News

Regenerative Medicine Helps the Body to Heal Itself

2012-02-15T17:51:57+00:00

Regenerative medicine is a new way of treating injuries and diseases, using specially-grown tissues and cells, along with artificial organs. The goal is helping the body to regenerate itself. It’s an emerging field with great potential, according to the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. “These approaches can amplify our natural healing process in the places it's needed most, or take over the function of a permanently damaged organ,” according to the Institute’s web site. Alan Russell is the founder of the McGowan Institute, and a leader in regenerative medicine. He will speak in Omaha at 7:30 p.m. on April 11 as part of the free Holland Lecture Series at the Holland Center. Research is also being done locally in regenerative medicine, including work at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Creighton University. Alan Russell Russell’s biography calls him a medical futurist and a pioneer in regenerative medicine. Crossing the fields of chemistry, biology, and materials science, Russell’s research lab studies how to help damaged tissues and organs to rebuild themselves. For example, he is currently developing an artificial ovary so that women with cancer may undergo radiation treatment and still be able to have children. Russell has also attracted attention beyond the scientific community. Rolling Stone magazine named him one of the “100 People Who are Changing America,” and he spoke at the TED Conference in 2006 on regenerating our bodies. In that TED talk, Russell said, “Regenerative medicine is an extraordinarily simple concept. It’s simply accelerating the pace at which the body heals itself in a clinically-relevant time scale.” This work makes Russell a logical choice as speaker for the Holland Lecture Series, according to Steve Hutchinson, chairperson of the Holland Lecture Committee. “Part of what we want to accomplish is to inform people about where the science is going, and to raise questions about the implications of that science,” he said. “We think he’ll be interesting, and it will increasingly impact people’s lives. It’s time to start getting informed and think about the implications.” The Holland Lecture Series is free to the public. It is sponsored by the First Unitarian Church of Omaha, and is funded by local philanthropist Dick Holland. The series has its roots in the Frank R. Hoagland Lectures, which were held at the Unitarian Church between 1954 and 1964. “When Dick Holland was a young guy, he attended the Hoagland Lectures. They were trying to bring provocative ideas into the community, and he wants to bring that back,” Hutchinson said. “That’s why he decided to sponsor this series.” The Holland Lecture Series began in 2005, and has since brought to Omaha two well-known speakers annually. According to Hutchinson, these lectures provide open discussion of provocative ideas that are not usually heard in Nebraska. Tickets are free, but must be reserved through the Holland Center box office. Reservations will become available on March 26. You may reserve up to six tickets, and can make reservations by calling (402)345-0606 or online at omahaperformingarts.org/tickets. Stem Cells Hutchinson believes the combination of scientific, economic, and ethical issues presented by regenerative medicine make it worthy of public discussion. “We had someone speak on stem cells in 2005, but we wanted to go back and touch upon that, because a great deal has happened,” Hutchinson said. “Regenerative medicine does include stem cells, but is much broader than that. The whole field has really come into existence over the last couple of years.” The McGowan Institute divides regenerative medicine into three areas: medical devices and artificial organs, tissue engineering, and cellular therapies. Stem cells are the best known aspect of regenerative medicine. According to the National Institutes of Health, stem cells are unspecialized cells capable of developing into many different cell types in the body, such as muscle, red blood, or brain cells. “In addition, in many tissues they serve as a sort of internal repair system, dividing essentially without limit to replenish other cells as long as the person or animal is still alive,” according to the NIH’s stem cell information web site. The use of stem cells in research has attracted controversy in the past, because some are taken from human embryos. Other stem cells are taken from adults. In 2006, researchers identified a way to genetically reprogram some cells to assume a stem cell-like state. These new types are called pluripotent stem cells, and may be used in future research. University of Nebraska Medical Center The phrase “wouldn’t it be great if…” comes up frequently in conversation with David Crouse. Crouse is a professor of genetics, cell biology and anatomy at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). “Many health problems are related to the loss of function of tissues and organs. These problems persist because something is wrong or missing,” Crouse said. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could solve these problems by replacing those tissues or repairing them?” About 20 researchers at UNMC dedicate at least part of their work to regenerative medicine, particularly to stem cells. This work is interdisciplinary. In addition to medicine, researchers come from backgrounds including biomaterials, engineering, and cellular biology. “This is a regenerative medicine initiative, not a program,” said Crouse. “There are quite a few graduate students working on these projects, including PhD students and postdoctorates.” Related research has been conducted for years at UNMC, but its formal initiative began in 2008 when Nora Sarvetnick was hired to lead its efforts. “She has a group of researchers with one floor in Durham Research Tower II,” Crouse said. “Even though they are in different academic departments, they are located together. This kind of science is more driven by concepts than departments.” The basic ideas of regenerative medicine go back decades. One of its first common applications was the repair of severe burns. Crouse said physicians originally took unburned skin from a healthy part of the body to replace burned skin. Over time, organ transplantation developed from this basic idea of trading good tissue for bad tissue. UNMC is now a major force in organ transplantation, but Crouse and his colleagues focus on newer and less developed aspects of RM research. For example, Crouse said that cell transplantation may one day replace organ transplantation. “We can transplant livers. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could transplant just liver cells?” Crouse said. “You could just inject them into the blood and they would find their way to the liver and fix the problem. It’s been done in animals, but not yet in humans.” The liver is a large organ, and obtaining enough liver cells would be a challenge, but Crouse believes the benefits of avoiding surgical trauma will eventually make cell transplantation therapy successful. In the same way, cells from other major organs and tissues could be transplanted and allowed to heal the unhealthy part of the body. One group at UNMC is currently researching the regeneration of retina tissue related to sight damage, and another is studying the possibilities of using cells on Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases. The U.S. military is now funding RM research, and UNMC is in early stages of getting involved. “There is horrible damage caused in military actions,” Crouse said. “The military can now get people to survive this damage, but they have missing or nonfunctional limbs or organs. The military is investing money and effort into recruiting scientists who can find solutions to these kinds of problems.” The hope is that regenerative medicine might be able to help those suffering from crushing or other trauma, including military actions, auto accidents, and sports injuries. “Wouldn't it be great to treat that? We are just beginning in this area,” Crouse said. Creighton University A number of researchers at Creighton University are also studying regenerative medicine, across several departments. One of these is researchers is David He, a professor of biomedical science, who is studying the possibilities of regenerating hearing. According to the National Institutes of Health, our ability to hear depends on bundles of hair cells in the inner ear. These hair bundles convert sound vibrations into electrical signals, which travel to the brain by way of the auditory nerve. When hair cells are damaged by disease or injury, people experience hearing loss. Although fish and birds are able to grow new hair cells, mammals typically cannot. “Our hair cells are vulnerable to noise. Teenagers use iPods. Military people are exposed to noise. Chemotherapy kills these cells,” He said. “Before this happens, we can prevent the cells from becoming damaged.” He’s work focuses on regenerating hair cells, helping the body to repair them and possibly restore hearing loss. While stem cells are instrumental in many types of RM research, He does not believe they are the best choice for the auditory system. “The inner ear is a unique structure. Stem cells are unable to regenerate themselves. You have to introduce new cells,” He said. “I am focusing on repairing your existing cells through gene therapy.” Damaged auditory cells will eventually lose their function and die, but it might be possible to spur a regenerative process and reverse the damage. He said that cells need a genetic signal to regenerate themselves, and his goal is to introduce that signal where needed. “We can put the gene into a virus,” He said. “When the virus is introduced into living tissue, it will integrate its genetic materials with host genetic materials. These code genes will eventually trigger cell repair or stabilize cells when they are injured. You are putting a new gene into tissue, and those new genes help the injured cells.” One obvious side effect of this method is that it requires the use of a virus. People normally think of a virus in negative terms, because of the direct and indirect effects it introduces into the body. “A virus is scary,” He said. “We would have to modify the virus to reduce any toxic effect. The major problem is that the virus will continue to reproduce itself, and that would cause damage. If you can prevent that problem, this can work. We still have to modify the virus to make it safe.” It might eventually be possible to use nanotechnology devices to carry the genetic signal into the damaged cells, without using a virus. This kind of RM research on auditory cells has been done in animals, but not yet in humans. When the auditory cells of guinea pigs were damaged, they lost their hearing, according to He. When gene therapy was introduced, partial hearing was regained by most of the guinea pigs within about one month. “Maybe in five years this can be used in humans,” He said. A Hot Topic David Crouse at UNMC calls regenerative medicine a hot topic in health care. New journals and books are being published regularly, and new research departments are starting up nationwide because of available funding. “If you do a web search with the words ‘regenerative medicine,’ you will get a lot of hits,” Crouse said. “People are living longer and therefore having more degenerative issues consistent with older age. People are getting into accidents more than in the past. “As long as you have young people doing things that hurt them and old people aging, regenerative medicine will be needed.”

