Photo credit: AP | In this May 11, 2012 photo, Sequoia National Park air resource specialist Annie Esperanza explains how ozone diminishes the view from Beetle Rock in Sequoia National Park, Calif. A big city problem has settled in a big way in Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park, home of the giant Sequoias. Smog from the neighboring Central Valley is making it tougher for seedlings from the giants to take hold, and the needles of surrounding Jeffrey and Ponderosa pines are yellowing. (AP Photo/Tracie Cone)
SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, California - (AP) -- The California forest that is home to the biggest and oldest living things on earth, the giant Sequoia redwoods, also suffers a dubious distinction. It has the worst air pollution of any national park in the U.S.
"Ozone levels here are comparable to urban settings such as LA," said Emily Schrepf of the nonprofit advocacy group the National Park Conservation Association. "It's just not right."
Signs in visitor centers warn guests when it's not safe to hike. The government employment website warns job applicants that the workplace is unhealthy. And park workers are briefed every year on the lung and heart damage the pollution can cause.
Although weakened trees are more susceptible to drought and pests, the long-term impact on the pines and on the giant redwoods that have been around for 3,000 years and more is unclear.
"If this is happening in a national park that isn't even close to an urban area, what do you think is happening in your backyard?" said Annie Esperanza, a park scientist who has studied air quality there for 30 years.
It's a problem in a handful of the nation's 52 parks that are monitored constantly for ozone, including Joshua Tree National Park in California's Mojave Desert and North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But none is as severe as Sequoia and its neighbor, Kings Canyon.
While forest fires create some pollution, most comes from the San Joaquin Valley, the expanse of farmland that is home to California's two busiest north-south trucking highways, diesel freight train corridors, food processing plants and tens of thousands of diesel tractors.
Smog is created when the sun's rays hit pollutants such as oxides of nitrogen and volatile organic compounds that are in motor vehicle exhaust, solvents, pesticides, gasoline vapors and decaying dairy manure.
"There is no simple answer to ozone pollution," said Thomas Cahill, a researcher at the University of California, Davis who studies air problem in Sequoia and across California.
Breathing ozone at high levels for even a short time can blister the lungs like UV rays blisters skin, scientists agree. The problem in quantifying exposure levels, however, is that some people suffer pulmonary damage at lower doses than others.
The only way to improve air in the park is to improve the San Joaquin air basin, something that so far has proved elusive given the myriad sources of pollution. Even with hundreds of millions of dollars spent to retrofit diesel engines and replace gasoline lawnmowers with electric ones, residents pay a federal fine for the region's failure to meet even minimal EPA ozone limits.
"We don't create a disproportionate amount of pollution; it's just that we have these natural challenges so that the pollution we do create can take literally weeks or months to clean out. It just builds up over time," said Jaime Holt, spokeswoman for the valley air district.
Already this year, the level of ozone in Sequoia park has exceeded federal health standards, even though it's early in the summer ozone season. During the June-to-September summer season last year, the park violated the National Ambient Air Quality standard at least 87 times, compared with 56 at Joshua Tree and 12 at Great Smoky Mountains.
"It's tragic that the National Park Service is known for clean air, and then you see a sign saying it's unhealthy to breathe," Esperanza said. "It's so contrary to the national parks idea."
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Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: www.newsday.com
Are foster kids helped, harmed by open hearings - msnbc.com
By KELLI KENNEDY
Associated Press
MIAMI (AP) - A California judge's decision to open a county's child welfare hearings earlier this year has energized a debate among advocates in other states about whether greater transparency helps or harms the young victims appearing in family court.
When a child is abused or neglected, there's a family court hearing to discuss the victim's future. In nearly 20 states, including Texas, New York, Florida and Illinois, those hearings are usually open to the public and there is a push among child welfare advocates to open them in other states. Efforts to open the courts in California, Kentucky and the District of Columbia have garnered attention recently.
