Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 10:12:15 -0600

From: "Carol DeProsse" <[log in to unmask]>

Dear Board of Directors of Iowa Vision:

We are citizens from Johnson County who oppose the Iowa CHILD proposal, a planned 85-acre complex that includes a 5-acre simulated rainforest, an elementary school, an aquarium, and a 600 room hotel. This proposal is intended to be funded by public and private monies.
 
Iowa CHILD is contrary to the legislative mandate and the mission of Vision Iowa. Senate File 2447, the legislation that created Vision Iowa, includes these statements:

Section 9, paragraph 3:

  When reviewing the applications, the review committee and the department shall consider, at a minimum, all of the following:  

g. The extent to which the project has taken the following planning principles into consideration:

(2) Provision for a variety of transportation choices, including
pedestrian traffic.

(3) Maintenance of a unique sense of place by respecting local cultural and natural environmental features.

(4) Conservation of open space and farmland and preservation of critical environmental areas.

(5) Promotion of the safety, livability, and revitalization of existing urban and rural communities.        

Building a simulated rainforest, tropical aquarium, and large-scale multimedia theater does not maintain a unique sense of place nor does it respect the local environmental features of Coralville, the surrounding area, or anyplace in Iowa.  An 85-acre complex of buildings does not conserve existing open space and farmland. There is no public transportation to the planned development area, and any provision for pedestrian traffic will be to accommodate those going to this planned tourist attraction. The Coralville/Iowa City/North Liberty area, as well as the entire of Johnson County, is already an exceedingly safe place to live, rates as one of the most livable areas by many national standards, and is not in need of revitalization through a major, Disney-like tourist attraction. For the long term well-being of the state of Iowa, both taxpayer and private dollars would be far better spent in bringing educational improvement and opportunity to more economically depressed areas.

We want Vision Iowa funds to be used in accordance with the spirit and letter of the enabling legislation.  For example, through a prairie restoration (including replicas of sod houses and early plains communities), children could be taught about the history of the prairies and wooded areas of Iowa, as well as its early inhabitants. This would do more to instill a sense of 'being Iowan' than any rainforest could ever do. Children could participate in restoration and conservation activities and learn about how the actions of humans impact valuable natural resources, including those of tropical rainforests.  Trails for the enjoyment of a natural area would insure that people got their exercise in the out of doors rather than on escalators, elevators, and walkways 25  or more feet above an artificial rain forest canopy. 

What are we teaching our children when we continue to destroy remaining remnants of natural areas and eliminate more farmland to build an indoor simulated wilderness that includes artificial plants?  It is ironic that while cutting funds for REAP and other environmental programs in Iowa, taxpayer money would be used for this project.  Children learn from the actions of adults.  We should model an appreciation of, and respect for, nature if we expect our children to act in environmentally responsible ways.

The Iowa CHILD project is ill-conceived and wrong-headed.  The Iowa CHILD website contains statements such as the following:

  "The experience of the rainforest canopy is offered at no other indoor attraction to our knowledge. It is available to the public only in remote tropical rainforest locations in the wild, where canopy access depends on stairways that climb high into the trees to tree-house platforms and on walkways suspended between the trees. Iowa Child provides this experience to large numbers of people, safely, at low cost, and indoors." (Chermayeff, Sollogub and Poole, Inc., Iowa Child: Conceptual Re-Design and Site Evaluations; Iowa CHILD website.)

To maintain that one can experience a rainforest by walking around in an indoor, imitation rainforest is naive at best.  It erroneously assumes that humans can experience artificial ecosystems in the same manner as they can experience living, breathing, biologically diverse realities. Such an assumption underlies much of the destruction of the world's diverse ecosystems, including the few remaining rainforests, which are in great peril of disappearing entirely from the face of the earth. If we truly want to save rainforests from extinction we would be better off spending our money to send children and teachers to study them in their natural state. This would provide rich, educational experiences for Iowa's children and teachers alike.

The energy cost of the Iowa CHILD project has been estimated at $3,000,000. Iowa imports 98% of its energy. Every effort should be taken to conserve electricity and natural gas supplies. How will the rainforest be cooled in the dead heat of Iowa summers? Warmed during the bitter cold of Iowa winters? In the tropics, where rain forests occur naturally, the day length is considerably even throughout the year. The only plant life that will be unaffected by day length in the artificial rainforest will be the artificial ones, the trees wired up to house lights and stereo components to broadcast rainforest sounds.

