Environment

Video: Wolf puppies from the Wildlife Science Center

Filed under: Environment

For a rare look at two-week-old wolf puppies, visit our text-rich photo gallery of a wolf litter born April 27 at the Wildlife Science Center in Forest Lake.

It's extremely uncommon to see wolf pups this young. Generally, they don't leave the den for months. If you weren't lucky enough to see them today, here are two videos:

A pup is weighed, and then climbs all over a human friend:

A bucketful of wolf puppies wriggles.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at May 9, 2008 1:00 PM | Comments (1)

 

That south Minneapolis dirt

Filed under: Environment

If you live in south Minneapolis, you've probably given some thought to arsenic. I have. Like the other day--you know, the one that was warm--when I turned my back on my two-year old just long enough for him to shove some of that south Minneapolis dirt into his mouth. Given all the attention the EPA has given our dirt in recent years (high arsenic levels have put parts of Corcoran, Longfellow, Midtown Phillips, Powderhorn, Seward, Ventura Village, and all of East Phillips on the list of contenders for federal Superfund money).

Got a dirt-loving kid in one of these neighborhoods? The Minnesota Department of Health is looking for 100 of them, between the ages of 3 and 10, to test for any possible effect arsenic contamination might have on those of us who live in the contaminated areas.

According to 9th Ward City Council representative Gary Schiff, all eligible households will receive a letter in the mail from the Minnesota Department of Health.

The prime suspect for the arsenic contamination is the Heartland Lite Yard Site, where arsenic-containing pesticides were manufactured and stored between 1938 and 1963.

The EPA, with a soil testing and cleanup program well under way, will be testing 130 more residential properties and cleaning up 34 this year.

For more information on EPA’s cleanup standard and cleanup process, or to find out how to obtain the soil sample results from your yard, email Tim Prendiville or call 800-621-8431 ext. 65122.

Posted by Jeff Severns Guntzel at May 2, 2008 2:05 PM | Comments (0)

 

Water sports

Filed under: Environment

In 2001 the United States Supreme Court ruled that many non-navigable, "isolated" waters are not covered by pollution protections in the Clean Water Act. Five years later the country's top court considered the issue again. This time it split 4-1-4, with three different and seemingly conflicting opinions about which bodies of water are subject to federal regulations. Environmentalists fear that these rulings, coupled with recent determinations by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, have put the nation's waterways at serious risk. Since 2004 environmental groups have been lobbying Congress to pass the Clean Water Restoration Act, arguing that such legislation is needed to ensure that the original intent of the landmark 1972 legislation is enforced.

Tomorrow morning Darrell Gerber, program coordinator for Clean Water Action Alliance of Minnesota, will testify on behalf of the legislation at Capitol Hill. The hearing is before the House's Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, chaired by Minnesota Rep. Jim Oberstar. Gerber believes that the bill's prospects are greater than at any time in the past four years. "This is by far the most consideration that it's received," he says.

Gerber points to two Minnesota lakes in highlighting the dangers posed by changes in how the Clean Water Act is enforced. Boyer Lake is a 310-acre body of water in Becker County, roughly 35 miles east of the North Dakota border, that's popular with walleye fisherman. Bah Lake covers 70 acres on the border between Grant and Douglas counties, and is typically covered with up to 10 feet of water.

The local Army Corps office initially determined that these lakes are no longer subject to federal protections from pollutants. This decision, however, was subsequently overturned. "The fact that federal officials first concluded that the Clean Water Act did not cover large and productive bodies of water shows that the threat to so-called 'isolated' waters is significant," writes Gerber in his prepared testimony for tomorrow's hearing.

Across the country, Clean Water Action estimates that more than 50 percent of the country's streams, representing over 1.8 million miles of waterways, could be at risk of losing protection, depending on how the loosened strictures are interpreted. Such changes could potentially impact the drinking water of 110-million people. "If we really want to meet the goals of the Clean Water Act we have to cover these waters," Gerber says.

You can watch the hearing starting at 10 a.m. tomorrow on the committee's web site.

Posted by Paul Demko at April 15, 2008 3:01 PM | Comments (0)

 

Get ready for another E-Junk Tsunami

Filed under: Environment

Even after last year’s "electronics tsunami," environmental activists are again trying to help Minnesotans get rid of their dusty TVs, VCRs, DVD players, computers and other dubbed E-Junk for free.

Waste Management, Sony Electronics and Best Buy will host electronic disposal drives at five different Twin City locations April 11 & 12.

The amount of electronic waste is on the rise and managing the issue has become increasingly important, especially with the FCC-mandated switch to all digital TV signals by Feb. 2009. Trashing electronic waste became illegal in Minnesota in 2007.

“We expect this to be the largest recycling event ever in the sate of Minnesota. We’re hoping to collect 1 to 3 million pounds of electronics this at this event alone,” says Julie Ketchum, a spokeswoman for Waste Management.

At last year’s event, held at the Mall of America, some 1.5 million pounds of e-waste were collected in little more than day, causing a back up of thousands of cars on the streets and highways surrounding the mall. The event had to close early because of the excessive demand.

This year to avoid confusion and meet demand, organizers chose spots with ample space for drop off points, herding TV totting customers to places like Canterbury Park Racetrack and Minnesota State Fair Grounds.

A complete listing of drop off points is available by clicking here.

Posted by Beth Walton at April 4, 2008 11:35 AM | Comments (2)

 

Reporter's Notebook: Artist takes on destructive plant

Filed under: Environment

You don’t have to be an artist to make a statement. And, you most certainly do not have to spend your time like Jim Proctor, creating giant faux dandelions to fix a problem.

Pulling buckthorn can be fun, says St. Olaf sophomore John van der Linden, who helped Proctor with the newest installations of the Buckthorn Menace. He laughs remembering the time that even a downpour of rain didn’t stop him and his friends from pulling the root.

“Everything was all muddy, yet we still stood there in the rain pulling out buckthorn. It looked like we came out of a swamp or something, but it was just so much fun to get down and dirty and really work on this major problem.”

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has some tips for recognizing buckthorn and aiding in its removal.

To control buckthorn, a plant that is slowing destroying Minnesota's forests, people need to kill it by pulling it out at its roots and cutting down seed producing trees, says Ann Pierce, a terrestrial invasive species coordinator for the Department.

Many people with one or two buckthorn hedges in their lots might not understand it’s an invasive species, says Pierce. But, buckthorn can easily be identified in the fall because it holds its leaves and stays green longer than most native species.

"If you wait until October, you’ll know if it’s buckthorn," she says.

Posted by Beth Walton at March 26, 2008 12:58 PM | Comments (0)

 

Where and How to Watch the Eclipse (Updated)

Filed under: Environment

I'm a sucker for celestial phenomena, but then, who isn't? Tomorrow night brings us a total eclipse of the moon. Not only is this rare, but the time and manner in which the lunar extravaganza will occur -- reasonably early in the evening, in a spot where most of North America can see it -- makes it all the more special.

During these events, the moon can turn colors ranging from bright orange to blood red to dark brown or dark gray. Assuming the sky's not totally cloudy, you've got to check out. Here are three suggested spots (indoor and outdoor) to do so.

For outdoor enthusiasts, Minneapolis Parks is leading a snowshoe trek at Lake Nokomis and Minnehaha Creek tomorrow night.

