RoguePundit

Possible Oregon Tire Recycling Facility

It looks like the Boardman area might soon be getting a tire recycling plant, one that doesn't simply grind the tires up for use in other products. 

A Bellevue (WA) startup by the name of Reklaim Technologies has scored $7 million in venture financing from Goldman Sachs to help recycle some of the 300 million waste tires created every year in the U.S.

...

Reklaim received a land-use permit this month for a 5-acre parcel at the Port of Morrow on the Columbia River in north-central Oregon, where it hopes to open a $50 million tire-recycling facility next year. The site, which could employ 40 people, is one of many that Reklaim is scouting around the country.

The environmental permits have not been secured at Morrow, but Lissa Druback of Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality said a meeting is scheduled with the company next week.

Reklaim has run into troubles before in Oregon. It tried to build a tire-recycling plant in St. Helens, located northwest of Portland, but community members objected and the land use permit was denied, Druback said.

But Morrow County already has granted the land-use permit. And Renee Gastineau, a spokeswoman for Reklaim, expressed confidence that the company will receive its environmental permits and open on schedule in the second quarter of 2008.

The site that Reklaim would lease is near the Tillamook Cheese plant.  The goal is to recycle 5.4 million tires per year.   

Reklaim plans to use a patent-pending technique called sublimation in which tires are shredded, heated to 850 degrees Fahrenheit in an oxygen-free environment and then broken down into oil, carbon black and steel. ...

It is not a new or unique concept, though the promises of the business have not materialized over the years.

"It is technically feasible, but the challenge is making it economically viable," said Druback, the eastern region solid waste manager for Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality.

Because waste tires represent a potential health and fire hazard, environmental regulations can be strict and add to the cost of operating a tire-recycling business. For example, Oregon requires tire-recycling businesses to set aside proceeds to clean up the facility if the business were to fail, Druback said.

There are also regulations on how the tires are stored and processed, making it difficult for recyclers to compete with landfills.

Reklaim says its technology is climate neutral, but the website simply doesn't provide enough information to analyze that claim.  It does note that there won't be any tire piles, as the tires will be transported to the site and stored temporarily (4-6 days) in closed containers.  The proposed site is near I-82 and I-84, and it also offers ready access to train and barge delivery.

With old tires containing about 5 pounds of carbon and 1.5 gallons of oil, she said, there is "a lot of inherent energy in tires."

Still, many of the old tires in Oregon are buried at a landfill in Prineville.

Meanwhile, Washington--which generated 5 million waste tires in 2005 and put 26 percent of them in landfills--plans to spend $7 million to clean up more than 3 million tires at 56 unauthorized piles in the state.

"Tires are a huge problem, and currently our option is to landfill them," Druback said. "If (Reklaim) could make a go of it, that would be great. It would be a lot better than having them in the ground."

Tire recycling has offered a lot more promise than results.  Hopefully this idea will deliver and be genuinely environmentally friendly.  It might even boost our ranking amongst the nation's top garbage importing states--we currently stand seventh (previous blog here). 

Jail for Former Sheriff

Last month, former Curry County Sheriff Mark Metcalf was convicted on four counts of third-degree sex abuse, four counts of harassment, and three counts of official misconduct against three female county employees (most recent blog here).  Yesterday the Sheriff, who was recalled in June, received his sentence.

Curry County Circuit Court Judge Richard Barron handed down the sentence, which also included at least 36 months of formal probation and restitution of $1,079.15 to Kim Wood, one of the three women Metcalf sexually harassed and abused, for costs of counseling associated with Metcalf's abuse.

Metcalf will serve 360 days in the Coos County Jail in Coquille and will register as a sex offender upon release.

In addition, terms of Metcalf's future probation include having no contact with the three victims, not entering the Curry County Courthouse except for preapproved, official business, taking no job that involves supervising women and not viewing or possessing pornography.

Metcalf was also ordered to pay a $67 fee for each of the 11 charges filed against him.

Each of the charges was punishable with up to one year in prison and a $5,000 fine.  Hopefully he'll never give anyone (more) reason to wish he'd received a stiffer sentence.

Opposing Country of Origin Labeling

The proposed farm bill, pork-laden though it is, contains something most Americans will welcome, additional country of origin labeling (COOL) requirements.  A number of products remain excluded, but at least there's progress.  First, a bit of background on why some labels show where a product comes from and others don't...

Some labels already disclose the information. The Tariff Act of 1930 requires it for many products, including processed foods, toys, vehicle tires and appliances. ... Also, some suppliers--notably of fresh fruits--voluntarily affix country-of-origin stickers, so consumers know that their shelves hold apples from Chile, pears from Argentina and American nectarines.

But the existing rules are not enough for some farmers and consumers, who have been pushing for decades for a law to fill the gaps. They won a partial victory with the passage of the 2002 Farm Bill, which required country-of-origin labeling on fresh meats, seafood, produce and peanuts but exempted poultry and poultry products, tree nuts and any food processed in the United States with imported ingredients. The U.S. Department of Agriculture got the job of crafting specific regulations under the bill and putting them into effect by Sept. 30, 2004.

Then, during appropriations talks in Congress, food processors, packers and grocery chains railed against some of the bill's requirements, including "onerous" record keeping, and persuaded lawmakers to postpone new labeling rules for meats, produce and peanuts until 2008. Not for seafood, however: Alaska fishermen favored the law and had champions on the Hill. So the USDA enacted interim seafood rules effective in April 2005 that require disclosure of not only the country source but also whether the seafood is wild-caught or farmed.

