EOY 5/19/17

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This week we needed to do out EOY (end of year) project for science. We had to make a brochure or a flyer on three of the environmental accords from last week, saying how they show up in our math portion, creating an urban village from scratch. Here is my paragraphs on the actions below:

Action 10: Action 10 clearly states, “Ensure that there is an accessible public park or recreational open space within half-a-kilometer of every city resident in seven years.” My Urban Village has a gymnasium that all sorts of activities can be in. There is also a grassy field that has many different uses. People can come into the Urban Village and use the grassy field for many things. The gym will also be open to the public, if people want to play basketball in the gym or an indoor game of football if it’s raining. There is an open recreational space in half-a-kilometer of all students.

Action 13: “Develop and implement a policy which expands affordable public transportation coverage to within half-a-kilometer of all city residents in ten years.” The Urban Village is small enough that the students and teachers in it will not need public transportation to get around. They will get to walk around. Even if there was public transportation, the village isn’t big enough for it, and it would be free!

Action 17: “Promote the public health and environmental benefits of supporting locally grown organic foods. Ensure that twenty percent of all city facilities (including schools) serve locally grown and organic food within seven years.”

There is a large garden in our Urban Village. It serves locally grown healthy non GMO food to the school in the village. All of the food is quite healthy, and there is no stinky truck bringing in your fresh food!

Environment 5/12/17

We had to do a says-means-matters.

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You are working with a partner. For each of the actions included in the Urban Environmental accords, record what you understand about what it says (means). Then add why you think it it important (matters). The first one has been done for you.

Says	Means	Matters
Energy
Action 1: Adopt and implement a policy to increase the use of renewable energy to meet ten percent of the city's peak electric load within seven years.	In the next seven years, cities will increase the use of renewable energy to produce electricity.	By having more electricity coming from renewable resources there will be less pollution from fossil fuels and it will cost less.
Action 2: Adopt and implement a policy to reduce the city's peak electric load by ten percent within seven years through energy efficiency, shifting the timing of energy demands, and conservation measures.	In the next seven years, we will reduce energy use.	By reducing energy use, we are slowing down the process of pollution.
Action 3: Adopt a citywide greenhouse gas reduction plan that reduces the jurisdictions emissions by twenty-five percent by 2030, and which includes a system for accounting and auditing greenhouse gas emissions.	By 2030 we will reduce greenhouse gas emissions.	By reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we will conserve our planet longer.
Waste Reduction
Action 4: Establish a policy to achieve zero waste to landfills and incinerators by 2040.	We are letting 0% of our trash go into incinerators and landfills by 2040.	Because there will be less pollution so the air will be clean.
Action 5: Adopt a citywide law that reduces the use of a disposable, toxic, or nonrenewable product category by at least fifty percent in seven years.	In seven years all toxic and non renewable material will be reduced by 50%.	If non renewable materials are still around, then there will be more pollution and less clean air.
Action 6: Implement "user-friendly" recycling and composting programs, with the goal of reducing by twenty percent per capita solid waste disposal to landfill and incineration in seven years.	In the next seven years, we will reduce disposable non renewable resources and start composting more.	Then if we do compost more than incinerating, that we can reuse things and we don’t have to ruin the air and resources such as trees that we already have.
Urban Design
Action 7: Adopt a policy that mandates a green building rating system standard that applies to all new municipal buildings.	Building stuff will pollute less if we enforce this law.	Pollution can kill babies and older people with weaker lungs, or make it harder to breathe for them. Also, animals will die too.
Action 8: Adopt urban planning principles and practices that advance higher density, mixed use, walkable, bikeable and disabled-accessible	Make things accessible for disabled people, bikes and pedestrians.	Bikers and pedestrians cannot get to places if they do not have a car. It can be hard to get where you want to be.
Action 9: Adopt a policy or implement a program that creates environmentally beneficial jobs in slums and/or low-income neighborhoods.	There will be more jobs in neighborhoods where there are no jobs.	Some people do not have jobs and then there will be more people with jobs.
Urban Nature
Action 10: Ensure that there is an accessible public park or recreational open space within half-a-kilometer of every city resident by 2015.	By 2015, there will be a park accessible to everyone in the community.	Everyone needs to be able to get to an open space or recreational area somewhere near them.
Action 11: Conduct an inventory of existing canopy coverage in your city; and, then establish a goal based on ecological and community considerations to plant and maintain canopy coverage in not less than fifty percent of all available sidewalk planting sites.	There must be a place with lots of trees and plants.	Trees and plants are much needed by the community and we need the air from the plants so we can breathe.
Action 12: Pass legislation that protects critical habitat corridors and other key habitat characteristics (e.g. water features, food-bearing plants, shelter for wildlife, use of native species, etc.) from unsustainable development.	Pass a law that will protect water, food, and shelter for humans and animals.	Animals need food, water, and shelter to live.
Transportation
Action 13: Develop and implement a policy which expands affordable public transportation coverage to within half-a-kilometer of all city residents in ten years.	In ten years, all affordable transportation will come within half a kilometer of all city residents.	People will not have to walk so far to a bus stop or train.
Action 14: Pass a law or implement a program that eliminates leaded gasoline (where it is still used); phases down sulfur levels in diesel and gasoline fuels, concurrent with using advanced emission controls on all buses, taxis, and public fleets to reduce particulate matter and smog-forming emissions from those fleets by fifty percent in seven years.	In seven years, 50% of all pollutants in gasoline will be reduced.	If pollutants are not reduced, people with weaker lungs, like babies and older people, will get lung disease or die.
Action 15: Implement a policy to reduce the percentage of commute trips by single occupancy vehicles by ten percent in seven years.	In seven years, the percentage of commute trips by single occupancy vehicles will be reduced by 10%.	Because there will be more pollutants that do not have to be in the air harming people.
Environmental Health
Action 16: Every year, identify one product, chemical, or compound that is used within the city that represents the greatest risk to human health and adopt a law and provide incentives to reduce or eliminate its use by the municipal government.	Choose a chemical or product that could be at risk for human health and terminate it.	If there was a harmful chemical that would hurt people, eliminate its use.
Action 17: Promote the public health and environmental benefits of supporting locally grown organic foods. Ensure that twenty percent of all city facilities (including schools) serve locally grown and organic food within seven years.	In seven years, people will support the use of locally grown organic foods at schools and places.	People need lots of healthy food to feed their children so they will be healthy in the future.
Action 18: Establish an Air Quality Index (AQI) to measure the level of air pollution and set the goal of reducing by ten percent in seven years the number of days categorized in the AQI range as "unhealthy" or "hazardous."	Measure the level of pollution in the air and reduce that number by 10% in the next seven years.	If there is too much pollution in the air, then people will  get sick and die from loss of clean air.
Water
Action 19: Develop policies to increase adequate access to safe drinking water, aiming at access for all by 2015. For cities with potable water consumption greater than 100 liters per capita per day, adopt and implement policies to reduce consumption by ten percent by 2015.	By 2015, safe drinking water will be in range of everyone.	If people have dirty or no water they will die.
Action 20: Protect the ecological integrity of the city's primary drinking water sources (i.e., aquifers, rivers, lakes, wetlands and associated ecosystems).	Protect all of the drinking water.	If water is dirty, animals and people will not be able to live well.
Action 21: Adopt municipal wastewater management guidelines and reduce the volume of untreated wastewater discharges by 10 percent in seven years through the expanded use of recycled water and the implementation of a sustainable urban watershed planning process that includes participants of all affected communities and is based on sound economic, social, and environmental principles.	In seven years, we will reduce the volume of untreated wastewater discharges by 10%	There will be more clean drinking water to drink.

