This is the Environment Show. It's about our stewardship of the Earth and the beauty
and mystery of life in all its forms. I'm Peter Burlite. Coming up, trash dumps which
may contaminate groundwater being closed in Massachusetts and Georgia. Can recycling
take care of the excess? We meet a scientist who is trying to find an organism to eat brown
algae before the algae killed scallops and shellfish. Environment Show advisors reflect
on 1997. How do we make policy when science is unclear? Pacific salmon may go extinct
while other wildlife are too numerous. What to do? In the Earth calendar, we participate
in the 97th annual Christmas Bird Count. It's the Environment Show.
This is the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burlite. For years, communities across the
United States have dumped trash into unlined landfills. The landfills are a source of groundwater
contamination which is a serious concern in communities which rely on well-war. Now,
state environmental officials recognize the dangers of unlined dump sites and the
Environment Show's Rachel Phillips looks at how two states are trying to get rid of them.
The good news is that states are starting to close online landfills. The bad news,
however, is that many landfills have been operating without synthetic liners and leachate
collection systems that stop contaminants from entering groundwater supplies. While newer
landfills include liner systems, the garbage in the old online fills produces leachate
and contaminants that can seat into the groundwater for years to come. Over the past four years,
Massachusetts has closed or designated for closure 98 of the 105 online landfills in
the state. The remaining online dump sites will be closed by the year 2000. State officials
say increasing recycling rates from 33 to 46 percent by the end of the decade is key
to dealing with the additional waste. Scott Cassell, director of waste policy for the Massachusetts
Department of Environmental Affairs, says technical assistance is just one way the state is encouraging
municipalities to increase recycling. We also have in our toolbox the stick approach,
which is having minimum recycling programs required for each community so that their
recyclables, excuse me, so that their trucks that would come from those communities would
not be inspected at the disposal facilities. Right now in Massachusetts, we do have a policy
of, we do have a policy that requires trucks from municipalities that do not meet
minimum recycling requirements to be inspected at the disposal facilities.
Cassell says residents are also being encouraged to take more active role in the recycling process.
Officials say the pay per bag or pay as you throw plan is the most important part of the
state's plan. It requires residents to pay for the amount of garbage they put on the
curb. The theory is that residents are more likely to recycle if they know they're saving
money. Overall, Cassell says recycling is more popular today, not only because of the
positive environmental effects, but because it's created 12,000 new jobs in Massachusetts,
which helps the economy. Like Massachusetts, Georgia is also in the process of closing
online landfills. Approximately 43 such sites are expected to be closed by July 1.
Jim Dunbar, program manager of the Solid Waste Program of Georgia's Environmental Protection
Division, says the status had two cases of low-level contamination and residential water
wells located near online landfills. In Georgia, we didn't start permitting and they
were not constructed land, we're not constructed land land, land, landfills until the late 80s.
And all of those landfills that were permitted and built before the late 80s are unlined.
They are much less, the unlined landfills are much less protective of the groundwater
than the line landfills. We have water monitoring data from the unlined landfills that we have
in the state and some of those are contaminating in low-level contamination, groundwater
and well to round the sides.
Dunbar says no groundwater contamination has been reported near the state's lined landfills.
Lehman Scott, director of waste management with Georgia's Department of Community Affairs,
says Georgia has enough lined landfills to handle the state's waste for years to come. Nonetheless,
state officials are helping to improve recycling efforts at the local level, which slows
the rate at which trash is put underground. Scott says a number of programs are being offered
to localities.
We do a lot of planning systems and technical systems. We do assist local governments with
starting programs with enhancing existing programs. We also help them find markets for the
materials that they'll be collecting. We maintain an active or current directory of recycling
markets in the state. Where can you take your glass? Where can you take your plastic? Based
on where you're located within the state of Georgia. We also do a lot of information
and contact sharing and case studies with these local governments.
Georgia is also offering training programs for local recycling coordinators, as well as
implementing its own pay-as-you-throw system. Currently about 32 percent of the waste material
produced in Georgia is recycled. A figure state officials hope will increase without
placing mandates on localities. While officials have not set a recycling
right goal, they are hoping these volunteer programs will be successful and subsequently
improve recycling across the state. However, such programs often need adequate funding
in order to be effective. Georgia state legislature provided $5 million to help increase recycling
efforts in the state, which isn't much considering the state's size. But Lehman Scott
remains optimistic. I think it will make a difference. I don't know if the numbers of
percent recycling rate will bear it out. But I think some of the programs that we have invested
in are very positive and I think it will make a difference on the local level as to the availability
of recycling and waste reduction efforts and to just the knowledge that the average citizen
has about waste issues. That's part of our overall program is public education. Scott says 1997 was
the first time a significant amount of money was spent on recycling, but admits he doesn't expect
Georgia's legislators to include additional funding for recycling programs in the next fiscal year.
