NEWSLETTER: September 2005
Dear ECC Member:
Labor day always marked the end of summer. However, it looks like the environmental joke, attributed to a high office, announced our new politically correct term for global warming is summertime, just may need to include fall too.
Getting back from two months away from doing the newsletter is harder than I thought, so please bear with me. There is a lot of news environmentally coming through the mailbox, Internet, newspapers and magazines, but will begin with news and reports on our local scene.
We are proud to announce that our Speaker of the House, Jim Amann, a long time member of the ECC, has appointed two of our ECC members to important posts. Representative Dick Roy has been appointed to a new legislative committee that will seek to work with New Yorkers to protect Long Island Sound and Barbara Bell to be the newest member on the Siting Council for the Power Lines that are destined to come through Milford. Congratulations to you both!
Our new winners of the Freedom Lawn Contest are:
- BEST OVERALL Garden & Lawn: Barbara Scott Mitaly;
- BEST FREEDOM LAWN: Kenneth Nicholson;
- GREAT USE OF SPACE: Jeanne Cervin and Tammy Jorgensen;
- BEST COMMERCIAL/
PUBLIC: Milford Public Works;
- UNIQUE GARDEN DESIGN: Cheryl & John Blake;
- BEST VEGETABLE GARDEN: Barbara Scott Mitaly.
We had a great display of all of the Freedom Lawn contestants at the Oyster Festival and thanks to all those who helped at the ECC Table: Betsey Wright, Judy & Charles Weyant, Dick &Jane Platt, Susan Cossette & partner, Amy & Anna Cecere, Chris Wrinn & David Wiemer, Joyce Acebo and Dick Roy, were able to get many of Milford’s citizens who had yards free of chemicals, to color in their property green on the Freedom Lawn map that we have permanently in place in the Parsons Building. We need all of you to do the same when you visit the Parsons. The front entrance that faces the Duck Pond locates the map. As you know we want to see all of these properties showing green. We would like to be the first organic town in the USA; I believe we are half way there already. Presently the exhibit of the Freedom Lawn participants and winners are on display next to the Freedom Lawn map.
We are pleased to announce that Barbara Jason is taking over the ECC Membership List. Mary Ludwig who put it into place needed some relief from all her duties with the trees –thanks Mary for all your years of service. That means if you know of any new members to be added, errors or omissions or to be deleted, please notify Barbara at 876-9540. She will also be responsible for notifying the six volunteers who are on telephone detail, those who call to remind us about the up and coming events and meeting. Our member list has reached approximately 350 members. We have been recognized as one of the largest ad hoc environmental groups in Connecticut. It well may be time to recognize and take the ECC seriously as an important force for the environment. Please call Barbara to be a volunteer to cover for telephone duty when the regulars need to be away. We are requesting that all members who receive the newsletter, snail or the email, to notify us if you want your name removed. Also we would really appreciate it if those who are on the snail mail list, if you have email capability, that you call to be on the email list to help conserve paper and postage.
We still do not have a decisive figure of how many Milford Citizens have signed up for Clean Energy. However, it is still desirable that you sign on, there can never be too many. Your contribution towards the environment is an investment in the future for your children and your grandchildren. Our future depends on how we act towards preservation and conservation as testified by UCC.
Congratulations go to the UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST. Under the leadership of Rev. Paige Besse-Rankin and the strong support from her 200 members, they will be buying 100% Clean Energy to the tune of $800 dollars per year!!
New application forms will be in your September UI bills. Please notice they have changed the cents to dollars, making it more understandable for figuring what your average additional cost will be for a month. Just remember that when you multiply your kWh, kilowatt hours by the cost it will look like 0.0ll or 0.0115 X kWh (eg.300) and the outcome will be only a few dollars and not in the hundreds.
We will devote part of our September ECC meeting to allow a representative from Community Energy, one of the Clean Energy providers, Mark Garrett to tell us about his company and how your participation will help in the long process of making for a cleaner atmosphere. We would like to use the other half of our meeting to discuss goals and possible agendas and or the formation of new committees thus giving members the opportunity to be more active in environmental work for our city and the state.
