Salmon Spawning in Sewage Plant

  • Peter Baranyai directs Wastewater Operations for the Sanitary District of East Chicago, Indiana. The plant's effluent channel looks like a natural stream and has apparently fooled wilflide into thinking so, too. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

You might not expect much good
environmental news to come from
sewage plants, but, believe it or
not, there is some on occasion.
And in one case, that good news
even involves thriving salmon.
Shawn Allee has the story:

Transcript

You might not expect much good
environmental news to come from
sewage plants, but, believe it or
not, there is some on occasion.
And in one case, that good news
even involves thriving salmon.
Shawn Allee has the story:

Sewage plants are often out of sight, out of mind, and people usually like it that way. But people who work at the water treatment plant in East Chicago, Indiana, want everyone to know about an ecological come-back story there.

I’m game. So I meet the plant director Peter Baranyai.

Allee: “You’ve got this strange mix of some really striking natural areas, rivers and streams, but then everything’s kind of dotted by industry as well, and has been for a long time. What kind of industries are we talking about in this region?”

Baranyai: “Basic steel mills, oil refineries, chemical industries also.”

Allee: “So, when they’re talking ‘heavy industry’, they really mean it here?”

Baranyai: “Yes.”

Allee: “What are we looking at here?”

Baranyai: “We’re trying to look at our discharge channel. That’s the effluent from our treatment plant. This pipe here’s a 60-inch pipe.”

Allee: “You can see the water moving out of it pretty quickly.”

The treated wast water is from nearby homes and factories. And when it leaves the pipe, you’d swear it’s a natural stream. Apparently, it’s fooled plenty of critters, including Chinook salmon.

Each Fall, salmon swim from Lake Michigan, past shipping canals, steel mills and chemical factories – just to spawn in the treated waste water.

Baranyai: “They’re not being too cooperative today because I don’t see too much.”

The salmon spawned earlier than normal this year, so, I only find dead salmon on the banks.

Baranyai: “This was a, oh, almost 4-foot chinook salmon.”

Allee: “Or the evidence of it.”

Baranyai: “And he died.”

Allee: “Again, they’re kind of programmed to die after they spawn.”

Baranyai: “Yeah, he died on the rocks here.”

The government introduced Chinook salmon to Lake Michigan decades ago, but for a long time, salmon wouldn’t spawn here, and birds and nearly everything else shied away, too.

Baranyai says one problem was that they used to disinfect water with chlorine.

Baranyai: “It’s a very effective way of disinfecting, but it continues to disinfect downstream. It’s not selective, usually anyhthing that’s alive, it usually kills. It pretty much sterilizes everything. And that’s how most water treatment plants in our country do that, still.”


Baranyai says in the late 80s, things turned around. His plant added better filters, and now, when they disinfect water, they kill bacteria with ultraviolet light, not chlorine. In just a few years, salmon started spawning – right in the plant. Plus, fresh-water sponges grow in the plant, and herons showed up. Word got around.

Roger Klocek was a biologist at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium at the time. He learned the news from a fellow scientist.

Klocek: “I thought he was nuts, literally. What are you talking about?”

Klocek says you have to understand, for a long time people ignored water treatment plants or they expected them to remove only the worst industrial pollutants.

Klocek: “I had no idea that waste water plants themselves could actually contribute to an improved ecology.”


Allee: “Maybe the opposite, they were putting chlorine in the water or bacteria, if they weren’t disinfecting.”

Klocek: “Absolutely, you know we hear constantly that technology is going to save us and I really don’t believe that. I think we put too much stock in that, but it sure is gratifying to see when there is some technology that makes a remarkable improvement.”

Klocek says, too often, people assume industrial areas like East Chicago will always be ecological basket cases.

He says, sure there’s room for improvement, but having one concrete example of something that works? That can give you hope about what nature can do if you give it a chance.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Ten Threats: The American Eel

  • Researchers measuring an American Eel. (Courtesy of United States Department of Agriculture)

Pollution and invasive species are killing off or crowding out native plants and animals,
but for some species, it’s not just one problem, but many problems that are hurting them.
Few species illustrate the dangers of the multiple threats to the Great Lakes as the American
eel. Only fifty years ago, the snake-like fish accounted for half of the biomass in Lake
Ontario. Today, it has all but disappeared. David Sommerstein has that story:

Transcript

In our next report in the series Ten Threats to the Great Lakes we hear about native
species that are in trouble. Our guide in the series is Lester Graham. He says some fish
and organisms are disappearing.


