SusanCampriello: My Works

Making green a way of life
The Daily Mail
April 23, 2009

CATSKILL — Sheila Dent wore a green blazer Wednesday adorned with a yellow, blue and green pin.

The blue and green triangles, the Catskill resident said, represent the sky and Earth and the yellow background the sun.

The pin is a memento from the Protect Your Environment — or PYE — group at her Gilboa school that was organized by the State University of New York at Oneonta.

The idea of environmental protection fit in with other politically charged issues in the 1960s, including the draft and a fear of nuclear warfare, she said.

“It was another thing to care about,” she said.

Dent, who calls herself a “true, reformed hippie,” points out that environmental responsibility is as easy as planting a tree or picking up garbage.

She remembers one protest her Gilboa group held over the felling of an oak tree near the Gilboa Dam.

“We didn’t win, but we were there,” she said.

Dent said her daughter, Rev. Ursula Carrie (Wilkerson), and grandson also recycle and conserve energy.

Carrie started her own church, the Church of the Sacred Earth, in Woodstock, and keeps a religious and environmental blog.

She writes that humans need to be aware of what they are doing to the earth if they want their children and grandchildren to have a life of any minute quality.

“The act of recycling and composting, and all those things can be utilized as a prayer to the earth,” she said.

And, as an herbalist, she said, everything she does is related to the earth.

She buys in bulk and recycles whatever she can to minimize her garbage, because there is no way humans can be separated from nature.

She said that once people become aware of their impact on the environment, environmentally friendly actions become part of an everyday routine.

“It’s a way of life,” she said, “because there is no life without the earth.”

Biomass heat equipment gains favor
The Daily Mail
April 22, 2009

State researchers and local businessmen are seeing green by seeing green.

Last fall, the state began an incentive program to support and improve biomass-fired heating equipment. The program was designed to foster the development of manufacturing jobs and the betterment of environmental performance of biomass technology.

New York State Energy Research and Development Authority Spokesman Sal Graven said that the initiative encouraged two pellet boiler manufacturers to relocated to New York, one to Dunkirk, on Lake Erie, and the other to Schenectady. They market a European outdoor wood-burning boiler, which, he said, operates about 80 percent more efficiently and produces less than five percent of the particulate emissions than a standard outdoor wood boiler.

“A house is now burning a renewable fuel instead of fossil fuels,” he said.

Graven said the project also encourages businesses to produce fuels grown in-state.

And the business potential is enough to excite Cairo businessman John Deschaine.

Deschaine, who runs a logging company, would like to add chipping capabilities to his logging business on Route 32.

Deschaine would join the roughly 30 logging companies in the state that produce chips as part of what DEC spokeswoman Lori Severino calls integrated harvesting operations.

Most of the companies are located in Northern New York.

Chips can be pressed into pellets, briquettes or used for fuel as they are.

Deschaine is optimistic about the possibilities of chipping wood closer to home.

“We have a large resource here in the Catskills,” he said, “I want to tap into that.”

Marilyn Wyman, program coordinator at the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Greene County Agroforestry Center, in Acra, oversaw an open forum on issues surrounding biofuels earlier this month.

She said the discussion focused on the potential of woody plants found locally, such as willow.

Willow, she said, grows in wet areas as a harvested crop.

The roughly 30 participants in the dialogue were curious about business opportunities and the factors involved with producing biofuels.

“I think there was a lot of interest in this,” she said.

Zywia Wojnar, of Pace University, also attended the Acra meeting.

Wojnar is the project manager of the renewable fuels roadmap, a project coordinated by Cornell Cooperative Extension and Pace University, NYSERDA, the state Department of Agriculture and Markets and the state Department of Environmental Conservation that was created earlier this year.

The roadmap was recommended by the Renewable Energy Task Force, created by Gov. David A. Paterson in 2008.

The roadmap, which is expected to be completed later this year, will provide guidance to those working on how to reduce dependence on foreign oil and harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

Wojnar said the initiative focuses more on biofuels that are made from non-food crops in order to avoid entering into the debate between growing a crop for food versus growing it for fuel.

“We try to steer away from that,” she said.