Another consideration is the drain on the aquifers of the region. A complex drawing 1.2 million visitors a year will have significant sewage disposal needs, in addition to the water necessary to maintain whatever living organisms are in the rainforest and aquarium. The aquifers of the world, including those in Iowa, are already severely threatened by burgeoning population growth, over development, and a lack of conservation.

What will be the material used to cover the rainforest? Glass? Plexiglass. Polycarbonate? Stretchable film? And what will happen to the complex should it be subjected to a tornado or the high winds such as came through this area in 1998? The world's climatologists predict increasing numbers of severe and turbulent weather events in the years to come. This is born out by the enhanced nervousness of the insurance companies that are responsible for the payouts in the aftermath of the destruction of such weather events.

What about pest control? Will it be natural or chemical? Pesticides have now been linked to Parkinson's Disease and other neurological disorders. Surely don't want our children learning in artificial environment where pests are kept under control by chemical means. What are the proposed natural biological controls which would substitute for chemical controls?

We would like to cite a paragraph from an article that appears on the Iowa CHILD website:

 "The large pavilion structure, with its steel trusses, fabric roof, glazed walls, and environmental systems for the rainforest is inherently expensive to construct. Other considerations include: the fabrication of the tall (artificial) tree structures, the interwoven circulation system of elevators, bridges, ramps, escalators and stairs for the public, the myriad living and non-living exhibit details; the utilities distribution within the trees and exhibits; the integrated systems of environmental control and life support; the procurement, placement and care of the living trees, vines, epiphytes, and other plants; and the procurement, placement and care of the birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, invertebrates and other animals. Adjacent hotel rooms, office space, and retail/restaurant facilities enjoy direct views into the habitat."

Web sites will provide information to Iowa Vision directors regarding the emphasis on tourism rather than education regarding the many completed projects involving the consultants of  the Iowa CHILD project. Citizens must ask themselves about the education value of aquaria given the degraded state of the world's oceans and waterways.

Here is another statement from the Iowa CHILD website, contained in a list of museums and other attractions that were visited in developing the project:

"We can't imagine going to Chicago and not visiting the Shedd (Aquarium). These folks have figured out how to display large animals (dolphins and whales!) in a way that is both humane and fun. Want to see a Beluga whale smile? This is the place."

We take strong issue with the assertion that whales in captivity are happy and smiling.  This very controversial exhibit in Chicago should not be a model for Iowans.

Lastly, we conclude with several selected paragraphs from The Rainforests, A Celebration, published by Chronicle Books of San Francisco, and contributed to by some of the world's leading rainforest ecologists, evolutionary biologists, zoologists, and botanists.

"The rainforest is not merely a random collection of plants and animals but a highly complex interactive community. Trees provide the framework for this community, supporting it in a huge variety of ways. Throughout the rainforest ecosystem, however, three is continual conflict between species, and no conflict has shaped the forest so profoundly as the evolutionary battle between the trees and herbivores."

"When considering the protection of biological diversity it is not enough just to protect the full array of plant and animal species. It is important as well to protect the different assemblages of species that make for distinct biological communities. Recent studies of butterflies in three 2-1/2 acre plots in the central Amazon, for example. Recorded 217 of 454 species known in the general area. However, even though the three plots were close to one another and superficially appeared to be similar forest, only about twenty-five percent of the butterfly species were shared in common by the three plots, and the twenty-five percent were unique to each plot."

"Tropical rainforests hold the greatest diversity of life of any environment on earth. Hidden by the vegetation from all but the trained eye are a multitude of plants and animals, rare, strange and beautiful. Among them are many species as yet undiscovered and unnamed, which may be of immense potential value to humanity; and there exist in the rainforest life forms which occur nowhere else in the world."

Rainforests are ancient and complex ecosytems that are everchanging as they continue to evolve. They cannot be duplicated or simulated, and they should not be artificially recreated to serve as tourists attractions and unworthy models to be used for the education of our children.

Sincerely,