Category Archives: Environment
Letter to Treasurer Raimondo
A group of civil rights and advocacy organizations in Rhode Island is calling Treasurer Raimondo’s attention to some of the extreme political positions taken by The Manhattan Institute and demanding that she return the award she recently received:
January 11, 2011
Hon. Gina Raimondo, General Treasurer State House, Room 102 Providence, RI 02903Dear Treasurer Raimondo,
On behalf of a broad range of civil rights and community organizations, we respectfully write to you regarding your recent affiliation with the Manhattan Institute – an extremist right wing group that promotes offensive, ignorant and hurtful positions towards the LGBTQI community, women, minorities and our environment.
Last week you traveled to New York to stand with and be publicly recognized by The Manhattan Institute, where you accepted their “Urban Innovator Award” for your work to alter Rhode Island’s pension system. Your work regarding the pension system has certainly been the subject of significant debate, and our purpose today is not to reexamine the merits of those legislative efforts. Rather, we seek to call your attention to a series of troubling articles and position papers that we sincerely hope do not reflect your own personal or political positions.
· In “Gay Marriage vs American Marriage”, the Manhattan Institute comes alarmingly close to some of the more common anti-equality rants espoused by the so-called National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and the Family Research Council, by claiming that marriage equality (same-gender marriage) is not the same as “American Marriage”. Furthermore, in “Redefining Marriage Away”, the Manhattan Institute claims that the reason to fear marriage equality is that gay and lesbian couples do not value fidelity, that their asserted lack of monogamy is immoral and dangerous. As if these articles aren’t offensive enough, they publish and reference anti-equality articles and books written by former NOM president Maggie Gallagher including “Why Marriage is Good For You”.
· Ms. Hymowitz writes about how “Women Prefer the Mommy Track,” widespread rape on college campuses is a myth, and claims that feminism as a whole is “not so much dead as obsolete.”
· The Manhattan Institute called claims of racial profiling by police “ACLU misinformation,” “promoting racial paranoia,” and “ivory-tower posturing” and compared being charged with racism to being charged as a witch: to be without any conceivable defense.
· The Manhattan Institute rails against President Obama’s green jobs initiative, stands in opposition to wind power, and sees fracking as an alternative energy solution.Madame Treasurer, the aforementioned articles are just a sample of what is readily available on the Manhattan Institute’s website. We must ask if you or anyone in your office were aware that this organization published such venomous, racially-charged, anti-gay, anti-environment and anti-women positions before you agreed to be honored by them in New York. We are willing to accept that you were not, but that acceptance must accompany a proactive effort by you. Return the Manhattan Institute’s Urban Innovator Award and publicly condemn these harmful writings at your earliest convenience, preferably within the next 48 hours.
We recognize that the purpose of your visit to the Manhattan Institute was to receive an accolade for your pension work and not to discuss the important issues we have brought to your attention. It is simply unacceptable to us as a coalition, or your constituents as a whole, for you to stand with or accept an award from a narrow-minded and hurtful organization. To do so would be seen as nothing less than an implicit condoning of their bigotry.
Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration, we look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.
Sincerely, Clean Water Action Rhode Island
Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island
Hope United
Marriage Equality Rhode Island
National Association of Social Workers Rhode Island Chapter
Ocean State Action
Sierra Club Rhode Island Chapter
Steve Stycos Year End Report: Ending Wasteful Spending, Opening Community Gardens, and Opposing Charter Schools
Ward 1 Council Member Steve Stycos reports on his excellent contributions to the city:
YEAR END REPORT
December 21, 2011As 2011 comes to a close, I want to update you on my first year on the Cranston City Council and my goals for 2012.
For the most part, the council works well. Debates are generally polite. Council members listen to each other and many change their views when presented with a solid argument. The inflexibility and nastiness which characterize politics in Washington, D.C. are rarely seen at City Hall. In addition, Mayor Allan Fung’s administration is honest and competent. Unfortunately, city finances remain tight due to years of inadequate funding of city-run police and fire pension funds, cuts in state aid and health insurance costs.
During my first year on the Council, I fought wasteful spending, advocated for our children and schools and worked to improve our neighborhoods.
Fight Wasteful Spending
Amendments I offered to the mayor’s budget cut spending by $289,000.
Included in the cuts was the repaving of two school yards. I argued that asphalt is an unsafe playing surface and repaving is not critical.
Another cut came when I discovered the budget included funds to rebuild two playgrounds at Hope Highlands Elementary School. I noted that every other elementary school survives with one playground and some have no playground. The Council made the cut, saving $70,000.
