Tile Line/Constructed Wetlands Op-Ed (1-10)
In the recent historical past, Iowa was covered with forests, prairies, wetlands, thick sod, streams and rivers. Rain that fell to the earth was retained, cleansed, used and slowly passed through the state. That changed with the coming of settlers who broke the sod of the prairies for cultivation agriculture. The historic hydrology of the state was altered with the need to drain fields. To accomplish that draining, we now have some 880,000 miles of field tile in Iowa. Records show a doubling and even tripling of the flow of some rivers over the last 100 years. Also, because tile lines provide a direct conduit to surface and ground waters, we have lost the water's contact with the cleansing soil and surface flora resulting in streams and rivers that are, in many cases, little more than silt, fecal and chemical filled canals.
Last November, the Water Resources Coordinating Council (WRCC) submitted flood plain management policy recommendations and funding options to Governor Culver and state legislators. The recommendations are intended to help the state rebuild safer, stronger and smarter in the wake of the historic 2008 floods.
House File 756, passed by the legislature in 2009, required the WRCC to submit policy and funding recommendations that promote "a watershed management approach to reduce the adverse impact of future flooding on this state's residents, businesses, communities, and soil and water quality."
One proposal from the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) is counter intuitive and scientifically questionable. IDALS proposes to further enhance artificial drainage of Iowa farmland. The proposal has morphed between an implementation plan and a feasibility study. The plan appears to be moving rapidly from concept to expensive experiment, in spite of serious questions raised by scientists and knowledgeable water resource professionals. What has been called the "Iowa Plan" redesigns and enlarges existing drainage systems and directs water flow to constructed wetlands. These wetlands may reduce nutrient loads delivered to Iowa lakes and streams. Restoring Iowa's wetlands sounds appealing because this could benefit the hydrology and water quality that has been disturbed by - ironically - artificial drainage. The arguments supporting accelerated drainage are the same that resulted in the elimination of Iowa's wetland ecosystem in the first place - increased agricultural production. Producers and commodity consumers tout the benefits of expanded production efficiency, but what about those of us who want to use the streams and lakes destined to receive more water, nutrients and pollution from accelerated drainage? If increased production efficiency resulted in the cultivation of less land, then this is a noble objective. History shows, however, that this has not been the case in Iowa.
The downstream consequences of accelerated drainage need to be carefully examined beyond the proposed token wetland band-aid. There are several things we know for certain: "improved" artificial drainage in Iowa has increased stream flow in quantity and duration over the last 100+ years; artificial drainage flushes nitrogen and phosphorus from soil into lakes and streams, impairing those waters for drinking, recreation, and aquatic life; wetlands have the potential to reduce stream flow and nutrient loads. What we don't know: how much will stream flow and nutrient levels increase if drainage is further enhanced? What will be the effect of constructed wetlands on downstream flows and nutrient loads? And, are producers willing to designate enough acreage to a constructed wetland such that it can function effectively? Furthermore, there is the risk that these constructed wetlands, which will be receiving enormous nutrient loads, will have deleterious effects on downstream water quality.
Under current Iowa law, producers can construct drainage systems for their land using their own funds. If the negative environmental effects of accelerated drainage are only balanced out by a wetland system, how will the taxpayers of Iowa and the U.S. benefit by subsidizing this activity? Will the water leaving these drainage systems be required to meet some quality and quantity objectives? Discussion of these questions and a discussion of further modifying Iowa's hydrology at taxpayer expense need to be addressed. A specific, scientifically sound project plan needs to be developed and reviewed. This will best be accomplished by assembling some of the best Iowa scientists familiar with the issues. A transparent planning and funding process should lead to evaluating competitive ideas rather than the process of directing taxpayer funds to a limited number IDALS' friends. Such a review is generally required for competitive research funding and Iowa should expect no less before embarking on a potentially expensive adventure in further (mis)managing its water resources.
If we learned nothing more from the Floods of '08, let's remember that accelerated drainage creates significant risks for downstream property owners and communities. We hope IDALS will propose changes in land practices that result in less flow and less nutrient pollution to the waters of the state of Iowa, rather than more.
Bob Watson
Bill Stowe
Mike Burkart
Anti-degradation Regulations (1-10 Register Op-Ed)
Iowa has a double standard about
sewage.
The state's inconsistent rules for waste from cities and industries, compared
with the regulations that apply to industrial agriculture, are jeopardizing
our water quality and punishing the citizens of our communities.
State laws and agency regulations require municipal and industrial wastewater
treatment plants to collect and treat their sewage, and to obtain permits
to discharge effluent from their treatment facilities. We know who these "point
source" polluters are, and we strive to keep them in check.
Industrial livestock confinements also produce sewage, but these operations have escaped the point source restrictions because they have been defined as "agriculture." With today's industrial scale, however, these confinements are no different than cities or industries in terms of the amount and kind of waste produced. Although confinement waste is produced by agricultural animals, it is not what most people would describe as "manure." Confinement animal waste sits in a pit, tank or lagoon and "cooks" for several months, turning into a toxic sewage. That confinement waste generates hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia - poison sewer gasses that are constantly vented into the air that neighbors must breathe. Confinements also produce and discharge methane, which is a toxic greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.
Cities and industries must collect and treat their waste before discharging it. In contrast, industrial confinements only collect and store their waste, but then are allowed to dispose of it on farm fields without treating it. That untreated sewage often enters our rivers, streams, tile lines and groundwater.
In recent years Iowa has adopted stricter discharge permits for point source municipal/industrial wastewater facilities. The DNR is now considering further restrictions on point source dischargers: so-called anti-degradation regulations. With the adoption of anti-degradation rules, today's permits would be a baseline and no increase in discharge limits would be allowed in the future. It is an attempt to keep the waters of the state from degrading any further due to increased pollution from dischargers. Yet the State has no documentation to show there would be a significant decrease in the ongoing degradation of Iowa waters if anti-degradation rules are adopted for point source dischargers.
To meet this new municipal/industrial anti-degradation regulation, the DNR is suggesting alternatives to discharging treated liquid effluent to a stream or river. One alternative would be applying the treated liquid effluent onto the land. The DNR has strict rules for land applying treated effluent from municipal and industrial systems, which makes land application more expensive than discharging their treated effluent into a stream. Small communities, with a high proportion of senior citizens and young people, would especially feel the financial pinch.
Contrast this proposed extra regulation and more expense for municipal/industrial waste with what happens to the completely untreated waste from an industrial livestock confinement. The pig to people equivalent amount of waste from confined pigs in this state would be like having 30 million Iowans spreading their "untreated" waste directly on Iowa's farmland. Remember, the manure from a confinement sits for months in a pit, tank or lagoon, where it becomes a toxic brew that spews poisons into the air. Eventually, both the liquids and solids from the untreated confinement waste - which is more polluting than raw human sewage - are simply spread on cropland. The waste can seep into the state's 880,000 miles of field tiles or run into adjacent streams, then quickly enter our rivers. Worse yet, it can enter groundwater through sinkholes or losing streams. Because many of the microorganisms in the soil have been lost to erosion and heavy application of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, there is only minimal biological breakdown of the waste. Likewise, the antibiotics and hormones commonly used by industrial livestock producers can enter our water without treatment.
If state officials hope to stop the degradation of Iowa's waters, it does not make sense to ignore the agricultural component, which accounts for at least 90% of our water pollution. To be sure, it's hard to argue against cleaner water. But is it fair to impose a new regulatory and financial burden on cities and urban industries, while continuing to allow industrial agriculture to spread untreated sewage onto the land?
It's time to require the agricultural community to pay its share of the clean-up. If livestock producers wish to use industrial confinements, which produce sewage instead of manure, we should apply the same standards to the wastewater from those confinement operations as we do to municipal/industrial wastewater treatment facilities. We should require them to build a treatment facility, just as we impose that requirement on Iowa communities. If producers of livestock "sewage" don't want this regulation, they should adopt sustainable models of agriculture that return manure to the land as fertilizer, rather than convert it to a toxic waste.
