Mayor responds to Sustainable Madison Committee’s PFAS Recommendations
Eken Park Resistance leaders and community members put jars of local waters in front of the City-County Building at the Water is Life event, April 2021 On May 23, Chris…
Air National Guard
City of Madison
Dane County
Environmental Justice
PFCs or PFAS
Public Participation
Starkweather Creek
Truax
Wisconsin DNR
Yahara Lakes
DNR repeatedly engages public in Marinette & Peshtigo on PFAS–but ignores Madison
Heavily PFAS-contaminated Starkweather Creek water and sediments flood over a backyard garden in the Darbo-Worthington neighborhood in Madison, about a mile south of the Dane County Regional Airport and Truax…
Air National Guard
Department of Defense
Environmental health
Environmental Justice
F-35
Fighter jets
Military
Racial Justice
Truax
Fighter jets, environmental education, and social justice do not mix
On May 10, F-16s from Madison’s Air National Guard Truax Field took off while MEJO’s Touyeng Xiong was teaching kids from the East Madison Community Center about birds, trees, and…
City of Madison
Corporate greenwashing
Earth Day
Environmental health
Oscar Mayer
Pesticides
Toxic Chemicals
Wastewater Treatment
Oscar Mayer’s Earth Day, 1970: Spray chemical perfumes on sewage stench!
In 1970, just before Madison’s first Earth Day, Oscar Mayer installed a mile-long system that misted artificial chemical perfumes around its sludge lagoons–after decades of neighborhood complaints about the sewage…
Air Pollution
City of Madison
Madison-Kipp Corp.
Racial disparities
TCE
Toxic Chemicals
Worker health and safety
May Day! May Day! Madison-Kipp workers
Above: Workers in Kipp factory Is anyone assessing risks to Madison Kipp workers? There’s a plume of highly toxic PCE and TCE under the plant vaporizing into the air workers…
Government won’t test air pollution in the Madison-Kipp neighborhood, so citizens are doing it themselves
Above: View of Madison-Kipp’s Fair Oaks factory from the low-income apartments across the street. Clean Air Madison, MEJO, and Kipp neighborhood activists tried for many, many years–to no avail–to convince…
City of Madison
Dane County
Public Health Madison Dane County
Starkweather Creek
stormwater runoff
Water Pollution
Water quality
Wisconsin DNR
Yahara Lakes
UPDATE 2: Has Dane County actually been violating its DNR stormwater permit for 26 years?
UPDATE 2: Following up (again) on my original post, looking at my old stormwater regulation notes today, I saw that the City of Madison and Dane County received their first…
Air National Guard
City of Madison
Environmental Justice
F-35
PFCs or PFAS
Public Participation
Racial Justice
Starkweather Creek
Water Pollution
Sustainable Madison Committee to Mayor and Council on PFAS
Above: Fishing at the mouth of Starkweather Creek as it flows into Lake Monona at Olbrich Park (Photo-Maria Powell) April 27, 2021 To: Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, Members of the Madison…
Air Pollution
City of Madison
Environmental health
Environmental Justice
Madison
Racial disparities
WisDOT
In “green” Madison, air pollution ‘disproportionately and systematically’ harms people of color
(Photo above: Construction during the Madison Verona Rd-W. Beltline highway expansion) The Washington Post reported yesterday: “Deadly air pollutant ‘disproportionately and systematically’ harms Americans of color, study finds.” This finding…
Bigger is not better
Citizen wisdom from the beginning of the “environmental decade” In 1970, a Madison citizen activist publicly questioned the idea that “growth is good.” He asked why people played a secondary…
City of Madison
Dane County
Public Health Madison Dane County
Starkweather Creek
stormwater runoff
Water Pollution
Water quality
Wisconsin DNR
Yahara Lakes
UPDATE: Dane County has been violating its DNR stormwater permit for 17 years
Above: Storm drains at Dane County Regional Airport, flowing through contaminated soils into Starkweather Creek. Are these city or county storm drains? Who is responsible to make sure toxic chemicals…
Madison: Address racial and environmental injustices created by design and denial
Earth Day 2018: East Madison Community Center kids, Gambian Youths, and MEJO removed trash from large city storm drain discharging to a Starkweather Creek tributary across from the Truax apartments–a…
We’ll need two Earths by 2030
Estimated number of Earths that humanity would require to sustain its current level of resource consumption: 1.6 Year in which humanity is expected to require two Earths: 2030 Harper’s Index,…
3.4 billion masks thrown away every day
Comic by Joe Heller–HELLERTOON.COM “Globally, 65 billion gloves are used every month. The tally for face masks is nearly twice that—129 billion a month. That translates into 3 million face…
Air National Guard
City of Madison
Endocrine disruptors
Environmental Justice
Fish
PFCs or PFAS
Starkweather Creek
Toxic Chemicals
PFAS “forever chemicals” impair our immune systems–National Academy of Sciences
Above: Teens fishing at the mouth of Starkweather Creek in Madison, a popular shoreline fishing spot for people of color, including many who feed their families with the fish they…