The widows of two men killed in a mine accident in Kentucky last year are suing the mine’s operator. The Dotiki mine had received hundreds of citations for safety violations before the 2010 roof collapse. The women say production took priority over safety at the mine.

From Bloomberg:

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Kentucky by Sandy Travis of Dixon and Melissa Carter of Hanson, whose husbands died in the April 28, 2010, collapse. They also filed claims with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration seeking $9 million each for personal injury and wrongful death.

Travis is seeking up to $5 million in punitive damages in the lawsuit, while Carter, who is also suing on behalf of the couple’s minor son, is asking for up to $10 million in punitive damages. Both are also asking for an undisclosed amount in compensatory awards.

A federal task force has just delivered its recommendations to President Barack Obama for accelerating the widespread use of carbon capture and storage across the nation. They say that carbon capture and storage is indeed feasible and cost-effective in the short-term, that a price on carbon is essential, and that the federal government must step up its coordination efforts.  But one power plant in West Virginia has been deploying the technology since last fall.

We brought back this two-part story on the experiment.

More on whether carbon capture and storage technology is making enough progress.

Welcome to the guts of the world’s largest coal-fired power plant.  The gigantic boiler inside American Electric Power’s Mountaineer plant in West Virginia incinerates up to 12 thousand tons of coal every day.  It generates enough power to juice up 200 New Havens—the plant’s hometown on the Ohio River.  It also sends more than 9 and a half million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. But that’s about to change.

Listen to the story.

Inside Mountaineer's boiler building

Project manager Brian Sherrick leads a group past the boiler and up onto the roof, to point out some new equipment on a smokestack.

“You look down the stack, you see duct work, going into the side of the stack.  On the far side of the absorber outlet hood, you see two white pieces of duct work,” says Sherrick

Sherrick is describing the  plant’s brand new system of pipes and tanks designed to cull the global warming gas before it goes up the stack.

“That’s the inlet and outlet duct work for the CO2 capture process.”

“So this is where the CO2 as a fluid will get transported over to the booster pump for injection into the two injection wells. So all this capture process on the back end comes down to this four-inch CO2 pipe,” Sherrick says.

That process is the chilled ammonia method, developed by French company Allstom.  AEP keeps the details secret, but basically they’ve fine-tuned a way to say a chemical “come hither” to the CO2 before it hits the stacks, coax it into this new structure, compress it, and shoot it into a deep underground reservoir of salt water and sponge-y rock for good.  What makes it different is the amount of energy it takes to do.  Plant managers call it “parasitic load.”  Other methods can take nearly 30 percent of a plant’s power.  But Sherrick says this takes less.

Duct work where carbon dioxide is captured before going up the smoke stack

“The goal of Allstom’s chilled ammonia process is to get somewhere down to 10 to 15 percent. Also, as you scale up the technology, you’ll have some efficiencies that you gain because you’ll be able to use the same size pump or motor as you did here.”

AEP is betting more than 70 million dollars on the process, along with partner investors.  Other industry leaders, like E.on vice president John Voyles, aren’t convinced the technologies are ready to deploy yet.

Wellhead where carbon is piped for underground storage.

“It will take 25 to 30 percent of the output from any particular unit just to run that equipment.  And obviously all of the electric generators that are installed and running today are there to serve customers’ needs.  So, there will be a cost to install that equipment that certainly will impact customer bills and rates,” says Voyles.

And a cost to replace the electric generation that goes into capturing the carbon dioxide.  Which could mean using more coal.  It’s a conundrum. Voyles says E.on has invested in carbon capture and sequestration research.  And he believes legislation requiring carbon reductions is inevitable.  But it may be sooner than we think.  For the first time in many years, both lawmakers and regulation writers are tackling plans to deal with greenhouse gas emissions.  The Environmental Protection Agency just finalized a rule that will require power plants to report theirs.  And two versions of a climate bill requiring serious reductions are wending their way through the halls of congress.  If something passes, more power plant operators may have to come to terms with a technology that’s still young and expensive.

- by Kristin Espeland Gourlay

More on the future–with all its technical and economic uncertainties—of carbon capture and storage.

What’s the value of a forest? It depends on whom you ask. But the nation’s Southeastern forests may need some new answers to that question if they’re going to survive the growing pace of development.

