Snowmelt Runoff Pollution: How to Reduce Your Impact

March 3, 2011

Melting snow can be a major contributor to pollution of West Michigan lakes and rivers during the early spring months.  Snowmelt, just like rain, is a component of stormwater runoff.  It carries pollutants from roads, highways, parking lots, and bridges to local waterways via municipal stormwater systems and surface runoff.  Snowmelt can also be a significant cause of sedimentation and erosion.

“The environmental impact of snowmelt is very similar to that of runoff caused by rain events, and in some ways, the impact of snowmelt can be even more extreme than rain.” said Kristi Klomp, Water Programs Manager for the West Michigan Environmental Action Council.  “It’s the same basic principle: The melted water serves as a vehicle for pollutants to reach our lakes and rivers. However, snowmelt has the potential to introduce contaminated runoff to our waterways at a more rapid rate than rain events, simply because the ground is frozen, and functions as an impervious surface with little chance of infiltration, much like our streets and roads.”

Klomp explained that snowmelt introduces most of the same pollutants to waterways as would stormwater runoff, such as dirt, dust, metal and rubber deposits, antifreeze, engine oil, pesticides, fertilizers, pet waste and litter.  These pollutants degrade water quality, harming human and aquatic life.

“You can see the most obvious contamination as the snow banks recede,” Klomp said.  “There is always dirt and trash left behind.”

Deicing salt used on roads, driveways and sidewalks is an additional concern.  Snowmelt runoff containing road salt squelches roadside vegetation and can produce high sodium and chloride concentrations in ponds, lakes, and rivers, creating toxic conditions that threaten aquatic life.  Klomp recommends the use of less harmful alternatives to road salt such as calcium magnesium acetate or products with reduced chloride content, such as those made from agricultural by-products.

To mitigate the larger impacts of stormwater runoff, Klomp suggests the use of low impact development strategies such as rain gardens or pervious pavement that will keep snowmelt on site, allowing pollutants to filter naturally into soil rather than washing into lakes, rivers, and streams.

Klomp said that some fairly simple behavior changes could also have very meaningful impact. “With snow we have a good deal of control on whether or not it melts on an impermeable surface.  By strategically depositing snow on a level surface of lawn, field or grassy area, you can dramatically reduce runoff.”

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Gender, Poverty, & Climate Change

February 28, 2011

Climate Rush

Lyndi Weener is a Women’s Studies major at Hope College and a staff writer for The WMEAC Blog.   In collaboration with WMEAC, she is researching the topic of ecofeminism.  This is the latest in a series exploring the connections between feminism and environmentalism.

Perhaps you’ve heard that those in developing nations suffer the effects of climate change more acutely than those in more developed nations.  Those living in poverty are more vulnerable to climate-change related disasters, creating millions of environmental refugees and affecting the  availability of natural resources.

However, according to publications released within the past couple years by the United Nation’s WomenWatch program, climate change is also a gendered issue, impacting women differently and more unfavorably than men.

In part, this is no surprise.  Accounting for roughly 70% of the world’s poor, it makes sense that women would suffer greater consequences of climate change than men.  However, in addition to poverty, women suffer other vulnerabilities due to their often unequal statuses and social roles in developing nations.

Being responsible for the majority of domestic tasks – growing food, gathering water, caring for children – women experience an increased workload in the face of climate change-related disasters.  They often must walk further to gather fuel and find clean drinking water as well as secure food in shortages.  In resource conflicts, women are more likely to suffer violence, including sexual violence.

In countries in which women have unequal rights, they are more likely to perish in climate disasters.  For example, in 1991 almost five times more women than men died as a result of the Bangladesh cyclone, largely because women couldn’t swim or didn’t leave their homes because they were waiting for a male to accompany them.  Men, often present in the public sphere, receive more information about impending dangers than women who must stay at home.

Though women are active participants and instigators of grassroots environmental activist movements (Wangari Maathai’s Greenbelt Movement, for example, was responsible for planting hundreds of thousands of trees throughout Kenya) they often have less decision making power at state and national levels.  In the effort to fight global warming, it will be important for women to find an arena in which they can make their voices heard (this is also true in West Michigan, as women here make up a much higher proportion of leaders in the environmental movement than they do in government).

