Hello friends, this is the Environment Show.
Welcome.
President Bush has given the Green Life for oil exploration and drilling in the sensitive
Arctic wildlife refuge in Alaska.
The National Wildlife Federation is leading a coalition to protect the region through
international treaties.
And California's water shortages likely will continue despite recent heavy rains.
Our use consultant Robert Kourik says we need to cut down home water use, especially
the water-guzling toilet.
Basically, the 5-7 gallon flush toilet is a fossil, it's an antique, it's culturally
and environmentally inappropriate or it should be because we don't need to use that much
water to safely flush away any amount of waste.
And poet Richard Grossman this time on the Environment Show.
The Environment Show is a national production of WAMC, made possible by the J.M. Kaplan
Fund of New York.
This is Bruce Robertson.
First this environmental news note.
With the end of the Allied Command Air and Ground Attack against the Iraqi forces, the
question of what to do now with all the wreckage.
It seems those destroyed Iraqi tanks are a recycler's dream according to Gershaw recycling,
which handles tons of metal on Long Island each year.
The charred remains of 4,000 Iraqi tanks in Kuwait and Iraq may represent the largest repository
of recyclable metal in the world, more than 200,000 tons of steel.
What can you make with 200,000 tons of steel?
100 billion paper clips?
How about 250,000 automobiles?
The problem is that it would take years to process the remains of the Iraqi armor.
But Iraqi tank hulk represents about 60 tons of steel, copper, brass, iron, and aluminum.
This is Bruce Robertson.
When President Bush announced his national energy strategy, those in the environmental
camp were dismayed to confirm what had been rumored.
Included in his call for increased domestic oil production is a plan to open up the
biologically diverse and oil-rich Arctic wildlife refuge in northern Alaska.
Several weeks ago we told you about a plan launched by the National Wildlife Federation
to protect that area should the President call for activity there.
National Wildlife Federation Vice President Sharon Newsom told us that the only way now
to protect that beautiful region is to bring it under an international treaty.
As she tells us now more about the plan, called Alaska in the 21st century, it would protect
the entire Arctic region, Alaska, Canada, and the Soviet Union.
We believe that the pollutants and scientists have shown that the pollutants that are being
produced in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia in the US are ending up in the Arctic.
And if we are going to protect what we've always believed was a very pristine ecosystem,
we are going to have to begin to address these pollution sources that occur in other places
and in other countries.
So we are urging the United States, Canadian and Russian government to come together and
devise a treaty along the lines of the Antarctica Treaty to protect that very important region.
An international treaty, whether political or in this case environmental, is effective
only if the signatory parties abide by it.
Policing the treaty can take many forms, military activity, or economic and political sanctions.
We would encourage the treaty to set out sanctions that would be imposed if pollution was not
curtailed, if countries did not do what needed to be done to protect the Arctic region.
It's not to say that it would be a permanent protection without any problems, but it certainly
would be better than what we have right now where no one is paying any attention to the
problems in the pollution in the Arctic.
Newsom says all nations, either bordering the region or having anything to do with it,
should have a vested interest in protecting the US Arctic Refuge.
The Arctic Refuge coastal plain is currently the only pristine undeveloped section of the
Arctic coast, both in Canada, the US, and Russia.
So as the only pristine area, we believe that there would be an interest by certainly
the Canadians who have already expressed an interest in keeping that area undeveloped,
for scientific research purposes, and for the calving ground for a very large caribou herd
that uses both Canada and the United States.
The 21st Century plan is outlined in six points.
The first proposal is protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the coastal plain.
The second is the designation of new refuges, wilderness areas, and wild and scenic river areas
in Alaska.
Additional protections for currently designated parks and refuges, which are suffering from
incompatible activity on adjacent lands and suffering from incompatible uses and development
on inholdings within these parks and refuges.
The fourth area that we believe needs more attention by Congress is the actual management
of the conservation system units, the parks and refuges, and preserved.
The Reagan administration did a very bad job of making sure that plans were written for
these areas and that development was consistent with the purposes for which the areas were designated.
The fifth area that we believe needs further attention, particularly by state and federal
agencies, is the enormous amount of pollution that is coming from the current extraction
and development of oil and gas in Crudeho Bay and along the outer continental shelf in Alaska
and the transportation from Valdez.
There is a lot of oil spills.
The Transylaska pipeline is corroding and is suffering from more and more oil spills.
And finally, the effort to establish an international protection treaty, we believe is where all three
countries ought to be going in the future.
Sharon Newsom, Vice President of the National Wildlife Federation.
The Six Point Plan is intended to guide congressional action as legislation is crafted to protect
the area.
Joining with the National Wildlife Federation and calling for this plan is the Sierra Club,
the wilderness society, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense
Fund, and the National Parks and Conservation Association.
This is Bruce Robertson.
