NEWSLETTER: September 2007
It seemed ’07 was the fastest traveling summer on record. Slow coming, then an early fall, summer’s back, fall arrives and summer again. Not complaining, but cross fingers, we have so far, escaped the terrible extremes of other states and countries with their fires, floods, droughts and hurricanes, but for how long?
Many thanks to all the volunteers for their great support and good work at the Oyster Festival!! Thanks to Diane Vasseur, along with Mark Garrett, who arranged our materials and table display. As usual, it was a difficult task to get people’s attention in the mad rush of humanity that is present for fun and not to be confronted with issues like pesticides, energy and global warming. And, thanks to Jeanne Cervin for getting our Freedom Lawn Exhibit ready in time for the Festival. I was not present, but vacationing in Nova Scotia, learning with my nephew, the hard way, how to build a small cabin in the woods by the sea; learning how it is to live with a very low water supply, and how to bathe with a quart of water and appreciating the abundance of rain water from the rain barrel. The skies opened up quite often and filled them to capacity more than once.
The winners of the Freedom Lawn Contest are: Best Lawn: John Altieri; Best Flower Garden: Tina Kosh; Best Vegetable Garden: The Carters and the Most Creative Veggie Garden: Karen Myers.
Our ECC meeting on the 20th will be featuring a speaker, Ira Kettle, who is the State Inspector for Bee Hives or as they are called Apiaries. He said he just returned from a weeklong seminar, sponsored by the Eastern Apicacultural Society (EAS) at the University of Delaware. He will be giving us the run down with the latest info about the bees’ conditions and what the future holds for the bees and us. Ralph Harrison, our ECC member and Bee Keeper, will also join us with his beekeeping experiences.
Ralph forwarded me an email to connect with an article that has recently appeared in Fortune Magazine giving a history of the events leading up to and about the honeybees Colony Collapse Disorder, CCD. http://tinyurl.com/27mm3m.
Here is a short list of what we could be losing without the honeybees: “almonds (one of the largest users of honeybees) blueberries, melons, cranberries, peaches, pumpkins, onions, squash, cucumbers and scores of other fruits and vegetables would become as pricey as sumptuous old wine. Honeybees also pollinate alfalfa used to feed livestock, so meat and milk would get dearer as well. Ditto for farmed catfish, which are fed alfalfa too.”
“U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns warns that “if left unchecked, CCD has the potential to cause a $15 billion direct loss of crop production and $75 billion in indirect losses.”
The day before our ECC meeting, the 19th, is a Celebration, “School Bus Victory Celebration” to which you all are invited to attend. It is being held at Milford City Hall at 7:30. The Keynote speaker is Representative Richard Roy, Co-Chair of the Environmental Committee. Please RSVP to Joyce Acebo-Raguskus, Chair of Diesel Clean-up Committee: 874-3437 or soulprints@net.zero.com. We are also welcoming any contributions of finger foods and or drinks/juices/liquid/teas, etc.
This is an opportunity to acknowledge and thank all those who worked so hard to get his bill to retrofit old school buses passed… beginning with Mayor Richetelli and the Board of Aldermen, who
passed a resolution in support of cleaning up Diesel Pollution. And, of course, Joyce Acebo-Raguskus, Chair and prime mover for the ECC's Diesel Cleanup Committee, for producing the film on cleaning up school buses and organizing a Children’s Art Exhibit at the Capitol; Sarah Uhl from Clean Water Action and last but not at all least, Representative Richard Roy who supported its passage through the legislative process and for whom we can also thank for many of the other bills he helped get passed, especially the Pesticide Bill for schools K through 8th grade.