American farmers and ranchers support the proposed COOL changes, figuring that with this information, more Americans will buy American.  But, some of the companies between them and the consumers continue to have a different view.

During talks on the 2007 Farm Bill, negotiators struck a deal that addresses the processors', packers' and grocery chains' key objections. Companies would be able to rely on records that they already maintain instead of having to create new ones. Adjustments also were made to certain label terms. "Idaho potatoes" or "Washington apples" could signify a U.S. product with no additional information needed, for example--something not allowed by the 2002 law. The compromise passed the House on July 26 and will go before the Senate in September.

But the Food Marketing Institute, which represents large retailers and wholesalers, did not sign on to the House compromise. "We are not ready to tie our hands," said Tim Hammonds, FMI president. And the Bush administration has threatened to veto the 2007 Farm Bill because it contains hot-button provisions on subsidies, nutrition and conservation.

There's another complication. While the 2007 legislation is in flux, the USDA still must promulgate regulations for the 2002 law by the Sept. 30, 2008, deadline. To that end, a department spokesman said, the USDA is reviewing comments it received on proposals covering meats, produce and peanuts, and on the interim seafood rules. In their comments, industry sectors voice support for the basic concept of country-of-origin labeling but protest requirements they deem troublesome and costly.

Troublesome and costly...the major Canadian beef and pork producers have a similar complaint about our proposed COOL regs.  They're pushing Canada to fight the proposed changes as violations of NAFTA and World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, claiming that it will increase their costs and thus create a trade barrier.  In the following paragraphs (from this link), note that Davis represents the Canadian Livestock Producers Against COOL, and Schlegel is president of the Canadian Pork Council.

If a pork chop or T-Bone steak derives from a Canadian animal that was slaughtered in the U.S., it would be inaccurate to label it as a product of Canada, Davis said.

Under NAFTA and WTO rules, a commodity becomes the product of the country in which it undergoes a "major transformation," he explained.

"We consider slaughter a major transformation," said Davis.

The U.S. and Canada have developed an integrated market for meat and livestock that could be seriously disrupted if such labeling laws were incorrectly implemented, said Schlegel.

Slaughter certainly seems like a major transformation, but what does that have to do with listing where a product's ingredients came from? 

FYI, Canadian consumers also want to know where their food comes from.  Under Canadian law, manufacturers can use the "Product of Canada" label if at least 51 percent of the production costs are Canadian.  The Canadian Federation of Agriculture is developing a new labeling system to better highlight Canadian products.  Do you suppose that will present a trade barrier to our products?

"The real problem is the burden of record-keeping," Schlegel said.

Beef and pork processors are both in the de-manufacturing business--that is, they take a raw material and dissemble it into products they individually market, he explained.

Uhhh...de-manufacturing typically refers to "the disassembly and recycling of obsolete consumer products," with goal being to maximize recycling.  Anyway...

Tracking the animal is easy, but tracking those products is much more difficult, particularly with ground beef and ground pork, Schlegel said.

"The problem is not from the farm to the slaughterhouse. The problem is from the slaughterhouse to the grocery store," he said.

Tracking the animals is easy?  Why is it then with each case of mad cow, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has been unable to find some of the cattle that fed upon the same contaminated feed as the victims (most recent example here)? 

Of course, our ability to track cattle and other farm animals isn't exactly robust either.  The USDA continues to work on the implementation of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), a process which hasn't been going very well...but that's a subject for another day.      

The costs of tracking animals from farm to plate will be passed along to the consumers, both directly and via tax dollars.  The more foreign ingredients a manufacturer uses, the more there is to track.  Obviously food manufacturers and retailers fight for cost advantages in their cutthroat businesses.  Sometimes that means buying foreign ingredients simply because they're cheaper, and sometimes that means being forced into buying foreign ingredients because competitors control the domestic supply, or there was crop failure, or it's out of season in this hemisphere, or...  Labeling could be rather dynamic for some products.   

The law would also create hassles for U.S. pork producers who buy Canadian wiener pigs, who must then separately track them, Schlegel said.

Processors would think twice about accepting Canadian livestock for slaughter, which could dent the price for hogs and cattle produced in that country, according to the group.

Furthermore, making COOL mandatory would be of questionable benefit to consumers, Schlegel and Davis said. If such labeling had a real market advantage, processors and retailers would be eager to implement it voluntarily, said Schlegel.

Both the USDA and CFIA work under the principle that food safety has to do with the food itself, not its origin.  But, some people want to make food choices based upon origin.  That's why we have organic labeling.  That's why some products voluntarily list where they come from...even if it's only to benefit from association, like with Old Milwaukee. 

Processors and retailers wouldn't be fighting this unless they figured the additional COOL requirements would adversely impact their profits.  For some it's simply a matter of cost; for others, it's also that people might read the label and decide to choose a different product.  It might be informed choice, it might ignorant choice, but it's choice that we should have. 

If we suddenly have several cases of mad cow here in the U.S., Canada's beef producers will be happy to claim credit for their products. 

Random Nature #135

Bullet-Shaped:  I've blogged on multiple occasions (most recently here) about the filovirus family and a couple of the deadly hemorrhagic fevers its members cause, Ebola Virus and Marburg.  The filoviruses are related to rhabdoviruses, which are a curious mix of plant, insect, and vertebrate pathogens.  Only one of them commonly preys upon man--rabies. But due to the length of this post, rabies has to wait until next week.

Rhabdovirus consists of six or seven genera with a total of over 200 species of rod-shaped viruses (listing here).  The majority are transmitted by insect vectors, and several cause significant economic damage to fish, crops, and herds.  Here's info on a few of them. 

