Clarion Content

Have you heard about this fabulous program from the City of Durham’s Urban Forestry Division in partnership with Keep Durham Beautiful? The idea sounds terrific. It is called Adopt-a-Tree, basically, the city is matching grants from local groups and citizenry to sponsor tree planting.


This was once our city slogan...

While we have missed the deadline for this year's trees, and doesn't it just feel a little too cold to be planting trees today, the Clarion Content is excited to learn about Adopt-a-Tree and already looking forward to next year.

The city helps with size and suitability selections. They have lists of small, medium and large tree options, guidelines about everything from root balls and containers to overhead canopy space and distance that must be maintained from fire hydrants and manholes. It appears well thought out. Read all the details and apply to have a tree planted on your street here.

Tip of the hat to the Old West Durham resident who sent this our way, word is you can see new trees on several streets in Old West Durham, including Hale, Green, and Rosehill.

Labels: Durham, ecology, infrastructure, Living things

The Clarion Content had a fabulous time on the bus yesterday. We cannot overemphasize what a good deal a free bus that runs down Main Street is for Durham.¹

Want to see something at the Nasher?

What about an event at Goldenbelt?

Perhaps get a drink and listen to some tight grooves at the Pinhook?

Or have a $1 PBR on Monday at the James Joyce?

Or anywhere and everywhere in between and then some. Free. Pull the cord, the Bull City Connector will drop you off where ever you want.²

Yesterday, they let the Clarion Content team, photographer, Jessica Arden,³ and Creative Director, Cady Childs⁴ hop aboard the bus to photograph a fashion shoot, the latest of our Durham Fashion Drive-by series. We mingled with the public.⁵ The drivers, especially our pal Medoza, were amazingly accommodating, able to get their passengers to their appointed destinations on time and keep up with our photographic needs and desires.


We can't wait to show you the whole thing...but in the meantime can we whet your appetite with a preview?


Models from left to right, Cody Tyler of Totes Codes parties and events, director, Ned Phillips, aka the Cozmik Gangsta of the ODD crew, and musician Joe Hall of Hammer no More the Fingers and Blanko Basnet…


Amazing men's clothes from Vert & Vogue.

Special thanks to the stylists at Rock, Paper, Scissors Salon and Gallery for their work with the model's hair.


Notes
¹It is our contention that the bus is an important public good and a social justice issue. In this day of modern transportation and therefore distance, people need cheap options to travel to work.

²Seriously, for more than fifty Durham restaurants, bars, clubs, art spaces and more, the Bull City Connector's service is just about door-to-door.

³This was a physical shoot, can't wait for the behind the scenes footage. Ms. Arden must be doing her pilates, because it was circus act to keep a steady base to shoot from while winging around corners, stopping at traffic lights and otherwise having the floor move beneath her feet, as the wheels on the bus went round and round.

⁴Managing three models, nine outfits, in the drizzle on a moving public bus while coordinating with three PR people, two videographers and three photographers; a veritable whirlwind, Ms. Childs was unbelievable. This all after coming off of working the fabulous soft opening at Durham's newest hot spot, Mateo Tapas.

⁵It wasn't quite this packed.

Labels: Duke, Durham, ecology, economics, Fashion, Fashion Drive-bys, Politics

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported on Wednesday that July was the hottest month on record since the United States began keeping temperature records in 1895. This hot July also closed out the warmest twelve month period ever recorded in the United States.

Wondering about the practical impact of all this hot weather?



Climatologists at the NOAA noted that by the end of the month, about 63% of the country was experiencing drought conditions. Not surprisingly, corn prices¹ have surged up by over 60% in response according to Bloomberg News. And even if the drought eases in America, it may be too little too late after the blazing hot Summer here, and globally dry weather limiting agricultural output in India, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine.

It is worth remembering that a global spike in food prices was part of the catalyst of the Arab Spring.²


Notes
¹Corn, thanks to a very effective lobby, goes into everything, even gasoline, and equally critically animal feed, threatening food security for millions in the less-developed regions of our world.
²Like so many the Clarion Content had tremendous hopes for the Arab Spring revolutions when they began in Tunisia. Sadly the Obama Administration squandered the opportunity. In Egypt, they treated the Muslim Brotherhood backed President as if Dick Cheney were still running the White House. The direct blowback from that failure, notably under Hillary Clinton's watch as Secretary of State, has pushed Egypt into Iran's arms.
It would not be hard to argue too, that the Obama administration's failure to give decisive early backing to Syrian rebels has contributed to thousands of deaths there. The dithering will produce a new administration which will hate Americans no matter which side wins their civil war.
At least, we are still effectively killing civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere with the Obama administration's favorite technology, (f*ck high speed trains) the pilotless drone.

