The Environment Show #387, 1997 May 31

This is the Environment Show. It's about our stewardship of the Earth and the beauty
and mystery of life in all its forms. The Environment Show's and National Production
made possible by the W. Alton Jones Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Turner Foundation,
the J.M. Kaplan Fund and Hemings Motor News, the Bible of the Collector Carhabee, 1-800-CAR-HRE.
Your host is Peter Burley.
Coming up on this week's Environment Show, the Superfund program was created to clean up
the nation's toxic waste sites, but 17 years later, many sites are still contaminated and
Congress is calling for reform. We visit a Superfund site in front of Royal Virginia, where
residents are still waiting after eight years for cleanup to begin. Then we go to Washington,
DC, where policy makers are slugging out the details of Superfund reform. Our ear to the ground
finds students spending their spring break working on a denuded cypress swamp in Louisiana,
and a portrait of a Navajo sheep ranch in Arizona. And in the Earth calendar, we meet the bees,
but no birds in the Apple Archery. These stories and more coming up on this week's Environment Show.
17 years ago, the U.S. government established the Superfund program. The goal was to clean up sites
around the country contaminated by toxic waste, but the program has come under fire from everybody,
and many sites still await cleanup. The Environmental Protection Agency is the wing of the
government responsible for the program, and while it has made significant changes to Superfund
over the years, Congress is considering passing a wholesale reform bill. The Environment Show's
Thomas Lally looks at Superfund and efforts to reform it, starting in the town of Front Royal
Virginia, home to a Superfund site, which remains contaminated eight years after the site was
added to the Superfund list. This sprawling Superfund site sits on 440 acres at the edge of the
small town of Front Royal, tucked away in the rolling Shenandoah Mountains, and right along the
Shenandoah River. Opened in 1940, this was the site of the world's most advanced ray on plant.
During the war years, it pumped out material for many thousands of parachutes and tires.
Then in the 70s, Abtex fibers bought the then-aging plant. Town residents say it had always sent
a foul smell over the valley, but in the 80s, the pollution got worse, and the company didn't have
the money to fix it. Finally, one day in 1989, Virginia's attorney general, citing over 2000
pollution violations, ordered the plant closed. What officials found astounded them. 220 acres of
30-foot deep lagoon filled with a deadly toxic soup, a 60-acre manufacturing plant, with toxins
oozing from nearly every corner, and underneath it all, a sewer and drainage system filled with
yet more toxins. Today, the site looks unkempt, weeds rise, waste high, and deer congregate in the
open meadows. Still, houses surround the site on three sides. Randolph-Macon Military Academy
is just up the hill, and from a daycare center, you can read signs on the fence, which read EPA Superfund
site. A couple of miles away from the Abtex site is Front Royal's small downtown. Fosters
jewelers is located right in the middle of Main Street. Fred Foster is the owner, and is also
heading up the Warren County Redevelopment Corporation. He says the plant's closing and continued
shutdown has been devastating for the area. In its heyday, it had 3,800 people, and it was the largest
rayon manufacturing world, and I think the largest imploring in the state of Virginia, and it's
time in its heyday. But when it closed, we were like 14 to 17 percent unemployment in the area,
and it devastated the area. It really, I mean, it didn't slow things down. It just came to a
screeching halt. Foster says the community desperately wants the site cleaned, and after $25
million of taxpayer money already spent, he blames the EPA and the Superfund program for not
moving quickly enough. Very, very slow. Too many young people are in the United States of
our Middle Protection Agency with an inability to make a decision. But I think the problem is it's
they study a study to death, and then they want to go back and take another study and make sure
the first study was correct. That's wrong. You've got to sooner or later roll your sleeves back to
truck up, so okay, let's start cleaning up the site. 90 miles to the east of Front Royal is
Washington, DC, where Superfund has been the subject of intense debate ever since the program started.
As hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent in its name, efforts to reform Superfund have
dragged on for years. Now many believe Congress stands a good chance of passing Superfund reform
this year. The two biggest issues are who pays for cleanup and how clean should the sites be.
Clifford Rothenstein is the deputy administrator designate for the Environmental Protection Agency.
He says Superfund is not perfect, but is fundamentally sound. Many folks have criticized Superfund
in the past, and that was a fair criticism years ago. The program is fundamentally different now
than it was several years ago, and that's largely due to administrative browners, administrative
reforms to try to improve Superfund. The numbers basically speak for themselves.
