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 Burley.
Coming up. Before transcontinental pipelines, almost every city had a gas plant which made gas from coal. The plants are now gone, but we're discovering they left bad things behind.
Landsfaw's paper company operates a certified mill using certified wood to make certified chlorine-free paper. It's the first in the country to do it. We visit the plant.
Timberwars are spreading from the northwest to the southeast, a citizen's group that dogwood alliance battles chipmills.
And on the Earth calendar, the Leonid Meteor Show will soon be upon us. These stories and more coming up on the Environment Show.
You're listening to the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burley. Many communities are now finding pollution problems they never knew they had. They stem from the days when every city had its own gas plant.
Before natural gas was easily available all across the country as it is now by virtue of a national pipeline system, the only way that one could have gas for lighting or heating or cooking was if you made it. If you actually manufactured the gas, there were a few places where natural gas was locally available.
In almost all of the country, you had to rely upon manufactured gas plants. And what these plants did was to take coal or coke or petroleum and through an industrial process make that solid or liquid fuel into a gas.
And the difficulty that that process created was the byproducts. In many cases, those byproducts were not disposed of properly. These are tar and oils that were released to sewers or to the ground. Many of them toxic and carcinogenic.
That was attorney Clifford Case, a partner in the New York City law firm Carter led you to Millborne. He has secured a $20 million jury verdict against the Central Hudson Gas and Electric Company for the City of Newburg, New York, which found toxic residue from an old gas plant had seeped under city property.
In many cases, the contamination that came from these plants disappeared in quote unquote into the ground. And what happened afterwards nobody knew about for some time. And that was certainly the case in the city of Newburg where I worked on a manufactured gas plant lawsuit.
What happened there was that the city of Newburg in 1994 began work on an expansion to its wastewater treatment plant down on the banks of the Hudson River.
And when they did their initial excavations, they found in the hole a large amount of tarry oily material which was giving off very strong odors and created a burning sensation on the face.
And in the mouths of the people who were working there and so work stopped obviously. And it turned out that that was the residue from gas manufacturing operations which had taken place uphill from the city's wastewater treatment plant and the Hudson River.
Jim Cummings, who works for the Technology Innovation Office of the US Environmental Protection Agency, says there are a huge number of these sites around the United States.
Well, the manufactured gas plants were situated all around the country. There are an estimated 3500 of these sites however estimates range as high as 50,000 in the early days from 1850 probably to the 1950s.
No self-respecting community in America was without its own manufactured gas plant. For example, Skokie, Illinois, New York had nothing on small communities like Skokie, Illinois because the city fathers were bound to determine that their cities were going to be in the city.
Like Newberg, some communities are finding substantial quantities of coal tar soaked soil well below the surface of the old plant sites. Sometimes this can be excavated and put to use. Again, Jim Cummings from EPA.
In general, I believe that many of these cases, it may be possible to actually, adequately recycle the material into further streams of commerce, much as the material was done when the manufactured gas plants were in operation.
If I might, I'd provide one example, one of our national priority list sites in Utah reprocessed approximately 20,000 tons of MGP waste into 200,000 tons of pretty high quality asphalt through a cold mix asphalt batching process.
There is another waste product of the old gas plant that is not easy to deal with. Rick Gas, a partner in the Milwaukee Law firm of Cravitt Gas, Hubble and Lighter won a 104.5 million dollar verdict against the local utility. It had disposed of waste which resulted from the process by which manufactured gas was purified.
The way these companies would take the poisons that were in the manufactured gas out of the gas before it went into the means to go to the houses and the factories in the city.
They knew that they had cyanide sulfur and other poisonous compounds in that gas and they had to take it out.
So they would push it through a box, a concrete or a steel box that had a combination of wood chips and steel filings in them.
And there would be a reaction between the steel filings and the cyanide and the sulfur and it would come out of the gas, stick to the iron filings, and then periodically they'd have to get rid of the cyanide-laced wood chips and steel filings.
The lawsuit, Attorney Rick Gas brought, stemmed from the fact that the utility dumped the contaminated wood chips in wetlands for fill.
And when it was then uncovered, 35 years later when this was discovered because the wind and the rain had slowly etched away the soil and exposed it to the elements, it actually had a blue plume running off of it and into one of the creeks in the area.
