environment

What Detroiters are Doing with Discarded Tires

| ChrisHardmanWriter

ONE 2014 MORNING on Detroit’s northeast side, residents along Mapleridge were horrified to find that 10,000 tires had been stuffed into a row of abandoned houses on their street. The tires were stacked from floor to ceiling, piled in alleyways and jammed into garages. The fire hazard was high, and the disregard for neighborhood safety was disturbing. In the days that followed, community leaders organized a cleanup effort that took 30 volunteers 6 hours to haul the illegally dumped tires onto the curb for the city to pick up.

Tires figure prominently in the lives of Detroiters, and not because they live in the Motor City. There are just so many of them — illegally dumped in vacant lots, stuffed in abandoned buildings, discarded carelessly throughout neighborhoods. Some estimates put the number of tires littering Detroit’s neighborhoods at as many as 1 million.

Tires are considered a hazardous material, and as a result, they can cost as much as $2 each to safely dispose of. So it’s not surprising that unscrupulous tire haulers have been using Detroit’s vacant buildings and lots as their own personal dumping grounds for years.

“It tears me up, because we are talking about families,” says Audra Carson, native Detroiter and founder of De-tread, a start-up working to collect and dispose of Detroit’s abandoned tires. “People who aren’t from here or people who are disconnected, don’t realize that even if there are abandoned houses, there are still families living [nearby].”

Carson lists the dangers of abandoned tires in Detroit neighborhoods: piles of tires attract and provide homes for rodents; tires are highly flammable and create fires that are hard to extinguish; tires collect standing water that breeds insects that can carry disease.

Carson is so concerned about tires in the city that she left her two-decade career in corporate Detroit to launch De-tread in 2009. During her first cleanup project, with the Osborn Neighborhood Alliance in October of 2012, De-tread and a team of volunteers picked up 313 tires in less than 30 minutes.

Key to Carson’s strategy is to get the community involved in the actual hands-on challenge of tire removal. For her second cleanup, she returned to Osborn with a grant from the Skillman Foundation. De-tread, along with 50 volunteers, managed to get rid of 2,500 tires, hiring a licensed hauler to take them away and have the tires processed according to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality standards. “To be able to make that instant impact in a neighborhood is extremely rewarding,” Carson says.

Now De-tread is developing products to make from abandoned tires. “Once the rubber is in a certain form it can be molded into anything. Think about sandals, kitchen items. It runs the gamut of what can be done,” Carson says. “Where I want to be is funky, cool. We’re talking about furniture. We’re talking about apparel.” Carson plans to do more than just get rid of tires. She wants to use them to create manufacturing jobs for people in the city.

In another part of Detroit, Reverend Faith Fowler is already using abandoned tires to create jobs for people in her neighborhood. She is the Executive Director of Cass Community Social Services, which runs Cass Green Industries (CGI), a small business that employs people who face barriers to employment — some are homeless, recovering from addiction, or dealing with chronic health conditions.

“The recession was hitting Detroit hard but especially our people in terms of employment,” Reverend Fowler explains. “None of my people had cars so they couldn’t get to where the jobs were, and if they were able to finagle a ride, they weren’t considered because there were so many people who had been laid off of other jobs with great resumes that our folks didn’t stand a chance.”

Fowler began to search for a small business idea that would be self-sustaining and cheap to start. When she read an article about woven mud mats made out of recycled tires, she knew she had found the right product for Detroit. “We have tires everywhere,” she says. “Talk about a free resource.”

By employing homeless veterans, ex-cons, or chronically ill people, CGI relies on the talents of a population that is often overlooked. Fowler is proud that some of her employees have used CGI as a stepping stone to full-time, better paying jobs.

To create even more jobs CGI introduced a new product in 2014. Detroit Treads sandals are made out of the tire treads that are left over from making mud mats. The sandals were an instant hit. In the first 4 months CGI sold $82,000 worth of sandals at $25 a pair. By leveraging the power of social media, Cass Green Industries has sold products in every state and in five foreign countries.

