Solar Within City Limits

  • Tom O'Neill (in suit) develops new businesses for Exelon, an energy company best known for its fleet of nuclear power stations. The Chicago solar project is the company's largest to date. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

There’s a commercial-scale solar project
that’s getting some buzz in Chicago and
beyond. The builders promise to use up
some abandoned industrial space within
the city limits… and hope to provide
some local jobs. City governments across
the country like both of those ideas.
Shawn Allee looks at why this
urban solar project’s falling into place,
and whether it might get repeated across
the country:

Transcript

There’s a commercial-scale solar project
that’s getting some buzz in Chicago and
beyond. The builders promise to use up
some abandoned industrial space within
the city limits… and hope to provide
some local jobs. City governments across
the country like both of those ideas.
Shawn Allee looks at why this
urban solar project’s falling into place,
and whether it might get repeated across
the country:

Carrie Austin is a Chicago alderman, and, as she says, she’s constantly dealing with problems unique to Chicago. But she’s convinced she’s got one problem a lot other cities face, too: what to do with vacant industrial land. She’s got 200 acres of it in her neighborhood.

“The environmental issues left from the company, left us with such devastation without any regards to human life. That has been our fight all these years. ”

Austin says, even with some clean-up in recent years, it’s been tough getting someone to come in with some work – and jobs.

“We’ve talked to FedEx, Kinkos and many other corporate offices. Even to Wal-Mart, bringing some of their distrubution to such a large piece of land. But to no avail.”

Austin says there’s a portion of this land she’s not so worried about now. The energy company, Exelon, is putting up solar panels on about 40 acres. And for the first time in a long time, there’s the sound of new construction there.

“This site’s been vacant for thirty years.”

That’s Tom O’Neill – he develops new businesses for Exelon. We’re walking along a padded-down field of soil where there used to be factory walls, machines, and concrete floors.

“What’s changed is you don’t see the brush and the shrubbery and there was a building that used to be here. The whole site is now graded and you can see signs of the construction where the foundations are going to come out. If you look further west, you can actually see the foundations going in for the solar panels, so it’s changed quite a bit.”

This is a transformation a lot of cities would envy, but I’m curious why Exelon’s doing this in Chicago and whether it’ll repeat it in other cities. On the first question, O’Neill says Exelon’s putting up the panels because it’s got a plan to cut its own carbon emissions.

“This project here will displace 30 million pounds of greenhouse gases per year. So it is a part of our low-carbon initiative.”

This Chicago solar project qualifies for federal loan guarantees and tax credits, but even with that, it’s not clear Exelon will make a profit. So, the question is: will Exelon repeat this? O’Neill says he’s hopeful.

“It is a demonstration project to show what can be done and with its success will come other successes.”

To get an industry-wide view of whether other cities might get urban solar farms, I talk with Nathaniel Bullard. He analyses solar power markets for New Energy Finance, a consulting firm. Bullard says cities are eager to re-use land that can be an eye-sore, or even cost a city money to maintain. For example, some southwestern cities have old landfills – and they’re planning to put solar farms on top.

“We’ve actually see those go much larger than what’s on the books right now for Exelon.”

Bullard says companies are taking a closer look at solar power because states are mandating utilities buy at least some. And the US Congress changed some tax laws recently. Exelon is taking advantage of that.

“First thing to note in the Exelon project is that it is Exelon itself which is going to own its project. If this was a year ago, they would be purchasing the electricity on contract. Now, with a change in policy, investor-owned utilities is allowed to own the asset itself and take advantage of tax benefit.”

Bullard says we’re likely to see more urban solar projects like Chicago’s – if the technology gets cheaper and government incentives stay in place.

