Newsletters

MAY, 2012

 

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

-E. B. White

 

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all"

-Helen Keller

 

 

A ZERO-WASTE COMMUNITY? – An environment is a terrible thing to waste.

Fall River is addicted to cheap disposal of its solid waste as host to one of the largest solid waste dumps in Massachusetts. Doesn’t matter that the stinky dump is the most prominent landmark in the city; that the dump destroyed Mother’s Brook and all its trout; that the dump has been cited, over the years, for numerous violations; that the dump looms over the municipal water supply. Let’s just keep on dumping. It’s easier to ignore the solid waste issue than to inconvenience ourselves finding real solutions to our growing solid waste disposal problem.

Another problem now, however, is that the stinky dump is way beyond capacity. For the past few years the dump owners, city and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) have been rummaging around the dump looking at little corners and subsidence areas at the top of the dump searching for any spot that can accommodate more trash. More waste piled on top might cause a trash avalanche? Oh, No!!! …What is Fall River to do?

The first step is for the city administration, other elected and appointed officials, business leaders and residents to stop burying their heads in the sand. Ignoring the problem or coming up with the same old tired solutions to solving the problem did not work in the past and won’t now.

The city must seriously expand recycling; actively promote re-use; lobby for producer take-back; explore composting/co-composting; look into anaerobic digestion (Toronto and New York both have large-scale solid waste digesters); institute pay-as-you-throw …and, tell our state delegation to work toward getting DEP to complete and release the state’s solid waste master plan, “A Pathway to Zero Waste.”

Instead of taking decisive action, the city administration and council, past and present, continually “reinvent the trash disposal wheel” while Mount Trashmore continues to pollute and grow.

If you read our recent “Action Alert” on this solid waste issue you know we were very disappointed to see city leaders, who should know better, wasting time, once again, talking trash incineration. Massachusetts has a ban on new trash incinerators …and even if they didn’t …incinerators are not the solution to solid waste elimination.

We were appalled after reading this article in The Herald News: http://www.heraldnews.com/news/x787563427/Fall-River-incinerator-wont-likely-be-fired-up-anytime-soon

Apparently many have short memories. Lest we forget, here’s some recent history that we’ll title, “Fall River Incinerator Follies.”

Read this clip from The Herald News, May 25, 1999:

Protestors demand incinerator closure

FALL RIVER – The REV. James Hornsby of St. Luke’s Church stood in front of the Fall River Municipal Incinerator Monday morning and said he has held and baptized children with lead poisoning.

“I know the tragedy,” he said.

Hornsby was one of about two dozen people representing different organizations who believe the city is risking residents’ health and safety with the outdated incinerator, and called for its closure.

The state’s Department of Environmental Protection confirmed, last week, that the incinerator is still spewing too much lead and cadmium into the air, violating both state and federal air quality standards.

Representatives of Green Futures, a city environmental group; Citizens for Citizens, the local anti-poverty agency; and the statewide groups Toxic Action and Clean Water Action all called on the city not to go forward with the retrofitting and expansion of the incinerator, a project estimated to cost up to $55 million.

“Mayor Lambert’s proposal to build a larger, new incinerator would be a risky gamble which would continue to threaten the health and safety of Fall River residents,” said Eric Weltman. Program director for Toxics Action. To my knowledge, there are no other proposals anywhere in the United States to build new trash incinerators.

DEP’s Johnston confirmed the city incinerator is still violating federal and state air quality standards for lead and cadmium, according to emission test results from February.

 

Read this from the Boston Herald, February 4, 1999:

Neighbors feel burned by Fall River Incinerator

FALL RIVER – In the midst of a densely populated neighborhood a garbage incinerator has been spewing as much as 12 times health advisory limits for cadmium and lead for four years, with the state failing to stop the toxic emissions, records show.

The state’s oldest trash burning facility, built in the late 1960s by the City of Fall River, sits between Interstate 195 and a multifamily district, where residents say incinerator smoke intermittently blows in their windows.

 “It’s a chemical smell. It’s not a burnt smell. It’s a chemical smell like chlorine,” said Jocelyn Charron, a mother of two who works in a local pizza shop and lives two blocks away on Tecumseh Street, where 45 state-funded affordable housing units are being built.

Her mother, Nancy Pereira, added: “One of the city workers told us it’s just steam. That’s not steam. Steam evaporates. This just hangs there.”

