Reforming School Food Systems

  • USDA undersecretary of food and nutrition, Kevin Concannon, says today former military generals are concerned because many 17-24 year olds aren’t healthy enough to qualify for military service. (Photo courtesy of the US Navy)

These are challenging times for people who run school lunch programs. A national TV show this spring took on the school food system, and now leaders in Washington are debating how much money the country should spend on childhood nutrition. Julie Grant reports.

Transcript

These are challenging times for people who run school lunch programs. A national TV show this spring took on the school food system, and now leaders in Washington are debating how much money the country should spend on childhood nutrition. Julie Grant reports.

The national school lunch program started after World War II because the military was concerned. Many young men had been rejected from the draft because of childhood malnutrition.

Kevin Concannon is undersecretary of food and nutrition at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

He says today former military generals are getting concerned again. That’s because many 17-24 year olds aren’t healthy enough to serve.

“Twenty-seven percent of them in that age group are so overweight, they don’t qualify for military service.”

And part of the reason so many have gone from being malnourished from not enough food, to malnourished from too much junk food, is the school meals program.

Everyone from first lady Michelle Obama to celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is pushing for improvements in the foods served in schools. Chef Oliver spent three months in Huntington, West Virginia for his program Food Revolution – because it was dubbed the unhealthiest city in America.

In this scene, he started by working in an elementary school cafeteria – and goes with one of the workers to check out the freezer.

“The freezer was just an aladdin’s cave of processed crap….So this is pizza for breakfast, and then they have it for lunch tomorrow?”

“I would not ever feed that to my kids, ever.”

“I’m not getting a good feeling about this…”

“Do you honestly think that we could go from raw state every day?”

“Yes.”

In his efforts to improve the food in this one school district, we see how many barriers there are to doing something as simple as getting kids to eat vegetables and fruits.

There’s resistance from cafeteria workers, the school administrators, the parents, and the kids.

When Oliver serves roasted chicken instead of chicken nuggets, most of it ends up in the trash. And when the schools do start using his menus, more and more parents send their kids in with brown bag lunches – many filled with candy and potato chips.

Kevin Concannon at the USDA says the government cannot do anything about the lunches parents send with their kids. But it can do something about the food served by schools. And he says there is a big push right now to serve healthier foods.

“The direction we’re going in is more fruits, more vegetables, less fat, less sugar, less sodium.”

But, there’s a catch:

“Better, healthier foods cost more.”

So President Obama is proposing adding 10-billion dollars to school food programs over the next decade. The Senate is looking at adding a little less than half that – 4.5 billion. Either way, Concannon says it’s more money than has ever been added to the program.

“It’s no longer a political climate of ‘I’m OK, if you’re OK.’ I think it’s more a realization that this affects health costs, this affects national security, and many of these health conditions are preventable if we get people to eat healthier and to exercise.”

Chef Jamie Oliver agrees more money is needed to provide healthier foods in schools. But right now, he says the government is part of the problem. It offers schools cheap processed food for almost nothing.

“The donated food that you get that is so cheap that you can’t resist it. And it’s from the government. The government is saying ‘We want change.’ ‘Here, why don’t you have some really lovely, cheap processed food.”

The USDA says the government food being sold to schools has improved over the years. But many people say it hasn’t improved enough to ensure that most U.S. students are offered nutritious meals every day.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Mapping Underground Rivers

  • DNR hydrologist Jeff Green consults a high-resolution topographic map to figure out which sinkhole is ahead of him. The trees and grass that grow up around the sinkhole form a buffer, allowing water to soak into the soil and filtering any pollutants before it reaches the aquifer.(Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)

Spring in the north is a time of melting snow and running water. It’s the best time of year for people who study underground water flows. Those underground rivers are important, especially where surface water easily drains into bedrock. It can quickly carry pollution long distances. Hydrologists try to map these underground rivers to help protect fragile ecosystems. As Stephanie Hemphill reports, the first step in making these maps is a process called dye tracing.

Transcript

Spring in the north is a time of melting snow and running water. It’s the best time of year for people who study underground water flows. Those underground rivers are important, especially where surface water easily drains into bedrock. It can quickly carry pollution long distances. Hydrologists try to map these underground rivers to help protect fragile ecosystems. As Stephanie Hemphill reports, the first step in making these maps is a process called dye tracing.

When the snow is melting in the woods and fields, Jeff Green wants to know where it’s going.

