This American Land

- Just ahead on "This American Land"... - When we look at the coral reef, it is not just a marine resource.

It is our relative.

- In Hawaii, culture and science working together to solve decades-old threats to corals.

- These kids not only like it, but they tell all their friends and their neighbors about it.

- Plants and people blossom at this urban market, sharing farm skills and community spirit in the City of Angels.

So plant yourself for the next half hour.

"This American Land" starts now.

[dynamic music] - Hello, and welcome to "This American Land."

I'm your host, Ed Arnett.

And in every show, you'll meet some of the frontline heroes working alongside their families and neighbors to conserve our natural resources.

In Hawaii, an environmental crisis is bringing communities together.

Hawaii has the vast majority of America's coral reefs, and they're dying off at a rapid rate.

It's not the global marine heat waves and coral bleaching that have been in the news in recent years.

The cause is much closer to home.

Brad Hicks reports.

- Okay, paddles set.

Hooky.

[all shouting rhythmically] Downbeat.

all: Ho.

- Nice and strong.

- When the sun comes up on the island of Hawaii, George Fry... - Feel the glide.

- Hears the call of the water.

- Pressure on your blade.

Pressure.

When you're in a Hawaiian canoe at sunrise on the ocean, it's like a dream.

These are mapulehus.

It's a mango from Molokai.

- But back at his house in the coastal village of Puako... - This is not quite the heaven you think it is.

- The awful problem happening under his feet hits home.

- Where is paradise?

It's starting to go away.

- Water is the thing that unites us.

There are no boundaries.

There's one ocean-- - The problem, which Stuart Coleman is trying to solve, started in the '50s and '60s after Hawaii became a state.

- Development happened so fast that it outpaced infrastructure.

And so cesspools were literally just temporary solutions.

Dig a hole in the ground until we catch up with the infrastructure.

And then they became semipermanent.

And people were like, oh, this works.

And, you know, people don't realize it's just a hole in the ground where all your sewage goes.

- There are more than 80,000 cesspools in Hawaii-- more per capita than any other state.

And scientists now confirm they are killing the coral reefs.

Steven Colbert, a hydrologist at the University of Hawaii, Hilo, provided proof cesspools and the sea are connected.

- We put dye into their drainage system somewhere in their house.

We then are monitoring at the shoreline for when this dye comes out.

- Normally, the nontoxic green dye becomes diluted and invisible.

But on the coast of Hawaii, where freshwater springs flow into the ocean... - All of a sudden, whoa-- - Colbert was blown away.

- Dye is just coming out at the shoreline-- this bright green color, and it just traveled to the shoreline so fast.

This was actually the fastest we ever saw dye reach a shoreline from a cesspool.

- How fast?

- 4 1/2 hours.

[solemn music] - With around 90% of Hawaii's population living near the coast, on lava rock filled with holes and fissures, there is little chance for the cesspool sewage to break down.

It's obvious why that's gross and unhealthy for swimming.

- So this is the coral nursery.

- But to understand how it's killing coral... - This is a really cool species here.

- It helps to know what coral is.

- Coral is actually an animal, but it's an animal that can photosynthesize because it has a symbiotic relationship with a microscopic algae that lives inside of its tissue.

[mellow music] - Through that photosynthesis, those single-celled algae give coral its color and give it energy so it can build those calcium-carbonate skeletons we picture when we think of coral.

But inside that skeleton, there's a little critter-- a lot of little critters, in fact, called polyps.

The colorful colonies they create are a key foundation of the ocean ecosystem.

At least 25% of marine species rely on the reefs at some point in their life.

- We're going out snorkeling and diving.

- In the waters off Puako, where coral coverage has plummeted from 70% to just 7%, Karen Anderson leads a community nonprofit trying to save the coral.

She wants to show us how the reef is being ruined.

She points to coral covered with algae.

It's not the good algae that lives inside the coral.

It's the green, slimy stuff you're used to seeing.

- One of the problems with wastewater is that we bring nitrogen out onto the reef.

And the nitrogen just feeds the algae.

- Eventually the algae, fueled by all that nitrogen, suffocates the polyps.

This is how cesspools are killing the coral reefs.

These stunning comparisons show the same reef years apart.

- For 25 years, scientists had been telling us their findings about the reef.

And they say the same thing every year.

But it's dying, and you're the cause.

- It must hurt to hear that.

- Hurts a lot.

[dramatic music] - In Puako, they call pioneering ecologist Greg Asner their pillar of hope.

[air hisses] Based on technology he developed that revolutionized our mapping and understanding of rainforests, he's now revealing never-before-seen details of what's happening in the rainforests of the sea, the coral reefs.

It starts in the sky, in his plane packed with sensing instruments, where he's able to map dead coral and pinpoint the natural springs that can carry pollution.