And that's how it was discovered. But when they opened it up, 35 years later and this stuff was exposed to sunlight in the ultraviolet rays, it began bubbling, just like a witch's cauldron.
Rick Gas believes there may be 30 to 100 gas plant cases filed a year.
The pollution now being discovered from the thousands of extinct gas plants presents problems for the environment as well as the utilities.
For example, the consumer's power corporation in a 10k filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission estimates that it may face liabilities between $48 and $98 million for investigation and clean up of 23 sites.
And the PSE&G, a New Jersey utility, reports that remediation could cost up to $20 million a year and that could be material to its financial condition.
In Northern New York State, there's a small paper company making history.
It's leading competitors in the transition to certification and is set the standards by which other paper producers may soon follow.
Frequently in the Environment Show, you hear us mention certification, a process by which an independent third party sets criteria that timber or paper companies follow to show that its forest management and practices are sustainable.
While many in the timber and paper industry are just now moving towards certification, this small company has been improving its operations for years and has been praised by environmentalists around the globe.
The Environment Show's Stephen Westka takes us there.
Water from the Black River roars as it plunges down the falls beside the little town of Lions Falls, a small community located on the western edge of the Adirondack Park.
Along the Black River lies Lions Falls pulp and paper, the plan itself appears as if it is a fixture in the wooded landscape.
Craig Upton is director of research and market development for the company.
This mill has been in business for over 100 years now.
It was an old site here, originally a saw mill. They had the hydro power here from the river of course.
Paper machines went in in the early 1900s. They made several grades at that time but it was predominantly newsprint.
It was an old groundwood pulp mill here. Georgia Pacific had purchased the mill in the early 1960s.
Put a pulp mill on the facility which is still the same pulp mill we have today.
And the mill is growing over that time to now we operate two paper machines here on site.
In 1986 Georgia Pacific sold the plant to a Swiss company which still owns the facility.
It's the second largest employer in this rural New York State community.
Despite its remote location though Craig Upton says exciting things have been happening at Lions Falls pulp and paper.
We're the first mill in North America to become certified and we're the first mill in the world to start selling certified printing papers.
You know things that would be commercially used in printing applications.
Upton describes some of the products Lions Falls pulp and paper is marketing today.
Anything from direct mail which is a commercial printing type type grade.
It's going into business reply card stocks.
It's going into offset printing paper and a new product that we've recently introduced is a certified stationary grade with the actual the FSC watermark embedded right into the paper.
And we're seeing a lot of interest in that. That has just been introduced this month and we expect that that's going to take off in popularity.
Home Depot the world's largest retailer of wood products recently announced that it would phase out wood from endangered forests and begin buying wood that is certified.
Craig Upton says Home Depot has expressed an interest in purchasing Lions Falls pulp and papers new certified premium stationary paper.
It's a promising step for the small company. Upton mentioned the FSC label.
FSC stands for the Forest Stewardship Council, an international organization that sets certification standards and guidelines.
In the United States some environmental groups like the National Wildlife Federation or NWF have become members of a program called Smartwood which uses FSC criteria to certify forest management.
Alan Calfey and NWF Forestry Specialist who certifies under the Smartwood program says not only is Lions Falls pulp and paper getting wood from certified forests and southern Ontario, the paper making process itself is certified.
Calfey explains what makes the processes at Lions Falls pulp and paper so innovative.
The certification of paper was really a breakthrough project because the process of pulping and producing paper involves a lot of wood and the movement of this wood from the log yard through this set of basically plumbing fixtures.
No one really until Lions Falls got certified was able to develop a system where that by they can prove to us and have checks and balances in their system that the paper that the pulp and paper that was being produced came from the wood that came from forest that were certified by us.
Besides certifying the company National Wildlife Federation was the first customer of Lions Falls new paper for use in the environmental groups magazines.
Inside the plant workers move 300 to 400 pound rolls of paper on the production floor that are ready for shipping.
The plant has the appearance of a typical factory but what is happening here is anything but ordinary.
What's impressive is that customers know exactly what went into making Lions Falls paper. Craig Updike.
So that when we ship paper to the National Wildlife for example we can certify that 30% of it was recycled fiber, 70% of it was virgin and 50% of the 70% is certified.
The certified Harvard pulp from Lions Falls and the other 20% is certified from one of our other pulp suppliers.
