Winds of Change Newsletter, September 2005     See sidebar for table of contents

Miscellany

Respect This: Water Sustains Life!

(from www.peopleandplanet.net.)

Streams, rivers, groundwater, lakes, wetlands and other freshwater ecosystems provide a myriad of services that are essential to human well-being.

“Healthy watersheds are nature’s water factories, and it pays to protect them,” says Sandra Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project, and author of the study, Liquid Assets: The Critical Need to Safeguard Freshwater Ecosystems.

The worldwide value of the “ecosystem services” provided by healthy watersheds amounts to trillions of dollars each year. The services provided include flood protection, drought protection, and pure-drinking water, essential to human health and basic to economic well-being. Mountaintop removal degrades and destroys ecosystem services.

Think Clean Water Isn’t Important?

Whereas 300,000 people were killed in armed conflicts in 2000, as many people die each and every month because of contaminated water or lack of adequate sanitation – this according to the U.N. Wire, July 23, 2004, as reported in the 2005 edition of State of the World, published by The Worldwatch Institute.

Clean Elections Video Available

The success of Maine and Arizona’s Clean Election system is documented in a short video, “The Road to Clean Elections,” narrated by journalist Bill Moyers. If you would like to receive a copy to share with your friends, neighbors, or others please contact us at janet.ovec@gmail.com or call (304) 522-0246.

Protests Planned for Monongahela National Forest Management Plan

On August 12, the US Forest Service released its recommendations for management of the Monongahela National Forest over the next 10 -15 years. The Bush administration ignored the wishes of West Virginians and proposed a plan, called Alternative 2, which fails to protect the Mon’s special places and opens previously untouched areas to logging, road building and other destructive activity.

West Virginians are coming together under the banner of the WV Wilderness Coalition to urge the Forest Service to abandon Alternative 2 in favor of greater protection for wild lands in the Mon, many of which are contained within the plan known as Alternative 3.

The public comment period for the Draft Forest Plan runs through Nov. 14; to learn more and make your voice heard, see www.wvwild.org.

Mountaintop removal/valley fill strip mining is relentlessly consuming Kayford Mountain in southern West Virginia.