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EJ INTER VIEWS:
Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward Jr. opens up about his ‘Coal Tattoo,’ and Farm Together Now author Daniel Tucker discusses his role in changing America’s food system
The MSU Knight Center for Environmental Journalism Magazine
RADIOACTIVE WATER Efforts to regulate radon in drinking water remain at a standstill PAGE 16 ROAD TO PEARL LAGOON Globalization contributes to environmental problems in eastern Nicaragua PAGE 24
Spring 2011
Got (Raw) Milk? Dangerous? Delicious? Drinking raw milk draws debate PAGE 14
Knight Center for Environmental Journalism covering the planet MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
School of Journalism
SPECIALIZED MASTER’S DEGREE IN ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALISM This program includes courses in environmental reporting, science and policy, and requires an internship in science or environmental journalism
The School of Journalism at MSU is one of the nation’s largest, oldest and best journalism schools. It is ranked among the top 10 programs by the Gourman Report. Application deadline: October 1 for spring semester and February 1 for fall semester. For information see ej.msu.edu/ej_option.php Contact the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, Room 382, Communication Arts and Sciences Building, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1212. Phone: 517-353-9479 or 517-432-1415. Web: http://ej.msu.edu
Add your voice to the Great Lakes Echo GreatLakesEcho.org is a nonprofit environmental news service dedicated to reporting on 20 percent of the world’s fresh surface water and supported by Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. It features explanatory, investigative and experimental journalism that transcends the boundaries of two nations, eight states and two provinces. We consider brief pitches from journalists for environmental news stories important to the Great Lakes region, particularly those involving water diversion and privatization, contaminated beaches and the nearshore ecosystem. Got a great Great Lakes environmental story? Contact Echo Editor David Poulson at poulsondavid@gmail.com
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cover how raw milk became so popular and controversial
(Raw) Milk? 14 Got The sale of raw, unprocessed milk is illegal in many states, including Michigan. But herdshares provide a way for advocates to get a glass. Dangerous? Delicious? Drinking raw milk draws debate.
inside featured sections and stories CORNERING A PRO a Mark 8 Making Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward Jr. pioneers coal
Banning Bags
20 Cities taxing, banning plastic bags to cut down on pollution
New Food
10 Activists, authors document the farmers and innovators
The MSU Knight Center for Environmental Journalism Magazine Spring 2011
Vol. 10, No. 1 Copyright 2011
coverage with his ‘Coal Tattoo’
BOOKS
ej EJ (ISSN 1538-5361) provides environmental news and commentary locally, nationally and internationally.
Restoration 22 Model Nonprofit group buys Montana ranch to inspire cleanup of region scarred by mining
behind the movement to change America’s food system
EJ is produced by Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. Jim Detjen executive editor David Poulson editorial adviser Rachael Gleason editor
WORLD Road to Pearl Lagoon
GREAT LAKES
24 Markets, migration and municipal policies contribute to environmental problems in eastern Nicaragua
Worms Wasted 12 No Vermicomposting flourishes in the Great Lakes region
TECH NATION
the Planet 26 Engineering Climate change prevention ignites debate
Radioactive Water
16 Efforts to regulate radon in drinking water
LIFESTYLE
remain at a standstill
in the Wind (Infographic) 18 Blowing Despite their high start up costs, wind turbines are
Fragrances 28 Dangerous Harmful chemicals in personal care products, perfumes irritate sensitive people
becoming a popular choice of alternative energy
Recycling 30 Fringe Dumpster diving is a way of life for Michigan environmental consultant
also departments 4 From the editor: Local Guidance 5 From the director: Environmental Journalism Day 6 EJ News: Latest updates from the Knight Center and its alumni 35 EJ INDEX: Environmental numbers you should know
John Kalmar design editor Barb Miller editorial assistant Contributors: Liz Pacheco, Katie Dalebout, Carol Thompson, Brian Bienkowski, Carolyn Sundquist, Shaheen Kanthawala, Haley Walker and Dmitri Barvinok Contact information: EJ Magazine 382 Communication Arts Building Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824-1212 Ph: (517) 432-5155 Fax: (517) 355-7710 E-mail: ej@msu.edu Web: www.ejmagazine.com Subscriptions: E-mail or call us to receive upcoming issues of EJ. Supporters: The Environmental Journalism Program thanks the following organizations for their support: John S. and James L. Knight Foundation MSU College of Comm. Arts and Sciences MSU School of Journalism Advertising: Call (517) 432-1415 for rates. Submissions: To contribute an article, photos or artwork, contact us at the address above. Printed on 25 percent post-consumer waste, 50 percent recycled paper.
1910 - 2010
From the cover Cover photo by Abbey Moore, a 2011 graduate of Michigan State University’s School of Journalism. Contact her at abbeymoorephoto@gmail.com.
10 0 YEARS OF MSU
JOURNALISM
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from the editor| rachael gleason
Local Guidance Local guides help reporters make sense of international stories
Resources for travel journalists International Center for Journalist www.icfj.org Global Investigative Journalism Network www.globalinvestigativejournalism.org
Michigan State University Nicaragua Research www.globalchange.msu.edu/nicaragua
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Photo by Rachael Gleason
Rachael Gleason is a second-year master’s student studying environmental journalism at Michigan State University. This is her third semester as editor of EJ Magazine.
A dark green Field & Stream pillow, three yards of plastic tarp, water, peanuts and raisins weren’t the only items I used to survive while sleeping overnight in a small boat on Nicaragua’s largest coastal lagoon. Michigan State University doctoral student Kara Stevens was replicating a 1996 study that examined fish abundance in the Pearl Lagoon basin, located along Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast. Michigan State University has a long-standing project in the region examining the impact of globalization and road development on Pearl Lagoon households, rainforests and fisheries. I tagged along to document the research and tell a few stories of my own. (See page 24.) Kara and I left the coastal indigenous community of Kakabila at sunset with a boat full of supplies and long nets called gillnets, which she would set up overnight to catch lagoon fish. Robert Fox, son of Kakabila’s community leader, came with us to assist in the endeavor. It’s common for Pearl Lagoon fisherman to spend the night on the water near their gillnets to retrieve and put the fish in coolers so they don’t spoil. They also have to protect their nets from marine marauders. Gillnets are difficult to maneuver; they’re heavy and easily tangle. But Robert’s familiarity helped with the process. We went to bed that night under a clear sky and big bright moon; I slept peacefully. The gentle rocking of the small skiff and presence of a person who had done this
In the interest of full disclosure, EJ editor Rachael Gleason slept in this exact the location the night before — bloody fish guts and all. Gleason traveled to Pearl, Lagoon Nicaragua in July 2010 to document Michigan State University research; she slept in this small skiff one night.
many times before put my mind at ease. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed while reporting in a foreign country. That’s why it’s important to seek out reliable sources of information and support. Local guides help you meet basic needs, keep you safe and ease the cultural transition. Jonathan Katz, an award-winning Associated Press reporter who covered the Haiti earthquake, pressed the importance of guides at a recent regional Society of Professional Journalists conference. Katz had lived in Haiti for nearly two years before the 2010 disaster; his connections helped his reporting on earthquake. “Without a guide, you end up reporting things that don’t make sense to you or your readers or audience,” Katz said. Guides are the key to gathering information overseas for both journalists and scientists. Michigan State University doctoral student and wildlife ecologist Chris Jordon relies heavily on local guides and community leaders for his research. Chris travels to Nicaragua several times a year to set up wildlife cameras. He employs community members to help him chose locations for the cameras and travel with
him to camera locations. My filming partner Adam Elzinga and I joined Chris and his guides to some of Kakabila’s surrounding rainforests one day. The rainforest was muddy from frequent rainfalls. My rubber boot lost a good fight with a shallow river at one point. But the locals, wearing nothing but sandals, knew the land. Thomas showed me some of the community’s herbal medicines on the way back to Kakabila, revealing his intimate knowledge of the rainforest. Ecological and forest knowledge is another focus of Chris’s research. Throughout my journey, Chris, Kara and all of the Michigan State researchers proved to be valuable sources of information. I survived sleeping out on the lagoon. I awoke that morning to the most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever seen. As I lay covered in tarp at the bottom of a gently rocking boat, I watched an orange glow eclipse the dark sky and stars. I remember the peace of that night. And now, as I look over my notes from that trip, I remember all of the people of Pearl Lagoon and how, through their words, actions and concerns, opened up their world to me. !
jim detjen| from the director
Environmental Journalism Day Sixth workshop teaches 250 Detroit High School students the ins and outs of environmental reporting Photo courtesy of MIPA
Jim Detjen is a professor and director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University.
For Tanya Moss, a veteran journalism teacher at Crockett Technical High School in Detroit, the annual environmental journalism workshop is something she looks forward to each spring. She has brought her students to this event five of past last six years — and each time her students benefit. ”This workshop lets our students step out of the classroom and meet real journalists. It also gives them an opportunity to report and write,” she said. “A lot of our students are intimidated by writing. They don’t think they have the skills to do it. But this workshop gives them practical skills. And when they see their articles published in the student newspaper, it makes them feel important. It gives them a voice.” Tanya was speaking on March 31 at an event that has become known as “Environmental Journalism Day.” This year the full-day workshop was held at the Fairlane Conference Center on the campus of the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Since 2006, the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism has sponsored six conferences for journalism students from 15 Detroit high schools. Overall, more than 1,200 students have learned about environmental issues and had a chance to practice reporting and writing at these workshops. The vast majority are AfricanAmerican students. Many live in poorer neighborhoods and attend high schools that have relatively few journalism resources. The annual event’s primary sponsor has been the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. But it wouldn’t be possible without the generous support in time, energy and money of many people and organizations. Emilia Askari, a former environmental reporter at the Detroit Free Press and University of Michigan graduate student, has been the primary organizer. She has been ably assisted by Cheryl Pell, director of
Students get ready to take notes on the upcoming speaker at the Knight Center’s environmental journalism workshop. the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association (MIPA); Erin Hill Perry, high school journalism program coordinator at the Detroit Free Press; Barb Miller and Chris Kennedy, of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism; and many others. During the past six years the event has been held at the New Detroit Science Center, the Detroit Zoo, the Cranbrook Institute, the Charles W. Wright Museum of African American History and the Fairlane Conference Center. The day starts out with talks by prominent Detroit journalists, followed by five break-out sessions on various environmental issues. During these sessions the students interview a variety of experts. They are coached by experienced journalists from the Detroit Free Press, MSU and other organizations. The students then enter their articles in a journalism contest organized by MIPA. They have the opportunity to win prizes, including scholarships to study at MSU and attend MIPA journalism summer camps. “Everytime I come I meet new people and learn a lot about journalism and writing,” said Anthony Grimmett, a 12th grade student at Frank Cody High School.
This workshop has earned prizes in scholastic journalism from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. And Mark Hallett of the McCormick Foundation has raved about it. “How do you get urban teens interested in journalism?” he asked in an article about the workshop he wrote for McCormick Media Matters. “We can all learn from what they’re doing in Detroit.” The McCormick Foundation has given the Knight Center a two-year grant of $45,000 to support high school environmental journalism in Chicago. The Knight Center will launch this initiative this summer in conjunction with We the People Media, an organization that gives lowincome residents journalism training, in Chicago and on the MSU campus. It will involve MSU journalism faculty members along with former Washington Post environmental writer Kari Lydersen. It has long been known that many of the nation’s worst environmental problems occur in poorer communities. The Knight Center has been working hard to equip people living in these areas with the journalistic tools to document these conditions — and to bring about change. !
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EJ NEWS
Knight Center News GREAT LAKES SMACKDOWN!
Who would win in a fight, a caveman or an astronaut? What started as typical newsroom banter resulted in an award-winning journalism project concerning a widespread ecological issue in the Great Lakes region. The lighthearted inquiry inspired Knight Center graduate assistants and second-year master’s students Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason to ask the same question about invasive species and create an interactive feature for the environmental news website Great Lakes Echo with the answers. “Rachael and I both saw the opportunity to do something unique and different,” Rossignol said. “We wanted to engage readers in a new and innovative way about a topic that is serious and affects all parts of our region.” Great Lakes SmackDown! premiered in October 2010 and highlighted eight of the region’s most formidable aquatic invaders. Over the course of several weeks, species like the ferocious sea lamprey and pipe-clogging quagga mussel competed in “lake fights” for the title of most destructive Great Lakes invader. Readers had the opportunity to fill out brackets, much like the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s March Madness competition, vote in polls and earn recognition on Echo for correct guesses. After the battles, the reporters picked winners based on research, expert interviews and reader perspectives and published discussions that explained their reasoning. Rossignol and Gleason launched the feature’s successor in March. The Great Lakes SmackDown! Terrestrial Terror pitted 16 terrestrial species against each other in “land brawls” over the course of the March Madness tournament. Echo received more than 70 reader brackets; a sixth grade class even sent in their terrestrial favorites. “The reaction we’ve received from our friends, colleagues, readers and experts has been really gratifying,” Rossignol said. “We hope that the SmackDown! inspires others to develop creative platforms that address serious environmental issues in an engaging way.”
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The SmackDown! started with a simple question, but it has gained international attention. The Times of India, along with local television and radio stations, reported on the SmackDown! The original feature won a first-place Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence award for online opinion and commentary in April 2011 and advanced to the national competition.
REGIONAL REPORTING
Students in a regional environmental reporting course were given the chance to contribute stories, blogs and “cool stuff” to Great Lakes Echo, a Knight Center news website dedicated to environmental issues in the Great Lakes watershed. Editor and assistant director Dave Poulson calls Echo a “newshed” — a news audience defined by a geographic feature. Instructor and doctoral student Carol Terracina Hartman designed the course to strengthen journalism skills and teach students the nuances reporting on the Great Lakes region. Students had to write short blogs, which Echo calls “Catch of the Day” posts, and stories of increasing complexity and length on different themes. Students also picked their own environmental beats, Terracina Hartman said. Mallory McKnight, MSU senior journalism and English film studies major, wrote a story about a shipwreck off the coast of Milwaukee, Wis. and how it sparked a ghost ship festival; Echo published her story in March. The class is challenging because it’s different from others in the journalism department, McKnight said, who has more experience with community journalism. “It’s been a learning curve to go from finding out about a story to understanding why it’s an issue,” she said. “When you have such a large area, it’s hard to track developments.” Terracina Hartman, who has taught journalism for 10 years, recognizes the difficulties of regional reporting and of the class. It’s a challenge not knowing who the specific audience is, she said. Are they
educated? Are they interested in all of the Great Lakes? Do they know about Asian Carp? Some students have struggled with developing the Great Lakes angle, but they’ve done well in other areas, such as getting interviews despite their busy schedules, she said.
