cereal.
Opponents of bio tech say we don’t know all of the ramifications of
engineering drugs into food or altering the genetics of any organism,
but John Howard thinks we know enough to be safe.
“You can always argue that we just don’t know
enough yet and that’s an argument that can go on and on. And this
applies to everything that we think about in terms of risk. But
what you can do is look at a risk benefit equation. There’s
no question this is a for-profit company, let’s not make any mistake,
but not at the expense of harming people.”
And supporters say the Safety First initiative will see to that.
Lawrence Jacobs is a political scientist at the University of
Minnesota and a leader in Safety First. Jacobs says, like it or not,
GM food is here to stay.
“If we do not find some credible way to address the biosafety issues in
biotechnology, we are heading for a major maelstrom. The challenge
that’s out there now for the biotechnology industry right now is get
your act together. And the potential for consumers to panic in this
country is significant.”
Of course safety standards are already engineered into the
manufacturing of airplanes and cars. But will that work in an
industry which is manufacturing a living thing?
Supporters of the Safety First initiative say there’s too little
oversight on an industry that could have much greater impact on health
and the environment.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Stucky.
There’s a plan in place to clean up a PCB-contaminated river. It could be one of the most comprehensive, and most expensive, river cleanups ever done in North America. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Patty Murray has more:
Transcript
There’s a plan in place to clean up a PCB-contaminated river. It could be one of the most comprehensive, and most expensive, river cleanups ever done in North America. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Patty Murray has more:
The Fox River, which flows into Green
Bay, is the biggest source of PCBs
emptied into Lake Michigan.
Tom Skinner is with the EPA’s Great
Lakes National Program Office. He
says the Fox cleanup will be one of
the most ambitious ever.
“There’s a lot of talk about the
Hudson River project. This project has
the Hudson beat in a number of different ways.”
Such as: the cleanup may cost
400-million dollars, and Skinner says
the amount of contaminants to be
removed is also significant.
“The analogy we’ve used previously is that a
cubic yard is equivalent to a very
compact refrigerator. We’re
going to take probably over 7 million
of those out of the river.”
Seven paper companies that
dumped the PCBs in the river will
pay the cost of the project.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Patty Murray.
Funding has dried up for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study designed to show where, when, and how often it might flood along the Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri rivers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rich Egger reports:
Transcript
Funding has dried up for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study designed to show where, when, and how often it might flood along the Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri rivers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rich Egger reports:
After a whistleblower revealed the
Corps overstated the economic
benefits of its projects, Congress cut
the agency’s budget. That’s meant a
shortage of money for research, such
as this flood study. Supporters of the
research believe another large flood
is inevitable.
Heather Hampton-Knodle is with the
Upper Mississippi, Illinois, and
Missouri Rivers Association. She
says it’s important to finish the study:
“It’s the notion that we need to build the Ark before the flood…and be prepared to protect our citizens and keep our economy flowing in the case of that sort of major
disaster. This is one disaster we can
plan for.”
Funding was frozen this summer just
before the report was completed. Researchers
say they need just another $142,000
to finish the eight-and-a-half million
dollar study.
For the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium, this is Rich Egger.
The federal government could soon promise a lot more money to help clean up the Great Lakes. Lawmakers from several states in the region are proposing a multi-billion dollar cleanup fund. More from the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland:
Transcript
The federal government could soon promise a lot more money to help clean up
the Great Lakes. Lawmakers from several states in the region are proposing a
multi-billion dollar cleanup fund. More from the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Michael Leland:
Lawmakers from states bordering the Great Lakes say previous cleanup efforts have been
uncoordinated and under-funded. The region’s U.S. Senators are sponsoring
a bill that would give Great Lakes states six-billion dollars in grants during the
next ten years. A similar bill in the House offers four billion over five years.
Andy Buchsbaum heads the National Wildlife Federation office in Ann Arbor. He says the
proposals are groundbreaking.
“Until now, all too often the approach has been to slow or, if we are very lucky, to stop the
degradation of the Great Lakes. But these bills really break the mold. They give the lakes a
chance to improve, to heal, to recover.”
The Senate bill would create a regional advisory board to recommend which projects should
receive federal money. Buchsbaum predicts presidential candidates hoping to win support in the
region will back the bills. Both measures are only authorization bills. Lawmakers in future years
would have to vote to actually spend the money.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Michael Leland.