City officials want to build an incinerator with four times the capacity and better environmental controls on the existing incinerator site.

City Administrator Robert Connors said the city is working to remove items containing heavy metals from the waste stream.

“We’ve been in compliance with state regulations,” he said. Connors said he was unaware of the high lead and cadmium emissions.

The city’s track record at the old plant is questionable. The plant is supposed to be shut for a long-overdue repair of pollution control equipment. But the Herald observed one of two stacks pumping out steam and yellowish emissions on January 26.

“Really?” said Ed Kunce, deputy commissioner of the state Department of environmental Protection, when told the plant was running that day.

“As far as we know there’s no trash going there,” he said. If they fire it up, it will only be after they agree to do what has to be done; a lot of maintenance, replacement of parts – a lot of pollution equipment hasn’t been cleaned for awhile.”

But a Fall River source said new garbage – replacing water-logged material on site – was trucked into the plant and burned the week prior to January 26 in preparation for ne emissions tests, which are scheduled to begin Monday.

Because of its age, the Fall River incinerator – which can handle 150 to 200 tons of trash per day – has the state’s most lenient air discharge permit. The state only requires that it meet limits for “particulate,” meaning soot.

But the state has the legal power to crack down on a facility that “causes or contributes to air pollution.” Particularly where a health hazard exists.

Prior to 1995, a special piece of state legislation exempted the Fall River plant from being tested, much less coming in line with health standards. The 1995 tests came back above health limits.

The same thing happened in 1996. In July of 1996, Richard Fields, an environmental analyst at the DEP, notified colleagues that downwind levels of lead and cadmium were estimated to be again higher than health advisory limits.

The response he got, according to a memo obtained by the Herald, was a request for more information.

The regional office “asked whether I could determine how frequent these exceedences would be; if not so frequent, then some action would be warranted,” Fields’ memo said.

Fields informed his bosses that the exceedences were an annual average – meaning they were essentially constant and ongoing. The memo added: “All of this certainly departs from past practice, when exceedences were exceedences – which had to be gotten rid of.”

Fields said he wasn’t in a position to comment on DEP policy. But Kunce said an inquiry about the state’s four-year delay in taking meaningful action was a “good question.”

He said that since the health limits were based on lifetime exposure, that two to 12 times the limits for four years were deemed acceptable by the DEP.

“We felt that based on a couple of years of exposure, the risk was minimal. We thought their numbers would go in one direction, and when they went in the other direction, we felt it was time to call them in here,” he said.

In 1997 and 1998, the plant spewed even more cadmium and lead. Last November, after four years of meetings between DEP and city officials, the city shut the facility for repairs.

Last month it fired up the plant again without telling the DEP, and was burning garbage, yesterday, sources said.

Eric Weltman, program director for the Toxics Action Center, an environmental group in Boston, said the city’s history should prompt state officials to bar it from building a new plant.

“Cities should not be in the business of running incinerators,” he said. “Instead of spending millions of dollars on another dangerous trash facility, the city of Fall River should focus on reducing and recycling its waste.”

In fiscal 1998 Fall River recycled only 10 percent of its garbage. The state average is 34 percent and other cities did much better.

Worcester recycled 54 percent in the most recent year for which figures are available. Fall River officials are expecting a better showing in 1999.

A few other headlines from 1999 editions of The Herald News and other newspapers on the polluting incinerator issue:

Report: Bristol County air pollution levels unsafe

Hope for incinerator dims

Trash plant under fire

Incinerator foes, councilors face off

Incinerator closes

City to close incinerator

Incinerator stays shut

Can we agree we breathe air and we need it to be clean? So, what do we do now? One thing we can do is STOP talking incineration!

As we progress toward making Fall River a Zero-Waste Community here’s what we must do now…short-term:

Have our elected leaders demand a true zero-waste state master plan from DEP and the guidance and funding to help communities implement it.

Vehemently oppose any further height or width expansion at the Republic Services Allied Waste Dump. Cap and close it, now!

Institute citywide pay-as-you-throw. In order to increase the abysmal Fall River recycling rate folks need a financial incentive. Trash that cannot, at present, be recycled must go in “official” city bags. Start by charging one dollar a bag.

We are not alone. Go here for a map of pay-as-you-throw-communities:http://www.mass.gov/dep/recycle/reduce/images/paytmap.pdf

Separated recycled trash goes in its designated bin. Scofflaws are fined. Recycling and pay-as-you-throw have been very successful in Worcester and other communities. And yes, some of these communities have demographics similar to ours.

