Report Finds Cleaner Air Out There

  • According to a recent report, a decade of cleanup measures to reductions in emissions have paid off in cutting levels of deadly particle and ozone pollution. (Photo courtesy of the NREL)

A new report finds some of the cities with the worst air pollution are breathing a little easier. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A new report finds some of the cities with the worst air pollution are breathing a little easier. Lester Graham reports.

The American Lung Association’s annual “State of the Air” report uses the latest data from 2006, 2007 and 2008. That’s just before the economy really tanked. Janice Nolan is with the American Lung Association. She says even though factories were still running at full tilt, improvement in air quality was seen across the nation. Particularly in cities the group watches closely.

“We’ve tracked some of the 25 most polluted cities each year to see how they’re faring and in each case we saw significant improvement in most of the cities in those twenty-five.”

Nolan says cleaner diesel fuel and new less polluting trucks… along with some improvements at coal-burning power plants helped. But she says other dirtier coal-burning plants and older diesel trucks continue to pollute the air.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Biomass Power’s Footprint (Part 2)

  • The future site of Russell Biomass Power Plant is already used as storage space for chips that are sold to another biomass operation.(Photo courtesy of Shawn Allee)

Biomass power is the new-fangled alternative energy source that uses a pretty old technology: basically, you just burn plants, usually wood, for electrical power.

Many states are looking into biomass power because they have plenty of wood and sometimes wind or solar farms meet resistance from neighbors.

For a while, Massachussetts looked like it would give biomass power a big boost.
Shawn Allee found the state could change its mind:

Transcript

Biomass power is the new-fangled alternative energy source that uses a pretty old technology: basically, you just burn plants, usually wood, for electrical power.

Many states are looking into biomass power because they have plenty of wood and sometimes wind or solar farms meet resistance from neighbors.

For a while, Massachussetts looked like it would give biomass power a big boost.
Shawn Allee found the state could change its mind.

A guy named John Bos gives me a tour of an old lumber mill.

It’s in Western Massachussetts, in a town called Russell.
The mill’s almost in ruins.

“So you can see this … it looks like movie set out of a bad , bad-guy movie.”

“Definitely. Watch your footing there .. ”

This factory used to turn wood into lumber, charcoal and paper.

Bos’ brother and other investors want to give the place a new life … but wood will still play a key role.

“We are walking into the site of what will be Russell Biomass.”

The Russell biomass plant would be a power station that burns wood to generate electricity.

It’d burn through half a million tons of wood each year.

And if you think that’s a lot of trees going up in smoke, Bos says the plant will use mostly waste wood.

“Our wood will come from discarded pallets, stump removal from development. Road side trimming. Every year there’s road-side trimming to keep utility lines clear. There’s a lot of waste wood out there.”

This is controversial talk in Western Massachussetts.

Critics of biomass power don’t trust the idea that local supplies of “waste wood” will hold out since investors are planning five biomass power plants.

Chris Matera is one critic.
Matera shows me what he fears could happen if projects like Russell Biomass come through.

He takes me to forest that surrounds a long, thin reservoir.

The forest filters rainwater and keeps the reservoir clean and clear.
The reservoir happens to supply water to the Boston metro area.
Anyway, Matera shows me there’s logging here.

“We’re looking at big stumps and rutted out muddy areas on a steep slope that actually dr ain into the watershed eventually. It’s not gonna help the water quality. This is a place you’re not even allowed to cross-country ski to protect the watershed. A lot of places you’re not even allowed to hike.”

These trees were NOT cut for biomass power, but Matera fears new biomass plants will use up cheap waste wood …
Then, they’d resort to logging like this to keep producing electricity.
And the water quality in reservoirs, streams and rivers would suffer.

There’s been plenty of heat between biomass proponents and their critics.

One sticking point is whether Massachussetts should subsidize biomass power in the same way it does other renewable power sources, like wind and solar.

The state hired an outside consulting group called Manomet to help it decide.

“We’ve been asked by the state of Massachusetts to answer some basic fundamental questions about woody biomass energy.”

