The Chumph Tries to Kill the Chesapeake Bay and Kill More Jobs

One of my favorite memories as a young boy was when visiting country relatives who lived along one of Virginia’s rivers emptying into the Chesapeake Bay. In the summer, we’d go fishing a few miles down river for the plentiful Sea Trout, Spot, Croaker, and Bluefish. And yes, “Croaker” is a type pf fish prevalent along the mid-Atlantic seaboard considered a delicacy by some, and a trash fish by others because it has lots of bones.

Atlantic Croaker. So named because it makes a sound when caught. They breed in a 6 year cycle, and disappear for a year. Depending on year, they can range from 3-4″ to over 18″ in length.

In the fall Hunting season, the men in the Hunt Club would sometimes go out to the Oyster Grounds along the river, and collect bushels of the delicious bivalves. We would usually all ride on one of the flatbed Lumber Trucks, and wade out at low tide to chip Oysters off what is called Oyster rock, filling bushel baskets. Then on the way back home, “shuck” a few to eat raw, flavoring them with Vinegar, splitting up the catch so everyone had some to take home.

By the late 60’s – there just wen’t any Oysters.

The bay (and ocean side) has made a big comeback from the devastation of the Oyster stock by over-fishing and pollution. And a number of small aquaculture companies have had success in farming Oysters and Clams for the commercial market. I started “planting” my own clams, and raising Oysters in baskets which are designed to float, suspending the Oysters in a cage under water.

While people both farm clams and use the floats for Oysters for commercial purposes, many people here who live along the water, or have access to a dock will raise Oysters or Clams for their own personal consumption. Originally the floats were designed to raise the Oysters above the bottom to avoid the deadly MX Virus, as well as pollution. Now, they are the basis of a sustainable aquaculture system.

Now, Putin’s Bitch wants to take us back to the “bad old days” by destroying the very Chesapeake Bay clean up efforts which allowed the Oyster and Clam businesses on the bay to come back. POS needs to keep his freaking small paws off the Bay!

This is why the Farmers in my part of the world…

Weren’t stupid enough to vote for Trump

Chesapeake Bay’s Booming Oyster Industry Is Alarmed By Trump’s EPA Budget Cuts

Ryan Coxton resurrected his family’s oyster business in 2001 from the same muddy swath of Virginia river bottom his great-grandfather leased 102 years earlier. The slippery, jagged-shelled bivalves became so popular in the decades after the Civil War that a gold rush ensued in the Chesapeake Bay and its teeming estuaries, at times spurring violent rivalries that became known as “the oyster wars.”

But the Rappahannock Oyster Co. ― the first iteration of it, at least ― died in 1991 with Coxton’s grandfather. By the time Coxton and his paternal cousin, Travis, started growing oysters as a hobby on the family’s old property, the oyster industry in the region had all but collapsed.

Overfishing over the last century badly hurt wild oyster populations. Diseases ravaged the remaining creatures in the 1950s. Runoff pollution from farms and sewage treatment plants tainted the waters with phosphorus and nitrogen. Bacteria and algae fed by the pollution blossomed into massive, toxic plumes that sucked up oxygen and blocked sunlight, stymying fish populations and thinning the marsh grasses that oysters cling to to keep from slipping into the soft, silty mud and dying.

Things started changing in the last several years as the effects of an Environmental Protection Agency cleanup that began in 1983 under President Ronald Reagan took effect. (President Barack Obama imposed even stricter targets in 2009). Levels of phosphorus and nitrogen, a third of which settled on the water from being wheezed by power plants into the air, fell. The water cleared. Grasses grew back in dense thickets, tightening the river bed with roots.

By 2004, Coxton quit his day job and started cultivating oysters full time. At first, restaurants in the area, knowing how dirty the water had been, wouldn’t buy his product, even though it was safe to eat. He shipped them to upscale eateries in New York. But as water quality improved over the past decade, local demand came roaring back. Coxton opened his fifth restaurant Thursday evening and plans to cut the ribbon on a sixth in September.

Now the program that saved the Chesapeake Bay oyster industry is in jeopardy. The budget President Donald Trump proposed Thursday would eliminate funding for the $73 million initiative, along with more than 50 other programs and 31 percent of the EPA’s overall budget. Funding isn’t the only thing on the chopping block. Trump vowed to boost economic growth by axing regulations, particularly environmental rules he blames for holding businesses back. Already, his administration has scrapped a rule protecting streams from coal mine pollution, tossed out a directive ordering oil and gas drillers to report methane emissions and overturned a regulation giving the EPA power to police fertilizer and manure runoff from farms, the chief contaminants in the Chesapeake Bay.

“Oysters are filter feeders,” Coxton, 47, told The Huffington Post in a recent interview. “We can’t operate without clean water and a good environment.”

It wasn’t long ago that another Republican eager to placate his party’s populist wing took aim at cleanup efforts pursued by his Democratic predecessor. Weeks after taking office in January 2015, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan blocked regulations aimed at limiting Eastern Shore poultry farmers’ use of chicken manure on their fields. The phosphorus-rich fertilizer is a leading source of runoff in the Chesapeake Bay.

A month later, the Hogan administration received a letter from the EPA warning that, if the state dropped new manure rules, it would need another policy to meet the agency’s pollution limits. Maryland Democrats scrambled to pass bills that would have done just that. In response, Hogan made an about-face. He ordered an immediate ban that targeted fields oversaturated with manure, even though he gave other farmers more time to comply, local NPR station WYPR reported.

“We have listened to the agricultural and environmental communities to find a fair and balanced plan for limiting phosphorus,” Hogan said in a statement at the time. “The enhanced Phosphorus Management Tool regulations … will protect water quality in the Chesapeake Bay while still supporting a vibrant agriculture industry in Maryland.”

In a statement to The Huffington Post, the governor vowed he would “always fight to protect our state’s most important natural asset.”

“If any of these budget proposals ever become law, we will take a serious look at how to address them during our budget process next year,” Amelia Chasse, the governor’s spokeswoman, said. “Since taking office, Governor Hogan has invested more than $3 billion in efforts to protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay and will remain a fierce advocate going forward.”

Conservationists, clean water advocates and oyster farmers hope Trump will have a similar change of heart. Or, at least, that Congress will withhold approval for any budget that doesn’t include funding for the project. Republican lawmakers, some of whom already joined Democrats in opposing Trump’s cuts to a similar cleanup effort in the Great Lakes, are expected to oppose the reductions.

“This just makes no sense. We are in disbelief,” said William C. Baker, president of the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “The EPA’s role in this cleanup is nothing less than fundamental. It’s not just important; it is critical.”

Oyster farmers emerged over the past decade as a force in Virginia and Maryland. In the Old Dominion State, farmers sold $16 million in oysters in 2015 alone, besting all other states on the East Coast, according to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science’s 10th annual report on the state’s aquaculture industry. Though smaller in Maryland, the industry has ballooned in the last eight years, said Jeffrey Brainard, a spokesman for the EPA-funded Maryland Sea Grant, which is also earmarked for disposal.

In just the last five years, farmers in the Chesapeake Bay region helped double oyster production on the East Coast to 155 million bivalves per year, said Bob Rheault, executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association.

“We’re literally an engine of job growth, especially in Chesapeake and especially for the watermen of that region who are up for the challenge,” Rheault said. “These proposed cuts are just job killers.”

“It’s like, my God,” he added, sighing loudly, “if we don’t have clean water, we don’t have customer confidence.”

Uncertainty over the future of the EPA cleanup program has spooked some who left other jobs in recent years to join the booming industry. Johnny Shockley, 54, quit commercial fishing to build a sustainable oyster hatchery on Hooper’s Island, the bayside archipelago where he grew, a third-generation waterman. Now the man The Washingtonian once called “the Chesapeake Bay’s hope on the half shell” worries his small empire of sustainable oyster hatcheries could be imperiled.

“One of the reasons why folks were getting in and willing to change their lives and commit their livelihoods to these efforts is the support we’ve seen from the federal government in the last 25 to 30 years,” Shockley said. “All of a sudden we’ve been threatened to see that all taken away.”

