A couple of young elephants playing on the banks of the Luangwa River

A couple of young elephants playing on the banks of the Luangwa River

You are getting very sleepy….

You are getting very sleepy….

Small-Town America Has a Serious Drinking-Water Problem | Mother Jones

http://m.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/rural-water-contamination-uranium-navajo-sanders

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Small-Town America Has a Serious Drinking-Water Problem
In Sanders, Arizona, residents drank uranium-contaminated water for years.

JULIA LURIE JUN. 6, 2016 6:00 AM

Kim Britten/Shutterstock
On a sweltering day last July, a team of scientists stood before a crowded room of people from the tiny town of Sanders, Arizona, and showed them a photo of a dilapidated wooden shack covered by hole-filled tarps. This, the scientists explained, was the town’s water source.

Tonya Baloo, a longtime resident and mother of two, did a double take. “It looked like a Third World country,” she says. “I was like, ‘Is this Africa?'”

The well serving Sanders residents Chris Shuey
The researchers’ next image—a chart with a flat red line cutting through yellow bars—was even more worrisome. Tommy Rock, a Ph.D. candidate studying water contamination at Northern Arizona University, explained that the red line was the Environmental Protection Agency’s threshold for uranium allowed in public water systems: 30 micrograms per liter. The yellow bars represented uranium levels in Sanders’ water supply dating back to 2003. They hovered around 50 micrograms per liter.

For more than a decade, the chart showed, people in Sanders had been drinking contaminated water.

Residents listened, dumbfounded. Sanders sits on the edge of the Navajo Nation; uranium mines, relics of the Cold War, have long dotted tribal lands across the West. Long-term exposure to the heavy metal can cause kidney disease and cancer. But locals had never been notified of the contamination. Nor were they aware of the nearly 200 drinking-water violations that the local utility had amassed over the previous decade, ranging from uranium and bacterial contamination to failure to test the water.

“The initial betrayal,” Baloo says. “It was shocking.”

Roughly 6 million Americans use one of 2,300 public water systems that qualify as “serious violators”; 99 percent of those utilities serve fewer than 50,000 people.
The meeting happened two months before researchers in Flint, Michigan, revealed that their city’s water was laced with lead. In both cases, curious scientists exposed years of drinking-water violations that affected predominantly poor, minority communities. (Most Sanders residents are Navajo and live on less than $20,000 per year.) But unlike urban Flint, Sanders is home to just 630 people and consists of a cluster of single-family homes, a gas station, a dollar store, two churches, and a trading post—all surrounded by miles of red rock and sage brush.

An aerial view of Sanders, Arizona Doc Searls/Flickr/Wikimedia Commons
The town is one of thousands of rural communities across the country where water quality has quietly evaded federal health standards for years. Many small utilities simply cannot afford advanced water treatment technology, says Jeff Griffiths, a public health professor at Tufts University and a former adviser to the EPA on drinking water. (An inspection of the Sanders well in 2012, for example, found that “the owner pours an unapproved bleach product down the casing vent daily as the method of disinfection.”) According to EPA data, roughly 6 million Americans use one of 2,300 public water systems that qualify as “serious violators”—defined as having multiple, continuous, or serious health or reporting problems. Ninety-nine percent of those utilities serve fewer than 50,000 people. Together, they serve a population 25 times the size of Flint.

A week after Rock’s presentation, Sanders residents received a notice in the mail from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) informing them of the high uranium levels in the local water supply—a first since the contamination was reported to the state in 2003. Long-term exposure can increase the risk of kidney disease and cancer, it said, but the situation wasn’t an emergency. “You do NOT need to seek an alternate (for example, bottled or hauled) water supply,” it read. “The water remains safe to use until treatment is put into place.”

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Many residents, wary of the state’s assurances, avoided the water. Baloo brought her kids an hour away to her mom’s house for baths. Genevieve Lee, a 73-year-old retired teacher, resorted to eating canned food and taking sponge baths out of a bucket. She made 40-minute treks to Gallup, New Mexico, for water and often found herself wondering about the uranium’s impact. Did it contribute to her breast cancer in 2008? To her neighbor’s kidney disease?

