T. Boone Pickens Weighs in on Energy

  • Michigan Gonvenor Jennifer Granholm and T. Boone Pickens, founder and chairman, BP Capital Management, shaire their alternative energy solutions at the Detroit Regional Chamber 2009 Mackinac Policy Conference (Photo courtesy of the Mackinac Policy Conference)

A Texas oil tycoon is trying to get America off of foreign oil. T. Boone Pickens has spent the last year and nearly 60-million dollars promoting his plan to use only US sources of energy. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

A Texas oil tycoon is trying to get America off of foreign oil. T. Boone Pickens has spent the last year and nearly 60-million dollars promoting his plan to use only US sources of energy. Rebecca Williams reports:

T. Boone Pickens says he’s all for domestic oil drilling, solar, nuclear, coal – especially wind and natural gas. But anything, as long as it comes from the USA.

“I’m for anything that’s American. Anything that’s American. (applause) But we have to get off oil from the enemy.”

And he said he used to be an outspoken critic of ethanol. But not anymore.

“It is American. Is it a good fuel? It’s an ugly baby is what it is. But it’s our ugly baby.” (laughter)

He says Members of Congress tell him, whether it’s a good fuel or not, farm states want it.

He readily admits his plan would help him make some money. But he says he also wants the U.S. to get away from foreign imports for the sake of national security and the health of the economy.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Virus Killing Great Lakes Giants

  • Fishing guide Rich Clarke of Clayton, NY, is famous for muskie hunts. He's worried so many adult muskies are falling victim to VHS. (Photo courtesy of Rich Clarke)

Fall is when avid anglers flock to the Great Lakes for one of the most
challenging freshwater catches: the muskellunge, or muskie. Some call it
“the fish of 10,000 casts.” This year’s muskie season is clouded by bad news
of a new fish disease and invasive species crowding muskie habitat. David
Sommerstein reports scientists are watching this top-of-the-food-chain
species carefully:

Transcript

Fall is when avid anglers flock to the Great Lakes for one of the most
challenging freshwater catches: the muskellunge, or muskie. Some call it
“the fish of 10,000 casts.” This year’s muskie season is clouded by bad news
of a new fish disease and invasive species crowding muskie habitat. David
Sommerstein reports scientists are watching this top-of-the-food-chain
species carefully:




It’s a cool afternoon as fishing guide Rich Clarke fillets the day’s catch:


“Went out, caught some northerns, a few bass, some jack perch. Had a
pretty good morning.”


Clarke’s specialty is hunting for muskies, 60 pound fish with a lot of fight:


“I mean, the rod screams, they yank, yank, and yank. It doesn’t come all that
often, but when it comes, it’s one of the most exciting things you’ll see when
you fish in fresh water.”


Clarke worries that magical hit might become even more rare. Since 2005,
several hundred of those prized muskies were found belly-up dead, victims
of viral hemorrhagic septicimia, or VHS.


(Sound of hose)


Clarke washes down his fillet table. He mutters VHS is just another non-
native organism threatening the muskie. There are already more than 180
invasive species in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River system:


“Everything from the goby to the , y’know, and weed species and all
sorts of stuff, spiny water fleas, you name it, all sorts of stuff that are not native to this
waterway that we have to deal with, and it changes the whole ecology.”


A new invasive species is found every six to nine months. Scientists can
barely keep up in understanding the impact on the native environment.




In a nearby bay of the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State,
Roger Klindt, John Farrell, and a crew drag a huge net through the water:


“We’ve got two people pulling it slowly through the vegetation just trying
to basically corral fish.”


This is called seining, getting a sample of all the fish that live here. Klindt
and Farrell have been doing this in the same marshy shallows for more than
20 years. And Farrell says what they’ve found this year is disturbing:


“Muskellunge numbers in the index are at their lowest levels on record since
we’ve been collecting data.”