 

 

Native Americans Pray for the Rivers

Native Americans involved in the Environment. The Potomac River was a full on cesspool up until the early 1970’s. So bad, then President Richard Nixon ordered a cleanup, as the river would be a national embarrassment during he 1976 Bicentennial celebrations in Washington, DC. Between 1970 and 1976 substantial cleanup efforts resulted in a vastly improved river system, and gradually the native fisheries recovered….Until President Raygun loosened the laws on cleaning up sewage being dumped into the river by treatment plants. Which resulted in green algae blooms covering the water from shore to shore, Fortunately residents raising hell caused Congress to act.  Most of the river is cleaner than it’s been for over 100 years now, and all but a few sections are safe to swim in. Water from the river tapped above the city is tapped to provide drinking water.

‘Do it for the water’: Native Americans carry Potomac water on prayerful, 400-mile journey

It’s noon on a Thursday, and Reyna Davila-Day would ordinarily be sitting in her AP Human Geography class, memorizing the rivers of the globe.

Instead she’s stumbling in and out of a gully alongside a busy road, ignoring the cars and trucks that whiz past, walking as fast as her 14-year-old legs can carry her. Instead of memorizing the world’s most important rivers, she’s walking one of them: The mighty Potomac, 405 miles from its source in West Virginia to the Chesapeake Bay.

In a 13-day relay, Davila-Day and dozens of fellow participants in a Native American ritual are walking the entire length of the Potomac, praying for its return to unpolluted health. They will speak to the water, sing to the water, and pray for the water.

And now, on a Thursday afternoon half a continent away from her Human Geography class, Davila-Day is carrying the water.

“It’s us showing that the water needs to be cared for, and that we care about the water,” she says, beads clinking against the copper vessel full of a few precious pints of the river. “At school, they ask why I do it. I tell them that the water has a spirit. They’re like, ‘It does?’”

The Potomac River Water Walk began with a water ceremony — a tradition in the Ojibwe tribe — at Fairfax Stone, the 18th-century marker now located in a West Virginia state park that marks the source of the Potomac River. Participants took water from the clear pool at the start of the river and filled the copper vessel. Starting on Oct. 7, a band of Native Americans and supporters began walking that vessel all the way from the river’s clean source to its significantly more polluted end.

“We want the water to have a taste of itself. This is how you began, and this is how we want you to be again,” explained Sharon Day, the organizer of the walk and Reyna’s great-aunt.

The walkers made plans to pass through the District on Saturday — walking right past the White House — and to reach the Chesapeake Bay on Wednesday, Oct. 19. There, they’ll pour the clean water into the polluted bay.

People tend to ask Day if the walkers’ goal is to raise awareness about water pollution. Sure, awareness is nice, she responds — but that’s a paltry goal. The intent of this walk is to speak to the water’s spirit, not to a human audience.

“All the while, we’re speaking to that water. We’re telling the water how much we care about her,” Day said. “We really do support the work of other environmental groups. We believe what’s missing from most of this work is the idea that the water has a spirit, and we as spiritual people need to speak to that spirit.”…Read the rest Here…

 

Outdoor Afro

Analysis of visitor data has shown that black folks are among the lest likely to enjoy our National Parks system, and to engage in outdoor activities. Getting out and doing activities is one of the most important things in terms of long term health. Doesn’t men you have to zipline Grand Canyon or scale El Capitan – but moderate hiking has great cardio benefits. Not to mention the psychic benefits of just seeing something wonderful.

One of my hobbies for years has been Landscape Photography. Backpacking gear into the wilderness to photograph the scenery, wildlife, and beauty in the mountains, desert, or coastlines. Walking through the 2000 year old Old Grove trees in the Pacific Northwest can be a religious experience, as can the silence of the Desert. Many of these places are located within a few hours drive of a city – some are so remote only a few people even get to them a year.

 

This Woman Wants To Encourage More Black People To Embrace The Outdoors

“There’s something so dynamic about a forest environment,” she said

One woman wants to inspire more black people to participate in outdoor activities, so she created a network where “black people and nature meet.”

Rue Mapp is the founder of Outdoor Afro, an organization that encourages black people to embrace the outdoors and all the activities it has to offer.

“I found that in the nature experiences I had, I was far too often the only one who looked like me,” Mapp said in a video by Facebook Stories. “So I decided to do something about it.”

The nationwide network was created in 2009 and started out as a Facebook group Mapp made to help connect black nature-lovers everywhere. The social media platform and its offerings has become a useful tool for many organizations. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday that now one billion people are using Facebook Groups every month.

