- NEWS RELEASE
- April 23, 2007
Storm
Water District Participates in Hamilton Earth Day
The following
article was originally published by the Hamilton Journal-News on Saturday, April
21, 2007:
Earth
Day event sheds light on environmental issues
By Candice Brooks Higgins
Staff Writer
Saturday, April 21, 2007
HAMILTON
- Karen Adams didn't expect to see her "alarming" sun-damaged
face looking back at her Friday, butshe did.
Adams, of
Hamilton, had ultraviolet light shined on her face while she
stared into a mirror. The idea was to highlight areas of sun
damage and potential skin cancer, said Dan Remley with the Ohio
State University Extension office.
The experience
helps people recognize signs of skin cancer and the need to protect
themselves as the incidence of skin cancer rises with the depletion
of the Earth's ozone layer, Remley said.
"A lot
of people are shocked," he said.
The DermaScan
Sun Safety Program was one of the educational tools used during
Friday's lunch-time Earth Day Festival held in front of the Government
Services Center in downtown Hamilton.
More than
20 state, regional and local environmental organizations were
at the event to encourage recycling, resource conservation and
awareness of local environmental issues.
The free expo was sponsored by the Butler County Soil and Water
Conservation District and the Hamilton to New Baltimore Groundwater
Consortium in celebration of Earth Day, which is Sunday.
Downtown
workers and passersby |couldn't miss the action at the corner
of High Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard. Hundreds of
people stopped by - many on their lunch break - to improve their
environmental awareness.
But the free
grilled hot dogs, popcorn, chips and more than 600 one-foot Norway
spruce and white pine seedlings that were handed out also helped
to attract visitors.
Ruby, a red-tailed hawk from the Hueston Woods Nature Center's
raptor rehabilitation program, drew attention as well.
Yet it was
the free information Patty Grabowski of Hamilton said she wanted.
With her arms full of brochures, she said she learned enough
to raise her concern about groundwater contamination.
"I have
a pond where I'm moving," she said. "I'm going to get
the water tested."
Tim McLelland,
manager of the Groundwater Consortium, said Butler County's
drinking water is naturally filtered through sand and gravel
before it arrives to local wells. Unlike more complex surface
water treatment plants, local groundwater treatment plants simply
add chlorine and fluoride to well water to make it ready for
the tap, he said.
That's why
the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency's clean-up of local
threats such as underground gas storage tanks and toxic waste
at the commercial waste disposal ChemDyne site on Ford Boulevard
are so important.
"We
have to protect our sources of water," said Peggy Collins,
a Groundwater
Consortium volunteer from Fairfield. "We can get along without
oil, but we can't exist without water."
Contact
this reporter at (513) 820-2175 or chiggins@coxohio.com.
Find this
article at:
http://www.journal-news.com/search/content/oh/story/news/local/2007/04/21/hjn042107earthday.html
Photos courtesy
of the Butler County Storm Water District.
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