Fishy Letters:  Many salmon and trout fishermen here in the Northwest are familiar with the acronym IHNV, which is mercifully short for infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (hematopoietic has to do with the formation of blood).  This virus tends to prey upon the young in spring and early summer, with mortality rates of up to 60 percent in Chinooks and 90 percent in Sockeyes. 

The clinical signs may include abdominal distension, exophthalmia, darkening of the skin, anemia, and fading of the gills.  Long, semi-transparent fecal casts often trail from the anus.  Hemorrhages are common at the base of the pectoral fins, the mouth, the skin posterior to the skull above the lateral line, the muscles near the anus, and the yolk sac in sac fry.  In sac fry, the yolk sac often swells with fluid.  Diseased fish move slowly, float with the current, and occasionally act as if they were suffering from cramps.  In later stages, fish tend to float on the surface, turn over, and occasionally swim frantically.  Surviving fish often have scoliosis.

Folks with aquariums refer to exophthalmia as "popeye."  This virus is readily shed in various fish excretions, including those of asymptomatic carriers (which is what some survivors become).  Plus it can be spread via contaminated feed...and there may be insect vectors.  Prevention is the key.

Yet More Letters:  Here are some other rhabdoviruses that prey upon fish. 

- The redundantly-named viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV or Egtved disease) has a growing list of strains that until recently were known for attacking salmonids in Europe (where it's a scourge of rainbow trout) as well as the Pacific Rim.  Now it's also becoming infamous for killing a large variety of species in the Great Lakes and the region's fish farms.  After a number of ugly symptoms, the fish generally die from internal bleeding.  Man is definitely helping to spread VHSV via contaminated water, eggs, and bait fish.  Plus again, there can be asymptomatic carriers.  With the Great Lakes strain now being found in channel catfish, farmers in the South see it as an impending threat.   

- Spring Viremia of Carp Virus (SVCV) was an Old World problem for carp and goldfish until earlier this decade, when it was found in parts of the Americas (including Washington).  Its mortality rate is high in cold water (up to 90 percent), but drops off considerably in warmer conditions.

The clinical signs may include darkening of the body, sluggish breathing, tilting to one side, abdominal distension, exophthalmia, anemia, hemorrhagic spots on the gills, and reddening and swelling of the anus.  Diseased fish tend to gather at the water inlet.  Some recovered fish may become virus carriers.

- And a couple of others...Snakehead rhabdovirus (SHRV) strikes its namesake fish family, members of which are farmed in parts of Southeast Asia.  It can also kill zebrafish--the danios of aquarium fame.  Hirame rhabdovirus is a type hematopoietic necrosis suffered by flounder, causing problems for those who farm them.  But, there is a vaccine for this virus. FYI, hirame is Japanese for flat fish.      

Blisters of the Mouth:  A genus of rhabdoviruses that can strike both fish and animals is Vesiculovirus.  It's most famous member causes vesicular stomatitus (VSV), a disease primarily of the Americas that...

...primarily affects cattle, horses, and swine. The virus that causes vesicular stomatitis has a wide host range. This disease also occasionally affects sheep and goats. Many species of wild animals, including deer, bobcats, goats, raccoons, and monkeys, have been found to be susceptible hosts.

It's considered one of the "big four" livestock diseases.  Plus, it occasionally strikes people who come into direct contact with diseased animals.  In people, VSV is like a mild flu that lasts for 4-7 days and includes a fever, head and muscle aches, and what resemble cold sores.  Continuing from the above quote...

In affected livestock, vesicular stomatitis causes blisterlike lesions to form in the mouth and on the dental pad, tongue, lips, nostrils, hooves, and teats. These blisters swell and break, leaving raw tissue that is so painful that infected animals generally refuse to eat or drink and show signs of lameness. Severe weight loss usually follows, and in dairy cows, a severe drop in milk production commonly occurs. Affected dairy cattle can appear to be normal and will continue to eat about half of their feed intake.

That probably sounds like another of the big four, foot & mouth disease.  However, that was eradicated from the U.S. in 1929.  VSV is hardest on horses, but fortunately it rarely kills its victims.

The morbidity rate for vesicular stomatitis varies considerably within species. For example, about 5 to 10 percent of affected herds generally show clinical signs of the disease. Up to 80 percent of dairy cattle herds have become affected by vesicular stomatitis. If there are no complications such as secondary infections, then affected animals recover in about 2 weeks.   

The disease is generally spread directly between animals, via shared objects (like a salt lick), and in some instances by sand flies, black flies, and possibly mosquitoes.  In the U.S., it tends to strike for 2-3 years and then disappear for about a decade...which is why the Southwest should be due pretty soon.  Curiously, research may be finding that VSV is actually a plant virus that can also strike some animals.  There's also a line of thought that similar plant and animal viruses evolved from the same insect virus.

Three Day Sickness:  Bovine ephemeral fever (BEF) virus afflicts cattle and water buffalos in the temperate through tropical areas of the Old World plus Australia.  The disease, which is probably transmitted via mosquitoes, doesn't last long, but it can hit hard. 

Infected cattle usually develop a biphasic or triphasic fever, with temperature peaks approximately 12-18 hours apart.  During the first fever, milk production in lactating cows often drops dramatically, but other clinical signs are mild.  During the second fever, the symptoms are more severe.  Animals may have an increased heart rate, tachypnea, depression, anorexia, ruminal atony, serous or mucoid discharges from the nose and eyes, salivation, muscle twitching, waves of shivering, joint pain, stiffness, and shifting lameness.  There may also be submandibular edema, or patchy edema on the head.  Many animals become recumbent for eight hours to days.  Some may temporarily lose their reflexes and be unable to rise.  These clinical signs can be exacerbated by severe environmental stress or forced exercise.   