Earlier this year, the EPA tightened regulations on pollution from large-scale livestock operations. Farmers will be limited on the amount of manure they’re allowed to spread on fields. A new study by the USDA says, under the new regulations, these farmers will need more land on which to spread the manure. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
Earlier this year, the EPA tightened regulations on pollution from
large-scale livestock operations. Farmers will be limited on the amount of
manure they’re allowed to spread on fields. A new study by the USDA
says, under the new regulations, these farmers will need more land on which
to spread the manure. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has
more:
Researchers say most of the big livestock farms will need more land under
the new regulations. The study found that operations in some parts of the
country will have trouble finding that land.
Marc Ribaudo is an agricultural economist with the USDA’s Economic Research
Service. He says it’s possible that these large-scale farms will look to
the Midwest as a potential place to relocate:
“I would think that for those companies or those operations where manure
management is suddenly an important cost, that they would give greater
consideration to the Midwest or areas where there’s more land available for
spreading manure.”
He cautions that manure management is just one factor in the overall cost of
running these farms. But that finding available land to spread manure on is
becoming increasingly important.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.
It takes a lot of water and a lot of grain to brew a good beer. And once that beer is made, there’s a lot of spent material and water left over. This excess is usually just considered waste. But two guys in the Great Lakes region decided to start a brewery that would focus on reducing pollution and waste and then re-using whatever was left over. They wanted to show how helping the earth could also help business. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports:
Transcript
It takes a lot of water and a lot of grain to brew a good beer. And once
that beer is made, there’s a lot of spent material and water left over. This
excess is usually just considered waste. But two guys in the Great Lakes
region decided to start a brewery that would focus on reducing pollution
and waste and then re-using whatever was left over. They wanted to
show how helping the earth could also help business. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports:
(ambient pub noise)
It’s a busy summer night at The Leopold Brother’s of Ann Arbor
Brewery. People have shown up to unwind after a long week. Some are
here to listen to the live band. Others to play a rowdy game of Pictionary
in the beer garden.
But mostly, people are here to drink the beer.
Brothers Scott and Todd Leopold own and run the brewery. A family resemblance is
obvious between the brothers.
But their roles in the business are totally different. Todd Leopold brews the beer. He’s a
big, friendly guy who seems at home in a comfortable-looking pair of old
overalls. Todd went to the Siebel brewing school in Chicago and got hands-on
training in four different German breweries. He uses techniques he learned over there in
his own facility.
His brother Scott Leopold is an environmental engineer, educated at
Northwestern and Stanford. Scott spent years helping big companies
save money by using environmentally sustainable business techniques.
But four years ago he decided to put his money where his mouth was.
One night, at a bar in Colorado, the two brothers came up with the idea
to combine their talents and start the world’s first zero-pollution brewery.
They wanted to build the model, then show people that it could really work.
Their idea was met with some skepticism by family and friends. Simply put, they
thought Scott and Todd were nuts. And Scott says they weren’t all wrong.
“Most of the entrepreneurs who are out there will tell you if they knew what they were
getting into before they got into it…they probably wouldn’t have done
it. We might not be alone in that.”
But so far the idealistic business venture has proved to be a success. Scott and
Todd have reduced the volume of a typical brewery’s waste by 90 percent.
To accomplish this, Scott and Todd designed a brewery where every detail was taken into
account to conserve resources.
“What we wanted to do was put science ahead of marketing…to ensure that anyone could
look within our production processes to ensure that it would stand up to the rigors of
science within the environmental engineering world.”
(ambient sound of brewery)
In the brewhouse, stainless steel machines gleam like they’ve just been washed. They’re
not brewing today… that only happens about once a week. But the factory computer is on
and its small, colorful graphics are showing everything that’s happening in the facility.
The computer helps cut down on the brewery’s waste by tracking and regulating all
energy and water use. So there’s always an accurate record of what was
produced versus how much of the raw materials and energy was consumed.
Todd Leopold says this helps him brew better beer.
“When you know everything that’s going in and everything that’s going out, if suddenly
that changes or there’s a spike you know there’s a problem and you’re able to track it
down. So it’s really helped me run a much tighter ship.”
