Bicycle and Pedestrian Task Force Working for Health and Safety

by John Bliss, Chair of BPTF

 

Most of us are becoming more aware of the threat from global warming and how much our reliance on the automobile contributes to it.  At the same time, we have been learning that obesity is on the rise, in part because children and adults are walking less and driving more. Newton has a Bicycle and Pedestrian Task Force (BPTF) working to address these problems, by making walking and bicycling safer and more convenient for everyone in the city.

Recently, a national bicycling magazine gave Boston a low grade for bicycle accommodations, while commending Cambridge for its leadership in this area.  Although Newton is not known as being particularly bicycle-friendly, the city has been addressing pedestrian concerns, by publicizing the right of way of pedestrians in unprotected crosswalks and installing “count-down” pedestrian signal lights.

Newton’s population of 80,000 clusters around 13 distinctive village centers, each having a range of stores and services.  Improved conditions for bicycling and walking could enable many more residents to satisfy their shopping, commuting and recreational needs without having to use their cars.  Trips to school on foot or by bicycle would be more enjoyable and healthier for children and reduce the congestion and safety hazards now associated with the common practice of being driven to school.

BPTF has been cooperating with other Boston-area organizations to improve bicycle and pedestrian facilities in the entire metropolitan region, while working with our own city officials to mark heavily-traveled roadways with striped shoulders for cyclists, and encouraging private companies to make it easier for customers and staff to access their locations by bicycle and on foot. 

The Task Force has updated the city’s Greenman-Pedersen, Inc. Bicycle Accommodations Report (2000) and has submitted it to the Department of Public Works to help guide future road projects.  This plan helps the City set priorities for bicycle accommodations required by state law for any road project paid for by state and federal funds.  The accommodations include the four-foot wide striped shoulders on Centre Street between Mill Street and Newton Corner as well as “Share the Road” signs and painted “hybrid lane” symbols designed for congested areas that have been proposed for Walnut Street near the Newton Highlands village center. 

BPTF has worked with Boston College and Newton-Wellesley Hospital to improve bicycle and pedestrian access for students and employees, and has helped the city’s Planning Department set priorities for locating new bicycle racks (to be provided at no cost by the state) in conjunction with road projects.

Newton is one of many communities in the “inner core” area of the Boston region, and BPTF works with the MassBike Metro Boston chapter on issues of common interest.  Most recently, this group helped to prepare a report to the state Dept. of Conservation and Recreation on the deteriorated conditions of the Charles River paths that are used by hundreds of people every day.

In the coming year, BPTF will continue to monitor active road project planning, work with City officials on providing bicycle and pedestrian accommodations to the new Newton North High School, promote the adoption of safe routes to school programs, and work with city officials to improve pedestrian facilities in under-served areas and improve access to all sidewalks in the winter.

The Task Force has public meetings at 7:30 p.m. on the fourth Tuesday of each month in the cafeteria of Newton City Hall. The October meeting is on the 24th. Come and share your concerns and ideas about bicycling and walking in Newton or contact me to be added to the email list.  More information: johnsbliss@verizon.net or (617) 244-6495.

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It’s Wednesday, do you know where your vegetables are?

By Lois Levin

 

Each year 76,000,000 Americans suffer food poisoning; 300,000 require hospitalization and 5,000 people die. These numbers imply much human suffering. The US food supply is highly vulnerable to contamination, even here in Metropolitan Boston.Michael Pollen, in a recent op-ed piece in the NY Times, cuts to the quick: “Today 80 percent of America’s beef is slaughtered by four companies, 75 percent of the precut salads are processed by two and 30 percent of the milk by just one company.” He adds: “Keeping local food economies healthy — and at the moment they are thriving — is a matter not of sentiment but of critical importance to the national security and the public health, as well as to reducing our dependence on foreign sources of energy.”

Consider public health. Most of us felt a twinge of fear when we learned about the recent contamination of packaged spinach, and rightly so. Although we may never know the exact source of that deadly outbreak, the underlying problem is no mystery. E coli bacteria thrive in the guts and manure of feedlot cattle. Manure often finds its way onto agricultural fields and agricultural workers’ hands. This problem has escalated because of the increasing centralization and scale of US agriculture. Because the growing, packaging and distribution of agricultural produce has become highly centralized and mechanized over the years, what used to be a local problem of food-borne illness that could be contained and traced is now poised- at any moment- to generate a national disaster.

There are technological fixes for this, such as increasing radiation treatment of our food supply to eliminate bacterial agents.  There are also political fixes, such as government enforcement of strict separation of animal feedlots and produce fields. These solutions, however, exact a big price. Not so much in dollars; the large corporations involved in agribusiness are marvels of efficiency and can absorb the financial cost. The greatest price is borne by the public, because enacting these measures reinforcesthe trend of limiting consumer access to fresh, ripe and varied produce.Consider national security. In 2004 The US Health and Human Services chief, Tommy Thompson, publicly expressed amazement that “terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do.”Consider energy and pollution. In Massachusetts, most of the domestic produce we eat travels on average 1500 miles (and often 3000 miles) from field to market. It is transported by vehicles that run on fossil fuels.  Consider biodiversity. Look at all those uniform bags and bunches of produce in the supermarkets. We have already lost so much of the variety that promotes disease resistance. Monocultures are not natural ecosystems; they require lots of pesticides and fertilizers.Consider local farmers.  Not only does the large-scale, highly centralized production of our food supply seriously compromise human health and biodiversity, while increasing our vulnerability to terrorism, it is also putting more and more small farmers out of business. They cannot afford- and they do not need- the costly equipment and procedures mandated by governments to ensure the safety of food grown by large, centralized producers.We consumers right here in Metropolitan Boston have choices about what we eat. Exercising those choices thoughtfully takes time and care. We can make the effort to support local farmers, to learn how and where our food is grown and about the benefits of organic food (www.nofa.org). If we don’t do this, and wejust “keep on truckin'", we'll be playing Russian roulette ‘til the cows come in.

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Zoning and Energy

By Gil Woolley / Special To The Tab

 

The single most important obstacle in the US to reducing dependence on imported oil and our disproportionate generation of CO2 is the settlement pattern that has grown up over the years.  Apart from few older cities, most Americans are almost totally dependent on their personal automobiles for essential journeys to work, to stores, to church, to public offices and to entertainment.

In 1900 most jobs were in Boston and residents of suburbs like Newton and Wellesley commuted by rail or subway. Thousands still do.  But today, residents have jobs all over the region.  Living in Newton, for years I commuted to Marlboro, Northboro, Littleton and Shrewsbury, none of which were conveniently accessible by public transportation.  And when my company relocated our workplaces, it was assumed that we all had automobiles.  There was some effort to set up car pools, but I never found one that met my needs. 

The US will soon be competing for oil supplies with the rapidly growing demand from mushrooming Asian economies.   The price of oil will continue to rise and so will the US foreign trade deficit.  There are many good reasons to guide development towards less energy intensive patterns.  Massachusetts has officially adopted a “Smart Growth” policy, but most land use decisions in the Commonwealth are made at the town level, and many towns and cities have zoning regulations that do not encourage “Smart Growth”.

