text:
Archives for posts with tag: Environmental Justice
Camden, New Jersey – home to 103 toxic sites
From Rollbackcampaign:
Camden has the second highest cancer rate in New Jersey, and the eighth highest in the nation thanks to over 100 toxic waste sites. When the St. Lawrence Cement Company tried to build yet another polluting factory in Camden, citizens banded together and convinced a district court to halt construction. Then the Supreme Court ruled in Alexander v Sandoval that citizens could not sue based on discriminatory effect. In order to block the construction of yet another polluter, citizens would need to show that there was intentional discrimination.
This clip is part of a video made by award-winning documentarian Stanley Nelson, which exposes the negative consequences of a federal judiciary that is increasingly opposed to civil rights protections. Mr. Nelson puts a human face on what has come to be known as the "rollback" of civil rights.
Tags Camden New Jersey, Environmental Justice, toxic sites
Categories Activists, Chemicals, Corporate Influence, Diseases, Documentaries, Environmental Justice, Videos
Peggy Shepard on Environmental Justice
Upstream Contributor Peggy Shepard speaks on TEDxTalks about Environmental Justice and surfacing the meme of "Sacrifice Zones."
Visit Peggy Shepard's main Upstream page.
Tags Environmental Justice, Peggy Shepard, WEACT
Categories Activists, Environmental Justice, Government Action, Peggy Shepard, Upstream Contributors
Pollution + Stress = Disease; 1 + 1 = 4
Lindsey Konkel has just published an outstanding article on Environmental Health News. Here is an excerpt:
When doctors told Wanda Ford her 2-year-old son had lead poisoning, she never suspected that the back yard in her low-income neighborhood was the likely culprit.
Ford knew that exposure to the heavy metal could be dangerous. So when she and her husband moved into the Lower Lincoln Street neighborhood, Ford, then pregnant, took steps to make sure their 100-year-old home was lead-free.
"We never thought to test the soil – my son played in the back yard all the time," said Ford, whose son is now seven.
It's long been known that children in poorer neighborhoods like Ford's are more likely to be exposed to lead, industrial emissions, vehicle exhaust and other contaminants. Now, scientists are beginning to suspect that low-income children aren't just more exposed – they actually may be more biologically susceptible to them, even at low levels.
A growing body of research suggests that the chronic stressors of poverty may fundamentally alter the way the body reacts to pollutants, especially in young children. Several studies have found that such stress may exacerbate the effects of lead on children's developing brains, while others reported more asthma symptoms in kids with simultaneous exposure to air pollution and socioeconomic problems.
Everyone experiences stress occasionally; it can improve focus and performance to overcome obstacles at work, during athletic competitions, or in everyday life. But stress also can harm the body.
"When the stress is chronic and the stressors are out of our control, we experience it as a threat rather than a challenge," said Dr. Rosalind Wright, a physician and epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health. "This type of stress can have negative, lasting effects on key systems in the body. It's like having the fight or flight response turned on all the time."
Schools and homes next to refineries and Superfund sites, farm workers drinking toxic water, urban children breathing exhaust from congested streets. Many of these people are living in poverty or with low incomes, and they have to cope with socioeconomic problems as well as high exposure to pollutants. Scientists say living in such areas and facing financial strain, racial issues and high crime rates can wear down the systems responsible for controlling immunity and hormones. Hormones needed for proper brain development may be altered, or the immune system may continually release inflammatory molecules into the blood.
"This may make you more susceptible to everything else around you, including pollution," said Jane Clougherty, an exposure scientist and epidemiologist at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.
One + one = four
Stress, when combined with certain pollutants, may produce a much greater health effect than either stress or pollution alone.
"It would be like adding one and one together and getting three or four," said Dr. Ted Schettler, science director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, a non-profit organization focused on applying science to promote health. "Socioeconomic status may affect underlying biology, making exposure to certain chemicals more adverse for the poorer kid."
In Worcester, about 40 miles west of Boston, nearly one in five residents lives below poverty level, almost double the Massachusetts average, according to 2010 U.S. Census data. Its median household income is roughly 30 percent lower than the state's.
Worcester is representative of many old manufacturing towns across the country. "With a decline in manufacturing, you get a decline in certain types of pollution, but you are also left with ongoing problems such as lead contamination in soil, which is typical of a lot of older American towns and cities," said Katherine Kiel, an environmental economist at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester. "Low-income housing is often built where property is cheapest. Unfortunately, these areas often have more pollution."
Socioeconomic stress "may make you more susceptible to everything else around you, including pollution. –Jane Clougherty, University of PittsburghThe eaves of Ford's home – one of Worcester's iconic triple-decker apartment houses – are blackened by soot from trucks and cars. From her front porch, she can see the on-ramp to the interstate highway that bisects the city.
"This feels like a depressed town. There are a lot of neglected, dilapidated places. It's not very child-friendly," said Ford, who is not using her real name for fear that her son will be bullied at school about his learning disabilities.
Ford is black, as is roughly 12 percent of Worcester. One small study published last year found that women in Boston who faced racial discrimination and community violence had higher levels of a stress hormone linked to preterm births.
Gang activity and a drug raid at a house nearby have brought community violence close to home. "My husband and I didn't see it at first when we moved here, but it's pervasive," said Ford.
Rates of violent crimes in Worcester are about 17 percent higher than the national average. In 2010, there were roughly 471 assaults, armed robberies and murders per 100,000 inhabitants in Worcester. The national average for that same period was 404 violent crimes per 100,000 people, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports.
She worries constantly about the safety of her kids. Four of them, all under the age of 15, live at home.
When her son was born in 2004, he seemed healthy. "Looking back, there were signs of developmental delays early on, like he drooled too much, but we didn't think much of it," she said.
When he was 2, his doctor found that his blood lead levels were elevated, though they fell below the commonly defined threshold for effects of lead. Ten micrograms per deciliter has traditionally been defined as the harmful level, but recently the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lowered it to five, recognizing that effects can occur at lower levels.
Synergy between lead and stress
With lead pollution, "the toxicity of lead may be stronger in a child also exposed to the stress of poverty," said Dr. Robert Wright, a pediatrician and environmental health scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, and husband of Rosalind Wright.
Lead exposure, which has been linked to reduced IQs, attention problems and aggressive behavior, may be more detrimental to low-income kids than to children in families with higher incomes. Children in Boston began to show reduced IQ at blood lead levels as low as six micrograms per deciliter, while kids from families with more financial resources only began to show cognitive deficits at levels greater than 10, according to one study.
"If this synergy exists between stress and lead, from a biological perspective, it's plausible this link exists between stress and other neurotoxic pollutants, such as mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) as well," said Robert Wright.
For years, toxicologist Deborah Cory-Slechta of University of Rochester and her colleagues have studied the combined effects of lead and stressful conditions on lab rats. Lead plus stress had effects on their learning ability and brains that did not occur with either of those factors alone, according to their research.
Researchers are trying to tease apart why chronic stress may make some pollutants more harmful. Both human and animal studies suggest that it can throw key systems of the body out of whack. At a young age, it may create hormonal shifts that permanently alter the way the body responds to future stresses, including chemical exposures. It also may weaken the immune system or trigger inflammation.
"Inflammation is central to a lot of chronic diseases we worry about today," including respiratory diseases such as asthma, Clougherty said.
In one study, young male laboratory rats put under chronic stress showed a rapid, shallow breathing pattern when inhaling polluted air – unlike rats exposed only to the pollution.
The researchers created a stressful environment by placing the young male rat in the home cage of an older, dominant male twice a week. The stressed rats had higher levels of molecules associated with inflammation in their blood.
Also, in East Boston, children who were previously exposed to community violence were more likely to show signs of asthma when breathing traffic-related air pollution than children in less violent neighborhoods. "This suggests a model where stress impacts the child's susceptibility to pollution," said Clougherty.
In addition to asthma, this may make low-income children more predisposed to diabetes, heart disease and even dementia later in life.
Kids living with violence also may experience more wear and tear on their DNA, damage that has been linked to disease later in life, according to a Duke University study published in April.
Susceptibility starts in the womb. Exposure to stress and pollution before birth and during early childhood may be particularly harmful because "both may alter development of the brain, lungs and nervous system during these critical periods," said Rosalind Wright.
This raises an important question: Are people protected by policies that just consider their chemical exposures without looking at their living conditions, too? Many scientists think not.
Increased risks due to social status are "a critically important but neglected area within risk assessment, and should be incorporated in the future," Harvard epidemiologists Joel Schwartz and David Bellinger and Johns Hopkins' Thomas Glass wrote in a 2011 report.
Schettler said "this new understanding has the potential to change the way we think about interventions for low-income children."
Tags environmental health, Environmental Justice, pollution, Stress
Categories Diseases, Environmental Justice, Epigenetics, Inequality, Pollution, Scholars, Stress
Fighting Coal Ash Pollution
From Earthjustice
March 22, 2012 was World Water Day. See how North Carolina citizens came together to protect their waters from coal ash.
It's no secret that coal is our dirtiest energy source. However, what many people don't know is that as coal burns, many of its most toxic elements, including heavy metals like arsenic, mercury and chromium, are concentrated in the ash that remains and the sludge that's scrubbed from smokestacks. This by-product is called coal ash. It's the second largest industrial waste stream in United States and is essentially unregulated.
Tags coal, coal ash, energy, environmental activism, Environmental Justice, power plants
Categories Activists, Coal Ash, Corporate Influence, Energy, Environmental Justice
Peggy Shepard on Environmental Justice – 2007
From tomficklin:
Advancing Environmental Justice and Urban Sustainability, 6th Annual Arnold J, Alderman Memorial Lecture, Martin Luther King Celebration, Yale Peabody Museum
Tags activism, environmental health, Environmental Justice, Peggy Shepard
Categories Activists, Environmental Justice, Peggy Shepard, Upstream Contributors, Videos
Lead Paint, Lead Poisoning, and Tort Law
From the Madison Capital Times:
When Republicans passed their far-reaching tort reform bill last year, they did away with the effects of a 2005 state Supreme Court ruling that made six paint manufacturers potentially responsible for a Milwaukee boy's lead poisoning. Now, in a move that raises constitutional questions, Republicans want to apply the new court standards to cases already in court.
The proposal, Senate Bill 373, would invalidate so-called "risk contribution" theory by requiring plaintiffs in 173 pending cases to identify the producer of the paint that poisoned their children. The risk contribution theory, adopted by the high court, allowed the family of Steven Thomas to sue the paint companies even though the family couldn't identify which company produced the paint that poisoned him.
The theory was not new. It was adopted by the state's high court in 1984 in Collins vs. Eli Lilly, a case that dealt with the miscarriage-prevention drug diethylstilbestrol, which was linked to vaginal cancer.
In the Thomas case, the Supreme Court ruling did not decide it. It only allowed the lawsuit to proceed. If the companies lost, they would share a degree of liability for producing the paint.
Peter Earle represented Thomas and is the attorney for the 173 children in the current cases. On Thursday Earle said at a state Senate judiciary committee hearing that he'd never seen litigation that changed the rules in pending court cases, and for the benefit of specific litigants.
"It's obnoxious. It's onerous. It's something that I would expect to happen in North Korea, not the United States of America," he said.
The bill, introduced only last week, is moving at breakneck speed, getting a hastily scheduled public hearing on Thursday. Introduced by Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, the proposal also apparently has the blessing of Republican leadership. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald has signed on as a co-sponsor.
"When a court does something that's as outrageous as (the Thomas ruling), when they retroactively tell businesses that were producing paint in 1900 or 1910 that not only can you be liable for damages … but you have to be liable for any paint produced by any paint company in the United States in 1900, obviously you can't operate commerce with that type of decision made," Grothman said at the hearing.
Business interests were also enraged by the Thomas decision when it came out in 2005. In fact, they launched a successful electoral crusade to tilt the liberal court toward the conservative side. In 2008 the author of the Thomas decision, former Justice Louis Butler, lost his bid for reelection after business interests spent millions to back Michael Gableman, an obscure, conservative circuit court judge.
Grothman said Thursday that the pending lead paint cases were "filed at the last minute" to beat last year's Feb. 1 enactment of the state's "tort reform" bill, but Earle said he filed his cases before the law was even proposed, some as early as 2006.
Grothman didn't restrict his comments to the bill. He questioned the notion, which has been well-documented over decades, that paint in the home can cause lead poisoning.