If the weather is clear, the Minneapolis Astronomical Society's Onan Observatory will be open. If the weather's not clear, then we're all out of luck.

UPDATE: Closer to the cities, the University of Minnesota Dept. of Astronomy will be hosting an eclipse viewing, too. Visitors can watch from the roof of the Tate Physics building from 8:30-10:00 pm. Telescopes may also be set up on Northrop Plaza.

Plan to get lucky, though, and come prepared. Plot out your spot with NASA's detailed eclipse diagrams. Take these detailed photographic tips with you, and maybe you'll catch some great pictures.

Light a candle for clear skies, and ad astra, baby.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 19, 2008 10:09 AM | Comments (7)

 

Suppressed Report: Great Lakes States at Great Public Health Risk

Filed under: Environment

An exhaustive federal study about the health of boundary waters between the U.S. and Canada was supposed to come out last July. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suppressed the report, perhaps because of the disturbing information it contains.

The Center for Public Integrity has obtained the study, which warns that more than nine million people who live in the more than two dozen “areas of concern”—including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee—may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants.

That's weighty. Is there any argument for continuing to forestall this information's release? One top scholar who has reviewed it says no.

“It raises very important questions,” Dr. Peter Orris, a professor at the University of Illinois School of Public Health in Chicago and one of three experts who reviewed the study for ATSDR, told the Center. While Orris acknowledged that the study does not determine cause and effect—a point the study itself emphasizes—its release, he said, is crucial to pointing the way for further research. “Communities could demand that those questions be answered in a more systematic way,” he said. “Not to release it is putting your head under the sand.”

The report has been independently reviewed over a period of years by more than 20 EPA scientists, state agency scientists from Minnesota multiple academics and several boards of review. "As such," Orris wrote in a letter calling for the study's release, "this is perhaps the most extensively critiqued report, internally and externally, that I have heard of.”

You can download excerpts from the report here and check out the findings for yourself.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 18, 2008 9:20 AM | Comments (0)

 

Rays of Future Present: Solar in Southeast Como

Filed under: Environment

It's hard to pick the one best reason to transition away from fossil fuels -- minimizing climate change, forestalling environmental degradation, ameliorating the inevitable economic dislocations as oil starts to run out. Instead, we should start selecting technologies with the highest chance of extracting us from these assorted messes.

Minnesota Monitor has an interesting item about solar power generation in the Southeast Como neighborhood, where the Green Institute worked with neighbors and a local solar installer to jump start solar thermal energy in the Twin Cities. Solar thermal energy, designed in this case to heat water, is technologically distinct from the more high-profile photovoltaic electricity generation projects, but the upshot's the same -- building a workable ecological alternative to oil and gas power.

It's easy to assume that with the state's long winters, solar would be unfeasible here. A study [PDF] of the local project by the Green Institute reveals that Minnesota's climate is actually better than you'd think for solar energy.

Because of the cold, we have a comparatively greater need for hot water than other locales, so a solar thermal system here can save more energy than a place like Phoenix. And Minnesota's solar resources are comparable to Houston, Texas -- and exceed those of Germany, where they've already developed three times the solar energy capacity of the entire U.S.

It's a timely issue. There's a new Scientific American article this month that says solar energy could end dependence on foreign oil by 2050, slashing greenhouse emissions in the process. From the story:

"Solar energy’s potential is off the chart. The energy in sunlight striking the earth for 40 minutes is equivalent to global energy consumption for a year. The U.S. is lucky to be endowed with a vast resource; at least 250,000 square miles of land in the Southwest alone are suitable for constructing solar power plants, and that land receives more than 4,500 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) of solar radiation a year. Converting only 2.5 percent of that radiation into electricity would match the nation’s total energy consumption in 2006."

A solar panel.

The Scientific American plan would be a grand solar electric project centered in the American southwest, distinct in aims, technology and scale from our local initiative. But that's the point -- shifting away from petroleum products requires multiple strategies, national and otherwise.

The standard oppositional line on alternative energy used to be that we didn't have sufficient technology, that expense would be prohibitive, and that we were stuck with the fossil fuel economy inevitably. If this was true once, it is demonstrably false now -- a bevy of strategies, proven and promising, are out there.

Some fit better than others. Unlike Hawaii, we can't do Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion here, and maybe a place like Buffalo is better suited to wind power than energy from the sun. Solar may not be the answer, but it's an answer, a piece of the puzzle that makes sense in many communities. Once that's been acknowledged, it's a question of which emerging energy economy makes sense in the particular part of the world one finds oneself.

Regarding solar thermal energy here in Minnesota, the Green Institute report had some insights:

* Advancing energy efficiency is key, and in fact is more desirable than generating more power. Investing in new energy comes with expense, and that investment may not be recouped for more than a decade. Creating green energy makes sense; saving energy makes more.

* Solar thermal energy is especially suited for multi-family homes and homes with inefficient electric water heaters. The economics of these living situations make sun power advantageous (and future natural gas prices play a major role in determining how advantageous).

* A state rebate program for solar thermal (one already exists for solar electric) is needed to promote further growth.

One more appropriate excerpt from that Scientific American piece: "The greatest obstacle to implementing a renewable U.S. energy system is not technology or money ... [i]t is the lack of public awareness that solar power is a practical alternative."

Scientists have long held that the last six words of that sentence are true. Seventeen homes in Southeast Como are helping to prove it.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at January 7, 2008 1:54 PM | Comments (4)

 

Murky Waters

Filed under: Environment

Will the 35W bridge collapse have serious environmental ramifications? With bodies presumably still in the water, it may seem a rather churlish question to pose. But the massive heap of concrete, steel, vehicles, and lord knows what else would seem to be a poor development for the well-being of the Mississippi River.

Environmental concerns initially focused on three railroad cars that were crushed by the collapsed bridge. There could have been serious ecological harm if those cars had been carrying a highly toxic substance, such as benzine. But as it turned out one of the cars contained plastic pellets, while another held plastic powder. The third was empty. "There was a little bit of spillage," says Sam Brungardt, public information officer for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. "Nothing that would pose an environmental or a health threat."

Another possible environmental issue stems from gasoline seeping into the water from impacted vehicles. But oil dispensation appears to have been surprisingly limited. "There was a little bit of oil but that dissipated very rapidly," says Brungardt. "We never really found pockets of oil."

A concern going forward will be air quality. As workers untangle and remove the debris, the MPCA is worried about what types of particulate matter will begin circulating in the air. The agency has done preliminary testing near the site of the bridge collapse to establish baseline levels of lead, asbestos, silicates, and other potentially dangerous materials. "Those are all things that are known to affect health if they are breathed in," Brungardt says.

But overall it doesn't appear that the bridge collapse will have any serious, long-term impact on the health of the Mississippi River. "One could imagine scenarios where much worse cargo could have been on that bridge," says Whitney Clark, executive director of Friends of the Mississippi River. "That does not appear to have happened."

Posted by Paul Demko at August 6, 2007 1:17 PM | Comments (1)

 

Former U of M researcher bestowed highest civilian honor awarded by Congress

Filed under: Environment

A former University of Minnesota scientist received the Congressional Gold Medal Tuesday during a ceremony held in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C. Dr. Norman Borlaug—who earned bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees while studying plant pathology at the U of M—was honored for developing high-yield strains of disease-resistant wheat in the 1960's, an achievement that sparked the Green Revolution and helped to alleviate hunger throughout much of the Third World.

