Prevention beats cleanup

Early this morning, or very late last night, the clouds and the bare, clustered tree branches provided a faint, ghostly portrait of the moon approaching full. According to this year’s Minnesota WeatherGuide Calendar, come Saturday the 24th, the full moon we’ll experience is an Ojibwe Sucker Fish Moon. also known as the Popping Trees Moon by the Lakota.

geese and swans on open water, late Feb. 2017

Photo by J. Harrington

On our way to deliver our "tax organizer, “ plus attachments, to our tax preparer, we glimpsed a pair of swans close to County Road 36 on the Sunrise River pools of Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area. The fact that there were no other waterfowl to be seen makes me think the ones we saw are overwintering somewhere nearby but also heightened my anticipation of spring migration.

Also this morning, we received a notice from the good folks at Water Legacy that comments are being solicited on Minnesota Pollution Control Agency PFAS Rulemaking. An extract from the notice notes:

Why Comment on PFAS Rulemaking?

Last year, the Minnesota Legislature passed a statute (Minn. Stat. § 116.943) that would prohibit PFAS in many types of products unless their use in those products was “currently unavoidable.” This was an important positive step to keep PFAS out of surface water and groundwater.

Now the MPCA is developing rules that will determine how the PFAS statute will be interpreted. The details will determine if Minnesota waters and human health are protected.

PFAS “forever chemicals” have a wide range of serious health consequences including cancers, liver damage, increased cholesterol and obesity, reduced immune response to fight infection, dangerous high blood pressure in pregnancy, reduced infant birth weight, and developmental delays in children

The MPCA will receive many comments from industries seeking less transparency and more exclusions to allow continued use of PFAS. Your comments will push back on the pressure from special interests.

You might want to read the whole thing and consider commenting. Something I’ve not seen mentioned yet, but is in an article in The Guardian today, is that 

Among the main sources of food contamination are tainted water, greaseproof food wrappers, some plastics, pesticides, or farms where PFAS-tainted sewage sludge is spread as fertilizer.

That’s all for now. Enjoy the thaw. 

[UPDATE: At least 60% of US population may face ‘forever chemicals’ in tap water, tests suggest]

The Commodity Sings to its Beloved

By Julien Poirier

I am here

for a very particular reason:

to buy a 6-pack of beer

and berries out of season

 

 

                    all for you, i did it all for you

 

 

I noticed an oil spill

on my drive past the bay,

emergency broadcast on the radio

—What do you have to say?

 

 

                    all for you, i did it all for you

 

 

You chopped down the plant

that used to grow my pants,

resurrected it in Indonesia

like a blow-up doll with amnesia

 

 

                    all for you, i did it all for you

 

 

Poor people once lived here

but you flooded the valley

with psilocybin carcinogens,

and forced the kids into shooting galleries

 

 

                    all for you, i did it all for you

 

 

You gave poor people jobs

then you forced them to act

like robots lining up

for a real live heart attack,

made them take apart their futures

then you sold the parts back,

repurposed the sutures

to close a robocaller’s rap

 

 

                    all for you, i did it all for you

 

 

You got children in slums

to make things that break,

your unspoken credo—

“If it lasts, it’s fake.”

 

 

But you were there first

when we were dying of thirst,

with a pint of chilled water

each, for me, my wife and two daughters,

 

 

and even a kewpie doll

and a tiny stuffed puppy

—for my wife some paper slippers,

for me, a stuffed yuppie

 

 

—You saw every decision

that I would make first,

and you did get there first

when we were dying of thirst

 

 

                    every decision

                    i make is part yours,

                    every step i take,

                    i take on your floor

 

 

You mangled my fingers,

polluted my streams,

screamed in my face,

closed deals over my dreams

 

                     all for you, i did it all for you

 

(and now it fades out,

 

                    “The Commodity Sings to its Beloved” song. 

They’ll say it was a good idea

done wrong

—“They should have got a bigger budget,

done it as a singalong.”) 

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.