Newspapers have done a pretty good job of ignoring the impact of the web as the web has come to play a bigger and bigger role in people’s lives. Print media keeps a steady drumbeat of criticizing blogs, mixed in with sudden spurts of online activity. The Pal-item creates blogs and a “community forum,” then scraps them, then relaunches them.

Frequently, the local Gannett papers seem to decide that they need to be doing something online and throw up a site completely ignoring the local online community that has already been in place. The problem with this is that, although the papers have plenty of advertising power for their online sites, by ignoring existing online efforts they alienate the very folks who would be most likely on get online and make use of their site: those folks already online.

For a flavor of what I am talking about, head over to the Muncie Free Press and check out this editorial by Kpaul

Well, now that Chris Hardie is only releasing his informative and well-produced local news podcasts on rare occasions, I am savoring each new episode, and would encourage you to do the same.

Yesterday’s #12 is worth the trip. Chris is the only local source keeping honesty as a valued component of discussions about local economic development. This week he questions the Pal-Item’s pie-eyed approach to local development plans.

He also features local computer guru Paul Retherford as his featured blogger.

Give it a listen!

The fact that I do not even have a category for this item is probably a good sign that it is outside the scope of this blog (whatever that has become), but I cannot pass this one up. Lots of people are picking this one up, but I love this type of case. It’s like when the US Supreme Court determined whether a tomato was a vegetable:

Is a burrito a sandwich? The Panera Bread Co. bakery-and-cafe chain says yes. But a judge said no, ruling against Panera in its bid to prevent a Mexican restaurant from moving into the same shopping mall.

Link. (Yahoo News)

The case centers around a lease provision giving the Bread company the right to prevent a competing “sandwich” shop from coming in. Somewhere some attorney it kicking himself or herself for not defining the term in the definitions section of the lease. And people wonder why legal documents are so complicated. . . .:

“A sandwich is not commonly understood to include burritos, tacos and quesadillas, which are typically made with a single tortilla and stuffed with a choice filling of meat, rice, and beans,” [Superior Court Judge Jeffrey] Locke wrote in a decision released last week.

If you have not been checking Joel David Palmer’s site Livestock & Ag Waste Intelligence , you are missing out on some of the best nationwide coverage of CAFO related issues. Recently, Mr. Palmer has covered some of the following:

High powered commission to investigate public impacts of CAFOs:

Some aspects of the current animal production system have created new challenges regarding human health, rural communities, and the environment. Concerns are centered on the emergence of food-borne diseases, antibiotic resistant bacteria, air and water contamination from animal waste, significant shifts in social structure and the economy of many farming regions, as well as issues of animal health.

The Commission includes former Kansas Governor John Carlin, former USDA Secretary Dan Glickman, actress and environmental activist Darryl Hannah, and Cargill Meat Solutions Corporation president Thomas Hayes, among others. A Reuters article provides additional details.

Cattlemen Opine on Proposed EPA Rule:

The very basis for federal regulation of water quality, discharges into public water sources, NCBA finds problematic, saying that "discharge" has not been adquately defined for CAFOs: "The EPA cannot expect producers to know if they have a discharge unless the term is defined. In addition, states must know the answer to this question before they can promulgate appropriate regulations."

Tropical storm threatens wastewater lagoons in Eastern US:

An article in the News & Observer, North Carolina, US, describes impacts of tropical storm Ernesto on animal feeding operations that manage wastes in liquid form. After more than a foot of rain in some regions and with more on the way, many wastewater storage lagoons are filled to the brim and in danger of overflowing or breaching, although no spills have yet been reported.

Gloves come off in editorial about proposal to exempt CAFOs from Superfund Regulations:

The Eugene Register-Guard, newspaper of record for highly-agricultural Lane County in Oregon, US, addresses the issue with a strongly-worded editorial condemning the notion that CAFOs should be exempt. The paper further argues that all other laws concerning the environmental regulation of livestock agriculture should be strengthened and more vigorously enforced than at present. Principal concerns are inadequate storage of manure and wastewater, and land-applications of this material at times or in quantities that cannot be assimilated and recycled by growing crops.

Long the gold standard for a legal blog, Indiana’s own Indiana Law Blog author Marcia Oddi has been give an award by the Indiana Judges Association for outstanding legal journalism:

Marcia J. Oddi, publisher of The Indiana Law Blog, will receive the media award. The Indiana Law Blog is a web log devoted to providing information on Indiana court decisions and other legal developments. Judge David Chidester of Porter Superior Court nominated Ms. Oddi for providing citizens with an up-to-date capsule of all matters involving Indiana law. Ms. Oddi has published The Indiana Law Blog since 2002.