“Outdoor Afro is a perfect example of how people can use Facebook groups to build relationships around the things they care about,” Alex Deve, a product manager on Facebook Groups, said in a statement to HuffPost.

Since its launch, Outdoor Afro has grown significantly and now has over a dozen chapters across the country with more than 13,000 members. According to a 2015 report released by the Outdoor Foundation, 70 percent of people who participated in outdoor activities last year were white. Only 10 percent were black.

“National park visitorship, especially in more remote areas, can be as low as 1 percent African Americans,” Mapp said. “I just felt that there were these opportunities and lessons I was learning that more people could benefit from.”

Outdoor Afro has been able to reconnect black people with nature. It encourages black people to invest more in the planet by inviting them on outings such as nature trails and teaches them important lessons on conservation. Mapp said the work she is committed to has evolved beyond her wildest dreams.

“At the end of the day, this is about love and connecting [with] one another,” she said. “Connection is strength and the chance to be better, bigger, stronger and sustainable.”

The Bioblitz Dance – Outdoor Afro and the California Conservation Corps Dance. That is Rue Mapp on the lead in.

 

The Black Professional Minefield

If you are a black professional in America, the more than likely you work in an environment surrounded almost entirely by white people. I remember back in the 80’s, speaking before a group of 2,000 of my peers at a corporate conference and being the only black face in the room, along with a half dozen other minorities and women. An executive job in an American corporation is a Fly-Trap. You are there, but the chances of a lateral move to another company to move up, which is a common strategy available to white managers – is difficult, if not impossible. You probably can count on one hand the number of black CEOs, Presidents, or Sr VPs recruited by other companies for executive positions outside of the company in which they earned their position in the first place. An issue which makes the expansion of black CEOs in the Fortune 500 difficult.

It goes beyond just simple watercooler small talk in that black folks are more likely to be fans of Football and Basketball, while whites are fans of Hockey and Baseball. And you are never going to be able to explain the Black College Greek tradition of a Step Show. Being bi-lingual, speaking at least two English dialects…

And learning to love Broccoli and kale as a salad.

And yes, you have to put up with the occasional racial micro-aggression (typically born more of ignorance than anything else), as well as the full on racism. Nor are your white co-workers or peers going to get why BLM has resonance with you, who aren’t living in the poor part of town, aren’t covered in tats, or are speaking in the dialect of the lower class.

Being Black—but Not Too Black—in the Workplace

To be a black professional is often to be alone. Most black doctors, lawyers, journalists, and so on—those in white-collar positions that require specialized training and credentialing—work in environments where they are in the racial minority.

This comes with challenges. Beyond outright discrimination, which many still face, there are psychological costs to being one of just a few black faces in a predominantly white environment. In a study of black professional workers in a number of different occupations, I found that these employees worked to carefully manage their emotions in ways that reflected the racial landscapes they inhabited.

In particular, black professionals had to be very careful to show feelings of conviviality and pleasantness, even—especially—in response to racial issues. They felt that emotions of anger, frustration, and annoyance were discouraged, even when they worked in settings where these emotions were generally welcomed in certain contexts—think litigators interacting with opposing counsel, or financial analysts responding to a stressful day on Wall Street. Interestingly, this often played out at trainings meant to encourage racial sensitivity. Many of the black professionals I interviewed found that diversity trainings—intended to improve the work environment for minorities—actually became a source of emotional stress, as they perceived that their white colleagues could use these trainings to express negative emotions about people of color, but that they were expected not to disclose their own honest emotional reactions to such statements.

One of the most interesting recent contributions to this area of research comes from legal scholars Mitu Gulati and Devon Carbado. In their book Working Identity, they argue that while everyone needs to create and put forth an “appropriate” workplace identity, for members of minority groups—women of all races, racial-minority men, LGBTQ people—this becomes particularly taxing because their working identities must counter common cultural stereotypes. For example, black men may feel compelled to work longer hours as a way to repudiate stereotypes of a poor work ethic among blacks. To make matters more complicated, such strategies can backfire, reinforcing other stereotypes: Working those long hours may lead colleagues to assume that the workers lack the intellectual preparation needed for high-status professional jobs.

Carbado and Gulati also note that minority professionals tread cautiously to avoid upsetting the majority group’s sensibilities. Put simply, they can be visibly black, but don’t want to be perceived as stereotypically black. As Carbado and Gulati write, a black female candidate for a law firm who chemically straightens her hair, is in a nuclear family structure, and resides in a predominantly white neighborhood signals a fealty to (often unspoken) racial norms. She does so in a way that an equally qualified black woman candidate who wears dreadlocks, has a history of pushing for racial change in the legal field, is a single mother, and lives in the inner city does not.

The same is true for professional workers who are members of other racial minority groups. For instance, Latina attorneys may be able to advance further at work if they take pains not to speak with any trace of an accent. These are challenges in addition to the more well-known ones—the difficulties finding mentors of the same race, coping with racial stereotypes, being treated as a representative for one’s entire racial group.

So what does this mean for black workers in professional environments? First, it’s indicative of the degree to which race shapes occupational outcomes. In many circles, people feel more comfortable reducing racial issues to class-based ones, assuming that poverty explains much, if not all, of the differences between minorities and whites.

But for blacks in professional positions, issues of poverty are not the problem. Poverty does not explain biases in hiring, the need for particular types of emotional management, and the careful self-presentation that minority professionals engage in at work.

Second, all of this ought to encourage a rethinking of some of the existing efforts to create more diverse work environments. Do diversity and inclusion initiatives take into consideration how minorities placed in those environments feel? How can policies create not just more equitable hiring processes, but address the emotional toll of being a racial minority in a professional work setting?

In the current political climate, there is generally support for solving race-related employment challenges by focusing on job training and education—in other words, increasing human capital to improve access. Given the research, it’s also important to consider how to create better workplaces for the minority professionals who are already in these jobs.

 

Morgan Freeman – The Future of Green

 

Aircraft Causing Weather Changes

Old folks used to claim that the airplanes flying high in the sky were causing weather changes. For years, scientists laughed at this as preposterous…

Until now. Turns out the Old Folks were right… Again.

Aircraft Induced Cloud Hole in Anartica

Airplanes Can Cause Extra Rainfall

Airplanes flying through super-cooled clouds around airports can cause condensation that actually results in more snow and rain for nearby areas, according to a new study. The perfect conditions for such a freaky weather event occur about 5% of the time—but 10% to 15% in winter—according to the study’s lead author. Aircraft take off into the wind, so if they are generating extra ice particles upwind of an airport, the result can be snow right on the airport. That could mean planes will require more de-icing.

The team was investigating holes or canals that are sometimes seen drilled in clouds after an airplane has passed through. They found that increased snow and rainfall occurs in areas where the unusual cloud holes appear, usually within 60 miles of the airport. The added rain or snowfall occurred when the clouds were made up of water droplets that were colder than freezing, but which had not yet frozen: When an airplane passes through one of these clouds the movement causes a sudden cooling of the air, sometimes down to the critical point where the droplets freeze. They then can fall to earth as snow or rain.

 

Natures Way of Telling You…

 

 

Birds falling out of the sky dead in Arkansas…

Birds falling out of the sky dead in Louisiana…

Huge Fish Kill in Arkansas…

Huge Fish Kill in the Chesapeake Bay…

Republicans take over Congress…(And Boehner cried on schedule!)

Nature’s way of telling you, something’s wrong.

 

A Rock and Roll oldie from my large Afro days (circa 1970), from the Album The 12 dreams of Doctor Sardonicus, Spirit…

Music Fans – Christopher Cross did an excellent cover of this in 1994 on his “Windows” Album.

 

Military and Universities Team to Solve Honeybee Mystery

This one wouldn’t get much press in the hyperactive MSM as it’s consequences aren’t easy, and don’t involve political foible. For the past 6-10 years the Honeybee population around the world has been dying off…

Sounds bad… but catastrophic?

Since about 80% of the pollination of crops is done by Honeybees – you betcha. The reduction in numbers of Honeybees means a massive reduction in the production of food per acre…

Meaning if the Honeybees die off… So do we humans in fairly short order.

