Backyard Ecology

                     BACK YARD ECOLOGY

Have you ever seriously wondered whether your yard has a positive or negative effect on the environment?  Consider the following:

Watering your lawn depletes water resources.  Mowing, using aerators, leaf blowers, weed whackers, and edgers add to air pollution and eventually to global warming.  To cut your yard one time, your lawn mower emits as much pollution as a car on a 300 mile trip.

Excess fertilizers and pesticides run off into streams and lakes and destroy marine life.  Lawn clippings are over 20% of all household waste.  Lawn owners use up to 10 times more chemical pesticides an acre than do farmers.  In many western states, lawn watering accounts for as much as 60 percent of urban water use.  In our country, our lawns cover over 25,000,000 acres of countryside.  We spend an estimated 30 billion dollars each year to maintain the vast green blanket.   Would you believe grass is the country's largest single crop?

As bad as the above sounds, we really haven't touched on the real negative to our perpetual care lawn system.  We have created 25 million acres of an essentially sterile environment, totally absent of any wildlife.  Nothing can live on our grass carpets.

If we look back on our country's history, we can see the development of the lawn.  Our great grandfathers were determined to win the west, conquer the wilderness, and they did.  We won.  The wilderness has surely been conquered.  In fact, most of it is long gone.  It is only natural that we inherited a slash and burn attitude.  Our great grandfathers believed when you prevailed over the wilderness, the evidence of such was no trees.  In fact, most settlers went as far as no grass.  I can still remember my grandmother sweeping her bare dirt yard.  Now, as we approach the 21st century, we have moved slightly away from the slash and burn approach.  We have started replanting the wilderness, but with controls.  In many cities, trees now line the streets, and neatly trimmed yards meet the eye.   We are moving back toward a greener country, but in our landscaping, we are ignoring the basic essentials for wildlife habitat.  For wildlife to flourish, there must be food available as well as cover for protection.  When we remove honeysuckle and blackberry vines that look unkempt and snaky, we remove the animals that depend on the berries for food and the birds and small mammals that hide in the brambles.  One cannot randomly remove habitat if the land is to be shared.

Nationwide, our songbird population is plummeting.  Worldwide, we are seeing plant and animal extinction at a rate only surpassed by the great dinosaur extinction. There are many reasons for this alarming decline in plant and animal species, but without question, one of the prime causes is loss of habitat due to urban development.

Is there any way we can reverse the trend?  Can we individually make a difference?   I believe we can if we understand a few basic principles of wildlife management and agree to share our yard with wildlife. 

Now, let's look at a few simple ideas that will let us convert our sterile green yards into an attractive wildlife compatible yard.  First, it is not just parking the riding lawn mower or bush hog.  After all, we have worked for years to alter the environment around our home.  To return it to a wildlife compatible state will require more than letting the grass grow.  It doesn't matter if your house sits on 1/4 of an acre or 10 acres, the principals are the same.  When you analyze your yard with an eye toward improving wildlife habitat, the most critical part of your yard is the back yard.  Think of the back 20 feet, or 20 yards if you have a big yard, as a wildlife corridor. Wildlife corridors link together to allow animals to move across an area searching for food while protected by the cover it provides.  Now, consider your 20 foot wildlife corridor connected to your neighbor’s backyard to form a 40 foot corridor, which connects to your adjacent neighbor’s yard to give small mammals, birds, reptiles, and insects access to food and safety.  To continue the concept to create a wildlife friendly yard, focus on the edges of your yard.  If your yard is like my yard, I could give wildlife the back 20 yards or the other edges of my yard, and they would still starve to death.  When you turn this area into wildlife habitat, you must give Mother Nature a hand.  First, we should plant a grove of nut or berry producing trees along the very edge of the lot.  Then edge the grove with berry bushes of varying heights and species.  Mow and weed this area very lightly.  In fact, your goal should be to allow this area to slowly return to its natural state.  Next, along the sides of your lot, continue with more hedgerow type plants, along with berry bushes.  In the adjacent open areas, allow native grasses and wildflowers to reclaim a portion of the area.  In order to achieve the proper balance, you must plant the wildflowers and native grasses.  Finally, in a back corner of your yard, create a small pond.  When you build your pond, set it in a natural drainage area, possibly one that would receive runoff from your roof.  When building your pond, don't be concerned about the size.  A 6' by 10' pond is adequate.  The pond depth should be around 3 feet in its deepest part and feather out to 2" to 6" in depth on one end.  I recommend a thin layer of cement to slow seepage.  After construction, add 4 inches of dirt and rocks to cover the concrete.  Your construction should allow a natural drainage spill point to carry excess water into the wooded back portion of your lot.  Stock your pond with minnows and Mother Nature will do the rest.

