World Naked Bike Ride in McAllen THIS Saturday (9th)! →
We are riders of South Texas. People that willingly travel the scorched roads of the RGV, looking to change the way we transport ourselves as a society one wheel at a time. Societal change will not occur within this precious little time we have unless we stand in solidarity and move with direction!
Why ride naked you ask?
When ANY bicyclist hits the road, he or she is quite metaphorically naked. No amount of self safety training or practice will completely protect and prepare you for a road system that is suited specifically and primarily for motor vehicles. Riding naked is an effective way of demonstrating that as bicyclists we are exposed to all automobiles and must be seen! When you ride your bike naked, you are promoting a safer cycling environment for all.
How many of you have ever felt like you’re just not respected on the road? How about even seen?! Well when you join us this upcoming Saturday, be prepared to do some body paint, slogans, banners, flags, anything! Can’t see me before? Now you do! Spread the word to all!
Rules & Stuff:
This ride will be a “bare-as-you-dare” event. Keep in mind, as a bicyclist you are not required to carry personal ID. Your personal safety is our top priority, and at no time will we be exposing ourselves to incite disgust, or be obscene. This is a movement created to liberate ourselves and demand equality as self-propelled vehicles!
Protect Our Borders and Coasts (Click for Petition) →
On April 17, Rob Bishop (R-UT) reported his border bill, the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act (HR 1505), to the U.S. House of Representatives. Now is the time to urge your representative to strongly oppose this bill.
Over 30 federal protection laws, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act, would be waived on public lands in a zone that extends 100 miles into the United States from all land borders.
HR 1505 puts dozens of National Parks, tribal lands and protected natural areas at risk. Disguised as a border security initiative, it is in fact an assault on public lands and environmental health.
Nicol: The Grand Old Party Pushes for a Lawless Border
McALLEN, May 20 - Last month, the Pew Hispanic Center reported that net migration from Mexico into the United States has dropped to zero, with roughly the same number of Mexican citizens heading south across the border as north.
Just a few days earlier, HR 1505, the misnamed National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act, was introduced onto the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives by Representative Rob Bishop, R-Utah. Aimed at stopping the flood of immigrants that Pew found are, in fact, not pouring over our borders, this bill waives 36 laws on all federal lands within 100 miles of both the northern and southern U.S. borders for any Border Patrol activity. Forward operating bases, roads, and even more border walls could tear through national parks from Glacier to Olympic to Big Bend, as well as national forests, national monuments, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas with no concern for the laws that protect natural ecosystems or human communities.
HR 1505 is a dramatic expansion of the Real ID Act, which gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to waive laws to build border walls and roads. In 2008 former DHS Secretary Chertoff waived these same laws, which include the Endangered Species Act, Farmland Policy Protection Act, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to build walls that would otherwise have been illegal.
The resulting damage has been tremendous. Walls now carve up the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, fragmenting habitat set aside for endangered ocelot and jaguarundi. Up and down the Rio Grande, farmers and ranchers, some of whose families have held title to their land since the 1760s, have had their property condemned. And during border wall construction ancestral remains were unearthed and left exposed by bulldozers in the Tohono O’Odham reservation.
Now Representative Bishop, whose Utah district is hundreds of miles away from either border, wants to see this brutalizing of our borderlands expanded to cover lands that are nowhere near the border. He has yet to explain why he believes that the Border Patrol is incapable of enforcing immigration laws without violating every other law.
For their part, the Border Patrol has not asked for the power to ignore our nation’s laws, and they have told Congressional researchers that “land management laws have had no effect on Border Patrol’s overall measure of border security.” The current Secretary of Homeland Security, former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, recently called HR 1505 “unnecessary” and “bad policy.”
One would assume that those who represent border communities would stand up for the borderlands. Yet Representative Francisco Canseco, whose district already contains more miles of border wall than any other in Texas, is one of HR 1505’s cosponsors. The city of Eagle Pass, whose residents are Rep. Canseco’s constituents, was on the receiving end of the very first border wall condemnation. Big Bend National Park is also in his district, and HR 1505 would sweep aside all of the environmental laws that currently protect and maintain it.
Some of Texas’ other border Representatives have taken the opposite position, asserting that all of our nation’s laws should be enforced on the border, not just those that pertain to immigration. Representative Rubén Hinojosa, for example, whose district includes the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, criticized HR 1505, saying, “I think we can allow the Border Patrol to do its work and at the same time protect our environment and our rare animals such as the jaguarundi, the ocelot and our migrating birds in deep South Texas.”
