Air Date: March 31, 1995

SEGMENTS

Cuyahoga River Clean Up / Robin Finesmith

Twenty-six years ago, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio was a burning toxic soup. After a concerted cleanup effort, commerce along the river is picking up and fish are beginning to reappear. Robin Finesmith reports from Living on Earth's Midwest bureau at station WCPN on debate over finalizing the cleanup. (06:54)

Added Property Value: Government Takings vs Givings

When government takes private property, it is required to compensate land owners. Some lawmakers say the government should also pay land owners when regulations reduce property values by restricting development. But one land use attorney says that means the government, and taxpayers, are paying twice. Host Steve Curwood talks with Edward Thompson, who says the government’s actions give private property much of its value to begin with by building roads and running sewer lines. (05:36)

Yellowstone Park: Snowmobile Capitol of the World? / Jyl Hoyt

Over the tranquil blanket of snow in Yellowstone Park, a noisy new trend has emerged. Tens of thousands of snowmobilers comes to gape at the scenery. But cross-country skiers and other more traditional nature observers are disturbed by the noise, fumes and disruption they say these tourists bring. Jyl Hoyt from member station KBSU reports. (06:45)

Show Credits and Funders

Show Transcript

Copyright c 1995 by World Media Foundation. No portion of this transcript may be copied, sold, or transmitted without the written authority of World Media Foundation.

HOST: Steve Curwood
NEWSCASTER: Jan Nunley
REPORTERS: Paul Hochnos, Adam Hochberg, Robin Finesmith, Jill Hoyt
GUEST: Edward Thompson

(Theme music intro)

CURWOOD: From National Public Radio, this is Living on Earth.

(Music up and under)

CURWOOD: I'm Steve Curwood.

How much is enough? Cleveland's infamous Cuyahoga River is again healthy for humans, but not yet safe for fish, and some say finishing the cleanup is just not worth it.

MAZOLA: There comes a point in time where government needs to, you know, to simply stop. The job's been done; let's go onto something else. And you know, monitor the situation for what it is. And what it is out here is a navigation channel.

CURWOOD: Also, wintertime business is booming in Yellowstone National Park, and so is air pollution in the sound of snowmobiles. But talk of limits has Yellowstone snowmobilers steamed.

SNOWMOBILER: You want to play, you got to take what goes with it. We're going to regulate ourselves right out of living, we keep it up. Don't you think?

CURWOOD: And the property rights debate this week on Living on Earth, coming up right after the news.

Environmental News

NUNLEY: For Living on Earth, I'm Jan Nunley. Scientists say an unprecedented melting of Antarctic ice is the result of atmospheric warming. Since January an iceberg nearly the size of Rhode Island has broken off the frozen continent. The Wardee Ice Shelf has completely collapsed, and the Larson Ice Shelf has cracked, exposing patches of sea for the first time in more than

10,000 years. While researchers say this is not proof of global warming, it is a clear sign of local warming, with regional temperatures rising two-and-a-half degrees Celsius in just the last 4 decades. David Peale of the British Antarctic Survey says that these events provide a graphic demonstration of what warming can do.

At the UN's World Climate Summit in Berlin, officials from 160 nations and hundreds of environmental organizations are wrestling with reducing the human contribution to atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other gases. Most researchers believe the buildup is leading to global warming, the greenhouse effect, and one group of nations has made a dramatic plea illustrating what may be at risk if the summit fails. From Berlin, Paul Hochnos reports.

HOCHNOS: The Alliance of Small Island States asked the industrial nations for a 20% cut in carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2005. Leaders of the 36 member alliance say that global warming will raise sea levels and their nations could disappear beneath the waves. But observers hold little hope that a 20% cut or anything near it will come out of this meeting. While Germany says it will meet the emissions goals set at the 1992 Earth Summit, most other industrialized nations, including the US, will not, and some won't even try. China, the world's fastest growing economy, recently announced that pollution controls would cost far too much to implement. With no consensus on what to do or how to do it emerging from the 3,000 participants, it is likely that this summit will do little more than postpone the hard decisions to cut greenhouse gas emissions. For Living on Earth, I'm Paul Hochnos in Berlin.

