Greenhouse

Never mind the Arctic air that has teeth chattering from Maine to Florida. Chloe Pitard's red camellias are blooming. The limbs of her orange tree hang low under the weight of three ripe fruits. And the finger-high cyclamen seedlings she rescued from her yard are poking out of the potting soil on delicate stems. "I'll nurse them along and give them to the church fair," said Pitard, of Newtown Square. Everything, in fact, seems to be thriving inside her greenhouse, a 12-by- 15-foot enclave where blooms are coaxed from the dead of winter.

Stream research can be problematic. No sooner does a researcher set up probes in a waterway than a flood comes along and washes them away, along with the substance being studied. The Stroud Water Research Center, recognized as the premier waterway research facility in the nation, has brought the field work inside. A creek now runs through a new $600,000 greenhouse research facility - dubbed a streamhouse. Center director Bernard Sweeney and environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. christened it yesterday not with the traditional champagne, but with a dousing of water from the White Clay Creek.

In making a documentary to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson's "Bad," director Spike Lee says combing through footage was like opening a "treasure chest of findings. " "We have footage in this documentary that no one's ever seen, stuff that Michael shot himself, behind-the-scenes stuff," he said in an interview with the Associated Press. "We had complete access to the vaults of Michael Jackson. ... He wrote 60 demos for the ‘Bad' record. Only 11 made it. So we got to hear a lot of that stuff, too, so it was just a great experience.

The region's biotechnology community is confronting a delightful problem: How to spend the $30 million of tobacco-settlement money that Gov. Ridge earmarked in his proposed budget yesterday for an eastern Pennsylvania "life sciences greenhouse. " Never mind that the problem could become a Gordian knot, given that - at a minimum - four major research universities, about a hundred pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, two major business groups, and two prominent economic-development organizations will want a say in how to spend the money.

When agriculturist Dave Specca thinks about the industry's future in Burlington County, the first thing that pops into his head is gas. Not just any gas, mind you, but methane gas, the kind that is burning at a rate of 2,000 cubic feet per minute at the county landfill in Mansfield and that could help produce plump, juicy Jersey tomatoes. The methane, generated by disintegrating trash, is a wasted resource, but not for long, said Specca, an agricultural specialist at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

Horticulture teacher Doug McCarty has supervised a decade of high school flower and shrub sales. He spent part of the money on occasional pizza parties for his students at Camden County Technical Schools. That still left $32,282 in the student activities fund - but no place to put it. When one of the school's old greenhouses collapsed under last winter's snow, McCarty found his project. A brand new, state-of-the-art greenhouse would not only give his students a place to learn modern plant technology, he figured, but it also would allow them to watch the structure itself grow.

A consortium of university and business groups will ask the state today for $45 million - nearly half of the allotment statewide - to create a biotechnology "greenhouse" in Southeastern Pennsylvania. The idea for a regional "greenhouse" originated with then-Gov. Tom Ridge earlier this year to speed biotech research from the laboratory to commercial use. In June, the legislature allocated $100 million to create three "life-science greenhouses" in the state. The financing for the greenhouses will come from Pennsylvania's $11.3 billion share of the settlement with the nation's tobacco companies.

The president of Hillside Cemetery Co. has told officials of the state Department of Environmental Resources (DER) that the company has located about 10 tons of petroleum-contaminated soil that were excavated after an underground storage tank near the greenhouse leaked in 1991. "We found our dirt," said the president, John W. Heyman. The pile is wrapped in a tarp next to the greenhouse, and has been there since the tank was removed, Heyman said. Residents near the cemetery, part of which is slated for residential development, have expressed concern about soil contamination since tests over the summer indicated an unexpectedly high level of petroleum-related fuel in a different section of the property.

Eve Thyrum thought it might be nice to live in a house made completely of glass. Not only would she be able to have plants growing indoors no matter the season, but the transparent walls would let her feel like she was outdoors all the time. And Thyrum loves to be outside. She heads out the minute she gets up in the morning, if the weather obliges, and in summer eats inside only when she absolutely must. But a totally glass house? It didn't seem feasible at the time. Now, the idea doesn't seem so far-fetched.

Charlie Andersen was noodling around with the idea of growing corn on his family's farm in Charlestown Township and converting it to fuel. He figured the fuel could be used for heating a greenhouse-type structure called a hoophouse. Or for running the tractor. But there was a major problem. The fuel tends to be hard on engine seals, especially on newer tractor models. And then he heard about a furnace that burned corn kernels, completely eliminating the conversion process.