It seemed like a good idea at the time. Let’s make an artificial reef from old tires and let corals establish themselves, creating a new marine habitat. At the same time, we’ll free up space in our landfills.

Ray McAllister, a professor at Florida Atlantic University, organized the project, with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approval. Goodyear donated tires and equipment to bind them. Volunteers sent money and used their boats and barges to haul the tires. And everyone felt they had done a good deed, benefiting the sea and the land.

Unfortunately it did not work out that way.

Thirty-five years later, the man-made “reef” off Fort Lauderdale is a total flop. The steel clips used on the straps holding the bundles of tires together have melted away, and loose tires are scouring the sea bottom of any life. Tires are washing up on beaches and blocking the growth of a real coral reef further down the shore.

William Nuckols, coordinator for Coastal America, which is involved in organizing a cleanup effort, told the Associated Press, “They’re a constantly killing, coral-destruction machine.”

 Photo credit:Matthew Hoelscher

Tire-reef projects were popular off American coastal states and around the world. Millions of tires have been dumped into the ocean. But whether because the tires are too light and move too much to allow sea life to colonize, or because the tires are secreting some toxic substance, they do not work as a reef base.

The tires are often washed ashore, especially after storms. While some tires wash ashore, others have broken loose from the tire-reef and are doing damage to the sea bed.

Dr. Robin Sherman at Nove SE Oceanographic University obtained a grant to find a way to recover and dispose of the tires.
 Photo credit:Matthew Hoelscher

In Florida, the cleanup is expected to take three years and cost about $3.4 million. Many of the tires are buried in the sand and must be dug out, lest further wave action free them to continue the destruction.

Lately the U.S. Federal Government has been making a lot of noise about green fuel. It started with President Bush’s comment about “switch grass” in his State of the Union Address. He got a few chuckles out of that. While we’ve all heard of using corn to make ethanol, and the importance of trading our SUVs for hybrids, I don’t know anybody who is talking about using switch grass.

Since January, the photo-ops broadcast on television networks have been touting Bush’s concern for the environment. Since this is the administration that turned the Clean Air Act into the Clear Skies Initiative, while lowering the standards of environmental safety that energy companies are required to uphold, we should probably ask: how green is green anyway?

Take ethanol, for example. There is a refinery in Goldfield Iowa that has been making ethanol since late last year. It’s been hailed as the “clean, renewable fuel of the future.” But it uses fossil fuel to power the ethanol refinery, so just exactly what are we gaining from this experiment in so-called green energy?

According to a report from the Christian Science Monitor, Carbon Cloud Hangs Over Green Fuel, while other ethanol plants use natural gas, the Goldfield plant burns 300 tons of coal a day to make this clean, renewable fuel. In fact, Goldfield is the first of its kind to use coal. In Nevada, Iowa, just south of Goldfield, another coal-burning ethanol plant is currently under construction and there are, reportedly, plans to build at least three more in the mid-west.

There are now an estimated 200 similar plants under construction. So, environmentalists are getting a little worried. As well they should. According to the climate director for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, the coal producing ethanol plants may undo the environmental benefits of using ethanol in the first place.

So why would the industry deliberately build plants that feed on coal? The answer: the almighty dollar. It costs too much to use natural gas and it’s relatively cheap to retrofit plants to burn coal instead.

They’re calling it “clean coal” technology, but plants using it produce twice the environmental toxins that plants run on natural gas would create. This was substantiated by a group of scientists at the University of California at Berkeley, who concluded that running the almost 200 ethanol plants now under construction on “clean coal” would mean that all the benefits of running vehicles on ethanol would be eliminated by virtue of the CO2 emitted during the ethanol production process.

So what are the alternatives? According to a spokesperson for the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) it is possible to use methane from cattle dung to fire up the ethanol plants. Apparently, it is also possible to use a variety of plant material as well — which is likely where the switch grass reference came from — meaning it is possible to create ethanol without burning either coal or wood. But even if ethanol is produced by boiling switch grass, you can’t run a vehicle on straight ethanol.