Environmental Alchemy

2011-04-05T21:53:01+00:00

When it rains in Omaha, it pours raw sewage, industrial waste and toxic chemicals into nearby waterways. The city’s century-old sewer system is designed to either put it there or into your basement. Neither is an inviting option. But that design is changing thanks to a federal mandate from the Environmental Protection Agency. The oldest part of the city — nearly everything east of 72nd St. — currently works on a combined sewer system (CSS) where one pipe handles both storm water and sewage. During dry conditions it works great. Sewage is carried away from homes and businesses to one of two treatment plants where it is treated and then safely released into the Missouri River and Papillion Creek. If it rains heavily enough, however, the storm water rushing down drains in the street mixes with the raw sewage in the same pipe and frequently overwhelms the system in what the EPA calls a Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO)event. The combined runoff – typically 85 percent storm water, 15 percent sewage, according to the city – then flows directly to the Missouri River and its tributaries throughout the area. Omaha isn’t alone. Nearly 800 other communities are undergoing similarly massive sewer separation projects as part of the EPA's CSO Control Policy. Since 2002, Omaha has averaged 86 overflows a year, pumping 3.5 billion gallons of sewage and storm water annually into receiving streams. The goal is to reduce that number to about four a year by 2024. No matter where you look, it’s a big and expensive project. Atlanta is spending $3 billion to control its CSOs. Cleveland is protecting the Cuyahoga River with a $1.6 billion project. Omaha officials estimate the city will spend nearly $1.7 billion over the next 15 years to address 51 square miles of aging sewer lines in East Omaha. The Sewer Maintenance Division of the Public Works Department, with a staff of 64 employees and a $2.9 million budget in 2011, is in charge of making the change happen. “I believe it’s probably the biggest public works project we’ve ever undertaken,” says Marty Grate, the city’s environmental services manager. “This is like building the West Dodge Expressway, a $100 million project, every year for 15 years.” Just like that expressway, the sewer project will disrupt daily life. Streets will be torn up. Traffic will be diverted. But Grate says the project will ultimately improve more than just the city’s water quality. Omaha’s CSO Control Project is an opportunity for the city to get a little bit greener as well. Old Omaha There was a time in Omaha's history when raw sewage flowed through the streets — not by accident, but by design. Or, rather, lack thereof. For the first few decades of the city’s existence, Omahans simply emptied their outhouses and privies through trenches that poured directly into the street. Human waste pooled in wagon ruts during rainy weather and baked in alleyway cesspools during the hot summer months. Faced with a calamity of unsanitary conditions and citizen complaints, the City Council proposed Omaha’s first sewer system in 1878, according to city records. The city tried to do it right. The original plan called for separate sewer systems for storm water and sewage at a cost of nearly $1 million dollars, a $20 million project today. But with Omaha’s explosive growth in the early 20th Century, the plan was abandoned in favor of a much quicker and more common solution – the combined sewer system. Until the mid-1960s, all of Omaha’s wastewater emptied directly into the Missouri River without treatment. The city began to build separate sewer systems in developing West Omaha and constructed two treatment plants that sterilized all of the city’s wastewater prior to release into the waterways to service East Omaha under normal conditions. Combined sewers were the exception, and the City of Omaha, along with the other cities, operated under special permits from the EPA and state regulators due to the limitations of their antiquated system. But as concrete replaces grass and cities continue to grow, so does the amount of storm water runoff. By 1994, the EPA had developed its first control plan to address the growing dangers of combined-sewer overflow and had set a series of minimum controls for cities to meet by 1997. Omaha met that deadline, but a new one emerged in 2005. Because of increased federal requirements in the Clean Water Act, the EPA gave Omaha two years to have a draft of its longterm plan to address overflow issues in place. In 2009, the city submitted its completed plan to the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, the state organization charged with monitoring the project. The Health Factor Pat Nelson doesn’t look at a rainstorm the way most people do. She’s been working with storm water for more than 20 years, and as the compliance team lead with Clean Solutions Omaha, it’s her job to ensure the city meets all of its state and federal water-quality requirements. “The perfect place for storm water to go is into the surrounding natural bodies of water,” she says. “That’s just part of the natural hydrological cycle.” But when storm water and sewage mix you introduce a potentially potent cocktail of pollutants into the water system. Rain water can pick up pollutants from a variety of sources as it washes over yards and streets, gathering industrial waste particles from the air, car fluids, fertilizers, pesticides, and pet and animal waste. Raw sewage is a breeding ground for the E. coli virus, the most common pollutant found in overflow material. Combined is a filthy mix of heavy metals, chemicals and bacteria in our lakes and rivers. The National Resources Defense Council reports that combined-sewer overflows contain more than 100 times the concentration of fecal coliform colonies than treated waste water. At its worst, high fecal coliform concentrations can lead to a variety of human health risks from ear infections to food poisoning, and can endanger fish and other aquatic life. The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality maintains a biennial list of impaired waterways that do not meet state water quality standards when tested for pollutants. In 2006 and 2008, Omaha’s segment of the Missouri River and Papillion Creek — the two major waterways receiving CSO runoff — were listed as Category 5 waterways, the EPA’s most severe pollution ranking, due to elevated levels of E. Coli. In 2010, both waterways were upgraded to Category 4 for E. Coli levels, but remained on the Impaired Waterways list because they contained other chemical pollutants. Based on those risks, the backbone of Omaha’s CSO control plan is to keep storm water and sewage separate through a variety of control mechanisms. In addition to sewer separation — approximately $700 million of the total $1.7 billion cost according to Grate — the city will also install a 5-mile long underground concrete tunnel along the Missouri River to accept CSO runoff. That’s the gray part of the equation, but Nelson says a large part of cleaning up Omaha’s waterways happens before storm water even reaches the sewer system. And that’s where Omaha becomes more environmentally sustainable. More Grass, More Green A number of institutional and individual solutions can help reduce a city’s storm water runoff, but they all primarily focus on soaking up as much water as possible before it reaches the storm drains. Few things do this better than vegetation. But that presents a challenge for city engineers facing firm regulatory requirements and deadlines. Everyone wants green solutions where possible, Grates says, but those efforts must be supported by structural controls that can deliver precise results. Like most cities, Grate says Omaha is working to the balance the gray solutions already in place with constantly evolving, and perhaps cost-cutting green solutions. Emily Holtzclaw is one of the engineers making that happen. As a water resources engineer and project manager with environmental engineering firm CH2M HILL, Holtzclaw does everything from work with computer models of the Omaha sewer system to conduct field visits as workers are lowered 50-feet underground to check the condition of century-old pipes. The solutions she comes up with might be multi-million-dollar projects or they may be as simple as making sure the city doesn’t have any manhole covers with holes in them. But the connecting thread, she says, is a devotion to become more environmentally sustainable. “We’re working to find other ways to deal with storm water. And one of our first tasks is always to identify and, if possible, use the green solution,” Holtzclaw says. “We’re always looking to save space and save cost and do something that’s more environmentally supportive.” In the first phase of the longterm control plan, the city is undertaking three major projects based on environmental sustainability. Last summer, Omaha received a $200,000 grant from the Nebraska Environmental Trust to restore ponds that were drained in 1931 at Spring Lake Park in South Omaha and to add a planned wetlands area to the site. Native plants with deep root systems are better equipped to soak up water, and Grate says the plan “lets nature reduce the runoff we have to deal with.” The city estimates the four-year, $1.5 million project could eventually save $2 million in overall CSO project costs. Nature is doing part of the work in sewer separations near Aksarben Village and Saddle Creek Road, as well. Rather than build an entirely new, separate sewer system, engineers are using the natural landscape to direct storm water to the waterways. Three dry detention areas in Elmwood Park will collect storm water, reducing peak-time runoff and safely depositing solids in the water before it reaches the Elmwood Park Creek. The city estimates the project will save $1 million. An above-ground, open channel will work similarly west of Saddle Creek Road, allowing soil and vegetation to clean the storm water naturally prior to its entry into Little Papillion Creek. The Saddle Creek extension is estimated to save $2 million in infrastructure costs. But the bill for Omaha’s CSO project is still potentially enormous and how the city will pay for it is debatable. The federal mandate to fix the system was unfunded, leaving the city and its citizens to pick up all of the cost. For now, the plan is to gradually increase the city’s sewage fees for residents. The average residential rate in Omaha in 2010 was approximately $15 per month. By 2017, the city estimates sewer fees could reach $50 per month — more than a 200 percent increase over the next seven years. Some local politicians are fighting to reduce that cost. In late March, Mayor Jim Suttle traveled to Washington D.C. to lobby for federal funding for the project. On March 22, the City Council approved a resolution asking Nebraska’s Congressional delegation to lobby for a 50-50 federal cost share for the project. Omaha State Sen. Heath Mello has a proposal before the Nebraska Legislature that would return state sales taxes associated with the increase — a windfall of about $48 million over the next 15 years — to the city of Omaha to help defray costs. But for now, the only certain cost-cutting measure is to go green whenever and wherever the city can. The key to cleaner, safer, more modern Omaha may lie in the mud and sludge of a century-old sewer system. “We’re not putting in green solutions because they’re cool but because they improve the project, they benefit the city and they’re cost effective,” Nelson says. “We’re going to see more and more of these solutions as time goes on.”

