All, Environment, Environmental Justice, Nature, Policy, Protection, Water

Indigenous women in Ecuador & allies march to defend the Amazon & protest environmental & cultural genocide

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PUYO, Ecuador, March 9, 2016 – In recognition of International Women’s Day, Indigenous Amazonian women leaders of seven nationalities including: Andoa, Achuar, Kichwa, Shuar, Shiwiar, Sapara and Waorani nationalities and their international allies took action in Puyo, Ecuador, in a forum and march in defense of the Amazon, Mother Earth and for climate justice. Specifically, they came together to denounce a newly signed oil contract between the Ecuadorian government and Chinese oil corporation Andes Petroleum.

Indigenous woman of the Amazon with megaphone
Source: Mike Riech/Pachamama Alliance

By plane, foot, canoe, and bus, some five hundred women mobilized from deep in their rainforest territories and nearby provinces marching through the streets of the Amazon jungle town of Puyo.

Chanting, “Defend the forest, don’t sell it!” and carrying signs reading “No more persecution against women defenders of Mother Earth,” the march culminated in a rally in which each nationality denounced the new oil threat and shared traditional songs and ceremonies. The women spoke of other methods for protecting and defending the Amazon and its vital living systems, making it known that the women of the Amazon are not just victims of environmental and cultural genocide, but rather are vital solution bearers.

In addition to highlighting the grave social and ecologic implications of this new contract and the Ecuadorian government’s plans to tender several more oil blocks in the pristine, roadless southern Amazon, the women and allies brought light to their struggles and the ongoing criminalization faced as they stand to protect and defend their territories and lifeways based upon living in harmony with the natural world. A tribute was held in honor of Berta Caceres, the Honduran indigenous environmental leader who was killed last week for her years of work defending rights and territories from privatization, plantations, and most recently, a mega dam project.

The women of the Amazon were also joined by Casey Camp Horinek, WECAN delegation member and Indigenous leader of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma, who shared her traditional songs and stories of how her people have been impacted by fracking activity.

Indigenous women of the Amazon-2
Source: Mike Riech/Pachamama Alliance

“Right now the oil company is trying to enter our territory. That is our homeland, this is where we have our chakras (gardens), where we feed our families. We are warriors, and we are not afraid. We will never negotiate,” explained Rosalia Ruiz, a Sapara leader from the community of Torimbo, which is inside the Block 83 oil concession.

“Although we are from three different provinces, we are one territory and one voice,” Alicia Cahuiya, Waorani leader declared.

As the march unfolded, the Ecuadorian government and Andes Petroleum held a meeting in the nearby town of Shell to organize an illegal entry into Sapara territory, knowing that key leaders would not be present. Outraged, a delegation of Sapara delivered a letter to the meeting, underscoring their peoples’ opposition to the oil project and governments tactics to divide the community. They successfully thwarted the government and company plans, and returned to the streets, victorious.

International allies including the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, Amazon Watch and Pachamama Alliance shared messages of solidarity and calls for immediate action to keep fossil fuels in the ground in the Amazon.

“On this International Women’s Day we are reaching across borders and standing together as global women for climate justice to denounce oil extraction in the Amazon and call for attention to the struggles and solutions of local women land defenders,” explained Osprey Orielle Lake, Executive Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, “We all depend on the flourishing of these precious rainforests, the lungs of the planet. Now is the time to keep the oil in the ground and stand with the women who have been putting their bodies on the line for years to protect the forest, their cultures, and the health and well being of all future generations.”

“Today was a historic day for indigenous Amazonian women! It was the first time that hundreds of women and their allies marched for the Amazon, Mother Earth and Climate Justice. And the power of women was so strong that plans for oil companies entering Sápara territory today were halted. This is is a signal that the collective call to defend rights and territories by keeping fossil fuels in the ground is working,” says Leila Salazar-López, Executive Director of Amazon Watch.

Indigenous woman of the Amazon with banner
Source: Mike Riech/Pachamama Alliance

Belen Paez from Pachamama Alliance declared: “It’s a unique and historical moment to have the experience of solidarity and connection between indigenous women and activists from all over the world standing up for the rights of the Amazon rainforest and its people, we have all been waiting for this moment for so long, and that moment is now.”

