Homestead mailing list

[Nels Tomlinson <nels.tomlinson AT gmail.com>]

I looked up my borough using scorecard, and I'm not much impressed
with their accuracy.
(click here: 
http://www.scorecard.org/community/index.tcl?zip_code=99801&set_community_zipcode_cookie_p=t&x=0&y=0
)

They said that Juneau, Alaska is in the worst 10% of the counties in
the U.S.  Their justification seems to be the Greens Creek mine, which
is about 20 miles away, on an island.  It does, technically,
``release'' some ``pollutants'', but they are the tailings pile, and
cannot affect our ground water or anything else, since they are on a
different watershed, on a different landmass, separated by miles of
ocean.  Furthermore, their tailings pile is pretty well contained: I
gather that they are thinking about doing some sort of chemical
leaching eventually, and have designed to contain the chemicals so
they can recover the vauable minerals they leach out.

Our air pollution comes from wood stoves, and is only noticable on
those rare, cold, still days.  The Valley (the only place where that's
a potential problem) has a permanent ban on winter use of wood stoves,
so we haven't any real air pollution problem, except for the
cruiseships downtown.

We have clean air, clean water (fresh and salt), whales, trees, pretty
much everything but sun and warm weather, but you'd never guess it
from their silly review.

I can see how scorecard might be useful as a starting point for
research, but I wouldn't base any decisions on their information
alone!

Nels

On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 11:01:55 -0800, Lynda <lurine AT softcom.net> wrote:
> One does wonder where some of these folks get their info and who's paying
> them.  Take for instance the Lung Association which doesn't list anything
> Texas as being polluted.  Go figure
> http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=50752#graph3
> 
> I like Scorecard better than the rest because they are real specific.
> However, they are kind of behind on some counties http://www.scorecard.org/
> Just plug in your zip code and it will tell you who the major polluters are
> in your area, carbon monoxide, sulfur, etc.  Plus you can do comparisons
> with all the other counties in your state and in the U.S.
> 
> Lynda
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Chris Clarke <hstead AT nc.rr.com>
> To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2005 9:20 AM
> Subject: RE: [Homestead] Air quality map
> 
> > According to my cursory reading of these maps, the
> > only places with decent air quality are the Aleutians,
> > Northcentral Montana, federally protected land in Utah
> > and several counties along the Rio Grande in Texas, none
> > of which most people could live.  Given the derth of
> > "A" air, I would say this site has a ax to grind.
> >
> > Chris
> 
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