On Mother's Day weekend, Michelle's Earth Foundation, the Heymann Foundation and Lead Safe Louisiana helped fund and develop a lead-safe playground for Abeona House Discovery Center, a preschool for 60 children in New Orleans, LA.

The preschool playground is located in an area of New Orleans where the lead levels in soil are dangerously high. Lead poisoning in children from birth to five years of age is linked to developmental delays, health issues and eventually, crime. The greater New Orleans area has a particularly high lead level.

Development of the lead-safe playground included grading the contaminated soil and covering it with a bright orange geothermal fabric which provided a barrier. Six dump trucks of clean sand were trucked in, graded and covered with St. Augustine sod.

The work was made possible by Boy Scouts and Eagle Scout Grant Estrade along with Wood Products. Daycare Center Parents and volunteers from Annunciation Mission also contributed time and equipment. The project was based on the research and scientific protocol of Dr. Howard Mielke of Tulane University. Future testing for compliance will be done by LSU.

The intervention at Abeona House included making the yard lead-safe, sharing information through a parent and community education component, and further development of the school's farm-to-table food program through Wood Resources and Gardener's Supply.

Each preschool playground containment costs about $100/square yard, which is substantially less than the cost of education relating to developmental delays, health issues and, possibly, crime.

Ashley Meredith received MEF's Outstanding Environmentalist award for her many activities in promoting a sustainable environment. For many years she was a camper at Potomac Overlook Park. Eventually she became a counselor there as well as at the Arlington Outdoor Lab. At Governor's School Ashley developed a tool, algal floway, for removing suspended solids to improve water quality. Her paper on this method won 3rd place at the Virginia Academy of Science competition. She completed her Girl Scout Gold Award project by teaching 140 elementary school children about sustainability which included painting and installing rain barrels at libraries and elementary schools. For Ashley's senior project at H-B she spent a week on Smith and Tangier Islands identifying wildlife and researching the impact environmental changes have had on the islands and the people living there.

Ashley is now at the College of William and Mary as a Monroe Scholar. She is currently planning to major in Environmental Science and is considering a career as an environmental educator. She has joined the Student Environmental Action Coalition and the Marine Science Society. Ashley, we wish you the best!

Opinion piece by Rachele Huennekens

Co-founder of MEF and former Board member

Kaboom! After three years as a climate justice activist working with the Sierra Club, I got a Big Bang sense of accomplishment and relief on September 20, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy announced tough new requirements on coal and gas power plants, aiming to limit their greenhouse gas emissions for the first time. These 'carbon pollution standards' issued and enforced by the EPA, are the centerpiece of a bold new Climate Action plan announced by President Obama in June. The Climate Action plan includes a cluster of federal Administrative policies to curb carbon dioxide and other pollution emitted by dirty fossil fuels, which are responsible for climate change, and accelerate America's transition to clean energy sources.

As our wet, hot American summer of extreme wildfires, droughts, and floods has shown, Obama's Climate Action Plan comes not a moment too soon to stem our climate crisis. Regulating the carbon pollution from dirty fossil-fueled power plants is a commonsense first step, putting them in fair competition with clean energy sources like solar and wind farms. The new standards are likely to permanently halt construction of new coal plants, because coal companies and electric utility operators would need to install expensive technology to capture carbon dioxide and bury it underground.... [which] no coal-fired power plant has done yet. Despite the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars already wasted by the Big Coal industry on snake oil promises of "carbon capture" and "clean coal technology," coal is essentially out of the electricity business.

Of course, what replaces coal plants as our main source of energy is of utmost importance to all American families who need a healthy environment and stable climate free from pollution. The Obama Administration's Climate Action Plan needs to do more to curb methane emissions from natural gas drilling, otherwise known as fracking, and to require energy efficiency measures from corporate utilities who are reluctant to reduce demand for their profitable product. There is also much more work for the federal government to do to supercharge America's homegrown, clean, renewable energy industries. President Obama's goal of doubling wind and solar electricity generation by 2020 is admirable, but still not ambitious enough to stem the havoc fossil fuels are wreaking on our climate.

Let's celebrate 2013 as the year the Obama Administration (finally) got behind America's clean energy revolution! Now, we need to hold the President, EPA Administrator, and all of our public officials accountable to truly stop our nation's harmful addiction to coal, oil and natural gas, and create a future with wind farms on every faraway hillside, electric vehicles and public transportation crisscrossing every city, and solar panels on every rooftop.

by Dusty Horwitt, Senior Analyst, Earthworks

 

Major D.C. area water providers, local governments and conservation organizations have warned that an impending U.S. Forest Service decision on whether to allow horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in the George Washington National Forest could threaten a range of resources -- including the D.C. area's water supply. The Forest Service could make a decision to allow the practice as early as October 2013.

 

Located in western Virginia and West Virginia, the 1.1-million-acre forest is the closest National Forest to Washington D.C. and contains the headwaters of the Potomac River that provides drinking water to more than 4 million people in the Washington area. About half of the forest sits atop the Marcellus shale, a vast natural gas-bearing formation that stretches from upstate New York to Kentucky. Three local water providers including Fairfax Water, DC Water and the Washington Aqueduct have urged the Forest Service not to allow horizontal drilling in this forest that provides drinking water to customers in Washington, DC, Falls Church and Arlington.

 

In April 2011, as part of a draft update for the forest's 10 to 15-year management plan, the Forest Service recommended against horizontal drilling in the forest citing water quality concerns as one of the reasons. However, after lobbying by more than a dozen drilling companies and trade associations including the American Petroleum Institute, Halliburton Energy Services Inc., and XTO Energy, a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corp., the Forest Service is reconsidering its position.

 

To protect our drinking water and the George Washington National Forest from horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, please write to the following two public officials to urge them to prohibit this type of drilling in the forest:  1) The Honorable Thomas Vilsack; Secretary; U.S. Department of Agriculture; 1400 Independence Ave., S.W.; Washington, DC 20250 or agsec@usda.gov and 2) Elizabeth Agpaoa; Southern Regional Forester; USDA Forest Service; Southern Region (R8); 1720Peachtree Road, NW; Atlanta, GA 30309.

 

For more information, visit Earthworks.

 

How many times have small, well financed, powerful interest groups carried their agendas over the best interests of the people? Thank you Dusty for letting us know of the threat to the drinking water of our area. Now it's up to us to do what is necessary to protect our drinking water.