Typically Green Industries is lucky to break even. Last year the business brought in $120,000 in sales from tire products as well as coasters handmade from recycled glass. Reverend Fowler points out that the business is there to create jobs, and currently Green Industries employs 20 people part time making $9 an hour. “Not only are they making money, they are making the city better,” she says.

It’s nearly impossible for the city of Detroit — which covers 138 square miles — to keep up with the tire problem. In sparsely populated neighborhoods with rows of abandoned houses, there are just too many places to hide. “These tire companies are looking for an area where there are abandoned homes and a very low population. So they have no eyes and ears watching them,” says Detroit Department of Neighborhoods District 4 Manager and lifelong Detroit resident Odell Tate.

As part of Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s “Every neighborhood has a future” initiative, Tate works with community leaders, churches, and neighborhood watch programs to solve the problem of blight in District 4. “We have been very fortunate to have strong community block clubs and associations that radar and monitor tire situations,” he says. Vigilance and community cooperation are the keys to success in Tate’s district, where residents work closely with the police to report any suspicious activity.

In April 2015, the Duggan administration introduced the Improve Detroit mobile app as an easy and convenient way for citizens to let city hall know about problems in the city.  Using the app, residents with smartphones can report potholes, missing traffic signs, and illegal dumping. They can pinpoint the exact location of the problem and even submit a photo.

In addition to eyes on the street, Tate says surveillance cameras would be a good way to find out who is dumping in Detroit. “If we’re able to catch one of the tire companies, and we can make them an example, I think that would put the rest of them on notice,” Tate says. “[The residents] are fed up with companies coming in and disrespecting the neighborhood by dumping tires.”

Published on BeltMagazine by Chris Hardman

 

Chicago Beekeepers Get a Second Chance

| ChrisHardmanWriter

EVERY 10 DAYS, Thad Smith enters a piece of land that is otherwise forbidden to most people: The empty acreage around Chicago’s O’Hare airport. It’s there that Smith and his crew from the Westside Bee Boyz tend to 75 beehives. Last year, he and his fellow beekeepers harvested 1,600 pounds of honey in the otherwise unoccupied land beneath O’Hare’s airspace.

An international trend that began in Germany has spread to the U.S. as airports have begun to open their vacant land to bees and beekeepers. Airport apiaries in Quebec, Copenhagen, and Seattle have appeared in The New York Times and on Science Friday. But some of these collaborations are producing more than honey. They’re also creating jobs, helping to restore habitat, and giving some beekeepers a second chance.

By design, airports require long tracts of land for takeoff and landing strips and act as a buffer between the planes and the surrounding community. As a safety measure this excess land cannot be developed for human use. But for bees, it’s prime real estate.

In 2011, O’Hare Airport installed 28 beehives, making it the first airport in the U.S. to host an apiary. The project is part of its Green Initiatives Program, which includes an aeroponic garden, green roofs, construction recycling, and wetland restoration.

The beekeepers come from the North Lawndale Employment Network (NLEN), a non-profit organization on the west side of Chicago. In addition to honey, the NLEN produces a line of honey-based skin care products through a business called Sweet Beginnings. The majority of the people working for Sweet Beginnings have spent at least some portion of their lives in prison. The company gives them a second chance, and a shot at a meaningful career.

NLEN is located in the North Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago, an area where many residents face uphill battles accessing education and employment. In 2001, 57 percent of the population was involved in the justice system—either in jail, on parole or on probation. As NLEN executive director, Brenda Palms Barber’s job is to find employment for former inmates. “We knew we had to do something different to give them a hand to establish work skills,” says Barber.

After realizing how reluctant many area employers were to hire former prisoners, Barber decided to create a business of her own. A colleague had recommend beekeeping and honey production as one option, so in 2004 Barber started Sweet Beginnings. Then, four years ago, the Chicago Department of Aviation offered Sweet Beginnings airport land for their hives.

Because beekeeping is primarily taught in the field, it can be a good job for people who have struggled in the classroom. Employees also work in manufacturing, sales, and customer service.