For the Environment Show, I'm Rachel Phillips.
As we recently reported on the Environment Show, red tides in the oceans caused by algae have been
around for millions of years, while most algal blooms are relatively harmless, a few dozen are toxic
and can kill marine life as well as humans. A little over a decade ago, a new algae appeared in the
sea, it's brown. This brown tide is severely impacting both marine environments in the northeast
and many people who depend on the ocean. The Environment Show Stephen Westcott reports on one
scientist's search for answers. The algae recently causing problems along the northeastern
Atlantic coastline is known as Oryokakis-Anifagephrens. The, yeah, that organism is, it is a cause of a
problem called brown tides that's typically where you hear it referred to. The brown algae is a very
wide large group of algae contains many many species. This particular one is an organism that has
actually caused tremendous problems on, well since 1985, they had a massive bloom in the
insure waters of Long Island and also in a significant part of Narragansett Bay. Since then, they've
had recurring brown tides, not every year, but frequently in bays of Long Island, specifically the
Poconic Bay System, which is a large bay system, the eastern part of the island, and the Great South
Bay System, Chinacac Maritius Bay, which is most of the southern lagoonal systems. That's Dr. David
Karen, senior scientist in the biology department at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod.
Oryokakis-Anifagephrens in essence means small golden cell, causing organisms to stop feeding,
muscles and scallops obtain food by filtering ocean water. Oryokakis enters the shellfish and in
high concentrations can prohibit them from feeding, which starves the animals to death. The
algae has the ability to multiply rapidly, reaching levels of a million or so in very small amounts of
water, according to Dr. Karen. Now when it does that, it actually has the effect of blocking out a
lot of the sun. This Oryokakis itself actually does have the ability to grow fairly well at very
low light conditions, which means it can make the water turbid, and it can still do fairly well.
Unfortunately for things like eelgrass at the bottom, it's the kiss of death. It actually cuts
out enough of the light at high abundances of this little brown tide organism that it shades the
organisms on the bottom, particularly eelgrass, and basically prevents it from being able to
photosynthesize and grow. When it dies, it actually is, the eelgrass is a habitat for things such as
scallops. So when their habitat goes essentially, they go. While there were some smaller blooms this
past year, the two largest blooms occurred in 1985 when the algae first bloomed and in 1995.
During those years, Long Island scallop fishers lost millions of dollars not to mention the
effects on tourism, recreation, and real estate. A number of theories have been suggested as to the
cause of brown tide. Some speculated stew to pesticides, fertilizers, industrial waste, or a
combination of everything, man is putting into the waterways. Karen says, increasing levels of
nitrogen and phosphorus, also known as nutrient enrichment, has something to do with the blooms.
But he says there's more to it than that. Karen believes the answer lies in the relationships
between the various phytoplankton. In order to get them to grow and form a bloom, they have to
actually be enriched. They have to be growing. But in order for them to reach bloom proportions,
in order for their abundance to increase, they essentially can't be removed from the system. In
other words, we feel that it is the predator-pray relationships in the water that have a large part
to do with who wins the competition. Because if you have two organisms that are growing very rapidly,
then only one of them, if only one of them is predated on and the other is not, that one that
is predated on will not build up to high concentrations. Karen has also theorized that the overfishing
of shellfish is contributing to brown tides. Since fewer scallops and muscles are there to filter
the water, there may be an overabundance of some microorganisms like oriacoccus, which can out
compete others under the right conditions. There's also some question as to whether oriacoccus was
native to the northeastern coastline or whether it came from somewhere else. Besides understanding
why such blooms are occurring, Dr. Karen is also trying to determine whether other organisms can
help stop brown tides after they begin. We call them enrichment cultures. What we're doing is we're
providing the food for the predators that we want to see grow up in that system. So we actually,
we have cultures of the brown tide alga in the laboratory and we add cultures of this organism
to these water samples until the natural predators in the system grow up until they increase their
population abundances. Then under the microscope, we actually go in and we pick out individual organisms
and we grow them as cultures. From then on, we have a pure culture of this organism.