The Stations of St. Vincent

2012-05-15T13:43:26+00:00

Last Monday night was the fourth time that I’ve seen indie rock band St. Vincent a.k.a. Annie Clark play a show in Omaha. The first time was nearly five years ago at The Waiting Room. St. Vincent was just beginning to get a name for themselves releasing their debut album, Marry Me, after Clark had completed tours of duty as members of stellar indie rock choir The Polyphonic Spree and singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens’ band. If I remember correctly, around 100 were there to see her band, consisting of a violinist, keyboardist and drummer, perform a short set of rather unfamiliar, though gorgeous, music. At the center of it was Clark’s electric guitar howling with a tone reminiscent of The White Stripes'' Jack White, ripping and tearing the room asunder. I concluded a review of that show predicting that Clark was “going to be as big PJ Harvey. Maybe bigger.” Who is PJ Harvey? She's sort of the black queen of indie rock, a breakthrough U.K. artist and an acknowledged groundbreaker who attracks crowds in the thousands -- massive by indie rock standards. St. Vincent returned to Omaha two months later to open for The National at Slowdown, but this time it was just Clark alone with only her electric guitars, her duo microphones, and a cabinet of sampled beats and noises; and no, it wasn’t as stellar a performance as that previous show at The Waiting Room, but it was still pretty durn good, and at times, great. It would be almost two years until Clark would return to Omaha, this time in support of her first release on “important” mid-sized indie label 4AD, called Actor. Instead of Slowdown’s big stage, Clark and a band that included a violin, bass, drums and a guy on woodwinds (flute, saxophone, clarinet), played Slowdown Jr., the bar’s smaller front room. The show wasn’t a sell out, but it was close, with a few hundred people mesmerized by St. Vincent’s dreamy, theatric and funky music. Then came this past Monday night, again at Slowdown but this time on the big stage. In some ways, Clark is both a traditionalist and a curiosity. Her career progression -- starting as a sideman, then striking out on her own, opening for larger bands before a breakthrough album and then onto a larger solo tour, was standard operating procedure for the indie rock game. But lately that model has become abbreviated. Bands these days seem to only get one massive hit record (or at least "massive" for indie standards), one big-stage tour and then... the inevitable downfall. There rarely is a second act for indie bands. The iPod-in-shuffle-mode and the Internet have all but killed this generation's attention span. We live in an era of one-hit wonders, where what's hot today is passe tomorrow and forgotten next week. Somehow Clark has avoided all of that. At 10:30 Monday night, she walked onto Slowdown’s big stage to a sea of upturned faces, a capacity crowd come to see the sexy conquering hero, clad in leather hot pants and black hose, sleeveless black shirt (thankfully no ink marred her ivory shoulders), her tiny frame propped tall on 4-inch high-heeled black shoes (not boots). Around her neck, a black electric guitar. Surrounded by white-hot strobe lights and a band consisting of two keyboard players (one playing a mini Moog) and an amazing percussionist, Clark become the female embodiment of Prince circa 1983 when the wunderkind could do no wrong, when he was at the height of his powers. Monday night I had a feeling that I was seeing Clark at the height of her powers. Strong, ingenious, locked-in and groovy, lost in the music and the moment, she would lean forward and coo her sweet soprano all innocent before tip-toeing backwards while viciously, relentlessly torturing her guitar. Because first and foremost Clark is a guitarist, weirdly talented at pulling dark, fuzzy growls from her lacquered instrument. I cannot tell you the names of the songs she sang, despite having all of her albums. Strike that, I do remember that she sang “Cruel,” from her last album, 2011’s Strange Mercy (4AD), her highest charting (peaking at No. 19 on Billboard) and arguably best record of her career. Oh, I recognized the songs, I just can’t tell you what they’re called, and these days it doesn’t really matter. There are no “radio hits” in the indie world, and won’t be again. Though her stage presence recalled Prince, her music had more in common with arch New Wave composers such as Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson and Talking Heads, while her voice was Joni and Aimee and Souxsie Sioux. But it was nothing compared to those hot-bitch guitar licks that could rattle your teeth with its staccato fists or pull you under the covers with waves of luscious, tonal phrasing. The crowd, as they say, ate it up. And in the end, she ate them up, meeting them one-on-one first with a stage dive, followed by another stage dive and then a chaotic stroll within the melee, her head of black curls lost in the sea of sweaty bodies reaching out for a touch, her presence a moving mosh pit, before she crawled back on stage; exhausted, spent. She returned for a two-song encore that peaked with another thick slab of guitar, before exiting stage right. I left Slowdown thinking that, despite pulling off one of the best shows this year (and the best she's ever performed on an Omaha stage), my prediction never came true. Clark still isn't as big as PJ Harvey. At least not yet. Beyond Lazy-i is a weekly column by Reader senior contributing writer Tim McMahan focused on arts, culture, society and the media. Email Tim at tim.mcmahan@gmail.com.