Since it opened, Sweet Beginnings has hired 383 transitional employees and seen approximately 70 percent of them move on to gainful employment elsewhere. NLEN records show that the number of former Sweet Beginnings employees who return to a life of crime is below 10 percent compared to the national average of 40 percent and the Illinois average of 55 percent.

Thad Smith turned to the NLEN when he got out of prison at age 46. He was homeless, desperate, and living with a felony conviction on his record (a reality that keeps many ex-offenders out of work). Soon Smith started working with the bees, and things gradually started to turn around.

“I opened a hive and I just fell in love,” Smith wrote on his company website. “It’s so fascinating. I can just stand there and watch 60,000 individuals who are one entity, working toward one common goal. It is all about the colony, making sure they survive and find a way to work together.” Now he is the co-owner of Westside Bee Boyz and does contract work for Sweet Beginnings managing their airport hives.

Sweet Beginnings products are sold at Whole Foods stores, in gift shops, and online. Travelers passing through O’Hare can find their products in the market located just below the aeroponic garden in Terminal 3.

“Beekeeping has allowed me to help the community, provide jobs, and be a mentor,” Smith says. “The people I work with are like a colony of bees. [We’re] putting people to work and propagating the community of North Lawndale. There is not a day that goes by when I don’t learn something.”

Published on Civil Eats by  

 

Bringing Pollinators Back to Washington

| ChrisHardmanWriter

HAVE YOU CONSIDERED putting in a beehive, but worried that you might not have the time to maintain it? If you live in Seattle, you’re in luck. Once a month, Corky Luster’s Ballard Bee Company will install a hive, care for the bees, and harvest the honey for you.

“It’s like having a lawn service, but with bees. You can sit back and enjoy the bees, and we will take care of them,” Luster explains.

Ballard Bee customers sign up for a year of “urban pollination” services at a time. During the 6-month honey season, they receive two 12-ounce jars of honey a month, and in winter, Luster makes sure the hive survives.

In the process, he is turning suburban backyards and city rooftops into honey producing habitats, in hopes that it will help his customers connect the dots between what they eat and the natural world around them. “By [giving people] bees, you bring them into the fold, and they become part of the food system,” Luster says.

To make his business sustainable, Luster does more than manage hives. He teaches classes, consults with chefs, and sells honey and beekeeping supplies. “We’ve had a huge interest in beekeeping in Seattle,” he explains. His classes sell out and many of his graduates move on to their own beekeeping adventures.

Luster also consults for some of Seattle’s finest chefs. He helped both Jason Stoneburner of Bastille Café & Bar in Ballard and Gavin Stephenson of Seattle’s Fairmont Olympic Hotel set up rooftop apiaries. “My goal was to educate the chefs and get them involved,” says Luster. “Both are really bright and very interested in trying to be part of the solution.”

The restaurant apiaries have succeeded. Chef Stephenson now manages five rooftop hives that house half a million honeybees. He harvested more than 400 pounds of honey last summer. Last year, after relying on the service of Ballard Bees for three years, Chef Stoneburner has taken over caring for his hives. He uses his honey in desserts, vinaigrettes, and in a popular cocktail called the Bee’s Knees.

In 2014, Luster started a new service for restaurants called the apiary partnership program. He invited restaurants and chefs to buy bee hives that he manages for a small fee. The restaurant gets 100 percent of the honey. According to Luster, the partnership is a great success and he plans to expand this program in the future. His clients include the Walrus and the Carpenter, an oyster bar in Seattle, Vif, a wine and coffee café in Seattle, and the Tom Douglas Restaurants.

Nearly half of Ballard Bee’s income comes from honey sales. The company owns an additional 130 hives that are housed 45 minutes outside of Seattle at Local Roots Farm and at Camp Korey. The honey produced by those hives has varied flavors that depend on where the bees are foraging. The first nectar flow begins early in the spring when the bees are feeding on pollen from the flowers of bigleaf maple trees, the largest species of maple found in the Puget sound area. Next the bees feed on pollen from blackberry bush flowers. The last flow is from the Japanese knotweed plant and has a fig and caramel taste to it. Called Dark Cream Honey, it’s Ballard’s favorite flavor and recently received national recognition as a 2015 Good Food Awards winner.

