A Clunker’s Fate Once It’s Cashed In

  • Cars stacked up and waiting to be shredded at United Iron and Metal in Baltimore, MD. (Photo by Tamara Keith)

The federal Cash for Clunkers
program kicked off this weekend,
and dealerships were pushing it
hard to sell new cars. The program
was created by Congress last month
to give a boost to the struggling
auto industry while helping the
environment. The idea is to get
older polluting cars off the road
for good and replace them with
new more-efficient ones. Tamara Keith has this report
on what will happen to all the
clunkers:

Transcript

The federal Cash for Clunkers program kicked off this weekend, and dealerships
were pushing it hard to sell new cars. The program was created by Congress last
month to give a boost to the struggling auto industry while helping the environment.
The idea is to get older polluting cars off the road for good and replace them with
new more-efficient ones. Tamara Keith has this report on what will happen to all the
clunkers:

Car dealers suddenly have a whole bunch of cars on their lots they have absolutely
no use for. The clunkers cannot be re-sold. That would defeat the whole green goal
of the program.

So all those old trucks and sagging sedans, they’re headed to places like M and M
Auto Parts in Stafford, Virginia. Most of us would call it a junk yard. But don’t tell
that to owner Rick Morrow.

“Long before green was popular, this kind of operation, even though a lot of people
said, ‘Oh junk yard.’ But they were actually recycling cars. They were making use of
what the component was built for in the first place.”

His company’s logo prominently features a large green recycling symbol.

“This is the dismantling area where after the cars come are inventoried and then take
them apart.”

Morrow’s business is all about re-use. A fender, or a tail light, or maybe an alternator
from this car will live to see another day in a car that needs a replacement part.

You’d think Morrow would be totally excited about Cash for Clunkers. But he’s not.
Because the one component from the clunkers that absolutely cannot be re-sold is
the engine – pretty much the most valuable thing in the car.

“If we do a few dozen cars and it looks like it’s costing us more money than it’s worth,
we’ll say, ‘sorry.’”

From an environmental perspective, it absolutely makes sense to prevent those
engines from ever polluting again. But, from a business perspective it’s a real
problem for the nation’s auto recyclers.

“It will make it extremely hard to make money on a car.”

Scotty Davis is the vice president of All Foreign Auto Parts in Fredericksburg
Virginia. He says it costs him $1800 in labor to take apart a car.

“It’s going to cost me money to do this. It’s one of these things. I have to bring the
car in. I have to get rid of the tires. I have to get rid of all the fluids, the freon,
process it – just to crush the vehicle.”

Davis specializes in newer foreign vehicles. Parts from a clunker won’t help stock
his shelves. But he feels like he has to take the cars to stay in the good graces of
the auto dealers he sells parts to.

“And I’ll be very honest with you. A couple of them I do a lot of business with, I said,
‘I will take your cars.’ And they said, ‘what are you going to do with them?’ I’m going
to crush ‘em. I mean they’re not of any value.”

(sound of a shredder yard)

Once all the usable parts are removed, and the toxic chemicals cleaned out, most
cars will end up at a scrap yard like United Iron and Metal in Baltimore.

“Right now you can see the tail end of a car coming on the conveyor belt down into
the shredder.”

“A tremendous amount of friction is going on as these hammers are pulverizing that
car into small pieces.”

Bruce Savage is with the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries – a trade group. It
only takes 15 seconds, and when the shredder is done with a car, it isn’t even
recognizable.

“That big pile over there is the end result. It’s just a big pile of metal pieces.”

Savage says the metal is then sold. Whether scrap recyclers will cash in on Cash
for Clunkers all depends on the commodities prices for metal in the coming months.

“What was an old car can become a new car or can become a dishwasher or siding
for a home. It depends on the materials. But everything is being reused,
reprocessed and renewed.”