The most glaring example is large single lot zoning, two or even four acres in some outer suburbs.  This pattern of sprawl requires virtually every adult family member to have use of a car to get to work, to school, to stores and everyplace else.  It also adds to the demand on utilities, school buses and snow plowing.  Newton’s villages with public transportation are very appealing to single people and childless couples.  Those villages would benefit culturally, socially and economically from having more clustered housing units to accommodate them. 

“Single Use Zoning,” another obstacle to more energy efficient residential patterns, has the effect of discouraging residential building in central business districts.  In contrast, “Mixed Use Zoning” allows multi-story residential building above retail and offices.

When housing is within easy walking distance of subway or light rail service, it allows many people to become less car-dependent.  With a larger base of customers within walking distance, local grocery, hardware and clothing stores are more likely to thrive, further reducing automobile dependence.

Living closer together in suburbs has many compensations.  When shopping, going to the library, to a local restaurant or to church you have many opportunities to encounter people.  Children and teenagers tend to be better behaved when they know that neighbors and family friends may be around.  And wouldn’t it be easier for them to be less auto dependent!  In short, anonymous suburbs can become communities. 

Then there is health.  When many activities involve walking, rather than driving, this provides more continuous moderate exercise without the need to schedule time at the gym.  Walking burns calories, and people who walk are less prone to the obesity and its many related health problems.  And don’t forget the personal economic benefits.  Not needing a second car saves finance charges, taxes and insurance as well as gasoline. 

I grew up in a medium density suburb of Nottingham, England where almost all the homes were single family with a garden and few people owned cars.  Industries, schools and colleges, major stores and entertainment were all accessible by public transportation.  It was many times more energy efficient as similar suburbs in the US and frankly, just as nice a place to live.  Affordable gasoline will soon be a thing of the past, so let’s start preparing for a future where we are much less dependent on it. 

Gil Woolley is a retired engineer, and an active member of the Sierra Club. 

This article is archived at www.greendecade.org/environmentpage

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Ecological gardening

By Michelle Portman/ Special To The Tab

 

 

You can turn a yard into a wildlife-friendly, water-saving, low maintenance, naturally beautiful place without pesticides and chemical fertilizers.  It might require a change of perspective.

Turf grass has become a staple of American life.  The consensus seems to be that green grass lawns are a safe place for children to play, a haven away from stressful daily lives and a way to connect with nature and neighbors.  But these turfs are far from a natural occurring phenomenon and usually aren’t “safe” at all (see wording of sign above).

Americans’ love of lawn stems, in part, from early English gardens, which incorporated grass as an art form.  British landscape painters of the early 18^th century entrenched this vision by painting vast expanses of grass lawns as the ideal living situation.  European settlers brought these preferences to North America.  Advertisements and television shows highlight lush green turf lawns and envious neighbors (e.g. “the grass is always greener . . .”), making many believe that this is the only option for an attractive yard.

In reality, expansive turf and tidy exotic planted beds are far from ideal.  The application of pesticides—herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and rodenticides—and synthetic fertilizers needed to maintain lawns and many plant species present serious environmental and health risks.  An alternative called “ecological landscaping” that minimizes the use of pesticides and fertilizers and maximizes the use of natural landscape elements suited to local climate and geography offers a wiser, practical alternative. 

Ecological landscaping involves preserving native vegetation, landscaping with new native plants, shrubs and trees and if desired, adding non—invasive ornamentals that complement and do not out-compete native vegetation. A complementary approach—organic landscaping—uses no synthetic pesticides, fertilizers or soil amendments; its land care practices take into account the local ecosystem, benefiting the whole web of life.  (Another definition of “organic” may confuse people:  in chemistry, any molecule with a carbon atom is called “organic.”)

Ecological and organic landscaping benefit not only the yard owner and user but the whole environment because what we put into our yards eventually ends up in the air, water and soil.  The US Geological Survey’s National Water Quality Assessment for the decade of 1991-2001 found detectable concentrations of pesticides in water more than 90 percent of the time across all streams sampled that had significant agricultural or urban land use in the watersheds.  More than 80 percent of urban streams had concentrations in water of at least one pesticide that exceeded a water-quality benchmark for aquatic life set by the Environmental Protections Agency. 

The advantages of ecological and organic landscaping are significant.  Better wildlife habitat is created, thus helping to protect biodiversity.  Native varieties usually require much less water and they can provide erosion protection, especially near bodies of water or on steep slopes.  There is less noise and air pollution from lawn mowers, weed whackers and leaf blowers when these machines are used infrequently.  Cost savings is a great benefit too, achieved through fewer inputs to the yard.  Less obvious benefits are lower health risks from pesticides, fertilizers, and gasoline fumes. 

The key principles of Ecological Landscaping are:

a)    maintain as much as possible of the pre-existing landscape, including soil, rocks and contours;

b)    integrate components with surrounding natural vegetation to rejoin native habitat;

c)    identify and remove non-native invasive plants;

d)    use native varieties of plants and ground covers that are appropriate for the soil type, moisture content, and climate conditions;

e)    use water-efficient/drought-tolerant plantings;

f)      provide plant species of varying height—grasses, flowers, shrubs, and trees—to provide food, hiding places, nesting and over-wintering sites;

g)    minimize the use of pesticides to control weeds, insects and rodents;

h)    use compost and other natural products for fertilizer and mulch.

More information:  Ecological landscaping Association website:  www.ela-ecolandscapingassn.org; MA Executive Office of Environmental Affairs booklet:  More than Just a Yard:  Ecological Landscaping Tools for Massachusetts Homeowners.  www.Mass.gov/envir/mwrc/pdf/More_Than_Just_Yard.pdf, and www.organiclandcare.net (list of accredited organic landscape professionals from the Organic Land Care Committee of CT and MA.

Michelle Portman is an environmental planner/analyst and the author/illustrator of “Compost, by Gosh! An Adventure with Vermicomposting”. 

This article is archived at www.greendecade.org/environmentpage

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Crabgrass: friend or foe?

By Bruce Wenning/ Special To The Tab

 

Undoubtedly you have noticed that crabgrass has invaded your lawn and is growing very well. You may be plotting against it, investigating herbicides. Perhaps you have been working on this problem for years. Crabgrass - and a weed-free lawn - may even have become an obsession. Crabgrass seeds can lie in the soil for years. This is why crabgrass suddenly appears after you turn over an unused garden bed or you renovate your lawn in spring or summer. The seeds are there, just waiting for the right amount of sunshine, heat and moisture to germinate and make you miserable.

Crabgrasses are coarse-bladed grasses with prostrate blades that spread at right angles to attached stems, reminiscent of the angular structure of a snowflake. They are lighter in color- and do not blend in with- finer bladed perennial turfgrass species and cultivars of Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis), fine fescues (Festuca spp.) and rye (Lolium perenne). Two species of crabgrass, which can be found in the same lawn at the same time, are common in our area: large crabgrass (Digitaria sanguinalis) and smooth crabgrass (D. ischaemum).

