Photo: Christine Mangan
November 2005 | Choice News
Fill ’Er Up With Ethanol
High gas prices got you down? Worried about the U.S. dependence on foreign oil? Well, the answer may lay in increasing imports — not from half a world away — but from downstate Illinois in the form of corn-based ethanol.
With 11 million acres of corn, Illinois is the second largest corn producer in the United States. About 20 percent of that goes to the production of corn-based ethanol, according to Leone Corzine, president of the National Corn Growers Association and chairman of its Biotechnology Working Group.
The ethanol is then blended to make a 15-percent gasoline/85-percent ethanol mixture called E85.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 signed into law in August includes tax incentives for producers of ethanol and calls for 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels — such as corn-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel — to be used annually by the year 2012. That would be almost double the current usage levels and is good news to Corzine, a fifth-generation farmer who grows corn and soybeans on his family farm in Assumption, Ill.
“For farmers to work, we need financial backing,” Corzine said.
Although soaring oil prices have focused attention on alternative fuel sources recently, ethanol development has been underway for some time. “We’ve been working on this since the 1960s,” Corzine said. “This bill has finally recognized the fact that agriculture has the potential to be a solution for the U.S.”
Supporters say that this renewable fuel will help to reduce the exhaust emissions and relieve dependence on foreign oil. “In 2003, ethanol use in the United States reduced CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 5.7 million tons,” according to the American Coalition for Ethanol.
The new fuel also promises to create more jobs as ethanol plants are built to increase production.
Still, some skeptics insist that the production of ethanol requires more energy to make than the fuel would actually yield. In a paper that examines ethanol production using a variety of materials, Cornell University Professor David Pimentel reports that previous studies claiming a positive energy return are mistaken. Pimentel also doubts that ethanol could ever replace the U.S. dependency on petroleum.
“Even if you assumed that you could get 100 gallons net per acre of ethanol,” he said, “to fuel all of the U.S. autos would require an area greater than the total U.S. planted (with) corn.”
Only Flexible Fuel Vehicles can burn E85, which isn’t exactly easy to find, at least not yet. Only an estimated 460 stations in the United States sell E85. In Illinois, 64 stations carry it.
Still, Corzine is not alone in predicting an increase of ethanol production. “I think (the Energy Policy Act) will have a big impact,” he said. “There is a growth in farmer investment right now. Farmers are getting together and building ethanol plants.”
He is particularly optimistic for the distant future. “It is not going to be a good year but long term, the future will be bright.”
Can Your Car Burn Corn?
To check if your vehicle can run on corn-based ethanol, visit Illinoisgreenfleets.org. With your Vehicle Identification Number, simply refer to the chart provided to find out if your vehicle and E85 are compatible. As the website warns, be sure that the model, year, engine type, and the second, third and eighth digit of your VIN number match the chart.
The website also provides a list of Illinois gas stations that offer E85. There are now 64 stations throughout the state, with 10 of these stations in the Chicago area.
— Christine Mangan
Invasion of the Goby
CAPABLE OF spawning multiple times each year, the Round Goby is just one of 160 invasive species threatening the Great Lakes. Along Chicago’s Calumet Harbor, gobies now exceed 20 per square meter. That’s like having 20 in your bathtub! They’re gobbling up other native species, but there is some good news. In just one day a single Round Goby can eat up to 78 non-native Zebra Mussels. Zebra Mussels are hard-shelled, tiny creatures that clog water intakes and consume plankton normally eaten by newly hatched fish. You can check out the Round Goby, Zebra Mussel and a whole bunch of other aquatic nuisances at the new Invasive Species Exhibit, set to open the week of Nov. 14 at Shedd Aquarium, 1200 S. Lake Shore Drive Call 312-939-2438 or visit sheddaquarium.org.
Photo courtesy of The Shedd Aquarium.
— Christine Mangan
A Stitch in Time Helps Mend Broken Hearts
NOVEMBER 11 is Veterans Day, a national day of remembrance to honor our nation’s soldiers: those on active duty, those returned, and those fallen.
But some people spend nearly every day honoring our fallen soldiers by working to help ease the pain of their families.
Among them are sisters Pam Turner and Barbara Urick of west suburban Winfield. Turner, who works at Ball Seed Co., and Urick, a retired Ameritech employee, manage the Illinois chapter of the Home of the Brave Quilt Project.