To learn more about women who are doing just that, visit Climate Rush or Women’s Environmental Network.  To read the United Nations report in its entirety, click here, and to check out more of my ecofeminism blog posts, click here.

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Women and Environment to Suffer Consequences of Proposed Cuts

February 15, 2011

Lyndi Weener is a Women’s Studies major at Hope College and a staff writer for The WMEAC Blog.   In collaboration with WMEAC, she is researching the topic of ecofeminism.  This is the latest in a series exploring the connections between feminism and environmentalism.

Last week, House Republicans proposed their plan to cut federal government spending by billions.  Included in their plan was a 10 percent budget reduction for a food program that aids pregnant women and their babies, clean energy program slashes, and a 17 percent budget cut for the Environmental Protection Agency.

The goal, according to House Speaker John Boehner, is to “create an environment where we’ll have more jobs in America.”

However, the cuts could have an opposite effect.  According to Kenneth Baer, spokesman for the White House budget office:

“This Administration strongly agrees that we have to make tough choices to bring down the deficit and get the country back on a sustainable path, but to win the future, we cannot make cuts that undermine our ability to create jobs, drive innovation, and compete in a global economy.”

But, what does a “sustainable path” look like?  How do we measure development, wealth, poverty?

In “The Impoverishment of the Environment: Women and Children Last,” leading ecofeminist thinker Vandana Shiva challenges widely-used definitions of worth, cost, and poverty.  Drawing a distinction between subsistence poverty and material poverty, she suggests that a GNP focused development plan often fails to acknowledge the hidden costs of environmental degradation and threatening health conditions:

I would argue that GNP is becoming increasingly a measure of how real wealth – the wealth of nature and the life sustaining wealth produced by women – is rapidly decreasing.

While much of Shiva’s research concerns developing nations, she is quick to point out that the ‘poverty of life’ affects all nations:

Pure income indicators often do not capture the poverty of life to which the future generations are being condemned, with threats to survival from environmental hazards even in conditions otherwise characterized by ‘affluence.’

House Republicans are interested in sustaining jobs…but at what cost?  And who will suffer the consequences?  Or, as Shiva puts it:

To whom will the future belong?  to the women and children who struggle for survival and for environmental security?  or to those who treat women, children and the environment as dispensable and disposable?

Previous posts on eco-feminism can be found here and here.

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Embracing Michigan’s Future Without Coal

February 9, 2011 1 Comment

Prior to his State of the State address, a press release from Gov. Rick Snyder’s office contained the following lead quote: “Reinventing Michigan demands that we break the bad habits of the past and embrace opportunities for our future.”

Writing as a guest writer for the Detroit Free Press, Martin Kushler, director of the utilities program for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, is eager to see how Gov. Snyder’s statement might contribute to the controversy over promoting coal-fired power plants in Michigan.

According to Kushler, if we are talking about bad habits, supporting coal-fired power plants is about bad as they come:

Coal is the dirtiest of all electric fuels, producing several types of toxic pollutants. Coal plant construction costs have doubled in the past decade, coal fuel prices have risen substantially, and everyone knows there will eventually be costs associated with the carbon dioxide released by burning coal [...]

Michigan has to import every ounce of coal burned here, already costing us billions of dollars a year. Building a new coal plant now is like tying a tether around our ankle, locking us into 50 more years of dependence on coal from states like Wyoming. Coal is one bad habit from the past that we clearly need to break.

Though the prospect of jobs may seem appealing to Michigan residents, Kushler assures that building a new coal-fired power plant would only be a temporary fix:

Admittedly, building a large coal plant would create a few thousand temporary jobs (although an internal consultant’s report projected that only half of those would go to Michigan residents). Once built, only a couple hundred jobs would remain. More important, those coal plant proponents need to be pressed on the question: At what cost?

So what are Kushler’s suggestions for “reinventing Michigan” and “embracing opportunities for the future”?  The following are three priorities that Kushler believes Michigan would do well to undertake:

Energy efficiency programs should be our first priority resource, as they can save electricity for one-fourth the cost of a new power plant. The second priority needs to be Michigan-based renewable energy, which is already becoming competitive with coal-fired power plants.  The third priority should be advanced design natural gas fired power plants.

Learn more about Michigan’s bad habit by reading Martin Kushler’s entire guest commentary here.