Down from almost 50 in the spring spawning run of 2003 to just 4 this year.
Farrell’s a researcher with the State University of New York Environmental
Science and Forestry. He says this could be the result of VHS killing so
many adult muskies in their reproductive prime.




Yet another invasive species is also troubling, the round goby. It’s an ugly
little fish from Eastern Europe that breeds like crazy. Farrell and Klindt
count minnows flipping and fluttering in the seining net:


“15 black gins, 8 blunt nose, 5 spot tail.”


“I didn’t actually count things, I was just picking gobies.”


Farrell says they’ve found more round gobies in these marshes than ever
before:


“Which is a bit of a surprise to us.”


Now the muskie young have to compete with round gobies for food:


“How these species are going to respond to the presence of gobies is
unknown at this time, but they have high predation rates, they’re very
prolific, becoming extremely abundant, so the food web in this system is
shifting.”


This is what frustrates people who study invasive species. Once researchers
train their focus on one, like the fish disease VHS, another emerges to
confound the equation. Roger Klindt is with New York’s Department of
Environmental Conservation
:


“Change happens, y’know, nothing stays the same forever. But when we
have invasive species and exotic species come in, the change is often so
rapid that native species can’t adapt to it.”


That talk makes anglers nervous. Peter Emerson’s been fishing around here
for years. In fact, he participated in a catch and release program that brought
muskie populations back to health in the 1980s:


“There was a real bonanza, til this virus showed up. I’m hopeful they don’t
go extinct.”


Biologists expect adult muskies that survived VHS will develop resistance to
the disease. But they fear the next generation won’t inherit the immunity,
causing more die-offs of one of America’s most prized freshwater fish.


For The Environment Report, I’m David Sommerstein.

Related Links

Plunging Into Low-Flow Toilets

Low-flow toilets left some people flushed with anger when the products
debuted in the 1990’s. But the Environmental Protection Agency is
pushing ahead with a voluntary program to create toilets that use even
less water. Chuck Quirmbach reports some toilet manufacturers say they
want to join the new water-saving market and hope consumers are ready
to buy:

Transcript

Low-flow toilets left some people flushed with anger when the products
debuted in the 1990’s. But the Environmental Protection Agency is
pushing ahead with a voluntary program to create toilets that use even
less water. Chuck Quirmbach reports some toilet manufacturers say they
want to join the new water-saving market and hope consumers are ready
to buy:


Rob Zimmerman admits there are plenty of jokes about toilets, but the
water engineer for the Kohler Corporation takes the bathroom commode
very seriously.


“I’ve heard people say that the toilet is kind of the foundation of
modern civilization… that modern sanitation allowed for the growth of
cities and allowed for the decline of infectious diseases.”


And now Zimmerman has a handle on a new role for toilets: saving water.
Studies have shown that toilets can account for up to 30% of
a household’s water use. Water prices are going up and in some fast-
growing communities water supplies are growing more scarce.


So, the EPA created a voluntary program it calls Water Sense. It aims
to get toilets to use 20% less water than the newer toilets you’ve
probably seen that were mandated back in the 1990’s. This new
generation of toilets goes from 1.6 gallons per flush to about 1.3
gallons, and still meets performance guidelines for producing a clean
bowl.


(Sound of flushing)


Kohler and other toilet makers are trying various ways to get to 1.3
gallons. After looking at a 1.6 gallon model, Rob Zimmerman lifts the
tank lid on a 1.3:


“What you see that’s different here… is remember the other one had
that red flapper? This canister here, that lifts straight up when you flush
it, so all the water can move from all different directions and go down
down the valve. It’s a bigger rush and so the actual time that this
flushes is a little bit shorter than the other one.”


Zimmerman says other higher efficiency models use what’s called a dual-
flush system that sends away one amount of water for liquid waste and
another for solids, with an average of 1.3 gallons.


Another type is the so-called pressure assist, a louder system that
compresses air to force the smaller volume of water out quickly.
Under its new Water Sense Certification program, the EPA has put out
final specifications for the 1.3 models.