KNIGHT CENTER RESEARCH
Carol Terracina Hartman, a Knight Center graduate assistant and doctoral student in media and information studies, recently presented a paper called “Framing of climate change in newspaper coverage of the East Anglia e-mail scandal” about the dispute between climate skeptics and scientists over hacked e-mail messages and computer files. The paper is a “cross-national content analysis of the U.S and U.K. coverage of the hacking of a compute server and subsequent release of more than 1,000 email messages and computer files from the East Anglia Climate Research Unit,” Terracina Hartman said. Terracina Hartman used photos from Knight Center graduate assistant Alice Rossignol’s summer study abroad trip to India in her presentation. The University of Oklahoma hosted the March 2011 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Mid-Winter Conference.
BAD COMPANY
The Great Lakes system of locks and canals opened up the region to more than just economic opportunities; it also paved the way for hundreds of destructive invasive species. Their untold negative impacts on the region’s ecology and economy have led some to consider them “bad company.” Set to run in May 2011 on MSU’s broadcasting channel WKAR, the Knight Center’s fourth documentary examines the history of invasive species in the Great Lakes region. Bad Company is preceded by The Night Shift, an awardwinning documentary about the impact of chemicals on great horned owls in Midland, Mich.; Dying to be Heard, an award-winning story of the Michigan State professor who discovered a link between DDT and dying birds on cam-
NAMES IN THE NEWS JIM DETJEN, Knight Center for Environmental Journalism director, will co-teach with Nancy Hanus a MSU Study Abroad class, Reporting in the British Isles, during the summer of 2011. He served as a judge in the 2011 competition of the Reed environmental writing award, which honors the best environmental books and journalism in the Southeastern United States. The award is given by the Southern Environmental Law Center. GERI ALUMIT ZELDES, MSU Journalism School assistant professor, produced and narrated a documentary called Arabs, Jews & the News, which was nominated in March 2011 for a best documentary award in the Detroit Independent Film Festival. She is the co-producer of “The Death of an Iman,” which will receive a best of festival award from the Broadcast Education Association in April 2011. BRIAN BIENKOWSKI, M.A.‘12, received a mark of excellence award for non-fiction magazine writing in the region 4 competition of the Society of Professional Journalists for Roots of Rebuilding, an article he wrote for the Fall 2010 issue of EJ Magazine. He will intern during the summer of 2011 at Mindful Metropolis Magazine in Chicago.
2010. He also works as the assistant manager at the Total Sports Complex in Wixom and Novi. He referees soccer and is working on an MBA degree. HANNAH NORTHEY, M.A. ’07, is now a reporter for E & E Publishing’s Greenwire in Washington, D.C. She covers energy policy on Capitol Hill, the nuclear industry, electricity transmission issues and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. She was previously an energy reporter at Argus Media, where she covered regulatory issues impacting the energy industry. She can be reached at hnorthey@ eenews.net or 202-446-0468. JOHN KALMAR, B.A. ’11 and EJ design editor for two semesters, graduates in May with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, a specialization in graphic design and a minor in Spanish. Kalmar will intern at his hometown newspaper, the Grand Rapids Press, as a copy editor and page designer. JEFF GILLIES, M.A. ’11, will pursue a three-month communications and outreach fellowship with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration following his May graduation.
JEFF KART, B.A. ’93, was part of a team that won a Michigan Association of Broadcasters’ merit award for Friday Edition, a newscast on Delta College’s NPRaffiliated station. Jeff is nearing completion of a master’s degree in environmental studies from the University of Illinois.
ALICE ROSSIGNOL, M.A. ’11, will pursue a three-month fellowship with the Cooperative Institute for Limnology and Ecosystems Research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich. following her May graduation.
HALEY WALKER, M.A.‘10, is working as a community crew leader with the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps. Walker was president of the Environmental Journalism Association and prolific reporter for the Knight Center’s Great Lakes Echo and EJ Magazine.
KIMBERLY HIRAI, M.A. ’11, worked on the Michigan Energy Efficiency Network and reported for Great Lakes Echo while serving as a Knight Center graduate assistant. She will be interning this summer for the High Country News in Paonia, Colorando, writing articles for both the news magazine and online Web site.
CHRIS JACKETT, B.A.‘09, is the Novi High School reporter for the Novi News. He took several environmental journalism classes as a student at MSU. He earned a first-place award for sports coverage from the Michigan Press Association in Fall
RACHAEL GLEASON, M.A. ’11, has completed a 30-minute documentary about the effects of globalization in rural communities along the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua after traveling there in July 2010.
pus; and Meltdown, a look at global climate change from a local perspective. Instructor Lou D’Aria and journalism student Matt Mikus co-produced the onehour program with help from associate producer Rachael Gleason and a handful of additional Michigan State students. Overall, D’Aria is pleased with how the documentary came out, especially the narration. Jim Peck, Big Ten Network executive producer, voiced the piece on his own time. “Jim Peck did a great job. I’m really happy with the amount of work and effort he put into it,” D’Aria said. One of the biggest obstacles to production was the lack of budget. D’Aria relied on eager students and free-to-use material from the United States National Archives and photo-sharing websites like Flickr to tell the story. Some of the producers traveled miles to get some of the footage; other parts came from D’Aria’s own back yard. It took more than a year to complete the piece. “That’s the thing with doing videos.
They are never finished,” he said. Michigan State University previewed Bad Company on campus in late February. D’Aria is currently seeking funding for a documentary project about the historical significance, evolution and current state of the nation’s land-grant universities. Tentatively titled The Morrill Act: Cultivating Knowledge, the hour-long film will be a collaborative effort between Michigan State University faculty, students, and professional crews, offering the chance for students to take part in a national production. Lou D’Aria, an award-winning TV producer, hopes to team up with Jim Detjen, Knight Chair in Environmental Journalism director, and Greg Lyon, a veteran TV writer and producer, to create this documentary.
MICHIGAN ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Can you create a grass roots energy conservation community from the top down? And is government service and social media an oxymoron? Those are questions Knight Center
staff sought to address as part of an MSU College of Communication Arts and Sciences effort to build a community of government energy departments, municipalities, energy efficiency groups and the public. Knight Center Associate Director David Poulson and graduate assistant Kimberly Hirai last fall helped develop a social media website called the Michigan Energy Efficiency Network — The MichEEN — to network like minds in Michigan’s energy efficiency community. The site at www. micheen.org features blogs, forums and document sharing to encourage interaction between government and public entities. The experiment in Government 2.0 was a collaboration between MSU, the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth and INgage Networks. It offers opportunity for community formation around such issues as biomass, renewable energy, energy efficiency grants and energy efficiency in schools, homes and agriculture. Those communities are also part of a broader community that examines energy efficiency issues in general. !
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Photo by Abbey Moore
CORNERING A PRO
K
Photo by Katie Dalebout
MAKING A MARK Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward Jr. pioneers coal coverage with his 'Coal Tattoo' STORY BY KATIE DALEBOUT
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en Ward Jr. knows coal. The Charleston Gazette reporter and blogger thoroughly covers all things coal, focusing on mining safety and the effects of coal on society, including climate change and mountaintop removal. After covering the topic for more than 20 years, Ward has a unique edge on his beat. “It’s an underreported issue; it’s something that doesn’t get paid attention to by the national media unless there’s a big disaster,” Ward says. “But it’s an issue that we cover day in and day out. I write about the so-called small accidents where there’s only one person killed and most of the national media don’t really pay any attention to that.” A native of Piedmont in Mineral County West Virginia, Ward has been covering the Appalachian coal industry for most of his life. It started with a story for his West Virginia University student newspaper about a disputed proposal to build a coalfired power plant in downtown Morgantown. Ward also interned with the Gazette. After graduating in 1991, the daily West Virginia newspaper hired him to cover the environment. “I’m very proud of the work the Gazette has done covering coal mine safety issues because I think it is a very important issue here and in coalfield communities across the country,” he says. Informing people in non-mining communities about the impacts of coal is one of the aims of his two-year-old blog: “Coal Tattoo.” “One of the great things about the Ken Ward Jr. Internet, if people want to understand the impact they’re having on the environment around them, including places they don’t happen to live, they can go right to our website and look at our ‘Coal Tattoo’ blog,” he says. “They can learn a lot about the impacts their coal-fired lifestyles are creating for people who live here.” EJ Magazine got in touch with Ward as he was probing government documents one day in February; he talked about his career covering coal and what it will take for the country to reduce their use of the damaging mineral. EJ Magazine: What are some of the biggest problems associated with coal? Ken Ward Jr.: “Coal has been a great benefit to our society. It provides 43 to 44 percent of the United State’s electricity. It powered the industrial revolution in this country and others; it’s powering industrial revolutions now in developing countries around the world like China and India. “At the same time, for communities where it is mined, it’s taken a terrible toll, particularly on the people who mine it.
EJ: How long have you written the ‘Coal Tattoo’ blog? KWJ: “[About two years ago.] Newspapers have been slow to adapt to the Internet and you still find old crotchety newspaper people who still think the Internet is just a fad, and a blog is really nothing different than a regular newspaper website as far as the technology of it goes. More and more … a lot of younger people are seeing blogs as a hot place to get information. The format allows for a more conversational tone and more interaction with readers. It just seems like a natural extension of the sort of work we’re doing in our print edition and our regular website that I have a weblog about the things that I find out as I report on this industry.” EJ: Do you really have a coal tattoo? How did the blog get its name? KWJ: “No, my wife picked the name actually. I was trying to come up with a name and thinking all sorts of stupid things like the canary in the coal mine and nonsense like that. Then about the time I was doing the blog, a lady named Kathy Mattea, who’s a Grammy Award winning West Virginia native singer, was coming out with an album of old coal songs. One of them was Billy Ed Wheeler song called ‘Coal Tattoo.’ My wife said maybe you should call it that. So then we decided on Coal Tattoo: Mining’s Mark on the World.”
EJ: How to you pull readers in and tell complicated stories in interesting ways? KWJ: “That’s a constant challenge for me, I’m actually a very terrible writer to tell the truth; I get buried in numbers and technical things and studies. I also think that journalism schools and journalists and editors make a terrible mistake by underestimating the American public’s ability to understand complicated things. We too often try to dumb everything down...If we do a good job of explaining the technical issue they will understand. “Gimmicks to try to pull people in to make them understand … are shortcuts that end up not working in the long run. With that said, the best thing for the reporter to do is understand the issue themselves. If you can’t understand it, you can’t write about it.” EJ: How is the Internet and dwindling newspaper revenue changing environmental journalism as it moves to other outlets? How have you seen it evolve in your career? KWJ: “I’m certainly not an expert in newspaper revenues or the business, but this ought to be a golden age for journalism. We have more ways to get information to people — we have more ways to inform the public. Now, instead of writing a story for the print edition where we might be limited to twelve or fifteen paragraphs, we can write as much as we want on the Internet and we can also post background documents that we’re quoting from. We have the freedom to interact with readers and show them where you’re getting your data — it really should be a golden age, I really think it is.” EJ: What are the solutions that you see that could help major problems associated with coal? KWJ: “People who live in places like New York City need to be willing to pay a lot more for their electricity, so that people living in places where coal is mined don’t get blown up, the water isn’t polluted and our atmosphere isn’t destroyed by global warming. “The reason this is all mined is
Coal Coverage The explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia was the worst coal disaster in the United States in 40 years. Ken Ward Jr. has written dozens of stories and blog posts on the subject. Here are some highlights of his coverage: !Massey worker charged with faking foreman's certificate
March 22, 2011 A man forged a foreman’s certificate to conduct safety checks before the mine explosion. !Report details Mine Safety and Health Administration lapses prior to disaster.
March 2, 2011 Regulators warned lawmakers of incomplete inspections and inadequate enforcement actions before the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster. !
MSHA outlines key problems that led to mine disaster Jan. 19, 2011 Federal investigators outline key problems with mining equipment and operations that led to the explosion.
so people who live places where coal isn’t mined can live nice comfortable lives with their iPhones and the Internet and their television sets and their lights and their heat. Until society as a whole is willing to grasp those issues, it’s not going to be solved… Until [people] are willing to pay more and make some sacrifices themselves, people who live where this stuff is mined will continue to bear the brunt of the cheap electricity that everybody gets.” EJ: Was the environment always important to you? KWJ: “Yeah, I fished and hiked and camped as a kid with my dad. I probably got much more interested in it in a serious way when I was in college, which is now 27 years ago. But even before that, the outdoors and those things were always a huge interest of mine.” EJ: You are the chair of the Society of Environmental Journalists First Amendment Task Force. What does that job entail? KWJ: “The board of SEJ formed that task force after Sept. 11, 2001 when a lot of information that was previously public — national gas pipeline maps, studies of dam safety and other sorts of information about the environment and public safety — was being scrubbed from government websites because of concerns about homeland security. SEJ’s leadership was very concerned that [that would] prohibit its mem-
bers’ ability to write about things that were important to their communities, so we formed a group to try to work on that and advocate for continued openness.” EJ: What advice do you have for students preparing for a career in environmental journalism? KWJ: “My friends who are professors at journalism schools won’t like this, but don’t go to journalism school. Take lots of science, math, history, economics and business classes. I would say learn as much science, math and history as you can. Also, take some classes in how to do research and those sorts or things. I think those skills are just vital today. I do have a degree in journalism from WVU, but most of what I know about how to write newspaper stories I learned working at the student newspaper and since I’ve come to the Gazette. "I think that journalists need to be more grounded in science, especially environmental journalists so you can understand what the people you are interviewing are talking about.” EJ: Favorite movie? KWJ: “My movie watching these days consists mostly of things that a 6-year-old would like watching. My favorite thing we recently watched with him was ‘Night at the Museum’ and he liked it a lot.” ! Katie Dalebout is a junior studying journalism at MSU. Contact her at dalebou1@msu.edu.
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[Roughly] 10,000 coal miners have died in the last decade alone from black lung disease. In the last century, more than 100,000 coal miners have died in disasters, accidents, explosions and roof falls. Across places like Appalachia, there are still streams that run orange because of acid mine drainage from past mining practices. Across southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky entire mountains are being blown up and leveled to allow companies to mine the coal that provides all of us with the electricity that we use. On a global scale coal is a major contributor to carbon emissions that are causing global warming.”
BOOKS
EW NFOOD C
in their book, Farm Together Now: A Portrait of People, Places, and Ideas for a New Food Movement. Filled with interviews, photos and drawings inspired by the authors’ activist art backgrounds, the book documents 20 farms changing the way America produces and consumes food. “We’re not activist farmers, we’re not community organizers…so there are limits to what we can do,” Tucker says. “We wanted [the book] to be a
Photo courtesy of Anne Hamersky, Farm Together Now photographer
ity Slicker Farms is more than a Saturday farm stand. The Oakland, Calif. nonprofit grows high-nutrient, highyield crops, raises chickens and produces honey, sold on a sliding scale to give residents of all economic backgrounds access to healthy, sustainable food. And this farm is no exception in the food movement as authors Daniel Tucker and Amy Franceschini illustrate
Althea Morrow and Barbara Mayo work at the Hunger Coalition's Umoja Farm in Atlanta, Ga.