NUNLEY: Stratospheric ozone over much of Canada has thinned to near record lows during the last few weeks. According to the Atmospheric Environment Service, current ozone levels are down an average 16% across southern Canada. Scientists are concerned that the drop in ozone will boost skin cancer rates as more ultraviolet radiation penetrates the atmosphere. The Service's Chief Scientist, Dr. James Kerr, says as more countries discontinue the use of ozone-destroying CFCs, levels will return to normal, but not until the middle of the next century.

American scientists are puzzled by the way Mexico's government is explaining the deaths of hundreds of birds and sea mammals in the Gulf of California since January. Mexico's Environmental Protection Agency cites cyanide poisoning as the most probable cause of the deaths. But University of Arizona professor Donald Thompson says cyanide would have killed large numbers of fish as well. High concentrations of heavy metals have been found in the tissues of the dead animals, but the source of the contamination is still unknown.

Several North Carolina hog farms belonging to US Senator Lawch Faircloth contain hundreds of acres of wetlands. So it's raised some eyebrows that the Republican is drafting a bill to allow development on about half the nation's federally protected wetlands. From Raleigh, North Carolina, Adam Hochberg reports.

HOCHBERG: Senator Faircloth himself owns more than 500 acres of wetlands, and much of his property, as well as millions more acres of land nationwide, would be open to development under his proposal. The Senator's plan is being distributed around Capitol Hill by his staff. It would change the definition of wetlands, so that about half of the nation's protected wetlands would no longer receive that protection. In addition, it would reduce the punishments for people who violate wetlands laws, and strip the Environmental Protection Agency of much of its authority to designate areas as wetlands. Faircloth is one of North Carolina's largest hog farmers, and farm leaders have long attacked Federal wetlands laws as being too restrictive. He's also the Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee that handles issues concerning wetlands. Some Senate Democrats are criticizing the North Carolina Republican for attempting to draft a bill that could affect the income of his own business. For Living on Earth, I'm Adam Hochberg in Raleigh, North Carolina.

NUNLEY: A government agency says a dramatic increase in salvage logging on public lands will cost taxpayers big money. A bill passed by the House and now before the Senate would require the Forest Service to allow the sale of more than $6 billion board feet of timber over the next 2 years. A spokesman for the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service wouldn't say how much the plan would cost taxpayers, but Robert Wolf, who recently retired from the agency, predicts the cost of providing roads and other services for timber companies could reach at least $200 million. Supporters of the plan say the bill is a necessary step towards improving forest health and boosting the economy, but Interior Department Chief of Staff Tom Collier says it flies in the face of science, tradition, and common sense.

That's this week's Living on Earth news. I'm Jan Nunley.

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Cuyahoga River Clean Up

CURWOOD: This is Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood.

(A man sings: "There's a red moon horizon, on the Cuyahoga River, rolling into Cleveland to the lake. There's an oil barge winding down the Cuyahoga River, rolling into Cleveland to the lake...")

CURWOOD: Back in the 1960s, the Cuyahoga River was so polluted as it passed through Cleveland into Lake Erie, that you could smell it for blocks. In 1969 the city gained international notoriety when the Cuyahoga's toxic brew of chemicals and debris actually caught fire.

(A man sings: "Burn on, big river, burn on. Burn on, big river, burn on...")

CURWOOD: Today, after years of hard work and millions of dollars, you no longer have to roll up your windows when you pass the Cuyahoga. Marinas and riverfront restaurants are enjoying good business, and in parts of the river fish are flourishing again. But there's still one big problem: the constant dredging of the last few mile of the Cuyahoga can sometimes make the water deadly for fish. A Federal deadline to fix the problem is looking, but in a time of tight money and cost-benefit analyses of environmental rules, some folks say the price of that last bit of cleanup is just too high. From Living on Earth's Midwest Bureau at WCPN in Cleveland, Robin Finesmith has our report.

(Running water)

FINESMITH: Ten miles south of Lake Erie, the chocolate-colored water of the Upper Cuyahoga River pushes rhythmically against dead tree branches. Recent rains have scoured the muddy banks and stirred up sand from the bottom, where emerald shiners and white bass are beginning to spawn. Once the fry are large enough, they'll swim downriver toward the lake, but before they get there they must pass through a 5-and-a-half mile stretch of the river that's been permanently altered to serve as a shipping channel for Great Lakes freighters.