"He has long understood that one of the greatest threats to global progress is the torment of human hunger," said President Bush during the ceremony. "Dr. Borlaug, I thank you for your vision and dedication." (A full transcript of Bush's speech can be found here.)

In conducting his research, Dr. Borlaug confronted what he called "the Population Monster"—mankind's inability to produce enough food to keep up with worldwide population gains. He saw various social ills, such as war and terrorism, as consequences of this phenomenon. As Borlaug explained in 1970 upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize: "You can't build peace on empty stomachs."

Read more about Dr. Borlaug and his accomplishment here.

Posted by Matt Snyders at July 18, 2007 9:22 AM | Comments (2)

 

Doh! A Deer!

Filed under: Environment

The Department of Natural Resources has a question: What do you think of Minnesota's population of cloven-hooved rats?

Ecologists have indicted the species—better known to the public as the white-tailed deer—for all manner of crimes against humanity and the natural world. (See "Bambi Must Die," 11/04/04.) The species' rap sheet includes: spreading bovine TB, plundering crops, consuming gardens, stripping new growth in forests, devouring ground-nesting birds, and spoiling the grills on 20,000 Minnesota vehicles each year.

In response, Minnesota's Department of Natural Resources has started to take the first toddling steps toward getting the state's deer population under firmer control. This has mostly involved expanding the hunt for antlerless deer—that is, reproducing does.

So why does it look like the DNR is equivocating like Elmer Fudd? In recent months, the agency has gathered teams of citizens to talk about deer numbers, and now they've launched an online survey to ask all Minnesotans how they feel about the state's number-one ungulate. Why assemble a jury of civilians when science has already judged the deer guilty—and handed down a few hundred thousand death sentences?

"Historically, and this is true nationally, deer has been a hunting commodity," explains Lou Cornicelli, big game program coordinator at the DNR. "We have 500,000 deer hunters in this state. They spend about a quarter of a billion dollars pursuing white-tailed deer. Deer hunting, it's been said, is actually more valuable than the wheat crop in this state."
It's a new paradigm, then, to ask Bambi to behave for farmers, ecologists, exurban gardeners, and long-haul commuters.

While the white-tail has proved hard to wrangle, the DNR seems to be having better luck mustering a consensus out of the most ornery of upright apes. "We've gotten 600 or 700 responses this year," Cornicelli says. "We're using a social process to implement science-based population goals."

Posted by Michael Tortorello at June 29, 2007 9:32 AM | Comments (1)

 

Save a bird, turn off your skyscraper lights

Filed under: Environment

Among the many detractors of modern architecture, the party with the most legitimate beef may be the migrating songbird. Researchers have noted that lit skyscrapers disorient birds at night in roughly the same manner that bus stations waylay runaways: They both have a bad habit of ending up on the sidewalk in morning.

This year, a working group led by Audubon Minnesota kicked off a project to dim office lights at night during the migratory season. At worst, the experiment would be harmless. The voluntary effort promised real estate managers a way to save energy and money—only Joe Soucheray found cause to complain—and tall buildings like the IDS Center, U.S. Bankcorp Center, and Riverplace joined the effort in mid-March.

Joanna Eckles, a St. Paul Audubon member, helped launch the experiment, and has trained a team of a dozen volunteers to collect data each morning. "Data," in this case, means the tiny carcasses of crashed birds and the occasional survivor.

"We always walk the same route," Eckles says over the phone from her house in Stillwater. "We focus on the morning, from five to eight. In Minneapolis, especially, we find the people who clean the streets are out really early. Until you befriend them, you have to get there before they do."

Eckles notes that there are other scavengers to beat, too—crows, raccoons, and the like. And then there are birds that turn up disarticulated—presumably victim to the city's population of peregrine falcons, who have not signed up for any program to aid their avian colleagues.

Eckles walked the route herself last Sunday, and collected five birds—a normal haul. "The most common warbler we're finding is the ovenbird," she says. "We find sparrows. Not house sparrows,"—at this point, Eckles takes a moment to disparage the invasive species—"but white-throated sparrows."

The mortality list has included some surprises. One volunteer picked up a woodcock—a ground bird that generally has no business to conduct in downtown Minneapolis. Dead bats can be found lying in curled-up black balls. That's a particular mystery, as these creatures navigate the skies through echolocation. Eckles herself picked up a reclusive water bird called a sora rail: "That bird should be there just as much as I should be on the moon," she says.

Having failed to reach their destination—be that Lake Minnetonka or a beach in Mexico—do the birds end up in a charnel house or a pauper's grave?

"That's a good question," Eckles says. "All the carcasses are brought to the University. All the ones that are intact will go into the collection."

At this, Eckles puts down the phone for a second. There's someone at the door: a neighborhood child who has brought her a robin's egg that he found in the grass. Eckles promises to recommend a few places where the nest may be hiding, though she doesn't sound hopeful. There isn't a spreadsheet in the world big enough to register the lost robin's egg.

Posted by Michael Tortorello at May 25, 2007 3:49 PM | Comments (0)

 

The Evils of Ethanol

Filed under: Environment

It is a universal axiom of modern politics that no politician with presidential ambitions can talk honestly about the very real problems of the government's slavish promotion of corn-based ethanol. In the corn belt states, of course, it is impossible to talk honestly about corn-based ethanol if you want to get elected dog catcher.

This why we occasionally need to listen to professors.

In a paper published this month in the journal, Foreign Affairs, two University of Minnesota profs--C. Ford Runge, the Director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy and Benjamin Senauer, the Co-director of the Food Industry Center--highlight some of the unwelcome consequences of growing so much corn for biofuel.

Runge and Senauer cover some familiar territory--the adverse environmental consequences of intensive corn farming, the approximately eight billion dollars of direct subsidies paid to American corn growers each year, the obnoxious enrichment of agri-giant ADM.

But they also take a close look at the effects of U.S. ethanol policy on poor people who live outside the U.S. Long story short: it drives up food costs for those who can least afford it:

In late 2006, the price of tortilla flour in Mexico, which gets 80 percent of its corn imports from the United States, doubled thanks partly to a rise in U.S. corn prices from $2.80 to $4.20 a bushel over the previous several months. (Prices rose even though tortillas are made mainly from Mexican-grown white corn because industrial users of the imported yellow corn, which is used for animal feed and processed foods, started buying the cheaper white variety.) The price surge was exacerbated by speculation and hoarding. With about half of Mexico's 107 million people living in poverty and relying on tortillas as a main source of calories, the public outcry was fierce. In January 2007, Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderón, was forced to cap the prices of corn products.

Posted by Mike Mosedale at April 25, 2007 4:10 PM | Comments (2)

 

Blood and gas: Welcome to the Twin Cities sewer system

Filed under: Environment

After he got sprayed with a face full blood while on the job last month, Minneapolis sewer work Ron Huebner—like a lot of the people who heard about the incident— responded with a mix of shock and repulsion. How could such a thing happen?

You can count geologist Greg Brick among those not appalled by the incident. Of course, Brick has more experience with such matters than the average citizen. For much of the past decade, the inveterate explorer has crawled and waded his way through the storm drains, sanitary sewers and caves of Twin Cities' netherworld.

