NewsEco-team members soughtBy Cindy Iutzi/Gate City Staff WriterA program designed to help preserve and care for the environment is being presented Thursday at St. John's Episcopal Church, 208 N. Fourth St., Keokuk.
The event, Faithful Stewards of Thy Bounty, begins at 7 p.m., and features guest speakers Ed Fallon, David Osterberg and Lynn Heuss. Fallon, a former Iowa legislator, contacted Meg Oliver-Mills, Keokuk, about coming to Keokuk. She is spearheading the local program. “We are inviting the Tri-State Area,” Oliver-Mills said. “One thing we'd like to have come from this is a group of people interested in becoming part of an eco-team, to help pick up trash.” Oliver-Mills drove around the Tri-State Area for a month with a camera recently and found discarded items strewn along roads and in ravines that included such large items as refrigerators, car seats and couches. She sees an eco-team as having the potential to be a local land version of Chad Pegracke's Living Lands and Waters non-proft organization based in Moline, Ill. Pegracke and hundreds of volunteers have removed tons of trash from miles of rivers since 1998 when he formed the group. “This whole global warming thing has become politicized,” Oliver-Mills said. “But regardless of people's idea of whether global warming is manmade, we're not doing a good job of cleaning up after ourselves. The Iowa River is the third most endangered river in the country - that's sort of scary. And it's primarily because of chemical runoff.” Oliver-Mills used the example of a program an Iowa congregation has devised, Cool Congregations, Solving Global Warming One Family at a Time, that is geared to help reduce over-use of resources. Participants take a pledge to make a few changes, such as: replace their incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent bulbs, travel less, stop running water while brushing their teeth (running water the whole time wastes an average of 100 gallons per week per person, according to Oliver-Mills), adjust the thermostat up in the summer and down in the winter by a couple degrees or hang clothes on the line once a week instead of always using the dryer. Fallon, who has lived in Nova Scotia, England; Cairo, Egypt; Israel; on a Native American reservation in Wisconsin; and India, has a degree in religious studies from Drake University. He has been involved in matters of social justice and environmental concerns and served seven terms in the Iowa Legislature from 1993 to 2006. In 2006 he ran for governor in the Democratic primary, receiving 26 percent of the vote. Currently, he and coworker, Heuss, are directing the Independence Movement for Iowa (I'M for IOWA). The organization responds to individual Iowan concerns, particularly in the areas of “good, clean elections, supporting legislation to control urban sprawl, local control of factory farms and eminent domain issues,” according to his biographical material. Osterberg is an associate clinical professor in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Iowa and is the current director of the Iowa Policy Project. The Iowa Policy Project is focused on water quality, the industrialization of agriculture, tax fairness, energy policy and the decreasing standard of living of many Iowans. In 1999-2000 Osterberg consulted the Iowa Department of Natural Resources on global climate change and renewable energy. He also has appeared before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory commission as an expert witness for consumer, environmental groups and small businesses. Heuss raised her family and then resumed her education part-time at Grand View College in 1996. She earned a degree in religion in 2002, worked on a master's degree at Notre Dame, and in 2003 became director of The Connection Cafe, a volunteer-operated free meal program for homeless and low-income people. Call 524-4672 or 524-4306 for more information about the program Thursday. Copyright © 2010 - Daily Gate City
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