Standing For Equality In the Courts

2012-05-14T14:38:06+00:00

Last Saturday, a crowd of about 700 packed the Hilton Hotel's Grand Central Ballroom at 10th and Cass to honor Chief Standing Bear and the landmark court decision made in 1879 by Omaha judge Elmer Dundy, recognizing Standing Bear and Native Americans in general as "persons" before the law. Among those in attendance were Omaha mayor Jim Suttle and Nebraska U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, who both issued proclamations honoring Standing Bear in Omaha and Nebraska respectively. This was the first time the Standing Bear Breakfast was held in Omaha (other years it was held in Lincoln). The breakfast coincided the conclusion of the 24th Annual Conference of the National Consortium on Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts, which was also held in Omaha for the first time. Liz Neeley, who serves on the board of directors of the Consortium, said she was happy to have the conference in Omaha because the conferences have primarily been held on the east or west coast. "Historically, the East Coast and West Coast have been the first to address these issues (of fairness in the courts)," Neeley said. For two days, topics like bilingual interrogations, perceived racial bias, and the courts handling of refugees were addressed. Susan Berk-Seligson, professor of Linguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Vanderbilt University, hosted a forum titled "Coerced Confessions: The Discourse of Bilingual Police Interrogations", which drew off her 2009 book of the same name. Berk-Seligson used case studies of persons accused of murder, rape, molestation, and kidnapping. In some of the cases she referenced, police had little to no knowledge of the Spanish language, or the arrestee spoke little or no English. In the past 20 years, police departments in small midwestern towns and some southeastern cities have dealt with sharp increases of Spanish-speaking people, but haven't been able to provide adequate interpreters, Berk-Seligson said in a phone interview from her home in Nashville, Tennessee. "The police departments are not prepared to meet the needs of the demographically shifting population," Berk-Seligson said. "Police have been forced to take these crash courses (in Spanish). Some courses are a semester long, some are only 30 hours," she said. She compared the training some police departments give their officers to receiving a year's worth of high school Spanish. After a year of schooling at that level, people still do not have the necessary Spanish skills to adequately handle a routine arrest, let alone a full interrogation, Berk-Seligson said. In other cases, Berk-Seligson argues it's sometimes just as detrimental if the officer is fluently bilingual because the officer could use their understanding of the language to coerce a confession out of the accused. In one case Berk-Seligson cited, an officer who spoke fluent Spanish did not speak to the arrestee in Spanish during the interrogation. "The police have some inherent biases," Berk-Seligson said. "They often will try to coerce a confession to get a conviction." The solution to the language gap problem in arrests and confessions is not more Spanish-speaking officers, Berk-Seligson argues, but more independent interpreters. The main reason is that certified translators are ethically bound to be unbiased. The task of serving as interrogator and interpreter should not fall to one person, Berk-Seligson said. "It's really impossible," she said. Jeffrey Rachlinski, professor at Cornell Law School, was scheduled to give a talk titled "Implicit Bias and the Justice System." However, due to a family illness, he was unable to attend. Rachlinski co-authored a paper published in the Notre Dame Law Review titled "Does Unconscious Race Affect Trial Judges?", where he argued that while trial judges make concerted efforts to be unbiased, when given negative subliminal messages associated with African-Americans, the results indicated judges gave stricter sentences for the African-American defendant. In a phone interview, Rachlinski said the trial judges (one-third surveyed were African Americans) were given cases where the race of the defendant was explicitly identified. In those cases, the sentences given to white defendants were the same as those given to African-Americans. The same judges were then told to stare at the center of a screen while certain words oftentimes associated with African-Americans were subliminally flashed without the judge's knowledge. The judge was then given a misdemeanor case involving a 14-year-old who stole a video game. In the situations where the African-American associated words were flashed before the case was presented, the sentences given by the judges were more severe than when the words were not displayed. In a similar test, judges were given an image of a white person along with a positive word. They were also given an image of an African-American person and a negative word. Later in the test, the negative words and races were reversed (with negative words displayed with a white person and positive words for an African-American person). The study showed an almost 80 percent quicker response rate for judges who identify "good" words with whites than African-Americans. "When they're (judges) hurried, that's when we worried that judges may rely on these stereotypes," Rachlinski said. One of the most often-debated claims of prejudice in the courts is mandatory minimum sentencing, where judges are forced to apply a certain sentence for a crime. Rachlinski said at its worst, racial bias can be applied to minimum sentencing because legislatures can pick out certain crimes to levee punishments (for example, the disparity of sentencing for possession of cocaine as opposed to possession of crack cocaine). However, not having a set minimum or maximum guideline can also have a detrimental effect, allowing a judge's possible bias to play a role in sentencing (either explicitly or implicitly). The best approach, Rachlinski argues, is for a crime to have a maximum and minimum sentence and for the judge to justify the decision. "Forcing people to explain themselves is the best way to combat racial bias," Rachlinski said. Yesterday was Election Day, and there have been reports of voters having difficulty accessing their polling places. If you have a story about running intro trouble when voting or not being allowed to vote, report it to Nebraskans for Civic Reform and Nebraska Appleseed here.

Schoolyard Fight

2012-05-08T20:29:35+00:00

Half of the non-partisan Omaha Public School Board’s twelve seats are up for election this year. Of the six expiring terms, two subdistricts have uncontested candidates and three subdistricts have two candidates, leaving only one subdistrict with a competitive primary – subdistrict 12. West Omaha’s Omaha Public School subdistrict 12 has five candidates, three Republicans and two Democrats, who range from a grandparent to teachers and attorneys to a former Nebraska State Senator. They are fighting for two spots in the general election to represent the only district with a population over 30,000 School district boundaries were redrawn in 2011 to account for the population shifts reported in the 2010 US Census. The new boundary lines added 3,126 people to subdistrict 12 Serving Standing Bear, Saddlebrook, Picotte, Sunny Slope and Joslyn schools, its jagged cutout extends to 168th street on the west, I-680 on the east, Ida on the north and roughly Blondo on the south. Republicans recruited Randi Scott to run for subdistrict 12. Democrat and former State Senator Patrick Bourne is also running. Dorrell Nutter, Jennifer Tompkins Kirshenbaum, and Tom Green round at a race where key issues include transparency about spending, student proficiency and readiness. Dorrell Nutter, (Republican) 72, is a grandfather, has a UNO business administration degree and is retired after 36 years with M.U.D. Concerns about the U.S. Department of Education motivate him. “I will do all that I can to abolish the federal department of education and return local control,” advises Nutter. “It has interfered with and impeded education.” “I’m running because I care,” Nutter states, “I married a schoolteacher. I have a pretty good handle on the schools. Children today are the future of tomorrow. I was concerned about the unwillingness of the current school board to cooperate with the community.” Jennifer Tompkins Kirshenbaum, (Democrat) 39, is married with two children, has an MBA from UNO and previously served two terms on the board for Sanitary Improvement District (SID) 370. “I obtained my teaching certificate three years ago. I’m in the classroom 3 to 4 days a week. I see the current strategies for success helping student achievement.” “I’m concerned about all of our students. I want to make sure that things are in place for the kids who receive free and reduced lunch as well as the students who do not,” Kirshenbaum advises. “I want to make sure that Omaha is competitive with other districts. I believe we should utilize and expand read/write and other programs to benefit the kids. If students don’t meet the threshold, then they receive help.” Tom Green, (Republican) 39, also has served two terms on a SID board., is a local attorney with children in OPS. “I’m concerned about the current state. Running for the school board is an opportunity to have greater insight and say into what happens. We need to find ways to motivate kids that don’t just develop programs and push them on teachers.” “There is almost a disconnect between teachers and the school administration. Teachers should have more say in what goes on,” said Green. “My wife is a teacher. We need to focus funds and programs so that training is first and then we can effectively implement the program. We should be trying to motivate all learners. “ Another educator and school law attorney running for subdistrict 12 is Randi Scott, 33, who is married with two children. “I taught for three years in Lincoln at Southwest High School and for two years in OPS at Northwest High School. After obtaining bachelors and master’s degrees in special education, I graduated from law school specializing in school law. I have received Justin Wayne’s endorsement on my candidacy. People can have confidence that I will not be a ‘rubber stamp’ when I vote on matters. “As a special education teacher, I saw students who weren’t ready having to be passed through, said Scott. “Yearly teacher reviews aren’t done. We need to know how our money is spent and where it goes. We need to address busing, look at all our programs with transparency to the community.” Patrick Bourne’s candidacy has drawn fire from the Douglas County Republican Party. A former Nebraska state senator, Bourne (Democrat) fought legislation proposed Senator Ernie Chambers to break OPS into three school districts. Republicans have complained that as a vice president for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Nebraska, which provides health care benefit coverage for school district employees, Bourne has a conflict of interest. “Anyone can have a conflict of interest,” states Bourne. “My interest in running for the Omaha school board is because I have a six-year-old daughter in school here. We need to manage our money, pay special attention to the budget and build our relationship with Lincoln so that we are at the table when the dollars are doled out.”

The Problem and Promise of Alt Weeklies

2012-05-08T13:14:23+00:00

My column on The Dundee Theatre published a couple weeks ago illustrates an age-old war in the print world, a war that The Reader can't win. But in the internet age, neither can the Omaha World-Herald or any other media outlet. When I interviewed Denny Moran about the theater, I was blind-sided by the news of his intention to do a top-to-bottom renovation. I went into it with a heavy heart, assuming by the ongoing dilapidated condition of the theater that Denny had been negotiating with developers, and that its demise was imminent. I expected Denny to stonewall me -- as any good developer would who was in the middle of a negotiation. Instead, he pulled this rabbit out of his hat with the renovation news. That interview was on a Wednesday. The story was written four days later, tightened the next morning and filed Tuesday morning for a Wednesday online publication and a Thursday print date. I knew it was a hot story -- a news story, at least for those of us who live in the neighborhood -- and I watched Omaha.com daily expecting it to break there before we could go to press. Well, over lunchtime Wednesday, the story went live on The Reader website and was promo-ed via social media and my personal website (lazy-i.com). Within an hour, links to the story started to pop up on a number of Facebook walls and were being retweeted into the vast inter-verse. This time The Reader scooped the Omaha World-Herald. But it didn't matter. By 5 p.m., Bob Fischbach, the OWH's movie critic, filed his own version of the story, repeating most of the pertinent facts. Whether he already had been working on the piece before we went live or simply picked up the phone and called Denny and confirmed the facts based on my story, I do not know, though the timing was more than coincidental. The Herald now had the story, and as is their policy, they didn't print where they first heard it. They don't have to. I guess that’s how the news game works. But where The Reader would really lose was the next morning (or even that evening, if Bob made the evening-edition deadline) when the story would appear in print, a full 12 to 24 hours before The Reader started to hit the racks around town. For those out of the Internet media loop, it would appear that the OWH once again scooped The Reader and everyone else in town. It's a problem that alt weeklies always have faced. When you publish only once a week, you're never going to win. The dailies will always beat you to the punch. It's a scientific fact. But what are we whining about? The dailies have faced the same problem since the invention of the radio. An Omaha World-Herald reporter can work for weeks on a story and see it published in the morning only to have the local TV and radio stations (maybe) verify the facts and report the story as their own over the lunch hour. If the anchor doesn't credit the OWH for first reporting it (and they never do) readers who don't get the morning edition have no idea that the Herald had it first. The Internet, of course, trumps all of them. Back in the old days, before the WWW, when someone stumbled over a bit of news, that news stayed with them unless they went to the media with it. Today, anyone can report news via Facebook, Twitter or their personal blog. From there, it's all about dividing rumor from facts from conjecture from opinion. It's all about who you trust to know what's really going on. Does it really matter who “breaks” the news? By the time that guy whose thumbing through his iPhone behind you in line at Baker’s finally makes it to the check-out, he’ll already have learned who won the French elections, the final score of the Knicks game, this year’s Emmy nominees and the latest on Warren Buffett’s health -- all “news” that the OWH will benignly republish word-for-word in its analog edition the following morning. And in the end, Mr. quart-of-milk-and-a-6-pack will have no idea who broke those stories in the first place, if he bothers to remember them in all their 140-character splendor. So why does any print news organization bother to chase the proverbial tail of breaking news? And where does a turtle like The Reader fit into all of this? Well, in an era where everyone has access to breaking news at their fingertips, alt weeklies and magazines could have an advantage if they take off the running shoes and focus on style and substance over timeliness. The Reader must become the publication where people go for nuanced, detailed local stories, humorous analysis and thoughtful criticism and opinion. Not “breaking news.” Since we’re not focused on being “the first,” The Reader and print magazines have the luxury of writing stories (not providing “content”) for the folks who take time to soak it in. I’m talking about that guy or gal kicking back with a skinny latte at Blue Line, waiting between sets at The Slowdown or The Waiting Room, or sitting at home in the nursery waiting for Junior to finally go to sleep. Let the other guys concentrate on their 140-character deadlines while we focus on our 1,000- to 1,500-word story telling. Let the other guys "break" the news; then come to us for the real story. Because an alt-weekly cannot win the race to your eyeballs, and shouldn’t even try. The Moleskin Diaries is a weekly column by Reader senior contributing writer Tim McMahan focused on arts, culture, society and the media. Email Tim at tim.mcmahan@gmail.com.

