My grandfather's high school notebook was brought home after my uncle died a decade ago and had lain in a stack of papers. Upon discovering it I found his spelling and penmanship, his math perfect and history and science seemed interesting to him. He practiced writing letters and that is how I learned after reading one he signed his name adding the date: 1898. I was reading a document composed by my grandfather, my mother's father, when he was sixteen years old. I was born five years after he died,  but he came to life in my hands while reading that school book.
 
One essay caught my attention, the evening before leaving for the Southeast Riverkeeper Retreat in Georgia, as he defined a river "as a body of water flowing through land. It's starting place is called its source. The place where it ends is called its mouth. Its sides are called its banks." The next day I was sitting alongside water protectors of the rivers in the southeast dedicated to protecting their waters and the lands they flowed through.
 
A book Debbie Clark Seeley recommended went with me out on the walking trails to get the feel of one of the southern states. The book was The Slaves' War, the Civil War in the Words of Former Slaves, written by Andrew Ward. Walking in the forested area then through what would be a swamp, now completely dry after their 4th year of drought, where only a few weeks ago Hurricane Mathew had delivered devastating floods in other parts of the south.  Both examples of  extreme climate change.
 
Slaves had been property and the owners wanted to keep them, since they were their ticket to wealth. They had great investments in the slaves they owned.  Some slave holders took their slaves and "refugeed them" to hide them from freedom during the Civil War and they got meaner as they went further south and west with them. Over a million soldiers died during that struggle. The fossil fuel industry now, is invested and does not want to lose and are destroying the whole earth to keep making profits even as the price of oil has decreased with all the overproduction.
 
Oklahoma has continued to produce oil and gas creating more waste water and injecting that water has resulted in the man-made earthquakes we have all been experiencing.
 
We learned about the Cushing, OK oil spill while at the retreat from another Riverkeeper. Over 2 million gallons of crude oil spilled out of the Seaway pipeline, an old pipeline owned by the same company building the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota where water protectors at Standing Rock are risking their lives to stop. Seaway is 500 miles long from Cushing to the Gulf, Enterprise owns the section that leaked. It carries 50,000 barrels a day and it spilled it's whole load last Sunday night and by Tuesday the media was saying little about it while their emergency manager said, "it just happens sometimes."
 
All Pipelines leak, it is just a matter of time. The Galveston Baykeeper found when inspecting old pipeline in a former occupation a remarkable thing: the old pipes had totally dissolved and the oil was simply flowing through the space the pipe had created, running through the harden clay. Really.

We learned this week that sixty percent of the animals with vertebrates have gone extinct on this earth since 1970. We have vertebrates, and it seems no heart for any other living creatures, and not so much for our fellow humans.
 
The phrase by Norman Maclean "A river runs through it" inspired the motto for this year's Tar Creek Conference:       A Creek Runs Through It.  That phrase is lifted from the paragraph below:
 
   "Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's  
   great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless  
   raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
    I am haunted by waters.”
 
What sort of life are we leaving for those who may follow us?  I too am haunted by water and what we are doing to what's left of it. The water protectors at Standing Rock are doing the right thing. The company and the industry have a legacy of ruined land and ruined water. When watching how they are being treated I see the faces of slaveholders desperate to stop change.
 
Water is life and won't we all be sorry when the well runs dry?
 

Respectfully submitted  ~ Rebecca Jim
 

A dear friend called me this week concerned about recent cases of severely ill children in the area. She told me their names, their parents' names and where they lived. One child is too many. A few weeks ago I attended a benefit for one of these children. People and the community are so very giving and want to find ways to help.

I want to help find out what and why this happens and want to link up with others who want to understand what governmental programs are and if they can help provide answers.

The Superfund is the federal government's program created to clean up the nation's uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. The program was created in 1980 when Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).

Through it the EPA works with communities, "potentially responsible parties" (PRPs), scientists, researchers, contractors, and state, local, tribal, and Federal authorities to identify hazardous waste sites, test the conditions of the sites, formulate cleanup plans, and to decontaminate the sites.

 It was determined the Tar Creek Superfund site posed a risk to human health and/or the environment and was placed on the National Priorities List early as one of the first sites in the country to make the list and still be on it.

CERCLA, also known as Superfund was amended by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) on October 17, 1986.  SARA reflected EPA's experience in administering the complex Superfund program during its first six years and made several important changes and additions to the program.

One change celebrating a 30 year anniversary this week was the toxics release inventory program (TRI).  TRI collects data from industrial facilities about which toxic chemicals they're using, how much of each is released into the environment, and what they’re doing to prevent pollution.

The TRI Program tracks the management of toxic chemicals that may pose a threat to human health and the environment. Facilities in certain industry sectors report annually the volume of toxic chemicals managed as waste--recycled, treated or burned for energy recovery--as well as disposed of or otherwise released into the environment.
Making this information publicly available allows communities to make more informed decisions about their health and the environment and creates a strong incentive for companies to reduce pollution.

I have been checking the TRI for Ottawa County and Cherokee County, KS for years and have been astounded by the number of tons of air emissions coming from local facilities. Recently the TRI data has outsmarted me and gotten very "techie" and I am struggling to keep up, but am amazed by what it can do now. For example: just by typing in the zip code, selecting a company, 10 years of air emissions can be viewed in a color coded graft showing thousands of pounds of air releases by chemical, and if that chemical is carcinogenic or if not, what health impacts it may be known to be associated. Then type in another zip code and find several choices, check them out. What is interesting but unknown to me yet, is how to pull all of these sites together for a true picture of what air emissions these zip codes deal with as the prevailing winds bring them to neighborhoods, schools and playgrounds.

One in four Americans lives within four miles of a hazardous waste site, so in Ottawa County with every residence eligible to have their yard tested for lead in the soil from the Tar Creek Superfund site, that must mean four in every four of us.  But that doesn't count the air emissions from existing facilities or the impact from years of exposures. And that brings us to another term used by EPA: environmental justice.
 
The tool the TRI program offers has given communities the information to sit down with emitters and ask for change to be more protective and perhaps making decisions that help industry to improve their operations and even profits. The graphs I saw on our zip codes show great improvements over the years, but surely there is still room for more.
The cost of illness impacts an individual, the family and our community. People are generous and want to help. But here as in other communities around the country there is fear about speaking out but there could be much to gain by speaking up.
 
 
https://www3.epa.gov/enviro/ 
https://www.epa.gov/toxics-release-inventory-tri-program
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2016/oct/toxic-economy-common-chemicals-cost-us-billions-every-year
http://fusion.net/story/359158/the-problem-with-dairy-cow-manure-in-washington/
http://sph.unc.edu/superfund-pages/ncwellwater/superfund-toxics-release-inventory/

After 70 years as the ninth monarch of Thailand, King Bhumibol, the Great died this week.

My son's roommate in college, Panit was from Thailand and after graduation Dana came home, got a part time job and boned up  for the LSAT, while Panit went to his home country to spend a year as a Buddhist monk, wearing colorful orange robes and living a simple life while following all the official precepts.  Serving in that position could help him gain karma and certainly merit it is called for his family.

While roommates they shared cultural differences and picked up new vocabulary, which I witnessed when he came home with Dana and we ate at Cosby's Catfish out past Disney, OK. The only thing on the menu was catfish, so that was the word for the day. To me it sounds like a silent C in "CLO." Fish have been studied in the Great Lakes for over 25 years and results lately are saying even with the mercury and other contaminants, the lake fish are better for the residents than store bought tuna and other varieties. They are now preparing guidelines for visitors and residents much like the ODEQ Fish Advisory for our local fish for lead so people can decide the amount of fish that would be safe for them and their children.

Fish is a nutritious food, one I certainly enjoy.  And next Thursday LEAD Agency members have been invited to the Afton Masonic Lodge to pick up a check for $1,500 given as a match for the fundraiser fish fry they held for us at this year's Tar Creek Conference. These funds will help our organization continue our outreach efforts. You bet some of those efforts will continue to be about sharing what we know about the fish we eat and just how much of each species to consume, especially to limit the portions of those really large "CLO" catfish. Those are the ones to catch and to release so they can keep populating our lake and rivers.

Governor Fallin asked for a day of prayer for the oilfield, and I didn't do it. As a Cherokee, I did go to water, down to the creek below my house and say a prayer for our water, our precious earth and all abiding here with us.  The governor also thought we should ask for protection.

Protection? One of the Oklahoma House of Representatives Richard Morrissette hoped that there would be prayers on the following day asking for no earthquakes. We need some protection from earthquakes in the state most prone to have man-made earthquakes.  The protection could come also from leadership from the governor's office, state legislators and certainly those charged with regulating the oil and gas industry in our state. They have all let us down as the industry continues the practice of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and the wastewater injection wells used to get rid of the produced water, now billions of gallons of it.