Southeastern forests make up nearly 30 percent of the nation’s forest lands.  And they’re among the world’s most biologically diverse temperate forests—home to some 3,000 plant species and nearly 600 bird species.  But two recent reports project that these forests are on course for dramatic change within the next 50 years.
Listen to the story:

More on this topic:
The Future of Southeastern Forests

One report is from a U.S. Forest Service project focused on providing policymakers, landowners, and scientists the information they need to make decisions about future forest use.

“The work of the Southern Forests Futures Project is focused on trying to simultaneously simulate the development of forest in the south, in response to climate change, changes in population and urbanization, as well as changes in forest management and harvesting,” says Wear.

Wear says that, by 2060, nearly 30 million more acres will have been developed in the Southeast.

Image credit: WRI

“That’s about a doubling of developed land in the region.  That’s with about an 80% increase in population here. A majority of that land would come out of forests.”

Craig Hanson explains why there’s little public outcry:
“Continual but dispersed change often goes unnoticed.”

Hanson is with the World Resources Institute, whose Southern Forests for the Future project just came out with its own report examining those trends to raise awareness about their implications.  He says several factors are driving the kind of incremental change that could amount to lots of lost forest.  He says, for example, forest will be lost not only to sprawl but also to converting agricultural land for timber or fuel products, especially as demand grows globally.  And Appalachian coal mining will have cleared one and half million acres of forest by the end of this year.  But since most Southern forests are privately owned, Hanson says these kinds of changes in land use reflect what owners find the most value in.

“So on average, they’re only getting paid for timber, although their forests also provide places for recreation, hunting, carbon sequestration, water purification, you name it, right? Now any business model where you’re making five things and you’re only getting paid for one of them is not a long-term sustainable business model,” Hanson says.

Those kinds of assets are often called ecosystem services. And the healthier and more intact the ecosystem, the better the services it can provide: oxygen to breathe, stable soils that prevent flooding, food, habitat.  The challenge, says Jon Erickson, is that those services don’t traditionally have any market value.  Erickson is an ecological economist with the University of Vermont. He says that’s why forest owners don’t have much incentive now to keep their forests intact.

“All the incentives in the marketplace are to convert a forest into something else, to convert a forest into board feet and sell it as timber, or to convert the forest land into acres and sell it for development,” Erickson says.

And maintaining an intact forest isn’t cheap: there are taxes and insurance to be paid, to name a few expenses.  But Erickson says an emerging point of view says that keeping ecosystems, including forests, intact might be more valuable – to the owner and to society as a whole.  One possibility is to offer tax incentives.

“Giving forest landowners a break on taxes is a tried and true way to give them the incentive to keep forestry either in sustainable forestry or to preserve all those other services that come from forests, and in return, society is essentially compensating the landowner by lowering their tax bill,” Erickson says.

The economist says that one way to measure a forest’s value is to consider the cost of replacing it.  For example, if forest lands act as a city’s first line of water filtration from a primary drinking source, what would it cost in terms of man-made infrastructure to replace that filtration system?

So the forces of change shaping Southeastern forests could have major effects on not only our landscape, but our health, and our livelihoods.  But some emerging practices – like paying for ecosystem services or putting legal limits on how much land can be developed – may alter some of these trends.

- by Kristin Espeland Gourlay

Thanks to Haley Hart for additional reporting on this story.

For many regional farmers, the most popular weed-killer is becoming less effective.  Now, many are reverting to older, harsher chemicals to combat so-called “superweeds.”

Bill Haddad, agri-chemical salesman

It started 10 years ago, when Bill Haddad thought he might be out of a job.

He sells weed killers to farmers in Ohio for a company called Valent.  He had been selling a variety of types.  But when agri-business giant Monsanto introduced the herbicide Roundup -  Haddad says farmers didn’t want to buy a variety of chemicals anymore.  They only wanted Roundup.  It controlled so many kinds of weeds:

Lambsquarter is evolving resistance

“For the farmer, instead of having a whole cabinet of medicines, he had one, you know aspirin.   You know,  I can control lambsquarter with Roundup, I can control giant ragweed, marestails, thistle, crabgrass,” says Haddad.

Farmers also bought Roundup because it was part of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready farming system.  The company genetically engineered soybeans, corn and cotton seeds to be resistant to Roundup. That meant farmers could spray all the Roundup they wanted, whenever they wanted.  The weeds would die – but the crops survived.

