Environmental Justice News and Actions

I'm back in Ohio looking forward to a summer of writing, tweaking my History of Health Care course for the Sarah Lawrence College Health Advocacy Program and clearing vast amounts of undergrowth in my woods (my woods! I hadn't thought about it this way until now) as construction continues on my land.  I will also be tracking EJ developments. 

Potential Fracking Areas in OH (ecowatch.org)

As many of you know, Ohio passed one of the most regressive pieces of environmental legislation in it's recent worst in the country Fracking law, allowing health and safety loopholes, the gas industry will pay very little and, according to EcoWatch.org "Doctors will be prevented from talking openly about the sickness they see in their patients, and the gas industry will keep profits flowing out of our communities."

Marie Gunnoe Contemplates A Mountaintop Removal Site (ohvec.org)

Mountaintop Removal is the topic at the Natural Resources  Committee of the House of Representatives.  OVEC's Marie Gunnoe is testifying before a rather hostile Republican committee.  This is in anticipation of the upcoming End Mountaintop Removal Week in DC.  Be prepared to call your Senators and Representatives on June 6. 

The Kelly Air Base Struggle: Building A Grassroots Movement Against Military Pollution

I have the privilege to attend the Environmental Justice Encuentro in Houston, sponsored by TEJAS Barrios.  The connection between environmental justice and health is abundantly evident.  Hearing from the Southwest Workers Union and their community campaign in San Antonio TX to close Kelly Air Force Base and have the shallow aquifer, poisoned by TCE (tri-chloroethylene) and PCE (a related chemical),  underneath cleaned up.

Purple Cross Campaign

Here's an awful fact: One out of two households in near Kelly have someone who died from cancer.  These victims of the toxic soup in the aquifer ten feet below their homes are commemorated through the Purple Cross Campaign. The whole campaign for closing, cleaning up and addressing the health effects of military pollution has been based on a popular methodology that the organizers from SWU describe as "We Speak For Ourselves".

San Antonio residents believe the aquifer has been accumulating military toxins since the 1950s.  They have been documenting health effects and organizing for change since the early 1990s.

Akron Trees on Earth Day

Buckeye nut

One of the things I love about Akron Ohio is our trees.  The city has always maintained the trees in what we call the devil strip, that patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street.  When I was a child we had Buckeyes, the state tree. Ohio Buckeyes are related to the chestnut and horse chestnut.  The nut is encased in a spiny green fruit.  I remember them bouncing off my head on early fall afternoons, as I walked home from school (ow!).  One could have an artificial limb made of Buckeye, back in the day, or one's casket crafted from its wood.  Now it is used for pulp and feels to be fairly scarce along our city's streets.


Before the Buckeyes were the elm trees.  Majestic, with an expansive canopy, the American Elm tree lined streets throughout this country. Most American Elms died off from Dutch Elm disease.  The disease first appeared in 1930 in Ohio, most mature elm trees were gone by the 1970s.  The dutch elm fungus is spread by a beetle and along roots where trees are close together.  

American Elm

I have the opportunity to plant trees on my land on North Maple St.  I can plant anything I want but buckeyes and elms are part of my heritage (along with sour cherries but that may have more to do with pie...).  They feel like arboreal familiars alive with the essence of this place.   Nurturing an elm tree to maturity would require vigilance and fungicide.  This is the mystery of ecological change.  What was part of my environment at ten may not be viable almost fifty years later.  The Dutch elm fungus is now part of this ecosystem, along with other invasives such as japanese knotweed, purple loosestrife, the Asian long-horned beetle and a relative newcomer,  the blacklegged tick (deer tick). 


I plan to wage a vigorous campaign against knotweed but then I need to listen to this land as it is now.  Nothing remains the same.  Nostalgia will not fix our environments. But a girl does need to have a sour cherry tree or three.

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Today's poem:

Excerpts of Eclogue 1 by Virgil, Paul Alpers, translator

Meliboeus

You, Tityrus, under the spreading, sheltering beech,

Tune woodland musings on a delicate reed:

We flee our country's borders, our sweet fields,

Abandon home; you, lazing in the shade,

Make woods resound with lovely Amaryllis.

Tityrus

O Melibee, a god grants us this peace --

A god to me forever, whose altar

A young lamb from our folds will often bleed.

He has allowed, you see, my herds to wander 

And me to play as I will on shepherd's pipes.

M. 

Not jealous, but amazed am I -- our fields

Are everywhere in turmoil: look at me,

Sick, driving my goats, scarcely leading this one.

Here in thick hazels, laboring on bare rock,

She left the flock's one hope, her twins just born:

A curse well augured, had our wits not been

Blind to the oaks struck down by heaven above ...

M.

Luck old man! your lands will then remain

Yours and enough for you, although bare rock

and slimy marsh reeds overspread the fields.

Strange forage won't invade your heavy ewes,

Nor foul diseases from a neighbor's flocks ...

Ah, but we others leave for thirsty lands --

...

T.

Still, you could take your rest with me tonight,

Couched on green leaves: there will be apples ripe,

soft roasted chestnuts, plenty of pressed cheese,

Already rooftops in the distance smoke,

And lofty hills let fall their lengthening shade.