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Activists, authors document the farmers and innovators behind the movement to change America’s food system STORY BY LIZ PACHECO document of the social movement, but also a prod or push in new directions.” The authors talk with farmers from all corners of the country: urban areas, desert environments and forested cooperative communities. The farmers grow vegetables, harvest grains, raise bees and save seeds. Their work is both centered around food and the communities in which they’re located. Using an interview style, the book collects oral histories and explores food politics so as to give farmers a voice to talk about their work, the risks they’ve taken, the successes they achieved and the plans they’ve made. “[…] If we’re all involved in this world-changing, economy-changing, social relation-changing [food] movement,” says Tucker, “we need to now who each other are and acknowledge all of our contradictions and diversity and figure out a way to talk to each other.” With a foreword by Mark Bittman, a food journalist and author, and photos taken by Anne Hamersky, who specializes in portraitures and agriculture, the book is a source of information and inspiration as well as a catalyst for challenging the American food system. EJ Magazine caught up with coauthor Daniel Tucker at his Chicago office to talk about the book. Tucker is an organizer and documentary maker who until recently edited the journal AREA Chicago, which discusses art, education and activism in Chicago. EJ Magazine: Where did the initial idea for Farm Together Now come from? Daniel Tucker: “One thing we talked a
EJ: Previous work you’ve done hasn’t been directly tied to the food movement, so why write about food? DT: “Amy and I would answer that question very differently. Amy grew up on a farm and both her parents are farmers. Her father is a large-scale industrial almond producer and her mom is a small-scale back to the land organics producer, both in California. Amy’s life story is very much wrapped up in food politics. Mine is much different. I grew up in cities and I’ve always had a fairly conventional relationship to agriculture in that I’m not very connected to it. So, for me, the question is really about what are the most exciting and inspiring, challenging, hopeful social movements that exist in this country right now. “One answer to that is that food justice, food sovereignty, even slow food [movements] bubbling up across the country are certainly part of an international trend that I look to and I see as undeniably important right now. So, for someone who studies and documents social movements of all varieties—both the unsuccessful ones that are still interesting and worth looking at and the more emerging and vibrant and, lets say, more successful ones—it made sense to orient around a really exciting field, like food
EJ: Are there any places you had wished you had visited, but didn’t? DT: “We did the best we could with our limited resources, but there are so many places not in the book that it’s hard to pin down. But definitely one place I was curious to go to was Miami. My understanding is a lot of the urban agriculture work happening there is closely connected with activism around fighting evictions. People are making an interesting link between affordable housing and using open space for food production that I think is an unusual mix. A group called Take Back the Land is basically taking back houses that people had been evicted from and putting [those people back] in houses. Then, [Take Back the Land] said if we’re doing stuff around urban land use, then we should also be talking about other things people need, which includes food. And so, they started squatting, taking over empty land and growing their own food. That seemed really exciting to me and I’m sad that we didn’t get to go down there, but their work, in terms of food production, was just starting to take off when we started working on the book. “Then, definitely West Texas or the Dakotas, Montana, certain plain states, I feel like that’s a big gap in our book. I’ve since met
EJ: You both obviously brought something very different to the project. Can you talk about that relationship and how that worked? DT: “Amy’s family background is in farming and she has been working for the past several years in San Francisco around a lot of urban agriculture policy in the city. So she’s very involved in activism and policy work and it dovetails with her art practice. We both have a fair amount of experience in publishing, but we are not people who went to an environmental journalism program. We have art backgrounds and sort of activist art backgrounds. That’s a unique thing in terms of our combination.”
The authors visited farmers from all corners of the country; the map shows their travel routes. some really interesting activist farmers from that area who are part of the National Family Farm Coalition. A great woman named Dena Hoff, who works with the group Northern Plains Resource Council, spoke on a panel I put together in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago and blew my mind. She should’ve totally been in the book.” EJ: Why did you decide to use the interview format? DT: “The interview format felt particularly important because we were looking at people experimenting with solutions to the broken food system and we wanted to present their voices as directly as possible. We felt like [the interview format] would also be the most acceptable to people who may or may not have a lot of good experiences with journalists. There’s a lot of fear of being misrepresented…especially among the people who are taking on huge fights, have dedicated their lives to this work, and have risked a lot along the way. That’s a concern I think is shared among a lot of different practitioners, but that I encountered certainly among the people that we interviewed. We felt the interview was a way we could make them most comfortable with the process.” EJ: Describe the editing process. DT: “Amy and I did about 10 interviews each, so there are slightly different styles we had to account for in editing to make them seem like they were sort of done in a unified voice. The way to make decisions was really to look at the book as a whole. We had to map out the book in terms of issues and key words we felt
Farm Together Now documents 20 farms changing the way America produces and consumes food. It’s available for $27.50 at chroniclebooks.com. we had to have in the book ... Even though we wanted the interview to stand alone, we wanted it also to be a complete project that felt integrated. Really the limitation for us is part of our interest in the way different people in different contexts use different language to talk about very similar things.” EJ: When I first looked at the book I immediately saw it as a piece of journalism — it was in an interview format, presenting stories through the voice of individuals and photos. But in the introduction you refer to it as an “exhibit.” How do you interpret the project? DT: “I think that the ‘exhibit’ language comes from our background in art. I think in those terms, and so does Amy, as a way to compose a set of ideas. We have a lot more experience making exhibitions than we do books. There is a curatorial perspective on it. I ultimately feel like this is a documentary about an emerging social movement. It was really
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BOOKS
activism, that’s happening right now.”
Photo courtesy of Anne Hamersky, Farm Together Now photographer
lot about when we started the project was that there was an incredible array of food-related literature out in the world that was describing the problems of the food system and creating an analysis. We felt like our contribution could be more. Even if there are occasional articles or spots in a documentary that highlight different sustainable farming practices, there wasn’t really a documentary project that profiled a wide range of people and gave a sense of the diversity and complexity that make up this emerging social movement around food. We’re not experts, we’re not people who can necessarily provide you with the best analysis of what’s wrong with the food system. We felt like this could be like a complement to their work rather than some attempt to reproduce it.”
GREAT LAKES Photo courtesy of Brendan Sinclair
No Worms Wasted Vermicomposting flourishes in the Great Lakes region STORY BY CAROL THOMPSON
I
Michigan State University Student Organic Farm employee Brendan Sinclair helps run the farm’s vermicomposting operations. Sinclair once played midwife to worms hatching in his hand.
t's a bleak 19-degree February morning outside the translucent walls of the hoop house, but inside the worm bed where Michigan State University Student Organic Farm employee Brendan Sinclair sticks his hands, it's a balmy 50 degrees. The hoop house, affectionately named Compost Commons, accommodates the Student Organic Farm's compost and vermicompost operations. It's where Sinclair and other employees and farm volunteers are working on a composting model that transforms food waste into a rich, organic fertilizer with the help of some dedicated decomposers. Vermicomposting refers to the breaking down of food and plant material using
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worms, typically a species called "red wiggler." Castings, a more respectable term for the worm waste, are even higher in nutrients than traditional compost, says Kelly Trace, development coordinator for a Milwaukeebased urban farm called Growing Power. Finished vermicompost is made of castings mixed with decomposed organic matter and has higher levels of plant nutrients and more microbes than traditional compost because of the microbes present in the worms' digestive systems. Castings can also be mixed into soil, layered on top of soil or made into compost tea. Compost tea is a mixture of castings and water that can be sprayed on plants as a nat-
ural pesticide and insecticide. Growing Power says vermicomposting: ! improves soil's physical structure ! improves soil's water holding capability ! adds microorganisms to soil ! attracts more earthworms ! improves root growth ! enhances crop yield Vermicomposting and traditional composting are important aspects of Growing Power's vision to get healthy food to urban areas where residents frequently don't have access to fresh foods or grocery stores. "To grow really healthy food you need to have healthy soil," Trace says. Because soil is
Materials: ! ! ! ! ! !
Container, with optional lid (could be a plastic bucket, a recycling bin or whatever is available) Shredded newspaper Red wiggler worms (found in bait shops, local farms or local organizations) Food waste Carbon waste (newspaper,used napkins,used paper towels) Soil or finished compost
Building the Bin: !Line the bottom of the bin with slightly damp
shredded newspaper. Top this bedding layer with lightly moist garden soil or finished compost. ! Add worms to the top of bedding material or bury them in it. The worms will eat more than half their body weight each day and reproduce. ! Feed worms often. To add food waste, push the top layer of soil to the sides of the bin and bury the food with a layer of finished compost or soil. Avoid meat and cheese products and harsh foods like grapefruit. Mix in carbon material like used napkins or paper towels. ! To harvest the worm castings, empty the bin onto a tarp. The worms will gather away from light; castings can be scraped away from the sides of the pile.
MSU Student Organic Farm workers feed food waste to worms in large bins to create finished vermicompost material for transplanting media and soil amendments on the farm. waste is a better return on investment in a global, holistic sense than harvesting methane, Regenstein says. It would be even better if more of the appropriate food scraps went back into the feeding system for animals. "[We should] use the food as food value," Regenstein says. "Which vermicomposting essentially is, except it's an animal we don't eat." In the past 20 years, Regenstein has seen more schools, restaurants and supermarkets composting and more municipalities keeping organic material out of landfills due to increasingly costly regulations. Diverting waste has become an economic incentive. "There is clearly an acceleration in composting," Regenstein says. "I know some places do vermicomposting on a very large scale. In most cases it's been families dedicated to doing it in their homes." Outside of domestic vermicomposting a few companies have picked up the trade. Among them is Morgan Composting in Sears, Mich., which has more than five million worms. Jeremie Morgan, who runs the vermicomposting operation at Morgan Composting, came back to work full-time at the family company two years ago. The company produces more than two semi-truck loads of castings every year. Those castings are sold in potting soil to individual costumers in small volumes and more than 30 retail outlets from Michigan to Pennsylvania on a large scale. The interest in vermicomposting is growing in the Midwest, but people are still uneducated about the process, Morgan says. He attended a meeting in Wisconsin about small gardens and greenhouses with his wife where they discussed vermicomposting. In classes and meetings like these, Morgan and his wife frequently end up helping the teachers with the vermicomposting material. "The biggest thing is that people are uneducated," Morgan says. "It's slow coming, but it's coming." The Worm Team at MSU is working on the education front. By studying how worms react to different foods and environments, the team can develop the best vermicomposting model and put it into practice at the Student Organic Farm. Twice a week, Sinclair picks up about 250
pounds of food waste from two of Michigan State’s dining halls. He collects waste generated in the kitchens like eggshells and old produce, not food scraps that diners leave on their dishes. Back at Compost Commons, the waste is allowed to break down and added to the outside end of the worm bed. The worms move toward the fresh food, leaving their castings behind for harvest. The worm bed stays warm, even in the dead of Michigan winters, because it's located under a tented plastic cover inside a passive solar greenhouse. Also under the plastic cover is a separate compost pile that can heat up to 150 degrees to provide additional heat. A red wiggler worm can eat between 50 and 100 percent of its body weight per day. In one semester — 15 weeks — the worms on the Student Organic Farm went through almost two tons of waste. In an ideal environment worms can double in 60 days, which Sinclair has seen quite literally first hand. He even played worm midwife when he happened to pick up a handful of worms as some were hatching. "I got to see some baby worms wiggle out of a mature cocoon right in my palm," Sinclair says. "It was awesome." Worms are hermaphrodites and can reproduce after they're a month old and develop a clitellum, the thick white band around their bodies that holds genetic material. After mating, the clitellum slides down the worm's body collecting eggs and sperm and a cocoon forms, holding four to six baby worms. As the Student Organic Farm's worm population continues to increase, so will its capacity to break down food waste. The Worm Team's goal is to use finished vermicompost material for transplanting media and soil amendments for the Student Organic Farm, though some may be used for research. "I don't think that we would have any trouble selling the vermicompost in the future if we wanted to, but being able to produce our own sources of fertility at the Student Organic Farm is a valuable resource," Sinclair says. "I hope that most of it would stay on the farm." ! Carol Thompson is a junior studying environmental journalism at MSU. Contact her at thomp872@msu.edu.
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GREAT LAKES
Build Your Own Worm Bin
Photo courtesy of Brendan Sinclair
frequently contaminated in urban settings, having fresh compost is vital for Growing Power's operations. Regenerating food waste into castings and compost doesn't only create rich, healthy soil and natural pesticides, but it also keeps food waste from getting dumped in landfills. In 2009, Americans generated 243 million tons of waste, and only recycled or composted 33.8 percent of it, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That means Americans dumped into landfills household waste weighing more than 44 million African elephants. And that figure doesn't even include industrial, hazardous or construction waste; it’s just everyday items like plastic wrap, old receipts and food scraps, from homes, hospitals, schools and businesses. But some of that waste is more dangerous to landfills than the rest. Food scraps, which accounted for 14.1 percent of municipal waste in 2009, weighed in at 34.29 million tons, according to the EPA. This moist, heavy, organic food waste causes leaching in older landfills built without plastic liners and drainage systems, says Cornell Food Science professor Joe Regenstein. Food waste also emits methane, a greenhouse gas more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. And although some landfills harvest methane for fuel, it's not an efficient fuel-extraction process compared to biodigesters, which convert organic waste into fertilizers and the methane emitted into heat or electrical energy. Composting or vermicomposting food
Dangerous? Delicious? Drinking raw milk draws debate
Got (Raw) Milk?
STORY BY LIZ PACHECO
M
ichigan dairy farmer Linda Thomas handed me an almost overflowing glass and smiled saying, “don’t worry, you don’t have to drink it all.” I took the glass and peered over the brim. Inside was a creamy white liquid, what Linda, her husband Harley and advocates of the drink call fresh unprocessed milk. For many, it’s simply known as “raw milk,” or milk that hasn’t been pasteurized. While milk and milk products can offer nutritional benefits, the Food and Drug Administration warns that raw milk may also contain dangerous, health threatening microorganisms otherwise killed in pasteurization. That’s why the sale of it is illegal in 22 states, including Michigan. This was my first taste of raw milk and I took a sip without hesitation. The glass was
everything I had been missing in my morning cereal: fresh and smooth with a high cream content. The milk was indulgent. Perhaps this experience is biased from years of drinking soymilk and too many glasses of watery skim. And maybe, sitting there with Linda and Harley, whose cows were only nextdoor, I wanted the milk to just taste creamy and fresh. But in that moment I began to understand why drinking raw milk has become so popular and consequently, so controversial.