Finally, leave a mowed strip along the sidewalk to keep your neighbors happy.

Your new yard now has the three criterion that makes for wildlife habitat: Woodland, wetland, and grassland.

Is the natural state ready for the natural yard?  Well, let's be honest, Arkansas usually doesn't lead the nation in innovative ideas or trends.  However, we do focus on our natural heritage much more than most areas of our country.  We may be ready to take the lead in restoring our urban landscape to one more wildlife friendly.

I believe, if we consider the tremendous expenditure of our resources to maintain the perpetual care yard, we will change our yards.  As our environmental awareness continues to grow, the natural yard will be the yard of choice.  Our grandchildren may very well look back on the first half of the 21th century with as much amusement as we had when we watched our great grandparents sweep their dirt yards.  So join me, and be one of the first on your block to plant something other than grass and ornamental pear trees.  Soon your neighbors will start to admire your woodlands, your berry bushes, your wildflowers, and the variety of wildlife your yard attracts.

Back to the 70s

Back to the 50s...or maybe just the 70s

            Well, I remember the 50s: Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Elvis, but unless you tune in XM Sirius Radio to the Oldies Station, you’re not going to hear any 50s music. However, the 70s music is still around, but I don’t see a resurgence anytime soon. But if you do miss the 70s, the present administration in Washington and in Little Rock are trying their best to bring back the good old 70s—environmentally. Yep, the 70s featured a river actually catching on fire, the Houston ship channel was mostly an oily sewer, New York City’s dirty air was almost toxic, and the idea that a person would swim in the Cities Hudson River was considered a joke.

That national environmental nightmare brought about the Clean Water Act of 1972, and later the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act was passed in a remarkable bipartisan effort.

Fast forward to 2018...36 years later, and take a look at the outstanding improvements in air and water quality, our forests and wildlife. In order to achieve this impressive improvement the EPA, Congress, and individual states have had a roll in enforcing the mandated regulations. Some states have made a lot more progress than other, and of course, Arkansas is near the bottom in spite of having the potential to actually be The Natural State. Yes, you got it, we’re moving in reverse with our governor, congressmen, and the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality making sure we bring up the rear. Our Attorney General’s lawsuit against the EPA to prevent certain smokestack emission from coal-fired electrical generating plants is a good example. To reduce the mercury spewing into the atmosphere from coal-fired plants with the potential to harm the mother’s fetus is dismissed as being too expensive.

 You might be naive enough to think no one in their right mind would want to reverse the outstanding national progress that has been made under Republican and Democratic administrations. If you actually believe that, you are dead wrong, and are using alternative facts.

            Today the EPA and the President, using Executive Orders, are working to reverse the environmental progress made, and they are being assisted by Congress and some individual state agencies. Those are the facts. It’s is a nationwide rollback of the 36 years of progress, from allowing coal mining in national forests to denying climate change and everything in-between. But let’s look closer to home. We have four Congressional Representatives, two Senators, and a Governor who can influence and actually enhance the EPA in its rule making and certainly can have an overall impact on the President’s Executive Directives. Well, what would I give the environmental score for our congressmen, governor, and president? Just a note of warning to my readers: I’m taking the gloves off!