"You get a lot of weird fluids in the sewers. There's a lot more stuff down there than people realize," says Brick, whose has written extensively about his subterranean explorations. (His forthcoming book on the Twin Cities underground will be published by the University of Minnesota Press).

Blood is hardly the most worrisome substance an underground explorer can encounter, Brick says. "In some sewers, there are horrible, gasoline-type vapors. It makes you afraid to create a spark," he says.

He is not sure if he's encountered blood in the sewer before but says slaughterhouses routinely discharge such waste. That's one reason—although hardly the only one—that Brick now wears a respirator whenever he ventures into the sanitary sewers. "I've gotten sick in those tunnels too many times not to wear protection," he laughs.

For the record, Huebner's face full of blood—a mix of animal and human—was legally discharged into the sewers by R & D Systems, a medical research company in northeast Minneapolis.

Posted by Mike Mosedale at April 16, 2007 11:55 AM | Comments (0)

 

City Pages presents the Global Warming Day of Action

Filed under: Environment

The Global Warming Day of Action will take place on Saturday, April 14, from noon to 4:00 p.m. at the Minnesota State Capitol Mall in St. Paul. Learn more about ways reduce global warming and hear from speakers including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Keith Ellison, Mayor R.T. Rybak, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, Cities 97's Brian Oake, and others. The event will feature information booths and music by Cosmic Railroad, Gold Standard, and Jenny Dalton. To volunteer call (612) 659-9124.

Posted by Corey Anderson at April 6, 2007 9:49 AM | Comments (2)

 

Just Don't Inhale

Filed under: Environment

With the attention paid to the hazards of coal-fired power plant recently, you asthmatics might want to blame Xcel Energy and other power producers for your hacking and wheezing. Think again. According to a report released last week by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, the big bad utilities don't top the list when it comes the release of so-called "respiratory toxicants" in Minnesota.

That dubious distinction belongs to an agricultural outfit, CHS Oil Seed Processing in Mankato. In 2004, according to U.S. PIRG's review of the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory data, CHS released a total of 520,000 pounds of respiratory toxicants at its Mankato plant. Statewide, the report says, industrial facilities released almost 12 million pounds of respiratory toxicants.

Meanwhile, Flint Hill Resources, an oil refinery in Rosemount, tops the list for reproductive toxicants, release an estimated 10,561 pounds of the worrisome chemicals. Another Rosemount company, Spectro Alloys Corporation, which manufactures aluminum alloys, is the state's leading emitter of dioxin (at a modest 2.4 grams). Super Radiator Coils in Chaska leads the overall carcinogen release category at 125,250 pounds.

This could be the next-to-last year Minnesotans have such access to such a complete data set. That's because the EPA changed recently changed its reporting rules, effectively weakening the public's ability to know, according to Monique Sullivan, U.S. PIRG's Minnesota field organizer.

"According to the EPA's own reports, toxic pollution has decreased 57 percent nationwide since 1998 [when the toxic release inventory was created]," says Sullivan. "It served as a very powerful incentive."

Right-to-know legislation seems to be gaining a foothold in Congress. Two members of the Minnesota congressional delegation—DFLers Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum—have signed on as co-sponsors. The big question, says Sullivan, is whether such a bill would fall victim to a presidential veto.

Posted by Mike Mosedale at March 27, 2007 8:56 AM | Comments (0)

 

Bird brains

Filed under: Environment

This month the Twin Cities became a safer place for migrating birds. The Department of Natural Resources' Nongame Wildlife Program, in cooperation with other conservation groups, launched the Lights Out Twin Cities Project, an effort to reduce building collisions from birds that migrate during the night in the spring and fall. According to the DNR, millions of birds die each year from flying into highly reflective or brightly lit buildings, or drop dead from exhaustion after circling a bright lights for hours.

The project, similar to programs in New York, Toronto, and Chicago, asks that tall buildings dim or turn off all unnecessary lighting during peak nighttime bird migration hours—midnight until sunrise from March through May. Minneapolis' Wells Fargo Building and the Accenture Building have both signed on. Street-level lighting would be unaffected.

"Reducing bird deaths from collisions will have a positive effect on bird conservation," states Mark Martell, director of Bird Conservation for Audubon Minnesota. "The Lights Out program costs building owners or managers little or nothing to implement and will save energy and money at the same time it saves birds."

Volunteers will also be collecting dead birds around highly trafficked buildings along the West Bank and both downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul for further research.

Posted by Jessica Armbruster at March 26, 2007 4:56 PM | Comments (0)

 

Slate calls BS on the wind chill factor

Filed under: Environment

Daniel Engber has a piece at Slate.com, the topic of which speaks to our hearts and extremities—the wind chill factor. In our part of the country, where chatting about the weather goes beyond small talk and television meteorologists are considered celebrities, Engber's piece gives the reader a bit of insight into the history of calculating the wind chill factor, and, quite frankly, how meaningless it is: "The updated model patches over the worst flaws of the old wind chill system, but it's not anything close to perfect. [Randall] Osczevski and [Maurice] Bluestein made a set of new assumptions to determine wind-chill-equivalent temperatures. Namely, they geared their calculations toward people who are 5 feet tall, somewhat portly, and walk at an even clip directly into the wind. They also left out crucial variables that have an important effect on how we experience the weather, like solar radiation. Direct sunlight can make us feel 10 to 15 degrees warmer, even on a frigid winter day. The wind chill equivalent temperature, though, assumes that we're taking a stroll in the dead of night." Read the article here.

Posted by Corey Anderson at February 12, 2007 1:59 PM | Comments (1)

 

Sprawl of the Wild Part II: Northwoods for sale

Filed under: Environment

For anyone dismayed by the real estate bonanza that has so radically transformed Minnesota's north woods over the past decade, one question has long loomed at the forefront: When will it ever stop? Answer: Barring nuclear war or economic catastrophe, no time soon.

At least, that seems to be a reasonable inference from this week's little-noted announcement that the Potlatch Corporation plans to sell some 120,000 acres of its holdings in northern Minnesota. The reason: The land, much of which has been traditionally open to the public for purposes of hiking and hunting, is simply more valuable for development than for timber production.

If all proceeds as planned, the sale will amount to one of the largest real estate transactions in recent Minnesota history--surpassed in scale only by the 1999 sale of 310,000 acres of woodland by another forest products company, Boise Cascade. That land was bought by Forest Capital Partners, an investment company that is expected to parcel much of the property off for subdivision.

Tom Landweher, assistant state director at the Nature Conservancy, says he was not surprised that Potlatch executives decided to unload some of the company's land holdings. The size of the prospective sale is another matter. "It's a big chunk of land," Landwehr notes. "There are roughly a million acres of forest land owned by industrial companies like Potlatch [in Minnesota], so this represents about 10 percent of that."

While Potlatch has yet to identify the parcels it intends to sell, Landwehr expects that many of the plots will be those that are most closely intermingled with existing public lands. Such proximity raises the value of the land--who wouldn't want their ten-acres adjacent to a state forest? The unfortunate corrolary, of course, is that development in the middle of a public lands generally serves to degrade the qualities of those places.