Labels: ecology, Economy, Politics, weather

The Clarion Content is stoked to support the bus.

We are delighted to live in the kind of city that supports the bus. Free municipal bus routes are a fantastic public service. The bus is an old, school kind of throwback idea. It hearkens to an era when people knew their neighbors and front porch culture dominated.

The practical personal benefits of taking the bus are legion, from decreasing the propensity to drive drunk, to saving on gas, to safety. The societal benefits of taking the bus are extensive, too. The list includes decreased pollution and traffic congestion, less need for public parking and hence more open space. The bus encourages a pedestrian culture that helps local business. People walk when they get off the bus.





You should take advantage of the wonderful, free, Bull City Connector bus any and every chance you have. It hits all the spots on Main Street, it is a great way to get out to the Scrap Exchange, Liberty Arts, the Cordoba Center for the Arts, Goldenbelt, American Tobacco and more.

And while the bus makes sense every day, tonight we have a special opportunity for you. Do you want to be an extra in a fashion shoot? Would you like to highlight how easy it is to get to your place of business by Durham's free bus?

Then join the Clarion Content and our fabulous Fashion Drive-by team, photographer, Jessica Arden, and Creative Director, Cady Childs tonight at 6pm along the Bull City Connector route.

We are shooting our latest Fashion Drive-by. We will be photographing on the bus with the amazing fashions of the Independent's Men clothier of the year, Vert & Vogue.

We will be highlighting business along the route. Hoping off at stops to take pictures. There will plenty of opportunity for by-standers and patrons of your establishments to become extras. Wave at us through the windows of the bus and you may end up in the background of a high fashion shoot.


We would like to offer our special thanks to the good folks at the Bull City Connector and the Durham Convention and Visitor's Bureau who reached out to the Clarion Content about making this happen.

Labels: Duke, Durham, ecology, energy policy, Fashion, Fashion Drive-bys, infrastructure, Politics

The Clarion Content is delighted to announce, as some of you have already heard, that we are partnering with the Bull City Connector for our next Fashion Drive-by, Fashion in Transit. The clothes will be provided by the Independent's Men clothier of the year, Vert & Vogue.

We will have our usual superlative Fashion Drive-by team, photographer, Jessica Arden, and Creative Director, Cady Childs.



The Clarion Content is stoked to support the bus.

We are big believers in the ecological and communal returns of mass transit. The bus has so many rewards. There are obvious benefits; saving on gas, no parking issues, being able to knock back a tipple or two without driving. And there are subtler benefits; meeting your neighbors, understanding the geography of our community, the positive feeling of having played a part in reducing pollution and waste, helping push the mass transit mindset.

The Clarion Content is proud to be in and of Durham. We make a concerted effort to support the green¹ in our community and we believe Durham does the same.


Notes
¹We like green initiatives, ideas and projects of all ilks. If we are missing out on yours, please send it our way! Info@ClarionContent dot com. All one word dot is the symbol "."

Labels: Durham, ecology, Fashion, Fashion Drive-bys, infrastructure, Politics, Practical Advice, vehicles

A fantastic new service called CompostNow has debuted in Durham and the surrounding area. A tip of the hat to a fellow member of the Watts-Hillandale Neighborhood Association for sending this our way. They heard about them through the ahead the curve cats over at Bull City Forward.





For $25 a month, CompostNow provides a homeowner with a composting bin; you fill it up, they pick it up, once a week. Homeowners then have the option of having the resulting nutrient-rich, garden-ready compost delivered to them whenever and wherever at no extra charge. Or, CompostNow members can also choose to donate the compost to a local community garden of their choice.

Labels: Durham, ecology, Practical Advice, science

The Clarion Content has been following the fracking story and its effects on this area and our community closely. We broke the news that national builder D.R. Horton had been securing fracking rights to Durham properties through "Special Warranty Deeds." They have since backed down at least partially giving mineral rights back to some Durham property owners who were not properly informed they were granting them to the home builder.


This may or may not happen to your water after local fracking...

As we warned last month, the national debate on fracking is not over, many view fracking through the lens of domestic energy production. We think you will be hearing a lot more about fracking as the presidential campaign heats up.

The Obama administration announced this week its intention to toughen oversight of fracking on federal land. It is widely expected that the Interior Department will issue rules regulating hydraulic fracturing, e.g. fracking, by the end of this year.