“We’re going to hike back to two springs.”

Green is a hydrologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and an expert in the limestone geology of Southeast Minnesota.

Green climbs a fence and splashes through a stream that’s flooding a pasture. The stream is bordered by a natural wall of limestone.

Melting snow seeps into the limestone. It runs down vertical cracks to bigger horizontal openings that look like miniature caves. Jeff Green calls these “conduits,” and some are three inches wide.

“You can imagine a pipe that big — water would move very fast, like we’re seeing. So these conduits are what we’re dye tracing.”

Green has traipsed out to this pasture to put what he calls a “bug” in a spring. The ‘bug’ is a small mesh bag about the size of a cellphone, packed with charcoal. The charcoal will capture a dye that he’ll pour into melting snow in a sinkhole a few miles away. He’ll do this in several different spots.

By tracing the paths of different colors of dye, he’ll learn the sources of the water that feeds each spring. That will help him make what he calls a springshed map.

We slog across a corn field that’s dotted with small groves of trees. They’re growing around miniature canyons, about 20 feet deep. Here, you can see how this honeycombed water highway works, and this is where Jeff Green will pour the first dye.

“This is a place where there was a conduit, an opening in the limestone.”

Green climbs down carefully into the crevasse.

“Listen! … All right!”

He’s found some running water.

“Water’s running right here. I don’t know where it’s going but it’s going someplace. So I’m going to try pouring dye here.”

He pours a cup or so of a bright red fluorescent dye into the snow.

Green marks the spot with a GPS unit. This is a place where surface water and groundwater meet.

“That snow-melt is surface water, it’s going into this sinkhole and it’s becoming groundwater as you’re listening to it.”

That means what happens here on the land directly affects the quality of the groundwater.

“In this case, it’s pretty good, you’ve got conservation tillage, lots of corn stalks left to keep the soil from eroding, and then you’ve got grass, permanent cover, around the sinkholes. So this is actually really good.”

There are wonderful trout streams around here. The map Green is making will help protect those streams by pinpointing the source of the water that feeds them.

In a day or two, Green will check the “bugs” he put in the springs, and find out exactly where the dye from this sinkhole went.

He usually finds water traveling one-to-three miles underground before it surfaces.

When the springshed map is finished, he’ll share it with local governments, farmers, and people who want to protect the water in this landscape.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Salt in the American Diet (Part 2)

  • Health professionals often work to reduce their patients salt intake to reduce high blood pressure. Should the government get involved too? (Photo by James Gathany for the US CDC)

New research shows that Americans’ health
would benefit dramatically if we ate less
salt. But some people say it’s not the
salt in the saltshaker that’s the
problem. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

New research shows that Americans health would benefit dramatically if we ate less salt. But some people say it’s not the salt in the saltshaker that’s the problem. Julie Grant reports:

Darryl Bosshardt comes from a salt family. His grandfather started mining salt on their farm in central Utah. When Bosshardt hears about a new study that shows 100-thousand American lives could be saved each year if everyone reduced their salt intake by just a half teaspoon – he cringes.
He says salt is being given a bad name.

“And the challenge is, how we define salt.”

Most of the salt today all looks the same – perfectly pour-able, uniform bright white grains. It’s pure sodium and chloride, but Bosshardt, whose family owns the Real Salt Company, says it’s not the same as naturally occurring sea salt.

“Sea water occurs with many trace minerals. Over 50 to 60 trace minerals. It doesn’t occur, the salt in sea water doesn’t occur, as pure sodium and chloride.”

Bosshardt says those trace minerals help the body to process sodium, but most salt today looks perfect because the trace minerals have been taken out. He says when our bodies lack the minerals needed to process sodium; it raises blood pressure, which can lead to heart problems.

There are some books by holistic doctors that make these kinds of claims,but there’s not much science to prove this.

Most doctors today say salt is salt; sodium chloride. Our bodies need it, but not as much as much as most Americans are eating.

Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo is a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California in San Francisco. She’s lead author of that new study on salt – the one that finds Americans could reduce deaths from heart disease by 100-thousand just by slightly reducing salt consumption:

“I don’t think we’re saying salt is bad and one of these other types of salt would be good. I think the newer types of salt that are on the market might have a lower sodium content for the taste that they have and so that would certainly be potentially beneficial.”

But Bibbins-Domingo says most Americans only get 6-percent of their sodium from their own saltshakers. The rest comes from processed foods and restaurants. So buying expensive sea salts with those trace minerals isn’t going to make much difference to most people. She says the problem is that salt is ubiquitous – people don’t even realize they’re eating it:

“If you start out with a healthy bowl of cereal with some milk, you’ve already consumed quite a bit of salt right there. If you have that healthy turkey sandwich or tuna sandwich, you have a bit of salt right there. If you have the marinara sauce with the pasta, you have salt there. So you realize that there are so many different ways, without you choosing items that we might clearly associate with a high sodium content, that there are a lot of places that we’re all consuming salt.”

Bibbins-Domingo supports efforts like the one in New York City. There Mayor Michael Bloomburg is urging food manufacturers to reduce the salt in their foods by 25% over the next five years.

Mark Kurlansky thinks it’s a terrible idea. He wrote a book called “Salt.” When laws curb smoking – that’s one thing. But salt is something different:

“You have to deal with the fact that people like salt. There isn’t the moral imperative of cigarettes because there isn’t a problem of second hand salt. If you don’t want to eat salt and the guy at the next table wants to eat it, it’s not going to affect you. It becomes an issue of government messing around with individual choice.”

But most people don’t realize they’re making that choice – there’s just so much salt in all the foods they buy. Other countries, such Finland and England, have worked with food manufacturers to lower salt content. In the UK, they cut sodium in foods by 10-percent. And researchers say the public didn’t even notice. They’re still studying to see if it’s actually improved health.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Salt in the American Diet (Part 1)

  • Dr. Bibbins-Domingo says the health savings of reducing salt are comparable to cutting the number of smokers in half. (Photo by Paul Goyette)

If you read nutrition labels on food packages, you might be surprised by how much sodium there is in a lot of foods.
Some researchers say all that salt is causing a plethora of health problems – and they want the government to force food manufacturers to lower the salt content. Julie Grant reports.

Transcript

If you read nutrition labels on food packages, you might be surprised by how much sodium there is in a lot of foods.
Some researchers say all that salt is causing a plethora of health problems – and they want the government to force food manufacturers to lower the salt content. Julie Grant reports.

When Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo sees patients with high blood pressure, she advises them to cut back the on the salt.

She says they often return to the office – happy to announce that they’ve cut out fast food and processed snacks.

“AND THEN I ASK THEM TO TELL ME WHAT THEY’RE EATING AND I AM AWAYS BLOWN AWAY WHEN THEY COME BACK WITH THESE NICE HEALTHY VEGETABLE SOUPS THAT ARE CHOCKED FULL OF SALT. AND SO ALL THE THINGS THAT THEY DON’T REALIZE ARE HIGH IN SALT ARE ACTUALLY STILL THERE IN THEIR DIET.”

Bibbins Domingo is associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California in San Francisco. She’s also lead author of a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers at Stanford and Columbia University Medical Centers co-authored the study.

They did a computer simulation – to see what would happen if every American reduced their salt intake by a half teaspoon a day. That’s 3 grams.

“WHAT WE FOUND THAT IS IF WE WERE ABLE TO REDUCE SALT IN THE U-S DIET BY 3 GRAMS PER DAY, WE WOULD ANTICIPATE 100-THOUSAND FEWER DEATHS EACH YEAR, 100-THOUSAND FEWER HEART ATTACKS, AND MORE THAN 100-THOUSAND FEWER CASES OF NEW HEART DISEASE.”

Bibbins-Domingo says the health savings of reducing salt are comparable to cutting the number of smokers in half.

But not everybody puts that much stock in the new study.

Michael Alderman is a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He says the government shouldn’t act so quickly based on this new study:

“WELL, IT’S INTERESTING THAT IT’S CALLED A STUDY, WHICH I THINK SORT OF SUGGESTS THAT THERE ARE REAL OUTCOMES AND REAL PEOPLE THAT WERE STUDIED. IN FACT, OF COURSE, WHAT IT IS A SIMULATION, A MATHEMATICAL MODELING.”

Alderman says there are lots of different findings when it comes to sodium consumption. And some show reducing salt intake could have actually have negative health effects:

“WE KNOW THAT REDUCING SODIUM INTAKE, BY AN AMOUNT SUFFICIENT TO REDUCE BLOOD PRESSURE, ALSO INCREASES SYMPATHETIC NERVE ACTIVITY, IT INCREASES RESISTANCE TO INSULIN…”

If we already ate low salt diets, the researchers in this latest salt study say those concerns might be valid. But Dr. Bibbins-Domingo says salt consumption in the U.S. is higher than is recommended, and it’s on the rise.

But she says there are high levels of salt in so many foods, it’s hard to avoid. Cereal. Bread. Lunch meat. Pasta Sauce.

And she says consumers can’t really reduce salt consumption without some changes by food manufacturers.

“RIGHT NOW THERE ARE NO CHOICES THAT ARE REALLY AVAILABLE THAT MIGHT BE LOWER IN SALT. I THINK THAT’S WHERE THE EFFORTS WITH THE FOOD MANUFACTURERS ARE ABOUT REALLY MAKING A RANGE OF CHOICES SO WE CAN EAT LOWER SALT, WHICH IS VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE RIGHT NOW.”

Some governments are responding. New York City has already started urging food manufacturers and restaurant chains to lower the salt in their foods by 25-percent over the next five years. Bibbins-Domingo says California is considering salt limits in foods the state buys for schools, prisons and other public institutions.

She also wants the Food and Drug Administration to require food makers to alert consumers when foods are high in salt.

In the meantime, Bibbins-Domingo advises her patients to look at food labels – and really look at the sodium content – so they know what they’re getting.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Solar Panel Prices Drop

  • Experts say one of the main reasons solar is cheaper is because of Spain. (Photo courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

There’s a big push to find alternative sources of energy. Problem is, a lot of alternative energy is just too darn expensive. The cost of solar energy, however, is on the decline. Jennifer Guerra reports:

Transcript

There’s a big push to find alternative sources of energy. Problem is, a lot of alternative energy is just too darn expensive. The cost of solar energy, however, is on the decline. Jennifer Guerra reports:

The price of solar panels took a huge drop this year.

Experts say one of the main reasons solar is cheaper is because of Spain.

The country is a big buyer of solar panels, or what are called PV modules, largely because Spain offers generous incentives for people who buy them.

Galen Barbose is with a federal research lab in Berkley, California. He says, because of the economic crisis, Spain had to slash those incentives.

“And so demand in Spain dropped fairly significantly. And so what we’ve seen over the past year is a glut in the global supply of PV modules. And that has led to a fairly significant drop of the wholesale price of PV modules.”

The cost of solar still isn’t on par with conventional energy, but Barbose says things are headed in that direction.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

Related Links

Green Crime: Stealing Solar Panels

  • Solar panels were recently stolen off the community rec center in Carbondale, Colorado. The building is one of the greenest building in the state. (Photo courtesy of Lynn Burton)

Solar panels are expensive and
increasingly in demand. And now,
many communities are learning of
their solar array’s value the hard
way – they’re being stolen. Conrad
Wilson tells up about this new type
of “green crime:”

Transcript

Solar panels are expensive and
increasingly in demand. And now,
many communities are learning of
their solar array’s value the hard
way – they’re being stolen. Conrad
Wilson tells up about this new type
of “green crime:”

Solar panels are expensive and they’re increasingly in demand throughout the
world, so it sands to reason solar panels have become an attractive target for
criminals.

Recently, 30 panels were stolen from one of the “greenest” buildings in Colorado.
Ninety solar panels valued at $135,000 were swiped off a waste water treatment
plant outside San Francisco.

Monique Hannis is a spokesperson for the Solar Energy Industries Association.
She says, over the last year, solar theft has become a greater concern.

“It’s really just emerged as an issue we need to be watching, really, in the last
year. And the reason is, as solar becomes more prevalent and people
understand the value of the solar panels, it’s just like any other target for theft.”

Currently the group doesn’t track the crimes, but since more panels are
disappearing Hannis says they’ll likely start.

This type of “green crime” is nothing new in developing countries. Lori Stone is
international program manager for Solar Energy International. It’s a Colorado-
based nonprofit that trains students world-wide for careers in the solar industry.
Stone says in some cases the solar panels are gone just days after they’re
installed.

“If somebody really wants to steal solar panels, it’s pretty hard to keep them from
doing it. You know, there’s some new things that are coming out now with ways
to lock them and stuff, but they’re costly and so a lot of these developing country
systems, solar home systems, are pretty easy to take.”

In Kenya, last September, thieves unsuccessfully tried to swipe solar panels on
the house belonging to President Obama’s 86 year-old step-grandmother.

As the solar industry becomes more established, security is gearing up. It’s
becoming part of installing a solar array.

The Solar Industry’s Hannis says manufactures are making things harder for
thieves by adding tracking numbers as part of a recycling program.

“This same system could be used to at least track the location of panels, the
rightful owner of panels going forward, similar to a VIN number of a car.”

Hannis says consumers should be wary of purchasing panels from online sites
such as eBay or Craigslist because they could be buying stolen panels.

To ward off thefts, some go so far as to post night watchmen. Other larger arrays
are equipped with cameras and fences. But there’re also more affordable
options.

Bryce Campbell is president of Bryce Fastener Company, an Arizona based
business that specializes in a unique type of security bolt that acts like a key. The
bolts cost about two dollars per panel.

“The solar industry is starting to say, ‘Hey, what do we do?’ Ha ha. Are we going
to up security systems up here, cameras? Not really effective in places where
most of these solar arrays are laid out.”

Campbell says solar companies began contacting him about a year and a half
ago. Now he gets orders daily.

For Campbell, it makes sense considering people are parking thousands of
dollars on roof-tops and in fields.

For The Environment Report, I’m Conrad Wilson.

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Stimulus Dollars for Your House

  • A 1.4 ton geothermal heat pump unit at an elementary school. Stimulus credits did boost sales of geothermal systems – the most efficient systems out there. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

The Cash for Clunkers program is
not the only government incentive
for energy efficiency. The stimulus
package has incentives to make homes
more energy efficient. Mark Brush
took a look into the bigger part of
the tax credits – new home heating
and cooling systems:

Transcript

The Cash for Clunkers program is
not the only government incentive
for energy efficiency. The stimulus
package has incentives to make homes
more energy efficient. Mark Brush
took a look into the bigger part of
the tax credits – new home heating
and cooling systems:

Homeowners can get 30% of the cost of a new heating or cooling system refunded on their taxes. For most systems the government caps the refund at $1,500.

Trade groups say the credits didn’t do much for air conditioning sales this summer. They say the types of air conditioning systems eligible for the credit are just too expensive.

But energy efficient furnaces cost a lot less – so trade groups do expect the tax credits to boost furnace sales.

Francis Dietz is with the Air Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute. He says the credits did boost sales of geothermal systems – the most efficient systems out there.

“That was a bright spot. That is a 30% uncapped tax credit. So basically a homeowner who has a geothermal heat pump installed can get back, as a credit, 30% of the cost of that.”

That’s a big help – because geothermal systems can cost between $15,000 to $28,000 to install.


For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Greenovation: Whole House Fan

  • Matthew Grocoff says a whole house fan gives the same comfort as you would have with an air conditioning system. (Photo courtesy of Greenovation TV)

Energy efficiency is on the mind
of a lot of homeowners. They’re
starting to question everything
about their homes, even the need
for air conditioning. Lester
Graham met with some homeowners
and an energy-efficiency expert
to talk about a different approach
to cooling a house:

Transcript

Energy efficiency is on the mind
of a lot of homeowners. They’re
starting to question everything
about their homes, even the need
for air conditioning. Lester
Graham met with some homeowners
and an energy-efficiency expert
to talk about a different approach
to cooling a house:

For some people, air-conditioning just feels a little unnatural. I mean, it’s a refrigerated room, right?

There are older ways of cooling a house that are cheaper and use a lot less electricity.

Matthew Grocoff is with Greenovation TV. His website suggests all kinds of ways to make homes more green.

We met at a house in a tree-lined neighborhood of century-old homes in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

(sounds of house and stairs)

He wanted to show me an idea that’s like throwing open the windows and pulling in a cool summer breeze.

It’s called a whole house fan.

Grocoff: “We’re at the home of Jacinta Beehner and Thore Bergman. Thore actually installed this fan himself. It cost about $250 – about $9500 less than the quote that they got to install an air conditioning system in their house. And, this summer, they have not had to turn on their window units at all.”

Now Thore is not a carpenter. He’s a university researcher who studies monkey vocalizations. But, he decided he’d try to install the big fan in his ceiling on his own.

Bergman: “It was fairly easy. It took a couple hours. The tricky thing was – we have an older house that had layers of plaster and wood in the ceiling. So, cutting through that to make the hole took a little more work that it might in some houses. But it wasn’t too bad.”

Beehner: “I have to admit, I didn’t really believe that maybe he could install it himself. And yet, he did a great job. And I am the biggest fan of the whole house fan.”

Grocoff: “So, you’ve got the Beehner-Bergman fan club here. And this is interesting, because the goal, for most homeowners, is to get the house to a comfortable 72 degree temperature. And, it’s kind of strange that when it’s 65 degrees outside, and it’s 80 degrees inside your house, that we’re turning on an air conditioning unit when the air outside is actually colder than the air conditioning unit.”

(sound of fan turning on)

Bergman: “One drawback is the noise. Which, we’ve gotten used to. We kind of like it for sleeping – it blocks some of the street noise. We’re standing right underneath it, and it’s kind of hard to talk.”

Beehner: “But, we also have a baby. So the whole house fan serves as white noise, which really helps us move around upstairs while he’s asleep.”

Grocoff: “Those people who are not looking for that white noise sound, like Jacinta and Thore are for their baby, they’re going to be able to get something that’s quieter, more efficient, more insulated, that’s going to be virtually silent, at the higher price points.”

There have been some surprises along the way.

Jacinta says, you have to keep in mind – anything in the night air will be drawn into the house.

Beehner: “One night, we actually did turn it on, and within about one minute, our entire house was filled with the smell of skunk.

Grocoff: “So, if you’ve got really good, deep skunk smell, you know the fan is working. Another possible drawback is, with the air, you’re bringing in any kind of dust, pollen, anything else like that.”

But, Grocoff says, overall, this big sorta-box fan in the ceiling really pulls the hot air out of the house and pulls the cool air from outdoors into the house.

Now, these fans don’t work everywhere.

If you live in an extremely humid area, or a region where it never really cools down at night or in the morning, it might not be a good fit.

But for areas that enjoy cooler mornings and evenings in the summer, Grocoff says this is a good alternative.

Grocoff: “With a whole house attic fan, you’re going to get the same comfort as you would with an air conditioning system. But, on a dollar-for-dollar basis, the cost for running an air conditioning system is 20 cents to 30 cents every hour that you have that turned on. For a whole house attic fan, you’re talking about a penny to a nickel an hour.”

There are all kinds of designs besides the big box fan types.

You can go to a home improvement store, your heating and cooling installer, or do some research online at greenovation.TV or just type in whole house fan in Google. You’ll find plenty of places wanting to sell you there version of a newly popular old idea.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Tax Incentives Put Solar Within Reach

  • Eric Lindstrom, Vice President of Cannon Design, stands next to the building's 140 new solar panels (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)

Buying a solar system for your home still is not as simple or inexpensive as say picking up a new water heater. But solar energy advocates argue that the systems are affordable and obtainable for just about everyone – right now. Joyce Kryszak checked out that claim:

Transcript

Buying a solar system for your home still is not as simple or inexpensive as say picking up a new water heater. But solar energy advocates argue that the systems are affordable and obtainable for just about everyone – right now. Joyce Kryszak checked out that claim:

You might say that sunlight is a trade mark for Cannon Design. The Western New York based firm designs some of the most solar friendly buildings in the world. But only now is Cannon using the sun for its own building.

Eric Lindstrom is Vice President of the company. He says it’s what their environmentally savvy clients expect.

“You know there’s a huge P.R. factor here that we can bring our clients in and say, you know, this is what we’re recommending to you, but we’ve done it ourselves and it works. That we didn’t just read it in a magazine somewhere and say this is what you should be doing.”

Lindstrom takes us up on the roof of the company’s building to have a look at the new system.

Up here we find solar panels. 140 of them. They’re stretched out from edge to edge, soaking up the rays.

Lindstrom says they generate about 5% of the energy the building needs. But he says even at that small percentage the company will recoup the roughly $17,000 investment in about three years.

The system’s total price tag is actually about $170,000. But Cannon Design got corporate tax credits and incentives that covered roughly 90%. After the pay-back period, Linstrom says the company will actually pocket money.

Back in the building they can watch the savings add up on the inverter meters inside. That got Lindstrom thinking. He got a bid on a system for his home. He’s decided against it for now because the payback would take about eight years. You see, businesses get more tax breaks than homeowners.

But some people say the payback time can be less. And sometimes it just doesn’t’ matter to them.

Joan Bozer was at the American Solar Energy Society Conference held in Buffalo, New York. Bozer was showing off pictures of her home’s $30,000 solar system. It cost her half that after incentives. The payback will take a while—about eight years. But Bozer says that’s okay.