Kohler is getting ready to submit six toilet models for certification,
which the EPA compares to its Energy Star program for things like
computers. EPA Water Administrator Benjamin Grumbles says the public
can be confident about a third party certification system the EPA has
created:


“The agency working with the scientific community and with independent
testing organizations want to make sure that consumers, when they see that
Water Sense label, they will be able to have confidence that the
product will perform well, and it will lead to increased savings. Not
just in terms of water, but also reduce the water bill and reduce the
energy bill as well.”


But it may take a while to build that confidence. At a home remodeling
show, bathroom fixtures store owner Rich Libbey said he’s seen low-flow
toilets elsewhere that have not worked properly.


“Some of the Carribean Islands that are desert islands flush on a
European quart of water, but they don’t clean the bowl. So, later on in
the evenings, for example at a bar or resort, the toilet gets kind of
gamey.”


But Libbey says he’s willing to give companies like Kohler the benefit
of the doubt of reliably getting to 1.3 gallons per flush. Like most
high-efficiency energy-saving systems, the up-front costs are a little
higher.


The Kohler Corporation says its new high-efficiency toilets might cost
an extra fifty dollars to buy, but estimates the financial payback of
using less water could come in just a couple years.


For the Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach

Related Links

Fertilizer Makers Cut Back on Phosphorus

Two major manufacturers of fertilizer are cutting the amount of phosphorus in their products by half. Fred Kight reports the move should help reduce water pollution:

Transcript

Two major manufacturers of fertilizer are cutting the amount of phosphorus in their products by half. Fred Kight reports the move should help reduce water pollution:


Phosphorus is a major source of water pollution in many parts of the country. It can create algae blooms. When these blooms die off they rob the water of oxygen, often killing underwater plants and animals.


Scotts Miracle Gro is one of the companies cutting back on phosphorus. Rich Martinez is the chief environmental officer for Scotts. He says the problem occurs when the product doesn’t go where it’s intended:


“We did it as our part of contribution to a reduction in phosphorus losses – material moving off target that might end up in the water.”


Officials from Lebanon Seaboard say they’ll also reduce the amount of phosphorus in their fertilizers. Martinez says gardeners will probably see the new, lower phosphorus products on shelves by next spring.


For the Environment Report, I’m Fred Kight.

Related Links

Locavores Sprout New Way of Eating

  • Holley duMond's daughter Zoe enjoys a local harvest. (Photo courtesy of Holley duMond)

Eating grapes and green beans in winter isn’t all that
novel. We’re used to buying whatever we feel like all year
round. But some people are rejecting what’s convenient.
They’re going on a diet that means they can’t get what they
need from the supermarket. The GLRC’s Rebecca
Williams explains:

Transcript

Eating grapes and green beans in winter isn’t all that novel. We’re used to
buying whatever we feel like all year round. But some people are rejecting
what’s convenient. They’re going on a diet that means they can’t get what
they need from the supermarket. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams explains:


When the snow flies, most of us will trudge to the store in heavy coats.
But Holley duMond will just be walking out to her freezer.


(Sound of footsteps and freezer opening)


“These are our fruits, we eat a ton of blueberries throughout the winter.
And all of that is ratatouille and then there’s corn. And then underneath here is the
beginning of our meat stores for the winter, but that will fill up to the
top.”


Holley duMond has her hands full. She and her husband have busy jobs and a
3 year old daughter. They also have a basement full of mason jars. As the
Michigan harvests come in, they spend four days a week buying locally-grown
cherries and sweet corn and squashes, and chopping and cooking and canning.


duMond says yeah, sometimes people call them crazy. But she’s proud that
even in the winter, her family gets half of their diet from local sources.