Wojnar explained that poplar can also be grown for fuel. Once the trees are mature, she said, they can be cut back — but not to the ground — and regrow. After three years, wood can be harvested again, she said.

She said that most of the woodfuel used by New York companies is produced in New York.

Currently, fuelwood pellets are manufactured for residential use in five location in the state, in Delaware, Herkimer, Jefferson, Stueben and Wyoming counties, Lori Severino, a DEC spokeswoman said in an e-mail last week.

She said two more plant will open, in Massena and Saratoga County, shortly.

Severino said that many sawmills use wood chips for space heaters and to run lumber dry-kilns and two coal-fired facilities in Niagara and Yates counties have begun to co-fire with wood.

Two electric/cogenerating plants, in Franklin and Lewis counties, use wood feedstocks exclusively, she said.

But chip and pellet production for large-scale operations still has room to evolve.

John Deschaine explained that the pellets are more expensive to produce than chips because wood needs to be stripped of its bark before it can be pressed into a pellet or briquette.

Zywia Wojnar said that biomass needs to be commoditized, before the industry can grow.

A number of variable factors including moisture content, size and weight need to be standardized in order to a customer to know exactly how much product is needed, she said.

“I would not say it is a very established market,” she said.

Easy to protect, hard to restore
Environmental groups announce plan to safeguard Catskill Creek watershed
The Daily Mail
Apr. 4, 2009

CAIRO — Representatives of two environmental education groups have told the Cairo Town Board about a joint initiative to protect the 415-square-mile Catskill Creek watershed.

The watershed includes parts of Schoharie, Albany, Greene and Ulster counties.

Fran Martino of Hudson Basin River Watch, Inc., explained that the upper sections of the Catskill Creek, and the Shinglekill, in Cairo, are pollution-free, which is why the groups hope to watch the streams now, rather than wait for pollution to come,

“It is much easier to protect a stream than it is to try to restore it,” she said.

The creek’s headwaters are in Schoharie County and it flows through Albany County before winding its way through Greene County to empty into the Hudson River at the Catskill Point.

Liz LoGiudice of Cornell Cooperative Extension explained that the lower portion of the creek is tidal, LoGiudice said, and is a spawning ground for ocean fish including American shad and other herring as well as for American eels. Local species, such as white perch, spawn in the creek as well, she said.

The creek also plays an important role in the tourism, marina and bait industries, Martino said. Farmers use water from the creek and its tributaries for irrigation.

LoGiudice said that the first step toward organizing, the team is trying to promote watershed awareness. Next, the partnership will create a concerned citizen’s group to monitor tributaries in the watershed.

The group will gather other information about the streams’ life and previous studies conducted from people who life along its banks. Finally, the partnership hopes to work with municipalities across the watershed to develop a watershed protection plan.

The pair will give a similar presentation to the Catskill Town Board on May 5, and another to the Durham Town Board. They have tentative plans to visit the Cairo Planning Board and other public forums as well.

Last fall, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Greene County was awarded an $80,000 grant from the Hudson River Estuary Program to continue promoting watershed protection. Part of these funds will help start the Catskill Creek watershed protection program, LoGiudice said.

Hudson Basin River Watch, Inc. and Clearwater have already begun work on watershed management plans for the Kinderhook creek, Martino added.

LoGiudice and Martino asked the Town Board for permission to access Shinglekill, in Cairo, for some stream studies. During the studies, volunteer researchers will take measurements of the stream’s depth and width as well as its oxygen, nitrate and pH levels.

They will also look for various bugs.

“The bugs tell all,” Martino said, “certain bugs can only live in healthy water systems.”

The Town Board approved their request for access to the Shinglekill from the town park.

Councilman Richard Lorenz pointed out that the town water supply is adjacent to the Shinglekill.

“Preserving the Shinglekill creek is of utmost importance to the town and the community,” Lorenz said.

To learn more about the Catskill Creek watershed protection program or to get involved, contact Fran Marino, Hudson Basin River Watch, Inc., at (518) 828-1330 and riverhaggie@peoplepc.com or Liz LoGiudice, Cornell Cooperative Extension, at (518) 622-9820, ext. 33 and elm37@cornell.edu.

