27 July 2009
Everywhere it smells like oil, a constant reminder of the force that drives this region. And the people, all polite and helpful, are defensive, because they need those jobs. How dare those environmentalists come and criticize? “What powered the car that got you here anyway?” In traveling the world, I see this over and over, fear-motivated support of environmental destruction by the populations dependent on the pillage for their jobs. My friend Larry Gibson, the David fighting the Goliath of Massey coal, holds an annual July 4th party (remember life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) at his place in WV. This year it was busted up by a gang of drunken, slovenly coal miners, threatening the women and children present. Land of the free, home of the brave. One almost feels sorry for them, because it is fear that drives this behavior. Of course, the coal companies with whom they cast their lot have repeatedly shown their willingness to enslave and abandon the workers: the stories of coal towns and indebtedness to the company stores are legendary. More recently, the mechanization of coal mining has obviated all of the jobs once provided by the mines, at a much greater environmental cost. There is a madness at work here: our heritage is being destroyed, and make no mistake, the environment is our legacy; it pervades our songs and lore. But we seem to be willing to sacrifice our children’s inheritance for trinkets and our indulgence.
Fort McMurray, the support town for the tar sands operations, has the gold-rush feel pervading everything: hotel rooms and real estate cost more than prime cosmopolitan areas, labor is scarce, so service suffers, fortunes are made (and lost) overnight, and everyone is rushing to get theirs. Meanwhile, the people downstream (the Athabasca River looks like chocolate milk) are suffering myriad cancers and birth defects, but can’t get anyone to pay attention.
Showing posts with label adirondack museum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adirondack museum. Show all posts
27 July 2009
TAR SANDS - Part I
25 July 2009
Like all industrial extraction processes, the culpable actors don’t want publicity. I'm driving along next to the Albian sands project, a joint venture of Shell and Chevron/Texaco, which happened to be one of the most interesting excavation projects from the air, and the “Access Interdit” signs abound, as if one could actually do damage to this ravaged landscape. Of course the only damage is to reputation: no one is more dangerous than the photographer. Meanwhile, as I drive, I listen to the local radio station, which is full of the news of a recent study commissioned by the Alberta provincial government (which is very supportive of tar sands development) asserting (for the benefit of dubious USA lawmakers (who are always on the side of the environment)) that oil from tar sands has only ten percent more global warming footprint than traditional crude. Driving through Fort MacKay, a First Nation community which, unlike many others, has embraced tar sand development, I’m impressed with the new roads and community center and school, all in a village of 450 people. Of course, given the rate of cancers and other mysterious diseases I’ve read about, one wonders who will be around to enjoy it all. Must jobs always come at the cost of environmental devastation? A resounding NO.
Meanwhile, I’m in northern Canada and the weather feels like Florida. Can we realize the problem before it’s too late?
Like all industrial extraction processes, the culpable actors don’t want publicity. I'm driving along next to the Albian sands project, a joint venture of Shell and Chevron/Texaco, which happened to be one of the most interesting excavation projects from the air, and the “Access Interdit” signs abound, as if one could actually do damage to this ravaged landscape. Of course the only damage is to reputation: no one is more dangerous than the photographer. Meanwhile, as I drive, I listen to the local radio station, which is full of the news of a recent study commissioned by the Alberta provincial government (which is very supportive of tar sands development) asserting (for the benefit of dubious USA lawmakers (who are always on the side of the environment)) that oil from tar sands has only ten percent more global warming footprint than traditional crude. Driving through Fort MacKay, a First Nation community which, unlike many others, has embraced tar sand development, I’m impressed with the new roads and community center and school, all in a village of 450 people. Of course, given the rate of cancers and other mysterious diseases I’ve read about, one wonders who will be around to enjoy it all. Must jobs always come at the cost of environmental devastation? A resounding NO.
Meanwhile, I’m in northern Canada and the weather feels like Florida. Can we realize the problem before it’s too late?
