Hello friends, it's the Environment Show and welcome.
The federal government concedes a costly mistake.
The whip in New Mexico will not be tested to accept weapons grade uranium.
Observer say this is a wise decision by the Clinton administration.
Others say there is more to the story.
We'll have the story.
Also this time, dishing up another visit with the Environmental Gardener and assessing
the loss of Ted Parker and Al Gentry.
The ability to get out there to bring a lifetime of experience to bear on the condition and
the uniqueness of a forest in much the same way that a good physician can in diagnosing
human illness.
These stories this time on the Environment Show.
The Environment Show is a national production made possible by Hemings MotorNews, the national
Bible of the Old Car Hobby, monthly from Bennington, Vermont and by the JM Kaplan Fund of New York.
And this is Bruce Robertson.
We built nuclear missiles and bombs and now we have the garbage left over.
Garbage called Trans-Urenic Waste, a special grade of nuclear waste.
The federal Department of Energy wants to bury this Trans-Urenic Waste beneath the
sands of the desert near Carl's Bad New Mexico.
However, having spent billions of dollars to develop the project at WIP, the Waste Isolation
Pilot Plant, the DOE has now changed its mind, at least for the moment.
Robert Neal is Director of the Environmental Evaluation Group in Albuquerque, a group
funded by but operating independently from the Department of Energy.
Neal says his group monitors and evaluates the DOE at the WIP site.
To understand what DOE has done, Neal says we need to understand what is involved in
the project.
The purpose of WIP is to permanently dispose of all the nations, defense, trans-Urenic
waste that were generated for defense purposes by the Department of Energy.
These waste materials are located at 10 different sites in the U.S. and due to their very
long-lived activity, the intent is to permanently dispose of them at the WIP site, which is 25
miles east of Carl's Bad, in a layer of bedded soil.
DOE recently estimated that the total cumulative cost of the WIP project will be close to $9
billion.
When I first started this job in 1980, the expected cost was only $1 billion.
The intent is to dispose of all the trans-Urenic waste.
These are radioactive waste materials that are heavier than uranium in the periodic table.
We're talking about perhaps 6 million cubic feet, 850,000 drums, a number of canisters,
and a total of a curian inventory of less than perhaps 8 million curies of radioactive
material at this point.
Neal says this is about 25,000 truckloads.
Though this sounds very large, indeed, Neal says the actual site does not occupy but a
small piece of underground real estate at the site.
In fact, Neal says 70% of the waste intended for the facility has not yet been generated.
There is room to grow.
Although the facility can open though, the DOE has to establish that it is going to work
properly.
To do this, the DOE had planned to conduct tests on site at tremendous costs, as we have
just heard.
However, now, the DOE has a new game plan.
Until last October, the DOE was both building and monitoring the project.
In October of 1992, Congress turned over the monitoring function to the EPA, feeling
the other way was too much like the Fox guarding the chicken coop.
Although it became clear, EPA standards are more stringent than those at the Department
of Energy, the DOE maintained its position of planning to conduct the testing on site.
Neal recommended against it for three reasons.
One, the requirements in the Whip Land Whip Draw Act require that the data be shown to
be directly relevant to meeting the compliance standards of EPA.
That hadn't been done.
Secondly, the proposed schedule to get the data would not have made it available until
after the completion of these performance assessment analyses and calculations to show
compliance.
And the third problem is that there are a number of unresolved engineering problems that
had never been addressed by DOE.
For example, after three years of characterization of the waste, we only had a little more than
one truckload of waste prepared and available for these experiments at the site.
And our point is that those resources could be better addressed to showing compliance
with the disposal requirements of EPA and not be diverted towards these short-term experiments
which are of marginal value.
One of the chief concerns has to do with solubility.
How easily does this trans-uranic material either dissolve or resist dissolution in water
that might find its way into the salt caverns?
To test the solubility, DOE says that DOE does not need to enter the underground facility
itself.
A high-level laboratory will not only provide the same data, DOE says the experiments
will actually be more controlled and thus the data more accurate.
DOE commends the DOE for recognizing the folly of spending so much money on a project
with so little chance of success, but is this all there is to it?
Don Hancock is a leading research advocate with the Southwest Research and Information
Center in Albuquerque, a group founded in 1971 and for the past 15 years, fighting
whip.
Hancock commends the DOE on the wisdom of its decision, but...
But DOE has coupled this decision with essentially financial payoffs to the city of Curlsbad
that are not based on science or good public policy or reducing the budget or speeding
up the opening of the Whip Project, all of which are explanations in rationale.
