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 Burwin.
Coming up, the demilitarized zone in Korea should have been maintained as a nature preserve.
There's more ocean in the United States territory than land, but Congress wants to find a better
way to manage it. We jet through South and Central America and islands in the Atlantic
and Pacific and get a snapshot of El Nino effect. And Sapa Dillop fruits are being picked
in Florida. It's part of the Great American harvest. These stories coming up on the Environment
Show.
This is the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burwin. For more than 45 years, a two-and-a-half
mile wide, 220-mile long stretch of land has separated communist North Korea from South Korea.
Before the demilitarized zone was established at the cessation of fighting in the Korean
war, much of the land consisted of farms. The demilitarized zone, or DMZ, was created
as a buffer between the countries located along the 38th parallel. This guarded area has
grown back and is now a rich forest area that is home to many endangered species. Although
resumed peace talks recently fell apart, some environmental groups and scientists want
to protect the area from development which might occur after a peace treaty. The Environment
Show's Stephen Westcott report.
Just last month, North Korean officials appealed to the South Koreans to end 50 years of
confrontation and distrust. The Northerners say they want to work toward reconciliation.
A surprising move, considering the North Koreans have long seemed content, on remaining
separated from their southern ancestors. While many Koreans would welcome the reunion,
some environmentalists are afraid that now lush DMZ would be ruined by developers, some
of whom already have their hopes set on gaining access to the forest areas.
Dr. Robert Lee, assistant director of the Asia program for the International Division
at the Wildlife Conservation Society, is among a group of scientists and researchers that
is trying to get both North and South Korea to agree to keep the DMZ protected should
they ever reunite. Lee says while the South Korean government has responded favorably to
the idea of preserving the DMZ, communications with the North are limited.
In terms of the North Korean government, as you know, it's rarely isolated. So there's
not a great deal of communication, but the three organizations that are putting this DMZ
forum together, that is the Wildlife Conservation Society, Penn State University, and the Institute
for Public Administration, have been in contact with the State Center for Nature Conservation,
which is sort of the conservation branch of North Korean government. And there seems
to be some willingness on their part to participate in this process.
The North's overtures may appear promising to some, but actual reconciliation between
the two sides may still be a long way off. Dr. Lee, a Korean American, says there is
a lot of bad blood between the North and South. Nonetheless, working out a deal to preserve
the DMZ could be the start of something much larger. One of the key issues in any reunification
discussions would be the landmines that remain in the DMZ. But until that point, Dr. Lee
says the United States has refused to lift the band on landmines.
Well, that seems to be a fear on the part of the United States government, that the landmines
are there for security reasons. That is, if the North Korean government ever decided to
attack South Korea, they would be there as a barrier. In terms of how the South Koreans,
that is the public, feels about the landmines, I'm not really sure, I think, for the most
part, South Koreans are very eager to be reunited with their families in North Korea.
And their people, essentially, because North and South Korea are racially, ethnically,
linguistically, culturally identical. So there is a great deal of support by the people
of South Korea to clear the landmines. Now, whether the South Korean government and the
United States government agreed to clear the landmines is another matter.
The landmines are important because they serve as a buffer from North Korea. They also
keep people out of the DMZ, allowing the forest and wildlife an opportunity to flourish.
If the landmines were removed, that protection would be lost. The DMZ forum has been created
to mobilize scientists, governmental leaders, and others, to establish forums to support
preservation of the DMZ ecosystems and to support research in the Korea Peace Bio-Reserves
system in the DMZ corridor. Besides the DMZ, the preservation plan also includes the civilian
control zone, or CCZ, a three mile wide by 12 mile long buffer zone south of the DMZ.
Dr. Lee believes an agreement between North and South Korea is the only way to protect
the 1200 plant species, 90 freshwater fish species, mammal species once believed to be
extinct, as well as black bear and musk deer.
We find two species of birds that are very endangered. That is, we find the white-naked crane and
the red-crowned crane that make their wintering grounds in the CCZ, as well as the DMZ.
So although we don't know about the biota of the DMZ itself, by looking at the CCZ,
we get a very good glimpse of what might be out there in the DMZ.