Panit also taught Dana to use the Thai fishbone management system. Imagine the boney fish with the head attached, much like the image we have been using for years for the "Tar Creek fish."  Of course my first fishbone management problem would be Tar Creek and the tail has filled out with education and planning, the first bones are these pilot projects, Bob Nairn's passive treatment project at George Mayer's Ranch, the distal EPA cleanup acres, next bones, the Catholic 40, chat piles going down, next set of bones, the Beaver Creek watershed, that should count as both, and it just is continuing and it will be completed and Tar Creek will be restored from Kansas to the Neosho River.

My goal for the earth would be for her survival and all who call her home and to get there, bone one near the tail might have some prayers on it, but bone two would have some actions, personal changes we can make, as simple as taking your own reusable cup to work and quit using Styrofoam cups, reading labels and removing everyday products made from petroleum, bone two left side: take reusable goods for the picnic, quit gifting people with products made from petroleum. Bone three, four, five move us and those in our circles to a world that might last, as we shift ourselves from fossil fuels to sustainable ways to power our vehicles, heat and cool our homes, generate lights and charge our phones.

And certainly once we have saved the earth and slowed climate change, we will breathe better air, our fish will be safer to eat, and there will be time to not only celebrate, but also for prayers made by us and surely by the orange robed monks of Thailand for thanksgiving, which will have been well earned by all.
 

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is trying to protect their water supply by stopping a oil pipeline that could pollute it. They are not protesting, they are protectors and many posters have been created using the slogan Water is Life. Who could dispute that statement?

The Craig County Rural Water District 2 held their annual meeting this week, and I attended with the hope to be informed about any progress made to improve the water quality they are providing to residents in my district. I went to their annual meeting last year to ask questions about the notices we received in the mail every few months revealing the district was out of compliance with the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality’s drinking water standards for Haloacetic Acids (five) HAA5. I had written a letter to the ODEQ executive director about my concerns and had been satisfied the agency would be assisting with next steps that needed to be taken to correct the problem.

The annual meeting held a few days ago proceeded through their agenda and finally got to the manager’s report with the announcement to those attending that the water we are drinking, is now in compliance, had been made safer for public consumption. Not meaning to be disruptive, but a yelp came out of my mouth with a “Yahoo!” Water is life, or can be if it is safe to consume! They really deserved a standing ovation for working with the City of Ketchum and the City of Vinita to find ways to improve the water coming out of our taps, our Grand Lake. The best news given that evening did not make it to print in the report they distributed but was given orally!

Our water source, Grand Lake is challenged by the runoff from agricultural fields and permitted waste water discharges. These bring natural organic matter, nutrients and when chlorine is added as a disinfectant the reaction forms the by-product haloacetic acids which may lead to liver or kidney problems, nervous system effects or increased risk of cancer. And that was my concern and my relief that the water district serving much of Craig County, but also Mayes, Rogers and Nowata counties was now in compliance and no longer producing the HAA5. 

Fertilizer put on fields in our watershed may be good for plants but not for drinking water. We are what we eat, but that saying goes for the water we drink. Water is life, it can be. Florida had been in the news before the hurricane with a story about a fertilizer plant leaking into a sink hole contaminating the drinking water aquifer.

There was concern and a need to deal with it before rains caused even more to be released. After the rain they received with the hurricane, they will regret not reconciling that earlier. Sinkholes around phosphate rock mining sites have occurred recently in Florida and they have found ways to plug them. The state has more than half of the U.S. reserves of phosphate rock with about 63 percent of the country's production capacity, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The mineral is a key element of fertilizer used in commercial agriculture, and is an important building-block of the nation's food supply. But too much phosphorous  can cause eutrophication which can stimulate methyl mercury accumulation in the fish we eat.
 
Water is life for us but also for the fish we consume must have safe water, too or we harm ourselves and our children with the exposure to heavy metals. LEAD Agency and the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Oklahoma's Health Sciences Center studied mercury in local fish. We have produced a fish consumption guide to use when deciding which fish and how much of each to eat from our watershed. You can find it on the website www.grandlakemercurystudy.org.  Check out the fish consumption guide on lead in our fish produced by ODEQ at www.deq.state.ok.us.

We can identify with sinkholes and man-made disasters, and certainly with natural disasters. Water is life but as the Governor of Florida told citizens, it can also kill you.

We are learning more about water, this precious life sustaining substance and the loading we are giving her through the discharges and applications environmental agencies permit. Those permits give permission to pollute.  Shouldn't more of us be water protectors since water is life? And when our water is tainted as it is in Grand Lake we need to ask if the permits are strong enough, if it no longer meets its beneficial uses of fishable, swimmable and drinkable.
Signing up to be a Water Protector!