So maybe a 1989 suburban can be reborn as a 2010 Ford Focus Hybrid.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

Related Links

Dealerships Prepare for Clunkers

  • ‘Cash for clunkers’ became popular before all the rules were final. For the past few weeks there’s been a growing backlog of orders at dealerships. (Photo by Samara Freemark)

Today is the first official day of the cash for clunkers program. The government program offers you up to $4500 to trade in your gas guzzling car for a more fuel efficient new car. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Today is the first official day of the cash for clunkers program. The government program offers you up to $4500 to trade in your gas guzzling car for a more fuel efficient new car. Lester Graham reports:

The goal is to clean up the environment and give sagging new car sales a boost.

‘Cash for clunkers’ became popular before all the rules were final. For the past few weeks there’s been a growing backlog of orders at dealerships.

At Varsity Ford in Ann Arbor, Michigan, people have been seeing if their clunkers qualify, and picking out a new car that they’ll finally be able to drive off the lot today.

Matt Stanford sells cars there. He says as far as he’s concerned, ‘cash for clunkers’ is already a success.

“We’re going to sell new cars. We’re going to get cars that don’t really need to be on the road off the road.”

The National Autobmobile Dealers Association says some dealerships have been holding off until they learned more about the rules of ‘cash for clunkers’ which were just cleared up last Friday.

The clunkers will be scrapped. The cash ends when the one-billion dollars in government money runs out.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Whose Grass Is Really Greener?

  • Molly Aubuchon and Stefan Meyer survey their lawn. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Many Americans love full, lush
lawns. Fertilizers and herbicides
might help. But there’s concern
about water pollution from lawn
chemicals. Julie Grant reports
that some experts say you can use
them, just don’t over-use them:

Transcript

Many Americans love full, lush
lawns. Fertilizers and herbicides
might help. But there’s concern
about water pollution from lawn
chemicals. Julie Grant reports
that some experts say you can use
them, just don’t over-use them:

Molly Aubuchon and her husband Stefan Meyer aren’t sure
what they’re going to do. Their two little kids are running
around the yard. Stefan wants a lawn of thick, soft grass for
them to play on. But that’s not what he’s got.

Stefan: “As you can see, there’s no grass here.
I don’t know what some of this stuff is. Some kind of moss.
I think even the moss died, so now we have dead moss
that’s like yellow and brown.”

Molly: “It’s not attractive dead.”

Stefan: “No. I just think, when I’m out here cutting my grass,
I’m like, man, if I lived across the street, I’d be like, ‘hey look,
they’re cutting absolutely nothing again. They’re just running
that lawn mower over bare spots.’”

They see their neighbors, with those thick, green lawns,
spreading chemicals a few times a year. Molly and Stefan
don’t want to do that.

Molly: “Well, the fact that I’ve got kids running around here
all day. And the fact that it seeps into the water supply and
the rivers, that’s a concern to me.”

There are lots of people who are concerned about lawn
pollution. Lawns have gotten a bad wrap in some places –
because of the fertilizers and other chemicals people use on
them. In much of Canada, lawn chemicals have actually
been banned.

Lou DiGeranimo is General Manager of Water in Toronto.
He says lawn chemicals were damaging the water quality.

“People were over-fertilizing, they were using commercial
pesticides. That chemical ended up in the rivers and ended
up in the lake. We passed a bylaw that prohibited that.”

But some experts say the chemical bans in Canada are
extreme.

David Gardner is professor of turf grass at the Ohio State
University. He doesn’t think banning lawn chemical will do
anything to improve the environment.

“Based on the work that I have seen, based on the research
that has been conducted, I believe that if there is a unilateral
ban on the use of pesticides it will make absolutely no
impact on our environmental footprint.”

Gardner says compared to
other sources of pollution, like cars and over-use of
chemicals on farms, the impact of lawn care is miniscule.

Still, Gardner says people like Molly and Stefan can keep
nice lawns – without using a lot of chemicals.

He says you’ve got to cut the grass and water regularly.
He also recommends fertilizing lightly in the spring and more
heavily in the fall.

That’s what Gardner does at his house – and he uses only 6
to 8 ounces of herbicide a year.

“Putting it another way, if I were to go to a store and buy one
of those gallon jugs of ready-made herbicide, that would be
enough to last me for about 16 years.”

Gardner says the herbicide will hit its expiration date before
he has a chance to use it all.