Crabgrass is an annual; it spreads by seeds. At the first killing frost, crabgrass dies, turning brown against the green of more desirable species. However, it leaves behind in the soil seeds that will germinate the following late spring and summer, potentially filling in every available unoccupied space. Crabgrass seeds germinate every time you irrigate your lawn and after every rain. Compared with usual lawn species, crabgrass requires less water and fewer nutrients, and it spreads more efficiently in stressed areas, i.e. turf worn from foot traffic, compacted soils, dry soils, diseased and low nutrient lawns, and even areas under attack by white grubs! And because of its prostrate growth habit, crabgrass escapes the cutting action of the mower.

Fortunately, there is another way to look at this problem. Crabgrass can play a role in providing that inexpensive, green, maintenance - free lawn you have been striving for. It has the same utility as a fine home lawn. You can play on it, walk on it, complain about its appearance, not water or fertilize it and it will continue to grow with minimal care. Even if you cannot face the idea of a brown lawn after the first frost, you can still reduce the crabgrass population in your lawn without using herbicides.

Start by getting a soil test. Visit www.UMassGreenInfo.org for directions and costs. A soil test will determine the proper amount of lime to apply to correct soil pH (acidity) problems and allow you to select the right amount of organic fertilizer.

Be sure to water your lawn only one inch/week during the growing season (if there has not been sufficient rainfall); this encourages the growth of deeper roots. Lawns with deep roots have more resilience to environmental and biological stresses. Raise the mower blade height to at least two and a half inches; three is better. This will allow the grass to caste more shade on the soil below, thereby discouraging crabgrass (and other weeds) from germinating.

Throughout the growing season, remove crabgrass (and other weeds) by hand, which creates open spots where lawn grasses can spread. Then reseed your lawn between August 15-September 20, when nights are cool but the days, while still warm, are growing shorter, which inhibits weed germination and establishment. If you reseed your damaged lawn in spring or summer, the grass seed usually loses out to the quick germinating lawn weeds.

Bruce Wenning is the Environment Page Garden columnist. He is a horticulturist at the Mass. Audubon Society Habitat Wildlife Sanctuary, Belmont, and serves on the Board of the Ecological Landscaping Association.

This article is archived at www.greendecade.org/environmentpage

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Yes, we'll have no bananas?

By Nick Kelley / Special To The Tab

 

Are we going to live in a world without bananas? Australia is facing that question right now.

In March 2006, Cyclone Larry destroyed 80 percent of Australia's banana plants, and it will take several years for the plants to be able to produce bananas again. Unfortunately, damaged plants are also more susceptible to disease. The price of bananas has skyrocketed, and a previously inexpensive fruit has become a luxury. Bananas that sold for $2/pound earlier this year now cost more than $7/pound. Thieves are breaking into banana plantations and running off with bushels of them. When a friend from Sydney came to visit me recently, he was desperate for a banana.

Currently Australia is considering importing bananas while their own plantations recover. Farmers fear that the entire Australian banana crop could be wiped out by the Panama disease (found in SE Asia), to which native plants have not yet been exposed. Farmers also fear that Australians will switch their eating preferences away from bananas and will not switch back when the local crop recovers. Although Australian bananas' are expected to re-grow, there is concern that increased cyclone activity could further damage the industry and make it unprofitable.

Technically, Australia allows importation of bananas. But because the government enforces a lengthy quarantine, this effectively prevents their importation. While some are pushing to shorten the quarantine period, to allow the importation of Philippine bananas, the banana growers of Australia are resisting. Australia will remain in a banana shortage for some time and Australian's are braced for the potential of life without bananas.

Bananas have long been a dietary staple in many countries, including the US. It is the most popular fruit in the world and the fourth largest agricultural crop, behind rice, wheat and maize. Besides great taste, bananas have outstanding nutritional value. An excellent natural source of potassium, bananas are also an ideal fruit for athletes, combining three natural sugars, providing both instant and sustained energy.

Wild Bananas, which are much smaller than the bananas we usually see in grocery stores, originated in SE Asia and have been domesticated for thousands of years (perhaps as far back as 8,000 BCE). The Portuguese established banana plantations in the Caribbean and imported the fruit back to Europe.

Cultivated bananas are sterile, which means they have no viable seeds, so old plants must be spliced to create new ones. That means taking one plant and creating a clone of it by placing a shoot in the ground and allowing it to grow. This creates a monoculture of genetically-identical bananas. Today banana production occurs in most tropical countries and the banana is perhaps the world's largest monoculture crop. The lack of genetic variability makes them vulnerable to being wiped out abruptly; an entire crop is at risk of crashing when a pathogen is introduced.

The Cavendish, found all over the world, is the species everyone has come to know and love. If Cavendish bananas are wiped out by a pathogen, it will not be the first time an entire species of banana has been obliterated. The Gros Michel accounted for virtually all sales of bananas until the 1920s and 1930s, when a major outbreak of Panama disease decimated the world banana crop. Growers were able to meet demand by drastically increasing the amount of land under cultivation, so even with enormous losses to disease, banana export continued. When growers went bankrupt, they shifted to a banana species with natural resistance to Panama disease. However, those Cavendish bananas remained genetically unchanged, while the Panama fungus mutated, thus ending the Cavendish's immunity to the disease.

How can the future of bananas be secured? Growers are willing to switch to another species, but they want the taste and appearance of the new strain to be similar to the Cavendish, so that it will be readily accepted on the world market. A rare banana seed has been found in Honduras and growers are attempting to breed a strain of bananas resistant to disease. This species has not done well in the marketplace because it has an apple-like after taste. Industry is taking a different approach. Large chemical companies are seeking ways to make banana plants more resistant to the Panama disease by genetically altering the banana plants directly, using gene- splicing. It remains to be seen which approach, conventional breeding or genetic engineering, will be more successful at resolving the banana crisis.

Given the recent near demise of the banana in Australia, we should be asking if other crops are vulnerable to a similar fate. Droughts, floods and other natural disasters will continue to devastate the land. This summer, heat waves destroyed crops and livestock on a wide scale here in the US. The banana scare could be a preview of things to come..

Nick Kelley, a senior at Colorado College Majoring in Environmental Science, was the Green Decade Coalition intern this summer.

This article is archived at www.greendecade.org/environmentpage

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Why are we still using coal?

By Patricia Goldman/ Special To The Tab

Book Review
"Big Coal" By Jeff Goodell

When I was a child growing up in Pennsylvania in the 1940s, my father had to shovel dirty black lumps of coal into a fire in our basement furnace to heat our home. By 1950 we had switched to natural gas heat, but electricity was powering our many post-war appliances, from dishwasher to freezer to TV. I have always assumed that coal hasn't been used for ordinary energy since then.

In fact, dirty coal is powering a significant percentage of electric plants across this country, even in Massachusetts, far from Appalachian, Midwestern, and Wyoming coal mines. This electricity comes into our homes to power 21st century computers, stereos, DVD players and microwaves.

Why are we still using coal, which we know to be polluting, instead of cleaner, renewable sources of energy? That is the question answered in Jeff Goodell's fascinating new book, "Big Coal: the dirty secret behind America's energy future" ((c) 2006, Houghton Mifflin).