And what we have been doing lately in the laboratory is to run tests to find out if once
those cultures are grown, they can continue to grow rapidly on the brown tide organism.
And in fact in doing that, we've found a number of organisms that are capable, at least in the
laboratory of consuming this alga at very rapid rates. So far, three predators have been identified
as possible contenders of the brown alga, but testing these predator prey relationships in a
laboratory and in the field are two different things, which Dr. Karen continues to research.
But in general, he believes a lot of progress has been made in understanding brown tides
in a very short amount of time. Karen emphasizes while there is a greater awareness of the impacts
man is having on marine environments, better management is needed especially in the areas of land use
and ocean dumping. For the Environment Show, I'm Stephen Westcott.
You're listening to the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burlin. The Environment Show is made
possible by the W. Walton Jones Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Turner Foundation,
the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the Oliver S. and Jenny R. Donaldson Charitable Trust,
the William Bingham Foundation and Heming's Motor News, the monthly Bible of the collector
Carhabi, 1-800-C-A-R-H-E-R-E.
The Environment Show wants to hear from you. Give us a call. Our phone number is 1-888-49-Green.
You can also reach us by email at green at wamc.org. That's green at wamc.org.
You're listening to the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burlin. The show has a distinguished
board of advisors who share council wisdom and contacts with us throughout the year.
annually as the new year begins we ask them to assess what has happened and what lies ahead.
Advisory council member Brewster Denny is professor and former dean of the School of Public
Administration at the University of Washington in Seattle. He's concerned about environmental
policy and the role of science. Well I think the big thing we face is the number of basic issues,
not only environmental but all of the heavy environmental content that are very science dependent
in nature. That is judgments have to be made now about things and actions taken now about things
that science predicts not always with great certainty will be real problems in the future if we
don't do something now. Close to home, Seattle resident Denny believes the future of the King's
salmon is a big issue. I sit here on the banks of the Pacific Ocean and we are about to lose.
We will lose the great salmon. They're on their way out. They are becoming extinct. They will
shortly run the prime species salmon the one we call King will rightly be gone and be certainly
soon be declared as a endangered species and it takes a lot of guts to deal with it. We have a new
fisheries director in this state of Washington who has real courage. He says well we may have to
stop fishing. We certainly have to stop farm fishing if we can. We have to stop it over the world
in order to save our fish and we will have to greatly reduce hatchery the dependence on hatchery
fisheries if we are going to save these great wild salmon runs which are one of the most wonderful
things the Lord ever gave us. Bruce Judenny is professor and former dean of the School of Public
Administration at the University of Washington. Advisory council member Mike Robbins,
former editor of Audubon magazine is also concerned about human activity and wildlife but from a
different perspective. Specifically how we share space with wildlife species that are increasing
such as bison coyotes, white tail deer and snow geese. One of the things that struck me as being
major importance to environmentalists was the the issue of wild nature and really coming up as an
issue of how we are going to live with it. I am thinking of the situation in Yellowstone last winter
when a surfeit of bison in the wrong place for the bison as it turned out wrong place for the
ranchers resulted in over a thousand bison being slaughtered much to the dismay not only of the
bison but of environmentalists and nature lovers everywhere I think. That is a situation that
points up a larger situation in my mind that emerged last year which is a kind of imbalance in our
terms of wildlife. We have long I think wrestled with the idea of the threats to endangered species
and so on and haven't given much thought to the issue of what happens if we succeed.
So where does this take us Mike? Well here we are the critters are coming back and now we can't handle
them. Well that's the now what are we doing? Now what do we do indeed? We've got to develop some
solutions that do not rest in my view that do not rest on traditional means of reducing the numbers
which largely come down to shooting them. That is to say either allowing hunting seasons to be
lengthened or the numbers of animals that can be taken increased. I don't think the public,
the number of hunters and the percentage of the population that's engaging in hunting is declining.
And in my view I think part of the collision here is that the public support for hunting is declining.
I think there's going to be increasing pressure. I think we saw this for the first time in 1997
with another animal, the snow goose where there's going to be increasing pressure for a solution other
than simply blasting them out of the sky. That was an environment show advisor Mike Robbins,
former editor of Audubon Magazine.