The project provides homemade quilts to the families of soldiers who lost their lives fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Illinois has lost more than 105 men and women in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, according to operationhomefront.org, a website maintained by Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn’s office.
“The organization that’s sponsoring this is not political,” Urick said. “Basically we’re doing this to say we feel for the families. We want to show that we support them.”
Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 417,500 National Guard members and reservists have been called to active duty, leaving behind more than 557,500 spouses and children, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
Turner and Urick got involved in the project through their other sister, Anita Wolff, a North Side Chicago resident and avid quilter who invited them to sew blocks for the quilt project’s New Hampshire chapter. Turner, who belongs to a local VFW auxiliary, then established the Illinois chapter, which geared up production last winter after connecting with a representative from Quinn’s office during a benefit for a military family. During a September ceremony honoring Illinois’ “Gold Star” mothers, the sewing volunteers presented 55 quilts to military families at Chicago’s Navy Pier.
The quilts are patterned after ones given to families of Civil War soldiers. The cot-size replicas are made by volunteers from all over the state and are embroidered with the deceased soldier’s personal information. They also feature small squares of white muslin containing signatures of quilt makers and others wanting to show their support for the soldier’s family.
“Close to 100 people have helped in some way, making blocks, donating materials or actually putting the quilts together,” Urick said.
The project needs additional volunteers. For more information, call 630-690-5714 or visit operationhomefront.org/Info/quiltproject.shtml.
Photo courtesy of The Home of the Brave Quilt Project.
— CC
Wetlands, Dry Basement
THEY’RE CALLED marshes, bogs, sloughs, fens, small glacial lakes and prairie potholes. Officially they’re known as “isolated wetlands,” but perhaps a more appropriate name is flood control. That’s because they retain water and keep it from entering main waterways, acting as one of nature’s marvelous balancing mechanisms.
In the wake of the New Orleans flood, the need to preserve wetlands has been gaining national attention. However, in the last four years, wetlands have become increasingly vulnerable to development across the nation and in many parts of Illinois, especially Cook County.
State Rep. Karen May (D-Highland Park) wants to change that. For several years, May has championed legislation to establish a state agency to regulate development of the state’s approximately 150,000 acres of isolated wetlands. The agency also would monitor county storm-water management agencies such those operating in DuPage, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties. These are currently the only governing bodies in Illinois regulating isolated wetland development.
The state wetlands protection legislation May originally had envisioned did not survive in the Illinois Senate last year. That was OK with May and many environmentalists because by the time her House measure emerged as Senate Bill 761, it had changed into something the Sierra Club described as having “a loophole big enough to drive a bulldozer through.” The Sierra Club said the amended version would permit destruction of a wetland up to a half-acre in size without any mitigation for the loss.
The wetlands legal landscape across the nation was changed about four years ago due to a lawsuit originally filed in Cook County that ended in a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision. Before that decision, under provisions of the Clean Water Act, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was the agency that determined whether isolated wetlands could be developed.
The lawsuit (SWANCC vs. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) stemmed from the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County’s unrelenting fight against the Corps’ refusal to grant a permit for development of an abandoned gravel pit. The pit had been serving as a magnet for migratory waterfowl. Ironically, although swancc won the High Court battle, it eventually scrapped its landfill plan.
Even so, the resulting damage of the decision far exceeded the boundaries of the gravel pit. The High Court decision removed Corps jurisdiction over isolated wetlands throughout the nation. It also set off an avalanche of requests from developers to have areas declared non-jurisdictional, according to the Illinois Chapter of the Sierra Club.
Within a year of the SWANCC decision, developers in Cook County filed 84 such requests, the Sierra Club said.
Enter State Rep. Karen May, who was sworn in just one day before the SWANCC decision and had been paying special attention to the fate of isolated wetlands.
“Isolated wetlands are crucial to the prevention of flooding … they operate like sponges,” she said. “They clean and filter water and improve water quality — I call them the kidneys of the ecosystem — and they replenish our aquifers.”
They also happen to provide special habitats for numerous indigenous and endangered species.
Despite earlier defeats of her wetlands legislation, May said she is still determined: “In the aftermath of hurricanes Rita and Katrina, we need to be more cognizant that we’ve filled in most of the wetlands of the state.”
May pointed out that Joliet, Ill., depends on a levy for flood protection, much like New Orleans, and she is currently shopping for a new state Senate sponsor of her renewed wetlands bill.