Holley duMond says at first, she just felt local food would be fresher and
healthier. Then, she says she learned how far most food travels. Some
recent studies say your average piece of produce travels 1500 miles from
field to store. duMond says she worries about the environmental costs of
shipping lettuce from California, or apples from New Zealand or China.


“We do believe that every dollar that we spend is a vote, and so I think politically
we’re helping to change some of the bigger systems that we just don’t like
and don’t appreciate.”


duMond says for her family, it’s been a gradual shift. They eat local meat
and produce but they still drink coffee and eat chocolate that’s shipped in
from far away.


But some local eaters make food buying sound like an Olympic contest. James
Mackinnon and his partner Alisa Smith spent a year on what they call the
100-Mile Diet.


“We were absolutely 100% hardcore about it by the end. In our house and
crossing our plates, by the end of last year there was absolutely nothing
that hadn’t been produced from within 100 miles.”


And that means every meal, every glass of wine, every spice, except for
salt. The couple started their experiment during a long cold spring in
their Vancouver apartment. Their first attempts didn’t exactly work out.
They ate potatoes and turnips and kale. They lost 15 pounds in six weeks.
They pulled all-nighters canning hundreds of pounds of vegetables.


But Mackinnon says things really started to turn around. Their 100-mile
diet grew rich on trout and salmon, fuzzy melon, wild mushrooms and
pumpkin-flower honey.


“A whole year of eating unprocessed foods made from scratch, picked at their
seasonal peak. We felt fantastic for the entire year. The year of the 100-Mile Diet was almost certainly the most diverse diet I’ve ever eaten.”


Mackinnon says he found nearby farmers growing delicious rare varieties of
tomatoes and apples that wouldn’t be economical for supermarkets to sell.


The ranks of local eaters are growing. A similar group of 100-mile eaters
sprung up independently in San Francisco. They call themselves “locavores,” as in local
and omnivore.


And there are the 80 thousand members of Slow Food, a movement to defend traditional
foods and ways of cooking. They’re all firing back against one-stop shopping, but these
people say being truly devoted to local food is like an extra part-time job.


That’s because our food systems are not designed to be local. Rich Pirog
heads up the marketing and food systems program at the Leopold Center for
Sustainable Agriculture. He says after World War II, farmers were
encouraged to expand and specialize in just a couple of products such as
corn and soybeans:


“We’ve seen our food system become more specialized, food is traveling
farther distances, and as we have moved into the last two decades, we’ve
seen that shift to be even more global.”


Pirog says chances are, your supermarket apples are more likely to come from
China than your local orchard. He says pushing back against the global food
system is no easy feat, but he doesn’t think most locavores want to cut off
global trade:


“But what they’re advocating is, I would say, is an incremental approach where
in season we provide more of the food that we are able to grow.”


Pirog says reviving 10 to 20 percent of local food sources could boost local
economies.


So, locavores near you are canning food instead of buying cans because they
think it might just be better tasting and it might be better for the earth.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

LOCAVORES SPROUT NEW WAY OF EATING (Short Version)

There’s a trend among some food buyers. People are
signing up for a diet that means they can’t get what they need
from the supermarket. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams
explains:

Transcript

There’s a trend among some food buyers. People are signing up for a diet
that means they can’t get what they need from the supermarket. The GLRC’s Rebecca
Williams explains:


These people are setting out to eat only foods that are grown and produced
near their homes. A lot of times that means tropical fruit, chocolate and
coffee are off limits.


Writers James Mackinnon and Alisa Smith went on what they call the 100-Mile
Diet for an entire year. The couple wanted to challenge themselves to eat a
diet more friendly to the environment.


“Are we doing greater environmental good by eating out-of-season organic
apples from New Zealand in the winter? I would argue that that’s not a
compromise we need to make.”


Mackinnon says he worries about wasting energy by transporting food from far
away.


Farm researchers at Iowa State University say there are two opposing trends
at work. There are more people demanding locally grown food, but at the
same time, imports of produce from countries such as China continue to grow
steadily.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

If You Build It… Will They Really Come?

  • Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, OH just before detonation in 2002. The 32 year-old stadium was demolished to make way for a new stadium paid for by a sales tax. (Photo by Eric Andrews)

In cities across the nation, taxpayers are finding themselves facing the same dilemma: cough up big bucks for a new sports stadium… or else. Right now it’s happening in Washington, D.C. as the capital city tries to lure a baseball team. It’s happening in New York where the city’s deciding whether to spend 600 million dollars on a new home for the Jets in Manhattan. The debate is over what the taxpayers get. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Richard Paul takes a look at whether sports stadiums really can hit a homerun for taxpayers:

Transcript

In cities across the nation, taxpayers are finding themselves facing the same dilemma:
cough up big bucks for a new sports stadium… or else. Right now it’s happening in
Washington, D.C. as the capital city tries to lure a baseball team. It’s happening in New
York where the city’s deciding whether to spend 600 million dollars on a new home for
the Jets in Manhattan. The debate is over what the taxpayers get. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Richard Paul takes a look at whether sports stadiums really can hit a
homerun for taxpayers:


It’s sort of funny when you think about it. The most hackneyed rationale you can think of
for building a ballpark is… it turns out… actually the primary motivation when cities sit
down to figure out whether to shell out for a stadium. You know what I’m talking
about…


(MOVIE CLIP – “FIELD OF DREAMS”: “If you build it they will come…”)


Just like in “Field of Dreams.” Put in a stadium. People will show up, see the game, eat
in the neighborhood, shop there, stay overnight in hotels, pay taxes on everything and
we’ll clean up!


(MOVIE CLIP – “FIELD OF DREAMS”: “They’ll pass over the money without even
thinking about it…”)


Here’s the thing though… it doesn’t work.


“In the vast majority of cases there was very little or no effect whatsoever on the local
economy.”


That’s economist Ron Utt. He’s talking about a study that looked at 48 different cities
that built stadiums from 1958 to 1989. Not only didn’t they improve things, he says in
some cases it even got worse.


“If you’re spending 250 million or 750 million or a billion dollars on something, that
means a whole bunch of other things that you’re not doing. Look at Veterans Stadium
and the Spectrum in South Philadelphia or the new state-of-the art Gateway Center in
Cleveland. The sponsors admitted that that created only half of the jobs that were
promised.”


But what about those numbers showing that stadiums bring the state money – all that
sales tax on tickets and hot dogs? Economists will tell you to look at it this way: If I
spend $100 taking my wife to a nice dinner in Napa Valley…


(sound of wine glasses clinking)


Or we spend $100 watching the Giants at Pac Bell Park…


(sound of ballpark and organ music)


…I’ve still only spent $100. The hundred dollars spent at the ballpark is not new money.
I just spent it one place instead of another.


In Washington right now, fans have been told they can keep the Washington Nationals, if
Major League Baseball gets a new stadium that the fans pay for. Washington is a place
was more professional activists, more advanced degrees and more lawyers than it has
restaurants, traffic lights or gas stations. And as a result, it’s practically impossible to get
anything big built. But the mayor’s trying. He wants the city to build a new stadium in
really awful part of town and use baseball as the lever to bring in economic activity. The
reaction so far? Turn on the local TV news…


NEWS REPORT – NEWS – CHANNEL 8
ANCHOR: “Baseball’s return to the District still isn’t sitting well with some folks. One
major issue is the proposal for a new stadium.”


ANGRY MAN GIVING A SPEECH: “Tell this mayor that his priorities are out of
order.”


Turns out that guy’s in the majority. A survey by The Washington Post shows
69% of the people in Washington don’t want city funds spent on a new baseball stadium.
We Americans weren’t always like this.


