Solutions everywhere: Maine will have tidal power project

Washington County, Maine, is about to have its own tidal energy plant.  The project will start with 138 kilowatts and increase as the strength of its equipment is increased.  The project is being developed by Ocean Renewable Power Company.  

Tidal power is scarcely a new idea.  People in the Middle Ages who lived by the sea sometimes used tidal power to turn water wheels, which ground grain into flour. 

According to the U.S. Dept. of Energy, "It doesn't cost much to operate tidal power plants, but their construction costs are high and lengthen payback periods. As a result, the cost per kilowatt-hour of tidal power is not competitive with conventional fossil fuel power."

Guess it all depends on what you consider the "cost" of fossil fuel.

Photo from Peter Kaminski's photostream at Flickr.

New England's (possibly) oldest elm soon to be no more

This morning's Boston Globe tells the story of Herbie, an approximately 235 year old tree in Yarmouth, Maine, which is finally succumbing to Dutch elm disease and will be removed by the town on January 18.  The tree has had the disease for more than 50 years, but careful tending by volunteer tree warden Frank Wright, now 101 years old himself, added another six decades to the tree's life.  Now the tree's time as a tree is ending.  Read more.

The same edition of the Globe has an opinion piece about the  Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation's promotion of clear-cutting in our state's forests.  I've learned a lot about clear-cutting recently, but until reading this article, I hadn't also heard that Massachusetts lost its "green certification" from the Forest Stewardship Council.  Hundreds of acres of forest have been clear-cut around the Quabbin Reservoir, which supplies Boston's water but is located here in Western Massachusetts.

Do we have to anthropomorphize trees to save them?   I don't recall ever having named a tree but I certainly have had close relationships with a number of memorable trees throughout my life.   I didn't learn to truly love them as a species until I lived in Maine and began to understand their importance.  But loving a single tree is not a bad place to start.

A hundred years ago, even in a city like Springfield, children could name their favorite climbing tree, and knew where to find apples and chestnuts.  The modest mulberry tree still thrives, but do Springfield children even know their berries can be eaten?

Photo from McPhloyd's photostream at Flickr.

Saving the Butternut Tree

Ah, the blueberry fields of Maine. I've mentioned how I did seasonal work raking blueberries, and let me tell you, blueberries never taste as good as they do those first moments right off the bush. But I've never mentioned the butternut trees that lined two sides of the fields.

I must have gathered a hundred pounds of butternuts in small batches for the weeks I worked in the fields. The nut is shaped like a walnut, and much more segmented on the inside, but incredibly flavorful and buttery, making it worth the effort.

I haven't had a butternut since I left Maine. About five years ago, I did a search for butternuts and was dismayed by what I discovered. Butternuts, actually Black Walnuts, are being decimated by a fungus that has wiped out 90% of all butternut trees in the Midwest and Ontario. Forest researchers in Vermont monitored 1,269 butternuts; in 1993 92% were infected and 12% were dead. In 2000, 96% were infected and 41% were dead.

Most of us would never know if a particular species of tree disappeared over time. Elms and American chestnuts have just about disappeared; most children have never seen one. Probably most people in Massachusetts have never seen a butternut tree either, or tasted a butternut, and that's to our detriment.

Not everyone is willing to accept the loss of the butternut. The Burlington Free Press has an article about the search for resistant trees and research into grafting and treatment. Let's hope they succeed.
Painting: Terri L. Baugh Norman

Wolf found in Western Massachusetts; assault continues elsewhere

Genetic tests have confirmed that the first wolf in more than 160 years was found in Massachusetts in October, the Boston Globe reported March 4. The last confirmed sign of any wolf in New England was in 1992 east of Bangor, Maine. Are wolves on their way back in the Northeast?

Wolves had been hunted to regional extinction in Massachusetts by the mid-1800's, at about the same time that coyotes began to increase. Coyotes are often considered to be urban and rural pests; studies in Yellowstone National Park have shown that after wolves were reintroduced there in 1995, the coyote population was reduced by 50%.

The nearest wolf population to New England is in Southern Quebec, according to the Maine Wolf Coalition,
which promotes wolf restoration in Maine. Although the U.S. Dept. of the Interior had been dragging its feet in implementing a 2003 wolf restoration law, a recent ruling by the U.S. District Court in Vermont has ordered the government to get on with the business of restoration of the wolf population in Vermont and Maine.

Elsewhere in the country, however, wolves are not faring so well. Last month The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the protected status of wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, allowing hunting to take place. Aerial shooting of Alaskan wolves has been approved by the Alaskan state government. Wolves, foxes, bears and 10,000 other wild animals a year are being poisoned with sodium cyanide and sodium fluoroacetate in a misguided attempt to control coyotes. You can send a comment to the Environmental Protection Agency to ban these chemicals at the Care2 PetitionSite, and speak out for wolf protections at the Defenders of Wildlife website.

In November I wrote about the return of fishers and moose to Massachusetts, thanks to the increasing reforestation of our state. Seems to me that learning to share our environment with other animals will help us to save our environment for ourselves.

Who Will Care? We'll Find Out

Today I started mentally composing a list of housed people, houses of worship and organizations that might actually care about what happens to homeless people.

Still can't get it out of my mind: Mayor Ryan KNOWS that people will be out on the street as of June 30, and he has CHOSEN to close the Warming Place because he thinks that the unsheltered will disappear from Springfield if they have no shelter. He fears that if there is even ONE vacancy at any Springfield shelter, we will draw in homeless people from outside the city. (I know writing in caps is gauche but I am THINKING in caps.)

In my spare time (ha!) I am going to find out:
Do cities the size of Westfield and Ludlow, if they are near a major metropolitan area, EVER provide their own shelter?
Is the ratio of Springfield homeless to non-Springfield homeless (about 60%/40% as I recall, with 75% from Hampden County) really that different than in any other city Springfield's size?

I am so tired of the crap and the assumptions.about people who become homeless.

Maybe one reason the idea of a tent city feels not foreign to me is that I've spent a little more than a tenth of my life living in a tent. When I homesteaded in Maine with my husband at the time, we built a shelter by pulling down saplings, tying them together, creating a weave with other small trees, and then covering the whole affair with canvas tarps and with flattened cardboard boxes stuffed inbetween. We built the shelter over a wonderful outcropping of rock that formed a natural fireplace. Smoke drifted up to a hole in the chimney. In the winters we used a tin stove.

Of course, getting wood for the stove was an ongoing affair. I fell into the habit of looking for standing deadwood-- didn't want to cut living trees and deadwood on the ground tended to be too wet. I got pretty good at knowing at a glance, even in the winter without leaves to guide me, which trees were standing up dead, and then mentally marking them for harvesting later. It took years for the habit to die away after I came back to Springfield. It was both a pleasurable activity-- in the sense of some treasure found-- and a habit necessary for survival in the Maine winters.

Now I find myself scanning the city as I drive, looking for vacant lots, hidden yet accessible places where people might camp if they had to. I remember doing this three years ago, after Sanctuary City agreed to find another place to move after six weeks on the lush lawn of St. Michael's. Same skill, different use.

A few of today's small pleasures (I didn't go looking for them, but boy, were they needed):
-- The grackles feeding their babies under the eaves of my work window eat my cracker crumbs.
-- The scent of lilacs drifts into my window.
-- I hear singing and look out my window and a Somalian woman is striding to the bus stop in full song.
Photo by William Cordero