So we can be very specific in talking about where our fiber comes from to end up in our paper.
In addition to being certified, Lions Falls pulp and paper was the first company in the United States to make totally chlorine free paper, something it has been doing for years now.
Paroxide is used in the bleaching process which is less harmful to waterways, ecosystems and wildlife.
Lions Falls pulp and paper has won a number of awards for its paper making processes. Craig Updike says while the attention is wonderful,
company officials have remained modest and focused on what's really important.
We realized that we're first but I think we just saw it really as an extension of what we already claim we were doing.
It's exciting being involved with this. When the project first hit, I think a light bulb went off is great.
This is exactly what we talk about when customers visit our mill they want to know what we're doing in the forests.
We take them out, we give them a tour, we show them some of the regional forests.
Now this is a way of really better defining what we're doing. Now we're actually labeling it.
We talk about it and there's some other party out there that's coming in and doing the certifying and it gives the whole process a lot of credibility.
Today, Lions Falls pulp and paper is producing about 2,000 tons of paper with the FSC label annually.
While the company is not dominating the paper market yet, it continues to receive international recognition for its paper making processes
and has become a leader in the industry, setting the standards that other companies will likely follow in the near future.
For the Environment Show, I'm Stephen Westcott.
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I'm Leah Fleming and this is EAR to the Ground, with stories about people affecting change in the environment.
This week, the Dogwood Alliance is committed to defending native forest ecosystems.
The mission of the Dogwood Alliance is to protect and restore southern forests from the threats posed by expanded industrial forestry.
Executive Director Dana Smith heads up the Dogwood Alliance's efforts to chip away at several hundred of the country's chipmills.
Based in North Carolina, the privately funded nonprofit organization has been operating for the past three years.
It's a network of 60 community organizations and 15 states around the greater southeastern region.
The Alliance was formed out of concern about the environmental effects clear cutting is having in southern forests.
Smith says forestry is no longer about men in plaid shirts with chainsaws.
Since 1985, we've seen a major geographic shift in the woods products industry out of the overcut forests of the Pacific Northwest and into the forests of the southeast.
As a result of that shift in the industry, more than a hundred chipmills have been constructed in the region.
These are facilities that take whole logs and chip them into wood chips mostly for making paper and particle board.
The Dogwood Alliance for the last three years has been campaigning for a moratorium on the licensing of any new chipmills in the region until state and federal agencies conduct a study of their impacts and adequate forest protection policy is implemented.
Smith says this is a problem that threatens not only our forests but our water, our heritage and even our future.
Forest provide clean drinking water and while certainly protecting drinking water should be a number one priority.
Unfortunately, these chipmills with their industrial clear cutting of forests are mudding our drinking water causing an incredible amount of sedimentation and erosion.
This industry is also responsible for trashing habitat for wildlife so that around wildlife contributes significantly to community quality of life in the southeastern region.
And as this industry comes in and clear cuts our forests and leaves behind habitat that is not suitable for wildlife, they're impacting the quality of life of people in the region.
The Dogwood Alliance has managed to stop the construction of a few chipmills in Russellville, Arkansas, accompanied by the name of Warehouse Air was planning to construct a chipmill.
The group developed a strategy of grassroots education which consisted of slide shows and meetings before legislators to inform them about the dangers of chipmills.
As a result Smith says the Russellville City Commissioner denied the business license declaring that the mill would have been detrimental to the public's welfare and the forest ecosystem.
The Alliance also helped to delay the construction of a chipmill in Pinehall, North Carolina.
Aside from the negative environmental effects these mills have, Smith says they also negatively affect the tourism and recreation industry.
People don't go to forest to see a chipmill or a clear cut. They come to an area because it's beautiful and they want to see the trees and the leaf change.
When these chipmills have come in and as we see more industrial clear cutting we're seeing a negative impact on tourism and recreation.
The interests of big business are superseding the interests of the local communities.
Local communities in the southeast are virtually powerless to stop the proliferation of this industry.
Citizens across this region have been challenging chipmill permits for the last three years and despite tremendous efforts on the part of a large number of people only several chipmills have been able to be stopped due to concerns by local citizens.
If you would like more information on the Dogwood Alliance you can call 828-883-5889 or log on to www.dogwoodalianceoneword.org. With ear to the ground I'm Leah Fleming.