Rothenstein says EPA has enacted major reforms over the past two years, saying that out of the over
1300 Superfund sites, work is completed or underway at 1100 sites. We have turned the corner on
Superfund cleanups. Most sites have either completed their cleanups or have cleanups on going today,
and if we get our budget request, an additional 500 sites, which would make a total of 900 sites by
the year 2000, we'll have all their cleanups completed. Yet even with recent progress, Superfund
continues to draw fire from many sides. Delma Smith is the executive director of Friends of the
Earth. She says the criticism is often unfair. What is the most hated environmental program
around, and what is the most effective environmental program around? And the answer is Superfund,
and that is because Superfund is not only about cleaning up, but Superfund was a program that from
the beginning was aimed at changing behavior and creating a chain of responsibility. The overall
impact has been that businesses, a lot of businesses, have really cleaned up their act because they
see the specter of some very tough liability coming down on their heads in the future.
Superfund is hated because it's costing businesses and governments big money. The law states that
all parties, no matter how big or small, must pay to clean up the portion of the mess that's theirs.
It sounds fair enough, but deciding who owes what has led to thousands of court cases.
Some of the most spectacular cases have involved fortune 500 companies,
suing parties like mom and pop pizza shops, and even the Girl Scouts.
I don't believe for a moment that those suits are about cost recovery and about those companies
trying to get a fair share back from those folks. Those suits are about
destroying the reputation of the Superfund program. They are about politics and creating a
political climate that will change Superfund and destroy the liability scheme. That's what they're about.
Velma Smith and many others believe the solution to this problem is to cut out the smallest
of the polluters and only go after the big polluters. But that won't stop the costliest legal
battles, which have been between insurance companies and businesses. Both claim the other is liable.
Critics point to the huge costs of these and other lawsuits as evidence of Superfund's failure.
Clifford Rothenstein from EPA agrees small polluters should not be held accountable,
but he says EPA is committed to making sure polluters and not the taxpayers cover most of the cost
of cleanup. We're not talking about placing blame on anybody. That somebody was criminally liable.
There may have been no laws at the time, but it's a question of who should be responsible to clean it
up. Somebody who actually was responsible for creating the contamination or the public at large
was not responsible. And it's our position that those who were responsible should be required to
pay to clean it up, whether it was legal or not. Time is another complaint of many people. It takes
an average of 16 years to get a Superfund site clean. But Friends of the Earth, Velma Smith says it
often took a long time to contaminate Superfund sites and they won't be cleaned overnight.
It doesn't matter what you do with the liability. It doesn't matter how much money you throw at it.
Some of these sites will not be cleaned up for decades because it is going to take that long
to clean it. They are that bad. If Superfund reform is passed, it's likely to include more
flexibility for cleanup standards, meaning some sites may only be clean enough for industrial uses.
Environmentalists are particularly pleased with this provision since remaining contaminants
may still pose a health threat. But back in front royal, this comes as good news. Fred Foster
believes the Aftex site should be sealed and reused as soon as possible, a prospect which may come
true by the end of the year. And if one thing we should learn, that should be our college degree
force, don't ever let it happen again. I think that we can clean up our sites in this country
if we would be as aggressive on cleaning up the sites in this country as they were as being
aggressive when they polluted them. Congress and EPA are currently working out the contents of
a Superfund reform bill, which may be passed in this session. For the Environment Show, I'm Thomas Lalley.
I'm Peter Burley. What do you think about Superfund? Give us a call. Our toll-free number is
1-888-49-Green. That's 1-888-49-Green. Our email address is green at wamc.org. That's green at wamc.org.
Tell us what's on your mind or send us questions you have about the environment.
We're visiting us on the internet where you can hear the Environment Show anytime.
It's at www.enn.com-slash-env-sh-o-w.
I'm Linda Anderson and this is Ear to the Ground with stories about people affecting change
in the environment this week doing the swamp thing.
About 50 miles northeast of New Orleans lies a once vibrant cypress swamp, the Manshac swamp.
Years of intense logging has denuded the area of its diverse species-rich wetland forests.
By the end of World War II, the swamp was logged out and since then, little regeneration has occurred.
That is, until 1991, when Michael Green researched assistant in biology at southeastern Louisiana
University led a bunch of students into the swamp. Through the University's Wetlands Restoration Lab,
Green says they began experimenting to figure out why regeneration was not occurring naturally.