Lee, Baloo, and others formed a water task force, petitioning for the town to connect to a nearby, well-maintained utility in the Navajo Nation. “All we think about is water,” Baloo told me this spring.

The hubbub led Sanders school system superintendent Dan Hute to test the schools’ water supply, which comes from a private well unaffiliated with Sanders’ water system; the water in Sanders elementary and middle schools was also contaminated. Hute tapped into school budgets to provide bottled water to roughly 500 students and 150 teachers. “I’ve gotten no help from anybody,” Hute told me earlier this spring. According to Rock, no local, state, or federal agency provided the town with bottled water or filters.

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, utilities are required to notify their customers if water has contaminant levels above the EPA’s threshold. If they fail to do so, the law calls for the “primacy agency”—in Sanders’ case, the state—to intervene. After 30 days, the EPA steps in.

“These people have been drinking this for years. It’s not a short-term exposure. I’m a little baffled by their lack of concern.”
Though the policy sounds simple enough, the reality is far murkier. Dr. Bruce Macler, an EPA toxicologist who helped decide to tell Sanders residents that their water was safe, explains that when it comes to uranium, the feds have a standard in place. “It’s no joke,” he says. “That’s why we go after them if they exceed it. But it isn’t terribly worrisome if they’re a little over the level.” If the contaminant were an “acute toxicant”—say, giardia—being over the standard wouldn’t be tolerated, he explains. But “when you’re looking at something that takes a lifetime of exposure” to produce health effects and the benchmark is already conservative, Macler says, it doesn’t make sense to tell residents to use other water sources: “The stuff isn’t that risky.”

Many disagree. “It’s unbelievable to me that they would have such a cavalier, unconcerned attitude,” says Chris Shuey, a researcher at the Southwest Research and Information Center who studied Sanders’ water with Rock. “These people have been drinking this for years. It’s not a short-term exposure,” says Doug Brugge, a biologist at Tufts University who studies the impact of uranium. “I’m a little baffled by their lack of concern.” (An EPA spokeswoman says the agency was concerned about the contamination of Sanders’ water and was working on establishing an alternative source.)

State records show that over the past two decades, environmental regulators repeatedly approached the local utility’s owners, an elderly couple named Pat and Lillie Paulsell, about the poor water quality. (Pat maintained the well until his death in 2014, when Lillie took over the utility, Arizona Windsong Water Company. Lillie Paulsell declined to be interviewed for this article.) An inspection in 1995 found that Windsong wasn’t testing for bacterial or lead contamination. By 2002, the utility had risen to the top of the EPA’s “Significant Noncompliance” list due to a host of reporting and health problems. Yet, according to an ADEQ representative’s notes from that year, Pat Paulsell “continued to make no effort to comply other than to send me a package of analytical results, which I have not yet received.” In 2012, a state-commissioned water quality report noted live wiring on the floor of the well. Uranium contamination continued to be a “major problem.” In 2014, the utility paid a $1,000 penalty to the EPA for its violations—but the uranium levels continued to exceed federal standards.

“There are Sanders equivalents all over the country.”
The records also show that the Paulsells were struggling financially and unable to keep up with the growing number of required tests and treatment plans. “I don’t know what you mean by emergency operations plan. Also a microbiological sample plan,” Pat wrote to the ADEQ in 2001. “I have tried very hard to keep all samples done that are supposed to be done.” When an ADEQ representative asked if he had a copy of the rules for water utilities, Pat replied, “You people are always changing them!” In 2002, an inspector found that the couple’s “current health is poor.” Pat, 69, was using a wheelchair. In 2009, he faxed a handwritten letter along with water sample results. “It costs between $35 and $45 each month to send this water sample. The power bills have more than tripled in the last 3 years. I have worn out a ¾ ton new pickup just on the water co…I can’t continue to operate this co with this small income.”

“There are Sanders equivalents all over the country,” says Macler, the EPA toxicologist. “Small little communities that have limited ownership, no money, no resources.” Many, adds Griffiths, the former EPA drinking water adviser, are unwilling to cooperate with state and federal regulators, which don’t have the financial capacity to force the matter. “We have a foolish system for how we deal with this stuff,” he says.

