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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Pesticides and PFAS should be tested at Oscar Mayer, Burke & Starkweather Creek
Oscar Mayer in 1947 (Wisconsin State Journal photo) In May 2020, a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment (ESA) contracted by the City of Madison, while it was preparing to purchase…
Addendum: Will Wisconsin Air National Guard follow DNR laws on PFAS investigations & cleanup?
A couple weeks ago, we posted this article asking whether the Wisconsin Air National Guard (WIANG) will follow DNR laws regarding investigation and cleanup of its highly contaminated base in…