(Running water)

FINESMITH: Steve Tuckerman is an environmental scientist with Ohio's EPA, who measures the flow of the Cuyahoga. He says the alterations to the river have permanently changed its ecology.

TUCKERMAN: Because of the deep portion of the navigation channel, the water does not have a chance to go through that area and have some of the normal cleansing pocesses that rivers go through. And we found that whenever the flow drops below a certain level, we start to have water quality problems, specifically dissolved oxygen, low concentrations in the navigation channel.

FINESMITH: Tuckerman says the problem is so severe that on some hot, still days during the summer the water contains no dissolved oxygen at all, killing the fish and everything else living there. Some summers that only happens for a few days, but it can go on for months. Clevelanders have taken great pride in their transformation of the Cuyahoga, since the embarrassing day in 1969 when pollutants and debris in the water actually caught fire. Massive cleanup efforts have revived the river and the nearly dead Lake Erie, and the banks of the Cuyahoga in downtown Cleveland are lined with waterfront restaurants, nightclubs, and docks for excursion boats. The low oxygen level is essentially the only problem left in the Cuyahoga, and that's why some say the city should take pride in what it's achieved and move on to other issues.

MAZOLA: There comes a point in time where government needs to, you know, to simply stop. The job's been done; let's go onto something else. And you know, monitor the situation for what it is. And what it is out here is a navigation channel.

FINESMITH: Joe Mazola is the Executive Director of the Flats Oxbow Association, representing over 200 businesses along the river.

MAZOLA: What people are realizing with the Cuyahoga is that it has been altered by man to serve industry. That was a conscious decision. People come down here and they say oh, the river, but it's really a navigation channel with steel walls 26 feet down on each side, and a river bottom that is consistently dredged. It ceased to be a river a long time ago. To spend big bucks into getting that last little inch out of what it takes to say okay, it has a completely clean bill of health, I think is uncalled for. It's too much.

FINESMITH: Mazola readily acknowledges that cleanup of the Cuyahoga is responsible for the area's economic rebirth. But he also says that further expectations for the river are simply too high. US EPA concedes at least part of Mazola's argument. Recognizing the importance of the navigation channel to area commerce, the EPA has set a lower oxygen standard for this part of the Cuyahoga than for other Ohio rivers: just enough to allow fish to survive on their way to Lake Erie. Assistant District Chief of Ohio's EPA, Bob Wisenski, says the standards can't be relaxed any further.

WISENSKI: We recognize that it is a ship channel. The rule that was passed recognizes that that is a unique water body, and we've given them a very big break already.

FINESMITH: Wisenski notes that fish populations have significantly improved over time. Where there were only 9 species counted 10 years ago, today there are close to 30. But he also says people must realize that the oxygen problem involves more than just the survival of the fish.

WISENSKI: If you're trying to restore an ecosystem, which is what we're trying to do, we're not just trying to meet some magic chemical numbers in a river system. I mean, the goal of the Clean Water Act was to restore the biological integrity of these systems. It's to have a well-balanced aquatic community. You can't have that if you have a major river system without any oxygen in it for a couple days out of the year or a couple months out of the year.

FINESMITH: To ensure that the oxygen level never falls below the EPA's minimum standard, Wisenski says the water must be artificially aerated, with compressors, waterfalls, or other means: a costly process that could run into the tens of millions of dollars. Officials want industrial users of the channel to pay for the aeration system, but business leaders like Joe Mazola wonder if the money could be put to better use.

MAZOLA: We can make that river as clean as you like; it's going to cost. How much do you want to spend? Should we be spending that money in other areas? Should we be spending money on, say, brown fields conditions where we have contaminated soil in an area where a company wants to locate a 100,000 square foot facility and generate 250 jobs which can " it's, these are the kind of things that as a community we have to decide.