And now it's time for the Earth calendar. On November 18th folks in certain parts of the world may see a spectacular display of shooting stars as part of the Leonid meteor shower.
Alan McRobert, associate editor at Sky and Telescope Magazine, says a meteor shower is the result of small particles entering Earth's upper atmosphere.
The particles that hit our atmosphere get heated up white hot by the air friction. They're traveling very fast with respect to the Earth many miles per second.
The air friction heats them up and they burn up in the top of the atmosphere. These are very tiny little particles typically sand grain size to small pebble size to create the meteor's the little shooting stars that you see.
A stream of particles was left in space by comet Temple Tuddle and each November for the next couple of years the Earth's orbit will take it through the debris.
The particles were left behind when Temple Tuddle passed through our solar system. However Alan McRobert says the meteor showers are actually named for the consolation from which a meteor appears to originate.
And like parallel lines on the side of a road or parallel railroad tracks if you could follow them back into the far distance they converge at a perspective point.
And the constellation Leo is where the perspective point from the Leonid meteors are. This doesn't mean you have to be watching the constellation Leo they appear all over the sky.
But if you trace their paths backward far enough across the sky they would all intersect the constellation Leo.
Comets are basically dirty icebergs that travel through the solar system. While Temple Tuddle is now long gone the particles that is left behind remain in space.
Space debris is constantly bombarding the Earth's upper atmosphere and on any given clear night you can often see burning particles are shooting stars as they're called.
The Leonid meteor shower occurs in 33 year cycles because that's about how long it takes Temple Tuddle to return and cross Earth's orbit.
The last Leonid shower occurred in 1966. A display Alan McRobert says was tremendous. Today we know what causes meteor showers. However that hasn't always been the case.
The 1833 Leonid meteor shower or meteor storm was seen all throughout North America at that time. And well people thought it was the end of the world.
It's estimated that essentially everybody in North America woke up that night either by the moving lights shining in their windows from the sky or the noise and yelling and commotion in the streets.
People thought it was the end of the world. The heavens were breaking open. It didn't happen. It didn't happen the next morning. It didn't happen the next Sunday. It didn't happen the next year. Although well there were people who spent the rest of their lives thinking that the world was supposed to end any minute as a result of death.
Alan says the best estimates now show that parts of Europe, the Middle East and Africa will have a good chance of viewing the Leonid meteor shower.
But he adds that folks in North America could get lucky on November 18 and see some of the display. The best viewing times are between 1 a.m. and dawn and try to steer clear of areas with a lot of light pollution.
So if you happen to see the shower just remember it isn't the end of the world. You're listening to the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burley.
Still ahead. Was your new house erect Chevrolet or a dog food can in an earlier incarnation? We talked green about recycled steel and residential construction. A green tip on environmental organizations. The name may sound green but some are doing their best to repeal our environmental protections. We see broad-winged hawks by the tens of thousands on the eastern coastal plain of New York.
The western coastal plain of Mexico with author Scott Widenstall. Stay with us.
We're talking green and I'm Steven Westcott. Today we're talking about a product that most of you use every day in some form.
And that you probably give little thought to and that is steel. Specifically we're going to discuss steel recycling. How much steel is recycled and what is being recycled?
Well then see how recycled steel is being applied in the construction industry to frame houses and other structures. I have three guests with me today. They are Greg Crawford vice president of operations for the Steel Recycling Institute.
Vince DeGregory president of Amity Incorporated that is a general contracting firm in New Mexico that is using steel framing and Scott Belen president of the local home builders industry of central New Mexico. Greg Crawford with the Steel Recycling Institute. I'll start with you when we talk about recycled steel. We're talking about actually reusing what we're at one time appliance as automobiles and cans of all sorts right?
Exactly Steve, but the tonnages are absolutely astounding. Most people as you indicated earlier are not aware of it in 1998 for example over 67 million tons of steel were recycled.
And that's such a large number I think it's hard for most people to get their arms around it. But if you just look at cars alone that's 12 million cars that were recycled about 14 million tons.
And as a matter of perspective if we were looking at that same tonnage of steel going into new steel framed homes that would be enough for 2 million new steel framed homes or a city about the twice the size of Chicago.
And where is most of the recycled steel coming from and what is it being used for?