It may be that the difference between the two Representatives’ positions comes down to experience: Hinojosa saw first-hand the harm inflicted upon the border by the waiving of laws, while Canseco did not come to office until the Tea Party’s surge in 2010. Or perhaps it is a matter of party affiliation, as Conseco’s Grand Old Party tries to use immigrant bashing and charges that President Obama has not done enough to secure the border as a wedge issue in the upcoming election, ignoring the Pew findings and facts on the ground.
Representative Bishop is currently working hard to convince Democrats, particularly those whose districts are as far from the borders has his own and who he assumes know as little about the borders as him, to support HR 1505. Bipartisan support would increase the bill’s chances in the Senate, and make a Presidential veto unlikely.
Whether he comes to his decision out of ignorance or politics, Representative Canseco needs to think about the on-the-ground impacts of the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act on his constituents and the lands they cherish. He and other members of Congress need to decide whether they stand for partisan politics or stand up for the people who put them in office. And when the next election comes around border residents need to think seriously about which side their Representatives in Washington are on.
Scott Nicol co-chairs the Sierra Club’s Borderlands Team and is a founding member of No Border Wall. He lives in McAllen. Nicol says you can send an email to your US Representative urging them to reject HR 1505 using the Sierra Club’s online action feature by going to http://bit.ly/IOwaEs.
Study says wetland isn’t filtering water efficiently
SAN JUAN — It’s been two years since San Juan opened its 7.5-acre manmade wetlands, with the dual goal of providing natural habitat and filtering wastewater. But how much is the park, near Hall Acres Road and Nebraska Avenue, actually filtering?
That’s the question University of Texas-Pan American biology major Peter Cerda and Subtropical Studies Professor Hudson DeYoe set out to answer when they began a year-long study in November 2010.
“The idea of a wetland is that it acts like a sponge and water comes in with lots of nutrients, and then it goes out with less,” DeYoe said. “We were looking to see how efficiently the wetland worked and what percent reduction could be expected.”
DeYoe presented the results of the study to the San Juan City Commission last month. Results found that while water flowing into the project had high levels of ammonia, phosphate and nitrate, the wetland substantially reduced only the nitrate levels —by about 30 percent.
The water that passes through the wetlands filters into the Arroyo Colorado watershed, which feeds into the Laguna Madre. The addition of too many nutrients in the system can cause environmental problems, such as seaweed buildup in the Gulf of Mexico, DeYoe said.
As far as those involved know, this is the first study to evaluate the efficacy of manmade wetlands in the Rio Grande Valley, where only a couple other cities have created such spaces.
“I was a little disappointed in that result, but given that this is the first time we’ve studied this in the climate that we have, I had nothing to base it on,” Cerda said.
The size of the wetlands and the plants contained within all could be factors in how nutrients are filtered.
San Juan began working on the wetlands project in 2009, utilizing an $836,000 grant from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, according to Monitor archives.
City Manager J.J. Rodriguez indicated the city could be amenable to assisting with future research in the area. The city did not contribute funding to the first project. Instead, Cerda donated his own time and gas money for the experience.
DeYoe said he does not have any students working with him on research projects, but that he would like to continue studying the wetland system if he gets some. Future studies may address why the six different ponds filtered the nutrients so differently, and what the lifespan of the system is.
“Any of the cities that would be spending money on these would be interested in knowing what they’re getting and how long it is going to last,” he said.
ECO-PARK
The wetlands park appears to be more successful in its second mission, to provide natural habitat that will eventually become a well-used city park.
Almost a year after San Juan began putting out the word that leaders were seeking nature-watchers to help identify and catalogue the species within the wetlands, volunteers have identified 57 species of birds, according to a list kept by the Parks and Recreation Department.
“We’ve been real fortunate that some of our local birders have come in and identified (those),” said Rene Jaime, assistant director of the department. “I think for some of the birders, if it’s a park that’s not well advertised they want to be the first to start identifying birds.”
Visitors to the area have also spotted a bobcat, red-eared snyder turtles and other assorted critters.
Some 2,000 students from 26 area schools visited the wetlands in the past year, where parks workers explained how the water is filtered as well as what the habitat provides for different species of animals and bird migration, Jaime said.
Money is budgeted to add bathroom facilities to the park, but there is no timeline yet to do so. Jaime said his department would have to evaluate hiring extra staff and work on parks maintenance as it becomes more available to general use. Currently the area is open for tours upon request.
“It’s growing,” Jaime said. “It’s a small park, but the birders have complimented us.”
Nature’s Helpers: Volunteers work to restore sand dunes
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND — For six years, Leah Thrash has sowed plants to help build the sand dunes that protect the beach from erosion.
Saturday, she and about 70 volunteers planted thousands of bitter panicum plants along a 400-foot stretch of beach off White Sands Street, said Rob Nixon, chairman of the Surfrider Foundation of South Texas, a group dedicated to helping preserve the beach.
“I live on the Island because of the beach and I want to help sustain it,” said Thrash, a saleswoman.
Sand dunes act like walls to nurture the beach, Nixon said.
Dunes help protect the beach from cold fronts that blow away its sand and storms and high tides that wash sand away, Nixon said.
“The beach is extremely important. It’s the biggest economic generator for South Padre Island and Cameron County,” Nixon said. “We think it’s important to preserve the beach with natural means when possible.”
So from October to May, the group teams up with the Barefoot Wine Rescue Project, a national organization that works to restore beaches, to help build the dunes that protect the beach from erosion and safeguard property from storm surge, Nixon said.
“We plant in areas where dunes have washed away or have been lost to development,” Nixon said. “As these plants grow, sand accumulates around them and it grows the dune.”
Since October, volunteers planted about 60,000 plants to shore up sand dunes along the beach, Nixon said.
For the project, the city of South Padre Island provides the plants, he said.
Along the Island, property owners request that the groups work to shore up sand dunes, Nixon said.
Property owner Deloris Max called the project critical to beach maintenance.
“It’s very important because it protects the environment and the property,” said Max, a heath food store owner who’s co-owner of a condominium along the stretch where Thrash sowed her plants.
“I go to the beach for recreation, therapy and family time. It’s serenity,” Trash said. “It takes some work to make sure it’s around for everyone to enjoy for years to come.”
McAllen area jumps 14 spots in nation’s worst for asthma
McALLEN – A high pollen count and second-hand smoke were two contributors this year as the McAllen-Mission-Edinburg area jumped to ninth from 25th as the worst place in the country for asthma.
“I was surprised myself. I knew we were high, but I didn’t expect to be that high compared to other places,” said pulmonologist Ramon Rodriguez, who McAllen doctor specializes in internal medicine and pulmonary disease.
The ranking, which is determined by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation for America, includes evaluation of factors like pollen counts, air quality, frequent ozone days, public smoking bans and use of asthma medications.
All contributed to McAllen’s rise on the list, according to Angel Waldron, spokesperson for AAFA.
“This year, the pollen count was really high in McAllen, (which) can cause problems over half of the people with asthma because they also have allergies,” Waldron said, adding that allergies trigger 60 percent of asthma cases.
Exposure to second-hand smoke also triggers asthma attacks.
Although the AAFA recommends smoking bans in workplaces, restaurants, bars and in cars with minors, McAllen only bans the first two, according to Josue “ Josh ” Ramirez, the city’sdirector of Environmental and Health.
Rodriguez said second-hand smoke is an irritant, but added that barbecuing also sends people to the emergency room with breathing problems. Most show up on Mondays, he said.
Additionally, the McAllen area is among the top five highest in the country in poverty and uninsured rates.
According to the National Prescription Tracking Data Base, which is provided by IMS Health, the usages of both over-the-counter and prescription medications used to treat asthma are higher here than they should be.
“The data is telling us, the people in McAllen are either dealing with a high incidence of triggers that cause their symptoms, or they may be self-medicating (by) trying different things until they find something that works,” Waldron said.
However, patients who are diligent in being tested and who consult with allergists regularly won’t need to self medicate, Waldron said.
Although typically considered a children’s disease, 68-year-old Connie DiCarlo-Mendiola, of McAllen, learned she had the disease 11 years ago. Growing up in Minnesota, DiCarlo-Mendiola never suffered symptoms as a youth. Even when she moved 22 years ago to the Valley, things seemed great.
“ When I first came to the Valley, I loved that Gulf breeze in the evening. I thought that was the best thing because I could breath that fresh air. But now that I have asthma, whenever (there) is a windy day, I stay indoors because of allergies and the wind ,” she said.
Since her diagnosis, however, DiCarlo-Mendiola has ended up in the hospital once a year.
She is not alone. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas reports that the impact reflected on the asthma-related claims are on the rise in Texas.
In the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission area alone last year, BCBSTX processed 28,000 claims and paid $2,500,000 related to asthma, Ross Blackstone, senior manager of Media and Public Relations for BCBSTX, stated in a written statement.
Asthma now affects one out of every 12 people in Texas. In addition to health challenges, the Texas Department of State Health Services says asthma also carries significant social and economic burdens:
» One-third of asthma-affected Texans miss work at least one day a year because of their condition.
» One third of Texans with asthma have trouble sleeping, and more than 11 percent have had trouble sleeping five nights in a row or more.
» Children up to age 4 who have asthma are admitted to the hospital two to eight times more than adults with the same condition.