And we always had to depend upon volunteer help-mostly students from here at SOU to help us go out and plant.
And some of them were kind of draftees from wetlands classes and other ecology classes that we took out there.
Their research green says revealed a number of reasons why trees were not growing.
One of the primary ones is the exotic, rodent,
nutria, which has been introduced from South America to this area in, I believe, around 1925.
And it has since spread all across the Gulf States and up and down the east and west coast for that matter.
Another problem was entangling vines which covered the young seedlings and prevent their access to sunlight.
And a third problem was a lack of nutrients being brought into the area because of levy building over the past 100 years or so.
It has changed the course of the Mississippi River and these areas don't get nutrients anymore.
Once the causes were discovered, Green says he needed a good-sized workforce to help plant young cypress
in a way that would ensure survival. He got in touch with an organization called
the National Alternative Spring Break Program and now he says he has volunteer students coming from Aspar as Oregon.
The alternative spring break is kind of an interesting way for them to spend a spring break.
They give up sort of the traditional festivities of hanging around on the beach and all that
and do something meaningful with their time, whether it be working on homelessness or AIDS patients or
working with habitat for humanity or like us doing some environmental work.
He says the students are highly motivated, work diligently and take a lot of pride in what they're doing.
Or as one SLU graduate student named Rachel explained,
the volunteer students are the kind of people who aren't afraid to sweat and sacrifice clean clothing
to help restore a wetland ecosystem. Rachel has been volunteering for three years and describes
a typical student expedition. It's very muddy naturally so we usually wear hip-waters or at least
a shrimp boot squaloshes to go out there and plant these things. We usually have a belt full of
these young cypress trees hanging from our waist and a spade type device that we that we plunge into
the ground to make the hole in the mud where we plant the cypress tree and then these PVC pipe
are cut in longitudinal sections so that we can wrap them around the young cypress tree and
tape them after it's gotten into the ground. And we just do that in a kind of a and a kind of
assembly line fashion out in the marsh. The PVC tubing is used to ward off the
nutria who like to chew the young cypress. Commercial nylon weed mats are used to control
competing vegetation. The fertilizer is given to last year's sapplings. After years of trial and
error, green says they now have a 70 to 80 percent success rate with planting. This year green says
for the first time cypress ceilings in the mancheque swamp are taller than he is. Evidence that a
new forest will stand there. For Rachel, the budding cypress are living proof that during her spring
break she did something important to help improve the environment. With ear to the ground, I'm Linda Anderson.
We all have places which are special to us. For some, their city streets, for others,
their deep in the wilderness. In his book, Bertwater, author Scott Fibony presents a picture of the
four corners area of the southwest. It's a place which he says takes us beyond ourselves.
His book is named after a place on the Navajo Reservation where at one point he and his brother
found themselves working for a sheep herder. An old man in a cowboy hat walked past a hogon,
chanting to himself in a rolling monotone. Jim Samson was a Navajo singer, a medicine man.
My brother and I followed him to the sheep carol. He didn't speak English, John and I didn't
speak Navajo. The singer looked at us with a smile that deepened the creases in his face.
Facing out, he swept his arm toward a wide expanse of sand and rock. He wore leather bow guard,
set with a silver on his left wrist. Forming the shape of the sun with his thumb and forefinger,
he swung his arm in an arc over his head. He then reached out with both arms and drew them back
to his chest. I took this to mean he wanted us to herd the sheep in that direction and bring them
back at noon. Jim Samson walked off with a smile singing to himself. Jim and his wife, Alice,
had offered us room and board to take care of their sheep, but no pay. We ate our meals with them
and slept in our own hogon. The door faced east to catch the first light from the rising sun.
At dawn I woke to someone pounding on the door. One of the grandchildren had been sent to get us moving.
Eat, he shouted. My grandmother says eat. John and I pulled on our boots and shambled over to
the main house. As we sat down, Alice grabbed a lamb from a cardboard box next to the stove and
began to feed it with a bottle. Her hair was pulled back, showing silver earrings. She wore a
velveteen over shirt and a skirt cut from satin gathered at the waist. She had cooked a full
breakfast for us. A stack of fried bread set next to two bowls of cornmeal mush with fried eggs on
the side. The table held even more food than yesterday. We had been told it was the custom to eat
everything placed before us. The woman would be offended if we didn't eat what she served.
So we do not have to work on breakfast, barely managing to finish. Outside we joined Jim Samson at
the corral. He let us saddle the horse to the sheep pen and mounted it as we opened the gate.
Again he sang a low chant as the goats and sheep filed out. The three of us crossed the sweep of
high desert at an unhurried pace. The horseman trailed the herd, moving without wasted effort.
Anticipating every move of the sheep, he was right where he needed to be at each moment.
He never raised his voice and never got angry at the animals. This was the first lesson he gave
us in herding sheep and the last. A butte called the peak where wild cat stretch broke the horizon.
Closer to us a massive outcrop of sandstone humped above the flats and a wind rippled dune slid
down the side of a wash. Stiff clumps of yucca and snakeweed anchored the sandy ridges.
Riding through the dry beauty of the land, the old man kept singing to himself.
Within a few days John and I had eased into a routine. Each morning we woke up to what had become a daily ritual.
Eat! My grandmother says eat! But now we dreaded the thought of facing another breakfast.
The old woman kept serving us more food each morning.
Clumly walking to Alice's house, we sat down at the table before six pieces of fry bread,
a can of butter, a bowl of mush, a dozen eggs, and a pot of coffee.
Enough. We wanted to accommodate their customs, but we just couldn't eat anymore.
Taking only what food we needed, we left the rest untouched.
That night their son and la joe looked puzzled when we apologized for not finishing breakfast.
Suddenly he began to laugh, realizing what had been happening.
No, he said, don't feel bad. His wife had warned Alice that bellaganas had big appetites,
so she better give us plenty to eat. The first morning she served us, she thought were generous
portions. We ate everything. She was afraid she wasn't feeding us enough. So she gave us more
the next morning and more the next. Where did they put all that food she wondered?
Scott Thibany is the author of Burtwater, published by University of Arizona Press.
Stay tuned, the earth calendar is next.
Apo Close Vlogs
in northern parts of New York State in New England.
It's been a cold and damp year,
so flowering is more than a week behind its usual schedule.
One of the things I like best about the apple trees and flower in the orchard on our farm
is that each variety has its own shade of pink.
The grass seems greener than any other time of the year,
so the apple blossom stand out in particular contrast.
Over the years, we planted a variety of apples,
some for eating, some for cooking, some for keeping,
some just because they were green or yellow,
and some just to see that they would grow.
While we didn't think about it, without a variety of apples,
we wouldn't have any apples at all.
Alan Laxon, Professor of Pomology at the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station,
In Geneva, New York, explains.
The showy flowers of apple are particularly good at attracting insects,
and apple does require insect pollination.
Apples can't grow from their own pollen fertilizing their own flowers.
They have to receive pollen from another variety of apples,
so they have to be able to get pollen from a different variety,
and that pollen arrives via bees both wild and also the domestic honey bees.
Laxon says that if you plant a couple of apple trees in your yard
and are in a place where there are no other apple trees or crab apples around,
you should plant different varieties.
But in case there's any doubt in your mind about what the bee does to the apple blossom,
I asked Barton Gaffine, senior research associate in the Department of Horticultural Sciences at Cornell,
to tell us.
The female parts of the flower,
those parts are called the pistol,
and in apple, the tips of the pistol are divided into five little lobes and those are called stigma.
It's on those stigmas that pollen has to land,
and that stigma becomes a little sticky and pollen from the other variety.
Actually, in its own variety, we're likely germinate because the sugar solution in pollen greens
typically germinate in sugar solutions.
What happens is that much like in animals, we're all familiar with humans,
where a sperm cell has to travel to the egg in things like apple trees, that's not the case.
They're actually carried along as sperm nuclei.
From the place where the pollen is landed, a pollen tube germinates,
and there is a pollen tube nucleus that sort of guides the pollen tube down the stigma,
what we call the style, the tubular part of the pistol, down into the seed cavity,
to where the, what will be seeds, they're called ovules, host the egg cells.
Each one of those has an egg cell within it, and that tube is,
pushes its way down the stigma and comes into close proximity to those egg cells.
Meantime, the pollen tube has another nucleus in it called the generative nucleus,
and that will divide into two sperm nuclei.
And one of those sperm nuclei will penetrate the egg cell and cause fertilization.
And after that, we typically need that process to occur before we get apple fruit set.
While we focus on flowers and bees at this time of year,
Professor Laxos says the whole process began last summer.
So that the flowers actually begin forming in the little buds back in the, in the previous summer,
and then they continue to develop through the, through the fall,
and then in the spring they, they complete their development and actually come out
and flower about a month after the beginning of the growth of the tree,
the first little, little bits of green that you can see.
Market specialists tell us that sex helps increase interest in radio programming.
I wanted to rapsodize further on the beauty and color of the apple blossom,
but in this earth calendar we opted for an explicit description of the way apple fertilization happens,
hoping to increase environmental ratings.
The role of the bees is pretty clear, but it doesn't look as though the birds have anything to do with it.
So I guess the discussion about birds and bees can't start
in the apple orchard after all.
Thanks for listening. This is the Environment Show, and I'm Peter Burley.
This is the Environment Show, and I'm Peter Burley. Still ahead.
What hazardous chemicals are being released in your neighborhood?
The EPA gives us the new list.
Billboards are they visual pollution or constitutionally protected speech?
We'll talk green about it.
And musician Donald Mack practices his art with junk.
These stories still ahead on the Environment Show.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has just issued the latest toxic release inventory,
or TRI. The report says harmful chemical releases are down 7% from last year.
The Clean Air Act requires companies to report what toxics are being released from their plants.
This gives environmental and health authorities as well as private citizens a means of finding out
how much chemical contamination is being emitted in each neighborhood.
The latest report states that while overall releases of air toxics are going down,
the production of toxic waste is actually going up.
This year's toxic release inventory is unique, because for the first time it contains information
about an additional 286 chemicals that were not included in the past.
Lynn Goldman is assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Prevention,
Pesticides, and Toxic Substances. Her office assembles the TRI.
Well the exciting thing about this year's release is that for the first time ever,
we now have information about the 286 chemicals that we added to the toxic release inventory in 1994.
What we did is we nearly doubled the number of chemicals that are on the TRI by adding some of the
most toxic chemicals that simply had been missed during the first round.
And did you find anything that surprised you when these data were made available?
Well yes, there are some very interesting things that we found.
Which is not a surprise is that the total emissions to the air, the water, the land are continuing
to go down the downward trend that we have now observed steadily since the reporting under TRI
began. But second, what we are surprised by is the amount of the waste that is reported is
continuing to slowly go up. So that although we see emissions going down, waste is going up.
And then within that waste number, what's especially disappointing is that we're not seeing an
increase in the more responsible handling of the waste. We're not seeing the increases we would
like to see in recycling and in reuse. And a lot of the increase actually seems to be accounted
for by either burning or land disposal of the waste.
Golden says that the new chemicals on the list are hazardous and comprise a lot of risk.
The number one new chemical to be reported was nitrates. And nitrates are especially
discharged into surface water and we know that's particularly where they can be of concern either
because of affecting drinking water or affecting the environment. And another one that was the
number two of the new chemicals was in hexane. And that is a solvent that has very important
toxicity. It can be toxic to the nervous system. And so I think it's very important to know
where the significant sources of a chemical like in hexane are located.
Golden says hexane is a solvent used in both industrial and food processing applications.
The real importance of a TRI, she says, is that with the information it makes available,
communities become empowered to act. What people in the community will be able to see is exactly
who is reporting in their community. And what are they reporting in the way of releases?
How much waste are they generating? All of which is extremely important information.
If you want to decide what you can do to clean up your community.
With the expansion and publication of the toxic's release inventory, the Environmental Protection
Agency is put in motion forces to limit pollution that are driven not by administrative order,
commonly referred to as command and control, but instead by the polluters concerned about public
outrage and the risk of liability. In 1989, shortly after the TRI was first set up, Dick Mahoney,
then president and CEO of the Monsanto company, told me that even though Monsanto's toxic releases
were legal, he thought information about the quantities of hazardous substances being released
in communities where Monsanto had plants would be extremely damaging to the company.
He ordered that by 1992, Monsanto reduced by 90 percent the level of hazardous emissions which
had been generating in 1987. Monsanto spokesman Larry O'Neill, speaking from St. Louis's Missouri,
says the company met that goal and describes what required emissions reporting has done.
Well, the effect of TRI or of emissions reporting is to it acts like a spotlight and it causes a
company to step back and think about total emissions from a couple of points of view. Number one,
we recognize that the public expects continuous progress, expects fewer emissions, and when we see
our total numbers, we know that we have to move in that direction and we have been moving in that
direction. And the other effect is it caused Monsanto and other companies as well to recognize that
we've got either raw materials being emitted or going out the door, if you will, and or we have
products in the form of waste being emitted or going out the door that we need to recapture and
get some value from. And so over the last five, seven, ten years in part because of TRI,
we've been working hard to be more creative in redesigning our manufacturing processes to
release fewer emissions and to recycle and reuse whenever possible.
We're talking green and I'm your host, Peter Burley. Today we're talking about billboards. Are they
visual pollution and environmental blight or constitutionally protected property and speech
or both? If you want to get rid of billboards in your community, what can you do? We want to hear
from you. Our number is 1-888-49-Green. Joining me today is Meg McGuire. She's the president of
Scenic America, a nonprofit group based in Washington DC whose mission is to preserve and enhance the
scenic character of our nation. And Philip Gidlow, he's an attorney with a firm of white
men, an osterman, and Hannah in Albany, New York. He's the former council of New York's Department
of Environmental Conservation and in his private practice, it includes the representation of both
municipalities and outdoor advertisers. Unfortunately, the outdoor advertising association of America,
which represents the billboard industry, has refused to join us. Meg McGuire from Scenic America,
let's start with you. What kind of things is your organization doing to control billboards?
Well, Peter, we've just released a study. It's the first study that's been done in a long time
to define what the problem is. And we find that there are more than 450,000 billboards on America's
federal aid highways alone. And that five to 15,000 new billboards are going up every year.
We did a survey of all the states and this is the sort of shocking thing that we find.
We've already spent, since the Highway Beautification Act was enacted in 1965, this country has spent
$250 million removing non-conforming billboards, but they're going up faster, way faster than we're
taking them down. So we found that they're proliferating. About 23 states allow tree cutting in
front of billboards. That is public trees on public right of way to make for billboard visibility.
So you can see the billboards. So we've got trees going down in at least a thousand locations
every year. Okay, well, Phil Gettelon, from a legal point of view, why can't we just pass laws
banning billboards and be done with it? Well, Peter, the major issue that seems to get raised by
the billboard owners and advertisers is whether or not an outright ban on billboards or regulation,
impermissibly limit free speech protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
And there's been a lot of lawsuits about the subject. Commercial free speech, meaning advertising
has been found by the United States of the Court to be protected just like non-commercial free
speech, but it's a degree of protection is not as great. And the Court has made it pretty clear that
states and counties and towns can regulate commercial meaning advertising speech
if the regulation implements an important government interest and if FedEx has been recognized
as being such an interest. Yeah, there's also a property issue there. Have the billboard folk argue
that they have constitutionally protected property rights and these things?
That's right, Peter. The second issue that seems to be raised when there is a ban or regulation
on billboards is whether or not the ban or regulation takes private property without just compensation,
which is another constitutional principle under the United States Constitution.
Up here, I'd like to say that that the courts have upheld the right of municipalities to remove
billboards through what's called amortization. Letting the billboard company leave it signs up for
five, eight, twenty years. More enough to get their money back.
More enough to get their money back and then remove them, but you see on federal aid highways,
the Highway Beautification Act, the so-called Highway Beautification Act, the billboard
Proliferation Act really does not permit municipalities to take those signs down if it's on a federal
aid highway. Okay, let's go to the phones because we're going to hear a lot about that. Our number is
1-888-49 green and we're talking about billboards. So let's go to Missouri, Carl, you're talking green
on the environment show. Hi, thanks for taking my call. I'm calling from Columbia, Missouri.
And this is a very interesting program. We have an incredible problem with billboards in Missouri
under our state law, which actually complies with the Highway Beautification Act.
Billboards can be put up virtually anywhere except on residential zone property.
And one of the big problems we have is in rural and scenic areas where they can put billboards
up on unzoned property if there's a commercial activity within six or eight hundred feet of the
billboard. And so, the thing is huge gigantic double-decker billboards going up all over the beautiful
state of Missouri and we can do nothing about it. Our state law also prohibits cities from prohibiting
new billboards. So the proliferation of signs in Missouri is just unbelievable. And it's to the point
where a group has formed to actually start a petition drive to amend Missouri's constitution
to reinstate local control of billboards. Wow. Meg McGuire, does your program have any presence
in Missouri? Are you working there? Yes, we are working in Missouri. And we hope that citizen
initiative is going to be really successful. People are set up with this. Every opinion poll that's
done shows that people don't like these. They think there are enough of them up. They're tired of
having all this sky trash, all this litter on a stick, clogging up our scenery. Where the color
lives, there's a I-70. You can't drive along I-70 from Columbia, Missouri to St. Louis. You can't
be out of sight of a billboard except for one small three-mile stretch along that roadway. And in
Florida, going from the state line down to the turnpike, there are a thousand billboards in 150
miles. It's just litter on a stick. Well, Carl, it sounds like you've got quite a campaign going
and quite a problem. Meg just mentioned Florida, so I'm going to thank you for calling Carl.
And I see we have a caller from Florida. So let's pick up on bill from Florida. Bill, you're
talking green in the environment, shall we? Thank you. I'm from Jacksonville, Florida. And
10 years ago, the city of Jacksonville through a citizen's initiative, much like what Carl was
talking about in Missouri, passed a strong local law banning further construction of billboards
in this community and requiring all billboards located along non-federal roads to be removed after
a five-year amortization period. And as a result, there were some subsequent litigation with the
industry. We prevailed through various, we have settlement agreements with all the industry members.
And over a thousand billboards are coming down in our community, 500 are down now. And the ironic
thing and the thing that people just can't believe is that the billboards that we can't touch
are the reason we can't touch them is because of the highway beautification act. And it's the most
bizarre, someone just can't believe that the Lady Bird Act actually prohibits local government's
from requiring the amortization of billboards. It's unbelievable. It's a real, the amazing thing
about this too, is that this is an industry that pays no road user tolls, taxes, or fees.
So for a very small permit fee, the billboard gets its whole transmission system free.
Phil, one of the interesting issues that's been raised here is the interface between the
municipalities and the Federal Highway Act and so on. And your representation of the municipalities
dealing with this, how have they approached this or what do you say to them when they're
backed up against a federal highway that may have a separate set of rules?
Well, the way we handle the jacksville, which is the way I would advise other municipalities
and counties in this state, is basically go as far as you can, which is banning construction
anywhere and require removal of that to the local, you know, jurisdiction's choice of billboards
along non-federal roads, which they can do over a reasonable period of time. And actually,
most billboard companies recoup their investment in the first year that the billboards up five years
almost universally held to be a reasonable period of time.
Phil, Gettlin, is this interface between the municipalities and the feds of problem as you
see it from a legal perspective? Well, it's not so much an interface between the...
Let's hear from Phil Gettlin, our lawyer who's on the panel.
Well, Peter, here in New York, it certainly has been because the federal law does have this
unintended consequence, I believe, of limiting what local governments can do along interstate
highway carriages. And of course, the failure to comply with that act threatens the state's
share of federal funds for building and maintaining interstate highways. And I do think it's rather
ironic because the use of amortizations has been well recognized. It gives to the owner
a period of time to recoup cars. And during that period, the owner winds up having,
especially a monopoly because no one else can construct a billboard in that area.
So they really wind up with an economic windfall which really mitigates against the economic
consequence of a ban. Let me just say that the voters have got an opportunity to fix this federal
law and have got the opportunity to do it right now. The Senator Jeffords from Vermont,
Vermont being one of the four states that has banned billboard construction, billboard free state,
Senator Jeffords has introduced a bill, the Cini Highway Protection Act, which would allow
municipalities to take back this right, which both of the other people in the line have said,
this is a constitutional right that municipalities should have. And to stop tree cutting in front of
billboards, to end the kind of abuses in the system by enacting a gross revenue tax on this
outdoor advertising industry that's getting a completely free ride. Bill, thanks for your call and
I see that we have a call from way up a new Hampshire. Martha, you're on the air talking green
on the environment show. Yes, this is state representative Martha Fuller Clark calling from
Concert, New Hampshire. Aha, you're on the state legislature. Yes, I am. And you must deal with
this all the time. All the time. I'm the lobbyist. Do you see a lot about the advertising lobbyists?
You're jumping ahead. Well, when I was a state legislature, state legislature, they were all
over. Absolutely. And let me just say that for the last five sessions here in the New Hampshire
legislature, we have had bill after bill, which would have permitted the cutting of trees in front
of the billboards next to federal aid at highways. Despite the fact that when those permits are
granted for the New Hampshire Department of DOTs, that they reserve the right to retain the
vegetation over time. So let me understand this. This would be legislation to permit trees to be
cut down if they get them away with the billboard. That's right. That's right. Even though when the
advertising agency takes out those permits with the Department of Transportation, they agree and
sign a agreement with the Department of Transportation saying that they understand that they have no
rights to cut those trees. So they keep coming back every session with this legislation.
