NEWSWATER

Rick Spilsbury is a Western Shoshone, native to Nevada. He lives in Ely and writes a blog called No Shoot Foot that you can check out here: http://noshootfoot.blogspot.com/

By: Rick Spilsbury

Being in Nature is like going back to your soul. You know what I'm talking about; that feeling that you are more complete when you feel you're a part of a natural place.

And you should. No man is an island. We are just a part of life on Earth – and we should relish that. As humans, we crave the feeling of a complete soul. And we are more likely to feel that feeling when we are in Nature. In fact, fresh air actually feels like the breath of life – because it is. This perception makes sense if we think of the life all around us as the rest of our soul. And the life around us is that consciousness which lives on after our body dies.

And if this all makes sense, then destroying nature for money is destroying a part of your soul.

By Candice Norcross, a resident of Grand Rapids, MI and creator of a Change.org petition to protect the Thornapple River

Forty-one volunteers arrived at Lincoln Park in Ada, Michigan for the annual River Clean-Up Day. The early risers pulled blue shirts over their hoodies and gathered at the covered bridge, ready to scour the banks for garbage. Joggers — with knowing smiles — watched as we carried the canoes to the water's edge and started on our way.

I had never been to this particular river before, as it's about 10 miles from my own corner of Grand Rapids. However, I recently read several news articles in regards to the Gerald R. Ford International Airport and its stormwater dilemma. I was inspired to launch a petition on Change.org to protect the river from the airport's new proposal to use the river as a dump site for de-icing fluid.

"This'll only cost you $9 billion," reads a billboard put up over the weekend on the side of I-70 near Grand Junction, Colorado.

Pictured is the desolate scene—the parched dry bed of the Colorado River's largest tributary— that would become reality if a proposed water project called the Flaming Gorge Pipeline ever gets built.

The pipeline would spell disaster on a number of levels, according to experts, editorial boards and activists in the region. With the astronomical cost of piping water from Southwest Wyoming's Green River to Colorado, 560 miles up and over the continental divide, the piped water would be the most expensive in the state's history, delivered to fuel even more unsustainable population growth along Colorado's booming Front Range.

The Flaming Gorge Pipeline would would also devastate the Green River ecosystem and Dinosaur National Monument. This can't be a good sign for thousands of recreational river users and the significant local tourism businesses they support. Lastly, given that the Flaming Gorge would withdraw 81 billion gallons a year from the Colorado's largest tributary, this pipeline is only going to exacerbate existing intractable conflicts among the seven Basin states that share this increasingly scare resource.

So what's a concerned citizen to do?

For years, the Lehigh cement quarry and plant in Cupertino, California got away with violating state environmental safety and pollution laws.

Not any more.

A group of citizens—with the help of 26,000 people who signed the petition started on Change.org— have proven they can make a difference, even in the face of powerful interests.

Recently, as reported by Louis Sahagun in today's Los Angeles Times, California state officials issued an "ultimatum" to Lehigh, the oldest cement manufacturer in California. Either shape up in 30 days, or lose government cement contracts, which comprise up 70 percent of the company's revenue.

In a stuffy room in Wisconsin, upwards of 500 people gathered for a Department of Natural Resources (DNR) hearing on a proposed factory dairy farm that would bring 5,000 cows to Richfield, WI. Many in attendance wore red "No CAFO" tee-shirts and shared their concerns over waste disposal — especially manure runoff, water usage, and the farm's impact on the local community including its pristine lakes and streams.

The five-hour hearing was held at the behest of local activists and concerned citizens who live near the proposed site. It was meant to help the DNR determine if it will grant a permit allowing Milk Source, the company that will run the proposed farm, to discharge pollutants into state waterways. It seems odd, then, that instead of the DNR presenting the facts and information about the proposed farm to start the meeting, officials granted that role to the CEO of Milk Source. The DNR also seemed to defer to Milk Source, allowing executives to answer questions the DNR should have had answers to (for instance, whether or not Milk Source has had any environmental violations in the past).

The meeting wasn't all pandering, though. Many people got to tell the DNR why they are opposed to the farm and explain their very real worries. Of particular concern is what the farm will do with its waste manure. The farm's current plan is to hold manure in massive pits (small ponds, really), and then have trucks haul it away to spread on fields. "A lot of them will be running right down in front of my house to spread manure on the fields on 3rd and 4th avenue over there," Paul Powolish, the closest neighbor to the proposed farm, said. "I can't live under conditions like that."

