STANISLAUS CONNECTIONS
Living Lightly
By DAN and BARBARA POLLOCK
Dear Friends and Fellow Gardeners,
Last week I was invited to make a presentation at the Second Annual Caltrans Landscape Architects Academy. I am pleased to report that it was productive, and very much in favor of many important environmental matters and included several discussions on the use of native plants, as well as addressing soil and water pollution problems. For my part, there was lots of interest and discussion on my presentation on use of mulch to reduce herbicide use including the importance of soil testing and plant selection. Translating all of this into practical reality remains to be seen. It was however, a good start.
Myrtle asked me to address winter pruning. The following are a few key points to think about before whacking back those trees and shrubs.
Prune for plant health by removing dead, diseased, or injured wood. Cut out branches that cross over the center of the plant. Train the growth of young plants to fulfill the intended structure and to strengthen the tree or shrub. Fruit trees have very specific needs for pruning. Apricots, peaches, nectarines need to replace their fruit wood each year. In order to do this, you must cut out much of the previous season’s fruit wood.
Many fruit trees such as apples, cherries, citrus, and plums, have long lived fruiting spurs and need very little pruning.
Many blooming plants such as roses, Weigela, Forsythia, Spiraea, and Buddleia need to be pruned immediately after bloom in the Spring. Pruning them now will result in little or no bloom this Spring.
Large trees (over 15’) in need of pruning should be done by a qualified arborist. Cutting heavy limbs can be dangerous to you and disastrous to the tree if not done properly.
Leave as much foliage as you can when pruning a young tree; the more foliage left on will result in faster growth and bigger supportive diameter trunk.
During the growing season be careful about cutting off too much new growth. Keep in mind that many important growth regulators called auxins are produced in the tips of new growth and help in the formation of new roots and other vital plant functions.
When making pruning cuts, always cut back to a bud or stem; never leave a stub. The direction that the stem or stem faces is going to be the direction of the new growth. As a general rule, try to cut to a bud or stem that faces toward the outside of the tree or shrub.
Because pruning is quite different for many plants, I suggest that you check out a book on pruning for specific details and instructions.
Barbara just finished reading Jane Goodall’s A Reason for Hope, a book that chronicles Goodall’s life experiences that shape her philosophical views of the world. From environmental activism to community action, this book is a must read for anyone interested in responsible stewardship of the environment.
Please let us hear from you if you have any questions or comments regarding life in the garden. Email us at mulchman@ mother.com
Until Next Month, Peace and Good Gardening
By BOB MEYER
It’s that time of year again. The leaves are turning color, dropping to the ground, and people city-wide are manning rakes and blowers to clean them up. What happens afterwards should be of concern to us all.
When the leaves are piled too close to the curb they either prevent water from reaching the storm drain, causing street flooding, or are washed into the storm drain.
If you live in Modesto, your storm drain is usually a rock well — a hole in the ground filled with rock which allows storm water to slowly seep into the ground. If leaves are washed into the rock well, it will lose its effectiveness because the leaves block the waters passage into the surrounding soil. This also creates street flooding.
If you live in an area with active storm drains, they pass the storm water and everything else that washes into the drains directly into lakes and rivers. If the storm water contains a large amount of organic matter such as leaves and grass clippings, it can disrupt the ecology of the river or lake. Leaves and other yard waste are high in nutrient value for small organisms in the water called phytoplankton. They multiply rapidly, and this population boom will create an increased cloudiness in the water. Submerged plants are shaded out and die eliminating an oxygen source and habitat for fish. The phytoplankton will reach a maximum population and then become balanced by die-off as well. They then settle to the bottom where bacteria consume the excessive deposits of detritus and then, in turn, multiply creating an additional demand for oxygen. Since the water plants have died and no longer provide oxygen, fish and shellfish will eventually suffocate because of the lack of dissolved oxygen in the water.
This happens whenever there is an excess of nutrients flowing into a body of water. A recent die-off of shad in Yosemite Lake reported in the November San Joaquin Connections was the result of yard waste. North Carolina has this problem because lagoons holding hog waste were flooded during the recent hurricane. The Gulf of Mexico has a continual "dead zone" at the mouth of the Mississippi river where no fish are found.