Pollution and invasive species are killing off or crowding out native plants and animals,
but for some species, it’s not just one problem, but many problems that are hurting them.
Few species illustrate the dangers of the multiple threats to the Great Lakes as the American
eel. Only fifty years ago, the snake-like fish accounted for half of the biomass in Lake
Ontario. Today, it has all but disappeared. David Sommerstein has that story:


Before you say, who cares about a slimy critter like an eel, eels are amazing. They spawn
in the Sargasso Sea, the Bermuda Triangle, but no one’s ever caught them in the act.


After they’re born, they’re like tiny glassy leaves. They float thousands of miles north
and west on ocean currents. Then, they wiggle up the St. Lawrence River and into the
Great Lakes. They live up to 20 years in fresh water before they start the long journey to
the Sargasso to spawn.


The problem is their offspring are not coming back. People are worried about the eel, and
those who relied on it for a living feel like they’re disappearing too.


(Sound of waves)


Just ask fisherman John Rorabeck. He grew up here by the lighthouse on Point Traverse,
a peninsula that juts out into northeastern Lake Ontario.


Rorabeck’s been fishing these waters for more than 30 years. Eels were his prime catch.
He points past the lighthouse.


“I remember when I started fishing there were nights on that south shore, the most fish
that would be eels at certain times and there was literally tons of them on that south
shore. Now, you could go back there and you’ll find nothing.”


Rorabeck stopped fishing eels several years ago because it just wasn’t worth it. Now he
dedicates his fishing time to science. He catches specimens for leading eel expert John
Casselman, who examines them in his lab.


“It is truly a crisis. A crisis of concern.”


Casselman’s a scientist at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. In 1980, at a point on
the St. Lawrence River in mid-summer, he counted more than 25,000 eels a day. Now
there are as few as 20 a day.


Casselman ticks off a list of causes. It sounds like a who’s who of environmental threats
to the Great Lakes – over fishing, dammed up rivers, erosion, pollution, invasive species,
climate change. If scientists could sift out how all the factors relate, they could take a big
step in better understanding the Great Lakes delicate ecosystem.


The problem is, Casselman says, there’s no time to wait. In 2003, eel experts from 18
countries made an unusual statement. In what they called the Quebec Declaration of
Concern, they urged more action, not more science.


“I’m a research scientist, and of course I love data. At this point, you don’t want me.
Don’t ask me to explain what’s going on here because by the time I get it figured out, it
may be too late.”


People are starting to do something about it, Casselman says. Several U.S. agencies are
considering giving the eel “rare and endangered” status. More money is going toward
research for fish ladders over dams.


Marc Gaden is spokesman for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.


“We’re committing ourselves, our resources to working to make the recovery of the
species a reality.”


The province of Ontario has closed the eel fishery in its waters for the foreseeable future.


(Sound up at beach)


Fisherman John Rorabeck supports that plan. He stares out across the waters he’s
trawled for decades. He says he’s behind anything to bring the eel back for future
generations.


“And hopefully we can, but I don’t expect to see it in my time. When I…[crying]…when I
think of all the times that we’ve had out in the lake and my forefathers and see what’s
happening here, it breaks you down.”


Rorabeck says when he thinks of the eel nearing extinction, he feels like he and his way
of life are becoming extinct too.


For the GLRC, I’m David Sommerstein.

