A Commitment to Uncovering Local Environmental Issues

Toxic sites map/North Jersey.com

The headlines in a recent newspaper series unveiled a shocking story: “DEP let poison flow for decades” … “North Jersey riddled with failed cleanups” … “Desperate to move, but bound to stay; Residents say homes in Superfund site are worthless.”

Got your attention? That’s the intent of the “Toxic Landscape” series that The Record, a daily newspaper in northern New Jersey, has instituted as an on-going investigative look at industrial contamination lingering in local communities in its coverage area. Here’s the opening salvo in a three-part expose by Record environmental writer Scott Fallon that burst from the front pages recently:

     A highly toxic industrial chemical has been spreading under a Garfield neighborhood for almost three decades, slowly seeping into homes and threatening the health of thousands.
     Residents live in fear that hexavalent chromium is infiltrating their basements, that their families could get cancer and that their property values have been destroyed.
     And state officials allowed it all to happen.
     What occurred in Garfield over the course of 28 years is a story of an environmental oversight system that failed the people it was supposed to protect. In instance after instance, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection showed poor judgment, lax enforcement and bureaucratic indifference to an emerging public health threat….

After detailing the spreading contamination through groundwater under an urban neighborhood and the startling lack of government action even after a city firehouse was closed in 1993 due to the hazardous substance seeping into the basement, Fallon’s report widened the scope of the problem to encompass many more communities:

“Garfield is one of the more egregious examples of failed environmental oversight. But all over North Jersey there are botched cleanups caused by questionable decisions, bureaucratic indifference or both,” Fallon wrote. "’There are Garfields in literally every corner of this state,’ said Robert Spiegel, head of Edison Wetlands, an environmental advocacy group. ‘The system for cleaning thousands of sites has been dysfunctional, chaotic, and it just doesn’t work,’" Fallon’s report added, after listing a number of failed, incomplete or barely ever started contamination investigations and cleanups in North Jersey towns that have been periodically in and out of the news.

The back story behind this unusual newspaper series—which began last year with a detailed examination of unfinished cleanups at several federal Superfund sites across the region—is a recognition by The Record’s editors and publisher that hazardous waste cleanups habitually stall when there’s no on-going, in depth news coverage.

That realization was crystallized by a previous investigative series in 2005 called “Toxic Legacy,” which showed how the US Environmental Protection Agency allowed Ford Motor Company to claim it had cleaned up a toxic waste dump in the late 1980s in Ringwood, NJ. The newspaper investigation, which I participated in as a reporter, uncovered the fact that the officially approved cleanup barely scratched the surface of buried mounds of lead-based paint sludge and other potentially cancer-causing contamination that local residents, environmental groups and newspaper reporters found and made public.

A far more substantial cleanup has taken place since that investigative series, with every step reported by local newspapers, sometimes bird-dogged by national news organizations and further exposed to a wide television audience by a documentary shown on HBO titled “Mann v. Ford,” after the name of a lawsuit by residents of the affected residential area.

Yet, despite the residents’ lawsuit, the renewed cleanup in Ringwood stalled once the initial flurry of news coverage subsided. Record editors then expanded the “Toxic Legacy” coverage into on-going, frequent update reports published under the same label.

“The [initial] story was about the government’s failure to live up to its promise,” Tim Nostrand, The Record’s editor for investigative projects, told a gathering in September at Columbia University’s Journalism School that honored new and past winners of the Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment. The “Toxic Legacy” investigative team led by Nostrand won the 2006 Grantham Prize, among a number of other national journalism awards.

Once congratulations on winning major awards are collected, news organizations usually ease off covering that topic and move on. But Record editors found their readers appreciated the “Toxic Legacy” coverage. And they found that government officials slipped back into old habits once that coverage eased off.  “We did a five-year look back and found history repeating itself. We’re now staying on top of that,” Nostrand added in his account of how one investigative project morphed into a long-term commitment.

On top of reporting every new twist and turn in the Ringwood Superfund site case, six years after publishing a series that shook up the EPA, Record editors have assigned municipal reporters to dig into environmental contamination issues in the towns they cover, Nostrand told the audience of award-winning journalists, journalism professors and students at Columbia. Previously, as was my experience during a more than 20-year career at The Record, municipal reporters often ignored environmental issues unless they were prepared to wrangle with editors to provide time from the relentless pressure to file daily news stories in order to dig into often complex, hidden contamination problems.

