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Thursday, November 10, 2005

Environment - Dunes Lakeshore Transfer Station; Deer Sterilization

Transfer Station. Disputed transfer station granted IDEM permit, reports both the Munster (NW Indiana) Times and the Gary Post-Tribune today. The Times reports:

THE PINES | State regulators granted a permit on Wednesday to Great Lakes Transfer LLC, for a solid waste transfer facility about a mile from the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore near The Pines, a move that a citizens' group opposed to the station said they will appeal.

Great Lakes President Sean Blieden said he will begin construction right away on the 5-acre facility off County Line Road in LaPorte County.

Blieden has faced strong opposition from government officials in LaPorte and Porter counties, Michigan City, The Pines and Burns Harbor, as well as citizens groups created to fight the transfer station, People In Need of Environmental Safety and Residents Against Trash In Our Neighborhood Alliance.

The citizens groups have said The Pines, which already has contaminated water from industrial waste, has endured enough environmental damage and will suffer again when garbage trucks roll through town. Officials have raised concerns about large trash transport trucks that will likely exceed the 10-ton weight limit on County Line Road and the effect on the nearby National Lakeshore.

Each day, the transfer station will take about 250 tons of household waste, construction debris and recyclables, which are then shipped out to landfills within 24 hours.

The Tribune story reports:
“We expected this ... ” said opponent Larry Silvestri of Residents Against Trash in Our Neighborhood Alliance. “We’re going to appeal it,” he said. * * *

The station, which will straddle Kintzele ditch, less than a half mile from the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore has the potential for overflowing contaminated water into surrounding wetlands and onto Central Avenue Beach near Mount Baldy, Silvestri said. * * *

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore Superintendent Dale Engquist said the park had listed its concerns and questions in a letter to IDEM, which were never answered.

Deer Sterilization. "Sterilization caps expansion of suburb's deer population" is the headline to a story today in the Chicago Tribune. Some quotes:
A four-year study on controlling Highland Park's deer population by sterilizing instead of killing the animals has proved successful and could be a model for urban and suburban areas, Wisconsin researchers say.

The scientists, working with city police, caught and sterilized 67 does from 2002 to 2004. They also tracked the movement of the does and determined that they stay close to home, which is critical because if the spayed deer were leaving, fertile ones would simply take their place.

"Our findings are exciting. This is really the first time we've been able to [determine] under what circumstances this can work," said Nancy Mathews, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. * * *

Since its two main deer populations are separated by U.S. Highway 41, researchers were able to designate a treatment group and a control group, critical to a scientific experiment. All of the sterilized deer were from the east side herd; the west siders were left to reproduce naturally.

In the control group, the observed population rose from 88 to 103 from 2002 to 2005; in the treatment group it rose from 50 to 57, Mathews said. More important, the population in the treatment group appeared to drop significantly from 2004 to 2005, which is in line with models that suggest it takes 3 1/2 years for sterilization to have an effect on population growth, she said.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 10, 2005 09:23 AM
Posted to Environment