Education is important to the Ballard Bee Company’s mission. Luster’s goals when starting the business in 2009 were to teach people about bees, replenish the local bee population, and encourage new beekeepers. He is dedicated to spreading the word about the value of bees and says people are afraid of bees because they don’t know enough about them. When he works with a hive, onlookers express surprise that he is dressed in short sleeves without gloves. “People are amazed that honey bees are extremely gentle. They’re teddy bears,” he says. Some of his clients put lawn chairs near the hive so they can relax and watch the bees at work.

As pollinators of fruit trees, nut trees and crops, the value of bees is vast. According to the Washington State Department of Agriculture, honey bees pollinate $2.2 billion worth of tree fruits, nuts, and berries, and produce 2.5 million pounds of honey in their state alone. Those calculations do not include the value of all the seed crops bees pollinate, such as onions, watermelon, and squash.

Seattle, with its vibrant local food scene, is an ideal place to launch an urban bee company. Since Luster started his business, other bee companies have debuted, offering hosting, consulting, and education services. One business, called the Urban Bee Company, gives city dwellers a chance to sponsor a hive or an apprentice beekeeper along with hosting and education programs. “I could not be here without the support Seattle has given me,” Luster says. “I am really thankful for that.”

 

Published in Civil Eats: By

 

An Urban Farmer Breaks New Ground in Flint

| ChrisHardmanWriter

THIRTY-YEAR-OLD Roxanne Adair is a trailblazer. In 2010, she and a friend started Flint River Farm in Flint, Michigan, a city where urban farming isn’t the norm. Adair’s background was in fisheries, wildlife, and biology, and she used the knowledge gained working at the Genesee County Land bank to buy and rent city lots, totaling nearly three acres, in the heart of Flint.

This process wasn’t easy. Flint’s history mirrors that of other rust belt cities. The city had a robust economy based in the auto industry until it began to decline in the 1970s. When General Motors closed multiple plants and cut thousands of jobs in Flint in 1989, work suddenly became scarce. As unemployment and crime increased, the media dubbed Flint “the Murder Capital” of the U.S.

Despite the city’s challenges, Adair and her partner jump-started their business with a grant from the Ruth Mott Foundation. Their goal was to create a sustainable business model for urban farming in Flint.

The farmers built hoop houses, produced enough vegetables to supply a multi-family community supported agriculture program (CSA), harvested honey from two beehives, and even tapped neighborhood maple trees to make syrup. They sold their organically grown produce at the Flint Farmers’ Market.

Since her partner left in 2012, Adair has continued to expand the farm on her own, and the space now occupies 17 city lots. Flint River Farm produces a wide array of heirloom crops, including apples, blackberries, strawberries, cherries, corn, melons, tomatoes, squash, dried beans, carrots, beets and Brussels sprouts—the list goes on and on.

frf joannas dadWhile Flint River Farm is filled with fresh produce, the neighborhood still faces its challenges. Across the street is a burned-out convenience store. The main drag, Saginaw Street, is a block away and is home to strip clubs, a pawn shop, and a liquor store.

Theft is a frequent problem on the farm, but Adair doesn’t begrudge her hungry visitors. “If you need [food] bad enough to steal it, you need it more than I do,” she says. But, she encourages people to reach out to her first: “Tell me and I will harvest it for you. I’ll wash it for you and have it ready.”

Vandals also come through the farm regularly, slashing the thick polyethylene walls of the hoop houses or spray painting gang paraphernalia on the sides. Repairs and replacements can cost thousands of dollars.