Landwehr doubts that the state or non-profit like the Nature Conservancy will be in a position to step in and buy much of the Potlatch land. "Some of that land will be $2,000 an acre or more. You're talking tens of millions of dollars," he says. Additionally, he notes, a lot of local units of government in northern Minnesota would resist any such efforts because they want to kept as much land as possible on the tax rolls.

"It used to be the only type of land people bought in northern Minnesota was waterfront," Landwehr observes. "Now people are satisfied 10 acres in the middle of nowhere. It's one of the big cultural changes in the last 15 years. People no longer require water."

Posted by Mike Mosedale at January 12, 2007 2:33 PM | Comments (1)

 

Liberal global warming threatens Christmas 2014

Filed under: Environment

The Associated Press reports the tree-growing operation owned by John and Jan Donelson "has lost 27,000 young Christmas trees to the drought" that hit Minnesota this summer. The Donelsons own 300-acres of faith-based forest near Clear Lake, Minnesota that, despite a new irrigating system, met an inconvenient truth that could affect the Christmas tree supply in eight years. Ironically, the more secular Santa's Forest nearby lost no trees because new trees weren't planted this year.

Posted by Corey Anderson at August 23, 2006 3:29 PM | Comments (0)

 

Who Didn't Kill The Electric Car?

Filed under: Environment

Tuesday, as the Edina theater marquee asked Who Killed The Electric Car? and gas station marquees hailed the highest gas prices in the history of the Twin Cities ($3.105 for unleaded), I turned the ignition key on one of the few known electric cars in the state, clicked the switch on the control panel to "reverse" and put my foot on the accelerator as the vehicle's owner, Pete Bonahoom, nervously cautioned, "Just remember, this is a $25,000 car."

Not to mention the future of everything, chick magnet, tonic for the troops, dude magnet, the answer to all our problems, kid magnet, hope for the planet, motorcyclist magnet, the only way to go, skateboarder magnet, big fun, and, as one slack-jawed Earth-loving cat with an Amoeba Records Hollywood T-shirt on Lake Street put it, "a very sweet ride."

 

(Left) Pizza Galactic brothers Greg and Pete (foreground) Bonahoom, and (right) the Myers Motors sweet ride.

Bonahoom, 28, is the owner of Galactic Pizza in Minneapolis. The two-year-old restaurant is best known for its superhero-costumed delivery people, and it got Hummer-sized press in early June when one of its superheroes nabbed a purse snatcher. But perhaps most importantly, Bonahoom and Galactic is the owner of three electric cars – three-wheel buggies that can be seen tooling all over south Minneapolis – that would be the envy of all the former electric car owners in California who lament the General Motors-big oil-feds-led hit on their beloved EV1s in Who Killed The Electric Car?

Bonahoom bought his vehicles from NevCo, a now-defunct Eugene, Oregon company, who came out with an electric car in 1999 and went under last year. "No one else (in Minnesota) has these. They only made 38 of them, and I have four," says Bonahoom, a former stock trader for Piper-Jaffray. "I freaked out when I looked at the people around me and saw where that whole path would take me; it was just after 9/11 and the world was entering this super-chaotic state," he says, explaining how he embarked on his organic business and came to buy the cars, dubbed Gizmos, for under $12,000 each.

"I didn't want to be pissed at myself on my deathbed, and hate what I'd been doing. I started learning the whole concept of socially-responsible business, and thought it was something that needed to be worked on," says Bonahoom, sitting at his neat timecard-strewn desk in the back of the Galactic kitchen. He's wearing a "Dy-No-Mite" T-shirt and a glazed look, due to an exhausting week that has seen business spike due to the purse snatcher press, and news that one of his drivers was in a serious hit-and-run motorcycle accident the night before.

"One of the major impacts that pizza restaurants have on the environment is that you drive crappy cars everywhere and spew out emissions and all that," he says. "So I just Googled `electric car' and found a few different choices, and went with the Gizmo for various reasons – price being the biggest. Plus, they're really unique-looking. The other one we have now is stylish, but (the three) Gizmos are funny, and I'd rather have humor in the business than style."

Because it's easier to drive (the Gizmos are driven with two hand-controlled brakes and accelerator sticks), Bonahoom suggests I take for a spin the stylish one: A sleek blue version from Myers Motors that comes with the standard steering wheel and floor brake and accelerator. The car was given to Galactic as a promotional tool after someone at Myers saw a national TV story on the purse snatcher.

Bonahoom takes me out to the back parking lot, where his brother Greg is working on the vehicles. The Myers car's fuel "tank" is hooked up to a generator, which is attached to the car's battery. Pete pulls the hose out of the tank, and says the car can run for a couple hours per charge, but that he wants it back after 30 minutes because he needs it for deliveries. The car can reach 75 miles per hour, but its internal computer is set to not exceed 45, because Bonahoom doesn't want anyone flipping it.

I pull out of the Galactic back lot and onto Garfield Avenue. After gingerly making my way up the one-way, I ease out onto Lake Street and, with SUVs and other monster trucks whizzing past and bearing down, I feel like a go-cart at Elko Speedway. I cruise down Lyndale, picking up speed and confidence as I go. At every intersection I find myself silently idling at, I have conversations with strangers. People of all ages on the street wave and point and smile; the ones who don't wear expressions that suggest they want to drive it, own it, know what it is.

Look, I test-drove a Hummer a couple years ago, and it wasn't nearly as much fun as this. Driving the H2, I pretty much felt like a dick, and the one thing I remember is that it had a great radio (the electric car has a decent CD player), and what the salesman told me as we drove around a man-made lake in Arden Hills: "When you come up to an intersection, they all stop for you. They want you to go first. They want to watch you. And there's a fear factor, too." It did not charm me, nor did it inspire thumbs-ups, or a couple of electric youth on bikes to yell, as they did just past Lakewood Cemetery, "Oh, that's sick!" Nor did it come with this quote from Romans, which Myers Motors has on its promotional materials: "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."

One of the main points of Who Killed The Electric Car? is that General Motors never marketed the electric car the way every car in America has been: as a sex symbol. Save for a brief love affair with a 1970 T-Bird with suicide doors and an eight-track tape player, I have never owned a sex machine, but trust me: Hotties of all stripes like electric cars.
Sure, some of the more conventional can't-be-bothereds look at you like you're a little boy in a Rickshaw and like your manhood-car thing isn't even in the running, but plenty of others – say, the blissed-out runner at Lake Calhoun's North Beach – look at you with a wry smile that says she knows that the "All Electric!!" sign on the side of the car goes for what's inside the hood and in the cockpit.

After 30 minutes of electricity, I reluctantly return the car to Galactic, on Lyndale and 28th. I get back into my emissions-belching beast and drive home. No one looks at me. I am Clark Kent, no longer saving the world or making a better future for the children. But, as with the last three minutes of Who Killed The Electric Car?, I come away hopeful. Hopeful that someday soon, the bums who run oil–slicked civilization will be out of power, and common-sense stuff like the electric car will no longer be the vehicle of choice for solely superheroes and dreamers.

"Most people don't even know the electric car is an option," says Bonahoom. "My whole goal is to influence other businesses to do what I'm doing. That way, not only am I doing stuff, but I'm spreading it."