Besides the wildlife, Dr. Lee says the plan is necessary for humans living on the Korean
peninsula. He says the peninsula was once called the land embroidered with 3,000 rivers
and mountains, but in the last 30 years South Korea has lost much of its natural resources.
You have urban sprawl, air pollution, pollution of major rivers and lakes, health problems,
and so forth, and obviously lost by diversity is one of the products of environmental degradation.
So now in South Korea, what we have is a lot of animal species are either endangered or
extratated, and the DMZ ecosystems is a very good cross-section of the Korean peninsula
in terms of representing the ecosystems on that piece of land. And that joint with other reserves
throughout the peninsula will help bring back that idea of the land embroidered with 3,000
and more.
Dr. Lee believes supporters of the plan aren't being naive in hoping North and South Korea
will approve the plan. He believes the two sides can work together, even if the two never
reunite. An international conference is scheduled for September to discuss the DMZ preservation
plan. It remains to be seen whether diplomats from North and South Korea accept the invitations.
For the Environment Show, I'm Stephen Westcott.
In this year of the ocean, our territorial waters are beset with threats to their ecological
health, which include overfishing, pollution from runoff, and even harvesting of organisms
for pharmaceutical manufacture. A bill is under consideration of the U.S. House of Representatives,
which would establish a commission to determine how we can better manage these ocean resources.
The bill is known as the Ocean's Act, and it has already passed the Senate. At issue
is who is in charge in the exclusive economic zone, or EEZ. Roger Buckmanis, president of
the Center for Marine Conservation recently testified in support of the oceans bill before
a House subcommittee. He describes the size and the nature of the EEZ.
President Reagan in the wake of conversations regarding the law of the sea established our
authority to manage our resources out to 200 miles, and that's what's called the exclusive
economic zone. For so for 200 miles out from our shores, all around the continental United
States and Alaska into the Caribbean, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and other holdings
that we have in the Caribbean, and out to Hawaii and the other holdings that we have in the
Pacific Ocean. From each point of land for 200 miles around, the United States has the
authority to manage its resources, its resources in those areas. Now nations still have,
other nations still have the right of transit through those areas, and we don't inhibit free and
fair transit, but for as far as resource development, we have control over those resources.
But the United States of America has the largest exclusive economic zone of any nation. In fact,
we have over 4 million square miles of ocean that's under our jurisdiction compared to
only about 3.5 million square miles of land. So from one perspective you could say most of the
United States of America is ocean not land.
McManus says we need a plan for the management of these ocean resources and somebody in charge
of implementing it. Well we're very concerned about the future of management of the oceans and
the resources of the oceans, and in particular we're concerned because the United States has no
plan for how it will manage the territorial seas of the United States. And we don't have any
agency or any federal government agency that will lead us in this effort. So we've been very
supportive of legislation that has been introduced in both the Senate and the House now, which would
establish a commission of experts that would re-examine how we're managing our coastal waters and
offshore waters and the resources that they hold. And come to some conclusions about how we might
be able to improve management in the future. Given the plethora of government agencies and commissions,
I asked McManus why we need another one. Well the problem is we have lots of agencies that are
carrying out independently of a variety of regulatory activities. We do have the National Marine
Fisheries Service for example, as you mentioned that manages our fishery resources. And we do
have the Minerals Management Service that manages oil and gas development. But these agencies
frequently don't talk to each other. In some cases they're engaged in activities that adversely affect
the objectives of the other agency. When something comes up like recently there was a request for a
permit to establish an aquaculture facility in the exclusive economics zone. What happened was
the only agency that had any control over this was the Army Corps of Engineers under the
Rivers and Harbers Act of the 19th Century. And basically the only authority they had was to
evaluate whether the aquaculture facility would be a navigational hazard or not. The
National Marine Fisheries Service and the Environmental Protection Agency had a lot of concerns about
that proposed facility. But there was no authority and law for them to express a view one way or another
that the Army Corps of Engineers could consider. That was Roger McManus, president of the Center for
Marine Conservation, commenting on the need for a commission to determine how the United States can best
manage our exclusive economic zone.