Goodell, a veteran journalist, spent three years researching and writing "Big Coal." It is a colorful narrative, with extensive footnotes, that takes you along on his trips down into an Appalachian coal mine, blasting the top off a Wyoming strip mine, riding on one of the mile long trains incessantly hauling coal across the country, visiting power plant managers, engineers, scientists, company executives, lobbyists and government officials.
Big Coal is a huge industry, wielding extraordinary influence in Washington and state capitols, with legions of lobbyists and millions of dollars in campaign contributions. As we worry about our dependence on overseas oil, it turns out that the biggest fossil fuel reserves in the world (25 percent of the world's recoverable reserves) are buried within the U.S. As of 2005, more than 120 new coal powered energy plants were planned or under construction in the U.S. The coal industry wins huge government subsidies, succeeds in choking environmental regulations, while its PR spinmasters promote the message that coal is safe and cheap.

Since the passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act, emissions per unit of energy from American coal plants have dropped, but the total "volume of pollution released by coal plants remains staggering." Coal plants are responsible for nearly 40 percent of U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas), plus sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulates, and some sixty varieties of what the EPA terms 'hazardous air pollutants', including toxins such as lead, chromium, arsenic and mercury" - and solid waste equal to three times as much as all municipal garbage in the country, laced with heavy metals. The coal-powered electricity industry was born in 1882, when Thomas Edison invented a dynamo in lower Manhattan that heated coal in four big boilers and used the steam to activate generators that produced enough current to light up 1200 lamps in the neighborhood. Black smoke and soot poured into the air and nearby residents immediately began to complain.
Edison realized that to capitalize financially on producing electric power, he had to locate the dirty dynamos out of sight and out of mind. Instead of simply selling the dynamos, he wanted to build the power plants, lay the wires, and make money by selling the electric current. Edison put Samuel Insull in charge of moving Edison Electric's operation to Schenectady, New York. Later, it became General Electric.

Insull moved on to take over Chicago Edison. He understood that "power plants are expensive to build but comparatively cheap to run." He convinced fellow power industry executives not to waste money building duplicate power plants. He argued that power companies would do better as monopolies regulated by the state. With Chicago's corrupt political machine at the time, there was little interference from regulators.Insull's strategy for growth (still pursued today) was to keep prices low, encourage consumption, and "promote electricity as clean and sanitary: no more soot from the coal stove!" He and Edison created a nation of "electricity junkies."

As the power companies grew into multi-state empires, reformers called for public ownership. Instead, Congress passed the 1935 Public Utility Holding Company Act, which broke up the huge companies and forbade competition among them. The Act established "cost-plus pricing", which guaranteed utilities a fixed return on their investments. The more electricity is used, the more the utilities earn. The utilities were required to pass 100 percent of any efficiency gains on to customers, so there was no incentive for them to spend money to develop more efficient and cleaner energy. The coal companies, the railroads hauling the coal and the power plants liked the income they were producing the old way.

Goodell points out that the cheap "cost" to customers does not include "the social, environmental and public health costs of burning dirty coal... the devastated mountains of West Virginia, the heart attacks and asthma caused by air pollution, the pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere" or the dead coal miners. These costs are "all offloaded onto the public." According to the ten-year ExterneE study, if the market accurately reflected these true costs, "old coal burners would be shut down because the price of the power they generated would be too high for the market to bear."

Recent events have favored Big Coal. Concerned that, if elected, Al Gore would work to regulate pollutants, Big Coal threw its money behind George W. Bush, who won and immediately began staffing regulatory agencies with former coal industry executives and lobbyists. The lobbyists have cynically worked to portray global warming as theory rather than fact. Big Coal has failed to pursue technologies to make coal energy cleaner and more efficient, such as coal liquefaction and sequestering CO2 underground.

Says Goodell, "The key debate today is not whether pollution from coal plants kills people. It indisputably does..." The question is, "Are we willing to put the earth's climate at risk to save ten bucks on our utility bills?"... Goodell also asks, "What can I do to lighten the load?...I simply believe that it's within our grasp to figure out less destructive ways to create and consume the energy we need."

Patricia Goldman was Executive Director of the Asthma & Allergy Foundation of America/New England Chapter, until she retired in 2004. She was also a contributing editor for the Newton Times.

This article is archived at www.greendecade.org/environmentpage

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Keeping the fish in the Charles

By Anna Eleria and Rebecca Scibek/ Special To The Tab

 

Not long ago, fishing in the Charles River reaped little reward due to potential health risks and few fish. Today it has become safer, more popular, and more enjoyable with many fishermen casting their lines off the docks, bridges and banks of the Charles. Restored fishing in the Charles can be attributed to efforts by organizations such as ours to improve water quality and fish passage at dams in the lower river reaches.

CRWA, MA Division of Marine Fisheries and the US Fish and Wildlife Service are currently involved in a multi-year collaborative effort to restore the American shad population in the Charles and to create a local sport fishery. The Charles River American shad restoration program, which will span the next three to six years, involves stocking juvenile shad fry in the Lakes District area of the Charles in Newton and Waltham each year from late June to mid-July.

The first step of the American Shad restoration program is to obtain brood stock - adult shad - from the Merrimack River, where the shad population has rebounded in recent years. The brood stock will be transported and spawned at FWS hatchery where the larvae of the adults will be raised for seven to ten days, and then marked prior to their release so their return to the Charles River can be tracked. CRWA's work will involve sampling juvenile fish to estimate fish survival and establish recruitment indices, and assessing the river's chemistry to determine if river habitat conditions are suitable for the young fish.

This year, the project's first, more than 1.8 million shad fry were released in Waltham during the weeks of July 9 and July 16, following successful spawning at the hatcheries. The fry will spend several months in the Charles growing, feeding, and slowly swimming downstream before reaching the mouth of the river, entering Boston Harbor, and moving out into the Atlantic Ocean where they will spend most of their adult lives. CRWA is monitoring water quality twice a week, through September, downstream from the release site in the Waltham, Newton and Watertown areas, to help determine habitat conditions. Following water quality monitoring starting in late September and continuing through the fall, DMF and CRWA will sample the juvenile shad. This process will be repeated for the next few years, with shad fry being released each summer. Beginning in 2009, three to four years after their release, the shad will begin to return to the river to spawn, and they will be identified and tracked by the project coordinators.

One of the largest members of the herring family, American Shad can reach up to 30 inches in length with an average weight of 7-8 pounds. The shad is one of five species of anadromous fish found in the river - fish that are born in freshwater, spend the majority of their lives in the ocean, and return to their native freshwater to spawn in the late spring.

Dating back to the early 1600s, the Charles River supported an abundant population of American shad. Despite historical abundance, the shad population in the Charles was nearly wiped out because of the construction of dams and culverts and the degradation of the river's water quality and flow. Today, only small numbers of adult shad are observed in the river each year despite the fact that the Charles River should support a viable shad population of 30,000 adults based on an estimate by DMF, which takes into consideration historical records of fish in the Basin and the community appropriate for a natural river in southern New England.

Successful repopulation of American shad may involve addressing obstacles to their viability in the Charles including predation by birds, unsuitable flow, poor downriver passage, availability of forage species, such as zooplankton, and habitat alterations. If the shad restoration program succeeds, beginning in 2009 adult shad will come back to the Charles and start a new generation of life.

