#UNIONIZESEXWORKERS

New Edmonton non-profit offers support for sex workers

Scott Neufeld/CBC News

CBC/Radio-Canada 

3/22/2021

 ANSWERS, a newly certified non-profit in Edmonton, announced its intentions to provide support for accounting, counselling and mentorship for sex workers, while fighting for their labour rights and providing education 

When Inna Stefen worked as a dancer, she felt she often had no support.

With two young children, Stefen says she didn't see pathways for financial help while in the sex work industry. She said she often felt looked down upon and like she had to hide her work.

"I had no clue and I felt very isolated," Stefen said.

"I don't want other girls and women who are in this profession experiencing the same."

Now, Stefen is one of the founders and board members behind ANSWERS, which stands for the Advocacy for Normalizing Sex Work through Education and Resources Society. The group is a newly certified peer-to-peer organization created to support sex workers in the Edmonton area.

ANSWERS, which was first created in November, says it will also provide educational resources about sex work to help remove the stigma and negative stereotypes surrounding the industry.

After receiving more than $70,000 in grant funding, ANSWERS plans to help sex workers by partially subsidizing accounting services and counselling, offering a mentorship program, and providing necessary supplies like groceries and face masks.

"When I was a dancer, I never heard about support for accounting services, there was no support for psychological and trauma counselling, and there's still none," Stefen said.

"So ANSWERS is, in this way, pioneers."

© Scott Neufeld/CBC News Inna Stefen is one of the founders of 

ANSWERS, a newly certified peer-led non-profit in Edmonton to support sex workers.

The new non-profit's goals also include building trust and respect with government, helping provide a better quality of life for sex workers, and working toward decriminalization of sex work along with labour rights for the industry.

The group of board members who created ANSWERS came together with a shared vision to help sex workers, Stefen said, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic that has cut into their already precarious work. Stefen said unlike other vulnerable communities in Canada, she and the other founders saw even fewer government supports for sex workers.

Stefen said sex workers often face stigma when it comes to conducting business at banks, renting places to live or even when they try to receive proper care from counsellors and doctors.

The group will provide education and training modules for partner groups. Stefen says they hope to offer those resources in the community through universities and police services, for example.

ANSWERS calls itself the first and only sex worker-led non-profit in Alberta. Such a group was needed in Alberta, said Mona Forya, another founder of the group. Forya is a sex worker and CBC has agreed to refer to her by a pseudonym.

"All the stigma within the industry will be reduced immediately just knowing that they're going to be helped by their own comrades," Forya said.

The financial assistance is especially timely, Forya said, because many sex workers have faced even more difficulty in the past year as the COVID-19 pandemic significantly reduced their income.

Lilith, a sex worker for around three years now, says the introduction of ANSWERS helps relieve much of the stress and pressure she and others in her industry often face when accessing medical support.

"Not too many people are comfortable even saying what they do for a living without judgment coming back to them, especially in the medical community," said Lilith, who CBC News has agreed to refer to by a pseudonym.

"That discourages a person from ever entering an office or even going to see a doctor. So having this offered makes them feel more comfortable because now the organization that they're associated with is run by sex workers or people who advocate sex work."

Elizabeth Eaton, an Edmonton-based psychotherapist, says they were immediately interested in working with the organization after being asked to be a part of their ally directory, noting the importance that anyone who is in a position to help marginalized communities to do so.

Eaton expects clients will be referred to their office, knowing it's a safe, supportive space for them. The psychotherapist will also receive education about sex work to better assist clients.

"You want to be sure that the person working with you respects you and understands you, and is going to be safe to work with," Eaton said.

"You're going to be able to look into that [ally] directory to find an accountant, to find a massage therapist, and then feel like you're not going to be judged or shamed by that person when you work with them."

Lilith said she's hopeful about the supports this group can provide, adding that she hopes it will help further foster a community in the industry.

"I think a lot of fears will start to diminish," Lilith said.

"There's no hidden agenda, and it's very transparent in what we do, what our mission is, and I think a lot of people in the industry are looking for that."

NDP's Singh commits to cancel up to $20,000 in tuition in election campaign-style promise

OTTAWA — Federal New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh renewed his pitch to young voters on Saturday, pledging that an NDP government would cancel up to $20,000 in tuition.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Singh announced he would also freeze federal student loan payments until the COVID-19 pandemic winds down and eliminate interest on student debt if elected.

The announcement, presented as a campaign-style pledge ahead of a possible election this year, comes as federal parties prepare to battle it out for the hearts and ballots of young voters.

Statistics Canada found last fall that more than 60 per cent of post-secondary students were concerned about using up their savings and taking on more debt.

The Liberals imposed a moratorium on Canada Student Loan payments between last April and September, but the freeze has long since thawed and student groups have urged Ottawa to suspend payment obligations again.

Singh said the government has been "profiting off the backs of young people" by taking in more than $4 billion in interest payments since 2015.

Video: NDP’s Singh announces plan to cancel up to $20K in student debt (Global News)

"Young people are making student loan payments the size of mortgage payments — spending years under crushing debt, not able to get ahead. And the COVID-19 pandemic only made matters worse," he said at the party's virtual youth convention.

“An education should help young people get ahead, not leave them further behind."

Singh also repeated his commitment to work with provinces and territories toward tuition-free post-secondary education.

Under the NDP plan, student debt forgiveness would be capped at $20,000, with the amount determined based on a household's average income for five years after graduation.

Borrowers with annual incomes above $60,000 would see the amount of debt reduction available shrink linearly up to $100,000 in income, at which point no chunk of the debt would be cancelled. (For reach dollar of income above $60,000, the amount of debt forgiven would decrease by 50 cents from the $20,000 starting point.)

The announcement goes beyond Singh's 2019 election campaign promise to nix all current and future interest on federal student loans.

More than 868,000 borrowers hold Canada Student Loans amounting to $9.77 billion, according to an auditor general's report released last July.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 20, 2021.

The Canadian Press

QUEBEC INC.

Behind the profit, and politics, driving Montreal's new light rail project

Jonathan Montpetit

CBC  3/22/2021

 FEATURE

 BACKGROUNDER

 LONG READ

© CBC A light rail car waits at a platform in Montreal. The first section of the REM network is scheduled to be operational next year.

When Quebec's pension fund manager announced in 2016 that it was going to build a state-of-the-art, 67-kilometre light rail network around Montreal, it seemed like a miracle solution for the city's cash-starved transit system.

It had been decades since the last major investment in Montreal public transit. The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec appeared out of nowhere, offering to shoulder most of the up-front costs for connecting the western half of the metropolitan area to downtown.

In exchange, it would get the revenues generated from operating the network.

"It's probably one of the greatest projects we've seen in [public transit] in the last 50 years," gushed the mayor at the time, Denis Coderre.

Late last year, the Caisse announced it was expanding its light rail network, now dubbed the REM, into Montreal's east end. But the reception, this time, was decidedly less enthusiastic.

Architects and urban planners have publicly criticized the plans. Neighbourhood groups are lobbying for changes. A petition has attracted nearly 2,000 signatures. Even city hall has expressed reservations.

© Ivanoh Demers/Radio-Canada The REM will run for long stretches along an elevated track supported by massive concrete columns. These are being built in Montreal West Island.

They all share concerns about the current design plan for the project, which features an elevated track supported by massive concrete pillars running through some of the most densely populated areas of the island of Montreal.

"We're scared about what will happen to our neighbourhoods with this immense structure," said Catherine Miron, a spokesperson for a group of concerned east-end residents called REM et citoyen-nes de l'Est de Montréal.

CDPQ Infra, the arm of the Caisse that oversees the REM, maintains the elevated track is the only way the east-end network can be built on time and on budget.

Those are important considerations for the provincial government, which campaigned on a promise to connect the island's east-end suburbs to downtown.

And, so far, CDPQ Infra has proved its alternative model for funding infrastructure can deliver. While other transit projects backed by municipal governments and transit authorities have stalled on the drawing board for years, the west-end REM is nearing completion and in the ballpark of its original budget.

But it sped ahead with only marginal input from independent experts and citizens, say observers of the process. They fear a similar dynamic is emerging as the REM expands east, leading to a project that will scar neighbourhoods in the interest of profit and politics.

"It might not be the right mode of transit in the right place," said François Pepin, president of the public transit advocacy group Trajectoire Québec.
Lukewarm reception from region

There is not much debate that the east end of Montreal needs better transit connections with downtown Montreal. Much of that territory only has bus service, which is usually crowded and slow during rush hour.

In May 2019, the Coalition Avenir Québec government asked CDPQ Infra, as opposed to the co-ordinating transit authority for the Montreal area (known by its French initials as ARTM), to look at meeting that demand.

That CDPQ Infra ended up proposing a light rail network was no surprise. It's the only transit technology it has on offer, though transit experts have in the past suggested other solutions for the east end, such as bus-rapid transit or tramways.

The elevated track being built in Montreal's West Island runs along highways, and hasn't stirred much public concern. But in the east end, large stretches of the REM network would run along boulevards in mixed residential-commercial neighbourhoods.

As well, the prospect of noise, shadows, and a lot of concrete has urban planners worried.

"It's a big structure going through areas where people live. It risks destroying their quality of life," said Sylvain Gariépy, president of the Quebec Order of Urban Planners.

Gariépy expressed frustration at the lack of detailed information CDPQ Infra has provided about the proposed structures, making it difficult to evaluate the project.

Citizen groups have also struggled to get more information about the project, and to offer their feedback. Miron said she has attended two meetings with CDPQ Infra in recent weeks, but they resembled marketing sessions rather than consultations.

"They gave the same PowerPoint presentation at both of them and couldn't answer our technical questions," Miron said.

CDPQ Infra stresses the proposal it has made public is a work in progress. It is promising to spend the next two years consulting extensively with the public as well as an independent group of experts.

Virginie Cousineau, the organization's public affairs director, said consultations will play a larger role in the final design of the REM's extension compared with the consultations that were done ahead of the first phase of the project.

"There are things we're doing differently in the REM East, things we didn't do in the REM 1.0," Cousineau said in a recent interview.

But she also acknowledged that certain elements of the project are non-negotiable. Many have called for the track to go underground as it approaches downtown. Cousineau said while that option was studied, existing subway lines and old sewers threaten to escalate costs to prohibitive levels.

"The Caisse can't endanger the pensions of Quebecers with a project where we are unable to control the risks," she said.
The politics behind mass transit choices

The concerns about the REM's east-end extension are not just technical matters about an engineering project, however. They are part of a larger debate about which institutions ought to be shaping the future of Quebec's cities.

Provincial funding for Quebec City's tramway project was held up when the CAQ government began demanding last-minute changes to the route, even though it had been the subject of extensiveconsultation since 2018 and had widespread local backing.

Premier François Legault said the project needed to better serve the suburbs in order to get his government's approval. Community groups in Quebec City, and the mayor, accused him of meddling for political gain.

In the case of both the Quebec City tramway, and the REM in Montreal, local transit authorities seemed to be sidelined at key stages of the decision-making process.

That's a shame, said Pepin, given that transit authorities, like the ARTM, were created with the intention of limiting the influence of politicians on major projects and making public consultation routine.

They are meant to be relatively independent bodies that have the expertise required to plan a transit network with the interests of the public in mind.

"It's a science," Pepin said of public transit planning. "We talk about it for the vaccine; maybe we should do the same thing for public transit and listen to the science."

Transit authorities, though, often operate too slowly for politicians. That makes alternative funding models that can fast-track projects, like CDPQ Infra, appealing.

"The idea, of course, is to get a project shovel-ready before the next election," said Pierre Barrieau, president of Gris Orange, a Montreal-based urban transit consulting firm.

At the same time, community groups in Montreal have adapted to CDPQ Infra's pace.

They learned from the first phase of the REM, Barrieau said, and are mobilizing at the outset of the second phase to demand more input.

"We should expect a project that will take comments from the public into greater consideration," he said. "I think the Caisse understands that what they did for the first time isn't going to fly for the second time."

Environmentalists want Jasper backcountry ban extended to protect remaining caribou

EDMONTON — Environmentalists and scientists are calling on Parks Canada to further restrict access to Rocky Mountain backcountry in an effort to help save the last large caribou herd in the national parks. 

© Provided by The Canadian Press

"There's lots of evidence that winter closures help caribou," said Gillian Chow-Fraser of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.

Chow-Fraser is asking Parks Canada to extend winter closures of the Tonquin backcountry in Jasper National Park. Tonquin's alpine valleys are home to a herd down to about 10 breeding females.

The area is currently closed between November and Feb. 15.

Chow-Fraser said that's not enough. Even tracks from backcountry skiers provide enough of a path for wolves to get into the herd's winter range.

"(There's) overwhelming evidence ... of how wolves use linear features, driving caribou declines everywhere in the country."

Mark Hebblewhite, a University of Montana biologist with long experience in the Canadian Rockies, said the Tonquin caribou are nearing the same brink other herds have already toppled over.

The Banff and Maligne herds, two of five in the Jasper-Banff area, are gone. The Brazeau herd is down to about six animals and the only reason the la Peche herd is healthy is the extensive wolf cull on its habitat outside the park.

"That leaves the Tonquin," Hebblewhite said. "Inside the parks, it's pretty grim."

Parks Canada acknowledges caribou are in decline. The agency is hoping to shore up the herds with a captive breeding program, in which females from nearly vanished herds would be penned and bred.

In a 2017 report, it called the Feb. 15 closure date arbitrary and "a compromise to stakeholders."

Wolf predation is decreasing in Jasper, said Rola Salem, spokeswoman for Jasper National Park.

"Because of closures and declining wolf numbers, fewer incursions into caribou habitat have been documented," she said in an email.

"Parks Canada is constantly assessing conservation measures and adapting to changing conditions, including ways to mitigate disturbance to caribou in the Tonquin Valley.

"This includes maintaining winter access restrictions in locations where they will benefit caribou the most."

That's no guarantee, said Chow-Fraser.

"Who's to say that just because a wolf wasn't there last winter, there won't be one this winter. If they get in, they'll find caribou. Easy pickings."

Studies in Jasper have shown wolves quickly find new trails and begin using them. And with so few breeding females, one successful hunt can have a major effect on a herd's future.

A captive breeding program without securing genetic breeding stock is counterproductive, Hebblewhite said.

"It just doesn't make any sense to me."

Some backcountry users are already staying away. The Alpine Club of Canada has asked members not to use the Wates-Gibson hut in the Tonquin country.

There is a private lodge in the area which has been operating since 1939. Owner Gilbert Wall declined to comment.

Chow-Fraser said extending the backcountry travel ban until the snow is gone needn't be permanent.

"This isn't a forever thing," she said. "You need to give these really sensitive animals some space until the breeding program can bolster numbers."

Parks Canada has a dual mandate of encouraging Canadians to enjoy the outdoors and of preserving the ecological integrity of those places. Chow-Fraser said preservation should come first in the case of an iconic species on the verge of vanishing.

"In a national park, you would think ecological integrity would be the No. 1 priority."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 21, 2021.

— Follow @row1960 on Twitter

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

The return of "extinct" species

CBSNews 

 3/22/2021

Seventeen years ago, while floating through this spooky swamp in Arkansas, Tim Gallagher and Bobby Harrison saw a ghost. "Neither one of us knew what we were looking at," said Harrison. "And we've been birding all our lives. It turned up on edge. And you could see those white trailing edges of the wing."

© CBS News ivory-billed-woodpecker-1280.jpg

"That's when you knew?" asked correspondent Conor Knighton.

"Just locked in. We were both locked in," Gallagher said.

"We both yelled, 'Ivory-Bill!'" Harrison laughed.

The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was thought to be totally extinct. Gone. Dead forever. The last good film of one was taken back in the 1930s. And yet, Gallagher and Harrison were sure that was the bird they'd seen.

Even now when he thinks about it, Harrison said he gets "real emotional."

The men had traveled to Arkansas after kayaker Gene Sparling reported seeing an Ivory Bill in the same spot a few days earlier. Once Gallagher saw one with his own eyes, he convinced his colleagues at Cornell University to conduct a massive search, a search that eventually led to a bit of blurry video

.

© Provided by CBS documentation News An eyewitness' video of what is believed to be an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. / Credit: CBS News

That out-of-focus footage was enough to set off a media firestorm. "60 Minutes" did a feature on the rediscovery. "Sunday Morning" sent Steve Hartman down to Arkansas to get an ivory-billed haircut.

The bird was back!

At an April 2005 press conference Interior Secretary Gale Norton said, "I cannot think of a single time we have ever found a species, once thought extinct, and now found to be in existence."

© Provided by CBS News From 2005: In search of the Ivory-billed Wood... 07:34

But it turns out the rediscovery of an allegedly "extinct" creature actually happens more often than you might guess. While species are disappearing at an unprecedented rate, a handful have reappeared. Animals mistakenly thought to have been killed off, like the Bavarian pine vole, and the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect, are all known as "Lazarus taxon." In the Bible, Lazarus came back from the dead.


"When you declare something extinct, that's almost like a challenge to people: 'Okay, we're now going to go and find this thing, prove you wrong,'" said Craig Hilton-Taylor, who is in charge of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's "Red List," the most comprehensive species status list in the world. With categories ranging from "Least Concern" to "Vulnerable" to "Critically Endangered" to "Extinct," it's that last category that's always hardest to pin down.

"Trying to determine that fact is really, really hard to actually know when that final individual has disappeared," Hilton-Taylor said.

"Yeah, it seems like endangered, there's a range; extinct is very binary. You're either extinct or you're not," said Knighton.

"It is very binary, exactly. Yes, it's there or not. And it requires lots of gathering of evidence – negative evidence – over a long period of time."

Ultimately, extinction ends up being an educated guess. We're pretty confident Stegosauruses aren't still running around Colorado. But when it comes to smaller, more elusive creatures, well …

"There's a big world out there, and there are a lot of places to hide," said biologist Forrest Galante, who has made a career out of searching for these "lost" species. Each episode of his Animal Planet show "Extinct or Alive" focuses on a creature presumed to be long gone. While most episodes end without concrete proof of an animal's existence, in the Galapagos Islands, a promising piece of poop led Galante and local experts to the rediscovery of the Fernandina giant tortoise.

"To hold this 'extinct' species that the world hadn't seen for 114 years, like, I'm still not sure if it's real," Galante said. "I think it might've been a dream to this day. Like, I can't believe that we found this thing!"

Modern technology has made searching for species easier. But discovering evidence of an extinct animal doesn't always involve mounting an expensive international expedition, with drones. Sometimes you need look no further than your own back yard.

In 1981, a dog belonging to Meeteetse, Wyoming rancher John Hogg dragged home a supposedly extinct Black-footed Ferret. Kimberly Fraser said, "Here was this animal, dead on his back porch. And he picked it up, and he looked at it, and he didn't know what it was."

When John's wife, Lucille, wanted to get it stuffed, their taxidermist realized it was something special.

"And how fortuitous. What a great story! What a chance to bring a species back from the brink of extinction," Fraser said.

Fraser works with the Black-footed Ferret Recovery Program. Thanks to that one dead ferret on a porch, scientists discovered a tiny group of them still alive in Wyoming. They were rounded up and put in captive breeding programs. Thousands of Black-footed Ferrets have been released back into the wild.

Fraser said, "I think it's a great example of people coming together and doing the right thing. We definitely have hope, hope for the future."

We are in the middle of a human-caused extinction crisis. Reintroducing a species is a rare chance to right a past wrong.

Back in the swamps of Arkansas, it's been over a decade-and-a-half since Tim Gallagher's Ivory-billed Woodpecker sighting. He said he has not seen one since.

Despite all of the initial excitement, the woodpeckers have remained elusive. Stylist Penny Childs still holds onto her collection of memorabilia, although it's been ages since anyone has asked her for a woodpecker haircut. "Once the word broke, then everybody came," Childs said. "And if he was there, goodnight, you know? I woulda left, too! I mean, the woods was just crawling with people. I mean, it was just crazy."

Maybe the woodpecker got scared and flew the coop. Maybe Gallagher and Harrison saw the very last one. Maybe they were mistaken, and didn't see one at all.

But the men have come back to search together dozens of times. It's all on their own dime now; nobody is paying for this quest.

They feel an indisputable sighting of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker – a crystal-clear picture – would mean more than bragging rights. It could lead to habitat conservation that would help revitalize the species.

Harrison said, "You know, the world's in pretty bad shape right now. We're losing birds, we're losing habitat. And I think, if we could actually get the proof of this bird, it would really spur a new conservation era. It's really a symbol of what's been lost."

And yet, every once in a while, what's been lost can be found again. It's possible the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is indeed extinct. But for now, in this forest of tupelo trees, they're still keeping hope alive.

"The Grail Bird: The Rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker" by Tim Gallagher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), in Trade Paperback and eBook formats, available via Amazon and Indiebound

International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species
"Extinct or Alive" (Discover+)

Black-footed Ferret (U.S.. Fish & Wildlife Service)

Black-footed Ferret Connections (blackfootedferret.org)

\
Story produced by Aria Shavelson. Editor: Lauren Barnello

Toilet-invading iguanas among invasive species now banned in Florida

Ed Pilkington 

THE GUARDIAN

3/22/2021

Florida is known as a state with a fondness for the exotic, from its long history of accommodating religious cults to the Bubble Room restaurant where every day is Christmas Day. But now time is running out for one type of eccentric Floridian: those who own or breed exotic and invasive reptiles and other non-native animals.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has ruled that within the next few weeks the breeding and dealing of 16 of the most ecologically-damaging non-native species must be brought to a halt. The ban will apply to several types of python that have proliferated to crisis point in the Everglades, as well as all types of tegu lizards, anacondas, Nile monitor lizards and green iguanas.

© Photograph: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images Snake hunter 

Jim McCartney pulls a live iguana from a cage in Delray Beach, north of Miami.

When the commission debated the rules last month it was inundated with comments, many from exotic pet owners and breeders pleading for the ban not to go ahead. As the Washington Post reported, one woman burst into tears over the idea of losing her pet iguanas and pythons.

“If you take them away, I would be really messed up,” she wailed.

But the spread of invasive species through sensitive ecosystems such as the Everglades is happening at such speed that the state felt duty bound to act. The reptiles are also causing havoc in urban areas.

Green iguanas have multiplied in Florida to such a degree since they were first spotted there in 1960 that they are regarded as an environmental hazard. They puncture seawalls, tear up sidewalks and carry salmonella.

An animal once prized as an exotic curiosity is now widely decried as a pest. The iguanas hang out on roofs, dig under houses and to the horror of home owners can crawl into sewers only to emerge, thrashing around, in the toilet bowl.

The state conservation commission now encourages Floridians to humanely kill the lizards, which can grow up to 5ft and 17lbs, on their own property. No hunting licenses are required.

To soften the blow to besotted pet owners, a concession has been tucked into the new regulations. Anyone who cannot contemplate the thought of being parted from their iguana or tegu can apply for a free permit.

But the reprieve will last only for the life of the animal. Once the critter is gone, it cannot be replaced by a new pet from the list of banned species.

INFRASTRUCTURE

In the past 6 years, dozens of Illinois homes had lead levels as extreme as those in Flint, Michigan, analysis finds

2021/3/20
©Chicago Tribune

Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune/TNS

CHICAGO — More than 8 of every 10 Illinoisans live in a community where brain-damaging lead was found in the tap water of at least one home during the past six years, a new Chicago Tribune analysis found.

The alarming results are from a limited number of samples collected under federal regulations by the state’s 1,768 water utilities. Depending on the number of people served by each utility, only a handful or a few dozen homes are occasionally monitored, but when combined the tests provide snapshots of a widespread threat to public health that for decades has been largely ignored.

Most exposure to lead in water can be traced to pipes known as service lines that connect homes to municipal water supplies. Illinois has more service lines made of the toxic metal than any other state. Chicago has more than any other city.

“Too many people still get their water from what essentially is a lead straw,” said Miguel del Toral, a retired U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientist who discovered high levels of toxic metal in water at homes in Flint, Michigan, and East Chicago, Indiana.

Between 2015 and 2020, tap water in dozens of Illinois homes had hundreds and even thousands of parts per billion, or ppb, of lead — just as extreme as what researchers found during the same period in Flint, where mismanagement of the public water system exposed children to the toxic metal and drew a world spotlight to the scourge.

East Moline found one home with 3,000 ppb of lead in tap water, records show. The Rockford suburb of Loves Park detected 2,700 ppb of lead in a home. Southwest of Joliet, the water system in Coal City found 1,260 ppb of lead in one of its samples.

Utilities in the three cities were among 224 statewide where at least one home had lead levels at or above 40 ppb, a threshold the U.S. EPA once declared an “imminent and substantial threat to pregnant women and young children.” Others in the Chicago area included Bartlett, Cicero, Lake Barrington, South Elgin and Wauconda.

Nearly 60% of the state’s water systems found at least one home with levels greater than 5 ppb — the Food and Drug Administration’s limit for bottled water.

By far the state’s worst lead-in-water problems in recent years are in University Park, a south suburb on the border of Cook and Will counties.

Samples of tap water collected since 2019 in the predominantly Black community contained as much as 5,300 ppb of lead and averaged 54 ppb, according to the Tribune analysis of data obtained from the Illinois EPA through a Freedom of Information Act request.

“There is no training for a water crisis,” said Mayor Joseph Roudez, who took office less than a month before the staggeringly high levels of lead began turning up across the village, including at his own home. “The experience has been horrible, and it’s still horrible.”

The U.S. EPA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stress that lead is unsafe to consume at any level. More than 400,000 deaths a year in the U.S. are linked to the toxic metal. Even tiny concentrations can permanently damage the developing brains of children and contribute to heart disease, high blood pressure, kidney failure and other health problems later in life.

Yet federal regulations allow the vast majority of water utilities to hide the hazards from customers. Once a year, water bills include a brochure that almost always declares tap water is safe to drink.

Reality is more complicated in cities, towns and villages with lead service lines. Unless water drawn from household faucets is properly filtered, scientists and former government officials say, the only way to keep the lead out is by replacing toxic pipes.

After little progress during the Obama and Trump administrations, President Joe Biden is pledging to tackle the problem as part of his efforts to overhaul the nation’s infrastructure and fight for environmental justice.

Earlier this month the Biden EPA suspended regulations adopted during the last days of the Trump administration that effectively delayed lead service line replacements for up to three decades and, in some cases, allowed cities to keep toxic pipes in the ground indefinitely.

“We’re urging EPA to require that every service line in the country should be pulled out within the next 10 years,” said Erik Olson, senior director for health and food at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, which in a recently filed lawsuit demanded a more aggressive strategy from the agency. “Until then they should be providing filters to keep people safe.”

Other lawsuits and legislation filed after the 2015 Flint crisis already are prompting a long-delayed reckoning with the nation’s reliance on lead during the last century to convey drinking water.

Cities including Cincinnati, Denver, the District of Columbia and Newark, New Jersey, are aggressively replacing lead service lines with safer materials. State governments in Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin created funds during the past five years to speed up replacements, while Indiana and Pennsylvania authorized utilities to finance the work through water bills.

Illinois and Chicago lag far behind, though there are signs the state and city are taking the problem more seriously after years of denials.

The Chicago Department of Water Management just began accepting applications for free service line replacements at homes and two-flats where the owner’s household income is less than 80% of the regional median ($72,800 for a family of four). The department also is waiving permit fees for homeowners who opt to pay for the work themselves.

Initial work will be modest compared with the scope of the dangers. City officials estimate this year they will only replace 750 of the roughly 400,000 lead service lines connecting homes to street mains, according to slides prepared by the water department.

Legislation introduced in Springfield would add a small fee to most water bills statewide, raising $200 million a year to speed up service line replacements. Based on typical water use by a family of four, the fee would range from $1.20 to $5.40 a month depending on how a community’s median income compares with the statewide average. (The fee would be waived for households earning less than $39,532 a year.)

“Illinois must step up and take action to replace the thousands of contaminated pipes throughout the state, particularly in Black and Brown communities that are struggling with countless other crises,” said Naomi Davis, founder and chief executive of Blacks in Green, one of the groups backing the measure. “Babies, pregnant mothers, seniors — all residents have a right to clean water.”

Every Chicago home and two-flat built before 1987 likely gets water from a lead pipe. The city’s plumbing code required use of the toxic metal until Congress banned the practice.

Street work made the problem worse, in particular water main replacements launched under Mayor Richard M. Daley, rapidly expanded during Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s eight years in office and continued through the first years of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration.

Studies by del Toral and others during the past decade have found that when service lines are jostled by street repairs or plumbing work, spikes of lead can intermittently flow out of household taps for weeks or months afterward.

“There’s no way to make these pipes safe,” del Toral said in a recent interview.

Chicago officials attempted to undermine the research until their own testing found spikes of lead in more than 1 in 5 homes where a water meter had recently been installed. Lightfoot ordered the water department to stop installing new meters in 2019, but city workers are still digging up streets to install new water mains, which they continue to hook up to existing lead service lines.

This summer the water department plans to combine service line replacements with the installation of a new water main on a single city block — a more cost-effective solution that already is standard practice in other communities.

Most of the money to pay for the city’s new programs will come from low-interest federal loans. Since 2012, the water department has borrowed more than $487 million from the same pot of federal money to replace water mains. Emanuel doubled water rates to pay back the loans.

Other Illinois cities also are tapping into federal funds for service line replacements, most notably Galesburg in Knox County, where high rates of childhood lead poisoning prompted more rigorous EPA scrutiny in 2015.

Galesburg is on track to replace all of the city’s lead service lines by the end of the year, said Wayne Carl, the city’s works director.

“Most people in our community know we had concerns about lead in drinking water,” Carl said. “Replacing the service lines became a smoother process over time.”

A major reason lead service lines remain in other cities is most water utilities aren’t required to replace them under the federal Lead and Copper Rule, a 1991 regulation that underestimates the hazards and, in several ways, keeps them hidden from the public.

Researchers have found that lead levels in tap water can vary widely between homes and during different times of day, depending on water usage, the length of individual service lines and other factors that can limit the effectiveness of corrosion-inhibiting chemicals added to the water supply.

Yet all of the tests analyzed by the Tribune were collected using EPA protocols that require sampling of just the first liter of water drawn after faucets have been turned off overnight. More extensive sampling in Chicago, Flint and other cities showed the highest levels of lead often flowed out of taps after water had been running for several minutes.

Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech researcher who led a team that flagged lead problems in Cicero, Flint and the District of Columbia, compares the unpredictable spikes to Russian roulette, the lethal game of chance.

Changes in water chemistry also can affect lead levels. High levels of the toxic metal began leaching out of service lines in Flint and household plumbing in University Park after local utilities switched water supplies and tweaked treatment methods.

Utilities are considered to be in compliance with the federal rule as long as lead levels are lower than 15 ppb in 90% of the samples collected during a particular sampling period. If 10 homes are tested and just one has exponentially higher levels of lead flowing out of the tap, the utility still meets federal requirements and isn’t required to inform the public about potential risks.

Flint met the 15 ppb “action level” in regulatory sampling even as other testing found high levels of lead in tap water across the city.

Though the 15 ppb threshold often is described as a safety limit for individual homes, it actually is an arbitrary level the EPA set years ago to help determine if a utility’s corrosion controls are working. The only safe level is zero.

Another drawback is the federally mandated sampling is limited.

Despite having hundreds of thousands of lead service lines, Chicago is one of several big U.S. cities that are only required to test 50 homes every three years.

Most of the Chicago homes where regulatory sampling is conducted are owned by people who work for or retired from the water department, the Tribune reported in 2016. None are in neighborhoods with higher than average rates of childhood lead poisoning.

As a result, Chicago hasn’t violated the Lead and Copper Rule since the early 1990s. But a 2018 Tribune analysis of free testing kits distributed throughout the city revealed that lead had been detected in more than two-thirds of the homes tested. About a third of those homes had more lead in tap water than would be allowed in bottled water.

Even people within the EPA know the agency’s tap water regulations are woefully inadequate.

“Consumers do not get timely, or often any information to protect themselves from elevated levels of lead in drinking water,” Robert Kaplan, the EPA’s former acting regional administrator in Chicago, wrote in a 2017 memo to the agency’s top water official. “Public needs to know when water is acceptable to drink based on the level of lead, or if a water filter or bottled water should be used.”

The Trump administration’s overhaul would have required homeowners to be promptly informed if high levels of lead were detected during compliance sampling. But the revised regulations would have allowed lead service lines to remain underground for years or even decades.

Del Toral, the retired EPA scientist, helped draft Kaplan’s memo. He advises the Biden administration to keep its own version of the regulations simple.

“Tell people if they have a lead service line so they’re aware of the dangers and can start filtering their water,” del Toral said. “Provide filters to low-income folks. And damn it, just get the pipes out.”

New polyethylene tubing connects to a home's plumbing in Galesburg, Ill., on March 4, 2021. - Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Kyle McCradic, a laborer with J.C. Dillon Inc., gets ready to replace a lead service line with new polyethylene tubing, which he is holding, in Galesburg, Ill., on March 4, 2021. - Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Tom Gorham, left, feeds new polyethylene tubing through the opening where the lead service line was in a home in Galesburg, Ill.. - Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune/TNS

An old lead service line is removed from a home in Galesburg, Ill Pipes known as service lines connect homes to municipal water supplies. - Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Biden-Buttigieg put the brakes on 

'bomb trains'

Sarah Okeson,

 DCReport @ RawStory
March 20, 2021

President Joe Biden, known as "Amtrak Joe" for his train trips to Washington, D.C., from Delaware as a senator, could reverse the Team Trump approval of "bomb trains" carrying carrying liquefied natural gas.

The Trump rule financially benefits an energy company tied to a hedge fund that loaned millions to the Trump Organization and the Kushner Companies. New York prosecutors are examining those financial ties to Trump.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said during his confirmation hearing that he planned to take a "hard look" at the rule.

Liquefied natural gas is even more volatile than Bakken crude oil carried on trains like the one that derailed and caught fire on July 6, 2013, in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, killing 47 people. Most of the victims had to be identified with DNA samples and dental records. The bodies of five of the people were never recovered.

In April 2019, Trump called for federal rules to be rewritten so trains could carry liquefied natural gas. Drue Pearce, the political appointee who was the deputy administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, helped shepherd the regulation through the agency.

The Biden administration asked a federal judge in February to put lawsuits challenging the rule on hold to give Biden regulators time to review Trump's rules that affect climate disruption. Biden issued an executive order the day after he was sworn in to review rules that may worsen greenhouse gas emissions.

Earthjustice, one of the environmental organizations involved in the lawsuits, said the rule could bring LNG railroad cars through virtually all major U.S. cities and that a disaster could destroy an entire city.

Vapor clouds from liquified natural gas that ignite can burn as hot as 2,426 degrees. Liquefied natural gas is odorless because ethyl mercaptan, the foul-smelling compound added to natural gas for residential use freezes above the boiling point for liquefied natural gas.

On Oct. 20, 1944, liquefied natural gas leaked from a storage tank at East Ohio Gas Co. in Cleveland and got into the sewer lines, causing explosions over a square mile. The explosions and fires spread through 20 blocks, killing 130 people and destroying 79 homes and two factories in a neighborhood of Slovenian immigrants.

The Trump regulation financially benefits New Fortress Energy, a publicly traded company founded by billionaire Wes Edens. Fortress Investment Group, a New York City hedge fund co-founded by Edens, was part of a deal to loan the Trump organization $130 million to help build the Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago in 2005.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. has subpoenaed documents from Fortress about the deal.

Trump couldn't pay the loan which ultimately grew to about $150 million, according to documents filed in the New York Supreme Court by New York Attorney General Letitia James. She is investigating possible fraud by the Trump Organization.

James said that Fortress forgave more than $100 million of the loan, money that may have been taxable.

Fortress also loaned $57 million in October 2017 to a Jersey City, N.J., real estate project owned by Kushner Companies. Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, transferred his stake in the project to a family trust.

SoftBank Group, a Japanese firm, bought Fortress Investment Group in 2017.

PHOTO'S ARE OF LAC MEGANTIC QUEBEC TRAIN EXPLOSION

Atlanta Suspect’s Fixation on Sex Is Familiar Thorn for Evangelicals

The man accused of killing eight people, including six women of Asian descent, blamed “sexual addiction,” a disputed term used in parts of evangelical culture.


Combating improper sexual desire is an enduring theme in contemporary conservative evangelicalism. Some men partner in “accountability groups” and install software that monitors their use of pornography.Credit...Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York Times


By Ruth Graham
March 20, 2021

When Brad Onishi heard that the man accused of a rampage at three Atlanta-area spas told detectives that he had carried out the attacks as a way to eliminate his own temptations, the claim sounded painfully familiar.

Dr. Onishi, who grew up in a strict evangelical community in Southern California that emphasized sexual purity, had spent his teenage years tearing out any advertisements in surfing magazines that featured women in bikinis. He had traded his online passwords with friends to hold himself accountable. “We had a militant vigilance: Don’t let anything in the house that will tempt you sexually,” Dr. Onishi, now an associate professor of religious studies at Skidmore College, recalled.