John Hagan is Manomet’s president.
Hagan’s supposed to answer whether there’s enough waste wood or any kind of wood to supply biomass plants planned for Massachussetts.

He says his group’s not entirely finished, but …

“I think if four, fifty megawatt plants went in, they’d almost certainly have to pull wood from beyond the boundaries of the State of Massachusetts.”

Hagan says this doesn’t necessarily mean forests in the state will suffer … his group’s not finished with its report, after all.

But he thinks it’s good Massaschussetts is questioning whether biomass deserves extra financial help.

Hagan says states are subsidizing biomass without thinking through all the effects … not just on local jobs … but also forests, and local air and water pollution.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Dollars and Streams

  • A creek runs through Melvin Hershberger's farm in Holmes County, Ohio. He was able to clean up the water with money from the Alpine Cheese Company. The company needed to offset phosphorous pollution from its factory, so it pays farmers to reduce their manure runoff. (Photo by Julie Grant)

When you hear about dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes, they’re largely caused by pollution draining from the farm belt. It can take a long time and a lot of money to reduce pollution at factories. So they’re starting to pay farmers to cut pollution instead. Julie Grant explains:

Transcript

When you hear about dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes, they’re largely caused by pollution draining from the farm belt. It can take a long time and a lot of money to reduce pollution at factories. So they’re starting to pay farmers to cut pollution instead. Julie Grant explains:

When you eat cheese, you might not realize that something so delicious creates a lot of waste. And that waste – that pollution – ends up going into the drain. It eventually ends up in rivers and lakes.

(sound of a factory)

We’re at a cheese factory in Holmes County, Ohio where they make nearly 60,000 pounds of cheese a day.

The big stainless steel vats look immaculate. But our shoes are wet.

Bob Ramseyer is CEO of the Alpine Cheese Company.

He says the floors are covered with water because the equipment is constantly being washed.

“We have a pre-rinse – that goes to drain. We have a final rinse, and that goes to drain. And we have all the floors that are flushed down and so forth, so that all ends up as part of the wastewater.”

The cheese factory’s wastewater includes not only those caustic chemical cleaners, but wasted milk by-products. One milk nutrient is the chemical, phosphorous.

About a decade ago, the Environmental Protection Agency told Ramseyer that the cheese company had to reduce the phosphorous it was releasing into the nearby river. Ramseyer was concerned.

“The equipment alone was going to cost a half million dollars. We projected it was going to cost between a half million dollars and a million dollars a year in operating costs. So we were looking for any way we could to reduce that cost. That’s where we got into the nutrient trading program.”

Alpine Cheese was among the first to negotiate what’s called a nutrient – or water quality – trading program. Instead of reducing the phosphorous coming from his factory, he pays farmers to reduce manure – another source of phosphorous – from washing from feedlots into the river.

(sound of cows)

Mervin Hershberger is an Amish dairy farmer with 125 acres and 54 milking cows.

(sound of a stream)

His farm looks like a postcard – beautiful hilly green pasture.

But a lot of the manure was washing off his farm into the streams. Herberberger says the cows were grazing right around the water.

“With the cows being in the creek we could see dirty water. The rocks were covered with dirt from cow’s waste. You walk through the stream, you’d kick up dirt and waste from the cows.”

Hershberger didn’t like it, but he didn’t have money to change it.

So when the County Soil and Water Conservation District held a neighborhood meeting to explain that Alpine Cheese was going to pay to reduce pollution from nearby farms, Hershberger saw a way to afford to clean up his farm.

He did about a dozen projects to reduce manure run-off into the water, like building a fence to keep the cows out of the stream.

And the little creek is bouncing back:

“As of now, it’s just totally clean, what you see. For the minnows and all the critters that are in the creek.”

Hershberger gets paid for the amount of phosphorous he keeps out of the water.

About 25 other farms in Holmes County are doing similar projects to reduce water pollution. And Alpine Cheese foots the bill. In exchange, the company doesn’t have to clean up wastewater coming from the cheese factory.

It’s a lot like a cap and trade program on water pollution.

There are a growing number of small programs like this around the country. But some people are trying to create water trading projects on a much larger scale.