By and large, however, the long-time residents of the neighborhood have become Adair’s friends. They share tools, talk over the tomatoes, and collaborate on composting. Adair recalls that when she started the farm, she rarely saw the neighbors outside. “They would mow their lawn and then run back inside,” she says. Now people have planted flowers and are taking pride in their landscape. “I can’t take credit for that,” says Adair, “but I think [the farm] has caused people to come outside more and not hate their surroundings.”

Throughout the year, Adair shares her knowledge through community workshops, on topics as diverse as urban foraging, composting, maple syrup making, organic gardening, and season extension. Although she charges a small fee for the classes, Adair admits that she doesn’t turn anyone away. “There is a spirit in the city of Flint that I haven’t found anywhere else,” she says. “The people who have stayed have been through some really hard times. I have a respect for the struggle.”

Flint River Farm aims to address the city’s high unemployment rate by providing jobs to Flint residents. Using grant money, Adair hired local teenagers to farm and work at the farmers’ market. At the height of the growing season, she employed nine full-time staff members and two interns. As the farm moves toward self-sustainability, Adair hopes these jobs will become more permanent. When the farm first started, it was entirely grant-funded. This year grants accounted for only 40 percent of the operating costs.

To sustain the farm, Adair has diversified her product line. She has sold lip balm made from her bees’ wax, salad mixes from the hoop house, teas from dried herbs, eggs from her small flock of chickens, and nut butters she grinds herself. This month, she began selling bulk dried goods like organic oats and flour at her stand in the market. “I am confident that with bulk food bins we will be sustainable next year,” she says.

Last summer, the city threatened to confiscate the chickens Adair keeps at her house. Flint’s Blight Authority gave her 30 days to dispose of the birds. Adair used that opportunity to try to change a 1968 city ordinance that prohibits residential homeowners from keeping “fowl” on their property. She mobilized her support network, worked with the city council, and created a ”Friends of Flint Chickens” Facebook campaign.

On the last day, Adair sat on her front porch and waited for the police to come. She highly doubted that in a city with only three police officers on duty at a time, one of them would take time away from chasing drug dealers and thieves, to chase her chickens. She waited all day. No one came.

Like her chickens, Roxanne Adair is in Flint to stay.

Published on Civil Eats.com by

 

Turtles on the Upswing

| ChrisHardmanWriter

ENCOURAGING NEWS COMES FROM the beaches of Tortuguero, Costa Rica, where endangered green sea turtles nest by the thousands. Continuing an upward trend, the 2005 nesting season was one of the busiest on record with a total of 91,615 sea turtle nests recorded over a 4-month period. Researchers from the Caribbean Conservation Corporation (CCC) documented that in one night alone, sea turtles laid 3,000 nests on a 21-mile section of beach. In spite of poachers, beach disturbances, and turtle-eating jaguars, Tortuguero’s sea turtle population is growing steadily. “What we’re seeing are the positive benefits of long-term conservation,” explains Dan Evans of the CCC’s education program.

Located in northern Costa Rica on the Caribbean coast, Tortuguero supports the largest nesting population of green sea turtles in the Atlantic Ocean. By day the sand tells the story of the evening’s activity where rows of perfectly parallel turtle tracks cover the beach. Some of the tracks lead past the high tide mark to the deep pits the turtles dig to lay their eggs, while others only reach halfway up the beach and head back to the water. Researchers call those tracks “half moons,” when a turtle starts the egg-laying process but then changes her mind and returns to the sea. At night, it’s much harder to track the turtles’ activity. The black sand reflects the darkness of the night sky, and unless the moon is clearly visible, it’s nearly impossible to see.

Scientists and volunteers have been patrolling this beach since 1955 when renowned scientist Archie Carr set up a turtle-monitoring program with his students, friends, and family. At the time, Tortuguero’s green sea turtle population seemed on the verge of collapse. But in the years that followed, Carr and his successors at the CCC led a sea turtle campaign that helped sea turtle nesting populations rise from a low of 19,731 nests in 1972 to an all-time high of 92,523 nests in 1998. In half a century they established a permanent research station, welcomed the start of the ecotourism boom, developed a model volunteer research assistant program, and became an international force for sea turtle conservation. The data generated by the CCC’s nearly 50 years of sea turtle work has helped scientists understand the mysteries of the sea turtle and develop strategies to protect it.

