Protecting Beaches From Gulf Oil Spill

  • Volunteers are combing every inch of the shoreline, picking up trash and raking driftwood and sticks into the dunes. Normally they’d let the natural debris stay on the beach. But if it gets coated with oil it becomes hazardous waste and has to be shipped to a local landfill. (Photo courtesy of the NOAA)

It’s been weeks since oil began gushing from
a broken underwater well in the Gulf of Mexico.
As BP continues to try to stop the leak, many
coastal communities are scrambling to
prepare for the oil that threatens their
shorelines. As Tanya Ott reports, volunteers in
Alabama are taking some low-tech steps to get ready:

Transcript

It’s been weeks since oil began gushing from a broken underwater well in the Gulf of Mexico. As BP continues to try to stop the leak, many coastal communities are scrambling to prepare for the oil that threatens their shorelines. As Tanya Ott reports, volunteers in Alabama are taking some low-tech steps to get ready:

Within days of the oil rig explosion, Casi Callaway’s phone started ringing off the hook.

“I have hundreds of volunteers calling every minute.”

Okay – well maybe not every minute. But Callaway’s group, Mobile Baykeeper, has been very busy organizing volunteers. In the past week more than 7-thousand people have flocked to the white sands of the Alabama coast hoping to help.

They’re combing every inch of the shoreline, picking up trash and raking driftwood and sticks into the dunes. Normally they’d let the natural debris stay on the beach. But if it gets coated with oil it becomes hazardous waste and has to be shipped to a local landfill. So volunteers are working round the clock to move the material. Tom Herder is with the Mobile Bay Estuary Program. He says they have to be careful because this is nesting season for wading birds like Plovers and Terns.

“You know we were the dumb transgressors the first day. I was throwing stuff in the dunes. And we were just moving stuff up and I wasn’t looking for Plover nests and the Audobon Society kinda got on my case – and it’s good, they educated us. And we’re educating our volunteers.”

They’ve been training volunteers on how to remove debris without disturbing wildlife. But Herder says the clock is ticking and there’s still lots of work to do. So they’re balancing the need to protect wildlife with the need to get the beaches ready. Herder says to do that they’ve been bending the rules a little bit.

“People have to be 18 years old to take part in our volunteer efforts. Shoot – that’s, that’s not necessarily the way people do things here. And we tell people, if you live on the Western shore of Mobile Bay don’t wait for us. Get down there and clean it up yourself. You know. And that’s not rogue.”

While volunteers work to get the beaches ready for oil, BP says it’s working to keep the oil from reaching the shore. It’s using what are called chemical dispersants – basically it’s industrial detergent – to break up the oil deep under the surface. But critics say the chemicals could kill off the larvae of fish that use the Gulf of Mexico for spawning grounds… fish like the Atlantic bluefin tuna. It could also hurt oysters and mussels. But BP’s Steve Rinehart says there’s always a tradeoff.

“Nobody wants an oil spill. We have an oil spill. You need to make judgments about limiting the damager where you can.”

Rinehart says a group of state and federal spill responders, including environmental scientists, has determined that dispersants pose the least risk.

“If the choice is oil going to shore or using dispersant off shore, using dispersant off shore causes less environmental impact. That’s not to say there won’t be some, but it’s less harmful to the environment than having the oil go to shore.”

So basically, it could be an “either/or” – protect the beach with dispersants and you might risk the fish. Tom Herder — with the Estuary Program — says it’s a no win situation.

“I’ve almost been making deals with God. And I can’t bribe God, but he knows I’ll follow through.”

Right now, Herder’s just praying for good weather – and more time – to get the coasts prepared.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

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Congress Investigates Gulf Oil Spill

  • One area the investigation will focus on is whether the blowout prevention and emergency shutoff devices had been tested and properly maintained for use at the drilling facility.(Photo courtesy of the US Mineral Management Service)

Next week Congress will hold what’s likely to be the first of many hearings on the drilling rig explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Lester Graham reports this is just the latest Congressional investigation into BP’s operations.

