The 82nd Rainforest Thread ~

N.Y. Tests Turbines to Produce Power
City Taps Current Of the East River

By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 20, 2008; A02

NEW YORK -- On a recent morning, a crane sank a 16-foot rotor into the waters of the East River and divers swam deep to bolt it to the bottom. By early evening, as the northerly current sped up, the rotor began to spin, a big thunk sounded in the control room, a green light went on, and electricity began to pour into a nearby supermarket.

The scene represents an experiment in tidal power, using turbines that look like underwater windmills, and it is the first of its kind nationwide and one of only a few such pilot projects in the world.

"This is just the beginning of a project, but the project itself is emblematic of a whole new industry," said Trey Taylor, the president of Verdant Power, a small company that created the experiment and hopes to expand it to commercial use with 300 turbines in the East River that could power up to 10,000 homes in the city.

Engineers, policymakers and energy experts say projects like the East River tidal turbines are already placing this city at the urban vanguard of energy production. They say New York City is uniquely positioned to advance sustainable energy projects because of the city's enormous need for power, its high electricity costs, and the pressure for new sources created by its unusual rule that 80 percent of energy must be generated within the city.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has sought to make New York the cleanest and greenest major city in the country. He has faced setbacks -- for example, when his congestion pricing plan to reduce the number of cars in Manhattan was killed by the state legislature. He was mocked when he spoke of placing windmills on bridges and skyscrapers, and a few New York tabloids ran illustrations of wind turbines on the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building.

Still, he has asked private companies to submit ideas to develop wind, solar and water energy projects. And for the past year, his administration has supported the water turbines, a project many years in the making.

The idea is simple: As water flows, it spins the rotors and produces electricity. The turbines run according to the tide charts, which are as predictable as phases of the moon.

The idea was rejected for state funding in 2000, only to be accepted a few years later.

The strength of the flows of the East River -- which is technically not a river, but a tidal strait, whose current switches direction throughout the day -- makes it an ideal spot for generating power. The strength of the current also makes it hard on equipment. Swift-moving waters chewed up the first two types of turbines, which Verdant, a small, private company, installed in late 2006 and early 2007.

The first blades were fiberglass with a steel skeleton. Later, another set of rotors was made from aluminum and magnesium.

"The water was very powerful, so it broke the rotors," Taylor said.

The newest blades are made from an aluminum alloy, attached to rotors whose strength has been extensively tested. If all holds together, Taylor expects to apply for permission to expand and launch a commercial operation.

But the capacity of the turbines is not the only stumbling block. There were years of environmental testing on the site, including an investment of more than $2 million to monitor the impact on fish and migratory birds. Both have avoided the big, clunky turbines thus far, Taylor said, but regulations require ongoing inspections.

The city needs new ways to generate energy because existing transmission lines from upstate are inadequate and the city's needs are growing, said James Gallagher, energy expert at the city's Economic Development Corp.

"We need generation within the city, and anything we can add in terms of clean, efficient, new generation, has a value to it," he said.

He and other analysts say tidal power is a small piece of the city's energy equation. In fact, New York is learning the rules of the game for its own brand of urban sustainable energy production: The winds and waters of this port city can be harnessed, but only in certain places. Tidal power is reliable, but small-scale. Wind power is cheap but rare. Solar power is unreliable, inconstant and expensive but easy to install.

Experts warn that before these alternatives are widely adopted, New York will have to upgrade its antiquated grid system, which is currently incapable of incorporating a great deal of power from multiple small sources.

The city's peak energy consumption is 12,000 megawatts at any given moment, said Stephen Hammer, the director of the Urban Energy Program at Columbia University. "The question is, 'What's our goal? How much of that 12,000 megawatts total do we want to try to achieve? What kind of cost burden do we want to bear to achieve it?' "

So far, support has been relatively strong on Roosevelt Island, the quiet community between Manhattan and Queens that is the project's base. Developers began building that support in 2001, long before any installation, beginning with neighborhood meetings.