And what happens? And one of the biggest difficulties that we have is the outdoor advertising
industry sends in their lobbyists, if you were referring in full force, to lobby all of the 400
state reps and the 24 senators in our state. And why we have succeeded in defeating that legislation,
that margin has become narrower and narrower over time. And it does not reflect the attitudes
of the residents of New Hampshire. We have a survey that was taken in New Hampshire two years ago
showing that more than 70 percent of the residents would like to ban all billboards in New Hampshire
and fully support whatever intentions we can put in place to preserve the scenic quality of our
federal aid at highway. Let me play the devil's advocate for a moment and ask our lawyer, Phil Gettlin,
why the advertiser shouldn't have a right to have his product seen if he's got it up there and
paying to put it out so people can read it. Well, there is any question, Peter, that advertisers
have the right of free speech just like any of the rest of us. But the Supreme Court has made it
pretty clear that commercial free speech is not entitled to the same degree of protection
as non-commercial free speech. And so government is free to regulate it or ban it. If there's an
important government purpose such as aesthetics, it's what they do directly advances the interest
such as limiting or prohibiting billboards. And here's the tricky part, if the regulation or the
ban has to reach no further than it's necessary to implement that interest. And that's where a lot
of successful challenges to billboard regulation have prevailed. I see. Okay. Well, Martha, thanks for
your call and let's go to Virginia. John, you're talking green on the environment show.
Yes, I might relate to the situation we've had here in Virginia. I'm a locally elected town council
member in Virginia. We're getting a lot of local government funds. Great to hear from you.
We're concerned about economic development and the appearances are our community, so it's a problem
for us. The billboard industry in Virginia has passed session proposed legislation that would allow
the destruction of mature trees in the public right away, publicly owned trees. And also,
the issue is substantial one. I suppose it's a reflection of ecological health if the trees didn't
grow, then people wouldn't be there. I guess they don't know if trees grow, but trees in Virginia do grow
over time. But they also included a piece in this piece of legislation that would allow them to
destroy what they described as unsightly trees or ugly trees. And the legislation was portrayed
to the general assembly in Virginia as sort of a housekeeping bill. And it wasn't even made
apparent to them that they were talking big trees that were planted with public money in the
public right away and would affect non-conforming billboards and lights. And so, Nick, do you have any
advice to John about how he can fight it when it comes back? We were certainly involved in that
work. It's very helpful. They're closely with Virginia Garden Club. And who termed it the
Virginia Chainsaw Master. Exactly what it was destined to be. The Virginia Garden Club put
it was around George Washington's birthday and they took seedlings. Pine seedlings and gave
them to all the state senators and said, George Washington cut down a cherry tree and lived to regret it.
And it was very effective. People can do a lot about this issue. They can complain to their
municipal officials and say we want effective billboard control. They can contact their
representatives, their congressmen and their senators and say you can do something about this issue.
Okay. Well, I'm afraid our time is up. I want to thank you, John. This is an issue that we're
going to return to because obviously it is of a great deal of concern. Our guests have been
Meg McGuire from Scenic America and Phil Getland from the law firm of Whiteman,
Osterman, and Hannah in Albany, New York. We want to hear from you. Our number is 1-888-49-Green.
And you've been listening to Talking Green in the Environment Show. I'm your host Peter Burley.
Music
Musician Donald Mack has just released a new CD called Junk Music, where he plays everything on
garbage. He calls it the true world music because it combines two elements common to contemporary
society, music and refuse. All performances use junk like discarded bottles, lumber, newspaper
and sheet metal. This piece is called Mishmash Music. The instruments you hear include
sewer pipes, clay flower pots, and autumn veal taillights.
Musician Donald Mack has just released a new CD called Junk Music.
Musician Donald Mack has just released a new CD called Junk Music.
Musician Donald Mack has just released a new CD called Junk Music.
Musician Donald Mack has just released a new CD called Junk Music.
Musician Donald Mack has just released a new CD called Junk Music.
Musician Donald Mack has just released a new CD called Junk Music.
Mishmash Music by Donald Mack off his CD Junk Music released by the Move Group of Vermont.
Thanks for being with us on this week's Environment Show. I'm Peter Burley.
For to set copy the program called 1-888-49-Green and Ask for Show Number 387.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions which is solely responsible for
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