- We have a technology on board our plane that can find the freshwater plumes inside this otherwise salty ocean.

And as I zoom in, you'll se the actual groundwater plumes where they're coming out.

- Until he started doing this, finding the exact spots where cesspool effluent could be entering the ocean was a guessing game.

- We're talking about 1,000 of these discharge points just on the west coast of the Big Island.

So nobody knew where they were.

- The next step is figuring out what's in the water.

With the aircraft data, he and his team now know exactly where to go.

- This is a passive sampler that we deploy on the seafloor and use to measure human chemicals, which is what the corals are sensitive to but are really difficult to measure.

- With the Chemcatchers and water samples, they can measure not only nitrogen but also pharmaceuticals from human waste.

Those also damage the reef.

But this isn't just about science.

It's about solving the problem, rebuilding the reefs, and honoring a culture.

Asner's reef-restoration program is called Ako'ako'a.

- It means on one hand in modern times for people to come together with common purpose.

And in Hawaiian mythology, it has the meaning of corals assembling on the seafloor in the beginning of time.

- For Native Hawaiians, coral is more than a critter in a calcium-carbonate skeleton.

It is the genesis of creation.

- The coral polyp is the foundation of life.

It is our oldest ancestor.

So, when we look at the coral reef, it is not just a marine resource.

It is our relative.

- Our family has been here from the beginning of Hawaiians.

- In the Hawaiian village of Honaunau, Jim Medeiros' determination to remove the cesspools and protect the bay is in his blood.

- There's so much responsibility if you're a descendant of this kind of a place.

We call that "kuleana" in Hawaii, where you have a responsibility to the spirit of the place.

- The usual options, sewer and septic, are too expensive in the lava rock.

His vision involves small, low-pressure pipes to push sewage from each house to a containment tank, and then truck it to an existing wastewater-treatment plant.

- We want to be the cleanest, no-leaching bay on this state.

- It's the kind of innovative solution Stuart Coleman's nonprofit is offering communities across the islands.

- There's no pushing back the mandate.

We've already kicked it down the road for decades and decades.

- The state has ordered residents to get rid of all the cesspools by 2050.

But the mandate came with no money and no strategy.

This is where Greg Asner's maps are a game changer.

Knowing where the most contaminated water overlaps with coral is helping prioritize which places to clean up first.

- Convert those now and get them more bang for the buck immediately, instead of waiting 25 years to do the whole thing, which may not happen, 'cause we're talking billions and billions of dollars.

- Our reefs can't wait until 2050.

- In Puako, they echo that urgency.

They're pushing ahead with plans for innovative financing so residents can ultimately cover the cost of an affordable system to send their waste to a treatment plant at a nearby resort.

- That's it.

- George Fry hopes that day will come while he's still on this Earth.

- I would want to dive off the canoe and think, wow, fish, healthy coral.

This is a miracle.

Looking good.

[acoustic guitar music] - The Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC, put millions of young men to work during the Great Depression.

What you may not know is the commitment and ingenuity of all-Black units in the segregated South.

Company 1433 was based in Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp.

Marsha Walton has their story.

- It certainly is both rugged and treacherous, and there are probably many alligators down there.

[dramatic music] - Alligator-filled, remote, sweltering-- Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp in the 1930s.

But for some young Black men from near and far, six months here also brought opportunity from the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Jennifer Berglund is the manager of the Company 1433 Project.

- They would get $30 a month.

And $25 of that they would have to send home to their families.

But they got to keep $5.

It was a job.

I mean, there were very few jobs in this time period.

And that's why the CCC was created-- to give young men an opportunity.

- They were there from '37 to '42 doing, you know, the full gamut and range of work that the CCC was doing-- animal husbandry, forest work, fire-ant control, and of course, digging the Suwannee Canal, which kind of opened that area for tourism and commerce as we know it today.

- This was one of the structures that Company 1433 built.

You can see the original logs.

And I'm sure the windows have been replaced... - Storyteller and filmmaker Berglund learned about the segregated camp from Okefenokee refuge manager Michael Lusk.

- As I was reading through some of the local history, it came up that we not only did have a CCC camp but that it was an all-Black CCC camp.

[mellow music] So, working with Okefenokee Swamp Park, they were able to secure a grant to find out more information on the camp.

- Historian and archivist Jess Neal joined the detective work, visiting the south Georgia site and poring over government records to learn more.

["Reveille" playing] - Every camp would raise the flag in the morning, just like the military.

They would take classes and learn about the environment.

You can't understand how to grow pine trees without learning a little bit about how pine trees grow.

This looks like a machine shop.

They were developing the skills where they learned to use equipment like this.

[boat motor rumbling] - For many, this swamp adventure was their first time away from home.