FINESMITH: Along with the EPA's Wisenski, Mazola serves on a broad-based local committee that coordinates environmental planning for the river. Many members recognize that it's far easier to quantify immediate economic costs than long-range benefits. But Committee Chair Ted Esborg says the dramatic turnaround the Cuyahoga so far makes a strong case for spending the money on this last step.

ESBORG: We have seen measurable progress, measurable benefits from where we started 25 years ago. I think it's an easier sell here just because of those advances that we've already made.

(Gulls and foghorns)

FINESMITH: The momentum of economic growth that's followed the Cuyahoga's recovery now reaches almost to the Lake Erie shore, where there are plans to build an aquarium on some of the last undeveloped land in downtown Cleveland. With so much civic pride riding on the river's cleanup, no one at this point wants to actively oppose the aeration project. Yet with a Federal
deadline looming, there are still no firm plans to build an aeration system, and no agreement on who would pay for it. And in the political climate of cost-benefit analyses and fewer regulations, those wanting to move ahead with the last stage of the Cuyahoga's cleanup may face a tough fight. For Living on Earth, I'm Robin Finesmith in Cleveland.

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(Gulls calling)

(Music up and under)

CURWOOD: Tell us what you think. Call us right now our listener comment line at 1-800-218-9988. That's 1-800-218-9988. Or you can write to us at Living on Earth, Box 639, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02238. That's Living on Earth, Box 639, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02238. Or zap us on the Internet. Our address is LOE@NPR.ORG. That's LOE@NPR.ORG. Transcripts and tapes are $10.

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Added Property Value: Government Takings vs Givings

CURWOOD: The cost of protection is key to many environmental controversies. One issue that's before many legislators in the Congress these days is the debate over so-called takings. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution clearly prohibits the government from taking private property without just compensation. And many argue that environmental regulations that limit the use of property amount to takings. The US House of Representatives has already passed a bill that would make the government pay when laws or regulations reduce the value of property, and the Senate is considering a similar measure. But little so far has been said about government actions which give value of private property. Edward Thompson is the Director of Public Policy for the American Farmland Trust. He says the debate over property rights has been entirely one-sided.

THOMPSON: For every taking that is being claimed in this debate, there is what you might call a giving. Something that increases private property values. There are many, many ways that government does this. First are direct appropriations, such as money spent on roads and sewer lines and so forth that make land developable that otherwise wouldn't be. A very good example of that is the lot out on the South Carolina island that was the subject of a recent Supreme Court case.

CURWOOD: Mr. Lucas's lot there.

THOMPSON: That's right. Had it not been for the public investment in the bridge and the roads and the sewers and the flood insurance and the beachfront protection measures, that property would have been a worthless strip of shifting sand rather than a prime building lot. But there are many other examples as well. I mean, there are tax preferences that are granted to real estate development. There are entitlement programs, such as farm subsidies, that are capitalized in the property values greatly increasing it. There are land management policies. Out west, land next to national parks, for example, carries a very high premium price. And even regulations themselves. If you look at the principal form of land use regulation in this country, zoning, it has a much greater impact in maintaining an increase in property values than it does in reducing them.

CURWOOD: So this is a giving that you think should be considered when the government does a taking.

THOMPSON: I think it's only fair, both to the property owners and to the public, that we have both eyes open when we're taking a look at how government affects land values. Because otherwise, the public is being asked to pay twice for these takings: once when it adds value to private property, and again when compensation is demanded when regulations attempt to limit uses that are harmful to the environment. If there is a real unfairness here to many of the landowners who are complaining the loudest, it's not that they're being asked to shoulder a disproportionate amount of the cost. It's that government is giving them very mixed signals.

CURWOOD: Now, what do you think we should do here? Are you suggesting that these sorts of givings, road development, subsidies, the mortgage deduction " should they be eliminated or should they just be taken into account when setting policy and trying to settle disputes?

THOMPSON: I think the first thing we need to do is have an audit of how government affects private property values both positively and negatively. As a result of that audit, we may find that there are indeed some givings that need to be eliminated, because they're completely counterproductive to protecting the resources. There may be others that we want to continue. We have to stop subsidizing land uses we do not want to occur. That is prohibitively expensive to begin with. It puts landowners in this unenviable position of being whipsawed, and it's " it's not going to get us where we want to go.