That would mean a factory in one state might be able to pay farmer in another state. Eventually, all of the thousands of factories in just one river basin could pay farmers enough to reduce dead zones like the one in the Gulf of Mexico and in some of the Great Lakes.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

More Ethanol in Gas?

  • A corn ethanol refinery- The ethanol industry is asking the EPA to raise the legal limit of ethanol that can be added to regular gasoline from 10 to 15%. (Photo by Grant Hellman, Courtesy of US Department of Agriculture)

In the 1970s, the government limited the amount of ethanol that can be blended with gasoline at 10 percent. Now, a trade group called Growth Energy has asked the U-S EPA to raise the limit to 15 percent:

Transcript

In the 1970s, the government limited the amount of ethanol that can be blended with gasoline at 10 percent.

Now, a trade group called Growth Energy has asked the U-S EPA to raise the limit to 15 percent.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has already said that 12 or 13 percent ethanol is possible soon.

But, an environmental groups says, “slow down.”

Jeremy Martin is with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says, first, the government should make sure that a higher-ethanol blend doesn’t damage pollution controls on vehicle engines.

“We don’t want to quickly make a change and then find out that we’ve caused a lot of damage to lots of vehicles on the road or caused a lot of air quality impacts.”

Supporters of the increased ethanol blend say it would help US corn farmers and reduce the demand for foreign oil. But opponents say ethanol made from corn does more harm to the environment than good.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Will Coal Ash Spill Get Into the Air?

  • Airborne toxins could be causing health problems for residents near this coal ash spill (seen in the background) in Tennessee. (Photo by Matt Shafer Powell)

Environmentalists don’t want a lot of new coal-burning power plants to be built. They’re concerned about more greenhouse gases from the plants and environmental damage from mining the coal. Late last year, another concern came to light. For decades a power plant disposed of coal ash in a pond next to it. The dam holding back the coal ash sludge failed. Matt Shafer Powell reports more than a billion gallons of the sludge caused plenty of damage to the soil and water. Now, there’s concern about the air:

Transcript

Environmentalists don’t want a lot of new coal-burning power plants to be built. They’re concerned about more greenhouse gases from the plants and environmental damage from mining the coal. Late last year, another concern came to light. For decades a power plant disposed of coal ash in a pond next to it. The dam holding back the coal ash sludge failed. Matt Shafer Powell reports more than a billion gallons of the sludge caused plenty of damage to the soil and water. Now, there’s concern about the air:

In December, the massive coal ash spill at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in East Tennessee made people aware of a hazard they’d never really considered before. And no one knows how much of a problem it’s going to be.

“We’re looking across the Emory River.”

Matt Landon is a volunteer for the environmental group United Mountain Defense. These days, he spends a lot of time near the Tennessee Valley Authority’s ash spill site. His double respirator mask, his personal video camera and his vocal criticism of the T.V.A. have all become fixtures here. It was on one of his recent rounds near the Emory River that he saw something that scared him.

“I drove around the bend here on Emory River Road and I witnessed a massive dust storm coming off the entire coal ash disaster site.”

Landon says the dust cloud was about 70-to-80 feet high and about a half mile wide. Coal ash can contain several toxic heavy metals — like arsenic, lead, and mercury. For Landon, the site of this swirling cloud was a sobering and frightening reminder that it wouldn’t take much for the toxic materials contained in the wet cement-like sludge to dry out and become airborne.

When Landon walks up to Diana Anderson’s house on the Emory River, her shih-tzus go nuts. And no wonder. Here’s this tall, lanky guy in a double-respirator mask headed their way.

Anderson has lived here for forty years now, just downwind from the plant. And she never worried about it. But since the spill, she’s begun to notice changes in her health.

“My sinuses are irritated, I have a raspy throat, and I do a lot of coughing and my head hurts and I feel very, very, very fatigued.”

Anderson has volunteered to let Matt Landon test the air near her home. So, the two head to her kitchen sink, where they wash and prepare Pyrex dishes.

They’ll set the dishes out on Anderson’s back porch to collect dust. After a while, Landon will send the dust samples off to a lab to find out what’s in the air.