The latest in The Record’s remarkable “Toxic Landscape” local reports rolled out this week. The first day’s headline conveyed a double drum-roll: “DPW cleanup tab put at $200,000; Decades-old pollution ‘ignored’ mayor says.” And thus residents of Dumont, NJ were told about the mounting costs of inaction by local officials and the state environmental protection agency in dealing with contamination from leaking gasoline storage tanks at the municipal Department of Public Works property dating back to the 1980s.

A Dumont Borough Council subcommittee trying to get to the bottom of why nothing was done, despite a DEP order in 1992 to do a cleanup, got some astounding responses, Record reporter Rebecca D. O’Brien found. A former councilman who served in 2004-2009 said “We never discussed any issues of any gasoline spills or any contamination down at that site,” O’Brien reported in her second-day article.

Another former councilman who served in 2003-2008 put this kind of investigative story into glaring perspective, when he testified that “he didn’t even know about the DPW contamination until he read about it in the newspaper,” O’Brien added.

So that readers can follow the newspaper’s probing into the tangled, toxic mess underlying much of the Garden State, The Record offers on its web site a special projects section titled “Toxic Landscape: Tracking contaminated sites in North Jersey,” which provides interactive maps and hotlinks to an extensive list of investigative articles on local contamination sites.

For more information:

http://www.northjersey.com/specialreports/full/toxiclandscape.html

   

Why Do Superfund Environmental Cleanups Take Decades?

Tuesday 10/4/11 "Why is Environmental Cleanup So Slow?” Panel Discussion at Ramapo College, Mahwah, NJ

Friends Hall (SC219) in Student Center, 6:30-9 p.m. 

The regional head of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program, Walter Mugdan, will speak Tuesday on a panel with Ramapo College professors. Other panelists are Adjunct Professor Jan Barry Crumb, who teaches environmental writing; Adjunct Professor Chuck Stead, who teaches courses in environmental investigations; and environmental studies Professor Michael Edelstein, the panel chair.

The event, which is open to the public, is sponsored by the Ramapo College Institute of Environmental Studies.The panel will discuss why environmental cleanups at Superfund sites often take decades, with a focus on the Ringwood Mines Superfund site in New Jersey and sites near the Town of Ramapo landfill in Rockland County, New York. These sites were all contaminated by paint sludge and other industrial waste from the former Ford Motor Company plant in Mahwah, NJ.

Panel Chair, Michael R. Edelstein, Ph.D. Professor of Environmental Psychology, Ramapo College of NJ. He is author of Contaminated Communities, 2nd Edition (Westview 2004) and lead editor of Cultures of Contamination (Elsevier, 2007). Edelstein has a perspective on cleanup activities that stretches back to research done at Love Canal in the late 1970s. He has studied Superfund communities and testified in administrative hearings and toxic torts, not only about the consequences of living in contaminated communities which have not been addressed, but also about the impacts of cleanup itself.

Walter Mugdan, Director of the Emergency and Remedial Response Division at the Region 2 office, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), located in New York City.  He heads a staff of some 220 employees responsible for the Region’s “Superfund” toxic waste cleanup, emergency response and brownfields programs.  Previously he headed the Region’s Division of Environmental Planning & Protection, where his staff of about 180 scientists, engineers and planners managed the Region’s air, water, hazardous waste and environmental review programs. Prior to that appointment, he served as Deputy Regional Counsel and then Regional Counsel for Region 2, where he headed a staff of 80 attorneys.   He joined EPA in 1975 as a staff attorney, and subsequently served in various supervisory positions in the Office of Regional Counsel, including Chief of the units responsible for Superfund, RCRA, TSCA and the Clean Air Act.  

Jan Barry Crumb, Journalist, Adjunct Professor, Ramapo College. He is the author of A Citizen’s Guide to Grassroots Campaigns (Rutgers 2000). During an award-winning career at The Record of Bergen County, NJ, Jan Barry intensively reported on the Ford contamination issues and their impact on the Ramapough Indians. His work with an investigative team of reporters and editors led EPA to reopen the closed Superfund project in Ringwood. The Record's Website www.toxiclegacy.com documents this effort.

Chuck Stead, Social Ecologist, Adjunct Professor, Ramapo College and Cornell Cooperative Extension. A native of Hillburn, NY, he is a local historian, activist and place scholar who has worked for years on the Ford contamination. Ramapo students, under his supervision, have helped him identify areas of contamination in New York State that have never been addressed previously. These hazardous waste sites are now the subject of cleanup efforts under the New York State DEC. Mr. Stead is in the process of erecting an education center dedicated to the contamination cleanup efforts in the Ramapo Mountains.

Environmental Writing 2011

From Agent Orange’s insidious grasp out of the past of the war in Vietnam to current health concerns of many residents of Ramapo River communities, to the potential future effects of global climate change, 11 student-reporters at Ramapo College of New Jersey dug into a wide array of ecological issues in the Spring 2011 Environmental Writing class.

Here are some of many insightful passages that summarize topics students chose to research and report in magazine-style final writing projects, all of which are posted on our class website, ramapolookout.blogspot.com, along with their other writing assignments throughout the semester.

“The Earth is as a storm. Violently it crashes and trumpets along its trillion year journey. Like a wildfire burning on a California horizon, the Earth surrounds itself in tapestry of both beauty and terror. In essence our planet is a hospitable destroyer. It will deny life as easily as it fosters it. Often times life will simply die off, a casualty of the constant unseen equation of nature. Still, despite the changes our planet has seen, the existence of life has always remained firmly rooted. However, our modern age has threatened life with a new villain: pollutants.”

--From Destroying our Oceans: Impact of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by John Clancey

“Beekeepers throughout the Garden State know there is something wrong. Some blame mites and pesticides but others are still puzzled as to what exactly is causing colony collapse disorder.

“’I had beehives that were full of bees and produced a great honey crop, and two weeks later were empty,’ says Joe Triemel, Corresponding Secretary at the Essex Co. Beekeepers.

“Why all the buzz? Bees are very critical to agricultural practices.”

--From New Jersey's Buzz on Colony Collapse Disorder by Courtney Leiva

“When being advised to follow a healthy diet, the one food that is indisputably on the top of the list is fish. Its Omega 3 fatty acids, vitamins and minerals keep our heart pumping and our blood pressure low. It is an easy food to cook, requiring little preparation and, in most cases, done in less than 30 minutes. It is almost impossible to make a bad dish with fish unless, of course, the fish itself has been contaminated.

“With the recent environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, which was formally known to produce quality fish, particularly shellfish, fish lovers now question the safety of the fish coming from the Gulf. Do we believe the government agencies that maintain the fish from the Gulf is safe or do we stop buying, adding to the sorry economic state of the Gulf fishermen’s woes, who are just recovering from Hurricane Katrina?”

--From Is Eating Fish as Healthy as It Used to Be? by Virginia DiBianca

“Climate change, or global warming as it is often referred to, has been a hot button issue in recent years. It has dominated the environmental arena, and has even played a role in the political spectrum, as Democrats and Republicans hold very different ideas about the phenomenon. There is a lot of conflicting information about this so-called global warming and the process of weeding through all of it to separate fact from fiction can seem overwhelming. The truth of the matter is, depending upon who you ask, you will likely get a very different interpretation of climate change, its causes, its effects, and what it ultimately means for you and me. …

“Climate change, or global warming, is certainly a very complex issue with a myriad of facts, data, and evidence from a host of different organizations to take into account. But these are the bare-bone facts of the situation. There is evidence to support hundreds of thousands of years of constantly changing climate situations on our planet. But there is also hard proof that humans have, if nothing else, sped the process up a significant amount. It is really up to each citizen of the planet Earth to make their own decision about climate change and make their day-to-day choices accordingly.”

--From Climate Change: A Complex Issue with Clashing Points of View by Lindsey de Stefan

“Jeff Genser, a Suffern native, pleaded to the council about flood issues. He stated, ‘You're proposing to eliminate 100 acres of flood plain, and turn it from a pervious area to an impervious. And that is unacceptable, in my opinion.’ He went on to propose his own idea for what could be built on the flood plain next to the Ramapo River, a Vertical Farm. ‘A building could be constructed that could supply food to half of Bergen County...use all the water it comes into [from the river], over and over again, and have no pollution and environmental impact.’ The idea seemed to stir no interest by the council.

“Many individuals mentioned how the mall would impact the surrounding community. Some were frustrated over the idea of Stag Hill residents being stranded in an emergency situation, being that the only access road to their community would become a constant point of traffic and congestion. Retired resident Ron Whalberg asked the council, ‘At what point do we stop endangering future generations?’”

--From A Changed Mahwah by Graig Mihok

“It is a race against time for a fading era of American heroes who served their country and feel they were poisoned by their government. It is a race against time for the Vietnamese people suffering from health conditions and birth defects. The U.S. government is left with a choice. It can accept responsibility and dedicate itself to all who suffered from the Agent Orange spraying campaigns, or it can wait for the end of an era. It can hope for the best that history will forget. The natural environment and the lives it gracefully sustains are in serious danger.

“For Agent Orange investigator Fred Wilcox, justice is yet to be done. ‘The government can start by saying sorry,’ he said.”

--From War After the War: The Environmental Assault of Agent Orange by Dan Savino

“Consumers seem to be paying attention to what they eat more and more. It is too soon to prove whether GM seeds, crops and foods will hurt or help us, but staying informed and questioning claims for will help to insure our safety. Big corporations own the rights to a very crucial part of the food chain. Urging others to ask questions, voice opinions and challenge tests is incredibly important. Food and its nutrients are what help us survive. As consumers and as humans we have the right to take control over the products we use daily.”

--From Genetically Modified Food: What Does it Mean for You and Your Kitchen? by Lorraine Metz

“Some say it’s just a coincidence; that it would take years, if not decades, for us to see any change in prices if we started drilling.  Experts say that the process of actually obtaining the oil, refining it, dispersing it, and using it takes an extreme amount of time and money, so that we wouldn’t see any relief in the near future.  The Energy Information Association found that increased drilling would have a very small, if any, impact before 2030.  They also found that even once the oil starts flowing, it would only bring in about 0.2 million barrels per day.

“Others argue that just by lifting a ban on drilling, it would influence the market to lower prices.  This is what seemingly happened between 2008 and 2010 with President Bush’s decision.  However, other economists argue that the oil industry is part of a global market and since the United States would only be contributing less than one million barrels per day, it wouldn’t do much for the prices.  How would one explain what happened after Bush’s decision?  The theory of supply and demand seems pretty fitting, which would directly benefit us in this situation.”

--From To Drill or Not to Drill? Offshore Oil Drilling and How it Can Affect You by Brittany Shann

“’Many residents have told me they don't trust DuPont or the NJ DEP. They think DuPont is covering up pollution and DEP is rubber stamping inadequate DuPont cleanup plans,’ says Bill Wolfe, former planner and policy analyst for the state Department of Environmental Protection and former policy director of Sierra Club's New Jersey Chapter.

“’They are frustrated by the slow pace of cleanup, angry for not being told about vapor intrusion, and disgusted by repeated failures by local and state officials to provide full information and allow them to have a meaningful role in cleanup decisions that affect their lives, their family’s health, and their property value,’ he says.”

--From DuPont: Pompton Lakes Site Still a Source of Conflict After 25-Year Clean Up by Deanna Dunsmuir

“Some fluctuations in the Earth's temperature are inevitable regardless of human activity, but centuries of rising temperatures and seas lie ahead if the release of emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation continues unabated, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore for alerting the world to warming's risks.

“Over the next decade, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to regulate sources of greenhouse gases, imposing efficiency and emissions requirements. Until the UNFCCC starts taking action on a global scale, it seems that countering global warming and climate change is up to the people’s smaller actions and lifestyle changes. Maybe then those with the greater power will see that we are prepared for much bigger, even drastic changes.”