Currently, E85, which uses 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, is being touted as the fuel of the future. According to the RFA web site, there is growing interest in E85 and the “flexible fuel vehicles” or FFVs that can run on it. But current ethanol/gasoline mixtures are using a much smaller percentage of ethanol–more like 10%.

Still according to a study done by Smog Reyes in 2004, even a 10% ethanol mix will reduce tailpipe fine particulate matter by 50%, and carbon monoxide emissions by up to 30%. So if we can push the industry to use cleaner fuel for firing up the ethanol plants, rather than relying on coal, as the newest plants appear set to do, we may actually see some progress.

The recently enacted Energy Policy Act (EPACT), which was signed into law by President Bush in August 2005, includes a Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) which some believe will considerably impact our dependence on foreign oil and our ability to create jobs, thus strengthening our economy while simultaneously improving our environment.

In a study conducted by LECG, LLC in May 2005, analysts project that adherence to the RFS will, by the year 2012, allow us to reduce crude oil imports by $2 billion and save $64 billion in payments to foreign oil producers. In addition, they are predicting that ethanol production will add $200 billion to the GDP between 2005 and 2012, create close to $240,000 jobs and increase household income by 43 million. All of which sounds great, but it doesn’t appear as if their study took into account just how the growing number of ethanol plants are going to be fueled. And if coal is used in the majority of the new plants being planned for construction in the coming years, who knows how valid any of these predictions will actually turn out to be?

In the meantime, while we struggle to reduce our dependence on foreign oil for powering cars and other gas guzzling vehicles, we mustn’t fail to consider all the other things we use oil for. Here’s a short list of things you might not think to connect to oil consumption. For the full list you can check out the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) web site:

clothing ink, heart valves, crayons, parachutes, telephones, deodorant, pantyhose, rubbing alcohol, hearing aids, motorcycle helmets, electrical tape, candles, denture adhesive, refrigerator linings, hair coloring, toilet seats, loudspeakers, movie film, tires, floor wax, electric blankets, lipstick, eyeglasses, life jackets, insect repellent. . . and the list goes on

This is not to say we aren’t making progress. After all, we can’t expect to rid ourselves of dependence on foreign oil overnight, despite the newest legislation and increasingly frequent lectures by the President about America’s shameful “addiction” to oil.

But I can’t help but wonder, in all the hoopla over green energy–just how green is green, anyway?

Photography By Bastian, Robenalt, Automatt via Creative Commons

In 1964, a report produced by the Tennessee Department of Public Health stated that the Chattanooga Creek was “without a doubt, the most grossly polluted stream in the Chattanooga area.”

In 1969, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare determined that Chattanooga, Tennessee had the poorest air quality in the nation. This was due, in large part, to a heavy manufacturing industry that included chemicals and pesticides.

Many cities have faced these same challenges. Many cities still do. But Chattanooga’s responses and solutions have been unique, and very successful.

One of the first things the city did was create, and have approved by the state, the Hamilton County Air Pollution Control Bureau. The Bureau was charged with establishing air quality regulations for the city. In an effort to ensure compliance of these regulations, the Bureau worked directly with the manufacturing sector. At the time, the primary need was for smokestack “scrubbers”, which remove most of the toxic by-products typically released by industrial smokestacks.

The manufacturing sector responded quickly and creatively. Not only did they agree to the $40 million in renovations that was needed, but local entrepreneurs chose to build the scrubbers in town. Today the scrubbers are still being manufactured, and are being exported worldwide. Thus, a profitable industry was created, while simultaneously improving air quality.