It literally comes from throughout the United States and as you've already indicated it could be steel cans that is food cans beverage cans, paint aerosol cans appliances, cars and construction materials whether it's demolished bridge or a skyscraper whatever it may be.
So literally throughout the entire nation various steel products come to the use to the end of their useful life.
And at that point they get processed by a local scrap dealer and then it's off to the steel mill to become new steel which can be any sort of new steel product because steel has no memory.
So it could be steel framing for residential construction or it could be back into cans, cars appliances whatever the product may be.
Recycled steel is being used to frame houses and other buildings. I saw a figure that stated something like 50,000 homes were steel framed in 1997.
Scott Belin with the local home builders industry in New Mexico. Are many of your members using steel framing?
Well I tell you it's fast becoming more popular. We have really embraced the steel framing industry in trying to standardize their materials that is more adaptable to residential construction.
In the past it has been used quite frequently. A large much larger percentage of it is used in commercial construction but they are not trying to they actually are configuring the materials so that the mention wise they can come into the residential home and be placed out in place of wood.
So that's starting to make it much more much more friendly to use in the residential environment. As an association we have quite a few initiatives going on. One of them is our green building program in Elbacrycum New Mexico and one of the components that we have a one to four star rating in this program.
And one of the things that you do in there other than energy savings and water savings is alternative building methods which one of our alternative building components is steel.
The North American Steel Framing Alliance is something I believe you're a part of. Can you tell me what that is?
North American Steel Framing Alliance is a foundation that was set up to really educate people on using steel. They're educating labor and they're also educating contractors and giving them the criteria to actually do the bidding and the takeoff, the take lumber, the material takeoffs and the bidding of steel project.
So they are educational. We are using them as an educational tool to teach our labor industry here in New Mexico how they can use steel and in different various ways they are able to use steel that they aren't wearable.
Vince DeGregory with Amity Incorporated, where's the steel framing you're using coming from?
It comes from the local supply houses and we are presently working with a company called the House Factory Systems of Belen who pre-panalized steel framing systems for us.
And they are actually cold rolling their own steel product to put into these framed panellized walls and they're buying their roles from several different suppliers around the country. I'm not sure exactly which ones.
And when you get it it's rolled but are you also getting it say in like stud form like a 2x4?
Yeah, when we do stick framing we will purchase those in the stud rolled form. And one thing that North American Steel Framing Alliance is striving to do is to standardize that product around the country because there are several roll formers presently that are creating different sizes and nomicalatures for their studs.
And so it's very confusing in the field for the framers to put that together and come up with the standardized product.
So their mission is to again standardize that so it makes it more like we go to a lumber yard by a 2x4 or a 2x4 with certain dimensions.
And that will help tremendously in the training and the use of that product in the field.
So how much of this stuff are you using? Are you using it more and more or is it a gradual increase or how is it working?
Well, I think right now it's a gradual increase. We use it almost 90% in commercial office construction. But in the residential side there's very little of it being used presently.
I think I've been told by Jeff Stone of the North American Steel Framing Alliance that they only have captured about 7% of residential market at this point.
And I personally am integrating it into our company Amitine because we think it's the product of the future.
We're training our labor force to actually work with it and they're becoming used to it very quickly. And they're realizing how much better it is in the field.
So we have a lot less waste and it just goes to get a lot straighter and cleaner and takes care of a lot more problems that we've had in the past.
Vince, are there certain types of homes or structures that steel framing works best with?
I don't think anything you can build out of wood, you can build with steel. I don't really see much difference in it. It's just different materials all.
I think that Vince is correct and I think one thing to add to that is the Scott that again the educational process that the steel framing alliance is doing is going to make this product be used in custom homes as well as in more of a production line or a simple home.
We need to, but I think the resistance of taking it into residential is because of the lack of training that has been available.
And then they see that as a problem and are definitely working with our program here in Elbucharque to train kids at the high school level coming into the workforce to use steel more often in our industry as well again because it's recycled content and fits into an environmental sensible program that we have here in Elbucharque.
And when you talk about steel you have to drill steel you can't nail it, is that the case?
No, it's put together with screws and North American steel framing alliance has financed all kind of fascinating systems which would be on the market in the very near future that are going to let us put together steel framing just like you would a nail gun with wood framing.
It basically screws together at this point.