Posted by Jim Walsh at August 9, 2006 5:36 PM | Comments (6)

 

Minnesota by the numbers: Top 20 polluters

Filed under: Environment

So you want to know what companies are releasing the most pollutants into Minnesota's air and water? The ugly answers can be found in the recently released Right-to-Know Chemical Information Report, which is posted on the Minnesota Department of Public Safety website. Among other things, the report lists the top 20 pollution producing facilities in the state. As usual, Xcel Energy's coal-burning power plant in Becker occupies the top spot; according to the report, the Sherco plant emitted more than seven million pounds of pollutants during the 2004 calender year. That's more than three times as much as the number two polluter, Minnesota Power's Boswell Energy Center in Cohasset. The full report is larded with useful tables and other data. Below are the Dirty 20, ranked top to bottom.

Sherco Plant (Xcel Energy), Becker
Boswell Energy Center (Minnesota Power), Cohasset
Flint Hills Resources, Inver Grove Heights
3M Cottage Grove Center, Cottage Grove
Sappi Cloquet LLC, Cloquet
A.S. King Generating Plant (Xcel Energy), Bayport
Boise White Paper, LLC, International Falls
CHS Oilseed Processing, Mankato
MN Soybean Processors, Brewster
Riverside Plant (Xcel), Minneapolis
Rochester Public Utilities, Rochester
Larson Glastron Boats, Little Falls
Twin Cities Assembly Plant (Ford), St. Paul
Crown Food Packaging, Owatonna
Central Bi-Products, Redwood Falls
US Marine/Bayliner, Pipestone
ADM Co., Mankato
Gopher Resource Corp., Eagan
Taconite Harbor Energy, Schroeder
3M, Hutchinson

Posted by Mike Mosedale at July 31, 2006 2:02 PM | Comments (0)

 

The ethanol conundrum

Filed under: Environment

For Minnesota politicians, ethanol is the classic no-brainer issue. You are either pro-ethanol or don't want to get re-elected. For Minnesota environmentalists, it is a more complicated matter. While everyone with any green in their blood agrees on the need to develop alternative fuels, ethanol remains controversial because of the long running debate over whether its production requires more energy than it actually creates. "What I would really love is to get all the researchers in the same room and watch them duke it out and see who convinces me," says Jeanette Brimmer, legal director of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.

Given such ambiguities, it is hardly surprising that the MCEA does not have a global position on the virtues of ethanol. "There are some good ways to do ethanol and there are some really bad ways. We're still trying to sort through that," explains Brimmer. "So our approach is a devil's in the details approach."

With rising gasoline prices fueling an unprecedented ethanol boom, those details are suddenly more critical than ever. Currently, there are 16 ethanol plants operating in Minnesota, which can produce about 600 million gallons of ethanol annually (or approximately 13 percent of the national capactiy). With eight new facilities in the planning stages, that output could triple by 2008.

To date, most proposals have zipped through the state's regulatory process, which is administered mainly by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. That's not to say there hasn't been controversy. As Dennis Lien of the Pioneer Press has reported, ethanol production requires a lot of water--between four and five gallons per gallon of ethanol. Because many of these proposals call for plants to be built in areas with problematic or otherwise diminished water supplies (mainly, in agricultural zones in the western and southwestern parts of the state), water use has become a highly contentious matter.

For Brimmer, an equally disturbing trend is the push to use coal--instead of natural gas--to power ethanol plants. Economically, the rationale isn't hard to see. One 2004 study showed that plant operators can save 70 percent on fuel costs by using coal; since then, natural gas prices have only continued to soar. But among environmentalists, even so-called "clean coal," is an anathema (or as Brimmer puts it, "an environmental oxymoron").

That's why the MCEA sued the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency after the agency granted a permit to the Heron Lake BioEnergy LLC, which aims to build a $97 million coal fired ethanol plant in the southern Minnesota town of Heron Lake. The Minnesota Court of Appeals is expected to rule on MCEA's lawsuit Monday. However that suit plays out, Brimmer anticipates more skirmishes because of the economic attractiveness of coal.

She also lays some blame at the feet of the MPCA, which, she says, has routinely fast-tracked ethanol proposals and cow-towed to the agendas of ethanol backers. That said, Brimmer adds, there is considerable uncertainty how the MPCA will process applications in the future. Earlier this month, the MPCA replaced its entire ethanol team, even the lawyer.

Posted by Mike Mosedale at June 30, 2006 2:22 PM | Comments (3)

 

D'oh! A nuclear blunder and a one-day story

Filed under: Environment

Last week, Michael Keegan, an anti-nuclear activist out of Indiana, was scouring the fine print on the website of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when he came across a curious item: on May 3, according to the website, approximately 100 workers at Xcel Energy's Prairie Island nuclear power plant had been exposed to an unfiltered radioactive gas called iodine 131. Keegan forwarded the news to Bonnie Urfer, co-director of the Wisconsin-based group Nukewatch, who disseminated the report to colleagues in the environmental movement, who then notified reporters. All told, six days had passed between the blunder at the plant and its first public airing.

"I was absolutely shocked that there was no press release by the NRC or Xcel Energy. It should have been headline news everywhere, no matter what the industry said about the danger," says Urfer. The reports that did make the news hardly stoked the flames of outrage. In the Star Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the "incident"--no one dared call it an accident--was a one-day story. Jan Strasma, a spokesman for the NRC, dutifully supplied quotes suggesting that the it was, really, no big deal. He further declared that there were "no health or safety consequences" from the exposure, which he likened to an x-ray.

That comparison did not sit well with Urfer and other anti-nuclear activists, whose insights were conspicuously absent from the mainstream accounts. Cindy Folckers, an environmental scientist at the Nuclear Information Resource Service, bristles at the equating of effects of inhaling a radioactive gas to getting an x-ray. "It's apples and oranges. There is no comparison, except to make it seem insignificant. But scientifically, it's a stupid thing to do," Folckers offers. "It's the difference between touching a hot coal and breathing in a hot coal into your system."

George Crocker, director of the Lake Elmo-based North American Water Office, was equally incensed. "These people were trying to pretend that nothing had happened," he says of Xcel. "What does that tell you about whether you can trust them?" In Crocker's view, the mishap also highlights the inherent problem of the nuclear industry. "These guys are out of bounds again and they're operating a very unforgiving technology," says Crocker. "The time will come when they're will be a payback."

Dave Lochbaum, the director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, says U.S. power plant workers are exposed to radiation under similar circumstances every two or three years. In Lockbaum's view, the most noteworthy aspect of the Prairie Island event was the number of workers effected; by that standard, it was the most serious accident in about five years. "Bottom line," says Lochbaum, "this is not the first time that mistakes caused workers to face unplanned radiation exposures and it'll likely not be the last time."

Posted by Mike Mosedale at May 12, 2006 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

 

Instant follow-up: 3M's bluegill problem

Filed under: Environment

My story in today's City Pages about former Minnesota Pollution Control Agency researcher Fardin Oliaei merits a quick footnote. As the piece relates, Oliaei's 16-year employment at the MPCA came to an end last month--an outcome the scientist attributes to institutional opposition to her efforts to focus public attention and research dollars on pollution from a ubiquitous and highly persistent family of synthetic chemicals known as PFCs. In particular, Oliaei has been concerned with a PFC called PFOS, which was long manufactured by the 3M Company at its facility in Cottage Grove for use in such products as Scotch-Guard.