DOE gave for the decision to drop the test.
Specifically Hancock says, instead of developing Whip, DOE is proposing to fund and develop
a national trans-uranic waste program center in Curlsbad.
Hancock says this simply does not make any more sense than pursuing Whip itself, did.
The majority of the trans-uranic waste in this country on trans-uranic waste is a kind
of intermediate level waste.
It's not high level waste.
It's not low level waste.
It is long lived.
It has a lot of plutonium in it.
And it comes.
It's generated from production of nuclear bombs.
Most of this trans-uranic waste is currently stored in Washington State, Idaho, Tennessee,
and South Carolina.
Of course, none of those locations are at all proximate to the Whip site.
And so there seems to be no reason to cite this facility in Curlsbad.
In addition, Hancock says the DOE has promised the city government in Curlsbad that a staff
currently employed in Albuquerque working on the Whip will be transferred to Curlsbad
for this new project.
Hancock says this too does not make sense, saving money by canceling the one project and
spending it on retraining the workers for the new project.
Hancock says it comes down to this.
The supporters of Whip in Curlsbad, which are the Chamber of Commerce and the mayor and
other clearly important people in Curlsbad are saying, we've been supporting this project.
Don't you dare do anything that will take jobs and money away from Curlsbad.
So the cutting some jobs at Whip by stopping the test program is being replaced by bringing
other jobs that don't necessarily have much of a purpose either, but are ways of keeping
essentially the same number of jobs in Curlsbad.
So it's a reward to Curlsbad.
It's a way of essentially having the city fathers of Curlsbad acquiesce to this decision
to not proceed with the test.
The long term problem, of course, is that DOE wants to continue spending $200 million
a year on Whip, a facility that has no nuclear waste and is cutting back on the money that
it spends at some of its other facilities and other parts of the country that have a large
amount of nuclear waste that is dangerous to workers and the public and is contaminating
the environment.
So it seems like it's sort of pork well politics reward your friends as opposed to do the thing
that is most important scientifically or makes the most sense technically or in terms
of using the budget.
While the recent decision by the DOE to curtail onsite activities at Whip means a certain
savings, Hencock says not too far down the road, Congress is going to have to look at the
situation.
The cost of Whip is just too large to toss off as a small mistake.
The Whip project currently looks to be about a $10 billion project, so it's on the order
of the magnitude of the superconducting super collider that after spending a couple of
billion dollars on Congress has now decided to terminate.
Well Whip long term looks like as big a budget project as the super collider we haven't
yet sunk as much, quite as much money into it.
There's been about a billion and a half dollars spent on this project up to now, but at some
point if the administration is unwilling to look at what Whip would do in the budget
for it and whether it's a good and safe project, Congress may have to do that.
While most observers say the DOE's decision is smart and prudent, reversing a boondoggle
of the previous administration, others see it as having won a battle while the war still
rages.
No doubt all sides would agree this is a very serious problem, perhaps as with no other
situation we are dealing with future history.
The life of this toxic material is so long that it will threaten and be present in the
lives of generations thousands of years from now.
Not only must we store this material in just the right way, we must make it as unobtainable
as possible, otherwise says Neil consider this two-part scenario.
A future generation may be puzzled if we put up an elaborate sign above waste that are
located 2,000 feet underground and we don't have similar signs over waste that are buried
at different generating sites under two feet of dirt.
They'll say, you know, what kind of a society is this?
They put up these elaborate signs where the material is placed at a great depth.
The second thing you have to be careful about on a sign is it can be a very encouraging
thing to dig into.
I've often said that if we found a sign and then outside one of our major cities in an
ancient Samarian script that said whatever you do do not dig here, you know, some horrors
are below the ground.
On Monday morning we'd all have our earth moving equipment there ready to start digging
away to see what the heck is underground.
Robert Neil, director of the Environmentally Valuation Group based in Albuquerque, Don
Hancock is with the Southwest Research and Information Center also in Albuquerque and
this is Bruce Robertson.
Having a summer vegetable garden is a lot of work.
The hot sun, the back breaking work, weeding and raking, the frustration of seeing so much
get eaten by insects and animals.
Isn't it just as easy to buy your fresh produce at the grocery store?
Well, maybe, maybe not.
Larry Sompke, the environmental gardener, is convinced the real point to gardening is
apparent when you see it all from a different perspective.
He's been cooking up a plan.