The city began holding “community visioning” meetings, seeking resident assistance with the environmental and economic troubles it was facing. One outcome of those meetings was the creation of the Moccasin Bend Task Force. This task force studied the 22-mile long Tennessee River and, with the input of hundreds of local citizens, developed the Tennessee River Park Master Plan. The Master Plan eventually resulted in the development of a 23-mile River Walk. The city maintains it through a yearly River Rescue clean-up effort, and it has enabled Chattanooga residents and tourists to enjoy the river again. The Master Plan didn’t just focus on the banks of the Tennessee River. It also included strategies for cleaning up and beautifying the banks of the creeks that feed into the river. In addition, a water treatment facility was built farther upstream, to aid in purifying the streams and lake. Now, where “no swimming” signs used to be the prominent feature, you can instead see people swimming, boating, or simply walking along the river’s edge.

From the river, the environmental revitalizing moved to the downtown district. Trees were planted along the streets. Not just for aesthetic purposes, but to help reduce pollution. The trees are purchased from a local, private nursery. Street pavers were built to help reduce the effects of storm water run-off. Air and traffic pollution have been reduced with the introduction of an electric mass transit system. The technology and vehicles were developed and built locally, and are now being exported globally. People who work downtown can park in garages at the edge of the downtown district, then take electric shuttles to their final destinations. The money generated from the parking garages helps cover the cost of the electric vehicles.

One of the most aggressive and innovative projects is the South-Central business district. Being built as an eco-industrial park, the goal is zero emissions. This means that the waste products from one industry become resources for another within the district.

Chattanooga has excelled at developing a sustainable community, because it has re-integrated the human element. At the heart of most of its initiatives has been the Chattanooga citizens themselves. The community vision meetings were the cornerstone for most of the changes that have been made. But the citizens don’t just offer ideas, they help implement and maintain them. This is done, not only through clean-up efforts like River Rescue, but also through everyday activities. The Orange Grove Recycling Center is a perfect example.

Though it could use machinery to separate the recyclable materials that come in from the nearly 60,000 homes and municipal drop-off sites, the Center instead employs about 100 developmentally disabled adults. Not only does manual sorting reduce industrial pollution, but it also gives an often-ignored part of the population a sense of purpose and belonging. The workers are paid for their time, and are given the opportunity to become and integral part of this community’s sustained environment.

Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise was yet another result of the community vision meetings. It is currently creating a mixed-use, mixed-income development in a part of downtown Chattanooga’s Southside district. Included is an elementary school that will allow children in the area to walk to school for the first time in years.

While most cities, nationally and globally, make an effort to reduce negative affects on the environment; few (if any) have attained the level of success enjoyed by Chattanooga. Here, industry is not the enemy, but instead has offered viable and effective solutions. Here, the citizen and the government official aren’t at odds. Rather, they work together to creatively address the environmental challenges the city has faced.

Chattanooga has become one of the few cities designated as an EPA attainment city. This has been due, in large part, to combined efforts of Chattanooga citizens and city officials.

From “most polluted city in the nation” to one of the best (possibly the best) models of an environmentally healthy and sustainable city, in under 40 years. Not bad.

Sources: Chattanooga Horizon Plan 2010, RiverCityCompany.com, CneInc.org

The City of LA loves bicyclists, officially, and tries to do what it can for them. But the great congested mass of benzene-addled motorheads does not. And the infrastructural legacy that seven decades of pandering to the personal automobile at all costs has left most of the city grimly cold to human life in general, and to bicyclists in particular.


It is stunning, really, that in a city that’s mostly flat, warm, and dry, so few people ride bicycles at all, whether for utility or pleasure. There are fifteen million plus people in LA; there are maybe 1/20th that number in cold, rainy, hilly San Francisco.

Yet there are bicycles around you almost anywhere in SF, whereas it’s unusual to see one anywhere in most parts of LA, except as a prop. Ditto Portland, Seattle, Chicago, New York—and let’s not even bring up Amsterdam or Tokyo, all cold, wet burgs half the time that are buzzing with bikes.

What is it that makes LA a strong contender for the label of the World’s Least Bicycle-Friendly City?

Sprawl is a good place to start, especially in the city that defined the term. Distances in Los Angeles are vast in the conurbation Dorothy Parker once described as “seventy suburbs in search of a city.” Commutes of ten to twenty miles are not uncommon, and some folks drive in to work from distant corners of adjacent counties, sitting in their cars for one to two hours each way each day.

