Addendum to Top 25 Alt-Rock songs
28. KD Lang, "Constantly Craving" (1992)
40. Alanis Morisette, "You Oughta Know" (2011)
Showing posts with label Best of Bullwork. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Best of Bullwork. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
TOP 40: Great Alternative Rock songs
40. Alanis Morisette, "You Oughta Know" (2011)
Saturday, September 9, 2017
Octophins of Europa/Chapter 2/Discovery
AFTER John Ginan was formally accepted for the Europa Colony Program (ECP) in early 2015, his first order of business was to spend at least three days in a NASA psychiatric facility. That was where he got the "Spoonman" moniker.
NASA's Europa-colony recruiters had suspected he was bipolar psychologically during the "First Wave" colonist-selection process; but his intelligence and physical-endurance assessments had registered at the top of the scales. In addition, stigma over most mental health conditions had not been a barrier to NASA employment for more than a century.
Spoonman stuck as a nickname because of all the ingenious spoon inventions that he created in the Cape Canaveral Behavioral Health Unit (BHU). Like the plastic knives and forks that patients received with their BHU meals, spoons were considered potentially dangerous objects; and patients had to ask for spoons if they wanted to snack between meals.
In general, John Ginan loved to eat sweets; in particular, he adored ice cream. Finding ways to enjoy his favorite dessert without asking for a spoon had fired the flames of his imagination.
First, he discovered no spoon was required at all when raiding the BHU's refrigerator-freezer, which was always stocked with vanilla and chocolate ice cream. The seemingly endless supply of frozen temptations in the freezer box were packaged in small, tub-like paper containers. The soon-to-be-dubbed Spoonman had realized quickly that he could pull off the little containers' lids, then tear off about half of the containers' remaining paper to consume the delicious contents without using a spoon.
Second, this 26th-century man followed in the cheesy footsteps of a 20th-century pop icon -- old fashioned television's Angus McGyver. Spoonman's grandfather, Daniel Ginan, had a favorite joke about McGyver that he would spring on anyone around him whenever necessity became the mother of invention: "McGyver could make a hand grenade out of a potato and a tampon!"
John Ginan discovered several other ways to craft spoons in the BHU:
- He could combine the paper lids from two or three of the little ice cream tubs to make a rudimentary spoon, which was particularly effective if he had the patience to allow the frozen treat to melt a bit.
- He extrapolated from the paper-lid-turned-spoon invention to other forms of utilizing readily available thick paper, including tool-making with manila folders.
- He realized that the index, middle, and ring digits could form an effective spoon -- ideally with a sink nearby to wash his sticky fingers.
They all dutifully honored his request, and the Spoonman sobriquet stuck like glue.
Opening positions in chess /Wikimedia Commons image
Jim Pappel
Unlike Spoonman, who had no awareness of his precarious mental state before he was recruited for the ECP, Jim had known he was bipolar for more than a decade. He just chose to ignore it.
Unlike Spoonman, who grew up in a relatively stable neighborhood in Manhattan, Jim grew up in a low-income housing project in the perennially tough North End of Hartford, Connecticut.
Unlike Spoonman, who could trace his ancestry to the Mayflower Pilgrims and had such a fair complexion that his skin was almost transparent, Jim could trace his ancestry to the slave trade in Nigeria and had such dark skin that he was "out-of-Africa brown" as his grandmother Angela Pappel would often say.
Unlike Spoonman, who had no children, Jim had sired his first son when he was 16.
Spoonman had an itch to play chess from Day 1 of his confinement in the BHU, and he defeated two staff members handily, so his confidence had been transformed to hubris. Jim was game for the challenge on Day 1 of his three-day stay in The Unit.
The pair met over breakfast on Day 2 of Spoonman's BHU stay.
"One of the psychiatric nurses says you have rolled over two pretty good chess playahs on the BHU staff," Jim said, making his first move of the psychological game-within-the-game of chess.
"I am on a roll. If you want to play, why don't you go ahead and take white. I'll give you the first-move advantage," Spoonman replied, brimming with confidence as he gestured with his pancake-laden plastic fork to the chess board and pieces he had set up at an empty table in the nearly empty BHU cafeteria.
"Alright, but don't think you are going to play teacher and preacher on me. You are probably in the BHU because you don't know who you are; and I'm not interested in hearing any lecturing from anybody in this place."
"Sounds like you are bringing your 'A game' to this match, Jimbo!"
Jim quietly moved himself and his breakfast tray to the cafeteria's de facto chess table, then made his second move in the psychological game-within-the-game. "Nobody ever called me Jimbo in the hood. Your move," he said, advancing his queen's pawn two squares.
"It's about time somebody here challenged me for the middle of the board," Spoonman said, matching Jim's opening move by advancing his queen's pawn to block encroachment into his side of the board.
"Didn't you hear me when I said no teaching and no preaching? Are you going to play this game, or are you just gonna to talk about it?" Jim said in a serious tone as he advanced one of his knights to bring more force to bear in the center of the battlefield. "I'll say this: I don't care whether I win this match or not. I'm playing this game to figure out how you play, so I can definitely beat you in the next game!"
"Maybe I should start focusing on my A game," Spoonman replied, pushing his king's pawn forward one square to help brace his shiny black pieces against the growing potential of a bloody onslaught from his apparently skillful opponent.
"You're not listening. You're talking. I'm not bringing my best 'game' to this match. I already told you what I'm doing, and I'll tell you again. This round is all about figuring you out -- discovering how you play the game."
Jim's harsh rhetoric took hold on Spoonman as he pondered his next move. "Alright, alright, I'll focus on the game. Why don't you tell me where you're from?"
"I thought you wanted to focus on the game; but if you really want to know where I grew up, I was born in New London, Connecticut, and grew up in Venice, South Carolina.
Spoonman fell silent, realizing that he had probably lost the game-within-the-game and that he was at least one move behind in the mounting struggle to control the center of the playing field. The next hour of the match was fought hard, move-by-move, with barely a word said.
After the inevitable blood-letting in the center of the board, Spoonman conceded, "I'm not going to win this game, but I can play you to a stalemate."
"That's the first nearly intelligent thing you've said since we sat down to play," Jim said, pressing his advantage in the game-within-the-game.
"We're playing for a stalemate now," Spoonman replied.
"No, I can still win. You're playing for a stalemate. You really don't have a clue of who you are, or why you are here in the BHU, do you?"
Spoonman managed to fight Jim to a stalemate, but the effort was exhausting and emotionally raw. "I get it now," he said to his more-than-worthy chess adversary. "You were my teacher and my preacher."
"No, you don't get it at all," Jim said flatly. "This match wasn't about teaching, or preaching, or even chess. It was about your overblown ego and cocky attitude."
"I learned at least one thing, Jim: Over confidence can get me killed."
The next day, which was slated to be Spoonman's last in the BHU, he requested to spend one more day in The Unit.
On Day 1, all Spoonman wanted to do was get out of the BHU, but he had come to appreciate the group therapy sessions and coping skills he was learning. Additionally, the Day 2 care-team meeting after his humbling chess encounter with Jim had been an Earth-shattering eye-opener: He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
The diagnosis spurred both shock and relief in the blond-haired, blue-eyed wonder man.
The revelation that he had been bipolar for more than a decade was shocking.
When his NASA psychiatrist, Dr. Zeppelbaum, announced the diagnosis during his daily care-team meeting, Spoonman felt like he had looked up and saw a piano dangling in mid-air above his head. How, he asked himself in that moment, had such a dangerous condition develop without his considerably capable intellect being aware of it?
The relief associated with discovering his bipolar disorder was equally heavy with gravity: Much of his struggles and triumphs as a young man now made sense.
In terms of size and mass, Jupiter dwarfs all of its moon, including Europa. /NASA image
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Octophins of Europa/Chapter 1/Going Home
THE year is 2517, and half of the United States has surrendered to the advancing glaciers.
The front line of America's desperate struggle against mountains of ice stretches 3,000 miles, coast-to-coast from Hilton Head, South Carolina, to San Francisco. The summer is over, and the entire nation is bracing for yet another brutally cold winter.
John "Spoonman" Ginan has not seen his father, Goodman, since he began terrestrial-exploration training at Cape Canaveral on his birthday, Jan. 2.
Spoonman could fly no further north than D.C. to get as close as possible to New York City, which was home to him in many ways. The Modern Ice Age had made Reagan International Airport the last bastion of U.S. aviation north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
The last leg of Spoonman's journey home is a bone-chilling trek on every snow machine imaginable. At the Reagan airport, the bevy of vehicles available to most travelers with family or professional business in The Big Apple is a menagerie of machinery. The collection at the airport's ground-transportation depot ranges from 100-year-old Arctic Cats, trailer-equipped snowmobiles, and the speedy anti-gravity Snow Devils that the U.S. government started deploying nation-wide in 2508.
Traveling in the trailer of a relatively new model snowmobile seems like the best value, so Spoonman tosses his backpack next to the spare gasoline canister and gingerly slides into the trailer's unexpectedly comfortable banana seat.
Goodman Ginan
When Spoonman emerges from the subway station in Hoboken, New Jersey, he does what he always does when he comes home -- gaze at the greatest walled city of all time. When it had become clear around 2220 that the Modern Ice Age had begun in the prior century, the citizens of NYC faced a choice: fight or flight.
Manhattan had decided to accept the Herculean challenge, designing then constructing walls of reinforced concrete 50-feet wide and 50-feet tall. The inhabitants of the great city's other three boroughs fled south.
Spoonman decides to take a creaky Arctic Cat with two other travelers across the long-frozen-solid and glacier-covered Hudson River to The Great Wall's Pier 45 Parapet. After tipping the Cat's driver generously, he looks at the parapet's entryway with mixed emotions -- this would be his last visit to the first city he had ever known. Like his wife and most of the other astronauts, engineers, and builders in Earth's first wave of Europa colonists, Spoonman's fate was to die on Jupiter's ice-clad, water-world moon.
The Pier 45 Parapet is one of seventeen 70-foot-high titanium towers that interlock The Great Wall and help protect America's financial center from the Northeastern Glacier's megaton pressure. After passing through the parapet's base, Spoonman re-hitches his backpack and scampers two blocks to the Christopher Street subway station. His next stop would be where he could always find his father in the hour after dawn -- atop the Battery Park Parapet.
Before he could feel his father's warm embrace in the chilled air that blankets the city, Spoonman climbs the hundreds of artfully crafted stairs that spiral up the inner wall of the Battery Park Parapet. In addition to being relatively close to Goodman's apartment in Greenwich Village, this rook-like outpost has unique commanding views. To the north, all of Manhattan is visible. To the south and east, feet-thick ice cover the once-bustling harbor, Long Island Sound, and the vast frozen expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.
Spoonman opens the exit door at the top of the spiral staircase silently, hoping to surprise his father. He sees his dad's back, which is covered by a bright orange parka. Goodman had been surveying the icy wasteland surrounding the city since dawn. Now, he is deep in thought about his son's months-long journey to Europa, Jupiter's ice-clad satellite.
"The day is always darkest before the dawn," Spoonman says, borrowing a catch phrase that his father has told him at least dozens of times.
Goodman spins on his heels in an instant, the sound of his son's voice breaking the spell that the mysterious moon had cast upon him.
"Son! I was beginning to think I would have a frost-bit nose by the time you showed up," the older man says.
Father and son then hold each other in a bear hug, swaying gently as puffs of their flash-frozen breath flow from their fur-lined parka hoods.
After 30 seconds that alternately seem like an eternity and an instant for Spoonman as his father holds him close, Goodman leads his son to the parapet's edge.
"The Northeast Glacier is still inching its way up The Great Wall, you know," the retired mechanical engineer says.
"I know," Spoonman says, staring intently down the concrete slope of The Great Wall to the meters-thick sheet of ice and detritus that has encased the city since before he was born at Mount Sinai Hospital in 2483. "New Yorkers are lucky they listened to you and grandfather instead of Reginald Thump."
The son sensed his father's back stiffen reflexively at the mention of the Ginan family's arch nemesis.
"Thump's plan for The Great Wall would have heaped cataclysm on top of disaster," Goodman says flatly, using his favorite turn of phrase when describing anything related to the real estate magnate and disgraced former U.S. president's ill-conceived scheme to save Manhattan.
"If that decrepit ass-hat had had his way," he said, looking over his right shoulder at Thump's frost-covered golden tower, "the glacier would have razed the city decades ago."
Goodman and his father were both outstanding mechanical engineers.
Thump's brilliance was limited to the mechanisms of turning a fast profit, usually on assets that were leveraged with debt to the hilt.
To be effective, Goodman's father knew years before the first gargantuan bucket of concrete was poured that The Great Wall would have to be the biggest public works project in the history of civilization. While he was president, Thump's minimalist approach to construction of the glacier-barrier wall would have saved U.S. taxpayers about a trillion dollars, but it would not have saved the city.
Thump could not help seeking the limelight and being a slave to his self-interest. Single-minded selfishness was the root cause of Thump's scandal-shortened single term as president of the United States. Narcissism doomed his presidency to impeachment in the House of Representatives and removal from office in a landslide vote in the Senate.
The trillionaire's attempt to cut corners during the final phase of The Great Wall's construction probably sealed his fate as the worst president in U.S. history. He had rarely emerged from his golden, 58-story monolith since Marine One had delivered him to the helipad on the skyscraper's roof in 2500. The city's vibrant tabloid press called Thump the Hermit of 5th Avenue.
"I am a compassionate man," Goodman says, draping his right arm across his son's broad shoulders, "but I can't wait much longer for that shit-heel to draw his last gasping breath."
Artist's conception of Europa's frozen surface, Jupiter, and the Sun /NASA image
Genevieve Ginan
AFTER talking for two hours about the great city of New York, The Great Wall, and Spoonman's impending great adventure, father and son made the slightly dizzying decent down the Battery Park Parapet's spiral staircase.
Before they parted outside the titanic tower, the men gaze at one another's faces through their parka hoods. "I'll be alright, dad," Spoonman says.
"I know, but I also know that this is the last time that I will see you in the flesh."
Neither of the engineers wanted to cry, so their last-ever clutch is short and sweet.
The astronaut-engineer is hankering for lunch before starting his journey south back to Cape Canaveral; but his eagerness is fueled by love, not hunger.
The Battery Park Parapet is only three blocks from the Golden Orchid, the Thai restaurant where Spoonman first met Genevieve Leigh.
In the summer of 2514, the then-bachelor had arrived at the eatery before his future bride, whom he had met online through the NASA astronaut online community. Through the restaurant's thick plate-glass window facing the street, he had watched with amusement the beautiful and brilliant woman's confusion as she tried to open the locked door that led to an apartment above the Golden Orchid.
He sensed the native New Yorker's embarrassment as she walked toward their table wearing a tight-fitting blouse and a smile that betrayed her nervousness, and her dismay over picking the wrong entryway door.
"Genevieve, it's great to see you," Spoonman said, attempting with great difficulty to pronounce his lunch-mate's name with a French accent.
"I'm so flustered," the tall brunette with dark-chocolate eyes said as she took her seat opposite from Spoonman across their ornate dining table.
"Your agitation is nothing compared to how I feel about butchering the pronunciation of your name."
"Please call me Genie," she said, quickly signally to a waitress before the conversation spun out of control into premature intimacy,
"The curry dishes are amazing here," Genie said, hoping to change the subject.
"I love Thai food, so pretty much every kind of curry they have here will work for me!" Spoonman said, with the prompting of his empty belly and gratitude for Genie's abilities as a conversationalist.
She had been recruited to be among the first Europa colonists for her communications skills, which were essential to overcome the 40-minute audio-signal delay over the 390-million miles separating Earth and Europa.
Communication skills also would be essential if the colonists encountered intelligent life on the Jovian moon.
After its awkward beginning, the rest of the soon-to-be couple's first date flowed effortlessly. The topics of conversation ranged rapidly from growing up in Manhattan, to the rivalry between their respective high schools, to the Europa colonist selection process, to what the pair expected when their spacecraft arrived at the ice-encrusted moon as it orbited the solar system's largest planet.
The curry had been very good.
Their first kiss outside the Golden Orchid was much more satisfying.
Sunday, September 3, 2017
Top 25: Great Alternative Rock songs
Saturday, August 26, 2017
Soccer-Chi™ Rule Book
Soccer-Chi(TM) is a version of The Beautiful Game modified for safety-first. Soccer-Chi(TM) workouts can have as few as one participant, and games can range from 2 to 20 players.
Soccer-Chi™ Rules:
1. No rough contact: Violations draw yellow or red cards. Drawing two yellow cards or a red card results in 5-minute side-lining.
2. No goalie, and hand-ball violations draw yellow or red cards.
3. No heading: Violation draws foul call and referee-directed restart of play.
4. Scoring: (a) goal created with two objects on ground to serve as goal posts; (b) to score, ball must roll over goal line; and (c) to score, ball cannot knock over or displace goal posts.
5. Referee: (a) generally, the oldest player on the field of play serves as ref, (b) an experienced fan on the sideline can serve as ref, and (c) if there is an odd number of players on the field, the oldest player present takes on role of ref.
Recommended Equipment
Soccer ball, eight small orange cones for goal posts and playing-field corner markers, referee whistle, red card, and yellow card.
/Christopher Cheney photo
Friday, August 25, 2017
Poetry: Love is God
I know God is Love
I know
Love is God.
I know
God is Love.
I know
violence is evil.
I know
evil is weaker than Love.
One of the ways I roll. /Image via @deviantART
Kindness: 'Petting Phin'
First, learn Cat Language.
Second, gently pet and/or scratch the back of Phin's neck.
If Phin does not "play" scratch and/or bite, proceed to third step.
Third, pet Phin, but end stroking before
the center of the friendly feline's back.
If Phin does not "play" scratch and/or bite, proceed to fourth step.
Fourth, stroke kitty from the back of his neck to the end of his back.
If Phin does not "play" scratch and/or bite, proceed to fifth step.
Fifth, stroke kitty from the back of his neck to the end of his back,
then gently grasp the base of his tail and feel the furry softness
all the way to the tail's tip.
Phin is a Good Cat.
Phineas the Cat was born on the Fourth of July, 2015. /Christopher Cheney photo
Monday, July 3, 2017
Trump's Afghan War: No Mission, No Margin
With the Trump administration sending more U.S. troops to fight in Afghanistan, America's longest war is getting longer.
The commander-in-chief has yet to offer the country an explanation why Americans are dying under his watch during in the latest interminable Afghan war.
Borrowing and inverting a business-world motto that could appeal to President Trump, America's war in Afghanistan is now a "no-mission, no-margin" scenario. In business, even the best-intended enterprises are doomed unless they can turn a buck, generating the marginal income necessary for long-term financial survival. No margin, no mission.
It is impossible to turn a buck--or generate any other gain--if there is no mission to execute at the outset of any enterprise.
What is the U.S. mission in Afghanistan under President Trump?
Trump loves to win. If winning is the mission, then Americans should brace for a long struggle and consider making Afghanistan the 51st state.
Editor's Note: More to come
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Black Lagoon: 'Sleeping giant' threatens reservoir
BULLWORK OF DEMOCRACY EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE: The Black Lagoon is a contaminated man-made pond near the corner of Maple and Walker streets in Marlborough, Mass. For more than a century, petroleum-product spills have plagued properties on a mile-long stretch of Maple Street. Toxins from those spills including lead now rest uneasily in The Black Lagoon, mingled in massive silt deposits that pose a threat to the nearby Sudbury Reservoir.
The dam holding back tons of contaminated silt at The Black Lagoon is structurally compromised and could fail catastrophically, according to a pair of engineers.
The dam has been poorly maintained over the past two decades, and the elements have taken their toll, says Joseph Landry, principal at San Francisco Bay Area-based Joseph Landry Architecture and Design. "It is easy to see that the structural integrity has been compromised from years of natural forces and maintenance neglect. The cracks in the concrete and the misalignment of the top stones will only further degrade at a more rapid speed because the foundation support is obviously deteriorated. Even by just viewing photos, one can see the severity of the situation."
The damaged eastern abutment and tree growth on the earthen portion of the dam are serious structural problems that could lead to a collapse, says an engineer at the Connecticut Department of Transportation who also reviewed photographs of the site. "It is possible," he says of a dam failure at The Black Lagoon. "Like anything, it's not going to last forever. It has to be maintained."
The Black Lagoon, which is on state land managed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), is filled with tons of contaminated silt from several properties upstream along Maple Street. Over the past three decades, at least 16 Maple Street properties have undergone state-supervised environmental cleanups, according to Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) records.
In an April 1996 story published in the Middlesex News, a state official called The Black Lagoon a major source of contamination for the Sudbury Reservoir, which is a key element of the backup water supply for 2.2 million Greater Boston residents and 5,500 businesses. In the time since I wrote that newspaper story, the environmental threat has mushroomed, with alarming growth of the contaminated silt deposits in The Black Lagoon and the man-made pond's dam in disrepair.
This week, an official at the city of Marlborough told Bullwork of Democracy that all of the known contamination along Maple Street has been removed or contained. "It's been cleaned up piece by piece," said Priscilla Ryder, the agent for the Marlborough Conservation Commission who has been monitoring Maple Street toxic waste sites for a quarter century. Some of the cleanup efforts have taken as long as 15 years to complete, she said.
There still could be contamination under the surface along Maple Street, in part because DEP denied requests from the city to conduct a comprehensive cleanup of the entire commercial strip. "They've cleaned up what we found," she said.
DCR bears responsibility for cleaning up The Black Lagoon, Ryder said. "I remember talking with DCR at the beginning [of the Maple Street cleanups in the late 1980s], and they said they were not going to clean up the pond until everything was cleaned up upstream."
DCR officials did not respond to email and phone requests for comment.
For more than a century, a mile-long stretch of Maple Street has been the scene of repeated oil and gasoline spills, according to DEP records. The Marlborough Fire Department headquarters, a $2.4 million facility completed in 1995, is located on one of the most notoriously polluted properties: 215 Maple St.
A 1986 subsurface exploration study of 215 Maple St. focuses on the environmental impact of a coal gasification plant that operated on the property from about 1900 to 1940. The Black Lagoon, which is about a half-mile south, is fed by the Sudbury Reservoir tributary that flows through the 215 Maple St. parcel. "Flow in the Metropolitan District Commission ditch which bisects the site is ... in a southerly direction, towards Sudbury Reservoir," the 1986 study says.
The study documents a thin layer of coal-gasification sludge "found at a depth of about 16 to 18 feet in one area of the site." The study also says the discovery of "an abandoned underground gasoline storage tank on the site constitutes a violation of the State Fire Marshals Regulations." Despite these toxic hazard discoveries, the study fatefully concludes "The volume of hazardous material (coal tar) buried on the site appears to be small."
While preparing the property for the new fire department headquarters on Nov. 15, 1993, excavation workers hit an abandoned pipe from the coal gasification plant, releasing more than 100 gallons of thick black coal tar into the soil, DEP documents say. "While performing construction activities at the new fire station, a pipe that was part of a former coal plant was ruptured, resulting in a release of 100-150 gallons of a tar-like substance," a DEP report on the spill says.
The day after the coal tar spill, a cleanup contractor estimated that 50 cubic yards of contaminated soil would have to be removed from the property and "approx 3000 gallons of coal sludge/water will be pumped out of the excavation," a DEP document says.
The Black Lagoon -- and the legacy of petroleum-product spills that it harbors in tons of contaminated silt -- is an environmental threat that has grown silently over time with no end in sight, Ryder says. "It's been a sleeping giant. Nobody's rattling the cage."
DEP documents on Maple Street environmental cleanups:
Cleanup plan for former Texaco gas station, March 11, 1997
Cleanup report for 417 Maple St., April 1998
Cleanup report for 415 Maple St., June 1998
Cleanup report for gasoline spill, 146 Maple St., June 1999
Cleanup report for 146 Maple Street, July 2010
Waste oil cleanup report for 417 Maple St., August 2013
Monday, February 15, 2016
Black Lagoon: The monster's cage weakening
PHOTO GALLERY: The concrete, carved-stone and earthen dam off Walker Street in Marlborough, Mass., has been poorly maintained for the past 20 years. Several dams in Massachusetts are in similar disrepair; but none are like the bulwark at The Black Lagoon, which contains untold tonnage of contaminated silt. The man-made pond is contaminating the nearby Sudbury Reservoir, part of the MWRA water system's emergency water supply for 2.2 million Greater Boston residents and 5,500 businesses.
THE MONSTER'S CAGE: The primary features of the dam at The Black Lagoon include a rusty steel-and-plank walkway, a main spillway constructed of concrete several feet thick, and a 4-foot-wide flood gate. /Christopher Cheney photo
Saturday, February 13, 2016
Black Lagoon: Unheeded toxic-waste warning
Editor's Note: This story, which is available online exclusively at bullworkofdemocracy, was originally published in the Sunday Middlesex News on April 21, 1996.
'Sudbury Reservoir Unfit to Drink: Greater Boston's emergency water supply plagued by pollution' Sunday Middlesex News, published April 21, 1996, By Christopher Cheney
The Sudbury Reservoir, Greater Boston's main backup water supply, is unfit for human consumption because of isolated "hot spots" of pollution, state officials warn.
If the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority water supply system were to fail due to a drought, earthquake or sabotage, the 7.5 million gallon reservoir would have to be activated.
But state environmental officials now studying the reservoir in Southborough and Marlborough say pollution in the water exceeds safe drinking water standards.
"If we needed to use that reservoir, a 'boil order' goes out from DEP," said Michael Mislin, manager of the Sudbury Reservoir for the state Metropolitan District Commission. "We know we have numerous sites that contain hazardous materials and those materials are leaching out."
A study soon to be released by the MWRA identifies several contamination problems that are compromising water quality in the reservoir.
According to Gretchen Roorbach, the project manager of the MWRA study, the biggest concern is that an ongoing buildup of algae will "kill" the reservoir by depleting oxygen in the water. She said two of the driving forces behind the algae growth are leaking septic systems and fertilizers being used on homeowners' lawns near the water.
Roorbach said the damage may be irreversible if the algae problem is not controlled. "Basically, it becomes a huge algae swamp," she said of the worst-case scenario.
Ten MetroWest communities use MWRA water services: Framingham, Waltham and Newton are totally reliant on the MWRA for drinking water and sewers. MWRA water is the main source of drinking water in Southborough and Weston. A limited number of neighborhoods in Marlborough, Northborough and Wellesley use MWRA drinking water. Ashland and Natick are on the MWRA's sewer system.
Another contamination issue raised in the upcoming MWRA report is the existence of hazardous waste "hot spots" that are polluting the reservoir, Misslin said.
The Middlesex News has learned hazardous waste leaching from contaminated properties along a half-mile stretch of Route 85 in Marlborough is polluting the reservoir.
A century of industrial pollution on Route 85, known locally as Maple Street, has left a legacy of petrochemical contamination.
The area was home to a number of different industries since the beginning of the 20th century, including a shoe factory, a coal gasification plant, and oil distribution facilities.
Over the past eight years, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection has identified 10 confirmed or suspected hazardous waste sites stretching for a quarter mile north to south from 146 Maple St. down to 311 Maple St. A tributary of the Sudbury Reservoir, which is a half mile downstream, runs through the center of the contaminated area.
The affected area of Maple Street is about a half mile north of the Marlborough-Southborough border.
The contamination developed over so many years and is so widespread that officials say it may not be possible to determine who is responsible for the pollution. "It's pretty tough to figure out where the stuff came from," Misslin said.
The commission has documented spills of hazardous materials on Maple Street going back 90 years, he said. "Now what we're seeing is the gradual movement of these materials through the ground."
The Sudbury Reservoir study being conducted by the MWRA has identified the Maple Street hazardous waste sites as a significant source of contamination. "Maple Street jumps right out at you," Misslin said of the report's findings.
According to water officials, the Sudbury Reservoir would only be activated under emergency circumstances such as if an earthquake damaged the aqueducts carrying water from the massive, 412 billion gallon Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts. "There is no immediate danger to anyone," MWRA spokesman David Gilmartin said of the Maple Street contamination.
Roorbach said a pond off Walker Street is functioning as a catch basin for the contamination flowing down from the Maple Street toxic waste sites. "That [pond] is a very serious source of contamination."
Testing of the Walker Street pond has revealed the presence of not only petrochemicals from oil and gasoline spills but also heavy metals such as lead, she said. "That is a real settling pond for contaminants and heavy metals."
Heavy metals such as lead are considered to be highly toxic if consumed by humans.
Roorbach said the reservoir has not been tested for heavy metals since 1978, when the presence of the materials was found to be "prominent" near the reservoir's dam. Drinking water would be pumped from the dam area if the reservoir was brought online.
Roorbach said it is unlikely heavy metals would get into drinking water if the reservoir was activated because they sink into the lake's sediment. "We of course worry about it; but, the way the Sudbury Reservoir is used, heavy metals would not be stirred up."
Misslin said the level of risk posed by heavy metals in the reservoir is an open question. "So far, we haven't found significant levels of metals," he said. "We haven't gone out actively looking for metals, either."
Monday, February 8, 2016
Environmental Memoir: Saving Hodgson Brook
I helped save a brook that the Air Force nearly destroyed.
I first became aware of groundwater pollution at Pease Air Force Base while working as night editor at the Concord Monitor at the turn of the century.
The last time I was aware of groundwater contamination at Pease was in 2013, when I was the first to see the damage.
