Today's Topics:
$32+ billion in mining damage
Forest Rally calls for "Zero Cut!"
GreenYes Digest V97 #219
GRRN Website Updated!
NRC Conference
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Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 06:26:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: "David A. Kirkpatrick" <david@kirkworks.com>
Subject: $32+ billion in mining damage
POISONED STREAMS: The Mineral Policy Center released a new book,
Golden Dreams, Poisoned Streams, chronicling "the pervasive and ongoing
destruction of US water resources caused by modern hardrock-mining."
Mining operations in the US benefit from a 125-year old law containing
no environmental provisions. The Center estimates taxpayers bear an
estimated $32 billion to $72 billion in cleanup costs for 557,000
abandoned mine sites alone. For a copy of the book, call (202) 887-
1872.
GREENLines, Fri, Sept. 19, 1997 from GREEN,
the GrassRoots Environmental Effectiveness Network
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Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 11:58:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: DavidOrr@aol.com
Subject: Forest Rally calls for "Zero Cut!"
MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
Published Monday, September 15, 1997
Forest Reform Rally calls for zero cut in national forests
Dean Rebuffoni / Star Tribune
BURNTSIDE LAKE, MINN. -- For a tree-hugger, few places are better to
indulge one's yen than here, amid the vast sweep of the Superior
National Forest and at the edge of the biggest U.S. wilderness east of
the Rockies.
And so, about 180 tree-huggers ("self-proclaimed and proud of it," one
of them said) came to a YMCA camp on Burntside Lake near Ely last week
for the 11th annual Forest Reform Rally. They came from throughout the
nation, and planned -- the U.S. Forest Service might say "schemed" --
how to change the way the agency tends the public's trees.
After four days of speeches and debate, the attendees proclaimed: "ZERO
CUT!" -- if not unanimously, then certainly with a loud, clear majority
voice. In short, they will crusade to ban commercial logging in U.S.
national forests, just as it is banned in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area
Wilderness (BWCA), only a stroll from where they met.
No small task, that. The 155 national forests, including the Superior
and Chippewa forests in northern Minnesota, collectively cover 191
million acres.
The forests will supply almost 4 billion board feet of wood this year to
the timber industry, meaning paper, lumber, other wood products and
jobs.
That's one set of federal statistics. Another set, widely cited by
speakers at the Burntside rally, includes these numbers:
The national forests contain only 17 percent of U.S. timberlands, they
account for only 4 percent of U.S. timber production and, within three
years, recreation in those forests is expected to pump $100 billion into
the national economy.
By comparison, the Forest Service's timber sales are expected to
generate $3.5 billion. And the forest activists stressed that the sales
program is heavily subsidized by taxpayers, costing more to administer
than it earns.
"Most people think our national forests, like our national parks, are
protected from logging," said David Orr, an activist from California.
"We need to educate people. Public support for zero cut is there; we
need to stir it up."
Orr is backing proposed federal legislation to end logging in the
national forests. Other activists touted bills that would greatly
restrict, although not ban, logging.
The zero-cut crusade
Zero cut is not a new idea. By a 2:1 ratio, Sierra Club members voted
for such a ban last year, and some activists have advocated it for
years, arguing that the national forests are not needed to sustain a
healthy timber industry.
After all, the activists stress, 83 percent of the nation's timberlands
are owned by the industry, nonindustrial landowners and state and local
governments. The most productive timberlands are industry-owned,
especially intensively managed tracts in southern states.
Still, the heavy support for a zero-cut crusade was not totally expected
by rally attendees. That includes veteran activist Bill Willers, a
recently retired zoology professor at the University of
Wisconsin-Oshkosh.
"I had expected fights," he said. "But when Ned Fritz got up and shouted
'ZERO CUT!,' that sealed it. After all, he's the grand old man."
Indeed. Edward (Ned) Fritz, a Texas lawyer and longtime
environmentalist, said he launched the first of these national rallies
"back in '81. And I'm now 81."
Willers, Fritz and Ray Fenner, a St. Paul environmentalist who organized
the latest rally, are not among the more moderate environmentalists
calling for forest reforms.
Willers and Fenner, for example, are leaders of the Superior Wilderness
Action Network, which has strongly differed with more traditional
environmental groups such as the National Audubon Society on how to
reform the Forest Service and protect timber on public land.
Also, there's little expectation that a zero-cut bill, or even a call
for tougher logging restrictions, will get far in the pro-business,
Republican-controlled Congress. Nor is the Clinton administration, which
has frustrated environmentalists with its shifting positions on forest
issues, apt to endorse such a sweeping measure.
"We're not going to get zero cut in this Congress," said Jim Jontz, a
former Democratic congressman from Indiana who now heads a
save-the-trees campaign in Washington, D.C. While in Congress he fought
for tough forest-protection laws.
"All of these bills are intended to build support for forest reform," he
said at the rally. "But while we wouldn't win a vote today to end
logging in the national forests, we've seen a growing national consensus
to do that."
He stressed that in many forests, including the Superior, the Forest
Service is significantly reducing -- or promises to -- the volume of
timber it will sell to loggers. Jontz attributes that to pressure from a
public increasingly aware of the need to preserve biological diversity,
including rare old trees, in the forests.
Logging roads an issue
Activists at the rally also called for a quick end to the building of
logging roads in the forests, and even to phase out some public roads
just outside those tracts. The latter idea is to connect fragmented
blocs of public land to create contiguous tracts devoted to preserving
biodiversity and rare forest.