And then, obviously I won't be giving a Bob Vila run for his money anytime soon, but anyways Greg Crawford with the steel recycling institute, how much virgin steel is there in the market compared with recycled steel?
That's always an interesting question for me, Steve, because literally there is no virgin steel per se produced anymore.
What happens these days with the modern technology where the industry is saving energy and saving cost, they always use old steel to make new steel.
Now, blended in with that will be some level of steel made from the raw materials from nature, but at a minimum there's always going to be 25% recycled content.
And that may be as high as virtually 100% recycled content. So with every ton of steel that is recycled, we are saving the resources for the future including 2500 pounds of iron ore, 1400 pounds of coal and 120 pounds of limestone.
And Greg, will we ever get to the point where there is so much steel in the market that can be recycled that humans won't have to mine anymore iron ore?
That depends upon the question of the future world population as population continues to increase and as countries to continue to develop across around the globe, the amount of steel needed for new infrastructure continues to grow at the percentage rate that would be appropriate for an individual nation.
For example, the growth rate typically within the United States would be on the order of about 3%. So new steel is needed to be brought into the system to account for population growth, but it's also needed for another thing.
And that's that steel typically is in products that have a very long service life. So it's out there, it's in use, but it can't be recycled until it reaches the end of its useful service life. And for that reason, more steel is needed over time to provide for the various needs.
Scott Beeland with the local home builders industry, there are pluses and minuses and using steel framing. Can you talk about some of the benefits it offers compared with wood, say in terms of durability or strength?
Well, I think for one, again, we're talking about straightness and cleanness of a home. As a residential builder, we can often save time, which of course, if you save time, that saves money, which goes back to the end user, which is the buyer.
The frame up of steel home can be done with less hands than it can with wood because of its weight. You can frame a steel home probably, I would say, 60% quicker than you could in wood. You get a much straighter home and a much cleaner home. You don't have any problem with the lumber laying out in the weather, getting warped and twisting and checking and having to replace studs and board walls and things like that.
Another point is with lumber, the price of lumber fluctuates up and down through the course of the year, probably three or four times, where the steel stud pricing seems to stay much more consistent in the marketplace, where we can bid products out in the high end. Sometimes it takes me four to five months to actually get to that product to build it.
The lumber price could go up some place between four to six thousand dollars in that time, where steel is something that's much more of a fixed price and we can count on it being a fixed price through the course of the year.
I was going to ask you in terms of cost is steel much more expensive than wood?
I'm going to let Vince, Vince is under the process of doing and pricing 45 homes out on an Indian reservation here in New Mexico and he's going to have a much better answer on that Vince on the pricing.
We have found today that on average 1,600 square foot house we are getting it to wash out with wood framing at this point.
Let's back up a second. When you say wash is out you mean that it actually costs the same?
It's on par here. I see, okay.
We have found pre-panelizing these homes off the site is really the key to making it par out with wood framing. If we were stick framing these homes it would be probably another dollar to two dollars a square foot for that home and labor costs.
By pre-panelizing them we can get the house up after the foundations poured within four working days ready for roughouts on electrical and plumbing etc.
So we saved quite a bit of time frame on the sides with translates to interest savings etc.
But all in all when it's said and done we're coming out right within the same range as wood framing on these homes.
Let's talk about some of the drawbacks. Are there any drawbacks to steel framing? I understand you have to use more insulation when using steel framing is at the case Vince.
What I've found is the main drawback is the educational levels of the subcontractors and what they're used to. For instance if you pull a trim carpenter into these homes they're used to using a nail gun instead of a trim screw gun.
So they complain for a little bit and then they finally figure out it's just as fast and it's not that big of a deal.
The main drawback that I have found to date is in northern parts of the country more specifically you're going to have an insulation and conductive problem where this deal actually conducts the heat out at a much faster rate than wood.
So it would total overall our value of that wall is going to become less unless you adjust for it say with a dial type star foam on the exterior spanning it and providing a thermal break for it.
So you would have to take that in the consideration on little cooler climates than you would here in Albuquerque.
So in the southwest in certain arid type climates steel framing makes sense then.
Absolutely. And it makes sense in northern climates it's not that expensive to increase the R value with the wall and you have actually a better insulation system on the exterior.