The T.V.A. is also testing the air, with help from the state of Tennessee and the E.P.A. T.V.A. Spokesman Gil Francis says they’ve already collected more than 10-thousand air samples.

“We’re taking samples 24/7, the samples are coming back that the air quality is meeting the National Air Ambient Standards and we’re going to continue to work hard to make sure that’s what the case is going forward.”

That might be easier said than done. Francis says the T.V.A. has done a lot to keep the ash from drying out and blowing around. They’ve dropped straw and grass seed from helicopters and coated the ash in an acrylic mixture. But Steven Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy says nobody really knows what it’s going to take to clean this mess up. Or how the people who live downwind will be affected.

“There are still a lot of unknowns about this. We’ve never had an ash spill this size and I think people ought to err on the side of caution.”

If there’s one bit of consolation for the people living near the Kingston coal ash spill, it’s this: the National Weather Service says that during the summer months this region is among the least windy and most humid in the country.

For the Environment Report, I’m Matt Shafer Powell.

Related Links

Communities Welcome Wilderness

  • Eric Fernandez of Oregon Wild says wild areas still allow for a lot of activity - "just leave your chainsaws and bulldozers at home." (Photo by Sadie Babits)

More than two million acres in nine states could soon become permanent wilderness. Congress is expected to vote on the plan today. Sadie Babits recently visited one of the sites, Mount Hood in Oregon:

Transcript

More than two million acres in nine states could soon become permanent wilderness. Congress is expected to vote on the plan today. Sadie Babits recently visited one of the sites, Mount Hood in Oregon:

A steady stream of traffic runs through the small town of Sandy, Oregon every day.

It’s known as the “Gateway to Mount Hood.”

This used to be a town of lumberjacks. The timber industry was king here.

And a wilderness designation means no logging.

“It wasn’t that long ago that this was a mill town so for the city council unanimously support wilderness is an interesting thing.”

That’s Scott Lazenby. He’s the town’s city manager. He says in the past a wilderness proposal would end up in a Paul Bunyan sized tussle.

But Lazenby says the city council saw real benefits to having wilderness in Sandy’s backyard.

“We do have a watershed that our city water comes from. It’s important to protect that and part of that watershed would be protected by the wilderness bill.”

Not only that. Lazenby says these days, it’s not timber – it’s tourism that brings money to Sandy.

“Even though the number of people who can go into wilderness is relatively limited, the presence of wilderness is a very positive thing.”

Under a massive bundle of bills now before Congress, 127,000 acres surrounding Mount Hood would become wilderness along with other sites across the nation.

“Right now we’re standing in White River Canyon and in the winter this is a really popular place for cross country skiing, snow showing.”

That’s Eric Fernandez. He’s the wilderness coordinator for Oregon Wild – a conservation group out of Portland.

He says a wilderness designation still leaves a place open to all kinds of activities hunting fishing camping.

“You just have to leave your chainsaw and bulldozer at home.”

Fernandez says, yes, this entire area will mean clean drinking water, and wildlife protection.

“But in this instance, the reason I’m so excited about protecting this area of White River Canyon as wilderness is because it has the world’s best sledding habitat.”

Yep, he said sledding – like tobogganing. There’s nobody sledding today.

But, we did bump into Jeff McKnown, who’s out skiing.

“It’s great to come here on the weekday when no one is here.”

McKnown says he loves the trees and the snow so bright it hurts your eyes.
He’s been escaping to White River canyon when he can for the last fifteen years.

“You know when you have a wife and five kids these moments are pretty precious.”

The law that makes wilderness designations possible has been around since 1964. There are more than 700 wilderness areas in 44 states.

But Oregon has lagged behind. Even conservative Idaho has more wilderness than the more progressive Oregon.

Mike Matz thinks that could change. He leads the ‘Campaign for America’s Wilderness’. It’s been pushing for the new wilderness designations before Congress.

“It’s really become amazingly so a motherhood and apple pie issue. This is something that Republicans and Democrats alike have gotten strongly behind.”

And from Oregon’s Mount Hood, to rolling hills in West Virginia, from red rock country in southern Utah, to sand dunes along the Great Lakes – it looks like Congress will preserve two million acres more as wilderness.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

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Paint Regs Better for Environment?