Anna Eleria is the CRWA Project Manager, and Rebecca Scibek is the CRWA Office & Publications Manager.

This article is archived at www.greendecade.org/environmentpage

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Energy Use Here and In Germany

By Gilbert Woolley / Special To The Tab

 

On a recent visit to Germany and Austria I tried to compare typical comments on and response to environmental issues in these countries. Each day I skimmed through a German language newspaper to look for environmental news. One notable difference was that I saw no mention of "solutions" for dependence on imported fuels and no complaints about gasoline prices, which are roughly twice as high as in the US. The explanation for cost tolerance is that gasoline has never been cheap in Germany (and other industrial countries of Western Europe).

Until the discovery of North Sea Oil in the 1960s, these countries were almost totally dependent on far away places (including the US) across thousands of miles of ocean, In the twenties and thirties it was recognized that in case of war, these oceans would be patrolled by enemy ships, including submarines. High taxes were imposed, not only to raise revenue, but also to decrease usage, and dependence on imports. As a result, the public never came to regard cheap gasoline as a "right" and most people drove less, and in smaller cars or on motorcycles, than in the US. Raising taxes is the sure way to reduce dependence on foreign oil but is politically difficult in the US.

Germany has well over 11,000 wind turbines, generating more electricity by wind than any other country and, as we traveled between Berlin and Munich, we saw many wind turbines. This area is not ideal for wind and some turbines were not turning, presumably because of insufficient velocity. Germany's only significant domestic source of fossil fuel is coal and the country is trying to meet its commitment to the Kyoto Protocol to reduce CO2. Wind generation increased by 44 percent last year.

Hotels in Berlin and Munich, which used key cards as room keys, also used them to conserve electricity. To turn on the lights and air conditioner in the room, the card must be placed in a reader by the door. When leaving the room, retrieving the key turns off the lights and air conditioner. The tank on the toilet had two levers, a small flush and a full flush. Using the small flush saves not only water but also the electricity used to drive the water and wastewater pumps.

Dependence on the automobile is also reduced by efficient and frequent public transit - subways, streetcars and buses. The most noticeable difference between Berlin, Munich and Vienna and American cities, however, was that bicycle paths were provided on all major, and some secondary streets. Imagine cycling down the "Unter den Linden", Berlin's Fifth Avenue. These cycle paths are clearly marked by the contrasting color of paving and are part of the sidewalks. This means that cyclists are not threatened by powered vehicles as is the case when cycle paths are simply painted lines dedicating a couple of feet of the carriageway to bicycles. And these paths are used by young and old, even by middle-aged ladies out shopping. Most businesses, including department stores, have bicycle racks near the entrances. In busy city streets it has been demonstrated over and over again that the bicycle is the fastest method of travel but most people are afraid to cycle in traffic. The German cyclists confidently asserted their right to use these paths and often didn't warn pedestrians who had strayed on to them. This was a hazard to some of our (American) party who often ignored the cycle path markings.

None of these things is going to "solve" the energy problem or eliminate Global Warming. Neither is drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge nor in the coastal zone. The excessive use of energy did not happen suddenly, but built up over most of the twentieth century, and reducing energy use will also take time and require hundreds of millions of people to take simple actions to reduce energy use, like driving less and driving smaller cars, turning the thermostat up in summer and down in winter and adding insulation to their homes. It is not politically popular to say so, but the German, and European, example suggests that the "market" - that is higher prices - may be the most effective tool to reduce demand. One thing that will not reduce gasoline consumption is that additional lanes are being added to the Autobahn we were driving along. Experience in the US is that increasing the capacity of highways results in diversion of travelers from public transportation to private automobiles.

The German word for the Environment is "die Umwelt," literally the world around us. This seems to me to be less abstract and more "user friendly".

Gilbert Woolley is a retired engineer and longtime member of the Sierra Club.

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Green revolution in big biz

By Nick Kelley / Special To The Tab

 

Multi-billion dollar companies can have a huge impact, both positively and negatively, on the environment. Even minor changes in business models and practices can dramatically effect how a company interacts with the larger world.

There is a common misconception that it is too expensive in a highly competitive world market for large corporations to focus on reducing their impact on the environment.

Concern about the environment is not usually viewed by businesses as in the best interests of shareholders, because it is assumed not to be profitable. However, it is possible to make huge profits while having an environmental conscience. In fact, it is more profitable over the long term and therefore in the shareholders best interests, to act "environmentally friendly". Our economic system often rewards innovation in this way.

DuPont de Nemours is one company that has changed from being one of the worst polluters to being a leader in progressive environmental thinking. DuPont started up over 200 years ago and has been one of the largest chemical developers ever since. It has created many products which most people use in their everyday lives. Some of its most famous creations are nylon, Teflon, Kevlar and Chlorofluorocarbons. CFC's, which were revolutionary when they were developed in the 1930's, were used in air conditioners and refrigerators, but they turned out to be extremely destructive to the ozone layer, with long-lasting and persistent effects on the entire planet.

DuPont is taking a radical approach compared to its competitors. One of its business goals is to create sustainable growth, that is, economic growth that attempts to balance both the future and present needs of a company. DuPont is reviving its tarnished image by reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 65 percent of their 1990 levels by the year 2010. The company has already exceeded that goal by reducing emissions by 68 percent. Also, DuPont intends to hold its energy use flat at the 1990 baseline level.

DuPont has displayed progressive thinking in part to amend for past misdeeds. It reached many of its environmental goals rapidly because, having polluted so horrendously for so many years, it was forced to pay enormous legal fees and heavy fines for environmental cleanup efforts. The company realized that it would be much cheaper over time to spend money to reduce pollution than to pay for the resulting lawsuits, inevitable penalties and cleanup projects. Chad Holiday, Chairman and CEO of DuPont, estimates that "In working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we achieved more than $2 billion in avoided costs due to energy conservation activities". Obviously it makes business sense to be environmentally responsible.

DuPont is not alone in its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. General Electric, the second biggest company in the world, has also pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. BP, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, IBM and many other major corporations have pledged to reduce greenhouse emissions. However, compared to DuPont, other companies' efforts, while vital, are less impressive.

With a net income of $1.89 billion in 2005, DuPont has proven that large profits and environmental responsibility are not mutually exclusive, and that 'top down' change is possible in our capitalistic economy.

Improving the environmental practices of one large, multi-billion dollar corporation has direct benefits worldwide. And when DuPont adopts sustainable growth principles that encourages other companies to follow its example.

All large corporations will need to change their business policies and practices in order to solve many of serious environmental problems facing our country and the world, but they are not going to do this without outside pressure. The efforts of individuals and grassroots campaigns to reform corporations should never be underestimated. If it were not for the work of watchdog groups, DuPont would never have cleaned up its act, because no one would be demanding that they do it. Citizens, through their governments and non-profit organizations, have to take the initiative to make sure this happens.

The example set by DuPont may be hard for smaller companies to follow. DuPont is well-established and has the luxury of thinking long term, because it knows that it will be around to reap the benefits from making the many changes involved in transitioning to being a sustainable company. Their dramatic turnaround in a short time span makes them a tough act to follow.

