permaculture

[lance <phytomphalosfarm@dccnet.com>]

>



Greetings and Salutations:
I'd like to add (though my feeling is 'basta"-enough...) that in late 
1998 I was hired by a few high-level marijuana growers to make a report 
on what y2k might mean for the thriving B.C. marijuana industry.  As an 
outspoken and ground breaking (first med-pot grower of any size outside 
of my governments feeble attempt) medical marijuana activist I am quite 
well known inside of these circles.  The first thing I looked into was 
Hanford due to its relative proximity to a certain mega-billion dollar 
pot growing locale within B.C.  I was shocked to see that the surface 
clean up cost was in the low billions(!) and that the leachate was due 
to hit the Columbia 3 years (now!) BEFORE the expected clean up of both 
surface and sub surface contaminants.  Right away, though it added 
nothing to my report, I looked into Los Alamos.  Same thing.  
Contamination was certain before clean up could be effected.
     In December (I believe, the exact date could be wrong...anyone else 
know?)of 1999 that information was NOT on the upgraded website.  Y2K 
allowed for an immense loss of relevant data on the US (and I assume 
Canadian) governments.  To add insult to injury, both Los Alamos and 
Hanford were intentionally set afire shortly into the new millenium.  
One can only hope that the several billion dollars which were saved via 
a massive atmospheric (intentional...?!) polluting allowed the EPA to 
step up the pace to save the Columbia River.  The same fires threatened 
several high percentage marijuana districts in the Interior of B.C. and 
had the wind drifted (thankfully, it stayed in the US...Canadians 
'neglected' to develop a nuke-weapon industry, though Ontario and hence 
Lake Ontario are highly threatened by the many nukeplants) into those 
regions at least 4 Billion dollars in the underground economy would have 
been lost.
    It was this data that got my circle more focused on Permaculture.  
But that's a weak scent to an overwhelming miasma.  Good luck!
In Lake'ch
Lance Wildwood
Phytomphalos Farm
Robert's Creek
Sunshine Coast, B.C.,
Canada


> -----------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 18:13:54 -0400
> From: Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>
> Subject: [permaculture] WMD in US Rivers
> To: Permaculture ibiblio <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <407871A2.7020908@mindspring.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
>
> http://www.dissidentvoice.org/April2004/Hamilton0408.htm
> -------------------------------------------
> The Threat from Made-in-USA WMDs
> by Mina Hamilton    www.dissidentvoice.org  April 8, 2004
>
> Iraq's alleged nuclear threat sinks into the dustbin of history.
> Americans can stop worrying about atomic perils? Wrong.
>
> Americans are at risk from American-as-apple-pie,
> Stars-and-Stripes, and made-in-USA, WMDs.
>
> A just-released study, Danger Lurks Beneath:
> The Threat to Major Water Supplies from US Department
> of Energy Nuclear Weapons Plants, details the danger.
> Written by Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, a high energy, nuclear physicist,
> who has been studying nuclear hazards for 28 years
> and published by the public interest group,
> the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, this book will curl your hair.
>
> Danger Lurks Beneath shows EVEN IF THE US NUCLEAR ARSENAL IS NEVER 
> USED a
> deadly plague has been released upon the land and water. Though most of
> the 13 nuclear weapons factories are currently shutdown (a situation
> President Bush would love to change), the contamination is spreading.
>
> The process of manufacturing nuclear bombs is not dramatic. Unlike an
> actual nuclear exchange no humans are burned to a crisp, no cities are
> pulverized. But the ingredients for a nuclear bomb must be mined, 
> sheared,
> heated, melted, liquefied, transformed into gas, spun, fashioned into
> metal, nuked, chopped up, put through chemical baths, extracted - all 
> the
> while unleashing a host of poisons.
>
> The hazard isn't just to the citizens living nearby to the factories. 
> The
> poisons threaten us all.
>
> Imagine the distance between Boston and New York. It's a five-hour,
> pedal-to-the-metal highway jaunt. It's also the alarming distance toxins
> have migrated away from the Hanford nuclear weapons factory in 
> Washington.
>
>
> Mussels and oysters found on the Washington coast are contaminated with
> radioactive poisons that flowed down to the coast from Hanford, 200 
> miles
> upstream. This is one of many devastating findings in Danger Lurks
> Beneath.
>
> How can we take in the enormity of what's happened and is still 
> happening?
>
>
> We learn that four major rivers and many minor rivers are already
> contaminated or at risk. The Columbia River in Washington, the Snake 
> River
> in Idaho, the Tuscaloosa River in Georgia, the Rio Grande in New Mexico,
> the Great Miami River and Ohio Rivers in Ohio.
>
> How do we wrap our minds around four major rivers at risk? What does it
> mean for people who swim, fish or drink from those rivers? What about
> people picnicking alongside those rivers? Are the grasses along the 
> banks
> safe? Is the sediment toxic?
>
> The risk is not a hypothetical, let's-worry-in-ten-years matter. At the
> Fernald nuclear weapons factory in Ohio the plant managers deliberately
> poured - via a buried pipeline -tons of uranium into the Great Miami
> River. Yes, TONS. And this is a river that flows into the Ohio River 
> from
> which many municipalities draw drinking water.
>
> Ohio communities are not the only ones whose water supplies are
> threatened. One water reservoir has already had to be shutdown, the 
> Great
> Western reservoir in the suburbs of Denver. It's contaminated by runoff
> from the Rocky Flats factory. Now a second nearby water reservoir,
> Standley Lake, is also polluted by radioactivity.
>
> The information in Danger Lurks Beneath is so shocking we want to 
> comfort
> ourselves, assure ourselves, Hey we don't live there or near there.
> Problem: The toxins are seeping into the food chain in sinister ways. 
> For
> example, ever eat farm-fed trout? That delicious, fresh trout staring up
> from your plate was probably grown in water drawn from the Snake River
> aquifer in Idaho. The nearby Idaho nuclear weapons factory is polluting
> the aquifer.
>
> For the first time in 2000, plutonium was detected in two locations in
> this aquifer. A host of other nasty chemicals and radionuclides had
> already been found in this vital water source.
>
> Not that the trout are contaminated, at least, as far as we know. But
> here's an indicator of how real the threat is: several years ago a trout
> farmer tried to sell his Idaho hatchery business to the company, W.R.
> Grace. He was turned down. What were W.R. Grace's reasons? They didn't
> want a fish farm that gets its water from a source above which nuclear
> waste is buried. (1)
>
> W.R. Grace was not whistling in the dark. It's a company that knows 
> about
> nuclear hazards. Back in the 1960's, Grace ran a now-defunct nuclear
> reprocessing factory in West Valley, NY.
>
> Danger Lurks Beneath shows that the contamination from nuke weapons
> factories is widespread and it's traveling along unknown and unmapped
> pathways. We're fooling ourselves if we think we're safe -- anywhere.
>
> The information is this book would be easier to swallow if there were a
> villain, an archenemy like Saddam to blame. But these villains are US
> government employees making extraordinarily dumb decisions, decisions
> driven by a blind dedication to so-called national security.
>
> During four decades worth of bomb making the Atomic Energy Commission 
> and
> its successor the Department of Energy adopted an out-of-sight,
> out-of-mind policy. Dump the waste where nobody can see it. Pump poison
> into aquifers, pipe it to rivers, dump it into streams, ponds and
> trenches, site burial grounds in swamps. And, all the while, lie about
> what you're doing.
>
> This WMD threat makes Saddam's "nuclear" menace look like a cupcake. 
> Ditto
> North Korea's or Iran's.
>
> Don't expect President Bush to make jokes about this threat. No way is 
> he
> going to engage in a comic routine looking under the desk in the Oval
> Office for by-products of the US's bomb building spree.
>
> Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, John Kerry, the US Congress, the media and
> any sane member of the human species should be trumpeting the findings 
> of
> this report across the land. Will they? Are they?
>
> Are we?
>
> (1) Perspectives of a Former Idaho Trout Farmer, www.ieer.org/sdafiles.
>
> To obtain a copy of Danger Lurks Beneath go to www.ananuclear.org. If 
> you
> don't feel up to the 270-page study, an Executive Summary is available.
> Also you can download individual chapters on nuclear factories nearest 
> you
> or your family and friends.
>
> Mina Hamilton is a writer based in New York City. She is a Contributing
> Editor to Danger Lurks Beneath: The Threat to Major Water Supplies from 
> US
> Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Plants. She can be reached at
> minaham@aol.com.
>
>
> --
> Keith Johnson
> Permaculture Activist Magazine
> PO Box 1209
> Black Mountain, NC 28711
> (828)669-6336
>
> also Patterns for Abundance Design & Consulting
> Culture's Edge at Earthaven Ecovillage
> http://www.permacultureactivist.net
> http://www.earthaven.org
> http://www.bioregionalcongress.org