Tag: spawning

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.

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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.

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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.

Brighter Future for Native Trout

Anglers in Lake Superior are looking forward to the return of the coaster brook trout. The native trout was fished nearly to extinction in the early 1900s. New efforts to help the remaining populations rebound are attracting the interest of fisheries managers around the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill has the story:

Transcript

Anglers in Lake Superior are looking forward to the return of the coaster brook trout. The native trout was fished nearly to extinction in the early 1900s. New efforts to help the remaining populations rebound are attracting the interest of fisheries managers around the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:


The French River tumbles into Lake Superior about 15 miles from Duluth. It’s a popular fishing spot, and people are catching rainbow trout. Rainbows are not native to Lake Superior. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources stocks them from the fish hatchery across the road.


People used to catch coaster brook trout here, but
there aren’t many of the fish around anymore.


“I haven’t seen one of those in years.”


“There aren’t any coaster brook trout. You’re dreaming.”


“‘You very seldom get them, but when you do they’re nice.’ Hemphill: ‘Why are they nice?’  ‘They’re so nice and clean, the colors are so beautiful.’ Hemphill: ‘Are they good eating?’ ‘Oh-h-h, there isn’t any better.'”


For a freshwater fish, coasters are colorful. Their sides are sprinkled with bright red dots. Their fins are edged with a bright white line. When they spawn, their bellies turn iridescent orange.


They hatch in rivers, and then swim downstream to grow up in the lake. They return to the river to spawn.


There used to be lots of coasters around Lake Superior, and in northern Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. They were a popular sport fish. In the 1850s, people came from all over to catch them. By the early 1900s coasters had practically disappeared.


Don Schreiner is the Department of Natural Resources fisheries supervisor in this part of Minnesota. He says coasters are fairly easy to catch. And that’s why they almost disappeared.


“There were no roads up here, people came in by boat, they came in by train. There’s accounts of people standing on the shore and on the riverbank and catching hundreds of brook trout.”


After the fishermen, lumberjacks came. They cut down the big trees that shaded the streams. They floated timber down the rivers, eroding the banks. Now these rivers are much more susceptible to flooding and sedimentation. The coaster brook trout need a rocky bottom, not a mud bottom, to spawn.


Then the state began stocking other fish here, so anglers would have something to catch. Pacific salmon, European brown trout. They compete with the few native brook trout that still survive in Lake Superior streams.


Some people want to try to restore the native brook trout. But others like to catch the big salmon, and the feisty rainbows. Don Schreiner says the DNR has to balance those competing demands.


“I think everybody cares about coaster brook trout as long as it doesn’t cost them anything personally. If I have to give up my favorite species in favor of a coaster brook trout, I might not be willing to do that. That’s the sort of thing we see.”


Angling restrictions imposed in the last few years have helped the trout. Schreiner says it’s possible they’ll bounce back, if people leave them alone, but improving the habitat is also key. That could take 50 years.


Some groups are trying to push things along a little faster.


The Red Cliff Tribal Fish Hatchery near Bayfield Wisconsin specializes in rearing coaster brook trout. Every year a million eggs are hatched here.


“Inside this building is where we keep our adult brood stock fish.”


Greg Fischer is the hatchery manager. He says they raise some fish for a year and a half before releasing them. Workers mark these fish to keep track of them in the wild.


“We have fin clipping parties where for several days we fin-clip each one of the fish, and when we’re stocking anywhere from 50 to 80,000 of these larger fish a year, that’s a lot of marking”


Some coasters from the hatchery might find a home at Whittlesey Creek near Ashland, Wisconsin. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is turning Whittlesey Creek into a refuge for coaster brook trout.


Biologist Lee Newman says it’s a promising spot for spawning. Springs seep up through the gravel bottom. That provides the eggs with a constant flow of oxygen. Newman wants to plant eggs and very young fry directly over the springs. That’s what they did on the Grand Portage Chippewa reservation in Minnesota. And Newman says it worked there.


“We’ve captured pairs of adults that were radio tagged and captured on their spawning beds, and two years later catch the exact same pair on the exact same spawning beds, indicating that they are returning precisely to their home locations.”


Newman says when the fish are very young they can imprint on the chemistry of the stream, and find their way back years later.


Biologists still have a lot of questions about how to help the coaster brook trout. But right now, at least, its future looks a little brighter. 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.

Restocking Program Restores Walleye

At one time, the St. Lawrence River was home to some of the best walleye fishing in the world. But by the mid-1980’s, the spawning runs that once brought thousands of fish to this region had dropped off dramatically. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, a group of local fisherman decided to tackle the problem themselves:

Annual Sturgeon Spawn

Northeast Wisconsin is home to one of North America’s largest sturgeon populations. Every Spring, those sturgeon swim north from Lake Winnebago to spawn. The fish are huge, prehistoric-looking creatures. Some of them are more than six feet long and weigh a hundred pounds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nick Van Der Puy was there and has this report: