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On Saturday October 31 a Wilderness Workshop will be held from 10 am - 2 pm at the Chattanooga Nature Center, 405 Garden Road, Chattanooga, Tennessee. This interactive workshop will train volunteers in the skills required to pass a wilderness bill for the Cherokee National Forest.

Representatives from Campaign for America's Wilderness and The Wilderness Society will be on hand. The event is free and open to the public. Childcare is available.

For more information, please visit the Tennessee Wild website, or contact Jeff Hunter at 423-322-7866 or jeff@safc.org.

http://tnwild.org/get_involved

Jeff Hunter
Tennessee Field Organizer
Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition
423-322-7866
jeff@safc.org
http://tnwild.org/

Lee University together with the Center for Health and Global Environment at Harvard Medical School present "CREATION: A CALL TO CARE: A Symposium Intersecting Faith, Science and Practice Concerning God's Creation." This will be free symposium and will feature both nationally-recognized and local speakers.

This year EarthCare is suspending our usual Fall Retreat and will participate instead in the symposium at Lee University on Friday & Saturday, October 30-31, 2009. We hope you will be able to join us! John Rossing, president of EarthCare, and Jerry Faulkner, board member, will be speaking at one of the Saturday morning breakout sessions.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2009

7:00pm PLENARY SESSION :
Session Moderator: Cheryl Johns (Pentecostal Theological Seminary)
Greeting: Paul Conn (Lee University)

"Climate Change and Human Health"
Paul Epstein (Harvard Medical School)

"A Pastoral Call to Care for Creation"
Joel Hunter (Northland Church, Orlando, FL)

"In the Same Net: Ocean Life and the Human Spirit"
Carl Safina (Blue Ocean Institute)

* Coffee reception and book signing following the presentation

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2009

9:00 - 9:30am CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST / EXHIBITS

9:30 - 10:30am BREAKOUT SESSIONS  :

"The Ministry of EarthCare"
Jerry Faulkner (EarthCare / Cleveland State Community College)
John Rossing (EarthCare / Christ the King Lutheran Church, Dalton, GA)

"Growing Switch Grass for Cellulose Ethanol Production"
Ken Goddard (UT Extension Service)

"Demand: A Consumer's Glance at Sustainable Agriculture"  
Jennifer Norton Driving (The Greenway Table)

Topic To Be Announced
Nancy Sleeth (Blessed Earth)

"Connecting People and Nature"
Ken Voorhis  (Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont)

11:00am - 12:00pm PLENARY SESSION :

"All Creation Groans: A Call to Care"
Cheryl Johns (Pentecostal Theological Seminary)

"Healthy Solutions for the Low Carbon Economy"
Paul Epstein (Harvard Medical School)

"Good Stewards of God’s Resources"
Nancy Sleeth (Blessed Earth)

The Southeastern Water Trails Forum takes place October 29-30, 2009 right here in Chattanooga, TN at the Chattanooga Marriott. Hear from regional and national experts, learn from fellow success stories and share ideas. To find our more or register go to http://www.southeastwaterforum.org/index.asp

This is the fourth meeting of folks interested in seeing Chattanooga grow in sustainable ways, and become a green leader in the South.

We meet next on Oct. 28 at 4:30p, and we're shooting for the same goal as at our first meeting:
Review the links to the cities with sustainable and smart growth policies that make them green leaders, and decide which ones (and which aspects of the best plans) best fit Chattanooga. We can mix and match and try to overlay the best ideas on our city, then hand off our construct to a city employee qualified to adapt those ideas to us?

Coordinating with other action teams
Karen is working on coordinating our efforts with other teams. We don't want to duplicate efforts with the other action teams whose roles and missions overlap ours. We want to play a complementary role. The policy and procurement team is also looking at model green cities in order to adapt their best practices to our needs. We also share interests with the urban forestry team, which is looking at our landscaping ordinances, as well as the teams advising the mayor on recycling, transportation, education, communications and biodiversity groups. The education and communications team may be interested in the idea of citizen forums and speaker presentations, as well as showcases of some of the larger projects mentioned, such as at VW, etc.

EPA Smart Growth Principals
Also, there was much interest in Steve's link to the EPA smart growth principals: http://www.epa.gov/dced/about_sg.htm. Steve, if you'd like to walk us through what you've found, please feel free to send the links.

Empowering Neighborhoods
We discussed how not much that we do will have much bite, if we don't also at least uphold, preferably enhance, our land-use plan (a plan that has been ratified twice as a guiding zoning document by the city council). The zoning ordinances would have to support that land-use plan, and discourage violations of the plan, such as spot zonings that can also lower home values, if we are to get very far with smart growth recommendations. That said, we discussed ways to generate community support. It was suggested that empowering the ultimate stakeholders, the residents of neighborhoods, to combine forces to determine their ideal land-use plan is a direction we want to pursue. Designating pilot neighborhoods or communities to demonstrate how citizens can identify or "brand" their community, as a place of interest was mentioned at both the first and last meetings, and sounds like a good idea. I volunteered E. Brainerd, since a couple of us have looked at the land-use plan, and it is facing the typical sprawl. However, areas, such as Main Street and North Shore were nominated as places that are already making strides towards sustainability in some quarters. Perhaps we can pilot more than one area.

423-267-2464

Sierra Club is meeting on their regular last Monday of the month,the 26th, and our topic has changed from Sierra Club Outings Program to one about the Water Monitoring Program of the United Mountain Defense, Matt Landon presenting.

This from their website:
UMD monitors water quality in Tennessee’s coal impacted areas. We have sampled and tested water quality in streams in the New River Watershed, Elk Valley, the Eagan area of Claiborne County and after the TVA disaster in Roane County, TN. Test and data results are made available to TDEC and OSM and to members of the public either by request or through distribution online through our listserv and website. Our data advances science by providing a portrait over time of water quality in the Tennessee coalfields and of the impacts of surface mining and by providing samples for scientists and others to study.
UMD’s water monitoring program includes three components:

Chemical monitoring using a YSI digital monitor

Biological survey of macro invertebrates

Visual stream assessment

Since we are downstreamers, it will be a topic of interest for many, and extent the discussion of the TCWN from last month.

Thanks again and Blessings,
Tami
Tami Freedman
Cherokee Sierra Executive Committee
http://tennessee.sierraclub.org/
706-866-1074
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