Transcript

Next week Congress will hold what’s likely to be the first of many hearings on the drilling rig explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Lester Graham reports this is just the latest Congressional investigation into BP’s operations.

Congressman Bart Stupak chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. He says you can add this oil spill in the Gulf to several oil spills on Alaska’s North Slope and the refinery explosion that killed 15 people in Texas City in 2005. He says earlier this year he fired off a letter about billions of dollars in budget cuts BP just recently made.

“We wanted to make sure these cuts don’t negatively affect the safety of the workers or the environment. I mean, we put that in writing to them in January. And when I heard about the blow-out and the fire down there and the accident, they didn’t have to tell me the company that was bitten by this. I just figured it was BP.”

Stupak’s subcommittee will be questioning BP officials, the drilling rig operators, TransOcean, and Halliburton which did maintenance work on the rig.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Oil Spill Cleanup Seeks Volunteers

  • Until they work out the logistic challenges that go along with hosting out-of-town volunteers, organizations are looking for people who are locally based, who are easily within driving distance and may be able to contribute a day’s worth of work.(Photo courtesy of the NOAA)

No one really knows how many thousands of barrels of oil have gushed from the British Petroleum pipeline on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. But, the environmental damage is expected to be astounding. Lester Graham reports… Gulf Coast groups are preparing for the worst.

Transcript

No one really knows how many thousands of barrels of oil have gushed from the British Petroleum pipeline on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. But, the environmental damage is expected to be astounding. Lester Graham reports… Gulf Coast groups are preparing for the worst.

The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana is a consortium of environmental groups trying to coordinate volunteers to help clean up the environmental damage to hit the coast.

Steven Peyronnin is Executive Director of the group.

“There is the potential that we may need volunteers for extended periods of time–for weeks, but certainly there are challenges to arranging logistical and housing support for that. So, in the interim we are looking for people who are locally based, who are easily within driving distance and may be able to contribute a day’s worth of work.”

Right now they’re in need of people with HazMat training, but anyone can register to volunteer. The website is crcl.org.

You can also volunteer for clean-up at volunteerlouisiana.gov.

They’ll likely be looking for volunteers for months.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Oil Spill Worse by the Day

  • The gulf region is the world's largest producer of oysters and shrimp(Photo courtesy of the NOAA)

When an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana exploded last week, gulf coast officials knew they had a problem on their hands. But as Tanya Ott reports from Alabama, everyday they find it’s worse than they originally thought.

Transcript

When an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana exploded last week, gulf coast officials knew they had a problem on their hands. But as Tanya Ott reports from Alabama, everyday they find it’s worse than they originally thought.

It’s estimated more than 200-thousand gallons of oil are spewing out of the well each day. Cleaning up using chemicals causes problems because it might make it easier for marine animals to eat the oil. Burning the oil on the water is not great either. Casi Callaway is with the environmental group Mobile Baykeeper.

“The air quality impacts from it and therefore the health impacts from it are great – and frankly unknown.”

It’s not just an environmental crisis. It’s an economic crisis. This area is the world’s largest producer of oysters and shrimp. And the pristine gulf coast beaches fuel a tourism industry worth 20-billion dollars a year.

For the Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

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Making Biodiesel Kosher

  • Glycerin is a common ingredient in foods. It's made from fat from animals, or oil from vegetables. So automatically, there's kosher glycerin and non-kosher glycerin. (Photo courtesy of Wakefern CC-2.0)

The next time you’re near your cupboard, check for kosher food items.
The packages have specials symbols, like a “U” or a “K” with a circle around it.
The kosher label shows Jewish people the food was prepared with ingredients that meet religious guidelines.
Shawn Allee learned rabbis had to work overtime to keep kosher food separate from the byproduct of an alternative fuel.