Listen to the Story

Even many environmentalists approved.  Roundup was less toxic than other farm chemicals.  And farmers didn’t have to plow the weeds to control them anymore.  No plowing meant less soil erosion, and less pesticide runoff into the waterways. Today 90% of the soybeans and 80% of the corn grown in the U.S. are “Roundup Ready.”

But recently, chemical salesman Bill Haddad is noticing some changes.  Roundup is losing its power.  So, he’s selling more of the older chemicals – stuff that was popular in the 1970s.

As we walk through a field in northern Ohio, Haddad points out a spot where the farmer sprayed Roundup.  Some weeds are totally brown and dying, but others are still green:

“Here.  Here’s a case right here.  See how this thing is dead, but this thing is still alive.”

Weeds sprayed with Roundup; some are still alive.

Each of these weeds can put out thousands of seeds. If just one survives the Roundup, Haddad says the seeds it produces will be even more resistant to the weedkiller:

“And every year that goes by, you have these superweeds putting more resistant seed out there, more tolerant seed.   And we’re throwing everything but the kitchen sink at them,” says Haddad.

There are documented cases of weed resistance to Roundup throughout the Ohio River Valley.  But so far, the problem is worst in the Southeast U.S.  Ken Smith is a weed scientist at the University of Arkansas.  He says some farmers there have lost entire fields of cotton because the Roundup is no longer killing pigweed, a tough weed with a stalk like a baseball bat.

”One farmer said, ‘First time I sprayed pigweed with Roundup and I went back three days later and I thought, Oh my gosh, what a gift.’  He said it just cleaned every pigweed out of the field.  He said, ‘Now I found out it wasn’t a gift, it was just a loan.  Now we’re having to pay that loan back.’”

Agri-businesses are responding, by spending hundreds of millions of dollars in what some have dubbed an herbicide arms race to combat superweeds.  They’re trying to engineer crops that will be resistant not just to Roundup – but also to some of the harsh, older chemicals.

That frustrates Jane Rissler.  She’s an agriculture specialist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.  Rissler says twenty years ago seed companies promoted genetically engineered crops as a way to help farmers use less toxic chemicals.

”Monsanto oversold the crop.  It continued to promote and promote the crop until farmers were using it every season on herbicide tolerant corn or soybeans or cotton.  And so the weeds emerged, as anyone who knows much about biology could have predicted,” says Rissler.

Superweeds evolved the same way antibiotic use led to the rise of antibiotic resistant germs— overuse.  And it could have more consequences than just the environmental ones: experts say the loss of Roundup’s usefulness could lead to higher food prices.

Monsanto admits that weed resistance is a serious issue – but says it’s manageable.  Farm experts say Roundup is a once-in-a-century discovery – and everything possible should be done to preserve its effectiveness.

Major utilities aren’t the only facilities burning coal. College campuses often have their own coal-fired power plants. One of them, Indiana University, has become the target of national and local environmental groups calling for the school to stop burning the fuel. But the school can’t begin to think about eliminating its carbon footprint without a significant change in its stance toward coal.

Inside the plant

An alarm sounds at the Indiana University Central Heating plant. It’s just one of the dozen or so bells and buzzers that litter the white noise soundscape here. Assistant Director of Utilities Mark Menefee stands by a coal boiler with a two thousand degree inferno raging inside. He says the plant has tried to reduce pollution in recent years.

“We’ve changed the control systems, we’ve changed the emissions systems. But the boilers, they’re 1940s technology. It’s old stuff,” he said.

Plant manager Mark Menefee

The university heats and cools 12 million square feet of buildings on its Bloomington campus alone – that’s just less than double the size of the Pentagon. Menefee says many buildings and campus systems are inefficient and result in more coal being burned than necessary.

“It would be easy for us to turn off the switch tomorrow. But then we’d all look at each other and say, ‘Now what do we do?’” said Tom Morrison, IU Vice President.

Morrison says his school – and nearly all others with coal plants – are stuck with the fuel as their heat source for the time being. Burning natural gas – which emits half as much carbon as coal – would hurt the university’s bottom line too much, he says.

