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A Decade of
RochesterEnvironment.com
RochesterEnvironment.com is the most comprehensive online
portal of environmental information for one municipality--Rochester, New
York--in the world. This site provides an example of one specific community's
entire environmental profile. Though I focus sharply on Rochester, NY, there is
nothing particularly significant about this mid-sized, upper New York State
community’s environmental situation. I merely use Rochester because I live here
and thus I have better access to much of the information needed to demonstrate
my ideas.
In 1998 I began RochesterEnvironment.com both to inform
myself about the Rochester-area environment and to share what I discovered using
the new and quickly-growing medium of the Internet. What I was learning from
scientific studies, books, public documents, environmental reports, and online
articles about the growing plight of our environment did not match what was
being reported locally. My observations revealed a looming disaster while the
local mainstream media plodded on with business as usual. So, over the last ten
years, RochesterEnvironment.com evolved towards the premise that our mainstream
media is not doing a good job on informing the public about our environmental
priorities. If the public does not have a correct model of reality, we are
doomed to serious environmental degradation, maybe even environmental collapse.
Over the years, I have shaped RochesterEnvironment.com to
provide at least one small enclave against the suppression of environmental
information we need to know in order to have a sustainable environment. The site
is an objective, non-profit, connect-the-dots presentation of all the
environmental information pertaining to one area. Instead of measuring how
environmental stories will bring readership to the news media or fit within a
political agenda, I ask, how will Global Warming affect Rochester? How does the
deterioration of the oceans and other bodies of water like the Great Lakes
affect Rochester? Or, when will brownfields be cleaned up in our community? In
addition, RochesterEnvironment.com catalogues all the environmental events and
activities (which constitutes a large interactive part of this site’s work)
going on in and around this community. My hope is that this vision of an
all-encompassing environmental web site devoted to one community would take hold
in others areas—and then connect with each other.
The advantage of this wholesale approach is a complete
monitoring of our environment sourced from many online news publications, near
and far, while providing primary sources from university, libraries, cities,
counties, state, federal, and environmental organizations. Truly, the Internet
is an excellent vehicle for making the public aware of our environment. It is
paperless, instantaneous, world-wide, interactive, comprehensive, and mostly
free. The web allows for feedback, self-correcting, and even allows detractors
to have their say.
While we share many environmental concerns with other
communities around the world, some of the repercussions of these issues and the
solutions to them are unique to the Rochester, New York area—just as other
locations would have their particular environmental issues, taken on in their
unique way.
As catalogued in
News Archives (a ten-year list of environmental news links about our area)
and
Daily Update Archive (a decade of events, actions, and thoughts on our
environment), there are some unique stories about the Rochester area environment
that provide lessons and suggestions for future study. Here are some issues and
trends I have reported on in the last ten years:
- the rise and fall the Rochester-to-Toronto Fast Ferry
project
- the rise and fall of the attempt to expand Seneca Park
Zoo into the Olmstead designed Seneca Park
- an increase in dog fighting stories
- fewer asthma stories (which, given the nationwide
epidemic, I doubt is actually dwindling)
- against most expectations, the adoption by our county
of the state 48 Hour Pesticide Notification Law of pesticide lawn spraying
- lingering brownfields and several major pollution
outbreaks
- an attempt by the county to put a NYS Thruway exit at
Chili, an area of dwindling population that would have uselessly spilled a
major thoroughfare on to an open corn field
- fewer stories on acid rain (probably because of
efforts to curb energy plant emissions that caused acid rain)
- the rise in outbreaks of diseases like Viral
Hemorrhagic Septicemia (VHS), West Nile Virus, and deer wasting disease (CWD)
- the rise and predictable nuisance of the Zebra Mussel
- more stories on local predictions of how Global
Warming will affect the Rochester area
- a movement against burning coal for energy
- rise in recycling, and the proper disposal of
hazardous waste with many ‘disposal’ events provided by Monroe County
- the steady rise in businesses “going green”
- more sightings of coyotes, bears, beavers, cougars,
and even a moose
- growing concern over fresh water diversion and a
plethora of environmental issues around the Finger and Great Lakes
- more environmental health reports and more studies on
animals diseases, pollution, and invasive species
- Rochester becoming a leader in the reduction of lead
poisoning detection in homes
- more lands set aside for open space
- periodic attempts by businesses and sports
organizations to take over parts of our public parks
- rise in farm co-ops and organic farming
- a steady stream of various scenarios for solving
Ontario beach pollution
- rise in wind farms, renewable energy sources, and
local universities taking on research on renewable energy
- more stories about air quality, smog, and ground-level
ozone pollution
- fewer environmental stories locally, likely due to a
loss of dedicated environmental reporters and more online stories pertaining
to our region coming from far and wide
- rise in trails and use of bikes for commuting
Now here in 2008, as the Internet grows in availability and
use, I hope to see RochesterEnvironment.com grow as an online newspaper. This
might seem pretentious to some in a world where there is more information, more
media outlets, more web sites, more governmental agencies, and more universities
doing more reporting on our environment. And while these points are true,
ironically it is also true that it is getting more difficult to actually find
out what is going on in our environment.
Governmental environmental agencies are underfunded and
subject to political and economic pressures; the mass media is undeniably
collected under fewer corporations dedicated to profit first. Also, in all
sectors of the media our environmental problems are but one of the many issues
confronting the public whereas in reality the state of our environment must be
our first priority. As Carl Sagan has stated, “Anything else you're interested
in is not going to happen if you can't breathe the air and drink the water."
Because of the primacy of our environment, I disagree with
the view that the public is overwhelmed by the complexity and urgency of our
environmental problems. That is an irresponsible and irrational attitude
towards a real danger. We need more objective, interactive, and continual
environmental information to help us protect our environment, not less.
Regardless of environmentalism’s state of popularity, I believe that we must all
monitor our environment daily, like we do sports, accidents, celebrity’s quirky
predilections and the other things that attract us to the daily news. Further,
we must compare the information we get from the government and the media with
information from scientist and other media. At the level of societal choices,
not necessarily scientific inquiry, the public must be ready to make profound
decisions and wise votes that will affect our environment.
Many of us assume that the future will be much like the
past, but a great deal of evidence suggests otherwise: There are manmade
chemicals and genetically modified plants radiating into our environment that
never existed before. Mankind, since the rise of agriculture ten thousand years
ago, and his footprints on his environment escalating geometrically since the
Industrial Revolution, has been profoundly altering air, land, and water on this
planet. We must change our information priorities. We must all pay attention
to what is going on in our environment locally and world-wide.
RochesterEnvironment.com is here to help you to do just
that. Please visit today and everyday, or sign up for our
free newsletter. (http://www.rochesterenvironment.com/)
* Remember: You don't have to check back
to this site often to get the benefit from RochesterEnvironment.com services.
You can subscribe to our monthly
RENewsletter.
E-mail - FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com
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