"I think it's a great thing," said Pia Doane, 63, speaking as she shopped for fruit at the Gristede's supermarket the project powers. She said she'd rather live in view of a turbine than a smokestack, such as those at the massive power plant just across the water, which she calls Asthma Alley. "This current has a big force," she said. "We should use it."

September 23, 2008
Ban Near on Diverting Water From Great Lakes
By SUSAN SAULNY

The House began debate Monday on a sweeping bill that would ban almost any diversion of water from the Great Lakes’ natural basin to places outside the region.

The measure is intended to put to rest longstanding fears that parched states or even foreign countries could do long-term damage to the basin by tapping into its tremendous body of fresh water.

The bill, which would also put in place strict conservation rules for the eight states that border the lakes, is expected to win House approval, perhaps as soon as Tuesday. It has already been passed by the Senate, and the Bush administration has signaled its support.

So House backing for the measure, known as the Great Lakes Compact, is regarded by its many advocates across the Midwest and in New York and Pennsylvania as a long-sought final piece to a complicated puzzle whose solution started taking shape a decade ago in an effort to give the region control over its water. The fear was that without strict, consistent rules on who is entitled to that water, it might start disappearing.

“People realized that Great Lakes water is a finite resource and that death by a thousand straws is a real threat,” said Jordan Lubetkin, a spokesman for the National Wildlife Federation. “There is a perception that because the Great Lakes are so vast, they are immune from harm. That is not the case.”

Before the legislation even reached Congress, the states bordering the lakes had to approve the compact individually, agreeing " in a contentious process that itself took years " to certain common goals. The last state to approve, Michigan, did so only in July, following Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

(The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, which also border the lakes, have adopted a nearly identical document.)

Though passage in the House is foreseen, support there is not unanimous. Some members say the pact is not strong enough to protect the lakes, which together account for 20 percent of the world’s fresh surface water.

Among the dissenters is Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, who complained Monday about an exception that would allow bottled water to be shipped outside the basin, among other management issues.

“Because these concerns remain unaddressed,” Mr. Stupak said in a statement, “I regret that I have to urge my colleagues to join me in opposing the compact until proper protections are put in place.”

“I see no reason why we must rush this process when our nation’s most precious natural resource is at stake,” said Mr. Stupak, whose district borders three of the lakes, calling the bottled-water exemption a loophole that could be used for large-scale diversion, exactly what the compact seeks to prevent.

But one of the compact’s drafters, Samuel W. Speck, former chairman of the water management working group of the Council of Great Lakes Governors, said the exemption was “not an issue.”

“By and large, bottled water isn’t shipped that far,” Mr. Speck said. “We found there is more bottled water sent into the Great Lakes Basin than sent out. It wasn’t a matter of us losing water. We actually gain water from the shipping.”

“There are those things that would irritate perfectionists,” he continued, “but it was the only way to get something so comprehensive and with enforcement enacted in all of the states and provinces. That’s an amazing accomplishment, and a very important one as we’re looking at greater demands for water and threats that climate change will bring.”

Under the measure, water generally would not be allowed to be diverted from the basin except under rare circumstances that would require the approval of all eight bordering states. In addition to the bottled-water exemption, an exception has been made for so-called straddling communities that lie on the basin’s borders, among other negotiated concessions based largely on whether diverted water could be restored to the lakes.

As for outlying states, Mr. Speck, among others, said he hoped they realized that guarding the freshwater supply with more vigor was in the long-term interest of the entire country.

“Some people will say, ‘Gosh, that’s discrimination against other states,’ ” Mr. Speck said. “The reality is that in the eight Great Lakes states, the largest parts of those states are outside of the basin. They’re not treating other states different from how they’re treating large areas of their own states.”