The March 8 forum, action and press conference will be followed by a March 9 event and report back, ‘Women of Ecuadorian Amazon and International Allies Stand For Protection of the Amazon Rainforest’ to be held on March 9 at 17:00 at the Biblioteca FLASCO, Universidad FLACSO, Quito.

A solidarity action was also held at the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, CA, to denounce the new oil contracts on Sapara and Kichwa territory and support women’s rights in Ecuador and around the world.

All, Environment, Environmental Justice, Nature, New solutions, Protection, Water

Breaking! EPA finalizes plan to decontaminate Newark Bay & lower Passaic River

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After years of investigating safety issues involved with removing Agent Orange and other contaminants from the Newark Bay and lower Passaic River, the EPA has created a comprehensive plan to remove what is logistically feasible and cap the rest at the bottom of the waterway.

The plan includes:

  • 3.5 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment will be removed, bank- to-bank, by dredging the river bottom from Newark Bay to the Belleville/ Newark border.
  • This will result in the permanent removal from the river of approximately 13 pounds of highly toxic and persistent dioxin (2,3,7,8- TCDD), 24,000 pounds of mercury, 6,600 pounds of PCBs, and 1,300 pounds of DDT (a pesticide).

Here are highlights of the plan:

EPA Lower Passaic Cleanup Plan
Source: EPA

View the entire record of decision for the lower eight miles of the Passaic River.

All, Food, Growing, Justice, Protection

The Shangri-la source of all the world’s apples is under threat of destruction

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Kazakhastan apples via orexca
Source: Orexca
Modern apples are a product of bear selection and a mother-father pair of trees in the Tian Shen forests of Kazakhastan, where many tasty and supremely healthy varieties can still be found today. Techly contributer Riordan Lee explains:

After sequencing the entire genome, scientists have traced 90% of the billions of apples that have ever been, back to the Malus sieversii – the original wild apple.

This species was born deep in the heart of the Tien Shen forests – where dense covers of apple trees dominated the hilly, remote mountain ranges.

The reason most apples have that classic, sweet ‘apple’ flavour is funnily enough, because of bears.

In these Kazakh forests, bears, being the picky buggers that they are, would only pick and eat the sweetest apples.

Then they’d go and wander around poop everywhere and the seeds of these sweet, delicious apples were spread around.

Today, tourism and deforestation are threatening the Kazakh region’s, “highly disease resistant, sweet, and hard,” apple trees. Due to centuries of inbreeding, the genetic structure of apple varieties outside of Kazakhastan has become fragile and their immune systems are weak. Fruit from Kazakh trees has the power to save apples around when seedlings from their stock is merged with genetically weaker varieties the rest of us know and love.

We must protect our apples!

Abuse of public trust, All, Justice, Protection, Water

State Sens. Gordon & Weinberg ask why NJ did not get most of the Sandy recovery funds HUD wanted to give us

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Sandy impact
Source: NJ National Guard. New Jersey National Guard in flooded Hoboken following Hurricane Sandy
State Senators Bob Gordon and Loretta Weinberg are deeply concerned that Christie’s administration failed to submit a disaster resilience grant application to the federal government which would have empowered HUD to give us hundreds of millions of dollars they had earmarked to help New Jersey residents.

For New Jerseyans, who suffered more heavily from the ravages of superstorm Sandy than the residents of any other state, last month’s announcement of federal disaster resilience grants by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development hit like a nor’easter.

Of the $1 billion being awarded by HUD in Natural Disaster Resilience Competition grants, a minimum of $181 million had been set aside for New Jersey and New York thanks to the hard work of our congressional delegation.

That’s why it was so shocking when New Jersey received just $15 million.

New York City and New York State received a total of $212 million, but New Jersey ranked 14th on the grant list, just ahead of the city of Springfield, Massachusetts. The last time we looked, Springfield didn’t have much of a coastline.

The state’s failure is just the latest example of New Jersey coming in way behind New York in obtaining federal aid to rebuild after superstorm Sandy. New York City and New York State received $8.6 billion in Community Development Block Grants — twice as much as New Jersey’s $4.2 billion — and the $1.7 billion we received in Federal Emergency Management Agency grants is dwarfed by the $7.7 billion that went to New York.