Tachypnea is "abnormally fast breathing," and ruminal atony is essentially indigestion related to the first compartment of the stomach.

BEF outbreaks can sicken up to 80 percent of cattle, typically killing 1-2 percent of them.  Strangely, the malady is more severe in robust animals...it can kill over 30 percent of "very fat cattle." 

Plant Problems:  There are more than 70 plant viruses in the rhabdovirus family.  The common names of these and other viruses are often descriptive of a key problem or appearance for which the virus is responsible.  There are almost certainly a large number of plant viruses that haven't been discovered or identified yet...research often tends to follow monetary damage.  In most instances, viruses weaken their victims, causing reduced yields, unattractive flowers, etc.  Here are a few of the plant rhabdoviruses: 

- Beet leaf curl virus attacks beets (including chards & sugar beets) and spinach in parts of Eurasia.  This pathogen is controlled by going after its vector--the beet bug--and by quarantine.  The virus used to be a major problem in Central Europe, reducing sugar beet yields by as much as 75 percent.  But in recent years, the problem has waned significantly.

- Citrus leprosis virus was originally observed in Florida in about 1860.  It causes spotting on fruits, leaves, and twigs, and can eventually kill the trees.  Leprosis had spread to 17 nations by 1925, by which time it had been eradicated in the U.S.  The keys were planting in new locations and controlling flat mites, the vector.  Sulfur works well on the mites, but it can kill citrus trees.  The virus remains firmly established in South America, where it causes millions in damage.  A recent outbreak in Panama has growers in Florida fearing what they now consider to be an exotic disease.

- Euonymus fasciation virus is best explained by defining fasciation, which is also known as cresting:

Fasciation is a condition that may randomly affect a diverse range of plants. Round stems are flattened, suggesting many stems have fused together. True fasciation is the product of a single, normally dome-shaped growing point that has become abnormally broadened and flattened. Any sideshoots usually remain small and undeveloped.

Several things can cause fasciation, including genetic disruption, bacterial infection, frost, insects, fungi, plant damage, and sometimes viruses.  In a few plants, fasciation is a desirable trait (cactus photos here).  A few very decorative plant variegations are also caused by viruses.  However, viruses which cause color breaks in flowers are generally not appreciated.

- Raspberry vein chlorosis virus is a native of Eurasia that's been introduced to both New Zealand and Canada.  It afflicts the red raspberry (Rubus idaeus), though it can infect woodland strawberries and has been grafted into loganberries.  It's spread by aphids.

- Strawberry crinkle virus was first reported here in Oregon, but it lives in much of the world.  The virus, which is also spread by aphids, causes different symptoms in the various types of strawberries.  In the woodland strawberry, its calling cards are "chlorotic and necrotic spotting of veins, epinasty, deformation, local lesions in petioles and stolons, streaking and deformation of petals."  FYI, epinasty is a downward bending of leaves driven by the tops of the leaves growing faster than the bottoms.   

- Wheat American striate mosaic virus is found in the northern Great Plains.  This virus affects some varieties of wheat more than others (and can infect a few other types of grasses), but it rarely seems to impact a large or concentrated portion of a wheat field.  It's spread by leafhoppers, but curiously, moulting rids leafhoppers of this particular virus.

And again, rabies (which is shaped like a plant virus) comes next week.

Iodine Sales and Meth

A couple of years ago when Oregon was considering restricting our access to pseudoephedrine, I asked why not consider other meth ingredients that wouldn't inconvenience as many people.  One of the suggestions was iodine.  The following goes part way towards that thought.

New restrictions on iodine are intended to put "meth cooks" out of business, but the stricter rules governing sales of the common disinfectant will also be a pain in the neck for some livestock producers.

As of Aug. 31, wholesalers and retailers of iodine solutions above 2.2 percent in concentration will be required to pay registration fees of about $1,100 and keep records of all iodine sales, regardless of size.

The enhanced regulations are a result of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration seeking to clamp down on domestic production of methamphetamine. Iodine is one of the substances used to manufacture the illegal drug.

Previously, imports and exports of iodine weren't regulated and handlers weren't tracked by the DEA.

"These loopholes have been exploited by drug traffickers and the businesses that supply them," according to a DEA statement on the new rules.

That steep registration fee will probably discourage fly-by-night cookers, but it sure gouges the farmers.  Stores will still be able to sell the 2 percent solution, but as the article notes, it's not strong enough for some of the typical livestock applications.  Note though that the number of places selling 7 percent iodine has been dropping for awhile.   

After being notified about the problem by the Oregon State Police, Marion Ag Service, based in St. Paul, Ore., discontinued selling iodine at concentrations above 1 percent several years ago, said Marci Gaibler, the company's office manager.

"We just didn't want it going out the door to people like that," she said.

Jon Hendersen, owned of Old Mill Feed and Garden in Dallas, Ore., was also contacted by police about five years ago, which prompted him to stop selling 7 percent iodine solution.

Before he was even aware of the chemical's role in meth production, Hendersen noticed the product attracted an unusual demographic to his store, he said.

"There were some pretty shady people who would come in, and they were always looking for big quantities of it," Hendersen said.

Iodine is sold over the internet.  Vets already have to register with the DEA to dispense various regulated iodine products.

As we've learned in Oregon and other states, restricting access to pseudoephedrine doesn't reduce meth's availability, but it does decrease the number of local meth labs.  That's positive from the perspective of eliminating environmental and health hazards.  In other words, illicit manufacturers and traffickers from places like Mexico and China aren't the only folks who've benefited from the outsourcing of meth manufacturing.      

Wind Turbine Problems (Updated)

Germany easily leads the world in installed wind energy capacity.  Its 18,865 wind turbines (as of the end of 2006) supply 5.7 percent of the nation's electricity.  Plus,

German turbine manufacturers and suppliers produced more than 50 % of the turbines and components manufactured worldwide in 2004.

The wind energy industry has been growing at nearly 30 percent per year for the last decade.  The heavy push for more green energy has created a gold rush of sorts...which means buyer beware.

"Many companies have sold an endless number of units," complains engineer Manfred Perkun, until recently a claims adjuster for R+V Insurance. "It hardly leaves any time for testing prototypes."

Wind power expert Martin Stöckl knows the problems all too well. The Bavarian travels some 80,000 kilometers (49,710 miles) across Germany every year, but he is only rarely able to help the wind farmers. It is not just the rotors that, due to enormous worldwide demand, take forever to deliver, but simple replacement parts are likewise nowhere to be found. "You often have to wait 18 months for a new rotor mount, which means the turbine stands still for that long," says Stöckl.

"Sales Top, Service Flop" is the headline on a recent cover story which appeared in the industry journal Erneuerbare Energien. The story reports the disastrous results of a questionnaire passed out to members of the German WindEnergy Association asking them to rank manufacturers. Only Enercon, based in Germany, managed a ranking of "good." The company produces wind turbines without gearboxes, eliminating one of the weakest links in the chain.

Even among insurers, who raced into the new market in the 1990s, wind power is now considered a risky sector. Industry giant Allianz was faced with around a thousand damage claims in 2006 alone. Jan Pohl, who works for Allianz in Munich, has calculated that on average "an operator has to expect damage to his facility every four years, not including malfunctions and uninsured breakdowns."

So much for German precision...there are quick profits to be made.

Many insurance companies have learned their lessons and are now writing maintenance requirements--requiring wind farmers to replace vulnerable components such as gearboxes every five years--directly into their contracts. But a gearbox replacement can cost up to 10 percent of the original construction price tag, enough to cut deep into anticipated profits. Indeed, many investors may be in for a nasty surprise. "Between 3,000 and 4,000 older facilities are currently due for new insurance policies," says Holger Martsfeld, head of technical insurance at Germany's leading wind turbine insurer Gothaer. "We know that many of these facilities have flaws."

And the technical hitches are not without their dangers. For example:

- In December of last year, fragments of a broken rotor blade landed on a road shortly before rush hour traffic near the city of Trier.

- Two wind turbines caught fire near Osnabrück and in the Havelland region in January. The firefighters could only watch: Their ladders were not tall enough to reach the burning casings.

- The same month, a 70-meter (230-foot) tall wind turbine folded in half in Schleswig-Holstein--right next to a highway.

- The rotor blades of a wind turbine in Brandenburg ripped off at a height of 100 meters (328 feet). Fragments of the rotors stuck into a grain field near a road.

These examples do highlight a rare benefit of our nation's NIMBYism regarding wind farms...there's less for failing turbines to damage in rural settings.

At the Allianz Technology Center (AZT) in Munich, the bits and pieces from wind turbine meltdowns are closely examined. "The force that comes to bear on the rotors is much greater than originally expected," says AZT evaluator Erwin Bauer. Wind speed is simply not consistent enough, he points out. "There are gusts and direction changes all the time," he says.

But instead of working to create more efficient technology, many manufacturers have simply elected to build even larger rotor blades, Bauer adds. "Large machines may have great capacity, but the strains they are subject to are even harder to control," he says.

Even the technically basic concrete foundations are suffering from those strains. Vibrations and load changes cause fractures, water seeps into the cracks, and the rebar begins to rust. Repairs are difficult. "You can't look inside concrete," says Marc Gutermann, a professor for experimental statics in Bremen. "It's no use just closing the cracks from above."

The engineering expert suspects construction errors are to blame. "The facilities keep getting bigger," he says, "but the diameter of the masts has to remain the same because otherwise they would be too big to transport on the roadways."

The strength and variability of the wind was a surprise to the engineers designing the turbines and their support structures?  Those are part of the site conditions--basic parameters that engineers would need to do the designs for the turbines, masts, and foundations.  The less confidence one has in the weather (and soils) data, the greater the safety factors that are needed.  One has to seriously wonder who was cutting corners in the design, construction, materials, and/or gathering of reliable weather data.       

Still the wind power business is focusing on replacing smaller facilities with ever larger ones. With all the best sites already taken, boosting size is one of the few ways left to boost output. On land at least. So far, there are no offshore wind parks in German waters, a situation that Minister Gabriel hopes to change. He wants offshore wind farms to produce a total of 25,000 megawatts by 2030.

Perhaps by then, the lessons learned on land will ward off disaster at sea. Many constructors of such offshore facilities in other countries have run into difficulties. Danish company and world market leader Vestas, for example, had to remove the turbines from an entire wind park along Denmark's western coast in 2004 because the turbines were not sufficiently resilient to withstand the local sea and weather conditions. Similar problems were encountered off the British coast in 2005.

Some say early adopter, others say guinea pig. 