CURWOOD: Let's say you were a member of the US Senate. What sorts of amendments would you offer to the House version of the Property Rights Bill to get at the giving side of the issue?

THOMPSON: In the first amendment I'd offer would be one that backs out from the property value any incremental value attributable to government subsidies. Take, for example, good, productive farmland out in the corn belt. Let's say it goes for $1,200 an acre on the open market. But if it has what is called a corn base, which is a thing that entitles the landowner to receive Federal income support payments for the crop, that same land will go from $1,500 to $1,800 an acre. I would back those values out so the public is not paying twice. The second thing I would do, let's say it's a wetland regulation and there's a 10-acre wetland there, I would say that the only compensation that you should receive is the annual loss of the profit from the crop that could be grown on that 10-acre wetland. That is in fact the only loss that the landowner suffers until they go to sell the propert y. And at that point you could compensate them for the full value lost. I think that there's a real chance that we could actually afford to protect wetlands in that way. Whereas if we go the way that the bill is now structured, I think it's quite clear there's no way we can afford it and that the bill really becomes a rollback of environmental protection rather than a sincere effort to try to reconcile environmental protection with the protection of property rights.

CURWOOD: Well thank you very much for taking this time with us. Edward Thompson is a land use attorney and Director of Public Policy for the American Farmland Trust. He joined us on the line from Washington. Thank you, sir.

THOMPSON: Thank you.

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(Music up and under)

Yellowstone Park: Snowmobile Capitol of the World?

CURWOOD: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or rather for this next story I should say, beauty is in the ear of the listener. Consider Yellowstone National Park. For years it has been enjoyed in the winter by cross-country skiers and snowshoers as a quite sanctuary. A place to escape the noisy civilized world and retreat into a broad wilderness that hisses quietly with geysers and the swirl of snow. But today, the snow-covered trails of Yellowstone echo with a roar of visitors moving at much higher speeds, touching off a clash of values in one of the country's most treasured landscapes. Jill Hoyt of member station KBSU has our story.

HOYT: A blue haze hangs over West Yellowstone, Montana, a small tourist town bordered by vast, high basins and the rounded mountains of Yellowstone National Park. The haze feels eerie, and is especially thick every afternoon around 5, when snowmobile enthusiasts wearing black helmets and thick jumpsuits spew back to town on their rented snow machines. It's the machine exhaust that causes this haze. But the snowmobilers don't notice as they marvel to each other about the park's wind-shaped ice sculptures and huge geysers.

(Snowmobile motors revving up)

SNOWMOBILER: Love it! First time here, but boy it's unbelievable, the scenery. Unbelievable, it's great, especially the animals, the ale [word?]. Love it!

HOYT: Snowmobilers call Yellowstone the Snowmobile Capital of the World. Last winter, more than 74,000 snow machines entered the park, more than any other year. Even more than park officials predicted would come by the year 2,000. Snowmobilers like John Fowler come here because they can zoom along grooved trails within touching distance of vast herds of wild animals.

FOWLER: The elk and the buffalo lay right alongside the trail. You can stop a few feet back and take pictures and it's beautiful.

HOYT: But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and for people who don't ride snowmobiles can be a nuisance. Slim, athletic cross-country skier Mike Yokum says he can't escape the loud machines, no matter how far he goes in the park.

YOKUM: I spent last winter at Old Faithful, and I'm a healthy skier, I can ski 20 miles a day. And I could not find a place that I could ski to and back in one day that was immune from snowmobile noise.

(Two men speak: "Good morning." "Morning." "Jack, how's it going?" "Good, how are you?" "Jack will claim nobody will listen." "Yeah, that's for damn sure." Laughter.)

HOYT: Even people who travel into the park on other motorized vehicles complain. John Gosbadereg, a driver for Alpen Guides Company, a West Yellowstone-based companies that carries tourists on ski-mounted minivans, says his clients often express dismay and disgust at the snowmobilers.

GOSBADEREG: A lot of times it's just the snowmobiling etiquette. You know, we pull up to a waterfall, but you'll get a group of 20 sleds pull up to this waterfall and none of them shut their snowmobiles off. You've got 20 2-stroke engines idling, it sounds like you're in a logging camp.