That this is a collective madness that generates individual psychopathy is undeniable; that the galactic scatter of workplace and domicile mitigates against bicycle commuting for many people is self-evident.

The concentration of retail and services into gigantic malls, and concomitant decimation of neighborhood commerce (literally illegal in most parts of the city) makes it difficult to bike or stroll to a nearby bakery, greengrocer, shoemaker, hardware store, or what have you for a simple purchase, because such places simply do not exist except in the luckier, historic districts.

Since each trip involves an expedition, the tendency is to bunch them together so that one braves the intimidating expanses of mall parking as infrequently as possible, loading up the car to the brim with whatever goods one feels compelled to buy that week. Mall culture and bulk buying are antithetical to bicycling, not to mention to civility itself.

This exaggerated dependence on the motorcar coerces the denizens of this automotive dystopia into spending endless hours staring at the bumper ahead of them on freeways, streets, and parking lots, leading the citizenry to clamor for -— you guessed it! -— more freeways, streets, and parking lots.

For which you tear down yet more local stores and cozy neighborhoods, only to replace them with more malls and bedroom communities even farther apart from each other and the central city, thereby perpetuating the very syndrome one thought to escape thereby, in a slow but inexorable feedback loop.

The result is wide, eternally crowded asphalt planes that don’t even deserve the name of “streets,” fourteen lanes filled with cars from curb to curb and horizon to horizon, with nothing to look at but the cinderblock soundwalls demarcating malls, industrial parks, and the occasional cloistered pink stucco ghetto.

It creates a place that no one wants to be in, especially not on a bicycle.

The motorist’s salvation was to be the freeway, which simply replicated the conditions of the streets with added horrors, such as the practice of lowering the road into a trench from which escape is possible only at long intervals of sometimes several miles between off-ramps.

The solution, for many drivers, is to cut through residential streets. So many drivers have chanced upon this obscure but clever idea that now little narrow lanes have one or two dozen cars per block, squeezing past each other with engines roaring in opposite directions, chirping their tires as they blast away from the stop signs, and yelling the LA motor-moron’s slogan, “get off the road!,” to any bicyclists they may have to pass.

And pass and pass and pass. It so happens that one of those hapless roads is Hauser Boulevard, which comprises the first half of my bike ride to the office every morning. Let me recount an all-too-typical incident of recent date:

I was pedaling on to work one morning, going up Hauser as usual. About the middle of one block a gigantic SUV — an Escalade — swung past with the usual flurry of rasping motor sounds and tire hisses. The tires alone seemed nearly as big as my wife’s Mini Cooper. He bounded around a slower car ahead of him too, and crowded up on the next one , since there was opposing traffic and the road is narrow, as are most residential streets.

A block or so later I caught up with him at the light, waiting behind a short row of his fellows. I went past, the light turned green, we all started up again. A half a block later, he passed me again. A block and a half later, I caught up to him again, and passed him again.

This went on for nearly three miles. Finally we came to Santa Monica Boulevard. I pulled up on his left this time and motioned for him to lower the window.

Of course he was probably expecting a lecture from a self-righteous bicycle radical (which I am). Instead I just told him his right brake light was out, and that he might get a ticket for that. He thanked me and turned; I went on.

Maybe, just maybe, he’ll reflect on how much he was spending in gas and nerves to go uphill at exactly the average speed of a greybeard on a bicycle. We can only hope.

At least he didn’t yell at me. Some do. Besides the usual “Get off the road!” mantra, I’ve had drivers inform me that I wasn’t a car, something I thought was pretty obvious. The implication is that I shouldn’t be on the road. So one fellow bitterly informed me one rainy night on Van Ness Avenue. I didn’t bother to argue with him. I just pulled on ahead in the space between the cars and the curb. The cars that were actually blocking his way. I was a mile closer to home before he got to the end of the block. So maybe he was jealous of my freedom.