Letter to the Editor of The Gray Times

Dear Editor, 

I found several errors in the news article that you published on February 21, 2001. It IS true that chlorine is killing the fish. Several things are responsible for the fish kill, and chlorine is one of them. The chemist DID test the water, and there was no chlorine, but Ken Unballe was cheating. He let out all of the chlorinated water a couple days before the chemist tested, and then refilled his pool with river water. I have proof that he didn't add chlorine-on Friday, January 19, 2001, 26 children caught E. coli. One of them died. The germ was given to them in the pool, where there should have been chlorine to kill it. 

Also, there were phosphates in the pond. Phosphates do poison fish. But we tested the water dumping into the pond from the town, the golf course, and the cattle ranch, and the cattle ranch was proven innocent. The small town's water was clean, as was the water from the cattle ranch. The golf course is dropping in all the phosphates. They use too much fertilizer to keep the lawns green, and lots of water. The water from the golf course had to many phosphates in it. So the golf course was the one dumping the poisonous phosphates into the pond, thereby killing some fish. 

Fish autopsies did find oil in the stomach and intestines of SOME of the fish they tested. Only some. And how do we know that the oil that killed those fish came from his refinery? It could have been the tanks that spilled, or car oil that spilled onto the street and into the river. Only 14 of the 50 fish they tested died of oil in their stomach/intestines. That isn't a lot. 

Sediment does get into the water, but it makes the rivers to HOT for fish, not cold. The sediment is dark, so it attracts the sun to it. The water will heat up. Warm and hot water doesn't hold oxygen as well as cold water. In the heat, the fish need more oxygen to be able to function, but there is less oxygen actually there. And the sediment is NOT coming from Don Juan Tuno's logging operations. It's coming from Parallel Park! If mountain lions are allowed to be hunted again, there will be more deer. The more deer there are, the more grass they need to eat. They will overgraze, causing there to be no grass roots to hold in sediment on the banks, causing sediment to fall in the water. 