You're listening to the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burley. The Environment Show is a
national production. It's made possible by the W. Walton Jones Foundation, the Packard Foundation,
the Turner Foundation, the JM 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 would like to hear from you. What's on your
mind? Give us a call. The number is 1-888-49-Green. That's 1-888-49-Green. Email at green at
wamc.org. That's green at wamc.org.
Last summer, we reported an appearance of El Meno as the water is warmed in the South Pacific.
Subsequently, we've talked to people in various places about the effect of El Meno on the land
on rivers, on wildlife, and on various economies. Now, as El Meno is winding down,
Environment Show Advisory Council member John D. Worth, who is Professor of History and Environmental
History at Stanford University, gives us a view of the effects of El Meno on the South American
continent. Several days ago, he concluded a barnstorming lecture tour by Chartered Jet,
in which he covered Southam Central America, as well as parts of the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean
in less than three weeks. With El Meno in mind, here is what he saw. Starting out from California,
of course, it's been raining hard. So we're well aware of El Meno out here on the West Coast.
Our first stop was in Konayma, in the Rolreima Upper Amazon basin in Venezuela.
And there, the first thing we noticed as we were flying in was how dry the landscape is.
It hasn't rained for months. The rain is just starting. And in fact, Angel Falls virtually
has no water in it. So that was the first effect on the eastern side of the continent of South
America. The rainfall was drastically reduced because of El Meno. After poking around some very
interesting landscapes, nonetheless, we went to Manaus. And there, what was very noticeable were
the fire notices all out of all around the city. Warning people to be very careful about backyard
fires. And in fact, this was an insight. The whole Amazon basin is very dry, tender dry, and there's
some spontaneous fires that we've been reading about, but it was nonetheless sobering to see notices
on the public streets, about in a major city, on the edge of the Rio Negro, part of the Amazon itself.
Warning people about fire dangers, the last place you'd expect. But again, this is the effect of El Meno,
going by 767, like this great space machine. You see it as a whole. It was a very unusual way to travel.
The longest flight we took, in fact, was to Easter Island. That took five and a half hours.
And there, the effects of El Meno were a delight for us anyway. The island was emerald green,
like San Francisco, in January and February, at the rains we have out here. So instead of the
usual scene with those extraordinary monoliths and the Easter Island culture, in a barren landscape,
it was an emerald green and chanting landscape. Absolutely gorgeous.
Boyed by that, we proceeded onto the Galapagos, traveling north and east if everyone has the geography
in mind. And spent three days cruising by both among several islands, and there, the effects of
El Meno were extraordinarily speeded up. Of course, everything in the Galapagos is environmentally and
biologically. Speeded up in the sense that Darwin's Finches were making out like literally, in many
ways, like they rarely do. There's a profusion of things of greenery and things for them to eat
because of El Meno. So their population is skyrocketing and the males are singing. They can't stop
singing. The females are laying eggs. At an extraordinary rate, the population is way, way up.
But on other islands, right nearby, the marine birds are dying and are doing very poorly because of
the temperature and version in the water, which has drastically reduced their fishing opportunities.
So that several of the different varieties of boobies, the frigate birds, even the marine iguanas
are doing, are under stress, doing very poorly. And I think this was a sobering sight to see the
number of dead chicks and the search for food that just isn't available, whereas right nearby is
this extraordinary singing of Darwin's Finches. A lesson in that I suppose about the power of nature
to affect our lives and perhaps speed up the pace of evolution, which may be happening as a result of
this year, a natural process, but nonetheless devastating and its power to see that. And then
finally, the last leg of the trip to Tikal to see the great Mayan city. And to get there, we flew
over the length of Guatemala and looked down on again a very dry landscape and one which was
unfire, not huge sheets of fire, but just smoke over the whole country. And one could see graphically
the effects of massive internal migration from the Highlands into the lowlands. And in fact,
the Tikal area is under stress from people moving into the forest, very rapid deforestation.
Lots of fires. And the need to accommodate people for whom there are no longer niches in the Highlands
where they've lived for centuries, moving into an area where their corn and bean culture is no
longer is not adequate for the thin soils of the lowlands. And then back to San Francisco, where
right on cue it's raining again. That was Professor of History at Stanford University, John D. Worth,
with comments about the effects of El Meno in the southern hemisphere.