Related Links

Ten Threats: The Beloved Invader

  • Because alewives are the main source of food for some sport fish, some people forget that they're an invasive species. (Photo courtesy of NOAA Fishery Service)

As we look at the “Ten Threats to the Great Lakes,” we’re spending some time examining the effects of the alien invasive species that have changed the Lakes. One of the first invasive species to arrive in the Great Lakes was the alewife; it’s native to the Atlantic Ocean. It has become the most beloved of all the invasives. That’s because it’s food for the most popular sport fish in the Great Lakes. But in the beginning, the sport fish was introduced to get rid of the alewives. Peter Payette reports:

Transcript

Today we’re continuing our series on Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham is our series guide:


As we look at the “Ten Threats to the Great Lakes,” we’re spending some time examining the effects of the alien invasive species that have changed the Lakes. One of the first invasive species to arrive in the Great Lakes was the alewife; it’s native to the Atlantic Ocean. It has become the most beloved of all the invasives. That’s because it’s food for the most popular sport fish in the Great Lakes. But in the beginning, the sport fish was introduced to get rid of the alewives. Peter Payette reports:


When autumn arrives in Northern Michigan, salmon fishermen line the rivers. The fish, native to the Pacific Ocean, swim upstream to spawn and then die. That’s why Tim Gloshen says they’re not interested in his bait.


“But if you irritate ’em enough and keep putting it in front of them, they’ll snap at it sometimes and you got to be ready when they hit it and set your hook.”


Anglers caught eight million pounds of salmon in Lake Michigan last year. Most of the fish are caught out in the lake.


“I got buddies that are catching couple hundred a year out there. They’re out there twice a week at least, all summer long, you know.”


Tim and his buddies and everyone else who fishes for salmon in the Great Lakes are at the top of the food chain. The money they spend on food, lodging, tackle, and boats figures heavily into decisions about how to manage the Lakes.


But it wasn’t always so.


Pacific salmon were stocked here about forty years ago to control the invading alewives. The native lake trout had just about been wiped out by overfishing and the sea lamprey. With no big predators left, the alewife population exploded.


At one point, it was estimated that for every ten pounds of fish in Lake Michigan, eight were alewives. Occasional die-offs would cause large numbers of alewives to wash up on beaches all over the Great Lakes. Historian Michael Chiarappa says all this was happening as America was feeling the urge to get back in touch with nature.


“And that’s when you get this rise in greater interest in sport fishing, recreational fishing, hunting. Teddy Roosevelt sort of epitomized the spirit of the strenuous life; get back out there and engage nature. It’s good for the soul, it’s good for the body, it’s good for the mind.”


So the salmon was brought in to control the alewife population and transform the Great Lakes into a sport fishing paradise. And it worked. But alewives remained the best food source for the ravenous salmon.


So now a healthy alewife population is seen as a good thing by the states that benefit economically from the recreational fishing. Mark Holey, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says this has caused people to forget alewives are an invasive species.


“If alewives were knocking on the door today, there may be a much different discussion about it. It may be more like the Asian carp.”


How the alewife would compare to Asian carp is unknown, because the Asian carp has been found in the Mississippi River, but not yet in the Great Lakes. What is known is that when alewives are abundant, native fish don’t do well. For example, Holey says biologists used to think PCBs caused many young lake trout to die. Now they know early mortality is mostly due to thiamin deficiency.
Thiamine is a vitamin lacking in lake trout that eat too many alewives.


“From the studies that we’ve been involved with, anywhere, right now, anywhere between thirty to fifty percent of the females that we take eggs from show some… their eggs show some signs of thiamine deficiency. Which means survival of those eggs are impaired.”


In some cases, none of the eggs will survive. So a worse case estimate would be half of the wild lake trout in the Great Lakes can’t reproduce because of alewives. This is why advocates for native fish species have been happy to see the alewife populations decline in recent years. They almost disappeared from Lake Huron.


Mark Ebener is a fisheries biologist for the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority. He says the government agencies that stock salmon and lake trout should stock more than ever to keep pressure on the alewife. Ebener thinks with alewife numbers down, there’s an opportunity to reestablish the native herring as the main prey fish in the Lakes, especially in Lake Huron.


“Saginaw Bay used to have a huge population of lake herring that’s essentially gone. They used to have a tremendous commercial fishery for it, and people used to come from miles around to buy herring there, and everybody in the lower end of the state used to have herring come fall and the springtime when the fishers were fishing, but they’re gone.”


This opportunity to bring herring back might not last much longer. The warm weather this past summer will probably help alewives rebound next year.