I’m generous when I give the whole sorry bunch an F without using profanity. Want some local examples? Let’s start with the Buffalo National River. If you have read the papers lately, you know 14 miles of the River is now polluted. Of course, nothing has appreciably changed on the watershed except for...Oh you guessed it... the “hog farm”. Each year the hog farm spreads the hog waste on 11 fields near Big Creek...oh by the way... Big Creek has also turned up polluted. What a coincidence? The last time I checked the science books, water still runs downhill...and downhill to Big Creek...you guessed it again...Big Creek feeds into the Buffalo National River. Yes, only 14 miles of the Buffalo are polluted according to the latest tests, but what will next year and the next and the next bring? I’ll tell you what. It will bring more and more pollution until swimming will be restricted and ultimately the river will resemble a hog farm sewer. Am I crying wolf?

Hell no! I’m a geologist who knows the topography, and the karst (Swiss cheese) Boone Limestone landform that the hog farm and the fields on which they are sited. They are dumping hog farm waste on land that has a direct subsurface conduit to our National River. The tremendous amount of hog waste dumped make it virtually impossible for the river not to be polluted. Just look back at my initial column on the river some months ago, and you will see the current pollution is exactly what I predicted.

            The Governor could stop the pollution source tomorrow, but instead he appointed The Beautiful Buffalo Action Committee—It’s hard to say that without laughing. It has no authority to act on the hog farm. It is just a smoke screen that allows the River to be polluted while the Governor does nothing. Anyone who follows political maneuvers knows appointing a committee is a politician’s way to not act, but to pretend you care about a problem.

However, the Governor is not alone in failing to come to the river’s rescue. Congressman Bruce Westerman, at a Hot Spring’s Coffee with Your Congressman event, was asked: “Congressman, do you believe the C & H Hog farm will pollute the Buffalo River?” His answer was recorded by several individuals. “I think the folks who canoe on the river and urinate in it, will pollute the river more than the hog farm.” The hog farm dumps the waste equivalent to a city of 20,000 on the Buffalo watershed and the congressman can dismiss it? Well, a pro-hog-farm congressman who will let the Buffalo continue to be polluted won’t get my vote this fall. Of course Congressman Westerman doesn’t have the backbone to have a town hall meeting to explain his position. He’s also a back-to-the-70s congressman who has proposed the Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017. A thinly designed bill to make our National Forest timber company farms. His bill restricts public comments and allows up to 10,000 acres to be clear-cut without public input. Next time you see him ask how much money forest products companies have contributed to his campaign. It’s north of $100,000. He’s in the corporate timber company’s hip pocket—right next to their wallet.

            I wish that were all of the rollback to the 70s, but it’s not. A bill to gut the Endangered Species Act is on the table and based on the sorry environmental record of our elected officials, they will pass it, and we can kiss the Bald Eagle, the Grizzle Bear, the Gray Wolf, and a raft of other species goodbye.  The proposed bill will gut the original Endangered Species Act, and make it easier to delist and not to list critical species.

There’s a bottom line to all of this, and it is rooted in this administration’s goal to roll back environmental progress When 194 countries and the Pope are committed to fight global warming, and our country is backing out of the Paris Accord as the administration tries to deny climate change—all for coal miners, and when the same congress is trying to gut every environmental act and our congressman are happily going along with the President, you know it’s time to do the only thing we can—vote ‘em out!

thenorphletpaperboy: Hard Times

thenorphletpaperboy: Hard Times:                          HARD TIMES Sometimes I get inspired to write a particular column, and late last Thursday afternoon, when Ve...

Hard Times

                         HARD TIMES

Sometimes I get inspired to write a particular column, and late last Thursday afternoon, when Vertis and I were sitting under our little wooden pergola down by the pond having a little something to drink, a column idea hit me right between the eyes. We were listening to Apple Music via a great little Bose speaker, which along with our IPad, allowed us to hear nearly any artist recorded in the last 50 years, and I just happened to run across an album by Joan Baez. It was her 75^th Birthday album. Well, if you are a child of the 60s Joan is really a turn on, and as that clear, silky voice echoed in our back yard as the shadows lengthened, my mind drifted back to when I first listened to her. I was in college and her songs were on everyone’s playlist.