And now it's time for the Earth calendar. As we broadcast,
Saffodilos are being picked in southern Florida. It's part of the Great American harvest.
The fruit is believed to be native to the Yucatan and possibly other nearby parts of southern Mexico.
Mark Ellenby of Ellenby grows in Holvsted, Florida has been growing the fruit since the late 70s.
He was forced to replant his trees after Hurricane Andrew ripped through the area in 1992.
But today, Ellenby's young trees are providing six to eight tons of fruit a year.
Everything is harvested by hand and we do indeed use clippers. Some is later picking,
but my trees are small enough now that we can get by with like a two-step step ladder. Our trees
are only like eight to ten foot tall. We can bring a branch to us with a hook and then clip the fruit.
So every fruit is hand picked and every fruit is hand-packed. There's one additional factor in
that the fruit has a pronounced sap. The sap is a useful sap, but not useful in our harvest.
The sap is called chiquet. It's the original natural chewing gum.
Chiquet was a primary ingredient of chewing gum until gum became artificially manufactured.
While the sapadilla resin doesn't provide the winter green or spearmint flavors we often associate
with gum, the fruit is really the treat. Mark Ellenby says the taste of sapadilla makes up for
its bland appearance. If you've seen the outside of a kiwi fruit or the outside of a brown potato,
it kind of looks like that on the outside. The size is anywhere from maybe four ounces. Let's say kiwi
fruit size up to a pound or more, which would be apple size. The fruit can be round, it can be
oblong, it can be elongated with pointed ends. And maturity is key. So we have to pick them
when they're mature. It's tough to tell with a brown fruit. We pick them properly. We scratch,
we wait for it to smooth out a bit on the outside. There's a mild color break. And then they'll
ripen when they get into your hands in five or seven days. When you open the fruit, it's tan on
the inside or a reddish brown or a rich brown. And the flavor is like a pear that's been injected with
brown sugar or maple syrup. It's a remarkable fruit. The fruits can be seedless, but usually
having their center, three to twelve hard black shiny flattened seeds about three quarters of an
each long. Sapatillas mature about six months after flowering and they keep for about two weeks
at room temperature. Sapatilla trees are a tropical hardwood, which means they grow slowly and are
very sturdy. The Mayans in Guatemala even use the trees as support beams in their temples.
The hearty stature of the Sapatilla allows the tree to survive in frigid temperatures,
high winds, and even the poor limestone rock soils of South Florida. Mark LNB says it maturity.
Sapatillas get extremely tall. My trees are only five years and younger. And thus they're not tall,
but the trees will get to be 40 or 50 feet tall with a 30 foot spread over time. I won't grow them
that big in the orchard. We'll keep them controlled, but the tree is an evergreen tree with a leaf that's
probably an inch to an inch and a half and width and maybe three to four inches long. It's just a
magnificent tree with a wonderful growth habit and extremely well adapted to South Florida
conditions and all through the islands. If travelers go down to Key West, they can find these in season,
which is most of the year, but in my mind the season would be December through May, but there's
some scatter production through the year, but they can find them in Key West and Fruit stands.
LNB says Sapatillas are mainly sold in Indian, Asian, and Hispanic grocery stores along the
Eastern Seaboard, but he expects the fruit to one day appear in mainstream supermarkets.
Quartered and served as fresh dessert fruit is Mark LNB's favorite way of eating Sapatillas.
Others prefer it in salads or mixed with orange juice and topped with whipped cream.
If chewing gum really is a substitute for smoking, let's subsidize our tobacco farmers to grow
Sapatillas and produce real chick-lip. Global warming will even make that possible in North Carolina.
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. Shipwracks provide habitat for fish on the ocean floor, and remind us that staying
afloat is not certain, given the power of nature and human fallibility.
We talk green about another nuclear waste problem. This one is hot water being discharged off
a coast of California. Winter still holds its grip in the high Rockies, but author David Peterson
finds the tips of the Aspen trees swelling despite the snow at their feet. Stay with us.
The movie Titanic has once again brought sunken ships to the attention of the American public.