Cuomo, E.P.A. reach accord
The Daily Mail
Jan. 17, 2009

New York, N.Y. — The Office of the Attorney General and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have reached a settlement requiring new limits on the amount of mercury and other toxic pollutants that cement plants can discharge, according to a press released by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo Friday.

The new rules will require EPA to propose new standards for mercury and other hazardous pollutant emissions from Portland cement plants across the counrty, including three in this area, by March 31, 2009, and will be subject to public comment. Final standards will be adopted by March 31, 2010, according to the release.

The St. Lawrence plant, in Catskill, the Lafarge plant, in Ravena and Glens Falls plant, in Glens Falls, all produce portland cement, which is used in concrete, mortar and grout.

The St. Lawrence plant has been cited for exceeding EPA emission standards in the past. Last week, Lafarge announced the dissolution of 37 positions in various areas of the company.

“The EPA has made the right choice by going back to the drawing board and committing to adopt new hazardous air pollutant standards for cement plants that comply with the Clean Air Act,” Cuomo said in the release.

In 2007, Cuomo and a coalition of eight other states including Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania sued the EPA for adopting emissions rules that did not adequately control the pollutants. Arguments in the suit said that the EPA violated the act by not baseing emission standards on state-of-the-art pollution control technology.

“We are please that our work with Attorney General Cuomo and the other states has resulted in this important environmental victory,” Jim Pew, an attorney with Earthjustice, one of several environmental groups that joined the coalition said in the release.

Portland Cement Association, an industry group, also signed the settlement.

As seen on The Norwood News.

With global warming fast becoming a global priority, thanks to environmental crusaders like former Vice President Al Gore, the science community is enlisting amateurs to make its job easier.

A new program at the New York Botanical Garden is offering volunteers a chance to study climate change while exploring its 50-acre natural forest.

This fall, 30 volunteers signed up for the citizen scientist program and will collect phenologic data that will be passed on to the United States of America National Phenology Network, an organization that helps scientists studying climate change obtain necessary data.

Phenology is the study of the timing of natural events and has been used for thousands of years by people around the globe to note when plants germinate or flower.

“Plants tend to be much more reactive to climate change than animals,” said Jake Weltzin, the phenology network’s executive director. Weltzin works for the United States Geological Survey, which, along with the Fish & Wildlife Service, National Science Foundation and other partners, supports the network.

Plants provide food or shelter to many animals and insects, so a delay in plant growth could be disastrous, Weltzin said. Timing of bud development can also help scientists predict, for example, when plants such as ragweed will bloom and cause allergies.

Monitoring plants in every forest, garden or yard would overwhelm scientists, Weltzin said, so the network relies on volunteers.

A group of seven citizen scientists at the Garden taking a training session earlier this fall included Fordham University students, a semi-retired medical laboratory worker, a former pre-school teacher and a guide at Teatown Lake Reservation, in Mt. Kisco, New York.

Some citizen scientists have years of volunteer service at the Garden, while others, like Fordham University senior Elyse Santoro and recent graduate Krystina Holak, have spent little or no time in the Garden.

Dr. Christina Colon, the Garden’s curator of curriculum development, said that phenology is a good introduction into the science field because it requires no prior scientific education. Once an observer knows what to look for, such as a leaf changing color or a fruit maturing and dropping, spotting changes is easy.

Santoro signed up for the program because she thought that participating might help her understand or connect more with a school project. Plus, she said, monitoring trees would also allow her to spend more time outside.

Holak said that her home state, Nevada, has a much different landscape and tree population than New York.

“This is a completely new experience,” Holak said, as she and James Boyer, the Garden’s director for teacher and professional development, walked through the forest discussing different leaf types.

Boyer, Colon and Daniel Avery, the Garden’s sustainability and climate change program manager, helped the volunteers identify and track changes to the 24 trees selected for monitoring. The compiled data will be entered into an on-line database, which eventually will be viewed by real scientists studying climate change.

If successful, Weltzin said, the Garden’s program could be used as a template for future programs at other botanical gardens across the country.

Boyer said one appeal of the program is that spending time in a natural forest can help people reconnect with nature. “You experience this forest in a way that most people don’t have the opportunity to do,” he said.