This link provides information on the wind farms that are on-line or currently being built in Oregon, including the number and types of turbines at the facilities.  Almost half are Vestas (the Danish company mentioned above...yes, the list has a typo), with GE Energy coming in second and Mitsubishi (Japanese) third.  A wind farm being constructed in Sherman County will have some Siemens turbines; it's the only German manufacturer on the list.

UPDATE:  Ugh...I hadn't seen the following sad news when I was writing this post.

One man was killed and another injured Saturday after a wind turbine collapsed in Sherman County.

Deputy Shull with the Sherman County Sheriff's office said the two men involved were working on a non-operational turbine at the Klondike Wind Farms east of Wasco Oregon.

Officials said one worker who was at the top of the turbine was killed when it buckled. A second man had to be rescued from the barrel of the collapsed structure. He was taken to an area hospital where his condition was unknown.

There are two Klondike wind farms and a third under construction.  They all belong to PPM energy, which is owned by ScottishPower.

UPDATE:  It was a Siemens turbine at Klondike III, which is still under construction. 

Planning for the Recovery of an Extinct Species

The ivory-billed woodpecker hadn't been seen since 1944 until the much-heralded sighting in early 2004, which wasn't publicized until April 2005.  Since then, the confirmation of that lone sighting has been brought into question by some of the world's foremost experts on ivory-billed woodpeckers.  Nevertheless, the government is busily spending money on its recovery.

In an attempt to prevent the extinction of the rare Ivory-billed woodpecker, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today issued a draft recovery plan for public comment during the next 60 days.

Evidence supporting the Ivory-billed woodpecker's rediscovery with the presence of at least one bird in the Bayou de View area of Cache River National Wildlife Refuge was announced in 2004 and 2005. Before that sighting, there had been no confirmed sighting of an Ivory-billed woodpecker in more than 60 years.

While the woodpecker's existence has not been confirmed since, evidence continues to be gathered in Arkansas, Florida's panhandle, South Carolina, and other locations across the bird's historic range.

Organizations like the Nature Conservancy are busily gathering money and political support to protect large swaths of land to help the ivory-billed woodpecker.  Yet more than three years later, no one has conclusively proven that the ivory-billed woodpecker exists.  Despite the experts and technologies involved in the search, all we have are brief, poor-quality recordings that wouldn't impress Bigfoot enthusiasts.  The American Birding Association still considers the ivory-billed woodpecker extinct. 

The testy debate over its existence has now merited a lengthy retrospective in Science...which had helped in the initial publicity blitz of the woodpecker's discovery.  The ethics shown by a couple of the scientists...yikes.  Key players in the following quotation are: John Fitzpatrick, Director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and a board member of the Nature Conservancy (hmmm); Jerome Jackson, a noted ivory-billed woodpecker expert at Florida Gulf Coast University; and James Tate, science director to then Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton and a former assistant director of the same Cornell Lab.

Jackson and three other scientists prepared a paper for PLoS Biology, arguing that the Luneau video showed a pileated woodpecker. "All we wanted to do was have everyone go, 'Wait a minute!' before any more money got spent," says co-author Robbins. "We didn't want to see precious conservation dollars wasted on something that might not be there."

This made the Cornell team and its sponsors nervous. Not long after The New York Times reported the existence of the skeptical but not-yet-published paper, Jackson says, Tate called Jackson on a Saturday night and told him to "back off." Tate denies that and says he just wanted to discuss Jackson's criticisms. "My concern was that the skeptics would destroy our opportunity, destroy that second chance to get the biological information of what the birds needed," Tate says.

Days before publication, and after writing a rebuttal, the Cornell team offered to play the critics additional, unpublished recordings that hadn't been fully analyzed before the submission of the Science paper. The recordings convinced co-authors Richard Prum of Yale University and Robbins that at least two ivorybills were living in the Big Woods. They withdrew the paper on 1 August, saying they didn't want to undermine conservation efforts. (In retrospect, now that it's clear the recordings are not solid evidence, they regret the move. "I blinked," Prum says.)

But Jackson, who had been out of town and unreachable, still thought that the doubts needed to be aired. In a long, invited article published in The Auk in January 2006, he accused Fitzpatrick's team of "delving into 'faith-based' ornithology and doing a disservice to science." In a March 2006 response in The Auk, Fitzpatrick's group charged that the Jackson article was "a series of factual errors and poorly substantiated opinions." Jackson, they implied, was "compromising science with sound bites."

After another round of rebuttals commenced, Fitzpatrick confronted Jackson during an August 2006 meeting in South Carolina and asked him not to publish. Jackson recalls Fitzpatrick heatedly telling him, "You are going to be independently responsible for the extinction of the ivory-billed woodpecker because you are preventing me from raising money for conservation." Shortly thereafter, Fitzpatrick contacted Jackson again and offered co-authorship on a future paper if Jackson would pull his letter. "That's not how I operate," Jackson told him. Fitzpatrick says he wanted to focus on the bird and avoid another unproductive exchange: "It was not my desire to prolong and underscore resentments and personal disagreements."

At stake are millions in research dollars and donations, the jobs that go with that money, the conservation of hundreds of thousands of acres (that would help a myriad of species, though not necessarily the ones that need it most), some scientific reputations, and possibly a few ivory-billed woodpeckers.  That makes it worth stifling legitimate scientific debate and pretending there's a consensus, right?

Returning to the original article...       

Rediscovery of the species led to the need to develop a recovery plan, says the Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency says it gathered "one of the most talented recovery teams" it has ever assembled to write the first recovery plan crafted for this species.