MILK LAW
In 1948, Michigan became the first state to mandate that all milk sold to the public must be pasteurized. Only cow owners can drink the raw milk and so, farmers can’t sell directly to consumers. Instead, raw milk drinkers must own the cow. On their farm, Thomas Organic Creamery,
Linda and Harley offer a cow leasing or herd share program. Customers pay a six-month lease rate and bi-weekly boarding fees for the cows. In return the leaser can pick up two gallons of milk every other week. About 350 families participate in the program and another 80 families are on a waiting list. More than 40 farms offer similar cow or goat shares in Michigan, according to the Campaign for Real Milk, a project of the Weston A. Price Foundation, which supports research, education and activism for nutrientdense foods like raw milk and organic fruits and vegetables. Some states allow raw milk sales in retail stores, including Arizona, California, and Washington. Other states, like Massachusetts, New York and Vermont permit farmers to sell directly to consumers. In Europe, raw milk consumption is also Photo courtesy of Thomas Organic Creamery
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MILK SCIENCE
MILK DEBATE
Harley doesn’t claim that their milk has any particular health benefits. “It’s fun to make good, wholesome food,” he says. “Raw milk is
just part of that.” Partridge also doesn’t believe raw milk has special health benefits. “The nutrients that you lose by pasteurizing the milk are, in my opinion, insignificant to your diet,” he says. “Some of the raw milk advocates will claim that pasteurized milk is dead food. I just don’t believe that. There are vitamins left in pasteurized milk.” But many raw milk drinkers disagree. “I absolutely, fundamentally believe that one reason why my wife and I drink fresh unprocessed milk is it’s nutritionally better for us,” says Ted Beals. Beals is a retired pathologist from the University of Michigan’s medical school as well as director of the Farm-to-Consumer Foundation and a member of the Michigan Fresh Unprocessed Whole Milk Workgroup. He and his wife Peggy, a registered nurse, became involved in the raw milk cause after Beal retired. They wanted to lend their medical expertise to protecting the quality of food, he says. Beals works as a consultant, answering medical questions about raw milk, particularly on illness and microbiology. He has testified at legislative hearings and court trials in both the continued on page 33
!
To understand the science behind raw milk, I met with John Partridge, a Dairy Food Extension Specialist and Food Science and Human Nutrition professor at Michigan State University. Partridge’s office is directly above Michigan State University’s dairy store, one of two locations that sell homemade ice cream and cheese. I was convinced the hallway outside his office smelled like fresh waffle cones. As might be expected, his office is an homage to everything dairy: Books on milk, cheese and ice cream line the shelves and office supplies with “Got Milk?” sit on his desk. “Raw milk is milk we harvest from the cow and the only thing we do is cool it down,” Partridge says. “Pasteurized milk we cool down and then we run it through a heat treatment system…basically enough heat to destroy the most heat-resistant pathogen.” These include pathogens like E. coli and salmonella, which can cause sickness and, in extreme cases, death. Partridge, who grew up around the dairy industry in Vermont, explains that the only way to guarantee pathogen-free milk is to milk cows in a sterile environment. But most people looking for raw milk want cows from a pasture, Partridge says. That’s exactly what diary farmers like Harley and Linda promise.
Harley started Thomas Organic Creamery 12 years ago when he retired from house building to satisfy his interest in farming. Until six years ago, the Thomas’ had been shipping their milk to an organic processor in New York. “It wasn’t possible to stay in business and sell from our small farm to a co-op,” Harley says. “Milk prices are too controlled.” For a year they tried selling organic pasteurized milk from their farm using the licensed pasteurizing equipment for their yogurts and ice creams. But the facility was too small, the demand too great and labor costs too high, Harley says. Instead, they started a herd share program. Besides being organic certified, their milk is tested by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and state and county health departments inspect their facilities. The creamery also goes a step further and each month has an independent lab test their milk for coliform, E. coli, E. coli O157:H7, and salmonella. Customers have never asked for these additional tests, but Harley sees this as a good business practice to protect customers.
The State of Raw Milk A state-by-state look at the different raw milk laws across the country.
MILK FARMING
Thomas Organic Creamery is an 80-acre certified organic farm northeast of Lansing, Mich. The farm employs 17 mostly part-time workers and is home to the Thomas family, 32 Jersey cows and a flock of chickens. Linda and Harley have bees their daughter uses to make skincare products for profit and Harley is developing a fruit orchard. “We have to be diversified to stay viable and profitable,” Harley says. The farm’s dairy store, located next to the barn, is a small room off a single-level building with two refrigerated areas the size of one-car garages and a kitchen. In the dairy store are a refrigerator and freezer filled with their allorganic, onsite-made yogurt, ice cream, frozen colostrum treats made from the first milk a cow mother produces, pasture-fed meats and eggs. Sitting on an overturned milk crate, Harley talks about the key to his success: “The reason people are drinking the milk is because it’s fresh and whole…just the way God and nature intended it. Once you taste real milk, the stuff in the store doesn’t compare.” As seen by the extensive waiting list, the creamery’s milk is in high demand.
Raw milk sales illegal Herdshares either legal or states have not taken action against them Retail raw milk sales legal Farm sale legal* Legal for sale as pet food * Farmer can legally sell directly to consumer Source: Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (http://farmtoconsumer.org/raw_milk_map.htm), last updated May 2010.
John Kalmar/EJ
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FROM THE COVER
legal. Italy even has a countrywide raw milk vending machine system and countries like France, Slovenia, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands are starting to do the same.
NATION
RADIOACTIVE
WATER Efforts to regulate radon in drinking water remain at a standstill STORY BY BRIAN BIENKOWSKI
A
fter decades of volleying recommendations, the federal effort to regulate radon in household water remains at a standstill, failing to protect consumers from the potential danger lurking in their pipes. The invisible, odorless and tasteless contaminant is the leading cause of lung cancer among nonsmokers and the second leading cause of lung cancer, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is a naturally occurring gas that comes from the breakdown of uranium. The 2010 President’s Cancer Panel singled out radon — short for radon -222 — as one of America’s most “underestimated environmental cancer risks” in its April 2010 report. Such ominous findings have led to federally established state training centers, technical assistance programs, citizen guides and construction standards. But these standards have only targeted airborne impacts; states are left to develop their own guidelines for radon in water.
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Nine states have them: Pennsylvania, Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and New Jersey. While most radon-related deaths are due to gas leaking through foundation cracks, approximately 180 deaths each year are attributed to radon in drinking water, according to the National Academy of Sciences, whose members advise the nation on science, engineering and medicine. Radon in water usually originates in wells built in uranium-rich areas but can be present in community water supplies with surface reservoirs, says Shane Lyle, a Kansas Geological Survey senior research assistant. Radon in water is dangerous because the gas can escape into the air; it’s a risk that’s harder to quantify. “In water, the radon is in tiny little bubbles … like the carbonation in soda,” Lyle says. “When you turn on a faucet or a shower, it’s like shaking up the can, and the bubbles are released.” Radon is measured in picocuries per liter (pCi/L). A picocurie is one-
trillionth of a curie, the international measurement unit of radioactivity. So if a curie is two times the federal budget ($2 trillion), then a picocurie is the cost of a hamburger and soda ($2), according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. States with maximum exposure guidelines have varying recommendations. New Hampshire recommends limiting exposure to 2,000 picocuries per liter of water. Massachusetts has the highest recommended exposure limits at 10,000 picocuries per liter. New Jersey is reviewing a recommendation by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to regulate radon in water and limit exposure in water to 800 picocuries per liter, said Larry Hajna, a spokesman for New Jersey’s environmental department. If adopted it would be the first mandatory radon standard for drinking water in the country. The EPA’s most recent proposed maximum contaminant level limits public water supplies to 4,000 picocuries per liter of radon. For those working to test and rid
Academy of Sciences study to determine the risk of ra don in drinking water. The report mirrored the agency’s previous conclusions and found that the risk of radon is greater than the risks posed by other contaminants currently being regulated. The EPA proposed the 4,000 picocuries per liter maximum containment level in places that adopted a different radon mitigation program that reduced exposure in water and air. For water companies not implementing such measures, the agency advised a limit of 300. The rules have not been finalized. The EPA will not grant personal interviews on the subject. An e-mailed response says that the public has expressed concerns about the proposed limits and how to implement them at the state and individual level. Part of the pushback against regulation was that the gas is too expensive to remove from water. There are two methods of radon water treatment: a granular activated carbon unit and aeration units. Granular activated carbon filters work because radon attaches to the carbon, leaving the water radon-free. Some units have separate sediment filters placed before the granular activated carbon to avoid clogging the unit with other sediments. Aeration units pump air into the wells, allowing the radon to escape into the air before the water makes
How radon can enter homes
Bedrock
Soil
Radon in well water travels up through pipes and eventually out via shower heads. Radon can seep through fractured bedrock and work its way up into the soil. Source: Natural Resources Canada (www.geoscape.nrcan.
Water table
Radon in soil can get into homes through windows, cracks or fittings.
Radon in groundwater can also enter homes through cracks and sumps.
into the home. But the systems aren’t cheap. To treat contaminated wells, homeowners would have to spend $4,000 for a granular activated carbon filter or $6,000 for an aeration system. There are approximately 500 companies nationwide that remove radon from water, says Peter Hendrick, American Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists executive director. “The problem is they can’t keep up with new home construction,” Hendrick says. “Even in a depressed economy, more units are being built with high radon than we can keep up with.” In addition to pricey mitigation techniques, the EPA has had funding and staffing decreases in recent years, which has made it difficult to push through radon standards, Hendrick says. But he feels that is still not an excuse. “It’s another sad tale of an opportunity being missed,” Hendrick says. “Their (EPA) radon program is a failure … money and staffing are an issue, but the technical expertise and internal fortitude is lacking in the organization.” In February 2010, the EPA announced plans to develop regulation up to 16 other toxic chemicals that may pose risk to human health. Absent is radon. The cancercausing contaminant remains on the backburner even though it is part of the agency’s broad new Drinking Water Strategy to strengthen protection from contaminants. “[The] EPA continues to evaluate and consider stakeholder concerns with the proposed rule while we work to address other Safe Drinking Water Act priorities,” according to the e-mailed agency response. Without government regulation or even guidelines in most states, consumers’ best bet is to take matters into their own hands, Lyle says. “The take-home message is that radon can occur anywhere … it shows up independently and sometimes unexpectedly. Your neighbor’s house could test low, but yours could have it (radon). Everyone should do a radon test.” !
NATION
homes of radon, the lack of a national standard makes life difficult, says Dave Naggar, director of marketing at RadonAway. Based in Massachusetts, the company manufactures and distributes radon mitigation products to people in neighboring states — states that have different guidelines. “How do you explain to a consumer why Massachusetts’ standard is so different from New Hampshire’s?” Naggar says. “Consumers are not trying to get into science; they’re worried about their children and not getting cancer. They just want the EPA to tell them what to do to be safe.” The EPA recommends a limit of 4 picocuries per liter of radon in air, although two thirds of radon-caused lung cancer cases occur below that level, according to the President’s Cancer Panel. For every 10,000 picocuries of radon in water, approximately 1 will be released in the air, according to a study conducted by the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State University. The latest federal recommendation is just another chapter in the decades-long effort for a national radon regulation in drinking water that began in 1986. Ten years later Congress squashed proposed statues and sent the EPA back to the drawing board. The EPA was ordered to draft a new proposal by 1999 and fund a National
Brian Bienkowski is a first-year master’s student studying environmental journalism at MSU. Contact him at bienkow1@gmail.com.
John Kalmar/EJ
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Photo by dhruvaraj (Flickr)
(One of) the answers
is blowing
IN THE WIND
By harnessing an abundant, clean and free resource, wind power has become a viable source of energy for homes, farms and businesses. Despite large start-up costs and the remote locations of wind farms, it remains one of the fastest growing forms of alternative energy on the planet. BY JOHN KALMAR
SAY YES! TO WIND ENERGY! CLEAN
PLENTIFUL
JOBS
TIME
Wind is one of the cleanest forms of energy on earth. It’s a sustainable resource that can be converted to energy without emitting fossil fuels and has few negative impacts on the environment, making it a popular choice for renewable energy resources.
Because it is a form of solar energy wind resources will never be depleted. Wind exists due to uneven heating of the earth by the sun. As hot air rises, cool air moves in to take its place, resulting in the creation of wind.
The growth in wind energy has led to the creation of more engineering and manufacturing jobs in wind energy technologies.The U.S. increased its wind power capacity by more than 5,000 megawatts (MW) in 2010 to its current capactiy of 40,180 MW.
Compared with coal and naturalgas power plants, it takes less time to construct wind farms. A 50-megawatt wind farm is typically built in 18 to 24 months, and the payback energy period is only three to six months.
DISTANCE
CONSISTENCY
AESTHETICS
Because of the high wind speeds, some 0 25 50 of the best places to harvest wind are in remote locations, often hundreds of miles away from major cities. Building transmission lines from these desolate wind farms can be expensive.
Wind isn’t always constant. This increases the need to have power plants store the energy or the use of a battery system to help even out erratic flows. Turbines must be shut off in winds greater than 55 miles per hour to prevent damage to the machine.
Wind turbines aren’t the most aesthetically appealing structures. Some opponents cite that wind turbines are an eye sore, cause noise pollution and pose as life-threatening obstacles to both birds and bats.
CO2
TURN OFF THE WIND TURBINES! COSTLY
$
The average cost of wind turbines in 2007 ranged from $1.2 million to $2.6 million per MW of nameplate capacity, the maximum rated output of a wind generator. Most commercial-scale turbines produce 2 MW of power.
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SOURCES: AMERICAN WIND ENERGY ASSOCIATION, MSNBC.COM, NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM, NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL, NPR.ORG, POLITIFACT.COM, POWERNATURALLY.ORG, POWER-TECHNOLOGY.COM, SUSTAINABLEBUSINESS.COM, THE NEW YORK TIMES, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, U.S. ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION, WINDUSTRY.ORG
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THREE OF A KIND: THE PRIMARY WAYS TO PRODUCE WIND POWER SMALL SCALE
WIND FARMS
OFFSHORE WIND FARMS
Small-scale wind turbines allow homeowners, farms, small businesses and public facilities to generate their own on-site energy. Small-scale turbines are defined as producing 100 kilowatts or less. Average small wind turbines stand from 35 to 140 feet tall. Small turbines may serve as a way to break free from the reliance of fossil fuels for powering homes and businesses, but they don’t come cheap. For a 10 kilowatt machine, which is the size needed to power an average home, the price tag ranges from $35,000 to $50,000.
By being built in rural regions away from cities, large scale wind farms are able to harness the powerful winds in their isolated areas. Texas is home to the six largest winds farms in the U.S. with the Roscoe Wind Farm in Roscoe, Texas tipping the wind energy scales at a capacity of 781.5 MW. The 100,000-acre West Texas farm houses 627 wind turbines, ranging from 350 to 415 feet tall. The land was primarily used for cotton before being converted to a wind farm in 2007. Roscoe Wind Farm can generate electricity for more than 230,000 homes.
The biggest advantage of offshore wind farms is their ability to capture the strong, afternoon breezes produced at sea, which occurs at a time of peak energy consumption. While there currently are no offshore wind farms in the U.S. (pending the Cape Wind Project), the largest offshore project is the Thanet Offshore Wind Farm, approximately seven miles off the coast of England. The wind farm boasts 100 turbines with a total capacity of 300 MW, which is enough to power 200,000 British homes.