Proponents say transparency leads to better decisions by putting a spotlight on judges, exposes the blunders of child welfare workers and gives the public a better understanding of how the system works.
"Confidentiality has done more to protect the system than to protect the children in the system," said Michael Nash, chief presiding judge of Los Angeles County's children's court. He ruled in January that dependency hearings in his county will be open to the public unless there is proof the child will be harmed.
The longtime advocate of open courts was frustrated that fellow judges frequently sided with those who wanted to keep the hearings closed. Nash said decisions were made on an ad hoc basis. His order lays out a uniform process to follow when someone objects to opening the hearing.
But critics say children will be further traumatized by testifying about abuse in a courtroom full of strangers. The Children's Law Center of California, which represents most children in the Los Angeles County system, asked the state appeals court to overturn Nash's decision, but that move was rejected.
Executive Director Leslie Starr Heimov says it's unfair to compare states that have open hearings with California because children don't have a legal right to attend hearings in many states. More than 200 children attend hearings every day at the Los Angeles courthouse.
"It's difficult and it's painful and they're in the system through no fault of their own and to create a system where there's forced to endure more pain, that's harmful," Heimov said.
Family courts have opened gradually since the early 1980s, beginning with Oregon. An advocate for child welfare reform says that among the states that have followed suit, New York and Missouri's moves in the late 1990s were particularly significant. The change is usually spurred by a horrific child abuse case or a push from local media to gain access. The beating death of 6-year-old Elisa Izquierdo by her mother prompted the opening of New York family courts in 1997 and the passage of a state open-records law referred to as "Elisa's Law."
But the practice can vary by county or by judge, even in states that are presumed to be open. A New York Times reporter visited local courtrooms at random last year and found that many were closed with locked doors or hostile deputies.
Still, the reverse can be true in states that are generally closed. For example, courts in Alleghany County, Pa. were opened after a news outlet fought for access, but most of the state is still closed, said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Virginia. No one has compiled national data on how counties treat the issue.
Kentucky Rep. Susan Westrom filed a bill for the third time in March that would open courts under a pilot program. The bill passed the House, but died in the Senate.
"Social workers were identified as falsifying records and lying in court, and I heard horror stories from family court judges. The lack of transparency has harmed far too many families and children in Kentucky," Westrom said.
Among several recent efforts in California was legislation proposing a pilot program to open courts in a few counties. It died in committee last year.
Activist Gail Helms has fought for open courts in California since her 2-year-old grandson Lance was beaten to death by his father in 1995, shortly after the man was awarded custody despite a history of drug use. The boy's father was sentenced to 25 years in prison for second-degree murder.
She said public court proceedings would have exposed holes in the child welfare system and put pressure on the judge to take her son's drug use and criminal history more seriously. Spurred by the case, lawmakers eventually changed state child welfare laws to make it harder for abusive parents to regain custody.
"They need to have someone in there to monitor and see what goes on in those courtrooms," said Helms, whose efforts have included protests and remarks at public forums.
Wexler said that despite some initial protest when hearings are opened, no state has reclosed them.
"In every state there are lots of people worried and upset that courts are going to be opened and then a few years later everybody forgets the courts were ever closed. The disasters that everybody worried about never happened and there is a modest uptick in attention. It's constructive," said Matt Fraidin, a law professor at the University of the District of Columbia. Lawyers in Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, Oregon, and Utah told Fraidin no problems have been reported since opening courtrooms there.
But former California foster youth Michael Bowen Dural said that opening dependency court may solve some problems, but it creates others - such as compromising children's privacy. The change also doesn't affect other problems in the system such as social workers having too many cases, said Bowen Dural, who entered foster youth at birth when he was taken from his drug-addicted mother and stayed in the system until he turned 18.
"The laws should include you in deciding whether you want it open or not because every foster kid is at a different point in their life and at a different comfort level with some of the things that are discussed in court," said Dural, 24. He now works in the housing department for the L.A. County Department of Children and Family.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: www.msnbc.msn.com
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