Enviroment « Maxi News Room

Posts Tagged ‘Enviroment’

Beach Erosion – When It’s Man vs. Nature – Nature Naturally Wins!

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

september-erosion-1

I just spent another week in one of our favorite places, Sarasota, Florida. The weather was great and everyone had a wonderful time. My wife Gail and I lived there from 1978 until 1983, and have been visiting there every year since then. There have been many changes, new developments, buildings, hotels, shopping centers, etc. We have lost many of the old family stores and restaurants to have them replaced by newer fancier ones.

However, by far the greatest change that I see from year to year are the beaches themselves. This year it was even more pronounced due to the effects of Tropical Storm Debbie that swept through the area June 26, 2012. Ten to 30 feet of sand were eroded from beaches in Sarasota County.

Erosion of beaches is nothing new. There has been several attempts to replenish the beach and there is an official presentation on the City of Sarasota’s website about the Lido Beach Restoration.

As much as I love the beach, the fallacy behind any beach restoration or replenishment is that we can “fix” a naturally occurring process, the ever changing relationship between water, wind and sand. According to the Center for Ocean Solutions, coastal erosion is a natural process along the world’s coastlines that occurs through the actions of currents and waves and results in the loss of sediment in some places and accretion in others. Erosion is considered to to be sporadic and episodic. There can be large scale erosion in only a few hours with a severe storm (episodic) and different areas can erode at different rates even during the same event (sporadic).

Here are examples of erosion in the Florida Panhandle at Navarre Beach due to two hurricanes. The upper photo was taken on July 17, 2001, the middle photo was taken on September 17, 2004, one day after the landfall of Hurricane Ivan, and the lower photo was taken on July 12, 2005, two days after the landfall of Hurricane Dennis. This is a clear example of the episodic nature of beach erosion. (Click image to enlarge)

Scientific American stated in its EarthTalk column that coastal erosion in any form is usually a one-way trip. Man-made techniques such as beach nourishment—whereby sand is dredged from off-shore sources and deposited along otherwise vanishing beaches—may slow the process, but nothing short of global cooling or some other major geomorphic change will stop it altogether. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that between 80 and 90 percent of the sandy beaches along America’s coastlines have been eroding for decades. In many of these cases, individual beaches may be losing only a few inches per year, but in some cases the problem is much worse.

According to Stephen Leatherman (“Dr. Beach”) of the National Healthy Beaches Campaign, building a bulkhead or seawall along one or a few coastal properties may protect homes from damaging storm waves for a few years, but could end up doing more harm than good. “Bulkheads and seawalls may accelerate beach erosion by reflecting wave energy off the facing wall, impacting adjacent property owners as well,” writes Leatherman, adding that such structures along retreating shorelines eventually cause diminished beach width and even loss.

Other larger scale techniques like beach nourishment may have better track records, at least in terms of slowing or delaying beach erosion, but are expensive enough as to warrant massive taxpayer expenditures. Beach nourishment is the process of adding new sand to the beach profile in order to restore it to some former width. This is usually accomplished by dredge and fill operations with sand pumped onto the beach from an offshore source, such as sand bars or shoals. Beach nourishment is only feasible at the community level as large sectors (e.g., miles of the shore) must be nourished to be economical viable. In the early 1980s, Miami Beach was restored at the cost of $65 million along this 10-mile strand of shore.

There have been over 8 beach nourishment projects on Lido Beach at a cost of over $12 Million Dollars. However, the beach continues to erode. Here are pictures I took last week showing significant recent erosion on Lido Beach.

With the expected rise in sea levels and the increase in both the frequency and severity of storms being attributed to global climate change, one can expect that coastal erosion will continue to increase. The U.S. government’s Environmental Protection Agency states that if sea levels increase by one foot, would erode most of Florida Beaches 100 to 200 feet. They also believe that sea levels could rise as much as 3 feet over the next 100 years. The cost to replenish the lost sand would be $8 Billion.

While it is understandable that areas with expensive homes and condominium projects and whose economic base is dependent on tourism will continue to spend large sums on beach replenishment projects. While this may be futile in the long run, short term it still allows for a wonderful beach experience as these photos from last week will show.

Also, if you didn’t click the “sand” link earlier in the article, take a second to check out this cool slideshow. It gets up close with what our beaches are made out of, Sand of course!
Click here to view the slideshow.