MOVIE CLIP – SAN FRANCISCO WORLD’S FAIR
ANNOUNCER: “You will want to see the Golden Gate international exposition again
and again in the time you have left to you…”


Today politicians need to couch this kind of spending in terms of economic development
because no one will support tax dollars for entertainment. But there was a time in
America when people were willing to squander multiple millions in public money for the
sake of a good time.


MOVIE CLIP – SAN FRANCISCO WORLD’S FAIR
ANNOUNCER: “Remember: Treasure Island – the world fair of the West closes forever
on September 29th.”


In 1939, in New York and San Francisco, and then again in New York in 1964. they
spent MILLIONS. And the purpose was never really clear. Here’s Robert Moses… the
man who made New York City what it is today… on the 1964 Fair.


REPORTER: “What is the overall purpose of the new Fair?”


MOSES: “Well, the overall stated purpose is education for brotherhood and brotherhood
through education.”


MOVIE CLIP – NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR
ANNOUNCER: “Everyone is coming to the New York World’s Fair. Coming from the
four corners of the earth. And Five Corners, Idaho.”


Maybe those were simpler times. When people were a lot more willing to let rich men in
charge tell them what was right and wrong. Today, a politician looking to build himself a
monument is going to have to convince people it’s for their own good – and economic
development is the most popular selling point. Looking around these days – more often
than not – it seems voters are willing to rely on a quick fix. Taken together, that’s a
recipe for this kind of thing continuing. After all, when you’re a politician building a
legacy for yourself, a sports stadium is a lot sexier than filling pot holes or fixing school
roofs.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Richard Paul.

Related Links

Cultivating the Humanure Revolution

  • Source: The Humanure Handbook. Jenkins Publishing, PO Box 607, Grove City, PA 16127 www.jenkinspublishing.com

Books can be powerful. Sometimes they can even change your life. As part of our ongoing series on individual choices that impact the environment— “Your Choice; Your Planet”—the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Curtis Gilbert brings us the story of one book that changed his mother’s life… a book that so profoundly affected her that she felt compelled to share its teachings with strangers. It wasn’t the Bible or the Koran… or “Chicken Soup for the Soul.” And the part of his mother’s life that it changed is one so exceedingly private that most people don’t even like to talk about it. He’ll explain:

Transcript

Books can be powerful. Sometimes they can even change your life. As part of our ongoing
series on individual choices that impact the environment — “Your Choice; Your Planet” —
the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Curtis Gilbert brings us the story of one book that
changed his mother’s life…a book that so profoundly affected her that she felt compelled
to share its teachings with strangers. It wasn’t the Bible or the Koran… or “Chicken Soup
for the Soul.” And the part of his mother’s life that it changed is one so exceedingly private
that most people don’t even like to talk about it. He’ll explain:


There’s a sound — something familiar to everyone who lives in a Western, industrialized
country — but it’s a sound you’ll almost never hear at my mother’s house.


(sound of toilet flushing)


Five years ago, my mom turned off the to water to her toilet. She put a house plant on top
of the seat and opposite it built a five-gallon bucket in a box that took over all the duties
of its porcelain counterpart.


“Well I had seen ‘The Humanure Handbook’ in the FEDCO Seed catalog — and it just sort of
intrigued me. And I decided one year that I would read it since I was curious about it year after
year. And I read it and then I began to feel really bad every time I flushed the toilet.”


That’s because every time my mom flushed the toilet she was rendering undrinkable several
gallons of otherwise perfectly good water. And what’s more, she was whisking away valuable
nutrients that she could have just as easily returned to the earth.


That’s right… Humanure is a contraction consisting of two words: human and manure.


Here’s how it works: You use the humanure bucket in pretty much the same way you’d use a flush
toilet. Everything’s the same, except that instead of flushing when you’re done, there’s another
bucket right beside the humanure bucket and it’s filled with sawdust. You use a little cup to
scoop up some sawdust and then you just dump the sawdust in the humanure bucket when you’re
finished using it. That’s it. And the crazy thing, the thing that always surprises people when
I tell them about my mother’s humanure project is that it doesn’t smell bad.


