CT Green Scene

Wipe Out?

by Eileen Weber
 
Yesterday, The Huffington Post had an entry that caught my eye. It focused on the death of tens of thousands of bats this year due to a mysterious fungus. Called “white-nose syndrome”, the disease is wiping them out.
 
Why should we care? Because bats eat the insects that are harmful to us and our crops. Without them, there would be a massive overpopulation of insects.
 
Earlier this year, the same story was reported on National Public Radio. So why is it that no one seems to be paying attention? Is it just because bats aren’t fuzzy and cute? If this were a blight wiping out all domestic kittens, would we be more concerned? There has been little funding for the cause yet it could have catastrophic results if left unattended.

Race For Space

by Eileen Weber

There are some people who give a lot of thought to the open space available in Connecticut. One of those people is Karl J. Wagener, Executive Director of the Connecticut Council of Environmental Quality, an organization that objectively monitors the state’s environmental progress.

Last night at the Pequot Library in Southport, Wagener lectured that Connecticut may be doing a lot of things right when it comes to the environment. But when it comes to land conservation, we still have a long way to go.

“Land is one of those things that Connecticut can’t seem to do right,” said Wagener. “A lot of land conservation is unaccounted for. We don’t really know how much we’ve got.”

Wagener says the biggest problems center around a lack of money to fund the inventory of available land, a good strategy for better land conservation, and looking at the land acquisition as a unified whole rather than as a compilation of separate, individual acquisitions.

While the state does have a Green Plan to reach a land preservation goal by 2023, Wagener says it’s hard to get people excited about something that has no plan of attack and no way to pay for it.

Making a Difference

Congratulations to this team of volunteers who participated in International Coastal Clean Up Day and CFE Save the Sound on Saturday, September 19th 2009 on Goose Island.

Appearing from left to right: Hanne Flaherty, Kevin Flaherty, Mark Watkins, Curtis Watkins, Luke Watkins and Caroline Politi.

Giant garbage patch in Pacific Ocean's possible effect on marine life worries researchers

When more garbage dumps are being filled to capacity with enough plastic to sink a ship, it's disheartening to read about it in the oceans as well. And, with landfill issues in Connecticut as recent as the one in Franklin, where we put our debris is a growing problem. See the post below originally from the Associated Press.

MICHELLE RINDELS
Associated Press Writer
August 27, 2009

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A tawny stuffed puppy bobs in cold sea water, his four stiff legs tangled in the green net of some nameless fisherman.

It's one of the bigger pieces of trash in a sprawling mass of garbage-littered water, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where most of the plastic looks like snowy confetti against the deep blue of the north Pacific Ocean.

Most of the trash has broken into bite-sized plastic bits, and scientists want to know whether it's sickening or killing the small fish, plankton and birds that ingest it.

During their August fact-finding expedition, a group of University of California scientists found much more debris than they expected. The team announced their observations at a San Diego press conference Thursday.

"It's pretty shocking — it's unusual to find exactly what you're looking for," said Miriam Goldstein, who led fellow researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego on the three-week voyage.

While scientists have documented trash's harmful effects for coastal marine life, there's little research on garbage patches, which were first explored extensively by self-trained ocean researcher Charles Moore just a decade ago. There's also scant research on the marine life at the bottom of the food chain that inhabit the patch.

Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security

August 9, 2009
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON — The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.

Fish Food

by Eileen Weber

The next time you fire up the grill for some Cajun catfish, consider where that fish came from. Is it really safe?

Much of the seafood we eat comes directly from fish farms, also known as aquaculture. More specifically, the majority of those fish farms are in China and some in Vietnam. With shrimp, eel, catfish, basa, and dace among them, the Chinese alone farm more than 50 million tons of fish. Compare that to about 5 million tons produced in the U.S., a mere fraction of the Chinese market.

According to some statistics listed on the Food & Water Watch web site, Americans eat more than 16 pounds of seafood per person per year. That’s almost 30 percent more seafood than 25 years ago. The amount we consume is about two billion pounds, which is the weight of approximately 270,000 Hummer SUVs.

Part of the problem with the Asian fish farms is that many of them are contaminated by sewage, agricultural runoff, and industrial chemicals dumped into the waterways. They keep the fish in near-shore pens, nets, and enclosures that become breeding grounds for disease. To counteract this, Asian fish farmers turn to illegal veterinary drugs to ward off bacteria and parasitic infections. When that seafood is contaminated with illegal veterinary drugs and other environmental contaminants, what’s on our plates doesn’t seem all that appetizing after all.

The drug residue on Chinese farmed fish was the reason for a block on imports in 2007. According to a New York Times article dated December 28, 2007, the drugs are effective in fighting disease and increasing the survival rates of the fish, which directly affects their profitability.

“The dirtier the water and the more pollution there is, the more drugs are used, there’s no question about that,” said Lai Zini as quoted in the article. Zini is a researcher at the Pearl River Fisheries Research Institute in southern Guangdong Province

Natural Pesticides that Work

EarthTalkTM
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: What green-friendly lawn and garden pesticides are available today? I’m particularly interested in options that won’t harm my cats.     -- Nancy Blanchard, via e-mail

Pesticides have greatly boosted agricultural yields over the last half century, so it is no wonder, given the commercial availability of many of these synthetic chemicals, that American homeowners apply 100 million pounds of the stuff each year to make their own gardens grow bigger and faster, too.