Transcript

The next time you’re near your cupboard, check for kosher food items.
The packages have specials symbols, like a “U” or a “K” with a circle around it.
The kosher label shows Jewish people the food was prepared with ingredients that meet religious guidelines.
Shawn Allee learned rabbis had to work overtime to keep kosher food separate from the byproduct of an alternative fuel.

The world of futuristic alternative fuels got tangled up in ancient Hebrew food laws.
To understand how, I talk with a rabbi in the know … Sholem Fishbane of Chicago’s Rabbinical Council.

To start, I admit I don’t understand the key word: ‘Kashrut’ in Hebrew … or ‘kosher’ in English.

“How about your Yiddish?”

“Not so good.”

“Not so good, OK.”

“The word kosher means straight, correct. So when it comes to consumer items, and especially food, how does this play out?”

“The basic concept is that you are what you eat. You become the character of what you’re consuming.”

For example, in the Hebrew Bible, pigs are unclean, so pork’s not kosher.
But even some ‘clean’ foods are not kosher if you mix ’em …

“A very big thing in kosher is not to eat, uh … milk and meat together. meat representing death. milk representing life. Those are things that shouldn’t be coming together.”

So, you separate kosher food foods from non-kosher foods and even each other at times.

Well, Rabbi Fishbane’s job is to keep all this straight at big food factories.
He inspects food equipment and ingredients.

If everything’s kosher, he lets factories use the little “K” character on packages.

So, a few years ago, Rabbi Fishbane was at this factory, inspecting paperwork.

“All of a sudden you see an increase amount of glycerin receipts and hey, what’s going on? You usually have X amount a month and now it’s tripled.”

Glycerin is a common food ingredient, so Rabbi Fishbane thought, ‘no big deal.’
Until … he saw glycerin prices plummet, and his factories substituted it for more expensive ingredients.

“This is now a pattern. When we see a pattern, that’s when we get nervous.”

So, Rabbi Fishbane dialed up a teleconference with other rabbis.

They noticed the same thing … loads of cheap glycerin hitting the market.
The rabbis started sweating.

“glycerin has always been a kosher-sensitive item.”

This is one of the other rabbis on that conference call – Abraham Juravel of the Orthodox Union.

Glycerin keeps food sweet or moist.

It’s a clear, slick goo … and it’s made from oil or fat.

“The fat can be from animal or that fat can be from vegetable. and so automatically, there’s kosher glycerin and non-kosher glycerin. As a food ingredient it’s very common in all kinds of products. They actually use glycerin as a sweetener in certain candies.”

Rabbi Juravel started tracking down the source for all this new glycerin.
After some detective work, he found it was coming from factories that make biodiesel.

Biodiesel is an alternative fuel made from oil or fat.

You chemically process the fat … and you get fuel for cars and trucks, but …

“What you’ll also get is very crude glycerine, which is the waste product.”

Several years ago, new biodiesel factories were popping up and they looked for whatever fat they could find … kosher or otherwise.

“So, they buy used oil that you fried french fries in, and who knows what else you fried in there. if you made french fries and then you also made southern fried chicken in that oil, then that oil’s not kosher.”

Again, if the oil’s not kosher … neither is the glycerin and whatever food glycerin goes into.

There is a happy ending here.

Rabbis worked overtime to keep non-kosher glycerin out of the kosher food supply, but they actually made biodiesel operations part of the solution.

Some factories switched to all-kosher oils, so now their waste guarantees a steady supply of religiously pure, kosher glycerin.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Budget Trimmers Target Ethanol

  • CEO of Growth Energy, Tom Buis argues ... we spend plenty of money for overseas oil ... why not support home-grown ethanol?(Photo courtesy of the NREL)

President Obama’s visit to the Corn Belt is highlighting a tough debate about the future of corn-based ethanol used in our cars.

Transcript

President Obama’s visit to the Corn Belt is highlighting a tough debate about the future of corn-based ethanol used in our cars.

Congress is looking to cut the federal budget and one target is a key ethanol subsidy.

It’s a tax credit of about 4 and a half billion dollars, and it runs out by the end of the year.