Bullard has this joke about solar power that he swears is true. He says, in the solar industry, the strongest light does not come from sunshine – it comes from government policy.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Seeing Abandoned Buildings Through a New Lens

  • Artist Julia Christensen peers through the ceiling of an abandoned auditorium in Gary, Indiana. (Photo by Anne Barnes)

We often take the buildings around us
for granted – that is, until those factories,
schools, or big retailers close shop and
people around town are left wondering –
what’s going to happen to that place?
One photographer’s making a career out
of documenting the surprising ways
people deal with this. Shawn Allee met her in the heart of America’s Rust
Belt:

Transcript

We often take the buildings around us
for granted – that is, until those factories,
schools, or big retailers close shop and
people around town are left wondering –
what’s going to happen to that place?
One photographer’s making a career out
of documenting the surprising ways
people deal with this. Shawn Allee met her in the heart of America’s Rust
Belt:

I meet Julia Christensen in Gary, Indiana.

She’s here for an art project: She’ll photograph buildings in Gary and ask people how they could be re-used in the future. I’m supposed to be the chauffer.

Christensen: We’re going to 5th avenue.

Allee: Where is that, exactly?

Christensen: Right. Uh…

Well, I’ll get to her current project in a sec but with all these wrong turns – I’ve got a chance to ask about her artwork in general.

I mean, what’s the point of documenting how people re-use buildings?

“Looking at use of urban space. It’s a structure we all share. No matter how you interpret it, there it is on he ground in front of you.”

Christensen’s got plenty of examples. She’s done photo exhibits of buildings in several cities, and she wrote this book called Big Box Reuse. It’s about how people reused buildings abandoned by Wal-Mart, K-Marts and other big retailers.

She photographed one big box store that got turned into an indoor go-cart track. Another became a school. And one store turned into a museum dedicated to the canned meat, SPAM.

“What it did was create this niche tourist industry. Over 10,000 people a year come to the SPAM museum and they spend money in the town, and it’s actually done something toward revitalization of this city, you know.”

Christensen says the point is that when big box stores get abandoned, they’re often a blight – kinda like one-building ghost-towns with enormous parking lots.

She found people assumed they were the only ones facing this problem.

“They’d be like, ‘huh, that’s interesting. You mean other people are dealing with this? How did they deal with those glass panes and those central pillars?’ And I became story-telling person who had information about big-box re-use.”

Christensen says she’s got a new art project. She’s interviewing people about old industrial sites, commercial buildings and homes. She’ll write stories about how these buildings could have totally new uses thirty years from now. Then, she’ll put photos and text together for art exhibits or maybe a book.

“It’s like an exercise to take these photos and write a caption for them in the context of the next thrity years, so it’s a little more exploratory.”

Right now, Christensen’s touring Rust Belt cities that are dealing with abandoned buildings. Gary Indiana is just one stop.

“So, we’ll turn left at Broadway.”

Christensen got a tip about a closed building.

“It is a closed performing arts school. It’s closed a few years ago when the city had to consolidate the schools.”

Christensen and I meet a young man named John. He lives nearby and he tells Christensen the closed school’s kind of an open wound.

“Kids just running through there, trust me. You see how the windows broken in?”

But Christensen asks John, What about the future? What could it be?

“I always thought of this being a recreational center for the kids. People can be indoors and play basketball and stuff all year round, stuff like that.”

Christensen notes all this and takes some snapshots of the building.

She’ll do this again and again in Gary and other Rust Belt towns. Christiansen says she wants to return some day – maybe with a book or photo exhibits. She wants people talking about what could happen to these places.

“People can come to arts and access a photo or a sculpture or a creative website from across the board, so I see the arts as central in the conversation about what our future is going to look like on the ground.”