Another advocate of the compact, Steve Wieckert, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Assembly, said it had caused a tough fight in his state, because about half of Wisconsin falls outside the Great Lakes Basin. Some residents accused him of creating second-class citizens, but Mr. Wieckert, whose own district falls within the basin, said the compact was fair.

“No one else could come up with a better answer,” he said. “We needed a compact, and this was the best compact we could come up with.”

September 23, 2008
It Takes Just One Village to Save a Species
By PHIL MCKENNA

CHONGZUO, China " Long ago, in the poverty-stricken hills of southern China, a village banished its children to the forest to feed on wild fruits and leaves. Years later, when food stores improved, the children’s parents returned to the woods to reclaim their young.

To their surprise, their offspring had adapted to forest life remarkably well; the children’s white headdresses had dissolved into fur, tails grew from their spines and they refused to come home.

At the Nongguan Nature Reserve in Chongzuo, Guangxi province, the real-life descendants of these mythical children " monkeys known as white-headed langurs " still swing through the forest canopy.

As the langurs traverse a towering karst peak in a setting out of a Chinese landscape painting, they appear untouched by time and change, but it is remarkable that they and their tropical forest home have survived. In 1996, when the langurs were highly endangered, Pan Wenshi, China’s premier panda biologist, came to study them in Chongzuo at what was then an abandoned military base. This was at a time when hunters were taking the canary-yellow young langurs from their cliff-face strongholds, and villagers were leveling the forest for firewood.

Dr. Pan quickly hired wardens to protect the remaining animals but then went a step further, taking on the larger social and economic factors jeopardizing the species. Dr. Pan recognized the animal’s origin myth as legend, but he also believed that alleviating the region’s continuing poverty was essential for their long-term survival.

In the 24-square-kilometer nature reserve where he has focused his studies, the langur population increased to more than 500 today from 96 in 1996.

“It’s a model of what can be done in hot-spot areas that have been devastated by development,” said Russell A. Mittermeier, the president of Conservation International. “Pan has combined all the elements " protection, research, ecotourism, good relations with the local community; he’s really turned the langur into a flagship for the region.”

Part of what makes Dr. Pan’s achievements so remarkable is the success he is having compared with the fate of primates elsewhere. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s most recent Red List, nearly half of the world’s 634 primate species and subspecies are in danger of extinction. “If you look at the Red List, Asia has by far the highest percentage in the threatened categories,” Dr. Mittermeier said.

When Dr. Pan arrived in Guangxi, the challenges of studying langurs, much less protecting them, seemed insurmountable. He and a student spent their first two years living in collapsing cinder block barracks with no electricity or running water.

At that time, the langur’s population was in freefall, dropping from an estimated 2,000 individuals in the late 1980s to fewer than 500 a decade later. Historically, local farmers had occasionally killed langurs for food, but then teams of outside hunters began taking a serious toll on the population.

“In the 1990s, the Chinese economy started booming, and those with money " governors, factory owners, businessmen " all wanted to eat the wildlife to show how powerful they were,” said Dr. Pan, 71.

A breakthrough in protecting the species came in 1997 when he helped local villagers build a pipeline to secure clean drinking water. Shortly thereafter, a farmer from the village freed a trapped langur and brought it to Dr. Pan.

“When you help the villagers, they would like to help you back,” he said.

As self-appointed local advocate, Dr. Pan raised money for a new school in another village, oversaw the construction of health clinics in two neighboring towns and organized physicals for women throughout the area.

“Now, when outsiders try to trap langurs,” Dr. Pan said, “the locals stop them from coming in.”

But the villagers were still dependent on the reserve’s trees for fuel.

“If I told them they can’t cut down the trees, that wouldn’t be right,” Dr. Pan said. “They have to feed their families.”

In 2000, he received a $12,500 environmental award from Ford Motor Company. He used the money to build biogas digesters " concrete-lined pits that capture methane gas from animal waste " to provide cooking fuel for roughly 1,000 people.