All the other devices in the brewhouse are specially tailored to reduce waste. In fact,
they’re so efficient that Leopold Brothers generates 25 percent less solid waste residue
and buys 25 percent less grain than most small breweries.
That means they’re saving money.
Scott Leopold says their profit margins are nearly a quarter higher than they would have
been if they hadn’t made the investment in better equipment early on. But even with all
the complex equipment, there’s still some spent grain and water left over.
It’s all put to good use. The used organic malt and hops make great food for
animals at organic farms. Excess water from the brewing process is used in the
greenhouse in the back.
Pots of basil for the menu and moonflowers for the beer garden grow in there.
Conservation even extends beyond the brewhouse to the brewery’s decor.
Fat vinyl green tubes with zippers up the sides snake across the ceiling. They’re part of a
more energy-efficient heating and cooling system. And old doors hammered together
make up the bar.
The Leopold Brothers pay the same attention to detail when it comes to marketing their
product. The labels are made from vegetable-based inks. And they use recyclable
cardboard boxes as packaging.
But the brothers want to have an impact on brewing beyond just their own facility.
Todd says they have to start off small.
“We’d love to see the larger, world class…well, not world class, but world size breweries
that distribute their beer internationally to adopt some of the things that we do. It’s just
very difficult to infiltrate the corporate culture as opposed to where there’s one or
two owners. You sit down with them, have a beer, and say this is how you need to do
things. It’s much easier to have an impact on that level, I believe.”
Scott and Todd Leopold say the big breweries have adopted some conservation
techniques simply to save money…but they still generate a lot of waste water.
Scott thinks they could reduce the amount by introducing new machinery and changing
their cleaning techniques.
But U.S. Environmental Protection Agency environmental scientist Erik Hardin says the
big breweries will have to be shown that trying more new things will help the bottom
line.
“With most any big business, pollution prevention steps seem to be incorporated after the
people in charge have been convinced thoroughly that these things can actually save them
money.”
And the Leopold Brothers say that is the exact mission of their brewery …to show, by
example, that sustainability means profitability.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Annie
MacDowell.
Loggers and environmentalists fight continually
over the use of national forests. Managers at many national forests
around the country are developing new long-range plans.
(Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
Jerry Birchem says the price of his raw material,
timber, has tripled in the last ten years, partly because of
time-consuming environmental reviews of timber sales on federal land.
(Photo
by Stephanie Hemphill)
Sierra Club member Clyde Hanson says the new
plan doesn't provide enough protection for old growth and
wilderness areas. And he worries the 90 miles
of new ATV trails in each forest could ruin the peace and quiet.
(Photo by Stephanie Hemphill).
Loggers and environmentalists are in a continual fight over the use of national forests. One of their battlegrounds is the long-range planning process. Every ten to fifteen years, the U.S. Forest Service designs a new plan for each national forest. Right now, several forests in the Northwoods are getting new plans. The Forest Service says it’s paying more attention to biodiversity, and wants to encourage more old growth forests. Critics on the environmental side say the new plans are just business as usual. Loggers say they still can’t cut enough trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
Loggers and environmentalists are in a continual fight over the use of
national forests. One of their battlegrounds is the long-range
planning process. Every ten to fifteen years, the U.S. Forest Service
designs a new plan for each national forest. Right now, several
forests in the Northwoods are getting new plans. The Forest Service
says it’s paying more attention to biodiversity, and wants to encourage
more old growth forests. Critics on the environmental side say the
new plans are just business as usual. Loggers say they still
can’t cut enough trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie
Hemphill reports:
(sound of car door closing, footsteps in woods)
Jerry Birchem is a logger. He’s visiting one of his harvest sites on
land owned by St. Louis County, in northeastern Minnesota. The highest
quality wood will be turned into wooden dowels… other logs will go to a
lumber mill… the poorest quality will be turned into paper.
Birchem tries to get the highest possible value from each tree. He says in the last ten
years, the price of trees has tripled.
“We have to pay more for timber and the mills want to pay less, and we’re caught in the
middle of trying to survive in this business climate.”
Birchem likes buying timber from the county, like at this logging site. He hardly ever
cuts trees from the national forest anymore. He’d like to, but the Forest Service doesn’t
make much of its land available for logging. The agency says it doesn’t have enough staff
to do the environmental studies required before trees can be cut on federal land.
