Turning Nuke Waste Sites Into Playgrounds

  • Grassland prairie flowers from Weldon Spring, part of the Department of Energy's restoration effort to control erosion and add aesthetic beauty to the area. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy)

Across the U.S., there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear weapons programs.
The government is trying to return these Cold War relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much like public parks. The GLRC’s Kevin Lavery visited one that was recently opened to the public:

Transcript

Across the US, there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the
nation’s nuclear weapons programs. The government is trying to return these Cold War
relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much
like public parks. The GLRC’s Kevin Lavery recently visited one that was recently
opened to the public…


A thick grove of trees opens up to a clearing that reveals a white mound of limestone
rock. It rises like a tomb from some long-forgotten civilization, were it not for the water
towers and golf courses on the horizon.


Mike Leahy and his 9-year-old son Cameron came to this rock dome to catch the view
atop its 75 foot summit. But the real attraction was what they did not see:


“We read the sign and saw what was buried and how they did it, and – it’s kind of
disturbing, what’s in there.”


Beneath their feet lay more than a million cubic yards of spent uranium, asbestos and
PCB’s. The 45 acre mound is a disposal cell, where the government buried thousands of
barrels and tons of debris. That history didn’t bother young Cameron:


“It’s really cool. They keep all that nuclear waste under all that and it can’t harm
anybody.”


The Weldon Spring site, 30 miles west of St. Louis, Missouri began during World War
Two as an Army TNT factory. In the 1950’s, the plant refined yellow cake uranium for
later use in nuclear weapons. All that stopped in 1966 and all the radioactive waste just
sat there. Weldon Spring became an EPA Superfund site in 1987. After a 900 million
dollar cleanup, the site was opened to tourists in 2002.


(Sound of frogs)


Today, frogs sing in a native prairie at the foot of the cell. In April, officials opened a
hiking trail adjacent to a once-radioactive landfill. The route connects to a state park.


Weldon Spring is not a park per se, but project manager Yvonne Deyo says urban sprawl
prompted them to think like one:


“There’s subdivisions and lots of infrastructure going in…and that just kind of hits home
how important green space is, and that’s kind of what we’re trying to do a little bit of
here at the site.”


Weldon Spring is one of about 100 such sites the Department of Energy is converting to
what it calls “beneficial re-use.” Many are becoming recreational venues. Another
closed uranium plant near Cincinnati is adding horseback riding trails. In Wayne, New
Jersey, a former thorium processing facility is becoming a baseball field. And a national
wildlife preserve is in the works at Rocky Flats, the site outside Denver that made the
plutonium cores of nuclear warheads.


The Department of Energy says Weldon Spring is safe for visitors – though some residual
contamination remains.


(Sound of Burgermeister Spring)


Burgermeister Spring runs through a 7-thousand acre state reserve adjacent to the site.
This is where uranium-laced groundwater from Weldon Spring rises to the surface.
Though the spring exceeds the EPA’s drinking water quality standard, there’s no warning
sign here. Officials say the contamination is so low that it poses no immediate public
hazard. The spring feeds into one of the most popular fishing lakes on the property.
Most visitors are surprised to hear that:


“Huh.”


Jeff Boeving fishes for bass four or five times a month:


“(Does that concern you to hear that?) Yeah – absolutely…I mean, they’ve got a great
area out here and they’re kind of messing it up if they’re going to have contaminants, you know, going into it.”


The government’s vision of post-nuclear playgrounds is not without its critics. Arjun
Makhijani heads the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park,
Maryland. He says recreational sites near urban development zones risk losing their
original purpose:


“Institutional memory tends to be very short; after 30, 40, 50 years people forget, they
begin to develop the land, and pretty soon you could have houses, farms and schools in
the area. So it’s not necessary that it will stay recreational forever.”


