Northeast-Midwest Institute

Great Lakes environmental agencies want to build the capacity to understand microbe threats and develop responses and mitigation plans in advance of crises such as large fish kills. We developed a collaborative plan for monitoring microbes across the Great Lakes of North America to meet practical needs with the latest science and testing technology. The goal was to build understanding of harmful microbes and be rapid, relevant, and robust in addressing threats. The program was oriented for adaptability to changing threats and will target areas of human activity, especially shipping ports and invasion hotspots. Sampling will be aimed at fish and water with application of molecular testing procedures that will allow rapid, efficient, and very sensitive detection of microbes. Compared to other programs with similar aims, our agenda is broader in scope, focuses on building knowledge, uses a representative sampling design, and will provide findings for proactive management and response planning. The reliance on molecular testing procedures, sample archiving, and rapid and broadly distributed results distinguishes our approach from the other similar programs. Fitting microbe monitoring into the Great Lakes environmental management agenda is expected to add an important new dimension to ecosystem monitoring and yield new knowledge of importance for management.

Abstract Consumers interact with each other and vendors on a social level at farmers' markets. Some consumer social interactions, such as enjoying the market, talking with farmers about seasonal products and making a trip to the market a family event, are significant and positive influences on spending at farmers' markets as identified through a survey of 216 shoppers at eight farmers' markets in Maine. Vendors at these markets were also surveyed, with 65 of the 81 vendors being farmers. Through direct farmer/consumer relations, farmers indicated a willingness to reduce chemical inputs to meet customer demands, suggesting that customer interaction has the potential to affect environmental quality. By examining the linkages between producers and consumers at a direct market—often embedded with a sense of local identity—there is the potential to better understand social interactions that can support the economic and environmental sustainability of local agriculture.

In this paper we analyze the potential for CHP in US manufacturing. We use typical efficiencies of today's available CHP technologies to estimate the technical potential for the frozen technology case. We find that if manufacturers in 1994 had self-generated all their steam and electric needs with existing cost-effective CHP technologies, they could have reduced carbon equivalent (=12/44 carbon dioxide) emissions by up to 30 million metric tons of carbon (MtC) or nearly 20 percent, and energy use by nearly an Exajoule (EJ). With growth in manufacturing and expected improvements in CHP technologies, this technical potential could be much larger. However, without environmental regulatory reform and innovation-oriented utility restructuring policies, actual CHP installed by US manufacturers could fall far short.

A description is given of a wave of proposals from the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which are expected to add momentum to the ongoing deregulation of the electric utility industry. The regulations are intended to address some of the difficulties posed by the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA). The developments in the electric utilities industry since PURPA, the anticipated impacts of the new regulations, and the industry's reactions are examined.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>