Take care when you pile your leaves in the street this fall. Leave as much space as possible between the leaf piles and the curb. Composting the leaves or working them into your garden would be an even better solution.
YELLOWSTONE ALERT: toxic catastrophe in the making!
From Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free
Yellowstone National Park and its 4 million annual visitors are being threatened by one of the most dangerously foolish and ill-conceived plans ever proposed by our government and its agencies.
Unless it is stopped immediately, The United States Department of Energy’s Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) will construct a nuclear waste incinerator to burn 200,000 tons of radioactive waste imported into Idaho from all over the world. This facility will become the nuclear garbage dump to the world. Deadly fumes will be exhausted into the air and blown 90 miles downwind to southeast Idaho and northwest Wyoming. This area is home to both Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and Jackson Hole. Here is where millions of people a year enjoy unique scenic wonders and the largest herds in existence of buffalo and elk. Here is where the Snake and Yellowstone Rivers support incredible fish and wildlife including Bald Eagles and Grizzly Bears.
Without so much as one legal notice provided to the residents of Wyoming, this deadly incinerator has been rushed through the approval process. Within months, construction permits could be issued to British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., a company with a reported history of emission accidents, hidden safety records, and falsified documents. Nuclear experts say microscopic ashes will escape from this burner. These ashes will cause cancer and other horrible diseases for hundreds of miles downwind and will kill off entire species of wildlife.
The Department of Energy says, "Trust us, this process is safe." Regarding INEEL’s nuclear incinerator, however, scientists at the Livermore Nuclear Lab in California have declared the proposed technology to be "a violation of the cardinal principal of radioactive waste treatment: namely, containing radioactivity rather than spreading it around."
Residents downwind of INEEL and people who care about saving Yellowstone have raised over $500,000 and have filed a lawsuit to stop this nuclear waste incinerator. Nationally known litigator Gerry Spence, the man who successfully sued in the famous Karen Silkwood nuclear case, is volunteering his time and is spearheading the efforts of our legal team.
ACTION: Besides attorneys, we need additional help. If you have ever visited Yellowstone or want to preserve it for generations to come please send no more than $10 to: Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free, a Wyoming Nonprofit Corporation, PO Box 4838 Jackson, Wyoming 83001
For information, see http://www.yellowstonenuclearfree.com
THE WESTLEY TIRE FIRE: When a community cares enough, action can happen
By MYRTLE OSNER with Indira Clark
Although the mountain of tires in the westside hills of Stanislaus County with its monstrous fire this fall, and subsequent action has been covered by other papers, much has yet to be told. An interview with Karen Cox, a Westley grower and businesswoman, shows that community action was what got the fire put out. Conventional wisdom said a tire pile fire could only be left to burn itself out. Government officials parroted industry experts with a plan for inaction allowing black clouds of tire smoke to pollute the air for a year, at least.
The day after the fire blossomed from a lightning strike on September 22, Solange Altman consulted with Cox. The Modesto attorney suggested that only a massive demonstration of outrage from those people directly in the path of the smoke and fallout would have any effect on the bureaucracy. Very quickly the community was organized by citizens in Patterson and Westley as they breathed the tire smoke. A meeting was called at the Westley Hotel. Five hundred people were there. Answers by the various agencies were not sufficiently complete, nor did they diffuse the anger. It was obvious that the community was not going to let go until answers were forthcoming. And the fire put out NOW.
History was made, technologically, when the Westley tire fire was put out, and in relatively short order.
The tire pile wasn't even supposed to be there anymore, Altman reminds us. "Residents were hugely angry that (the tire dump original owner) Ed Filbin has been allowed to continue flouting orders from government agencies for all those years," Cox says.
Can the westside citizens now, by continuing publicity and moxie, also forced compliance? There was plenty of blame to go around. Beginning with the amassing of millions of tires in a canyon in the Coastal Range on land owned by Ed Filbin as early as 1962, and the addition of millions more illegally during a period of a quarter of a century, a pattern of neglect has emerged. Local and state agencies have often "considered" action against Filbin and even ordered changes at times, but even then did not follow through in enforcing existing laws. It's a complicated history. The following brief summary leaves out much and is offered as an overview.