For the GLRC, I’m Peter Payette.

Related Links

Can Carp Eggs Get Around Barrier?

  • Some worry that the barrier to protect the Great Lakes from Asian carp may not be as effective as previously imagined. Asian carp eggs can be brought in with ships' ballast water. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

By summer’s end, officials from the Army Corps of Engineers and the
state of Illinois hope to finish an underwater electric barrier in a canal just south
of Chicago. The barrier is designed to repel invasive fish such as the Asian Carp.
But some environmentalists fear the barrier won’t be enough to keep the voracious,
non-native species out of Lake Michigan. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports:

Transcript

By summers end, officials from the Army Corps of Engineers and the state of Illinois hope to finish an underwater electric barrier in a canal just south of Chicago. The barrier is designed to repel invasive fish such as the Asian Carp. But some environmentalists fear the barrier won’t be enough to keep the voracious, non-native species out of Lake Michigan. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports:


Some conservationists worry Asian Carp may someday enter the Great Lakes by simply hitching a ride.


These critics say leaky ships passing through the electric barrier could hold carp eggs inside their ballast tanks and deposit them on the other side. But local officials say that scenario is unlikely.


Steve Stuewe is with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
He says Asian Carp eggs need turbulent water, and if they do find their way into rusty ballast tanks…


“They will probably be dead because they’ve settled out into the bottom of the hull and they’ve either suffocated or they’re down there, mixed in with the iron oxidate. So, they sink. They have to float.”


The research on egg viability is still sketchy, but a federal study of the issue may settle the question once and for all early this summer.


Just as the Asian Carp begin to spawn.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Scientists Keep Tabs on Exotic Crab

  • Sightings of the Chinese mitten crab outside of its native habitat make some scientists uneasy that it will turn into an invasive species. (Photo courtesy of the California Department of Fish and Game)

Biologists are asking people to keep their eyes peeled for another potential invader into the Great Lakes. A Chinese mitten crab was found in the St. Lawrence River last fall. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:

Transcript

Biologists are asking people to keep their eyes peeled for
another potential invader into the Great Lakes. A Chinese mitten
crab was found in the St. Lawrence River last fall. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:


Scientists aren’t sounding the alarm yet. One Chinese mitten crab found near Quebec City doesn’t constitute an invasion. But if they reproduce, the critters could spread quickly.


David MacNeill is a fisheries specialist with New York Sea Grant. He says one was found in Lake Erie in the 1970s, but didn’t proliferate. The mitten crabs spawn in salt water, so they don’t really threaten the upper Great Lakes. But the St. Lawrence River may be better habitat. Regardless, MacNeill says the discovery highlights problems with foreign ships exchanging ballast water before they enter the Great Lakes system.


“Inside ballast tanks on ships, they’re like giant tidal mud flats. When you empty all the water out, there’s this large mud layer. Some of these organisms can burrow into the sediment which is what the mitten crabs do.”


In January, the Coast Guard conceded its ballast discharge rules don’t always work. It said it must find new ways to keep foreign invaders out of the Great Lakes.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.

Related Links

Saving the American Eel

  • Eel fisherman John Rorabeck near his home and fishery on Point Traverse, near Kingston on northeastern Lake Ontario. He says these waters were once practically boiling with eels. One night, he caught 3 tons of eels. Today he's lucky to catch one eel. (Photo by David Sommerstein)

For centuries, the American eel dominated the waters of parts of the Great Lakes. Only fifty years ago, the snake-like fish accounted for half of the biomass of Lake Ontario. Today, it has all but disappeared. Researchers and fishermen see the decline as a shrill warning about changes in climate and the environment. And they say now is the time to do something about it. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:

Transcript

For centuries, the American eel dominated the waters of parts of the Great Lakes. Only
fifty years ago, the snake-like fish accounted for half of the biomass of Lake Ontario.
Today, it has all but disappeared. Researchers and fishermen see the decline as a shrill
warning about changes in climate and the environment. And they say now is the time to
do something about it. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:


Before you say, who cares about a slimy critter like an eel, hear me out. Eels are
amazing.