In early April, eight months after the state distributed a water advisory and more than a decade after the first reported uranium, Sanders residents got some good news: Arizona and the Navajo Nation agreed to let Sanders switch water sources to the nearby Navajo utility. Within the month, water from a new source was flowing through the old pipes, which will be replaced this summer.

“From my standpoint, this is more of a success than a failure,” Macler says. “Could it have been sooner? Yeah. Are we glad that it’s done? Yeah.”

“It’s a really big sigh of relief,” says Tonya Baloo, who’s now watering the trees in the yard and letting her kids bathe at home every once in a while. Her family still drinks from jugs of water she buys from Walmart. Maybe after the pipes are fixed, she says, they’ll once again start drinking from the taps.

This article has been updated.

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Small-Town America Has a Serious Drinking-Water Problem | Mother Jones

http://m.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/rural-water-contamination-uranium-navajo-sanders

Chief Iron Tail at Wild West show. Oglala Lakota. Late 1800s.

Chief Iron Tail at Wild West show. Oglala Lakota. Late 1800s.

One Girl’s Life and Loss in an Eden of Biodiversity

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/06/editors-note-manu-protecting-parks-peru/

FROM THE EDITOR
One Girl’s Life and Loss in an Eden of Biodiversity
Meet Yoina, an 11-year-old orphan. She lives with her tribe In Peru’s Manú National Park, a place that’s remote, remarkable—and endangered.

Picture of Yoina holding a photograph of her with a pet tamarin on her head
Posing with a photo of herself with a pet tamarin, Yoina smiled—which she wouldn’t do in the first photo.
PHOTOGRAPH BY GLENN SHEPARD
By Susan Goldberg, Editor in Chief
This story appears in the June 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine.

Some stories just break your heart. So it is with the behind-the-scenes story of the girl featured in this month’s article on Manú National Park in Peru. The girl’s name is Yoina. She’s a member of the Matsigenka tribe, an indigenous group that lives in Manú, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth.

When we saw Yoina’s picture, taken for National Geographic by photographer Charlie Hamilton James in June 2015, all of us were captivated by the image of this 10-year-old girl, neck deep in the Yomibato River near her village, looking defiantly at the camera, a pet tamarin on her head.

That photo did what great photos do. It made us want to know more—about the girl and about her life. Because her tribe and others have inhabited the area for generations, it’s their legal right to live in the protected rain forest with a few limitations: no gun hunting and no other activities that would irreparably harm the environment.

Yoina “didn’t really care much for having her photo taken, and that’s why she’s got a bit of attitude in the shot,” says Hamilton James, who has covered Manú’s people and animals for 20 years. “I must have shot around 20 frames like that, and she’s only smiling a little in one of them.”

From there the story takes a tragic turn. The next month Yoina’s mother, Carmen, died after giving birth to her ninth child. The baby—named Grace Kelly at the suggestion of a visiting nurse’s wife—was adopted by Carmen’s sister. The aunt also cares for Yoina, who shaved her head in mourning. But the sad events did not stop there. Soon after, Yoina’s pet tamarin was killed when it overturned a boiling pot on itself. The family buried it.

Thanks for reading National Geographic.

Yoina, a member of the Matsigenka tribe that lives deep inside Peru’s Manú National Park, swims in the Yomibato River with her pet saddleback tamarin: Is it cute or what?

Yoina, a member of the Matsigenka tribe that lives deep inside Peru’s Manú National Park, swims in the Yomibato River with her pet saddleback tamarin. Read the full story: http://on.natgeo.com/1UjIG20

Simone da Poggibonsi, Gregorio IX ha la visione della chiesa di San Pietro sostenuta da San Domenico. Chiostro Grande di Santa Maria Novella (Firenze)

Simone da Poggibonsi, Gregorio IX ha la visione della chiesa di San Pietro sostenuta da San Domenico. Chiostro Grande di Santa Maria Novella (Firenze)

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The winding road: Photo © Yiannis John Samaras

Photo © Yiannis John Samaras

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White Pocket is in a remote section of Vermilion Cliffs National Monument in Arizona

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Pardon the weeds!

The Taggart Lake Trail: Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park.