Love Drunk Over America, Take 2

2012-05-01T13:46:21+00:00

It's that time of year again when local ace videographer Django Greenblatt-Seay (G-S for short) and his band of merry volunteers climb aboard a shiny rental van and drive across these great United States of America to capture through unblinking lenses the best and brightest rock 'n' roll bands that you and I never heard of. They're calling it the Love Drunk 2012 Tour. In a nutshell: Over the next two weeks beginning May 4, G-S and his eight-person crew use high-tech video and sound gear to record musicians performing in odd and everyday places -- from Laundromats to spacious warehouses to the roofs of urban apartment buildings to the streets of Philly. They edit, mix, then upload to lovedrunkstudio.com for the world to see and hear. To accomplish this, they'll drive all night, shoot all day, dine on cheap food and even cheaper booze, and sleep and poop and pee in strange places, all for the sake of art. And what did you do on your last vacation? Because like a lot of us involved in the local music scene, G-S doesn't do this for a living. In fact, he's never made a dime from his Love Drunk project, and never wanted to. Instead, he makes a living as a digital media coordinator at OPPD, where he writes and shoots video for the power company's internal audience. G-S spent a good chunk of last summer at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant, shooting flood footage to pass along to the media. Yeah, he loves his job, but we all need some time off. "It would be nice to fly someplace and spend a week at a beach and relax and drink lemonade," G-S said, "but I'm not passionate about that. I'm passionate about rolling around in a van with my best friends, making jokes and mixing audio and video and coming up with a piece of work that everyone can be proud of." When last I wrote about the Love Drunk project back in May 2011, G-S and his team had shot 43 live, one-take music videos. Today, his website hosts 73 mini-masterpieces, which have been viewed nearly 18,000 times per month so far this year. Viewership is skyrocketing. In an era when new bands have no chance of getting on local corporate radio (if they ever did), online outlets like Love Drunk are among the few options available to get their music heard. Here's something you may or may not know about your typical up-and-coming indie rock band: They're broke. Most are barely getting by with the instruments they're playing. They're lucky if they can make a few bucks playing local shows, and any money they can scratch together goes either to their tour fund or toward their "recording budget" to cover studio costs for their next record that very few beyond their friends and family will likely hear. Hardly the rock 'n' roll lifestyle that you see in the movies. The last thing a band has money for is to make a rock video. That's where Love Drunk comes in. So who are these bands they're going to shoot? You've probably never heard of any of them unless you're entrenched in the indie music underground. For this year's tour, which spans from Ames, Iowa, to Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, New York, Boston, Philly, Chapel Hill, Knoxville, Nashville and St. Louis, G-S stumbled across most of the bands via friends or friends of friends or friends of bands or online suggestions or what he calls Facebook trolling. Among the acts: Driftless Pony Club, Donora, Nelsonvillians, Mandolin Orange, Hammer No More the Fingers, Diarrhea Planet and Sleepy Kitty. See, I told you you've never heard of them. A couple are more well-known, including Cymbals Eat Guitars, who just toured with local heroes Cursive, and the Spinto Band, who opened for national singer/songwriter Basia Bulat at Slowdown a couple years ago, but you probably never heard of them, either. It doesn’t matter. They're good. Trust me. Or trust G-S, who's rooting that one of them will break through, like The Menzingers, a band he recorded during last year's tour that signed a record deal with Epitaph -- an important indie label -- the day of the video shoot in Philadelphia. "Our video instantly became the best promo tool the band and label had," G-S said. It stands as the most popular video Love Drunk ever shot, viewed more than 27,000 times. G-S depends on that sort of breakthrough to get viewers to watch videos by other Love Drunk bands, which are listed on the right side of whatever media channel you're watching from, such as YouTube. It also gives Love Drunk much needed cred with record labels and influential websites such as punknews.org, altpress.org and Urban Outfitters blog, who hopefully will link back to his website. Anyway, total cost for Love Drunk's 2012 tour: Somewhere north of $5,000. But G-S isn't paying for it out of his pocket. This year the tour is being sponsored by local web auction house Proxibid and Old Market cigar lounge/mojito bar/hangout The Havana Garage, who were connected to Love Drunk through ad agency/art gallery/think tank The New BLK. It's one big happy circle, and you can be part of it. This Thursday, May 3, The Sydney in Benson is hosting a fundraiser for this year's tour. Drop down at 9, catch some fine local music, drop some money into the hat and be part of the Love Drunk movement. You'll be glad you did. Beyond Lazy-i is a weekly column by Reader senior contributing writer Tim McMahan focused on arts, culture, society and the media. Email Tim at tim.mcmahan@gmail.com.

The Rebirth of the Dundee Theatre (Thanks, Janet)

2012-04-24T13:18:09+00:00

In its first incarnation, the Dundee Theatre was a vaudeville house, complete with a stage. But when vaudeville died in the '30s, the stage was covered by a silver screen. Now that stage is being unveiled once again as part of the theater's top-to-bottom renovation. And never has a renovation been more needed. Sitting through a recent screening of "The Forgiveness of Blood," the theater felt even more run down and musty than usual, generating a burning anxiety that maybe the reason it was being allowed to fall apart was because it had a date with a wrecking ball. Rumors of the Dundee Theatre's demise have been whispered for years. I was afraid they might finally be coming true. So I asked Denny Moran, who has owned the theater since 1980. A retired Omaha police officer, Moran said he originally bought the building and those surrounding it with one intention in mind: "To tear them down and make way for a McDonald's," he said from a booth inside the Old Dundee Bar & Grill, another of the buildings he's renovating. "I didn't know diddly squat about the movie business," he said. When Moran took over operations from former owner Dave Franks, the Dundee played "sub-run" pictures, films that had premiered months earlier and were on their second run. "No one was showing up," Moran said. "I talked to the kids working there at the time and said, 'This ain't working.'" Three weeks later, Moran switched programming to independent films and people began coming back to the theater for flicks like "Fitzcarraldo" and "Tender Mercies." A few years later, Moran met his future wife, Janet, who also fell in love with the theater. The two were married in 1987, the same year Janet first remodeled the Dundee and helped open Main Street Movies, the video store that used to be located next door. Now 25 years later, Janet is remodeling the Dundee Theatre again. Moran said she helped convince him to keep the theater rather than to sell it to developers. "She drove the decision," Moran said. "She's always loved the theater. It breaks her heart to see it the way it is." The first order of business is returning the stage to working order. "It's always been there, covered by the screen," Moran said. "It's in good shape. All we have to do is sand it and stain the wood." To facilitate live productions as well as movie screenings, Moran ordered a massive 40-foot by 19-foot retractable screen from a manufacturer in France -- the only manufacturer in the world of such a large device. "We'll have live shows at 7 and move screenings back," he said. Local producer Gary Rockwood will help book the venue, which will initially focus on a '70s music revue called "8-Track," similar to the popular "Beehive" productions at the old Howard Street Tavern. However, anyone will be able to lease the theater for one-off productions. Everything else in the 400-capacity theater will either be repaired or replaced, starting with the seats. Moran said they considered replacing them with modern high-back theater seats, but Janet nixed the idea. "She doesn't like those," he said. "They make her think of head lice." Instead, the existing American Body Form seats, first installed in 1955, will be repaired, repainted and recovered. "They're so comfortable because they have coil springs," Moran said. "I can widen the seats, add cup holders and recover them with mohair fabric, which wears like iron." The rest of the theater's interior will get a fresh coat of paint and all linens will be steam cleaned or replaced. The building's roof recently was repaired, high-efficiency heating has been added, and all electrical has been updated. Moran said a "top-of-the-line" Christie 4000 DLP projector would soon sit alongside the existing film projector. The theater's speakers also will be repaired or replaced. And while all this is going on this summer, the theater will acquire a liquor license to sell beer and wine from its redesigned concessions area. Only one thing is driving the renovation's timetable: "First Janet has to pick out the new carpeting" Moran said. "There are carpet samples scattered all over our kitchen floor." For a longtime Dundee Theatre patron, it all sounds too good to be true, especially in the face of what could have been a demolition. "It was a big decision in my life to turn down the money -- and we're talking big dollars," Moran said, adding that over the past few years community support has waned. "It's not like it used to be. I know the theater is run down, but once we remodel, the patrons will come back." For the Morans, running the Dundee Theatre has always been a labor of love. "We never took anything out of the theater," Moran said. "Whatever money we made we put back into it. And it definitely needs it now." Moran said the renovation could be completed by September or October, but you won't have to wait that long for the theater's first live stage production. A "one night only" performance by Branson-based music impersonator Bill Chrastil is slated for May 5. Beyond Lazy-i is a weekly column by Reader senior contributing writer Tim McMahan focused on arts, culture, society and the media. Email Tim at tim@timmcmahan.com

Turning Over Rocks

2012-04-23T23:21:24+00:00

Elisha Yellow Thunder has a very personal reason for her research into mining contamination impacting some of the poorest counties in the country, better known as the Pine Ridge Indian reservation. Her daughter Laila Pettigrew seems like any other nine-year-old. She smiles a lot, her favorite color is green, she loves to draw and sketch, her favorite food is potatoes, and she wants to be a scientist like her mom when she grows up. On a recent day at a park in South Omaha, she seems full of life and energy, performing a cartwheel, riding her bike and playing with her brother and sister. Just by looking at her, you wouldn’t suspect that anything’s wrong. That is, until you notice the tubing taped to her collarbone when the neck of her shirt moves, or see the bag near her stomach when she cartwheels. Despite appearances, Laila was born with a number of medical anomalies: a cystic kidney that looked like a cluster of grapes, partially developed reproductive organs a deformity in her lower spine. She required two surgeries immediately after birth. Her cystic kidney was removed, leaving Laila with only one functioning kidney. On Feb. 25, 2011 Laila’s remaining kidney catastrophically failed. Laila fell to the ground convulsing. She recalls her father Jeremy Pettigrew attempting to keep her awake. She taps her face with her hand to demonstrate, “He was doing this every time I’d try to sleep.” Because of two blood transfusions that Laila received and the antibodies that she built up, none of her relatives are a match for a kidney. The normal wait list for a transplant kidney is one to two years, but it could be up to 15 years before Laila finds a suitable donor. The tubing at Laila’s collar is a catheter used for the dialysis that she requires three days, for a total of nine hours, a week. The dialysis assists her remaining kidney, which is in end stage renal failure. The bag at her stomach is a colostamie bag that Laila has had to have since birth. She can’t eat her favorite food potatoes, because her kidney can’t handle it. Elisha Yellow Thunder also isn’t as she appears. Wearing a red bandana with a skeleton on it, or often in a Misfits t-shirt, she says that people often mistake her for an art student, not a geology undergraduate. Laila’s family is Oglala Sioux and until a little over a year ago lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation on the northwest border of Nebraska. They had to move to Omaha, because there is no pediatric dialysis there and to wait for a donor kidney for Laila. Source of the Problem When Elisha was pregnant with Laila she was living in Loneman, South Dakota near Oglala, an area that Elisha says she came to find was a hotspot for uranium contamination. Elisha began to suspect that the Laila’s birth defects were due to drinking water contaminated with uranium during the first six months of her pregnancy. Her other two children were born on a portion of the reservation with Sandhills water, recognized as the cleanest water on the reservation. Both of Elisha’s other children were born healthy. Something calling attention to the kidney disease, diabetes and cancer on the reservation is the fact that some say 20 to 30 years ago these health issues were not widespread on Pine Ridge. People have noticed a spike in renal failure within the last 10 years. As Elisha looked for the sources of her daughter’s health problems and began researching uranium, she became interested in studying geology at Oglala Lakota College. That’s where she met Dr. Hannan LaGarry. LaGarry a non-Native, found his way to OLC after working for the Nebraska State Geological Survey and later Chadron State College. During a summit, “Our Water, Our Future: A Town Hall Meeting,” concerning declining water quality and water shortages in northwestern, Neb., Debra Whiteplume, a Native American activist who is also Elisha’s aunt, asked about possible uranium contamination. Whiteplume’s question for LaGarry was if the In-Situ Leach uranium mine near Crawford, Neb. could be a possible source of contamination to groundwater on Pine Ridge, which is 30 miles downriver. In-situ leach (ISL) mining is a mining process where uranium-bearing ore is injected with a leaching solution that is then pumped to the surface from other wells. It’s touted by some as being a safer method of uranium mining and is also cheaper than open pit uranium mines of the past. A number of open pit uranium mines have already left their legacy on South Dakota. LaGarry says that there are 88 open pit uranium mines in the area that are no longer in use. While studying outcrops near Ludlow, South Dakota he registered that he received radiation levels comparable to Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped for 15-minutes. The area under study was only 2/10 of a mile from the playground of an elementary school. Appearances can be deceiving. LaGarry says that when looking at a glass of water you wouldn’t know that it’s contaminated by uranium. He says, “It’s odorless, colorless and tasteless.” He says that the water on the reservation has several contaminants: arsenic, uranium, and fluorine. In answer to Whiteplume’s question, LaGarry says, “There are plausible scenarios where water with contamination could get from the mine into the water in northwest Neb., including downstream which is the Pine Ridge Reservation.” According to LaGarry’s report published in 2008, he had several concerns with the Crow Butte Resources ISL mining operations near Crawford, Neb. mainly due to unmapped faults: The uranium mine is situated along the same aquifers and fault zones as Chadron Creek. If faults and joints are draining the flow of Chadron Creek, they could also be allowing mine waste waters to migrate through confining layers. A review of the scientific literature showed that faults and joints are well known in some areas, but especially along the Pine Ridge near Chadron and Crawford, and along the southern border of the Pine Ridge Reservation near the town of Whiteclay, Nebraska and Pine Ridge, South Dakota. The report goes on to state: “This issue isn’t even about uranium. It’s about protecting the region’s water supply, and the future inhabitability of northwestern Nebraska and southwestern, South Dakota. Elisha’s Research In the summer and fall of 2011, Elisha sampled rocks from 25 above ground outcroppings on Pine Ridge. She received a grant for the study from the University of Washington. “I guess you could say that I’m trying to blame Mother Nature first,” she says, “before any of the blame goes to the mines. So let’s eliminate Mother Nature as the source of the contamination and then we can move on to man-made uranium isotopes found in the water.” Elisha resumed her undergraduate studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha until she can return to the reservation and OLC. During UNO’s Spring Break, when other college students were traveling to destinations like Cancun and worrying about bacteria in Mexico’s water, Elisha made a trip back to the reservation with other water concerns. She picked up her samples and delivered them to a lab at the University of South Dakota for testing. There’s currently no conclusive evidence to suggest that the CBR uranium mine is responsible for contaminating Pine Ridge’s groundwater. But Elisha’s research may one day eliminate or verify it as a source. Some question if a spill or even a fault beneath an ISL mine did cause water suitable for human consumption to become contaminated if there would be any remedy. Documentary filmmaker Suree Towfighnia—who is shooting a film about Laila, the issues with ISL mining, and water concerns on Pine Ridge—says that mining companies have never demonstrated an ability to return water contaminated back to its original level of purity. “They say they can, but they’ve never done it.” Cameco- Canadian Mining and Energy Corporation Cameco, a Canadian corporation based in Saskatchewan, Canada is the world’s leading producer of uranium, with a checkered history of environmental stewardship. It operates the CBR uranium mine near Crawford, Neb. Its Highland-Smith Ranch operations in Wyoming was touted as being a leader in environmental responsibility, but according to a report by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (See full report here). In the language of in situ leach mining, an “excursion” is an underground leak of mining chemicals or radioactive material, meaning it has moved outside the immediate mining area. Because ISL is done in water, this means that water has become contaminated. The LQD’s Report of Investigation reports, “Over the years there have been an inordinate number of spills, leaks and other releases at this operation. Some 80 spills have been reported, in addition to numerous pond leaks, well casing failures and excursions. Unfortunately, it appears that such occurrences have become routine. The LQD currently has two large three-ring binders full of spill reports from the Smith Ranch – Highland operations.” Regulators only discovered many of these violations after investigating an anonymous tip. Among other things, the report also went on to say that spills at the mine resulted in a total 202,247 gallons of mining fluids escaping, with only 3,500 gallons recovered. This raises the question: Where did the remaining 198,747 gallons of mining fluids end up, and how effectively are regulators able to monitor the mines? Cameco subsidiary Crow Butte Resources (CBR) ISL mine near Crawford, Neb. has been cited for a number of violations, as well. From Aug. 12, 1997 to Oct. 7, 2011 a total of 52 License Violations were compiled. A number of these are for excursions from monitor wells and pond leaks. In 1998, according to reports, there was a spill of 10,260 gallons of injection fluid. In 2008, The District Court of Lancaster, County imposed a $50,000 penalty on CBR for violations at the Crawford ISL uranium mine. According to the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality the fine stemmed from violations “beginning on our about July 1, 2003, and continuing daily thereafter until March 31, 2006” that violated its Underground Injection Control (UIC) Permit No. NE0122611. The violations CBR was fined for: • Releasing well development water upon the surface of the ground during CBR’s well development and drilling process • Using Chadron Formation well development water as drilling water • Constructing injection wells and mineral production wells in a manner that had the potential to allow movement of fluid containing contaminants into the underground source of drinking water • Failing to provide written notification until May 12, 2006, upon becoming aware of the noncompliance on or about March 31, 2006. In addition, according to a written document to the Department of Environmental Quality, CBR acknowledged that in 1996 a leak in an injection well caused 300,000 gallons of mining fluid to escape with only 1/3 of the lost fluid being recovered over a three-year period. Cameco’s cumulative violations in the U.S. and accusations at its ISL mining operations elsewhere in the world leave some worrying if the risk of contaminating water useable for human consumption outweighs the benefits. Towfighnia says that the perception that uranium mined from Crawford is reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil interests is false. She says, “None of it feeds energy locally. It’s taken to facilities in Canada and Illinois, enriched there and sent to energy plants around the world.” Towfighnia says that her production company Prairie Dust Films is researching exactly where it goes, but that the trail is hard to follow. OLC has been received millions of dollars in grant money from the National Science Foundation, some of which is used to study uranium. A number of other universities have given grants or have partnered with the college, as well. The fight to stop Crow Butte’s expansion to open two new ISL uranium operations in Nebraska is currently under contention. An article from an Oglala Sioux group, Obe Aku (Bring Back The Way), sums up the many questions that linger: “Have the nuclear waste tailings from the [abandoned] uranium mines around the Edgemont area that washed into the Cheyenne River also gotten into the groundwater, thus traveling for many years underground to get here, under the Pine Ridge, into the Aquifer we drink from? Did the above ground tailings blow in the wind to our lands here on Pine Ridge? There has never been a definitive study across the reservation to determine possible sources of contamination.” When, complete Elisha’s study hopes to remedy that, but for now Elisha waits for Laila to find a donor. Years from now the many questions about Pine Ridge’s water quality should have answers. Right now, Laila fights for her life. Anyone interested in becoming a donor should contact the Transplant Center at UNMC at 402-559-5000 or visit Laila’s Fight on Facebook. For more information on water quality on Pine Ridge visit PrairieDustFilms.com or BringBackTheWay.com