They spawn in the Sargasso Sea – the Bermuda Triangle. But no one’s ever caught them
in the act.


“There is a mystery that we haven’t solved. We have never seen them spawn.”


After they’re born, they’re like tiny glassy leaves. They float thousands of miles north
and west on ocean currents. Then they wiggle up rivers and streams from Florida to
Quebec.


“The eel is a fish that we should be looking at very closely.”


They live up to 20 years in freshwater before they start the long journey to the Sargasso
to spawn.


The problem is their offspring are not coming back.


“A very important native species of the Great Lakes, that we’re at serious risk of losing.”


As you can hear, a lot of people are worried about the eel, and not just in the Great Lakes.
European eel young are down 99% from the 1970’s. The Japanese eel is down 80%. In
Lake Ontario, the fish is all but gone. And the people who rely on it feel like they’re
disappearing too.


(sound up of waves)


Just ask fisherman John Rorabeck. He grew up here by the lighthouse on Point Traverse,
a peninsula that juts out into northeastern Lake Ontario.


Rorabeck’s been fishing these waters for more than thirty years. Eels were his prime
catch. He points past the lighthouse.


“I remember when I started fishing there were nights on that south shore, the most fish
that was in there would be eels at certain times and there was literally tons of them on
that south shore. Now you could go back and you’ll find nothing.”


He stopped fishing eels three years ago because it just wasn’t worth it.


“That eel is telling man we better smarten up because this is happening all over the
world.”


Now Rorabeck dedicates his fishing time to science. He catches specimens for leading
eel expert John Casselman, who examines them in his lab.


“It is truly a crisis. A crisis of concern.”


Casselman’s a scientist at the Glenora Fisheries Station, run by the Ontario Ministry of
Natural Resources. In 1980, at a point on the St. Lawrence River in mid-summer, he
counted more than 25,000 eels a day. Last year, there were scarcely 20 a day.


Casselman ticks off a host of possible causes – overfishing, dammed-up rivers, erosion,
pollution, invasive species, and perhaps most troubling, a climactic change of cooling
ocean currents.


“There is an interrelationship between what’s going on in the ocean and the recruitment of
eels.”


And he says we’re mostly to blame. The problem is, Casselman and other researchers
don’t know exactly how all the factors relate or which is worse. And they say there’s no
time to find out. Last summer eel experts from 18 countries made an unusual statement.
In what’s now called the Quebec Declaration of Concern, they urged more action, not
more science.


“I’m a research scientist and of course, I love data. At this stage, you don’t want me.
Don’t ask me to explain what’s going on here because by the time I get it figured out, it
may be too late.”


The Great Lakes Fishery Commission has issued an emergency declaration of its own. It
represents commercial fishermen and anglers in the region. Spokesman Mark Gaden
says it’s calling on the U.S. and Canada to do everything they can to reduce eel deaths in
the Great Lakes.


“We’re committing ourselves, our resources to working to make the recovery of the
species a reality.”


Last month, the province of Ontario halted commercial eel fishing for the foreseeable
future.


(sound up at beach)


Fisherman John Rorabeck supports that plan. He stares out across the waters he’s trawled
for decades. He says he’s behind anything to bring the eel back to Lake Ontario for
future generations.


“And hopefully we can. But…I don’t expect to see it in my time. When I… (crying)
…when I think of all the times that we’ve had out in the lake and my forefathers and see
what’s happening here, it breaks you down.”


Rorabeck says when he thinks of the eel nearing extinction, he feels like he and his way
of life are becoming extinct too.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.

Related Links

Preserving World-Class Walleye Fishery

  • Walleye (image courtesy of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission)

Conservation officials say there need to be new restrictions on walleye fishing. Lake Erie is a world-class destination for walleye fishing. But officials say without better conservation, it won’t be in the future. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Aileo Weinmann reports:

Transcript

Conservation officials say there need to be new restrictions on walleye
fishing. Lake Erie is a world-class destination for walleye fishing. But
officials say without better conservation, it won’t be in the future. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Aileo Weinmann reports:


The Canadian province of Ontario and the states around Lake Erie plan to cut
this year’s walleye harvest by 30 percent. Conservation officials say
lowering the catch of the popular sport fish is necessary because the
walleye population is down.