Whatever the source, untreated "sewage" pollutes
our waters, kills aquatic organisms, affects the health of our citizens, and
impacts the quality of life. Those who produce sewage - whether cities, or
industries, or industrial confinements - should follow the same strict environmental
rules. Until this happens, it is pointless to impose any further regulations
- including these anti-degradation regulations - on point source dischargers.
.
Bob Watson Larry Stone
bobandlinda@civandinc.net lstone@alpinecom.net
Presentation to the Iowa Board of Pharmacy:
Medical Marijuana Hearings.
Sept 2, 2009 Mason City, IA.
Bob Watson
2736 Lannon Hill Rd.
Decorah, IA 52101
563-382-5848
Dear Board Members,
My name is Bob Watson. I reside in rural Decorah. I am a disabled combat veteran.
I was a radio operator with 2nd Battalion 5th Marines, a combat unit, in Vietnam
40 years ago. My disabilities are PTSD, the colloquial definition for me is
too much combat before the age of 21 and plenty more after; and the cerebral
form of p-falciparum malaria. This form of malaria destroys the insulation
around synapses in the brain and allows short circuiting of electrical impulses
which are a form of seizures. These disabilities are central to my testimony.
Since the 1960's the literature abounds with studies about marijuana trying to prove its dangers, it helpful uses, and it's chemical compounds. This has led to the understanding that many of the old, thousands of years old, uses for marijuana have a firm basis in science. Marijuana has been used to treat pain, convulsions, nausea, glaucoma, neuralgia, asthma, cramps, migraine, insomnia, and depression to name a few.
With the 1988 Allyn Howlett discovery of specific receptors for THC in the brain we begin to understand the ability of marijuana to affect humans. In 1992, Raphael Mechoulam, who originally discovered THC, discovered the brains own cannabinoid and he named it anadamide.
As Pollan tells us, "The cannabinoid receptors Howlett found showed up in vast numbers all over the brain (as well as in the immune and reproductive systems), though they were clustered in regions responsible for the mental processes that marijuana are known to alter: the cerebral cortex (the locus of higher-order thought), the hippocampus (memory), the basal ganglia (movement), and the amygdala (emotions). The one neurological address where cannabinoid receptors didn't show up was in the brain stem, which regulates involuntary functions such as circulation and respiration. This might explain the remarkably low toxicity of cannabis and the fact that no one is known to have ever died from an overdose.
Howlett suggests that the purpose of this network might be various direct and indirect effects of cannabinoids: pain relief, loss of short-term memory, sedation, and mild cognitive impairment. She noted that cannabinoid receptors had been found in the uterus and speculated that anandamide may not only dull the pain of childbirth but help women forget it later. The sensation of pain is one of the hardest to summon from memory. Howlett speculated that the human cannabinoid system evolved to help us endure and selectively forget the routine slings and arrows of life so that we can get up in the morning and do it all over again. It is the brain's own drug for coping with the human condition." After my year in the rice paddies and mountains of Vietnam, there is much to forget.
Humans have a coevolution relation with marijuana, much like pollinators and flowers, which has had evolutionary advantages to both species. Which gets me back to PTSD and malaria.
As I stated previously, one of the effects of malaria is the creation of seizures. These seizures lead to a number of problems including debilitating anxiety attacks, rages, etc. Smoking marijuana dampens the seizures and works as an anti-convulscent. Marijuana has none of the side effects, or in fact unintended actions on the brain, that the normal pharmaceutical drugs used for this purpose have.
The central symptom of PTSD from the jungle war in Vietnam for veterans is hyper-alertness. Because hyper-alertness saved my life throughout that whole year, my brain won't let me stop being hyper-alert. Hyper-alertness causes the brain to fill in voids with flashbacks, nightmares, and a perpetual state of alertness which can take on many forms of problematic behavior.
One tends to forget that not only did combat veterans hunt other humans; they were also hunted by other humans. This brings in a whole set of PTSD problems normally not thought of when thinking of combat veterans. Mine is not an easy life. I must always be aware of and manage my PTSD and malaria symptoms and try to separate them from what might be called normal life.
Smoking marijuana can reduce hyper-alertness. Reducing hyper-alertness can reduce the symptoms that combat veterans must live with. Smoking marijuana acts as an anti-convulscent thus relieving symptoms caused by seizures that veterans with cerebral malaria must live with. Smoking marijuana allows the veteran to selectively forget many of the horrible memories of combat.
When we have understood for the last 50 years the pharmacological reasons why marijuana works as it does on the human brain, when we have understood the positive cultural uses this plant has been used for for thousands of years by humans, when we understand that other states in this United States understand and legally allow those medical uses that marijuana has been shown to have, as a combat veteran who has spent the last 40 years dealing daily with the effects fighting for this county has had on my life, I find it morally reprehensible that a doctor at the VA, or any other doctor, is not allowed to write me a prescription for marijuana when that doctor knows that marijuana is the best medicine I could have for my combat related disabilities.
Do me, and the thousands of other veterans with PTSD and malarial
disabilities, a favor: understand the real history this plant has had with
humans, understand the positive medical outcomes this plant has shown, and
recommend the use of medical marijuana in Iowa. Thank you.
The Dark Side of the Green Revolution (10-09 Register)
There is a sense in which Norman Borlaug's Green Revolution can be viewed as one of the most serious and sustained human-caused pollution events in history.
Similar to US, Midwest, and Iowa farmers, other countries farmers' use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides as part of the Green Revolution has resulted in dead zones, algae blooms and polluted surface and ground waters. Locally, Iowa's impaired surface waters list alone is now well over 400. We find agricultural chemicals in the majority of our private wells. And, we have seen recent stories about poison algae blooms and Iowa's contribution to the continuing dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
Again, like many agricultural areas in the US and around the world, because of drenching soils with chemicals for 50 plus years, the soils in some areas of the Punjab, India's breadbasket, are now so polluted and bereft of beneficial biological organisms that crops can no longer be grown without the use of chemicals. And similar to what has happened to the Ogallala Aquifer, because of the Green Revolutions' need for water, the Punjab's and other water tables have been significantly lowered.
Although it has been claimed that the Green Revolution has saved millions from starvation, we know that millions of subsistence farmers have been put off the land through not having the capital resources for the machinery, chemicals and hybrid seeds required by the Green Revolution. Millions of people have moved into urban areas contributing to urban problems that come with over-population. Similar to the US's illegal immigration problem, millions have been forced to migrate to other countries looking for work.
We have a tendency to pat each other on the back and give each other awards and accolades. Meanwhile, unintended, but very real, consequences are conveniently brushed aside and ignored.
Borlaug's admonition that no food revolution will help unless we deal with the problem of over-population is seldom remarked upon. It should be. But, his Green Revolution is not the right agricultural model for the earth or for its people.
Militarization (7-09)
It is with a sense of dismay, sadness and creeping foreboding, that I see the continued militarisation of our holidays and our larger society. Our society has been trending towards that end, but with the Bush Administration's invasion of two sovereign nations, it has accelerated at an alarming rate these last eight years.
The July 4th holiday is supposed to be about our country's celebration of our independence from England. In all of the media that I encountered that day, television, radio, and newspapers, the main message was to support our troops that were fighting overseas. It was the same for Christmas, New Years, Easter, etc.
Holidays have been turned into military shows of protecting the "Homeland". We are to honor active military personnel. But, that is hard to do when what they are doing is not honorable. How can we honor what is being done by our military in illegal and immoral invasions and occupations of nations we have destroyed?
What is happening to individual military members may be tragic; it may even be criminal. But, it is not honorable and should not be honored. Bush and Cheney, along with Johnson, Nixon and Reagan should all be prosecuted for war crimes. And, we as a nation should hang our collective heads in shame at having let this happen.
In our efforts to separate ourselves from military service, we have enabled this malaise to overtake us. Without the draft, without the shared burden and responsibility of making war on others, we have let our politicians enter into wars of choice since 1954. And if we question why our leaders would invade other countries "just because", we are labeled as non-patriots.
Because of this, the military no longer has a sense of what it is for and where it stands in our society and in the larger scheme of things. The military and its members have an overblown sense of their importance. As an example, at the Fair last week the Marine recruiters were placed right next to the "Music Tent". Their vehicle, which was constantly running, was six feet from the back of the tent. What little breeze there was, and it was a hot day, was blowing both the exhaust and the engine heat into the tent. When they were asked by people, and Fair representatives, to turn that engine off while people were sitting in the tent and listening to music, their answer was a resounding "NO". They couldn't turn off the engine because it was running a TV and that TV was part of their recruiting. That Marines can't recruit without a TV for an hour is a ludicrous notion on its own. The second reason given was that they paid for that spot and they could, and would, do as they pleased whether or not it inconvenienced those 50-60 people who had come to listen to music.
Many people had to leave the tent as a result of the exhaust and heat from the Marine recruiter's vehicle. I had the senior Marine call his superior so that I could explain the situation and ask him to have the vehicle turned off while people six feet away were listening to music. The Staff Sergeant I talked to on the phone said that they paid for that spot and they weren't going to turn that vehicle off!
It is very disappointing to me as a former combat Marine to see what is happening to Marines, and other service members, in their understanding of what their place in the larger society is because of this supposed constant war footing. As I mentioned to the Marines that day, as a Marine 40 years ago I was more considerate of villagers in Vietnam than they were being towards Winneshiek County residents who were simply trying to listen to their kids and friends play music at the fair.
Dismaying, sad, and foreboding.
Jingoism in Agriculture (12-08)
Unless you confine your information to what the Farm Bureau or other "corporate agriculture apologists" have to say, anyone who pays attention to what subsidized American agriculture has done to indigenous farmers around the world certainly knows Steve Jacobson knew what he was talking about. Guatemala's historical problems with the US go much further than farmers losing their farms because of the US exporting subsidized corn to their country. It started when the US, through the CIA, overthrew a democratically elected government there in 1954 and hasn't stopped since.
Paul Hunter should get a clue from the recent elections. Mouthing talking points will no longer work when discussing our country's unfortunate effects on other countries in the world. Petro-chemical/industrial agriculture, as a model of agriculture, is not only bad for others around the world but it is also slowly killing our environment and ourselves.
Some weeks ago I gave information to the County Health Board which talked about a U of Iowa study showing MRSA being found in 70% of confinement pigs and 45% of the workers in those confinements. Whether it was a case of ignorance or confusion, no one at that meeting seems to have thought this might be something to worry about. In 2005 alone MRSA caused nearly 19,000 deaths in the US and more than 94,000 life threatening infections.
Another recent study done out of Johns Hopkins showed just driving down a highway behind a truck full of confinement chickens being taken to a processing plant resulted in high levels of bacteria, some of which were resistant to antibiotics like MRSA, in the car, in the car's air, and on items in the car. The U of Iowa MRSA pig study was recently expanded to non-confinement pastured-raised pigs and no MRSA was found in pigs or people on those farms.
Because of subsidized American grain being dumped in Guatemala, many farmers and farm workers lost their livelihoods and some ended up working at Agri in Postville. It is a good thing for our local environment and our local social service providers that Agri has finally gone under; for good, I hope. Kosher meat industry prices were kept unduly low because Agri scrimped on environmental costs of raising and butchering meat animals, and by hiring illegal immigrants and paying them wages far below what most people could live on. We and our neighborhoods paid a high price for Agri's low priced meat.
We continue to pay a high price for using this inherently poisonous petro-chemical/industrial model of agriculture. With the recent rejection of right wing jingoism, there may be a chance of having a conversation filled with good science, fairness and justice, resulting in a cleaner form of agriculture, and a clearer conscience when it comes to dealing with our international neighbors.
Impeach Bush and Cheney (9-08)
I am really glad that Dale Olson's letter last week on the brotherhood of Vietnam Veterans was in the paper. For a while there I was worried it was only actual combat veterans like me, and not the whole brotherhood of veterans, that understood that George Bush and Dick Cheney should be immediately impeached for an immoral and illegal invasion, and continued occupation, of a sovereign nation; that the whole brotherhood also thinks that after impeachment Bush and Cheney should be turned over to the International Criminal Court to be tried as war criminals.