But that answer hasn’t been good enough for the Sierra Club, which sent paid organizers to campus last fall, resulting in the boisterous student group Coal Free IU – led by President Lauren Kastner

“They’re buying it, they’re burning it. That’s as far as they see. That’s as far as they want to see. The financial argument is the strongest they have because you can’t argue with the recession,” Kastner said.

But in the latest draft of its campus master plan, IU has pledged to work toward carbon neutrality by the middle of the century, joining nearly 700 other colleges making the same pledge – nationwide.

“It’s an abstract date. It was a suggestion. And nobody’s bought into that.”

That’s Jeff Kaden, university engineer. He is on the master plan working group.

“The administration has not said we fully understand and agree and follow the guidelines of the timelines for climate neutrality. That hasn’t happened. And I don’t know if it will,” Kaden said.

Kaden says the university is counting on developments in clean energy that will allow the school to reach its goal. But until those affordable, new clean energy methods are invented and thoroughly tested first, Tom Morrison and other IU officials admit the school won’t reach carbon neutrality.

“We don’t have the benefit of experimentation to say let’s try this and three years later go, ‘Whoops! That didn’t work.’ We don’t get that luxury,” Morrison said. “We have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers of the state of Indiana.”

Bob Keuster, who runs the non-profit Center for Energy Research, Education and Service, says college campuses — especially ones as large and coal-dependent as IU — will never not have an carbon footprint, so climate neutrality is a bit of a misnomer. But he says schools that promise to work toward neutrality have a duty to make the effort.

“Although shame is not the foundation of the approach, there is dimension is lurking there. If you don’t follow up on what you say you’re going to do, you’re going to be a little embarrassed, if anything else,” Kuester said.

Of the 60 college campuses that have their own coal plants, fewer than a handful have announced plans to consider phasing them out, despite the Sierra Club’s forceful campaign.

But just up the road from IU, in Muncie, Indiana, Ball State University will soon shut down its four Eisenhower-era coal-fired boilers by completing the largest geothermal heating and cooling system in the country. While the project will move the school closer to its carbon neutral pledge, at best, it’ll move the school less than halfway towards its goal.

Urban agriculture is growing. And its not just city-dwellers frequenting farmer’s markets for their vegetables, eggs and honey – more of them are interested in growing or cultivating it themselves.  That’s leaving officials scrambling for ways to regulate the new farmer that’s cropping up in American cities, farmers like Jana Thompson.

Meredith Greeley, urban farmer

Thompson grew up on farms. Seven years ago she moved to Pittsburgh. Although she had a garden she missed having a connection to nature. So, first came the bees. 70,000 of them, in open-bottomed hive boxes on her roof. Then came the chickens – three Salmon Bantams. Next, she wants to raise rabbits for meat. But then she received an email with some troubling news.

“The first code the city proposed everything I’m doing here would have become illegal,” says Thompson.

Urban chickens

As an urbanite with a growing farm-stock, Jana Thompson isn’t alone. As a nationwide consciousness about where food comes from increases more city-residents are growing their own food – and keeping farm animals. Which is leaving city officials struggling to figure out how to codify the practice.

“In order to protect the people that were doing urban agriculture and also the neighbors of those people doing urban agriculture  we thought it was the perfect time to start going down creating an ordinance for urban agriculture. Before, well actually currently  there is nothing on the books for urban agriculture. And that’s pretty prevalent in a lot of cities.”

That’s Jason Kimbitsis, a senior city planner who’s working on the urban agriculture code. When the proposed one was released earlier this year, there was a bit of an outcry from the urban agriculture community. The required square footage per chicken and the distances bees needed to be from a neighbor’s house would have nearly negated the chance for anyone to practice urban agriculture in the densely packed, narrow streets that make up the majority of Pittsburgh’s landscape.

Kimbitsis said the city looked to cities that had recently enacted or were in the process of enacting urban agriculture codes–New York, Portland and Detroit for example.

Julie Butcher –Pezzino is the director of Grow Pittsburgh, an urban farming non-profit. She says that was part of the problem.

“Pittsburgh being a rust-belt city and an older city has a different property set-up,” says Butcher –Pezzino.

Cities around the country and within the Ohio River watershed are all slowly creating or changing codes. For cities that take chickens into account like Nashville, Tennessee, it’s unlawful to keep any chicken in the metro area in a way that a nuisance is created. In Lexington, Kentucky, where the county makes the code, pigs or goats can’t be kept at all in urban areas.  In Asheville, North Carolina, it was illegal to have any livestock within city limits unless they were permitted until last year. Each city is different. Many don’t have anything on bees at all.