That both the Universal Vehicle Code and the California Vehicle Code classify bicycles as vehicles and require that one operate them only on the roads is something that these boneheads shouldn’t be ignorant of, considering that they have to pass a test of their knowledge of those very codes to get their licenses. But immuring oneself in a car nurtures ignorance, and here, at Ground Zero of Autogeddon, ignorance is seen as, if not bliss, at least the comfort of the falsely self-righteous.

Plus, if tedious distances and Neanderthal drivers weren’t enough, there’s Proposition 13. Sold to the public as a way to save grandma from being taxed out of her cottage, what it really did was insulate anyone who held onto property past a certain date from paying any reasonable share of property tax. Well, grandma died, and anyway the average homeowner in LA moves every seven years, so all the small property owners were paying high taxes again fairly soon. But the Big Corporations, who hold vast tracts of land for decades, sometimes centuries, well, they’re holding onto their cash. This first great success of the starve-the-beast movement gutted California’s budget, and one consequence of that was that streets and highways that used to rival Switzerland’s now more closely resemble the shattered lanes of particularly destitute Third World countries.

Ripples, cracks, and bumps—why, you hardly even notice them! But potholes the size of real cooking pots do get your attention. Solidified asphalt washboard with repeated three to six-inch heaves that convert your bike from a thoroughbred stallion to a spastic camel as you bounce down the space between the speeding cement truck and the trash-filled gutter are hard not to notice.

Irregular longitudinal trenches up to four inches deep and wide enough to swallow a motorcycle tire, let alone a bicycle’s, occasionally inspire concern. Not to mention the surprisingly unrare blocks of concrete left in the street for weeks at a time—chunks of curb broken off in violent accidents are common, as well as fistfuls of macadam torn up by the relentless pounding of heavy trucks. Never mind the sheets of plywood, constellations of broken glass, and half-mashed shopping carts…

And dead rats. Lots of those in Hollywood, for some reason.

Fourth Street, near where I live, is a designated bicycle route. Halfway down one mansion-bordered declivity is a bad patch job where a one-by-four foot rectangle of road drops four inches down, leaving edges of jagged concrete.

The bike lanes on the eastern stretch of Sunset Boulevard place you about eighteen inches from car doors—if they’re small cars. Of course the SUV-stretch pickup with the dual rears sprawls well beyond the painted line designating your space, forcing you out into the path of stoned gangbangers, imbecilic teenagers, hemmorhoidal lawyers snarling into cell phones as they swerve their Beemers through traffic, and befuddled immigrants who took their first driving lessons at age seventy-five.

You’ve really got to love bicycling to ride in LA.

It’s a tribute to the World’s Most Efficient Machine that some of us do.

More and more each day; I see them every morning, every night, and unlike the Spandex Superheroes who attack the canyons Sunday mornings, they wave back when you say hello. We’ve even got Critical Mass, and when a phalanx of bicyclists occupies a whole block of La Brea Avenue, the diners at the sidewalk tables look up, shocked by the sudden tranquility—and everyone smiles.

So there’s hope, even here. But we’re still pioneers against our will. All we want to do is ride our bikes and create a little peace in a weary world. LA makes it difficult. But still we ride.

See more writing from Richard at EBykr

Much of the news coverage of the horrible devastation of Hurricane Katrina has focused on what many consider the almost irreparable demolition of New Orleans. This city, once a vibrant part of Louisiana’s rich history, now lays in ruins; however, Louisiana’s capital Baton Rouge, which experienced very little damage during the storm, is facing its own set of issues as it attempts to aid fellow Louisianans.

As New Orleans residents leave their homes, many have found their way to Baton Rouge, which has seen a population boom upwards of a quarter million people. This means traffic jams, overcrowding, and an overall increase in tension for native Baton Rouge residents. Grocery stores are running out of food, gas stations are fighting to keep up with long lines of customers, and, most alarmingly to residents, gun sales have increased dramatically.