Of course, a new President might mean a whole different set of rules than the current occupant of the White House is planning. For example, current regulations do not require energy and mining companies injecting high-pressure concoctions of water, chemicals and sand into the earth to even disclose what chemicals and potential pollutants are in their frothy brew (which may or may not seep into your ground water).

Read more about this political hot potato here at The Hill.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, ecology, energy policy, Politics

Have you heard about the Sol Food Mobile Farm?

If not, you should.

It is one more fabulous, innovative, concerned group of Durham citizens. Four Durham School of the Arts graduates, Eliza Bordley, Reid Rosemond, Ellen Duda and Dylan Hammond are taking a biofuel¹ powered bus that they converted on a six month, 9,000 mile, nationwide tour. They are fiscally supported by Zomppa, a food education and advocacy non-profit(and your Kickstarter cash).


This is the roof of the bus...
It is planted as part of a scheme to regulate the temperature inside the vehicle.
Photo credit Scenes from my Lunch Hour


The Clarion Content sat down with this fascinating foursome for an interview yesterday, on the bus that will serve as their home and sleeping quarters, as they prepared to embark on their nationwide tour. They depart from their south central Durham farm base today, first stop Asheville.

Their journey will include ten workshops and as many fifty expos. It is a non-paying gig so the group will be working as many farm trades, farm stays, and farmer's markets as they can. They will also be growing herbs, vermacomposting and stocking up on staples like beans, corn meal and polenta as they hit the road.

During their workshops they will construct community gardens with local children and interested adults. The Sol Food Farm team already has experience in this arena. They partnered with several Durham school of the Arts teachers, including another DSA alum and high school pal, Victor Cadilla, now a DSA history teacher, to found the school's Urban Farm Club. Together with students they built eight raised beds and planted an herb and vegetable garden.

The Sol Food team has amazing plans. They are headed for some fantastic destinations and wonderful collaborations, including, in Maine with renown agricultural researcher and educator, Elliot Coleman, author of The Four Season Harvest.

One of their goals is to bring the message to adults and kids alike that local agriculture exists. Urban farming is possible. Food does not have to be massed produced and shipped across country. As Rosemond put it, "We are doing it out love, it is what we are into."

They are also partnering with an incredible Durham start-up called In R Food that analyzes, among many other things, the distance a product has traveled to market, what's in it and what are the locally produced alternatives.


Left to right Ellen Duda, Dylan Hammond, Eliza Bordley and Reid Rosemond.
Photo credit Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Durham, you never cease to amaze.

Sol Food Mobile Farm will be filing more dispatches from the road. We wish them well. The Clarion Content will keep you updated on their fabulous journey. We will be running a full length feature on the crew, their bus and the mission next week. Stay tuned.

For now, check out more pictures of the Sol Food Mobile Farm bus and crew at Scenes from my Lunch Hour.


Notes
¹ Technically waste vegetable oil, which is even better than a many a regular biofuel, because it never goes through processing, it just goes straight from the restaurant's fryer into the fuel tanks.

Labels: Durham, ecology, economics, energy policy, food, Living things, science

SEEDS garden at #706 Gilbert Street

Friend of the Clarion Content and fellow blogger, Durham Profiles, is a great place to read stories about fellow Durhamanians. We loved their profile of Durham musician, Steven Coffman, a couple of months back.

Durham Profiles and founder Ruth Eckles most recent article follows the story of urban farming in Durham through Homegrown City Farms. Local food is a cause near and dear to the Clarion Content's heart.

A brief excerpt from the latest pearl on Durham Profiles...

"There’s so much wasted land in a lawn," laments Collier Reeves of Homegrown City Farms in a recent interview. Her words remain on my mind as I drive to work, passing the broad expanse of lawns that surround office buildings, pedestrian malls, hotels, grocery stores and highway medians.

"We live in an agriculturally rich area here in the Piedmont, but there is a lot of underused land, especially in urban areas," Maryah Smith-Overman, the other half of Homegrown City Farms, adds.

Since moving from Asheville to Durham last year to launch the project, the two have steadily transformed a borrowed quarter-acre plot in East Durham into a small farm overflowing with sugar snap peas, chard, beets, radishes, spinach, arugula, carrots, and broccoli raab. On June 1st, they will begin distributing the vegetables through CSA shares. Homegrown City Farms grew out of Reeves and Smith-Overmans’ mutual desire to promote community, food sovereignty, and sustainable land stewardship practices...Both artists and musicians, Reeves and Smith-Overman are attracted to Durham’s overlapping social justice, farm-to-fork, music and art scenes.

Ms. Eckles teases out that uniquely Durham story, that vibe that makes our town a place where people find a way to say "Yes", rather than "No." Homegrown City Farms is clearly built on and sustained by a cooperative community effort.

