RadioActive

Producers/Hosts: Amy Browne & Meredith DeFrancesco

Topics: Privatization of water supplies….. the impacts of coal mining and burning on the environment…… climate change—– concerns about these issues are mobilizing international coalitions. Today on RadioActive we’ll get the latest news from Mainers who are involved. Segment 1: Residents of the towns of Shapleigh and Hancock move to protect their groundwater from corporate extraction; Segment 2: Thousands of protesters marched to a coal-fired plant in Washington DC Monday, and surrounded the plant to call attention to the coal industry’s impact on the environment and climate change. The event was organized by several groups, including the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Bill McKibben’s 350.org and Powershift 2009. In the days leading up to the protest more than 12,000 students attended a conference on the issues at George Washington University. Local artist and activist Rob Shetterly was among the participants. We spoke with him by phone yesterday and he described the protest and the growing movement of young people mobilizing on this issue.
FMI: www.coldrivermountainwatch.org , www.ilovemountains.org , www.kftc.org and mountainjustice.org/

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Producers/Hosts: Meredith DeFrancesco and Amy Browne

Topic: The issues of democratic power and local citizen input concerning the parceling out of natural resources to corporate enterprise are central to the issue of water extraction in Maine.

Nestle, the world’s largest food and beverage company, who now owns Poland Spring water, currently extracts from 8 wells in Maine, and has designs on many more sites through out the state, most currently in western and southern Maine.

Town residents who object to the commodification and sale of their aquifer resources by their town governments , find themselves in positions of limited recourse within current regulatory processes. These limitations have opened up a movement towards instating constitutional “rights based” ordinances in towns where residents seek to institute restrictions on the impacts natural resources shared by the community .

In Hancock County, the town of Lamoine’s conservation committee held an educational forum earlier this month. No water extraction permits are being applied for there, but the forum was set up to highlight the experiences of communities confronted by corporate extraction proposals in Maine.Two speakers also attended from New Hampshire. One from the town of Barnstead, where the first water rights based ordinance was passed in the country that specifically recognizes the rights of community self government. In Maine, the towns of Newfield and Shapleigh will be voting on similar ordinances on March 14th and February 28th, respectively. Today we hear some of the stories and perspectives from the Feb 6th presentation starting with Gail Darrel from Barnstead, NH.

Guests: Gail Darrel, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, Barnstead, NH resident; Denise Carpenter, Newfield resident & Shelly Goibelle, Shapleigh resident, both of Protect Our Water and Wildlife Resources (PWWR); Henrietta Clewes, nurse midwife at Blue Hill Hospital

FMI: www.defendingwaterinmaine.org

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