The Taggart Lake Trail offers some of the best views of the rugged mountain peaks in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. It’s a beautiful hike through a mixed coniferous forest and large stands of aspens, ending at a peaceful, glacial-fed lake right at the base of the majestic Tetons. It’s a favorite hike of photographer Michelle Olmstead, and she says it should be on everyone’s list when visiting the park. Photo courtesy of Michelle Olmstead.

Photo © Tsun-Hsiung Chian – Ferry in the beautiful lake, Taiwan

Photo © Tsun-Hsiung Chian – Ferry in the beautiful lake, Taiwan

✯ Photographers’ Blog’s Selection
✯ Editor’s ch
oice by Juan Bautista Hünber
✯ Congratulations to the author. Thanks for sharing

La Pinacoteca comunale di Città di Castello

La Pinacoteca comunale di Città di Castello trova spazio nel palazzo rinascimentale che fu dimora del condottiero Alessandro Vitelli e della consorte Angela de’ Rossi, conservato complessivamente nella sua struttura originaria.

E’ il maggior contenitore d’arte dell’Umbria dopo la Galleria Nazionale di Perugia e al suo interno si trovano importanti esempi di pittura rinascimentale e manierista, tra cui alcuni tra i primissimi lavori di Raffaello Sanzio e Luca Signorelli.

BROADBILL Black and Yellow Broadbill photographed by Malcolm Wilton-Jones in Malaysia.

BROADBILL

Black and Yellow Broadbill photographed by Malcolm Wilton-Jones in Malaysia.

http://www.projectnoah.org/users/Malcolm%20Wilton-Jones

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l’Oratorio di San Crescentino, costruito nel 1420

l’Oratorio di San Crescentino, costruito nel 1420 e ampliato nella forma attuale nel 1507, come ricordano le iscrizioni murate sulla facciata. L’Oratorio si presenta come un vero scrigno d’arte che custodisce al suo interno un interessante ciclo di affreschi attribuiti a Luca Signorelli e alla sua scuola.

Sici odihnește speranța

Rusii ne arata in ce ruine traim, ca rezultat al aderarii la UE – Alternative News Romania

http://www.alternativenews.ro/2016/05/rusii-ne-arata-in-ce-ruine-traim-ca-rezultat-al-aderarii-la-ue.html?m=1

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“Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.” -René Magritte

Sunset taken at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park outside Alamogordo

Sunset taken at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park outside Alamogordo.  I titled this photo “The American Southwest” as it is the image that comes to mind when I think of the area

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Flori de măceş – Eugenia Filotti Atanasiu

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Joseph Decker (1853-1924) German born American artist

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Este cunoscută pentru câteva fresce controversate în care apar îngeri în nave spațiale, sau Isus Cristos, care pare a fi într-o rachetă gata de zbor (în fresca Răstignirii).

Mule Ears are going off on US 395 near Devils Gate north of Bridgeport!

Mule Ears are going off on US 395 near Devils Gate north of Bridgeport!

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, baptized on June 6, 1599 in Seville, Andalusia, Spain – died on August 6, 1660, in Madrid, Spain.

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, baptized on June 6, 1599 in Seville, Andalusia, Spain – died on August 6, 1660, in Madrid, Spain.

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He was born in the Franconian village of Unfinden, now part of Königsberg, Bavaria. The name “Regiomontanus” was first coined by Philipp Melanchthon in 1534, fifty-eight years after Regiomontanus’ death.

In Epytoma in almagesti Ptolemei, he critiqued the translation of Almagest by George of Trebizond, pointing out inaccuracies.

Later Nicolaus Copernicus would refer to this book as an influence on his own work.

He went to work for János Vitéz, archbishop of Esztergom. There he calculated extensive astronomical tables and built astronomical instruments.

Later he went to Buda, and the court of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, for whom he built an astrolabe, and where he collated Greek manuscripts for a handsome salary.

In 1471 Regiomontanus moved to the Free City of Nuremberg, in Franconia, then one of the Empire’s important seats of learning, publication, commerce and art, where he worked with the humanist and merchant Bernhard Walther. Here he founded the world’s first scientific printing press, and in 1472 he published the first printed astronomical textbook, the Theoricae novae Planetarum of his teacher Georg von Peurbach.