Based on the project’s success, the federal government financed a sevenfold increase in construction of tanks to hold biogas. Today, 95 percent of the population living just outside the reserve burn biogas in their homes.

As a result, the park’s number and diversity of trees " the langurs’ primary habitat and sole food source " has increased significantly.

“When I first came, the hillsides were very rocky,” Dr. Pan said. “Now it’s hard to see the rocks and even harder to see the langurs because of all the trees.”

Nearly all money for Dr. Pan’s development projects has come from outside the region, but his efforts have not gone unnoticed by local officials. In 2001, the county government built a research center in the reserve with accommodations for Dr. Pan and his students, a guesthouse and a yet-to-be completed education center to showcase the region’s biodiversity.

Still, those who would like to exploit the scenic beauty of the park remain. One recent proposal included a five-star hotel that would turn the would-be education center into a gambling hall and cockfighting pavilion.

In 2002, when Dr. Pan inaugurated the Chongzuo Eco-Park, a small part of the Nongguan Nature Reserve that is open to the public, he had a quote from the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius carved into stone at the front gate. The phrase, “In an ideal society, everyone should work for the well being of others,” was a subtle reminder to local officials that the park should not be misused for their own financial gain. But the quote also reminds those looking to protect the langurs that they must consider the area’s human community.

“This is the most important thing we can do,” Dr. Pan said. “If the villagers can’t feed themselves, the langurs don’t stand a chance.”

Dr. Pan is a charismatic leader who is as quick to lead his students into the field under grueling conditions as to don a langur costume at local festivals to raise awareness about the species.

He got his start in wildlife conservation in 1980 studying the giant panda in Sichuan province with the biologist George Schaller of the Wildlife Conservation Society, based at the Bronx Zoo. Mr. Schaller left China in 1985, but Dr. Pan spent 11 more years in the field, and his resulting work proved instrumental in conserving critical panda habitat.

Yet his greatest achievement may well be what he has passed on to the next generation. In 1991, he founded Peking University’s department of conservation biology " now the Center for Nature and Society " one of the first institutions in China dedicated to studying and protecting endangered species.

Currently staffed by 10 of Dr. Pan’s former students, the department conducts fieldwork on everything from dolphins in the South China Sea to snow leopards on the Tibetan Plateau.

Dr. Pan became interested in langurs in the early ’90s after reading “Sociobiology: The New Synthesis,” a groundbreaking book by Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard biologist, environmentalist and writer. It suggested that certain social behaviors were evolutionarily advantageous. Dr. Pan wanted to test Dr. Wilson’s ideas in the field, but needed a more gregarious species than the panda, which lives primarily in solitude.

He has been studying langurs since 1996 and has observed numerous cases of infanticide " where an adult male that had taken over a family group killed all newborns sired by the prior reigning male. The primary intent of infanticide is not to kill, but to induce nursing females to start ovulating quickly and thus increase the usurping male’s chances of reproducing. Infanticide had been documented in other species, but he was the first to observe it in white-headed langurs.

Based on observations of male langur succession events that did not involve infanticide, Dr. Pan suspects the animal’s reproductive strategy may be evolving to include negotiated settlements between males. In such cases, two males have divided adult females and territory among themselves without killing any newborns.

“I’d like to know how closely related the males are,” says Patricia C. Wright of Stony Brook University in New York of Dr. Pan’s latest observations, “but it opens up a lot of interesting theoretical possibilities.”

Back in Chongzuo, Dr. Pan led a small group into a meadow of tallgrass surrounded by limestone karsts. Above them, a family of langurs leaped across a forested cliff face toward a rock ledge where they would spend the night. He hopes descendants of these monkeys will spread beyond the reserve to repopulate nearby mountains just as other scientists will continue the work he has started.

“I cannot do all of the conservation work that is needed here in China,” Dr. Pan said, “but my students and many others will continue toward this goal.”