Christensen says documentaries or art can’t solve all the problems people face with abandoned buildings but maybe it could be a good place to start.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Shrinking a Rust Belt City

  • Mayor Jay Williams says that about ten years ago, they started holding community meetings to figure out how to make Youngstown run better for its smaller population. (Photo courtesy of Youngstown 2010)

Folks in lots of rust-belt cities
are used to hearing about the declining
population. Over the past thirty years,
people have been moving away from
cities such as Cleveland, Detroit,
and Indianapolis. Julie Grant visited
one city that’s embracing its newfound
smallness – and trying to un-build some
of its neighborhoods:

Transcript

Folks in lots of rust-belt cities
are used to hearing about the declining
population. Over the past thirty years,
people have been moving away from
cities such as Cleveland, Detroit,
and Indianapolis. Julie Grant visited
one city that’s embracing its newfound
smallness – and trying to un-build some
of its neighborhoods:

For decades, Youngstown, Ohio has been a city looking to its past. It was booming in the 1950s. The steel industry brought good paying, reliable jobs. City leaders back then planned for the population to blossom above 200,000.

It never got there. The steel mills closed, and people left. Youngstown lost a lot of people.

Mayor Jay Williams says that about ten years ago, they started holding community meetings. They wanted to figure out how to make the city run better for the 80,000 people who are still here.

“While it was an acknowledgement of the fact that we were going to be a smaller city, it also was an understanding that smaller didn’t have to be inferior. And that started a series of things that led us to where we are today.”

Now they are in the process of demolishing 2,000 abandoned homes and other buildings. They actually want the people to leave some areas – so the city doesn’t have to spend money on things like power, utilities and snow plows on those streets.

Mayor Williams says, in some neighborhoods, there are entire blocks that are abandoned, except for one or two houses.

“So from that standpoint, we do have a moral, and an ethical and legal obligation as a city to provide certain services. But what we’re trying to do is balance that with the fact that sometimes it doesn’t make economical or business sense.”

A lot of the times those holdouts are older folks, who don’t want to move – and might not accept that the city doesn’t plan to return to its former glory. The new leaders want to embrace the city’s new small-ness – and improve the quality.

Thing is, most of the leaders in Youngstown today are – young. The mayor is 37, the Congressman is 36, and Community Organizer Phil Kidd just turned 30. Kidd says his generation doesn’t really remember those glory days of the steel mills.

“So we don’t remember how things used to be. We’re not bitter about what happened. We are here by choice in Youngstown as young people. And when you bring that to the table, there’s a different type of lens in which you look at Youngstown, I think.”

Kidd says his generation can see that the infrastructure needs to be the right size for the people who live here now.
He says making the necessary changes will open up all kinds of new opportunities for Youngstown.

“And we look at it as almost a blank canvas, in a way, to really be progressive about being as kind of new urban pioneers, in a certain regard. But with respect for the history for this community.”

And that new vision is inadvertently attracting some young people back to the city.

Maggie Pence grew up in Youngstown, and like a lot of people, moved away after college. She needed a job. And some hope for a bright future.

“When I left, I thought, ‘this is just, nothing’s ever going to change.’ It’s always going to be lamenting the steel mills, waiting for the next big savior. It was the waiting, just waiting, to see what was going to happen.”

Today, Pence is swinging her 11-month old daughter at a park just north of downtown Youngstown. She and her husband are renovating what was a boarded up, foreclosed house nearby.

Pence largely credits city leaders for her decision. When she saw their plan, called Youngstown 2010, she decided it was time to move her family back from Brooklyn, New York, to Youngstown.

“Yeah, I mean, seeing 2010 and seeing what they were doing and having make sense to me made me realize that you could come home again, kind-of. I mean, okay, there’s a future.”

The city isn’t sure exactly what it’s going to do with all the new open space – once all the abandoned houses are demolished. Some people are planting trees and neighborhood gardens. Community leaders say the people who live here will have to decide what they want the new city to look like.