Dr. Christina Colon and Jim Gmelin, 68, of Mt. Kisco, New York, go over climate change data at the New York Botanical Garden.

As seen on City Hall.

Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg Wednesday

Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered the keynote address to the Green Business Summit, a June 18 meeting of counselors for financial traders, lenders and power utilities to discuss the business opportunities and risks brought by new green regulations and technologies underway. The summit was sponsored and run by Chadbourne & Parke, the law firm now home to former Gov. George Pataki (R) and his chief of staff, John Cahill.

Pataki began the summit with a morning address calling green energy economically exciting because of its relation to the transportation sector.

“The transformation is going to be enormous. And because of that, the opportunities are enormous,” Pataki said.

Pataki predicted that a national law capping greenhouse gas emissions and putting in place a trading system would be passed in the near future, and said that this would be a huge improvement over the current hodgepodge of regional agreements throughout the country.

However, Reid Dechton, the executive director for energy and climate of the United Nations Foundation, who spoke as part of the summit’s energy trading panel, was skeptical that the next president would have an easy time creating a national policy.

In his keynote address, Bloomberg stressed what he called a natural link between capitalist mentality and environmentalist mentality.

“For far too long, environmentalists have gotten pitted against economic development,” he said. “I think that is a myth, and I also think that is a myth which is rapidly fading away as the reality of what happens when you do and don’t improve the environment starts coming home to roost.”

Bloomberg said that reducing global warming depends on people realizing the cost of carbon emissions.

“Green business is the future of business,” Bloomberg said.

He predicted that the next president will work toward passing legislation either installing a cap and trade system for carbon emissions or assigning a monetary value to carbon emissions.

This, he said, would spur similar action in other countries.

“The bottom line is that if we did it, then other people around the world might have the courage to do it,” he said. “I don’t think people here understand in this country how important America’s leadership is.”

Either solution would increase the cost of carbon emissions and carbon-based fuel, making alternative energy sources more cost-competitive and more attractive to consumers and industries.

Bloomberg highlighted several initiatives his administration launched, including requiring hybrid taxis, promoting solar energy generation, installing green roofs and promoting compact fluorescent bulb use.

Bloomberg then called on those in the audience to help make the next mayor continues these efforts.

“It’s your job to make sure our successors follow on,” he said.

On Thurday, a panel of environmentalists from around the globe met to discuss geetically engineered trees and wood based biofuels.

As heard on Uptown Radio. 

CAMPRIELLO:
The panel took place during the UN Forum on Indigenous Issues. Ann Peterman, of the Global Environmental Justice Project, said there are lots of reason why deforestation is taking place.

AX PETERMAN (16.15 seconds):
The basic driver, I think, of deforestation globally at this point is just massive over consumption of all kinds of wood-based products from construction material to paper to advertisements in newspapers to, you know, throw-away cups, you know, you name it.

CAMPRIELLO:
And there’s one more: forests are being used for biofuel production.

Trees are either felled and pulped and converted into biofuel, or, forests are cleared so that farmers can plant other crops, like eucalyptus, poplars and oil palms, which can be used to make biofuels.

That’s bad news for indigenous people who live in forests, according to Abdon Nababan, the secretary general of an Indonesian group called Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago. He says that Indonesia has seen the world’s most rapid rate of tropical forest deforestation. Between 1950 and 2000, Indonesia lost forty percent of its forest cover. Over the last ten years, the rate of loss has increased by over sixty-six percent.

He played a video [”My Forest Tears”] for the panel that showed scenes of uncut, natural forests full of life, human and animal…and then pictures of dry, barren land.

Income from logging and production of wood-based ethanol has been good for the country, he says, but bad for indigenous people who have lost their forest homelands and landed in poverty.

AX NABABAN (1.71 seconds):
Poverty in the midst of plenty.

CAMPRIELLO:
Nababan says corrupt political and economic systems in Indonesia have made the problem only worse. The gap between these people and the elite has become even more apparent.

AX NABABAN (2.38 seconds):
So you control the forests, you control the country.

CAMPRIELLO:
Meanwhile, as more and more land is being used to grow crops for fuel production, the price of food has gone up according to Simone Lovera, of the Global Forest Coalition.

