Third Annual Woodstock International Walk for World Peace—photos

Thanks to all who came to our Third Annual Woodstock International Walk for World Peace!

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Two days!

The weather forecast is good for Woodstock, NY this Saturday, August 6, 2011, and we are looking forward to our third annual Woodstock International Walk for World Peace! We gather between at 10:00 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. in the parking lot (no parking here, though; use one of Woodstock’s Municipal lots, please) at the intersection of routes 212 and 375, where water will be available (thanks to Hurley Ridge Market, and Michele Elyse Flanders). The World Peace Prayer Society is once again bringing the flags of 193 countries, to be distributed before the walk. The walk begins at 11:00 a.m.; we will proceed through town to Comeau Field, where we will hold the Flag Ceremony, a peace paint-out, talks, and performances by Denise Jordan Finley & Daniel Pagdon, James Cannings, and others. The Parrots for Peace™ will once again be on hand, too; as will Terry Leroy of the Haitian People’s Support Project.

This year’s walk falls on the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, an horrific event that we commemorate each year by holding our walk for peace on the weekend closest to the anniversary. We once again affirm that we never again wish to see such horror, and state that we all will do what each of us can to bring about a more peaceful world. The date of August 6th is known as Universal Peace Day, though the event is often observed in the United States on August 5th, due to the International Date Line.

We can all do more to bring about peace; we can show kindness whenever possible, and work with others to produce a more sustainable world. A sustainable world is a peaceful world, as sustainability would mean providing water, food, housing, safety, education for every human being—no one left behind. In the United States, this might mean strengthening and increasing enforcement of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, moving away from fossil fuels, and writing our local and federal representatives, urging less investment in the machinery of war, more investment in jobs, education, and infrastructure; less political posturing, and more substantive action. It might encompass reducing one’s energy use (we have one of the world’s highest rates of energy consumption) and eschewing some rainforest products (palm oil = bad), while using others (brazil nuts = good).

One thing is certain, every society that has not embraced the ideas of peace and sustainability has eventually failed; this is attested to in Jared Diamond’s books Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Collapse; and more recently in Brian Fagan’s Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind.

When we contrast those collapsed societies with the Aboriginal communities of Australia, the oldest continually operational society on earth, we find that the aboriginies have a deep reverence for nature that has enabled them to live for 40,000 years in one of the harshest environments on earth, and that peace and the environment can’t be separated.

Join us this Saturday, August 6, 2011, as we walk and pray for peace!

Third annual Woodstock Walk

This year’s Woodstock International Walk for World Peace is scheduled to begin at 11:00 a.m., Saturday, August 6, 2011. We will meet at the parking lot at the intersection of routes 375 and 212 in Woodstock, NY, where the flags of every country will be handed out for our procession through town to Comeau Field, where the World Peace Prayer Society will once again hold the Flag Ceremony.

We hold this walk each year to reaffirm our commitment to peace. The walk is always held on the weekend closest to the anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, to recognize that we never again wish to see nuclear weapons used. We hold that all life is sacred, and that there is no such thing as a “just” war. The only way to peace is through peace, and we support the peaceful resolution of all disputes. This year’s walk happens to fall on the actual date of the bombing, and we will say a prayer for the casualties of this horrific event.

Our founder, John Nelson, is in Hiroshima, setting up events there for Live Peace International, a worldwide event where concerts for peace will be streamed live from venues throughout the world. More info is available on YouTube, and I’m awaiting more details from John; as soon as they are made available I will post them here.

The same goes for events at the third annual Woodstock International Walk for World Peace; as performers and speakers are confirmed, we will post them here. The Parrots for Peace will once again be on hand, too. We look forward to seeing you all there! Peace and Love!

Third Annual Walk for Peace

I am happy to announce that we will be holding our third annual Woodstock International Walk for World Peace this year on August 6, 2011 in Woodstock, NY! We are waiting for confirmation from The World Peace Prayer Society, and expect that they will once again hold the World Peace Prayer and Flag Ceremony with us at Comeau Field. The Parrots for Peace will once again attend, too.

The indefatigable Father John Nelson, our founder, has been busy organizing events for Live Peace International, a worldwide event that has grown from our efforts here. Live Peace International will feature video streaming events from around the world, including peace events in Hiroshima, Japan; New York City, Conversano, Italy; and many other towns and cities worldwide.

We will keep you posted regarding schedules and events, and welcome the participation of all. May Peace Prevail on Earth!

Thanks!

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I hope you enjoy the slide show above (all photos © 2010 Cameron Williams or © 2010 Doug Potoksky, all rights reserved); this is the first opportunity I’ve had since Sunday’s second annual Woodstock International Walk for World Peace to say thank you to all of you who helped make our event a success.