That is why Senate President Stephen Sweeney asked our Senate Legislative Oversight Committee to open hearings on why New Jersey has consistently failed to obtain the funding needed to protect residents from Bergen County to Cape May from the ravages of coastal and inland flooding, and on what we should be doing to protect the state against sea-level rise and climate change.

Our first hearing earlier this month started to get some answers, and we will have a fuller understanding when officials from HUD, the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Rockefeller Foundation, which was retained by HUD to advise applicants, appear before the committee at a future hearing.

NorthJersey.com reports on the NJ Legislative Oversight Hearings held on 11 February 2016:

Several witnesses … raised questions about what New Jersey chose to include and not include in its application, including a bus station in the Meadowlands.

“One of the things about this application that really astonished me and I still don’t understand and I just wished someone could explain it to me in a way that makes sense, is how building a bus station in the Meadowlands protects anybody from flooding?” said Bill Sheehan of the Hackensack Riverkeeper environmental group.

Sheehan, after the hearing, questioned whether requests like that had less to do with flood control and more to do with the fact that the state’s Transportation Trust Fund is nearly out of money.

This is not a partisan issue. As Republican Sen. Joseph Kyrillos, who represents the Monmouth County Bayshore that suffered some of the most severe damage from Sandy, said at the hearing, it is the responsibility of the Legislature to hold federal and state officials accountable.

What we learned so far is just the beginning of that process.

We already know that HUD Secretary Julian Castro said New Jersey received less funding not because the state did not have great need for storm resilience projects, but because our application was weaker than most other states. In fact, we just made the minimum cutoff to receive any funding at all.

While most winning applicants identified significant matching funds and were working closely with regional nonprofits on climate change initiatives, New Jersey received just 1 point out of a possible 10 for “leveraging” other funding. Furthermore, we also got marked down on “scalability” for failing to present proposals that could be implemented even if we only received partial funding.

We need to find out if the state received adequate feedback from HUD and the Rockefeller Foundation that deficiencies in our proposal could jeopardize our chances to win the needed funding. But there are clearly questions at the state level as well.

New Jersey’s two main proposals were for a $231 million grant for construction of a berm and pumping stations to protect towns in the Meadowlands from flooding and for a $75 million satellite bus garage in Secaucus.

What our initial hearing showed was that the Meadowlands berm project was controversial — and indeed was opposed by environmentalists. And, as we pointed out, a proposal for a $75 million bus garage seems less like a proposal to protect the Meadowlands against climate change than an attempt to get the federal government to pay for a new bus garage because the Transportation Trust Fund is out of money.

The most disconcerting part of the hearing was the heart-wrenching testimony by Monmouth and Ocean County Sandy survivors who rightfully questioned why New Jersey did not apply for any funding for projects to protect homeowners in the Jersey Shore counties that sustained the lion’s share of Sandy damage.

Questions also were raised about whether New Jersey’s reluctance to embrace climate change gave HUD “political reasons” to deny our application. While New York State has developed a comprehensive mitigation and adaptation plan, is mapping for climate change and sea-level rise, and is increasing its green building and energy efficiency standards, New Jersey is the only state bordering either the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean that does not have a plan to deal with climate change and sea-level rise.

As a coastal state that relies so heavily on tourism to drive our economy and boost state revenues, we cannot afford to ignore the challenges posed by climate change and sea-level rise, and we certainly cannot afford to lose out on federal grants designed to protect our citizens against the ravages of future megastorms.

We need to know why we fared so poorly on federal Sandy grant funding, and we need to know how we can do better in the future. The victims of Sandy deserve no less.

Sen. Bob Gordon, D-Bergen/Passaic, and Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, D-Bergen, serve as chair and vice-chair of the Senate Legislative Oversight Committee.

Additional Sandy recovery coverage available at Asbury Park Press

Abuse of public trust, All, Environment, Water

Report on hundreds of millions of plastic particles found in the Hudson River

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Washed up plastic debris in Keysport NJ
Source: NY-NJ Harbor Estuary Plastic Collection Report – NY/NY Baykeeper Feb 2016
plastic particles in Hudson River Water
Source: NY-NJ Harbor Estuary Plastic Collection Report – NY/NY Baykeeper Feb 2016
There is an astonishing amount of plastic floating around in the Hudson River Estuary – 165,840,512 particles are in the water at any given time. The particles make their way into the digestive systems of wildlife, fish and birds and it’s fair to assume that a good number of them end up in our bodies too.