In the wake of Exxon Mobil's recent oil spill in Montana, it's now crystal clear (if it wasn't already) what a mistake the U.S. State Department would be making in approving the Keystone XL pipeline—a conduit that would carry Alberta's corrosive, carbon-heavy tar sands oil under the Yellowstone River and through America's heartland, in what remains today a poorly-regulated pipeline system.

Tens of thousands of Change.org members who took action to stop Keystone, through both the Sierra Club's and No Tar Sands Oil Coalition's actions, agree.

So do several Senators who sent a letter to the State Department on Friday. The letter, signed by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Ron Wyden (D- OR), Robert Menenedez (D-NJ), Frank Lautenberg (D NJ), and Ben Cardin (D-MD), called on the State Department to conduct additional environmental reviews. The EPA has already called the review thus far "insufficient," according to the Hill.  For example, the letter states that there was no consideration of an alternative route for the pipeline, one that would avoid a vast underground aquifer that supplies water to much of the Midwest.

When a factory farm sets its sights on a community, it takes a pretty dedicated group to keep it from being built. A group fighting a 5,000-cow dairy farm in Richfield, Wisconsin has taken some pretty big steps to do just that. Activists stoked the media's interest in their cause. They've garnered the support of many statewide organizations such as Sustain Rural Wisconsin Network (SRWN), Crawford Stewardship Project, Family Farm Defenders, and members of several chapters of Trout Unlimited.

They've also gotten the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to hold a hearing on whether or not to grant the farm a permit to discharge its waste into waterways. "The hearing is only allowed when there is sufficient citizen interest to do so," explains organizer and petition creator Bob Clarke. "We were granted the hearing because we mobilized quickly."

The hearing will be held at 1 PM on July 18th at the Adams County Community Center, 569 North Cedar St., in Adams, WI, and it's an extremely important moment in this campaign. "The position of the DNR  is that they plan to approve the permit," says Clarke. "The hearing is our only chance to demonstrate our position as well."

What would you do if you found out that 5,000 cows would be moving into your neighborhood? When Bob Clarke heard that a corporation called MilkSource was planning on building a massive, factory dairy farm in Richfield, Wisconsin, he got busy trying to stop it.

Clarke's mission isn't solely personal — constructing a mega dairy would have a huge impact on the local environment and residents' quality of life. If built, the dairy farm will negatively affect local air quality and the already-too-low water table as it pumps 52.5 million gallons of water out of the ground each year. Waste from the farm threatens to pollute the community's drinking water and two nearby, pristine trout-fishing streams. And then there's the noise, traffic, and offensive odors that come with any large factory farm.

As residents Shari Weakman recently commented, "Being a property owner on Pleasant Lake, quite near this proposed farm, I am appalled to think that the peaceful, family farm atmosphere of this area could be over-run by a large factory farm."  Talk about bad neighbors.

I took my first trip to Yellowstone National Park last week, and it was spectacular. I’d been in the park for less than half an hour my first day when half a dozen of the country’s oldest and largest public bison herd merged with traffic and held our speed to 2.5 mph. I took pictures of a black bear up close, saw an elk sow while alone on a hidden lake hike, and saw—rather than read—the history of a still-active volcano.

One park ranger told us that she’d been in the park for 42 seasons, and each one was different than the last. This year what everyone noticed was the water levels – after a heavy snowpack and near-record spring rainfall, the Yellowstone Lake and Yellowstone River have been at or near flood stage for weeks. This made for some fun marina stories and gorgeously full waterfalls – but there’s a downside to the heavy rains, too, as the nation learned last week.

Thanks to these near-floods, ExxonMobil’s Silvertip pipeline spilled 42,000 gallons of oil into the river last week. Response teams haven’t been able to get close to the leak yet to give it a proper exam, but one theory is “that the flood scoured out the riverbed, laid bare the pipe, and exposed it to all manner of hurtling debris.” Residents in nearby towns were evacuated immediately, and the slick has since spread hundreds of miles to North Dakota. Cleanup will be delayed, thanks again to the flooding.

Last week, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar traveled to the Grand Canyon to make an important announcement—that he favored a 20-year uranium mining ban around the Grand Canyon, the most environmentally-protective option on a spectrum of otherwise poor choices.

The announcement was a huge victory for many local and national coalitions across the country, who have advocated fiercely to protect one of the world's greatest natural treasures from despoilment by mining and nuclear industry interests. It was also big news for Change.org member Suzanne Sparling, an Arizona resident who started a petition on Change.org to protect the landscape and rivers she loves. Her petition allowed more than 50,000 Change.org members to tell the Interior Department to support the 20-year ban of uranium mining that Secretary Salazar set in motion last week. "This is a monumental step in showing how much we can all do when joining our voices and working together!" said Suzanne in a recent email I exchanged with her.