Like the Titanic, people often believe that most rags are found in remote areas where a few people
have the opportunity to see them. But in his new book titled Lost Voyages, Two Centuries of
Shipwracks in the Approaches to New York, author and scuba diver Bradley Sheard show shipwracks are
more common than we might believe, especially in the East Coast. The Environment Show Stephen
Westcott recently spoke with Sheard about these lost sailing vessels and their relationship
to the sea around them. The ship's not only give a history of war and commerce and trade, but
apparently of environmental degradation. Can you talk about the warship the Mohawk that sank in
October 1917? And what happened in that area where the ship rests? Sure. The Mohawk is really a
fascinating story. The Mohawk sunk during World War I in a collision only about 12 miles outside
New York Harbor. It was run down by a ship in a convoy that it was trying to protect and sank
to the bottom. Little did it know, however, that shortly thereafter in 1924, the city of New York
began dumping its sewage sludge offshore and especially designated area, a dump site designated
for this municipal sewage sludge and it happened to be right on top of the Mohawk's grave.
So the Mohawk served essentially as a kind of a silent witness to this what I call environmental
debacle in which sewage sludge was dumped offshore for 63 years every single day, tons and tons of
sewage sludge were dumped offshore. Now the sewage sludge just basically decimated the marine life
in the area. Local fishermen used to call it the Dead Sea. You could actually see that the color
of the water changes you steam through this area on a charter boat. The Mohawk sat through all this
being covered up slowly by all this sludge. Occasionally, sport divers would try and visit this rec site.
Usually the visibility was virtually zero and it could just almost explore only by feel.
Eventually the environmental awareness that came about during the 1960s and 70s began to
start an outcry against this practice and the fact that it was really destroying marine life in
the area. But probably the final straw that finally brought it to an end was the fact that medical
waste began appearing on the beaches during the 1980s. In fact, when we dove the Mohawk, we found
medical waste and things. Hyperdermic needles would be scattered all over the floor, medical tags,
things of that nature. Then medical waste continued to appear on the beaches until the dumping was
finally halted completely in 1992. Now since that time, the Mohawk water has really cleared up
tremendously there and it actually can be a diveable site now. It's really amazing how much
the area is recovered considering the fact that for over six decades it was basically covered in
the sewage sludge. Sunkin ships, as you mentioned, not only provide intriguing looks into the
past for divers but provide homes for marine life. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Chipwrecks really do provide this platform on the middle of this sandy ocean floor
where marine life can congregate. The wrecks themselves become completely encrusted and overgrown
with different kinds of marine life such as sea anemones which are kind of a flower-like animal
that literally carpet almost every square inch of a shipwreck along with things like muscles.
And this all these animals will of course draw other forms of marine life. Starfish come to feed
upon the muscles. Lobster and crab will be hiding in the crevices of these wrecks.
And then of course come fish which tend to school seek the protection of these objects on the marine floor
and feed upon the other animals that have chosen to live there.
Humans often like to believe that we can outsmart nature. How do the ships represent this fallacy?
Perhaps a timely example of this might be the Titanic even though it's nowhere near these wrecks.
Oh sure the Titanic of course is the latest example of you know the ship was supposed to be
unsinkable and the largest moving object ever built by man. And of course collided with a
nice burg in sank. It wasn't the first ship to collide with a nice bird however there was an
earlier ship called the Arizona which had ran into a nice burg in the middle of the Atlantic and
had run head on to it instead of the glancing blow that the Titanic saw and crumpled the bow up.
In this case however the collision bulk had held and the ship was able to make it into St. John's
Newfoundland under its own power. What was actually interesting about that story is that the
bookings on that ship actually increased after it because people felt that any ship that could
run into an ice burg and survive was the safest ship on the ocean. And there are many other instances
to where you know another example might be the Andrea Doria in which this was a passenger liner
that sunk off Montauk in 1956 in a collision in the fog and this was in the electronic age where
man had invented all kinds of electronic devices such as radar and loran navigation systems
that should have potentially prevented a collision at sea. And yet in the fog off man tuck it
the two ships came together even though they both saw each other on the radar screens. They
ended up running into one another and this came essentially represents the human fallibility
who can invent all these systems to see through fog with electronic radio waves. Yet humans have
to interpret the data that is presented and act accordingly. That was author Bradley Sheard
talking about his new book titled Lost Voyages, Two Centuries of Shipwrecks in the Approaches to New
York. It's published by AquaQuest Publications.
