Advocacy Project: Letter to Elected Official

December 10, 2011

Representative Chip Cravaack

House of Representatives

508 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20500

VOTE YES ON H.R.425: Great Lakes water Protection Act

I write to you today in efforts to express my concern regarding combined, untreated sewage dumping into Lake Superior as well as the whole network of Great Lakes.  I hope to secure your support on the issue of amending the Federal Water Pollution Control Act that would establish a deadline for restricting sewage dumping in to the Great Lakes and also to fund programs that would improve wastewater discharged into the Great Lakes. 

The Great Lakes provide 30 million Americans and also many Canadians, with drinking water each day.  Due to all the pollutants that are being dumped into the lakes, sewage is having a great impact on not only the concern of our drinking water, but it is threatening the health of the lakes and upsetting the circle of life that make them a part of a working system. The lake give us a fishing as well as a multibillion dollar recreation and tourism industry bringing in Duluth, and many other cities, a great income.  This lake is a precious piece of our city and its livelihood, and thus, needs to be respected and protected. It is a resource that we can not get back easily, if at all, once it is dead.

If this bill is passed, plants will have 20 years to upgrade facilities and ensure that their processes are running correctly and to specification.  Voting in this bill will also allow fines to be placed more easily on those plants that are currently not following the regulations already in place thus bringing in more funds as well as creating a catalyst for change. By not making this bill a priority, we run the risk of more lakes hitting the tipping point of their inability to dilute the billions and billions of tons of sewage that goes into the lakes each year.  This means not only dead lakes incapable of producing food and supporting life, but also toxic and unfit to swim in. Most noticeably, this will effect our ability to get potable, safe water and running the risk of various illnesses and diseases found in other places of the world where clean water can not be obtained. These health risks, if allowed to grow, will not only have detrimental effects on us individually but collectively as well.

Clearly there will be costs involved for the public treatment works to ensure they are up to regulation and to have the appropriate treatment processes and programs available. However, I urge you to think past this opposition and look towards being a voice for support of a creative solution.  We all have water to drink now - with twenty more years of toxic sewage dumping we shorten the life of our lake safety. Looking for a solution now and planning methodically ahead while we still have time to figure out how that can be made possible, the sewage treatment plants will save themselves the potential urgent demands and institution of fines that come with urgency and panic if our water hits the tipping point of safety. Saving funding now will only allocate the loss of funds, and health, somewhere else in the future.

I want to express my sincere appreciation for your time and attention to this correspondence, as well as to this very important issue. I urge you as a citizen who appreciates the beauty and gifts of the lake as well as a voting constituent. I sincerely encourage you to consider the issues at hand and the bigger picture and encourage your vote in support of H.R.425. I would be more than pleased to assist with further information as well as hear your thoughts, understandings and concerns.

Sincerely,

Judy B. 

Share & Voice Environments I Experiences when I lived in India

I had the great pleasure and fortune to live in India for 6 months with my partner Joel back in 2007.

I'm sharing with you some of the environments I experienced when I was there in pictures.  It seemed like there were many variations during our stay.


I'll start with a trip we took to Jim Corbett National Park which is in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains.  It was part of a team building trip with the group Joel was working with while we were there.

The picture to the right and the two below are views from the side of the stream where we spent most of our time when staying at the park and where most activities were held and about a 30 second walk from our cabin

In India there are stray dogs hanging out.  We could hear packs of them barking at each other occasionally at night.  There was a pack that hung round at one of the malls. At night they were given scraps from the butchers, or at least that was our theory.  They got very active at closing time.  They weren't really petable or people friendly.   This dog, however, was pretty calm and very pettable.  He was kinda full of flees but I took my chances and made it out without flea bits.







We got up for an early morning safari trip higher in the mountains in the park. It was REALLY COOL! Both Arthur Fonzarelli and in temperature when compared to Delhi where we were living while there.

We rode out in a caravan of a few Jeeps through the woods.







There were lots of interesting things to see. I have NEVER seen an ant hill so big! It was really hard to tell from the Jeep how high they were. I would not be shocked if they reached over 6 feet tall. They were HUGE! and pretty cool looking.

To the right and below are pictures of spider webs that were hanging between the trees.  

We stopped to look for tiger tracks...  

They tell us this was made just hours before we were there exploring.

We stopped at a stream up in the mountains.

It was beautiful and very pretty.

I enjoyed my time taking pictures of the cows running round.  I just LOVED them. 

Here is a picture of me taking a picture of a cow.  Very fitting. 

With all the cows that run loose in India I thought it was fascinating that I only heard one cow moo the entire time I was there. That was by a cow on this trip that was in a fence by our cabin.  Never a peep out of the free roaming cows. 

On our way back from the safari we were driving down a road in a town and turning the corner was a on his elephant.  We stopped and he "pulled up" behind our Jeep.  We took pictures with him and he had the elephant do tricks for us. The COOLEST part was watching him get ON the elephant.  He stood in front of the elephant who made a little chair with his trunk, the guy grabbed on and the elephant lifted and flipped the guy on his back. 

SO FUN! 

When we first arrived at our cabin, we were greeted by our roommate! 

Mr. Gecko.  He kinda freaked us out.

Of course, we also had one that got into our apartment in Delhi through the deck door in our computer room. 

We tried to be hospitable as he ran in and out of our vents before he got back to our computer room so we could shoosh him back out the door to freedom. 

Since he stayed for a while we thought he deserved a name and called him Art! :)  

He, he, he. 

Some other random fun things we saw on our trip to the park. 

Here our tour bus is at a tole booth waiting to cross city lines

I'm curious to know if they could reach the roof of the tole booth sitting on top of that truck. 

It wasn't unusual to see people and their sheep herds and  work animals crossing or traveling down the roads. 

This was on a pretty rural road. 

This was while driving down the highway. 

The picture below was from a different trip we took on our way to Jaipur -The Pink City. 

I feel I'd be remiss if I didn't show a picture of women in their traditional dress. In the cities like Delhi there is a greater mix of women wearing western clothing in with the women in their sarees. 

The very small out of the way towns you would see no western clothing but very traditional dress. 

This is one of the views outside our apartment in Gurgaon, a close suburb of New Delhi. It was usually pretty dry and this particular morning not very clear. 

During the monsoon rainy season it would rain very hard for periods of time. As you can see the streets couldn't keep up with draining the intense downfall.  The water was dirty both from the dirt on the streets and from the dirt in the air. 

City Centre, below,  is one of the malls I spent some some of my time shopping. Certainly some signs recognizable from the U.S. 

The big orange thing in the front that looks like the babies head on South Park is actually an orange juice stand. 

Below is an outdoor mall.  the bull walking towards me was great. He just kept walking slowly towards me as I kept taking pictures of him.  As he was about to run into me I stepped to the left as he brushed by.  CLEARLY knowing who owns the roads around here. 

My Dad grew up on a farm with cows and bulls.  When he saw this and freaked out a bit.  

This is not to say that they are all friendly all the time. One of Joel's co workers was head butted and chased home from work by a cranky bull for about 3-4 miles. Counting my blessings I never ran into one of them. 

I may be alone in this, but any mall that has a cow laying around welcoming me to the bank... THIS is service I can get along with!  

He was so curious as to what was going on in there. 

Clearly, the outside of a mall is not exactly familiar to us.  HOWEVER, you step inside a T.G.I. Fridays and you feel like you feel like your at home.  Until you open the menu and look at the prices of the pork ribs.  There were other menu changes as well. 

I also want to share 

This was the view we experienced when ever I went to Joel's work.  This building, shaped like a ship, stood across the street from Joel's offices.  It was fascinating to see... not only in the middle of the desert, but also the fun connection coming from Duluth.   It struck me every time I saw it. 

OK! Enough pictures without animals!  Let's get back to the good stuff. 

Sometimes when your trying to get from point A to point B you find yourself needing to sit in the road and wait for the cows to move out of the way. 

Sometimes they will just flop down in front of your car and make you wait or figure out how you will drive around them. 

This was probably my favorite part of my trip!

On the way to the Taj Mahal there were people with monkey's.  As you can see I completely ignored the words of advice I was given about not getting out of the car and not touching the animals. 

LOOK AT THAT FACE!

Joel had legitimate concern that I was going to send him off to the Taj alone and hang out with the Monkeys.  

OK, just Two more random fun things. 

See below, a pretty normal roll of toilet paper, new out of the plastic wrapped packaging... nothing special, pretty average, right??

Ahh, but don't let your eyes deceive you!

I found myself unrolling this fine, average roll of usefulness only to discover...  

YUP! you guessed it. A MATH problem written in the midst of the roll. NOT on the end, oh no, that would only be KIND OF weird. This was REALLY weird. 

The math was correct!  So, ya know, that was a relief. 

AND!

Because I don't want to be the ONLY person in this class without a toilet picture on their blog.  

This was a square toilet at a fancy, dancy mall near us. 

If you are bored you can learn a lot more fun things about Our trip to India by checking out our India blog. 

Even more animal pictures and the funny coincidence that the phone number to McDonald's at one of the malls ends in 666. 

Thanks for reading!   :)