Yep. You read that right. A blogger is being given an award for outstanding journalism, and I must say, it is well  deserved. [The press release, How Appealing coverage and this ILB entry.

Well, catch up is about all I can do, at this point. My priority list has not gotten down to blog now so far this week, But I would like to note some key storylines:

CAFO Issues:

Residents Oppose Location of Large Dairy was the title of the Journal & Courtier article from Wednesday, covering the 3,500 head dairy in Carroll County. Another CAFO going into a county with no local regulation of CAFO’s, so local residents are feeling left out of the decision making process as no local approval for the dairy is required, and IDEM already issued the permit.

Moving along, Kpaul over at Muncie Free Press put up links to pending and granted CAFO permits around the state over here. The only way to have a voice in the permitting process for operations in your region is to know about them, so be sure to check the links out. Kpaul, in addition to keeping people informed on the permitting process, is also attending CAFO related hearings and meetings, collecting audio and video, so stay tuned to the Free Press for future CAFO coverage. Kpaul also turns us on to a new website focused on CAFO’s coming to Madison County: NoMadCoCAFO.com, a site somehow connected to the Concerned Citizens of Elwood.

I had never heard of Heartwood before, but it is a  Midwestern organization focused on advocating for the preservation of forests in the Midwest. I learned of it through the CAFO issue as the group’s annual gathering spot in Orange County, Indiana is now facing the installation of a hog CAFO nearby: Heartwood.Alerts .

Local Podcasting:

Last week, I noted that local tech baron Chris Hardie has started podcasting his reaction to local (i.e. Richmond/Wayne County) news items over at the Richmond News Review. Chris pointed out to me this morning that the Earlham professor now trapped in Lebanon that he covered on his show July 16, 2006, ended up on the front page of today’s Pal-Item. Coincidence? Or is the local press listening? It would be interesting if Chris provided the lead for that story to the paper.

Chris called me this morning for an interview on the subject of my blogging the CAFO issue. So if you want to hear some of my reflections on my experiences in discussing this issue in this format, tune in to Chris’s show. It should be up later today. Chris is really putting a lot into his shows, and continues to crank out a high quality product. Sitting around listening to my computer is not something I do habitually, so I have pretty much missed the whole podcasting revolution. Chris’s show has given me the push to at least fire up the audio once a week.

Joel David Palmer is a former administrator of the CAFO program at the Oregon Department of Agriculture and he now has a blog, Livestock & Ag Waste Intelligence that is off to a good start this month:

Your first stop for information on livestock and agricultural waste management issues, with perspectives from the local to the international. We will always invite your comments and encourage discourse between all stakeholders, to contribute to elegant solutions for minimizing wastes and converting wastes into resources.

Link.

So far, Mr. Palmer has talked about technologies to deal with animal waste, practices inside CAFO’s that some say amount to animal abuse, and other issue, including the newly proposed revise EPA CAFO rules: "Environmental advocacy groups read the "intend to discharge" provision to mean that CAFOs will be able to decide for themselves if they need a permit."

He also pointed out that in response to the EPA’s proposed rule, some in Congress have proposed giving CAFO’s a tax credit:

Republican Congressman Tom Osborne of Nebraska announced today that he has introduced legislation to provide a tax credit to CAFOs to offset the cost of compliance with federal water quality regulations. Osborne describes the EPA’s CAFO rules as "an unfunded federal mandate" that comes at a time when producers are already struggling economically. Osborne’s colleague in the Senate, Chuck Hagel (R-NE), introduced companion legislation in that body on June 29. The Senator states that although he agrees that polluting discharges from livestock operations should be controlled, "EPA has once again regulated industry without considering the costs."

Link.

Looks like it will be an interesting site to watch.

First off, I have to express admiration for fellow local blogger Chris Hardie, of the internet consulting firm Summersault, for his recent adventure in podcasting: The Richmond News Review. Chris promises regular audio coverage of local news related issues, and so far, he has delivered interesting and insightful stuff, so head over there and tune in.

I was impressed by the high quality production that Chris has achieved. In Sunday’s edition, Chris touched on a letter to the editor of the Pal-Item by Tim Bain (What do trails have to do with transportation?) the letter criticizes use of transportation funds to extend biking trails in the state, claiming those funds should be used solely to improve the roadways. Chris expresses my exact reaction to this letter: automobiles cannot be the only form of valid transportation supported by our society anymore.

As we seem to be reaching peak oil production (i.e. the ultimate limit on supply) and increasing demand for oil from developing nations (i.e. China), energy costs will continue to eat up more and more of our wealth, unless we decrease our usage. Even former oilman George W. Bush started out this year noting that we have to break our "addiction" to oil. One way to do this is to live closer to work, and rely on a car only for those occasions when you have to travel great distances, walking or biking at other times.

Drop in on another local web poster (I can’t call him a "blogger" as he forsakes the standard format) Mark Stosberg, who has recently posted the results of his research on calculating your true miles per hour in a car versus a bike. Mark uses a formula to add in the actual time we spend driving around (including waiting for oil changes) and factors in the amount of time we have to work just to pay all the expenses associated with running a vehicle. His conclusion is that, for people who live and work in the same community, biking is just as time efficient as driving, plus, if you do not maintain a car, you will either have a bunch of extra money, or about 3 extra hours each week (the amount of time it takes to earn the money to pay for the car) to do whatever with.

The problem with bike transportation currently is that there is no safe way to do it (read Chris’s When people driving cars kill people riding bikes). The transportation priorities have resulted in making biking around a real threat to health of bikers. Roads are made for cars. Face it, even motorcycles are not safe on our roadways. People just keep driving over pedestrians and bikers of all sorts. When I used to ride a motorcycle, I quickly learned that there is a whole population of drivers who do not see ANYTHING on the road under 1,500 pounds. Most people do not want to run over bikers, small children, or even dogs and cats, but the possibility does not seem to make people more careful.

Nothing will change our engrained attitudes when we get behind the wheel. Cars will always rule the road. The only viable solution to making a community more biker friendly is bike trails. More people relying primarily on bikes for routine transportation means less energy consumption, and potentially, healthier people. Bike trails could save us both from the energy costs and the ever widening obesity crisis.

Henceforth I’ll be focusing on how we can adapt to the fairly drastic changes in our lifestyle that we’ll be experiencing in the next few years. As is my wont, I will attempt to synthesize technical, social, and economic factors and suggest legal and institutional changes that may be warranted. Or just as often, suggest that changes aren’t warranted.

The types of changes I’m talking about are: (1) the end of cheap oil and gas, (2) a decline in the power and influence of the U.S., (3) the ageing of the population, (4) an increasing rate of critical environmental problems, (5) an economy increasingly dominated by the super-rich, and (6) global warming.

While these changes are global, I’ll continue to focus on regional ways to cope. History is replete with periods of resource strain; these were painful times but civilization ultimately marched onward. Those that are able to innovate, not only technologically, but socially as well, are likely to fare best. I’ll try to leave the gloom and doom to others but folks, we need to talk about making some changes.

Okay, let’s get started.

I’m making progress on my backlog of work, and hope to be posting regularly again within a few days. Anyway, the coverage of environmental policy issues available on the ILB, Indiana Barrister, Kemplog, and Masson’s Log to name a few is quite thorough these days. It’s tempting to just sit back and read. At any rate, the days of the bigeastern.com as a headline service are about over…it’s time to morph into what comes next.

This blog will review and comment on major online postings in the rapidly growing world of Indiana blogs. It will act as a “spotter” service for readers who don’t want to look over all those blogs.

And TRIB will lift up for praise or criticism the blogs that are written by Hoosiers or that concern Hoosiers especially.

TRIB. It’s a little bit of a Tribune. A little bit of a Tribute to bloggers. And, sometimes, a one-blog Tribunal. That’s TRIB, “The Review of Indiana Blogs.”

 http://hoosier.blogs.com/trib/

This is not on topic for this blog, but as others have taken time out to at least acknowledge the situation down in the gulf, I want to pass along this story which has links to the Indiana legal community.

Bill Quigley is the brother of Fran Quigley, the director of the ICLU. Bill is a law professor at Loyola University, and has represented death row inmates and pursued litigation against the state of Louisiana to improve living conditions on death row.

He is stranded in a major hospital in New Orleans, and has not been heard from since yesterday when he sent out the message: “No water, sick, send help.”

I am amazed at how quickly the situation in NO has spiraled out of the ability of our national infrastructure’s ability to respond, despite the fact that the full crisis has taken days to develop.

Below is a TV interview captured with Bill from earlier this week that lays out the stark circumstances those who are stranded in the failing hospital find themselves.
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