--From Global Warming: Small Steps Towards Conquering a Big Threat by Jessica Vasquez

“A tract of twenty-two acres of forest named after the former Governor of New Jersey, George Brinton McClellan, was purchased a few years ago by Seton Hall Prep School of West Orange, New Jersey. The school’s plan’s to clear the old growth forest rippled through the community and neighboring towns and has caused many concerns. For two years, town residents and students attended zoning board hearings to voice their opinion on the proposed clear cutting. …

“The Mallangas, both active members of the Sierra Club, also brought in Bruce Kershner. Kershner is a field ecologist who is also a national authority on old growth forests and took a survey of the 22 acres of trees. He identified the trees and expressed the historical and biological value of the forest. Board members attacked his testimony claiming that the use of the term ‘old growth forest’ can not be used if he cannot tell the exact age of the trees. They repeatedly interrupted him during his testimony to ask him for credentials and if he had a background in studying and observing old growth forests. Kershner has studied old growth forests for over 30 years all over the country, but that did not seem like a sufficient enough background for the zoning board members.”

--From Seton Hall Prep Clear Cuts Our Future by Amanda Nesheiwat

Environmental Writing: The Next Generation

My explorations of innovative solutions to environmental problems have been on hold since January, as I focused on teaching journalism courses at two colleges, including launching a revived course at Ramapo College of NJ called Environmental Writing.

The original course was called Environmental Journalism; it was created more than 20 years ago by a persistent student, Bob Hennelly, who talked his way into teaching this topic. It was a brash, self-made stepping stone in Hennelly's career as an investigative journalist whose incisive reporting is a regular feature on WNYC and the National Public Radio network.

I was delighted to be asked to develop a new version of this course at my alma mater, which attracted a good roster of students for the spring semester. To showcase the 15 undergrads' exploratory writings on environmental issues, I created a class website: ramapolookout.blogspot.com.

It includes more than 150 items in various formats, from blog pieces to letters to the editor, news releases and news reports. The work spans weekly assignments on local to international issues we discussed in class--Agent Orange's New Jersey connections to industrial roots of water pollution problems--and magazine-style feature stories on topics of their choosing.

Some of the most thoughtful writing on potential solutions appeared in journal entries on what the students did for the college's required experiential learning outside the classroom. For instance, Amanda Valenti wrote a feature story--"Global Warming: Brew Your Own and Other Things You Can Do at Home"--on everyday things people can do to help lessen the human-made impact that scientists say is a cause of global climate change. Then she summed up what she had learned, in a journal entry titled "Experiental: Learning from Global Warming."

"In addition to doing research for the article, I decided to take my own advice and lessen the impact I am having on the earth," wrote Valenti, a senior. "I stopped buying water bottles and walk where I can. I also eat less red meat and more vegetables. Coffee has always been a weakness of mine, but after many experiments I think I can make a better cup of coffee than Starbucks. I put my coffee in a reusable thermos and brew it at my house now. Not only have I saved a lot of money these past few weeks, I like to think of myself as an experienced barista now.

"It has been a rather hard task to get others to do the same, but I realized I can only change my own ways and encourage others to do the same," she continued. "This was actually a great experience and had a larger impact on my life than I thought it would. At first I was just doing research for a magazine article, but it wound up being much more than that. This was a wonderful experience and I am glad I chose the topic I did."

Fellow senior Sharon Meyer decided to write about various examples of "Corporations Going Green" after noticing how a marketing company where she was doing an internship, EMI Music in Jersey City, switched from using reams of paper to filing transactions on a computer network. She also noticed that UPS envelopes that arrived at EMI were being reused.

"UPS supplies hundreds of companies who do bulk mailing with express envelopes for them to package it in. Those boxes are not easily reusable once they are opened, until now at least," Meyer wrote. "UPS has designed new envelopes that are actually green in color, and have directions on how to use the seal on the box properly, so that it can be re-used by the person receiving the package. This inspires people who are not so keen on re-using the envelopes to use them again because it is showing them the simple easy way to re-use it."

Dave Ragazzo, another senior facing graduation into an unsettling time economically and environmentally, decided to focus on New Jersey's most prominent feature for most residents and visitors: millions of cars on jam-packed highways.

"Being that climate change, or global warming as it is more commonly called, may have a direct correlation to carbon emissions, New Jersey drivers should be concerned that they are possibly causing much of the damage," Ragazzo wrote. "Unfortunately, the American public does not think about this when they are in stand-still traffic. People need cars to travel every day, so what are New Jersey residents to do?

"Electric cars may be the answer," he suggested in his feature article "It's Electric: Can Electric Cars Help New Jersey?"

The students also reflected on what they learned from readings in the course, such as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and related research.