“Baton Rouge is now the largest city in Louisiana, and I don’t think it will change for another five to 10 years,” said David Guillory, special assistant to the director of the Baton Rouge Department of Public Works.

On Friday, reports out of Baton Rouge rank the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport (9430 Jackie Cochran Dr. Suite 300, Baton Rouge, LA 70807-8020) as the second busiest in the nation. Traffic that is already overflowing throughout the city has reached epic proportions in the areas surrounding the airport, leaving drivers and commuters at a loss as to how to get to work, school and home.

“It used to take me 30 minutes to get to work, and it now takes me two hours,” said Courtney Finnan, a resident of a nearby suburb who has always commuted to the city for work.

“My wife relocated her office here, and the other day it took her an hour-and-a-half to go 2 miles,” said New Orleans resident Charles Macalso; he frequently travels back to check on his home.

Shelters in the area have been filling up as soon as they open, with most of Baton Rouge’s Community Centers and High Schools pitching in to take on as many people as they can. With school starting last week for most of the country, Baton Rouge has had to find ways to accommodate the influx of school-aged children from New Orleans, as well as their native children, while still using schools as makeshift shelters.

One of the shelters that was first to take in evacuees was the Volunteers of America Shelter (827 America St, Baton Rouge, LA 70802). Normally a transitional shelter for adults in housing transition, the shelter has transformed into a makeshift triage and home for hundreds. The area around the shelter, as with shelters all around the city, is growing more congested by the day.

This intermingling of displaced New Orleans residents has led to a rise in already-existing tensions among the two areas; while New Orleans has always been a notoriously “fast” city, Baton Rouge dwellers have always considered themselves to lead a much “slower” existence. Never has that been more true.

Dealing with hundreds of thousands of Katrina evacuees has indeed slowed things down – traffic, especially near shelter areas and schools is gridlocked most of the time – however, the immediate need for housing has led not only to a housing boom, but to a building boom as well, with houses being rushed into production wherever possible.

“I’ve been in the business for 30 years, and we’ve never seen anything like this. The only other time I’ve seen something like this was when my daughter moved to Washington D.C.” said Lara Dupree, the owner of Dupree, Terrell, and Company, a family-run real estate firm. “Any space where builders can build is being taken up.”

Judy Burkett, president of the Greater Baton Rouge Assn. of Realtors, said that prior to the storm, Baton Rouge had 3,626 homes listed for sale – over 75% of those have sold already. Prices, however, have risen significantly, with some estimates at 20% or more. Adding to the confusion are downed communications, which have prevented some recording of sales.

“The families go out to them and they’ll just snap them up — they’ll just snap up anything they can,” Burkett said.

As with the Southern California’s current housing market, buyers in bidding wars account for the major price increases. With so many people, both native and evacuee, vying for places to live, houses are springing up everywhere.

“If there’s lots, we’re putting slabs on them as soon as possible,” Burkett said.

High Res Images

In 1876, Kudzu was introduced to the United States at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Japanese government had constructed a beautiful garden filled with plants from their country. Because of its dense, rapid growth and wisteria-like purple flowers, it soon gained popularity with American gardeners. Then it took over the American Southeast.

Got Kuzu 2 [in North Carolina] photo credit: jimfrazier

“In Georgia, the legend says, / that you must close your windows / at night to keep it out of the house. / The glass is tinged with green even so”
James Dickey

Between 1935 and 1942, Soil Conservation Service nurseries grew a hundred million kudzu seedlings. They were shipped and distributed to farmers throughout the Southeast. The vines were used on gullied croplands and fed to livestock as well. Highway departments planted the rapidly growing seedlings along exposed right-of-ways.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Soil Conservation Service promoted kudzu for the control of soil erosion. Farmers were paid as much as eight dollars an acre as incentive to plant fields of the vines in the 1940s. A columnist from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution organized the Kudzu Club of America by the mid-1940s. Between the kudzu club and the Soil Conservation Service, about half a million acres were planted in the South by 1945.