In 1975, and over the next seven years, Stanislaus County repeatedly issued notices to Filbin requiring him to get a permit to operate a tire dump. A notice to "Close and Desist" the dump was ignored. The District Attorney was asked to prosecute. He refused. In 1982, then county supervisor Gary Condit arranged a $150,000 grant from the state for Filbin to buy a tire shedder. Later, claiming the shredder didn't work well and the market for tire chips was slow, Filbin sold the shredder. The state sued him. But the county planning commission approved his next plan, to burn the tires to produce gas and oil. In 1985, the County Planning Director amended the self-contained pyrolysis plant permit to allow a tire-burning plant that would emit some pollutants into the air. The incinerator was approved without an Environmental Impact Report or public hearings.
The tire-to-electricity plant was built, not by Filbin, but by Oxford Energy, with state-backed tax-exempt bonds and praise from government officials. Environmentalists and westside farmers protested the plant permit. The Merced Board of Supervisors requested a meeting with their Stanislaus counterparts over air quality concerns. A lawsuit by Ecology Action Educational Institute and others was dismissed by Stanislaus County Superior Court.
"We knew in 1987 that the deal (to make the incinerator buy Filbin's tires) was crazy," said Altman. Now in private practice, Altman was then a attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance concerned with farmworker health issues and a boardmember of Ecology Action. "Had the county prohibited the additional importation of tires and forced the energy company to burn what was on site, the fire would never have happened. Fifty-four (54) million tires would have burned in 12 years. There wouldn't have been anything to catch fire on September 22, 1999."
The zoning permit agreement, however, was between Stanislaus County and the owners of the plant, not with Filbin, as tens of thousands of tires continued to roll into his dump each day, exceeding incinerator consumption. Repeated orders to Filbin to clean up the pile to reduce the danger in case of a fire were never carried out. A 1995 agreement which involved the fire marshal was revealed during the tire fire meetings. Specifically, having a fire truck at the site at all times was not done. Staff were supposed to be trained in putting out tire fires and maintenance of the fire truck. Whether or not a local fire truck could have dealt with this fire, nevertheless it was not there as it should have been. This is only one example of how the agreements to control the tire pile were not carried out. It is clear that there were many other ways in which responsibility was not carried out.
"The history of the tire pile explains why citizens in this community are so distrustful of government's power to regulate the pile," says Altman. Or government's will.
Community action kicks in
When I asked Cox how 500 people showed up at the Westley Hotel meeting on such short notice, she said the other movers and shakers calling the meeting ". . . said we'd tell all our friends to tell five other people." At the next meeting at the Patterson High School cafeteria, I saw first hand the anger and outrage expressed when government officials told them that the fire would have to burn itself out. This was not the answer anyone wanted. Bringing in the Environmental Protection Agency was necessary, at least partly because only the federal government has enough money to do a job of this kind. EPA also have clean air rules that it could enforce. All sorts of ideas were flying around about how to put the fire out. A Texas company, world famous for its success in fighting oil well fires, was brought in. Its boast that the tire fire would be out in a week proved overblown, but it improvised until the blaze was extinguished in late October.
Where do we go from here?
The group of dedicated souls and leaders of the westside community continues to meet. Their demands are clear:
All burnables must be burned (in the incinerator), and the mess must be cleaned up before any more tires are imported. This is the most important of all the demands. Through the decades Ed Filbin continues to portray himself in a positive light, as a person working for a solution; the solution to the problem of what to can be done with the millions of discarded used tires littering our state.
Assemblymember Dennis Cardoza has set a priority of getting at what can be done with tires, as well as the cleanup of what is already there. He is investigating the fact that CALTRANS doesn't want to use shredded tires to build roads. One CONNECTIONS reader suggested that we could use a lot of tires to shore up the levees in the Delta which has hundreds of miles of levees, most of which are in a state of disrepair. Many other ideas should be investigated. The technology already exists for longer lasting tires, but the bottom line is then tire companies wouldn't sell as many.