Meredith Greeley learned beekeeping from her grandfather. Now she keeps hives on her rooftop deck. Urban beekeeping is important for a number of reasons, she says. Among them – honeybee population is on the decline. She says rural areas are no longer the best place for bees.

“Urban bees tend to do better actually because country bees are surrounded by far more pesticides and that’s one of the key contributors to colony collapse and other diseases that are sort of ravaging our honeybees. The other thing that honeybees enjoy is this greater diversity of food sources. In rural areas bees are confronted with these agriculture mono-culture right where you just have acres and acres of corn or almonds or soybeans.”

Greeley is a director of Burgh Bee’s, a bee keeping non-profit. They have four hundred people on their mailing list – but that doesn’t mean that’s all the beekeepers.

Not having numbers on the practice is part of why the city is attempting to regulate the practice. There is no animal census. Under an ordinance there would be. Jason Kimbitsis:

“I couldn’t say exactly how many chickens are in the city of Pittsburgh. But once our zoning is finished, people will come in and you’ll essentially have an occupancy permit saying you have x amount of chickens on your property,” says Kimbitsis.

The code will also regulate other animals. Christopher McGuirken came to own his four heirloom chickens last year. Now, he wants Nigerian Dwarf goats.

“If we have two small dogs we don’t see why we wouldn’t be able to have two small dairy goats,” says McGuirken.

The advocacy groups are all meeting with the cities to revise the code. The goal, after all, Kimbitsis says is to allow urban agriculture to keep growing – but not go wild.

-by Erika Beras

[podcast]http://archive.wfpl.org/environment/20100427urbanag.mp3[/podcast]

Today, Thursday, April 22nd, is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.  To find out how you celebrated, we sent reporters to four locations in three states to bring you this Ohio River Valley Earth Day postcard.  Enjoy!

The scenes you heard were as follows:

Washington County Elementary students in Springfield, KY

- Washington County, Kentucky elementary students planting petunias, and chiming in with St. Catherine College’s Sister Claire McGowan in Springfield, KY, brought to you by yours truly, Kristin Espeland Gourlay;

- Students at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville celebrating on campus, and citizens of the city of Bloomington at a seminar on how to grow your own food, brought to you by reporters Jessica Naudziunas and Daniel Robison;

- and students at Penn State University, building a “green” house from plastic bottles, brought to you by PSU student Erica Brecher.

More Washington County Elementary students in Springfield, KY

Fishing in the Ohio River is a popular activity.  But the latest tests show more mercury in fish than before, which can affect human health. This comes at the same time some power plants are saying they’re having trouble meeting water contamination standards. But the news doesn’t seem to bother this man.

“My name’s Jim Smith, and a lot of my customers call me Smitty.”

Smitty has owned a bait and tackle shop in Evansville, Indiana, for almost 24 years. He says he grew up fishing in the nearby Ohio River.

“You know, I had a pole as far back as I can remember.”

And for as long as he can remember, Smitty’s been eating the fish he caught.

“I eat fish a couple times a week. And I’m as healthy as a horse, so…I don’t think there’s a bit of a problem with eatin’ the fish. Fish is good for you,” Smitty says.

A recent recreation survey of more than 5000 people living along the Ohio shows Smitty’s not alone in enjoying his catch from the river. 13 million pounds of Ohio River fish is eaten annually. At the same time, the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission—ORSANCO—is finding higher mercury levels in Ohio River fish. For decades, ORSANCO has tested fish tissue for mercury and other contaminants. Peter Tennant is the deputy executive director.

“Actually, we hadn’t seen much of a problem with mercury up until recently, and it had to do more with the fish we looked at,” says Tennant.

ORSANCO used to test small fish, but last year they began testing bigger fish, higher up the food chain. Tennant says the new tests show more mercury than before because the chemical accumulates when big fish eat contaminated little fish. Jason Flickner is with the Kentucky Waterways Alliance, a non-profit advocacy group.

“But I think you also have to look at the practices, particularly surrounding coal combustion, and say that there is more mercury that is ending up in the river,” Flickner says.

