NEXT PAGE -->
|
February 2, 1999
"Without tougher vehicle controls, 92 million Americans will still live in areas violating the new smog standards in the year 2007, even after current and planned pollution control programs are implemented,"
--EPA Tier II report examining the need for new auto emissions standards, April 1998
CONTENTS:
TAKE ACTION- SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR THE TALLGRASS PRAIRIE PRESERVE!
1. A Victory for the Clean Water, Safe Fish Program!
2. West Antarctic Ice Sheet at point of melting? (!)
3. Protect the Northern Rockies
TAKE ACTION ***
SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR THE TALLGRASS PRAIRIE PRESERVE!
The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve was created in 1996 under a unique public/private partnership between the National Park Service and the National Park Trust. This partnership allows for more land to be protected with no additional cost to taxpayers. The NPT purchased the 10,894 acre remnant of the Tallgrass prairie in 1994 for future management as a unit of the National Park System.
The National Park Service is continuing to work on the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve General Monument Plan. At this stage of the planning process, the team has developed a draft preferred alternative for the future management of the preserve. The plan will describe the general direction the Park Service will follow in managing the preserve. Once completed, the new general management plan will provide both a vision for the future of the preserve and a practical framework for it's management.
Open houses have been scheduled to allow for us to hear about this alternative plan and to share ideas with the planning team. It is important that we the public show our support for the unique management partnership currently in place and the grasslands it has preserved.
The new plan will describe the general direction the Park Service will follow in managing the preserve. We need to make sure that direction is a good one!
Here are the dates, times, and places--if you're in the neighborhood, get out and show your support!
Monday, February 8, 1999 Tuesday, February 9,1999 5:00-7:30 5:00-7:30 Chase County Middle School Council Grove Christian Church 5th& Chase Streets 106 E. Main St. Strong City, Kansas Council Grove, Kansas
Wednesday, February 10,1999 Thursday, February 11, 1999 6:00-8:30 5:00-7:30 Great Plains Nature Center Topeka High School 6232 E. 29th Street North 800 SW 10th Wichita, Kansas Topeka, Kansas
Friday, February 12, 1999 6:00-8:30 Holiday Inn 200 McDonald Dr. Lawrence, Kansas
1. A Victory for the Clean Water, Safe Fish Program!
The Sierra Club Midwest Field office in Wisconsin has been heading up an effort to increase awareness about the dangers of eating fish caught in contaminated waters, particularly in the Great Lakes. Polluted fish are the number one threat for cancer causing chemicals and hormone disrupters to the most families in America. Developing children, both in vitro and of tender age are most at risk.
The campaign is fighting some alarming odds--over 50% of Great Lakes area residents don't know about the pollution and the dangers of eating contaminated fish, and only 2 in 5 women and 1 in 5 minorities are aware of the hazard.
By posting waters around the Great Lakes and in communities where people are most likely to be effected, generating press coverage of the problem and pushing decisionmakers for action, the campaign is getting the word out about this threat to our kids health.
All that hard work generated a victory this week when the EPA and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry announced that they will be sponsoring a nationwide effort to inform health professionals and their patients about the dangers of eating fish harvested from contaminated waters.
Through a letter to 100,000 Pediatricians, OB-GYNs, and Family Physicians across the nation, doctors are asked to advise their patients to pay attention to state or tribal-issued fish consumption advisories. Doctors will also receive outreach brochures, written in English, Spanish, and Hmong, that describe how to safely consume fish and minimize exposure to contaminated fish. Copies of the brochures and information on fish and wildlife advisories are available at EPA's Office of Science and Technology website at https://www.epa.gov/OST/fish
If you are concerned about contaminated fish in your area, the MW-WI Field Office wants to help you get the word out. Call 608-257-4994 For advice and materials to help you get the word out in your community.
2. West Antarctic Ice Sheet at point of melting? From The Press [New Zealand]
Dr. Peter Barrett, and influential polar geologist form Victoria University, Wellington has warned that the vast Western Antarctic Ice Sheet is on the point of melting, which could signal a six-metre rise in sea-levels in less than a century.
Dr. Barrett and other polar scientists said that they had serious fears that the sheet was on the point of going but they could not be absolutely certain yet.
"It will be too late to do anything about it when we know for certain," he told reporters. "We might be at that point now."
Dr Barrett gave his warning to Antarctica's first political meeting, dubbed the "Ministerial on Ice". The meeting, which involved Cabinet ministers and officials from 24 countries went into formal session on January 27.
The figure of a six-metre rise in sea levels if the western ice sheet melts appears to be widely accepted by scientists, although other researchers have said much of the rise might actually be due to thermal expansion of the huge volume of water in the world's oceans, caused by global warming.
