Shelley Sheehy wrote:

What do people know about the holdup on the energy bill caused by Grassley's
demand that the Townsend rainforest project near Coralville be included?  I
read this in the Post last week.  Didn't local residents express real
opposition to this project?
==============================================
The following message was posted on another Iowa listserve Sunday and is
copied here by Jane Clark.

On the front page of Saturday's Des Moines Register was a story headlined
"Pork for Iowa" (see web address below)

http://desmoinesregister.com/news/stories/c4789004/22710629.html

The story reported that Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa is seeking special
government financing, as part of a new energy bill in Congress, for a
tropical rainforest and learning center in Coralville (better known to some
of you as the "Iowa Environmental Project", promoted by the Iowa Child
Institute).  I would encourage you to contact Senator Grassley (using the
web address below) and ask him to not fund this project.  Let him know that
good examples of Iowa's real "rainforest" (its prairies, forests and
wetlands) are being lost every year because of a lack of funds.  Iowa needs
to protect these areas, part of its natural heritage, not build a copy of a
plant community from another part of the world.  Suggest to Senator Grassley
that Iowa needs more projects like the addition to the Effigy Mounds
National Monument in northeast Iowa, which he supported with federal funds.

chuck underscore (_) grassley with an @ after grassley, then
grassley.senate.gov.  (I am writing this out because computers insist on
underlining the entire e-mail address, which hides the _ between chuck and
grassley.

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The proposed "Iowa Environmental Project" has a tenative budget of $225
million.  That could purchase a lot of prairie, forest and wetlands.  Remind
Senator Grassley that Iowa's public and private conservation agencies do not
have anywhere near enough funds to protect the best examples of Iowa's plant
communities, its natural heritage.

It probably would not hurt to e-mail Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa either:


The proposed "Iowa Environmental Project" has a tenative budget of $225
million.  That could purchase a lot of prairie, forest and wetlands.  Remind
Senator Grassley that Iowa's public and private conservation agencies do not
have anywhere near enough funds to protect the best examples of Iowa's plant
communities, its natural heritage.

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