But the downside of using such chemicals is that they can poison people and pets as well as backyard wildlife: “Common insecticide ingredients such as 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), atrazine and dicamba have been shown to harm mouse embryos at times equivalent to the first week after conception in humans,” says Erica Glasener of The Green Guide. Due to such revelations, home gardeners are fast discovering the benefits of avoiding chemicals in favor of natural, less toxic alternatives.

But before thinking about applying pesticides, gardeners can design (or re-design) their gardens to make the most of native plants that have evolved over eons to thrive in local conditions without synthetic aid or lots of water. Choosing native plants appropriate to your elevation, soil type, drainage and sun exposure will naturally repel many common pests and also reduce the propagation of invasive exotic species.

Similarly, embedding your plants in healthy soil replete with beneficial insects and worms can also help reduce the need for pesticides. Laura Moran of Mainstreet.com suggests that home gardeners compost their vegetable food waste—which is chock full of nutrients that plants love—and mix it into existing soil to give the garden a healthy boost. “Aside from stimulating healthy root development,” she writes, “the addition of rich compost also improves soil texture, aeration and water retention.” It also provides a nice home, she says, for the beneficial bugs that are destroyed along with the bad ones by chemical pesticides.

If pesticides are necessary, there are a handful of organic varieties available. Bacillus thuringiensis (“Bt”) is a naturally occurring bacterium that is lethal to most leaf-eating caterpillars on trees, shrubs, flowers and vegetables. According to gardening writer Jeff Ball, it is harmless to all other insects, animals and humans. It comes in a powder form for use as a dust, or, when diluted with water, as a spray. Organic chemists have formulated varieties of Bt to kill mosquitoes or potato beetles as well.

83 Trees Cut Down to Make Better View for Billboard

Via The Green Vibration

Action is needed to protect trees in our very own state! We need to stop companies like LAMAR not only littering our landscapes but destroying our trees to achieve their goals. Send letters of support to Blumenthal and please visit www.scenic.org to send a letter to Jodi Rell stating your support of her bill to ban new billboard contracts in CT, including digital billboards.

Article Written By
BY ROBYN ADAMS REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

WATERBURY-- Nancy Voghel grew up on a "little piece of heaven," but she said Friday that the land near her childhood home has been destroyed.

Last year, Lamar Advertising of Hartford got a permit from the state Department of Transportation to trim and remove undesirable growth on state land off Sidney Street to increase the visibility of one of its billboards.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal filed a lawsuit against the billboard company and Long Hill Tree and Lawn Care Services of East Hartford for cutting down 83 trees that included birch, maple, oak and white pine that were between 85 and 200 years old. Long Hill Tree was hired by Lamar to do the work.

Hal Kilshaw, vice president of governmental relations for Lamar, headquartered in Baton Rouge, La., said the attorney general got it wrong.

"We got permission from the landowner and a permit from the state. We hired Long Hill and met with the state's landscape person, who was on site and agreed to everything that was cut," Kilshaw said in a telephone interview.

Many of the trees that were planted on the land in question were planted by Margaret Casey's grandfather.

"In less than one day, less than an hour, Lamar Advertising came in and changed our lifestyle," said Casey, of 56 Sidney St. "The noise -- we cannot open the windows anymore. We cannot hear the television because of the noise. It is unbearable."

The trees provided a buffer to highway traffic and noise, and soaked up water that spilled down the hilly terrain.

"Last year, I had five feet of water in my basement," said Jerod Voghel, 30, who is Karen Voghel's son. He bought the house that his mother grew up in four years ago; she now lives in Wolcott.

With the open swath of land in the background, Blumenthal and Rep. Selim Noujaim, R-75th District, talked to residents about the lawsuit.

Blumenthal said Lamar "clearly and disgracefully broke the law" by cutting 83 trees that provided a buffer to I-84. The state is suing for unspecified monetary damages to replace the trees.

Mercy Center at Madison: Connecticut’s Green Conference Facility

You’ve worked really hard this past year and now you need to get your staff psyched to launch a new product line. Or maybe your nonprofit organization is serving more people with fewer resources and you need to come up with a new fundraising plan. Setting aside a day once a year for a staff retreat to reconsider your mission and vision can yield big results.

Even better: schedule a staff retreat day to put your company’s sustainability plan and environmental policies on paper while enjoying and learning from an unusual organization that has made the commitment to sustainability themselves.

Mercy by the Sea, a 33 acre facility with 1100 feet of private beach offers nonprofit, government and business groups a “unique setting where learning, planning, exploring and innovating can flourish”, as described on their website, www.mercybythesea.org.

Two years ago they made a strong commitment to greening their operations and added an Ecology Department and Director, Sherill Baldwin, to their organization.

Friends United for Sustainable Energy (FUSE USA)

The aging Indian Point Nuclear Power point and its radioactive isotopes are far from a clean, green energy option. Previous arguements against closing the plant included not having enough power to replace the plant's output. This is no longer the case.

FUSEUSA (Friends United for Sustainable Energy) is a grassroots, not-for-profit organization, that advocates for the development and use of  sustainable energy, in an effort to protect public health and safety and to preserve the integrity of the environment. Their current campaign is to STOP the issuance of relicensing of the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plants, (located just outside New York City) that have a peak injury radius which includes Fairfield and Litchfield counties. They have already filed Contentions and Rulemaking Petitions with the NRC, and are currently preparing Intervener Petitions and other legal actions.

FUSEUSA is a member of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition (IPSEC) which is a coalition of over 70 community groups dedicated to the closure of Indian Point.  Visit their website or read more about their recent legal action in the NY Times.