With regard to the tire-burning plant, owned now by Modesto Energy Limited Partners, the westside community committee has been granted access to their site. There are new regulations as to how the tires must be stacked and separated so that they will be manageable. According to the government, the plant has a good record with regard to air emissions. The plant can burn much of the torched mass that remains. The California Integrated Waste Management Commission is "winterizing" the burned mess in hope of preventing winter rains from washing the residue across Interstate 5. The board intends to get Filbin to pay for what it spends on cleanup and winterizing, according to its spokesman. Filbin did, finally, file a cleanup plan with the Commission for the unburned portion of the tire pile. Board officials weren't happy with it at a hearing on November 16, claiming it appeared incomplete. Hope for the future for cleaner air still depends on us being ever vigilant and active to protect our environment.
And it also depends on us driving our cars less, I think.
Thank you to Solange Altman and Sam Tyson for the use of their files.
By SANDY SAMPLE
At this year’s Harvest Supper, a request was made to print the recipe for Pear Crumble Pie
In case you don’t know it, all the pies for this event are homemade by a crew, headed by Sandy, in the Pat Roberts' Catering kitchen. So it’s an event that not only makes money for the Peace Essay Contest, but offers treats you can’t get anywhere else.)
Here ‘tis :
8 to 10 Bartlett Pears
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon peel
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
Be sure the pears are ripe enough, otherwise you’ll get Crunchy Pear Pie, which is nobody’s favorite.
Place pear mixture into an 8 or 9 inch pie crust. (If you want your pie to taste as good as Sandy's, don't use a store-bought crust...)
Crumble topping:
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon mace
1/3 cup margarine or butter
Stir together flour and spices, then cut in margarine with a pastry blender, and sprinkle on top of pear mixture.
Bake at 400º for 45 minutes or until pear juices bubble in the pie's middle.
By DOROTHY GRIGGS
2 tablespoons olive oil (or 1/2 cup water)
1 tablespoons lite soy sauce
1 onion, chopped
1 red pepper, diced
3 large cloves garlic, minced
1 lb. (about 4 cups) butternut squash
1 15-ounce can chopped tomatoes
1 cup water
2 teaspoons oregano
1 teaspoons chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 15-oz can kidney beans
1 1/2 cups corn - fresh, frozen or canned
1-2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped, for garnish
Heat water and soy sauce in large pot (if oil is used, sauté), then add the onion, bell pepper and garlic. Cook over medium heat until the onion is translucent and most of the water has evaporated. Cut the squash in half and remove the seeds, then peel and cut into 1/2-inch cubes. Add to the onion mixture along with the chopped tomatoes, water, oregano, chili powder, cumin and black pepper. Cover and simmer until the squash is just tender when pierced with a fork (about 20 min.) then add the kidney beans with their liquid and the corn. Cook 5 minutes longer. Add salt to taste. Serves 6.
By BOB MEYER
Cut acorn(s) squash in half. Remove inner pulp and seeds. Place in a baking pan with a small amount of water in each half and a small amount in the pan. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes while preparing the stuffing. Remove from oven, stuff, cover with foil, then bake till tender; about 30 minutes. Serve with gravy, if desired.
Wild Rice Stuffing
This will easily stuff 2 medium squashes. If there is extra, bake in a separate foil covered pan for 20 minutes.
1 bag croutons or stuffing mix
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup wild rice
2 vegetable bullion cubes
1/4 cup chopped celery, if desired
1/2 cup margarine
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sage
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon basil leaves
1 teaspoon garlic
1/2 teaspoon rosemary
Bring the wild rice to boiling with bullion cubes in 3 cups water, then simmer for 50 minutes. Sauté the onion and celery in the margarine for 5 minutes. In a large bowl, combine everything and mix thoroughly. Water can be added if too dry.
Mushroom Onion Gravy (Vegan)
1 cup mushrooms
1/2 of a medium onion
1/4 cup margarine
2 cups vegetable broth
1 teaspoon soy sauce
one quarter cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rice or soy milk
salt and pepper to taste
Chop mushrooms and onion and sauté in margarine for about 5 minutes. Add broth and soy sauce. Bring to boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir the flour slowly into the milk. When mostly lump free, add to the broth mixture. Continue to simmer until thickened.