"Given the evidence pointing to its survival, we believe it would be irresponsible not to act. That's why we established this recovery team with some of the nation's best biologists to help us chart a reasonable, well founded path to save this species," said Sam Hamilton, regional director for the Service's Southeast Region and leader of the recovery team. 

The recovery strategy will initially focus on learning more about the species' status and ecology, including documenting known locations and characterizing those habitats. Population goals are not identified, although such goals are key to recovery.

The ivory-billed woodpecker was listed as endangered in 1967 IAW the Endangered Species Preservation Act of October 15, 1966, a precursor to today's Endangered Species Act (passed in 1973).  Even then, the ivory-billed woodpecker was already widely considered to be extinct.  Thus, it's not surprising that this will be the first recovery plan for the species.  Authors of the draft plan (here) include two members of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and the same Jerome Jackson mentioned above. 

The draft provides justification to spend $27.785 million searching for the woodpecker and helping it to recover, most notably by protecting public and private lands where the birds might be.  Note that this dollar amount includes the federal money already spent in the previous and current fiscal years for searches, preparing the draft, etc. 

It would be great if the ivory-billed woodpeckers had survived all of these years.  But, what are the odds that this is simply the pouring of more money and effort down a black hole--a type of scientific pork?   

More Sudden Oak Death in Curry County

Curry County has been struggling with sudden oak death (SOD) fungus (previous blog here).  Sadly, the following shows that the fungus there is still not contained.

City officials said Monday the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) notified them late last week of the 14 diseased trees and ordered an attempt be made to eradicate the disease from the area.

In a letter dated Aug. 8 to the city from ODA Plant Division Administrator Daniel Hilburn, the department called for the city's cooperation to prevent the disease from spreading to other vegetation.

"We believe we have caught the disease in the first stages of establishment," Hilburn wrote. "Thus, this is our best chance to halt the spread of this dangerous pathogen." 

"Forestry officials are proposing to inject all infected trees and all tanoak trees with a herbicide and then cut and burn the trees on site this fall," Milliman said.

Azalea Park was a state park until 1993, when the state--which considered the park a burden--turned it over to the City of Brookings.  The existing SOD quarantine area (map at p. 4 of this pdf) begins a short distance north of the park. 

Azalea Park contains five types of endangered native azaleas and over 400 rhododendrons; both types of plants are susceptible to SOD. While the fungus is deadly to some species--like tanoaks, it typically doesn't kill rhodies and azaleas, instead causing leaf spots and twig dieback.  The infected plants act as reservoirs of the disease, helping it to spread.  In fact, understory rhododendrons are key to the spread of SOD in English forests.

The city is torn between concerns about erosion near the North bank and air quality from a possible burn and concerns about the disease spreading to other areas of the park, he said.

"That's a difficult balance we haven't sorted out yet," he said. "If this is a truly significant threat to the azaleas and rhododendrons, I think it's appropriate to take action to prevent that."

...

The 14 infected trees would not be the only ones to be cut, according to the ODF. In his letter, Hilburn said his department would require the city to cut and burn the infected area and a buffer zone to be set by the ODF and ODA.

The work would be done by an ODF crew, Hilburn said.

This work needs to occur quickly before the rains set in; they help spread SOD. 

Frank Burris, watershed extension agent of the Oregon State University Extension Service in Gold Beach, said five of eight sites where the disease was initially found have been successfully eradicated, but Azalea Park's trees show there is still work to be done.

"It means it's still moving," Burris said of the disease. "We don't fully understand how to stop it. Realistically, (state agencies) are doing a pretty good job of containing it."

Milliman said a public meeting to discuss and analyze the ODF findings will be held sometime in early September.

"We think the community needs to be fully informed on what (ODF's) findings are," and given answers about eradicating the disease from the park, he said. "It's a sensitive area. Some folks out there are concerned.

It's easy to unwittingly spread this fungus--and not just via the nursery trade.  The public needs to be fully aware of where SOD is and the danger it presents.  And that means no more false bravado by public officials about having the fungus contained. 

The Reservoir of Marburg Disease

One of the key problems in preventing Ebola Virus and its lesser-known but deadly relatives (Marburg and Reston) is finding the source of the diseases (previous blogs here & here).  Health experts know that the outbreaks tend to originate in/near deep forest areas in Africa--and in Reston's case, the Philipines.  Because outbreaks are relatively infrequent, it's obvious that man, gorilla, etc. don't come into contact with the reservoir species very often, and possibly only indirectly.  Various experts have suspected that bats could be the reservoirs--fruit bats in the case of Ebola and now Marburg. 

This year, Marburg disease has been confirmed in a couple of Ugandan miners.  Because there are bats living nearby, health experts are testing to see if they could be the source.

On Friday, experts from the CDC, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases in South Africa and the World Health Organization entered a lead and gold mine in a remote forest reserve in western Uganda to search for bats, which are suspected to be the source of the latest Marburg outbreak.

About five million bats live in and around the small mine, which is situated in Kitaka, about 300 km (200 miles) from Uganda's capital Kampala.

...

Wearing protective gear, members of the ecological team set up mist and harp nets every night to catch bats as they leave the mine to hunt for food and water. They catch about 100 bats every night and aim to net more than 1,000.

The captured bats are taken to a nearby laboratory, established for Marburg research, where scientists there work through the night, taking blood and organ samples to look for Marburg virus antibodies.

The blood and organ samples are preserved in liquid nitrogen and carried to Kampala. They will then be transported to laboratories of CDC in Atlanta, Georgia, and of NICD in South Africa for further analysis.

