Citizens' Daily Lobby

Lee Creek, a designated Extraodinary Resource Waterway in Northwest Arkansas, should run free for at least the next three decades.  That’s good news for the Arkansas Canoe Club and other roupss in the state that stood in opposition to the project.  According to the Pine Mountain Dam project manager, Mark Yardley, Crawford County should not have to take up the issue again for at least three decades, because  Lake Fort Smith is projected to provide enough water for the county for another 50 years.  (Story here) .

The Fort Smith City Wire has a slightly different take on the story, probably more in keeping with political reality.

“Given that current conditions indicate an adequate firm yield for our region for the foreseeable future, coupled with the recent trend of slower growth and less than stellar economic conditions, the board felt that the best course of action was to suspend the study in the absence of data that clearly demonstrates a pressing need,” noted a statement from the [River Valley Regional Water] District.

If the economy were better, the study would likely have gone forward, need or no need, in spite of opposition from the Canoe Club, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, the Nature Conservancy, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Arkansas Heritage Commission, (the City Wire reports this as the Arkansas Heritage Commission, but I think they must mean the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission),  and the Sierra Club.

Are you feeling guilty about the amount of water you’re putting on your lawn this summer?  That’s healthy guilt.  Deal with it rationally by making plans now to convert some of your landscaping to native plants and herbs next summer.  Wildflowers and herbs (lavender and rosemary are beautiful additions to any garden) are hardy and require less water than many other plants.   Native plants have evolved in the Arkansas heat and will survive the punishment of a hot, dry summer.  You can check out options for native plantings at  Arkansas Plant and Resources .  Your new landscaping will require watering until it’s established, but you can look forward to a guilt-free garden for years to come.

Vinegar and baking soda will not save the world.  Or even my bathroom.  You heard it here.  I am not a fan.

Almost every well-intentioned greenhorn of the green movement picks up a “natural” cleaner at the grocery store.  This may well be the third pillar of green-ness (following use of fluorescent lightbulbs and recycling).  The end result of all this reliance on plant-based detergents and essential oils is dirtier houses or more shapely arms, or both, because, frankly, elbow grease plus green cleaners works about as well as elbow grease alone.   At least in my home, with its real hard water, genuine soap scum, and honest to goodness pet grime.   

I consider this while scrubbing (and scrubbing, and scrubbing, and scrubbing) the master bath.  It occurs to me that I am using medieval housekeeping technology.  Last week, I almost bought a washboard just to get the laundry clean, coconut-based detergents notwithstanding.  I hate phosphates and petrochemicals as much as the next person, so what’s an environmentalist to do? 

“Try vinegar and baking soda” say the gurus of go-lightliness.   Cue the angelic choir and radiant beam of light.  One solution to rule them all.

I want to believe in the magical mystical power of acid and base, yin and yang, but I am skeptical.  Vinegar does work on lightly soiled windows, it’s true.  Baking soda, on the other hand, is good for deodorizing refrigerators and making tasty baked goods and not much more.    Together…well, together they make a warm, foaming volcano.  And you know what?  Baking soda plus vinegar plus elbow grease is about as effective as elbow grease alone.

Baking soda and vinegar will not save the world.  Neither will fluorescent lightbulbs or recycling or buying organic.   It’s going to take elbow grease.  It isn’t always easy, but every step we take as individuals contributes to a better planet. 

(In the meantime, could we please have a few more engineers wrapping their heads around the creation of effective but harmless cleaners? )

If you are interested in hearing first-hand accounts of the oil spill tragedy in the Gulf,  come out on Thursday to the Gulf Voices Fly Out event at the Oyster Bar.   From Audubon Arkansas:

Clean Energy Works is hosting the Gulf Voices Fly-Out in order to share the personal stories of the devastating effects of the Deepwater oil disaster with communities and members of the press across the country.

Four Gulf Coast residents directly affected by the disaster will be traveling to Arkansas for approximately 24 hours in order to educate the people in the state about the effects of the oil disaster on business, health and ecosystems. The public is encouraged to attend.

The disaster in the Gulf affects real people whose stories resonate across the country. These Gulf Coast residents are seeing firsthand how America’s dependence on oil and other fossil fuels hurts our economy, our environment and their unique way of life in the Gulf. The worst environmental disaster in our nation’s history is happening in our backyards. The environmental, economic and human costs that come with our continued dependence on dirty fossil fuels is too high for our communities to bear any longer.

What: A roundtable discussion and media availability.
When: Thursday, July 15th at 11:00 AM
Where: The Oyster Bar
3003 West Markham Street
Little Rock, AR 72205-5853
Who: Rick Roberts, Executive Director, Snook Foundation (Sarasota, FL)
Linda Hawkins, Health Care Professional (ret.) (Abita Springs, LA)
Linda Schuch, Owner, Island Seafood Market (St. Petersburg, FL)
Joe Morris Doss, Bishop, Episcopal Church (New Orleans, LA)

For the past several months, I have been toying with the idea of parking my SUV during the week and riding the bus to work.   In many cities, making this choice might have been a no-brainer.  In Little Rock, it’s not so simple.  Riding the bus will require advance planning and a  significant sacrifice of time.    Popular opinion is that risk of mugging or worse is increased among bus riders, and that only the downtrodden and students ride the bus.  Conditions at bus stops are deplorable, with most lacking shelter and many lacking even a bench.  Once out of the downtown area, Little Rock is not a very walkable city, and just getting to the bus stop can prove to be a problem for many.

The idea has taken hold, however, and the Gulf oil spill has added new immediacy.  It’s not enough just to boycott BP.  I don’t buy gas there, anyway.  We have to decrease our use of fossil fuels, and driving my vehicle to work each day is looking more and more like an unsustainable extravagance.     There’s an example to be set here, and questions to be answered about the Little Rock bus system.  So it is  that this is to be the first post in a series designed to bring to light the problems and benefits  of using mass transit in Little Rock.

I live approximately 5 miles from work.  Riding the bus directly from the nearest bus stop will entail a  short (1/2 mile or so) walk and one transfer.  Already a hitch.  Buses here only run approximately every 30 minutes, even during rush hours, and the Rodney Parham bus I would catch misses the transfer at W. Markham street by about 5 minutes each time.  This means about a half-hour wait at the bus stop for the transfer and a trip to work of over an hour.   (I make the trip in about 15 minutes by car.)  I have never designed a bus schedule, but I would think that in a city with relatively few major cross streets it would make sense and be fairly simple to schedule transfers better.   What’s worse, my choices for leaving the house would be about 6:45 am for an 8:00 arrival or 7:30 for an 8:30 arrival.  An alternate plan would be for me to walk or bike to work with my husband and catch the West Markham bus from there.  This entails about a 1.5 mile walk and significant backtracking, but no standing around waiting for a transfer.  As bus riding around here goes, though, I am in pretty good shape.  A friend of mine who lives just across the river in North Little Rock says it would take him 2 transfers and about 1.5 hours to get to work.

Tomorrow, I will buy my first 30-day bus pass at a cost of $36.  This is less than the cost of one tank of gas, and I generally fill up once in about a week and a half.    I’ll count this as incentive.

For those who are wondering why I do not just ride my bike to work I have two answers.  First, I do not enjoy riding a bike.  I would rather run the five miles to work.  Second, Little Rock is even less bike-able than it is walkable.  W. Markham is a narrow 4-lane  street with curbs and no shoulders.  I’m not suicidal.

Ah, Earth Day.  Time for Earth-loving people everywhere to get outside and celebrate the gift that is Nature.  (Cue Grieg’s “Morning Mood” from Pier Gynt).

Also time for the press to pull out all the stops for its annual paeans to the God of the Consumer Marketplace, Wal-Mart.  Today in the New York Times, for example,  CEO Lee Scott is lionized for his role in promoting a greener outlook for the retail giant.   It’s fair to say the company is taking steps toward sustainability.  Relatively small steps that place the majority of the cost burden on their suppliers, that is.

Environmentalism, then, is very much a modern byproduct of sound business, in Scott’s view. The architect of the company’s well-publicized attempt to foist sustainability on its suppliers said the effort has less to do with environmental altruism than a business-sense commitment to cutting inefficiencies. That core distaste for excess, he said, should be the driver behind getting emitters to see opportunity in greenhouse gas reductions rather than punishment.

How does the man who leads Wal-Mart, biggest promoter of excessive, profligate,  unbridled consumption and peddler of cheap goods made for almost instant obsolescence,  say  that “core distaste for excess”  drives his company?

Thankfully,  some have resisted the growing trend to throw flower petals under Scott’s feet.  Read to the end of the NYT article, and you’ll find this excellent summation by Michael Brune.

“Wal-Mart right now is in a spot where there is legitimately a lot of praise, but there is a lot to legitimately criticize,” Brune said. “The scale of their effort is grossly surpassed by the pace of the company’s growth.”

Brune noted that the greenhouse gas commitment is to cut the intensity of the company’s total carbon footprint, not total emissions. Deciding to build solar panels on rooftops in 20 stores nationwide is nice, Brune added, but what about the 8,000 other stores?

“It’s a very long hike” to real sustainability, Brune said.