A lot of shrinking cities in the Rust Belt will have to figure that out. Sooner or later, shrinking tax bases won’t support all those barely used streets, sidewalks and water lines.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Using Rust to Remove Arsenic From Water

  • Scientists have been using tiny particles of rust to draw arsenic out of water (Source: Roger McLassus at Wikimedia Commons)

You might be surprised to hear that a lot of drinking water has arsenic in it. It’s a problem all over the globe, especially when drinking water comes from deep under the ground. Julie Grant reports that some researchers are using tiny particles – at the nano-scale – and plain old rust, to remove arsenic from the water:

Transcript

You might be surprised to hear that a lot of drinking water has arsenic in it. It’s a problem all over the globe, especially when drinking water comes from deep under the ground. Julie Grant reports that some researchers are using tiny particles – at the nano-scale – and plain old rust, to remove arsenic from the water:

You can’t see, smell, or taste arsenic – but prolonged exposure to it can lead to skin discoloration and even cancer.

Vicki Colvin studies chemistry and nanotechnology at Rice University in Houston.

She says arsenic has a chemical bond with rust – and sticks to it. So they’ve been using tiny particles of rust to draw arsenic out of water in the lab.

Now Colvin says they’re working with a city in Mexico. They’re trying to make what they call nano-rust in the field, so the city can cheaply remove arsenic from its water.

“So, we’ve developed procedures and processes that help people make nano-rust not at a major university with a nanotechnology facilty. But you know literally in a restaurant setting, more maybe in a ceramics factory.”

Colvin says they will be experimenting in Mexico over the next two years.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Turning the Rust Belt Green

  • The creation of 'green-collar' jobs may help the Rust Belt's unemployment problems (Photo by Lester Graham)

The nation’s economy is in decline, and
the middle states that make up the Rust Belt have
been hit particularly hard with job losses. Some
Midwest states have turned to a new type of
manufacturing and the so-called green collar jobs
it creates. Marianne Holland reports:

Transcript

The nation’s economy is in decline, and
the middle states that make up the Rust Belt have
been hit particularly hard with job losses. Some
Midwest states have turned to a new type of
manufacturing and the so-called green collar jobs
it creates. Marianne Holland reports:

Nationwide, just over half the states have passed some sort of laws or incentives geared at
getting green manufacturing jobs. In the nation’s rust belt,
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Ohio already have green policy in place.

Ron Pernick is a co-founder of CleanEdge. That’s a national green manufacturing research
organization. Pernick says those jobs, are in one of the major growth sectors in American
manufacturing. They’re growing at a rate of about 30% each year. In Iowa, property tax abatements are given to green manufacturing. In Illinois, the state has passed laws requiring utilities to get a portion of their energy from wind or solar power. Pernick says public policy translates to more jobs.

“If you think about creating new industry, you can’t export development. You’ve got to
hire local people to put in the wind turbines, to install the solar farms, to put solar on top
of rooftops. And those jobs can never be exported.”

But other states have been slow to change policy to embrace green manufacturing. In Michigan, green energy legislation has been tied up in
the State Senate. An in states like Indiana, there are no laws or business incentives even on the table to attract the green
manufacturing industry.

Indiana State Representative Ryan Dvorak blames the big power companies for lobbying against incentives to create green jobs.

“I’m not sure why they have so much sway in the state with the different legislators but
they don’t want to give up any ground basically. Obviously they make their money by
generating and selling electricity, so any loss in market share, they’re motivated to
stop that legislation.”

The power companies say they’re just looking out for their customers.
Angeline Protegere is a spokesperson for Duke Energy. Protegere says renewable energy is
moving forward without state regulations. She says Duke understands that some day
regulations will come. But she says that will be at a high risk.

“We constantly have to balance our environmental responsibilities with our economic
responsibilities to our customers because they pay for the cost of pollution control
through their bills.”

And the power companies’ lobbyists persuade legislators it’s in the best interests of the people to block incentives for green jobs. Representative Dvorak thinks his colleagues are being misled.

Jesse Kharbanda is with the Hoosier Environmental Council. He says in his state and others that ignore the green jobs opportunity, workers are being left behind.

“We’re obviously in this situation where Indiana has historically had a formidable
manufacturing base and that base has been continuously eroded because of globalization.
We’re not in any time going to fundamentally change Indiana’s economy and so we have
to deal with the labor force as it is. We have a good, technically minded labor base, but
the question is: what sectors are we creating in the state to employ that technical labor
base. And one of them ought to be the green technology sector.”