After I discovered that Board of Elections members were paid $12,000 in the last off election year for meeting a total of 73 minutes, I convinced the Council to eliminate their pay.
Shortly after I took office I discovered that the Board of Tax Assessment Review was meeting without taking minutes. In addition, the board, whose members were paid $50/meeting, was meeting more than 100 times a year, sometimes for just twenty minutes. I objected to this secrecy and the three member board was forced to keep minutes. The council also agreed to my proposal to eliminate their pay, saving $22,000 a year.Advocate for our children and schools
EDUCATION: I was one of two Council members to testify before the Rhode Island Board of Regents in opposition to the creation of a charter school in Cranston. Charter schools spend public money without controls from elected officials and drain badly needed money from our school system.LIBRARY: After I succeeded in cutting the mayor’s budget by more than a quarter million dollars, I proposed adding $50,000 to the Cranston library budget. In recent years, the library has reduced its reserve fund to provide excellent services in tough financial times. The Council passed the addition, but the mayor vetoed it. The council failed to override the veto by one vote.
PUBLIC HEALTH: I convinced the Council to increase the city license fee to sell tobacco from $25 a year to $100 a year, raising about $7000 and taking a small step to discourage tobacco sales.
WOMEN ON HEARING BOARD: When a citizen alerted me that the Cranston Juvenile Hearing Board’s members were all men, I moved to add two women. The police department refers teenage petty offenders involved in fights and graffiti to the board instead of the court system. We especially need women members because half the cases involve girls. My proposal passed and two capable women were appointed.
Improve our neighborhoods
COMMUNITY GARDEN: With a lot of volunteer help, I started Cranston’s first community garden at Edgewood Highland Elementary School. The school department contributed part of the school parking lot, the Council appropriated funds for soil and construction materials and volunteers built the garden. Sixteen plots were built in 2011 and another sixteen are planned for 2012.TREE PLANTING: At no cost to the city, I coordinated planting 28 trees at Edgewood Highland Elementary School, Cranston High School West, Ruggerio Park and Meshanticut State Park.
BUSINESS HOURS: When constituents complained that the council allowed Akid Dairy Mart to expand its hours without notifying neighbors, I proposed that businesses seeking longer hours must notify neighbors within 200 feet. The proposal passed and was used for the first time when Wal-Mart in western Cranston sought to open for 24 hours. The Council denied that request.
TREE TRIMMING: A Narragansett Boulevard resident complained that his street trees were badly pruned by Cox Cable and the city. We devised a proposal to require notice be posted whenever a street tree or a tree on city property is to be removed or trimmed. Citizens then may appeal to the city tree warden. The Council approved the proposal.
FOURTH STREET REPAVING: After a constituent brought to my attention that Fourth Street had only one layer of pavement and was falling apart, I raised the issue. The mayor was unaware of the problem, but after investigating, agreed to repave the street.
Looking toward 2012
In 2012, we need to do more. Our parks should be expanded to provide additional green space for biking, walking and other family activities. More trees should be planted to replace those destroyed by Hurricane Irene and, in a small way, temper the effects of global warming. Zoning reform is needed so that big corporations like Stop & Shop and CVS are not granted unnecessary variances which undermine the quality of life in our neighborhoods. Finally, our schools and libraries must be adequately funded.I look forward to representing you in 2012.
Happy New Year,
Steve Stycos
Ward One City Councilman
Urban Skywatching
Good view of the moon last night. It was pale gold, wreathed in smoky clouds, very big over Thayer Street. Here’s from Mother Nature Network.
Dec. 10, 9:36 a.m. ESTFull moonThe full Moon of December is usually called the Oak Moon.In Algonquian it is called Cold Moon. Other names are Frost Moon, Winter Moon, Long Night’s Moon and Moon Before Yule. In Hindi it is known as Margashirsha Poornima. Its Sinhala (Buddhist) name is Unduvap Poya. The full moon rises around sunset and sets around sunrise, the only night in the month when the moon is in the sky all night long. The rest of the month, the moon spends at least some time in the daytime sky.
Documentary on the Astroturf Tea Party
Watching this documentary makes me very sad for all the people who have been sucked into the right-wing astroturf propaganda machines that are driving the tea party movement.
Bills Come Due
One of the disadvantages of nuclear power is the problem of waste disposal, and the enormous costs both of building a plant, and safely dismantling it about thirty years later. From Reuters News Service…
IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] Director General Yukiya Amano this week said international safety standards needed to be strengthened but the agency was not a “nuclear safety watchdog,” stressing safety was the responsibility of individual countries.
But a senior former IAEA official, Olli Heinonen, said in a blog comment that Fukushima “should be a wake-up call to re-evaluate and strengthen the role of the IAEA” in boosting nuclear safety.
Amano’s safety report for last year noted that of the 441 reactors now in operation around the world, many were built in the 1970s and 1980s, with an average lifespan of about 35 years. The Fukushima plant also dates back to the 1970s.
“Their decommissioning peak will occur from 2020 to 2030 which will present a major managerial, technological, safety and environmental challenge to those states engaged in nuclear decommissioning,” it said.
“The need for national and international mechanisms for early planning, adequate funding and long-term strategies applies not only to decommissioning, but also to radioactive waste management and spent fuel management.”
Giving no details about which reactors faced closure, it also said some countries had started to consider extending operations of their nuclear plants beyond the planned timeframe.
The United States has most operating nuclear reactors in the world with 104 units, followed by France with 58 and Japan with 54, according to the IAEA’s website.
In this economy, in this political climate, who is going to sell the notion of paying dearly to ensure that a used up nuclear plant will not be a permanent hazard?
Epidemiology Map
Valerie Brown, of Alternet, takes apart the official reassurances that ‘no immediate risk’ of harm from radioactive exposure is the whole story.
On a spring day in 1975, the first words I heard as I rose through the fog of anesthetic were “it was malignant.” I was twenty-four years old. A couple of months earlier during a routine physical my doctor had found a mass on my thyroid gland. X-rays and ultrasound had failed to clarify whether the mass was a fluid-filled cyst or a solid tumor. The only choice was surgery. The tissue analysis during the operation confirmed a diagnosis of thyroid cancer. The surgeon removed one lobe and the isthmus of the barbell-shaped gland at the base of my neck. I was informed that I’d take thyroid hormone for the rest of my life because if my own remnant gland were to start functioning again, it might grow itself another cancer. And so I have taken the little pill every morning for thirty-six years. It took a long time for the screaming red scar around my neck – the kind that was later dubbed the “Chernobyl necklace” – to fade.
The rest of her post is worth reading, especially as this subject is not easily reduced to sound bites and slogans.
The phrase, ‘Chernobyl necklace’ is a reference to the approximately 4,000 children and adolescents diagnosed with thyroid cancer who lived in the path of nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The International Atomic Energy Agency has a somewhat more upbeat take on this consequence than Ms. Brown.
This is not an attempt to speculate about numbers and relative risk. That requires epidemiological research. It’s just to say that today’s news photo of a Japanese woman wearing a mask as she feeds her infant from a bottle is an illustration of one of the deepest and most real concerns about this present crisis and nuclear power in general.
Update on Edgewood Community Garden from Steve Sycos
There is progress being made in finding a plot for the community garden, as it detailed below by Steve Stycos:
Friends,
Community garden plans are progressing. We are focusing on the southeastern corner of the Edgewood Highland parking lot.
Annemarie Bruun discussed the project with Rich Pederson, who runs Southside Community Land Trust’s City Farm. He recommends removing asphalt whenever possible. Southside’s community garden coordinator is moving to Boston, so she is not available to meet with us. Her replacement says she is too busy to meet, so Annemarie may just go to her office to briefly get some details on how they run their gardens.
This morning, I met with Joel Zisserson, the school department’s head of grounds, the city DPW director Dave Ventetuolo and highway supervisor John Corso. Joel is supportive of the project and the city may be able to remove the asphalt, if we want them to.
Water, however, is in limbo. To make a connection to a water line now requires “a hot box,” or a heated box with a back flow valve to prevent contamination of the water supply. Just recessing a faucet in a box in the ground is no longer permitted. Dave estimated a hot box could cost $10,000 to $15,000. They suggested, and I agreed, that the best option, at least until we establish the garden, is to talk with nearby homeowners about running a hose from their homes and paying them for water. I will go door to door this weekend to talk with them. If that fails, I will go back to the school department.
We also discussed starting small and then expanding. Joel suggested phase one go from the last telephone pole to the far eastern end of the lot, but nothing is set in stone. Joel is also going to talk with the superintendent about a multi-year lease and liability. He also agreed to let us drill through the asphalt to do soil tests, if we want.
Joel, John and Dave also questioned whether leaving the asphalt in place and putting raised beds on top (as some community gardens have done) would work. They thought it would be hot and worry about how the site slopes, encouraging erosion. The slope is more pronounced when you look at it from the downhill side.
So we have a few more details to work out before we meet as a group to make plans.
Why it Matters
Because the same re-assurances from experts, the same doubts that were disregarded as alarmism, the same ‘pragmatism’ that allowed reckless policy in the name of science and profit are behind the push to expand nuclear power today.