(Engines revving)

HOYT: Each winter morning, hundreds of snowmobiles line up at the West Yellowstone park entrance and pay a fee to George Kittrell, an amiable seasonal employee who says he often gets headaches from all the exhaust. Even though fresh air is pumped into his cubicle.

KITTRELL: You look at 'em, listen to 'em and smell 'em. But this is what they love; they come from all over to do this. This guy's from Minnesota, you can tell from the sticker.

HOYT: Park officials worry about the health of Kittrell and other gatekeepers. That's one reason why the park started monitoring the west entran ce and several other sites along the park's 166-mile traffic corridor for carbon monoxide and particulants from snowmobiles. West District Ranger Bob Seibert says the 2-cycle snowmobile engine can be 100 times more polluting than just one car. So, in a single day...

SEIBERT: You could have certain types of emissions equivalent to a million automobiles coming through the west entrance on a single day. Whereas all of Yellowstone National Park gets a million automobiles in an entire summer.

HOYT: Yellowstone Park is monitoring its air for 2 years to decide if there is a pollution problem. The results will be part of a new winter use plan that will address other effects of increased snowmobiling, and could ultimately impose restrictions. But Bob Icke of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, an environmental activist group, wants the part to limit snowmobile use now.

ICKE: There are examples of other national parks where use levels are set: the Grand Canyon, only so many people are allowed to float that river. And so in Yellowstone there's nothing wrong with the idea of setting some limits to protect the resource.

HOYT: But just mention the word limits to Vicky Egger, Chamber of Commerce Director in the town of West Yellowstone.

EGGER: Not only do I think it would be a horrible miscarriage of the Park Service's mandate, which is to make that park available for people, I think it would be cataclysmic on our economy in West Yellowstone.

HOYT: Others suggest that West Yellowstone, which first got paved sidewalks just 7 years ago, would remain economically healthy with existing snowmobile use.

(Snowmobile engines revving)

HOYT: The Chamber of Commerce, the Park Service, and environmentalists all agree the snowmobile industry needs to adapt and build a Yellowstone-friendly 4-cycle snow machine that would be quieter and less polluting, even though many snowmobilers say the noise is part of the fun.

(Snowmobile engines revving)

SNOWMOBILER: You want to play, you got to take what goes with it. We're going to lobby or regulate ourselves right out of living, we keep it up. Don't you think?

(Snowmobile engines revving)

HOYT: The park expects about 300,000 winter visitors will maneuver through Yellowstone's narrow, crowded roads each year by the turn of the century. Most will be snowmobilers like Mary Gruber.

GRUBER: It's just a wonderful place to be. It's God's country.

HOYT: Others wonder if Yellowstone can remain God's country with an increasing and perhaps unlimited number of snowmobiles whizzing through.

(Snowmobile engines revving)

HOYT: For Living on Earth, I'm Jill Hoyt in Yellowstone National park.

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(Snowmobile engines revving; music up and under)

CURWOOD: This week, Living on Earth officially welcomes Robin Finesmith as our Midwest Bureau Chief at WCPN in Cleveland. Welcome, Robin, and thanks to all of you at WCPN. Living on Earth is produced and edited by Peter Thomson. Deborah Stavro directs the program. The coordinating producer is George Homsy; the associate producer is Kim Motylewski. And our production team includes Constantine Von Hoffman, Jan Nunley, Julia Madeson, Jessika Bella Mura, David Dunlap, Heather Corson, and Alex Garcia-Rangel. Our engineers in the WBUR studio are Keith Shields and Frank DeAngelis. Michael Aharon composed our theme. Special thanks this week to Jeff Martine.

Living on Earth is a project of the World Media Foundation, and is recorded at the studios of WBUR, Boston. I'm Steve Curwood, executive producer.

ANNOUNCER: Living on Earth is made possible with major funding provided by the National Science Foundation for coverage of science and the environment; and all-natural Stonyfield Farm Yogurt " whether supporting worthwhile causes or producing healthy foods, Stonyfield's goal is to make you feel good inside. Support also comes from the Great Lakes Protection Fund, and the George Gund Foundation.

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