Kharbanda says it’s a state’s public policy, tax breaks, and other incentives that will attract the
most green collar jobs. Without those incentives, unemployed factory workers in Rust Belt
states will have to hope for some kind of recovery in manufacturing, or take lower paying, service sector jobs.

For The Environment Report, I’m Marianne Holland.

Related Links

Road Salt Damage

  • Overuse of salt can cause damage to concrete, steel and the environment. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Each year about 118,000 people are hurt and 1,300 people are killed on
the roads during snowy and icy conditions. So, snowplows hit the
roads, scraping snow and ice off the surface… and spreading
incredible amounts of salt on highways, streets and roads to help keep
them clear. Lester Graham reports there’s some concern about the long-
term effects of all that salt:

Transcript

Each year about 118,000 people are hurt and 1,300 people are killed on
the roads during snowy and icy conditions. So, snowplows hit the
roads, scraping snow and ice off the surface… and spreading
incredible amounts of salt on highways, streets and roads to help keep
them clear. Lester Graham reports there’s some concern about the long-
term effects of all that salt:


This dump truck is getting ready for a load of salt for a coming
winter storm. Salt helps make icy roads safer. It helps prevent
people from slipping and falling on sidewalks. And… it’s pretty
cheap. But there are problems with salt. Salt pollutes and salt
corrodes.


Mark Cornwell has spent a good deal of his career trying to convince
highway crews that there are better ways to keep things safe and reduce
how much salt is dumped on roads and sidewalks:


“Salt basically damages just about everything it comes in contact
with. Salt moves through concrete and attacks structural steel,
bridges, roads, parking structures; it eats the mortar out of bricks
and foundations. It damages limestone, you know, just on and on and
on.”


So, even though salt is cheap, the damage it does costs a lot. It’s a
hidden cost that’s seldom calculated. Imagine the cost of having to
replace a bridge five years early because the structure is weakened by
salt. And then there are your direct costs: trying to keep salt
washed off your vehicle, and still seeing rust attack your car.


Cornwell says there are some cities and road commissioners working to
reduce the amount of salt spread on the roads. But in most places, the
political pressure to get the salt trucks out early, and laying it on
thick to keep drivers happy, outweighs any concerns about trying to
reduce the salt:


“I’m sure the public expects full attention to snow and ice. And they
have absolutely no understanding, however, of what it costs to provide
that.”


Nobody thought a lot about the damage salt was causing until the last
couple of decades. In a few places, the people responsible for keeping
the roads and walkways safe have been trying to reduce the amount of
salt they use and still keep public safety tops on the list of
concerns:


“So, this is our shops. The brine-maker is right here.”


Marvin Petway is showing me some of the tools in his arsenal to reduce
how much salt is used and still keep things safe. He works at the
University of Michigan, where there’s a goal to cut the amount of salt
used in winter in half. What they’ve learned is using innovative ways
of putting down salt can actually help melt snow and ice faster. One
way is to mix it with water to get the chemicals in salt working
a little more quickly:


“Why use 5 pounds of rock salt when you can use 2 gallons of liquid
salt? We’re able to get better coverage, quicker, better cost, and
we’re putting the material that is effective in reducing ice build-up
directly to the area where we don’t want ice located.”


The crews trying to reduce salt use computer assisted spreaders to
measure out only the salt needed, they mix in less corrosive chemicals
that make salt brine more effective, and even just wetting the salt in
dump trucks with chemicals all help to melt snow and ice faster and in
the end use a lot less salt.


Nothing is going to replace salt altogether, but those efforts can add
up to a lot less salt. That means less destruction of infrastructure.


But there are more reasons for reducing salt than the damage to
roadways and parking decks. Salt also damages the environment:


Mark Cornwell first noticed the effects of salt because he was a
horticulturalist. He’d work all spring, summer and fall planting
shrubs, make the grass green, tending beds of flowers. Then the winter
would come:


“Unfortunately what we were doing in six months of winter was
undoing everything we did in the other six months of the year.
If you’re going to get ahead, you’ve got to solve the problem
and in my mind, that was misuse of salt.”