From ADEQ:

The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality will hold an informational stakeholder meeting regarding the proposed changes to the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission Regulation 2 – Regulation Establishing Water Quality Standards for Surface Waters of the State of Arkansas on Tuesday, April 6 at 6:00 PM.  The meeting will be held at ADEQ Headquarters (5301 Northshore Drive, North Little Rock, AR).  A presentation on the proposed changes will be made by the Department and time will be allotted for questions and comments. Please call Steve Drown at 682-0655 or Jamie Ewing at 682-0918 with any questions you may have.  A copy of the draft rulemaking package can be found at:

http://www.adeq.state.ar.us/regs/drafts/reg02_draft_docket_10-002-R/reg02_draft_docket_10-002-R.htm

It’s important for those of us with a stake in clean water (and that’s everybody) to make our voices heard.  Proposed changes to the standards, including lower tolerance for several toxins, are under attack by industry, for the predictable reason: cost.  We need to make it clear to our regulatory bodies and to industry that human and environmental health comes before industry profit.

The cap and trade system proposed in the Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House last year could actually lead to increased farm income, according to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center. This is due to the fact that agricultural enterprises would not be “capped” under the bill, but would still be eligible to make additional income via offsets.    This is in contrast to regulation of CO2 by the EPA without passage of cap and trade legislation, which is predicted to place additional cost and regulatory burden on farmers.  Of the three methods of regulating greenhouse gas emissions (cap and trade, regulation, and carbon taxes), cap and trade is the friendliest to agriculture.   Under cap and trade with offsets, the return to farmers  (of commodities, at least)  might look something like the data presented in Table 2.  The Center acknowledges that without some control of greenhouse gas emissions, the effects of climate change on agriculture would leave agriculture “vulnerable to the vagaries of climate change not only in the US but in the world”.   Full story here.

It will be important for agriculture to carefully consider the offsets available and to choose those that don’t take too much cropland out of production (ie, for forestation).   I would be interested to see what the data might look like for returning land that is currently in commodity production to growing produce and animal protein for local markets.  Mainstream agricultural economics doesn’t do a very good job of looking at serious alternatives to our current agricultural system.

InArkansas has a nice report this week tracking the green portion of Arkansas’ stimulus money.   Arkansas received $110 million for energy projects last year.  Here’s a rough breakdown of the major recipients of this money and what it will do for the state:

Arkansas Department of Human Services $48.1 million to help low-income families become more energy efficient.  Low-income individuals often live in the least efficient homes, and they pay a disproportionate amount of their income for energy needs. The stimulus funds are expected to help weatherize 6,500 homes by 2012.

Arkansas Energy Office: $39.4 million to fund 13 environmental energy projects.  Most of the money will be used for energy efficiency improvements in public and private buildings.

Local goverments:  $16 million for various projects, largely for energy efficiency.  Kudos to Conway, for its plan to implement a synchronized traffic light system that will save gas, time, and frustration for local motorists.

This doesn’t quite total $110 million.  A table would have been helpful in the article.   I’m sure I could find the missing $7 million in the article if I took the time to sort through all the figures.

Send a letter urging the US Forest Service to finalize a “no leasing” preference for part of the valuable Wyoming Range and to prevent further exploitation of this essential ecosystem.  The Wilderness Society makes it easy with an e-letter.   The Society explains the situation:

The Wyoming Range is an isolated range of peaks rising up from sloping foothills and vast sagebrush plains located in western Wyoming at the southern end of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. It contains summer range for the largest mule deer herd in the lower-48, and is home to half of Wyoming’s moose. It also contains blue-ribbon native cutthroat trout fisheries, elk and pronghorn. Its lush habitat and scenic vistas are treasured by Wyoming families and visitors alike.

In 2005 and 2006 the Forest Service identified 44,700 acres for new leasing on the eastern flanks of the range in the wildlife-rich foothills, mostly in the Horse, Beaver and Cottonwood drainages.

These proposed leases have been sold at a series of auctions, triggering growing waves of protests and appeals from many corners, including the governor, labor groups, outfitters, property owners, sportsmen groups, and conservationists.

The threat of additional leasing mobilized a growing coalition that joined together to pass legislation in Congress to prohibit future oil and gas leasing in this scenic landscape. Now we have to finish the job by supporting the Forest Service’s withdrawal of these leases. Once this is done, the Wyoming Range Legacy Act will ensure that these lands are forever prohibited from future oil and gas development!

This is an important decision that demonstrates balance. Already, adjacent to these forest lands, there are thousands of oil and gas wells on BLM lands, with over 9,000 additional wells projected to be drilled in the region. Some of our most special public lands must remain free from industrial development to support other uses and values.

This won’t be the last battle for the Wyoming Range, however. After this is over, more work and public engagement from our supporters will be needed for one last project, as the Forest Service continues a separate process to consider authorizing 136 new gas wells in a roadless part of the Range near the Upper Hoback River.

To learn more about the Wyoming Range campaign visit www.wyomingrange.org