Go Green

By John Sutter

The Boise City News today printed a monster headline announcing — kind of — the governor’s visit to the drought-stricken area of the Oklahoma Panhandle.

“He Finally Made It!?! July 16 2008 It’s G-Day,” the headline reads.

The paper still seems to question whether or not a drought that’s been compared to the 1930s Dust Bowl will be enough to get Gov. Brad Henry to visit. The governor allegedly has never visited distant Cimarron County, with a sparse population of 2,664.

According to C.F. David, the paper’s publisher, owner and editor, the lead story begins: “If Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry shows up in Cimarron County today as he’s promised, it will have taken him 2011 days, or 5 years 6 months and three days to travel the 350 odd miles form the state capital to Boise City. But to make the trip the governor will have flown rather than driven. So he will still be in the dark about how much the entire Panhandle needs highway dollars. Maybe next time.”

By phone at about 11 a.m., an hour before the governor’s scheduled visit, David said he had written the governor two massive $50 checks — one for show, and one to answer a bounty he’s had out on Henry since 2006. In print, David has offered $50 up to anyone who could prove Henry has visited Cimarron County since he took office as governor.

When the meet this afternoon, David plans to hand over the check. Henry plans to donate the money to charity, according to the Associated Press.

At about 11 a.m., David said by phone that he still was delivering newspapers. Then he planned to go home, change into a t-shirt that promotes Cimarron County, and get ready to meet the governor.

The purpose of the visit is to talk about the drought, but David said he hopes the governor takes home a broader message.

“Even though there are less than 3,000 voters up here, we are part of Oklahoma and we need to be respected and heard,” he said.

He hopes that message resonates with future political candidates also, he said.

By John Sutter

After being petitioned by the governor, the state agriculture secretary, two U.S. senators and a U.S. congressman, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on Thursday that it will send drought relief to two Oklahoma Panhandle counties hit with a drought that’s been compared to the devastating 1930s Dust Bowl.

The disaster declaration comes after state Agriculture Secretary Terry Peach said that drought relief likely wouldn’t come until September. The drought has plagued Cimarron and Texas counties–at the western end of the Panhandle–for more than a year. Climatologists and officials didn’t take notice until the spring, after a Cimarron County commissioner sent a letter to state government.

Conservation officials prompted that letter, and, in effect, it led to the area being given the government’s most severe drought rating– “exceptional” — and to recent visits by Peach and Assistant State Climatologist Gary McManus.

Read more about the people of the Panhandle and the lead-up to Thursday’s disaster declaration in previous blog posts.

By John Sutter

For this morning’s paper, I wrote a story about scattered rain that’s fallen recently on the drought-ridden Oklahoma Panhandle — nourishing one couple’s hope that they’ll be able to keep their cattle, and their ranch.

I left out a fun detail, though.

There’s a newsman in Boise City named C.F. David. He’s the publisher/owner/editor of The Boise City News, a weekly paper that’s been prodding Gov. Brad Henry for two years to visit Cimarron County, at the western end of the Panhandle.

David has a $50 “bounty” out for anyone who can prove the governor has been to Cimarron County before. The governor’s spokesman says Henry’s never visited. You’d think the newsman would be thrilled that the governor now says he’ll visit the Panhandle soon (although he’s yet to set a date), to take a look at drought conditions that locals are comparing to the 30s Dust Bowl.

But David’s got his doubts.

If the governor comes, David said he will hand him a $50 check: an answer to his bounty. But until that happens — and this is the part I left out — David is telling locals to send the governor Oklahoma maps. He asked them to circle Boise City on the map, and trace the 6-hour route from Oklahoma City to the Panhandle for him.

Maybe he just doesn’t know the way.

By John Sutter

Because I know you didn’t spend the whole weekend sifting through newspapers, here are a few articles of eco-interest you may have missed.

Pig waste: Overnight last Wednesday, a Tyson Foods hog farm in southeast Oklahoma spewed liquid manure — 10,000 gallons of it — all over a field on its property. The spill is being called an accident by Tyson and the state Department of Agriculture. Its spokesman, Jack Carson, said regulatory action is unlikely. Terri Savage, who’s a member of the state environmental quality board, said pig farms like Tyson’s are a “ticking time bomb” for accidents such as this. Oklahoma is the 8th largest pig producer in the nation, with more than 2 million pigs.

Canadian River: A new state study shows creeks and rivers in the Canadian River watershed — which flows across south-central Oklahoma and through Norman — often are contaminated with bacteria 50 to 100 times state standards. Such contamination is common in Oklahoma and the country, but it means swimming can in these waters be risky for some people, particularly the old and young. Most of the pollution is thought to come from animal agriculture.  (you can send comments to the DEQ at an address listed on this public notice.)

Drought: Oklahoma Secretary of Agriculture Terry Peach is scheduled to visit the drought-stricken Oklahoma Panhandle this week. The situation there has been compared to the Dust Bowl by climatologists and Dust Bowl survivors. Locals have asked state officials to visit the area, and are pleased about Peach’s trip. The drought has received the government’s most severe drought rating. Climatologists in Oklahoma say the situation is consistent with predictions for drought patterns in a warming climate.

Oil spill: A leaky storage tank at Tall Grass Petroleum spilled about 10,000 gallons of oil near Skiatook on June 16. Rain carried the oil into nearby creeks, and environmental officials are still working to clean up the mess. Officials say ecosystems were not damaged by the spill. An environmental official with the Osage Nation, which owns some of the damaged land, said the oil was 3 inches thick on the water in some places. She said clean-up efforts were going well.