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Environmental Memoir: Nature needs protection
The stories shared below are testimony in defense of environmental protection. Beware of political candidates who seek to slash the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and crucial legal protections such as the federal Clean Water Act. Warning: All 2016 Republican presidential candidates buck the EPA and environmental protection.
Cape Cod war wounds
Military ordnance discovered at Marconi Beach on Cape Cod is destroyed in a controlled explosion. /Cape Cod Times image
America's war legacy spread environmental damage to Cape Cod.
Artifacts of war litter the Cape and Islands: bombs dropped and lost in the sandy depths of time from long-forgotten training flights over the beaches, lead bullets and other military refuse penetrating deep in the soil at the former Massachusetts Military Reservation, tainting the groundwater and the Cape's only aquifer, and health complaints against a top-secret radar station.
Abandoned military ordnance discovered at a beach on Martha's Vineyard. /Image via therealcape.com
The U.S. Air Force PAVE PAWS station in Bourne, Mass., is capable of providing early warnings for ballistic missiles. /Cape Cod Times image
Saving Hodgson Brook
I helped save a brook that the Air Force nearly destroyed.
I first became aware of groundwater pollution at Pease Air Force Base while working as night editor at the Concord Monitor at the turn of the century.
The last time I was aware of groundwater contamination at Pease was in 2013, when I was the first to see the damage.
'A River Runs Dry'
Bearing witness is the highest calling for a journalist.
On a sunny July day in 1997, Middlesex News staff photographer Paul Kapteyn and I paddled a canoe down the upper Charles River, from a Millis boat launch area off Route 109 to the dam in South Natick. It was a perfect New England summer day. Pushed along on a historically low flow for The Charles, even for a summer month, the paddle-powered journey was punctuated superlatively with sweeping river-basin views, a colorful array of wildlife, and an environmental crisis unfolding slowly but surely all around us.
The suburban way of life in the MetroWest region of Greater Boston is environmentally damaging and draining the upper Charles River watershed.
Sprawling subdivisions arrayed with a variety of impervious surfaces -- from shingled roofs to asphalt driveways to storage sheds -- thwart the recharging of aquifers that thousands of suburban homes rely upon for drinking water wells. Fertilizers poured on suburban lawns wash nitrogen-rich storm runoff into The Charles, fueling growth of invasive plants such as purple loosestrife on the riverbanks (photo above) as well as weed and algae blooms in the river. After two decades of suburban-sprawl damage, the boat launch area where Paul and I slipped our 17-foot shiny silver aluminum canoe into a 40-foot-wide stretch of the The Charles headwaters is now choked with vegetation (photo below).
'A River Runs Dry' by Christopher Cheney
Middlesex News, Aug. 3, 1997
Development Threatens Rejuvenated Charles(Editor's note: This story online exclusively at bullworkofdemocracy.blogspot.com and sadly prophetic.)
The mills that made the upper Charles River an industrial dumping ground for 100 years are gone, but rapid development near its banks could suck it dry.
A month-long Middlesex News investigation found the river has recovered from its polluted past. A six-hour canoe trip from Millis down to the South Natick dam showed the river supports an abundance of wildlife, including great blue heron, muskrat and thousands of eastern painted turtles.
But more and more public wells, along with paving, construction and sewer projects could dry out the headwaters of The Charles in summer, according to Robert Zimmerman, executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association. Such projects are blocking water from getting to the network of aquifers that feed the river, he said.
"I can't imagine a more definitive scenario for a water crisis," he said.
Interviews with watershed association staff, state officials and people who live next to the river found that it faces a new, insidious environmental threat from growing towns like Bellingham, Franklin, Holliston, Medway, Millis and Norfolk.
The latest threat comes after years of struggling to clean up a waterway that was so polluted fabric dye left a telltale tint on those who dared to swim in it.
Today, round green duckweed petals, not much larger than the head of a pin, line the sides of the river like billions of alfalfa sprouts suspended from the water's surface.
A feast for waterfowl, the duckweed also camouflages eastern painted turtles poking thumb-sized snouts through the floating green blanket, when they're not sunning themselves on the muddy riverbanks.
Dozens of great blue herons, stork-like birds with wing spans around 6 feet, make the river their home. But a new environmental disaster is on the horizon.
State regulators and those who live on the river say they may soon be able to walk across a dry river bed in the summer if town planners and developers fail to acknowledge the limits of the river.
And it's not just a matter of duckweed, herons or turtles, which would be wiped out if the river ran dry.
Dozens of public wells that draw drinking water from the aquifers -- underground pools of water linked to the upper Charles and its tributaries -- are threatened. If the aquifers are in danger of running dry, the state may make them off limits to well use. Twenty-three such wells in Franklin, Medway, Millis and Norfolk could be shut down in summer months when there water is most needed.
Communities would be forced to compete with neighboring towns for a shrinking suppl of water, driving up the price of a shower, a shave, a drink, cooking, cleaning and flushing.
Antonio D'Alessandro has lived near the banks of The Charles in Medway for 45 years and said it has been receding for the past 15. "My kids used to use a rope swing and jump into the water," he said. "Now, you couldn't make a splash down there."
A 1996 state Department of Environmental Protection study says the aquifers that supply Franklin are stressed to the point where future resource planning is essential.
The DEP's Water Management Program has identified the town, one of the state's fastest growing communities, as an example of how uncontrolled growth threatens the upper Charles, which stretches from Echo Lake in Hopkinton to Boston Harbor.
A drought in the summer of 1995 dried up three Franklin tributaries of The Charles -- Mine Brook, Miscoe Brook and Dix Brook.
Despite the DEP study, despite the dry streams, despite the rope swing that now sits over hard ground instead of a swimming hole for children, a consultant who advises Franklin on water issues said the threat that development poses to the upper Charles is overstated.
"There was no observed long-term damage to wetlands during (the drought) period," said Ted Morine. "They all dried up totally and yet the wells sited in those valleys were able to pump during the three-month drought."
"They have the ability to withstand complete dry periods and come back unharmed," he said.
Town Administrator Wolfgang Bauer said Franklin's growth can be accommodated by water within the town's border's. "We've got plenty of water, it's just a matter of drilling the wells to tap into it," he said.
Lealdon Langley, manager of the DEP's water management program, said Franklin officials are over-simplifying the situation. He is taking a hard look at requests for new wells from Franklin, Holliston, Millis, Medway and Norfolk.
The Water Management Act requires us to balance environmental interests with the interests of economic development. I believe it's time for Franklin to live up to those obligations," he said.
"The state is not telling Franklin how to develop its community," Langley said. "What the state is saying is that under the law we will protect the quality of life."
The increasing number of public wells, combined with a building spree in boom towns along the river and expansion of a sewage treatment plant in Medway has cut the flow of water in the upper Charles to dangerous levels, according to the Charles River Watershed Association's Zimmerman.
Construction and paving block rainwater from trickling down into the aquifers.
A proposed expansion of the Charles River Pollution Control District plant in Medway, which would handle sewage from towns including Bellingham and Holliston, would also decrease the flow of water into the river, according to Zimmerman.
It is better to have water flow into the river from properly functioning septic systems in Bellingham and Holliston than have it redirected farther downstream to the plant in Medway, he said.
"I think we're already crossed the line and unless we go back and pay attention to groundwater recharge, we'll be in in a serious situation," Zimmerman said.
(Editor's note: The Charles River's perennially dry summer-season riverbed in Millis, shown in the recent Google Earth photo below, is an alarming new finding of this bullworkofdemocracy report. In the summer of 1997, this stretch of The Charles was open water and great for canoeing. The impact on wildlife over the past two decades is unimaginable, with countless thousands of animals likely lost in the mass habitat disruption.)
'The Lagoon'
Sediment has filled half of "The Lagoon" in Marlborough, Mass. For decades, oil-tainted water has flowed from the man-made pond's dam and spillway (lower right) into the Sudbury Reservoir. /Google Earth image
"We call that 'The Lagoon,'" the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority hydrologist told me.
She was the first state official I interviewed about Maple Street, and she had studied water quality in the nearby Sudbury Reservoir, The man-made lake is dammed at its southern shores in Framingham and stretches north into Marlborough, where several small streams help fill the reservoir. One of the tributaries, which meanders south along Maple and River streets then feeds The Lagoon, has a lengthy history of environmental damage.
MWRA researchers had known about The Lagoon for years, the state scientist told me. A week later, the senior water authority official in charge of monitoring the Sudbury Reservoir told me the water was not potable. He said the Sudbury Reservoir would require environmental remediation efforts and new treatment facilities to be of much use in an emergency such as loss of access to the far larger and far cleaner Quabbin Reservoir.
The Sudbury Reservoir is one of the largest emergency reserve sources of water for the Greater Boston area. For several decades, a small stream that meanders along a mile-long portion of Maple Street in Marlborough has been washing oil-tainted water into The Lagoon, a football-field-sized pond located at the corner of Maple and Walker streets. The Lagoon, which is unlined, is equipped with a concrete dam and spillway.
Beginning in the early 20th century, oil spills had plagued the densely developed drag of commercial properties along Maple Street, one of the main southern entryways into Marlborough, including a lengthy history of rail access. Two of the small business owners in the Maple Street contamination hot-zone told me there had been several railway oil spills very close (or on) their properties over the years. They were both resigned, but angry, about the oil spill damage to their land and property values.
In late spring 1996, I joined the reporting staff of the Framingham-based Middlesex News and spent the first couple weeks in the newspaper's Marlborough bureau. I was more-or-less on my own to find stories. In my first week on the Marlborough beat, I drove to the Worcester office of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to conduct a records check on contamination sites in Marlborough.
The list of DEP-monitored sites in Marlborough included about 10 properties along Maple Street, which caught my eye and prompted an afternoon walk up and down the road as soon as I drove back into town.
Along a quarter-mile stretch of Maple Street, every other small business property had either sustained petroleum-based contamination, including multiple oil and gasoline spills. One DEP-monitored site at the northern tip of the environmental-damage hot zone had been used a century ago to convert coal to a thick, molasses-like form of fuel oil. Records indicated early cleanup efforts removed a vein of dark black waste product from the coal conversion site. The vein of hard tar was found about eight feet below the ground's surface very close to the gully cut by the stream that feeds The Lagoon.
At an old gasoline station next to the coal conversion site, about a ton of contaminated soil had been stored in a pile near the edge of the stream gully. At least half of the tainted soil had mysteriously disappeared, according to DEP records, The guy in the station definitely did not want to talk about it. My best guess as I walked away from the station was the soil pile had either eroded into the stream or been raided for "midnight dumping" disposal at another location.
Above, trees and light brush bound The Lagoon in Marlborough. The parking lot to the west of The Lagoon is behind a Maple Street business. Homes line the streets to the north and east of The Lagoon. Below, The Lagoon (upper left) drains into the Sudbury Reservoir. /Google Earth images
Nasty Norwalk water
The second venue for my environmental-damage education was on the Connecticut Gold Coast in filthy rich Fairfield County.
In the summer of 1986, I served as CCAG's fundraising canvas director in Norwalk, which is located in the heart of The Constitution State's most affluent region near New York City. Soon after converting half of the basement in South Norwalk's Methodist Church into CCAG canvas office space, I visited the Kellogg-Deering Well Field Superfund site, which is in one of Norwalk's mostly tony northern neighborhoods.
I parked my car on Slocum Street and could see the flag-pole-high aerator on the other side of the railroad tracks, about a football field's length away.from where I was peering across the empty crew cabin of my crappy-cream-colored Pontiac Sunbird through the passenger window. Unlike the aerator that SRS workers used to evaporate highly contaminated water in Southington, Conn., the Superfund site aerators in Norwark were inside silos. Rather than using an aerator to release deadly toxins into the air, as was the case at SRS in Southington, the aerators in Norwalk helped extract tainted ground water from the poisoned aquifer below for treatment. In a five-year review report filed with the EPA in September 2012, officials at Superfund-site contractor Tetra Tech Nus in Pasadena, Calif., say the aeration effort is falling short of drawing enough groundwater to make significant progress in restoring the aquifer to drinking-water level.