California's water drought is entering its fifth year now.
Historically though, this is not yet a very long period.
There have been droughts lasting four times as long in the region's history.
Nevertheless, the water shortages this year are causing political and social problems
all across the region.
Noted author and landscape consultant Robert Kurek, writing in the recent edition of Garbage
magazine, details a number of simple yet very effective steps that we can take to reduce
the amount of water, some estimates say up to 1200 gallons for a family of four, that
both is used and lost in our homes each day.
He joins us on the line now.
It's almost ironic that we had an interview scheduled at a time earlier today here, and
you tell us that you were unable to get back to the office in time because the road
was flooded out because you had nine inches of rain.
It was a fortunate problem for me because we don't have a good rain like this in years.
People were kidding about how they had to find their boots way back in the closet because
they couldn't remember where they were.
It's been raining at the rate of over three inches a day now for three days.
I guess we should say that although it's certainly welcome and makes everyone rather happy,
it really is literally a drop in the bucket.
Yes, it is for the state water system.
They basically have a simplistic way of looking at it in the paper if they talk about we
need 20 more storms this year of this nature to get a water supply back up to a state level
that's virtually impossible.
Is there anything that you or meteorologists actually are saying about the reasons for
the present rain that maybe is this part of some kind of changing pattern?
Well, I don't think any good reputable meteorologists look, we get caught saying that there's
a change in the pattern per se, and I certainly think it would only be inquiring mind types
to which I try to pin it to some specific actor, man or Chernobyl or some bizarre specific
events.
I know one of the articles I ran across about the drought in Santa Barbara, somebody had
done ring studies of pine trees on the inland valley.
I don't remember the specifics, but within the order of since the 1500s, somewhere around
there, I do remember specifically there were two periods of 60 year droughts since that
time.
I'm sorry, 60 years?
Zero, yes.
Half a century and then some.
Two times, since the 1500s or 1400s when that's happened, and over a dozen times when
there's been 20 year droughts of below average rainfall, so that a lousy six year drought
is or five year droughts, nothing in the scheming.
Agriculture uses something like 85% of all the water in the state.
In fact there is growing criticism not only of the amount of water farmers use, but the
kinds of crops grown in the region, crops that need a lot of water.
Better it would be, some say, to grow crops that are more compatible with the natural climate
and leave the high water use crops to areas of the nation that traditionally have more
water, the central south, for example.
And in weeks to come we will take a look at this side of the controversy.
The average homeowner though, is at fault two for allowing too much water to escape down
the drain, most obviously in the bathroom.
A delicate topic says Khorik.
Well, the first place when you sit down on the toilet every morning, I think I have a
hard time with all the details, I think it's something like 40% of the, it's a novice
amount of indoor water use comes from the water going down the toilet.
And a lot of times that that's just a flush away small amount of urine.
Other times there's more waste, but basically the 5 to 7 gallon flush toilet is a farful
to the antique, it's culturally and environmentally inappropriate or it should be because we don't
need to use that much water to safely flush away any amount of waste.
And in addition, you have written that that's assuming the appliance is working correctly
and many don't, many are leaking in addition to using too much water in the actual operation
under normal operational procedures just sitting there, they're leaking water.
I think they retrofitted a hotel one and they got a phenomenally larger savings than
the projections from the conversion and they found out that even though the toilets are
only three or four years old, some 30% or 40% leaking.
The styling thing to me is to find out that a toilet has to be leaking 250 gallons a day
before you can even hear the sound of the leak.
So the only way you can tell if your toilet leaking is to put up a die in the tank and see
if it shows up in the bowl.
All right now let's say we've discovered either a leak or we're concerned about getting
some kind of toilet that does not need as much water.
What can we do?
Well the first thing would be try to fix the leak in that most cases it's just a replacement
of one or more seals or one or two components either where the water comes into the tank
or where it feels going into the bowl or sometimes the shut off is not working quite right.
You have to just re-lubricate the arm on the float, etc.
Oftentimes it's down simple but a lot of times it's easier to call on a plumber because
if the simple toilets look in the back they can get pretty complicated when you try to
actually take them apart and put them back together again.
When it comes to replacing the toilet, excuse me there are quite a few, I'll put a low
flush toilet, 1.6 gallons per flush compared to the more conventional 5 to 7 gallons
flush toilet.
And those 1.6 ultra low flush toilets range from $89 to $400 but there are at least 5
or 6 models on sale at any one time in my area for $100 or less.
Now they consumer wanting to either replace their current model with one of these or
if they're new home construction wanting to install the best.
I suppose the first question, maybe the only question is do they work sufficiently?
Yeah, by and large yeah, the state of Maine doesn't, excuse me, state of Massachusetts
haven't found any significant problem.