And, we await the results.  So why the dramatic publicity now instead of waiting until the lab results are back? 

Marburg hemorrhagic fever is a global threat to public health, the World Health Organization says in a new report on the disease.

"Emerging viral diseases such as ebola, marburg hemorrhagic fever and nipah virus pose threats to global public health security and also require containment at their source due to their acute nature and resulting illness and mortality," says a summarized version of the 2007 World Health report due to be released in Geneva (today).

Marburg hemorrhagic fever is a severe and highly fatal disease caused by a virus from the same family as the one that causes Ebola hemorrhagic fever. Both diseases are rare, but can cause dramatic outbreaks with high fatality. These viruses are among the most virulent pathogens known to infect humans. There is currently no specific treatment or vaccine, according to the World Health Organization.

That report is a pitch for resources to continue researching and battling diseases caused by filoviruses.  It would be rather anticlimactic if the bats in that mine were innocent. 

And if they're not, how do you minimize or eliminate that particular Marburg strain without it becoming open season on all sorts of bats? 

FYI, I'll get to the unrelated nipah virus in another post.

Fire Protection Standards in Rural JoCo

In this part rural JoCo, we don't have the option of depending upon a volunteer fire department to help protect our homes.  Instead, we can pay for private fire protection or go without...which is what about 30 percent of the folks around here choose to do.  There are three private fire departments competing for our business: Rural/Metro, Grants Pass Rural, and the newcomer, the Inland Fire Protection Agency.  I pay more ($1.98 per $1,000) for the most capable of the three, Rural/Metro. 

I was taking I-5 towards GP last week and happened to drive past the fire that threatened several homes and the Humane Society north of town.  As we've been learning, part of that firefighting effort suffered from a dangerous lack of coordination.  From today's editorial in the Daily Courier.

A firefighter's trapped by a rapidly moving wildfire, mainly because his department no longer communicates with the two other fire outfits on the scene. He manages to escape, but firefighters from the other outfits don't know it, and several push through flames to rescue him. They, too, escape injury.

The firefighters are lucky, as are homeowners in the Scenic Drive area of north Grants Pass just east of Interstate 5. One home receives some damage, and animals at the nearby Rogue Valley Humane Society shelter are evacuated, but a catastrophe is averted Wednesday afternoon.

That's due in large part to the location of the fire, in a highly visible place with helicopters and lots of other firefighting resources nearby. Next time, homeowners--and firefighters--may not be as lucky.

The county doesn't have standards that our rural fire services must meet, so the quality and cooperation varies.  To put that more emotionally...

The three private fire companies involved are the Rural/Metro and Grants Pass Rural fire departments and Inland Fire Protection Agency. The names aren't really important. Facts that are important include the Insurance Services Office, which rates fire departments nationwide, hasn't rated one of them and gives another its lowest rating, basically saying it provides no fire protection. Then, there's the fact they don't talk to each other. This worried the Grants Pass Public Safety Department so much it recently stated it won't always supply help automatically to outlying areas.

The "system," if there ever was one, is crumbling, and that's dangerous--as one firefighter found out Wednesday.

Wednesday's near tragedy shows what can happen on the ground, in the middle of flames, with homes nearby, because of the county's failure to do anything about what is becoming a chaotic situation.

It shows dramatically the need for a proposed ordinance that sets standards for companies wanting to operate in the 280 square miles not served by tax-supported fire districts. The commissioners are scheduled to hold a public hearing on it at 9 a.m. on Aug. 29 in Anne Basker Auditorium. Adopting standards would be the first step toward recommendations made by the Josephine County Fire Protection Advisory Committee in February. It suggested an independent fire board that sets standards, negotiates prices and grants franchises to qualified fire companies.

To spell out what the editorial didn't, Rural/Metro offers the most capability, Grants Pass Rural is substandard, and the Inland Fire Protection Agency hasn't been rated yet.  However, it's no secret that Inland is in the middle in terms of cost and capability.  It was a Grants Pass Rural firefighter who nearly burned in the fire. 

There is a fair amount of resistance in the surrounding woods to the county establishing standards for private fire protection.  It could--and should--end up costing some folks some money.  When neighbors choose lesser or no fire protection, they increase the fire risk for the rest of us, especially when one considers how much of rural Josephine County is forested.  We don't need a house fire spreading through populated woods.

That thought obviously leads to the Oregon Forestland-Urban Interface Fire Protection Act, whose implementation here in JoCo remains stalled.  Many JoCo residents identified (rightly and wrongly) as living in the interface didn't react well to the setting of those fire-safety standards either.  There are many reasons for the hostility, including the potential liability.

There is no fine for not complying with the fuel-reduction requirements of the Oregon Forestland-Urban Interface Fire Protection Act, but a property owner may be billed for certain fire suppression costs if:

- A certification card is not received by ODF by the two-year deadline

- A fire originates on the property (any origin)

- The fire spreads through the parts of the property where fuel reduction should have been done

- The fire escapes initial attack and the state pays extraordinary suppression costs

This liability is capped at $100,000

But if a lack of fuels reduction, letting a wildland fire burn, etc. results in a forest fire on public land invading private land and burning us out of our homes (the threat that the Biscuit Fire posed a number of folks in the Illinois Valley), the government's liability is what? 

Governments doom a number of good ideas with lousy execution.  That's the problem with the Oregon Forestland-Urban Interface Fire Protection Act, and that's one of the fears regarding JoCo setting standards for private fire protection.  But, we do need some standards.

And yes, I do still owe a lengthy post on the Act.