They employ a process called a "Crop Mob" when they need extra help. A spin-off of the meme of the flash mob, crop mobbing is a way to harness the collective effort of the community. It is a natural pairing with urban farming because in the past when activities like planting, harvesting, processing, and barnraising almost always required local collective effort, the rural community was there. In the modern parlance, crop mobbers work together, share a meal, play, talk, make music and revel in life. No money is exchanged.

The Clarion Content knows we are not alone in Durham in our support for urban gardens, local farms and locally grown food. Just yesterday, we heard bon vivants, Jennifer and Dain Phelan, proprietors of a favorite Clarion Content watering hole and eatery Dain's, held a fundraiser to support SEEDS. SEEDS, a long time Durham institution, is a non-profit educational community garden that uses gardening and growing food to teach respect for life, for the earth and for each other. SEEDS young urban gardeners sell their wares at their own Produce & Craft Market Wednesday's from 4pm to 6pm at #706 Gilbert Street, in Durham and also Saturdays at the Durham Farmer's Market.

Read Ruth Eckles and Durham Profiles whole article here. Read more about Crop Mobbing here.

Labels: Durham, ecology, Economy, food

The Clarion Content has been following the fracking debate through our Durham lens. However, as we told you in our last article, fracking has a writ large context as well. It is a key player in the national debate about energy policy and energy production.


Image found here.

Witness an article in last week's USA Today, under the banner headline, "U.S. energy independence is no longer just a pipe dream" Their writer, Tim Mullaney, used the quaint home of the Little League Baseball World Series, Williamsport as his vehicle. Pennsylvania is a state where the fracking debate is manifest. Jobs and energy production meet local environmental and ecological concerns head on.

USA Today as is their want drifts through the highlights like daytime television: [footnotes we added]

"about 100 companies have moved to town..." and "Citigroup argues that the U.S., or at least North America, can achieve energy independence by 2020..." more citing Citigroup, "Counting the output from Canada¹ and Mexico², North America is 'the new Middle East'..." "It could help manufacturers and chemical businesses that use lots of energy or make products from natural gas. It might give the U.S. a structural advantage on trade partners in energy costs, helping to offset the edge that cheaper labor gives nations such as China.."

The general gist of it all is selling the amazing possibilities, and though USA Today is quoting Citigroup's report and analyst, is their readership nuanced enough to pick up on that? One wonders.

It becomes especially relevant in the next paragraph when the writer transitions from parroting citing Citigroup to this beauty, "A dozen years after Texas wildcatter George Mitchell commercialized a new gas-drilling technology called hydraulic fracking, the new energy boom is taking off..."

He then proceeds to tell the happy little tale, Wikipedia meets Johnny Appleseed style, of how fracking has spread its largesse from from Pennsylvania to Alaska to North Dakota back to Williamsport where, "Shell has announced plans to build a cracking plant, which will make chemicals from natural gas, outside Pittsburgh. The expected payoff includes 10,000 construction jobs..."

USA Today does caution its readership that this analysis assumes continued strong conservation trends, along with federal mandates for improved vehicle fuel standards. It also notes that this still won't lead to $2/gallon gasoline.

But what the Clarion Content finds most interesting, most relevant both in Durham and the proverbial Main Streets where the presidential election will be played out, is that never once does the author mention the environmental³ and ecological⁴ concerns that accompany fracking. Whether accidental or not, the Clarion Content finds it metaphorical for how we anticipate the soundbite politics of the presidential debate will approach fracking. The bitter irony is that here at home in Durham, across the fences and the backyards, concerns about health and the local ecology dominate. We don't want our families, friends and neighbors to get sick, we don't want our area polluted.⁵

Stay tuned.⁶



Notes
¹Be nice to Canadians, on top of their wealth of natural resources, the Northwest passage is about to open, too.

²Seems like it would be in America's interest to quit destabilizing Mexico with an unsuccessful drug policy.

³ Environmental concerns in this case being human health concerns, pollution that harms ground water supplies or creates new cancer clusters.

⁴Ecological concerns in this case referring to environmental impacts to the local habitat affecting everything from farming and animal husbandry to wild species die-off.

⁵The energy industry PR machine has a swell label for that stance, it makes you a nimby. As in "Those damn nimby's, first it was power plants, then it was mountain topping, now its fracking." Let it be said to the Clarion Content whole-heartedly agrees that a realistic national conversation about consumption and conservation has to occur. Dick Cheney be damned.

⁶The record is not over yet. This will (or should) come up hundreds of times in the presidential campaign.

Labels: Durham, ecology, Economy, energy policy, Politics, Pop Culture

The Clarion Content has been closely following the battle over fracking and subsurface mineral rights closely since we broke the story that national builder, D.R. Horton, had obtained fracking rights and mineral rights in the Triangle. Our sources are now saying that company holds these mineral rights in as many as sixty subdivisions in North Carolina.

However, they may be backing down in the face of massive amounts of bad publicity...

What? It isn't helping to sell homes when people discover you have the right to pump noxious chemicals 500 feet beneath the surface of their land? Just because those chemicals pollute groundwater and might cause earthquakes, people are concerned?

The Durham Herald-Sun's Laura Oleniacz reports that D.R. Horton gave mineral rights back to twenty-two Durham property owners according to the Durham County Register of Deeds office. The reason D.R. Horton gave was based on a technicality, "...company officials discovered last week that some property owners’ contracts didn’t mention that the company was reserving the mineral rights to some properties."

Oleniacz also notes that, "the D.R. Horton company also said that it is now stopping its practice of retaining mineral rights in cases where those rights have not already been reserved by a previous property owner, and until the state legislature 'has fully addressed the issues now pending before it.'"

Does not exactly sound like they have given up.

And clearly, statewide, the battle is not over yet, be prepared to hear the phrase "domestic energy production" hundreds of times in the upcoming presidential election cycle. Fracking is domestic energy production. Folks who attended the information session organized by Durham County Agricultural Cooperative Extension Services and Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA heard that while North Carolina farmers and landowners are being paid as little as a $1/acre for fracking rights, in some western states the going rate is $25/acre. Energy companies offer farmers and landowners, huge initial signing bonuses, too, in exchange for permission to frack on their property.

They build huge well pads, the hydraulic equivalent of open pit mines, often seven to ten acres in dimension. The pump their toxic brew beneath the surface, push what shale and natural gas products they can to the surface and leave, often with no reclamation provisions in place, not even minimal aesthetic repair.¹

State Senator Bob Rucho, R-Mecklenburg, introduced a bill to the North Carolina Senate's Energy Policy Issues Committee that recommends to the General Assembly eliminating the state's current prohibitions on horizontal drilling (fracking).

In the status quo many questions remain unanswered. Is D.R. Horton giving back mineral rights to all the North Carolina properties where they have claimed them? Or only where they did not properly disclose they were obtaining them? Are they willing to give back these mineral and subsurface rights to any D.R. Horton homeowner who requests them? What if your neighbor doesn't request their return? What is the effect on the property values of the neighborhood? The individual?

Durham property attorney, Carey Ewing, who was an essential part of bringing the story to the public eye, says that uncertainty prevails, "Homeowners need more information and no one is giving it to them."²

And while D.R. Horton's spokespeople insist, "D.R. Horton is not in the mining business. It is in the business of building, and selling, quality homes and providing excellent value to its homeowners..." What is the other part of their conglomerate up to? What is D.R.H. Energy's role in this dirty business?³

Stay tuned. We will keep you updated.



Notes
¹If North Carolina does end up legislating to allow fracking, at bare minimum, the state must put in place strong regulation about how the land is to be left afterward, both above and below the surface of the ground.

²Ms. Ewing is quoted in both the Durham Herald-Sun's and the AP's recent stories about fracking in North Carolina. Full disclosure: the Clarion Content editor has previously retained, on an entirely separate issue, Ms. Ewing's firm, the Ewing Law Center.

³D.R.H. Energy also owns mineral and subsurface drilling rights to many D.R. Horton properties in North Carolina. The energy company has not issued a public statement about its role or intentions.

Labels: Durham, ecology, energy policy, Ethically questionable, Politics

Since the Clarion Content broke the story that Mineral Deeds were being signed in Durham County granting national builders like D.R. Horton fracking rights, there has been much hue and cry.



The Assistant Attorney General of North Carolina, M. Lynne Weaver, wrote D.R. Horton asking them for further information about how they disclosed to potential homebuyers that they were reserving such rights. (See below.)

That they reserved the rights, and have been reserving them in certain property agreements as far back as 2010, is not in dispute.

What does that mean? What can you as a Durham resident and/or homeowner do?

One place to start getting answers to some of those questions is a public meeting tomorrow night. Durham County Agricultural Cooperative Extension Services and Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA have organized an informational session at the Durham Agricultural Extension Center, #721 Foster Street, at 7pm.

Some of the topics on the table include: Understanding the hydraulic fracking process, the potential impacts of drilling on crops, livestock, forest land, and water resources, how to understand oil and gas rights lease terminology, how to fairly negotiate a mineral rights lease and landowner protections,¹ and adequate compensation for mineral resources.