Currently no enforcement or regulatory body requires businesses to meet most environmental goals. Until we have such regulation, companies could just espouse lofty goals with little intention of meeting them. We not only need carrots, we also need sticks.

Nick Kelley, a senior at Colorado College Majoring in Environmental Science, is the Green Decade Coalition intern this summer, while he is also working for MWRA. He lives in Brookline.

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Have Your Lobster and Eat It, Too

By Trevor Corson / Special To The Tab

 

Lobster love is going mainstream: Executives at Whole Foods Market, the largest purveyor of natural and organic foods in the nation, have reevaluated the entire process of lobster acquisition, transport and sale. The company has announced that it will stop selling live lobsters because it cannot ensure that the animals are being treated with compassion.

For tens of thousands of years we knew, firsthand, where our food came from. During the past century, 99.9 percent of that experience has vanished. Lobster is one of the few foods that most Americans can still purchase alive and kicking. Apart from hunting and fishing, it is the last link between our kitchens and the great outdoors.

I belong to a new demographic called ethical eaters. We want our food to have been happy in death. At the same time, we want it so fresh and unprocessed that it still tastes, and nourishes us, like it is full of life. That's why I love buying live lobster. I am happy knowing that the lobster has lived at least six or seven years in the ocean. Most other meat at the store comes from a domesticated animal, and fish increasingly come from farms. Lobster is one of the last true free-range meats.

Some people feel that the entire process of capturing, storing, transporting and cooking lobsters cannot possibly be accomplished in a humane fashion - period.

The fact is that trapping lobsters is as humane as fishing gets. The animals crawl into a wire cage, eat a free lunch and sit around for a while. We know from video studies that many of the lobsters then climb right back out of the trap. We also know from scientific surveys that most lobstermen along the rocky coast from Gloucester to Downeast Maine release a lot of their lobsters back into the ocean - young ones, old ones and ones with eggs - and that those animals continue to thrive and repopulate coastal waters, despite their elevator rides to the surface and their swims back to the bottom. Lobster transport is similarly civilized. Because consumers have traditionally demanded that lobsters be kept alive, distributors already have a strong incentive to treat the animals with care. Nova Scotia-based Clearwater Seafoods, one of the top lobster distributors in North America, has constructed elaborate seawater condominiums at its three plants, tended by the company's own biologists, so that lobsters can rest in cool, stress-free solitude and regain energy before their trek to the consumer.

And storage? It is true that adult lobsters dislike spending much time together in close quarters - unless, of course, a male and female have completed their courtship dances and decide to move in together to mate. But lobsters communicate by smell instead of sound, and studies at the Marine Biological Laboratory on Cape Cod suggest that in crowded conditions, the lobsters' noses get desensitized to stimulation and they calm down and stop bothering one another. The tanks are also kept cold; the lobsters adapt by slowing their metabolism, reducing activity and lowering their food intake, just as they do in the wild, which further reduces stress.

That leaves cooking. It's the thornier problem, and what most upsets people. Unlike fish, [lobsters] can survive out of water long enough to make it to the kitchen still kicking.

In England, scientists have invented a new machine designed to kill lobsters with minimum pain prior to cooking. It is called the CrustaStun, and went into service in the United Kingdom last year. It comes in two sizes. The big one looks something like those zappers they put your suitcase in at the airport. Lobsters ride a conveyor belt into a 110-volt jolt that electrocutes them. The small version looks like a stainless-steel lobster coffin, and executes one animal at a time. Both get a humane stamp of approval.

Shucks Maine Lobster, run by Maine entrepreneur John Hathaway, is one of several companies employing a different sort of device: an 80,000-pound, 16-foot-tall machine that uses technology adapted from U.S. Army research. Hathaway loads a wide vertical cylinder with 200 pounds of live lobster at a time. A steel oval framework slides into place over the cylinder. He presses a button, massive pumps whir, and water inside the cylinder is compressed to a pressure more than five times that of the deepest ocean trenches. Without any heat, the lobsters die and their meat separates from the shell. The lobsters are then hand shucked, vacuum sealed, and the packages re-pressurized to kill pathogens. The result: fresh, raw lobster meat with a refrigerated shelf life of up to 30 days and no additives or preservatives - similar to chicken. Chefs love the product, and supermarkets are currently considering it for retail sale. Whether this system will get a humane stamp of approval remains to be seen.

I welcome the end of boiling lobsters alive. But I also fear the impending loss of live lobster, and with it the end of a beloved New England tradition. I do not want to hand over my last chance to make moral choices about my dinner to automated executioners. So for now, I will continue to do what I have always done. I will put the live lobster on ice for 15 minutes to slow its metabolism and neural activity. Then I will give thanks to the lobster and thrust the point of my knife between its legs and cut down through the head, splitting the front half of its body. The animal will die instantly, and I can boil it without causing further pain. This method, while not for the squeamish, does get a humane stamp of approval.

Adapted from Boiling Point, Boston Magazine, July 13, 2006, with permission

Trevor Corson is the author of "The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean" (HarperCollins, June 2004). He has posted instructions on the humane way to kill lobsters at secretlifeoflobsters.com.

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Understanding global warming's many effects and causes

By Joy Huang / Special To The Tab

Global warming is not new. Temperatures have been rising worldwide since 1867, when global temperature data was first available. Not everyone is convinced global warming is a serious concern. Skeptics argue that climate change is a normal part of climate cycles, and that Earth has been in a warm period for the past 10,000 years. Those worried about global warming point out that growth at an exponential rate would be catastrophic for the environment. They argue that while the increase in Earth's temperature may be "natural," human industrialization and intervention has drastically accelerated the process.
Everyone agrees that during the 20th century at least, global temperatures increased steadily, and that the rise in temperature impacts Earth's environment and humans in numerous ways. As global temperatures rise, the environment is disturbed and humans are put at risk. Glaciers retreat, sea levels rise, weather patterns change, bleached coral reefs die, and disease spreads.

The melting of glaciers has become a major focus of concern about global warming. As temperatures increase, these ancient ice behemoths thaw more rapidly. In Antarctica, entire sheets of ice sometimes slide off into the ocean. The European Alps and the Caucasus mountains have lost half of their glacial ice in this century, and glaciers in the Andes are retreating at seven times the rate they were just 30 years ago. The most dramatic effects are in the Himalayas, where glaciers feed the Ganges and Indus Rivers of northern India. The 500 million people who depend on those glaciers as a source of water have already experienced erratic flooding and serious mud slides. Glaciologist Keith Echelmeyer surveyed 90 glaciers in Alaska for eight years and discovered that most of them were thinning by 5 feet (1.5 meters) each year and some even up to 10 feet (3 meters) each year. The rate of thinning is exponential, and the thawing speeds up as glaciers get thinner because the melted water lubricates the glacier. In 2002, when the Larsen B ice shelf slid off the Antarctic peninsula, the glaciers behind it started disappearing at up to eight times their previous rate.