WORKING WITH WIND WIND SPEED Winds blow over the blades of the turbine, causing them to rotate. Turbines generally don’t operate unless winds speeds blow greater than 8 miles per hour.Turbines are able to generate the most electricity when winds are blowing at 22-to-55 mph.
BREEZY NUMBERS States with the highest installed megawatt capacity for wind TEXAS SWEPT AREA The area covered by the rotating rotors, also known as the swept area, plays a role in how much electricity the turbines can produce. The larger the swept area, the greater the electricity yield will be.
IOWA 3,177 MW
2,104 MW
CALIFORNIA
2,192 MW
MINNESOTA
WASHINGTON & OREGON
Drive shaft
Gearbox
GENERATOR Generator The spinning High-speed blades turn a drive shaft shaft, which powers the gearbox within the turbine. The gearbox rotates at 1,200-1,800 rpm, which is the speed required by most generators to produce electricity. The gear box moves the high-speed shaft which in turn fuels the generator. The electrical output of the generator is connected to a larger electrical grid, which supplies power to homes, offices and other businesses.
3,675 MW
10,085 MW
TURBINE SIZE Larger turbines take advantage of the more powerful winds at altitude and are less subjected to turbulence. Offshore wind turbines are able to harvest the dense, heavy air at sea level, which is able to produce more electricity by exerting more lift on the blades. Most small-scale turbines are 100 feet tall with a rotor diameter of 23 feet. The largest wind turbines stand as tall as 230 feet with a rotor diameter spanning 231 feet.
Megawatt capacity for other forms of U.S. energy in 2009 COAL: 459,803 MW NATURAL GAS: 338,723 MW NUCLEAR: 106,618 MW HYDRO: 77,910 MW WIND: 34,683 MW*
1 MW = 1,000 U.S. HOMES
*The 2010 MW capacity for wind energy was reported at 40,180 by the American Wind Energy Association.
A breath of fresh wind facts 20 percent of the nation’s electricity that will be supported by wind energy in 2030, according to an U.S. Department of Energy estimate.
100,000-300,000 estimated number of birds killed per year by wind turbines.
39 million estimated number of birds killed per year by rural cats.
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Photo by Abbey Moore
NATION
BANN IN
G BAG
S
Cities a re bags to taxing, banni ng plas c u t d ow n on poll tic STORY ution BY CA ROLYN
U
. S. residents use more than 830 million pounds of plastic every year. That’s more than one million pounds per person. That’s because common household items such as shampoo bottles, milk jugs and plastic bags contain the synthetic material. And more than 1 million plastic bags are used in the world every minute to line trash cans, pick up after pets and hold groceries. But many cities are starting to turn against the common receptacle. In 2007, San Francisco banned plastic bags in large supermarkets after plastic bag pollution negatively affected the quality of a Chinatown community, as EJ Magazine previously reported. Last year, Los Angeles passed a plastic bag ban and placed a 10-cent tax on paper bags. Why? City officials wanted to cut down on pollution on streets and in drains. The recent tax adds to a long-lasting dialogue about the use of the plastic bags. Cities increasingly discourage their use; some ban them, others create disincentives through new taxes. Consider the five-cent tax on plastic bags in Washington D.C. to cut down on pollution in the Chesapeake Bay and still allow customers to choose
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SUNDQ
UIST
them. Since the tax was imposed, the number of bags used has decreased drastically. People were using approximately 22.5 million bags a month in 2009. That monthly use is now about 3.3 million, according to the city officials. A plastic bag ban is an emotional response to the problem and would shift production to paper bags and compostable bags, which both have heavy environmental consequences and is not the solution, according to reuseit.com, an online store launched in 2003 to adhere to the reusable lifestyle, offering reusable products for everyday life.
PAPER OR PLASTIC?
The first plastic grocery bag hit the stores in 1977, according to packagingknowledge.com, an online packaging magazine. A cashier asking “paper or plastic?” is now part of the grocery shopping experience. About 80 percent of reusable bags in the U.S. market are plastic, says Allyson Wilson, a spokeswoman for the American Chemistry Council. So why ban plastic? A plastic bag starts as polyethylene, which is a plastic made mostly from natural gas. Plastic bag critics say chemicals used in the process can be toxic. Creating plastic bags also contributes to air pollution.
Paper or Plastic? Neither. NATION
Biodegradable plastic: Made from cornstarch, soybeans and other plant-based materials. Degradable plastic: Resin-based and manufactured with a chemical additive that speeds degradation. Bio-Based plastic: Made from materials derived from renewable biological resources, like plants. These are compostable, like the new SunChips bag. Reusable bags: While reusable bags are widely available nowadays, the best reusable bags are made of cotton or hemp. Photo by Abbey Moore
That’s why in 2007, the Calabasas, Calif. City Council banned retail food establishments, nonprofit food providers and city facilities from using food packagings made of expanded polystyrene, known popularly by its trademarked name, Styrofoam. But not everyone agrees that plastic’s potential toxicity is worth banning. Less than .05 percent of a barrel of oil goes into making all the plastic bags used in the U.S., according to the council. More than 93 percent of every barrel of crude oil is burned for fuel and heating. “Plastic grocery bags are an extremely resourceefficient bag choice,” Wilson says. “Plastic grocery bags require 70 percent less energy to manufacture than paper bags, and produce half the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the process.” It’s important to examine these tradeoffs, like how much water and air pollutants go into making each product, says Susan Selke, acting director and professor of the Michigan State University School of Packaging “If your supermarket is handing out grocery bags, you need a lot more trucks to bring paper bags to the store than you need to bring plastic bags to the store,” Selke says. “And if the bags are going to end up in a landfill, the plastic bags will take a lot less space.” There are also differences in how each material breaks down in a landfill, Selke says. Plastic takes thousands of years to degrade. Paper degrades much faster, but produces methane, she says. Methane poses a problem because of it can trap heat from the atmosphere and reflect it back to the earth. While most plastic bags end up recycled or in a landfill, sometimes they sneak in the sewer systems and end up in the ocean. The extremely slow decomposition of plastic bags leaves them to drift on the ocean for years. They can kill marine animals like fish and sea turtles that mistake them for food, according to Algalita Marine Research Foundation, a California-based environmental protection organization. When plastics break down, they don't biodegrade; they photo degrade. This means the materials break down to smaller fragments, which readily soak up toxins. They then contaminate soil, waterways, and animals upon digestion, according to the Endocrine Disruption Exchange, an organization that focuses primarily on the human health and environmental problems caused by endocrine disruptors, which are synthetic chemicals that when taken into the both either mimics or obstructs regular hormones and can disrupt the body’s normal function. Animals that eat small amounts of polychlorinated biphenyls, classified as a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in food for weeks and months developed health conditions, like anemia and liver and stomach injuries, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry, which provides health information to prevent harmful exposures and diseases related to toxic substances. Toxic substances may accumulate over time in animals that mistakenly eat plastic bags. Small fish that eat plastic particles can in turn be eaten by larger fish that are eaten by people. ”The ultimate question is the biomagnification aspect,” says David Johnson, Fisheries and Wildlife professor at Michigan State University. “Just like DDT in the past, it
The use of burlap bags can help curtail the consumer's use of plastic bags and keep them from piling up in landfills. will take some time to realize.” While it is nearly impossible to remove all plastics from our lives, the general consensus solution for people and organizations looking to control plastic bag usage is a tax to discourage the consumption of them. “Charging for them forces people to think about it,” Johnson says. “It’s a better policy.” ! Carolyn Sundquist is a junior studying environmental journalism at MSU. Contact her at sundqui7@msu.edu.
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Photo by U.S. Bureau of Land Management ( Wikimedia Commons)
MODEL RESTORATION Nonprofit group buys Montana ranch to inspire cleanup of region scarred by mining STORY BY THEA HASSAN
D
ry Cottonwood Creek Ranch looks like any other Montana ranch: Cattle graze on lushly vegetated fields as a creek meanders through grassy terrain. Despite the scenery, it’s one of the largest federally recognized contaminated areas in the country. A non-profit environmental group, with the help of two private investors, purchased the ranch — located north of Butte, Mont. on the Clark Fork River — to serve as a model for environmental restoration. Butte is home to the Berkley Pit, a one square-mile pond that holds a murky, reddish metal wastewater containing byproducts of the town’s mining origins. Due to the acidity of the pit, boats and sirens are used to chase away waterfowl to prevent their deaths. The region has been involved in mining since the early 1900s; small mines still operate today. Extracting precious minerals left copper, cadmium, lead, zinc and arsenic embedded in the soil. Mining operations often disposed of the byproducts, called tailings, in earthen dams and riverbeds. Cadmium and arsenic are a human health risk, while zinc and copper contaminants pose risk to plants.
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On the outskirts of town, the evidence of the disposal techniques is hard to miss: expansive patches of sandy contaminated dirt called slickens scar the surroundings. The lack of vegetation is coupled with an absence of wildlife. A massive flood in 1908, the result of a big spring melt and days of heavy rain, washed the contamination from small mines in Butte and a smelting site in nearby Anacadona. It was spread throughout the Clark Fork River watershed, said Brian Bartkowiak, Superfund site manager for the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. For the cleanup, the basin is divided into three portions. The ranch is in the most contaminated section. The Clark Fork Coalition has been involved in the restoration of the Upper Clark Fork River since the coalition formed in 1985, said director of the group Karen Knudsen. The Coalition is a group of citizens, scientists, landowners, business leaders and public officials dedicated to the cleanup and preservation of the Clark Fork River Basin. The challenge of cleaning up the metal contamination is significant, and the group decided to register the area as a Superfund site. The federal government established the Superfund
Photo by grabadonut ( Flickr)
program in 1980 to clean up hazardous waste sites that have been abandoned by owners. There are 17 listed Superfund sites in Montana and 1,290 in the U. S., according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. After successfully getting the area listed as a Superfund site, it took 20 years for the group to obtain permits for the cleanup. They were finally awarded in 2005 after attention was drawn to the area by a large number of dead fish found in the river, Bartkowiak said. But prioritization of restoration on various sites is based on the use of the land. “We clean up the residential yards first, the places where people are using and living on a daily basis,” Bartkowiak said. “Remediation of residential areas in the Clark Fork basin began last fall, with cleanup for Dry Cottonwood Creek expected in the coming year.” Cleanup needs to persist, but another obstacle is ahead: nearly half of the land is privately owned. Many ranchers depend heavily on their land. Both
NATION WORLD
(Top left) Dry Cottonwood Creek Ranch sits on the Clark Fork River just north of Butte, Mont. (Above) Berkley Pit's water has been contaminated by the byproducts of the town's mining origins.
testing for contamination and cleanup are invasive and disturbing. Ranchers may be hesitant to encourage cleanup if it means making big sacrifices, said Bryce Andrews, manager of the Dry Cottonwood Creek Ranch. Large machinery such as backhoes is required for soil testing and contamination removal, but can be disturbing to the land and interruptive of farming operations. “I think that [the cleanup] is sometimes a hard sell for people who are really focused on, how am I going to eat next year? How am I going to keep this land that has been in my family for three generations?” Andrews said. The basin has been over-logged, over-mined, and overgrazed for so long over the past 100 years that some ranchers need to be convinced to see there is anything unnatural about the basin, Knudsen said. “It’s all well and good to tell owners [restoration] is a good thing, but it is quite another to convince them it is good for the bottom line,” Knudsen said. That’s why members of the Clark Fork Coalition bought the Dry Cottonwood Creek Ranch. The idea was to use the most contaminated ranch in the area to test restoration strategies that could be used on neighboring ranches, Knudsen said. The concept lets government restoration agencies develop what works and what doesn’t while ranch operations still thrive. The ranch also gives the neighbors an opportunity to express their concerns or fears. “We have to work towards reproducible models,” Andrews said. “We have to design things in a way that our neighbors can look at it and say, yeah, that makes since for my place too.” For example, the ranch demonstrates sustainable ranch practices that neighbors can implement themselves. The group installed wildlife friendly fencing around the river, reducing the disturbance on the plant and fish community in the stream by keeping the livestock away. Restoration will take time; success depends on the numerous ranchers in the region working together with government agencies and the coalition. The handful of private landowners may not agree on how clean up should progress. “There are about as many opinions as there are owners,” Andrews said. When the cleanup is complete, the ranch will be turned back over to the two private investors. The effort isn’t all environmental altruism. Last year, the ranch produced a profit by selling all-natural, grass fed beef. But don’t worry, the cattle were kept out of the slickens, Andrews said. And as Bartkowiak pointed out: “It’s hard for cows to eat grass that doesn’t grow.” ! Thea Hassan is a first-year graduate student studying environmental journalism at MSU. Hassan visited the Montana Superfund site and the Dry Cottonwood Creek Ranch on a tour at a Society of Environmental Journalists conference in October 2010. Contact her at hassanth@msu.edu.