First, thanks to the legendary Pete Seeger, to whom the Woodstock Council awarded the first “Noble Peace Prize”.

Pete Seeger’s "Noble Peace Prize”

Thanks also to Joyce Beymer, and all the wonderful folks at the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce and the Arts, Woodstock Town Supervisor Jeff Moran, Woodstock Police Chief Clayton Keefe and the Woodstock Police Department, Terrie Rosenblum, Cathy Magarelli, Bill McKenna, Jay Wenk, Angela Sweet, Jacquelyn A. Earley, Michael Reynolds, Paul Andreassen, Ray Brundage, who was so helpful in setting up Comeau Field, Adam Slagsvol and all the other folks at American Printing, Michael and Ziedel Epstein at Hurley Ridge Market, Nick Altomare, Mark McDunna, Fumi Stewart and The World Peace Prayer Society, Gloria Waslyn and The Parrots for Peace, Victorio Roland Mousaa, Princess WOW!, founder of The Smile Revolution, Mary Poppiins, Caitlin O’Heaney, Hank Woji, Luke Hunzberger, Norman (who played and sang, and whose last name I don’t know), Mighty Xee, Christina Valentine and Monica, Tinya Seeger, Phil Sauers, Sonia Malkine, who repeated her moving rendition of Pete’s song “Where Have All The Flowers Gone”; Greg Reitman and Britta Peterson of Blue Water Entertainment, who are filming Rooted in Peace, Russell Richardson of the INDIE project, and Marie Uridia, also of INDIE, who filmed our walk; Carol Johnson, Catskill Mountain Plumbing & Heating, Vivo Gallery, and Cucina restaurant; David and Fiona Saxman of The White Gryphon, Catskill Mountain Pizza, Reverend Josh Bode of the Dutch Reformed Church (congratulations!), Bill McKnight and Melinda Terpening McKnight, Doug Potoksky; the inimitable Father Jack Nelson, without whom this would not be possible; Elaine Maggiore, B. Vos, Michele Elyse Flanders, Bob Place, Tony Angel, Pierre and Terry LeRoy of the Haitian People’s Support Project, and anyone else whose name I may have omitted. Special thanks also to Ronnye Jai and Alan Shapiro, who serve as inspiration to us all. Peace! —CW

Countdown!

A photo from last year's walk. ©2009 Doug Potoksky

We have less than 24 hours left until the Second Annual Woodstock International Walk for World Peace, and much to do!

Went to the Beacon Sloop Club potluck last night to make final preparations with Victorio Roland Mousaa and Pete Seeger, and we’re going to see them at the Peace Corner in Wappingers Falls today; also sound check, meeting Jack Nelson, and lots more to do. Thanks to everyone at the sloop club for their generosity toward Tony Angel’s Spirit Journey; we raised $120.20 for Tony last night, which we will deposit in his account this morning.

What is clear is the need for a more peaceful world. The best thing we can do is to be the change that we wish to see in others; we state again that if each of us is dedicated to a more peaceful world, we will have one. Please come support us in our mission by walking with us through town with the flags of all nations in Woodstock, and show the world the pro-peace spirit that is the true legacy of the Woodstock Nation lives.

Peace and love!

Universal Peace Day and The Woodstock International Walk for World Peace

Today, August 6th, 2010, is the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.  “Little Boy” was the name of the fission bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The 30 year old pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, named his B-29 Superfortress the “Enola Gay” after his mother. The immediate death toll was approximately 70,000 men, women & children, who were instantly vaporized. Many others perished in the months and years that followed. August 6 has been internationally recognized as Universal Peace Day, though due to the International Date Line, it is often observed in the U.S. on August 5th.

Yesterday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, and Nobel Prize-winning author and Hiroshima survivor Kenzaburo Oe wrote a moving article in The New York Times.

A photo from last year's walk. ©2009 Doug Potoksky

We ask all of you to join us this Sunday, August 8, 2010, for the Second Annual Woodstock International Walk for World Peace. We walk on the weekend closest to Universal Peace Day each year as a reminder to all that we wish to never again witness nuclear devastation, and to express our profound wishes for an end to all wars. If each of us is dedicated to a more peaceful world, we will have one.

We thank The Woodstock Chamber of Commerce & Arts, The Town of Woodstock, The World Peace Prayer Society, Pete Seeger, Victorio Roland Mousaa, Princess WOW!, Tony Angel, and all the other individuals who have given so generously their time and efforts to support our goals.

Now come on out Sunday morning for a great time!

Water is Life

Without water, there is no life—nearly 30,000 people die daily because of lack of access to clean water. Without water, there can be no peace. This informative and award-winning documentary, FLOW (For Love of Water) is available for free viewing here. Please watch it.