01 June 2009
NEW YORK MAGAZINE!!!
Industrial Scars and my Gray Krauss exhibit are featured in New York Magazine this week!! Check it out: http://nymag.com/arts/art/.
16 October 2008
ADIRONDACKS - Part I
September 20, 2008
The Adirondacks is the largest intact temperate forest in the world, a vital wild space in itself, and a link to the Green Mountains and the rest of the 80 million acre Northern Appalachians. Though established as a protected park in 1885, much of it is privately held with no protections. I became interested in this magical place as the result of a project with the Northeast Wilderness Trust, http://www.newildernesstrust.org/, which asked me to help in the effort to preserve a thousand-acre parcel of land. LightHawk, http://www.lighthawk.org/, a fantastic group that flies environmentalists, had volunteered to fly us in that endeavor. My idea was a project that would examine the negative environmental impacts on this place that is so essentially part of our American heritage, and LightHawk’s great pilot, Bob Keller, agreed to fly me on this mission, too.
The Adirondacks was once home to much industry that has, for the most part, left the area in recent years; lumber and paper were tremendous, and still are a large presence; numerous mines littered the landscape, with the mills and processing plants that accompany them. With the help of Sid Whelan and some others with local knowledge, I was able to identify and locate a number of these sites, and plot a mission. In addition, I was able to get great support from Peter Kelley and his team at Kelley Campaigns, http://kelleycampaigns.homestead.com/, who brought The Adirondack Explorer and Adirondack Daily Enterprise on board for the project; suddenly, we had a full plane. Bob was going to be doing some maintenance on his plane in Schenectady where the Amtrak from NYC stops at a station minutes from the local airport (love that train). Our plan was to work up the East side of the park, shooting the sites we had identified, then pick up the reporters at Saranac Lake and do the locations in the North and West.
The first target was the defunct Palmer Paper Mill in Corinth, site of one of the original International Paper locations. Though the mill is closed, the site remains, waste tanks full, a deep wound left behind on the town whose livelihood once depended on the mill’s successful operation. The river there was dammed to provide power for the mill, the dam an enduring relic of a different time, and an ecosystem alteration with permanent effects on the flora and fauna that depend on the river.
One of our next sites was a paper mill still operant in Ticonderoga, with an environmental record to make the bold weep. We think of paper as a benign product, made from natural sources, associating it with the Chinese and Egyptians that invented it. The reality is that paper production is an environmental disaster from start to finish. The process is so terrifying that I will not even take a paper napkin at a restaurant any more. We flew over Lake George, looking for the Asian Mille Feuille that has clogged this most bucolic Eastern resort location; but we were too late in the year, and only managed to get some good shots of storm-water runoff into the Lake from residential locations. Bob (the pilot) was so great. Aside from his expert piloting, local knowledge, and understanding of the issues, he was able to provide further insights into the terrain below.
Next on the agenda was the old Republic Steel Mill in Port Henry (great name). Republic Steel was once the third largest steel producer in the country, founded in Youngstown, Ohio in 1899. Republic Steel’s Port Henry operation opened its doors in the mid-to-late 1800s, and was headquartered in Mineville and Witherbee, neighboring towns that were built up specifically to serve as communities for the mine workers and their families. All that remains today (as far as one can see) is a mountain of waste, a beautiful old factory building, and some water bodies with mysteriously colored sludge on the surface and lining the edges.
The journalists were awaiting us in Saranac Lake, and from there we flew over the High Peaks to the old Tahawus lead and titanium mine at the head of the Hudson River. Apparently, this was once considered a vital “national security site,” titanium and lead being crucial for many things military. But, imagine a lead mine at the head of one or our most important rivers. The site is beautiful: a mountain of waste, ponds of various bright blues and greens, and strange arrangements of detritus that remind us of nothing so much as unexplainable phenomena often attributed to UFOs.