One such proposal has come from Mike Biltonen, an environmentalist from
Red Wing, Minn., who attended the rally. Biltonen, executive director of
the Minnesota Ecosystems Recovery Proj ect, suggested in a newsletter
last year that the Echo Trail, the narrow, rugged road that stretches
from Ely to near Crane Lake, be closed and given back to Mother Nature.
His reasoning was simple: The trail divides two big chunks of the BWCA
that he believes should be joined to form a contiguous piece of
protected wilderness.
As would be expected, that didn't play in Ely, where a good many people
have had their nerves rubbed raw by environmentalists in what they
consider an unrelenting assault on personal freedoms and lifestyles.
The Echo Trail provides access to the outback for hunters, anglers and
other outdoor lovers, as well as people who own cabins along its route.
Critics branded Biltonen yet another eco-fanatic from the Twin Cities
area who would sacrifice people for pine trees.
Biltonen said last week that it was just a conceptual idea, nothing
more, and that while he would like to unite pieces of the BWCA, he
doesn't "want to eliminate Ely from the map."
While the grand old man of the Burntside rally was Fritz, at the other
end of the age spectrum was J.C. Grogan, 21, of Minneapolis. He's
studying environmental science at Hamline University in St. Paul, and
spoke forcefully during a debate on whether Biltonen's Echo Trail idea
is too far-fetched.
"You need a Utopian vision," Grogan told his elders. "Then you work from
there to achieve your goals."
In an interview, he elaborated on his view of how to protect the
northern forest without disrupting local communities. "You need to
preserve biodiversity, but you still need roads to allow people to live
in these habitats," he said. "You can't just say, 'Let's get rid of the
roads.' "
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Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 14:30:46 -0400
From: "Blair Pollock" <bpollock@town.ci.chapel-hill.nc.us>
Subject: GreenYes Digest V97 #219
>Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 00:18:58 -0400 (EDT)
>From: RicAnthony@aol.com
>Subject: National Recycling Congress
> Hi Rick
>Quiz
>
>1. Who is going to the National Recycling Congress?
A lot of people will be there who are stalwart recyclers who have a foot
firmly in the zero waste camp, believe in the PET market push and plan to
use America Recycles Day to get people's attention without necessarily
endorsing the theme of "Buy more, recycle part of it". Will those folks get
to the debates/policy sessions?
If we just do one thing e.g. convince Coke to use old PET -- that would be
big. The Environmental Defense FUnd still talks about the victory of ending
lead in gasoline -- it's had a long term effect, it was one battle and it
was twenty years ago. We need something that potent to galvanize our forces.
How about starting with a letter writing a thon at NRC. A goal of 500
letters from conference attendees, mailed right there from Dizzy's World to
Coca Cola demanding this change to recycled PET as a start? I'll be glad to
provide a ream of paper and 500 envelopes (not the $tamps tho).
If you pick this up, bring a piece of your letterhead if you're permitted to
write it on that.
>
>2. What does anybody think we ought to do about zero waste, the
>campaign to get Coke to use recycled PETE, or America Recycles Day?
>Who's "we"? It's hard for NRC to be an effective single interest
organization i.e. recycling when there are multiple agendas -- zero waste,
social change, earth saving, etc. all out there. The NRC should do what the
NRC can do, which is NOT EVERYTHING. It is a big deal to try to promote
recycling let alone all the other stuff around zero waste. Not an easy
question to address nor can it be ignored. If a NRC campaign platform is
"Zero Waste" then let's elect a zero waste board and keep that focus.
>3. Is NRC still a membership organization?
>NRC is a membership organization to the extent that the members
participate, when members don't participate, then it falls to the staff and
elected board to get the work done the best they can. More membership input,
as with any org., can/may drive the board/staff. WIthout it, they drive
themselves (sometimes to distraction).
>
>------------------------------
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>
>
>
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Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 13:19:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: "David A. Kirkpatrick" <david@kirkworks.com>
Subject: GRRN Website Updated!
GreenYes folks:
The GrassRoots Recycling Network trial website has been
updated, find it at http://www.kirkworks.com/grrn.htm
Much thanks to Sally Fessler, KirkWorks' web maven
for all of the work on the update.
On the site, you will find - GRRN policy papers, local
government resolutions on zero waste and producer responsibility
(new versions coming soon), the Coke letter and petition,
the sign on card to join GRRN work groups and contribute,
links to zero waste sites...
David Kirkpatrick
---------------------------------------
KirkWorks
good works for the good earth
=======================================
Address: Post Office Box 15062
Durham, NC 27704-0062 USA
Voice: 919/220-8065
Fax: 919/220-9720
Email: david@kirkworks.com
Website: http://www.kirkworks.com
New website Sept. 97! Recycling invest-
ment forums, New recycling exports guide,
Investor's research guide to the
recycling industry, M&As in recycling,
GrassRoots Recycling Network, and more!
=======================================
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Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 16:53:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: STEVESUESS@aol.com
Subject: NRC Conference
Hello Zero Wasters,
Rick Anthony, Gary Liss, and I (Stephen Suess) are off to the NRC
conference tomorrow - Our goal is to convert the unconverted to a Zero Waste
Goal.
We come armed with the results of the CRRA Zero Waste Conference, and
the CRRA's agenda for the new Millenium, and the GRN's goal statement, and
more articles from across the world in favor of Zero Waste. There will be a
Zero Waste proposal put before the NRC Board on Saturday, and of the 11
candidates running for the Board all of the nine who responded to our
questions have come out in support of Zero Waste.
We will go with our computers and will try to send daily updates to this
listserve, so stay tuned and please respond ASAP to anything that get you
going.
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End of GreenYes Digest V97 #226
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