“Because it doesn’t make any difference to me if it’s five years or ten years what the payback period is. I want the solar panels, like people in their house they put on the roof they want, or they put on what they want and this is what we want – solar panels on the roof. That’s how we want to do it.”

But as green-minded as she is, Bozer admits that federal and state incentives gave her the final push.

While everybody can take advantage of recent federal tax credits, state incentives vary. Some are generous, and some offer homeowners nothing. Some local governments are offering low-interest loans on top of the federal and state incentives.

Neal Lurie is with the Solar Society. Lurie says incentives are creating demand and that’s driving down the cost of solar systems.
He says systems cost about 30% less than last year.

Lurie says with lower prices and tax incentives, some homeowners can have solar without much – or no – money out of pocket.

But how soon will solar catch on with the masses? Lurie predicts in less than six years.

“We’ll see solar technology a low-cost provider of electricity, even lower priced than fossil fuels without incentives. I think that when that happens we’re going to see it go from being something that people are looking at and starting to do to something that is truly common-place, much more than people may actually expect today.”

Others think solar will really take off in just three years. Solar installers are already gearing up. Some say they’ll double their workforce by the end of this year.

For The Environment Report – I’m Joyce Kryszak.

Related Links

Stopping Septic Seepage

  • Dan Jacin stands by his newly landscaped sewage tanks (Photo by Julie Grant)

There’s an underground threat to water that’s making it harder to clean up for drinking. Julie Grant reports – it all
depends on where you live and whether the people who live nearby are maintaining their septic systems:

Transcript

There’s an underground threat to water that’s making it harder to clean up for drinking. Julie Grant reports – it all
depends on where you live and whether the people who live nearby are maintaining their septic systems:

More than one of every four homes uses its own septic
system.

That means it’s not hooked up to a city sewer line. When a
toilet is flushed, the water doesn’t go to a central treatment
plant. Instead, it drains into a septic system buried in the
yard. It’s supposed to decompose using a natural process to
clean it up before going back to the environment.

The problem is – those septics don’t get enough attention.

When they fail, as about one-in-five does, that untreated
toilet water winds up in rivers, lakes and wells. In a lot of
places, that untreated sewage drains into our sources of
drinking water.

“Well obviously, there’s potential health risks, that’s the
number one.”

Nate McConoughey is the sewage program manager with
the Board of Health in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. He spends
a lot of his time inspecting home septics to see if they’re
working.

“We don’t want these pathogens getting out into the
environment and getting into the creeks and streams and
rivers that people come in contact with.”

Or get their drinking water from.

Even though he’s trying to protect water quality,
McConoughey is not a popular guy with homeowners.

“Nobody really wants to see you come out and take a look at
their system. Because most people with 40-plus year old
systems realize that they’re probably not working as good as
they should.”

It’s McConoughey’s job – and the other inspectors he works
with – to tell people when their system is leaking sewage,
and when it’s time to put in a new system.

“We’ve all seen people with different reactions. Whether it
be crying or very irate.”

People get so upset because replacing a septic system
costs big bucks.

Just ask Dan Jacin. Last summer he had to dig up his front
lawn and put in a new set of sewage treatment tanks.

“Oh yeah, it tears up your yard for a year and hits your wallet
pretty hard.”

But Jacin says he didn’t have a choice. His 43-year old
system was backing up atrocious-smelling sewage into his
basement.

“I wanted relief from sewage coming into my house, because
that’s just not a fun deal at all.”

Jacin also had sewage burping up in his yard.

If a septic is working right, sewage drains from the house
into a tank. And it’s slowly sent from the tank into an
underground absorption area – where it filters through the
soil.

But Jacin’s septic wasn’t working anymore. The sewage
was draining off his property into a nearby stream.

(sound of a stream)

This stream runs into the Cuyahoga River, which runs into
Lake Erie – a major source of drinking water. Jacin felt
badly about causing that pollution.

But he felt even worse about paying for his new septic
system. It cost more than $20,000!

“And just fortunately I had enough money to replace it at the
time. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have the
money. Who’s going to give you a loan to replace your
septic tank?”

Now Jacin’s lawn has grown back, he’s landscaped to hide
the treatment tanks. And he’s glad he’s no longer polluting
the waterways.

But he still isn’t happy about spending all that money.

Inspector Nate McConoughey understands. But he says
there are low-interest loans available for new septics – and
they’ve got to be maintained – so the water is clean for
drinking and other uses.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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