We're talking green and I'm Peter Burlite. Like your car radiator, nuclear plants circulate water
to cool down the reactors and then they discharge it into a nearby ocean or lake or stream.
And the question then is what are the environmental consequences of this kind of activity?
And our discussion is prompted by action recently taken by the San Diego Regional Water Quality
of or Water Control Board and they have permitted Southern California Edison to discharge water
about 25 degrees hotter than ambient ocean temperature from their Sanofre plant.
And so is that discharge a problem? What are the environmental consequences of this kind of
discharge? If you've got some thoughts we'd like you to let us know. Our number is 1-888-49-green.
I guess today include Mary Jane Johnson. She's the Sanofre environmental manager for Southern
California Edison company. Paul Richter, he's a sanitary engineering associate with a San Diego
Regional Water Quality Control Board and Dr. Steve Schroeder. And he's a professor at San Diego
State University and a scientist with the California Coastal Commission. Mary Jane Johnson from
California Edison, I'd like to start with you. Why is it that your plant wants to or needs to
discharge water than hotter than it had been previously permitted? Well thank you Peter.
There are several reasons why we need the additional 5 degrees. Keep in perspective that for
up and down our coastline other ocean dischargers are discharging at a higher temperature.
Then what we are, but regardless of that there are several reasons why we would request the
additional increase. One is the bile filing. What has happened was that it breaks down to a micro
and a macro. Macro is your heavy redgrass, your kelp. And that increases the heat load that is
needed for the coolant. Other items of left significance would be the additional heat loads
associated with we have two sister plants out here and when certain operations occur during
our activities we get an additional heat load from the other unit and that also increases
the temperature for cooling. So I gather what you are saying is that you have more hot water
than you can deal with and you need to get rid of it. Is that kind of basically where you come out?
Well we have in the past had to actually downpower the plant to stay within the requirements
associated with the thermal plant. And what that means for folks that don't understand the
lingo is that you just have to produce less electricity because you can't get rid of the amount
of heat to that is correct. That is correct. During critical times of the year we need to be at
full capacity associated with our consumers and we want to make sure that we are able to provide
electricity when needed during critical times. Okay. Professor Schroder what are the environmental
issues at least it relates to this part of the ocean that are involved when one has this kind
of discharge taking place? Well the impacts from the Sanonofri plant are two general kinds.
One has to do with discharged waters and the other has to do with waters that are in taken or
trained and the discharge effects actually the heat is probably not as important as some other
effects associated with the discharge because the discharge has been well designed to get rid of
the heat and in response to the thermal plant. But in the course of doing this it moves a lot of
water and as a result of moving this water both in taking insure waters and discharging it and
moving bottom waters and near-shure waters offshore it creates dirty plumes, dirty water,
turbidity plumes and this goes over the kelp bed and reduces the amount of light that reaches
the bottom and this affects the small kel plants. So I just so I understand that what you're
saying is that by changing the currents around that that is as much of an environmental problem as
the fact of the water is just hotter than the ocean water. In fact it's probably more important
because the discharge system of the power plant is pretty well designed to get rid of the heat.
Okay and as you know our volume or the constituents of what we're discharging we're asking for no changes.
Okay now I'd like to before we get into running the plant I'd like to get Paul Richter's view
you're with the regional water quality control board which I guess actually issue the permit to
allow the hotter water. What kind of environmental analysis do you folks do when you're faced with
the kind of request that you got from the epicent over plant here? Well for this particular project we
had a consultant review a lot of the application and the information that Southern California
Edison submitted. Our review would basically go through a secret which is California Environmental
Quality Act review. Public notices, participation with other government agencies.
And in the course of this did you look at the problems related to current that Professor
Schroeder is talking about? Well basically the change in the discharge will be temperature.
There has been some past findings by our board and by California Coastal Commission regarding
the turbidity and we did look at turbidity and any potential increase from this change and we found
that or staff's recommendation was that it was less than significant. So Professor Schroeder let me
ask you something use the kind of analysis that goes on when one does makes this kind of a change
adequate to deal with some of your concerns such as the turbidity and the change in current and so on.