He says we'll convince us too.
OK, let's see if Larry's home here.
Hey, Larry, you home?
Bruce, yeah, come on in, I'm in the kitchen.
Hi, how you doing?
I'm all right.
You're in it.
You came over on a good day.
What are you doing in the kitchen?
Well, I'm in here making up some stir fried Chinese vegetables.
Remember a few months ago you came by and I was planting my fall garden and I told you
if I had all of this Chinese vegetables?
Indeed I do remember and indeed I also remember looking forward to tasting the fruits
of your labor.
That's right.
I've got, here's what I have for you today.
I'm going to make up a plate of stir fried Chinese vegetables and let me tell you what
I have.
These are all things that I planted earlier this fall.
One is this nice looking purple stem Chinese cabbage and here is a nice long leaf celery
or napa style Chinese cabbage.
I'm going to cut it.
This is some arugula.
This is all common with Italian food but also tastes a lot like watercress, really good
in Chinese food and these are dicon radishes.
These are big long white radishes that are actually very sweet, very popular.
It kind of tastes like turnips, very popular in Chinese cooking.
So how about it?
Here it is coming into November.
We're in November closing it on Thanksgiving time.
It's frost in the ground.
Most of the leaves are down and you just picked these today.
I just went out and picked them today and that's one of the great things about planting
a fall garden.
I was encouraging everybody to plant a fall garden especially you.
I said if you plant a fall garden now you'll have vegetables all the way through till Thanksgiving.
Here it is almost Thanksgiving and I've got these great beautiful green vegetables and I
don't see them stopping.
We've had several hard frosts up here.
The ground isn't frozen yet but I still see a lot of vegetables coming from my garden and
as a matter of fact I see a lot of vegetables coming for you right now.
Let me toss some of these in there.
There goes the little dicons because they take a little longer to cook.
I've got my big old cast iron wok that I bought.
Larry, while those are starting to simmer I suppose to some degree your vegetable quantity
would be limited by how much you ended up planting but how long into the frost and frozen
season and the snow could you afford to go and still be able to pick these and eat them?
Well I think the dicon radish will be just like any other root crop that grows underground.
You can cover this up with a little mulch and then harvest it throughout the dead of winter
just like you would with carrots and parsnips and things like that.
Now the cabbages, I've noticed that the arugula and some of these other cabbages can take
a snow.
Last year I harvested cabbages.
These little cabbages leaves in the snow.
So it'll go on quite a while then they've been hit by a couple frosts where most everything
else in the garden is completely dead but these things keep growing there.
They actually thrive in this cool weather.
So you can really almost join one season with the other.
The end of one season still growing and just before you start planting your next season.
Yes, especially if you live in some of the more southern states if you live in Tennessee
or southern Missouri or Texas or some of those places you could if you planted the right
kind of vegetables at the right time almost have vegetables all year round with no trouble
at all.
Well it sounds and smells good looking forward to taking a taste here.
Well that's one of the thing people you know we always talk about working in the garden
but there's also a lot of benefits from being in the garden and one of the benefits is
having a great big platter of Chinese vegetables like this.
So let me get, it's starting to smell good now.
Let me get a little soy sauce on here.
Just a little bit for you.
Now you know a lot of these vegetables are also very nutritious.
If I can get the cap off my, here we go.
Little soy sauce.
Listen, I tell you what I'm going to take my coat off and stay a while and get ready
to sit down and enjoy a plate of your stir fried vegetables.
Oh great, great, I've got plenty and I'm looking forward to serving here.
Okay, I'll see you in just a second Larry.
Well see you.
Larry Somsky, the environmental gardener, author of beautiful easy gardens.
The aroma of stir fried vegetables fills his home in Hallowville, New York.
This is Bruce Robertson.
The loss of human life under any circumstances is sad.
When those circumstances are gruesome, the death is tragic.
We say this of our fallen national leaders as we say it of our family and friends.
Our planet Earth has lost two of its brothers.
Theodore Parker and Alwyn Gentry died when their small plane crashed into a fog-smothered
mountainside in the tropical forest of Ecuador.
Three others also died.
Perhaps we will never know what happened, nor certainly what their last thoughts were.
But we do know that with them died an incredible amount of undocumented research.
It's a great inspiration that will be difficult if not impossible to reconstruct.
Dr. Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, said these two scientists were truly extraordinary.
Ted Parker was one of the very few people who could go into a forest in Latin America
and doing so identify all the birds in that forest.