Jim Barta runs charter fishing trips for walleye. He says rough weather in
recent years has damaged a lot of the fish nests of the walleye.


“Cold weather, storms in the Spring, about the time the walleye
are depositing their eggs on the sandbars and in the various reefs where
they spawn — you lose a lot of these nests, a good many of these nests.”


Even with the reduction in the number of walleye fished from the lakes,
conservation officials say the walleye population will still go down during
the next two years. They hope the plan begins to help walleye bounce
back after that.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Aileo Weinmann.

Related Links

Scientists Alarmed Over Eel Disappearance

Scientists are sounding the alarm about what they call a catastrophic decline of the American Eel in the Great Lakes. They say the eel’s fate is a warning sign of overall climate change. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:

Transcript

Scientists are sounding the alarm about what they call a catastrophic decline of the American Eel
in the Great Lakes. They say the eel’s fate is a warning sign of overall climate change. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:


John Casselman is a researcher with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. He says
American Eels used to be to Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River what salmon is to the
Northwest.


“Inshore eels represented half of the total weight of fish inshore, so they were massively abundant
and the Onondaga of the Iroquois Confederacy actually had an eel clan.”


Today there’s only about one eel for every 10 acres in Lake Ontario. The eel spawns in the
Sargasso Sea and migrates into the Great Lakes. While commercial fishing, pollution, and dams
have contributed to the eel’s dramatic decline, Casselman says oceanic climate change may be a
culprit.


“And if we’re not concerned about it, or trying to do something about it, it is at our peril. Maybe
the loss of this eel resource is telling us something that’s a lot bigger and that I think we should be
paying a lot more attention to.”


Concerned scientists and the Great Lakes Fishery Commission have issued emergency
declarations urging the U.S. and Canada to take immediate action.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.

Related Links

City Cooks Up New Compost Recipes

  • A pile of food waste awaits processing at a Duluth, Minnesota composting site. A wide variety of materials arrive each day - anything from unused frozen dinners to sheet rock to bird droppings from a nearby zoo. Photo by Stephanie Hemphill.

Lots of people have a compost pile in the backyard. They throw their grass clippings and kitchen scraps in a pile and let it sit. Eventually it turns into rich black stuff that can be spread on the garden. Many cities around the Great Lakes collect residents’ yard waste and turn it into compost on a bigger scale. In Duluth, Minnesota, they’ve taken it a step further. An industrial-sized compost operation uses some surprising ingredients. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

Lots of people have a compost pile in the back yard. They throw their grass clippings and
kitchen scraps in a pile and let it sit. Eventually it turns into rich black stuff that can be spread
on the garden. Many cities around the Great Lakes collect residents’ yard waste and turn it into
compost on a bigger scale. In Duluth Minnesota, they’ve taken it a step further. An industrial-
sized compost operation uses some surprising ingredients. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Stephanie Hemphill reports:

There’s a steady stream of cars and pickups as people drop off leaves and branches. They’re
piling up their yard waste at the compost site of the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District in
Duluth, Minnesota. The Sanitary District takes care of the trash for Duluth and nearby towns.

At the back, four rows of future compost are cooking in the sun. They’re about 6 feet tall and
half a block long. They were mixed by a master chef of compost, Charlie Hitchcock. He’s about
to cook up a new batch. Today’s mix starts with biodegradable bags of kitchen scraps from
several restaurants.

“It’s a small load today, but it’s food waste and there’s animal hair that’s thrown in from some of
the pet grooming places. A lot of protein and nitrogen in that, I guess.”

Hitchcock consults a laptop computer to create his recipe. He plugs in the weight of the food
waste. The computer program tells him the right proportions of wood chips and leaves to mix in.
It’s aiming for the ideal combination of carbon and nitrogen. Most loads are about half wood
chips.

“Because it aerates it pretty good. And then I just keep punching a number in on the leaves until
I get between a 25-to-1 to a 35-to-1 on a C-N-N ratio, carbon to nitrogen.”