The water district in Santa Barbara area called the Galito water districts have paid for
people to retrofit 18,000 toilets that believe now and they haven't had any significant
problems.
There are occasional cases maybe if the old, old, old plumbing was put in with not sufficient
drop there might be a little bit of problem.
But by and large most toilets work fine on the flushing down to the street, a lot of
the carry through from the house to the street is really dependent upon a laundry water, a
shower water, a bath water falling down the pipes afterward.
As far as the toilet itself, cleaning itself there's what we refer to as the dreaded kid
marks and that's where the waste causes smearing well in Europe.
They just have the old routine is go to the bathroom, get up, wreak for the brush behind
the toilet, brush the toilet and go.
It's just part of the routine of life.
A lot of times you don't even need to do that with a well designed ultra low flush toilet.
Now many of us have heard and even tried for years the other sort of home remedy of
sticking a couple of bricks in the toilet tank and you say really not to do that.
Yeah, the old guideline of bricks should be thrown out the window because the bricks
fluff off, create particles and that helps wear out the seals and the parts and the tank
and causes them to leak faster.
If you're going to try to displace water in the existing tank of a water hogging toilet,
you would use either plastic one-court bottle fill with gravel or what they call displacement
bags, basically it's like a plastic bag filled with water hanging over the side of the tank
inside the tank.
But the bottles are usually better because you can position them where they won't
be as near any of the parts that move around inside the tank.
You can reduce the volume maybe half a gallon, maybe a gallon, sometimes a little bit more,
but you'll never get close to reducing the flush to 1.6 gallons because you have to have
a completely redesigned porcelain fixture.
The hydraulics are different, the rim is different the water comes out, the shape of
the bowl is different, the shape of the goose neck trap.
You get it to be effective using only that small amount.
Yeah, if you're going to try to get down to 1.6 you can only do that by buying a new
toilet.
You can take an old toilet and maybe shave off a half a gallon, a gallon, a little bit
more per flush depending.
But they're just not designed to flush with efficiency.
The toilet is the number one user and abuser of water in the average household.
The runner up for abuse is still in the bathroom the shower.
Corrix says taking a bath uses more water than taking a shower, but even taking a shower
can be wasteful.
Most people do not realize that taking a shower with a normal shower head in place uses
from 3 to 5 gallons of water per minute to do the same job that can be done with a low
flow shower head that uses only 1.5 to 2 gallons per minute.
Robert Corrix speaks to us from Santa Rosa, California, where he lives and works as a water
use consultant and writer.
This most recent article appeared in the current edition of Garbage magazine.
This is Bruce Robertson.
Philosophers are fond of defining man as being the animal that asks the question, what
is man?
There is only just a little humor in this, the deeper meaning being that man is the only
animal that thinks and is self-conscious.
That is, we are aware of our own being or so we think.
The truth is we just don't know about other animals or plants for that matter.
We have done a lot of work with dolphins and whales and other mammals and we think we
have established some kind of language to exchange communications, but we just cannot
be sure.
Describing his recent book of poems, The Animals, Richard Grossman says the 500 poems represent
a symphony of terrestrial life where creatures speak to us of their aspirations and disappointments.
For The Animals, Grossman, who joins us now, says he chose a particular literary style
called The Pastoral.
Well, I wanted to write on the one hand a book that was more contemporary than any other
book of poetry and on the other hand more ancient.
I wanted to combine those two contradictions.
And The Pastoral is one of the oldest, extant forms of literature.
It predates literacy really.
It is a form in which urbanized society tried to come to terms with nature, with the environment,
with rural living, with the joys of communion with nature.
And The Pastoral is basically the story of shepherd pleasures, shepherd love, the love
of youth, the love of laying under a tree with the jug of wine or whatever.
And it will, you know, a sheet of paper, a parchment or whatever.
And it became a corrupted form.
But in essence, originally, what it was was really man trying to come to terms with his
development as an urban creature and to try to retain the most important thing in man,
the thing that allowed man to enjoy the shade in the sun.
That's what it was.
You intend this to be something that makes a difference.
We're all trying to figure out a way we can be involved, get involved or cause something
better to come about.
On the surface of it, this accomplishes that you have pledged a dollar from each sale
to go toward either the nature conservancy or the people for the people of the animals.
But you mean to have an effect, cause an effect in a much more subtle way than just simply
spending a dollar from each sale.
The writing in the message itself, you intend to have an effect, to cause an effect, to
educate people, to get us to read and think and become aware of something that we were
not aware of before we read your poetry.
What are you trying to say in your writing?
Yeah.
Kind of taking an end around to what you're asking me and not be too direct about the answer.
I think part of the problem that we have, in a lot of cases, is we're told what to do.
Eat grains.
Don't wear for both very commendable.
But we're getting a lot of orders, marching orders in our lives.
Environmental issues are not really marching order issues to me.
