ALl are welocme to participate in the vigil tomorrow.
Post-Forward-Give to your local newspaper.
Confinement Equality Vigil and Media Event schedule:
"Confinement Equality Vigil". Friday Sept 15 though Tuesday, Sept
19. The vigil will take place on the Statehouse grounds in Des Moines,
Iowa, by the walkway to the Vietnam Memorial on the south side of the
Capitol building. There is public parking right at that site. The vigil
will be from 9am to 7pm with a "Media Event" at 11am each day. The Media
Event speaker's schedule is laid out below.
This vigil is about understanding Confinements
(CAFO's Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) as wastewater technology
that has been developed in a regulated sector of America and has been
transferred to the unregulated sector of agriculture, and the resultant
health and life threatening effects on people and the environment. This is
an important argument in that it gives a structure to understand generally
all the particular community problems when a confinement moves into the
neighborhood. It becomes not an argument about farming but about
industrial processes, their resultant poisons, and how the community is
affected by them.
This is the vigil request: "There are no cities or towns in Iowa
that take the manhole covers off of their sewers, put blowers down in the
sewers, and blow those poison sewer gasses into the air over those cities.
There are obvious health reasons why this is not allowed. These same poison
sewer gasses are being produced by confinements. Why do we allow these
poison gasses to be constantly blown into our rural neighborhoods?
To increase awareness of the confinement poisons issue in Iowa, I
am going to ask the urban people of Iowa to share in the experience of this
rural problem by doing exactly that; take the manhole covers off their
sewers, put blowers down in those sewers and blow that poison sewer gas
into their neighborhoods. I am asking for that to happen on the last day of
this vigil, Tuesday, Sept 19."
The context for this vigil is laid out in the talk I gave at the
118th Annual Meeting of the Iowa Academy of Science, April 21, 2006 at
Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. (For some of you, it may be
attached. You can read this if you go to my online book "Civilized and
Inclusive" www.oneota.net/~watsoncampaign , or google the title and click
on chapter 6. The IAS talk is at the top of that chapter.) The Media Event
speakers' areas of expertise and experience will meld together within this
overall context.
Friday, Sept 15 vigil 9am-7pm. Media Event at 11am:
Bob Watson will lay out the story of confinements as wastewater
technology and what that means for people's health and the environment.
That story will provide the context for the Media Event speakers. Watson
will preview the Media Event speakers, what they will be addressing and when.
Saturday, Sept 16 vigil 9am-7pm. Media Event at 11am:
Jim Miles-Polka, civil engineer, Des Moines, Iowa will address Bob
Watson's request for cities and towns to take their manhole covers off
their sewers, put blowers down in those sewers and blow those poison sewer
gasses into the city and town neighborhoods. He will speak to confined
spaces laws, regulations, equipment, conditions and health hazards, for
people who work in sewer conditions.
Bob Watson will speak about studies which show the health problems
off the public when they are exposed to these same poison sewer gasses
coming from confinements.
Sunday, Sept 17 vigil 9am-7pm. Media Event at 11am:
Bob Anderson, Decorah, Iowa, will speak to living next to the
first confinement built after the loss of the 1000 foot separation between
confinements and sinkholes in karst topography, and what that has meant for
his life and his peregrine falcon work. He will also discuss laws that are
being ignored or are just a fiction to conform to Legislative Rules, which
allow this confinement to exist, and the legal means he is pursuing in
order to get a remedy.
Mike Meyer, Ossian, Iowa, will speak to the effects of scale
(size) of chicken confinement operations in karst for natural underground
water systems. He will talk about the numerous documented pollution events
to his spring from the shallow-level aquifer being breached during site
preparation for chicken confinements, how the laws are not being enforced,
and why he has had to file a lawsuit.
Wally Taylor, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, environmental lawyer, will
discuss the legal aspect of laws regulating industrial agriculture in Iowa.
Monday, Sept 18 vigil 9am-7pm. Media Event at 11am:
Bob Watson will discuss whether conservation methods can save the
petro-chemical/industrial model of agriculture. He will also introduce
people who will discuss environmentally benign models of agriculture which
are safe for human health.
Paul Willis Niman Ranch Pork Company, Thornton, Iowa, will talk
about alternative ways of raising pigs.
George Naylor President of the National Family Farm Coalition.
Steve Reinart, Glidden, Iowa, Holistic Grazier. He will discuss
rotational grazing and how that, among other advantages, can build soil.
Tuesday, Sept 19 vigil 9am-7pm. There will be no Media Event on this last day.
The last day of the vigil is an invitation to all who would like
to sit and keep vigil with me from 9am to 7pm. If you are planning on
vigiling, make sure you bring a lawn chair.
During the time I am in Des Moines doing the vigil I will be
staying with Frank Cordaro at the Catholic Worker house. You may contact me
there before 9am or after 7pm.
Phil Berrigan Catholic Worker House
713 Indiana Avenue
Des Moines, IA50314
(515) 282-4781
Bob Watson
2736 Lannon Hill Rd
Decorah, IA 52101
563-382-5848
[log in to unmask]
"Civilized and Inclusive" www.oneota.net/~watsoncampaign
Press handouts and e-uploads will be available at the Media Events.
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