Recreation is only one option the Department of Energy is considering for all of its sites.
In the last two years, the agency’s budget has doubled with the addition of nearly a dozen
radioactive properties. Officials say Congress has so far supported its fiscal requests.
And with the future of a proposed permanent nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain still
in doubt, even more tax dollars will likely be spent converting the nuclear dumps in
America’s backyards to a place where families play.


For the GLRC, I’m Kevin Lavery.

Related Links

Churches Struggle With Urban Sprawl

Urban sprawl is affecting communities across the Great Lakes region. In one Ohio community, residents are turning to their churches to fight back. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Schaefer reports:

Transcript

Urban sprawl is affecting communities across the Great Lakes region. In one Ohio community,
residents are turning to their churches to fight back. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen
Schaefer reports:


Forest Hill Presbyterian Church was built in Cleveland Heights 100 years ago. Pastor John Lentz
says, in its heyday, some 15-hundred people regularly walked to church services every week.
Today, the congregation totals just 600. Lentz says it’s a constant struggle to replace those who
leave his flock for the greenfield developments that surround the urban center.


“Churches are anchors of communities and I think we need to be active in the kinds of issues that
affect our communities, like fair and open housing and education, and really make it our mission to equip
faithful people to, you know, walk the walk.”


He and other religious leaders have banded together to form the Northeast Ohio Alliance for
Hope. The group is working with 15 Cleveland suburbs, taking on issues like predatory lending,
school funding, and home repair.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Schaefer.

Researchers Forecast Region’s Warmer Future

  • The Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin - Researchers say global warming may mean earlier ice breakup and spring runoff, more intense flooding, and lower summer water levels. They say this could spell trouble for wetlands and the species that depend on them. (Photo by Ryan Hagerty, USFWS)

Warmer weather might sound like a welcome reprieve to a lot of people spending early spring in the Midwest. But a team of researchers is warning that in years to come, warming trends in the Great Lakes region could be bad news for business, and for people’s health. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports:

Transcript

Warmer weather might sound like a welcome reprieve to a lot of people spending early spring in the
Midwest. But a team of researchers is warning that in years to come, warming trends in the Great
Lakes region could be bad news for business, and for people’s health. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports:


Climate change is not a phenomenon that’s unique to the Great Lakes
region. But University of Michigan biologist George Kling says there’s
good reason to look to the Midwestern U.S. for early clues about global warming
elsewhere.


“The middle part of North America, including the Great Lakes region, warms, or has warmed in the
past, at a slightly higher rate than the globe overall. Because we’re right in the center of a continent,
and there’s less buffering impact from the oceans. So coastal areas tend to warm a little bit less, at
a slower rate, continental areas warm at a little bit faster rate.”


Kling and other researchers from the Union of Concerned Scientists, and
the Ecological Society of America, spent the last two years looking at
some of the changes that can already be seen in the region: shorter winters,
higher temperatures, and less ice on the Great Lakes during the winter
months. And Kling warns that extrapolating these trends out over the coming
decades paints an ugly picture:


“These climate changes that we project in our new report will magnify
existing health and environmental problems, and may stress our economy.”


Asthma that’s aggravated every time a heat wave hits, increased competition
for groundwater as dry weather saps wells, and financial losses in communities that once relied on
winter tourism are all distinct possibilities. And the report warns that more visible changes to the
landscape might also
be on the way.


Donald Zak teaches ecology at the University of Michigan. He says during
past periods of warming, trees actually moved north to survive. But Zak
says that kind of tree migration may no longer be possible.


“Ten thousand years ago, when species migrated across the region, there
were very few barriers to migration that we have now placed in the landscape –
like large areas of agriculture, large areas of urban development. Those
will become barriers to migration that didn’t exist following the close of the
last ice age.”


Theories about causes of the warmer weather are well known: heat-trapping
gasses – mostly carbon monoxide – are spewed from coal-fired power plants
and gasoline engines. And continued deforestation and urban sprawl help
ensure mother nature never catches up with processing it all. But the researchers who worked on
the project say solutions are available to slow the effects of global warming. The report makes the
case for raising fuel economy standards for cars and trucks. David Friedman with
the Union of Concerned Scientists says right now, there are more than 30 models of cars on the
market that get more than 30 miles per gallon. The problem, Friedman says, is that those are
mostly compact cars that don’t meet the needs of people who are shopping for pickups, minivans,
and SUVs. Friedman says for those customers, there’s no way for them to use their
wallets to show their desire for more fuel-efficient vehicles.


“When your choice is between 17 and 18 miles per gallon, that’s not a
choice. You’re probably going to choose the vehicle based on the color
and the cup holders, not the fuel economy, when the difference is only one
mile per gallon.”


Some critics say the incremental changes that would result from raising
fuel economy standards would have almost no impact on global warming.
But researchers on the Great Lakes study say resistance from policy makers
and corporate leaders doesn’t have to hamper efforts to slow the effects
of climate change. They say even choices at the household level – like
carpooling and conserving energy can help lessen the damage.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.

RESEARCHERS FORECAST REGION’S WARMER FUTURE (Short Version)

Within three decades, summers in the Great Lakes states might feel more like summers in Kentucky and Oklahoma. That’s according to results of a two-year study conducted by a team of Midwest and Canadian scientists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports:

Transcript

Within three decades, summers in the Great Lakes states might feel more
like summers in Kentucky and Oklahoma. That’s according to results of a
two-year study conducted by a team of Midwest and Canadian scientists.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports:


The study was conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the
Ecological Society of America. Researchers looked into trends that have
already shown up in the region – including shorter winters, higher
annual average temperatures, and declines in winter ice on the Great
Lakes. The study projects potential problems for the region. Anglers
might find certain fish no longer thrive in warmer waters, and
communities that rely on winter tourism might find themselves hard hit.


University of Michigan biologist George Kling is the lead author of the
report. He says the findings point to a warming trend unlike anything
the planet’s seen.


“In the next 100 years, we will have the same amount of warming that has
occurred since the last Ice Age – 10-thousand years ago.”


The report outlines approaches for slowing the effects of global
warming. They include reducing greenhouse emissions and investing in
renewable energy.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.

New Sprawl Study Ranks Region

A new study on urban sprawl suggests the Midwest is doing better than some parts of the country, but there are still some trouble spots in the region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

A new study on urban sprawl suggests the Midwest is doing better than some parts of the
country. But there are still some trouble spots in the region. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


A study released by Smart Growth America says California and the south are having the
worst problems with sprawl. But Detroit, Rochester and Syracuse, New York, and the
Gary-Hammond area of Indiana just missed being in the top ten. Researcher Rolf
Rendahl of Cornell University in New York says those are areas where sprawl partly
occurs because of economic distress.


“With very little demand for new development, land is cheaper and people can build
almost anywhere.’


Rendahl also says the suburbs in those areas generally have relatively permissive land use
policies. The study says sprawl can trigger ozone pollution and various traffic problems.
The group recommends more rehabilitation of urban properties and transportation
planning that doesn’t promote sprawl. The National Association of Homebuilders
contends the Smart Growth report ignores housing affordability and consumer choice.


For the Great Lakes Radio consortium, this is Chuck Quirmbach.

STUDY SAYS REGION’S PRIME FARMLAND AT RISK

A new study shows prime farmland in the Great Lakes region is being lost to development. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports:

Transcript

A new study shows prime farmland in the Great Lakes region is
being lost to development. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Natalie Walston reports:


The study by the American Farmland Trust ranks Great lakes states at the top of a list of
states with the most rapidly disappearing prime farmland. It says between 1992 and 1997
more than 6-million acres of land nationwide ripe for growing fruits and vegetables were
paved over. Bob Wagner speaks for the non-profit group. He says one problem is the
acreage per person in a housing development has almost doubled in the past 20 years.


“That’s more land that’s needed for each household and we need to get a handle on those
kind of sprawling, fragmented development patterns.”


Wagner says Ohio ranks second in the nation for the amount of farm land lost during the
time period that was studied, while Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New
York state are listed among the top twenty states losing land to urban sprawl.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Natalie Walston.

An International Wildlife Refuge?

An effort to create North America’s first international wildlife refuge is gathering speed. The refuge will be a partnership between Canada and the U.S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

An effort to create North America’s first international wildlife refuge is gathering speed. The refuge will be a partnership between Canada and the U-S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has details:


The Detroit River was once home to a thriving set of coastal wetlands and marshes. It was an area teeming with wildlife. But after more than a century of development – most of that habitat has been lost. The proposed international wildlife refuge hopes to turn back the pressures for more development.


The refuge would include the Canadian and U-S sides of the lower Detroit River – lands from the coal-choked Zug Island to the mouth of Lake Erie.


If established, the refuge will be a patchwork federal, state, and privately owned land. And so far, they’ve had some success. Several small islands have been donated or are being bought for inclusion into the refuge.


The first step will be to set up the boundaries of the refuge. Once established, funds may be appropriated for things like buying more land, establishing conservation agreements, and re-creating wildlife habitat.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium I’m Mark Brush.

Survey Respondents Favor Farmland Protection

A new poll indicates the majority of voters are concerned that farmland is being paved over by urban sprawl. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A new poll indicates the majority of voters are concerned that farmland is being paved over by urban sprawl. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


The American Farmland Trust conducted a nationwide poll that found
53-percent of the nation’s registered voters want federal dollars spent to keep farmland from being developed. That was nowhere as true as in five midwestern states where sprawl is a pressing issue. In that region 73-percent of those surveyed agreed farmland should be protected from sprawl. Ed Minihan is the Director of the Upper Midwest Field Office of the American Farmland Trust.


“The general populous sees this. You can’t miss it. I mean, you just can’t miss it. And it’s pretty clear that the general public is far ahead of the politicians on this.”


Most of the midwestern states have not yet passed legislation to protect farmland from development. Across the nation, approximately one million acres of prime farmland are lost each year due to sprawl.

Related Links

Small Towns Invite Sprawl

  • Eleven million acres of prime farmland were lost to urban sprawl in a 15 year period. Some small cities are embracing the growth and helping developers circumvent so-called Smart Growth restrictions on sprawl.

Researchers have found that small towns hungry for new tax dollars are making it possible for developers to get around Smart Growth plans. Often the result is urban sprawl that paves over farmland and natural areas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has the story:

Transcript

Researchers have found that small towns hungry for new tax dollars are making it possible for developers to get around Smart Growth Plans. Often the result is urban sprawl that paves over farmland and natural areas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


Despite the best efforts of some politicians to slow down the pace of turning farmland into suburbia, the 2000 Census shows population growth is exploding at the edges of Metropolitan areas, and all those people need somewhere to live and shop. So, in the Midwest, often housing developments and shopping malls are built where corn or soybeans grew just the year before.


For example, Kane County, Illinois, as recently as the 1970’s was predominately farmland. Now with more and more people moving there, only about half the county is left for farming.


Randall Road cuts through the heart of the county, although housing developments and retail stores are starting to infringe on the country setting, on one side of the road you can still see rows of crops and pasture, and on the other side of Randall Road, it’s nearly solid shopping malls and subdivisions. But in the middle of all that development, there’s still one dairy farm. Mike Kenyon and his family still grow hay and corn, and milk cows here. But their fields are surrounded by three sprawling towns. Kenyon says Randall Road used to be the line where planners said urban sprawl would stop. They were so confident that they even said so in their planning document for the year 2020.


“And they drew a line in the county and they said ‘we want the growth to occur here and we want to maintain this as rural, as farms. Well, how did developers get around that? Well they go to a little village and they say ‘Well, we’ll put a big housing development over here. Please, annex us and this’ll be more revenue and they’ll even have a sewer system when we get done.’ So, that’s what happens; they kind of bribe the villages so they get around the 2020 plan.”