Should the entire Antarctic ice sheet melt the oceans would rise a total of 60 metres. However, the bigger Eastern Antarctic Ice Sheet is considered more stable.
3. NREPA?? A wise investment.
Today, Congressman Chris Shays(R-CT) and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced the Northern Rockies Environmental Protection Act. This bill would protect much of the important remaining wild habitat in the states of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and eastern Washington and Oregon. This bill will protect about twenty million acres of public lands, and establishes biological connecting corridors to allow genetic interchange and diversity. The bill also sets up a wildland recovery system to rehabilitate lands that have long been subjected to overcutting and excessive road building.
The Northern Rockies contain unique treasures including the gray wolf, the grizzly bear, woodland caribou and fish such as the salmon and bull trout. Logging, mining, and residential development are progressively fragmenting the last blocks of natural habitat which sustain these animals and fish.
We thank Congressman Shays and Congresswoman Maloney for their continued leadership protecting America's wildplaces. Legislation like NREPA invests in the natural heritage we leave for our children. Please call, phone, or fax your Representative and urge them to cosponsor the Northern Rockies Environmental Protection Act. Thank you!!
"I think trade has divided us, and divided Americans outside this chamber for too long. Somehow we have to find common ground on which business and workers and environmentalists and farmers and government can stand together." Bill Clinton, State of the Union
TAKE ACTION: Support Call for WTO Review
CELEBRATE: Saving Chapman's Forest
SIERRA CLUB AIMS AT SPRAWL
ENVIRONMENTALISTS' SLAM CORPS' EVERGLADES SCHEDULE
TAKE ACTION
KICK OF THE YEAR OF FREE TRADE:
URGE YOUR REP. TO SIGN BERNIE SANDERS' WTO REVIEW LETTER
Beaten twice by labor unions, environmentalists, and family farmers in his bid for Fast Track trade negotiating authority, President Clinton used his State of the Union address to call for a giant free trade group hug. "I think trade has divided us, and divided Americans outside this chamber for too long," opined the President. "Somehow we have to find common ground on which business and workers and environmentalists and farmers and government can stand together."
Too bad the Administration's top free trade officials didn't get the message. In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee last week, Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin, US Trade Rep. Charlene Barshevsky, and Commerce Secretary Bill Daley all but ignored the President's plea for a new, comprehensive approach to trade policy that balances RESPONSIBILITIES to protect the environmental and working people with new transnational corporate RIGHTS.
What with the Summit of the World Trade Organization slated for Seattle this December, the Administration's first string trade team still wants Fast Track negotiating authority no matter what the cost to the environment, public health, and working folks. They want Fast Track in order to rush trade agreements through Congress without amendments and with limited debate.
Rep. Bernie Sanders has a better idea. In a recent letter to his House colleagues, Sanders proposed that we actually REVIEW the environmental and other impacts of the WTO before we launch new negotiations to expand its powers.
Afterall, it was the WTO that ruled against America's protections for endangered sea turtles as a "trade barrier." And it was the WTO that said our clean gasoline program was unfair to importers. Oh, and it is the WTO that would tie the hands of US officials in setting the toughest standards possible against imported tree pests, such as the asian long-horned beetle that munched its way through 14 square miles of a Chicago neighborhood last fall.
TAKE ACTION
Call your Representative today at 202-224-3121. Urge her or him to sign Rep. Bernie Sanders "Letter to Clinton and Barshevsky... demanding an assessment round at the WTO Ministerial in Seattle, Washington."
CELEBRATING CHAPMAN'S FOREST
On Sunday, January 31, a diverse crowd of over 400 people from across metropolitan Washington gathered to celebrate protection of Chapman Forest in Charles County, Maryland for its extraordinary natural and historic resource values. What in 1991 began as a local uphill battle to preserve Chapman Forest in the face of plans to build Chapman's Landing, the biggest new development proposed in the state, became a state and even national campaign against development inappropriately sited on a precious, irreplaceable natural and historical site. The intense controversy helped spark the debate in Maryland that ultimately resulted in adoption of statewide Smart Growth policies.
"We -- all of us -- saved Chapman Forest -- all of it!" said Bonnie Bick, president of Friends of Mount Aventine, the local group that formed the nucleus around which citizen concern mobilized. More than 80 organizations including Maryland B.A.S.S. Federation, Sierra Club, and the Maryland Native Plant Society eventually joined the campaign working for protection of the forest.