Another mystery is the disappearance of small snakes, which one of my contributors, Nanakwame brought up a while back. The environmental impact of this isn’t understood yet. In the US, it seems that the common green and garter snakes have all but disappeared in some areas. I live on a lake, and this has resulted in an explosion of the frog population. I also found several dead baby Corn Snakes in the Spring – which is unusual. They are very good at keeping the rodent population down. I have no idea what is killing them – and I severely limit the type and amount of chemicals used on the property to protect the lake.

To those who go “ewwwwe” – it’s a simple fact that if you live on freshwater in the Southern half of the US – you have snakes nearby, whether you see them or not. Most are neither poisonous or harmful, and keep the insect and small rodent populations in check. Green Snakes eat insects, Garters eat frogs, and Corn Snakes eat rats and mice.

Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery

It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is killing off the honeybees?

Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.

Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.

A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana inthe online science journal PLoS One.

Exactly how that combination kills bees remains uncertain, the scientists said — a subject for the next round of research. But there are solid clues: both the virus and the fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather, and both do their dirty work in the bee gut, suggesting that insect nutrition is somehow compromised.

Liaisons between the military and academia are nothing new, of course. World War II, perhaps the most profound example, ended in an atomic strike on Japan in 1945 largely on the shoulders of scientist-soldiers in the Manhattan Project. And a group of scientists led by Jerry Bromenshenk of the University of Montana in Missoula has researched bee-related applications for the military in the past — developing, for example, a way to use honeybees in detecting land mines.

But researchers on both sides say that colony collapse may be the first time that the defense machinery of the post-Sept. 11 Homeland Security Department and academia have teamed up to address a problem that both sides say they might never have solved on their own.

“Together we could look at things nobody else was looking at,” said Colin Henderson, an associate professor at the University of Montana’s College of Technology and a member of Dr. Bromenshenk’s “Bee Alert” team.

 

 

 

Spike Lee – “BP, Oil Companies, the Government – They All In Cahoots”!

Mr President –

“One time, go off!” director Spike Lee urged on CNN’s “AC 360°.” “If there’s any one time to go off, this is it, because this is a disaster.”

Here’s the deal. This United States ship of state has been reduced to a leaky old scow by years of mismanagement, “Starve the Beast”, the fallacy of smaller government, and disastrous deregulation. At this point in time, to keep it afloat – EVERYBODY needs to be rowing, bailing, or patching the holes.

It isn’t just BP you need to “go off on” Mr President…

It’s those Republicans who keep trying to drill more holes.

Back after Katrina, Republicans argued it wasn’t the Federal Government’s job to help the states. This from Uncle Tommie Sowell after Katrina –

“The Federal Government should not give bail out money. People should get private insurance. Because the government causes people to live in dangerous areas. If the market could decide without government intervention, people would be less likely to live in disaster prone areas.

He lives in an earthquake prone area and feels if his house is destroyed, that he does not have a right to have taxpayers in other parts of the country paying to rebuild his house.”

The states in the Gulf region have encouraged oil development with low (or no) taxes, favorable laws, and have turned a blind eye to the risks and environmental damage…

By Uncle Tommie’s logic – the taxpayers in other parts of the country aren’t responsible for the Gulf States foolishness…

That IS after all – what “small government” means.

 

Gulf Oil Spill Reaches the Marshes in Louisiana

This is the beginning of a wide scale environmental catastrophe. This is a total kill scenario impacting the area in a number of disastrous ways. Prior to the building of the MRGO Canal (and subsequent filling of it due to it’s role in the post Katrina collapse of the levies) the marshland to the south of New Orleans protected the coast from storms, buffering the waves and flooding. If the oil kills off the marsh, there is noting to impede that water during a storm.

Secondarily, the vast majority of the food supply for the marine environment starts right there in those coastal marshes. Many species of fish spawn there, or spend the early part of their lives protected from predators by the shallow water and reeds. Oysters, which start out as near microscopic “spats” swim in these marshes seeking tidal locations to attach themselves and grow, collecting nutrients in the currents.

The death of the marshland starts a cascade in the ocean food chain that reaches all the way up to the top.

Drill, Baby, Spill!… Indeed.