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Turning Up the Heat: Converting Global Climate Change Skeptics

February 4, 2011

With extreme winter weather taking the Northern United States by storm, disbelief in global climate change is on the rise. Staff writers for the Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin and David Fahrenthold, report:

While the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last week that 2009 tied as the second-warmest year on record, this week two new public opinion polls have confirmed a trend reported last fall: As Washington has focused more on climate change, the American public has come to believe in it less.

On Wednesday, Yale and George Mason universities released a survey showing that just 57 percent of people said global warming “is happening.” That was down 14 percentage points, from 71 percent, in October 2008. Fifty percent of people said they were “very” or “somewhat” worried about global warming, down 13 points from 2008.

How to make believers out of skeptics: a quandary shared by churchgoers and environmentalists alike.  A recently published study from Jane Risen of the University of Chicago and Clayton Critcher of the University of California, Berkeley, offers possibilities for a new approach.

Enlisting American university students as their experimental group, Risen and Critcher created questionnaires asking for students’ opinions in regards to varying political topics, including global climate change.  The first set of surveys was conducted out of doors in temperatures ranging from 49 to 89 degrees Fahrenheit.  For the second set, students responded in cubicles, half of which were heated by a space heater to 81 degrees, and the other half of which were controlled at 73 degrees, eight degrees cooler.

Surprisingly enough, Risen and Critcher found that students who filled out their questionnaires in warmer environments were more likely to say they believed in global warming, indicating the visceral nature of belief.

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Five Ecofeminist Business Endeavors in West Michigan

February 3, 2011 2 Comments

Not all women are feminists, and not all feminists are women.  However, feminism is a women-centered movement.  Feminists believe that women have a unique set of experiences, dialogue, and knowledge to offer to the world that has historically been silenced or neglected.  One of the goals of feminism is to work in a variety of disciplines to bring these female voices out into the open and pay homage to the outstanding lives that women lead all around the world.

Last week’s blog on ecofeminism may have left you wondering what ecofeminism has to do with West Michigan.  To start, the concept locally is interwoven with the sustainable business movement.  Some of its local leaders, particularly among small business owners, are women.  Below you will find a list of five women-owned businesses in West Michigan that maintain sustainable practices in one way or another.  Though perhaps not inherently ecofeminist (ie: the proprietors may not identify themselves as such), these business-owners bring their unique viewpoints as women to their work and take good care of the earth while doing it!  This deserves applause.

Check out these local businesses and support women and the earth:

  1. Global Infusion- Situated in the East Hills Business District of Grand Rapids, Global Infusion is a marketplace for Fair Trade goods, as well as tea, coffee, and chocolate.  Included in the Fair Trade agreement is a commitment to ensuring environmental sustainability in international trade.
  2. Marie Catrib’s - Marie Catrib’s is an excellent restaurant in the East Hills Business District of Grand Rapids serving up Lebanese inspired food with many gluten-free and vegan options.  Whenever she can, head chef Marie purchases locally grown and raised food.
  3. Karla’s Place – Located in Downtown Holland, Karla’s Place is a gift boutique that sells handmade items from local vendors.  Many of these items are made from upcycled materials, including, but not limited to, wallets made from newspaper and candles made in used, vintage dishes.
  4. Groundswell Farm – Started by a graduate of the GROW Program (Grand Rapids Opportunities for Women), Groundswell is a CSA farm located in Zeeland offering year round organic produce.  Groundswell also sells produce at the Fulton Street Farmer’s Market.
  5. Eden Environments – Eden Environments is West Michigan’s first sustainable design center.  Located in Grand Rapids, Eden Environments uses sustainable building materials, finishes, and furnishings.  Owner Denise Hopkins is a licensed architect and a LEED Accredited Professional with over 17 years of design experience.

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Winter Weather & Climate Change: A Report from the National Wildlife Federation

February 2, 2011

With the National Weather Service’s winter advisory in effect for the Great Plains and Midwest region, extreme winter weather is on the mind for many in the Northern United States.  Now is the perfect time for the global warming skeptics in your lives to come out in full force.  For those of you looking for a resource to equip you with meaningful research in the face of these doubters, the National Wildlife Federation’s recently published report, “Odd-ball Winter Weather: Global Warming’s Wake-Up Call for the Northern United States,” offers a great place to start.