Retreating glaciers lead to disastrous flooding and a shortage of water. When glaciers melt, sometimes rocky debris piled at the edge of glaciers impedes the flow of melted water, trapping large lakes behind them. When these moraines give way, the glacial lakes suddenly pour into the valleys below much as lava flows in a volcanic eruption. Eventually, the lakes and rivers they form each summer begin to shrink, leading to a scarcity of water for people dependent on those "summer river flows."
Melting glaciers also affect the oceans. Warm water expands and takes up more space, so sea levels rise in response to the warming of the planet. With the added melted ice from retreating glaciers, the rise in sea level will increase further. Sea levels rose four to 10 inches (10.16 to 25.4 cm) in the last century. Estimates vary, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency predicts a rise of 12 inches (30 cm) along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts by 2025, and most scientists agree that a rise of 28 inches (72 cm) over the next century is possible. These numbers may not seem shocking, but rising sea levels are destructive to coastlines and potentially disastrous to island nations and delta farmlands. Higher sea levels lead to more coastal erosion and destroy farmlands near the coast, replacing them with rocky sediments. Wetlands and adjacent low-lying terrain become prone to flooding. As seawater flows onto land, it contaminates freshwater, increasing river and groundwater salinity. Bangladesh has already experienced so many floods and storms that 10 percent of the country could be submerged as sea levels rise.

Earth's climate is shifting towards extremes. As the planet heats up, evaporation increases, adding more moisture to the atmosphere and causing more violent downpours. Thomas Karl of the National Climatic Data Center reported in the late 1990s that recent decades the US has experienced a 20 percent increase in blizzards and heavy rainstorms. Rising temperatures also strengthen hurricanes, which gather energy over warm water. The warmer the water, the greater the energy, which means more intense storms. Last year in the Gulf of Mexico, there were so many tropical storms that for the very first time forecasters ran out of names."

Weather patterns will change erratically. Some places will experience more precipitation and more severe weather, while others will experience an overall decrease in evaporation and rainfall. An average decrease in water vapor concentration reduces the moisture of the soil and can cause desertification. Drought conditions are intensifying in Africa and Asia for this reason. In 2000, Central Mongolia experienced its worst drought in 60 years followed by its harshest winter in 30 years, and 1.8 million domestic animals froze to death.

With higher temperatures, lakes and springs thaw earlier in the spring. In Alaska, four out of the five earliest record thaws occurred in the 1990s. In 1993 German scientists reported that spring was starting six days earlier and autumn five days later than in 1959, extending the growing season by 11 days. This can benefit farmers but it has detrimental effects on freshwater ecosystems. Recent studies document a connection between global warming and eutrophication. One Canadian scientist who collected samples from six lakes in the Canadian Arctic and found that algal growth began 150 years ago and is now increasing exponentially, has said: "These are pristine lakes that mankind hasn't directly affected. But there has definitely been an indirect effect."

Although there are disputes about the magnitude of global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, consisting of 2,500 top scientists from 60 countries, has compiled a comprehensive study of the impacts of climate change and proposed ways to respond to it. They have published a climate change report every five years since 1988.
The IPCC warned in its most recent report (2001) that global warming is occurring more rapidly than previously believed, mostly due to human activities. They concluded that the average global temperature is projected to rise between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius) by the year 2100; in North America the temperature is projected to increase by 7.2 to 8.9 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100; the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year since the beginning of global temperature observations; global sea levels have risen 10 times faster in the last 3,000 years than ever before and are projected to rise about 3 to 28 inches (8 to 72 cm) between 1990 and 2100; and snow cover and the northern sea ice will further decrease.

The IPCC concluded that "The balance of evidence suggest a discernible human influence on global climate." Carbon dioxide is one of the "greenhouse gases," a group of atmospheric gases named for their role in the "greenhouse effect," a natural process that maintains global temperature but which also contributes to global warming. Other greenhouse gases include water vapor, methane, nitrous oxides, and chlorofluorocarbons.

Visible radiation from the sun travels to Earth and is absorbed by the atmosphere. Some of that radiation is absorbed by the Earth, which warms up and radiates back to space as infrared radiation. As greenhouse gases and clouds in Earth's atmosphere absorb and reflect this infrared radiation, this slows the loss of heat from the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, although it has a lower global warming potential than the other greenhouse gases, is the most important one because of its high atmospheric concentration. Before 1750, its concentration in the atmosphere was around 280 parts per million (ppm), and for 420,000 years, following the natural carbon cycle, it never increased past 325 ppm, but today it has risen to over 360 ppm. Human industrialization was the main trigger for this unprecedented jump in CO2 atmospheric concentration. CO2 began increasing in the atmosphere in the late 1700s due to the use of fossil fuels as an energy source. Coal, oil, and natural gas consist of carbon compounds created millions of years ago. When burned, they release water vapor and carbon, which combines with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. The burning of fossil fuels creates three-fourths of the Earth's carbon dioxide.
Cement-making and deforestation also add CO2 to the atmosphere. Cement-making releases CO2 from carbonate rocks. Deforestation produces CO2 emissions through the burning of forests and also through the burning of firewood. Decaying wood results in slow CO2 emission, whereas burning wood results in rapid CO2 emission. Since 1992 cement-making and fossil fuel burning together have added more than 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions is no easy task, because we rely on fossil fuels to power industries and homes, cars and planes, and for nearly everything else we do. Practicing conservation measures will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but we must reduce our dependence on fossil fuels to address the problem adequately.

Joy Huang, is a student at Newton North High School, entering her senior year.
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Potential new MWRA members

By Robert L. Zimmerman, Jr ./ Special To The Tab

 

Water, growth and the MWRA

The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority is responsible for distributing water to 42 greater Boston communities. The reservoirs that provide this water, Quabbin and Wachusetts, and surrounding watershed lands are under the stewardship of the state Department of Conservation and Recreation. In creating the MWRA, the legislature split off responsibility for the management of the natural resource from the delivery of this water.

Thanks to aggressive leak repair and conservation in the 1980s, MWRA communities are using 100 million gallons less daily than 25 years ago. Today MWRA is selling 225 mgd of wholesale water to local water departments of its member cities and towns, down from a high of 342 mgd. The MWRA believes it now has extra water available and it is looking for new customers. Expensive projects like the Deer Island sewage plant and the 17-mile MetroWest Tunnel between routes I-495 and 128 have left the MWRA with a pile of debt. Funded by bonds, the debt service will continue to rise through 2011 and then taper off.

About 60 percent of the MWRA's budget currently goes to pay off this debt. The MWRA needs more revenue to meet these debts and rising energy costs. Double-digit increases in existing customer water rates are projected over the next several years as these costs rise.

Consequently, the MWRA Board, in a major shift, is proposing to treat water as a commodity, expand the MWRA service area and actively market this water to new communities. The sale of more water would purportedly help reduce projected increases in wholesale water rates through admission fees and by spreading the costs among more cities and towns. Additionally, a growing number of communities between the Route 128 and Interstate 495 beltway face water shortages over the coming decade. New MWRA supplies could help alleviate the problem. However, making more water available to new customers triggers a host of concerns that need to be evaluated carefully by the MWRA Board, state regulators and the public. It is unlikely that new water sales will materially reduce MWRA bond debt in the near term, or significantly curtail the cost of water for current customers. MWRA estimates that even if all of the 20 communities it has identified as potential customers (including Holliston, Medway, Franklin and Milford in the Charles watershed) joined - a dubious supposition given high MWRA fees and rates and lack of enthusiasm by these towns - rate increases would only shrink by 3 to 4 percent.