Ethanol trade groups are fighting to extend that credit.

Tom Buis is CEO of Growth Energy.

He argues … we spend plenty of money for overseas oil … why not support home-grown ethanol?

“We create jobs, jobs that can’t be outsourced. I don’t know why we want to fund economies of foreign governments. We should be looking at spurring our own economic development here in the United States.”

Last year the Government Accountability Office questioned whether we need this particular ethanol tax credit, since the government requires gasoline refiners to blend-in billions of gallons of ethanol anyway.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Shareholders Press Big Oil for Risk Information

  • The major risks with tar sand include dealing with pollution, and with lawsuits from native tribes that live near the oil sands.(Photo courtesy of the US DOE)

Several investors’ groups want four major oil companies to reveal the risks of getting oil from Canadian tar sands. Rebecca Williams reports shareholders will be considering this at BP’s general meeting this week:

Transcript

Several investors’ groups want four major oil companies to reveal the risks of getting oil from Canadian tar sands. Rebecca Williams reports shareholders will be considering this at BP’s general meeting this week:

Tar sands are kind of like they sound: they’re sand or clay soaked in oil. Canada’s tar sands are the second largest oil reserves in the world, so oil companies are all over them. But it’s a dirtier source of oil.

Several investors groups have filed shareholder resolutions with BP, Conoco-Phillips, Shell, and Exxon-Mobil. They want companies to reveal the risks to stockholders of getting oil from tar sands.

Emily Stone is with Green Century Capital Management.

“We want these companies to be more forthright about what they see as the big risks and how they’re mitigating those risks.”

She says risks include dealing with pollution… and lawsuits from native tribes that live near the oil sands.

BP did not want to be recorded for this story. But in a statement to shareholders, BP told them to vote no. BP says Canada’s oil sands are a proven and secure source of oil.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Shell Walks Away From Oil Shale

  • Shell says that even though it's no longer pursing water rights on the Yampa River right now, it's in no way backing off its larger ambitions for oil shale. (Photo courtesy of the US DOE)

Extracting oil from oil shale takes a lot of water. Most of the oil shale in the U.S. is in areas where there’s not a lot of water. Conrad Wilson reports, one big oil company seems to be walking away from oil shale for that reason. But not everyone thinks that’s the case.

Transcript

Extracting oil from oil shale takes a lot of water. Most of the oil shale in the U.S. is in areas where there’s not a lot of water. Conrad Wilson reports, one big oil company seems to be walking away from oil shale for that reason. But not everyone thinks that’s the case.

In the Western US, some energy companies are betting big on oil shale. That’s a process of basically heating up a shale rock into a liquid that’s eventually refined into oil. But the global recession and the threat of climate change might be giving those companies second thoughts. Add to that a increasingly limited water supply, and oil shale looks like a risky investment.

The process of creating oil shale is energy intensive and uses a lot of water. That’s a problem in the arid West. As the population grows, the value of water is increasing.

Royal Dutch Shell has the most invested in developing an oil shale technology that works. So earlier this year when the company announced it was pulling away from water rights, it sent shock waves through the industry.

“I read that decision as Shell’s acknowledgment that oil shale is a long way off and that this was a really controversial filing and that in a sense it’s not worth it.”

That’s Claire Bastable of the Western Energy Project. It’s an environmental group that keeps on eye on energy issues in the West. Shell had been pursuing water rights on the Yampa River, in the Northwest portion Colorado.

“Shell’s decision was a big deal. We’re talking about 15 billion gallons of water. … It would have basically taken the Yampa River, which is one of the the last free flowing rivers in the West and diverted a huge proportion of it to Shell for potential oil shale development.”

Bastable says the 15 billion gallons Shell was seeking is about three times the amount the city of Boulder, Colorado uses in a year.

But, Shell knows a lot of oil can be extracted from the oil shale. It’s estimated that there are 800 billion barrels of usable oil in the shale – in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah.