Maybe by their calls there are 9,000 species of birds in the world and he's supposed to
have been able to recognize about half of them by their call alone.
In other words, he could go into a forest in Peru at dawn and maybe pick off 250 species
of birds without seeing any of them just listening to them singing in the tops of the trees.
In other words, he had an unbelievable ability to discriminate bird songs and to recognize
them in that way and was undoubtedly the person in the world best suited to recognizing
those birds in that way.
Alwyn Gentry Raven says was phenomenal in another way.
He probably had the widest knowledge of lowland and middle elevation Latin American plants
of anybody who probably whoever lived because he traveled so widely.
It's much more difficult to go into a forest and recognize all the plants that are there
than it is to recognize the birds because they don't sing.
There's nothing comparable to song that can easily be used as an index to what's there.
You have to go in.
You look at the trees of plants which maybe the trunks go up 100 feet before they begin
to divide and somewhere way up there in the green above you might be little clusters of
white flowers the size of a pinhead.
You have to be able to know the trunk that leaves and so forth well enough to pick out
what's there and to have had enough experience so that when you go into a forest you can again
say how distinctive it might be.
It's a very rare skill and it's a skill that's based on a lifetime of experience and that
experience of course when Dowd died went with him.
Gentry and Parker were involved in what was known as a rapid assessment program, a kind
of research SWAT team gathering data sometimes even as it was being destroyed.
Ronald Sullivan in his article on Parker and Alwyn in the New York Times shortly after
their death recalled how Gentry once was taking an inventory of plants in one study area
while a bulldozer was smashing down trees and plants just a few yards away.
Raven says in the death of Al Gentry and to a different degree with the death of Ted Parker
we lost not so much the actual information they had collected but the way to collect that
information.
For example why an expert system that is a computer that makes point by point discriminations
can never be quite as you can never quite do the same thing as a good physician can do
in diagnosing illness.
You bring in so many points intuitively and you digest them based on your own experience
in a way that is very difficult to write down.
Not impossible but very difficult and that's what was really lost with Al Gentry and
Ted Parker the ability to get out there to bring a lifetime of experience to bear on
the condition and the uniqueness of a forest in much the same way that a good physician
can in diagnosing human illness.
So tell us about the plane crash itself.
What were they doing in where were they and what were they doing there at the time as
far as you can.
Faya Keel on the Pacific Forest of Ecuador which is one of the areas that Al and Ted
had studied the most.
Finishing off a day of field work actually a short field trip of about ten days duration
and flying into Guaya Keel to come back to the United States when somebody said let's
go back and look at some other particular patches of forest to see where we should better
go next to see what the important points places might be for our next visit and given that
and so the pilots said okay flew down into the clouds and immediately crashed, flew into
the side of the only mountain in that part of Ecuador.
It was just the characteristic way that accidents usually happen in skiing or in any other way
which is you do one more trip or one more run or one more visit and in that case it
proved to be one too many.
You recall the time and the circumstances and most importantly your immediate reaction
when you learn the news of the death of these colleagues and friends.
We learned about it at night after dinner that we given for visitors from Peru actually
here at the garden and the news came in and of course it was starkly unbelievable.
We just couldn't accept the fact that they were gone.
Al had about a dozen PhD students at the University of Missouri of St. Louis and at Washington
University and they gathered really in disbelief.
Most of them had come here to study with him and when this news came through it did not
seem possible to anybody so many people spent most of the night up wondering what had
gone wrong and why this had happened and worrying about it, thinking about it, thinking
about what it meant for them, some people crying and other people just as I say stunned
in disbelief.
Dr. Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, recalling the tragic deaths
of Ted Parker and Alwyn Gentry whose plane went down in a fog shrouded forest in the mountains
of Ecuador in August.
It may be years if ever that we recover the information and the skills they had developed
in the fight to learn about and save tropical forests.
This is Bruce Robertson.
Well, that's our report on this edition of the Environment Show.
We thank you much for joining us and be sure to tune in next week at this same time for
another edition.
The Environment Show is a program about the environment, the air, water, soil, wildlife
and people of our common habitat.
For a cassette copy of the program, call 1-800-767-1929.
Ask for the Environment Show, number 202.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions solely responsible for
its content.
Dr. Alan Chartock, executive producer, this is Bruce Robertson.
The Environment Show made possible by the JM Kaplan Fund of New York and by Heming's
Motor News, the national Bible of the Old Car Hobby, monthly from Bennington Vermont.