"I felt I learned just as much in Carson’s book about people's disregard for the environment, as I learned from the criticism she faced after publishing it," Jonathan Madden wrote in an essay titled "Learning from Silent Spring's Critique." "The same attitude where humanity naturally seeks to solve all problems through the easiest solution with no regards to its consequences is what’s harming our environment now. If we all focused on how to solve problems in manners that are both effective and environmentally safe, perhaps we wouldn’t have many of the problems we face today."

Tis the Season

Swan cygnet,

Monksville Reservoir, Long Pond Iron Works State Park, West Milford, NJ

(Photo from Wild Life

by Jan Barry)

A snowstorm has turned this area of New Jersey into a sparkling winter landscape. The rumble of highway traffic and freight and commuter trains that surround the village of South Bound Brook fades into the background just looking at the spectacular view from my garden apartment. A tree-lined section of the Delaware & Raritan Canal flows by just steps away. The canal is a favorite feeding and rest stop for migratory ducks and geese. Last winter, a flock of Merganser ducks took a liking to the stretch of waterway behind the garden apartments and entertained me for hours as they dove underwater for fish and paddled around in excited circles.

During a bike ride in the fall, a rambunctious doe galloped through an opening in the forest and ran up nearly beside me, cocking her head toward me with a look that clearly conveyed “hey, wanna race?” Last summer, a friend and I were kayaking and lost track of how many turtles we saw sunning themselves on logs, rocks and fallen trees.

I moved here to have a handy place to kayak and ride my bike and walk along the canal towpath, which stretches nearly the width of New Jersey and then runs parallel to one of the most scenic sections of the Delaware River. This 70-mile-long ribbon of state park provides a wonderful wildlife corridor as well as a great getaway for humans. It is also a vivid reminder that in the densely developed Garden State, such corridors are all that’s left in many places for wildlife and close encounters with nature.

A great holiday gift was provided by New Jersey voters in November who approved a $400 million Green Acres bond referendum. It was the 12th time since 1961 that voters approved borrowing millions of dollars to buy forests and farmlands to preserve open space in a state popularly defined by the industrial-strength commercial corridors lining the New Jersey Turnpike and other major highways. In recent years, every county and nearly half of the towns and cities in NJ have created open space trust funds that were approved by voters. Other lands have been preserved by private donations to nonprofit conservation groups and by gifts by families and individuals who deeded their beloved homestead or farm for the public and wildlife to enjoy.

In the spirit of honoring nature’s role in the winter holiday season, I created photo books for family and friends this year that feature wildlife I’ve encountered, usually in parklands in New Jersey and other states, while biking, hiking, kayaking, or just gazing out the window. You can see my Wild Life photos here.

For more information:
http://www.dandrcanal.com/gen_info.html
http://www.nj.gov/dep/greenacres/

Veterans Campaign on Environmental Issues

Mike Breen speaking
in Scranton, PA
(photo credit:
Operation Free)



After Army tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Captain Mike Breen is on a new mission—seeking to convince fellow Americans that our addiction to fuel from Middle Eastern oil wells is a dire threat to our soldiers in combat and our security at home. Breen, a former infantry platoon leader, contends that the shadowy insurgents our troops have been battling in two military campaigns are largely financed by oil-rich Islamic groups that profit from America’s insatiable demand for gasoline but oppose our military actions in Islamic nations.

“When you pay at the pump… we are literally putting the bullets in the magazines that are being fired back at our guys in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Breen said recently during a bus tour sponsored by Operation Free, a coalition of veterans and national security groups working to counter what they see as a growing threat from dependence on foreign oil supplies. Citing military experiences, Breen and his buddies are determined to add red, white and blue to the green banner of the environmental movement.

“We don’t have to make a choice between our lifestyle and an independent energy policy that promotes a clean energy environment and keeps us safe,” he added, in comments reported by the Times Leader of Scranton, PA.

Breen, an ROTC graduate who is now a law student at Yale University, was part of the Veterans for American Power bus tour that traveled to dozens of communities in 21 states last month.