(tractor starts)

The key ingredient that’s loaded in Hitchcock’s mixture is different every day. That’s because the
sanitary district is always trying to divert stuff that would normally go to the landfill. Lately
they’ve been going after some of the garbage itself, not just yard waste. And sometimes that
garbage comes from some exotic places.

(bird sounds from zoo)

Dave Homstad takes care of the birds at the Lake Superior Zoo. He’s giving the parrots some
fresh water.

(parrot chit-chat)

He slides out the bottom of the cage and whisks sawdust and bird droppings into a black plastic
bag.

“The composting stuff goes into a black bag, so that we can keep them separate. And then
anything that can be composted goes in here and then eventually into a dumpster for that
purpose.”

The dumpster gets filled with uneaten food, animal bedding, like straw and sawdust, and animal
dung. At the composting site, the dumpster-load from the zoo might be mixed with scraps from a
coffee shop. A commercial fishing operation brings fish guts. Even sheetrock is ground up to
become compost. The latest addition is waste grain from the elevators on Duluth’s lakefront.

(train sound at elevator)

The Cargill elevator handles 50 million bushels of grain every year.

Roger Juhl manages the operation. He says there’s some spillage when railroad cars have to be
changed from one type of grain to another.

“So we have to clean them out and dump them onto the tracks, and then pick them up and put
them in the dumpster. And that’s where they’ll go to this recycling center.”

Juhl says he’ll probably save some money. He’ll still have to pay the hauler to take the grain
away, but he won’t have to pay for dumping it in the landfill. What’s even better, Juhl says he’ll
be doing something good for the environment.

“Hopefully it’ll be useful for something.”

It’s put to use, all right, in Charlie Hitchcock’s compost mixer.

(compost sound back up)

The mixer’s been turning for 15 or 20 minutes. Hitchcock peers into the barrel. The ingredients
look like chunky dirt, and smell like day-old garbage. He reaches in for a handful.

“I do the squeeze test on it. If you get it packed tight without moisture coming from it, it’s within
the 50% range, which is good.”

Hitchcock is learning how to turn an amazing variety of stuff into compost. Some days he gets a
load of spoiled vegetables from a grocery store. Other times it’ll be outdated frozen dinners.

“When I get a lot of wet pasta, I use some sheetrock and mostly grindings. That’s shredded up
tree branches and limbs that we have. I don’t put leaves in it because the pasta’s so wet, it gets
real gumbo-y.”

After six months in a pile, the compost is ready for customers, like Suzanna Didier.

“I mean, I’m glad they’ve figured out a way for us to decrease the amount of garbage that goes
into the stream, into the waste stream, because obviously that needs to be slowed down a bit. So,
it’s great.”

It’s an expensive operation that doesn’t pay for itself. Officials hope to recoup half their costs by
selling compost. As they get more raw materials, it’ll become more cost effective. Someday,
they hope everyone in Duluth will send their kitchen waste for composting.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Will Trout Coast to Recovery?

A sport fish native to the Great Lakes region is famous for its looks and its size, but overfishing and habitat loss have driven its numbers down. Now, some fish experts are helping the coaster brook trout make a comeback. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

A sport fish native to the Great Lakes region is famous for its looks and its size… but over fishing and habitat loss have driven its numbers down. Now, some fish experts are helping the coaster brook trout make a comeback. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports:


Coaster brook trout, or coasters, cruise the near shore waters of Lake Superior most of their lives, and only swim into rivers to spawn. Male coasters turn vibrant red when they’re spawning. And the trout grow much larger than their inland relatives… an 8 pound fish is a trophy.


But coasters are rare, so Trout Unlimited is working with other scientists to boost their numbers. In the last 2 years, biologists have released baby coasters in 4 rivers in the Upper Peninsula.


Bill Deephouse is president of Trout Unlimited’s Copper Country chapter.


“You can’t protect all of these little creatures. So you put… and this certainly isn’t exact… but you put 10,000 fish in, you hope a few thousand of them make it. Maybe a few hundred make it to adulthood.”


The biologists say it may be some time before fishermen will feel one of the reintroduced coasters on the end of their lines. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.