Use too much salt and it kills plants. And it turns out the cost of
using all that cheap salt could be even greater than anyone guessed.
For decades, it’s been assumed that rain washed away most of the salt, but
studies in Ontario find that a lot of the salt doesn’t get washed
away.


Instead, a good deal of it is percolating down into shallow aquifers.
Researchers predict that in the future we’ll start find salt is getting
into the groundwater that supplies many of the wells where we get our
drinking water.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Farmers Watch for Soybean Rust

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

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

Transcript

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


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


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


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


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


For the GLRC, I’m Tracy Samilton.

Related Links

Defense Department Re-Opens Cold War Barrel Mystery

  • The Department of Defense is working on cleaning up barrels dumped into Lake Superior. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of the Interior)

The Department of Defense will re-open the case of 14-hundred mystery barrels secretly dumped into Lake Superior during the Cold War. The barrels were dumped in an area where the Red Cliff Band of Chippewa Indians have territorial rights. The DOD now has an agreement with the Red Cliff Tribe to investigate the weapons dump site. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson has this report:

Transcript

The Department of Defense will re-open the case of 1400 mystery barrels secretly dumped into Lake Superior during the Cold War. The barrels were dumped in an area where the Red Cliff Band of Chippewa Indians have territorial rights. The DoD now has an agreement with the Red Cliff Tribe to investigate the weapons dump site. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson has this report:


Documents show barrels of weapons scraps manufactured by Honeywell from 1958 to 1962 were secretly dumped by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers a few miles east of the Duluth-Superior harbor.


Red Cliff Environmental Consultant Dave Anderson believes there is an imminent danger to Duluth’s water supply. The barrels are rusting away 100 to 300 feet deep near the city’s water intake. He says he’s found evidence of PCB’s and unidentified ash.


“Right now we know that there is more to these barrels than what has been disclosed in the past. That the barrels are not just scrap steel grenade parts. There are other wastes that are hazardous that are contained in the barrels and we now know that the barrels are leaking some of those substances.”


The DoD has awarded the Red Cliff Tribe a 105-thousand dollar grant to assess and further investigate this 20 mile square site and report the findings in October for possible clean-up.


For the GLRC, I’m Mike Simonson.

Region’s Farmers Brace for Soybean Disease

  • Soybean rust is starting to travel northward in the U.S. It can destroy a large percentage of yield, but researchers say that being prepared can prevent loss of crops. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

A new invasive disease that affects soybeans may be on its
way to states in the Great Lakes region. Experts say it’s a serious disease – but their biggest challenge right now is calming farmers who fear the worst. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:

Transcript

A new invasive disease that affects soybeans may be on its way to states in the Great Lakes region. Experts say it’s a serious disease – but their biggest challenge right now is caling farmers who fear the worst. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:


Soybean rust is a fungus that attacks soybeans. It first appeared in China in the 1920’s. Soybean rust travels easliy and quickly on wind currents. It made its first U.S. appearance in 2004 in the southeast, probably arriving on the back of Hurricane Ivan. Experts say it could make its way to northern states this spring. John Whiteman is Director of the Indiana Soybean Board Research Program. He says he’s fielding a lot of calls from very worried farmers.


“They’ve heard the worst horror stories and they’ve not heard the other side yet. So all they’ve heard is the 80% yield loss, not that it can be controlled and here’s how you can conrol it.”


Whiteman says different types of fungicides can either prevent or kill soybean rust. He says farmers are being told to prepare ahead of time, so they won’t have to face devastating crop losses.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tracy Samilton.

Related Links

New Method Assails Exotic Hitchhikers

A new way to prevent rust in the ballast of ships might also prevent many alien aquatic animals from being transported from port to port. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has details: