Photo: courtesy Friends
of the Chicago River
October 2005 | Choice News
Water Quality Memo: When All Else Fails, Lower Your Standards
Fish and other aquatic life in the Chicago River may find it harder to breathe, if wastewater agencies get their way about a controversial proposal concerning Illinois waterways, environmental activists say.
October is slated to be a busy month of water negotiations. That’s because at an Aug. 25 hearing, the Illinois Pollution Control Board postponed for 60 days implementing a ruling that would relax the state standard for dissolved oxygen in Illinois streams and rivers.
“The level of dissolved oxygen determines the health of a waterway,” said Todd Main, director of policy and planning for the Friends of the Chicago River, an advocacy group that fosters public use and sustainability of the waterway. “The lower the level, the more stress it puts on fish and other aquatic life.”
Dissolved oxygen levels can be lowered by pollutants and nutrients in runoff water as well as discharged water from wastewater treatment plants, farms and industry. How fast a river flows and fluctuations in climate also can impact levels.
The Illinois Association of Wastewater Agencies is pushing to relax the dissolved oxygen standards to 3.5 milligrams, based on federal EPA standards adopted in 1986.
Currently, Illinois has higher standards, based on a 1972 state law that mandates a five-milligrams-per-liter minimum year-round.
The existing state standard “is overly restrictive and should be modified based on published research on natural fluctuations in aquatic systems and physiological tolerances of native life,” according to the wastewater group.
But representatives from the Sierra Club, the Prairie Rivers Network and the Illinois Chapter of the American Fisheries Society strongly disagree.
“Science does not support the proposed changes,” said Robert W. Schanzle, president of the American Fisheries Society’s Illinois chapter. In a letter to the Pollution Control Board, Schanzle wrote: “We do not support relaxing Illinois’ existing dissolved oxygen standards because insufficient evidence is available that such action will not have serious and irrevocable consequences for the state’s aquatic biota.”
The 60-day extension on the ruling allows the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to continue discussions with interested parties and provide a status report no later than Nov. 1.
To learn more about local river issues, check out the 3rd annual Chicago River Summit, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 8, at Michael A. Bilandic Building, 160 N. LaSalle St.; visit chicagoriver.org or call 312-939-0490.
— Peter Bernard
Change the Frequency of Bad TV
FRUSTRATED WITH programming on Chicago-area TV stations?
Complaints about local broadcasting carry little weight if you don’t participate in the license renewal process for all over-the-air TV stations in Illinois.
All TV stations must carry a broadcast license awarded by the Federal Communications Commission. The licenses are not permanent and must be renewed every eight years. Illinois’ TV licenses expire on Dec. 1, 2005.
The opportunity to officially vent won’t come around again until 2013. TV licenses can be revoked if stations don’t meet the FCC’s mandate to provide for the public’s interest, convenience and necessity.
Some questions to consider: Have Chicago-area TV stations been meeting the public interest, convenience and necessity? Do local stations deserve another eight years of untaxed use of the public airwaves?
Since we (the reporters of this article) are part of a media watchdog group called Chicago Media Action, we decided to find out. We visited the TV studios of WGN-TV, near Addison and Western, and Chicago’s Fox affiliate, WFLD, on Michigan Avenue. We viewed the public files of those stations, and found plenty of reasons to question whether they deserve another free eight-year TV license.
For example, free TV stations are required to air a minimum of three hours per week of educational children’s programming. WGN’s own files say it fills this requirement with multiple airings of just two shows — “Liberty’s Kids,” and “Sabrina: The Animated Series” — which both air on Sunday mornings.
Stations are required to maintain a file of correspondence with the public for the previous three years. WGN’s correspondence file contains complaints from several viewers who wrote about the frequency and sordid nature of WGN’s commercials.
WGN’s file also teems with letters condemning the station for “trashy” and “immoral” daytime programming. “The Maury Povich Show” seems to be a target of choice among disgruntled viewers.
Stations also are required to keep records of news stories which reflect “community concerns.” WFLD’s records include as “community concerns” stories about drug busts, murders, robberies, fires, abductions, drownings, sexual assaults, toddlers with guns, teachers accused of molesting students, and abandoned babies. Only a handful dealt with government or political issues. And this was right after an election year.
WFLD’s only significant local public affairs show, called “Fox Chicago Perspective,” airs Sunday mornings at 8, when audiences are miniscule. This is a disturbingly typical circumstance for local public affairs shows on commercial TV stations.
What can you do? Right now, and until Dec. 1, viewers can let the FCC know what they think about any of Illinois’ TV stations. To do so online, visit fcc.gov/cgb/ecfs/.
Also: During regular business hours, viewers can visit any licensed TV station and ask to see the station’s public file. They can also write to the station to contribute to the public file.
For more information, visit chicagomediaaction.org or call 866-260-7198.
— Mitchell Szczepanczyk and Steve Macek
Farmer by Summer, Activist by Winter
JUST SOUTH of the Wisconsin-Illinois border on Highway 173, you can see the Natural Farm Stand set back from the two-lane highway.
It’s all run on a self-service honor system with customers helping themselves to the heirloom tomatoes, squash, beets, potatoes, peppers and berries. No herbicides or pesticides are used on the vegetables sold at this small Richmond, Ill., business. It’s been this organic way since at least the 1960s on this farm that has been in the same family since 1923.
The 10-acre farm is the labor of love of Gary Gauger and his childhood friend and wife, Sue Rekenthaler. The couple manages the farm with the help of only a handful of volunteers. Rekenthaler, who handles the business side of the farm, also sells the produce four days a week at the Woodstock, Grayslake, McHenry and Crystal Lake farmers markets.
Gauger spends most of his summer days out in the fields, tending to a few goats and maintaining the farm equipment.
“It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do,” he said, explaining that he puts in long days and only takes an occasional break to enjoy a cup of coffee.
“I tried to quit (coffee), but then I just never knew when to take a break,” he said.
During the winter months, Gauger directs his energy into activism to abolish the death penalty, openly discussing his own nightmarish experience. Wrongly convicted in 1994 for the murder of his parents, he spent time on death row before being exonerated and released in 1996. Eventually, a member of a well-known motorcycle gang confessed that he and another gang member killed Gauger’s parents during a robbery, according to authorities.
Visit the Natural Farm Stand at 3016 IL Route 173, Richmond. 815-678-7072.
— Darcy Garrett/Photo by Ryan Duggan
Smart Seafood Choices
BEFORE YOU order that sea bass or beluga caviar, think again. Some fish just can’t take our indulgences. Certain species are at risk for expiring altogether, never to be enjoyed again.
For National Seafood Awareness Month, the Shedd Aquarium is stressing the importance of responsible seafood selection through its Right Bite Restaurants program.
So far, 42 Chicago-area restaurants have agreed to list at least one sustainable fish dish on their menus for October. And as a just dessert for making this meal choice, those conservation-minded seafood diners will be given VIP admission vouchers to the Shedd.
For a complete list of Right Bite restaurants, and to download a wallet card that lists popular seafood by environmental impact, visit sheddaquarium.org.
— CC
Jobs Versus Health
HOW DO YOU weigh concerns about environmental damage against industries that provide greatly needed jobs?
It can be a tough question for local communities, but one way to begin answering it is to frame it within the “precautionary principle,” said Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director of the Science and Environmental Heath Network in Ames, Iowa. How the precautionary principal is being adopted by municipalities and companies, which find it makes great sense both ethically and financially, will be the subject of two upcoming presentations by Raffensperger, one of several dozen speakers set for the fourth annual Great Lakes Bioneers Conference Oct. 14-16 at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Mich.
It’s one of the regional events to be held in tandem with its progenitor, the 16th annual Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, Calif., devoted to “visionary and practical solutions for restoring the earth and people.”
Visionary and practical are apt descriptions of Raffensperger, 51, whose love and respect for the environment are interwoven in her career and personal life.
Born in Oak Park, Ill., Raffensperger was the daughter of the surgeon-in chief in Childrens Memorial Hospital and the chief of pediatric surgery at Cook County Hospital.
“I grew up watching the consequences of environmental problems on children through the eyes of my father,” she said. “He saw the changing patterns of birth defects and childhood tumors over a 50-year career and he thought the increase in these birth defects and tumors was related to environmental problems. It made him a lifelong environmentalist.”
The physical setting of the Chicago area inspired her awe, with Lake Michigan, the source of drinking water; the sand dunes and wetlands; and the archipelago of forest preserves ringing the city.
No less inspiring were the local environmental activists such as Howard Learner and Pam Davis and the emerging field of ecology. Raffensperger said she “could not do … any of the work I’m doing now” without the inspiration of her Windy City colleagues.
After getting a graduate degree in archaeology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., Raffensperger earned her law degree and went on to head the Sierra Club’s Chicago office and serve on a state radioactive waste commission, which served to heighten her curiosity about public policy. How is it, she wondered that Illinois has the most nuclear power plants (six) of any U.S. state?
Asking the right questions is at the heart of the precautionary principle, which Raffensperger defines as “anticipatory action” to prevent harm to public health and the environment.
“If somebody wants to do something that’s a damaging activity, they’ve got the responsibility of demonstrating that it’s the best alternative. Reversing the burden of proof means we give the benefit of the doubt to the environment and public health.”
The precautionary principle has been adopted in a food and a chemicals policy at Kaiser Permanente, an HMO and hospital chain headquartered in Oakland, Calif. And San Francisco enacted a precautionary principal ordinance in 2005 that sets an environmentally preferable policy for purchasing such supplies as paper products and fuel.
In this way, state and local governments and corporations are becoming more progressive on the environment than the federal government, she said.
“Congress and the feds have really been in a gridlock because of the structure of environmental law,” Raffensperger said. “We made reauthorization and complex regulations the way the federal government did business, all based on risk assessments and cost-benefit analyses that really cut out the possibility of people doing some really experimental things ... We’ve got industries and businesses which are on the cutting edge of environmental protection. It’s no longer the federal government.”
The Bioneers Great Lakes Conference is packed with speakers, workshops on food, farming, energy and water, live music, and satellite broadcasts of sessions at the San Rafael conference. A complete listing of events can be found at glbconference.org. For more information, call 800-220-1415, or write to The Neahtawanta Center, 1308 Neahtawanta Road, Traverse City MI 49686.
— Jack Bess
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