Tags: beach, Enviroment, Erosion, Florida, Lido Beach, Nature, Ocean, Sarasota, Tropical Storms
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S.S. Badger Owners Try Landmark Status and Earmarks to Scuttle EPA Coal Rules

Monday, December 3rd, 2012

The owners of the S.S. Badger, the last coal fired ship on the Great Lakes are at it again. Since 2008, they have known that their permit to dump over 500 tons of coal ash annually into Lake Michigan would be expiring this month. Yet they have done nothing to resolve the issue. Instead they have asked the EPA for a permit extension while they study a possible conversion to Liquefied Natural Gas.

Now, according to the New York Times the owners of the ferry have enlisted friendly congressmen to bury in a Coast Guard re-authorization bill now in final negotiations between the House and the Senate:

Curious language saying a “qualified vessel” shall continue to operate for its entire lifetime, “without regard to any expiration dates” on the permit it operates on.”

Since the S.S. badger was placed on National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the Interior in 2009, the language in this bill would allow it to continue to dump over 4 tons of coal ash per day into Lake Michigan without a permit.

While the re-authorization bill does not reference the S.S. Badger by name, the enumerated qualifications — including that it be nominated for or on the list of National Historic Landmarks — apply to only one vessel, the Badger. As the Times points out, Republicans supposedly put an end to special-interest language slipped into bills to benefit projects or employers in their districts when they took control of the House last year. However, the sponsors of that language, two Republican representatives, Tom Petri of Wisconsin and Bill Huizenga of Michigan, say it is not an earmark because it does not mandate the expenditure of any federal money.

I may not be able to parse the nuance of congressional political speak as to what is or isn’t an earmark, but to me, the James Whitcomb Riley’s adage regarding looking and walking like a duck applies. Here is a piece of legislation that is slipped into a Coast Guard re-authorization bill that only applies to one entity and that would overrule the EPA permitting process. To me, that’s an earmark. The hypocritical argument that it is not an earmark because no federal dollars are expended does not take into account the cost of cleaning up the 500 tons of coal ash that the Badger dumps each year.

Apparently at least one Senator, Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, agrees with me. The Times quoted him as saying:

“If it walks like an earmark and talks like an earmark, it’s an earmark.”

Hopefully the Senate will stand firm and prevent the S.S. Badger from making a mockery of the EPA permitting process and finally take the steps necessary to either store the 4 tons of coal ash they create each day until it can be offloaded or convert to diesel power as have it’s competitors. No business should be protected from competition and allowed to continually pollute the Great Lakes because of it’s historic nature. We didn’t know better, or have better options than coal when the S.S. Badger first sailed on Lake Michigan. We know better now.

Let’s hope the Senate does the right thing and scuttles the offensive language.

Tags: Enviroment, EPA, Great Lakes, Lake Michigan, SS Badger
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Bottled Water Strikes Back! Or at least tries to

Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

Previously, I posted about many of the problems with our obsession with Bottled Water. These include the millions of plastic bottles that do not get recycled and will last for many years in landfills, the environmental cost of transportation, and the negative effect on our aquifers for the millions of gallons of water pumped from our ground waters, streams and lakes. Apparently, I am not alone in seeing a negative side to this phenomenon. Many people and organizations have tried or succeeded in banning the sales of bottled water.

Washington University in St. Louis, MO has banned the sale of bottled water on campus. Other campuses banning the sale of bottled water include Seattle University and the University of Wisconsin – Stephen Point, Belmont University, Oberlin College, University of Ottawa and University of Portland. Some campuses have not banned the sale of bottled water, but no longer serve it in the dinning halls. These include Gonzaga University, New York University, Stanford University, Stony Brook University and the University of Maryland.

Universities are not the only groups trying to stem the rising tide of bottled water sales and the problem associated therewith. The Dave Mathews Band has partnered with Brita FilterForGood to reduce the amount of bottled water sold at their concerts. Brita’s FilterForGood will provide fans and performers access to free Brita® filtered water. Festival-goers can ditch their bottled water and instead fill up using reusable bottles so that everyone has an opportunity to help reduce the festival’s environmental footprint.

Faced with increasing vocal green opposition to their product, the bottled water industry has decided to fight back. The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) on Wednesday took on what it described as a “a myth repeated by some anti-bottled water activists that bottled water which comes from municipal water sources is just tap water in a bottle.” They posted a video on YouTube that purports to show how they filter and purify their water prior to being bottled.