“As we spoke in Pennsylvania’s steel towns and rolled through the wooded hills of New Hampshire, I began to realize just how ready most people were to hear what we had to say,” Breen reflected in a blog on the Operation Free web site. “In small towns and state capitols, Americans young and old seemed to intuitively understand that dependence on foreign oil and pollution that threatens our climate both pose a danger to our security and way of life. More importantly, they seemed ready and eager to stand up and do something about it.

“In Pittsburg, the leaders of a local union showed us a training program that prepares workers for a renewable energy economy. In New Hampshire, state legislators explained how weatherizing homes in the state could create jobs. In Maine, Bowdoin College was packed with a new generation of student leaders ready to commit to putting America’s energy future back in American hands,” he continued.

“As the bus rolled on, I watched with humility and excitement as my fellow veterans mastered the skills of a new kind of service. Glenn Kunkel, a decorated Marine rifleman, spoke eloquently of wind farms as the victory gardens of a new greatest generation. Robin Eckstein told hushed town meetings of the perils of logistical convoys in Iraq, dodging insurgent attacks to supply petroleum for Army generators. Andrew Campbell brought a crowd of his fellow Mainers to their feet at our last event, with a call to stop funding both sides of the war through foreign oil.”

Meanwhile, a second bus-load of energized vets was touring Midwestern and Southern states. Rolling into Florida, the group’s “first stop was in the American Legion Hall Post 6 in Deland, FL,” noted Rocky Kistner on a campaign blog. “In a room appointed with military memorabilia and a wall-mounted M16, the vets mingled with fellow veterans of wars dating back to World War II. Many in the room agreed with their message: we need to find other sources of clean energy here at home to keep American armed service members from having to deploy and fight in wars over oil and other energy sources. It’s the best way to avoid future conflicts fueled by the increasing threats of climate change.”

Besides public education, a major focus of the bus tour was to build support for a bill in Congress, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. That bill was released by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee earlier this month for consideration by the full Senate. Introduced by Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, the bill aims to “cut carbon pollution and stimulate the economy by creating millions of jobs in the clean energy sector,” according to a Senate press release. A companion House bill was approved in June.

"This is a security bill that puts Americans back in charge of our energy future and makes it clear that we will combat global climate change with American ingenuity," said Kerry, the former presidential candidate and a Vietnam veteran long active on environmental issues. "Our health, our security, our economy, our environment, all demand we reinvent the way America uses energy. Our addiction to foreign oil hurts our economy, helps our enemies and risks our security.”

Fueling this bill and the concerns of vets on the bus tour were national security issues raised in federally funded studies and Congressional testimony by retired senior military officers.

“Global climate change presents a serious national security threat which could impact Americans at home, impact United States military operations and heighten global tensions, according to a new study released by a blue-ribbon panel of retired admirals and generals from all branches of the armed services,” states a summary of “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,” a 2007 study by the Center for Naval Analyses, based on research by nearly a dozen admirals and generals.

“Climate change is occurring at a much faster pace than the scientists previously thought it could,” noted General Gordon Sullivan, a former Army Chief of Staff. “Military professionals are accustomed to making decisions during times of uncertainty… Even if you don’t have complete information, you still need to take action. Waiting for 100 percent certainty during a crisis can be disastrous… The US has the responsibility to lead [on global climate change]. If we don’t make changes, then others won’t.”

Noting these concerns, support for addressing these issues has come from some Republicans as well as Democrats.

“As a conservative S.C. senator, a Marine and former chairman of President Ronald Reagan’s campaigns in South Carolina, I have always regarded national defense and economic development as top priorities,” state Senator John Courson wrote in a recent guest column in the Orangeburg (SC) Times and Democrat. “America’s dependence on foreign oil hurts our economy, helps our enemies and puts our security at risk. Together, we can protect our national security, keep our brave men and women out of harm’s way, strengthen our economy and take control of our energy future.”

Changing ingrained attitudes, and countering powerful economic interests, remains an uphill struggle. Courson was coming to the defense of U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC), who is under fierce attack by power utility groups for backing proposed legislative changes on energy use. Yet Captain Breen remains upbeat. “The bus tour may be over, but the mission continues,” he wrote. “I’m looking forward to reuniting with my fellow Operation Free veterans, and working together to meet the great challenge of our generation.”