Robert Peabody died almost fifty years ago in a nuclear plant that was sold as state of the art and safe. Workers in Russia were martyred in the Chernobyl cleanup. The news today is about a rotation of volunteers in Japan who brave exposure to radiation in a desperate effort to prevent the worst as nuclear safety fails in the wake of disaster.
It matters because not enough has changed, and not enough will unless we stop digging ourselves into dependence on nuclear power, leaving the mess to future generations.
Rhode Island’s Nuclear Fatality–Part I
This is in memory of Robert Peabody, a husband and father working a second job to support his family, assigned to a dangerous task in an unsafe workplace, poisoned by a nuclear reaction. There are lessons to learn, may we not forget them.
It’s been almost thirty years since the Three Mile Island disaster put a halt to the expansion of nuclear power in the US. Public opinion was already turning against the industry. Once promising cheap, clean electricity, the power plants in fact required massive taxpayer subsidies to build and a special exemption from liability in case the worst happened.
The worst almost happened at Three Mile Island …
Although the TMI-2 plant suffered a severe core meltdown, the most dangerous kind of nuclear power accident, it did not produce the worst-case consequences that reactor experts had long feared. In a worst-case accident, the melting of nuclear fuel would lead to a breach of the walls of the containment building and release massive quantities of radiation to the environment. But this did not occur as a result of the Three Mile Island accident.
The worst-case accident occurred in 1986 at Chernobyl.
Today, a generation after the gas lines and bitter winters of the 1970′s, we’re again caught unprepared. We still depend on foreign oil and large, centralized power plants. Investment in alternative energy has been cut to a trickle since Ronald Reagan. The nuclear industry is portraying itself as a clean, green savior. Safety concerns are dismissed as a superstitious fear of radioactivity…
In more than 500 reactor years of service in the United States, there has never been a death or a serious injury to plant employees or to the public caused by a commercial reactor accident or radiation exposure. Says Philip Handler, president of the National Academy of Sciences: “Nuclear power is the safest major technology ever introduced into the United States.” link
In fact, a Rhode Island man was killed on the job by radiation exposure. In 1964 in Charlestown, Rhode Island, Robert Peabody was working the second shift at the United Nuclear waste processing plant. The training was minimal, supervision lax and written policies inadequate. Peabody, a Navy vet and mechanic, had picked up a second job to support his large family. When he came on the evening shift, no one warned him that a container full of radioactive water was more concentrated than what he usually handled. When he emptied it into a larger tank the highly concentrated sludge set off a fission reaction…
A blue glow filled the small room as the radiation charged the air with electricity. Peabody was blown flat on his back. The force of the blast also sprayed radioactive solution onto the tower ceiling, 12 feet above. Some of the volatile fluid gushed over the tank lip and onto the floor. The entire plant was instantly filled with the sound of screaming sirens.(Providence Journal, Sunday Journal Magazine ‘Chain Reaction’ 3/11/90)
[ 'Chain Reaction' is not available online free of charge. Yankee Magazine has an online article that covers the same incident, with more technical detail. This is some buried history that the Journal should re-publish.]
Two other workers who responded to the accident were exposed to a second, smaller fission reaction.
Robert Peabody was doomed in an instant, but it took him 49 hours to die. Turned away from Westerly Hospital, he was driven at top speed to Rhode Island Hospital by ambulance driver John Shibilio and placed in an isolation room. His widow attributes her cancer to the minutes she held her dying husband’s hand. Everything he touched had to be decontaminated or burned. His remains were cremated. He left nine children.
His death, and the corporate denial afterward, is an example of the weak regulation and lack of accountability that leaves workers unprotected. The danger to the public is not imaginary.
The nuclear industry likes to compare its safety record to coal. But much of the danger of coal mining is a matter of priorities. Worker safety is balanced against profit. A mine accident is a disaster for the miners and their community. A nuclear accident such as Chernobyl sends radioactive particles across national borders. Millions are unaware that they are exposed. These particles contain elements that do not degrade for many thousands of years, that accumulate in our bodies and concentrate up the food chain, capable of causing cancer and birth defects many generations after the accident.
The Peabody family was left bereft and in poverty. Robert Peabody was blamed for the accident that killed him.
EVEN AS PEABODY was admitted to the hospital, United Nuclear was working to discredit him, blaming “human error” and “ineptitude” in newspaper accounts of the accident. In addition to assuring the public that any radiation released into the atmosphere was insignificant, company officials said that Peabody had violated plant safety procedures by pouring the contents of the 11-liter “safe” bottle into the “unsafe” chemical tank. (Providence Journal 3/11/90)
No danger to the public. No blame to the corporation. They say it’s different now. Trust them.