We smiled and settled in for a pleasant late afternoon of music.  Of course, we started by picking a few of her most popular songs, and then we listened to Joan sing with Emmylou Harris, and the ballad was called Hard Times. Well the lyrics popped up on our IPad, and as the two singers wafted in the steamy, summer afternoon, and as we listened and read the lyrics, memories flooded back. The two singers fit together perfectly musically, and while the song was being played we read the lyrics. Below is one of the several verses:

Let us pause in life’s pleasure and count its many tears, while we all sup sorrow with the poor. There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears. Oh, hard times come again no more.

‘Tis the song, the sign of the weary, hard times, hard times, come again no more. Many days you have lingered all around my door, oh, hard times, come again no more.

Well yes, as the song title indicates the song is about hard times, and that brought a flood of memories. Actually, I think, if you read the lyrics while the song is being played it amplifies the impact of the music, and by the time the song was over we were pretty much washed out mentally. All of the turbulent 60s flashed back as we sat there, and we relived some of those times as the song continued, Vertis said it first, but it was on my lips, “I can’t take it anymore. Play something else.” No, it wasn’t the quality of the voices or the music or the lyrics it was all of them put together intertwined so wonderfully, that it left us a basket case.

Actually, Vertis and I have been poor, but we have never really gone through real hard times. We had food on our table and clothes on our backs, and we knew, if we worked hard, we would be okay. As a pre-teen living on a farm without access to a balanced, wholesome diet, I went through numerous winters where, from bad nutrition, I developed boils and carbuncles on my neck, but never in the spring and summer when our gardens were putting forth more vegetables than we could consume. Yes, of course I worked and our whole family struggled just to make a living, but we never considered that we were going through hard times. It was just the way things were, and although we had to stretch our money to get along, our family never moaned about hard times. Those times were just what they were and hard---meant one thing---hard work, and my upbringing was instilled with a work ethic from my father and mother. Yes, they were trying times, but not really hard times.

After Vertis and I married we were still in college. My mother wasn’t financially able to help us with college expenses, and our part time jobs were all we had to fall back on.  However, even then, Vertis and I considered we were just going through a tight time financially, but with her working at the Baldwin Organ Factory soldering components in organs for $1.35 an hour as I bounced around the University from job to job---simultaneously. I was student manager of the Bough Commons, the dining hall, an employee of the University Bookstore---where I punched the time clock every time I had a had a free hour between classes, and in the late afternoons I worked cleaning cases and sweeping floors at the University Museum on the fourth floor of Old Main. No, we didn’t see many movies or go out to the Venesian Inn very often, but we made it.

 However, there were a few bumps. When Vertis went to the supermarket and checked out, it sometimes went like this.

 “When you hit fifteen dollars stop. Okay?”

“Sure, just a minute, oh… that sack of potatoes put you at $16.50.”

“Okay, hold everything…let’s see if I put this jar of peanut butter back…no that’s not enough…yes, the peanut butter and this box of cereal will do it….I’m sorry, y’all. I’ve got to put this back on the shelf.”

Yes, it was a little embarrassing, but Vertis, who could make her soldering console quota at the Baldwin Organ Factory with a couple of hours to spare while wearing gloves to protect those good-looking fingernails, wasn’t going to let putting back a jar of peanut butter bother her.

Of course, our parents and grandparents didn’t just ignore us, and our frequent trips home weren’t just because we were homesick. When the spring gardens were in we could count on Vertis’s grandparents to load us up with enough vegetables to hold us for a couple of weeks, and even as tight as money was, we could usually count on someone in the family slipping us a twenty.

 In today’s world our children have very little understanding of what hard times are. Most of our adult children and teenagers have never experienced anything like hard times, and they have no understanding of how to cope with the lack of essential services, food, and other amenities we take for granted. No, I’m not someone who goes on and on about our kids not knowing what hard times are, and secretly hope those sassy youngsters find out. Nope, I hope we all have the best of times ahead and none of us will ever experience what past generations went through.

A comment from a good friend, Dr. Jim Shepherd points the way back to what were really hard time.

 “We were lucky to be raised by the Greatest Generation!”  

Yes, looking back on that generation it is sure hard to argue with Jim. That generation lived through true hard times, but to them it was just part of life. However, as steel sharpens steel, those steel sharpened young men and women, who in the 1940s, fought and died for our freedom didn’t pick up courage, daring, bravery, and toughness in training before the War. They had it instilled in them from the time they could walk by our fathers and grandfathers, who did really have hard times, and those hard times had a name; The Great Depression, and those years were real hard times.

The Alarm Bell is Ringing

             The Alarm Bell is Ringing!

Stephen Hawking, who was called one of the smartest men who ever lived, made this statement a few years before his death; “In a hundred years, we will have polluted the Earth to the extent that it will be uninhabitable, and we will have to find another planet on which to live.” Dr. Hawking was basically saying the Earth will become so toxic that it will be a wasteland of landfills and rafts of plastic that will have filled our oceans. In some bodies of water it doesn’t have far to go. In the Pacific, there is already a plastic raft of material nine feet thick larger than the state of Texas.

Of course, a large portion of the World may already be under water from global warming caused by climate change before we have to vacate this planet, as Stephen Hawking predicted. Recently, His Holiness Pope Francis spoke out decisively about the threat to billions of people around the World from climate change. The Pope called climate change an international emergency that threatens everyone.  (Want more info on climate change? Read the great Voices Column on 7/9/18 by Dr. Malcolm Cleaveland professor emeritus of geosciences at the University of Arkansas. His area of expertise is paleoclimatology and climatology.)

Centuries before, Chief Seattle said: “To harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.”  I will paraphrase that by saying “Christians don’t trash our Earth.”         

I guess my little exercise routine has something to do with my current environmental reactions to what I see as an avalanche of pollution that is quickly trashing our earth. The exercise I have developed is a fairly rapid walk leaving my house on Calion Road on the edge of town, and then in a few hundred yards, I connect with the 167 By-pass. It’s about 3 and a half miles, and I was a jogger a few years back, but now I’m a rapid walker. Brisk walking is a good exercise and it gives you a chance to look at your surroundings. The Bypass is a pretty bland piece of a South Arkansas landscape, but the shoulders are wide and there are no hills, which I like.

As I walk, I see everything that can blow out of the back of a pickup truck, or a person can throw out a car window. When I view the huge amount of roadside trash one of the most obvious items I see are things that are not biodegradable. Yes, big word, but it means essentially plastic. Plastic everything from hundreds of plastic water bottles, to plastic straws including everything you can imagine made of plastic. Of course, we just ignore things such as plastic straws, but a little fact might make you reconsider when you suck up that Sonic Coke. Every hour, let that sink in, every hour 500,000 plastic straws are trashed, and since they are plastic, they will be with us for generations. You would think a garbage problem of that magnitude would have some folks up-in-arms to force straws to be made of paper, and sure enough over a dozen cities have already banned plastic straws. Seattle has not only banned plastic straws, but also banned single use plastic forks, spoons, and knives. And since I mentioned Seattle, let me make a comment about the town. It is considered one of the most livable cities in the country with a superior quality of life. Trails and sidewalks connect the inner city and almost 1/3 of the downtown workers either use bicycles or walk to work. They lead the nation in protecting the environment. But thank goodness Seattle isn’t the only city that’s trying to control the flood of plastic that threatens to overcome us. According to the number of legislative bills being proposed and nationwide polls, several states are ready to ban plastic straws and other one-time use of plastic utensils. The U. K. has already banned them, and Starbucks just announced they will eliminate all plastic straws. That will keep one billion straws a year from going to a landfill. I’m always looking for a good reason to stop at Starbucks.

However, plastic straws not only contribute to the overall landfill problem they actually are a significant part of the overall plastic trash. An estimated 7.5% of the landfill plastic trash comes from plastic straws. But there are other negatives in using plastic straws. Plastic straws can be detrimental to your health. Using a straw contribute to gas, bloating, and tooth cavities. Well, here’s another little problem with plastic straws, and you ladies might find this a good reason to quit the plastic…smoker’s wrinkles. That’s right, sucking on a plastic straw for years will do the same thing puffing on a cigarette will do…give you wrinkled lips!

Of course, plastic straws are only the tip of the plastic iceberg when you consider the 300 million tons of plastic products that are made each year, but those numbers are don’t reflect the actual enormity of the plastic problem. This is the number that is staggering…50% of this plastic goes into the one-time-use category such as plastic bags and other one-time uses. It is estimated each plastic bag is only used for 15 minutes and the vast majority end up in landfills or in our oceans. Recently a pilot whale beached itself in Thailand, and went through an agonizing effort to throw up the plastic bags it had ingested. It died and 80 plastic bags weighing 17 pounds were found in its stomach. The next time you grocery shop and come away with a half dozen plastic bags of groceries, think of that magnificent whale dying on the beach because it swallowed plastic bags.

I know it’s hard to understand the magnitude of the problem, but if you visit a landfill and view the hundreds of tons of non-recyclable plastic and other pieces of trash and then consider the World’s billions of people, maybe then you will have a better concept of why Stephen Hawking said in 100 years those landfills and other items that degrade our planet will become so numerous that future generation will be forced to live in squalor and Earth will become a toxic wasteland. That is the part that’s not under water from climate change.

Well, yes, there is hope for our planet, but it’s not from Washington. The plastic problem is a local problem, and it must be solved by local initiatives. Communities all across the country have already banned many of the items listed above and even a country, we might consider an undeveloped county, Rwanda, has banned all one time plastic products. That was ten years ago, and the country is doing just fine.

There are hundreds of web sites that offer reusable bags and other items that you can buy if you really want to help, and you can insist on either paper straws or no straw when you order a drink, and if paper straws aren’t available, then just sip the drink, and know that studies have shown a person will drink less of what is usually a sugary drink----and guess what? Lose weight.

138 Degrees in the Shade, Part 2

138 Degrees in the Shade, Part two

August 15^th 1965, the Red Desert of Libya.

            Of course, Bill and I know everybody in Norphlet so we spend a few hours a day just talking about folks back home. Two Norphlet High School graduates in charge of drilling a multi-million dollar well for Exxon. It’s pretty unbelievable, but after a few days it just hot and work, work, work, and thoughts of home pass.

            Yes, things are pretty grim and unbelievably hot, but the food is a real plus. The rig is a French rig, and they have a French chef. At lunch today the chef told us he has just received his supplies, and it included what he called a French delicacy; squid. Well, Vertis and I had fried squid when we spent a week in Athens and those small calamari were very tasty.

            It’s almost seven and we have just sat down to have dinner, and after an appetizer of whipped cream and onions, the chef brings out the main course. I’m looking for a pile of fried calamari, but instead the chef dips up a whole 18 inch squid and plops it on my plate. Then he takes a ladle and splashes a black sauce on top of the squid, and he says, “Squid in its own sauce.”

            It really looks gross, and I can smell a very fishy smell to go with it, but I know I have to try it.

            No, no, I can’t eat the squid, that bite has stuck in my throat. I check Bill, and he has just laid his fork down. Yes, the chef is muttering something;

            “Want hamburgers?”

            Wow, he just spit that out, but you would have had to hogtie me to eat that squid, so I’m quietly muttering “Yes” as the French crew gobbles up the squid. Yes, I do feel like an ugly American, but I don’t think many Americans would eat that squid, head and all, like the French crew did.

            It’s a few days later when one of the Libyans came back with a small gazelle that he managed to chase down with a Land Rover. Well, I really don’t approve of hunting with a Land Rover, but he dressed the gazelle and took it to the French chef to prepare.

            My gosh, I’ve just had maybe the best meal in my life. Of course, we’re making over how good it was to the chef, he’s beaming, and he rewards our compliments with a French cheesecake.                                                                   

            I’ve been waiting for the new bit that was put on at 8500 feet to get dull, which will give me about eight hours free while the crew pulls drill string and changes the bit. I’ve heard about rock carving made by pre-historic desert people on some cliff walls north of the rig, and I want to see the carvings, which are actually called petroglyphs. As I walk out of the dining hall, I see the drill pipe coming out of the hole, and I’m heading for my Land Rover.

            I’ve been driving for about an hour due north, and then, when I see a ridge over to the west, I turn and drive toward it. Thirty minutes later and I’m pulling up beside some impressive outcrops of sandstone where I notice something under the overhanging sandstone ledge. Then, on the sandstone wall under the ledge I see a carving. I can make out a stick figure and an animal, which is pretty fat. An elephant?

            That’s when I see a military looking vehicle heading my way with its light flashing. What? Algerian Border Patrol flashes through my mind, and after I yell, “Oh my God! I’m in Algeria!” I take off driving east, but they’re coming after me with lights flashing! I’m driving across the flat desert as fast as my Land Rover will take me, but they are gaining. That’s when I hear what might be a gunshot or the Land Rover backfiring, which makes me hunker down and stomp the accelerator to the floor. A dirty, hot Algerian jail comes to mind. Another noise and then another, and they are about to catch me, but as I dip into a dry stream bed, I turn and roar down over a rocky bottom for a few hundred yards, and up the other side I see them slowing down because there are some good size rocks in that dry stream bed, and now I’m gaining on them, and after another ten minutes they turn back. I guess I’m back in Libya.                                                                    

            My hands are shaking as I drive up to the rig. The last joint of pipe has just gone in the hole from a trip to change bit, and the driller has started back to drilling when I hear the rig brake start squealing as the driller eases off of the brake. That means the bit is penetrating rocks that are very porous, and are easy to drill.

            I walk out of the trailer, get the attention of the driller on the rig and give him a circle sign over my head, which means to stop drilling and circulate while we wait on the samples to come to the surface. From the depth we are drilling it will take about 20 minutes. I note the drilling mud looks a little frothy, and I yell to the driller, “Pierre! Gas cut mud! Get ready to close the rams, if it kicks.” The first samples are coming to the surface now, and as I reach out to get a handful of cuttings, I can smell oil. I take a quick whiff of the sample and nod, good oil odor. I stick my tongue to the samples, no salt taste..good.

            I’m heading down to the mudlog trailer with a bag of cutting to examine under the microscope Fifteen minutes later and I’ve examined the samples. They have good oil odor, fluorescence, oil staining, and I could see porosity in the sample. Well, another DST.  I walk up to the rig where Bill Sandifer is standing.

            “Good show, Bill. We’re going to test it. Set the packer at eight-thousand and eighty-five feet, fifteen minute open, and two hour final. If you flow oil, reverse it out.”

            “You got, Richard, but you’re gonna hear that bunch of roughnecks scream, when I tell them they are going to pull the pipe again and DST. Hell, they’ve been working all day making a trip, and they are about to have another eight hours of the same thing in this heat.”

            “Yeah, Bill, I know, but with a show like I just logged, the office would have my hide if I didn’t test it.”

            “Oh, I know it, Richard, but this crew has been drilling over in Algeria on field wells,

and they never test any of those wells.”

            “I think I’ll check things out at my trailer, while you tell the driller to come out of the hole for a test.”

            Bill laughs and I’m walking toward my trailer when I hear a string of what I think are French cuss words. The only word I can make out is “American!”

To be continued

PYour Grandchildren's World

               Your  Grandchildren’s World

   You had better skip this column, because I’m going to put a big guilt trip on you. Still reading? Well, here goes: It is without saying that you can have all the money in the world, but if you don’t have your health, what good is money? But you might say, “Well, I have my health.” Okay, but would it matter to you if your significant other didn’t have his or her health, or what if some of your off-spring didn’t have their health? Would you care? How about your great grandchildren? Well, of course you would care. But let’s stretch it a bit. What if a child, whose Moro Bay mother ate a lot of mercury contaminated fish, which means that child would likely live a sub-quality, lower I. Q. life instead of having a professional careers? Would you care? I hope you would.

             I could go on and on, but you get the point. If we really care about our Earth and its people, it directly effects how we and the rest of mankind treat our environment, because we are interconnected, and that child from Moro Bay is a child of the Earth, and it could easily be your grandchild or great grandchild.

            The idea, that for a short-term economic gain, we would doom an innocent child to a sub-par life is about as Un-American as anything I can imagine, but we are doing it daily, and those who can make a difference, such as our pregnant Attorney General, who is actively trying to block environmental rules (The Clean Power Plan) that would reduce the mercury emitted from Arkansas’ coal fired plants. That’s the mercury, which ends up in fish, and if a woman consumes a certain amount, during her early months of pregnancy, the child will probably have a reduced I. Q.  That’s not me pulling it out of thin air; that’s a proven scientific fact.

             I feel very strongly that by exposing individuals to environmental hazards just to make money, by evading existing environmental laws, or to oppose rules in place, is criminal. Yes, to reduce the quality of life of an individual just to make a buck isn’t criminal, what is? Of course, if by congressional action or presidential decree, the existing environmental laws are relaxed resulting in the loss of life or the degrading of life for a people, then that’s also criminal in my book, and to encourage using dirty coal as a fuel rather than nonpolluting alternatives, that, in my book, is also a crime.

            There are so many environment problems that will harm our grandchildren I could list, but I think one of the biggest environmental dangers is allowing our planet to warm until in years to come several billion people will suffer and numerous coastal cities will become uninhabitable. Here in the good old USA, the present Administration is denying global warming, just to curry coal mining votes in West Virginia, etc. and to allow mining of coal in the National forests, and on top of that they are extending lifelines to uneconomical, dirty coal fuel electrical generating plants to keep them going. By doing that our country is setting a horrible example to the rest of the world. Yes, global warming is a certainty, and any open minded person with a 6th grade education knows that. Of the 196 countries in the world, we are the only one whose leadership denies global warming. Even Syria has signed the pact. But what is worse than not signing the agreement are the folks who are denying global warming, knowing they are wrong, and their greed to make money is causing them to perpetrate a crime against humanity.

 Of course, the head of the EPA, who should be leading the way in protecting the environment, is leading the way all right, but he’s leading the way to dismantle as many environmental laws as he can, while having a $43,000 soundproof booth built in his office. Have we totally lost our moral compass? Have let the greed to make money dominate our lives? Corporate profits are at an all-time high and we have full employment, so why have we become so greedy that we will do anything to make a dollar? We should use this time of unequaled prosperity to strengthen our environmental laws.

       But dirty coal just the tip of the environmental iceberg because we are ignoring hundreds of other horrible problems such as the mountains of plastic, which are fowling the earth’s environment to the point where huge masses of plastic float out in the open water of the Pacific. One of these masses weighs 7 million tons, it’s twice the size of Texas, and up to 9 feet deep. Those plastic rafts in our oceans contaminate the oceans and create an ongoing hazard to animal life. Eight billion tons of plastic trash are dumped into the oceans each year, but hey “That’s way out in the Pacific”, you may say. I guess that is what you’re saying when you toss that plastic water bottle out the car window. Actually, around the World 1,000,000 plastic water bottles are used every minute, and only about 9% are recycled. I’m saying this, “There will not be another plastic water bottle allowed in my house.”                 

        Yes, we’re all guilty, and the solution in not to just say, “You’re right, Richard.” but to do your part in cleaning up and protecting our Earth. Everyone who has the intelligence to read this column knows how they can help, but are you going to wait until an environmental disaster is in your face?

           Let me give you an example: When I was a P. C. & E Commissioner there was a problem with a major chicken processing company disposing of waste chicken parts in an open mining pit. One of the individuals who lived in the area came before the Commission to protest was an elderly lady. I was impressed that at her age she would be so environmentally active, and I asked her, “When did you become so concerned about the environment?” She answered, “When the flies got so thick on my screen door that I couldn’t see out.”  And then she hesitated...”and the smell was so bad....” I was stunned with her reply, because I’m a visual person who grew up around barn waste with plenty of flies, but when that little lady said “...Flies were so thick on my screen door I couldn’t see out” I could imagine not only the flies, but the smell. I guess the question is for you, the readers of this column, to answer, “Are you going to wait until you can’t see out the screen door for the flies to be active in trying to improve our environment? “

            Yes, I have had a number of people say, “Richard, why waste your time!” I guess, I may be, but if I live long enough to see my great grandchildren have to live in an environmentally degraded world, and they ask me why did you let it happen, at least I can say, “I tried!” Will you be able to say the same thing?