At the same time mercury in fish is becoming a concern, ORSANCO is considering relaxing some mercury discharge standards for coal-fired power plants. Peter Tennant:

“Obviously, the timing could be better.”

Under the federal Clean Air Act, coal-fired power plants are installing scrubbers to limit air pollution. With scrubbers, much of the pollution, including mercury, winds up safely stored in landfills. But when the scrubbers are cleaned, Tennant says some mercury ends up in the wash water, which winds up in the river.

“The demonstrations we’ve seen from the power industry say on a real good day, when everything’s working perfectly, they can get down to the in-stream concentration But on a seven day a week 24-hour basis, they probably can’t,” says Tennant.

…the in-stream concentration being the allowable level of mercury. Jason Flickner, from the Kentucky Waterways Alliance, questions that…

“It’s done in other industries, and I’m not real sure why all of a sudden the coal power industry is unable to treat mercury discharges the way other industries treat them all the time.”

Some power companies say the technology for removing mercury from wash water isn’t available or is cost prohibitive, so they’ve asked ORSANCO for some leeway, before stricter discharge limits go into effect in 2013. Peter Tennant says so far, nothing’s been decided.

“What we’re thinking about doing now is just saying we can consider a variance to this section of the standards—not ‘hey, you’ve all got ‘em—and then we can consider it and do it on a case-by-case basis,” Tennant says.

Tennant says they’ll have a formal proposal in June, and after a chance for public comment, ORSANCO will take action in the fall. Jason Flickner doesn’t like that option even being on the table.

“I just don’t see how ORSANCO can consider this regulatory change in the face of the data and the potential long-term effects on human health and the environment,” says Flickner.

Flickner says he worries if ORSANCO allows a variance for some power plants, other industries could follow.

- by Micah Schweizer

As state legislatures wrap up business in many parts of the Ohio River Valley, it’s clear that energy – both fossil fuels and alternatives – bills were on the calendar for most.  Here are the highlights from three states in the region.

Natural Gas Draws Legislators’ Attention in West Virginia
Gas drilling is a very water-intensive process. Operators draw water out of rivers and streams, mix the water with chemicals, and then pump that mixture down to fracture the shale rock and release gas. Then there’s all the leftover liquid to dispose of.

Right now in West Virginia, companies don’t have to tell anyone when they draw water out of a stream, or account for where the water goes when they’re done with it. House Bill 4513 would have required operators to report their activities, as well as to ensure that water flow remained sufficient to support fish and wildlife.

But the bill died when senators packed it full of industry-friendly provisions. The bill’s lead sponsor, Del. Tim Manchin says he’s not sure why the legislation met with so much opposition.

“It just wasn’t that much to ask. I can’t explain why they were so resistive. I don’t even understand why the industry is so resistive of recordkeeping unless they know that they aren’t disposing of the well water the way it’s supposed to be disposed of. At least one has to ask themselves that question, don’t they?” Manchin asked.

Manchin says he and other delegates are requesting the DEP write emergency rules to address the threat posed by excessive water withdrawals and discharges.
- by Erica Peterson in Charleston, WV

Lawmakers in Kentucky Consider the Nuclear Option
In Kentucky, the legislative session is nearing its end. And in these final hours, a bill that would open the doors to nuclear power here has been tacked on to another somewhat controversial bill.  It would allow the condemnation of property for carbon dioxide pipeline rights-of-way.

The bill assumes federal regulation of this global warming-causing gas is coming, and the pipelines could be used send the CO2 for underground storage or for use in coaxing more oil out of underground wells.  The nuclear amendment to this bill would eliminate the requirement for nuclear power plants to find a way to permanently dispose of waste.  They would only have to find a place to store it.

And while that bill is still in play, a measure intended to raise the fees coal companies pay for mine permits has made its way to the Governor’s desk for his signature.    The coal industry has complained that the state has been taking too long to issue permits, and the raised fees are intended to help speed the process.
- by Kristin Espeland Gourlay in Louisville, KY

Pennsylvania Politicians Push Alternative Energy Use
In 2004, Pennsylvania became one of the first coal states to mandate an alternative energy portfolio. Since the law passed, other states have caught up with Pennsylvania’s alternative energy standard and several have exceeded it. Some state lawmakers say Pennsylvania needs to step up its standard to reduce pollution and attract green jobs. This session, they introduced a bill that called for power producers to get 20 percent of their energy from alternative energy sources by 2024. But Representative Eugene DePasquale, who’s repackaging House Bill 80, says some legislators were leery of the bill’s alternative energy requirement.