That's a good question. Well the Coastal Commission staff looking at this concluded that
there was some doubt as to whether or not the power plant would actually have an increased effect
mainly through turbidity and recommended a negative declaration but that it'd be mitigated or
amended or however it's put to keep an eye on the possible negative effects associated with
this possible increase. So we don't get tied up with the legal ease. What they basically said was
we've looked at it we don't think there's enough of an impact here to require for the study.
All right let's step back and let's look at this in a broader context. We've got nuclear plants
all over the country. We know about nuclear waste but they also discharge heat and in fact when I was
in environmental commission of the state of New York we had a sort of a funny situation. There
was a nuclear plant that wanted to shut down for maintenance and it turned out that their discharges
of hot water had caused fish to come into the river that normally weren't there in the winter time.
That brought eagles in who ate the fish and the question was if we shut down the plant
are we then going to have a negative impact on the endangered species, the eagles or do we have
to keep the plant going even though it's due for maintenance to save the eagle. So the bigger issue
I guess is heat and nuclear plants and how do we really kind of figure this one out.
In terms of California Edison do I understand that if you had to cool your or keep your
discharges cooler that would cost you money either because you couldn't generate as much electricity
or you'd have to operate your plant it'll lower rate of output. Is that, Mary Jane Johnson? Is that
that would be the consequence as far as your plant is concerned? Do our certain periods of time
throughout the years in the past where warmer waters do come into our coastline we are
we have downpowered which means law the electricity to our consumer. And that's because the
with the warmer water coming in that with your discharge got your levels up too high was that
was that correct. And how about El Nino is that affected you where you've got warmer water coming
in as a result of that? Of course. And just so we understand it if you use the water you take it
in from the ocean use it for cooling and discharges so that if it's warmer when it comes in you don't
get as much cooling effect as that. That's correct. In broad terms. Yeah. And from your perspective
Dr. Schroeder if you look at the whole California coast is both a turbidity and the heat issue a
significant environmental problem from your perspective? Well I think the more significant problem is
would be the turbidity and associated effects and at the top of the show I mentioned intake effects
which causes lots of plankton and fish larvae and produces the discharge effects are local
confined to the kelp bed the intake effects are more more general. And just so I understand that
that's the pipe that sucks it all in right as you're sucking it into this great tube it
grinds and changes things in the process. And I just wanted to I need we need to keep in mind here that
these effects we're talking about a kind of an incremental change in the operating characters
the power plant but the the impact of the power plant have already been decided upon and
Southern California Edison has agreed to undertake mitigation for those effects and they're moving
forward on that and there and we as the Coastal Commission are working with them to to affect this so
well just to pursue that issue of moment if they're taking mitigation effects that sounds as though
things happened damage occurred that had not been anticipated in the beginning and so they're
doing something to fix that. Well what are what are the kinds of impacts that have occurred that
are now being mitigated? Well there are there are several for the discharge effects there's
impacts on the local kelp bed there's about a hundred and fifty acre loss of giant kelp and
associated fish and the indivirables and wetlands that is a mitigation. And then there's something
like a six hundred ton by loss of by white fish stocks and mitigation for the losses the local
losses to the kelp beds are taking form of a of a reef a large artificial reef to produce 150 acres
of kelp forest and then mitigation for the intake effects is a restoration of 150 acres of wetland
which is a rare habitat in southern California. And so Mary Jen Johnson how are you doing the
wetland mitigation? Well um are you actually? I'm really not under my expertise. Okay I was
I was at the plant however I knew I know that our company and various other agencies,
Steve's and a lot of the environmental groups out here in southern California are jointly doing
this as a team and they are moving forward. I know that in November of 97 it just got our plan
got accepted to move forward on the wetland. Very briefly Dr. Schroeder is this mitigation
activity going to work? Is it actually going to restore the ecosystems that were damaged?