Is this sounding reminiscent of the 1956 film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Read on, and you’ll discover even more correlations of overnight possession!

Soon the vigorous growth of kudzu proved to be a virtue in excess. By the 1950s, foresters and highway engineers were complaining that wherever the vine was planted, it grew — upward and outward — at the rate of 60 to 100 feet per season. It smothered forestry and created thick mats (several feet deep) along roadsides. In 1972, the Agricultural Conservation Program demoted the once praised plant to an invasive weed status. Just like that, a plant that the government used to pay you to grow was declared a public enemy.

This vine can grow a whole foot, overnight. You can almost hear it growing. You can see it growing, if you’re in the right frame of mind.

Do you think it dies during the winter? Don’t let it deceive you. With the first frost, the kudzu leaves will die and the vines will turn gray. Don’t be fooled. As soon as spring arrives, the vine will continue growing almost exactly from where it left off the previous fall. These vines will cover buildings and parked vehicles if no attempt is made to control the rapid growth. They will shrubberize small wildlife, and pets. Keep them away from your three-toed sloth.

Kuzu Tendrils, photo credit: nailbender

Hungry for more facts?

• Kudzu is a climbing deciduous vine, capable of reaching lengths of over 100 feet in a season.
• The stems can grow to four inches in diameter.
• The large semi-woody roots can reach a depth of three to 16 feet.
• Kudzu is easily identifiable by its three-leaflet foliage, up to four inches across, which spreads into a dense mat of vines.
• These plants usually flower in their third year. The flowers are purple and fragrant and bloom during July–October.

Now for the really bad news

Kudzu is all-too-happy to grow under a wide range of environmental conditions. Its greatest growth is achieved where the winters are mild, summer temperatures are moderately hot, and rainfall is plentiful. Kudzu can grow in almost any type of soil, and its large roots allow the plant to survive in fairly dry climates and drought conditions as well as the most desirable conditions. The vines grow rapidly and then penetrate the soil again, only to create a new rooted area. Kudzu thrives not only in forests and abandoned areas but also in urban landscapes as well. The city of Atlanta has already been invaded!

Store Display, photo credit: Automatt

How to fight this supervine?

Hopefully you’ve got a lot of stamina, because that’s what it’s going to take. Use a digging tool and remove the entire plant, including the taproot. Destroy the vegetation you remove by burning or bagging it. You can also chop the vines and runners just above ground level and destroy the pieces. Repeat this cutting at two-week intervals to weaken the crown and slow the resumption of photosynthesis.

This method is only used to control the spread of the wildly invasive vines. If you want to actually remove via an herbicidal approach, check with your local Soil Conservation Agency for the necessary chemicals and methods, and keep your fingers crossed. It will not be an easy task. An environmentally safe herbicide made from legumes is sprayed on the kudu leaves. Three weeks later, the invasive plants should be dry and ready to clear.

Chair Growth Club, photo credit: Automatt

In Japan and China, kudzu has a fine reputation where it has been used for centuries in medicines and in food. Starch is extracted commercially from kudzu and made into tofu, tempura batter, noodles, and gelatenous treats. The vine is actually respected and enjoyed in these countries as well as by herbal and natural food enthusiasts.

But kudzu grows better in the South than it does in its native lands, and its natural enemies were not brought to the United States in 1876, when the plant arrived. Also, for an unknown reason, no insects have adapted to eat the delicious plant in the hundred and fifty years it has been growing here. Only between three and seven percent of kudzu is consumed by insects, compared with between five and fifteen percent of other edible plants.

Kudzu folklore and humor

Here in Atlanta, we have come up with some expressions of our own to combat the fatigue of fighting this persistent devil of a plant. Two pieces of advice are:

“If you’re going to plant kudzu, drop it and run,” and

“Plant it at night so that your neighbors don’t see you.”