But Molly and Stefan just aren’t sold. They don’t want to use
lawn chemicals just to appease the neighbors.

Stefan: “I just want to feel good about the way my yard
looks for my own satisfaction. I would like to cultivate some
grass that looks good, you know, with my hands.”

Besides, Stefan says, they don’t have the worst looking lawn
on the street and they’d just rather not add unnecessary
chemicals into the environment.

Stefan: “We don’t have the worst lawn on the street. Our
street is not that long. It’s only four blocks, five blocks long –
there’s a house down there and their yard looks worse than
ours.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Lawn Chemicals Cause Concern

  • Nationwide, farms use the bulk of chemicals. But one expert says homeowners are more likely to overuse pesticides and fertilizers. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

New laws restrict pesticides and fertilizers in some cities. In recent years, farms have cut the use of chemicals. But, Rebecca Williams reports, some environmentalists say there are still far too many chemicals polluting streams and lakes:

Transcript

New laws restrict pesticides and fertilizers in some cities. In recent years, farms have cut the use of chemicals. But, Rebecca Williams reports, some environmentalists say there are still far too many chemicals polluting streams and lakes:

There are 40 million acres of lawns and sports fields in the US. That’s only one-tenth of the amount of cropland.

But some experts say lawn pesticides and fertilizers can be more of a problem.

Charles Benbrook is the Chief Scientist with the Organic Center. It’s a non-profit research group in Oregon.

“While there are many more acres of corn and soybeans and cotton treated with pesticides than there are lawns, the rate of application on lawns in urban areas often is far higher than on the farm.”

And, he says people are more likely to get exposed to chemicals on lawns.

“There’s many more opportunities for significant exposures, particularly for children and pregnant women in urban areas.”

Nationwide, farms do use the bulk of chemicals. But Benbrook says homeowners are more likely to overuse pesticides and fertilizers.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Green Last Requests, Part One

  • Amy Weik has a will drawn up that specifies a green burial (Photo by Todd Melby)

Memorial Day is coming up. Many people still visit the graves of family and friends, maybe bring flowers. When a loved one dies, grieving prevents most of us from thinking about the environmental consequences of conventional funerals and burial. But some people are beginning to weigh the environmental costs of caskets, burial vaults and grave markers. Todd Melby reports on the green death movement:

Todd Melby and Diane Richard produced a documentary on green burial called “Death’s Footprint.” You can listen to it here .

Transcript

Memorial Day is coming up. Many people still visit the graves of family and friends,
maybe bring flowers. When a loved one dies, grieving prevents most of us from
thinking about the environmental consequences of conventional funerals and burial.
But some people are beginning to weigh the environmental costs of caskets, burial
vaults and grave markers. Todd Melby reports on the green death movement:

Amy Weik works at a bank in downtown Chicago. She’s also a big-time
environmentalist. She bikes to work, doesn’t eat meat, recycles and she composts.

“This is my worm bin. It’s a rectangular cube, which I keep my worms in that eat
my scrap vegetables. Mmm, look at that. Yum. Scrap paper, food that went bad.”

The environment is such a big part of Weik’s life, she’s not only interested in
living green.

She wants to die green.

“We’re Americans. We are wasteful and we consume. We think that we are
entitled to everything. So I’m entitled to using up this massive plot of land for the
rest of eternity. That’s ridiculous thinking. You know what I mean?”

So 11 years ago — when she was only 23 — Weik wrote her own will and shared it
with her mother.

Weik: “I can read part of it.”

Melby: “Sure, what does it say?”

Weik: “Zero products or services from funeral homes are to be utilized.”

Instead, Weik prefers her body to be chemically cremated. But that new, high-
tech process isn’t widely available yet. Her second choice is to be composted with
worms.

“If all efforts have been exhausted, but these two options are not available, please
bury me in a green burial ground, location unimportant.”

That second option leaves Weik’s mother — Linda Williams — confused.