And like we mentioned one of the benefits is the straightness and durability also you can recycle steel at the end of a home or once a home or structure has lived out its life you can take the steel and melt it down again.
Is that the case? That's correct.
Scott with the local home builders industry builders and others in the past have been prejudice against using recycled materials.
Has that been the case with recycled steel and framing?
No matter of fact that is one of the well with of course with panelizing plants as well it makes it it makes it much more of a cost savings because you do not have to remove that waste from the site.
It's done at the factory which they can then send it off to be recycled. You know we are currently recycling all of our wood components here as well.
But you know it's much more cumbersome there's a larger pile it's much heavier and harder to get rid of than the steel is.
Part of our program here is to look into shortening the distance in which we need to send this steel to be recycled here locally.
But there's no resistance to it as a matter of fact it's a very large part. I think it's one of the most conscious parts of our green building initiative is the recycling of all of our waste on the site.
Seems to be the most popular we've been saving energy with energy saving appliances and water consumption down here in the Southwest is very important.
And those things have been on the forefront of our thinking for a long time.
But we've really kind of come the grips with the fact that we need to be much more cautious with our materials and our ways to make sure that we're using more recyclable content.
So we actually put recyclable content is a criteria that you must need you must use so many components as one through four star level increases.
You need to use more recyclable content in your home so that there's an industry or a place for these materials these waste materials to be bought.
And steel fits right into that program very very well because of its when we purchase the steel it's already recyclable content and can be recycled again.
And Greg with the Steel Recycling Institute how environmentally friendly is the recycling process? Is it just a matter of melting old steel down or are there actual byproducts that result from steel recycling that can hurt the environment?
Recycling steel is the wise way to go both economically and environmentally as it is melted down it in and of itself does not create any byproducts that would be extraneous to the system but instead the embodied energy that exists in the steel scrap is recovered by way of the recycling process.
So that means the prior generations of steel and these particular iron molecules may go back literally several centuries depending upon how long they've been recycled in various ways but as they go forward the embodied energy that was originally used to reduce the iron out of nature and conform it into steel that's recaptured through the recycling process. So it saves energy.
I want to thank my guests for joining me today they are Greg Crawford vice president of operations for the Steel Recycling Institute. Vince de Gregree president of Amity Incorporated that is a general contracting firm in New Mexico that is using steel framing and Scott Bielin president of the local home builders industry in central New Mexico.
We want to hear what you think about steel recycling and steel framing you can reach our comment line by dialing 1-888-49 green that's 1-888-49 green. We've been talking green and I'm Steven Westcott.
Contact us here at the environment show via email green at wamc.org that's green at wamc.org. Ordinary mail 318 Central Avenue Albany New York 1-2-2-06 that's 318 Central Avenue Albany New York 1-2-2-06.
This is green tips tips on how you can save the world in your everyday life. One of the things we Americans are good at is forming organizations. There is no cause that doesn't have an organization someplace that espouses it. Also as a people worst suckers for fancy packaging frequently we buy the box rather than what's in it.
Laws require that the ingredients of a food product be listed but there is no similar disclosure requirement for organizations that have fancy names. There has been a proliferation of groups that have names that sound green but in fact lobby and purchase advertising space to reduce environmental protections in our laws.
The National Wetlands Coalition, the National Wilderness Institute, the Endangered Species Reform Coalition, the Global Climate Coalition or but a few of the industry supported groups that sound green but really are not.
The moral to the tale is that deceptive advertising or failure to list ingredients is not permitted if you're selling wild rice but is okay if you're soliciting support to change the law so you can fill in the wetland where it grows.
Don't be fooled by the name. Ask green sounding organizations for a statement of principles and a list of their 10 largest contributors before you pay attention to what they say. That's our green tip for this week.
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 off-Hersgod Widenstall it's the coastal plain of east-July.
We're in Mexico. We're more than 4 million birds of prey pass every autumn on their way from the United States and Canada. In this port are of place. Widenstall reads from his book titled Living on the Wind Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds.
It was an astounding sight. Huge kettles of broadwing hawks rose against the grey sky like tree trunks connected by wide thick sheets of hawks. The flocks were so big that even those that were a mile away in a thousand feet high look like dark thumbprints in the air.
When the kettle formed right overhead the feeling of vertigo was overwhelming. Tens of thousands of hawks swirling in a great globe, riding the invisible air bubble up and sheeding off the top in a broad ribbon like somebody peeling a vast ethereal apple.