And now it's time for the earth calendar. In the last couple of weeks about 42,000 Americans
took part in approximately 1700 bird counts around the United States. This year marked the 97th
consecutive annual Christmas bird count which is organized by the National Audubon Society. One
count was held along the Hudson River near Constitution Mars sanctuary located about an hour north
of New York City. National Audubon operates the sanctuary and Jim Rod is the manager. At the end
of the day we tallied with all the groups in the field and it turned out there were about 40 of us
out in that 15 mile circle. We tallied a total of 73 species and that was low. Our average is 79
and our high which actually was last year was 82 species. And we think it was the warm weather
frankly. You should know there was no snow cover at all which meant that food supplies were really
abundant. So birds did not flock into food sources and with no snow in the ground some of the
smaller things are harder to see. We had good numbers of ducks, a lot of ready ducks, a lot of hooded
mergansers, a lot of mallards and black ducks because so much of the water was open. But other birds
were down. In fact the bald eagle that we saw at Constitution Mars that morning was the only one
seen by any of the groups that day. Rod attributes the few sightings of bald eagles to warm temperatures.
He believes the eagles will migrate south as rivers and lakes in the Adirondex freeze as the
winter progresses. Meantime Rod says there are plenty of other species which stay around for the
colder months. It's always surprising people when these lists are published to learn that numbers
of blue birds and robins stick around this area in the winter time. And we had I think 43 blue birds
altogether some in our area but pretty well scattered out through the other areas as well.
And quite a few robins. The robins are considered half-hardy which means many of them will stick around
in the winter time. And often the first robins people see in the spring aren't really new migrants
their birds that have been here all winter. And as long as they can find berries and a little bit of
open water to drink they'll stick around. We did not have numbers of the so-called winter
finches. We had no evening grow speaks we had no pine grow speaks but there were a lot of red
poles that came down. I think we had nearly 400 red poles and this is supposed to be a year of
invading winter finches but they haven't come in any numbers to Putnam County at least yet.
Again probably a function of the warm winter weather that's reaching clear up into Canada.
Hermit Thrusches Carolina Rens Cardinals as well as Herian Downey Woodpeckers were also spotted
along the Hudson River. Autobahn's Christmas Bird Count began in 1900 when Ornithologist Frank
Chapman decided to see how many birds could be counted on Christmas Day as an alternative to
the custom of shooting as many birds as possible on that day. Records of all the counts are on file
in the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. Counting parties gather in groups and cover a 15-mile
diameter circle. Again Jim Rodd. But the Autobahn Christmas Bird Count is really the largest citizen
science participation project that goes on anywhere in the country or anywhere in the world for
that matter. And the value of the information we get from the Christmas Count comes into fact
that they have gone on for so long. The first counts began in 1900 so for 97 years in some areas
of the country people have been gathering systematic data. They go out on essentially the same date
each winter cover exactly the same ground and as we get years and decades of information we can
see population trends in many birds. One year taken by itself means nothing statistically. Now my
wife in fact is a statistics professor and she's taught me that you need many years of data but
but on these Christmas counts many of them have taken place for over 50 years in the same area.
And we have terrific information we can see fluctuations in wintering water file numbers,
bald eagles and virtually any other species. Rodd says counts even a current metropolitan areas
such as the Bronx in New York City where avid birders gather to tally the various species.
It's still unclear whether these bird watchers spotted any strange birds which are sometimes found
in urban areas. Strange birds are tough to see though. They come in various sizes and shapes.
They lack feathers and who knows they may be us. Thanks for listening this is the Environment
Show and I'm Peter Burley.
you're listening to the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burley.
Still ahead. An expanding world market for lumber is putting new pressure on Mexican forests.
In the second of a series we hear from Mexicans who say a lot of what is happening is outside the law.
We talk green about private property, community rights and environmental protection.
And author David Nolan takes us for a riverboat ride in Borneo. Stay with us.
Recently Mexico announced that it is launching a $385 million tourism project to attract people
to an 8,000 square mile forest area near Chihuahua. Environmentalosphere that the construction of
roads and lodges will severely disrupt the wooded area and the lifestyle of a 6,000 year old tribe.
But the bigger threat to Mexican forests is trade in logs and lumber.
Restrictions in US forests are causing some lumber companies to go to Mexico for wood with many trees
being harvested illegally. In this report Kent Patterson examined some regulatory issues that
have grown out of the expanding Mexican lumber trade.
At the center today subwörter crossing in southern Mexico, a fourth lift moves lumber back onto a truck.
In the last two years, lumber shipments from Mexico have become an important commodity here.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, shipments in 1997 were running more than double
1996 figure, increasing to more than 20,500,000 board feet.