Saturday, September 15 between 10:00 and 12:00, has been designated as a worldwide event--International Coastal Cleanup: Please volunteer to help pick up trash and record data about what you find by calling your Beach Captains, Kierran Broatch for Milford Point/Audubon area 787-0646 Ext. 117, or e-mail kbroatch@cfenv.org, and Anne O’Dell (Walnut Beach) 723-2681, or e-mail ajodell@sbcglobal.net
Last September, 957 volunteers collected over 7,000 pounds of trash, cleaning up 55 miles of Connecticut shoreline. Data recorded by cleanup volunteers is given to The Ocean Conservancy, who compiles and studies it to learn more about the global debris problem, educate the public and find solutions to stopping marine debris at its source. For more information about the International Coastal Cleanup, or to coordinate your own cleanup with Save the Sound, please contact Emily Schaller at (203) 787-0646 Ext. 113, or e-mail eschaller@savethesound.org.
Wendy Werthmann, a member of ECC’s Recycling Committee, participated in the seventh annual Kayak for a Cause this past July 28th. Wendy, along with 300 paddlers, kayaked 13 miles across Long Island Sound from Norwalk’s Calf Pasture Beach to Crab Meadow in Huntington, Long Island. This year’s event raised nearly $600,000 for five local charitable organizations including Outward Bound and Save the Sound. Each paddler trained with a team of kayakers for several months prior to the event. On one trip to Norwalk’s Fish Island, as a team building exercise, they picked up plastics and other trash to beautify the beach and to prevent fish, birds and other wildlife from eating the plastics or getting tangled up in them. Environmentally conscious paddlers should check http://www.kayakforacause.com/ to sign up for next year’s adventure.
This summer Will Cooper helped, through a grant, to launch one of our newly formed committees. He devised a questionnaire and interviewed many of the environmental groups in Milford, and compiled this information into a very fine written report. The report is available for anyone to read, if interested, by emailing me at annhberman@sbcglobal.net.
The committee met beforehand to set its goals and agenda. The Committee’s main purpose is to create a Coalition of Milford’s environmental organizations to promote better communications, to share mutual support, if possible, on any given project for the betterment of our community. It is Plan A. Plan B is to be made up of all other types of organizations to be included on a list to receive environmental information that may affect Milford, directly or indirectly. It will be a database of emails of their contact persons, for them to distribute pertinent information to their members, at their discretion. We will be making calls to introduce this idea, with the hope that they will see the importance of being in the loop of what is happening environmentally in their own backyards.
Why this gathering of information? Because, it seems, people are too busy to even read our local newspapers, but if notified by personal emails about an event or concern that may affect them, the response can be much more immediate. We also see it as a conduit for making a closer, friendlier and better-informed community. The City’s slogan is a “Small City with a Big Heart”- a community that cares, but first, the heart must be informed, then pumped into action. An informed community makes for a better functioning and happier place to live. Such a community that shares concerns will have a better survival rate when faced with severe global warming issues that affects our weather conditions, food and low oil supplies. It may come to sharing energy supplies for light and heat and local food production. Many of these ideas are explored in DEEP ECONOMY, by Bill McKibben.
Below is the summary of Will’s report. He had one month in which to conduct his interviews, which was not enough time to complete his list. Hopefully, that will be completed in the very near future. (We need help to complete this task and to make calls for Plan B. Please call 878-0910.)
“One major obstacle to Milford’s environmental improvement is a lack of funding for environmental projects. Home Depot and Lowe’s have been somewhat supportive but could probably do more. The Foran Energy Club is currently partnering with Wal-Mart. It also has been recommended that we apply for more grants from the Long Island Sound Foundation and Captainplanet.org, two groups that give grants to small projects like those undertaken in Milford. Other donors include the Iroquois Pipeline Land Enhancement and Acquisition Fund, and Forestry companies that utilize a piece of public land to both enhance it, creating a model project, as well as profit from it. As for the best way to receive city grants, refer to the interviews with Marcia Winters and Tom Ivers for suggestions on how to go about it. They mention that forming partnerships or umbrella groups increases the chances of funding, and that doing the environmental work in low-income neighborhoods would also increase its priority. Also, keep in mind, we are home to Subway and Schick and they could always use a public relations boost with a big sign thanking them for their help in restoring a park or making a beach more handicap accessible. A relatively new group, the Milford Environmental Protection Initiative (MEPI), has been formed to give small grants to environmental projects that benefit the community.