CCC’s presence in Costa Rica has had positive effects on the people of Tortuguero as well. CCC collaborates with the local government, provides a variety of jobs, participates in school programs, and assists resident entrepreneurs with their ecotourism ventures. “The community has really shifted and embraces the idea that a sea turtle is worth more alive than dead,” Evans explains. Instead of killing turtles for their meat or shells, villagers can make money by hosting, guiding, or providing services to tourists coming to see the turtles.

Beginning in 1997, the scientists added a new data set to their study when beach-going jaguars started to regularly visit Tortuguero. Based on tracks, motion sensor video, and chance encounters, the researchers have determined that at least one adult male and one female and her cubs are coming out of Tortuguero National Park’s forest to feed on nesting sea turtles. CCC Scientific Director Sebastian Troëng estimates that jaguars kill about 100 of Tortuguero’s sea turtles each year, and although that number may seem high, Both Evans and Troëng agree that jaguars eating turtles are part of a natural process that doesn’t pose a threat to Tortuguero’s thriving sea turtle population. For more information about CCC and their volunteer program, visit ccc@cccturtle.org or call 1-800-678-7853.

Published in Americas magazine: By Chris Hardman

Mowtown to Growtown

| ChrisHardmanWriter

FOUR YEARS AGO, Detroit businessman John Hantz received national attention when he announced his plans to create the world’s largest urban farm in Detroit. His plan to buy vacant city land and convert it to orchards and tree farms was hailed as visionary by some and nefarious by others. After 4 years of negotiating wit the city and meeting with neighbors, Hantz Farms was finally able to purchase 1,400 vacant city-owned lots on Detroit’s lower east side for half a million dollars.

“The purpose of the investment is to make neighborhoods more livable,” says Hqntz Farms president Mike Score. “Our intention is to take larger blocks of contiguous land and make our woodlands a permanent feature in the city.”

In a bankrupt city that has lost a quarter of its population in 10 years, vacant land has become a pressing  concern. The city of Detroit is drowning in the fniancial burden of owning nearly 200,000 vacant parcels–almost half of them residential plots.

The Hantz proposal, initially a plan to create commercial fruit orchards and cut-your-own Christmas tree farms, had been scaled back to a simpler tree-planting project by the time the city approved the land sale in December 2012. Hantz Woodlands–a subsidiary of Hantz Farms–agreed to buy 1,400 vacant parcels from the city, clean up the debris, tear down decaying buildings, plant 15,000 trees, mow the grass regularly,and pay taxes on the land. The parcels are interspersed among homes that people are caring for and living in.

A small, but loud, group of community activists allege that the transaction is a “land grab” and demand that Detroit’s surplus land go into a community trust. They accuse Hantz of greed disguised as philanthropy. What if Hantz sells some of those parcels for housing, they ask, and he makes a profit off the cheap land?

Score has posed that question to the people currently living in the area. “If you go up and down the street and ask people, ‘What do you really want to happen in this neighborhood?’ they say they want a house on every lot,” he says. At this time, there isn’t a great demand for land in Detroit, but if in the future people decide this is a nice place to live and Hantz Woodlands can build houses on some of its land, Score says the neighbors would be pleased.

Hantz Farms maintains a small demonstration site next to its office on Mt. Elliot Street. Oak and sugar maple trees in tidy rows grow on 50 lots that formerly were used as dumping grounds. Gone are the frayed tires, soggy mattresses, and semi trailer full of chemicals. The drug dealer that used to operate on the corner has moved on, and the 80-year-old woman who lives on the street is delighted.

Although urban farming seems a viable income source for a city with a surplus of land an a shortage of people, Detroit lacked a formal policy for urban agriculture until recently. The city’s first agriculture zoning ordinance, adopted by Detroit City Council in April 2013, recognizes agriculture as a legal use of land and establishes guidelines for it. With the law on their side, Detroit’s farming entrepreneurs should now be able to avoid spending 4 years and a lot of money for the right to buy land in Detroit.