Sharon O'Neal is a public affairs officer with the US Department of Agriculture Aifus.
Okay, what you're looking at here is rough cut pine lumber.
Okay, you can still see some of the bark on it. See the bark up there?
And these are not cut to dimension. Rough cut means that this lumber will go to a US mill and be finished.
Okay, then it'll turn into real boards.
The wood passing through Santa Cadeza is sold as moldings or firewood in places such as Colorado,
where a $25 port of wood can reportedly fetch more than $200.
According to Sharon O'Neal, changing political and economic circumstances are behind the trade.
We never traditionally imported lumber.
Into the United States from foreign sources.
And when we did, it was through Canada.
So Canadian stuff was about the same as our own stuff.
However, we've had certain issues that happened since 1990.
One is the environmental issues that are occurring in the Pacific Northwest.
And also the issue of who's going to log US public lands?
Are we going to leave them alone?
Are we going to harvest the resources?
What are we going to do?
That is kind of put a lot of stops on to domestic lumber production.
So therefore, other lumber in order to maintain our mills and
our domestic production is actually being augmented by foreign imports.
Still, the trade cuts both ways.
US wood and paper exports to Mexico actually grew during this period.
For instance, according to the Global Trade Information Service,
the value of these exports leaped from $487 million in 1993 to $557 million in 1995.
And in some cases, raw wood from the US is shipped to Mexico to be processed and then sent back
as a finished product. Specific products are finding their own niches in an increasingly integrated
economy. Maria Teresa Guerrero is an organizer with the Chihuahua Commission in Solidarity and
Defense of Human Rights, a non-profit group active around environmental and indigenous issues.
We know that the paper industry is a very important industry.
Everything we do is with paper. We write and read with paper. We need to tackle the problem of
paper production in terms of the conservation of the world's forests and the possibility of
having a less devastating production. The success of the non-governmental environmental
organizations in the United States shouldn't be the loss of the indigenous Mexicans.
This is the ethical problem that's in the background.
Some Mexican authorities estimate that more than half of their countries would
is cut without the proper authorization. This illicit business was one impetus for the passage
of Mexico's 1997 Forestry Law. Officials say the law will help curb the contraband by
empowering the environmental attorney general to demand permits from truckers hauling logs.
Ingenier Leon Aliglezias is responsible for coordinating the government's national
institute of forestry research in northern Mexico.
Article 20 of the forest law was modified and is now facilitating the control of
wood transportation on the highways by means of a required documentation. Under previous
modifications of the law in 1994, transporters weren't required to have documentation to show the
authorities. Now with the modifications of the law on May 20 of 1997, transporters are once again
required to have documentation. The document will have to disclose the origin and destination of the
wood and the forest plot not only a hilo from where it came. Also, the wood will have to be marked
in some way. The big question will be enforcement of the new law. In many instances, government
offices are located hours away from the logging areas and personnel are not regularly stationed in
the mountains. According to Iglesias, Mexico's environmental attorney general is in the process
of forming volunteer civilian committees to monitor wood shipments. But some representatives
of landowners groups in Chihuahua and Gadado say the timber vigilante committees have been slow to
start up. Meanwhile, Mexican timber and wood products continue arriving in the United States.
Everything from Ponderosa pine logs to toothpicks to San Mahogany.
Commodities are even entering the country in such unlikely places as Mobile, Alabama and Buffalo,
New York. I'm Kent Patterson reporting.
We're talking green and I'm Peter Burley. Today, we're talking about property rights and the
movement to change our laws so interests of property owners receive higher priority. Disputes
about where private property interests end and community interests begin have been prevalent
through the development of our laws concerning the environment. For example, some property owners
say that laws that stop them from filling in a wetland violate their private property rights.
Others who defend the community interests say filling in the wetland may cause flooding of
downstream property. Therefore, it's reasonable to restrict the private property owner to protect
the interests of the neighbor as well as the entire community. So the question is, do our environmental
laws restrict private property rights unfairly? I have two experts with me who see the issues somewhat
differently. One is John Achevoreo. He's an environmental law professor at Georgetown University in
Washington, D.C. He has litigated and written about this issue for many years on behalf of environmental
causes. Also with us is Grant Mazden and he is the director of communications for defenders of
property rights also in Washington. So Grant, let's start with you. What's wrong with
restricting private property rights to protect the entire community? Well, it's a good question and
it depends not just whether the regulation itself, well, there are two issues that maybe to be
addressed. One is whether the regulation itself goes too far and acts in a way that is
denies all property rights for the property owner and the other one is how it's actually implemented.
So in the example you said at the very beginning, it may not in fact violate a property right
per se when the government precludes someone from filling in a wetland but the way it is implemented
may in fact violate the person's right and especially in the sense that in many cases that could
deny the property owner all useful or productive use of the land and that in fact would be according
to the Supreme Court a taking of the land in which case here the community shouldn't be prevented from
doing protecting itself but it should in fact pay compensation and if the community refuses to
pay compensation that would be unconstitutional. But if it does in fact pay restitution then it would
be constitutional. And this I guess is where the real rub comes out. John Cheverev from Georgetown
you have struggled and I know lobby to hard in the Congress about proposals which would require
the government to pay compensation to private property owners that I know that you believe has been
much too extreme. What has that been all about? Now the Congress has considered a variety of
legislative proposals all of which are designed to create a fast track to the courts for developers
seeking to get the public to pay them not to do what they want with their property. I'm happy to
report that today at least Congress has uniformly rejected all those proposals. We like to say that
more people understand the taking of the property rights issue the less they like it.
Grant started off by saying that the whole issue doesn't have to do with whether
the government can do anything but whether or not it has to pay as a condition doing that. And
it seems to me that's a real red herring because if you have to pay in order to carry out a public
objective it's obviously going to be a lot harder to do that and the proponents of this legislation
know certainly well that if we have to pay to preserve our communities it's going to be a lot harder
to do that. Grant do you believe that there should be much more payment going on now to bring about
those or implement those laws that we now have in the books that detect the environment?
Yeah definitely and I think that maybe in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes that there's
no disputing that a lot of the environmental legislation that is on the books has a noble objective.
The question is though whether it's in many cases we haven't taken a constitutional or a shortcut
that a way goes against the Constitution and so I think that the only fair thing to do is to
pay people when in fact their property has been for all intents and purposes taken from them.
Not to do so would be unconstitutional. Now in fact I think John has a good point and that is it
may make certain regulations more difficult and that needs to be weighed in the in the consideration
of all these bills but on you know in the long run we think that it's probably better to
follow the Constitution stringently and and let that be the the top priority and everything else
sort of follows after that. Well before we get into the Constitution Grant let me ask you a question.
For many years I lived in an apartment house in New York City. It was a cooperative which meant that
all the owners owned it. There was a zoning change which said that the apartment house couldn't
go any higher than it was at the time which was 15 stories so in fact the owners lost the
opportunity to go from 15 stories to say 40. Should we have been paid when they made that zoning
change? Not necessarily and that gets into the specifics of that of your situation and what
sort of understanding existed at the time when the when the property was purchased and those sorts
of things. It's not the point is not that government can't regulate and the zoning can't take
place and so on. That issue is and the court has created several standards by which to judge whether
a taking has in fact taken place and and and they're you know it's a series of tests and I think
that in general terms without going through all the very specifics of zoning and then environmental
regulation and historic preservation and so on I think that in general terms the way
our organization feels is that we probably ought to make it easier for property owners to in fact
get access to the courts to in fact get compensation when the court feels that a violation of the
constitution has taken place and so on. So John, how do you line up on that? What I hear
Grant saying is sounds like more litigation to me. Well I think the legislation his group
proposed would plead to more litigation. I think that the key here is to find a balance and the
starting place in getting to a balanced result is to recognize that there are tens of millions of
property owners in this country and some of them are developers and some of them are in other
kinds of landowners but the overwhelming majority of landowners in this country are homeowners.
The 65 million homeowners and I don't know about the two of you but but my largest single asset
is my family home and I have a strong interest in property rights and I certainly want to protect
the value of my investment in my home like every other homeowner but that depends on enforcing
reasonable regulations that protect the quality of the environment that prevents somebody upwind,
upslope, upriver from me from doing something that adversely affects the quality of my environment.