Along with considering our numbers, we need to look at the line up of the stars. Meaning that we have many ECC members in high and important positions. Positions for which we are not asking for personal favors, but for recognizing the opportunity for us to effect historic changes in the way we do business in our state, by supporting our representatives and encouraging more environmental friendly legislation that make for a healthier and economically, a more vibrant and progressive state. These issues will include climate change or if preferred, climate uncertainty, protection of our air, water and soils, changing the way we do business, build homes, build cars, how we drive cars, use our fuels, invent new ways and change life styles, etc. There are any numbers of issues for which you may be helpful. So lets take this time to brainstorm and set our priorities. Please be present on September 15th at the Parsons Complex, upstairs in Conf. Rm. C at 7:30.
On Saturday, Oct. 1 will be OPEN HOUSE FOR GREEN BUILDINGS. This is a house tour of over 300 homes, schools businesses, places of worship and clean energy installations will be open- from Maine to Delaware. Go to www.nesea.org to find those available in Connecticut. My house will be part of the tour and all are welcome to visit from 10:00 AM –4:00 PM. at 77 Pelham St. If you go to the website, you may find others that are close by to make out your own tour for that day.
October has been designated as bicycle and safety month. PED, not an acronym, but is the name for the Mayor’s Ad hoc Committee for the advocacy and creation of venues involving bicycle and pedestrian safety, which will include road share programs, advocating for more trails and promotion of alternate vehicular travel. This committee under the leadership of Betsey Wright has been working on a program with activities that will take place on each Sunday in the month of Oct. There will be bicycle and walking tours, along with bicycle safety and maintenance classes. All tours and activities will be at and start from Fowler Field. These programs will be well advertised and hopefully entice all ages, shapes, and levels of condition to participate.
The ECC will be sponsoring 2 or 3 walking tours of Wilcox Park on October the 9th. There are many residents who know nothing about or even the existence of Wilcox Park. Barbara Milton is presently working on a narrative that will help the volunteer who will be acting as a tour guide. We are looking for three volunteers who will come forth to be one these guides to show off what a wonderful resource we have right on our harbor. Please call and represent the ECC as a guide by calling 878-0910.
TID BITS: Congratulations to two other members, Betsey Wright and Ann Carter who are now the proud owners of a Prius. For those interested in visiting farmers markets, go to www.cityseed.org for info on the locations of four different markets in New Haven being held at different times of the week.
Now, of course, the only story, the main important story, is what has happened to the states along the Gulf Coast, as the mayor of New Orleans said, Our Tsunami! Caused by Climate change or not? Man or God? Either way, the damage has been done and people died, too many died. But it does make a difference that we can and must ask the important questions of why and how? Because most of these questions do have answers, and answers we do not want to hear, answers that are painful to hear, answers that will be rebuffed and defensive and laced with fear, guilt and denial. The title of an article from New York Times says a great deal: “After Centuries of “Controlling” Land, Gulf Learns Who’s the Boss”. The arrogance of man and the thinking that man can win over Nature has demonstrated a powerful lesson, lessons we need to look for in our own back and front yards, actually right down the street in Bay View where homes have been built on the shifting sands as in New Orleans, and in the flood plains and marshes along Calf Pen Meadow and around Edgewood and Seabreeze to name just a few vulnerable areas in Milford. Mark A. Mitchell, M.D., MPH, and President of Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice put it this way, “the destruction of new Orleans represents a confluence of many of the most pernicious trends in American politics and culture: poverty, racism, militarism, elitist greed, environmental abuse, public corruption and the decay of democracy at every level.”
We can put the blame on climate change, or not but the unnecessary deaths and suffering are directly related to man’s neglect and not heeding the warnings. Take your pick we need to learn some lessons.
First, when the reports come in and they say evacuate, evacuate the poor and vulnerable first, no questions asked and provide safe and comfortable places, not astrodomes that will be vulnerable to loose electricity and other facilities. What we witnessed was inexcusable incompetence and inhuman disregard and the very vulnerable, the poor and innocent have paid the biggest price -- their lives. And add to this, further insult, reporting that was journalism laced with racism. Dr. Mitchell wrote, “those who chose to stay behind.” “Instantly, the situation has been framed with language to flatter the prejudices of the comfortable and deny the reality of the most vulnerable.”
Our second lesson should be preventive, to prevent further damage to our environment, especially to our marshes, our flood plains and our wetlands. That is what they are there for, lands to absorb the increasing flooding and severe storm impacts. We need to be calculating the future risks from how we change and develop our land and who will be responsible for these impacts and so on and so on.
Ann Berman, Chair of ECC
www.milfordecc.com
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