For more information: Contact State Rep. Karen May at 847-831-5858 or Illinois.sierraclub.org.
— Susan DeGrane
Charities — What Gives?
THE PHONE RINGS. It’s a caller from the Sisters of Charity Orphans’ Fatherless Fund (SCOFF). The mail arrives with a heart-rending letter from the Suffering Child-Amputee Mission (SCAM). Before you reach for your checkbook, you might want to fire up the Internet and look up SCOFF and SCAM on Charity Navigator, America’s largest charity evaluator (charitynavigator.org).
The Web site rates the claims of thousands of charities against their actual performance and it shows, at a glance, how much of the money raised was spent on relieving suffering vs. how much was spent on relieving administrative overhead. Charities are also ranked against one another, with the best receiving a four-star rating.
If your would-be benefactors don’t rate a single star, you might want to reconsider your gift. And if you want to cut short a call from a solicitor who’s earned a master’s degree in Guilt-Tripping 101, just tell him/her that you’ll be happy to write a check once you’ve checked with Charity Navigator. That usually results in a quick “God bless you and goodbye.”
In August, the folks at Charity Navigator added a new trick to their role as watchdogs of the charity biz: they undertook an investigation of CEO salaries at the country’s 4,257 biggest charities and discovered a huge gap between the highest and lowest CEO salaries. While some nonprofit CEOs serve without pay, one charity paid its top man $1,578,014. Educational charities offered the biggest salaries while religious charities offered the least. The study also revealed a link between ZIP code and VIP load — CEO s in Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., pulled down paychecks that were 23 percent higher than those offered in Salt Lake City or Little Rock.
In a world awash in corruption, CN’s overall conclusion was fundamentally reassuring: “With an average salary of roughly $150,000, our findings prove that the majority of CEOs do not earn excessive pay.” So what are CN’s top-rated charities? Here’s a short list: Tiger Woods Foundation, Lance Armstrong Foundation, The V Foundation (Bill Cosby), The Hole in the Wall Gang Fund (Paul Newman), Happy Hill Farm Academy (Dr. Phil), Washington University in St. Louis, Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation, Carnegie Mellon University, Children’s Aid Society, Orphan Foundation of America, Asha for Education, Michigan Botanic Garden Foundation, Jane Addams Peace Association, US-Japan Bridging Foundation, Association for India’s Development, The Shade Tree, Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust, Oregon HEAT and CURE Childhood Cancer.
— Gar Smith
Grassroots Rezoning
ELEVEN YEARS ago, Susan Martin bought a home on North Bell Avenue in West Rogers Park, hoping to avoid the congestion of other parts of Chicago. At that time, the diverse North Side neighborhood was attracting families and individuals seeking affordable rents and mortgages.
But all that seems to be changing. A developer is building a six-flat across the street from Martin’s two-flat, and now Martin worries about neighborhood density.
“It went from a quiet, sleepy neighborhood to an overcrowded, not-tranquil place,” Martin said. “I’ve seen a complete turnover in homeowners here … I know more and more people who are planning to sell to developers. It’s just greed, plain and simple.”
Such concerns weighed heavily on Martin and about 100 other area residents who attended a recent 49th Ward zoning re-map community meeting presented by Alderman Joe Moore at St. Scholastica Academy last month. The meeting was one of four hosted by Moore and the Metropolitan Planning Council. This particular gathering aired the results of a grassroots effort by local residents to provide community feedback as Chicago undergoes an overhaul of its zoning ordinances, the first since 1957.
About 40 resident volunteers spent two years evaluating Rogers Park building by building, parcel by parcel.
“Our goals in this process are to protect and preserve the character of neighborhoods and to strengthen business districts so they retain jobs and attract industry,” said Heather Campbell of the Metropolitan Planning Council.
Campbell also provided residents with a basic primer on the development and function of zoning ordinances.
“We wanted to get input from people from different backgrounds and share their insights,” Moore said. “I believe in community self-determination.”
Moore said he and his constituents are intent on “preserving the economic and cultural diversity of Rogers Park” and he will present recommendations to city zoning officials before the end of the year.
Citizen recommendations included limiting expansion of high-density housing where it would clash with single-family homes and two-flats, and re-zoning depressed commercial areas along Western Avenue to spur commercial development.
— Peter Bernard
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