It is important to get more young people concerned and involved. Platt Tech, Foran High School, the Alternative Ed. School and Lauralton Hall all have active environmental programs and could use the partnership of environmental groups either in the form of informational sessions or as stewards for the their projects in the field (which in some cases have already been started).
Although we have made some progress in improving and preserving our city, there still is more that can be done. You are the leaders, and with some additional funding and increased interaction, as well as a marketing program to obtain new volunteers and increase participation, a lot will be accomplished.
There has been much about our carbon footprint on this earth. The summer months are the best time for the reduction of carbon with all the foliage, grasses acting like carbon sinks. I was reminded after reading Frances Beinecke’s editorial (President of NRDC) about all the carbon that has been absorbed by the oceans. Heretofore, scientists thought this was a good thing, however they are finding that there is indeed, a limit of what the oceans can absorb without suffering ill effects. There is a turning point, when there is too much carbon; the ph is lowered making the waters acidic, thus endangering oysters, clams, crabs, starfish and all the other marine species that make shells and coral reefs. The good news is, that there are parts of the oceans where the ph has been lowered, and temperatures have risen and coral reefs and fishing is surviving. This means that a healthy ocean has the means of surviving higher carbon and higher temperatures. However, we must still be vigilant about lowering our carbon emissions.
To get a true sense of what we must do as a society, I would suggest reading the book DEEP ECONOMY by Bill McKibben. It is very easy to read. It is not deep economic theories, with graphs, tables and charts, but filled with common sense ideas of what me must and can do to survive our voracious consumption of our natural resources. Unfortunately, the whole world wants to be an America. However, McKibben reminds us “the planet is already buckling under the weight of one America”. “Each of us uses 6 times as much energy as the average Mexican, 38 times as much as the average Indian and 531 times as much as the man in the Ethiopian street.” “The western economic model,” the eco-statistician Lester Brown says simply, “the fossil-fuel based, auto-centered throwaway economy is not going to work for China. And if it does not work for China, it will not work for India, which has an economy growing at 7 percent a year and a population projected to surpass China’s in 2030. Nor will it work for the other three billion people in the developing world who are also dreaming the American dream.” An example of our increased consumption; we own 50 times more stuff than we did 50 years ago. I believe you could include children in that figure too.
I recommend “Eleventh Hour”, DiCaprio’s film on Global Warming. For more information see 11thhouraction.com. It is a documentary with interviews with Ecologists, scientists, writers, reporters, religious leaders, environmentalists, politicians, etc., all telling us what has to happen to change the course that we are dangerously riding. They bring home so poignantly how our bodies are so much a part of what nature is made up of, that the greatest percentage is non-human particles, like bacteria and yeast for example. What we have done is deny our connectedness, our body/nature relationships, and our closest relative. They clearly put the onus on corporations like Exxon and government’s connection to their money and interests as preventing a clear and honest direction to lead our country in another direction towards solving global warming. We, as a people and a state, are bypassing the Federal Government and putting in motion legislation to prepare for a future without oil. They describe how we must do business another way, reverse the theories on economics, for instance. Nature, if protected in an intelligent way, would clean up our polluting mess for nothing. The value in dollars, if we don’t do the job, could cost us in the trillions. Protecting nature surely is the best investment that man can make. Nature shows us a much better return for our investments and at no cost -- only preserving it. So much was said, one must see it many times to absorb it all.
By the way, a movement is on from San Francisco to Milford. People are getting together in their neighborhoods, comparing their trash-- bragging and competing for whom has the least. The movie said we destroy twice as much as we produce. More on this subject next month.
Ann Berman
Milford ECC
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