Dr. Jeremy Boak researches oil shale development at the Colorado School of Mines. He says Shell could be simply postponing extracting that oil. Boak believes oil shale has a future, but it’s still decades away.

“With all of the comments they’ve made about what the time scale for oil shale, Shell has been pretty comfortable that this is going to take time.”

Shell says that even though it’s no longer pursing water rights on the Yampa River right now, it’s in no way backing off its larger ambitions for oil shale.

The company wouldn’t provide someone to comment for this story, but in a statement the company said:

The “ultimate goal is to create a commercial oil shale recovery operation that is economically viable, environmentally responsible and socially sustainable.”

That statement adds timing depends on government regulation and the market. The company could be waiting to see what the government does about climate change and how that affects fossil fuel costs. Shell could also be waiting for oil prices go up before deciding whether oil shale worth the effort.

Eric Kuhn heads up water management for the Colorado River District. He monitors much of the state’s water West of the Continental Divide. Kuhn says there’s probably enough water for oil shale development right now, but it’s hard to say for how long.

“I don’t think they’re dropping the filing changes anything. I think those companies are dedicated to and still have a plan to develop the oil shale resource if they can find a technology that is economically productive or if they can produce the oil shale at a competitive price, I think they will do it.”

Environmentalists in the region hope they won’t. They say Shell’s decision not to pursue the water right now should be a signal to others… oil shale just might not be worth the effort.

For The Environment Report, I’m Conrad Wilson.

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Squeezing More Oil Out of Soybeans

  • Recently, scientists completed a big-picture map of soy's basic genetic make-up. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Bio-diesel is supposed to make
big-rigs and trucks run cleaner.
But to make enough biodiesel on
the cheap, we’ll need to get more
oil out of soybeans. Shawn Allee says we could be one step
closer to fixing that:

Transcript

Bio-diesel is supposed to make
big-rigs and trucks run cleaner.
But to make enough biodiesel on
the cheap, we’ll need to get more
oil out of soybeans. Shawn Allee says we could be one step
closer to fixing that:

Tom Clemente is a kind of true-believer in biodiesel. He studies plant biology at the University of Nebraska. Clemente says the problem is, we use pricey soy-bean oil to make biodiesel.

“The downside is there’s just not enough of the oil to really make a dent on petroleum.”

Clemente figures scientists can manipulate genes inside soy beans to boost oil content, but no one knew exactly where the genes are. Recently, though, scientists completed a big-picture map of soy’s basic genetic make-up. Clemente hopes that’ll speed up development of oily soy beans – just for biodiesel.

“Really getting a bio-based sustainable fuel from some sort of cropping system, the production’s going to have be really up there.”

Clemente hopes we get enough biodiesel to clean up the nation’s dirtiest vehicles, such as construction equipment and city buses.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Hanukkah’s Green Messages

  • President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama watch as a child lights the Hanukkah candles at a reception in the White House on December 16th, 2009. (Photo by Samantha Appleton, courtesy of the White House)

A lot of people worry that we make
too much waste during the holidays.
But some religious leaders are trying
to change that. Julie Grant reports
on one rabbi who wants people to see
Hanukkah as a holiday about sustainability:

Transcript

A lot of people worry that we make
too much waste during the holidays.
But some religious leaders are trying
to change that. Julie Grant reports
on one rabbi who wants people to see
Hanukkah as a holiday about sustainability:

Jewish people light candles each of the eight nights of Hanukkah – a tradition dates back 2200 hundred years – when the Jews reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem from the Greeks.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow says they needed oil to light the temple.

“They lit the menorah with just one day’s worth of oil, and, according to the legend, it lasted for eight days, until the new oil was ready.”

A few years ago, Rabbi Waskow realized this is an environmental message for people today.

“This could be seen as the conservation of oil.”

So Waskow wants people to see Hanukkah as a time to conserve natural resources in their own lives – and in public policy.

He’s encouraging people to drive less,
to support biking, railways and walking paths, and
to rest more, so we emit less carbon.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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