I mean, the most important thing is the feeling of communion with nature and with yourself.
And ascribing the beauties of nature to something beyond mere notions of human survival or animal
survival or tree survival or anything, it's a feeling that leads to moral conduct.
And in my poetry, the poetry works on environmental level, I think, effectively.
It also tries to, more importantly, start at a spiritual level and then try to make, get
people to see that they're part of an environment.
That's a spiritual environment.
I mean, we are part of paradise.
We are born into paradise.
I mean, we have turned paradise into a man-made sub-kingdom of heaven.
We've degraded it horribly.
We've overpopulated it.
And the answer isn't to say don't have babies.
And the answer is not to say don't have zoos, although again, both are commendable.
The answer is to see the paradise behind the human paradise we're trying to create so
that that natural paradise revolves.
And so we wind up in that pristine state where man was intended to be.
And that's what poetry is about.
It's a call to a higher form of humanity and that's what the book is about.
You also seem to be driving at the idea that the earth as a habitat, and perhaps as far
as we know anyway, it seems the only habitat in the nearby cosmos is a habitat that we
share.
We human, homosapian, share with all other life forms.
I'm wondering, do you feel that part of the separation, the gulf that has developed
between homosapian creature and other creatures has to do with language?
We feel we can't walk up to the beaver or the bear or talk to the hawk, you know, language
that we can necessarily converse in.
And yet, is that really what you're doing is conversing with the animals?
Yeah, well.
Where the animals conversing with us.
Yeah, well, the structure of the book is that there's a shepherd and there are 200 different
animals.
From a virus, the smallest one, to, I suppose, the largest one in the book is an elephant.
But in any case, there are 200 of them.
They span the animal kingdom and it's a scholastic discipline.
What I tried to do was to have an animal for everything you could possibly imagine.
So there's not a jaguar, but there is a leopard.
I mean, you have practically everything represented in the animal kingdom.
The reason for that was not that I wanted to create different voices, but that I wanted
to create one voice.
I wanted an amalgam language, a language of the planet.
I imagine, for example, that if we were from outer space from another kingdom, that was
not the terrestrial kingdom, and we came towards the planet, or the first thing, well,
we see this beautiful jewel revolving around the sun.
But the other thing that we don't think about is we would hear that jewel speak.
We would hear the language of the planet.
We would hear all the animals, not just us, with our squawk boxes.
We would hear the moose in the forest.
We would hear the hawk making its sound as it soared in the heavens.
We would hear the water rippling around the vein, the structure of the earth.
We would hear that vein of structure speak to us, purling at us.
That's what we would hear.
That in itself is like one song.
That is the song of the book.
That's what I'm trying to do.
I have this model of a shepherd basically arguing, cajoling a bunch of very fractious animals
who all have their own points of view and their own pain and their own loves and so on and
so forth.
Really what that is, that's a symbol for that feeling of being outside of it all, and hearing
that one vibrant biological and geological language coming at us.
And it's coming at us every moment.
It's always there.
And that's what the book is.
Try and replicate that in some way.
Some of Grossman's poems are based on researched fact, such as, moths are unable to eat.
Their life spans are so short they don't need to.
Other of his poems though are fantasies in the poetic sense, such as The Woodpecker.
This particular poem, Woodpecker, is about being in touch with one's environment and
I'm on the environment show so it's an app poem.
But what it deals with actually is with the Woodpecker's love for a tree.
The tree really being the substance, some in substance of everything that a Woodpecker
has.
It's where it raises its children.
It's where it makes its song by pecking against the tree.
The voice of the Woodpecker is the tree.
When you think about it, it's the drum of the tree.
It's where the bird nests and it's also the intellectual and emotional substance of
the bird.
The bird looks at its tree, the way Adam looked at the tree in the garden of Eden.
It's the tree of knowledge, it's the tree of life.
It's its tree, it's its home, it's its environment, and it's its great love.
So this is a poem about that, about the encompassing wonder, enjoy, and reverence that a Woodpecker
feels for the tree that it lives in.
Woodpecker.
Above and below the tree extends, feeding from every medium, mysterious tree never telling
where a branch might be, so lovely, so proportioned.
It is here near the heart I make my home, raise my children, keep warm, mysterious tree
never telling where a branch might be, where my food feeds my song.
When I fly through the air I seem to be free, but freedom is permanent and ease.
Mysterious tree never telling where a branch might be, I make love in your arms.
Poet Richard Grossman.
He lives in Los Angeles.
His anthology poems titled The Animals is published by Grey Wolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota.
This is Bruce Robertson, and that is our show for this week.
We hope you enjoyed this edition of The Environment Show.
This has been a WAMC national production, Dr. Alan Shartock, executive producer.
This is Bruce Robertson.
The Environment Show is made possible by the JM Kaplan Fund of New York.