Once again, the bottled water industry has missed the point. While one of my problems is that most of the US has access to good drinking water, making their product an unnecessary expense, the bigger issue is the bottles themselves and the energy it takes to get the product to the consumer. Add to that the fact that only about 27% of water bottles actually get recycled. The rest end up in landfills. Even when they are recycled, they have to be transported to the recycling facility, ground up and then transported to be melted into pellets for reuse. That is not a small carbon footprint.

In addition, there are some who believe that the chemicals in PET bottles are harmful to humans. There is evidence that PET bottles may leach harmful endocrine disrupting phthalates.

The IBWA should be ashamed of themselves. They are producing a slickly made video promoting their billion dollar business focusing only on the supposed purity of their product and not the numerous harmful environmental effects of their product. There are numerous reasons why bottled water is bad for the environment. Here are a few:

We pay three to four times the cost of gasoline for a product that comes free out of the tap.

We move almost 40,000 18-wheelers worth of water around the country every week–a tremendous waste of energy resources.

It takes three times the water in a bottle to produce the bottle and fill it.

Clearly, bottled water is not the answer to our need for good clean hydration. Use a refillable water bottle and fill it from your tap. You will be saving money, saving resources, protecting your health and reducing your carbon footprint.

Below is an infographic detailing the top importer and exporters of bottled water in the world.

Some art students started a neat “boxed” water company in response to the major issues of the bottled water industry. Please take a minute to check out Boxed Water, started in Grand Rapids, MI. They have good sustainable ideas behind their company. If isn’t a solution at least it’s a start.

Tags: Bottled Water, Boxed Water, Enviroment, International Bottled Water Association, Water
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Dart Environment’s Recycling Facility – Styrofoam Recycling 101

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

I recently got the chance to take a tour of Dart Container’s recycling facility. Dart has a statewide (and further) polystyrene (also known as Styrofoam) recycling program, where they collect used polystyrene from the food service industry, schools, county recycling drop offs; and people send them polystyrene to be recycled. Dart’s trucks go within a one hundred mile radius of Mason, MI (right outside Lansing), reaching forty-four county sites in twenty counties. Dart does this as a public service and they do not necessarily make money recycling, they do it because it is simply the right thing to do (being as they are primarily a new polystyrene manufacturer).

The process itself is quite amazing; they have a few employees who sort the trash before it gets processed. There are three different levels of polystyrene, which ends up as three different colors/qualities of usable resin. After being sorted the polystyrene is melted back down and then cooled in water. Little pellets are created, and they are slightly bigger than normal virgin plastic pellets and a little smaller than a pea.

Dart faces a few difficulties in this recycling system, first is transportation and second is finding suitable end-users, or basically what to do with all the plastic resin they reclaim. Lets start with transportation: recyclers get paid in weight; Styrofoam is 90% air and therefore, a truckload of polystyrene is not worth much to traditional recyclers. Long haul drivers are expensive because of this. For these reasons, getting truckloads of Styrofoam can become very costly.

Finding end-users who can use this product and put it back out into the mainstream is a whole task in and of its self. Currently their recycled polystyrene is being made into picture frames, rulers, Frisbees, toys, it has even been used as filler underneath concrete. Still it remains a continuous effort to find enough end-users to take their product because some industries cannot use it, such as the food service industry. The regulations will not allow post-consumer content unless they were returned to them within forty-eight hours for the original point of use, which is usually impossible. Ideally, Dart would like to go directly to the end user, knowing where and what their product is turned into. Since they cannot find enough end users, they have to occasionally sell to brokers. These are people who are in the business of buying from product and selling it to end users for a profit.

Next lets dispel some myths about polystyrene; all foam is simply not the same. At Dart, they deal exclusively with #6 polystyrene, which was created and patented by Dow Chemical. Though Styrofoam is petroleum based, it actually takes very little compared to other plastic products. Only twelve to fourteen little teeny tiny beads go into a coffee cup. If you are interested in learning more about polystyrene, it’s life cycle analysis and how it stacks up compared to paper, corn and other plastic products please visit their website.

For more information visit please visit Dart Environment on Facebook here.

Below are some pictures of from my tour of Dart’s recycling facility, enjoy!