Visitors are told about hitchhikers who have disappeared without a trace on kudzu-rampant county roads. Be advised to keep your car windows rolled up when driving along these roadways—to keep the growing vine from reaching in and grabbing your steering wheel.

There are people in the Southeast who have adapted to the kudzu proliferation. They’re consuming the problem. How about some kudzu blossom jelly to spread on your morning toast or perhaps some kudzu syrup to pour over your Sunday morning pancakes? Maybe put some grease in the skillet and fry up some kudzu leaves to accent your meal, or a kudzu quiche might be your choice for a Saturday luncheon.

Maybe they have the right idea. Municipalities have been known to buy goats to fight the tree-eating creeper. It worked out for them that the goats were more cost-effective than spraying the kudzu with herbicide.

Like it or not, “the vine that ate the South” has become a part of the Atlanta habitat.

sources

• Kudzu—The Vine
• The New Georgia Encyclopedia
• Southeast Exotic Pest Plant Council
• The Amazing Story of Kudzu

In 2002 Texas violated federal smog standards 52 times. At least half of these violations occurred in Houston, the third-smoggiest city in the United States. In previous years, Houston has had the worst air pollution in the nation but unseasonably rainy and windy weather in 2002 helped the city to give the pollution title back to Los Angeles. Nationwide, the smog standard was exceeded 700 times in 2002. This number is a significant jump from previous years; 532 violations in 2001 and 516 in 2002. (Houston Chronicle, March 19, 2003) Tom DeLay Watch

From Mothers For Clean Air:

Children suffer a disproportionately higher degree of harmful exposures, particularly from air pollution. These children tend to live in urban communities, come from families that have low income, and include a high proportion of ethnic minorities. The “environmental justice” or “environmental equity” movement aims to equalize the environmental exposure and related health risk disparities between minorities and low-income populations in urban areas and the general population, including children.

Negative environmental consequences of air pollution in urban areas include mortality (deaths due to heart or lung disease), increased use of healthcare (hospitalization, ER visits, doctor visits), increased respiratory symptoms (asthma exacerbation, infections, allergies), and lung cell changes. These effects can be more severe among children living in low-income, minority communities.

Children from these communities may also have greater exposures to specific pollutants than non-minority children. For example, many of the communities along the Houston Ship Channel have high minority populations that have lower incomes than average for the Houston area. Children living close to petrochemical industries along the Ship Channel are exposed to higher levels of toxic pollutants than children in far west Houston.

In addition to air pollution from industry, many children from minority and low-income communities are also affected by air pollution from freeway traffic. Interstates 10, 610, and 45, U.S. Highway 59 and State Highway 225 cut through many of the same communities affected by air pollution from the Ship Channel.

Besides increased exposure, other factors may contribute to the severity of air pollution effects among children in minority and low-income communities including socioeconomic stresses, poor nutrition, inadequate health care, and pre-existing disease. In addition, many of these children may not have access to the health care they need for problems caused or aggravated by air pollution. Mothers For Clean Air

“Dina Cappiello of the Houston Chronicle measured air pollution in neighborhoods surrounding some of Houston’s largest industrial plants, finding some locations where toxic air made it dangerous to breathe. “At 49 of the 100 locations where the newspaper hung air monitors, attaching them to structures such as windowsills, clotheslines, swing sets and Christmas light strands, the quantities of up to five different chemicals would have exceeded levels considered safe in other states with stricter guidelines for air toxics. Unlike the more well-known air pollutants that cause asthma and respiratory effects, the compounds found at elevated levels have all been linked to cancer. The Scoop

After watching many of her relatives succumb to cancer and leukemia over the years — including her brother-in-law, who died of an unidentified carcinoma at age forty — Cherry became a pollution activist. For the past five years, she has been organizing opposition to petrochemical expansion in her neighborhood. Her work with various community organizations has put her in contact with sick people throughout the region, and her job as an administrator in a Texas Medical Center genetics lab keeps medical issues constantly before her. “Everywhere I look,” she says, “cancer.” NRDC Feature Story