In the end, we missed the last train out of Schenectady, so Bob flew me down to the next stop on the line in Hudson NY, and a taxi met me at the small airport and raced me to the train station.
The Adirondacks is the largest intact temperate forest in the world, a vital wild space in itself, and a link to the Green Mountains and the rest of the 80 million acre Northern Appalachians. Though established as a protected park in 1885, much of it is privately held with no protections. I became interested in this magical place as the result of a project with the Northeast Wilderness Trust, http://www.newildernesstrust.org/, which asked me to help in the effort to preserve a thousand-acre parcel of land. LightHawk, http://www.lighthawk.org/, a fantastic group that flies environmentalists, had volunteered to fly us in that endeavor. My idea was a project that would examine the negative environmental impacts on this place that is so essentially part of our American heritage, and LightHawk’s great pilot, Bob Keller, agreed to fly me on this mission, too.
The Adirondacks was once home to much industry that has, for the most part, left the area in recent years; lumber and paper were tremendous, and still are a large presence; numerous mines littered the landscape, with the mills and processing plants that accompany them. With the help of Sid Whelan and some others with local knowledge, I was able to identify and locate a number of these sites, and plot a mission. In addition, I was able to get great support from Peter Kelley and his team at Kelley Campaigns, http://kelleycampaigns.homestead.com/, who brought The Adirondack Explorer and Adirondack Daily Enterprise on board for the project; suddenly, we had a full plane. Bob was going to be doing some maintenance on his plane in Schenectady where the Amtrak from NYC stops at a station minutes from the local airport (love that train). Our plan was to work up the East side of the park, shooting the sites we had identified, then pick up the reporters at Saranac Lake and do the locations in the North and West.
The first target was the defunct Palmer Paper Mill in Corinth, site of one of the original International Paper locations. Though the mill is closed, the site remains, waste tanks full, a deep wound left behind on the town whose livelihood once depended on the mill’s successful operation. The river there was dammed to provide power for the mill, the dam an enduring relic of a different time, and an ecosystem alteration with permanent effects on the flora and fauna that depend on the river.
One of our next sites was a paper mill still operant in Ticonderoga, with an environmental record to make the bold weep. We think of paper as a benign product, made from natural sources, associating it with the Chinese and Egyptians that invented it. The reality is that paper production is an environmental disaster from start to finish. The process is so terrifying that I will not even take a paper napkin at a restaurant any more. We flew over Lake George, looking for the Asian Mille Feuille that has clogged this most bucolic Eastern resort location; but we were too late in the year, and only managed to get some good shots of storm-water runoff into the Lake from residential locations. Bob (the pilot) was so great. Aside from his expert piloting, local knowledge, and understanding of the issues, he was able to provide further insights into the terrain below.
Next on the agenda was the old Republic Steel Mill in Port Henry (great name). Republic Steel was once the third largest steel producer in the country, founded in Youngstown, Ohio in 1899. Republic Steel’s Port Henry operation opened its doors in the mid-to-late 1800s, and was headquartered in Mineville and Witherbee, neighboring towns that were built up specifically to serve as communities for the mine workers and their families. All that remains today (as far as one can see) is a mountain of waste, a beautiful old factory building, and some water bodies with mysteriously colored sludge on the surface and lining the edges.The journalists were awaiting us in Saranac Lake, and from there we flew over the High Peaks to the old Tahawus lead and titanium mine at the head of the Hudson River. Apparently, this was once considered a vital “national security site,” titanium and lead being crucial for many things military. But, imagine a lead mine at the head of one or our most important rivers. The site is beautiful: a mountain of waste, ponds of various bright blues and greens, and strange arrangements of detritus that remind us of nothing so much as unexplainable phenomena often attributed to UFOs.
In the end, we missed the last train out of Schenectady, so Bob flew me down to the next stop on the line in Hudson NY, and a taxi met me at the small airport and raced me to the train station.
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