Mainline Mom
It seems that somebody with a considerable amount of experience and expertise has been commenting intelligently here in my blog. Needless to say, I am truly flattered, even though she and I seem to have some philosophical differences including some religious differences and some significant political differences. I first contacted her through her weblog, Water water everywhere...
http://waterwatereverywhere.blogspot.com/
She entered two significant comments recently in my Christian Environmentalism post from this past Friday, September 30.
http://edenhill.blogspot.com/2005/09/christian-environmentalism.html
If she is willing, I would like to open up a dialog here with her regarding this very topic, since the notion of conservative Christian environmentalists is a bit, shall I say, novel to me?... I haven't forgotten her name but I have noticed that her name doesn't appear that often now in her blog so I will give her the name "MM" (for Mainline Mom) here in my blog.
MM, I accept that I made assumptions about you that certainly don't seem to be true. By your latest comment, it would appear that you are well aware of ongoing and past environmental pollution.
Your comment that you would drink the discharge from some wastewater treatment plants made me smile. That very thing was the claim here in my small town a few decades ago when the town built its first multimillion dollar wastewater treatment plant. I can still picture in my mind when that claim was made at town meeting back in the 1970s. By design, the effluent would be so clean that a person could drink it and a glass of it would be indistinguishable in appearance from a glass of drinking water. Under that assurance, the town of Greenville and the State of Maine decided that the effluent should be discharged through a large pipe directly into Moosehead Lake one mile north of downtown Greenville. You can find Moosehead Lake on any map of Maine. It is Maine's largest lake.
That plant was built and operated against the wishes of a considerable number of people who were convinced that it was a very bad idea. Finally, after the effluent continually failed to meet the standards claimed, it was discovered that the engineers somehow had managed to slip a decimal point somewhere along the way and it would be virtually impossible for their design to produce the claimed results. Greenville wound up building a second treatment plant in the late 1970s, completely abandoning the first one which eventually was remodeled into a hardware store. I even think someone eventually pulled up the mile of pipe from Moosehead Lake.
But that's ancient history. I'm sure things like that don't happen in this day and age. But your comment put an old familiar smirk back on my face.
Back to the topic at hand...
I would like to give MM the opportunity to educate me concerning the Republican environmental agenda. If, as she says, she doesn't vote Republican merely on one issue, abortion, and if her scientific specialty is the environment, then it seems she must understand the Republican agenda. Since almost any non-Republican that I can think of is convinced that the Bush agenda is anti-environment, then if that is not the case, it would seem to me that someone like MM should stand up and educate us fools who don't understand Bush's goals.
Are you up to it, MM? Feel free to use my space if you wish, or your own, and take your time. I'm a rather patient man and you are a busy woman. I can't make promises, but as long as you write reasonably and avoid the political spin, I'll try to curb my attack instincts as best I can.
Oh, and back on that topic of "EPA wastewater bypass fiasco" that you have mentioned, Googling it doesn't seem to help me find what you are referring to. Could you point me somewhere to get me started, a web address or something?
http://waterwatereverywhere.blogspot.com/
She entered two significant comments recently in my Christian Environmentalism post from this past Friday, September 30.
http://edenhill.blogspot.com/2005/09/christian-environmentalism.html
If she is willing, I would like to open up a dialog here with her regarding this very topic, since the notion of conservative Christian environmentalists is a bit, shall I say, novel to me?... I haven't forgotten her name but I have noticed that her name doesn't appear that often now in her blog so I will give her the name "MM" (for Mainline Mom) here in my blog.
MM, I accept that I made assumptions about you that certainly don't seem to be true. By your latest comment, it would appear that you are well aware of ongoing and past environmental pollution.
Your comment that you would drink the discharge from some wastewater treatment plants made me smile. That very thing was the claim here in my small town a few decades ago when the town built its first multimillion dollar wastewater treatment plant. I can still picture in my mind when that claim was made at town meeting back in the 1970s. By design, the effluent would be so clean that a person could drink it and a glass of it would be indistinguishable in appearance from a glass of drinking water. Under that assurance, the town of Greenville and the State of Maine decided that the effluent should be discharged through a large pipe directly into Moosehead Lake one mile north of downtown Greenville. You can find Moosehead Lake on any map of Maine. It is Maine's largest lake.
That plant was built and operated against the wishes of a considerable number of people who were convinced that it was a very bad idea. Finally, after the effluent continually failed to meet the standards claimed, it was discovered that the engineers somehow had managed to slip a decimal point somewhere along the way and it would be virtually impossible for their design to produce the claimed results. Greenville wound up building a second treatment plant in the late 1970s, completely abandoning the first one which eventually was remodeled into a hardware store. I even think someone eventually pulled up the mile of pipe from Moosehead Lake.
But that's ancient history. I'm sure things like that don't happen in this day and age. But your comment put an old familiar smirk back on my face.
Back to the topic at hand...
I would like to give MM the opportunity to educate me concerning the Republican environmental agenda. If, as she says, she doesn't vote Republican merely on one issue, abortion, and if her scientific specialty is the environment, then it seems she must understand the Republican agenda. Since almost any non-Republican that I can think of is convinced that the Bush agenda is anti-environment, then if that is not the case, it would seem to me that someone like MM should stand up and educate us fools who don't understand Bush's goals.
Are you up to it, MM? Feel free to use my space if you wish, or your own, and take your time. I'm a rather patient man and you are a busy woman. I can't make promises, but as long as you write reasonably and avoid the political spin, I'll try to curb my attack instincts as best I can.
Oh, and back on that topic of "EPA wastewater bypass fiasco" that you have mentioned, Googling it doesn't seem to help me find what you are referring to. Could you point me somewhere to get me started, a web address or something?
posted by Bill | 7:43 PM
3 Comments:
Oops I replied to the wrong post. Oh well, I may have once been smart but I've got "mommy-brain".
Here is Mainline Mom's original comment which was posted to my All Roads post yesterday evening:
Mainline Mom said...
Well, I'll think about it. And yeah it'll probably take a little time to write. I am not saying I support the Bush agenda on the environment. I'm not saying I don't support it either. I need to do some more research. Just cuz I'm a Republican and I voted for Bush doesn't mean I agree with him all the time. I just get really annoyed when people throw so much hateful rhetoric around and reduce most of their arguments to "Bush lied, kids died."
Here's a position statement from the Water Environment Federation on the EPA blending guidance policy, so that you get an idea of my side of the story. http://www.wef.org/NR/rdonlyres/B5CBD40A-25DE-46AF-A2D8-A1F2F51898E6/0/blending_comments.pdf
Here's the Clean Water Action group's side of the story. (the WRONG side) Unfortunately they won. http://www.cleanwateraction.org/backgrounder2.htm
Thank you MM for considering my challenge and thank you for the two links which you provided. I have read through them once, but some questions remain from doing so. I'll need to read through them again before I can make any comments other than that the cleanwateraction article seems to be poorly edited. I'll get back on this topic when I've had a chance to reread the articles.
Again, thank you.
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