We hear that the organizers of the No Frack PAC might be in attendance.

For more information contact: Jordan Treakle at Jordan@rafiusa.org or 919-444-1321


Notes
¹Remember these agreements are fairly common in some of the Western and Rocky Mountain states.

²Letter from the Attorney General's office.

Labels: Durham, ecology, energy policy, Politics, public protest

The Clarion Content has been tweeting for several days that we are sitting on an amazing fracking related story. We have waited on the sidelines as political figures from Governor Bev Perdue on down have told constituents what a boon fracking will be to North Carolina, and specifically our region of North Carolina, which sits on the geologically promising Deep River Basin.

Quite obviously the debate between the believers in the economic benefits of fracking and those who fear its massive environmental costs are unresolved. There is strong opinion and strong emotion on both sides.

What we believe most of you, dear readers, are unaware of, is that in some parts of Durham County permission to frack is already being granted, in advance of state legislative approval and in preparation for private profiteering. The Clarion Content and our sources have obtained deeds from the public records that indicate prominent builder D.R. Horton is securing rights to frack underneath some of its most recent Durham developments.¹ (See below.)

We have redacted these deeds to protect the homeowners and their communities, but they should make you jump right out of your skin.

Public records indicate D.R. Horton homebuyers are using D.R. Horton's attorney at closing are receiving a "Special Warranty Deed" to their homes, rather than the far more common "General Warranty Deed." These "Special Warranty Deeds" grant D.R. Horton, a Delaware company and D.R. H. Energy, Inc.², any and all rights, titles and interests to subsurface resources beneath the homebuyer's property.

Fracking is the process of drilling into shale deposits and using water and toxic chemicals to break up the subsurface rock and extract natural gas. The fracking process usually comes in from the side, it is not drilling straight down like an oil well, so D.R. Horton and D.R. H. Energy do not need to own the land they intend to frack, if they own the rights to the minerals buried deep beneath the land.

As you can see in the deeds below D.R. Horton and their pals D.R.H. Energy have reserved:

"Any and all oil rights, mineral rights, natural gas rights, rights to all other hydrocarbons, geothermal heat rights, water rights and all products derived from these, collectively 'Subsurface Resources'."

They have also secured:

"the perpetual right to drill, mine, explore and operate for and produce, store and remove any of the Subsurface Resources on or from the Property by any means whatsoever including without limitation the right to whipstock or directionally drill and mine, from lands other than the Property wells, tunnels and shafts into, through or across the subsurface of the Property...and to redrill, retunnel, equip, maintain, repair, deepen and operate any such wells or mines..." ---All italics added for emphasis.

Yikes!

We sought comment from numerous Durham politicos and finally got this back from Amy Blalock, a Senior Public Affairs Specialist in the Office of Public Affairs, of the City of Durham,

"Ultimately, the State’s General Assembly will make decisions about where North Carolina goes on this issue, and local government authority over the matter will be determined by the State. In the meantime, all property owners should carefully consider any offers to purchase mineral rights, thoroughly research the matter themselves, and if necessary, consult an attorney with expertise in real estate and mineral rights law."

Doesn't exactly sound like city government has your back on this one, Durham.

D.R. Horton spokesman did not return calls requesting comment.

Considering fracking's potential list of harms include everything from ground water and well water pollution to increased seismic activity (yep, earthquakes) in previously seismically inactive areas, homebuyers ought to look long and hard at their deeds before signing anything.



See full size document here.



See full size document here.



See full size document here.



See full size document here.


Notes
¹The Register of Deeds Public Records Search reveals five Durham developments where D.R.H. Energy has secured similar rights. We have also seen similar deeds for properties in Granville, Franklin and Wake Counties.

²Think the similarities in the two companies' names might be more than coincidental?

Labels: Durham, ecology, energy policy, Ethically questionable, Politics

Regular Clarion Content feature contributor Cliff Phillips returns with another insightful piece about pace, society, and environmental change. Once again he examines our shared modern world and ways. His astute observations take what had heretofore been subterranean and casually ignored, and ask us to acknowledge and confront it in our cultural selves. We would say, "Amen, brother, shout it from the mountaintops!" but it would probably be drowned out by the din.


**********************************


What is the difference between a broom and a vacuum? Between a scythe and a mower? Between a horse and a car? Between a rake and a leaf blower? The newer tools save labor, of course, but it’s also important to recognize that the older tools belong to a quieter time.

Stop to picture doing things the old way and you will notice a critical break industrial man has made with our past. The bad old days of manual chores seem impossibly difficult to us now, but it has been easy to forget that they were blissfully quiet compared to the sonic environment we endure today. And the ongoing technological proliferation of gadgetry, machines and toys comes at the direct cost of escalating noise levels.