"Quite frankly, it's scandalous that lawyers are leading people to believe that the lead paint in these houses is responsible for the increases in the (lead) levels in their blood," he said.
Earle cited state health department statistics showing that Wisconsin is far above the national average in lead poisoning, and that the bulk of poisoning cases are concentrated in inner-city Milwaukee.
Earle, who showed up with several of the children he is representing who suffer from lead poisoning, said he was offended by Grothman's comment.
"These children are born into socioeconomic situations that have every single burden that society can impose upon them imposed upon them," he said. "And then what lead poisoning does is attacks the very gift that God gave them — their cognitive capacity, their ability to try to stand up and persevere over that."
Earle also charged that the bill is an inside job, designed specifically to circumvent litigation in the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where the cases are being litigated.
He said the parties were arguing the case on Jan. 9 and word that the bill had been drafted prompted the paint industry attorneys to cut arguments short. Two hours later, he said, Grothman sent out an email instructing the Legislative Reference Bureau to ready the bill.
"I believe it was put in the hopper so the six lead paint manufacturers had it in their back pocket, depending on how they saw the litigation in Chicago going," Earle charged.
Grothman didn't deny that the bill was designed to help the paint industry by eradicating the effects of the 2005 Supreme Court ruling.
Questioned by state Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, about the origin of anonymous memos in the bill's drafting documents that were incorporated in the bill, Grothman said he didn't know where they came from.
"I've never seen it before," Erpenbach said about the insertion of an anonymous memo in the drafting documents.
Critics say the bill could go much further than just protecting the paint industry.
"If you don't like the court decision, why didn't you just come in with a bill, a simple bill, that in effect repeals the court decision, rather than come up with a bill that may have serious, unintended results?" asked state Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison. "Because this affects not only the paint case; it affects other cases."
Tags environmental health, Environmental Justice, lead paint, tort law
Categories Chemicals, Corporate Influence, Environmental Justice, Lawsuits, Lead
Pollution and Disease in Los Angeles
In a study of more than 4,000 black women in Los Angeles, those who lived in areas with higher levels of traffic-related air pollution were at increased risk of developing diabetes and high blood pressure.
The researchers, led by Patricia Coogan at Boston University, found that black women living in neighborhoods with high levels of nitrogen oxides, pollutants found in traffic exhaust, were 25 percent more likely to develop diabetes and 14 percent more likely to develop hypertension than those living in sections with cleaner air.
Previous research has linked air pollution to health problems such as diabetes, stroke, heart disease and even higher rates of death.
"The public health implications are huge," said Dr. Jiu-Chiuan Chen, who studies the effects of air pollution at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles, especially for black women, who have higher rates of diabetes and high blood pressure than white women. He was not involved in the current work.
Forty-four percent of all black women in the U.S. have high blood pressure and about 11 percent have diabetes compared with 28 percent and roughly seven percent, respectively, of white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Black Americans also experience higher levels of air pollution than white Americans, according to the study authors.
For their investigation, published in Circulation, the researchers followed participants in the ongoing Black Women's Health Study for 10 years. The women were mainly recruited from subscribers to Essence magazine, and none had diabetes or high blood pressure when the study began in 1995.
Over the course of a decade, 531 women developed high blood pressure and 183 women were diagnosed with diabetes.
The findings on their relative risks for those conditions take into account several other potential influences, including how heavy the women were, whether they smoked and other stressors, including noise levels at participants' homes.
Although researchers measured average pollution levels near participants' homes for only one year of the ten-year study, Coogan told Reuters Health that air pollution patterns remained relatively constant over the entire study period.
While Coogan and her colleagues estimated nitrogen oxide concentrations near participants' homes, they did not account for commuting habits or exposure to air pollution at work. According to the researchers, Americans, on average, spend about 70 percent of their time at home.
In addition to measuring nitrogen oxides, a proxy for traffic pollution, the researchers evaluated levels of fine particulate matter. Many sources contribute to this type of air pollution, including traffic, power plants and industrial processes.
Women who lived in areas with higher fine particulate exposures also faced an increased risk of diabetes and high blood pressure, although statistically the link was weak and could have been due to chance.
Previous reports have suggested that air pollution particles small enough to make their way into the blood stream may contribute to a narrowing of blood vessels, which can lead to high blood pressure and reduce sensitivity to insulin.
Tags disease, environmental health, Environmental Justice, pollution
Categories Air, Diabetes, Diseases, Environmental Justice, High Blood Pressure, Inequality, Particulates, Pollution, Scholars, Studies
Upstream Interviewee Peggy Shepard to Give MLK Lecture
Peggy M. Shepard, executive director and co-founder of WE ACT For Environmental Justice (WE ACT), gives the annual MLK Lecture on Environmental Justice. The title of her talk is "Advancing Environmental Health & Justice: A Community Perspective."
Shepard has successfully combined grassroots organizing, environmental advocacy and environmental health research to becomea national leader in advancing the perspective of environmental justice in urban communities to ensure that the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment extends to all. Shepard was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science from Smith College last May for two decades of leadership in environmental justice and urban sustainability.
Tags environmental health, Environmental Justice, Peggy Shepard
Categories Environmental Justice, Peggy Shepard, Upstream Contributors
From the Associated Press:
For the first time in 20 years, a federal panel is urging the government to lower the threshold for lead poisoning in children.
If adopted, hundreds of thousands more children could be diagnosed with lead poisoning. Too much lead is harmful to developing brains and can mean a lower IQ.
Recent research persuaded panel members that children could be harmed from lead levels in their blood that are lower than the current standard, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
While the number of cases has been falling, health officials think as many as 250,000 children have the problem, many of those undiagnosed. The proposed change could take it to 450,000 cases.
Wednesday's vote by the Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention would lower the definition of lead poisoning for young children from 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood to 5 micrograms. The CDC has accepted all of the panel's recommendations in the past.
Lead — a metal that for years was common in paint and gasoline — can harm a child's brain, kidneys and other organs. High levels in the blood can cause coma, convulsions and death. Lower levels can reduce intelligence, impair hearing and behavior and cause other problems.
Usually, the victims are children living in old homes that are dilapidated or under renovation, who pick up paint chips or dust and put it in their mouths. Lead has been banned in paint since 1978. Children have also picked up lead poisoning from soil contaminated by old leaded gasoline, and from dust tracked in from industrial worksites.
Lead poisoning is detected through a blood test, often when kids are toddlers. Most cases are handled by seeking out and removing the lead source, and monitoring the children to make sure lead levels stay down. A special treatment to remove lead and other heavy metals is used for very high levels.
But the problem has seemed to be diminishing, based on the old standard. In 2009, researchers reported that 1.4 percent of young children had elevated lead levels in their blood in 2004, the latest data available. That compares with almost 9 percent in 1988.
The lead poisoning threshold was last changed in 1991. The proposed level of 5 micrograms was calculated from the highest lead levels seen in a comprehensive annual U.S. health survey. The panel recommended that it be reassessed every four years.
"It's a moving target," said Perry Gottesfeld, co-chair of the group that came up with the advice.
Some groups celebrated the decision, saying medical evidence has been mounting that lower levels of lead poisoning can erode a child's ability to learn and cause behavior problems.
"This is long overdue," said Ruth Ann Norton, executive director of the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, a Baltimore-based organization.
The recommendation might be difficult to implement. In many places, it's up to city and county health departments to provide many of the services for lead poisoned kids, and those departments have lost more than 34,000 jobs in the last three years because of budget cuts. Meanwhile, Congress just slashed the CDC's lead program from more than $30 million to $2 million.
Tags CDC, environmental health, Environmental Justice, lead paint
Categories Center for Disease Control, Environmental Justice, Lead, Studies
Poor Schools and Pollution
From The Province:
Public elementary schools in low-income neighbourhoods are more likely to be located near a major road or highway, exposing students to higher levels of air and noise pollution, according to a new B.C. study.
The study, which examined the proximity of 1,556 schools to a major thoroughfare in Canada's 10 largest cities, found that more than 22 per cent of schools located in the poorest neighbourhoods lie within 75 metres of a major road, compared to 13 per cent for the richest areas.
"The relationship between income and proximity was quite consistent across cities," said Simon Fraser University assistant professor Ryan Allen, one of the co-authors of the study, published this week in the International Journal of Health Geographics.
One possibility for the correlation, speculated Allen, could be that high volumes of vehicular traffic make a neighbourhood less desirable, driving property values down and making them more affordable to low-income residents.
The study obtained addresses for elementary schools in Toronto, Hamilton, Mississauga, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. The schools where then geocoded and their proximity to the nearest major road calculated.
"About 16 per cent of the schools we looked at is close enough to a major road to have elevated pollution and noise," said Allen, a health-sciences professor.
Research has shown that increased exposure to traffic-generated air pollution is linked to reduced lung functions, asthma and decreased cognitive functions. Noise pollution is also linked to increased blood pressure and reduced sleep quality.
The study does not list schools and its distances to major roads, but authors said Vancouver schools near or along Knight Street or Kingsway would be representative of schools that fall within the 75 metres radius.
A 2003 city of Vancouver report on the Clark/Knight Corridor had noted that while ambient sound levels in classrooms during lessons should be 35 decibels, the cacophony on Knight Street exceeds 70 decibels.
"It would be a challenge to meet the relevant criteria (< 35 dBA) in classrooms, even with the windows tightly closed," said the report.
Allen said he hopes the study increases awareness of where schools, daycares, and other similar facilities are built in the future.
"I'd like to see environmental quality be a consideration," he said. "I think we have an obligation to provide a safe environment for our kids to grow up in."
Categories Air, Environmental Justice, Inequality, Pollution, Studies
Environmental Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied
From iWatch News:
Three years into Lisa Jackson's tenure as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, more than a dozen formal complaints alleging air pollution is disproportionately harming low-income, minority communities remain unresolved. Each of these complaints has languished — in some instances, for more than a decade — in the EPA's Office of Civil Rights despite Jackson's stated commitment to environmental justice.
"We must include environmental justice principles in all of our decisions … especially with regard to children," Jackson wrote in a January 2010 memo outlining the agency's top priorities.
But EPA documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News and interviews with activists and residents reveal that the administrator's words have brought little relief to underprivileged communities overburdened with pollution.
The Office of Civil Rights — whose leader reports directly to Jackson — has in its files a total of 38 unresolved complaints dating to July 1994, according to a list published on the office's website following a Freedom of Information Act request from iWatch News. Fifteen of these OCR complaints involve air pollution.
The EPA did not explain why so many cases remain unresolved. However, a spokeswoman said in an email that "the Agency has made meaningful progress on many of the complaints that remain on its docket."
Environmental justice advocates are dubious. "The backlog doesn't seem greatly improved, and it's not clear what processes they use to evaluate the complaints" said Marianne Engelman Lado, a lawyer at Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm. "Why is that progress?"
Poverty and pollution
Tammy Foster, a 39-year-old housewife turned environmental activist from Corpus Christi, Texas, has had several miscarriages in the 17 years that a complaint alleging discrimination in her community has been pending at OCR. Doctors don't know why she's been unable to conceive, she said. "If I had to guess, I'd say living on Refinery Row," a 10-mile stretch of oil refineries and other industrial plants.
Foster blames emissions from the plants that border the Dona Park neighborhood on three sides for a birth defect that causes her to average four kidney infections per year and for regular outbreaks of hives and blisters. "When I'm gone, I feel great," she said.
Dona Park, where Foster has lived most of her life, is about 70 percent Hispanic, according to the 2010 census. The U.S. Census Bureau's most recent American Community Survey found that about a quarter of all families in the community live below the poverty line.
In Ford Heights, Ill., a solidly African-American exurb of Chicago, about 40 percent of all families are in poverty, according to the American Community Survey. In April 2006, residents filed a complaint — still unresolved by OCR — against the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency for failing to act on Geneva Energy, LLC, which bought a tire-burning power plant located only blocks from a community center that housed a preschool program.
The plant has operated intermittently due to financial and environmental problems that include a long list of air pollution violations. "The only way that you would know [it was running] is that the smoke was in the air," said Melva Smith-Weaver, who worked at the Head Start program in Ford Heights until 2007.
"There was quite a few children during that time that were asthmatic. You would expect to have out of 102 kids, one or two that are asthmatic, but we had quite a few — maybe 15 to 20." In 2009, the preschool program moved to new location about a mile away, but middle school students still attend classes just down the road from the plant.
"This facility is clean and safe for the surrounding community," said Geneva Energy CEO Ben Rose. He acknowledged the air pollution violations but said "there is little evidence that plants such as ours increase asthma attacks." Rose said it's "outrageous that this complaint wasn't addressed immediately" by OCR.
Ford Heights Mayor Charles Griffin agreed. In an October letter to Jackson, he noted that Geneva Energy is the city's biggest private employer and taxpayer. "This could have been dismissed after a brief investigation, lifting the cloud of uncertainty from the facility," Griffin wrote.
The Corpus Christi and Ford Heights complaints are among at least 15 Clean Air Act cases pending with OCR; three of these cases date to the 1990s. Twenty-three other pending complaints allege violations of laws governing water pollution, toxic waste and pesticides.
Tags environmental health, Environmental Justice, refinery row
Categories Air, Chemicals, Clusters, Corporate Influence, Energy, Environmental Justice, Environmental Protection Agency, Government Action, Inequality
Poverty – The Tradeoff between Mental and Physical Health
From University of Michigan:
When people are under chronic stress, they tend to smoke, drink, use drugs and overeat to help cope with stress. These behaviors trigger a biological cascade that helps prevent depression, but they also contribute to a host of physical problems that eventually contribute to early death.
That is the claim of University of Michigan social scientist James S. Jackson and colleagues in an article published in the May 2010 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The theory helps explain a long-time epidemiological puzzle: why African Americans have worse physical health than whites but better psychiatric health.
"People engage in bad habits for functional reasons, not because of weak character or ignorance," says Jackson, director of the U-M Institute for Social Research. "Over the life course, coping strategies that are effective in 'preserving' the mental health of blacks may work in concert with social, economic and environmental inequalities to produce physical health disparities in middle age and later life."
In an analysis of survey data, obtained from the same people at two points in time, Jackson and colleagues find evidence for their theory. The relationship between stressful life events and depression varies by the level of unhealthy behaviors. But the direction of that relationship is strikingly different for blacks and whites.
Controlling for the extent of stressful life events a person has experienced, unhealthy behaviors seem to protect against depression in African Americans but lead to higher levels of depression in whites.
"Many black Americans live in chronically precarious and difficult environments," says Jackson. "These environments produce stressful living conditions, and often the most easily accessible options for addressing stress are various unhealthy behaviors. These behaviors may alleviate stress through the same mechanisms that are believed to contribute to some mental disorders—the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal cortical axis and related biological systems."
Since negative health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use and overeating (especially comfort foods) also have direct and debilitating effects on physical health, these behaviors—along with the difficult living conditions that give rise to them—contribute to the disparities in mortality and physical health problems between black and white populations.
These disparities in physical health and mortality are greatest at middle age and beyond, Jackson says. Why?
"At younger ages, blacks are able to employ a variety of strategies that, when combined with the more robust physical health of youth, effectively mask the cascade to the negative health effects," Jackson said. "But as people get older, they tend to reduce stress more often by engaging in bad habits."
Black women show heightened rates of obesity over the life course, he points out. In fact, by the time they are in their 40s, 60 percent of African American women are obese.
"How can it be that 60 percent of the population has a character flaw?" Jackson asks. "Overeating is an effective, early, well-learned response to chronic environmental stressors that only strengthens over the life course. In contrast, for a variety of social and cultural reasons, black American men's coping choices are different.
"Early in life, they tend to be physically active and athletic, which produces the stress-lowering hormone dopamine. But in middle age, physical deterioration reduces the viability and effectiveness of this way of coping with stress, and black men turn in increasing numbers to unhealthy coping behaviors, showing increased rates of smoking, drinking and illicit drug use."
Racial disparities in physical illnesses and mortality are not really a result of race at all, Jackson says. Instead, they are a result of how people live their lives, the composition of their lives. These disparities are not just a function of socioeconomic status, but of a wide range of conditions including the accretion of micro insults that people are exposed to over the years.
"You can't really study physical health without looking at people's mental health and really their whole lives," he said. "The most effective way to address an important source of physical health disparities is to reduce environmentally produced stressors—both those related to race and those that are not. We need to improve living conditions, create good job opportunities, eliminate poverty and improve the quality of inner-city urban life.
"Paradoxically, the lack of attention to these conditions contributes to the use of unhealthy coping behaviors by people living in poor conditions. Although these unhealthy coping behaviors contribute to lower rates of mental disorder, over the life course they play a significant role in leading to higher rates of physical health problems and earlier mortality than is found in the general population."
Tags Environmental Justice, poverty, Stress
Categories Environmental Justice, Inequality, Scholars, Stress
The Illusion of Regulatory Compliance
One spring day in 2010, the haze hanging over this Mississippi River town was worse than usual. It billowed from the smokestacks of a corn processing plant and blanketed the neighborhood across the street. It enshrouded homes and, seen from a certain angle, looked almost blue.
Kurt Levetzow watched from his car. An inspector with the state agency that enforces air pollution laws, he'd been fielding more and more citizen complaints lately about Grain Processing Corp., known as GPC.
The company's plant sits on the edge of the town's South End neighborhood, where black soot and bits of corn collect on cars and homes and many residents worry about what they're breathing. Even on an ordinary day, a pungent burnt-corn odor hangs in the air, and the haze can be seen from miles away.
But Levetzow hadn't seen anything like this. Driving through the neighborhood near the plant, he snapped pictures and took notes for the memo he would write. "I went through Muscatine on 3-26-10," he wrote. "I was amazed at what I saw."
A pickup truck came to a stop next to Levetzow's car. It was a company security guard.
"Is there a problem?" the guard asked.
"Yes, there is," Levetzow answered. "GPC is fogging that residential area with a blue haze." Levetzow pointed. "You see what I mean?"
The guard looked over. "Ah, they're getting used to that," he said, chuckling.
Many communities have had little choice but to get used to it. As the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News has reported, hundreds of communities are beset with chronic air pollution involving toxic chemicals Congress intended to rein in years ago. Here in the heart of the Corn Belt, people endure the consequences of a regulatory system that has failed them for years.
The plant's troubles are well-known to state and federal officials, but fixes — when they have come at all — have been slow. Memos, reports and thousands of emails obtained by iWatch News detail Levetzow's efforts, the company's resistance and the state environmental agency's passivity. They also highlight gaps in a regulatory system that relies on a self-reporting honor system, spotty monitoring and ambiguous rules.
Officials at the state Department of Natural Resources, known as the DNR, have allowed GPC to avoid improvements that would reduce pollution. Even when Levetzow told his bosses he thought GPC's apparent compliance with air pollution laws was a façade and repeatedly urged them to act, they did little, emails show.
The company says it stays within the limits outlined in its permit, has followed air pollution rules and is upgrading pollution control equipment as part of a major plant improvement project, some of which is scheduled to be finished in 2014. The improvements — some required by a court order resolving a case brought by the state for environmental violations five years ago — still may fail to keep the area in compliance with air quality standards, the state says.
GPC spokesperson Janet Sichterman said other companies share responsibility for Muscatine's air quality problems, and GPC is doing its part to clean up the skies. "We want this to be a great community with quality air, too," she said.
While the Clean Air Act delegated enforcement duties to the states, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency keeps tabs on state agencies and sometimes steps in. The plant appeared on the September version of EPA's internal "watch list," which includes serious or chronic violators of the Clean Air Act that have faced no formal enforcement action for nine months or more. GPC was not on the list in October.
Now, after years on the sidelines, the EPA has started to get involved. The agency says it is conducting an ongoing criminal investigation of GPC — a rare step the EPA usually reserves for companies it feels have knowingly violated the law. In December 2009, a team of investigators led by the EPA raided the plant and seized documents. Sichterman said the company doesn't know why it's being investigated but is confident the probe will determine GPC followed all laws.
Some residents, no longer content to wait for official action, are organizing and building their own case. They are filing complaints and documenting health problems. Recently, they hired a lawyer. As in other communities, they face significant hurdles, from limited air monitoring and health studies that would help them make their case to wariness among their neighbors about taking on powerful political and economic forces.
Tags corporate influence, environmental health, Environmental Justice, pollution, regulation, regulatory capture
Categories Air, Chemicals, Corporate Influence, Environmental Justice, Environmental Protection Agency, Government Action, Regulation, Reports, Videos
Robert Bullard Interview
"Who wouldn't be against the poisoning of children?"
This was the rhetorical question posed by Dr. Robert D. Bullard during a recent phone interview that I had with him. Our talk covered topics from the genesis of his career as the "Father of Environmental Justice," to the role that women and mothers have played in the struggle for the health of the planet. As Bullard stated, "Women have been the backbone of environmental justice — and women of color have consistently been fighting for their kids."
African-American and Latinos have repeatedly found their communities targeted as prime locations for toxic facilities. I reached out to Bullard for an overview on the evolution of the Environmental Justice movement, which has served as a prism through which to examine policy based on race, environment, and waste. Bullard walked me through his work from the 1970s, when he developed the theory of Environmental Justice, to his current role as the Dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University.
Dumping In Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality, Bullard's 1990 book, became a textbook primer for teaching the underpinnings of Environmental Justice. In it, Bullard illustrated how siting practices have created a full range of health problems in the African-American population as the result of incinerators, garbage dumps, hazardous waste, and chemical plants. Bullard meticulously used research based on science and facts to demonstrate that environmental waste was being located in economically poor and politically powerless neighborhoods. The same year, Bullard built a list of groups doing related advocacy initiatives, which led to the National People of Color Environmental Summit in 1991 and a Principles of Environmental Justice manifesto. His formulations on public policy branched out to the international level, when in 1999 he assisted in preparing environmental racism documents that were presented at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
When we spoke, Bullard expressed his concern about the current atmosphere of ongoing negativity toward the Environmental Protection Agency. He said, "When people demonize the EPA, it's totally bogus. We need a strong, independent EPA." Reflecting on what a lapse on enforcing standards could do to the public's wellbeing, Bullard remarked, "Are we trying to race to the bottom?"
On the issue of "unequal protection," Bullard emphasized the need of governmental agencies to work together so that "no community becomes a dumping zone." He was definitive in his stance, "You need a strong Federal presence," referencing how in too many circumstances, "states have done a lousy job." Drilling down on the way equity issues impact low wealth communities, Bullard noted that the same neighborhoods that experience toxic sites are also the ones lacking in supermarkets, parks and other quality of life markers. Pointing to a Toxic Waste and Race Report, Bullard observed that of 413 commercial waste facilities, 56 percent were in locations inhabited by people of color. Using the term "clustering," he pointed to hot spots in California, Texas, and New Mexico — as well as to the urban centers of Detroit, Miami, Washington, D.C. and New York City — that shared similar patterns of toxic release.
In explaining how children of color were disproportionately affected by ozone, automobile and truck exhaust, coal-fired power plants — putting them on the front line, Bullard circled back to the efforts of mothers in East Los Angeles, reiterating how they had been battling against local incinerators for decades. He also mentioned the ongoing work of [Upstream Contributor] Peggy Shepard, executive director and co-founder (1988) of West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT), New York's first organization devoted to improving environmental health in communities of color. Speaking of all youngsters, Bullard said, "If we protect children, we protect everyone. If we don't, we put everyone at risk."
His final words to me summed up why mobilizing to ensure and maintain the progress and regulations put into place by the EPA is so essential:
"Writing off an entire generation is not acceptable."
Categories Activists, Environmental Justice, Inequality, Interviews, Peggy Shepard, Robert Bullard, Scholars, Upstream Contributors


The recent flap over the relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton State Department has created an appearance of influence peddling and pay per play government. The reality is that the uproar demonstrates that most Americans simply do not know how the government works.
In a country which is governed by laws and in which government regulations effect almost every area of economic life, a virtually constant need for rulings and decisions about how the laws and regulations apply exists. While so-called "normal" channels exist for getting the various permits, permissions, and decisions required to do business both domestically and internationally, to deal with immigration issues, foreign investment in US businesses, export of US technologies, and so on, it is also a constant effort on the part of businesses and individuals to get these decisions made as expeditiously as possible.
In every area of life, relationships are important and nowhere are relationships more important than in government. Every citizen has Congressmen and Senators in Congress that they elect to represent their interests. In theory, we all have the same access. But the reality is, and this has been true since the nation was founded, that the richest individuals and the most successful corporations go to the head of the line when they need access.
Your Senators and Congressmen spend a huge amount of their time helping their constituents navigate the maze of government regulation. They can contact an agency and help you make your case for a favorable decisions, they can contact another agency to find out the status of an immigration visa in process. Within certain ethical limits, they are there to represent the interests of their constituents. But it is a simple fact that big supporters of the party, companies that employ their constituents, even personal friends, will have "access" that ordinary people do not have.
This is not a Democrat or Republican issue, not a right / left issue, it is how things work and have always worked. One could certainly make a case for doing various things that would reduce the influence of wealth on our politics. We can make campaign finance reform a priority. We can repeal Citizens United and make the whole process more transparent. But nothing we will do will make relationships less of a central factor in getting anything done in our society.
The whole reason that Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation have come under fire has to do with the window into how relationships are formed and access is achieved in our society. The only difference between what happened during the Clinton years at the State Department and what has gone on in every administration, whether Republican or Democrat, is that the hacked emails let us see how the process works. We simply did not get the same kind of window on the relationships under under government officials.
The inference that foreign governments were making donations to the Clinton Foundation in order to get access and favorable decisions at the State Department is backwards thinking. The kinds of people making large donations to an international charity are doing so BECAUSE they already have these relationships. After her years as First Lady, her years as a Senator, and then in her years as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who is famous for her ability as a "connector", built a huge network of friends, colleagues, professional and government acquaintances. She is one of those people who seems to "know everyone". So, many of these folks donated to the Clinton Foundation because they knew both Hillary and, obviously, the former President, Bill Clinton. In other words, these relationships existed BEFORE donations were made to the Foundation. These were all influential people, government figures, etc who could expect to have access without doing anything at all regarding the Foundation.
Influence peddling involves benefiting personally from using ones position in government to influence government decisions improperly on behalf of some person or entity. But this is and has always been a gray area. Is a big campaign donor or wealthy constituent having his or her representative go to bat on their behalf some sort of ethical issue? It might be, depending on how it's done, but it might just be the elected representative taking care of a constituent. Now, if some benefit accrues directly to the government official from doing this,. it is clearly an ethical violation.
So, people need to be clear about the relationship of the Clinton Foundation to the Clintons themselves. The Foundation is a not for profit charity that operates world wide. Unlike a charity like the United Way, which collects donations and then dispenses them to other charities that are actually engaged on doing various projects, the Clinton Foundation does most of its work directly. So, when right wing critics try to say that most of its donations are not dispensed to other charities, it is precisely because it is doing its own charitable work.
As a not for profit charity, the IRS looks closely at the Foundation finances. The Clinton family does not financially benefit financially from the money donated to the Foundation. They do not have access to those funds. The Foundation is regularly audited to ensure that its funds are used primarily for the charitable purposes intended.
So, to the extent that people who donated to the Foundation had access to Hillary Clinton and her staff, it was the same kind of access that one would expect any wealthy contributor, influential leader, or even just a celebrity might have. This is how the government works. Influential people have more access than regular people. This is in no way shape or form unique to Hillary Clinton and it would be difficult to see how any system would exist in which this wouldn't be true.
So far, in reviewing the meetings set up on behalf of the see figures by Clinton's staff, there is ZERO evidence of improper pressure being applied to any of the decision makers involved. In most instances, meetings took place with no positive result for the person requesting the meeting. In those instances in which there might have been a positive result, it appears to have been an outcome that one would normally have expected.
So, to sum up. we have a suggestion of scandal that actually involves no direct benefit to the Clintons, demonstrates no improper pressure on officials to sway their decisions, which amounts to little more than using ones relationships to get a hearing from an agency empowered to make that decision. This is exactly what every Congressman, Senator, and other government official that represents the interests of the voters will do. The fact that wealthy elites, big corporations, leaders of other nations get more access than regular citizens is just a fact of life and is absolutely no different under any party, any administration. It was this way under the Bushes and it was this way under Bill Clinton or Obama. I won't be different under a Clinton or a Trump Presidency.
The one thing that can be said with certainty, is that this is another non-scandal. The only reason that people think that Hillary Clinton has acted differently is that we didn't get an inside view of any other official's emails via some hacker.
The way I see the 2016 election shaping up, it's going to be determined by which party has the fewest defectors. If the number of Republicans who have some decency and sense of honor and either do not vote, or choose to reluctantly vote for Clinton, outweighs the number of fanatical, uncompromising, Lefties who want to commit progressive suicide by hopping on the #NeverHilary movement, then we will be OK.
It is bad enough that I am looking at a country in which the members of one major political party seem to have gone mad, running a nouveau-Fascist, racist, sexist, bigot for President… but now I get to watch my beloved progressive movement commit elective hara kiri out of a rabid and irrational hatred for an establishment Democrat.
I feel as if the whole country is going mad. It's like I went down the rabbit hole and am now in some alternative world in which rationality is nowhere to be seen and anger, hatred, vitriol, and polemics have replaced any kind of normal behavior.
I see myself as a progressive. I have supported Bernie Sanders from the start. The legislative agenda I favor would be considered radical compared to the incremental approach, which I feel has largely failed. But I am also a realist. Politics is the art of the possible. Substantive change normally requires a long term commitment, moving the ball forward in any way you can. Sometimes that requires compromise with people or groups with whom you do not agree but can find enough common ground to accomplish some particular goal. Fanaticism is always a destructive force. It creates divisions, it is exclusionary, it wrecks things without replacing them with anything positive.
I simply cannot comprehend what is happening with the folks on the Left that I had thought were my "peeps". Many are revealing a fanatical side that I had not seen and do not share. Their inability to deal with the fact that the "founding fathers" intentionally built in a certain amount of inertia into our system is going to destroy our movement.
The people in our society who have made positive change happen are not the radicals on the street, the activists, the demonstrators, the ones out on the barricades. The radicals, virtually by definition, do not have the power to change things. It is the "establishment" that has the power. To crate change, one has to win over enough of the establishment to accomplish that change.
The New Deal wasn't created by the Labor Unions or the Bonus Marchers. It wasn't created by the radicals out fighting with the security forces. It was created by a President and Congress many of whose establishment members had been won over to the belief that something had to be done to radically change the direction of the country. A fear of revolution may have been the impetus, but it required members of the establishment to be converted to the cause. The Civil Rights Act was passed by a bunch of establishment white folks. The impetus may have been Dr King's "Movement" but it was the folks that held power who had to be won over. Dr. King understood this completely. He viewed his job as acting as the conscience of the nation, pushing and prodding the establishment to act out of a sense of national embarrassment concerning inequality and repression of his people. But Dr. King understood he needed those establishment types in Washington to see that their interests coincided with those of the movement.
The vilification of the establishment that I see from both the far right and the far left may be based on legitimate concerns over the various serious issues which the country faces. But people are acting like what needs to happen is to scrap the system and start over. With what, no one can actually say. How positive change is going to happen when the methodology is largely negative and destructive doesn't seem to be a consideration. It's all throw the bums out, break it all down. The total disdain for 300 years of our institutional development seems equal on both the left and the right.
Bernie Sanders will not be the Democratic nominee for President. I am sad, I am disappointed. But, to my mind, that fact means that it is time to keep my eyes on the prize. The greatest threat to the country that I would like to live in is Donald Trump. A Trump Presidency could be the biggest disaster for our nation since its founding. He embodies virtually every single negative trait our body politic possesses. He is fearful, angry, aggressive, bigoted, insensitive, merciless, and cruel. He has absolutely no experience relative to the job. His entire personality points to an admiration for dictatorship and "strong man" style leadership.
Hillary Clinton is the quintessential establishment Democrat. She is also the most accomplished female politician in the history of the country. In a society in which women cannot get ahead unless they understand how to play the game with the boys, she has prevailed. Toe to toe with some of the most vicious, unprincipled politicians in our history and she is still standing. This is a woman who knows how to get things done.
At this very moment, Hillary Clinton needs our progressive support to win. This is exactly the time when the interest of the establishment coincide with our interests. This is the moment when the establishment Democrats can actually be pushed towards the left. Right now, when they need us. And this is precisely when so many of my fellow progressives have decided to make themselves TOTALLY irrelevant to the process by refusing to work with the establishment Democrats. By adopting the #NeverHillary position progressives force the establishment Dems to focus more on trying to win over disaffected Republican voters than try to woo progressives. This irrational and uncompromising position guarantees that the party focus move towards center-right rather than towards any progressive agenda which we have said we supposedly felt so strongly about.
This is the best chance we are likely to get for many years to move our progressive agenda forward. Right now the collective interests of the establishment Dems and the Progressive Dems coincide. This is when we can get a more progressive platform for the party, this is when we can get commitments from Clinton to appoint more progressives to her administration, this is when, by uniting the party, we can get more progressives elected down ticket and possibly take back Congress. Right now, this instant, when the GOP is running a crypto-Fascist, racist, misogynist, narcissist. This is our chance.
TM Karla Enriquez Anti-Hillary Clinton protesters(left) lined up and questioned Clinton supporters (right) as she walked by the gym area of East Los Angeles College. Clinton held a rally at ELAC on Thursday, May 5. Photo by Karla Enriquez/TM.
The #NeverHillary position is a form of collective suicide for the progressive movement. A kind of electoral Masada in which we jump off the cliff rather than be captured by the "establishment". I simply cannot comprehend why any thinking progressive would believe that this is a good idea. The result will absolutely not move the progressive ball forward and it could easily lead to a Donald Trump victory.


text:
Q: ASP.NET and Visual Studio - Adding project references vs Bin Folder DLL I just started a new job yesterday and this is only my second job working in ASP.NET. We were setting up my dev box and were having trouble with some third party components like Telerik, etc. I was noticing that they were installed these third party tools, hunting down the DLL files, copying them into the bin and then adding a reference to the project which points to the file in the BIN. To me, this doesn't seem like normal practice.
I was under the impression that if you just dump a DLL in the bin folder, you don't need to add a reference, it's just available? Reason being, at my last job we used a few class libraries we built in house for data access and just dropped the DLLs in any new websites (not webapps) that we made. I don't recall every having to add a reference to get it to work.
So, can someone explain best practices on how to add third party references to your web app? Do you add the reference from wherever the DLL is installed in the system? If so, do you check copy local so it copies to the bin? Do you just copy the dll to the bin and that's it? Do you copy the dll to the bin and then add a reference to it there?
Sorry, I'm sure this seems like a simple question, but I'm confused by the two seemingly different methods I've seen used.

A: It depends on how your project is set up.  If you want to precompile your site (and get Intellisense to work properly) you have to have a Visual Studio reference.  But anything dropped in the bin folder will be automatically loaded by ASP.NET at runtime... so it's possible to access that assembly's controls/objects in code behind without adding a project reference.
For small projects I just throw the DLL into the bin and add reference.  For more complex sites/projects, I have a dedicated "library" folder for third party add-ons and code.

A: We version control our 3rd party assemblies using Subversion, then pull them down via svn:externals into a sub-directory of the solution or project in question, which then references them (and copies into bin).
This provides quite a few benefits:

*

*Build servers are happier, need less maintenance and are less brittle.

*We have a history of releases and can explicitly control versioning for each solution/project by setting the revision number on each svn:external. For example your trunk code may be using latest Telerik version, but your release branches are using old versions.

*We can share 3rd party assemblies for different projects, and be confident they are using the correct versions.

*We're not relying on developers installing or upgrading to the correct version, yet they can still add and test new versions without interfering with other projects (assuming you have explicitly defined the revision)

*We can test new versions, but easily go back if things don't work.

So a little more working setting things up, but I think it's worth it. Note that we don't version control (svn:ignore) our bin and obj directories, and the 3rd party assemblies are in the same Subversion repository, referenced by relative pathing.
FWIW: Subversion 1.6.6 fixes an annoying bug for file based svn:externals. This means you can choose one or more files (e.g. assemblies) from a directory instead of having to pull the whole directory down.
2013 Update
With the rise of NuGet, consider hosting your own feed via a local server before opting for using svn:externals, simply because it gives you all the same benefits, plus it's baked into Visual Studio via the Extension Manager and provides for better information and meta-data, e.g. being able to let developers know when there is a new release.
The only caveat would be to host your feed using a Win2008 or higher server, as I ran into some issues with our old Win2003 server using SSL with windows authentication to secure the feed. I believe this was due to the older version of IIS used in Win2003, but couldn't verify.

A: Usually I just drop them in the bin, unless it is part of something that isn't that simple.  Sitecore for example installs itself and has a couple of folders that it likes to use for putting some of its own code to give an example of something non-trivial.

A: Si is very correct there.
Also: keep your bin folder for results of builds/compiles. Like said before use a "library" folder to link to. I even do this with devexpress.
Normally by installing devexpress it will install its dll's in the GAC, and you can reference them like you reference the standard .Net dll's. But for version control it is much easier to use a library folder.
In that way, you can be sure that everybody uses the same version of devexpress (the one that is in sourcesafe) to test their code, and you will have less problems with code that compiles on your machine, but does not on another.

A: I always preffer to have project reference rather than having DLL reference. Below are the main reason for it.

*

*The project, which is adding the reference of other project, will not be up to date.

*Any change to the referred project will not directly reflect. User has to manully delete the old reference and add new reference.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


New Zealand benefits from being well informed about international developments in measurement, particularly where they impact on trade.
MSL enables New Zealand exports to be accepted internationally in over 100 markets through a mutual recognition arrangement. Economic analysis commissioned by IANZ estimates the value of accreditation, of which MSL is a key component, contributes $2.4 billion in premiums to New Zealand exports and 0.6 % to GDP.
Being an effective participant in international forums makes it possible to influence international decisions and to maintain the reputation of New Zealand's measurement system as being world-class.
The continuing development of the International System of Units (SI) is a major international research collaboration. Individual metrologists in MSL contribute widely as members of international professional organisations, conference committees, and as research collaborators.
New Zealand is a member state of the Metre Convention(external link), the intergovernmental treaty that is the basis of international agreement on units of measurement. MSL is a member of four of the ten scientific Consultative Committees that advise on the development of the SI. MSL is a signatory to an arrangement for the international mutual recognition of calibration certificates issued by national metrology institutes, known as the CIPM MRA(external link) (Comité International des Poids et Mesures Mutual Recognition Arrangement).
MSL is a founding member of the Asia-Pacific Metrology Programme(external link) (APMP) that brings together all the national metrology institutes in the region. APMP offers many opportunities for collaboration and training and is also responsible for implementing many of the CIPM MRA processes. MSL participates in international comparisons of standards to confirm our capabilities and ensure our services remain world-class.
NCSL International(external link) promotes cooperative efforts for solving the common problems faced by measurement laboratories. It has over 1500 member organisations from academic, scientific, industrial, commercial and government facilities around the world. MSL is a member to better understand how New Zealand industry might benefit from NCSL International.
MSL represents New Zealand's national committee on the International Commission on Illumination(external link) (CIE), a worldwide cooperation for the exchange of information on all matters relating to the science and art of light and lighting, colour and vision, and image technology.


The fourth title in our "Parr/Nazraeli Edition of Ten" (titles 1 through 3 shown left), Raimond Wouda's School shows groups of pupils at numerous secondary schools in the Netherlands. Rather than depicting classrooms, Wouda chose to photograph the places where students relax between classes, placing his large-format camera high on a ladder and triggering the shutter from the ground via remote control to capture specific moments. According to Wouda, the current debates about substance and behaviour in secondary schools have gone unnoticed by the students themselves, for whom school is a relatively safe place in which to meet and interact with their friends, and to discover their own identity.


WhiTech Equipment, Inc. has brought the advantages of Power & Free Conveyor Systems to middle-sized manufacturing in the mid-south and North America.
Accumulating, Multi-path Overhead Chain Conveyors have been used extensively in the automotive manufacturing industry for years, and the specialized conveyor manufacturers have been consumed by their demands. WhiTech Equipment has focused its effort on offering this unique product to mid-sized manufactures.
Due to innovative CADD and Laser Technology, WhiTech is able to provide P&F Track, Trolleys , & Components to expand almost any P&F Conveyor System.
With Realistic, Customer Conscience Approach and Cost Effectiveness as primary goals, our engineers develop systems which can meet the unique requirements of small, yet sophisticated systems as well as large integrated production systems.
We also offer a complete line of overhead crane and monorail equipment as well as specialty chain conveying and towing systems. Our Engineers and Contractors have been designing specialty equipment for the conveyor industry for many years. Contact us for any of your Material Handling Equipment Requirements.


Add texture and interest to the tabletop with this coastal fabric braided placemat, in soft colors to compliment any coastal kitchen. 14.5 in round, 100% cotton. Spot clean.
This mermaid bottle opener is made from cast iron with an antiqued finish, which will add unique nautical charm and style to your kitchen or home bar.


We don't like to admit it but there are some streets in Millington that we would rather not walk down alone at night. Usually, the thing to do is just avoid these places, but sometimes trouble comes to you. When it does, it is best to be prepared. Phoenix Personal Fitness & Martial Arts Inc. is here to give the people of Millington the tools they need to protect themselves when they need to.
Phoenix Personal Fitness & Martial Arts Inc. has designed its self-defense course by boiling down different martial arts techniques into their key components. These components are then connected with specific situations so that you gain the necessary knowledge to handle almost any circumstance. Our goal is that when situation X arises, you will counter with Y.
Self-defense is a serious subject but this is not the army, it is a classroom and we try to have fun while learning. Even the strongest building can't stand on a weak foundation. That is why we support each other in class; to create a solid foundation for our students to stand upon. Come and meet likeminded individuals, engage with other members of your community, and have some fun. If you have any questions about the self-defense classes we provided the people of Millington then please feel free to contact us.


United Airlines Will Soon Be Increasing Flights To College Towns Around The U.S.
In the spirit of football season, United Airlines is getting into the swing of things by making it easier for travelers to reach the country's most popular college towns. Offering more seats on flights and new routes around the U.S., find out where you'll be able to travel to this fall with United Airlines.
United Airlines has made the announcement that this year between September and November, they will be increasing their flights and number of seats to America's most beloved college towns. Vice President of United's Domestic Network, Ankit Gupta, announced that they're adding more than 204,000 seats to their top college destinations this fall, increasing their average daily number of seats up to 2,200.
United Airlines flights will depart from popular airports like Chicago, Denver, Houston, New York, and Washington D.C., but if you're wondering what college towns they'll be flying into — then take a look at the list below.
Note: Locations with an asterisk next to their name are airports where larger planes will be flying into.
Do you plan on taking advantage of these newly added flights with United Airlines? To read up on more travel news, check out The 4 Best American Airlines For Thirsty Travelers!


text:
Jewish, Not Arab, Roots in Judaea and Samaria
Jews Down Under 08/07/2013	1 Comment 2,153 Views
Written by By Hillel Fendel.. Israel National News…
US Pres. Obama's demand that Israel not settle Jews in the Biblical areas of Judaea and Samaria ignores thoroughly-documented Jewish roots in the Land of Israel, and in Judaea/Samaria in particular.
Yoram Ettinger, a former liaison for Congressional affairs in Israel's Washington embassy, lists in the latest of his periodic position papers some of the evidence showing that Judaea and Samaria has Jewish, not Arab, roots.
Notice that Galilee, Samaria, Judea and Idumaea are all provinces.
Area Always Known as "Judaea and Samaria"
Ettinger negates Obama's claim – enunciated during his June 4, 2009 speech at Cairo University – that "the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in" the Holocaust. For one thing, Ettinger notes, many world-renowned travelers, historians and archeologists of earlier centuries refer to "Judaea and Samaria," while the term "West Bank" was coined only 60 years ago. Jordan gave the region this name when it occupied it after Israel's War of Independence. No nation on earth other than Britain and Pakistan recognized Jordan's claim to Judaea and Samaria.
Among the travelers, historians and archeologists who referred to Judaea and Samaria are H. B. Tristram (The Land of Israel, 1865); Mark Twain (Innocents Abroad, 1867); R.A. MacAlister and Masterman ("Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly"); A.P. Stanley (Sinai and Palestine, 1887); E. Robinson and E. Smith (Biblical Researches in Palestine, 1841); C.W. Van de Velde (Peise durch Syrien und Paletsinea, 1861); and Felix Bovet (Voyage en Taire Sainte, 1864). Even the Encyclopedia Britannica, as well as official British and Ottoman records until 1950, used the term Judaea and Samaria, and not the West Bank.
Land Was Named "Palestine" in Order to Erase Jewish Presence
Ettinger goes even further back, and says that the name "Palestine" was given to the Holy Land for the sole purpose of erasing the previous name of the country – Judea – from human memory. The Romans, whose plan this was, similarly sought to extinguish Jewish presence in Jerusalem by renaming it Aelia Capitolina.
Arabs Came in the Last 150 Years
When speaking of "Palestinian national rights," it must be similarly kept in mind, Ettinger notes, that most Arabs residing today in Israel – anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean – have their origin in a massive 19th-20th century migration from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and other Moslem countries.
Town Names Betray Their True History
Finally, Ettinger says that almost all Arab localities in Judea and Samaria have retained Biblical Jewish names, thus reaffirming their Jewish roots. Examples include the following:
• Anata is Biblical (and contemporary) Anatot, the dwelling of the Prophet Jeremiah.
• Batir is Biblical (and contemporary) Beitar, the headquarters of Bar Kochba, the leader of the Great Rebellion against the Roman Empire, which was suppressed in 135CE.
• Beit-Hur is the biblical (and contemporary) Beit Horon, site of Judah the Maccabee's victory over the Assyrians.
• Beitin is biblical (and contemporary) Beit El, a site of the Holy Ark and Prophet Samuel's court.
• Bethlehem is mentioned 44 times in the Bible and is the birth place of King David.
• Beit Jalla is biblical (and contemporary) Gilo, in southern Jerusalem, where Sennacherib set his camp, while besieging Jerusalem.
• El-Jib is biblical (and contemporary) Gibeon, Joshua's battleground known for his command to stop the sun and moon (Joshua 10:12).
• Jaba' is the biblical (and contemporary) Geva, site of King Saul's son Jonathan's victory over the Philistines.
• Jenin is the biblical (and contemporary) Ein Ganim, a Levite town within the tribe of Issachar.
• Mukhmas is biblical (and contemporary) Mikhmash, residence of Jonathan the Maccabee and site of King Saul's fortress.
• Seilun is biblical (and contemporary) Shilo, a site of Joshua's tabernacle and the Holy Ark and Samuel's youth.
• Tequa is biblical (and contemporary) Tekoa, hometown of the Prophet Amos.
Arabs Never Wanted Palestinian State
In another of his posts, Ettinger has negated the US government position that a Palestinian state is the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict and that its formation would resolve the situation. He cites proofs from recent history showing that Arab antipathy to Israel not only predates Palestinian concerns, but often sidesteps such interests.
Israel's war for its independence in 1948-9, for instance, was conducted by the Arab countries at the expense of Palestinian aspirations. Though Egypt conquered Gaza, and Jordan took Judaea and Samaria, and Syria claimed the Golan, in none of these areas was a Palestinian government allowed.
When Egypt conquered the Gaza Strip, it proceeded to prohibit Palestinian national activities and expel Palestinian leadership. Not only did Jordan not grant Palestinian independence to Judaea and Samaria, it actually annexed these areas to its own country. When Syria occupied and annexed the Hama area in the Golan Heights, the Arab League outlawed a provisional Palestinian government there.
In short, it can be concluded that Arab "rights" to a state in Judaea and Samaria are historically weak and were long ignored by other Arab countries.
Tags Israel 's roots Judaea and Samaria
Previous Regavim's Rescue of Israeli Land – Interview with Ari Briggs
Next The Truth About the Refugees: Israel Palestinian Conflict
Pam Hopf
Interesting historical facts about the fallacy of calling Judaea and Samaria the 'West Bank".
These should be much more widely known, the the PC brigade prefer fantasy to facts.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
When does Celebrity MasterChef 2019 start? Cast, BBC air date and how the cooking series works
Gregg Wallace and John Torode return with a range of culinary challenges for the celebrities to get their teeth into
Deepika Rajani 1 day Monday July 15th 2019
Where is Stranger Things filmed? Season 3 filming locations around Atlanta for Netflix series
Labour MP Sarah Champion says she'd back no-deal Brexit
What time is the lunar eclipse tonight? How to watch from the UK on 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 launch
Here's who is appearing in Who Do You Think You Are 2019
When is the Love Island 2019 final?
Why did Sherif Lanre leave Love Island 2019?
Who is on Celebrity Gogglebox 2019?
Celebrity MasterChef – the programme that puts a spotlight on how well or how badly celebrities cook food – is about to open the doors to its kitchen once again.
Here's who is heading into the kitchen for the new series of Celebrity MasterChef
Instead of being the ones eating the food, the likes of Gogglebox's Dom Parker, BBC weatherman Tomasz Schafernaker, Olympic gold medallist Greg Rutherford and Motown legend Martha Reeves will be put through their culinary paces to create edible dishes for judges and food buffs Gregg Wallace and John Torode.
Through a series of challenges across six weeks, 20 celebrities will be whittled down until the best chef. But who will be the one to take over from John Partridge as the winner of Celebrity MasterChef?
Here's all you need to know about the latest series of the hit cooking competition.
From left to right: Dr Alex George, Oti Mabuse, Dame Zandra Rhodes and Greg Rutherford and many more will take part in the new series of Celebrity MasterChef (Photo: BBC)
When is Celebrity MasterChef on TV?
The BBC has yet to confirm an exact air date for series 14, but we do know it will slot into TV schedules this summer.
Which celebrities are taking part?
A total of 20 celebrities will be taking part in this year's competition with famous faces ranging from different backgrounds.
EastEnders actor Adam Woodyatt will be joined by Death in Paradise actress Elizabeth Bourgine. Radio presenter and actor Mim Shaikh; TV personalities Vicky Pattison, Dom Parker, Dr Alex George, Joey Essex; Motown legend Martha Reeves; Olympic champion Greg Rutherford, and MBE and Heavyweight boxer Dillian Whyte will be joined by former boxing manager and transgender campaigner Kellie Maloney.
Icon of design Dame Zandra Rhodes, Strictly Come Dancing star and professional dancer Oti Mabuse, and long distance runner and former Marine Andy Grant. BBC weatherman Tomasz Schafernaker will also be cooking alongside former footballer Neil 'Razor' Ruddock; DJ and entertainment lawyer Judge Jules and Radio 1 presenter Rickie Haywood-Williams; The Chase's Jenny Ryan and comedian Josie Long.
Who will be crowned winner of Celebrity MasterChef 2019? (Photo: BBC)
How does Celebrity MasterChef work?
The celebrity version will follow the same format as the regular series, with the first four weeks focusing on whittling the celebrities down before semi-finals week. In total, the series will consist of 18 episodes over six weeks.
During the four weeks, the first 60 minute episode of each heat week will see five celebrities enter the kitchen and take on an invention test. With limited ingredients, the stars will be asked to make a favourite dish from scratch with the options including a curry, pizza, burgers and sausages.
Despite not spending long in the kitchen, the celebrities will then find themselves in a professional setting making food for paying guests.
Rickie Haywood-Williams – (Photo: BBC)
With the pressure well and truly on them, which famous face will succumb to the heat of the kitchen? But the challenge won't stop there as they will be expected to prepare a dish of their design for Wallace and Torode when they return to MasterChef HQ.
At the end of the three challenges, one contestant will be sent home.
Martha Reeves (Photo: BBC)
For the remaining four, the next episode will test their ability to work under pressure in a team. The first task will be the Pairs Challenge where the celebrities are split into teams of two. Each team will be tasked with cooking the same dish. However, it's not as easy as it looks, as there will be a wall that separates the team members. Through clear and concise communication, the contestants will be expected to prepare dishes that are identical in taste and appearance.
Having burnt their fingers – so to speak – in the professional kitchen, the stars will then take on the Mass Catering Challenge where they will cook a range of dishes for hungry hordes in locations including: ZSL London Zoo, the historic Ford Factory in Dagenham and the Hendon Metropolitan Police Training Centre.
Josie Long (Photo: BBC)
With the semi finals fast approaching, the contestants will have to cook a faultless two course meal for the judges and a table of guest critics which consists of past Celebrity MasterChef champions John Partridge, Angellica Bell, Alexis Conran, Lisa Faulkner, Ade Edmondson, Sophie Thompson and Phil Vickery. Former finalists Spencer Matthews, Martin Bayfield, Rylan Clark-Neal and the Rev. Richard Coles will also be tasting the celebrities' creations.
At the end of this two celebrities are sent home and the remaining two become semi-finalists.
Dom Parker (Photo: BBC)
With just eight contestants left, the challenges intensify, including the task to cook for three of the UK's most renowned Restaurant Critics, William Sitwell, Grace Dent and Jimi Famurewa. For those that make it through they will also have the honour of cooking the dishes of world-renowned chef and food writer Yotam Ottolenghi.
As eight gets whittled down to just three, the remaining contestants are given the opportunity to cook at the daunting Chef's Table. This year they are given access to the kitchen of MasterChef: The Professionals judge Monica Galetti, Mere. They will cook her dishes to serve to a table of the UK's most revered and respected chefs; one Michelin-starred Ollie Dabbous, Lisa Goodwin-Allen and Jun Tanaka alongside Robin Gill and two Michelin-starred Daniel Clifford.
Adam Woodyatt (Photo: BBC)
Returning to where it all began, the finalists create a three course meal in the MasterChef kitchen before Wallace and Torode decide who should be given the title of Celebrity MasterChef Champion 2019.
Who presents and judges on Celebrity MasterChef?
Chef John Torode and former grocer turned TV personality Gregg Wallace will return to host and judge Celebrity MasterChef 2019.
More television
What you need to know about Love Islander Greg's rugby career
Meet Love Island's latest bombshell India Reynolds
Where is Love Island 2019 filmed?
Here's who had to leave the Love Island 2019 villa tonight
Introducing Love Island's latest bombshell Harley Brash


HCR is our favorite place to stay. We saddened that you'll be closed but we understand that it takes time to get things repaired. We'll be looking forward to visiting HCR soon!
Thank you, John, for your kind message and understanding.
We certainly look forward to seeing you next time!


text:
A reflection on life and the arts from a progressive perspective. Here you will find social commentary on movies, the performing arts, issues of cultural significance and life in general.
Black Actors and Filmmakers Face Enormous Obstacles in South Africa
Anna Majavu - The imminent screening of the new look Generations TV series, which has been off the air since its producer fired the cast last month, should sound an ominous knell for every Black creative in South Africa. The 16 fired actors held talks at the CCMA last week with MMSV, the production house owned by Mfundi Vundla who axed the actors after they went on strike for residual payments (which they should have been getting all along), and for three year contracts (which were promised to them by...
21 Oct 2014 · Life and the Arts · 0 comments
Banksy: Graffitist of the White Bourgeoisie
Arianne Shahvisi - Middle-class outrage at the recent removal of Banksy's graffiti in an area of poverty and racial tension indicates how disconnected the bourgeoisie are from the realities of working-class life in Britain, and is an example of the appropriation of subversive art forms by the elite. At the start of October 2014, UK graffiti artist Banksy's "anti-racist" stencil graffiti, presumably designed to satirize rising xenophobic sentiments in UK seaside town Clacton-on-sea, was...
Apolitical Humour? The Comedy of Joan Rivers
Binoy Kampmark - They [the Palestinians] started it. We now don't count who's dead. You're dead. You deserve to be dead. You started it. Don't you dare make me feel sad about that. – Joan Rivers, Daily Mail, Aug 8, 2014 The politics of the body, those irreverent observations about her vagina, and, well, everything else associated with the district of flesh – that was something Joan Rivers was rather good at. She made fun of her own...
10 Sep 2014 · Life and the Arts · 0 comments
Kim Kardashian: A Fitting Symbol for Late-Stage American-Style Capitalism
Lynn Parramore - Whether she is Instagramming her butt, or spending $827,000 on gold-plated toilets for her new mansion, or in her latest exploit, posing nude on silver sheets for GQ, Kim Kardashian has the American media in a fawning frenzy of non-stop headlines. Her body! "Kim Kardashian Flaunts Cleavage In Leather Dress For Made In America" (Hollywood Life) Her money! "Kim Kardashian's $28 Million Year: How She Made More Than Ever Before" (Forbes) Her fame!...
Century of Disaster
Eduardo Galeano - Uruguayan novelist Eduardo Galeano, a champion of the underdog, is known for his beautiful turns of phrase that read more like poetry than prose. His 2009 book, Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone, is a collection of 600 vignettes that contemplate life's contradictions, both historical and contemporary. From Fidel Castro to the Berlin Wall, Galeano's reflections provide a powerful and mesmerizing commentary on history, its people and its injustices. This excerpt of his book...
21 Aug 2014 · Life and the Arts · 0 comments
The World's 10 Most Dangerous Foods People Actually Eat
Jodie Gummow - Many of us take pride in experimenting with adventurous new foods, especially when we travel abroad. But, as tempting as these mysterious delicacies can often appear, some of them can make us violently ill or even worse can be fatal. So without further ado, here are 10 of the world's most dangerous foods according to Conde Nast Traveler, that you can eat but probably shouldn't. You have been warned! 1. Raw Cashews. Most of us wouldn't hesitate to buy a bag of these...


Sewing on strung beads and pearls has always been a tedious task but the beading foot now goes some small way to Alleviating this and to add pleasure to embellishing. Popular for bridal wear, evening wear, smart/casual or crafts, the beading foot set is a blessing. The Beading Foot Set - Part No. 200321006 is a set of 2 feet, both wide and narrow.


text:
Why Assam is prone to floods and what's the solution
jatin	14:55, 19.Jul 2019
News Assam is in the grip of yet another flood, with 57 lakh people displaced, all 33 districts affected, and 36 people killed besides hundreds of animals. More in News This is the first wave of floods this monsoon, and
Biennial State of Forests Report 2017 and CAMPA
News Recently, Forest Survey of India (FSI) released its biennial State of Forests Report 2017 that stated that forest cover in the country has increased by about one per cent, but several other reports highlight that this increase is not
Not even 1 in 5 Indian rural households gets piped water, govt tells Parliament
News Out of 17.87 total crore rural households, around 3.27 crore are currently getting water through piped connections, the Union Jal Shakti Ministry said in a written reply to the House. More in News The ministry, which has been formed
Pupils and teachers: the best ratios are in the smaller states
News In its reply to an unstarred question in Lok Sabha this week, the HRD Ministry said the PTR norm in the country has been set at 30:1 for primary level, and at 35:1 for the upper primary level. More
OIC's curious record on Xinjiang
Article Sujan R. Chenoy, director general of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, discuss the reason behind Chinese preference over India at Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) About Organisation of Islamic Cooperation The OIC, representing 57 member states and
The threat of Ebola
News After holding itself back on three occasions, the World Health Organization has declared the Ebola virus disease outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. More in News The outbreak in Congo,
Inappropriate template for a legitimate target
Article Ramkishen S. Rajan, Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy compare East Asian model with Indian Model to achieve economic growth. Important Analysis The recently-released Economic Survey either glosses over or ignores many acute challenges faced
Daily News Prescription 19th July 2019
GS 2 Polity and Governance Child labour in films, TV comes under scanner (The Hindu) The Union Labour and Employment Ministry has expressed concern over violations of child labour rules in film and television and urged the Ministry of Information
How films are certified, why it causes dispute
News Earlier this month, the Bombay High Court pulled up the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for refusing to give a 'U' certificate to Chidiakhana, produced by the Children's Film Society of India under the I&B Ministry. The CBFC
Attack On Journalists In India
Journalists are facing heightened threats around the globe, according to the 2019 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), covering 180 countries and territories. More in News It notes that the number of countries regarded as safe
1 2 3 … 46 Next Page▸


text:
Prelim-setting rescheduled again for…
NewsCourts
Prelim-setting rescheduled again for co-defendant in 2017 pot grow theft case
Judge orders Matthew M. Quinn, 35, to return to Department 11 at 8:30 a.m. Jan. 28 in the Justice Center in Fairfield
By Richard Bammer | rbammer@thereporter.com | Vacaville Reporter
A preliminary hearing date still remains pending for a 35-year-old co-defendant charged in connection to a 2017 theft at a marijuana grow site in rural Vacaville.
Matthew Michael Quinn appeared Friday morning in Department 11 and heard Judge William J. Pendergast vacate and reset the proceeding for 8:30 a.m. Jan. 28 in the Justice Center in Fairfield.
A jury on Sept. 24 found Quinn's co-defendant, Mark Alan Graham, 55, guilty of several serious felony charges related to the theft. They included robbery, attempted robbery, assault with a firearm, and being a felon in possession of a firearm. The jury also found true the allegation that Graham used a firearm causing great bodily injury during the robbery.
Court records show that on Sept. 19, 2017, Quinn and Graham went onto a rural property on Gates Canyon Road, off Pleasants Valley Road, to rob the owners of their marijuana.
Quinn and Graham wore masks to conceal their identity and impersonated deputies from the Solano County Sheriff's Office. Under their guise of being law enforcement officers, the two victims working as security officers on the property were ordered out of their tents and restrained.
One of the victims suffered injuries as a result of being shot in the leg while being
restrained.
Graham was arrested nearly two years after the crime, on Aug. 22, 2019, in the 200 block of Woodhaven Drive in Vacaville, and the DA's Office filed its complaint on Aug. 26.
It is unclear if Quinn, who is out of custody, was arrested at the same time and place, but the DA filed its complaint against him at the same time. Online records available to the public did not enumerate the charges against him, listing the case only as a felony. He is represented by the Solano County Public Defender.
In the meantime, Graham faces the possibility of more than 33 years in state prison at sentencing set for 8:30 a.m. Jan. 6 in Department 11.
Graham, who is represented by Fairfield criminal defense attorney Thomas Maas, remains in custody without bail in the Claybank Detention Facility in Fairfield.
Detective Charles Olmstead of the Solano County Sheriff's Department investigated the case. Deputy District Attorney Hunter Burnette led the prosecution.
Solano County Superior Court
Richard Bammer | Reporter
Photo: Helping "Mr. Bobby's" Family
South Bay Councilmember convicted of illegal voting


Celebrated in San Sebastian (Spain) in March 22nd 2017 under the umbrella of EERA, it was celebrated workshop to identify the potential characteristics as well as main barriers and challenges of the use of energy storage and hybrid energy storage for the integration of renewables. The Unit of Electric Power System introduced the Workshop with the topic "Hybridisation with fast energy storage systems", presented by Marcos Lafoz. Supported by IK4-CIDETEC and TECNALIA, the workshop hosted around 50 participants and presenters from CIEMAT, SINTEF, UPM, SCHWUNGRAD, NTNU, UNIPD and EUROBAT.
A complete report will be prepared based on the notes compiled from the workshop in order to write a white paper with the main conclusions and recommendations obtained from the workshop.