Dark skies: Millard Fowler at his wheat fields last week. The skies look ominous, but little if any rain fell.

Memories: Fowler carries this photo of his wife, who died at the end of 2007, in his wallet. She was his raven-haired city girl, and he was her goofy country boy. They were married during the heart of the Dust Bowl. Surviving her death was the hardest thing he’s ever done, Fowler said.

By John Sutter

Millard Fowler, 95, was kind enough to take a break from harvesting wheat this afternoon to talk to me from his combine for the Environment Podcast. Fowler is on the phone from Boise City to talk about a drought in the Oklahoma Panhandle that he says is drier than the Dust Bowl, which he lived through.

I asked Fowler about his health because he told me he was hospitalized last week with heart problems. This week, he’s already back out to harvest. He doesn’t expect to bring in much of a crop this year — and probably won’t break even, he said. But he’s not planning on leaving the area, and says other locals are firmly enough rooted in this land that they won’t be leaving either.

Watch a video featuring Fowler and other Cimarron County residents below:

By John Sutter

In Sunday’s paper, I wrote about the people of the Oklahoma Panhandle — they’re a gritty, stubborn bunch, who are doing their best to survive a record drought. Last week government forecasters upgraded last week to their most severe category, and old timers comparing the situation to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. (see video at bottom of post; and check out a slideshow with pictures of the drought.)

I talked at length with a man named Millard Fowler, who survived the dirty thirties. He’s 95, and when I tried to call him this afternoon to check in, a friend answered his phone to say Millard was out on his combine, harvesting wheat.

When I last checked in with him on Friday morning, Millard had told me he’d just gotten out of the hospital after having trouble with his heart. He said he was in the hospital overnight, but otherwise was doing just fine. He said he was just getting old.

Then, today, he’s back out on the combine. Friends say he won’t let anyone else touch it.

You find this kind of resiliency, tenacity (even hardheadedness) in many people who live out in Cimarron County, at the western end of the Panhandle. When I first met Millard, we talked for a short while and then I asked him if we could go see his wheat fields, which he says will yield about a third of what they normally do because of the drought. I offered to drive, but he insisted he would. So we hopped in his big, red pickup truck.

“Buckle your seatbelt, you’ll be fine,” the 95-year-old said.

Some people in the Panhandle say this drought will be the end of many farmers and ranchers. Some ranchers already have sold off all of their cattle. Some wheat fields are barren. But there are other locals, like Millard, who downplay the impacts of the drought. Things in the Panhandle have always been hard, they say, and these tough people always seem to find a way to make it through.

They did it during the Dust Bowl, and they’ll do it again now.

Still, even Millard says he’s going to have to lease out his farmland this fall.

He’s getting too old, he said, and it’s too hard to break even without any rain.

As the Economist explains, erratic weather in East Africa has again left Ethiopia in a famine, not one to the level of the mid-80s, but still severe.

The scale of starvation is so large in part because Ethiopia has virtually no business sector. Therefore families have little if any way to save money for hard times — which come in cycles, are tied to the weather, and are likely to become more severe with climate change.

When rains come at the right time, farmers have food. When they don’t — and that happens often — people starve.

Sound familiar? While Oklahoma doesn’t suffer famine like Ethiopia does, many of the state’s farmers depend on weather patterns that, if anything, are predictably extreme. We have decades of droughts and floods. This is the driest start to a year on record in Oklahoma Panhandle, and many farmers are losing their crops or having to sell of cattle.

Climatologists say it’s hard to make region-specific predictions about climate change. But Deke Arndt, the assistant state climatologist, says this year’s patter of eastern Oklahoma being intensely wet and the Panhandle being incredibly dry is consistent with expectations for a warming world.

Farmers I’ve talked to in the Panhandle say they expect good years and bad years, and sometimes they expect the bad years to be so bad that they won’t have crops. It seems like that kind of long-range planning lets them survive. But I wonder what readers think about our dependency on weather to give us food and money. Do we need better planning, and if so, what would that entail?

Here’s an excerpt from the Economist article on Ethiopia:

A famine on the scale of 1984, when Band Aid and Live Aid raised about $150m in relief for Ethiopia, is still unlikely. Logistics and medical understanding have improved. Yet, sadly, some of the conditions that created that famine have not really changed. Ethiopia still has too many people eking out a living on too little land, depending on rains that can never be relied on. Meteorologists say that the problem is not just the amount of rain but the climate’s increasing volatility.

The government has also failed. After several good harvests since the last big famine, in 2003, Ethiopia had a chance to progress. Instead, it dithered over reforms to promote private business and overhaul the country’s sclerotic banking system and mobile-phone sector. Aside from coffee, qat (a narcotic leaf chewed by Somalis), horticulture and a little tourism, Ethiopia is one of Africa’s very few countries that still has virtually no serious private business—and thus few jobs—outside the state sector. Almost three-quarters of the population may be under- or unemployed.

So few families have a chance to save anything for hard times. The lack of wealth creation makes the government more vulnerable to external shocks. The soaring price of oil may cost Ethiopia $1 billion this year—equivalent to its entire foreign-exchange earnings. Meles Zenawi, the prime minister, cannot be blamed for record oil prices or for the rising cost of food worldwide, both of which have sparked riots in several African countries. But he bears some responsibility for failing to increase his country’s hard-currency earnings.

John