‘Environment’ Archives
Urban Farm, Not Toxic Harm! City Taking Steps to Demolish the Historic Roof Depot Building
By THE EAST PHILLIPS NEIGHBORHOOD INSTITUTE Negotiations with the city of Minneapolis have failed, and now the city is proceeding with its planned demolition of the historic Roof Depot building at 1860 East 28th Street after walking out of negotiations with East Phillips residents. Now our families, our community and our environment face 888 diesel trucks and toxic arsenic that will further pollute our already overburdened neighborhood. East Phillips is being treated as an industrial wasteland, and it’s making our community members sick! The City Council was scheduled to take a vote on demolishing the Roof Depot building in late September. We can stop this if the East Phillips Neighborhood Institute (EPNI) can raise $200,000 to post bond for a legal injunction. The old Roof Depot site in the East Phillips neighborhood sits atop an arsenic plume where arsenic-based pesticides were produced and stored by a company that once occupied it. The building’s continued presence [...]
Spooky Greetings from Women’s Environmental Institute
By Shelia Bland, Women’s Environmental Institute Bugs, bees, bites, and bears And oh, the blackest of nights No chatter, or laughter or arguments outside but silences, hoots, creaks, and scares. If the moon is out the darkness abates, but the full moon sky casts an eerie glow It bears no semblance to streetlights! Things glow in the dark, And move across the black void Then suddenly float away. Crickets, frogs, wolves, and winds Some sounds never heard before And when there is no sound at all, the silence threatens to swallow you whole. Lost inside an emptiness you cannot see but also, cannot escape. So profound is this silence It dissolves all random thoughts That filled your between-the-ears space. You give in to perpetual wonder… Welcome to the countryside— A Back to the Future style trip Back to Nature! A trip to Women’s Environmental Institute Classes are available Free, For those who live, [...]
City songs for loving the Earth
Mushrooms growing in a potted plant on an East Phillips porch / photo: Ben Heath By Lindsey Fenner As a new master naturalist, I have started to study Minnesota’s major biomes or biological communities, especially the native grasslands that I love. But as I’ve studied, I’ve wondered when I would start reading about places like Phillips. I realized that the way Minnesota is divided up into the three major biomes: prairies, hardwood forests, and conifer forests, ignores one major distinct landscape: cities. Most people in Minnesota live in cities, in urban or suburban areas. This sprawling human development, after all, is why we are facing the painful loss of so many species. But people are a natural part of landscapes and ecosystems. And we have been living in cities for more than five thousand years. We have shaped our ecosystems, and have been shaped by them in return, whether we have lived close together in cities and villages or spread out in the prairies and [...]