For more information:
Mike Brean: Why I'm Fighting for Clean Energy
Vets have energy message
National Security and the Threat of Climate Change
Kerry, Boxer Introduce Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act
Foreign oil puts our security at risk

Think Green, Go Green

America is in the midst of massive change as sweeping as the transformation in daily life from horse-drawn wagons to horseless carriages, candle light to electric lights, and farm work to factory work that swirled through the nation a century ago.

A cutting edge of 21st century change is the spiraling use of computers and cell phones, which have morphed from curiosities for techies to hugely popular gadgets for instant communication among people in far flung places. Amid the flurries of texting and emailing, a sea change is also taking place in what Americans do for a living. This is a transformation—slowed down, but also highlighted by the worst economic downturn since World War II—from fast fading industrial jobs and stagnant service jobs to a rising wave of green jobs.

Wary of the boom and bust cycles of previous eras, advocates of the sustainability movement are trying to direct the energy of the trendy green wave to safer shores.

“Something that’s unsustainable undermines the very system on which it depends,” notes Jaimie Cloud, head of the Cloud Institute for Sustainability in New York City. She cites the example of overhavesting popular seafood—such as the long gone oysters that once thrived in New York waters—to the point of extinction. She often challenges school groups and other audiences to come up with a long-range plan for sustainable fishing. “If we want different results,” Cloud argues, “it begins with a change in thinking.”

Cloud was keynote speaker at a “Think Green…Teach Green Conference” this week in the epicenter of New Jersey’s most populous county. More than a million people live in Bergen County amid remnants of farmland that during the past 50 years was turned into wall-to-wall housing subdivisions, sprawling but now abandoned or struggling factories, and infamous traffic jams amid gleaming signs advertising luxurious pleasures at hard-sell, high-turnover shopping malls.

For Kathleen Sawryt, the key to doing things in a sustainable way is “adding green skills sets in all jobs.” Sawryt heads the Green Career Pathways program at Bergen Community College. The conference was sponsored by the college, The Record of Bergen County and several large industries including Konica Minolta and Verizon. The college, Sawryt said, is developing a training center for students, workers, homeowners and business owners to learn the latest techniques in construction and renovation with recycled materials and energy-efficient elements that incorporate solar, wind or geothermal heating and energy devices.

A nearby example is the state of the art Center for Scientific and Environmental Education at the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission headquarters, constructed on the side of a massive trash landfill that looms beside a sparkling expanse of tidal marshes. When it opened in 2008 to host environmental education programs run by Ramapo College of New Jersey, the $5.8-million center was the first public building in the state to meet the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) platinum standards. It offers a working model for school groups and businesses in the region to study. Visitors “get to see and feel what a green building is like,” Meadowlands Commission Executive Director Robert Ceberio said at the conference at Bergen Community College.

So what’s the wave of the future look like out beyond the buzz on campus? According to a recent issue of Time magazine, a “report by the RAND Corporation and University of Tennessee found that if 25% of all American energy were produced from renewable sources by 2025, we would generate at least 5 million new green jobs.”

For example, Time continued, “hundreds of employees … now work for the Spanish wind company Gamesa at its new plant in Fairless Hills, Pa. — a plant built on the site of an old U.S. Steel manufacturing facility. If you make wind turbines or solar panels, your job is reliably green.” Looked at more broadly, “a green-collar job can be anything that helps put America on the path to a cleaner, more energy efficient future. That means jobs in the public transit sector, jobs in green building, jobs in energy efficiency — even traditional, blue-collar manufacturing jobs, provided what you're making is more or less green. (Building an SUV? Blue-collar. Building a hybrid? Green-collar.)”

I’d add another green collar category—farming. There are good models of turning abandoned city lots into community gardens in New York, Detroit and other cities. The pay’s not great, but sustained gardening can help cut grocery bills. And as older farmers retire, there’s a chance to turn gardening skills into a farming career, furnishing food to city farmers’ markets. Or perhaps launch a career as a designer of rooftop gardens. At the conference at Bergen Community College, student Nirva Singh described how the Environmental Club and the Green Team turned cafeteria leftovers into compost used on a community garden on campus. Another project they want to tackle next, he said, is to create a rain garden on the roof of the student center.

For more information:
www.cloudinstitute.org/
www.njmeadowlands.gov/environment/cese.html
www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1809506,00.html
www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-06-02-urbangardens_N.htm