While studies document the damage of noise pollution to hearing, cognitive function, mental health and cardiovascular health (and not just for humans), there is no measure of the collective social damage caused by the stress, anxiety, and even pathological behavior unleashed by the escalating racket. And the roar is steadily increasing, even periodically doubling in many environments (like near growing airports), with no indication of how it might level off. The din is not merely diminishing our quality of life. Worse, civilization is sick with noise.

Noise pollution is defined as any environmental noise which is annoying, distracting or physically harmful. “Annoying” and “distracting” may seem to stretch the definition, until you try to listen to one of two or more competing sounds. It’s not just difficult, it can be irritating, and those unwanted sounds are a problem. Consider an office worker, standing beside a running copy machine in a busy office, straining to make out what their boss is saying to them from across the room. They may well feel a surge of annoyance, not all of it caused by their boss.

At 60-80 decibels, the competing sounds of conversation and office machines are beneath the 90-95 decibel range at which prolonged exposure can result in hearing loss. The typical modern environment is pretty cluttered with 60-80 decibel sound, whether from humans or from their electronic surrogates. But the brain can’t easily distinguish between multiple sound sources, making the quantity of noise just as problematic as its volume. The office worker can’t distinguish her boss’ words from the meaningless sounds, and events quickly outpace her senses. The tiny primal thrill of hypertension (“annoyance”) she feels is harmless in itself, but a busy day in the office can become thrilling in a bad way. When we talk about having “stress” and “distractions,” we are often referring to noise.

Our standard for what we deem unreasonable noise is bound up in notions of what a reasonable person would tolerate in their sonic environment. But when we try to imagine this “reasonable person” in our noisy contemporary world, it is often the exceptionally tolerant person we picture. Given how prolific noise sources are, we need to seek a standard of quiet rather than a standard of noise tolerance. There truly is a level at which noise is not only too loud, but too much, and just not healthy for individuals or society.

But can we remember the quiet well enough to make the judgment? What would the “reasonable person” of 1900 or 1800 have thought was unreasonable noise? How would they respond to an environment where streams of jet planes rip through the city skies, highways scream past crowded neighborhoods, televisions broadcast from every room in the household, cell phones sing spontaneously from every pocket, and swarms of leaf blowers and lawnmowers drone perpetually through the warm seasons of suburbia? The astonishing fact is that almost every basic task of life has been automated and has a corresponding mechanical or electronic noise. We live with a ruckus unanticipated in the hush of 1900. Unimaginable in the stillness of 1800.

No doubt, our ancestors would be rattled to encounter the sonic environment of 2011. The crescendo would alarm them, but so would the sheer fact that we endure it. No doubt they would wonder, because we seem unaware of the riot in the air. It might seem to them that in all the sustained commotion, human consciousness itself had been blasted into an altered state: that interacting with our environment no longer sharpened or heightened our senses but actually deadened them; that instead of listening we filtered out, instead of paying attention we ignored, instead of experiencing we disengaged; that the restorative beauty of silence, now nearly extinct, caused many only loneliness, anxiety and fear.

Maybe they would be sorry for us. Maybe angry at us. They would think us lonely, for sure, but also sense-addicted and over-stimulated. Was something gained? Would our ancestors see a world of “connectivity” and because of it leisure and freedom? Or would they see a bleak echo chamber where the human spirit is shouted down and gradually forgotten, silenced by the rampant, petty violence of exponential noise?

Labels: Cliff Phillips, ecology, technology

Damage already upriver

Is it one more sign of the turbulent weather that has accompanied global warming? The United States Army Corps of Engineers opened the floodgates on the Morganza spillway, for only the second time since its construction in 1954, releasing pressure on the swollen Mississippi River. The deliberate flooding is supposed to help spare Baton Rouge and New Orleans downstream.

Up to 3,000 square miles may be inundated. Local news stations were reporting that land that was farms just last week was 15 feet underwater less than three hours after the spillway opened. This was after only a single one of the 125 bays on the spillway was opened. For local wildlife, it is an epic disaster. The Associated Press reported that, within 30 minutes, 100 acres of land were under a foot of water. The area where the flood waters will drain is home to some of the best wading bird rookeries in the United States, normally from late February to late July, this part of Louisiana is suffused with little blue herons, barred and great horned owls, night-herons, roseate spoonbills, white ibis, egrets along with plenty of alligators.

One of the reasons engineers have only opened one gate, for now, is to give wildlife more time to flee for higher ground.

The human consequences are expected to be severe as well. The BBC is reporting that 25,000 people and 11,000 buildings could be affected by the roiling waters. Estimates are the damages could top $1 billion. The BBC says that residents of Butte La Rose, LA, a community directly in the path of the water, had been told to pack for a long absence. "They told us to move as though we were moving - period - not coming back, not to so much as leave a toothpick behind," said one woman. Farmers in the region are expecting to lose their entire crops in a year of high prices for farm produce.

Brutal. Times are tough.

The Mississippi River is not supposed to crest in Louisiana until the last week of May.

Labels: ecology, Economy, weather

Reports from the U.S. Geological Survey indicate that the coast of Japan moved eight feet during the massive 8.9 earthquake off of its northeastern coast last week. The earthquake was the most powerful to hit the island archipelago in its recorded history. The quake was so big that it shifted the Earth on its axis. Reports from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy estimated the 8.9 magnitude quake shifted the planet on its axis by nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters).

Read more here at CNN.

Labels: ecology

The game is called Homefront.

THQ, a Southern California video gaming company, was in San Franscisco to promote its hyperviolent video game, it ended up instead garnering far more publicity for its pollution of San Francisco Bay. The company staged an event in downtown San Francisco that included the release of 10,000 red balloons with an offer from the massive chain, GameStop, allowing gamers to "receive the resistance multi-player pack, featuring an exclusive weapon."

The game is set in a near-future where the United States has been invaded by nuclear-armed troops from North Korea. Beautiful. For the children, you know. Unfortunately, the balloons and the coupons, not so beautiful. Wind and rain combined to push the balloons toward, and then into San Francisco Bay, by the thousands, almost immediately after their release. Unsurprisingly, in an environmentally conscious city like San Francisco, local denizens were not pleased with the free pollution caused by THQ and GameStop.

Read more here.

Labels: ecology, Pop Culture

The Clarion Content is an unabashed support of the Gaia theory. We read several years back about work being done on parasitic worms, the human digestive tract and autoimmune disorders. The basic premise being that when human's used to spend a lot less time and energy sanitizing our food, we were a lot less susceptible to autoimmune disorders.

Naturally, this struck our Gaian heart as a likely candidate for a symbiotic relationship. Research has increasing born this theory out, although it is still highly controversial in the United States. Parasitic worms (likely worms in general) carry connotations far beyond the more common archetypes of natural healing; we are not talking wheat grass shots, yoga or even acupuncture here. We are talking extracting roundworm eggs from the stool of an eleven year-old infected girl, cleaning them and eating them. Or putting hookworm larva on a patient's arm so they burrow through the skin enter the bloodstream and make their way into one's intestines.

Yet the results have been compelling. Many of the Man's pigeons pooh-pooh evidence found on blogs. Read then an amazing tale on CNN backing the theories originally popularized by Dr. Joel Weinstock, chief of gastroenterology at Tufts University Medical School.

Humans lived with worms in our intestines for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. Is it really so odd that our bodies and theirs learned to work together?

Labels: ecology, health, Pop Culture, science, technology

An expedition coordinated by Conservation International looking for possibly extinct species of frog instead discovered three new species, two toads and a poison-secreting rocket frog. The expedition to Colombia failed to find the species it was hoping to rediscover, the Mesopotamia beaked toad.

According to the BBC, it did find a 3-4cm red-eyed toad, which was discovered at an altitude of over 6,000 feet. It also encountered a new toad that is also tiny, less than 2cm long. It has a bird beak-shaped head that Dr. Robin Moore, the scientist who led the rediscovery project, compared to the snout of Montgomery Burns.

Read the whole story here in the BBC.

Labels: ecology, science

The U.S. Geological Survey issued a reality check to those who think that United States can get by without foreign oil. Mind you, those who think U.S. oil resources are/were sufficient are in a special minority of dreamers, right there with those who still think the Earth is the center of the universe and the tooth fairy is real.

Despite the fact that these folks aren't the sort to be swayed by facts or numbers, it cannot help their cause that the U.S. Geological Survey revised the amount of untapped oil reserves that it estimates are in Alaska and its waters down by 90% this week.

The Survey group's new estimate is 896 million barrels of oil are in the reserve, approximately 90% less than a 2002 estimate of 10.6 billion barrels. The good news natural gas reserve estimates were revised upward from 8 trillion cubic feet of gas to 61 trillion cubic feet gas.

Side note, the United States desperately needs more liquefied natural gas terminals. Imagine an America willing to invest in its infrastructure. Too bad, it is a dream, not a reality.

Labels: ecology, economics, energy policy, Predictions