The report provides significant charts and graphs detailing recent weather trends in the Northern United States, including shorter winters, rising temperatures, heavier precipitation, and declining ice cover in the Great Lakes.  According to the research, Spring arrives 10 to 14 days earlier than it did just 20 years ago.  Additionally, average December-May ice cover for the Great Lakes has declined by about 17% per decade since the 1970s.

What does all this have to do with winter storm warnings?  Winter temperatures often hover over the freezing point, and the slightest change in temperatures can make a big difference.  As temperatures rise, precipitation increases because warmer air can hold more water.  In West Michigan, lake-effect snow becomes especially prominent because a decline in ice cover in the Great Lakes allows for more surface water evaporation.

The NWF report reads:

Even as global warming is slowly changing the character of winter in the United States, we will still experience familiar year-to-year variability.  Because many different variables affect winter conditions – including temperature, moisture availability, storm tracks, and natural climate oscillations – and because global warming affects these variables in different ways, scientists do not expect a steady progression to less wintery conditions.

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Ecofeminism: What About It?

January 28, 2011 3 Comments

Lyndi Weener is a Women’s Studies major at Hope College and a staff writer for The WMEAC Blog.   In collaboration with WMEAC, she is researching the topic of ecofeminism.  This is the first in a series exploring the connections between feminism and environmentalism.

As is the case with most branches of feminism, the exact definition of ecofeminism is hard to pin down.  Manifesting itself in a variety of theories and practices, the term originated in 1974 with French feminist Francoise d’Eaubonne.

Born out of two pre-existing movements, the ecofeminist movement is a social movement that acknowledges the parallel relationship between ecological interests and feminist interests. According to d’Eaubonne, the oppression of women and the oppression of the earth are intimately connected and centrally rooted in dualistic thinking and unequal power relationships.  Therefore, this thinking extends not only to sexist oppression, but other systems of oppression including racism, heterosexism, ableism, and specieism to name a few.

Many feminists believe that patriarchy, the social system in which men hold primary authority, originated with the invention of agriculture.  Hunter-gatherer societies were considered rather egalitarian, but as more families undertook agriculture, women’s inability to own property put them on an unequal playing field with men.

Therefore, ecofeminists believe that man’s relationship to land as domesticator and owner bled into his relationship with women.  Entitlement to and oppression of the land developed attitudes of domination within land-owners and helped to further justify oppression within other relationships of unequal power.  For this reason, ecofeminists claim that true healing of the oppression of the earth cannot be maintained without jointly striving for healing within oppressive relationships, whether they be sexist, speciest, heterosexist, racist, ableist or otherwise.

To learn more about ecofeminism in action, check out the website of Navdanya, a “women-centred movement for the protection of biological and cultural diversity” founded by activist, scholar, and ecofeminist Vandana Shiva.

Stay tuned for future posts on ecofeminism and its relevancy to West Michigan.

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Global Climate Change: What’s With All the Snow?

January 18, 2011

Ever since Al Gore’s 2006 documentary made public the Inconvenient Truth of Global Climate Change, the world has been a-buzz about rising temperatures, melting glaciers, and stranded polar bears.  However, recent events – a rare White Christmas in the deep South and the collapse of the Minnesota Viking Metrodome roof due to snow accumulation -  have led many to wonder if Global Climate Change is deserving of the hype.

If the world is indeed, as scientists suggest, getting warmer, then what’s with all the snow?  By turning to science we can begin to find an answer to this puzzling question.

Global Climate Change, as defined by the U.S. E.P.A., is “any significant change in measures of climate (such as temperature, precipitation, or wind) lasting for an extended period (decades or longer)”  and results largely from an over-accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels.  As greenhouse gases amass, the atmosphere becomes more impenetrable, and, over the years, average global temperatures in the atmospheric layer nearest the earth rise.

What does this mean for us?  For one thing, more snow.  As temperatures rise, the Earth’s water cycle becomes more intensified.  A warmer atmosphere results in increased evaporation and thus, increased precipitation.  Due to Global Climate Change, storm-affected areas experience snowier winters and rainier springs.  Don’t let the critics fool you; Global Climate Change is worth your attention.  And that snow that continues to accumulate outside of your window might be more proof of it.

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