At the site of the soon to be razed (hopefully) city incinerator construct a trash transfer station for the now significantly reduced waste stream. Truck what cannot yet be recycled to Covanta’s SEMASS facility. Since the SEMASS facility is not pollution free, this service should be short term and only used until long-term solutions can be developed and implemented.

Once the Republic Services Allied Waste’s Fall River dump is capped and closed the city should negotiate with dump owners for construction of a massive solar energy farm at that facility. The dump also emits methane and other gasses that have economic value. Profits from these alternative energy enterprises should go toward the disposal costs of the minimal amount of trash remaining.

Communities across America are recycling at well over 50% …some have reached 90%. Imagine if our solid waste that couldn’t be recycled was only about 10%.

Read about one city’s approach to achieving zero-waste here: http://www.seismologik.com/journal/2012/4/23/where-no-city-has-gone-before-san-francisco-will-become-the.html

 

 

BIORESERVE FLORA OF THE MONTH – Mayflower aka Trailing Arbutus – (Epigaea repens)

 

 

 

Mayflower is our Massachusetts’ State Flower and Nova Scotia’s Provincial Flower. Growing close to the ground it is often mistaken for a forb or herbaceous spring wildflower. Mayflower is actually a shrub with woody stems that trail along the ground or, at the most, rise only two to six inches in height. It grows very slowly, spreading out in a circular pattern from the parent plant.

 

Mayflower leaves are evergreen, leathery, alternate and broadly oblong. The flowers are small, half-inch four petaled trumpets, white to deep pink, in clusters and very fragrant. The older the blossoms, the stronger the scent.

 

Mayflowers are pollinated by forest bumblebees attracted by the sweet smelling abundant nectar. In Massachusetts they bloom in April and early May. Fruits are a dry capsule one-quarter inch in diameter filled with tiny seeds.

 

The name “Mayflower” was bestowed on this shrub by the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts, who named it after their ship. Although human development has made the shrub rare today, back in 1620 it was very abundant in sandy forest clearings. The ship, itself, carried the name of an entirely different flower that in England blooms in May.

 

Mayflower’s range is from Newfoundland to Georgia, west to Iowa, north to Canada’s Northwest Territories.

 

It grows best in pine forest clearings in moist, rich, acidic, sandy soil.

 

Mayflower blossoms were used by Indians to flavor maple syrup, various beverages and in salads.  New England country children often chewed the spicy, sweet blossoms in the spring.

 

 

 

 

BIORESERVE FAUNA OF THE MONTH – Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavao)

 

 

They’re everywhere, they’re everywhere!

The turkey is a very large bird, of a black color, yet white in flesh, much bigger than our English turkey. He hath the use of his long legs so ready, that he can run as fast as a dog, and fly as well as a goose. Of these sometimes there will be forty, threescore, and a hundred of a flock, sometimes more and sometimes less. Their feeding is acorns, hawes, and berries, some of them get a haunt to frequent our English corn. In winter when the snow covers the ground they resort to the sea shore to look for shrimps, and such small fishes at low tides. Such as love turkey hunting must follow them by their tracks. Some have killed ten or a dozen in half a day. If they can be found towards an evening and watched where they perch, if one comes about ten or eleven of the clock he may shoot as often as he will, they will sit, unless slenderly wounded. These turkeys remain all the year long, the price of a good turkey cock is four shillings and he is well worth it, for he may be in weight forty pounds.”

- William Wood ‘New England’s Prospect’ (1634)

The turkeys that were running around Massachusetts when William Wood wrote the above, were everywhere. Subsistence and commercial hunting, as well as the clearing of the forests for agriculture, soon made the big birds as rare as turkey teeth. Today, 378 years later, turkeys once again are everywhere in Massachusetts...

Unlike some other locally extirpated critters, such as the fisher and black bear, that have returned to New England’s regenerating forests on their own, the turkey needed a helping hand to make it back.

By 1950 the only wild turkeys left in the United States were those living in remote forested areas in the rugged Appalachian Mountains and in a few impenetrable southern swamps. By the 1960’s, most former wild turkey states had begun implementing wildlife management programs staffed by dedicated wildlife biologists working to bring the wild turkey back to its native range.

These biologists were delighted to find that by trapping and transferring some gobblers and hens from these remnant southern turkey flocks, and releasing them in suitable forested habitat in the states from which they had been long gone, the turkeys would do the rest.

Returned to Massachusetts in the 1970’s wild turkeys can now be found from Cape Cod to the Berkshires and they have even expanded their range out from the forest adapting to living among us in our suburbs and cities.

Wild turkeys are now frequently seen strolling down the urban streets of Boston and Brookline. Here is a recent headline and snippet from a news article on an urban Braintree turkey:

BRAINTREE – April 11, 2012

Turkey crashes into lottery office in Braintree

By Colin A. Young, Globe Correspondent

A large turkey burst through a window at the offices of the Massachusetts State Lottery in Braintree on Tuesday.

“It was crazy,” Beth Bresnahan, a Lottery spokeswoman, said. “It was a 40-pound turkey that came crashing through a double-paned glass window with such force that it crashed through the window and then hit a brick wall at the back of our lobby.”

Bresnahan said the turkey, which was fatally injured, crashed through the window at the Lottery’s rear employee entrance around 4:45 p.m. and caused a bit of commotion near the end of the workday. The turkey “had to be going extremely fast,” Bresnahan said, to be able to glide beneath a overhang and hit the window with such force.

“Many people thought a car ... crashed into the building,” she said. “There was a meeting taking place in an auditorium near there. … Everybody was a bit alarmed.”

Adult wild turkey males are called gobblers or toms. First year males are jakes. Mature female turkeys are hens. Immature females are jennies. A large flock of turkeys is a drove or rafter. Turkey chicks are poults.

Gobblers have a bare head that can be red, white and/or blue with raised caruncles, a red dewlap and red wattles on the neck. All of the colors intensify during the spring mating season. Gobblers also have a “beard” …a tuft of hair-like feathers …growing from their breast.

Mature gobblers also have a fleshy organ called a snood that hangs over the gobbler’s bill. The snood elongates and swells when the gobbler is sexually aroused.

Both gobblers and hens have long, broadly fan-shaped tails, but only the gobbler struts about with spread tail during mating displays. Depending on the light, the gobbler’s black, brown and white body feathers become suffused with iridescent red, green, gold and bronze tones.

Gobblers are polygamous and during the spring mating season the gobblers puff up their feathers until they look three times larger than their actual size, fan their tail feathers and drag their wing tips along the ground as they strut about to impress the local hens. Rival gobblers also fight ferociously at this time of year seeking to keep interloping competitors out of their territory and to keep their hens from straying.

Hen turkeys nest on the ground alongside logs or at the edge of forest thickets. They lay one egg a day until their clutch is complete and then they begin incubating. The average clutch is eleven eggs and the incubation period is twenty-eight days.

The poults, upon hatching, are brooded by the hen for the first day. They must be kept warm and dry or they will quickly perish. They can follow the hen when two days old and fly by eight days old. They begin to roost on broad tree limbs, safely under the hen’s outstretched wings, when two weeks old.

Turkeys have quite a vocabulary. The gobblers, of course, gobble …and they also yelp like a hound, cluck like a chicken, cackle like a witch and make a drumming noise …well, like a drum. Hens mostly cluck, whine and yelp and young jakes and jennies make a high-pitched ascending “kee-kee-kee-kee-kee” sound.

Mature wild turkeys are mostly vegetarian feeding on acorns, nuts, seeds, tubers, berries and various grasses and forbs. They are not averse to occasional grasshopper, caterpillar and other insect snacks. Young, growing turkeys consume more protein-rich insects than adults.

Gobblers are a third larger than hens. Jakes, in the spring, weigh 12 to 14 pounds. Two year old gobblers weigh 17 to 19 pounds, three years and older weigh 19 to 24 pounds.

Most know that Benjamin Franklin favored the wild turkey over the bald eagle when it was time to pick our national emblem. Congress debated this issue for almost six years.

Here is a letter that Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1784 and sent to his daughter, Sarah Bache:

For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.

With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping & Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper Emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our Country…

I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America… He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.

We think it is wonderful that the wild turkey is back home in Massachusetts. They are, like us, very socially complex creatures. Hopefully we have learned to share the landscape, well into the future, with this truly amazing native American.

 

THINGS TO DO

May and June are two of the best months to be out in your natural environment in New England. Great weather to take a hike, paddle a kayak/canoe, ride your bike, go fishing, plant some flowers in your garden, sniff some wildflowers in the woods …whatever. Check our Calendar of available outdoor offerings.