I think of the increased butterfield, a woman from statesboro, Georgia who bought a home in a
subdivision. When she bought it she was assured by the developer that the wetlands behind the
property, the Cypress swamp behind her property was protected by the Clean Water Act and therefore
it wasn't going to be destroyed. She paid a price that reflected the fact that she had that land
behind her. A couple years later the developer went ahead and filled in the property. In fact,
it did so illegally with the result that her property was then flooded and I think people like
the Tree's Butterfield deserve the protection of their property rights just as much as any other
property owner and what's necessary is a mechanism to achieve a balance and that's what we have
in this country and groups like defenders of property rights in high view really are now
the best interest of most property owners but instead are promoted to the interest of very narrow
set of property owners, primarily developers who don't have the best interest of existing homeowners
at heart. Grant, what about that? The whole matter is fine. The kind of protection that
John is talking about? Yeah, I think that he's actually there are two things that I sort of have to
address that he said. The first is I couldn't agree more that the individual homeowner is the kind
of person who is most affected by this sort of thing. I'd like to tell sort of a story of Bob
and Mary McMac and a couple that we represented who very similar to the people that John talked about,
bought a home from the Polkinoes, followed all the rules applied for all the permits, got everything,
everything was fine and four years after they'd moved into, they built their home, they'd moved
in, lived there for a couple of years and suddenly they get a letter in the mail that says essentially
cease and desist, your land has been deemed a wetland and we need you to stop mowing your lawn
and doing all the other things that a homeowner does. Those are the kinds, that's maybe a situation
that's more pertinent to what our group does. I think that he's not quite, I mean I feel like I can
better say the kind of, or people we represent and this is the kind of person we're present. I don't
think it's specifically developers or so on. Let me ask you about that particular instance.
If it were determined that by doing things on that wetland, those folks were then putting in danger
the folk downstream, isn't it appropriate to bring regulations to bear with respect to bear property?
Absolutely, yeah that's exactly the point I've been trying to know.
But aren't you saying that they need to be paid not to damage the guy downstream?
Well to a certain extent, in the sense that it's not just the guy downstream, it's the public at large
that is benefiting. I think the courts have been fairly clear that you can't single out individuals
or small groups to pay solely for what benefits the public at large. In that sense, yeah I think
that some sort of conversation, or if we could come up with even a policy solution that allowed
people to work together rather than simply saying, Too bad you happen to live on a wetland,
you lose all value of your land and everybody else benefits. Instead of having always go that
approach and instead come up with different ways of mitigating or allowing for some sort of
negotiation, I think that that would be a vast improvement over the essentially coercive
methods that have been used up to date. John, at Cheverea, having everybody sit around the table
and agreeing and living happily ever after sounds reasonable, why isn't that happening?
That's our goal and I think that the taking proposal actually interferes with that.
That the choice here seems to me is between having the city council, having the selectman sit down
and work out the kinds of rules and regulations the community needs to live by.
The constitution has a taking clause that has a Fifth Amendment but also starts out we the people
and the notion is that through the democratic process we the people are permitted to establish
rules that protect our communities and my concern is that the whole taking is agenda. Basically
says that we can as a community sit down and declare that we need greater protection for our
welllands. We need greater protection for the historic districts in our communities. We need to
be able to put a limitation on a height of Peter Burle's apartment building. It seems to me that
is what our government process is all about and that's entirely legitimate and it's consistent
with democratic values. The choice is between having developers use the courts to manage our
communities or to have our elected representatives manage our communities and I'm not sure either one
is entirely ideal but I'd much rather put my confidence in our elected representatives
than outside developers. Let me ask you both something. We have been discussing this in very
specific terms as it relates to the homeowner but indeed there has been a series of bills in fact
one that wound up at the end of the last session of Congress that in effect would put a lot of these
issues into the courts more rapidly. In a society that worries about whether it's getting over
litigious or are we about to become even more so? Grat what do you think? Well you know I think it's
a good question I think it's a good question worth considering. I think that maybe in general terms
and I can pick up where John left off you know it's not quite so simple as communities versus rich
developers and these particular bills you're talking about address specifically that point which is
if you are a small homeowner you know the kind of people that make up the vast majority of private
property owners. You want to have a quicker a speedier court process in case there is conflict
because you don't have the money to spend to see a lot of these issues through all of the loops
and things you have to go through in order to finally get a resolution of your dispute.
And so I think the vast majority of the motivation behind the kinds of legislative initiatives
we're seeing right now is sparked by the fact that individuals who don't have deep pockets are
finding it essentially impossible to ever come to a resolution. Okay I'm going to ask John to
sum up quickly because our time is almost up. Well the legislation that you're referring to was
was written for by and on behalf of the development community homeowners don't need people who want
to buy homes who want to use small pieces of property don't you just need more litigation opportunities
what they need is reasonable governmental procedures and this taking agenda is not a way to achieve that.
