Powderhorn Bird Watch by John Karrigan

April and May have been good months for birding in the park and the neighborhood, as they should be, with the return of nesting birds and the occasional visits by birds heading further north. A pied-billed grebe, a small diving bird similar to a duck, was on Powderhorn Lake almost all of April. Sometimes there were from three to seven grebes, but usually just one. There has been a pied-billed grebe on the lake every spring for several years. Is it the same grebe every year? I think it is, but that is just speculation on my part. In my last column, I wrote that there were not as many Juncos this year. Of course, soon after that, many Juncos showed up in both the yard and the park and stayed somewhat longer than they usually do. For a few days before and after the Earth Day park clean-up there were bufflehead ducks on the lake. I never saw more than one, but a reliable observer saw three at once. A bufflehead is a diving sea duck and, as far as I know, has not been seen in Powderhorn before. A double-crested cormorant was also on and above the lake around that time, late April. Some years, a number of cormorants have been on the lake daily from spring through fall, but few have been seen lately. Another bird that used to be a regular at the lake, the black crowned night heron, was on the island in the same time period, sometimes a pair of them. They could still be there, hiding in trees during the day, but when they were regulars, you could often see them during the day or hear them calling at night. And I have not seen or heard them in May. Other members of the heron family have arrived and hopefully will stay and remain visible through the summer. There are often two and sometimes three green herons, one or two great egrets, and usually one great blue heron. All can often be spotted on the island, shore or fishing dock. Killdeer and spotted sandpipers also returned to the shore in early May. Both of these species have, in the past, sometimes stayed all season and raised young or sometimes just passed through. This year, time will tell; if they are staying, they are laying low and incubating eggs right now. Among the usual water birds, there is at least one litter of ten wood duck chicks. Baby mallards should be appearing soon. I have seen no baby geese in the park yet; I don’t know if any are nesting. There are usually two Canada geese on the water, sometimes none, sometimes 20 or more. Don’t mention the geese to anyone, or the Goose Gestapo from the Metropolitan Airports Commission and the Department of Natural Resources might come and take all of them away again. One more water bird note: A belted kingfisher, another irregular visitor, was hanging around and fishing with some success in mid-May. Now, on to more land-based birds, although the lake is a key reason they stop or stay at Powderhorn Park. Yellow-rumped warblers, one of the early migrating warblers, came through in late April and early May. They also come through in the fall. Their numbers vary from a few to hundreds. If you are there at the right time, every tree around the lake will have many yellow-rumps, constantly darting out to catch small insects and returning to the trees. On Saturday, May 13, I was helping pick up litter at the Hennepin County sponsored park clean-up day. It was a very nasty, windy, cold damp day. Probably because of the wind and weather, some trees seemed filled with birds. After I picked up litter, I returned and found magnolia warblers and palm warblers, two species I have never seen at the park or in the neighborhood. A kingfisher and double-crested cormorant were also present. The next day, a much nicer day, I returned, hoping to see more warblers. I did not spot one warbler, but observed eastern kingbirds, many ruby-crowned kinglets, and two more species I had never seen in the park, a veery and a scarlet tanager. Another subject for another column, organizing a volunteer group that would have observers at the park every day during migration to see what else passes through. All this writing and I have barely covered the backyard. Beside the usual suspects, a veery was present for a couple of days in late April. Male and female goldfinches made rare appearances, male and female downy woodpeckers come to the thistle feeder and peanut feeder regularly, and a white-breasted nuthatch has been coming to the peanut feeder often since May 25. Comments and observations are always welcome.

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Winona LaDuke fights for her land by Ed Felien

Winona LaDuke has seen the change in farming. She has seen small farms bought out by large corporations. She has seen small scale organic farming replaced by large scale aerial assaults of poisonous pesticides. She has seen the careful harmony with nature replaced by the gluttonous destruction of precious natural resources. She has seen cancer rates rise. She has seen one man become rich, and she has seen a land and a people made poor. And, now, she is fighting back. In the next month or so she will publish a report of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, 2000: Potatoes, Frogs, Water: the Future of Northwestern Minnesota and RDO Offutt, written in collaboration with Geo. Ann Baker, Kevin Gasco, Anne Bailey and others. The report is primarily an indictment of the farming practices of R.D.O. Offutt. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture estimates Offutt owns about 28,000 acres and leases another 5,000 in Minnesota. He is mostly in the business of raising potatoes. Called “Sultan of the Spuds” and “The Lord of the Fries,” Offutt joined his father in the potato business when he got out of Concordia College in Moorhead in 1964. Today, he is the largest potato grower in the world and has amassed a personal fortune estimated at $300 million. He was able to pick up acres of sandy soil for $600 an acre in northern Minnesota (half the price of land in the Red River Valley), and, with massive amounts of fertilizer and pesticides and fancy irrigation equipment, he was able to get yields at twice the region’s average. In 1997, nationally, he produced potatoes on some 55,000 acres, and by 1999 he was operating farms on over 100,000 acres. Minnesota state law says a corporation cannot own or operate a farm, and most legal entities cannot own more than 15,000 acres. The exception to that is the family corporate farm, and Offutt is organized as a family corporate farm. He doesn’t even have to live on the land he farms; he just has to actively operate a farm on it. The original intent of the law prohibiting corporate farming was to prevent the exploitation of the land by corporations and to protect the family farm. The makers of the law probably could not forsee someone like Offutt fitting his large land holdings and factory farms through the loopholes. Winona LaDuke believes strongly the Minnesota corporate farming law must be strengthened to eliminate these abuses. But it is not ownership of the land by itself that is a problem. It is what Offutt is doing to the land that is the most serious concern. From the report: “In 1992 a couple came to the Mantrap Township Board of Hubbard County for help. They lived between two of Offutt’s potato fields and were concerned about the drift of the aerial spraying. The Mantrap township board passed a local ordinance to restrict the aerial spraying of pesticides. Offutt and the state’s commercial pesticide applicators sued the township. The township lost. They appealed and lost again. Judy Olson of the Mantrap Township Board says the people finally gave up. “‘People just basically backed off because they knew they didn’t have the money that the farms did, and, that they wouldn’t have a chance anyway.’ “Mary Losure of Minnesota Public Radio notes in her September 28, 1999, feature story, ‘The Minnesota Department of Agriculture is the state agency charged with regulating pesticides. When Offutt sued the township, the Agriculture Department joined in on the side of Offutt and the commercial pesticide applicators.’ (page 2 of transcript of What Price Success, September 28, 1999, Mary Losure, MN Public Radio). “The town of Perham, Minnesota, also has concerns about the nitrate contamination they associate with Offutt’s crops and his fertilizer storage tanks. As Mary Losure notes in Minnesota Public Radio’s feature on Offutt: ‘Perham has four city wells. The one near the elementary school is tainted with nitrates above the safe-drinking-water standard. Now the city is drilling a new well to replace it.’” Thirty-one percent of the wells in the county had nitrate levels higher than the drinking standard set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Thirty-one percent also had detectable levels of triazine herbicides. From the report: “At least two chemicals aggressively applied either through chemigation or aerial spraying by R.D.O Offutt have been proven to cause birth defects, mortality and abnormalities in frogs: Maneb and endosulfan.” “Many of the chemicals commonly used on potatoes have adverse health effects. Unfortunately, these chemicals appear in the water and in the food produced with the potato products. In a study completed by the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (1997) the organization reviewed only active ingredients in pesticide formulation, and prepared a summary of their findings. “These include: “*Out of the 41 pesticides studied, some 14 are considered as carcinogens by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “*33 of the 41 pesticides have been linked to impacts on the endocrine system, reproductive system and male fertility. . . “*Over half of the potato pesticides we studied have been found on food. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s pesticide monitoring program found pesticides on 32 percent of the potatoes sampled. “*Many of the pesticides used in potato production have not been adequately reviewed by the EPA.” These pesticides leech into the groundwater. Using sandy soil in the Straight River area near the White Earth Indian Reservation to grow potatoes means pesticides will travel rapidly through the porous soil into the aquifer, which is very close to the surface. Many of these chemicals are untested by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and those that have been tested generally have not been tested in combination with the other chemicals that are applied in fertilizers. It is this chemical soup that Winona LaDuke feels can be so potentially lethal. She believes, and it is a principle of the Green Party, of which she is the Vice Presidential candidate, no chemicals should be used unless they are seriously tested by themselves and in combination with the other chemicals with which they are most commonly found. In addition to poisoning the earth, the air and the water, Offutt’s potato production is using vast amounts of water in his mechanized chemigation process. He draws clean water from an aquifer below the aquifer near the surface. No one knows exactly how much he takes. It’s reported on the honor system. He pays $50 a year to draw up to 50 million gallons (a form of “corporate welfare” LaDuke opposes). We know he uses 556 million gallons each year at his RDO/Lamb Weston Enterprises potato processing plant. A 20-year simulation study shows water levels dropping by as much as 6 feet in the area. No one knows how much water is in the aquifer. No one can be sure the shallow aquifer isn’t somehow connected to the deep one, so, poisons from the shallow one could drift into the lower one, and draining the lower one could drain the shallow one. Winona LaDuke believes, “Everyone has to be responsible for their actions. We need to look carefully at what has happened, and, then, we need to look for justice.” Offutt thinks the problem is merely one of public relations. He is trying to create a better image for himself and his operations. He is giving a $500 scholarship and free french fries to the local school in Northern Minnesota. This infuriates LaDuke: “We’re being treated like stupid rural people who don’t know what’s going on. We’re supposed to be happy that people are getting the minimum wage to wash potatoes.” She and many Anishinaabeg elders agree there is a need for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that will protect the future into the seventh generation: “The right of citizens of the U.S. to enjoy and use air, water, sunlight, and other renewable resources determined by the Congress to be common property shall not be impaired, nor shall such use impair their availability for use by the future generations.” The damages Offutt has done to the land and the water and the air must be evaluated in terms of today and the effect on the future for seven generations. He must pay for the damages he has done to the land, water and air, and, if he is to continue growing potatoes, he must farm in a manner that is in harmony with the earth and not destructive of it. The dangers of monoculture are well known to ecologists. Any repeated planting of a single crop will deplete the soil until more and more chemicals are needed to make it fertile. The great historic lesson of dependence on monoculture is not lost on the American Irish. They know their existence in this country is a result of the failure of the potato crop in Ireland from 1845 to 1849. The English treated Ireland in much the same way Offutt is treating Northern Minnesota, a personal plantation on which to grow potatoes for a hungry world. The English encouraged the growing of potatoes as a cash crop to such an extent, the Irish stopped growing other vegetables. When the potato failed, they starved. From Winona LaDuke’s report: “The crop failure was so disastrous because the Irish peasants had come to depend almost exclusively on the potato for their diet, and this dependence was on one or two varieties, greatly reducing the genetic variations which ordinarily prevent the decimation of an entire crop by disease. “In 1845, much of the crop rotted in the fields, followed by subsequently more devastating failures in 1846–49. The crop failures were caused by late blight disease which destroys both the leaves and the edible roots of the potato, with the causative agent a fungus known as phytophtora infestans. The Irish Potato Famine was the worst famine to occur in Europe in the 19th century. “By August of 1847, more than 3 million people were receiving rations at soup kitchens with the situation worsening. About 1 million people died from the diseases and starvation associated with the potato famine, and almost 1.5 million Irish emigrated to North America and Britain during this same time, in order to survive. All in all, a chilling historic example of the loss of biodiversity. “It is also, perhaps a lesson not well learned. In 1999, the Offutt farming operations in this region, experienced a major crop failure. The loss was due to Late Blight.” Winona LaDuke is the founder of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, 2000 and a Vice Presidential candidate for the Green Party in this year’s national election.serve as places where independent critical thought is nurtured. Anne Kapuscinski, a visiting professor from the University of Minnesota who studies genetically engineered organisms, and other scholars we met with at Berkeley fear that raising questions about the safety of genetically altered crops — a principal research focus of Novartis — may prove difficult if more and more agricultural colleges turn to corporations to finance their research. Concerns about genetic engineering are mounting, Kapuscinski notes. A study published last May in Nature found that toxins dispersed from the pollen of Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) corn, a Novartis product, can kill nonpest insects, including the monarch butterfly — a problem with potentially enormous ecological implications. Such dangers prompted the Food and Drug Administration to convene a series of public hearings last November on genetically altered crops, whose use has provoked huge demonstrations in Europe and elsewhere. Ignacio Chapela, of the College of Natural Resources’ executive committee, believes that the most important thing Novartis stands to gain from the alliance is legitimacy. ‘The sheer value of having the logo of the University of California next to the logo of Novartis is immensely valuable to the company right now,’ he says.” The prospect of the University of Minnesota and the College of Agriculture trading their research for corporate sponsorships worries scholars and tests the limits of academic freedom. The prospect of corporate agricultural research worries farmers and threatens their precarious position in the marketplace. The prospect of genetically altered crops creating a worldwide catastrophe worries environmentalists. But the University plunges madly ahead.

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UNDER THE FLIGHT PATH

Noise Pollution expert shares knowledge and experience by Dean Lindberg

Dean Lindberg “Do you wait twelve years — when children are displaying hypertension markers — to find out if there’s any permanent damage?” Dr. Arline Bronzaft, chair of the noise pollution committee of the New York City Council for the Environment, asked at the spring membership meeting of the South Metro Airport Action Council (SMAAC) May 18th. Dr. Bronzaft used the question to illustrate a point: that FAA standards for community health, which require proof of damages, differ significantly from the accepted medical practice of preventive care. Instead, the FAA used its powers to prevent research on noise and health impacts around airports. “The Federal government set up the Office of Noise Abatement and Control (ONAC) to carry out a mandate that citizens should be protected from noise,” Dr. Bronzaft explained. “When the government was in the noise control business in the 1960s and ’70s, there was no question over whether noise had a negative impact on people. ONAC sent out brochures on the harmful effects of noise. Government officials did not say ‘We need more studies’ to document that noise harms us. But, when ONAC said ‘Noise harms us’ it made the FAA uncomfortable.” She added, “So while government was moving in a direction to protect us, the way for industry to stop noise progress was to close down ONAC,” suggesting that what we need to “get back to the ’70s,” when the government considered noise a serious issue. According to Dr. Bronzaft, part of that task will be to reassemble and update the body of evidence the government once had. She summarized recent research on children done by Dr. Gary Evans of Cornell University that replicated studies done in the ’70s. Dr. Evans documented increased hypertension in children living around the airport in Munich, Germany. In addition, reading levels in sixth graders have been found to be down by one year, and mathematics scores have slipped. Dr. Bronzaft has mixed feelings concerning Evans’ findings. While his research corroborates hers — adding to its credibility — Bronzaft is disheartened that some 25 years after her initial findings, the same levels of noise impact indicators are still being found. One step towards getting back to the ’70s was Dr. Bronzaft’s lobbying efforts in Washington D.C. The recently passed FAA refunding bill requires the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to study aircraft noise in the United States. This includes studying methodologies the FAA uses, the effectiveness of abatement programs, and the impact of airport noise on communities, including schools. The GAO must complete this task and report the results to Congress within one year. Support for the GAO study has been very strong, according to Dr. Bronzaft who stated that to researchers, public demands for health investigation are “an affirmation that something is going on.” Dr. Bronzaft urged SMAAC, Residents Opposed to Airport Racket (ROAR) and Citizens Concerned about Richfield’s Environment (CARE) to continue their collaborative efforts and to press their representatives in Congress to demand the GAO study be professional and credible. Bronzaft noted that well-intended legislative directives can fizzle without public support, and advised people to “let your representatives know a study is going on. They do react, and are more likely to do a good job.” Following Dr. Bronzaft’s presentation, several who expressed interest in starting a health research volunteer group met with SMAAC President Dick Saunders. Others interested can contact Saunders at: dsndrs@gateway.net or by phone (612) 869-1501. MAC concerns water quality board Minnehaha Creek Watershed District (MCWD) President Pam Blixt concluded that recent Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) actions may degrade local water quality, particularly Mother Lake, Lake Nokomis and Minnehaha Creek. Blixt notes that the review and permitting process, while often viewed as a nuisance by contractors, is an indispensable tool for protecting community water resources. The MCWD also encompasses the historic Coldwater Spring and Camp Coldwater area immediately northeast of the airport. To evade the permit process for expansion there, MAC officials hit on a clever solution: “Move” that portion of the watershed to a jurisdiction that doesn’t exercise its permit authority. Recently, MAC and Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) officials quietly negotiated with the Minnesota River Watershed district to assume jurisdiction over water quality in the airport’s northeast section, some of which flows into the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District. Blixt contends the negotiations and arrangement allow MAC and MnDOT to circumvent the intention of environmental laws that were enacted specifically to protect the metropolitan area’s water resources, because the Minnesota River Watershed District does not exercise its permit and review authority. MAC open house The huge turnout at last fall’s MAC Open House, which was held to answer residents’ questions about noise mitigation and the home insulation program caught MAC, Park Board, and Minneapolis residents and officials by surprise. MAC officials responded by arranging for more than twice the space, producing a video to answer basic questions and holding two nights of the Open House this spring. The larger facility and improved presentations gave hundreds of residents the opportunity to discuss concerns with MAC and FAA officials in comfort. While noise still tops the list of residents’ environmental concerns, the lesson’s learned from last fall’s Open House made the May event much more successful.

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