There is acid rain in the area, but it NOT coming from the oil refinery. The refinery has scrubbers, a thing that they put on the smokestacks to clean out all the pollution. Also, there are two types of acid, nitric acid and sulfiric acid. It is the nitric acid rain, and nitric acid comes from the pollution cars give out. Anyway, pH8 acid rain isn't even acidic. 1 is the most acidic, 7-8 is okay for fish, and 8-14 is too basic. So pH8 acid rain isn't a problem, because all the rivers are more acidic than 8. 

This is my proof that none of Don Juan Tuno's operations are causing the death of these fish, and that it is really everyone who drives, hunts, swims in the water slide, and all that. Everyone else, maybe including Don Juan Tuno is responsible, not just one person.

                                                                      Liliana Echeverria

Ecodetectives 5/5/17

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This week, we continued to study tests to find out who is lying. So far we have:

Ken Unballe

Ken manages the water slide, which is right by the Fo River. Since he does not long to lose his job, he has become insistent that he has not killed a single fish.

Evidence

• The chemist took a sample of the water from the Fo River, which was where Ken would be dumping out the chlorine. There was 0% chlorine.
• Juan Tuno, not convinced, decided to take matters into his own hands. He suggested looking for water fleas, since water fleas cannot survive in chlorine. There was one water flea in the water when Juan Tuno tested, meaning there WAS chlorine.
• There was a newspaper clipping saying that 26 children got E. coli in pool water that was supposed to be chlorinated. Ken was afraid they would shut down the water slide if he was dumping chlorine, so he stopped chlorinating the water. As a result, one of those 26 children died.
• An email was found from Ken to an employee telling him he would give him a pay raise if he would order a bunch of water fleas and dump them in where Juan Tuno was going to test. His plan didn’t work. The water fleas died, showing Juan Tuno that there WAS chlorine in the river.

Synchrony City Chronicle

The Synchrony City Chronicle, Synchrony City’s newspaper, recently interviewed Juan Tuno, who is now worried about acid rain.

Evidence

• Juan Tuno says that the dead fish have been showing up in the Gray Bay.
• Juan Tuno tested to see if the rivers were acidic, just to see.
• The Fo, Upper Misterssippi, Lower Misterssippi, and James Pond are okay for fish.
• The Fo/Misterssippi soil Runoff is too Basic for fish.
• The Upper and Lower Rafta river, Lake Adaysicle and Gray Bay are too acidic.
• If there is an acid rain problem all over the area, why is only those certain rivers too acidic? Well, there is an acid rain problem over the whole area. The reason why only those rivers and lakes are being affected is because of the material the bank is made of. The river bank of the Fo/Misterssippi river is limestone, which neutralizes the acid, making the river/lake okay for the fish to live. But on the other banks is just granite, which does NOT have magic powers, therefore making the river/lake too acidic.

Anton Alogue

Anton Alogue is in the logging business. He claims to have nothing to do with the fish. Is he lying? We shall find out.

Evidence

• Anton Alogue claims to replant the forest after he cuts the trees. But there is a clear-cut forest and a selectively cut forest. Looks like me might be lying.
• If a tree is born, it has roots that pack in the dirt, especially on the water edge, so no dirt will fall into the river. If the tree is cut down, then there will be nothing to hold in the dirt, causing it to fall into the river. This is true for all plants. If farmers let their animals overgraze, then the grassroots will slacken, letting sediment fall into the river.
• If the sediment falls into the river, it can have bad effects.
• Fish gills will be clogged, killing the fish. Eggs won’t be able to hatch, killing the fish. Underwater plants cannot get sunlight, depriving the fish of food, killing the fish. The sediment is dark, so the sun will be attracted to it, heating the water, killing the fish.
• Hot/warm water doesn’t hold a lot of oxygen (which fish need). The fish will need more oxygen to be able to function in the water, but there is less there.

Elmo Skeeto

Elmo Skeeto is a hunter. He hunts animals in the Parallel Park. Is he doing any damage to the ecosystem, like he claims to not be?

Evidence

• Mountain lions were let in with the deer to keep out overgrazing.
• Without any mountain lions in the park, the deer population fluctuated. Going up and down (because of hunters), the deer were very healthy. When they let in mountain lions, the deer population lowered. When there were less mountain lions (again, because of hunters), there were more deer. When there were less deer, there were more mountain lions.

Bo Vyne

Bo Vyne and Don Juan Tuno are being blamed for phosphates in the water. They own the cattle ranch.

Sandy Trapp

Sandy Trapp is also being blamed. She owns the golf course.

The golf course has the phosphates. Not the cattle ranch, nor the small town.