Containing the aeration of the Kellogg-Deering Well Field's contaminated groundwater inside silos limits release of toxins into the air, and the review report found the Slocum Street Aerator safe for human health. But as I gazed the shiny structure a strong place-kick away from my car, I knew the baker's dozen homes on Slocum Street were less than a quarter of the houses packed into tenth-acre plots in the tightly packed subdivision off Main Avenue. I knew that Main Ave, obscured behind the line of maple trees that provided the Slocum Street Aerator with a pastoral backdrop, was lined with houses.
/EPA image
Southington deathly sorrow
More than 30 years have passed, but memories of the first time I knocked on doors along Lazy Lane will always be as fresh as they are frightening.
Southington's environmental disaster, which I witnessed festering as a young and inexperienced man in the early 1980s soon after two locations in the Connecticut town were declared Environmental Protection Agency Superfund sites, began before I was born. The Herculean EPA-led cleanup remains a work in progress after the passing of more than three decades and the first generations of environmental casualties.
Southington is ground zero for two of my life's most twisted ironies. The birthplace of my awakening to the deadly consequences of environmental damage has a tiny sliver of my family's fingerprints on the killing machines. And 10 years after a cynical newspaper reporter unfairly cast CCAG's educationally oriented community organizing as monetarily motivated, I started a now two-decade-long journalism career.
A top source of toxic waste contamination in the town, which is home to more than 43,000 residents, is the EPA-erased Solvent Recovery Service of New England (SRS) facility at the foot of a hill below dozens of homes on gently twisting Lazy Lane. From 1957 to 1967, one of the prime sources of the toxic waste dumped in two unlined, Olympic-swimming-pool-sized lagoons at SRS was East Hartford-based Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, the company where my father worked for three decades and provided a living for his family.
The Quinnipiac River runs through the center of Southington. In the northern neighborhoods, the river flows south near SRS, then downstream to the center of the town, not far from the Old Southingon Landfill Superfund Site. Both sites are in the river's watershed, according to a December 2012 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department report.
In the summers of 1984 and 1985, when I stood on the front doorsteps of the modest middle-class houses on Lazy Lane as a fundraiser and community organizer for the Hartford-based Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG), the pain and sorrow of untimely death could be seen on every face that peered back at me through the screen-door windows and across the dark New England-red backyard picnic tables.
I will never forget the thin, outstretched arm of one longtime Lazy Lane homeowner as she pointed to each of the neighboring properties on either side of her lawn and across the street. "They have all lost someone to cancer," she told me of leukemia cases and other environmentally related maladies that had claimed many lives before her eyes.
Several Lazy Lane residents shared their memories of large dump trucks climbing up the hill and passing by their houses. Sheets of flapping canvas covered the deadly cargo of toxic-waste-tainted soil that had been scooped up at SRS as the lumbering vehicles rolled toward Southington's other Superfund site, an 11-acre municipal landfill in the center of town surrounded by residential neighborhoods and small businesses.
I will never forget the weathered face of the 40-something owner of an automotive shop on the edge of the Old Southington Landfill. His anger was visible and audible as he explained that the air in every space inside his one-story structure was contaminated with a collection of carcinogenic chemicals that included alarming levels of methane and benzene. He told me about the EPA investigators who had been walking through the neighborhood in their baggy hazmat suits. The government scientists wanted him to abandon his property. He was grimly determined to never leave his nightmarish investment in The American Dream.
The Quinnipiac River watershed includes a small pond a short distance south from the former town dump, where I canvassed another neighborhood for CCAG.
I will never forget the shock that gripped the face of the well-groomed 40-something doctor as he peered at the topographical map clasped my clipboard, the scene illuminated by the wrought iron-style lamp that lit his field-stone and concrete doorsteps. "That little pond is where I have been taking my little girls to go swimming," he told me.
Solvent Recovery Service cleanup stats
SRS Superfund site: By the numbers
- Address: 10 Lazy Lane, Southington, Conn.
- Proposed as Superfund site in December 1982. Listed as Superfund site in September 1983.
- "Cooking" and treating 56,670 cubic yards of toxic-waste tainted soil completed in February 2015. Lagoon area cooked: 1.7 acres
- From 1995 to 2013, a groundwater collection system at the Superfund site removed 16,000 pounds of hazardous materials
- May 2014 report: In Situ Thermal Remediation: Remedial Action Work Plan and Project Operations Plan, Gardner, Massachusetts-based TerraTherm, EPA and state regulated cleanup contractor
- Southington population growth, 2000 to 2010: 8.4 percent
Southington, Connecticut /Image via Google
Environmental protection is essential
Environmental damage destroys life.
When I was a boy, every street and roadside in America was lined with garbage. The wild turkey, Revolutionary-era icon Ben Franklin's candidate for national bird, was nearly extinct in my home state and across the rest of New England.
Now, it is rare to see motorists toss bags of fast-food waste out their windows, and I see flocks of wild turkeys along the roadsides and highways of New Hampshire on nearly a daily basis.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the nation's top nature watchdog that was created nearly a half century ago with the support of a Republican president, and key safeguard laws such as the Clean Water Act are largely responsible for turning the tide in an epic American struggle that continues to this day.
The environmental-damage memoir that I will be writing and sharing in stages over the final handful of days leading to the 2016 N.H. Presidential Primary is inspired by the Republican candidates' misguided and self-serving attacks on essential protections that stand between The People and poisons.
Among the top contenders heading into Tuesday's first-in-the-nation primary, John Kasich is the closest candidate the Republican Party has to an environmentalist. The Ohio governor acknowledges the moral obligation to preserve the environment for future generations and accepts the existence of global warming. But he opposes the Obama administration's plan to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which would include limiting Ohio's noxious coal-fired electricity generation.
Even with the EPA, Clean Water Act and other environmental protections, atrocities against nature remain a daily occurrence in America.
From the lead-tainted water disaster in poverty stricken Flint, Mich., to the historic natural gas leak in the affluent Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles, no American is safe from the unfettered devils of environmental damage.
I have seen the damage done.
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