And that, Kenyon says, is what’s now happening on the other side of Randall Road where Kane County was supposed to remain rural. Kane County officials are trying to implement all kinds of programs to save the remaining farmland from urban sprawl, or at least keep urbanization to certain areas of the county. But at the town and village level, many local politicians see growth as nothing but good and are willing to expand their city limits to include developments. That’s because those developments help increase their tax revenue.


The story is not unique to the Chicago region. It’s being repeated throughout the Midwest and the Great Lakes, as well as across the United States.
So much so that millions, yes millions of acres of prime farmland in the U.S. have been lost in a little more than a decade. Rich Green is a geographer at Northern Illinois University. He’s been tracking the fringes of the ever-growing Chicago Metropolitan area. He’s been adding up just how much former cropland has been turned into suburban lawns and parking lots.


“What we found is this: the nation between 1982 and 1997, that’s a 15 year time period, lost about eleven million acres of prime farmland, cropland, to urban development.”


Green also found, perhaps coincidentally, that an identical amount of land, eleven million acres of rangeland was plowed up and put into crop production during the same period.


“What we’ve been looking at is losing the nation’s best farmland in places like Chicago and other metropolitan areas in the Midwest, and replacing it with marginal lands in the arid West which requires more inputs, particularly water, irrigation.”


Green says shifting farming to less productive and more environmentally damaging land might not be the intent of the small towns that want to grow, but that’s the apparent result.


Just off campus at Northern Illinois’ Social Sciences Research Institute, Director Harvey Smith says Midwest states such as Illinois should take the time to better learn and weigh the costs of continued urban sprawl.


“Economically, Illinois relies very, very heavily on its agriculture. And, it is also the case that a lot of the very rich farmland is in the northern tier of the state which is closest to the moving fringe of the suburbs.”


Many times government at a more regional level, such as at the county level, is struggling with balancing development and farmland preservation. Even though it’s something of a contradiction, Smith says the people who move to the suburbs’ fringes causing further urban sprawl, actually want to preserve some of the farmland.


“The fact is that many of the people who move into the suburbs, while they like the sort of scenic quality of a farm or two over the hill, aren’t in a position to stop the disappearance of the farms themselves. It requires cooperation between local and regional governmental agencies to make a real effort to protect these qualities that are likely to disappear if they don’t.”


For some towns, it’s too late to recover the rural character and small town charm they lost to development, but for those at the fringes of the sprawling large metro areas with adherence to Smart Growth planning, some planners believe there’s still the opportunity to preserve a little of the setting of the suburbs that drew so many people there in the first place.

SMALL TOWNS INVITE SPRAWL (Short Version)

  • Eleven million acres of prime farmland were lost to urban sprawl in a 15 year period. Some small cities are embracing the growth and helping developers circumvent so-called Smart Growth restrictions on sprawl.

The U.S. has lost millions of acres of productive farmland in the last decade to urban sprawl. Researchers say state and county officials are seeing Smart Growth plans circumvented by politicians in small cities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The US has lost millions of acres of productive farmland in the last decade to urban sprawl. Researchers say state and county officials are seeing smart growth plans circumvented by politicians in small cities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


Most states have passed legislation or are looking at doing so to reduce urban sprawl. Even some counties are working to restrict development to certain areas. But often developers approach small cities, promising increased tax revenues and infrastructure if the town annexes large areas of surrounding land for the developers. Rich Green is a geographer at Northern Illinois University. He says some small town officials don’t see past their own city limits.


“And in some respects, they may overlook the regional concerns to benefit their own territory, developers, shopping malls, retailers, playing one municipality off the other in terms of getting the best deal to locate.”


And so long debated plans to manage growth become nothing more than lines on a map, while natural areas and farmland are replaced by subdivisions and parking lots. Green says that’s led to eleven million acres of prime farmland being taken out of production in the fertile Midwest and East in a 15 year period due to urban sprawl. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.