“They were concerned about whether we could even meet the number and about the impact on consumers. That’s why in the redraft of House Bill 80 we’ll be adding consumer protection provisions as well to assure that consumers do not get hit with higher prices as a result of alternative energy,” said DePasquale.

The repackaged bill would require Pennsylvania utilities to get 15 percent of their power from alternative energy technologies by 2024.
- by Ann Murray in Pittsburgh, PA

Scientists are noticing that Spring is arriving a little earlier in some places, possibly due to climate change.  And helping them draw those conclusions are the observations of thousands of so-called “citizen scientists,” who meticulously record their observations of the first buds, the first leaves, the first monarch butterfly sighting.  The observation and study of those things is called phenology.

“It means the study of earth and the changing of seasons.”

Students show the shape of the new garden.

Eight-year-old Claire gives this pretty good definition of phenology, which is basically the study of recurring plant and animal life cycle events. Claire is one of a class full of young phenologists at Field Elementary in Louisville. They’re arrayed in the school yard in the shape of a butterfly–the shape their garden will take when they break ground this spring. They’ll plant mostly milkweed to attract monarch butterflies. And then… they’ll keep watch.

“We’ll visit the garden and take pictures of it and draw and write about what we see, and then we’ll take it home and show our family, and they’ll be really impressed,” says a student named Henry.

Seven year old Henry might not understand this yet, but his observations will be appreciated far beyond the refrigerator door. Teacher Lisa Downs says they’ll log their data with Journey North, which maintains a web site of global observations of wildlife migration and seasonal changes.

Students in Lisa Downs' class on the site where their butterfly garden will be.

“The children are empowered to post their information on the internet, and people from around the world can look at the sightings they’ve posted,” says Downs.

They’ll note the first milkweed appearance, the first monarch, the first monarch eggs. Their sightings and those from kids throughout the country will help populate an interactive map and a searchable database.

It’s one of many similar projects helping scientists gather much more data than they could working alone. The USA National Phenology Network has just launched a major effort to recruit volunteers throughout the country to observe and record plant data. University of Wisconsin climatologist Mark Schwartz is the organization’s co-founder. He says the data will not only help scientists answer questions about the effects of climate change. It may also help them recommend ways to adapt to it.

“We’ve been starting to talk about the idea of phenology and understanding the changes as being something that we can use to start to adapt. Now, what does adapt mean? Well, first of all, you have to understand the changes you’re seeing before you can consider ways of adapting,” Schwartz says.

Schwartz has already documented some of those changes in one of his own phenological studies of lilacs.

“We see that over the last 50 years or so, from 1955 to 2002 during my study, that spring has been getting earlier at a rate of about 1 point 2 days per decade.”

Schwartz relied on historical data to fill in the gaps in his own observations. It’s those kinds of long-term records climate researchers need for spotting trends. And they’ll have another opportunity to do just that as soon as volunteers can transcribe more than 6 million handwritten note cards with historic bird observations. They’re the work of some early 20th century phenologists. And they’ve been languishing in government files for nearly a decade at U.S. Geological Survey headquarters. Now, working with the National Phenology Network, the USGS has also put out the call for help re-keying the information into a giant database. Indiana University law student Benjamin Keele tries to type up a few cards every day while he has a free moment.

“It’s nice that someone who doesn’t really know much about birds or ornithology or any other scientific topic can still contribute in a way,” says Keele.

Sample card from the USGS collection

Data from the cards should give scientists insight into how birds are responding to a changing climate, and perhaps even how to help species at risk of extinction. Keele says the authors of these vintage cards couldn’t have known how important their observations would become.

“This person you know, saw a bird, wrote this little card, mailed it off to the government, and I doubt that he or she ever could have imagined that a hundred years later, people would be keying them into a computer database that will be used to make projections about climate change and things like that.”

Perhaps a hundred years from now, researchers will appreciate the work of thousands of others like Keele who are filling in just one tiny piece of the picture at their computers and in their backyards.

By Kristin Espeland Gourlay

This story originally aired in April 2009.

*Monarch butterfly photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinlabar/ / CC BY-NC 2.0