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Second Civil War In Virginia – McDonnell Supports Offshore Drilling

Decided to take a few days of down time combining two of my favorite things – a relaxing view of the ocean, and fishing. Limited out yesterday on Flounder Fishing in the Intercoastal back bays of the Eastern Shore of Virginia, and I’m headed out this evening to (try and) catch some Drum surfcasting. The Land that time forgot, indeed!

Fortunately, time didn’t forget Internet Service, which in my case is DSL provided (barely) by Verizon – and is about a crappy as it gets and still be sorta functional. I’ll probably do a blog later about how, in the US, the quality (not quantity) of DSL Service in the areas reached is the worst in the world.

IN any event, the news from the Gulf of Mexico continues to be bad. As I gazed out over the beach to the surf, I tried to imagine the beaches covered in black oil, the birds dying, fish kills – and the oyster and clam beds destroyed…

For no other reason than greed and avarice.

This area has survived numerous hurricanes, and the even more destructive NorthEasters, and just off the coast is one part of the Graveyard of the Atlantic, where German UBoats during WWII sank hundreds of ships, spilling their contents (and fuel bunkers) along the coast. It is not unusual even today to see the imprint of man along these beaches with parts of those ships washing ashore – and every once in a great while, even a Spanish Piece of Eight from a bygone era. These disasters large and small have, over time been swallowed by the winds and the waves. IN the 20 years I’ve been coming here, I’ve watched the crash site of a WWII Douglass Dauntless Bomber, which splashed down in one of the back bays, degrade each year – until only a few rusty colored spars are left from this intrusion by man 65 years ago.

But what of an environmental disaster the size of the Gulf? Will it be 20-30-40… 50 or 100 years before the fisheries recover? Will they ever recover?

This area is the center of the major migratory path for everything from fish to Butterflies. Our last Republican pro-business Governor damn near killed off the Bluefish fishery by allowing the Japanese Fleet to stretch a net across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. That has still not recovered 15 years later.

Governor Bob McDonnell in the face of this disaster recently re-iterated his support for oil drilling off Virginia’s Coast.

Bob McDonnell Reaffirms Support for Offshore Drilling

Now, we had on Civil War fought in majority in this State…

Maybe it’s time for another.

 

Nuclear Plant – Environmental Racism?

Early this year, President Obama approved the building of two new nuclear energy plants. Apparently the location of on of those plants has sparked a local controversy. Hat Tip Hinterland Gazette on this one –

President Obama’s Proposal to Construct Nuclear Reactors in Predominantly Black Community Sparks Controversy

Glow Baby, Glow?

There is some controversy brewing over President Obama’s pledge of $8.33 billion in government aid to construct nuclear reactors in the town of Shell Bluff, located in Burke County, Ga. The problem is Burke County is 51 percent African-America and there are already reactors at Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle. An argument has been made that the majority of nuclear reactors are located in predominantly black and/or poor communities. Dr. Robert Bullard, an environmental injustice expert and activist told the Washington Informer, “After looking at environmental injustices over the past 30 years I can’t help but question why these reactors are being built in Burke County. “When a community gets something good, African-American communities are usually not the first to get it.” Some have called the proposal environmental racism, while others see it as a means of creating more jobs and clean energy.

 

Shrimp Oyster Production In Gulf Dead Due to Oil Spill

And they want to do this shit off the East Coast of Virginia? The rig that blew up is one of the new deep water rigs of the type which would be used to drill off of Virginia’s coast. Anybody out there know where I can get a few dozen unused Exocet missiles…

Cheap?

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Oil spill changes everything

The oil disaster plaguing the Gulf of Mexico and our coastal states puts our desperate need for a new clean energy economy in stark relief. We need to move away from dirty, dangerous and deadly energy sources.

We are pleased that the White House is now saying it will suspend any new offshore drilling while the explosion and spill are investigated, but there should be no doubt left that drilling will only harm our coasts and the people who live there.

Taking a temporary break from offshore drilling is an important step, but it’s not enough. We need to stop new offshore drilling for good, now. And then we need an aggressive plan to wean America from dirty fossil fuels in the next two decades.

This BP offshore rig that exploded was supposed to be state-of-the-art. We’ve also been assured again and again that the hundreds of offshore drilling rigs along our beaches are completely safe. Now, we’ve seen workers tragically killed. We’ve seen our ocean lit on fire, and now we’re watching hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic oil seep toward wetlands and wildlife habitat.