All right well I want to thank you both we've been discussing private property rights and the
environment we've been talking green we want to know what you think our number is 1-888-49 green
and my guests have been John Achevarea who is an environmental law professor at Georgetown
and Grant Mazin who is director of communications for defenders of property rights again we've been
talking green and I'm Peter Burling. We're going to be talking green about wolves and their
reintroduction if you want to participate call 1-888-49 green and leave us your phone number you can
also reach us by email anytime it's green at wamc.org
you're listening to the environment show and I'm Peter Burling we all have places that are special to
us for some it's a city street for others it's deep in the wilderness for author David Noland it's
experiencing the day-to-day life along an active river in Borneo in this portrait Noland reads
a passage from his book titled Travels Along the Edge 40 ultimate adventures for the modern
nomad from crossing the Sahara to bicycling through Vietnam Borneo is a place where you can gaze
into the eyes of an orangutan climb the highest mountain in Southeast Asia crouch beside a sea
turtle once you laser eggs in the sand or sniff the stench of two million bats in a cave the size
of a blimp hanger but to know the heart and soul of Borneo you must make a journey by riverboat
roads are strictly a coastal phenomenon on this island of mountains and jungle the mere
motorist can only nibble around the edges to the people of the interior it is the rivers that are
the lifelines of commerce and society in the heart of Borneo there was no north and south no
east and west there was only upriver and downriver we traveled in a motorized longboat only one
evolutionary step above a hollowed out log long as the stretch limo it was just wide enough to accept
one set of 50th percentile American buttocks we sat on the floor like a six-man bobsled team as
the water rushed by our elbows there was a crew of two the bowman stood at the front signaling the
helmsman the bearing in distance of onrushing rocks and logs just in case he carried a bamboo
pole to fend them off the skippers stood in the stern scanning the river ahead and jockeying
the throttle of a thirty horse power Yamaha outboard in shallow water the helmsman employed
a rather odd procedure over and over he rammed the throttle back and forth between idle and full
throttle every two or three seconds it made for a jerky annoying ride and it seemed to me waste a
lot of fuel and these guys didn't look like they could afford to waste much fuel turns out of
course there was a very good reason for all this throttle jockeying in the shallow rocky waters
this far upstream propeller repair costs happened to be the major operating expense if we hit a rock
there was a fifty-fifty chance that the propeller would be idling at the moment of impact and would
therefore not break off propeller repair costs are thus cut by half in addition to their canny
economic sense the Borneo Riverman have a remarkable resourcefulness we saw an example of this
one evening while lounging on the river bank in the small river town of Mulu a bit further downstream
two young men hooding and hollering and youthful exuberance sped past in a long boat much like
hours crossing another boat's wake the driver made a sudden swerve just for the hell of it
the maneuver caused the insufficiently attached outboard motor to fly off the stern and disappear
in a geyser of spray the engineless craft propelled only by its momentum continued to glide down
the river in utter silence a silence that was broken by the convulsive laughter of village
onlookers even before the boat had stopped a modern-day american suffering such a mishap would
have paddled a shore and immediately called his insurance agent and perhaps his lawyer in order
to sue the outboard manufacturer for the defective design of the motor mount but things worked differently
in Borneo within two or three minutes a half dozen long boats and twenty-five excited men and boys
had converged on the spot where the motor had disappeared they began diving overboard in the
muddy fifteen foot deep water each keen to be the first to find the sunken treasure within ten
minutes the motor had been located hauled up with a rope and taken a shore twenty minutes after
that the same two young men sped by in the same boat its resuscitated motor humming smoothly at full
throttle as they disappeared around the bend they were hooting and hollering still that was
authored david noland reading from his book travels along the edge forty all of it adventures for
the modern no-band from crossing the Sahara to bicycling through vietnans it's published by vintage books
and
thanks for being with us on this week's environment show i'm peter berlet
if you want to make soup out of brown algae you need a copy of the tape call one eight eight eight
forty nine green and order show number four nineteen the environment show is a national
production which is solely responsible for its content Alan shartock is executive producer
producers are Rachel Phillips and Stephen Westcott the environment shows made possible by the W.
Alton Jones Foundation the Packard Foundation the Turner Foundation the Oliver S and Jenny R.
Donaldson Charitable Trust the William Bingham Foundation in Heming's motor news the monthly
Bible of the collector car hobby one eight hundred C-A-R H-E-R-E funding for coverage of the
Mexico forest is provided by the fund for investigative journalism and the k un amp producers fund
be good to the earth and join us next week for the environment show
