You should know that volunteers are the heart of grassroots organizations! Without them, I would have given up on improving our waterways about 5 years ago. THEY are the ones who work hard, use their own gas money, time, energy, muscles, equipment and then take that message to other individuals. Thank you to all the people who are making OUR Earth a better place. – Abby Life Lessons on the River By: Karen Obringer on July 29th, 2010 at 12:00 pm In College, Grad School, High School, Personal Branding | 1 Comment BLOG HERE: http://studentbranding.com/life-lessons-on-the-river/ I had the pleasure of volunteering with Save Maumee on Saturday, a local environmental group focused on cleaning up the Maumee River. I met the rest of the volunteers at 10 AM near a canoe launch area of the Maumee River, and was greeted by a woman with bright eyes and a big smile. Abigail Frost is the founder of Save Maumee, and as soon as you meet her you can tell how passionate she is about the environment and how excited she is about life in general. She was able to turn a day of hard and dirty work into something fun
Read more →http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20100725/LOCAL/307259918# Journal Gazette – (front page of the Metro Section) Fort Wayne, IN July 25, 2010 by Caitlin Johnston Volunteers spent hours cleaning the Maumee River, replanting the banks along the way. Photos by Cathie Rowand | The Journal Gazette Abigail Frost King, left, and her son Canaan Eubank, 14, collect trash along the Maumee River on Saturday. Upper Maumee Watershed Partnership sponsored the Bi-State River Cleanup. Tires. A Little Tikes sport coupe. DVD cases. A car door. Sounds like trash in a junkyard or a city dump. But its litter found in the Maumee River. The Upper Maumee River Watershed Partnership and local volunteers spent several hours Saturday canoeing down a two-mile stretch of the Maumee gathering trash as part of the Bi-State River Cleanup. This is the first event the partnership has organized, but treasurer Abby Frost has led several outings on other parts of the river with the Save Maumee Grassroots Organization. Volunteers used canoes and boats to scour the river and collect as much trash as possible. But with limited time and minimal manpower, they had to leave a lot behind. Theres a lot of stuff we had to leave out there, which I wasnt expecting
Read more →Everyone should hug a farmer. Thank them for the food we eat and marvel at their ability to use the land for such bounty. American farmers are people that made our country great. I obey laws because that is what people do who live in a civilized society. Do you remember how people in England discarded their waste before the black plague killed 1/3 of the population (25 million people)? In the 14th century people would throw their chamber pots’ contents out of their window and into yards and streets. The rats would then walk through the feces while seeking food and finally carry it back to the larger rat populations. The flees that resided on the backs of rats were also exposed to the waste causing the plague. This is ONE theory of a disease called Black Death and is still studied today as one of the most deadly pandemics in history. Keep poop out of our water, just like what was enacted into federal law in 1973 – called the Clean Water Act. So leave our small farm owners alone for a moment; but immediately impose current law on factory farms that contain animals on an industrial scale.
Read more →http://greatlakesecho.org/2010/06/17/great-lakes-states-500-square-miles-of-parking-lots-threaten-water-quality-walkability/ Great Lakes Echo – June 17, 2010 People ask me all the time about CSO’s / SSO’s (Combined Sewer Overflow / Sanitary Sewer Outfalls). Did the city plan poorly for our sewers? Why would 1/12th of an inch of rain cause all of our toilets and sinks water and stormsewers mix and discharge directly into the rivers, if the city/county were not to blame? The answer is not that complicated like many others these days. However, solutions are very expensive. When Fort Wayne infrastructure was built around 1912 for our sanitary sewers (toilets) and stormsewers (the grates on the streets) they were two separate systems that were connected, toward the top, by a single pipe. The sanitary sewers have a constant flow, the storm sewers surge with rain. Since they are connected at the top with a smaller pipe, the mix of both pipes are released from the “outfall points.” This pipe is a fail-safe type system, so when large rain events or flooding occurred, it would discharge into the waterways instead of coming up in your house. This is not a bad idea, considering I am a homeowner as well. SO ~ when built all those many years
Read more →http://www.nuvo.net/indianapolis/waste-in-indianas-waterways/Content?oid=1274149 Check this article out for yourself…but this excerpt is what I found interesting. The Upper Maumee Watershed is also considered an impaired stream for PCB’s, heavy metals, Hg, Fish Consumption Advisories (FCA’s), E. Coli and nitrates. The Upper Maumee remains on the 303 (d) list for impared waterways. Indianapolis is reflective of other larger municipalities like Fort Wayne, Terre Haute and Gary, IN. NUVO – Indy’s Alternative Voice “IDEMs website houses a listing of all the impaired bodies of water in Indiana, which IDEM completes for the whole state every two years. For the West Fork of the White River in Marion County, the river is listed as impaired for E. coli, PCBs in fish tissue and mercury found in fish tissue. PCBs were once widely used as coolants and lubricants, their manufacture has ceased due to health effects. For the East Fork of the White River basin and the West Fork of the basin 21 and 19 counties were listed with impaired waterways respectively. Many of the impaired waterways are tributaries that will eventually hook up to one of the forks of the White River. Causes for the impairment of the waterways in both
Read more →I had Sandy Bihn from the Western Lake Erie Basin call and ask me what was happening upstream, “There are major problems in Western Lake Erie, we are having algae blooms comparable to the early 1980’s [just after the Clean Water Act became enforceable law]. Maumee Bay in this area is the outlet to the Maumee. If you are interested in visiting this area, ask questions and see for yourself; the tour is September 4th – Maumee Bay Tour – take a bus to Toledo, Ohio’s Maumee Bay and find out about the sediment load being deposited and removed from your waterways – call Jason Roehrig for interest or reservations (419) 782-8751 Greg Konger recommend I read the college textbook, “Living in the Environment/Fourteenth Edition” by G. Tyler Miller, Jr. It explains our environmental condition clearly with an attention to details. In this book, it states the harmful affects of artificial light. Here is the exerpt: “Wesley College professor Marianne Moore and her colleagues have found evidence that artificial illumination can alter aquatic ecosystems and could ultimately decrease water quality. Minute zooplankton avoid predators by remaining well below the surface during the day and then rising to graze on algae
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