“The second was composed with worms? When I read it today, my first reaction
was, oh my Gosh, she composts with worms in her kitchen. I hope she doesn’t
expect me to put her in the box!” (Laughs)

Weik sees lots of unnecessary waste in conventional burial practices. Caskets
constructed from wood or metal are used for a short time and then go right into
the ground. Most graveyards require the casket be placed inside a concrete burial
vault to prevent leaking, but most eventually leak anyway. Grave markers are
often made of granite. And cemeteries are usually manicured to perfection using
fertilizer and riding lawn mowers.

Green burial advocates prefer biodegradable caskets — or just a shroud — no
burial vault, no grave markers and no landscaping. They prefer natural
surroundings.

Weik is hoping to live long enough to see a cemetery in her town go green.

So far, that’s not happened.

But one organization is working on it.

“I don’t think many people really want many aspects of conventional death care. I
think they think it’s legally required.”

That’s Joe Sehee. He’s head of the Green Burial Council.

“Most Americans do not know that you can have a funeral with a viewing without
embalming. Most don’t know that you can transport a body across state lines
without having to embalm it. Most don’t know that burial vaults can be avoided,
for example, or that you can go into the grave with a shroud or nothing at all.”

The council has been busy certifying all kinds of earth-friendly death products,
but has been slow to find graveyards willing to ban concrete burial vaults and
minimize traditional landscaping.

That leaves Amy Weik wondering if she’s going to have rely on the worms in her
compost bin to dispose of her body.

For The Environment Report, I’m Todd Melby.

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.

Related Links

Fruit Foragers in the City

  • Foraging for fruit from people’s yards is one thing. Foraging for fruit in people’s alleys, another. Woody Sandberg says he avoids foraging in alleys where people conduct business. (Photo by Louise Baker)

With everybody looking for ways to save money, free food has never looked better. Devin Browne followed around a group of people who forage for fruit in the city. They look for fruit trees on private and public property to see what they can grab:

Transcript

With everybody looking for ways to save money, free food has never looked better. Devin Browne followed around a group of people who forage for fruit in the city. They look for fruit trees on private and public property to see what they can grab:

It’s perfectly legal here in Los Angeles to pick fruit from trees that are planted on private property as long as the fruit drops into a public space — like a sidewalk or an alley.

There are rules, though, to proper, legal urban foraging and the group Fallen Fruit knows them well. Woody Sandberg is with the group.

“You’re not allowed to reach across someone’s fence. You’re not allowed to reach into someone’s yard. You’re not allowed to crawl up people’s fences or lean ladders on their fences.”

Most of the people in Fallen Fruit ride bikes, sometimes mopeds. A lot of them carry fruit pickers on their back like you might carry a bow and arrow. There’s something almost primal in the way they all look together, fanning out into the street like a band of hunter/gatherers in search of fresh food.

(sound of street and birds)

“We’re looking for trees or any thing that produces food that hangs over the fence so we can pick it and eat it.”

Sandberg’s not actually picking fruit today – he’s just finding the best places to forage.

Later, they’ll go on a harvest ride. Then they’ll make jam and juice and beer with the fruit they’ve found. Today, the mission is just to make maps of where the trees are.

“Over here we got nopalitos and a lime and some nasturiums.”

People sitting on their porches seem not to mind at all when the group stops outside their house. No one in Fallen Fruit can remember a time when a fruit tree owner yelled or screamed or tried to kick ‘em off the sidewalk.

(sound of foragers giving directions to each other)

Which none of the foragers seem surprised by. Fallen Fruit is highly convinced of their mission. Part of this sense of legitimacy comes from the fact that the group originally conceived of itself in biblical terms.

The name Fallen Fruit even comes from a verse in Leviticus: “You shall not pick your vineyard bare or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.”

The founders also thought that cities should start planting fruit trees in public spaces, instead of thirsty, frivolous plants.

But fruit trees are oddly political. And city officials say there are reasons why they do not and will not plant them in public space.

The first reason LA’s Chief Forrester, George Gonzalez, gave had to do with people tripping and falling on fruit & then suing the city.

“One of the main reasons is a potential liability from fruit—fruit drop.”

He also said that trends in tree-planting have changed and they like to plant hearty , drought-resistant trees now.

“Also, fruit trees require more water.”