Joining the celebration were Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening, 5th District Congressman Steny Hoyer, Charles County Commissioner James Jarboe and other leaders. Glendening's involvement led to state acquisition of the 2,225-acre forest on October 28, 1998 with assistance from The Conservation Fund and the Richard King Mellon Foundation.
Glendening received frequent rounds of long, loud sustained applause. "As we stand on the eve of the 21st century celebrating the preservation of Chapman Forest, we can also celebrate some very basic truths about our environment and what it means to our health and well-being, our economy and our quality of life," Governor Glendening said to the crowd gathered at the Bryan's Road firehouse in Charles County. "Looking around, I see many more environmental heroes, partners who have worked tirelessly at every level to not only preserve this magnificent forest, but also to protect and restore natural treasures across the state. For all that we have achieved, many more environmental challenges lay ahead," the Governor added, urging all to invest in and promote Maryland's "green infrastructure" policies, which are the most significant natural resources restoration and protection programs in the State's history.
SIERRA CLUB AIMS AT SPRAWL
From a story by Mike Rutledge, The Cincinnati Post
The Sierra Club opened a satellite office in Cincinnati this week, pledging to fight urban sprawl in what the organization in September called the fourth-worst city in America for uncontrolled urban sprawl.
'Considering that. . .and that it is the only Ohio city not meeting federal air-pollution health standards, we need to act now to protect our environment, for our families and for our future,' said Glen Brand, who will staff the office at 309 Ludlow Ave. - the group's 35th satellite.
Brand, who recently coordinated the organization's Environmental Voter Education Project in Ohio's 1st District congressional race, will lead its 'Sprawl Costs Us All' campaign. Noting that Hamilton County officials are creating a plan for development of western Hamilton County, and also are wrestling with plans to reduce traffic congestion in the county's eastern corridor, Brand said, 'This is a great opportunity to stop adding to sprawl.'
One creator of sprawl is the allowance of huge superstores amid seas of parking lots, which automatically create large gaps between other places and lessen the likelihood people will walk from one place to another, he said. 'The main problem is the developers are trying to develop in a way that serves their short-term interests instead of the medium- and long-range public interests,' said Brand, a proponent of light rail transportation systems.
Clare Johnson of Green Township, a member of Concerned Citizens of Western Hamilton County, welcomed the Sierra Club's help. 'I don't understand why they have to cast their eyes on our beautiful hills when they could concentrate on (redeveloping) our urban core,' Ms. Johnson said.
ENVIRONMENTALISTS' SLAM CORPS' EVERGLADES SCHEDULE
Excerpted from PALM BEACH POST, JANUARY 31, 1999 By Howie Paul Hartnett and Robert P. King
Are you hoping for a healthier Lake Okeechobee, a cleaner Lake Worth Lagoon, an Everglades where great throngs of wading birds once again soar above the saw grass?
Be prepared to wait.
Even if Congress approves a $7.8 billion Everglades restoration plan next year, scientists say it will take more than a decade before South Florida's threatened marshes, lakes, bays and rivers see any major relief. Two big reservoirs, intended to help restore the Everglades' life-giving pulses of water, wouldn't be finished until 2036.
In contrast, farmers and the region's expanding suburbs would see improvements in their water supply by 2010.
But environmentalists say the Everglades can't wait. They want the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to rewrite its $400 million-a-year work schedule for the project, placing the environmental improvements first.
"Congress isn't going to go for this," said Shannon Estenoz of the World Wildlife Fund after the corps released its schedule last week. "We can't be 10 years and $3 billion down the road and see almost no improvements in the natural system."
Sierra Club activist Rod Tirrell agreed: "This doesn't show any kind of restoration other than a couple token projects in the first decade."
For the Sierra Club, the schedule could be a make-or-break issue for the restoration. The club's Florida representative, Frank Jackalone, said Jan. 23 his group will oppose any plan that doesn't promise any gain for the Everglades during its first decade. The club also wants the corps to submit the plan to an outside group of scientists.
Other groups, including the World Wildlife Fund and the Florida Audubon Society, say they think they can fix the plan without going that far. For one thing, the corps and the state shouldn't arbitrarily limit the project to $400 million a year, Audubon lobbyist Charles Lee said.
The plan's creators, however, say it will take years to give the Everglades what it needs most: a network of reservoirs and storage wells to ease the havoc created by South Florida's federally created drainage network. One big task is buying the land -- enough to cover Manhattan eight times.
"If you're putting a building up, obviously you have to build a foundation first," said corps restoration chief Stu Appelbaum.
Jackalone, preferred a different analogy: "Are we building the outhouse before the main dwelling?" What happens, he asked, if Congress cuts off the money in 2010 -- after the cities have their water but before the Everglades is saved?
NEXT PAGE -->
|