Nature programs at Forest Park utilize the park’s many unique natural areas to help teach kids about wildlife and sustainable nature practices. Photo courtesy Forest Park Forever/Cassi Lundeen.
By Don Corrigan (West End Word)
Did you get a cupcake? I didn’t either, but it was my fault for showing up late at Forest Park’s 140th birthday party celebration. I promise to be on time for the sesquicentennial birthday slated for June 24, 2026.
Bob Criss inside a flood gate at Valley Park. Outside the gate, MSD’s sewage treatment plant was disabled by flood water. photos by Ursula Ruhl, Webster-Kirkwood Times.
Six months after a Meramec River flood left millions of dollars in damage to cities along its banks, the finger-pointing continues – with much of it directed at Valley Park’s levee.
Critics contend the levee is built beyond its authorized height. The extra height resulted in flood waters of unprecedented volume and speed, causing destruction in Fenton, Sunset Hills, Kirkwood, Arnold and more.
Pictured: Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan, rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Town and Country.
The Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan, the rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Town and Country, talks to Don Corrigan about the idea that religion and science, specifically climate change science, can coexist.
Gateway Greening, St. Louis’ expert in community gardening, is helping backyard and community gardeners find the perfect vegetables and herbs for their gardens this season through the “Perfect Picks” program, a retail produce line that began in 2015 and features vegetables and herbs that are “Gateway Greening Approved.”
Find out where you can purchase Gateway Greening’s “Perfect Picks” and how to register for an upcoming Perfect Pick Autumn Garden Workshop at the Science Center’s GROW Exhibit below.
Pamela Braasch, SLSC education director and the GROW exhibit operations manager. All photos by Holly Shanks.
By Holly Shanks
Pass by the front lobby, the ticket lines and concession stands, and the watchful predatory eye of the T-Rex, and you’ll find a different kind of exhibit at the Saint Louis Science Center. It’s an exhibit, complete with chickens, vegetable gardens and tractors, and it tells the modern-day story of how our food makes it from a farmer’s hands all the way to our dinner table.
GROW, the newest exhibit at the Saint Louis Science Center. The exhibit opened June 18, 2016. Photos by Holly Shanks.
Here is a look at the sights you’ll find at GROW, the newest exhibit at theSaint Louis Science Center. The exhibit opened June 18, 2016.
Check back soon for Environmental Echo’s latest article that will have insights about the exhibit, what it took to bring the exhibit to life, and the collaboration between scientist and local farmers that brought accuracy and truth to the story of local agriculture.
See more photos from the GROW exhibit by visiting Environmental Echo’s new Facebook page HERE. Be sure to “like” our new Facebook page!
Managing rivers with dams, levees and channelization has always been a bit of an exercise in futility. Just ask the residents of the abandoned floodplain site of the old Valmeyer, Illinois. The Mississippi River did the town dirty in 1993.
More recently, residents of Fenton got a bad taste of Meramec River water when flooding in December and January overwhelmed the MSD sewage treatment plants.
Environmental Echo (EE) is posting a link to the June issue of the Missouri Environmental Educators Association (MEEA) newsletter. It has some great information on the regional history of trying to manage rivers and a map rendering that should not be missed.
EE Editor Don Corrigan has been a member of MEEA for several years and is always in awe of Missouri teachers and their commitment to teaching environmental issues and sustainability to students in the state.
The EPA announced that Meramec Caverns is approved to open tours in the upper level of the caverns as of June 10, 2016.
Find the EPA Region 7 announcement that includes a list of controls that have been implemented in the caverns HERE.
The show cave closed on March 10, 2016, because of unsafe levels of TCE fumes. TCE is an unsafe solvent used in manufacturing of metals, like vehicle parts. The contamination most likely originates from Sullivan, Mo, four miles away from a landfill and the former TRW/Ramsey facility, according to the EPA.
Learn more about the contamination from an earlier Environmental Echo podcast report that can be found below.
Above: A scene from last year’s Backyard Sustainability Tour. Photo provided by Terry Winkelmann.
Ever drive by a neighbor’s yard or see a backyard garden in your local area that makes you think – “I wonder how much work it takes to maintain a backyard garden or I wonder what type of grass is in that yard because they only mow a couple times each summer?”
Well, here is your chance to find out the answer to those questions and much more during the 2016 Sustainable Backyard Tour coming up June 12.
Westlake Landfill
by Don Corrigan (Article from the Gateway Journalism Review May 2016 )
When Dawn Chapman and other members of Just Moms St. Louis read a front-page story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch titled, “Misplaced Fear,” they immediately went to social media to express their upset with the piece.
Environmental Echo 