And then, there are the rats.

“Rodents love fruit trees… yes.”

Still, the City regularly gives away fruit trees to people who want to plant them in their yards.

It’s part of the mayor’s Million Trees LA pledge. Like Sandberg, Gonzalez sees fruit trees on private space as a way to benefit the public good.

“Cause when they look at a map and see it dotted everywhere with fruit trees hanging over the fence I think its going to blow people’s minds about how much food is out there. Because the current mindset is that food is in the grocery store.”

It’s a mindset not even the most dedicated of fruit foragers can escape.

After the mapping mission, Woody Sandberg left on his bike for the supermarket, because, he says, unfortunately chocolate soymilk doesn’t grow on trees.

For The Environment Report, I’m Devin Browne.

Related Links

Farming the White House Lawn

  • Some farmers think this spot is a perfect place for a White House organic farm. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Some people think American agriculture needs a makeover. They question why we waste so much fuel moving food long distances. A growing movement is calling for farmers and everybody else to produce more locally-grown, organic food. Shawn Allee reports some people want the President to set a good example:

Transcript

Some people think American agriculture needs a makeover. They question why we waste so much fuel moving food long distances. A growing movement is calling for farmers and everybody else to produce more locally-grown, organic food. Shawn Allee reports some people want the President to set a good example:

Last October Michael Pollan published a letter to the President in the New York Times.
Pollan is a sort of agricultural policy gadfly. His open letter to the President was full of big, policy-wonkish ideas about how to encourage local food production. But Pollan also wrote one small suggestion. NPR’s Terry Gross picked up on it.

GROSS: “You would like the next president to instead of having a White House lawn to basically have a White House garden. The president would set an example for the rest of us by having this garden of locally-grown foods?” (laughs)

POLLAN: “Now why is that preposterous, Terry? I mean, that’s actually one of the more practical things I proposed.”

Pollan went into how the President could even share some of his veggies with food banks.

POLLAN:” So you have this powerful image of the White House feeding Americans. What could be better than that?”

Some people heard this interview or read Pollon’s article and thought, “right on” – there should be a White House farmer. One family from central Illinois was especially intrigued. Terra Brockman talked about it with her father and sister.

BROCKMAN: “Well, it’s a great idea, but why don’t we bring it down to earth and make it real?”

ALLEE: “So, basically you translated it into reality by creating a contest on a Web site. White House Farmer dot com, as I understand it.”

BROCKMAN: “Yeah, we figured it was a way that we could get it out nationally without much time or money and ask people all across the country, ‘who do you think would be a good White House farmer?’ and have people nominate their farmers.”

Now, Brockman built her contest Web site even though President Obama never even talked about the idea of a White House farmer. But she’s hopeful because the White House actually has an agricultural past. At one time sheep grazed on the White House lawn, and during World War II Eleanor Roosevelt grew a Victory Garden there.

BROCKMAN: “It’s not like this is so, so way out there. And really, whatever the President does is pretty symbolic and people do pay attention.”

People paid attention to White Houser Farmer dot com, anyway.
The site gathered around 57 thousand online votes in just a few days.
And exactly who is the unofficial new White House Farmer?
That would be Claire Strader, from Madison, Wisconsin.
Strader invited me to see the land she works.

STRADER: “We’re at Troy Gardens. It’s in a parcel of land in the city of Madison, on the North Side. I haven’t actually seen the farm for a few months because the snow’s been so deep.”

ALLEE: “Can we get closer to the farm area?”

STRADER: “Yeah.”

Strader is the head farmer at Troy Gardens. She trains city people to grow food here. She also makes the soil fertile through organic growing techniques.

STRADER: “You can just start to see now, the green flush over the whole field. That’s our cover crop of rye. It looks really good. I’m happy to see it.”
ALLEE: “Could you tear yourself away to go to DC and leave all this behind?”
STRADER: “It would be difficult to pick up and leave it behind, but it would be a tremendous honor and a lot of potential to spread the good word of organic agriculture and the positive impacts that would have on our country in the future. It would be hard to accept and hard to reject.”

