----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 11:12
AM
Subject: Iowa Child Project
Hi,
Here is a copy of the letter that is being sent to the Vision Iowa
board about the proposed Coralville "rainforest." You are welcome to
distribute it as you wish. Anyone who wants to add their name
should contact Carol DeProsse at the e-mail address
below.
Thanks,
Myra Emerson
--------------- Forwarded message ---------------
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,
--- end forwarded text
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Bavousett
Photographer
University of Iowa
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