“Anytime anything’s stinky in the humanure, you just cover it with sawdust and it doesn’t stink
anymore, except of course what is already in the air, which is like any toilet.”


Once a day my mom takes the bucket brimming with sawdust and humanure and dumps it into her
massive compost pile. There, it mingles with her kitchen scraps, weeds from the garden, and
just about every other bit of organic matter she can find… and in two years time the humanure
cooks down into dark, rich, fertile soil.


For the first couple of years, my mom was content just to operate her own humanure compost
heap and let her garden reap the benefits — but the more she did it the more of a true believer
she became. Strict adherence to the faith wasn’t enough for her anymore. She had to become a
missionary. She bought a case of Humanure Handbooks and set up a booth at an organic gardening
festival called Wild Gathering.


“And I think I sold one at that Wild Gathering. And then after that I was giving them away right
and left to my sisters and nieces and friends and whoever! And I used them all up and then this
last year I decided that not only was I going to get another box of Humanure Handbooks, I was
going to collect humanure at Wild Gathering!”


My mom knew she’d a lot of buckets for the project, so went door to door at the businesses
in town. She didn’t say what she needed them for, and luckily they didn’t ask. She collected eight
buckets full in all — not quite the payload she was hoping for. Attendance at Wild Gathering was
pretty low that year, due to rain, but relatively speaking, sales of the Humanure Handbook were
way up.


“I sold more at this last Wild Gathering. I think I sold five or six. And I gave one away for
Christmas this year to Natasha, who had been having plumbing problems. And I started my spiel and
she was really quite interested. And, I think we may have a convert there before long.”


Conversion. The ultimate goal of any evangelist. My mom admits that she doesn’t know of anyone
she’s actually brought into the fold — but she likes to think she’s planting seeds. Just
introducing people to the idea that there’s a alternative to flush toilets, she says, is a huge
step forward.


“This is really a shocking idea to a lot of people and a lot of people who come to the house will
not use it. I have to make the water toilet available to them.”


My grandmother won’t use it. Neither will my mom’s friend, Rochelle. And then there’s my
girlfriend, Kelsey. Last summer the two of us spent several days at my mom’s house in Maine
before taking a road trip back to where we live in Minnesota. After quietly weighing the
ramifications of sawdust versus water toilets, Kelsey finally decided to brave the humanure…
well, sort of.


Curtis: “So you used it for some things, but you’ve told me before that there were some things
that you couldn’t bring yourself to do.”


(laughing)


Kelsey: “No, I couldn’t. I did not have a bowel movement during our entire visit to your
house, over the course of four days.”


I’d like to think that Kelsey’s physical inability to make full use of the sawdust toilet
was an anomaly, that most people would have no problem going to the bathroom at my mom’s house
in Maine… But I doubt that’s the case. And that’s not the only reason I’m a little skeptical about
my mom’s vision of a world humanure revolution.


Curtis: “It occurs to me, and I’m about 100 pages into the book at this point, that this is
all well and good for people living in rural areas, but I live in a city. Where am I going to
put a compost heap?”


Mom: “You know, there could be chutes in buildings. There would have to be temporary storage.
Trucks would come in and take it out. Great huge compost piles would be built and it would work
down very… I think that where there’s a will, there’s a way.”


I’ll admit it; I’m still skeptical. I mean I believe in humanure, sure. But I also haven’t
put a house plant on top of the toilet in my big city apartment…and I probably never will.
Call me a summer soldier in the humanure revolution if you will, but when I go home to my
Mom’s next Christmas, I’ll be flushing with sawdust and I’ll be proud.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Curtis Gilbert.

Related Links

The Comeback of the Wood Frog

Scientists are concerned about a world-wide decline in amphibian
populations. But one scientist has been bringing a frog back to its
native habitat. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports
the Wood frog is once again thriving in an area where it was pushed out
more than 75 years ago: