Can you find the boat amidst the mostly plastic debris? Such sights are no longer rare on some of the world’s waters. Ocean River Institute photo

PLASTICS, OCEANS, JOBS AND SECURITY

      While perusing the new non-fiction shelf in the Flint Public Library last week an old Closeteer found Plastic Ocean by Captain Charles Moore.  He borrowed it and has been fretting out loud about its revelations ever since.

For the past two decades, Moore, skipper of a catamaran, his own research vessel, has swept the surface waters of the eastern Pacific with nets designed to retrieve various sized pieces of plastic that have escaped from boats, ships, and land.  For now, let’s simply say he has found a lot.

Moore, with a background in chemistry, clearly tells the history of plastic most of which has occurred in the lifetimes of us older Stream Teamers.  Petrochemicals have spawned a huge industry, which, despite growing Earth inventories and fears, is still mushrooming.  The author tells of the late Steve Jobs urging that everyone update their iPods each year.  Such wonders are made of plastics and metals, some of the latter rare.  Multiply computers by a thousand other products plastic based.  We can’t begin to do justice to the chemical and commercial history of plastics here.  He outlines it well for us.  Moore kind of summarizes with a homely example we old timers can understand.  In the 1950s milk was delivered in reusable glass bottles.  In the 1960s wax coated cartons replaced milk bottles.  In the 1970s plastic containers surpassed paper.  These are the containers our children know for thousands of items.  Only some are recycled.  Much of the rest end up sequestered for awhile in landfills, along roads, and in the waters of the world.  Have you checked the roadside edge of your yard this morning?  You’ll probably find a few of the millions of pieces of plastic thoughtlessly chucked from passing cars last night.

The closeteer is still reading Moore’s passionate, rambling and revelatory book.  We fear he will share more of what he has learned with us.  Many of us have seen the shocking TV news reports and documentaries about plastic found in vast Pacific Ocean gyres.  Perhaps when he is done and we’ve discussed the subject, a proper book review will be forthcoming from the Water Closet.

The millions of tons of plastic suspended in our ocean currents, ranging in size from plastic boats to submicroscopic particles, is a concern you might think our leaders, present and potential, flanked by supposedly “shining seas”, would worry about.  Yet the candidates running for president loudly claim we shouldn’t apologize for our country.  Our major contributions to fossil fuel burning pollutants, which include plastics, and to global warming are not mentioned.  In a green world the color “green” is not uttered in their campaigns.  We take it back, in the case of global warming, Senator Santorum in debate the other night referred to the “the global warming hoax”.  Even President Obama, once quite green, in his long state of the union speech alluded to the environment in only a few fast sentences.  Are they afraid their fellow Americans don’t want to hear of environmental issues?  Yes.

Moore’s plastic on the loose comes from continents, ours long leading the way as a source.  The currents carry it everywhere.  Gravity takes some of the denser polymers down into the depths.  Some plastics degrade rather quickly in UV light.  Some are mechanically chewed and partially digested by a host of aquatic animals.  But how long do the smaller and then ever smaller particles last and how toxic are they?  As yet there are few definitive answers to these questions.  The variables are many.  Moore admits to being a lobbyist, a word much in political news of late.  We hear it a lot from our presidential campaigners who accept money from lobbyists and then tell each other not to do so.  Moore and his scientific and business friends are lobbying hard to stop the flow of plastic debris to the sea.

Another key word in the political campaigns of all, including our president’s, is “jobs”.  We ask, “Why not jobs cleaning up?”  Another word much heard is “security”.  By that the speakers mean a strong military.  Only representative Dr. Paul urges otherwise.  He, who wants friendship and negotiations between nations, is treated by the media as some kind of nut.  In a debate last week, Speaker Gingrich, a proclaimed Christian, when asked what he would do with America’s enemies, proudly quoting Andrew Jackson, said, “Kill them.”  The crowd, many also Christians, roared in approval.  What happened to “Thou shall not kill” or “Turn the other cheek”?  Is this a strange world or what?

Our point here as environmentalists is to look at the words “jobs” and “security” in the broadest and longest range senses.  What could be securer to all than having clean water and healthy habitats for all creatures?  What projects would provide more useful jobs for many than developing alternative sources of energy, cleaning up polluted places, and maintaining and expanding our national and state parks; tens of thousands more park rangers, fewer soldiers?  One old closeteer sadly learned last week on a guided walk of trails in Harold Parker State Forest that the swimming beaches there have been closed to the public these past few years due budget cuts.  Swimming areas were one of the main purposes of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) which built dams to provide them in mid-last century.  The federal government did CCC projects during a real economic depression, not just a recession.  If then, why not now?  Let’s help Moore keep stuff that shouldn’t be there out of our oceans.  There might be many tens of thousands of jobs at all levels in this endeavor.

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WATER RESOURCE AND CONSERVATION INFORMATION

FOR MIDDLETON, BOXFORD AND TOPSFIELD

Ipswich River Flow Rate (S. Middleton USGS Gage) in Cubic Feet per Second (CFS):

*Danvers Water Filtration Plant, Lake Street, Middleton

THE WATER CLOSET is provided by the Middleton Stream Team:

www.middletonstreamteam.org; <StreamTeam@comcast.net> or (978) 777-4584

An artist's rendition of what the upper falls, submerged since the 1630's, might look like without the Ipswich Mills Dam. Jim MacDougall credit

Join us on Wednesday, February 8th, 7 – 8 pm at IRWA’s Riverbend, 143 County Road, Ipswich, for a free presentation  “Towards a Free Flowing Ipswich River.”

Interest in river restoration has grown exponentially in Massachusetts over the last few years. Dam owners, communities, non-profits and government agencies are removing dams in order to restore rivers and eliminate threats to public safety.  Beth Lambert from the MA Division of Ecological Restoration and IRWA’s Brian Kelder will explore opportunities to restore the Ipswich River by removing aging dams. They will discuss 1) the role and function of dams; 2) how dams impact river ecosystems; 3) the dam removal process; and 4) dam removal projects in the Ipswich River Watershed.

RSVP to Cynthia at cingelfinger@ipswichriver.org or call 978-412-8200.

Kerry Mackin is a National River Hero and river watchdog. We look forward to celebrating her accomplishments with you in the months ahead.

With dogged persistence, IRWA Executive Director Kerry Mackin has worked to keep the Ipswich River out of danger for decades. Now we prepare to celebrate her inspiring leadership as she prepares for a new phase of her life — retirement!

Please consider making a gift in Kerry’s honor at www.ipswichriver.org and

Save the Date for Kerry’s Retirement Party

Voice of the River Concert
with local artist Miranda Russell
Friday, June 22, 2012 at the Governor’s Academy

We look forward to seeing you at this memorable and toe-tapping celebration and benefit concert. For more details contact Cynthia at 978-412-8200 or cingelfinger@ipswichriver.org.

In the summer these multiflora rose brambles glow with hundreds of white blossoms. Pamela Hartman photo

WOODLAND WALK IN NEW SNOW

Friday, January 20, 2012, we awoke to a white world shining in the sun.  The TV weather folks said one to three inches of dry snow had come fast and furious in just a couple wee morning hours.  The frozen ground received and kept.  The storm was already well out to sea.  The last of it here must have been quiet; there was still frosting on the trees.

At a little past eight nine members of Middleton’s COA/CC Friday morning walking group¹ met at Mundy Bridge.  There at Prichard’s Pond the water could be seen in several pristine forms.  The liquid tumbling down the stretch of rapids in Boston Brook was at a distance black, contrasting sharply with white banks.  It sang.  Prichard’s Pond, frozen the week before, was a cold sandwich of water, 3 inches of hard ice, and 2 of fluffy snow.  The clear, hence dark water, on entering from Boston Brook allowed us to see all three layers.

All this of course was not novel to the lifelong Yankees, average age 70 plus. They’d risen to a thousand white scenes before, many far more spectacular.  Still, when now and then a breeze burst swept the trees and put us in glittering cold-white dust, some oohed and aaahed, others just smiled.

Happily chattering and kidding one another, we moved easterly from North Liberty Street on a cow path into the woods.  As yet we saw no tracks except those in our wake.  We were soon slowed by unfrozen Pond Meadow Brook bringing water down from Boxford and North Andover.  We had to help each other across a snow covered stone wall and narrow I beam bridge.  There were no casualties.  We proceeded up a path flanked by ledges into a mature oak wood that had been opened some by fire four years ago.  The morning sun, now higher, shone brightly down on us through the leafless canopy.  We passed several vernal pools sealed in ice.  Still no tracks but our own.

A half-mile southwest of Bald Hill we took a winding trail away from it off to the south among glacier carved knolls and two-hundred year old stone walls, the lichen etched gray stones were nicely decorated in white.  Protected Greenbelt land stretched on our left to the east.  Much of this land in northern Middleton, even the private, is naturally protected by wetlands and granite ledge that will not support septic systems.  Long ago it was pasture.  It joins that of Boxford State Forest to the north.  There are miles of trails in Middleton, Boxford and North Andover where we can hike without ever seeing pavement or houses, and rarely other people.

However, we were not alone.  The first tracks that we encountered were those of a fox looking for a morning snack of voles or other small creatures.  We soon came upon a characteristic vole trail, which looked like those made by a western train engine in the deep snow of the Rockies as seen from a plane.  The vole had simply pushed its V plow nose in the fluffy dry snow leaving a mini-canyon behind.  One of the human hikers had seen a vole’s even more striking enclosed tunnel across his lawn that morning.  The fox, tracks in places spread and close together instead of well spaced in a perfect line, had obviously been very interested in the rodent’s path.  Her trail crisscrossed it several times.

All this guessing by non-trackers was done as we entered upon a great swath of openness not seen by us before.  In December and early January a logger hired by the New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) with great machines had pretty much clear-cut over a dozen acres of rocky knolls where the fire mentioned had taken its toll.  His state permit calls this “salvage” cutting.  A few individual healthy oaks were left as sources of acorns, the beginnings of new generations.  On higher portions of the large clearing are two undisturbed islands; fifty-foot wide bands of trees left around vernal pools as forest cutting rules require.

The logging areas of salvage and selective cutting over 80 acres appeared a mess of muddy skidder trails and slash before the snow.  Now all is somewhat cloaked in restoring solid water that will melt gradually to the living soil and roots below.  Much light will enter the woods and in just a couple years all will be green again.  We admired hundreds of waist-high white oaks, shoots from the bases of fire damaged trees, awaiting their turn in the now sunny wings.  Plants, many call “weeds” that we call flowers, will come forth this spring.  Wildlife in the area will increase.  These clearings will be where the food and action are.

Some of us had these hopeful thoughts as we climbed a wide skidder trail where mice and coyote tracks had joined those of fox and vole.  The breeze had picked up a bit and the freezing air on skin, in which blood now warmly flowed, felt good.  Despite the cold, some coats were unbuttoned.  The trail eventually took us southwest into the NEFF log yard where several enormous machines and a pile of whole trees for chipping were assembled.  We heard no sawing from the lone logger, his strength multiplied a million fold by engines and oil, was somewhere else.  His idle machines were waiting.

We left via Stream Teamer Joan and son Peter Cudhea’s driveway where the “harvested” logs and fuel chips also exited for the roads of North America.  The logger had told a couple of us that some of the best logs go all the way to Canada.

Back at Mundy Bridge we decided to hike up Boston Brook on a narrow pine shaded path beside the rapids to the ruins of an ancient logging operation powered by men, horses, oxen and water long, long, ago.  After crossing the “Boy Scout Bridge” over the brook on Greenbelt land we walked several rods² upstream, to the remains of a mill pond dam unused for three centuries.  There in the winter woods devoid of leaves the earthen dam and its sluice and overflow ways are clearly seen with an island between the ways.  There are new dams built by beavers on the upper entrances of both.  The beaver impoundment, once a mill pond with floating logs awaiting the farmer-sawyer, supported us on its ice as we walked upstream looking for the current dam builders’ lodge.  Sharp eyed hiker Sally Shaw spotted it upstream in bushes at half a hundred yards.  The beavers had taken advantage of a large fallen red maple’s upturned roots for the lodge’s northern wall.

We left as the last snow, down from white pines, swirled around us to songs sung by Boston Brook’s stones and fast flowing water.  Our blood sang in harmony.

1. The Middleton Council on Aging/Conservation Commission Friday morning walking group was started in 2005 by then Chairwoman of both boards Gertrude Dearborn.  If you would like to join us please meet at Angelica’s rear parking lot on Fridays before 8 AM.

2. One rod = 16.5 feet.  We use the ancient surveyors’ and farmers’ unit here because it seems appropriate for the ruins we were visiting.  ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

WATER RESOURCE AND CONSERVATION INFORMATION

FOR MIDDLETON, BOXFORD AND TOPSFIELD

Ipswich River Flow Rate (S. Middleton USGS Gage) in Cubic Feet per Second (CFS):

*Danvers Water Filtration Plant, Lake Street, Middleton

THE WATER CLOSET is provided by the Middleton Stream Team:

www.middletonstreamteam.org; <StreamTeam@comcast.net> or (978) 777-4584