Even with a White House Farmer chosen for him, President Obama still hasn’t said anything about the idea.
But Strader says she and some top contest vote-getters are trying to sway him – even if he’d pick someone else to run his garden.
Strader says she loves the idea of cucumbers and zucchinis growing at the White House… even if she’s not there to pick them.

For the Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

City Chickens and Urban Eggs

  • Linda Nellet brought a few of her birds to a backyard-chicken seminar in Chicago. She and other seasoned urban chicken keepers hope to keep chicken-raising legal and neighborly in their tight, urban landscape. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Maybe it’s easy to imagine chickens
cooing and clucking on American farms, but
how about in big-city backyards? Well,
keeping chickens is legal in the nation’s
three largest cities, but in one of them,
chicken-lovers nearly lost that right.
Shawn Allee tells how some urban
chicken-keepers were nearly caught off guard,
and how they plan to keep their chickens in
the coop:

Transcript

Maybe it’s easy to imagine chickens
cooing and clucking on American farms, but
how about in big-city backyards? Well,
keeping chickens is legal in the nation’s
three largest cities, but in one of them,
chicken-lovers nearly lost that right.
Shawn Allee tells how some urban
chicken-keepers were nearly caught off guard,
and how they plan to keep their chickens in
the coop:

No one’s sure how many chickens are in Chicago’s backyards. But honestly, few people
thought about it until last year.

That’s when one woman showed up at a city hearing.

“Hi. My name is Edie Cavanaugh, and I’ve lived in Chicago, since 1968.”

Cavanaugh told aldermen she’d caught messy, noisy chickens clucking around her
neighborhood.

She was stunned the city wouldn’t round them up.

“I was told chickens are permitted as pets in Chicago, and I said that’s impossible,
this is a city.”

Cavanaugh’s story ruffled plenty of feathers.

You see, even some aldermen didn’t know that keeping chickens as pets or for eggs in
Chicago is okay.

“I was riding down the street, and I seen a rooster. I was like, ‘What is this?’”

For a month, it seemed Chicago’s city council would ban chicken-keeping.

People who already had chickens worried their birds were destined for the stew pot.

But Chicago aldermen kept chicken-raising legal.

Chicago’s pro-chicken contingent saw the fight as a wake-up call. Some figured, if they
wanted to keep birds, they’d better police themselves.

“So, welcome everybody for coming to the first-ever Chicago backyard Chicken
workshop.”

Martha Boyd is starting seminars about urban chickens.

She’s part of the Angelic Organics Learning Center, a group that promotes urban
agriculture.

Boyd is confident city-people can raise more of their own food if they’re neighborly
about it.

“So the idea of the backyard chicken workshop is so we can have this thing grow
without creating more problems and potentially, then, having the backlash to the
backyard chickens.”

For this first seminar, Boyd invited chicken-raising veterans to a church basement.

One is Tom Rosenfeld.

His advice to urban chicken lovers? Talk to your neighbors. And, hey, if they cringe, get
creative.

“It also helps to bribe them, because if they think they’re going to get some eggs out
of the deal or they think they’re kids come over and pet them or whatever, then of
course they’ll be a little more understanding when one day you leave the door open
and there’re chickens running around the yard or other issues.”

Rosenfeld says those ‘other issues’ arise pretty quickly. In fact, just a few hours after
chickens eat.

“A lot about chicken keeping is about poop because they do it a lot. They do it in
surprisingly large quantities at a time.”

Rosenfeld says you can literally get ankle deep in the stuff if you’re not vigilant.

But bribery helps here, too. Rosenfeld says chicken poop makes excellent garden
compost.

“Our neighbors love it. They’ll come by with a bucket and that’s their way of
participating.”

Rosenfeld says the last issue that ticks off neighbors is noise.

There’s no such thing as a chicken muzzle, but there’s still a solution – and there’s no
bribe necessary.

You see, male chickens are the noisy bunch, so if you just want eggs…

“You don’t need a rooster. It’s a sad reality as a male chicken keeper to realize that
roosters aren’t necessary. They’re only necessary if you want chicks.”