Abuse of public trust, All, Justice, Nature, Protection

Landowners near Scranton & activists set to face off against Pipeline builders who will clear cut their trees

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protecting the land
Source: The Times-Tribune
Ted Glick reports on the environmental horror that’s about to begin in Northeast Pennsylvania:

Very possibly as early as tomorrow, chain-saw-armed tree cutters hired by Williams Partners, a powerful pipeline-building corporation for the gas and oil industry, will try to cut down sugar maple trees on the property of Maryann Zeffer, Cathy and Megan Holleran and their family. For 65 years they have lived on this land, and for the last ten or so they have been producing delicious, pure, Pennsylvania maple syrup from those trees.

This destruction won’t happen without a big fight. Nine days ago as I write, after FERC gave approval to Williams’ request to start tree cutting in Pa. even though Williams does not have all of the necessary approvals to build their Pa. to NY Constitution pipeline, an encampment was set up on the Zeffer/Holleran land. Every day since people have been there.

The implacable Williams Partners pipeline builders aka land destroyers and water polluters, has obtained the go-ahead from FERC to begin clear-cutting more private land on 160 Pennsylvania properties than they need to lay a pipeline for transporting fracked fuel through Pennsylvania to New York. Williams got the red light to proceed even though they lack all the necessary permits and have not paid for some of the land they plan to access. They acquired some of the land through eminent domain seizure and will cut down more trees than the pipeline requires to give themselves “working space”.

The families of Cathy and Megan Holleran and Maryann Zeffer fought the pipeline builders in court for well over a year. With tree felling now about to begin, they’ve taking their battle to the public. Anti-fracking/anti-pipeline and clean water activists, environmentalists and the press have been summoned to witness the Holleran/Zeffers take a stand against the usurpation of their land rights and the destruction of their beautiful maple syrup kingdom and stand with them, if they’re willing to risk being arrested. These people’s little slice of Paradise is a 1/2 hour drive north of Scranton, PA.

The family loves these 22 acres that Catherine Holleran’s parents bought in the late 1950s, when they escaped to the Endless Mountains from Long Island.

Sturdy maples, cherries and other hardwoods rise from their property’s steep eastern hillside. A small creek-fed lake lies at the bottom of the gentle valley. Across a strip of trees, a grassy field rises to the north. It’s a place for syrup making and snowmobiling in the winter, lake parties and off-roading in the summer.

Constitution’s designs call for a 30-inch pipe laid in an S-shaped strip across 1,670 linear feet of their land. The permanent easement would be 50 feet wide, but the company would fell timber in a wider area to create work space. The family doesn’t want to lose the trees or the quality of their lake, which they fear could fill with sediment despite the company’s stated policies of controlling erosion.

The five Zeffer siblings — Ms. Holleran’s maiden name — want to pass the land on to their children the way it is, “without a big stupid pipeline,” Ms. Holleran said.

If you wish to join or support the resistance, here’s the information you need:
Holleran property is at 2131 Three Lakes Road, New Milford, PA. But use these coordinates to find the location where people have gathered to stop the tree cutting: 41.8272387, -75.7585062

Contacts: Megan Holleran 570-709-3268 and Alex Lotorto (after 5PM) 570-269-9589

Visit Stop the Constitution Pipeline Facebook group

Hat tip to Theresa Lam for the share

All, Environmental Justice, Policy, Protection, Urban, Youth

Flint decision makers no-shows at today’s Congressional hearings on Flint Water Crisis. Scary situation.

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Flint Water Crisis hearings
Source: C-Span live stream

The Congressional hearing on the Flint Water Crisis was live streamed this morning, 03 February 2016.

Michigan Gov. Snyder and officials he appointed who made the decision for the City of Flint to stop receiving water from the Detroit Water Company and get it from the contaminated Flint River instead, have elected not to be present at the hearings. Detroit had been Flint’s supplier of clean, fresh water for over 50 years.