  • Most paints are still high in VOCs – volatile organic compounds (Source: DanielCase at Wikimedia Commons)

When it’s time for a new
coat of paint, you might want a paint
that doesn’t smell so bad that it
leaves your head spinning. More states
are shaking up paint laws – and forcing
companies to roll out paints that aren’t
as bad for the environment. But some
people question if they will work as well
as the old stuff. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

When it’s time for a new
coat of paint, you might want a paint
that doesn’t smell so bad that it
leaves your head spinning. More states
are shaking up paint laws – and forcing
companies to roll out paints that aren’t
as bad for the environment. But some
people question if they will work as well
as the old stuff. Julie Grant reports:

Matt Testa started painting for his family’s real estate
business when he was a kid. He remembers his parents
worrying that all the chemicals in the paint would ignite a fire
– so they turned off appliance pilot lights before painting a
kitchen.

(sound of painting)

Today, as a builder and general contractor, Testa says most
paints are still high in VOCs – volatile organic compounds.
Even though a lot of people don’t like it.

“Well, when we’ve used some high VOC products, of course
there’s occasional dizziness on large commercial jobs.
We’ve had to clear buildings at times because of people
reporting headaches and other things with the fumes that
were being given off.”

Testa says you can almost taste those chemicals in your
nose and mouth hours after painting. But the VOCs don’t
just affect painters. When you open a can of paint, or
primer, or wood stain, the chemicals get into the air – and
cause ozone pollution, which contributes to smog.

“When you do the math, they’re talking about a quarter
pound per gallon. And you think of the millions and millions
of gallons of paints that are used, you’re talking about a
huge amount of VOCs.”

In recent years, states on the east and west coasts have
started cracking down on paint makers. Smoggy southern
California has the toughest laws against VOCs in paints.
The Northeast has also forced manufacturers to reduce their
chemical load.

And now tougher paint laws are spreading to states in the
middle of the country. Ohio, for instance, has had a tough
time meeting federal clean air standards. It’s hoping that
stirring up the paint laws will make a difference.

(sound of paint store)

That’ll mean changes at the store. When you buy paints,
primers, stains – they will be based less on oil – and more
on water.

Steve Revnew is marketing director for Sherwin Williams –
and its 3,300 stores nationwide. Walking around one of his
Ohio stores, he says they have to roll out a new line of
products.

“For example, some of the oil based stains, wiping stains
that you traditionally would use on your wood work and
those types of things, as they’re known today, that
technology will no longer be available.”

Companies such as Sherwin Williams have seen the
chemical limits coming for many years. Revnew says
they’ve developed new stains, paints and enamels with
fewer harsh chemicals – using new resin and polymer
technology.

He picks up a can of enamel – “In 2009, we’ll be introducing
a whole new product line that is VOC compliant. It will still
provide you the hard, durable finish for metal, wood,
concrete – those types of things. Only it will be VOC
compliant.”

The changes have some professional painters in the store
concerned. They worry that water-based paints and stains
won’t coat as well or last as long as the oil-based coatings.

Now that contractor Matt Testa has kids of his own, he’s glad
VOCs are being brushed aside. But if reducing the
chemicals means things need to be re-painted more often,
he says the changes won’t do anything to improve air
quality.

“Yeah, if you have to go back and repaint it, you’re really
going to leave a bigger footprint environmentally from the
truck trips, the amount of the paint you put back up, all the
delivery of that paint, etc.”

Testa says consumers will have to see for themselves if
these new, environmentally friendly products work as well as
the higher VOC paints.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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The “Enviropig” Cuts Pollution

  • Researcher Cecil Forsberg created the first Enviropigs in 1999. Their meat may soon be available at American supermarkets. (Photo by Julie Grant)

At factory farms, cows and
pigs produce a lot of manure, and
that sometimes causes a lot of
pollution. Julie Grant reports that
one scientist says he’s got a solution:
genetically modify pigs so they produce
less pollution. But to be successful,
people have to be willing to eat
genetically modified meat:

Transcript

At factory farms, cows and
pigs produce a lot of manure, and
that sometimes causes a lot of
pollution. Julie Grant reports that
one scientist says he’s got a solution:
genetically modify pigs so they produce
less pollution. But to be successful,
people have to be willing to eat
genetically modified meat:

Murray Borrello says pig and cow poop is killing everything
in some of the water he studies. He’s a geologist and has
been researching water pollution with chemists and
biologists at Alma College in Michigan. Borrello says there’s
no fish in parts of the river – because of all the animal feces
running off of nearby farms.