AX LOVERA (9.33 seconds):
[I] mean there are so many poor families all over the world who cannot buy food for their children anymore as we speak because of agri-diesels, because of agri-fuel.

CAMPRIELLO:
There are also serious ecological problems that accompany deforestation. Ann Peterman says that burning roots and stumps to clear a logged forest pumping carbon into the atmosphere.

AX PETERMAN (7.62 seconds):
The burning of peat forests for oil palm plantations has made Indonesia the third largest emitter of carbon in the world.

CAMPRIELLO:
Also, agri-businesses genetically engineer plants to produce more biofuel and to resist insect infestations. Just as the use of antibiotics can give rise to so-called super-bugs, Peterman worries that engineering trees to naturally produce a pesticide known as “Bt” may literally create super-bugs.

AX PETERMAN (16.3 seconds):
The use of Bt trees will contribute to the existence to Bt-resistant super-insects. In other words, because there’s Bt present all the time in every part of the tree, insects can rapidly develop an immunity to the Bt, which means more toxic pesticides will be needed in the future.

CAMPRIELLO:
Peterman says the world needs to address overconsumption first, before the global discussion turns to generating biofuels.

Susan Campriello, Columbia Radio News.

Click here to listen.

TRANSCRIPT (Tape Time:4:22):

CAMPRIELLO:
Brownfields must be cleaned before anything can be built on them. For example, work is going on at a site in Manhattan on West 61st Street, near Eleventh Avenue.

AMBIANCE UP, FADE UNDER NARRATION AND OUT AT “2003″.

CAMPRIELLO:
Brownfields that don’t get cleaned are left abandoned. A highly contaminated site in an expensive area, like Westchester County and Manhattan can cost millions of dollars to clean up. So, to encourage remediation, the State of New York has been offering tax credits as incentives for contractors to take on this work since 2003.

In the past, the State Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, could accept or reject a developer’s application to clean up a Brownfield based on “public interest”. But several developers whose applications were denied filed lawsuits against the DEC. In December of last year, a court in Rochester threw out the department’s criteria for determining eligibility, and said that every site has to be admitted to the program.

Val Washington is a deputy commissioner of the DEC.

AX WASHINGTON (5.0 seconds)
It’s in everybody’s interest to have this get fixed sooner rather than later.

CAMPRIELLO:
But admitting every site could cost a lot of money.

AX WASHINGTON (21.2 seconds)
The first 25 projects that have gone through the Brownfield system are worth $1 billion–that’s billion with a “B”–for 25 development projects. Four of them, three in New York City and one in Westchester County account for over half of that, over $500,000, and that’s not sustainable over time.

CAMPRIELLO:
So, to stave off a budget crisis, former Governor Eliot Spitzer proposed in January a cap of 15 million dollars in tax credits for Brownfield cleanup projects.

Joel Landes works for Langan Engineering, a firm that performs Brownfield remediation. He says that everyone had been looking to the Governor to solve the problem.

AX LANDES (13.3 seconds)
I think his proposal was developed along those lines, to solve that issue, so that more developments can get into the program, to become eligible and they can go through the program without bankrupting the state.

CAMPRIELLO:
Now that ALL sites are approved automatically, developers face a new obstacle because their tax credits are set after they’ve been accepted into the program. For developers to get the credits, Landes says:

AX LANDES (6.3 seconds)
They’re going to have to show that without the tax credits, the project is not financially feasible.

CAMPRIELLO:
But not all projects in New York State are created equal. Those which are Downstate tend to cost much more than those Upstate. Yet, Brownfields are evenly distributed throughout the state. So Landes worries that projects Upstate will benefit more than those Downstate.

Val Washington of DEC sees a clear division, too.

AX WASHINGTON (24.2 seconds)
Under the current program to get 15 million dollars you’d have to have a 68 million dollar development. But a 68 million dollar development is a substantial development. And essentially that’s more or less the cut off point where you’d do better in the new program than the current program. So clearly right there Downstate - LARGE Downstate projects - wouldn’t do as well under the current program.

CAMPRIELLO:
There’s a second problem with the proposal: The cap will apply only to sites whose clean-up agreements were signed after July 1, 2007.