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ROAD TO PEARL LAGOON Markets, migration and municipal policies contribute to environmental problems in eastern Nicaragua STORY AND PHOTOS BY RACHAEL GLEASON
T
he rain over Pearl Lagoon stops just in time for the sun to set. A break in the clouds reveals a brilliant array of blue hues. A few restless residents sit on the dock’s wooden poles and watch dark storm clouds roll past Nicaragua’s largest coastal lagoon. The dock is the main entrance to the once remote community. It’s where people crowd aboard boats destined for other coastal communities. And, it’s where fishermen hastily sell their catch from wooden dories. Water is life for the inhabitants of Pearl Lagoon, located along Nicaragua’s Atlantic or “Mosquito” coast. Many spend days and nights on the calm waters, fishing for fish, blue crab and shrimp with hand lines and long gillnets. Farming and hunting are common in some of the communities, but fishing is essential to nearly all Pearl Lagoon inhabitants. That’s why community leaders, government officials
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and fishermen worry about an alarming new trend: It’s getting harder to catch fish. Pearl Lagoon inhabitants are yielding fewer fish despite increased efforts. And the fish they do catch are small. “Three to four to five years ago, in this season, the rain was heavy, hard and there was lots of fishes,” says Thomas Fox, community leader of an indigenous Miskitu coastal community of 500 called Kakabila. “Now everything has changed, everything has reduced. We don’t have sufficient fishes or shrimps to support our children.” Natural fluctuation in fish populations and a lack of data make it hard to define the problem, says Kara Stevens, a Michigan State University doctoral student who studies the Pearl Lagoon fisheries. It’s also hard to measure the region’s shrinking rainforests. Pearl Lagoon is surrounded by a variety of natural ecosystems: rainforests, pines, mangroves, wetlands, estuaries and freshwater rivers. But new land values are changing the landscape. The decline of fish and forests are both byproducts of increased road development
along the coast, according to Michigan State University research on economic and natural resources changes. Nicaragua’s Institute for Rural Development built a road connecting Pearl Lagoon and other once remote communities to paved highways in El Rama. The network extends to the country’s capital city of Managua. The 43-mile-long gravel road is unpaved and littered with potholes. For the people of the Pearl Lagoon basin, it’s a symbol for change and accessibility. Since its completion in 2007, the road has brought new economic opportunities and increased access to electricity and telephones. The migration of people and ideas have also made Pearl Lagoon, a fishing village of approximately 2,500 residents, a melting pot of Central American, Spanish, Creole and Garifuna cultures. But there are environmental costs to the newly accessible region. The road and forces of globalization stress the lagoon’s marine and terrestrial resources. Frank Lopez, president of the territorial municipality who resides in the northern
MARKETS
On a sweltering day in July, fishermen arrive in skiffs and wooden dories at one of the community acopios, just down the road from the main dock in Pearl Lagoon. Acopios are like middlemen for fisheries transactions. Here, their fish are counted, weighed and stored before going to market. “The acopios in our municipality are who buy the product from the fishermen,” says Xenia Gordon, a fishery expert with the Pearl Lagoon Alcadia, or municipal government. “They buy the product and then transfer the product to our municipality where we have a fishery enterprise and they sell the product there.” On any given day, a fisherman’s swordfish might end up in Bluefields, a center for commercial activity in the country’s southern autonomous region. Gordon has seen the road enhance the region’s fish markets. Fishermen generally sell their product to the acopios, but the new road has given them access to new buyers. The road’s impact is difficult to measure, but Stevens recalls seeing a clear and immediate effect while traveling through Awas, a small community near the start of the road. Stevens witnessed several fishermen waiting to hear about the whereabouts of a Spanish blue crab and shrimp buyer who comes to the community via the road; if he were to come, they would go catch crab to sell to him. “…Everyone got in their boat and went out and set their traps,” Stevens says. “Within
like hours, they had bags and bags of crab to give to this guy.” The road buyers are particularly interested in blue crab and shrimp, Stevens says. People at the acopios are more likely to buy fish; they are increasingly using the road to export their product. The road buyers give fishermen more options, but they make it harder to regulate the lagoon’s marine resources. The buyers don’t have the same knowledge of restrictions that other buyers have, especially when it come to the size of shrimp, Stevens says. Increased globalization also threatens the region’s terrestrial resources. The loss of Pearl Lagoon’s rainforests to market pressures is rooted in history. More than a century ago, the region was the center of a booming timber industry, says Pedro Ordonez, a forestry expert with FADCANIC, a foundation dedicated to the autonomy and development of Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast. American and British companies were attracted to the region’s cedar and mahogany trees, Ordonez says. “Nicaragua is like the middle of [Central] America. We have been a place of attraction for quite a while,” he says. “When people come around here and see all these timbers, it became a business. So people started cutting the trees down to sell them to make a little money.” Fish and agricultural markets became the dominant industries over time. Nearly half of the region’s households surveyed by Michigan State University were engaged in farming for local consumption or export in 2008. The new road’s impact on farm markets is unclear, according to Michigan State research of the relationship between the road and market success. But many Pearl Lagoon farmers say the road has changed how they do business.
The Pearl Lagoon Basin Here are some of the key communities surrounding Nicaragua's largest coastal lagoon.
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WAWASHANG RIV ER
Orinoco
CARIBBEAN SEA
ME
XI
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La Fe
Brownbank
Kakabila Pearl Lagoon John Kalmar/EJ
Paved routes have eased transport to and from Pearl Lagoon and surrounding farm communities. For about 20 Nicaraguan Cordobas, less than a dollar in the United States, residents can take a 20-minute ride on a yellow school bus from Pearl Lagoon to Rocky Point. Here, farmers like Susanna Cuthbert Gordon and her family have farmed for decades. Before the paved road to Rocky Point, Gordon worried about her family’s bean, pineapple, breadfruit, corn, coconut crops spoiling before they reached Pearl Lagoon’s markets. “Before this road came it was like, I used to walk three hours to get to Pearl Lagoon in deep holes. It was very hard … now it’s much easier with the transport,” Gordon says. Kensy Sambola, a cultural anthropologist and farmer from the Garifuna community of Orinoco, has witnessed a different impact of the road: Fewer people are working the land and more people are relying on imported food and home goods. The lagoon and rainforest used to provide everything for communities, Sambola says. Younger generations are missing out on having a close relationship to the lagoon and surrounding rainforests.
MUNICIPAL POLICIES
The Alcadia is a two-story concrete building along the main road through Pearl Lagoon. It’s uncommon for a traveling carnival to come to town, locals say, but on this particular day in July, a colorful Ferris wheel blocks the view of the municipal government building. Here, Gordon manages the lagoon’s fisheries; two broad national laws have afforded her that right. Law 445 of Demarcation and Law 28 of Autonomy for Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast gave Pearl Lagoon communities the right to own their land and manage their resources in 1987. They were a turning point for the Pearl Lagoon’s indigenous communities, but there are limitations. Surveying and titling land is a long and costly process, Lopez says. Still, the laws let government officials protect the region’s fisheries and rainforests. One prevents outsiders from fishing in the lagoon, Stevens says. Sometimes outsiders co-opt Pearl Lagoon residents into fishing with them to increase their catch limit. Legally, it’s murky water. Another limits the length and size of gillnets a fisherman can use based on the size of his boat. But a lack of resources prevents the government from enforcing these rules. Gordon once told Stevens about a group of Bluefields fishermen who were illegally fishing with gillnets stretching from one side of the lagoon’s mouth to the other. The
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village of Orinoco, has noticed the decline of the region’s natural resources. “How are things going to be in 10 years? I think things will be worse,” Lopez says. “Most people cannot fish. If we don’t do for them, things will be worse.”
TECH
ENGINEERING
THE PLANET Climate change prevention ignites debate
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icture a hot, sunny day. The heat streaming through the window raises the temperature in your living room. To prevent the room from heating, you close your window blinds. Problem solved. Could this same strategy also cool the entire planet? Instead of window blinds, could a giant reflective surface like plastic wrap, sunshades or a mirror prevent the sun from heating the Earth? It’s not science fiction. In fact, it’s one of many projects in a growing field called geoengineering. The modern concept of geoengineering, or climate engineering, refers to manipulating the Earth’s climate to counteract the effects of climate change from greenhouse gas emissions. Some people look at the manipulation of the planet’s climate as fringe science. But researchers are looking at the subject with renewed interest. The reason for this is the presence of more disturbing information about fragility of the global climate system and tipping points, including, for example, the understanding of how fast ice can disappear, says Eli Kintisch, author of the book Hack the Planet: Science’s Best Hope — Or Worst Nightmare — for Averting Climate Catastrophe during an interview with EJ Magazine. “Scientists are coming up with more possible emer-
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BY SHAHEEN KATHAWALA gency responses; globally geoengineering the climate is something they are thinking about a lot more now.”
SAVING THE PLANET
Geoengineering the planet’s climate falls into several categories: preventing harmful radiation from reaching the Earth with sun blocking, greenhouse gas removal and tapping into natural processes to change the climate. Sun blocking, or solar radiation management, attempts to change the brightness of the planet. This can happen naturally, like when a dark ocean turns into ice. Lighter surfaces reflect more radiation into the sun instead of absorbing it. An artificial method might be to genetically modify leaves to make them brighter. Adding particles to lowlevel sea clouds could make them “brighter and reflect more solar radiation back into space before it strikes the ocean,” Kintisch says. Another idea, according to Kintisch, would be covering large parts of the planet with reflective surfaces such as plastic wrap. Removing greenhouse gases could include methods to stimulate the planet’s capacity to naturally absorb carbon dioxide, which can trap heat. Researchers are also looking into creating a global dust buster, a way to suck carbon dioxide right out of the air. “A technique that has got a lot of attention would be growing manmade algal blooms at sea,” Kintisch says. “Billions of square miles of the ocean are covered
Geoengineering Techniques GREENHOUSE GAS REMOVAL Greenhouse gases trap heat. Projects to stimulate the Earth’s ability to naturally absorb these gases include engineering a global dust buster, growing algal blooms and enhancing the ability of soils and trees to suck the carbon dioxide right out of the air.
CO2
John Kalmar/EJ
in natural algae blooms. The idea would be to enhance that growth.” Algal blooms can prevent global warming by capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Ohio State University houses the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center which is focused on capturing carbon in soil, vegetation, and wetlands and biofuel alternatives. The center looks to standardize new and innovative methods to determine the amount of carbon in vegetables and soil and support the carbon trading by evaluating the rate of sequestration. When soils are converted from natural ecosystems to agricultural systems, they lose carbon, says Rattan Lal, the center’s director. Poorly managed soils have lost their organic reserve and consequently their quality and productivity is very poor. “Most soils have lost somewhere between 25 percent to as much as 80 percent of their original organic carbon reserves,” he says. “Therefore restoring carbon in soil is essential, not only for climate change mitigation but also for improving crop yields and total production and enhancing food security on a global scale. “If we restore the land by creating a marshland again, they will become a sink for the atmospheric carbon as they did for thousands of years,” he says. The third kind of geoengineering project tries to change some of the Earth’s natural processes.
“You might put a dam around the Berring Strait to move ocean currents around the Arctic to pump water from one place to another,” Kintisch says.
ETHICAL ENGINEERING
Geo-engineering interest is growing, but actual scientific research is still limited because governments haven’t set up programs to support it, Kintisch says. The research is small and in pockets. “The United Kingdom has a small several million dollars a year that they spend on this every year,” he says. “The German government supports a little project; [the] National Science Foundation here in the [United States] has funded a few small projects. But for the most part, these are small projects.” Most the geoengineering concepts are elaborate, but not outof-reach in terms of cost. “Many of these methods, such as cloud brightening or stratospheric aerosols — where they mostly talk about putting sulfur particles in the stratosphere — are monetarily feasible,” says Dane Scott, director of the Center for Ethics at The University of Montana. “They are all extremely cost-effective.” But the real question is whether or not geoengineering can solve climate change. “Even if we stop all carbon emissions now, all man-made greenhouse gases, we know that it would take many hundreds of years for the climate to stabilize versus what was done to it in the 20th century,” Kintisch says. “What we don’t know are
LEGAL ISSUES
Only a few geoengineering activities are under the jurisdiction of domestic laws or international treaties, according to the Congressional Research Service report Geoengineering: Governance and Technology Policy. How these laws would support or restrain these practices is unknown. In the United States, one way to govern geoengineering is to let states develop their own policies and act as laboratories for innovation and experimentation, according to the report. This necessitates the formation of a more comprehensive federal policy. The report also adds that while there are no federal laws directly against geoengineering, there are various laws that could be applied to geoengineering. Some have suggested an agreement between multiple countries or a multilateral agreement when considering international cooperation for geoengineering, according to the report. In November 2010, approximately 200 nations belonging to the United Nations Framework Convention on Biological Diversity agreed to ban geoengineering with the exception small-scale scientific research studies. The U.S. is not a member and did partake in the agreement. "No climate-related geoengineering activities that may affect biodiversity take place, until there is an adequate scientific basis on which to justify such activities and appropriate consideration of the associated risks for the environment and biodiversity and associated social, economic and cultural impacts,” according to the agreement. ! Shaheen Kanthawala is a first-year master’s student studying environmental journalism at MSU. Contact her at kanthawa@msu.edu.
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TECH
SUN BLOCKING Bright surfaces reflect radiation. Covering the Earth with large reflective surfaces, seeding clouds to make them brighter and making surfaces lighter could prevent absorption of the sun’s radiation.
the effects of cooling down the planet.” There is no guarantee that once the climate of a particular area has been altered, it will revert back to what it originally used to be, Kintisch says. One such concern, Scott says, is that geoengineering would lessen people’s desire to take strong action like move away from a carbon-based economy. It would weaken current sustainability efforts. It can be looked upon as the masking of a problem and not a cure. Mitigation is the solution; geoengineering can be looked upon as a coping mechanism, Scott says. There are two broad categories where deployment of technologies may occur, says Jason Blackstock, senior fellow for Energy and the Environment from the Center for International Governance Innovation. Blackstock was part of a workshop conducted at University of Montana about the ethics of geoengineering in October 2010. If people begin to panic about the climate and declare an emergency, rapid deployment of technologies may occur, Blackstock says. Also, engineering the planet’s climate would have to be a coordinated effort, Scott says. “Studies have shown that not all countries would be affected equally,” Scott says. “Northern latitude countries would find this much more appealing than mid-latitude countries would." These different motivations might lead to conflict where some people would want this technology to come into action and others wouldn’t. Most researchers tend to agree that research and development of this technology should be carried out, but going ahead with it is not something they wish to see happen. “Do airbags cause more car accidents or does having safety procedures on airplanes make pilots fly more recklessly?,” Kintisch says. The moral hazard risks involved with geoengineering are unclear since peoples reaction to the technology is unknown.
LIFESTYLE Photo by Moreh Leah Walker (Flickr)
DANGEROUS FRAGRANCES John Kalmar/EJ
Harmful chemicals in personal care products, perfumes irritate sensitive people STORY BY HALEY WALKER
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ancy Michelli keeps a surgical mask in her car. But she isn’t afraid of other people’s germs making her sick; it’s how they smell. “I get this overwhelming feeling that I am going to pass out and die. I get burning eyes and headaches and have difficulty breathing,” she says. “I have to be away from them completely.” It isn’t body odor she is talking about. Instead, the California woman is protecting herself from the fragrances people carry in their clothing, skin and hair from hair products, laundry detergent and perfumes. Michelli is far from the only one affected by fragrances. About 5 percent of individuals have such sensitivity to chemicals that it greatly diminishes their quality of life, says Claudia Miller, an environmental health and allergy expert at the University of Texas. Professor Anne Steinemann at the University
of Washington recently analyzed 25 of the most popular fragranced products, including air fresheners, fabric softeners, soaps, lotions, shampoo. She found that they emitted 133 different Volatile Organic Compounds. VOCs are gases that can affect both the environment and health. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, VOCs are ten times more concentrated indoors than outdoors. In addition to personal care and cleaning products, they are released from paint, lacquers and glue. Steinemann found that one fourth of them were considered toxic or hazardous by federal law. “When I started doing this research, I got hundreds of people wanting to tell me their story; it really resonated with people,” she says. “I knew it was a problem, I had no idea of how big of a problem it was.” Steinemann has heard from fragrance sufferers worldwide. People have described seizures and asthma attacks from being around the
Photo by William Cho (Flickr)
products, she says. One woman was unable to be with her dying mother because her sister used scented hair products. Their stories are similar to Michelli’s who says she was forced to retire early from her job as a 911-operator in California because her coworkers used too many fragrances. She noticed severe headaches and trouble breathing after staying in a dorm for overnight shifts. “I didn’t have very much understanding from my coworkers, I think they thought I was exaggerating or making it up so they didn’t have much empathy and they didn’t understand,” Michelli says. “They think because it is not happening to them, it is just you; they don’t realize how toxic the materials are.” Steinemann calls the health effects of someone being exposed to scents not belonging to them or the products they own, “second-hand scent.” “It is almost like cigarette smoke,” she says. “While people stopped going into places with cigarette smoke, people are now going to stop shopping in particular stores.” That’s already happening. In October 2010, Teens Turning Green, a student education and advocacy group, protested outside Abercrombie & Fitch’s New York store on 5th Avenue; they objected to the store’s excessive overuse of their fragrance, Fierce. The group stated that the fragrance is reportedly sprayed on all the
Possible allergic effects of fragrances: !