Jerry Birchem says loggers need the Forest Service to change that.
“You know there needs to be processes set in place so you know, it doesn’t take
so long to set up these timber sales. I mean, they’ve got to go through so
many analyses and so many appeals processes.”
Birchem says it should be harder for environmental groups to get in the way of timber
sales. But not everybody agrees with Birchem.
Clyde Hanson lives in Grand Marais, on the edge of Lake Superior. He’s an active
member of the Sierra Club.
He says it’s true loggers are taking less timber off federal lands in recent
years. But he says the Forest Service still isn’t protecting the truly special
places that deserve to be saved.
He says a place like Hog Creek should be designated a wilderness area, where no trees
can be cut.
(sound of creek, birds)
“Very unique mixture, we must be right at the transition between two types of forest.”
Red pine thrive here, along with jackpine and tamarack. It’s rough and swampy country,
far from roads. So far, loggers have left these trees alone.
But with the value of trees skyrocketing, Hanson says the place will be logged eventually.
Forest Service planners made note of the fact that the Hog Creek area is relatively
untouched by humans. They could have protected it, but they decided not to.
“And we think that’s a mistake, because this is our last chance to protect wilderness and
provide more wilderness for future generations. If we don’t do it now, eventually there’ll
be enough roads or enough logging going on in these places that by the next forest plan
it’ll be too late.”
But the Forest Service says it is moving to create more diversity in the
woods. It wants a forest more like what nature would produce if left
to her own devices.
The agency says it will reduce the amount of aspen in the forest. Aspen has been
encouraged, because it grows fast. When it’s cut, it grows back quickly, so loggers and
paper companies can make more money.
The trouble is, an aspen forest only offers habitat for some kinds of animals,
such as deer and grouse. Other animals, especially songbirds, need older trees to
live in.
So the Forest Service wants to create more variety in the woods, with more old trees than
there are now. But how to get the forest from here to there, is the problem.
Duane Lula is one of the Forest Service planners. He says fires and windstorms are nature’s way of producing
diverse forests. They sweep the woods periodically, killing big stands of older trees, and
preparing the soil for pines and other conifers. Jackpines, for instance, used to be more
common in the northwoods. Lula says the only practical way for man to mimic nature is
by cutting trees down.
“We can’t have those fires anymore just because people live here, there are private
homes here. There’s no way that we could replicate those fires. Timber management is one way of regenerating those jackpine stands in
lieu of having major fires.”
But Lula says the main purpose of timber cutting in the new plan is to move the forest
toward the diversity the agency wants, not to produce wood. And he says that shows the
Forest Service is looking at the woods in a new way.
“The previous plan tended to be very focused on how many acres you were going to
clearcut, how much timber you were going to produce, how much wildlife habitat you
were going to produce, and this one is trying to say, if we have this kind of desired
condition on the ground that we’re shooting for, then these other things will come from
that.”
As it does in the planning process in other national forests around the Great Lakes, the
Forest Service will adjust the plan after hearing from the public. Loggers,
environmentalists, and everyone else will have a chance to have their say. A final version
will be submitted to the Regional Forester in Milwaukee early next year. It could then
face a challenge in court.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.
The government is expecting shortages of natural gas in the next year. A combination of factors has caused reduced inventories of natural gas. Environmentalists say the Bush administration is trying to take advantage of the situation by calling for more drilling on public lands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
The government is expecting shortages of natural gas in the next year. A combination of
factors has caused reduced inventories of natural gas. Environmentalists say the Bush
administration is trying to take advantage of the situation by calling for more drilling on
public lands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
In a letter to U.S. Senators, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham indicated natural gas
must be conserved this summer by switching to coal or other fuel sources. Abraham also
suggested to boost supplies, the government should allow more drilling for natural gas on
federal lands. Some environmentalists see this as opportunistic. Patricio Silva is an
attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“We think that it’s reprehensible that the White House and some of their industry
supporters are using this opportunity to help subsidize the industry by giving away
billions of taxpayer dollars so that companies can drill and develop more of our protected
public lands.”
The shortage of natural gas is due to reduced storage capacity, hurricanes in the Gulf of
Mexico which stopped natural gas production, and low prices which curtailed
exploration. Inventories are down by 29-percent and prices are rising quickly.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