An environmental lawyer thinks that’s unfair to a developer who was promised, for example, twenty million dollars in tax credits under the old system, but would now receive only fifteen million. The lawyer worries that developers might be inclined to pull out of the program. Joel Landes, of Langan Engineering, agrees, but says that developers will have to work within the proposal if it goes into effect.

AX LANDES (5.2 seconds)
There’s not much they can do about it. They can argue, and take the State to court, but that’s always a chanc-y thing.

CAMPRIELLO:
Val Washington of DEC says developers who are angry about the loss of tax credits can find a way to make up the difference. They can appeal to a number of State development programs to procure funding.

AX WASHINGTON (10.0 seconds)
They layer these funding sources, so I find it hard to be sympathetic that people are unhappy about getting fifteen million dollars for developing a Brownfield site.

CAMPRIELLO:
Washington says that New York State has the best program in the nation. She also says that fifteen million dollars is a lot of money.

New York State’s new Governor, David Paterson, has submitted the proposal to the State legislature. If it’s approved, the Brownfield tax credit cap will go into effect on April 1.

Susan Campriello, Columbia Radio News.

Land usage is determined by the possible benefits of the land, be it an endangered species living there, an historical site, good soil composite, or scenic views.¹ The land use plan for the Adirondack Park in the years since 1972 follows the scheme set forth by Edward O. (E.O.) Wilson in The Diversity of Life;

Parcels of land will have to be set aside as inviolate preserves. Others will be identified as the best sites for extractive reserves, for buffer zones used in part-time agriculture and in restricted hunting, and for land convertible totally to human use.²

Wilson’s concept of animal worth, illustrated in “New Environmentalism” assesses the value of a wild species. Through this connection to economics, Wilson hoped to show that the natural flora and fauna could be viewed as economic assets to an area, thus giving rise to support of their conservation.³

The complexities of conserving the wilderness raise two fundamental questions: what is wilderness, and what does it mean to conserve this wilderness? The Wilderness Act (1964), written by Howard Zahniser, defines wilderness as lands still “untrampled by man.”⁴ In accordance with the Act’s specification, the 400,000 hectares (or about 1,500 mi. sq.) designated as “wilderness” in the Adirondack Park are open to foot traffic, camping, and fishing, but closed to motor vehicles.⁵ The meaning of conservation, however, is not as easily definable.

Conservation can be defined as “the wise use of natural resources to meet human needs and desires.”⁶ Conservation of a resource, be it land, oil, or animals, “demands the welfare of this generation first, and afterward the generations to follow.”¹⁷ The idea is to maintain the resource so that it benefits the greatest number of people for the greatest amount of time.⁸ Determining the exact benefit reaped at a future time is not an easy task. The concept of conservation grew out of the sense of stewardship felt by wealthy Americans. The two are linked by a definition, “an informed sense of responsibility that helps protect biological diversity by providing both the means and the motive to create and sustain bioregions in the face of economics, politics, and social pressures,” and by tensions within that responsibility.⁹ Whose needs are more important, those of the owners and user of the lands in question or those who would reap other benefits from further or alternative development of those lands; the needs of individual people or those of businesses and the State? These questions were raised by the creation of the Great Sacandaga Lake and, after seventy-five years, have yet to be resolved.

¹ Thomas Pasquarello, “Wilderness and Working Landscapes: The Adirondack Park as a Model Bioregion,” in Stewardship Across Boundaries, Richard L. Knight and Peter B. Landres, eds. (DC: Island Press, 1998), 284.
² Pasquarello, “Wilderness,” 283.
³ Pasquarello, “Wilderness,” 286.
⁴ Pasquarello, “Wilderness,” 284.
⁵ Pasquarello, “Wilderness,” 284.
⁶ Theodore D. Goldfarb, ed, Notable Selections in Environmental Studies (NY: Duskin/McGraw Hill, 2000), 9.
⁷ Gifford Pinchot, excerpt from The Fight for Conservation in Goldfarb, Notable Selections, 10.
⁸ Pinchot, Fight, 11.
⁹ Pasquarello, “Wilderness,” 290.

This is a section of my Environmental Studies thesis, © Susan C. Campriello Kenyon College 2005. Interested? Click here for more.