“It’s very obvious. It’s this kind of brown, mucky,
murky looking substance.”

That poop is full of phosphorous, nitrogen, and other things
that cause pollution problems. It creates algae that clogs up
waterways and sucks out all the oxygen.

Borrello says some of the farms house more than
10,000 hogs. Farmers sometimes hold 20 million gallons of
pig manure in lagoons. They liquefy it and spray it on the
fields for fertilizer. But Borrello says it’s too much manure,
so it runs off the land and into the waterways.

In some places, it’s the same water is used for drinking
water. And the same rivers drain into the Great Lakes.

On the northern side of the Lakes, a Canadian scientist says
he’s found a possible solution to this pig pollution problem.

(sound of a pig barn)

It’s called the Enviropig.

Cecil Forsberg has genetically modified pigs so they produce
less pollution in their waste.

I met him at his research barn at the University of Guelph in
Ontario.

There are no windows – just a ventilation system. And,
wow, it’s hard to concentrate – the smell of pig waste is so
strong.

He introduces me to a group of Enviropigs, they’re about a year and
a half old. He says they have no detectable difference from
regular pigs.

“They have four legs, two ears, a snout, and they like to dig
in the shavings.”

But while most pigs poop out a lot of polluting phosphorous,
Forsberg has made the Enviropig into a much better
machine for digesting phosphorous.

He’s no Dr. Frankenstein. But to do it, he did use DNA from
a mouse. He says it’s considered a safe technique, but he
knows it makes people cringe.

“There’s no mouse in these pigs, except for a little fragment
of DNA.”

The mouse DNA allowed Forsberg to add a bacterial gene to
the pigs. It’s that bacteria that triggers the pig’s salivary
glands to start the digestion of phosphorous.

Forsberg says the waste from these pigs does a lot less
damage to the environment than most pigs.

“There’s a reduction in the phosphorous in the manure by up
to 60%. And that’s important because phosphorous is the
component in manure that is the first one that’s problematic.”

And it’s part of what chokes the oxygen out of the waterways –
killing fish and other aquatic species. Forsberg wants to see
Enviropigs bred on the global scale to reduce pollution from
the growing number of large scale hog farms.

Back in Michigan, water specialist Murray Borrello
says reducing phosphorous pollution from giant hog farms
will benefit water quality, but he does not think a genetically
modified pig is the answer.

“The problem is that does not address the issue of all the
other stuff that is very concentrated going into surface water
and ground water.”

Stuff, such as nitrogen and ammonia.

Borrello says a better solution is to reduce the size of hog
farms, so there aren’t so many pigs concentrated in such
small spaces.

But the Enviropig is starting to get some traction.

When Forsberg and his colleagues created the first
generation of Enviropigs, nearly 10 years ago, the question
was: could they do it?

Today, seven generations of pigs later, the question is: will
people eat it?

Until recently, the US government hadn’t allowed the sale
of genetically modified meat. But, the Food and Drug
Administration recently published guidelines for it. And
some industry analysts say you could be eating pork from
animals like the Enviropig as soon as 2011.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Trout Used as the ‘Canary’ in a Stream

  • Natural resources workers wade in the Vermillion River, 30 minutes south of Minneapolis. They're sending mild shocks through the water to capture trout and measure them. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Suburban growth typically degrades
the quality of rivers and lakes. But
developers are finding ways to protect
water quality even as they build housing
developments and malls. Stephanie Hemphill
reports on a stream in a major metropolitan
area that still has trophy-sized native
trout in it – and how people are working
together to protect the trout:

Transcript

Suburban growth typically degrades
the quality of rivers and lakes. But
developers are finding ways to protect
water quality even as they build housing
developments and malls. Stephanie Hemphill
reports on a stream in a major metropolitan
area that still has trophy-sized native
trout in it – and how people are working
together to protect the trout:

A half dozen people in waders stand nearly waist-deep in a bend of
the Vermillion River. They’re getting ready to send electric shocks
through the water.