I am glad to know also that the brotherhood thinks it unseemly of John McCain to propose that just because he was a POW he is qualified to be the President. There have been thousands of American POW's; including my friend Jose who saved my life in an ambush in the Que Son mountains in August of '69. Jose was captured in January of '70 (he spent three years as a POW) when we were in the northern part of the Arizona territory in the An Hoa basin. POW status does not qualify one for the presidency.
I am also glad to know that the brotherhood speaks as one when the brotherhood says that anyone, and I mean anyone, who thinks that this country is about, and should be about, invading countries willy-nilly around the world killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, should immediately go down to the nearest Recruiting Station, enlist, and ask to be immediately sent to the front lines as a combat infantryperson.
The problem of the nations' public being ignorant and stupid about what war is and what it does to everyone affected is not new or unique to the US; although we have not experienced a war here since 1865. In his book "Her Privates We", an actual experiential account of trench warfare on the Somme and Ancre fronts in 1916, Frederic Manning has one of his characters, Glazier, speak to this, "…only I've sometimes thought it would be a bloody good thing for us'ns, if the Hun did land a few troops in England. Show 'em what war's like. Madeley and I struck it lucky and went home on leave together, and you never seed anything like it. Windy! Like a lot of bloody kids they was, and talkin' no more sense; upon me word, you'd be surprised at some of the questions they'd ask, and you couldn't answer sensible. They'd never believe it, if you did. We just kept our mouths shut, and told them the war was all right, and we'd got it won, but not yet. 'twas the only way to keep 'em quiet." Madeley continues, "But it's all true what he says about folks at home, most of them. They don't care a 'damn' what happens to us, so long as they can keep a whole skin. Say they be ready to make any sacrifice; but we're the bloody sacrifice. You never seed such a windy lot; and bloodthirsty ain't the word for it. They've all gone potty. You'd think your best friends wouldn't be satisfied till they'd seed your name on the roll of honour. I told one of then he knew a bloody sight more than I did about the war."
There are extremely serious issues at stake in this years'
election. None of them have anything to do with whether or not there is a
monolithic brotherhood or whether John McCain was a POW.
Iowa's farming model is poisonous (DSM Register 4-07)
Dear Editor,
A couple of months ago it was reported in the Register that the $800,000.00 fine imposed against Insituform as a result of the deaths of two of their employees from hydrogen-sulfide poisoning while working in the Des Moines sewer system was upheld. It is curious that for the 25 plus people killed from hydrogen-sulfide poisoning in hog confinements in Iowa, no company has ever been fined. Fecal waste in a closed structure always creates the poison gasses hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia, no matter if it is in sewers or in agricultural confinements.
Contrary to the confinement deaths and 40 years of scientific studies showing the adverse affects on human health from these poison gasses, it now seems that what is left of the EPA under the Bush Administration wants us to believe that these gasses aren't really poisonous when they come from agriculture. ("EPA wants exemption for livestock farms", Des Moines Register)
Rural Iowans are being sacrificed because corporate America
has chosen a petro-chemical/industrial model of agriculture which favors inputs
and structures, over the environmentally and human health benign biological
model which favors farmers' labor and management. And now we are to grant
a free pass for all the pollution, death and disease that comes with this
industrial model. Where is the moral outrage at this state of affairs?
Request for Rural/Urban Cooperation
To: City Council.
Re: Request for Rural/Urban Cooperation.
Dear Council,
My name is Bob Watson. Because I would like a written response from the Council to the request I am making today, this request will be in written form. After reading it to you, I will give it to you.
We hear much about rural and urban Iowans working together to solve problems that we have in Iowa. It is in that spirit of cooperation that I am here today. Many times it is necessary to experience something to actually understand it. I am going to ask that you and your children share with rural Iowan's and their children an ongoing rural experience. Hopefully, once you share that experience, we can work together in resolving this issue.
I will briefly describe the experience and its' effects on rural people and their children. I will then talk about what technology is in operation in your city which would allow you to share this experience. I will mention how you can easily modify that technology so that you can share the experience. And, finally, I will formally ask you to share in that experience.