Before selling more water the MWRA needs to revisit the "safe yield," or the maximum, dependable withdrawals that can safely be made from MWRA reservoirs without damaging the water resource. The original methodology for determining this did not sufficiently take into account the water necessary for downstream flow and fisheries' health. The re-determination of safe yield must also consider the effects of global warming, as well as the growth needs of the existing MWRA service area.

New sources of water spur new growth. The MWRA water sales will play a major role in where and how growth occurs in eastern Massachusetts. Stoughton, a recent MWRA member, has experienced an explosion of new development. Water sales need to be paired with Smart Growth approaches, which reduce sprawl and open space losses and promote denser, low-impact development. The metropolitan area needs to encourage mixed-use village density zones, transportation-oriented development, and the redevelopment of brownfields for commercial and residential uses. Linking the sale of new water to a Smart Growth agenda can help create the kind of housing and amenities that will make Massachusetts attractive to industry, stabilize housing prices, and reduce the number of cars on the road.

While MWRA water can help alleviate the stress on water resources in the Ipswich and the upper Charles basins, selling water to communities without adequate planning is not an environmental benefit and could backfire, by enabling low density, high impact residential development, which uses vastly greater quantities of water, and paving over more ground, which prevents aquifer recharge.

Communities seeking to join the MWRA will want to buy the water during the summer, when local supplies are most stressed. There would be little reason for these communities to conserve water or to build the kind of stormwater and wastewater infrastructure that will replenish aquifers while restoring river flow and reducing flash flooding during rainstorms.

Selling water based on demand alone will result in greater sprawl and unchecked development in the wrong places. Before expanding, a full environmental impact review, like that required under state law for any major project, should first be performed to analyze all aspects of expansion.

Robert L. Zimmerman, Jr. is the executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association.

These are communities in proximity to MWRA that may have water deficits now or in the future, and could consider MWRA as an option to supplement current water sources (list does not include communities that are actively pursuing admission to MWRA).

·       Boston Harbor South:

·       Hingham/Hull

·       Sharon

·       Ipswich River Basin:

·       Salem/Beverly

·       Ipswich

·       Wenham

·       Topsfield

·       Danvers/Middleton

·       Lynnfield Center W.D.

·       Upper Charles:

·       Franklin

·       Holliston

·       Medway

·       Milford

·       SUASCO:

·       Ashland

·       Hopkinton

·       Nashua:

·       Boylston

·       Lancaster

·       Sterling

·       West Boylston

·       Connecticut:

·       South Hadley Fire District #2

 

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Controlling white grubs without chemicals

By Bruce Wenning/ Special To The Tab

 

White grubs are insect pests of home lawns, athletic fields, parks, gardens and anywhere their preferred hosts grow. They live in soil, are C-shaped, have six legs, chewing mouthparts, and feed on turfgrass roots and the roots of other plants. Lawns that are attacked by these pests show poor vigor, thin turf, smaller (or no) roots and bare spots susceptible to weed colonization.

The four white grub species of concern in our area are introduced pests and are very problematic on home lawns. They are Japanese beetle, Popillia japonica; Oriental beetle, Anomala orientalis; European chafer, Rhizotrogus majalis; and Asiatic garden beetle, Maladera castanea.

The life cycle for all four species is very similar: there is one generation per year, adult beetles are active during the summer, the grub (larval stage) is actively feeding on turfgrass roots in the fall (August through October) and again in the spring (April through May). It is too often assumed that all white grubs are the insecticide-susceptible Japanese beetles. They are not! And particularly as there are health concerns and environmental problems associated with the misuse and overuse of insecticides for the control of white grubs, it is very important to properly identify white grubs using a 10X hand lens, so that the least toxic control agents will be used. Unfortunately, landscape company personnel typically do not identify grubs by species.

·      The Japanese beetle grub has a small distinctive V-shaped rastral (spines) pattern, and a transverse anal slit on the 10th abdominal segment. These grubs are widely distributed in southern New England and are more susceptible (than the other species of white grubs) to chemical and nonchemical controls. Adult JBs feed on nearly 300 species of plants, including trees, shrubs and vines.

·      The Oriental beetle grub has a transverse anal slit (like the JB) but exhibits a unique straight and parallel rastral pattern. It is less susceptible to commonly used insecticides because it is quick to burrow down deeper into the soil during hot weather, where it is difficult to control.

·      The European chafer has a rastral pattern that is somewhat Y-shaped; rows of rastral spines look like an opening zipper near the anal slit. It is the most damaging to home lawns, causing turf to become easily dislodged from the soil. Sometimes called an "eating machine on lawn roots," it's the only grub that can feed during cold weather, causing root damage in the early spring and well into the fall, when the other grub species are inactive. It has even been detected feeding on lawn roots under snow in February. These grubs are hard to control with insecticides because they are larger in size than the other species and they have genetic characteristics that enable them to metabolize insecticides or avoid them.

·      The Asiatic garden beetle has a rastral pattern in the shape of a reduced semi-circle. Imidacloprid (trade name, Merit) is used for chemical control, but it has limited effectiveness. It is suspected that the spread of AGB is due to imidacloprid overuse: the chemical kills the other grub species and allows the expansion of this one.

Fortunately, there are biological control alternative to synthetic insecticides that can reduce the need for chemical control of white grubs. Although there is one commercially available type of nematode, Steinernema carpocapsae, that does not provide white grub control, another commercially available nematode, Heterorhabditis bacteriophora, has been shown by Dr. Albrecht Koppenhoffer (Rutgers University) to be an effective bio-control agent against Japanese beetle grubs. Dr. Patricia Vittum (University of Massachusetts) has demonstrated satisfactory control for all four species of white grubs using the HB nematode in late summer field trials, but the trials were limited in scope.

IPM Labs entomologist Carol Glenister notes that HB nematodes are most effective when the soil is warm in late summer (mid-August to early September) and the grubs are large. She does not recommend applying nematodes before then. She said that with the proper environmental conditions nematodes will reduce all grub species to varying degrees.

The HB nematode seeks out grubs for food and reproduction. When this nematode enters a white grub through a natural body opening, it releases a bacterium while it feeds on the grubs' internal organs, and this eventually kills the grub. The nematodes then move through the soil to seek out more grubs.

The EPA exempts nematodes from the registration required for chemicals, and protective equipment is not needed to apply them. Commercially available nematodes are specific to pests stated on the label. Read and follow all instructions and be certain that the beneficial nematode matches the biology of the pest in question. To learn more contact: IPM LABS, Locke, N.Y. 315-497-2063, www.ipmlabs.com.

Bruce Wenning, the environment page garden columnist, is horticulturist and grounds manager, Massachusetts Audubon Society, Habitat Wildlife Sanctuary. massaudubon.org, and he serves on the Board of Directors of the Ecological Landscaping Association.

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