We really hope so everybody's making a concerted effort to to make it work and there's independent
monitoring associated with it and we're working as Mary Jane said we're working very hard with
Edison to to affect it. Good and what you have told us something that I didn't know before that
the business is sucking the water in can be as much of a problem as getting it out. Yeah so I'm
afraid our time is up. My guess has been Mary Jane Johnson from the southern California Edison
tall Richter from the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board and Dr. Steve Schroeder from
the San Diego State University and a scientist with the California Coastal Commission. We've been
talking green about discharging heat and taking water into nuclear power plants and I'm Peter Burley.
you
you can hear the environment show anytime for your personal computer our website is www.enn.com
oh
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 Peterson, it's winter among the tall aspens at his home in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.
In this portrait of place, Peterson reads from his book titled The Nearby Far Away,
A Personal Journey Through the Heart of the West.
Ten long weeks have passed since the annual Thanksgiving snowstorm blew into isolate
and insulate this southern Colorado mountainside I call home.
A meek sun rides low on the southern sky these brief winter days.
That is, when it isn't obscured by the ghostly fog of a white out.
In such conditions, white above, white below, white all around.
The barren aspens picketing our little handmade cabin seem gray, sad, pensive.
Or perhaps I'm investing them with my own melancholy.
Golden autumn is a mere faint memory, verdant spring, a distant impossible dream.
Cabin fever is endemic.
But even up here in the frozen white Rockies, life goes on.
Especially around the aspens tree where the bird feeder hangs.
To this winter oasis flock not just birds, but tassel-eared squirrels,
lean-brown cotton tails and plum-white snowshoe hairs,
and keeping watch with winter hungry eyes from a top nearby ever-greens.
Hawks, eagles, falcons.
One crackling cold morning not long ago, as I stood at the window-sipping coffee.
A quick dark shadow dropped from above and knocked one of the dove-size birds from the feeder,
pinning it to the ground below.
Cooper's hawk.
It's hard, but it works.
Sudden, violent death by predation is not an image that soon fades from the mind's eye.
Nor should it, for it's an analogy worth personalizing, expanding, pondering.
Death is the meat of life, all life.
Hunger haunts the snowy ground as well.
Recently Caroline was outside with her black lab, Otis, when she noticed an unfamiliar
chittering call like no bird you've ever heard.
She looked but saw nothing.
Then from beneath the woodpile burst what she described as a whirling ball of white.
What it was, was an ermine.
A winter white weasel, its barracuda teeth fastened to a cotton-tail's neck.
Otis missed none of this, of course, and in a flash was on the move.
Nining growling pounds of fury bearing down on you isn't something easily overlooked, even
in the midst of a life and death struggle.
Startled, the ermine relaxed its grip and the rabbit squirted away.
The weasel streaked off after the rabbit.
Otis, after the weasel.
Caroline called Otis back, and that was that.
So it goes high in the Rockies, deep in winter.
But for every life ended, another is begun.
Just yesterday, half a mile east to here, I found a dozen big oval snow depressions where
elk had bedded, the females among them bearing new life within.
New life, wildlife, like the rest of us up here, biting our time, waiting out winter.
Mountains on the drabus to days, melancholy shrouds me like a fog.
I lost two cherished companions recently, one a man, the other man's best friend.
Both way heavy on my mood as I sit here on this cold winter's eve, scribbling.
After a while, I rise from my rocker and venture out into the frozen night.
All around me, stoic aspen, stand tall and straight against winter's dark and cold.
And ivory pillars glowing eerily under a waning moon.
Already I'm noticing the aspen buds are swelling, reddening, blushing with the promise
of spring.
That was author David Peterson reading from his book titled The Nearby Far Away, A Personal
Journey Through the Heart of the West.
It's published by Johnson Books.
Thanks for being with us on this week's Environment Show.
I'm Peter Burling.
If you're a sapodilla picker and looking for work, you need a copy.
It's show number 430 and tapes available for $10 from WAMC 318 Central Avenue, Albany,
New York 12206.
The Environment Show is a national production which is solely responsible for its content.
Alan Shartock is the executive producer, Stephen Westcott is producer, and Ray Graff
is audio engineer.
The Environment Show is made possible by the W. Alton 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 car hobby, 1-800-CAR-HRE.
Be good to the earth and join us next week for the Environment Show.
