environment

Photo courtesy U.S. Army Corps of EngineersBarge traffic makes its way through a lock on the Upper Mississippi.”Our Rivers: A Sustainable Resource?” is the focus of a public education forum that four Washington University faculty will lead as part of a community-wide symposium being held in conjunction with the 5th annual St. Louis Earth Day Celebration, April 22-23. The sustainable rivers program will be held April 22 from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and will feature Washington University faculty Charles Buescher, professor of environmental engineering, Robert Criss, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences and William Lowry, Ph.D., professor of political science in Arts & Sciences. The colloquium will provide a background history of the rivers in our region and their various uses in transportation, agriculture, power production, recreation and public water supply.

The focus is on the environment during the university’s sesquicentennial and the spring 2004 Assembly Series lecture schedule reflects that initiative. Joining the traditional lineup up authors, lawyers, scientists, historians and architects will be five colloquia on the environment. Other highlights of the series include talks by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ann Coulter and Susan Sontag.

Marine biologist Jane Lubchenco and atmospheric chemist and Nobel laureate Mario Molina will deliver the second Sesquicentennial Environmental Initiative Lecture at 3 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 9. The lecture, which focuses on science and the impact of human society on ecological systems, is free and open to the public and will be held in Graham Chapel, located just north of Mallinckrodt Center (6445 Forsyth Blvd.) on the Washington University campus. During its Sesquicentennial year, Washington University is launching an initiative to help better understand the role that research universities can play in addressing issues related to the environment.

Former EPA administrators Carol Browner and William Reilly will deliver the first Sesquicentennial Environmental Initiative Lecture at 3 p.m., Friday, October 3. The lecture, which focuses on politics and the environment, is free and open to the public and will be held in Graham Chapel, located just north of Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd., on the Washington University campus.

WarrenThe administrative costs of federal regulation are budgeted to reach an all-time high of $30.1 billion in 2003, as more money is devoted to the environment, transportation security, and securities regulation, according to a new report issued jointly by the Weidenbaum Center at Washington University in St. Louis and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. The budget request for 2004 suggests a slight decline from the 2003 peak to $28.9 billion.

Next time you think “oil spill,” remember that the vegetable oils used to make Freedom fries also can create an environmental mess.

Lowry explores the dynamics behind efforts to restore rivers.As America celebrates the bicentennial of Lewis & Clark’s epic journey up the untamed Missouri River, the nation finds itself on the verge of a new era in modern river management, one in which proponents of environmental protection and ecosystem restoration stand on equal footing with those of the hydropower, barge and boating industries. In a new book, Dam Politics: Restoring American Rivers (Georgetown University Press, 2003), noted environmental politics expert William R. Lowry explores the dynamics behind recent efforts to restore American river systems to a more pristine state. The politics of river restoration run deep, and it is politics, argues Lowry, that will ultimately dictate the success or failure of future efforts to restore and preserve the nation’s riverways.

Valencius unearths a common theme among early settlers in *The Health of the Country*.Poring over stacks of yellowed aging letters and other documents from the 19th century while researching American western expansion, Conevery Bolton Valencius, Ph.D., an environmental historian at Washington University in St. Louis, noted a common theme. Assessments of the “sickliness” or “health” of land pervade settlers’ letters, journals, newspapers and literature from that time. Valencius says that the numerous references throughout 19th-century writings to “healthy country,” “sickly” countryside, or “salubrious” valleys reveal the importance settlers placed on the connections between their bodies and their land. One of the main criteria for choosing where to farm and where to raise a family for the early settlers was whether or not the area would be a healthy place to live.