It wasn't all work.

There were moments to unwind.

- They would cook together.

They would play instruments together, so there was a band.

There were a lot of sport activities-- be it boxing or basketball-- and other camps would compete against each other, even sometimes Black camps competing against white camps.

They would do a lot of drawing and poetry as well.

- One of the amazing things about the story, when looking at some of the pictures, was the smiles on their faces and how they interacted with family and on the jobs and working out here.

- For local resident Reverend Antwon Nixon, there's been immense pride in learning about the work done here nearly a century ago.

- Being a craft person-- I'm an electrician by trade-- I know what it's like to learn firsthand and become skilled in something.

- While some were later able to use their new skills in World War II, others faced discrimination.

- Most of them were not able to translate that over to a career in the military because Jim Crow and because, you know, segregation laws didn't allow them to fully participate.

- I will do no such thing.

- The next step for the 1433 Project will be putting names to faces and publicly honoring the lasting accomplishments of these individuals.

- I see it as my duty as an archivist to kind of bring visibility to the work they were doing and uncover what I can to better support the story.

- We owe these young men a lot.

- We certainly do.

We owe these men a lot.

And without them, we would not have the access we do, and we wouldn't understand how valuable the Okefenokee is as a natural resource without them.

[acoustic guitar music] - We're western Colorado bound now, headed to meet painter and sculptor Stuart Mason, Stuart finds his artistic freedom in the natural world, and it's reflected in every piece of his art.

Collin Herr gets a trial by fire, as he helps build a sculpture out of salvaged metal and wood.

[bright music] - I'm way back in southwest Colorado today.

I'm headed to see Stuart Mason.

He's a painter and a sculptor.

He's actually based in Charlotte, but he comes way out here into the Rockies to find his inspiration, to clear his mind, and to essentially keep his hands busy.

And so we're gonna see what he's up to today, maybe help him out a bit-- should be fun.

- Everything about here is peace.

And when the world is too loud, and whether I've got a writer's block, a creative block or just too many stresses, this is where I'll go.

I'll reset here, refind my inspiration, and start rebuilding.

There was a period of time where I just traveled Colorado in an RV.

I had my welding equipment, my woodworking equipment, all of my pneumatic equipment.

I could go chisel stone.

- It was all loaded in the RV.

- In the RV.

I had just gone through a motorcycle accident.

I split my leg, broke my neck, and shattered my hand.

I had to relearn how to make art, relearn how to walk.

I just needed to be somewhere so quiet and so remote.

So I took an artist residency to heal and to just be alone.

I'm thinking that we'll have some more material that we can sift through here and maybe pick something out.

- Oh, yeah?

- Being able to see the unique components of that material, that is what makes, really, sourcing materials so special, 'cause I want that storyline to transpire through the entire piece.

Colorado's famous for mining, and I've got a whole bunch of mining equipment.

All of this will go into a figure that is gonna be a hiker or a miner.

- I'm ready to get busy.

- All righty.

- Help out a little bit.

- Well, I got some gloves for you.

- Game time.

- We got some Miner Man to build.

Anytime I'm building, I really take the influence of the surroundings.

You're surrounded by red rocks and juniper and evergreen and aspens and sagebrush and cacti.

It's this diversity between the alpine and the desert.

So you really get this cool dynamic between old and new.

- You holler at me if my back catches on fire or anything, right?

- Will do.

Sculpture is so much hard work.

You're sweating.

You're bleeding.

You're drop-dead and fatigued.

But that hard work-- it validates me.

- Being here in Colorado versus Charlotte?

- I would never be making a Miner Man in Charlotte.

It's like eating food--you're taking in different nutrients.

- Yeah.

How would you describe being in this shop working, like, being hands-on?

- Creativity is my freedom.

It's my ground to play.

- Okay.

- So this place brings that out.

- I love it.

- Coming back home, I feel welcoming to my community.

I feel comfortable in my seat.

Peace is there.

I don't need anything other than what I'm about to do.

Bellissimo.

- This guy's stout.

- He's a solid 500 pounds at this point.

- [chuckles] Don't call me to help move it.

- [laughs] - Whatever day that is, I'm busy.

- Yeah.

He's on his search for glory.

- That's amazing.

I definitely didn't think I'd be coming out here and finishing a whole statue with you.

- Well, Collin, thanks for coming out.

- Yeah, man.

Of course.

Thanks for letting me be part of it.

This is a special place, no doubt.

[acoustic guitar music] - Farming may not be an activity that you think about in Los Angeles, but wait till you see its impact in this report from our partners at Planet Forward.

It's a project from George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, helping guide the next generation of environmental journalists.

Let's take you to the San Fernando Valley, where crops and innovation are flourishing.

- I started in education as a high-school teacher.

