Public Forum on blasting, ultra-fine particles and human health in Eau Claire

Friday, November 15, 2013 - 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. - UW-Eau Claire Campus - Davies Center, 105 Garfield Avenue, Eau Claire, WI

Dr. Crispin Pierce is an Associate Professor and Director of the Environmental Public Health Program at UW-Eau Claire. Pierce has been a UW-Eau Claire faculty member since 2003 and has mentored graduate and undergraduate students while conducting research on factors that may lead to overexposure of children to heavy metals, antibiotic resistant bacteria, measurement of toxicants in the human body, and exposure to airborne particulates and silica. Dr. Pierce is a Fulbright Scholar and recently conducted research on heavy metals in children’s hair in Finland during the spring 2012 semester. He is very active in issues of human environmental health and resource conservation.


Dr. Michael McCawley is currently the Interim Associate Dean for Research and Interim Chair, Department of Occupational and Environmental Health in the School of Public Health at West Virginia University. He has approximately 50 peer reviewed publications in the scientific literature and holds six patents for pulmonary disease diagnosis and dust sampling techniques. He received his PhD from New York University in Environmental Health and his Master’s Degree in Engineering from West Virginia University. He has held teaching positions in both the School of Medicine and the School of Engineering at West Virginia University. He has served as a private consultant to citizens’ groups, government and industry on air contaminants. Starting in 1974 to his retirement in 2001 he worked for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. He was responsible for coordinating Institute wide activities among Divisions for silicosis research and acted as a liaison with the staff of the Assistant Secretaries of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) and Mining Safety and Health (MSHA) and served as an on-site consultant to the State Department on the effect of oil fire smoke in Kuwait after the first Gulf War. His work also included developing novel approaches to dose assessment through development of sampling methods and instruments to evaluate dose to the lung more accurately, especially for ultrafine particles.

Bob Kincaid is a co-founder of the A.C.H.E. Campaign. A nationally known broadcaster whose network has devoted more time than any other broadcast medium to educating people about the imperative to end Mountaintop Removal, Bob is a resident of Fayette County, WV, where his ancestors have lived since the 18th century. He is the father of four and grandfather of three of Appalachia’s coming generations. Bob has traveled the country and across the ocean to build awareness of the self-sacrifices imposed on Appalachian people by foreign corporations, and serves as the President of the Board of Directors of Coal River Mountain Watch, where he strives to help people understand that the crisis in Appalachia isn’t merely an “environmental” one, but a full-scale human rights disaster unfolding before people’s very eyes.

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Location:
UW Eau Claire Davies Center
105 Garfield Avenue
Eau Claire, WI

November 1, 2013 – In what appears to be an effort to avoid facing his Madison area constituents, Sen Ron Johnson (R-) held what he considered a “public listening session” with a handful of people in a little-publicized meeting orchestrated by Camille Solberg, Johnson’s Central Wisconsin Regional Director. Fewer than a dozen locals gathered in a small conference room in the Shorewood Hills Village Hall basement to ask questions of the Senator, who was not present and did not make the “surprise” appearance that his representative said he sometimes makes at his mobile office hours. Unlike his predecessor, Russ Feingold, Johnson makes only infrequent, token efforts to communicate with his constituents, and doesn’t even provide a toll-free telephone number for any of his offices.

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During the listening session, Solberg struggled to come up with answers for the group. On a question relating to Johnson’s position on frac sand mining — an issue at the forefront in Wisconsin at the moment — she responded that she didn’t know Johnson’s views on it — “I’m not gonna have all the answers and have everything memorized,” she said. She claimed this was the first time she had been asked about it, even though she says travels the state over forty hours each week to hold listening sessions with the public. She then conceded that she regularly visits with sand frac mining industry executives who are seeking Johnson’s support in their efforts to avoid EPA regulation.



Solberg was also asked what Johnson’s rationale was for not supporting the lifting of the Debt Ceiling. The gentleman said Johnson was “playing with fire” and had violated the Constitution. “I think he violated his own core beliefs. If he believes in the Constitution, which I believe he does and he swore to uphold… There’s a very explicit statement in the Constitution that the United States will honor the debts that were legally incurred, and these were debts that were authorized by spending by Congress. So I just can’t understand it at all. And then when you add the repercussions on top of it, it’s… astonishing. That he could take this country to the brink like that.” It was pointed out by another attendee that Johnson’s decision cost the country $32 billion and damaged the reputation of the United States around the world. “That piece of legislation would have spiraled this country into the biggest economic depression we would have ever experienced. So that’s another disconnect. He says ‘compassion,’ he says ‘lower the debt,’ he says ‘fiscal responsibility,’ but his votes do nothing to reflect it.”

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Another constituent asked Solberg if Johnson believes in human evolution. Solberg shook her head no and replied, “I don’t believe so.” A minute later she retracted her answer and said she would find out more about it, “because I really don’t have a stance on his personal belief on that.” Members of the group pointed out there’s a disconnect between what the Senator says and how he votes. Solberg was asked to deliver a message to Johnson: “He might want to think harder about the repercussions of his statements before making them.”