Legislator Versus Executive

2012-04-20T18:40:25+00:00

Geography quite naturally plays a vital role in politics. When it came time for the respective campaigns to suggest site selections for The Reader to interview Nebraska State Senator Gwen Howard and Douglas County Treasurer John Ewing as they prepare to face off in a May 15 primary for the nod to challenge 13-year incumbent Republican Lee Terry in the 2nd Congressional District House race, matters of geography were equally as telling. And that special sense of “placeness” also contributed to each interview having a somewhat tardy start. Gwen Howard first had to share a hug and chat about issues with constituent Gerda Bailey, owner of Gerda’s German Restaurant and Bakery, before coffee could be poured and notebooks could be opened. It was the day after the term-limited State Senator helped close the 2012 session — her last — with a victory in overturning Governor Dave Heineman’s veto of LB 599, the bill that will now restore taxpayer-funded prenatal benefits regardless of a woman’s immigration status. Over in the shell of her opponent’s campaign headquarters that will open April 26 near 76th and Dodge streets, a pile of intertwined chairs had to be unsnarled just to provide a place to sit in the very same space that was then-Senator Barak Obama’s 2008 headquarters. It’s familiar turf to Ewing; he spent countless hours there as 2nd District campaign co-chair of the President’s historic drive to win a blue electoral notch in this, the red-redder-reddest of states. The primary pits Howard, a retired social worker with 34 years of experience in Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services who went on be elected to the Unicameral in 2004, against Ewing, a former police officer who rose to the rank of deputy chief before being sworn is as Douglas County Treasurer in 2007. The candidates are in accord on the most issues and defeating Terry tops that list. “I passed more legislation in my first seven years than Lee Terry did in seven terms,” Howard said. “I passed legislation yesterday.” A tireless advocate for working families, women’s health issues and the protection of children, Howard is particularly struck by “the war on women.” “There is a concerted effort to push back on women’s rights and women’s issues, things that we thought were settled decades ago,” Howard said. “Decisions on women’s health choices are just that, women’s choices. None of us should be able to make such decisions for our sisters, our mothers, our daughters.” “We have a divided, do-nothing Congress and Lee Terry is a big part of that,” Ewing said. “We must get back to work for the American people. Terry has been in office since 1999 and has been totally ineffective. Washington has enough legislators, enough attorneys. What Nebraskans and what the country needs now is strong executive leadership.” In a recent debate Ewing had stated his support for "the sanctity of life,” perhaps clouding his stance on abortion and other women’s health issues. In his interview with The Reader, the man who is also an associate minister at Omaha’s Salem Baptist Church clarified his position. He does not support the overturning of Roe v. Wade, he said, and instead prefers to frame the discussion in terms of attacking the problem at its root with efforts to inform, educate and support young women in preventing unplanned pregnancies. He points to his longtime service to such organizations as Girls Inc. and the YCA (formerly the YWCA), among others, as leaving little doubt on where he stands on women’s issues. Daughters played a role in each candidate’s political calling and both became emotional in talking about it. “My daughter Alexandria — then 19 and now 20 — challenged me as I considered a House run,” Ewing explained. “If you don’t run for Congress, she said, what are you going to tell the kids in all those classrooms you visit? What happens when you tell them to go for the gusto and you didn’t do the same? I didn’t have an answer for her.” Howard, whose daughter Sarah is running to succeed her in serving the 9th District , relayed a story of her other, eldest daughter, a story tinged with the bittersweet. The star on Howard’s campaign sign represents Carrie, who was only 33 when she died of a prescription drug overdose in 2009. “She taught me to dream,” the candidate said of the young woman whose troubles followed being introduced to pain medications after an auto accident. “She taught me to trust that I could take all that experience in Health and Human Services and step it up to a broader level, the policy level. The people of District 9 gave me their trust in sending me to Lincoln and now the people of the 2nd Congressional District will do the same in sending me to Washington.”