And, really, it's come back to that, you know?

And in the beginning, I thought, okay, urban farming-- I need to sell vegetables at a market or to a chef, and that's what's gonna make it.

So I think, that dream-- totally unsuccessful.

[scoffs] You know, I'm not doing that.

But I think it's shifting this other way-- and you can hear laughter behind me probably, As a community organism, we're a collective of different nonprofits and for-profit entities working in and around horticulture and agriculture as a community-organizing tool.

What you'll see here today has very little to do with my direct input.

And that, to me, is something that's sustaining and living on its own.

[light music] Running a place like this, you got to juggle a lot of things at one time.

Sorry, that's so cheesy, but I had to.

It's just really allowing a lot of different people to come into this space, right?

And so I think I've let go a lot of the management and... curation of the space to the people that are showing up here.

The role that I've fallen into for myself is a little bit of maintenance guy and just fixing and creating infrastructure to facilitate people being here.

And the idea is that it can be a model to sort of demonstrate to the city that there's a pathway and a desire for this stuff and there's a way for them to use the tens of thousands of underutilized or vacant acres that they have and really give it back to the community to grow and sustain their own health and well-being.

- I think Elliott's able to make a lot of impact because he's extremely generous with his knowledge, understanding, and with the opportunities that he's had.

This space became available, and he was no longer cultivating it.

And he offered it to us at a very affordable rate that allows us to expand our programming and have sustainability.

And that's very hard for urban farmers here in L.A.

In Van Nuys, there's a lot of immigrant families and a lot of poverty.

There are lots of families that are low-income, lots of people of color.

So, yeah, I started Black Thumb Farm as a way to be more involved in my community, to give back to my community, because I was kind of tired of seeing this food movement happening with so many people of privilege and really leaving out, like, an entire chunk of our community.

The schools around here do not have a lot of green space, and they haven't developed a lot of green space.

It's hot, and it's brown, and it's gray.

And there's no green space for them, which makes sense why they love Black Thumb Farm so much.

These kids not only like it, but they tell all their friends and their neighbors about it.

And then they bring a bunch of their people from their schools here.

Like, that's been a sure sign of success to me that this program is working and we're giving them something, because they're not only coming back.

They're bringing others with them.

I think sharing a common value structure makes it all work.

It's like, everyone who's a part of whatever's happening here at Cottonwood really, like, believes in community, believes in advocacy, believes in sustainability, and believes in community support.

And so, even as we function, like, autonomously, there's, like, a underlying value system that everyone shares.

And so we're able to, like, work collaboratively very easily.

[acoustic guitar music] - A healthy ecosystem relies on a lot of elements working together.

A major water provider in the thirsty Phoenix area is tackling some long-term supply challenges.

Forests and wildfires now have a big impact on their decisions.

Brad Hicks makes the connections.

- These are ponderosa pine.

- Ben Aragon orchestrates logging... - First, we cut the trees.

- Like a symphony in the forest.

- And then we skid them, strip them, and haul them to the wood yard.

- His crew has been sent into these Arizona woods by SRP.

- We're the largest water provider in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

The source of the water actually comes from two major river systems in Arizona.

- And in the upper reaches of those rivers, the utility is on a quest to clear the ponderosas to protect the water.

- All these small trees that are packed in incredibly dense are creating fuel for catastrophic wildfires.

- Thinning will reduce the flammable fuel so fires regenerate instead of ravage the landscape.

- When you have that high-severity wildfire, you're impacting the soils, where you're searing them so much that the water from rain and snow can't absorb.

- And the ash ends up in reservoirs, which reduces how much water they can hold.

- Those are our long-term water-store supplies.

They are the lifeblood of the Phoenix metropolitan area.

- And there may be another benefit more hidden.

- Forest thinning helps us reduce wildfire.

And we're trying to get-- does it also benefit the water supply?

- Trees take up a lot of water.

So, when a tree is removed, rain and snow melt may soak into the soil instead.

Or since the area is no longer shaded, it may just evaporate under the sun.

- How does the removal of a tree impact where the water ends up?

The hydrological model will tell us, this amount of water did not leave through the tree.

It stayed in the soil.

And eventually it becomes the water supply for a downstream city.

- SRP is the only utility in America with a long-term forest plan like this.

They'll thin more than 1,000 square miles-- music to Ben Aragon's ears.

- I know it's doing good for the environment.

[acoustic guitar music] - Now a look at some stories coming up in our next show.

- Beavers are nature's most clever engineers.

Fans of these busy builders have some new ways to improve their neighborhoods.

- We consider them fully restored to the state.

- These bears are back, and they're thriving.

- That's our show for today, and we'll see you next time.

And be sure to check out our website at environmentnewstrust.com.

And you can always watch us on PBS Passport.