BEAT’s Blog

I saw this news story and thought, “How terrible. Why weren’t the locals outraged?”  Can you imagine the outcry if this sort of thing ever happened here?

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, large quantities of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are entering our waterways.  Environmental agencies used to believe that the source was primarily industrial and agricultural, but recent evidence points the finger at residential sources.

What do you do when you have unused prescription medications, or cosmetics, or common products such as sunscreen, medicated lotions, or aspirin?  What about the cleaners, insecticides, herbicides?  Many people flush these materials down the drain.  Even when you don’t intend to send these chemicals down the drain, you may be.  A large percentage of the pharmaceuticals you take in end up passing through your body unchanged.  And all of these materials go straight to our waterways.  Wastewater treatment plants neither detect them nor modify them.  In many communities, putting them in the trash sends them to landfills, where they find their way into the soil or sometimes into groundwater.

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Newspapers have  a responsibility to separate their news stories from their editorials.  When, on July 6, the Berkshire Eagle ran their supposed news story entitiled “Airport upgrade intended for all,” they were neglecting this responsibility.  First of all, what prompted this article.  If you read carefully, you will discover that the news event that prompted the story was the fact that airport spokesperson Randall Christiansen had spoken.  The story has nothing to report other than this man’s words.  So what did he say that prompted the Eagle to announce that the airport is “for all.”  He said, “There’s still a sense out there that pervades a small portion of the community that this is a rich playground for the rich and famous….”  Nothing else in the story addresses this point.  There is no supporting evidence offered to support the position that this is a minority opinion, and there is nothing in the story that explains how the expansion will benefit the average person in Pittsfield; and yet the title proclaims this revelation. Read more…

Last week I wrote about a Pittsfield official telling the City Council that the City of Pittsfield had “elected” not to comply with state-mandated environmental monitoring regulations in an effort to save money.  In case you think this is an isolated incident, let me tell you about a few things that happened over the course of the last couple weeks and are still going on. Read more…

Why is it that people, whether in an office in Pittsfield or on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, always think they understand public safety issues better than the regulators. Recently, Bruce Collingwood, Pittsfield’s Commissioner of Public Works and Utilities, stood before the city council during budget hearings to discuss the mayor’s new budget. Mr. Collingwood was asked by a councilor to explain the fact that his department had asked for $106,000 for environmental monitoring but had received only $30,000. Why did this happen and what were the implications of the mayor not putting the full amount in Mr. Collingwood’s budget the councilor wanted to know.

Mr. Collingwood explained that the city had “elected” not to do this monitoring although it is required by the state.
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The ICOET (International Conference on Ecology and Transportation) is amazing. There are people from Mexico, Canada, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Cameroon, Norway, Portugal, France, Sweden, Taiwan, Ghana, India, Republic of Korea, Nigeria, and Switzerland, all working to help wildlife get across roads. I especially liked the photographs of wildlife crossing rope bridges over roads in Australia – sugar gliders and marsupial possums.

I am sorry I missed Pittsfield Green Drinks tonight, but I was there in spirit. BEAT is a member of the TransWild Alliance, a group of conservation advocacy organizations working to protect wildlife and natural resources from the devastating impacts of highways and associated development. And I went out with other TransWild Alliance members for our own version of Green Drinks here. All our conversations revolved around wildlife and roads. Very interesting!

Tomorrow we go on field trips around the Duluth area to see what great projects have been implemented here.

Good night from Duluth,
Jane

I am writing from the International Conference on Ecology and Transportation in Duluth, MN at the west end of Lake Superior. The conference doesn’t really start until tomorrow (Monday 9/14) but I checked in this evening and attended the screening of “Division Street” with the filmmaker, Eric Bendick. Actually, we only screened 40 minutes of the film, but enough to decide that this would be a great film to bring to western Massachusetts to try to raise awareness and start a discussion about the impact of roads on wildlife here. (As you know, BEAT is already working to decrease the impact of roads on wildlife.)

The filmmaker said that the farthest away you can get from roads in the continental US is about 21.2 miles. Roads are everywhere!

The conference should be interesting with speakers from around the world talking about what is being done in their area to decrease the impact of roads on wildlife.

More tomorrow once the conference is really underway!
Jane

A recent Pittsfield Gazette story highlighted the controversy surrounding flooding in the area around Deming Park in Pittsfield. Local residents are angry over mistakes made by the Pittsfield Parks Commission and the Pittsfield Conservation Commission. A second, seemingly unrelated story has me concerned.

According to the Gazette, “Ontario Street homeowners led by Dan Miraglia have challenged the city’s activities at the park, which they feel have violated the law and contributed to an ever-worsening flood problem impacting their residential properties. ‘There is a constant flooding problem in that particular area,’ he said.” (1)

Part of the controversy centers on a new batting cage that was built for the Babe Ruth baseball league in Deming Park. There was no permit issued for this work by the Conservation Commission even though the work was in the floodplain.

According to the Gazette, “The parks commission approved the batting cage — paid for by the Babe Ruth league — in February, during a meeting when all votes were illegal because a quorum was not present. The cage was then installed and in March, the commission ‘corrected’ the votes by voting as a package to reaffirm all February actions, without any deliberation. (1)
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Pittsfield has suffered from an unusual amount of flooding over the course of the past year. Of course nobody is blaming the City for the recent heavy rainfall. But the kind of extreme storms we have been experiencing lately may become more common in the future. Global climate-change models have been saying for years now that climate change in our area will mean more rainfall and more extreme and intense rain storms. (1)

Although nobody is saying that Pittsfield caused all the recent flooding, I believe that the decisions made by the Pittsfield Conservation Commission have made the flooding worse than it otherwise would have been. For example, take their decisions regarding the reconstruction of Wahconah Park. Read more…

BEAT has been warning the City of Pittsfield about the dangers of undersized culverts. As I said in a previous post,

“BEAT has also been arguing to apathetic ears that Pittsfield has been installing undersized culverts at road crossings. We hate to say ‘we told you so,’ but part of the flooding is a result of the city being unwilling to force engineers to do a little extra work or spend a little extra money. Apparently the city would rather force homeowners to go out and buy sump pumps.”

Here’s an amazing video from Freeport, Maine that underscores the danger of undersized culverts. The video was captured by WMTW.com photojournalist Kevyn Fowler in Freeport, Maine during a storm. It shows the collapse of a road when water flow exceeded the capacity of a culvert. The culvert makes its appearance at the very end of the video.