(sound of gas motor starting)

They’re looking for trout.

They’re stunning the fish so they can catch them in nets. When they
have about ten fish of all sizes in their bucket, they pull their boat to
the side to count and measure them.

“You can see on the one he’s pulling out right now, it’s a male, it’s got
that big hook jaw on the front. 532. These are millimeters; that’s
about 21 inches. ”

Brian Nerbonne is a trout habitat specialist with the Minnesota
Department of Natural Resources, and today he’s a happy man. He’s
collecting a healthy batch of trout on this river just thirty minutes from
downtown Minneapolis. He figures the big ones they’re finding are
about six years old.

“Fish grow really fast in the Vermillion: you saw when we were
shocking there’s a lot of a other fish, suckers, creek chubs, and things
like that they can eat, they grow a lot faster eating those other fish
than if they were just eating bugs.”

Biologists regard trout as a kind of canary in the coal mine. These
trout are healthy, and that’s a sign that this river is healthy for all
kinds of animals, including people.

As you walk along the stream, you can see schools and houses and
roads literally a stone’s throw from the river. Typically, development
like this threatens the trout, because it produces warm, dirty storm
water runoff.

Twenty years ago, a local sportsmen’s group asked the state to
designate parts of the Vermillion River as a trout stream. That would
mean local governments would have to do more to protect the water
quality, and not all of them were happy with the idea.

State planner Michele Hanson had the task of coaxing local officials
to get on board.

She did that by doing what the DNR is doing today – shocking the
river to show local officials there was something there worth
protecting.

“Once everyone believed us that it’s trout stream, then we went out
and met with every community along the river, of the section that we
were going to designate as trout stream, to tell them what it would
mean to them, what changes might happen.”

It would mean every town, every township and county that the river
flowed through would have to make some changes in the way they
developed.

Now, in some sections of the river, builders must leave a buffer to
protect the stream, as much as 150-feet wide.

Also, they need to avoid increasing the amount of runoff. Rainwater
that sheets off roads and driveways and rushes directly into the river
is too warm for the trout.

Builders are learning how to get the water to soak into the ground
instead. They can build narrower streets and shorter driveways.
They can build rain gardens and other landscaping that holds the
runoff long enough that it can soak in.

The state is also building structures in the river to provide better
hiding places and spawning grounds for the trout.

(sound of counting fish)

It’s all aimed at holding onto a rare treasure – a healthy trout stream in
a major metropolitan area.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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New Pcb Chemical Found in the Air

  • One study found PCB-11 in 90% of the air samples from Chicago (Photo by Lester Graham)

A potentially toxic chemical called
PCB-11 has been found all over the air in a
major city. That’s surprising, because people
thought the chemical hadn’t been used in years.
Gabriel Spitzer reports regulators could start
looking in other cities:

Transcript

A potentially toxic chemical called
PCB-11 has been found all over the air in a
major city. That’s surprising, because people
thought the chemical hadn’t been used in years.
Gabriel Spitzer reports regulators could start
looking in other cities:

Keri Hornbuckle says not much is known about PCB-11.

That’s because no one really expected to stumble on it.

“This finding is important, and I think it’s alarming. We should find out what the
health effects are for this chemical.”

Hornbuckle is a University of Iowa professor.

She looked at air samples from all over Chicago, and found the chemical in about 90% of
the samples.

She says the source is a mystery, though it might come from paints breaking down.

“Now, it could be that in all those places where we would expect to see the other
PCBs, we’d also see this one. But it’s a surprise, because no one thought it would be
produced.”

Hornbuckle says she found PCB-11 using a new, detailed way of analyzing air samples.

Other PCBs have been linked to cancer and neurological problems.

For The Environment Report, I’m Gabriel Spitzer.

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