More important news from Catskill Mountainkeeper

Public awareness is increasing, the sentiment against gas drilling is growing, but even in light of new revelations about the potential catastrophic consequences of gas drilling, the New York DEC and the gas industry are still intent on implementing a seriously flawed plan.  Until there is a plan that clearly provides the adequate protection for the people, animals and land of New York State, Catskill Mountainkeeper will use every opportunity to advocate that – Drilling Isn’t Safe! (download an informational PDF here)

DEC PUBLIC MEETING IN NEW YORK CITY
On Tuesday night November 10th the DEC held its second public hearing at Stuyvesant High School in New York City to get public comments on the Draft Supplemental Plan (the Draft) that was issued on September 30, 2009. It was attended by a very large, overwhelmingly anti-gas drilling crowd estimated at over 500. More than 170 speakers signed up and when they shut the doors at around 11:00 PM, more than half had still not had a chance to speak.

To chants of “Kill the Drill” and “Drilling Isn’t Safe” speaker after speaker spoke about the threats of gas drilling to New York.  At this sometimes raucous meeting, the main focus was on the threat to the drinking water of New York City and speakers including Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Congressman Nadler and former Congresswoman and State Comptroller Liz Holtzman called for a ban on drilling in the New York City Watershed.

Hundreds of people wore Catskill Mountainkeeper “Drilling Isn’t Safe” buttons.  Catskill Mountainkeeper’s Ramsay Adams and Wes Gillingham acknowledged city residents’ appropriate concerns about the potential contamination of their drinking water, but said that the lack of a credible plan from the DEC makes this a statewide, not just a city issue and that the health of all people in New York State must not be risked to bridge the state’s budget gap.

They identified numerous problems with the Draft and referred to this week’s headlines that revealed the presence of extremely high amounts of radioactive substances in drilling wastewater and the incidence of over 270 gas drilling accidents in New York State since 1979 – (see more information on these stories below).  Ramsay Adams said, “We only found out this week what the DEC knew in July when they were preparing the Draft Supplemental Report, that sample wastewater from New York State wells contain levels of radiation that are many times higher than that of other states and acceptable levels. This information alone demands that we have a longer comment period to analyze and understand what looks like catastrophic ramifications.”

Speakers from all walks of life repeatedly made points about the lack of provision for cumulative effect, the lack of adequate plans for wastewater, the heavy and unjust burden that will be placed upon local towns and counties, the total lack of a health impact statement and many other weaknesses in the Draft.

On Thursday November 12 the DEC held it’s 3rd public meeting in Chenango County.  Over 1000 people attended and the message was clear that the people from upstate New York are deeply concerned about the impacts of natural gas drilling.  Watch Wes Gillingham featured on Binghamton’s Fox 40 Nightly News story about the Chenango event here:

RESEARCHER UNCOVERS 270 REPORTED ACCIDENTS RELATING TO GAS DRILLING IN NEW YORK STATE SINCE 1979
Contrary to the DEC’s assertions that existing regulations on gas drilling are fine, Walter Hang, President of Toxic Targeting, identified 270 cases documenting wastewater spills, well contamination, explosions, methane migration and ecological damage related to gas production in the state since 1979.  The list was compiled using the Department of Environmental Conservation’s own hazard substances spills database.

Hang said his company publicly released the list to show that regulation of the state’s gas industry is “fundamentally inadequate.”

“All we wanted to do is test the fundamental assessment the DEC often makes: existing regulations are just fine,” he said. By Hang’s assessment, they are a long way from fine. Only 60 of the 270 cases were actually caught by DEC regulators. Many were called in by residents, public safety officials, affected parties or “people who just stumbled over them,” he said.

The complaints are related to traditional wells drilled through the decades, most of them in the Southern Tier and western New York.

More than three-quarters of oil and gas problems on the spills database were caught by somebody other than a DEC staff member, according to Hang’s assessment. That is clear evidence the Division of Mineral Resources — with about 17 inspectors — lacks the manpower to oversee traditional well development, let alone the tremendous number of wells that are projected for the Marcellus or their complication. Hang argues that the entire regulatory process needs to be rebuilt from scratch.

NEW YORK STATE HAS NO PLAN FOR HANDLING RADIOACTIVE WASTE FROM DRILLING SITES
In an article first published in ProPublica and then in the Albany Times Union on November 9, 2009, Abrahm Lustgarten reported that the New York Department of Environmental Conservation analyzed 13 samples of wastewater brought up thousands of feet to the surface from drilling and found that they contain levels of radium-226, a derivative of uranium, as high as 267 times the limit safe for discharge into the environment and thousands of times the limit safe for people to drink.

While New York’s Health Department raised concerns about these water samples in a confidential letter to the DEC in July, the agency did not  address radioactivity levels in their September 30, 2009 Draft Report.

“Handling and disposal of this wastewater could be a public health concern,” DOH officials said in the letter, which was obtained by ProPublica. The letter warned that the state may have difficulty disposing of the drilling waste, that thorough testing will be needed at water treatment plants, and that workers may need to be monitored for radiation much as they might be at nuclear facilities.

It is not clear if there are any treatment plants in New York that are capable of handling such material. Asked for names of plants capable of removing the radioactive materials, DEC spokesman Yancey Roy said “there are currently no facilities specifically designated for treating them.” The state would review disposal plans submitted by drilling companies, but has not yet received any, he said. “We do not know what treatment options are being considered or how effective NORM removal will be.”

What scientists call naturally occurring radioactive materials — known by the acronym NORM — are common in oil and gas drilling waste, and especially in brine, the dirty water that has been soaking in the shale for many centuries. Radium, a potent carcinogen, is among the most dangerous of these metals because it gives off radon gas and takes 1,600 years to decay. The tests taken so far suggest the amount of radioactive material measured in New York is far higher than in many other places.

The Draft said the DEC could not calculate how much radioactivity people may be exposed to, even though such calculations are routinely completed by scientists studying radiation exposure and should be very easy to do, according to Charley Yu, who runs a national dose modeling program for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Yet the Draft concluded radiation levels were very low and the wastewater does not present a risk to workers. DEC officials declined to explain their reasoning for this conclusion.

The Draft said radioactive waste licensing and special disposal processes may be required, but said more study is needed before the DEC can lay out precise plans to deal with the waste.

It would be a serious health threat and irresponsible in the extreme for the DEC to consider moving forward until they can establish a satisfactory plan to handle wastewater containing the dramatically increased level of NORMS that drilling in the Marcellus will likely produce.

HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO
Although our campaign, and the campaigns of others are raising awareness, our efforts will be worthless unless those who become aware take action.  If you believe as we do that the DEC should not approve gas drilling in New York State until it can be proven that it can be done safely, the moment to act is now.

• Click here to send an email directly to Governor Patterson to tell him what you think. (For suggested text for the letter, click here.)

• Email and call your elected member of congress, your US Senator, your State senator and assemblyperson.  Click here to find out who your representative are and how to contact them
• Write a letter to the editor of your local paper
• Pass this alert on to friends and family so they can take action
  

Testify at a Public Meeting – see list below:  Click here for background information – “15 Reasons Why the Draft Needs to be Rewritten”

Wednesday, November 18, Corning East High School Auditorium, 201 Cantigny Street, Corning, NY 14830

Thursday, November 19, State Theater, 107 W. State Street, Ithaca, NY 14850
(the hearings are free and open to the public – to make a comment arrive at 5:30 to register)

Every remaining day of the public comment period is precious time. If you’ve been reading our alerts you know what will happen after it expires on December 31, 2009.  The DEC will go into hiding, they will rubberstamp the final plan, drilling will begin in 2010 and it will not be adequately monitored and controlled.

If you support the efforts of Catskill Mountainkeeper as a leader of this critical fight – tell us you do – by making a donation today.  Donations of any amount will help. Give more if you can. To donate, please click on the link below.

Click here to make a secure online donation.

For more information about the gas drilling threat, please go to our website or you can call our office at 845.482.5400

Important update—Marcellus Shale

In a surprising announcement, the Chesapeake Energy Corporation announced yesterday that it will not drill on existing leases it holds in the New York City watershed, nor will it purchase any new leases within the watershed. Whether or not other gas companies will follow their lead remains to be seen, and we are not yet certain if other companies’ drilling plans will proceed in the Delaware and Hudson watershed areas of the Marcellus Shale that are not part of the New York City watershed—there are conceivably areas in Albany, Greene, Schoharie, Otsego, Sullivan and Orange counties where drilling may still be planned. Chesapeake Energy also announced that they do plan to drill in other areas of the Marcellus Shale, so we need to watch this closely. There are important aquifers and fisheries downstream that are not necessarily part of the New York City Watershed.

Public hearings are scheduled for this evening— Meeting Location:
Loch Sheldrake – Sullivan County Community College E Building,
Seelig Theatre; 112 College Rd, Loch Sheldrake, NY 12759
Doors will open at 6:00 PM for individual questions and speaker sign up.
Public comment session will start at 7:00 PM.

Future Public Hearings:
11/10/2009 – New York City – Stuyvesant High School High School Auditorium, 345 Chambers St, New York, NY 10282 
11/12/2009 – Chenango Bridge – Chenango Valley High School High School Auditorium, 221 Chenango Bridge Rd, Chenango Bridge, NY 13901 
TBD – Elmira/Corning

Please attend one of these meetings if possible, and join Riverkeeper and Catskill Mountainkeeper to help them with their valuable work.