After Snyder nullified Flint’s election and put former “Emergency City Manager” Darnell Early in place there, the decision was made during his term of service from 2013-2015, to change the city’s water source to the Flint River. The decision to not spend $9000 for three months of corrosion control treatment to seal the pipes carrying the water was made, even though this is an EPA requirement. Treatment would have prevented the river’s contamination from causing lead and other heavy metals to flake off from corroding pipes to enter the city’s potable water supply.

High lead levels resulting from the corrosion have caused irreversible, permanent lead poisoning to all of Flint’s children who drank the contaminated water, which is probably all of the city’s 9000 children. Lead is a neurotoxin which shortly after ingestion, causes damage which commonly includes brain damage. Resident Mrs. Leeann Walters speaks of her own child and other Flint children whom suffer from a panoply of symptoms including liver damage, slow weight gain and poor eye health. On Earth reports:

Panel testifying at Flint Water Crisis Hearing
Source: C-Span

LeeAnne Walters’ four children started getting sick around November of last year. Her 14-year-old, J.D., was in and out of the hospital, and her four-year-old twins, Garrett and Gavin, would get scaly, itchy rashes whenever they took a bath. “I could see the water line on Gavin’s stomach,” Walters says. In February, the pediatrician wrote a note to the city saying that Gavin, who has a compromised immune system, couldn’t consume the water.

City officials came out to test the Walters’ tap that same month and found lead levels at 397 parts per billion. For reference, anything greater than 15 ppb—what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers an acceptable level—can result in irreversible damage to a child’s brain.

Mr. Early chose to evade service of the subpoena summoning him to the Congressional hearings and is also not present. On a side note, Early was appointed by Gov. Snyder to serve as Detroit Public Schools “Emergency Manager” at an annual salary of $221,000 after leaving Flint in Jan 2015 . But Early has announced that he will step down from that position on 29 Feb 2016.

Cong. Stacey Plaskett of the US Virgin Islands, points out that Mr. Early received $181,000 for poisoning Flint’s children, and that this situation is an example of the powerful adverse health impacts that residents of environmental justice communities may experience.

Several Congressmen have asked the EPA representative present at today’s hearing to explain why the EPA failed to notify Flint residents when the lead and copper rule failure was discovered a year before the issue became known to the public.

Flint native and film maker Michael Moore is on the ground, researching and reporting on the situation. I’m sorry to say that it looks even worse up close than it does from a distance. Moore’s first point:

While the Children in Flint Were Given Poisoned Water to Drink, General Motors Was Given a Special Hookup to the Clean Water.

A few months after Governor Snyder removed Flint from the clean fresh water we had been drinking for decades, the brass from General Motors went to him and complained that the Flint River water was causing their car parts to corrode when being washed on the assembly line. The Governor was appalled to hear that GM property was being damaged, so he jumped through a number of hoops and quietly spent $440,000 to hook GM back up to the Lake Huron water, while keeping the rest of Flint on the Flint River water. Which means that while the children in Flint were drinking lead-filled water, there was one — and only one — address in Flint that got clean water: the GM factory.

Elijah Cummings
Source: bet.com
Rep. Elijah Cummings asked the most important question of the day: he wanted to know why so much blame is being assigned to the EPA when the decisions made to poison the people of Flint. He commented:

What you all have done has given us … a platform, the basic information … to go higher. I hope that the governor (Snyder) will understand that these are people who are suffering … About the water bills: If I’m being poisoned, can’t wash with the water, can’t drink the water and then I’m being asked to pay for the water, that doesn’t make any sense. (This is) about what happened – so you can correct it and so hopefully, it doesn’t happen again.

Abuse of public trust, All, Health, Justice, Policy, Protection, Urban, Water, Youth

Michael Moore reports from Flint on the Flint Water Tragedy

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Michael Moore on Flint Water Tragedy
Source: michaelmoore.com

Flint native and film maker Michael Moore arrived in the city a couple of weeks ago and went right to work gathering information about the origin and extended impact of what’s being nationally referred to as the “Flint Water Crisis”. He has released his article 10 Things They Won’t Tell You About the Flint Water Tragedy. But I Will.