Well, yesterday, the Minnesota Department of Health announced that it was issuing new fish consumption guidelines for a nearby stretch of the Mississippi River (Pool 2) because of research findings that show unusually high levels of PFOS in the fillets of bluegill sunfish.

Okay, this probably won't effect a hell of a lot of people. Pool 2, which runs from St. Paul's Ford Dam to Hastings, is a relatively polluted body of water. You have to be pretty cavalier to routinely eat fish from its waters. That said, until yesterday, the Department of Health held the position that it was okay to eat an unlimited number of bluegills from the river because bluegills, like other small panfish, typically don't accumulate conventional pollutants at the same rate as bigger predator fish.

PFOS seems to constitute an unusual exception to this principle. The compound binds to muscle tissue the way most other bioaccumulative toxins concentrate in fat. Long story short: the MDH now says no more than one bluegill meal a week out of the river.

Posted by Mike Mosedale at March 29, 2006 10:00 AM | Comments (2)

 

The Awful Truth: The grim prospects for Minnesota's great outdoors

Filed under: Environment

In recent years, the juggernaut that is the Minnesota real estate industry has inspired plenty of jeremiads. It's no mystery why. Minnesotans have long taken pride in the natural beauty of the place, and it is vanishing before their eyes at an appalling pace. With so much formerly pristine countryside being subdivided, paved or otherwise degraded, the time to act is now. Actually, the time to act was a decade or two back. But, as the man says, better late than never.

All this is addressed in considerable detail in a 56-page report released yesterday by the Minnesota Campaign for Conservation. The report opens on an optimistic note. The first passage, titled "Minnesota's Past Points the Way to a Proud Future," makes the usual high-minded points about the state's legacy as a leader in conservation and its ample natural resources.

No doubt, what follows is intended as an inspiring call to arms--or at least a call to staunch the bleeding. But the grim litany of statistics and trends outlined in the rest of the document will make anyone who cares about Minnesota's outdoor heritage lunge for the Kleenex.

A taste:

By 2030, the report estimates, more than one million acres of open space in Minnesota will be plowed over for homes, malls and roads; that is roughly equal to all the land in Hennepin, Ramsey, Dakota and Carver counties.

In the last decade, the report states, the seven county metro area alone lost approximately 140,000 acres of agricultural and open space to development.

You think your favorite lake is crowded now? Brother, you don't know anything about crowded. Between 2000 and 2030, according to the report, the state's population is expected to increase 28 percent (to approximately 6.2 million people).

A few other sobering facts:

The Brainerd Lakes area has achieved the dubious status as the fastest growing "micropolitan" area in the Midwest, and 28th in the entire nation.

In the next 20 years, between 500 and 600 new single family homes are expected to be built on the shores of Lake Vermilion, which has long been regarded as one of Minnesota's most picturesque bodies of water.

Large corporations--utilities and timber concerns--are rapidly selling off previously unbroken tracts of northern forest to real estate speculators. Prices are skyrocketing. Habitat for sensitive species is vanishing.

Environmental spending--as a percentage of the state budget--is plunging to historic lows. In 2001, for instance, approximately $228 million was appropriated from the general fund for expenditures at "primary conservation agencies" such as the DNR; the general fund appropriation for 2007 is pegged at $123 million.

Minnesota now ranks 37th in the nation in percentage of its budget spent on state parks.

Posted by Mike Mosedale at February 24, 2006 9:09 AM | Comments (1)

 

Department of Boondoggles: The Great Wall of St. Paul

Filed under: Environment

Usually when the words "boondoggle" and "Mississippi River" are uttered in the same sentence, you can bet that the phrase "U.S. Army Corps of Engineers" will follow in short order. As has been well-documented, the Corps loves to pour tons of concrete (and billions of dollars) into the Mississippi for projects with lousy economic justification and dire ecological consequences.

But the Corps is not alone in this proclivity. The latest competition comes courtesy of the Metropolitan Airports Commission (or MAC), which dearly wants to construct a one-and-a-half mile dike around the St. Paul Downtown Airport, otherwise known as Holman Field.

The rationale behind the $47 million project? To prevent periodic flooding from the adjacent Mississippi. By the MAC's own count, high waters have caused the airport to be shut down for a total of 210 days--over the past 80 years. For you mathletes, that's fewer than three days a year. So in other words, flooding constitutes a very occasional inconvience to the CEOS at 3M and Ecolab who prefer to use Holman Field than to rub shoulders with all the plebians at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. That's worth $47 million?

Although the Federal Aviation Administration announced this week that it will commit $20 million to the project, the dike is far from a fait accomplit. Today, a divided St. Paul Planning Commission postponed its scheduled vote on the matter until February 24. And while the project enjoyed a vigorous champion in former mayor Randy Kelly (and plenty of support from institutional boosters), new mayor Chris Coleman has not publicly announced his stance.

That is a source of considerable comfort to Whitney Clark, the executive director of the non-profit organization, Friends of the Mississippi River. Among Clark's objections to the project: the loss of more than 500 acres of floodplain, the limited benefit to the average citizens of St. Paul and, put plainly, sheer ugliness.

"It's going to have a huge impact on the way it feels to be on the river," Clark observes. "If you're in a canoe or a little john boat, you are going to be looking at a 20 foot high wall for one and a half miles."

Posted by Mike Mosedale at February 10, 2006 1:03 PM | Comments (1)

 

Aqualung

Filed under: Environment

Not every executive has the opportunity to write a letter to the Star Tribune touting her job performance. Minnesota Pollution Control Agency commissioner Sheryl Corrigan, however, sent out her Christmas card early this year in a December 5 op-ed titled "Environmental Successes Have Taken Wing in Minnesota."

The news pages hadn't been kind to the agency in 2005, with stories suggesting the MPCA favored industry over environmental groups in setting new state mercury regulations. Meanwhile, state senate hearings have been investigating whether the agency persecuted a whistle-blowing MPCA scientist who'd targeted 3M, Corrigan's former employer. Yet Corrigan saw happier signs in the air. Specifically, during a river swim with her two kids, Corrigan saw bald eagles, whose population has increased 28 percent, Corrigan writes, from just five years ago.

Granted, the recovery of this great carrion bird started with the federal ban on DDT in 1972. But Corrigan found much else to be excited about in the state's air and water: "The Twin Cities is one of only three major metropolitan areas in the country that meets all federal ambient air quality standards, and Minnesota is among only 11 states meeting those same stringent standards."

It was an interesting statistic to champion given that in 2005 Minnesota also registered its worst air day ever. In fact, a review of the MPCA monitoring data from last year suggests that Minnesota does not have "good" air. What it has most days, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's Air Quality Index, is "moderate" air.

The AQI measures ground-level ozone, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and fine particles (PM2.5), and categorizes the results under five headings: good, moderate, unhealthy for sensitive groups, unhealthy (for all), and very unhealthy. At the end of 2005, the Twin Cities metro had registered 191 moderate days 166 good ones and 5 that were unhealthy for sensitive groups.

And then there were the three days at the end of January and the beginning of February when a climate inversion over most of the central and northeast United States caused particulate matter readings to spike into the red zone--unhealthy for all.