Headaches
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Chest tightness and wheezing
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Infant diarrhea and vomiting
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Mucosal irritation such as sneezing
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Reduced pulmonary function
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Asthma and asthmatic worsening
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Stuffy nose and airway irritation
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Sense organ irritation
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Contact dermatitis or skin inflammation
merchandise and even pumped through the vents of the store. The corporation responded on its Facebook page that its cosmetics are formulated, tested, labeled and monitored to assure regulatory compliance and safety. In May 2010, the Environmental Working Group found that 17 popular fragrances, including Fierce, contained a variety of synthetic chemicals. The non-profit public health and environmental organization says that the fragrances included petrochemicals derived from petroleum and chemicals that can alter human hormones. “It’s no surprise why people often feel ill around fragrances,” says Stacy Malkans, co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, another organization authoring the report. “They spray the stores down both inside the stores and outside the stores, without any notification or consent from people.”
SENSITIZING CHEMICALS
An average of 10 “sensitizing” chemicals or allergens were found in the 17 fragrances tested in the report. These chemicals can cause severe allergic reactions including asthma, wheezing and headaches, and are found in more than just perfumes or colognes. One of Steinemann’s studies showed that 30 percent of people showed some kind of physical reaction to scented products. “Sensitizing chemicals are those that can trigger allergic reactions,” says Malkan. “We have had many reports of people in stores who use these products who have had watery eyes, headaches and just can’t stand being in there.” In 1999, the European
Commission’s Scientific Committee on Cosmetic Products and Non-Food Products released a list of well-known and frequently used allergenic substances. Europe requires that those substances be listed on all the labels of products when they exceed 10 parts per million. The United States has no such requirement. Allergens can severely hinder the immune system. Giorgio Armani Acqua Di Gio contained 19 sensitizing chemicals, the most of any fragrance tested for the Not So Sexy report. These chemicals are prevalent throughout the fragrance industry and included as ingredients in products such as laundry detergent, air fresheners and more, Steinemann says.
HORMONE DISRUPTERS
Twelve hormone disrupters, an average of 4 in each product, were also found in the fragrances tested in the Not So Sexy report. Halle by Halle Berry, Quicksilver and Jennifer Lopez’s J.Lo Glow all contained seven hormone-disrupting chemicals. The chemicals have been known to disrupt estrogen levels in women and androgen levels in men. Some are also linked to thyroid problems, breast and prostate cancer and obesity. One of the most prevalent hormone disrupters discovered in study was diethyl phthalate or DEP, a chemical known to cause abnormal genitalia in baby boys and sperm damage in adult men. It’s used to make the fragrance stick to the subject longer. The Environmental Working Group and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics found DEP in 12 of the 17 fragrances tested for the report. Recent research has linked DEP also to Attention Deficit Disorder in children, according to the Not So Sexy report. UV-Absorbing Chemicals To make fragrances last, manufacturers often add UV-chemicals found in sunscreens. When fragrances are exposed to sunlight and air, they can break down. UV absorbing chemicals are used to prevent them from weakening.
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Approximately 5 percent of people are so greatly affected by fragrances that it diminishes their quality of life.
The report, Not So Sexy: The Health Risks of Secret Chemicals in Fragrances, revealed that 38 chemicals were included in the 17 fragrances but undisclosed on the label. An average of 14 secret chemicals were included in each of the products. The American Eagle fragrance “Seventy Seven” contained 24 chemicals unlisted on the label, the highest number of any of the fragrances tested. Chanel’s Coco had 17 and Abercrombie and Fitch’s Fierce for men had 11. Concealing the chemicals that make up a fragrance is common. The Federal Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1973 requires companies to list cosmetic ingredients but exempts fragrances. Many of them are protected as “trade secrets.” “If companies were proud of their formulations and knew them to be safe, they wouldn’t hide their identities,” says Leann Brown, press associate with the Environmental Working Group. “We are not surprised that so much was missing from the label.” Approximately 66 percent of the products not listed on the fragrances tested by the Environmental Working Group and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics were never assessed for safety, according to the organizations.
LIFESTYLE
FRINGE RECYCLING Dumpster diving is a way of life for Michigan environmental consultant STORY AND PHOTOS BY DMITRI BARVINOK
B
y day, Ann Arbor-native Dave Szczygiel is an environmental education consultant for the Ann Arbor Public School Districts. By night, and occasionally after work, he reclaims treasures from the final resting place of consumer goods: the dumpster. As a dumpster diver, Szczygiel (pronounced Sea-gull) is part of a diverse community that redefines the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle.” He’s met homeless people looking for cans to return for a quick buck, helped college kids haul furniture out of dumpsters and provided frozen food to a man who lives entirely off of meals found in the trash. On one memorable occasion, he ran into a sixth-grader who skateboarded from dumpster to dumpster looking exclusively for video games. A weakened economy and a wasteful society have
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prompted people from all walks of life to turn to the trash to save money. Dumpster diving has shown up in books and documentaries and divers even have their own online presence: Trashwiki.org, a community-edited website made up primarily of summaries of dumpster diving conditions in cities worldwide. Szczygiel is a dumpster diver extraordinaire. He approaches the art with a scientific mentality, keeping records, finding patterns and determining the best time to fully commit to a night of diving.
TALKING TRASH
Trash can be divided into two categories: food waste and household. Household refers to anything people throw away: electronics, plastics, scrap metal, wood and textiles. Food waste is of particular interest to many divers
PEAK NIGHTS
Szczygiel dives in a college town and has kept daily records of his diving treasures. Over time, his records started to show an interesting trend of “peak nights”. These are the nights when University of Michigan students move out after each semester, particularly in the spring. To save space and clean their dorms as fast as possible, students throw out everything from microwaves and televisions to stacks of unused notebook paper, Szczygiel says.
Many things found in a dumpster are perfectly useable; they are still in the “re-use” stage. Szczygiel gives most of his finds to his family or back to his community. After his teenage daughter rummages through reclaimed clothing, Szczygiel donates several massive bags to Purple Heart and Planet Aid charities. He also gives hundreds of pounds of food to Food Gatherers several times a year. His family hasn’t had to buy laundry detergent in years. If he happens to drive by an elementary school, he can drop off $10 worth of box tops. On any given day, he can scrounge up enough cans to claim $20 at any grocery store. And he fills his truck to the brim with recyclable wood and metal time and time again. As a boy, Szczygiel collected aluminum cans from the banks of the Huron River. After hauling them on a bike to the nearby Miller Brewing Distributor, he received ten cents for every pound of metal. His father would bring home scrap metal to store and eventually take to the scrap yard. For helping out and tagging along, Szczygiel would often receive the money from the transaction. In his teenage years, he had finally saved up enough money from recycling and other jobs to buy a $5,000 pipe organ. “Most guys my age would’ve bought a car,” he admitted. “I was a pretty big nerd.” Szczygiel first opened up a dumpster in the late 1990s. Curiosity got the better of him, he says, and once he saw just how many things in the dumpster were salvageable, he couldn’t resist. At first he was self-conscious, feeling uncomfortable of being seen digging through the trash. Now, however, he feels that it’s almost part of his job description. After all, every environmentalist should practice what they preach, he says.
LAWFUL DIGGING
Dumpster diving is on tenuous legal ground, due to the possibility of trespassing and
breach of privacy. But Szczygiel has only gotten in a confrontation once in his ten years of diving. Taking trash from public dumpsters is not a punishable offense, according to the Supreme Court case California v. Greenwood. Unwarranted search and seizure of trash does not violate the fourth amendment, says the court, because it is common knowledge that anything put in a public dumpster is easily accessible. Unless specifically prohibited by a city, dumpster diving is legal. But trespassing and breaking into a locked dumpster is illegal. Police can also issue tickets for littering or for disorderly conduct. That’s why divers should leave an area neater than it was. It’s also a gesture of courtesy to the landowners, Szczygiel says. Property owners may restrict access to their dumpsters, but some landlords or storeowners may work with divers to cart away extra refuse. Circumstances vary wildly for each dive, and every case will is different, says Noel Garcia, a lieutenant at the Lansing Police Department. “Generally unauthorized entry onto private property is likely a trespass,” Garcia says. Once, a landlord of the apartment complex caught Szczygiel poking through the dumpsters in the parking lot. Szczygiel immediately agreed to leave. “I went diving on a Sunday in the middle of the day,” Szczygiel says. “Stupid idea.” Most people don’t mind, he says. Several times residents have handed him bags of trash directly. Some even offered to sell him things. “Does it look like I’m buying?” he chuckled. He’s even witnessed the police combing through trash to solve a crime, and when confronted, the police pretended to be professors studying trash. After that, people were more than happy to allow them unlimited access to their dumpsters. “If I can, I’ll always ask per-
Tools of the Trade Hook or gardening hoe Divers need an object to rake through trash bags and avoid sharp objects.
Gloves Keeping hands clean, cut free and safe is vital when rummaging around in dumpsters. Light source A headlamp is best, as it allows the use of both hands. If the battery dies, find another in the trash. Transport A pickup truck is best to ensure the most storage per vehicle.
Storage Any kind of space to store your junk, like a garage or shed.
Safety First Wild animals Warmer climates may have more violent insects. Watch out especially for fire ants and raccoons. Avoid personal garbage cans Divers are more likely to run into problems with the owners of personal cans. Ask for permission If possible, ask permission before diving.
Test your footing Don’t jump in a dumpster without looking first and getting a feel for what’s inside. Clean up after yourself If an area gets covered in trash, divers will no longer be welcome. John Kalmar/EJ
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LIFESTYLE
because food that is thrown away is sometimes edible. Grocery stores and corporations throw away food past its expiration date. Many have policies to dispose blemished food like bruised fruit. About half of food ready to be harvested and eaten in the United States ends up in the trash, according to a 2004 University of Arizona study. Individual household food waste accounts for approximately $43 billion a year in loss. Family households waste nearly $43 billion in food every year, or $590 for a typical family of four. On average, the American family wastes 14 percent of all groceries it buys, according to the study. Szczygiel collects unopened canned food and frozen food from dumpsters to supplement his family’s groceries, but picks up other food items for friends and charities. Apart from food waste, dumpsters are filled with scraps of wood and metal, electronics and their packaging materials, Szczygiel says. He blames planned obsolescence, the policy of creating products designed to break down after a certain period and requiring replacement. Office buildings often dispose of slightly broken furniture and appliances instead of fixing them, opting to go the easier route of buying new products. Expert divers like Szczygiel quickly become master fixeruppers, rescuing computers, furniture and appliances to sell, keep or donate.
Road to Pearl Lagoon: Continued from page 25
(From left to right) Frank Lopez, president of the territorial municipality who resides in Orinoco, Thomas Fox, Kakabila community leader, and Kensy Sambola, a cultural anthropologist and farmer from the Garifuna community of Orinoco, are among many Pearl Lagoon residents worried about environmental changes in the lagoon. officials told them to leave. But sometimes they lack money to buy gas for the boats to go out and stop them. “You’re blocking the gate. They catch everything. It just destroys the resource,” Stevens says. The road has given Pearl Lagoon fisherman many opportunities, but more enforcement and inspection are needed to protect the resource, Gordon says “The problem we have is, well, you need to have more inspection, more control around the size of product that’s going out,” she says. Gordon inspects all trucks that leave the Pearl Lagoon area carrying fish. It’s a difficult task to do alone, especially when the fishermen pushback, Stevens says. Fishermen try to sell too-small fish because that’s all they catch. In response, the government tells them to fish harder and use more gear. The municipal government has even given groups of fishermen who pool their resources motors or boats. But Stevens questions whether fishing harder with more gear is the best way to manage the resource. “If the fish are going down, it’s probably not the best strategy,” she says.
MIGRATION
It’s not just laws that govern the behaviors of Pearl Lagoon fishermen. Social customs also play a role in how people use the marine resources. “In terms of laws, and controlling people’s behaviors, what’s most powerful are the social norms that are accepted, how you’re supposed to do things,” Stevens says. Easier access has made the City of Pearl Lagoon a melting pot of cultures often unaware of fishing norms. They include not throwing spoiled fish in the water, not fishing in the river mouth, checking gillnets often to prevent spoilage and not using gillnets in the dry season, Stevens says. Norms also protect fish populations by governing the size of gillnets, Steven says.
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Communities typically refrain from using smaller than 4-inch gillnets, but other might use smaller sizes. If people can’t trust that other people are going to follow the rules and maintain the resource, then there’s a loss of social cohesion, she says. Outsiders are also bringing new land values to the Pearl Lagoon basin. The changes are clear along the Wawashang River, which empties into the northern part of the lagoon. Nicaragua’s autonomy and development foundation, FADCANIC, set up a lodge on a 2.5-square-mile natural reserve close to the river. It’s an arduous uphill hike from the river to the Kahka Creek Natural Reserve lodge. But unlike the surrounding rainforest, the trek to the lodge is relatively free of vegetation. The route is marked by reddish mud, a product of frequent rainstorms during the region’s wet season; Mestizos ranchers have cleared most of the land for livestock. An elevated tower puts visitors to the lodge right above tree line. Looking down, the rainforest is a tangled mess of trees, bushes and vines; it’s a stark contrast from route it takes to get there. A tall branch near the tower reveals tiny woodcutter ants carrying bite-sized pieces of leaves. Like the branch, the rainforest is alive with hundreds of species of birds, animals, reptiles and insects. Chris Jordon is a Michigan State University doctoral student and wildlife ecologist researching local ecological knowledge and wildlife in the Pearl Lagoon basin. Jordon hikes several miles a day setting up camera traps to document changes in rainforest wildlife and habitats. He’s surprised by some of the wildlife he’s captured in rainforests near Orinoco, a Garifuna community of roughly 1,000 located along the lagoon’s northern coast. Photographs and videos from his cameras reveal ocelots, a type of wildcat, jaguars and a healthy deer population, Jordon says.