In 1475 he was called to Rome to work with Pope Sixtus IV on calendar reform. Regiomontanus died of unknown causes in Rome, July 6, 1476, a month after his fortieth birthday. According to a rumor repeated by Gassendi in his Regiomontanus biography, he was assassinated by relatives of George of Trebizond whom he had criticized in his writings. More likely he died in an epidemic raging in Rome at the time.

Paul Thomas Mann, born on 6 June 1875, in Lübeck,Schleswig-Holstein – died on 12 August 1955, in Zürich, Switzerland.

Paul Thomas Mann, born on 6 June 1875, in Lübeck,Schleswig-Holstein – died on 12 August 1955, in Zürich, Switzerland.

“It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive”.

Thomas Mann

Fundãtura Ponorului Foto: Marius Batranu

Fundãtura Ponorului
Foto: Marius Batranu.

My Chakra Today no.3

My Chakra Today no.2

My Chakra Today no.1

The birds on the wire today no.2

The birds on the wire today no.1

The bird

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My pot with flowers today No.1

My pot with flowers Engraving Today

Good morning

Dan Enache: Presa internațională reacționează la alegerile de ieri când majoritatea primarilor cu probleme penale au fost realeși fără nicio problemă

Presa internațională reacționează la alegerile de ieri când majoritatea primarilor cu probleme penale au fost realeși fără nicio problemă în funcții. Lucru de netolerat într-o societate civilizată.

Din păcate românii nu au înțeles și nu înțeleg că politicienii corupți nu pot gestiona corect banul public. Nu există nicio justificare morală să votezi un corupt sau să stai acasă și să nu votezi împotriva corupților.

New York Times mentioneaza ca fotoliile de primari din Baia Mare, Brasov si Craiova au fost castigate de politicieni care s-au confruntat cu probleme cu legea si ca actualul primar din Baia Mare, aflat in inchisoare, a obtinut un nou mandat, cu un vot covarsitor.

Cei din Brașov vor Aeroport de 14 ani. Dar acum au ales un primar arestat pentru luare de mită. Ce investitor serios vmai merge acolo știind că dacă primarul îi va fura banii localnicii vor ține cu acesta?
La Brașov 10.000 de apartamente au rămas fără apă caldă deoarece primarul a luat mită de la firma care produce agentul termic. Acum cei care l-au votat îi cer să-i ajute să le dea apa caldă? Râsu-plânsu.

Baia Mare vrea să fie Capitală Culturală Europeană în 2021 dar au votat un primar care în aceste momente este la pușcărie. NICIODATĂ Baia Mare nu va fi Capitală Cultrală, în Europa hoții nu sunt premiați, sunt trimiși la pușcărie.

Reuters, potrivit stirileprotv.ro, face o analiza mai profunda a alegerilor locale din Romania si scrie despre procentul de 37,5% obtinut de PSD la nivel national, dar atrage atentia si asupra unui alt aspect:

“Observatorii spun ca PSD, sustinut de cei mai saraci sau mai in varsta dintre romani, au beneficiat de pe urma maririlor de salarii din sectorul public si reducerea taxei pe valoarea adaugata, pe care au apucat sa o introduca in 2015, inainte sa se retraga de la putere, si care a intrat in vigoare la inceputul anului. Victoria social-democratilor ii pune in pozitia de favoriti la alegerile parlamentare din toamna”.

“Zeci de candidati sunt subietul unor anchete si, desi legea le permite sa candideze pana la pronuntarea definitiva a instantei, deizia lor de a candida arata spre o acceptare tacita, dar la scara larga a coruptiei de catre societatea romaneasca”, mai scriu jurnalistii de la Reuters.

Adevărul este că ne-am făcut de râs la aceste alegeri. Cei care au votat primari corupți nu înțeleg că „Orice om cinstit este mai bun decât un hoț”, deci aveau ce să voteze.

Societatea românească este una bolnavă și doar un tratament extern ne poate fac bine. Noi nu suntem în stare să înțelegem ce înseamnă cinstit-corupt și cum să reacționăm.

Să curgă înjurăturile iubitorilor de corupți!