Hard as it was to believe this was only the prelude. After lunch, not that anyone had much time to eat, the number of hawks rose to insane levels. The kettles grew to almost frightening proportions, 20 or 30,000 hawks in each one.
Wherever we looked, there were layers of broadwings. Some so low that we could count the black tail bands and the adults. Others so high that we could barely distinguish them against the hazy sky.
It was almost easier to believe that the atmosphere was generating them out of sunlight and wind than to think that all these birds were real, coming from the cool damp woodlands of New England or the Midwest, assembling in their hundreds of thousands to march across the world.
We paired off into teams of counters and recorders and divided the sky among us. I took the Northwest, sinking down against the brick stair shaft and bracing my binoculars on my knees.
Much of the time there was no question of counting individual broadwings, so we started clicking them off by tens, then by hundreds, mentally chopping the endlessly flowing stream of hawks into manageable chunks.
Sometimes even that wasn't enough, and we were forced to count by blocks of about a thousand, all the while noting the other migrants that were swept up in the Great Torrent.
Osprey's exhibitors, Perigrand Falcons, Turkey Vulture, Swanson's Hawks, and others. After an hour of counting, my arms ached and my eyes felt gritty. After two hours there was a blister on my right thumb from punching the button on the metal clicker.
Yet even harder was the mental strain of trying to concentrate on dry lifeless numbers in the face of such surpassing beauty.
Nothing in a lifetime of bird-watching prepared me for the spectacle. I wanted to stand, head back and jaw slack, and simply drink in the sight of a sky electric with birds.
But I couldn't, there was work to be done. Each time a kettle exhausted itself I read the number off the clicker dial and quickly multiplied by whatever estimation block I was using.
Reset the counter to zero, yelled out the figure to gene who was keeping patient track of the numbers and the weather data, then raised my binoculars to yet another kettle unfolding overhead.
The numbers were astounding. From two to three o'clock we counted 126,516 broadwing talks, nearly 46,000 of them in one ten minute period.
The next hour there were even more, 166,790 broadwings along with nearly 11,000 turkey vultures. And it wasn't just hawks.
Lines of white palacans and ibis snaked overhead, weaving and undulating. Clouds of Anhingas formed their own precision ballet, wheeling and perfectly synchronized harmony.
Each long-necked, long-tailed bird like a flying cross.
Hundreds of cistertailed flycatchers zipped past us, pearl gray with a rouge of pink under each wing, dragging their comically long forked tails behind them.
Woodstorks looking huge and ungainly and prehistoric came in ragged chevrons of 50 or 60 at a time.
Long stick figure legs trailing behind, their flinty naked heads drooping on skinny necks that seemed barely able to support them.
Something about the storks excited Christian even more than the hawks. Each time he saw another approaching flock, his marginal English would desert him and all he could do was point and shout,
and sew it went for hours until the sun dropped toward the thin band of rusty clouds in the western horizon.
Word trickled in from the other count sites. 20,000 birds counted at Chachalakas along the coast, 55,000 at Chichikakseli, 65,000 at Rio-S Candido.
From our hot, dusty rooftop in Cardell, we had counted more than 435,000 raptors. Yet as impressive as the number sounded, we knew that we had only scratched the surface of what had actually passed us, only counted a portion of this magnificent flood tide of birds.
That was author Scott Wyden's hall, reading from his new book, Living on the Wind Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds. It's published by North Point Press.
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Thanks for being with us in this week's Environment Show. I'm Peter Burley.
Meltdown your steel home and start over after it's trashed by the meteor shower. Draw your plans on certified paper, avoid using cyanide chips from the old gas plant for fill, and locate the windows to take in the hawk migration. This show tells you how. Order it at 1-800-323-9262, it's show number 5-12.
Hawksounds were provided by Lying Elliott, Nature Sound Studio, www.naturesound.com. The Environment Show is a national production which is solely responsible for its content.
Alan Shartock is executive producer, Steven Westcott is producer, and is made possible by the W.A. and Jones Foundation, the William Bingham Foundation, the Turner Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund, and Heming's Motor News, the monthly Bible of the Collector Car Hoppe.
www.heming.com. Be good to the earth, and join us next week for the Environment Show.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0