January 29, 2002

Environmental Watch: Group: Games not green enough

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The conservation group Save Our Canyons issued a report this week on the successes and failures of the Olympic environmental effort. Their conclusion three weeks before the games: the Salt Lake Olympic Committee didn't do all it could to protect the environment.

Environmentalists say organizers could have developed a mass transit system from Salt Lake to Park City or installed solar panels to power venues.

SLOC's main plan for moving 70,000 spectators a day relies on driving and parking near venues before taking a short shuttle bus ride. Environmentalists said more effort should have been put into a massive bus effort.

About 900 buses are already on loan from transit agencies around the country.

SLOC environmental spokeswoman Diane Conrad Gleason rejects criticism that SLOC did not aim high enough. "We met our commitments and we raised the bar on the environment compared to other games," she said.

An independent review of SLOC's environmental achievements by CH2M Hill, a business consulting firm, said SLOC was successful in meeting its 12 specific goals. Kathy Dickey, air quality engineer for CH2MHILL, said the firm did not evaluate whether the goals were modest compared to other standards.

Gleason cited three main pillars of the 2002 environmental plan -- zero additional emissions, zero waste and an urban forestry program that will plant 18 million trees in Utah.

SLOC pledged to make the air cleaner with an emission program reliant on businesses donating air pollution credits. The credits essentially give a business the right to create a certain amount of pollution. SLOC bought some credits from Utah companies; businesses got a tax break and the credits went out of circulation, lessening pollution. Gleason said the program will eliminate 180,000 tons of pollution.

Another initiative involves recycling 85 percent of Olympic trash with a two-bin system that not only recycles glass, plastic and paper but composts food products. After the games, Salt Lake County will have its first functioning food-waste composting site.

Oregon farmers to harvest nickel

SELMA, Ore. (AP) -- The Illinois Valley is filled with small farms and woodlands where timber, pasture and wine grapes are significant crops.

Starting next year, farmers here could be mining nickel through two species of alyssum -- alfalfa-like plants harvested as hay and burned to produce electricity, yielding nickel-laced ash.

Two executives from Viridian Resources of Houston, Texas, met with farmers this month, securing acreage where they can plant commercial trials of the drought-resistant plants.

"We need a minimum of 2,000 acres, and we've almost got it," said Viridian's Carol Nelkin after looking at an untilled flat on a ranch west of this hamlet.

Viridian has also talked with Josephine County officials about building an incinerator plant.

Nelkin said if the project reaches the target acreage, planting would start in September 2002, with the first harvest in 2003.

The nation's only nickel mine is an inactive pit on a mountain near Riddle, 50 miles north of here. Depressed world nickel prices several years ago forced closure of the refinery. Conventional nickel mining is an energy-intensive process that leaves behind a huge volume of discarded rock and spoils from processed ore.

The United States Department of Agriculture's Research Service holds a 1998 patent on nickel- and cobalt-extracting plants. Viridian put $1 million into a five-year USDA research contract in hopes of taking the process commercial.

They've coined the name "phytomining" to describe the technique. Alyssum is a perennial plant that puts out vigorous leafy regrowth each year. Roots about 1 foot long spread into the soil.

The USDA speculates that in a year, at current world prices, an acre of alyssum could produce about $800 worth of nickel. When combined with income from electricity sales, the agency estimates $1,200 an acre gross annual revenue.

World's mountains said to be threatened

NEW YORK (AP) -- Wars, pollution and logging are despoiling the world's mountain ranges -- the Alps, the Rockies and the Hindu Kush are most threatened, according to a U.N. study released Sunday.

Mountains are the "water towers of the world," supplying more than half the world's population, said the report by the Tokyo-based United Nations University.

But 23 of the world's 27 current conflicts -- from Afghanistan to Chechnya and Kashmir -- are being fought in mountainous areas and are destroying the environment, the study said.

But nonviolent activities are scarring mountain ecology as well.

The Rockies are being hurt by new home building, skiing and other recreational activities that gobble up virgin lands, the study said. Industrial pollution from toxic mine tailings affects the Colorado Rockies, said mountain expert Jack Ives, who contributed to the U.N. document.

Canada's first national park, Banff -- crown jewel of the system -- faces serious danger of being overdeveloped, Ives said. The once pristine mountain valleys of the Alps "are now a litter of cable cars, ski lifts, tourists facilities and car parks," the study said.

Climbing expeditions have made "Mount Everest the highest garbage dump in the world," Ives said.

But commercial and illegal logging and slash-and-burn farming by poor people living in mountain areas are the real mountain ravagers, destroying the forests and increasing the chances of avalanches and landslides, fires and famines, according to the report.

The United Nations has designated 2002 the International Year of Mountains with the goal of alleviating the crippling poverty among mountain people and spotlighting the importance of mountains as the source of rich plant and animal life and more than half the world's fresh water. The U.N. study is part of that effort