Published in Organic Gardening magazine by Chris Hardman

 

Python Pete—The Snake-Sniffing Puppy

| ChrisHardmanWriter

BIOLOGISTS IN the Florida Everglades are using man’s best friend in their battle against invasive species.  National Park Service Wildlife technician Lori Oberhofer is training a beagle puppy—nicknamed python Pete—to sniff out pet Burmese pythons that have been released into the wild.

Burmese pythons are a popular item in Florida’s booming exotic pet trade, and according to National Geographic, more than 144,000 of them have been imported to the U.S. from Asia since 2000.

Although they are legal to own, the problem comes when they grow up. As one of the world’s largest snakes, they can reach up to 15 feet long, causing many horrified owners to dump them into the nearest swamp.

As the snake’s popularity has increased, so has the population that is invading the Everglades. In a 10-year period, park officials removed 52 Burmese pythons from the Everglades, but then in 2004 alone they removed 61 pythons from the park.

Biologists believe that the pythons are breeding in the Everglades, and like most invasive species, their success is bad news for the park’s native species. The pythons appear to be eating native wood storks and mangrove fox squirrels and taking away habitat and food from the Everglade’s threatened eastern indigo snake. Tourists have even watched the giant snakes fight with park alligators.

Oberhofer is training her own puppy to search for the snakes and bark upon discovery. She is relying on the dog’s acute sense of smell to pinpoint the snake’s location. Then, park officials can capture the snake and remove it before it does more harm to the environment.

Working under the assumption that the Burmese python has a unique odor that is species specific, Oberhofer has spent several months teaching Pete what Burmese pythons smell like using a captive python in a mesh bag.

To protect Pete while he is working, Oberhofer will keep him on a leash and out of the water. That way he won’t risk becoming a statistic himself.

Published in Wildlife Conservation magazine by Chris Hardman

 

Cancun Makes a Comeback

| ChrisHardmanWriter

NEARLY A YEAR after one of the strongest Caribbean hurricanes on record ravaged Mexico’s number one tourist destination, Cancun is reinventing itself. “In addition to improved airport facilities, returning guests will also witness that Cancun’s resorts, attractions and beaches have experienced a great deal of change since Hurricane Wilma last year, thanks to a destination-wide commitment to revitalize the area,” says Artemio Santos, executive director of the Cancun Convention and Visitors Bureau.

More than just a popular vacation spot, Cancun generates a significant source of income for the country as a whole. According to the Cancun Convention and Visitors Bureau, approximately three million tourists visit Cancun each year accounting for 30% of all tourism dollars spent in Mexico. When hurricane Wilma blew through the Yucatan peninsula on October 21, 2005, the damage to Cancun’s hotels, restaurants, and beaches was immeasurable. Ranked a category 5, Wilma battered Cancun for more than 24 hours with top winds estimated at 145 mph.

The slow-moving hurricane decimated Cancun’s top attraction, its beautiful shoreline with miles of soft sand. What was once a boulevard of powder-white sand, was reduced to a thin strip of beach in some locations and to no beach in others. To fix the famous beach, the Mexican government hired Jan De Nul, a global leader in dredging, stone placement, filling and salvage services, to reclaim the sand that was swept out to sea.

On February 1, Jan De Nul embarked upon a massive dredging project they finished in record-time only two months later. Working around the clock, workers dredged sand from 22 miles offshore and delivered it through a pipe for distribution on Cancun’s shoreline.  The project cost $21.5 million to complete and gave Cancun an even wider beach than before Wilma.

In addition to beach improvements, the city is using this opportunity to upgrade its infrastructure and add new attractions, condos, and restaurants. Many of the hotels have been rebuilt with additional first-class services.  The airport, which ranks second to Mexico City as the country’s busiest airport, is expanding and upgrading to accommodate more tourists at a higher level. “A lot of what was done was trying to make [Cancun] a more luxurious destination,” says Claire Kunzman a representative for the Cancun Tourism bureau. Upgraded services, and increased high-end hotels are designed to appeal to a more upscale visitor.