SOLUTIONS
There are several things that can help alleviate or lessen the affects of asthma.
One is to education people and make them aware of the disease and how to control it, Waldron said.
While there is nothing people can do about pollen counts, they can implement and observe smoking bans.
Also, working to improve the rates of poverty and those who are uninsured would help, Waldron said.
“It is good that students are able to access their inhalers while in school, (but) there are some states that don’t allow it because it is a controlled substance,” Waldron said.”When they don’t have access, we have unnecessary deaths.”
Recruiting more allergists and pulmonologists also would benefit the area. Currently, patients have long waiting periods before they can be seen by a board certified specialist.
Rodriguez said the Valley now has 14 allergists and pulmonolgists.
In the Medical: You can use some more physicians in McAllen as well, or specialist to handle, right now there are just far enough, so people are probably dealing with a long waiting period before they can be seen by a board certified specialist, if some more physicians were practicing in McAllen that would be a benefit to our patients as well.
Dr. Rodriguez said in the Valley there are 14 Allergist and pulmonologist if we include the Weslaco ones.
As for DiCarlo-Mendiola, who is a respiratory therapist herself, life is normal except during May and June.
She said she follows three simple rules:
» Complying with instructions for maintenance medications even when symptom free;
» Exercising regularly;
» Eating healthy.
Despite the debilitating effects of asthma, Di-Carlo-Mendiola said she’s winning the battle.
“I don’t let asthma control my life,” she said.
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Martha L. Hernández covers health, business and general assignments for The Monitor and El Nuevo Heraldo . You can reach her at (956) 683-4846.
6th annual Ride Against Hunger set for Saturday
Some EAC members have participated in this event in the past, it was VERY fun, and we highly recommend that people try to make it out.
Hundreds of riders will strap on their helmets and mount their bicycles Saturday with the goal of beating hunger in the Rio Grande Valley.
The Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley will host its sixth annual Ride Against Hunger on Saturday in the Sharyland area.
As of Friday, more than 50 people had signed up for the ride, which was more than had pre-registered at the same time last year, said Omar Rodriguez, the manager of communications and advocacy for the food bank. Last year, 321 people participated in the ride, and Rodriguez said he hopes that number will increase this year.
Bicyclists can choose to ride a 25-, 40- or 65-mile route that starts at The Grove Town Center at Sharyland Plantation and heads north. The event also includes a five-kilometer walk or run and a children’s one-mile fun run. The rides include rest stops and food and water for riders. The 5K will include a water stand.
It costs $25 for the bicycle rides; $20 for the 5K and $10 for the children’s run. The proceeds will go to the food bank.
Those who want to participate can register online at foodbankrgv.com through Thursday. Participants can register Friday at the Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley in Pharr and before the ride Saturday at Sharyland Plantation.
This year for the first time, if a rider raises $500 in donations, he or she will become part of the Pro-Riders Club, Rodriguez said. Members of the club receive an exclusive jersey and are entered into a raffle for prizes. They will also get a special meal after the ride.
The Ride Against Hunger is one of many fundraisers the food bank organizes, but it has a special meaning because it promotes exercise and health, Rodriguez said.
“We focus on healthy living getting kids active and getting people active,” he said. “The point is they’re out there exercising and it’s a good community bonder.”
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IF YOU GO
PARTICIPANT REGISTRATION
WHERE: The Grove at Sharyland Plantation, 3930 Plantation Grove Blvd. in Mission
WHEN: Bike tour registration begins 6:30 a.m. Saturday; 5K and Children’s 1-Mile registration begins at 7:30 a.m.
EVENT START TIMES
7:30 a.m. — 60-mile ride
7:45 a.m. — 40-mile ride
7:45 a.m. — 25-mile ride
8:30 a.m. — Children’s 1-mile
9 a.m. — 5k walk/run
Sodexo: Stop Abusing Pigs And Chickens →
UTPA Relevancy: Food Provider for Campus is Sodexo
Just passing along some petitions sent to us by EAC’er Ricky. Please take the time to check them out and sign! Signatures DO count and it only takes a minute or two to fill out the form.
EAC MEMBERS!
Check your emails! AHORA!
Tomorrow:
@ Earth Fest
Chevy Volt and Smart Car on Display
Live Music throughout the Event from Valley Musicians
Belly Dancing
Face painting
Balloon Animals and Hats
Fun photobooth with local freelance photographer for photo petitions
Recycled magazine bracelets
Student groups selling the following items: Dirt Cups, Corn Cups, Fruit Cups, and Raspas
Tonight!
Bag-It! The Movie @ Cine El Rey at 7 PM.
Wooooo!
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