This rig’s well is leaking 210,000 gallons of crude every day, wiping out aquatic life and smothering the coastal wetlands of Louisiana and Mississippi. As the reeking slick spreads over thousands of square miles of ocean, it rapidly approaches the title of worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, even worse than 1989’s Exxon Valdez oil spill. The well is under 5,000 feet of water, and it could take weeks or even months to cap it.

This disaster could unfortunately happen at any one of the hundreds of drilling platforms off our coasts, at any moment. It could happen at the drilling sites that the oil industry has proposed opening along the beaches of the Atlantic Coast.

Indeed, even before this spill, the oil and gas industry had torn apart the coastal wetlands of the Louisiana Bayou over the years. These drilling operations have caused Louisiana to lose 25 square miles of coastal wetlands, which are natural storm barriers, each year…

more about “Shrimp Oyster Fishing in Gulf Dead Du…“, posted with vodpod

Video: Worst case: ‘We won’t have shrimp’// // //

Video: Blame game in oil spill//

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Video: Fishermen help along Louisiana coast//

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Video: Fed scrambles against oil spill//

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• // Oil Spills
• // Offshore Drilling
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Indeed, even before this spill, the oil and gas industry had torn apart the coastal wetlands of the Louisiana Bayou over the years. These drilling operations have caused Louisiana to lose 25 square miles of coastal wetlands, which are natural storm barriers, each year.

 

Majora Carter – Green Powerhouse

Hat Tip – The Grio

Majora Carter, 43, has been described as a green powerbroker and a visionary in environmentally sound urban renewal. Carter is the president of The Majora Carter Group LLC, a green, for-profit consulting firm.

“I believe that you shouldn’t have to leave your neighborhood to live in a better one,” Carter said on her company’s Web site. Born and raised in New York’s South Bronx, Carter, now married, still calls the area home. When she was growing up, Carter says, many South Bronx problems centered on economic and social degradation.

“Everyone wants clean air, decent jobs, safe streets, and aesthetic beauty,” she said. “Folks with enough money, buy into communities that have those things. If you are poor, you are often stuck where you are.”

Carter left the South Bronx to attend college but returned home to live with her parents and save money while in graduate school.

“Coming back with a little bit of distance, education, and for an extended period, made it possible for me to really ‘see’ my hometown,” Carter said. And what she saw wasn’t pretty. Poverty had increased, unemployment hovered three times above the city’s average, and waste-handling plants had moved into the area.

“Poverty looks very similar wherever you go,” Carter said. “It looks vulnerable to city planners who want to place noxious facilities with the least amount of political resistance or costs associated with designing safeguards for public health.” In 2001, Carter founded the environmental justice non-profit group, Sustainable South Bronx. Her first major project was applying for and receiving a $1.25 million federal grant for the South Bronx Greenway. The 11-mile-long stretch, which is still in the works, will be the first new South Bronx waterfront park in more than 60 years.

In 2005, Carter was awarded one of the MacArthur Foundation’s prestigious $500,000 “genius” grants in part for her work with Sustainable South Bronx, which she left in the hands of colleagues in 2008.

Through her consulting work, Carter now hopes to take her message, on the benefits of going green, across the nation and globe.

“By incorporating environmental concerns into all of our calculations…, we can really make an America as good as its promise in our lifetimes!” she said.

For those unfamiliar with History, several Civil Rights figures in the early 70’s took up the banner of the environment, and environmental causes in urban areas…

Good to see that banner has been picked up again by the younger generation.

 

MY President!

The title for this one is a riff off of a Wanda Sykes joke told at the National Press Club Dinner. If you don’t get it – watch the video.

Chesapeake Bay Sunrise - Winter

MY President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order today to clean up the Chesapeake Bay! At freakin’ last there is hope to enjoy the Breakfast of Baysiders once more before I pass from this earth. The tasty morsel called a Chesapeake Bay Oyster. There have been wars fought in this part of the country over these bad boys, and a good number of brawls over which is best – Seaside Oyster or Bayside. And don’t even get into the discussion of whether Tangier Sound or Mobjack Bay taste better! Anyway – fried or on the half shell – this is the start to some seriously good eatin’ Chesapeake Bay style!