The city of Cancun has launched a massive public relations campaign—which included a $77,000 two-page advertisement in the official 2006 World Cup guide—to convince people to come back to Cancun. According to the Cancun Convention and Visitors Bureau’s most recent statistics, 700,937 tourists visited Cancun from January to April of 2006. Although that number is less than the 1,277,847 tourists who visited Cancun in the same time period last year, the public appears to be welcoming the new Cancun.

Recently the leading online travel company Orbitz ranked Cancun as the third most popular destination in the world for the summer of 2006. “We expect that both new and returning visitors alike will be excited to see the brand-new Cancún and all that the island now has to offer,” Santos says.

Published in Americas magazine by Chris Hardman

 

Cutting a Course of Pollution

| ChrisHardmanWriter

CRUISE SHIPS introduce millions of people to exotic places throughout the Americas. As the industry grows, so does the size of the ships. Some carry as many as 5,000 passengers and crew. According to a study conducted by analyst G.P. Wild, the number of people taking cruises will reach 20.7 million by 2010. The Caribbean is the principal destination accounting for almost half of all cruise traffic.

The problem — according to Oceana, a non-profit organization based in Washington D.C. — is that cruise ships are legally able to dump raw sewage into the ocean. To address this issue, Oceana has launched the Stop Cruise Ship Pollution campaign with two goals in mind: create federal legislation in the U.S. to control cruise ship water pollution and convince cruise ship companies to install modern sewage treatment equipment. “These boats go to some of the most beautiful places on the planet, places that are already struggling with all kinds of pollution from development,” says Oceana Pollution Program Director and Senior Scientist Jackie Savitz. “These boats are capitalizing on the glory of the marine environment and in the meantime they are dumping all kinds of waste.”

Each day an average-sized cruise ship hosting 3,000 passengers and crew generates 30,000 gallons of sewage. An additional 255,000 gallons of waste water comes from sinks, dishwashers, and laundry — much of which contains toxic chemicals from industrial cleaning products, dry cleaning, and photo processing. Under current environmental laws, all of this waste can be dumped untreated into the ocean once the ship is more than three miles away from shore. “Harmful nutrients in sewage like nitrogen and phosphorous are well known pollutants that cause low oxygen problems like the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico,” explains Savitz. She says that raw sewage contaminates marine ecosystems and contains viruses that can make humans and marine life sick.

The cruise ships have responded to public pressure by voluntarily adopting memorandums of understanding and waste management policies that agree to fully comply with laws and regulations, welcome new technology, and minimize waste. “We make our living off of pristine environments and we have no reason not to be invested in the future of the environment,” explains International Council of Cruise Lines President Michael Crye. He says that the industry has invested millions of dollars in advanced waste water treatment on board cruise ships and that some of the new systems — like those in use in Alaska —  discharge water that is drinking-water quality. “Our mandatory waste management practices and procedures basically mandate that none of our members discharge anything within four miles of the shore unless they have these advanced wastewater treatment systems installed,” he explains.

Oceana wants all cruise ships to install the most current waste treatment technology and estimates that cruise ships could install new technology within five years at a cost of only $1.50 dollars per day per passenger. In order to find out if cruise customers would support  the cost of new technology, Oceana hired Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, Inc. to conduct a survey of cruise ship patrons. The poll revealed that six out of ten cruisers are willing to pay extra to make sure that cruise ships never dump sewage into the ocean. More than 90 percent of this group said that they would pay more than $25. “What we want them to do is get into the 21st century and upgrade to state-of-the-art sewage treatment and then we’ll be off their back,” Savitz says. “If they treat the stuff and stop dumping raw sewage, we think the customers will be a lot happier and the oceans will be a lot better off.”

Published in Americas magazine by Chris Hardman