Click here to listen

TRANSCRIPT:

CAMPRIELLO:
Ford offered a modified natural gas pickup truck in the 1980s. Chrysler, General Motors and Honda were quick to follow, rolling out their own models over the next decade. Natural gas, which burns cleanly and emits less greenhouse gases than regular gasoline and diesel, looked like the fuel of choice. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 encouraged production of the natural gas vehicles, because it required that certain government fleets obtain alternative fuel vehicles. But obtaining the gas was a problem, and now, there is only one vehicle on the market that runs on compressed natural gas, or C-N-G. That’s the Honda Civic GX.

Jean Nonna test-drove a Honda Civic GX for three months in 2006. She immediately noticed a potential problem with the foot-and-a-half-wide gas tank.

AX 1: NONNA (6.3 seconds)
It’s in the trunk which…which limits the volume of the trunk, considerably.

CAMPRIELLO:
Nonna thinks her Civic lacked the pickup of other cars.

AX 2: NONNA (12.8 seconds)
You couldn’t go from one to sixty in five seconds–[laughs]–I don’t know what the…it’s a little slow on the uptake, but I wasn’t getting onto super-highways a lot.

CAMPRIELLO:
Nonna mostly drove her car near her Westchester County home, where we spoke. She filled up at a C-N-G station five miles from her house. She was lucky.

There are roughly twelve hundred public service stations offering C-N-G in the United States. They are heavily concentrated in California and New York. Even those are near urban hubs, like airports and major government or corporate offices, because delivery trucks, buses and other vehicles in a fleet travel short distances and can always refuel at a home base. A C-N-G car can be driven over two hundred miles on a full, eight-gallon tank of gas.

Nonna said because there are so few stations, she could not drive her car everywhere she wanted.

AX 3: NONNA (10 seconds)
I would have loved to take it up to Vermont to visit my mother, but I would have had to stop in Albany to fill up to go over to Vermont and then stop back in Albany to come down.

CAMPRIELLO:
What’s more, not all service stations are accessible to all drivers. Once, Nonna’s husband drove the car to Manhattan. He found that he could not access the C-N-G stations there without a key-card. He barely made it home to the C-N-G station near the house.

The New York State Department of Transportation has a fleet with roughly one-thousand natural gas vehicles, including one-third of its light-duty vehicles. But lately, replacing those vehicles has been difficult.

Joe Darling is the department’s Director of Fleet Administration and Support.

AX 4: DARLING (14.3 seconds)
We’re running into obstacles with the auto manufacturers with producing the autos that we need. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, none of them are currently producing a dedicated natural gas vehicle anymore.

CAMPRIELLO:
The scarcity of C-N-G stations lead to the discontinuation of those maker’s vehicles.

But there is a movement to convert diesel-running trucks to use natural gas. And C-N-G cars are beginning to attract individual drivers again.

Todd Mittleman, of Honda, says that the recent rise of gasoline prices has played a part in the trend; in New York, C-N-G costs around fifty cents less than regular gasoline. C-N-G vehicles are allowed to drive in carpool lanes. That’s attractive, too. And, the Federal Government offers buyers tax incentives for up to four thousand dollars. Without the incentives, the C-N-G Civic costs about seven thousand dollars more than a standard gasoline model. Mittleman says that individuals purchased almost half of the thousand C-N-G- vehicles his company sold in the model year 2007.

Honda and a partner have developed a device that connects a car to a home natural gas supply. So drivers don’t need to access C-N-G stations in order to drive locally.

But, Mittleman says, he hopes the automobile industry and the fuel industry can help each other grow.

AX 6: MITTLEMAN (18.2 seconds)
If theres more natural gas cars out there, if other manufacturers are making them, then there’ll be more call for infrastructure. And if there’s more infrastructure, then hopefully, natural gas cars will become more mainstream.

CAMPRIELLO:
An executive with a company responsible for City C-N-G stations agrees and thinks that public fueling stations will in time become more widespread.

Jean Nonna liked her Civic GX a lot, she said, but did not buy one. If there were more C-N-G stations to accommodate longer trips, her decision would have been different.

I’m Susan Campriello, Columbia Radio News.