The alerts received steady media play and they highlighted a paradox in the MPCA's public outreach campaign. On one side, the agency hopes to convince Minnesotans to limit their personal pollutants--snowmobiles, fireplaces, and, most of all, tailpipe emissions--when the air grows foul. (The MPCA has no plan--or perhaps no will--to increase limits on industry and utility emissions on air alert days.) On the other side, air alerts on the five o'clock news may stir an alarmed public to ask why the MPCA hasn't kept pollution under control.

"The public has a sense because we see alerts we didn't see as kids, that the air quality is getting worse," says Rick Strassman, air quality monitor supervisor at the MPCA. "But that's not the case. We're monitoring for new pollutants. At the same time they promulgated the new particle standards, the EPA made a tighter, more restrictive standard for ozone. And as a combination of the two, we've seen a higher number of alerts for both particles and ozone in the last five or six years."

Strassman goes on to explain that the MPCA didn't begin monitoring for pm2.5 pollution until 1999; undoubtedly, the public has been sucking down ugly stuff since the beginning of the industrial age. Meanwhile, levels of mercury and lead have fallen dramatically--despite the boom in the population and the increase in road congestion. And the planned gas conversion of two coal-fired power plants, the Riverside facility in Minneapolis and High Bridge in St. Paul, should eliminate the largest fixed source of small particle pollution. Though the air may be cleaner than it was a decade or two ago, Strassman acknowledges, "that's kind of been a tough message to sell."

Christopher Childs, who tracks air pollution for the North Star chapter of the Sierra Club, isn't buying such a rosy picture of air quality. "I was very concerned about the major air quality alert we had back in the winter," Childs says. "That's a real warning sign."
While he agrees that the coal-plant conversions will have a dramatic effect on the skies, he looks gloomily at the standing parade of cars stacking up on the ring roads. "It's going to take some serious advances in public transportation to make a dent in pollution from our vehicles," Childs says.

Ultimately, the Twin Cities aren't at risk of going into non-attainment--that is, failing to meet EPA air standards--which would trigger strenuous, and expensive, regulation of industry and transport. Yet even low levels of pollution can prove damaging to vulnerable populations: children, the elderly, and individuals with cardiovascular and pulmonary disease. Dr. Christine Ziebold, a Minneapolis pediatrician who also has a Ph.D. and a master's in public health, cites a 2004 statement from the American Academy of Pediatricians. "National air quality standards," she says, "are not protective of children's health and doesn't consider the special developmental vulnerability of children."

"For instance," she continues, "80 percent of the alveoli--the tiny air bubbles that make up the lungs--are formed post-natally. There's enormous growth, and during the early post-natal period the lung is very susceptible to damage."

While the AQI handily offers the public a color-coded way to gauge pollution levels, hour by hour, the health consequences, Ziebold argues, don't follow such a clear threshold. "Because of the enormous number of people involved," she says, "small risks equal a significant risk for the population."

Or as Corrigan wrote at the end of her cheery op-ed, "Maybe we can't see the difference, but the eagles can."

Posted by Michael Tortorello at January 18, 2006 12:54 PM | Comments (0)

 

Minnesota by the numbers: The nation's biggest importer of electricity

Filed under: Environment

A few weeks ago, Ken Bradley was poking around one of the more obscure corners of the Department of Energy website when he came across an eye-popping table. Minnesota, Bradley discovered after scrolling through the chart, is the United State's single biggest importer of electricity.

For Bradley, who works for the non-profit advocacy group Minnesotans for an Energy Efficient Economy, that fact wasn't so shocking; but the margin was. According to the DOE numbers, Minnesota's net imports of electricity--28.2 trillion BTUs in 2001--account for more than a third of the entire nation's imports.

The vast majority of this electricity comes from Manitoba Hydro, the provincially-owned utility which operates an enormous network of power generating dams on the rivers in central and northern Manitoba. Bradley has a laundry list of complaints about Manitoba Hydro. As coordinator of ME3's Just Energy campaign, he has worked for years to highlight the impacts of dam construction , both on the environment and the impoverished Cree communities that live near the flooded areas.

But in Bradley's view, Minnesota's atypical reliance on foreign electricity highlights another important problem: the state's failure to live up to the ubiquitous political rhetoric about the importance of energy independence. "We haven't done enough to take advantage of our own resources," Bradley offers. "Texas has ten times as much wind power as Minnesota. It's not because they love wind. It's because they know how to make money off energy and they see that fossil fuels are diminishing, so they're planning for the next generation."

Ross Hammond, a former manager of environmental affairs at Northern States Power (now known as Xcel Energy), says there are a couple of explanations for Minnesota's status as the nation's top importer of electricity. In part, he says, its a simple matter of geography. Minnesota's proximity to Manitoba--and its vast water resources--makes for relatively easy transmission.

But internal politics at the utility where he used to work also played an important role. "In the mid-80s, there was a shift at NSP, an internal corporate thing," Hammond explains. "The people who were in charge of purchasing power really took control of the company, so as Manitoba built more dams and we signed more long term contracts, we stopped building power plants in the state." In fact, says Hammond, Xcel, the state's largest utility, has not put a new plant on line since the late 80s--this, in spite of the considerable increase in demand.

As Hammond sees it, the reliance on Manitoba Hydro is not all bad. Hydro power, he notes, doesn't emit greenhouse gases and, therefore, doesn't contribute to global warming. It doesn't produce nuclear waste. And it is relatively cheap. "The dams are a good thing," Hammond says. But he adds one major caveat: "Manitoba Hydro needs to fulfill its obligations to the Cree people--has to do the right thing by Cree. And they haven't."

For his part, Ken Bradley offers one further objection. "We're not just importing electricity," he says. "We're also exporting a lot of dollars."

Posted by Mike Mosedale at December 30, 2005 10:30 AM | Comments (6)

 

Coming soon: "Redneck fishing at its finest"

Filed under: Environment

As environmental menaces go, the arrival of Asian carp in Minnesota waters may not seem particularly alarming. But the two main species of concern--the voracious bighead and silver carp--could radically alter the composition of fisheries in the Mississippi River watershed. They could also prove a real headache, literally, for boaters.

This is due to one of the fishes' more peculiar habits: idling boats trigger a wild leaping response in Asian carp. Because these species are so powerful--they can jump six feet out of the water--boaters in infected waters are sometimes struck by airborn fish. Such collisions can result in considerable trauma. Asian carp typically weigh 10 to 20 pounds and, occasionally, tip the scales at more than 60 pounds.

To date, neither bigheads nor silvers have established breeding populations in Minnesota. But this seems unlikely to remain the case for long. Having escaped from catfish farms in the south, both species have been steadily moving up the Mississippi for the past decade. In certain reaches of the river on the Iowa and Illinois borders, the invaders are now so numerous that they have virtually taken over the ecosystem.

Is there a silver lining to this nasty invasion? That depends how you feel about bow fishing--a bloody sport that is rapidly gaining popularity in Illinois. According to the Peoria Journal Star, one particularly avid bow fisherman has announced plans to open a specialty guide service called Redneck Charters. In prime conditions, according to the story, hundreds of the fish can become airborn at the same time. This provides ample opportunity for sharpening one's skill with the bow and arrow.

While the practice might seem the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel, it has the approval of at least one carp researcher, who calls it "redneck fishing at its finest."

Posted by Mike Mosedale at November 1, 2005 10:07 AM | Comments (1)