Rosenfeld says urban chicken-raising could catch on where it’s legal – if people keep a lid
on noise and smells.

As for places where it’s not legal?

You might want to change the law at city hall – just don’t try to bribe your alderman with
fresh eggs.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Repairing Backyard Rivers

  • The Conservation Resource Alliance works with property-owners to repair their rivers from problems such as erosion (Photo courtesy of the Conservation Resource Alliance)

American rivers have gone
through a lot in the last century.
Their twists and turns have been
turned into straight channels.
Their banks have been washed away.
And pollution is still flowing off
farm fields and city streets. Fixing
these rivers is a big challenge. A lot
of the land that rivers run through is
privately owned. So that means – to
fix a river, you often have to work with
landowners. Rebecca Williams has the story
of one group that thinks they’ve found
the secret to winning people’s trust:

Transcript

American rivers have gone
through a lot in the last century.
Their twists and turns have been
turned into straight channels.
Their banks have been washed away.
And pollution is still flowing off
farm fields and city streets. Fixing
these rivers is a big challenge. A lot
of the land that rivers run through is
privately owned. So that means – to
fix a river, you often have to work with
landowners. Rebecca Williams has the story
of one group that thinks they’ve found
the secret to winning people’s trust:

(bird sound)

Di Rau is the fourth generation of her family to farm this land in Northern
Michigan. Her grandpa homesteaded the land and set up a sawmill.

“It was the primary industry – I mean there was logging camps just
everywheres you turned.”

Back then the rivers were the only way to get those logs downstream. But
years of rolling logs down the bank into the river were causing serious
erosion. Huge trees were crashing into the water.

Rau says she didn’t know any of her family’s legacy until one day, when a
local group gave her a call. The more she learned about the problems, the
more she felt, well…

“Guilt! (laughs) Because of my ancestors. It’s like practicing medicine. It’s
always evolving and you don’t really know lots of times what you’re doing
wrong until another generation comes along and tells you this is what
you’ve created. Then it’s like okay let’s do something about it.”

So Rau let construction workers on her land. And now, ten years later, she
says it’s beautiful.

“Go down and just listen to creatures. You have deer come splashing
through, we have a bear around here, he likes to visit, couple bobcat.
There’s a lot of wildlife – it’s pretty cool.”

The woman who won Di Rau over is Kim Balke. She’s a biologist with the
group Conservation Resource Alliance. She says working with Di Rau was
pretty easy. But not everyone opens their doors so quickly.

There was the divorced couple who still owned land together, the fighting
brothers, the neighbors who nobody liked.

“Other people have said you know don’t go to their house they’ll greet you
with a shotgun!”

So far, no shotguns. Balke says she’s learned not to listen to what neighbors
say about each other. She approaches each person one by one, and talks to
them about what’s at stake. Her sales pitch? We’re just here to help – and
hey, we’ll pay most of the bill.

“You know a lot of our projects are erosion control, when banks are
completely falling into the stream – landowners, it’s not hard for them to
realize they’re losing property.”

But Balke says, still, you can’t just rush in and tell people what to do. She
says it can take months or even years to warm homeowners up to the
project.

That’s because fixing rivers is serious work. If a riverbank is eroding or an
old bridge is falling into the water, we’re talking about heavy construction
equipment. You have to be willing to have bulldozers and port-a-johns on
your lawn for a long time. And you might have to lose a tree.

“Things can look a little rough when you’re doing construction and some
people are a little worried about change.”

Balke says she just takes her time. She sends letters, sits down for coffee,
lets people think it over.

And it’s not just homeowners who Balke’s group needs to win over. There
are road commissions, tribes, sportfishers, and environmentalists. People
who sometimes just don’t trust each other.

Amy Beyer directs Conservation Resource Alliance. She says her group has
gotten all those people together.

“Yes they have been historically mortal enemies and that doesn’t mean all of
the baggage falls away but I can tell you it feels awfully good to go around
the circle when we complete a project and hear all the different voices and
how they’re celebrating that success.”

Beyer says this is not a quick and easy process – it can take years to get
people to actually find some little thing to agree on. But she says you can
fix a river without ever going to court.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links