“It seems to me that the lower impact farming here by indigenous communities and ethnic communities is less damaging and affects the wildlife much less than the Mestizos that are coming in and making cattle ranches,” he says. The national demarcation law hasn’t stopped outsiders from encroaching on land belonging to indigenous communities. Thomas Fox, Kakabila’s community leader, is particularly worried about Mestizos invading the western edge of his village’s rainforest. “They are destroying the forest more than anyone,” Fox says. His sentiments are mirrored in other coastal communities. Not all rainforests in the Pearl Lagoon basin are lost to agricultural expansion. Inhabitants are quick to point out that hurricanes also damage forest cover. The double impact of human development and natural disasters has taken its toll. Some communities have started tree nurseries to renew the rainforests. “If you were to go to rivers…you will see how all of the land, forest changed into pasture land. Some of the best land we have here has changed into patreros,” Ordonez says. “That’s why we are trying to get people conscious about planting a few trees. We know this is the only way to save this land, because it is washing away.” One of the farmers in Rocky Point manages a small nursery on her family’s land using seeds from Ordonez. Fox also manages a nursery in Kakabila. He receives cedar and mahogany tree seeds from URRACAN, a university system of the autonomous regions of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, and plants them near the back of the community. The seeds sprout in about 15 days; trees will be full-grown in 20 to 30 years, Fox says. “The tree is something to benefit to everyone. It gives you good oxygen, keeps out contamination. We need to protect our forest,” he says. “In the future the children will have the opportunity to make something of these forests…” ! Rachael Gleason is a second-year master’s student studying environmental journalism at MSU. In July 2010, Rachael traveled to Nicaragua’s Pearl Lagoon basin with MSU researchers to document their research. Contact her at rachaelkaygleason@gmail.com. Visit www.roadtopearllagoon.com for more information.
Got (Raw) Milk?: Continued from page 15 U.S. and Canada as an expert on raw milk safety. Peggy, who also serves on the Michigan milk workgroup and the Farm-to-Consumer Foundation, has published a safe handling booklet for raw milk consumers.
MILK CONSTRAINTS
“Our personal feeling is that it’s a choice thing,” Beals says. “If people believe the food is better or tastes better, or want to get it from the farmer, they should be allowed to do that.” The government shouldn’t restrict their access, he says. But government organizations, like the FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture, disagree. Although the sale of raw milk is decided on a state-to-state basis, the FDA has banned interstate exchange of raw milk and doesn’t support its consumption. Despite these differences, the Michigan Department of Agriculture has been involved in the dialogue about raw milk access. The milk workgroup Beals sits on wouldn’t exist if the Michigan Department of Agriculture was not involved, says Elaine Brown, executive director for the Michigan Food and Farming System and the workgroup’s facilitator. The workgroup addresses the broad question of what access to fresh unprocessed whole milk should be in three to five years by bringing together all affected parties, which includes farmers, fresh milk advocates, department of agriculture, academics and those in industry. “Yes, there was initial distrust,” says Brown, but “people have learned to respect each other and their points of view.” Brown doesn’t promise that the workgroup
will change policies against raw milk access, but acknowledges the importance in simply having this conversation.
MILK ENTHUSIASTS
So, if the FDA, USDA and Michigan Department of Agriculture are openly against raw milk consumption, why are consumers taking the risk? David Gumpert, author of The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights, cites two major reasons: “There’s just a lot more interest by consumers in the quality of the food they’re eating and there’s growing concern that processed food isn’t all that healthy.” Gumpert, a health and business journalist and raw milk drinker, has followed the raw milk controversy on his blog “The Complete Patient” since August 2006. And Gumpert, like Beals, believes that raw milk should be left as a personal choice. “I think people need to evaluate what they want for themselves…what kind of foods and how they’re prepared,” Gumpert says. “This is where I feel strongly about the matter. I’m not trying to advocate people drink raw milk.” Since 1998, more than 800 people in the U.S. have gotten sick from drinking raw milk or raw milk cheese, according to the FDA. From May 1 to July 31, during the 2010 egg recall, the Centers for Disease Control recorded 1,953 cases of salmonella. Typically, this number would be about 700. While Gumpert uses these numbers as proof of raw milk’s relative safety compared with other foods, Partridge takes a more critical view.
“I think the more people we have drinking raw milk, the more problems we’re going to see,” he says. If you look at food poisoning from the consumption of milk, consider the small number of people drinking raw milk versus the number drinking pasteurized milk. “If that was reversed,” Partridge says, “we’d have an awful lot of sick people.”
MILK TIES
Even after talking with Partridge and reading about the many risks, I still return to the simplicity of that first glass of raw milk — an exchange between farmer and consumer, a “back to nature” type relationship where the milk is coming from cows you can visit next door. There is a level of trust between farmer and consumer, one that isn’t created by buying milk from a supermarket’s dairy section. And arguably, that’s what the raw milk movement is all about. Drinking fresh unprocessed milk is perhaps no riskier than eating eggs or spinach, and honestly, it’s the lack of access, not the potential risk, that will keep me from having more raw milk. So although I won’t be joining a herd share any time soon, the milk from the grocery store is definitely going to be letdown for my taste buds. ! Liz Pacheco is a first-year master’s student studying environmental journalism at MSU. Contact her at: elizabeth.d.pacheco@gmail.com.
New Food: Continued from page 11 important to show the differences and the contradictions as well as the similarities. It’s not constructive for anyone who’s involved in this work to have something that just affirms everything they think and feel and is totally uncritical. By presenting those contradictions across the movement and its diversity, we’re presenting some challenges that if we don’t address and find ways to talk about constructively, then we’re just going to stay as fragmented as ever or become more fragmented.” EJ: You have decided to do something very interesting with the proceeds from the book. Can you explain the idea? DT: “We know that we couldn’t have done this book without working with a pretty big publisher that was able to give us an advance. And we know those kinds of opportunities
MORE FARM TOGETHER NOW To find out more on Farm Together Now and to read about the Agricultore Fund visit: www.farmtogethernow.org
"
don’t happen for everyone and might not happen for us again. There needs to be resources available for smaller projects, so we decided to set up a fund with half of the author proceeds from the book. The fund is called Agricultlore, a name we came up with about stories on farming and agriculture. Once we get enough money together, which will probably be at the end of this year, we will give either one grant or a few smaller grants to different projects
across the country that are somehow working in a similar tradition as how our book did documenting food activism. We’re talking about a few other things, but it’s hard to say at this point because we don’t know how much money we’re talking about. We also definitely are already thinking about a sequel to this book, but we’re not there yet.” ! Liz Pacheco is a first-year master’s student studying environmental journalism at MSU. Contact her at: elizabeth.d.pacheco@gmail.com.
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But these chemicals are also particularly potent hormone disrupters. And approximately 76 percent of the fragrances tested in the Not So Sexy report contained at least one of them.
Photo by Adria Richards (Flickr)
Dangerous Fragrances: Continued from page 29 REGULATING FRAGRANCES
The Food and Drug Administration and the Consumer Products Safety Commission oversee most cosmetics. However, the FDA does not have the authority to require manufacturers to test fragranced products before they enter the market. “There is no pre-market testing required; the FDA does not test these products and they rely on companies,” Stienemann says. “It’s a self-regulating industry, the industry is regulating themselves and they decide what to put on the labels.” A lack of regulation leaves consumers at a disadvantage, according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. “Whether people are allergic to specific ingredients, or just looking to minimize their exposure to potentially harmful chemicals, they deserve regulation that would increase transparency and quality of the ingredients,” Brown says.
Fragrances are prevalent in many products such as household cleaners.
ONE LIFE CHANGED
Before Michelli says she used to travel often. She flew on airplanes and stayed in
hotels. She went to the movies and out to eat. She went to work. But all of that has changed. “I don’t travel for fun anymore, because it is just not fun,” Michelli says. “I don’t go to the movies and sometimes in restaurants, I have to get up to leave.” Michelli calls ahead to hotels to make sure that no fragranced laundry detergent are used for the bed linen. “I hope that people start to understand better how it can affect them and others, because no one gets a choice when it is used out in public,” Michelli says. Michelli recently had to shampoo her carpets after a maintenance man left behind fragrances in the material. She asks visitors if they use fragranced products before allowing them in. “This really isolates people,” Michelli says. “It makes you angry and it makes you frustrated; I don’t think it is fair or right. “It’s like I am running the gauntlet everyday,” she says. “But there are so many people like me that are in this same battle.” ! Haley Walker is a graduate of the environmental journalism master’s program at MSU. Contact her at walkerh4@msu.edu.
Fringe Recycling: Continued from page 31 mission,” Szczygiel says. “They see I’m not really the average bum.”
DUMPSTER TREASURE
Szczygiel unearths the strangest things. Combine the unpredictable nature of refuse with Ann Arbor, and the chance to find oddities skyrockets, Szczygiel says. While he doesn’t actively sell finds — unlike those that exclusively dive to post things on eBay — he once raked in $200 on a brand-new shotgun, still in the box. Often items like old photo albums, letters and flash drives reveal interesting personal details. “A lot of this I don’t think they’re throwing out, I think they’ve left, and the landlord is just stuck with their stuff,” Szczygiel says. Szczygiel used to try to store such mementos, but ultimately there was no room to keep everything, especially on top of his other finds. Still, his garage has been called “the best yard sale in town.” Szczygiel knows he’s been lucky. Not once in ten years has he been hurt from diving. He hasn’t gotten sick or cut himself. Perhaps due to Michigan weather, he’s never seen any insect worse than a fly or maggot,
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and though he once ran into a skunk and a raccoon, he’s never been sprayed nor attacked. It helps that he doesn’t actually enter the dumpsters, something he reserves for those younger and more limber. “I find other people to go with me. I try and recruit,” Szczygiel says. “I have a friend of mine, he’ll go right in. He’ll just stay in there and hand me stuff.” When he’s by himself, instead of climbing in, he uses a hook tool to dig through trash bags. Dumpster divers everywhere share a sense of camaraderie, and most are very friendly, Szczygiel says. They share innovations, like the idea to save boxtops for education, and often help each other find specific objects in the dumpsters. “I’d find him tuna and he’d find me shampoo,” Szczygiel says. Divers have their own styles. Szczygiel does not enter dumpsters, while some of his ‘co-workers’ (who prefer to remain unnamed) vary between jumping right in and handing out trash bags to dissecting each bag individually until every possible thing is found. One man sells items he finds
to raise money for the Special Olympics. Another is a retired biology teacher and uses his knowledge to determine safe things to eat from the trash, things that Szczygiel claims he wouldn’t touch. “Ninety percent of what goes in [a dumpster] could be recycled,” Szczygiel says. Despite recycling efforts across the country, Szczygiel believes people have become more wasteful since his childhood. Now, many things he finds in dumpsters could otherwise be recycled. Still, in the past decade, the situation has improved. Dumpsters overflow less now. Massive bins have been installed along streets to accept recyclables. Many students and families take advantage of them. Although the culture of consumption seems to show no sign of stopping, Szczygiel remains optimistic. “In the past ten years, [the situation] has improved a lot,” he says. ! Dmitri Barvinok is a sophomore studying environmental journalism at MSU. Contact him at barvinok@msu.edu.
ej INDEX
100,000
NUMBERS YOU SHOULD KNOW COMPILED BY RACHAEL GLEASON
9.0
magnitude earthquake in Japan killed thousands, destroyed buildings, triggered a tsunami and led to a nuclear crisis. (CNN: March 25, 2011)
25,000
metric tons or more released annually is the new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency benchmark for mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions.
people confirmed dead two weeks after the earthquake and resulting tsunami hit Japan's eastern coast.
1,250
times higher-than-normal levels of radioactive iodine in seawater near the Fukushima Daiichi plant, according to Japan's nuclear and industrial safety agency.
3
reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant may have experienced partial meltdowns. Emergency crews pumped seawater into the reactors to cool them after the disaster knocked out the plant’s electricity and water pumping systems. (CNN: March, 2011)
DISASTER
$309
billion in damage makes the natural disaster the costliest in history.
2011
53
is the first year the EPA is requiring large emitters to report totals after years of legal volleying. (EPA: March 2011)
63
page document Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed in federal court in late 2010 to argue why Texas shouldn’t have to report those emissions. (The Texas Tribune: Dec. 7, 2010)
AIR
17
dead dolphins washed up along the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida since January 2011; more than half were juveniles. Dolphin die-offs are common every few years, but scientists are considering the 2010 Gulf oil spill as a factor. (National Geographic: March 2, 2011)
6.5 & 8
percent of the world's grain
percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2007, according to the Fifth U.S. Climate Action Report. (EPA: March 2011)
2,750
80
FOOD percent of vegetable oil consumed when producing corn-based biofuels.
dead fish discovered in Monterrey, Santa Cruz and San Luis Obispo, Calif. over a one-month period in late 2010, according to the USGS data. The northern fulmars, highly abundant sea birds, were emaciated. (USGS: Feb. 2011)
$1.8
WILDLIFE
1,300
percent rise in the cost of grains in 2010, according to figures from the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization. World food prices spiked because of bad weather, excessive heat, rising demand for food and increased ethanol production. (Time Magazine: Feb.14, 2011)
dead birds found in southern California from December 2010 to March 2011, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The American wigeons, ruddy ducks, gulls and waterfowl were diagnosed with Avian cholera.
JUSTICE
10
million worth of land won by Tom DeChristopher at a Bureau of Land Management auction. DeChristopher had neither the means nor intention to pay up and bid on the 14 parcels only to protest and disrupt drilling in environmentally sensitive areas.
year sentence DeChristopher may have to serve for violating the oil and gas leasing act and making a false representation; the environmental activist was convicted of two federal offenses in March 2011. (The Deseret News: March 4, 2011)
ejmagazine.com
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ej
School of Journalism 382 Communication Arts Building Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824-1212
A magazine of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University
EJ ACCOLADES KNIGHT CENTER AWARDS
SCHOLARSHIPS
JOURNALISM
Rachel Carson Award for Outstanding Graduate Student in Environmental Journalism Rachael Gleason
Len Barnes AAA Michigan Fund Award Jeff Gillies and Rachael Gleason
Society of Professional Journalists ‘Mark of Excellence’ Awards Brian Bienkowski, 3rd place Region 4 Non-Fiction Magazine Article, “Roots of Rebuilding: Detroit businessman proposes large-scale commercial farming to struggling city” (EJ Magazine)
The Edward J. Meeman Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Environmental Journalism Allison Jarrell Knight Center for Environmental Journalism Service Award Brian Bienkowski John Kalmar
ej
Don Caldwell Memorial Scholarship in Environmental Journalism Brian Bienkowski, Carol Thompson, Elizabeth Pacheco and Thea Hassan Michael A. and Sandra S. Clark Scholarship in Environmental Journalism Emma Ogutu and Shaheen Kanthawala Donald F. and Katherine K. Dahlstrom Scholarship in Environmental Journalism Chenqi Guo Dr. Mickie L. Edwardson Endowed Scholarship in Environmental Journalism in Memory of James Lawrence Fly Kimberly Hirai Kyle C. Kerbawy Graduate Scholarship Alice Rossignol Mary Adelaide Gardner Scholarship John Kalmar
Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason, 1st place Region Online Opinion and Commentary, “Great Lakes SmackDown!” (Great Lakes Echo) Alice Rossignol, 3rd place Region 4 Radio News Reporting-4 Year College/University (Great Lakes Echo) Great Lakes Echo staff, 2nd place Region 4 Best Independent Online Student Publication-4 Year College/University Great Lakes Echo staff, 3rd place Region 4 Online In-Depth Reporting, "Recycling Cities"