Among many confinement studies over the last 30 years, a study in Utah simply looked at hospital records pre- and post-confinement introduction into a community. Those records show clearly a tripling of illnesses generally associated with exposure to hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia. These illnesses are a direct result of the constant venting by those confinements of the poison gasses hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia into the neighborhoods around those confinements, and the contamination of the neighborhoods' sources of drinking water by those confinements.
A study concerning proximity of confinements to rural schools in Iowa and the incidence of asthma among those schools students was conducted by the University of Iowa's Dr. Joel Kline http://www.chestjournal.org/cgi/content/full/129/6/1486 . The overall rate of physician-diagnosed asthma in Iowa is about 6.7%. Two rural schools were in the study. One school had no confinement closer than 10 miles, and the other, a NE Iowa school, was ½ mile from a confinement. In the school which was 10 miles away from a confinement, 11.7% of the students were found to have asthma, double the Iowa rate. In the school which was only a ½ mile from a confinement, 24.6% of the students were found to have asthma, four times the Iowa rate.
In a recent study by James Merchant of the University of Iowa on asthma in children who live on a farm with a confinement http://www.ehponline.org/members/2004/7240/7240.pdf , it was found that after all other factors were accounted for, a shocking 55.8% of those children had asthma as a direct result of living on that farm with that confinement, nine times the Iowa rate for asthma. This study also found that antibiotics from the confinements are particularized and blown into the air along with the poison gases. We are constantly breathing not only poison gases from confinements but also antibiotics.
These are astounding rates of asthma, 11.7%-24.6%-55.8%, and increases of other illnesses for people, especially children, in rural Iowa who are in proximity to confinements.
All international, national and state health regulatory agencies, World Health Organization - Environmental Protection Agency - Occupational Health and Safety Agency to name some, know that hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia are dangerous to people. There is no argument about that danger; the science is settled on this issue. We see the dangerous results of exposure to those gasses in the rates of asthma and other illnesses in people in the rural areas of Iowa.
Now, how is it that you and your children have the capability to share in this experience? What technology exists in a city which constantly creates the poison gasses hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia? The answer is - your sewers.
How do we know confinements and sewers are the same technology? Confinements and sewers both are closed structures. They both have untreated fecal waste in them. That waste constantly generates the poison gases hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia in both confinements and sewers. People and animals need constant ventilation to survive in either a confinement or a sewer. The diseases and causes of deaths from those gasses are the same in sewers and confinements. That is how we know confinements and sewers are the same technology.
There are two major management differences. City sewers are designed to contain their poison gasses while confinements, having literally turned sewers on their head, are designed to constantly blow those poison gasses out into the surrounding neighborhood. Think of confinements as upside down sewers that exhaust their poisons, which people in the neighborhood then have to breathe, so that the pigs or chickens inside can stay alive. The second major difference is that your sewers are regulated by law.
So, how can you modify your sewers so that you and your children can share in the experience of having poison sewer gasses in your neighborhoods? And, this is my formal request of you today: Take the manhole covers off your sewers, put blowers down in those sewers and blow the poison sewer gasses out into your neighborhoods. After experiencing those poison sewer gasses and their health effects, hopefully, in the spirit of rural/urban cooperation, you will then want to work with your rural neighbors to resolve this issue.
Because part of what I am doing is documenting who can and cannot have these gasses in their neighborhoods, if you think sewer gasses in your neighborhoods might not be a good idea, or, if you think there might be some law, or other reasons, prohibiting you from blowing poison gasses into your neighborhoods, I would ask that you include what those reasons might be in your written response to my request. There are professionals employed by this city who work with these poisons on a daily basis. Your Wastewater Superintendent, Collection System Supervisor, or whoever keeps you in OSHA compliance, could tell you why my request should or shouldn't be granted.
Thank you very much for your time and for considering my request that you and your children share in the continuing rural experience of breathing poison sewer gasses. (I will answer any questions you may have.)
Bob Watson
2736 Lannon Hill Rd
Decorah, IA 52101
563-382-5848