The evangelical culture he was raised in, he said, “teaches women to hate their bodies, as the source of temptation, and it teaches men to hate their minds, which lead them into lust and sexual immorality.”

Robert Aaron Long, the suspect in the massacres that left eight people dead, told the police this week that he had a “sexual addiction,” and he had been a customer at two of the spas that he targeted. He was so intent on avoiding pornography that he blocked several websites on his computer and had sought help at a Christian rehab clinic. A former roommate said that Mr. Long agonized over the possibility of “falling out of God’s grace.”


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When Mr. Long, 21, was arrested on Tuesday on his way to Florida, the police said, he told officers he had planned to carry out another attack on a business connected to the pornography industry.

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Many people saw clear signs of misogyny and racism in the attacks, in which six of the victims were women of Asian descent.

But Mr. Long’s characterization of his motivations was also very recognizable to observers of evangelicalism and some evangelicals themselves. He seemed to have had a fixation on sexual temptation, one that can lead to despair among people who believe they are failing to follow the ideal of refraining from sex and even lust outside heterosexual marriage.

Combating pornography and improper sexual desire is an enduring theme within contemporary conservative evangelicalism. In churches, men partner in “accountability groups” to hold each other responsible for avoiding sexual temptation and other moral dangers. Others use “accountability software” like Covenant Eyes, which monitors screen activity and sends reports about pornography usage to a designated “ally.” Countless books promise spiritual and practical strategies for breaking free of the habit.

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Mourners visited Gold Spa, where a gunman killed three Korean women.

Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times


Historically, some evangelical leaders have also drawn a direct line between pornography and violence. James Dobson, the influential founder of Focus on the Family, recorded a video interview with Ted Bundy the day before the serial killer’s execution in 1989. Mr. Bundy’s message was that an “addiction” to pornography fueled his crimes.


“What a tragedy!” Mr. Dobson wrote later, referring to Mr. Bundy’s violence. “There is a possibility, at least, that it would not have occurred if that 13-year-old boy had never stumbled onto pornographic magazines in a garbage dump.”

In recent decades, many conservative evangelical leaders and their churches have begun to speak more frankly about sex. “It’s very openly talked about that God created sexuality, it’s something not to be ashamed of, and that God made it for his purposes,” said Anson McMahon, a pastor in Buford, Ga., who was a guest speaker at several summer trips for young people in the early 2000s at the Baptist church later attended by Mr. Long.

But if conversations around sexual issues have become more frank, the message that sex is reserved for straight married couples has remained unchanged.

Many Christians trace their condemnation of pornography back to Jesus. “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” he is quoted saying in the Gospel of Matthew.

For Protestants in particular, whose faith prioritizes correct internal beliefs and spiritual attitudes, that passage has contributed to a worldview in which inappropriate sexual thoughts are just as sinful as wrong actions.

The problem with pornography, in this view, is how it affects the person’s mind and heart.

“Masturbation in and of itself, the act is a biological act,” said Heath Lambert, the lead pastor of First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Fla., and author of a book for evangelical men struggling with pornography use. “What’s wrong is lust. What’s wrong is what happens in my heart.”


The attacks at the spas violated all church teachings, Dr. Lambert said, and he thought the obvious root of the violence was the pornography that the accused gunman “was using and trying to get away from.”

White evangelicals do not use pornography more than other demographics, said Samuel Perry, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma who has researched the role of pornography in the lives of conservative Protestants. In fact, white evangelicals who regularly attend church look at pornography less than the general population.

But they report significantly more anguish around the practice. Almost 30 percent of white evangelicals say they feel depressed after using pornography, compared with 8.6 percent of white liberal Protestants and 19 percent of white Catholics, according to a survey Dr. Perry co-conducted in February as part of the Public Discourse and Ethics Survey. White evangelicals are also significantly more likely to report that they are “addicted” to pornography.

Dr. Perry described a phenomenon in some parts of evangelical culture that he called “sexual exceptionalism,” in which sexual sins are implied to be more serious than other categories.

“So many men boil down how they’re doing spiritually to how often they have looked at porn recently,” Dr. Perry said, reflecting on his research in evangelical settings. “Not whether they’d grown in their love toward others, given generously of their time, or spent time connecting with God, but if they masturbated.”



The shooting suspect was an active member of Crabapple

 First Baptist Church in Milton, Ga., which condemned his 

“stated reasons for carrying out this wicked plan.”

Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times


For some with experience in evangelical youth culture, Mr. Long’s fixation on sexual temptation was a reminder of a damaging approach to teaching young people how to address sexuality.

“It presents a very demeaning view of manhood,” said Rachael Denhollander, an evangelical advocate for sexual abuse victims. “Every time you teach a woman in the presence of a young man that it’s her responsibility to keep a man from lusting and that she has the power to keep him from sexual perversion by what she wears and what she does, what he hears is that it’s her fault.”

Jeff Chu, a writer in Michigan, attended an evangelical junior high and high school that, like many similar schools, enforced strict rules for the lengths of girls’ skirts with the goal of encouraging modesty. “It was so rarely about the men controlling their own desires, and so often about women not being temptresses,” Mr. Chu recalled. “So many of us who haven’t fit within the norms of that culture, whether it’s women or queer people, we’re always seen as the problem.”

A Rise in Attacks Against Asian-Americans

Eight people, including six women of Asian descent, were killed in the Atlanta massage parlor shootings. The suspect’s motives are under investigation, but Asian communities across the United States are on alert because of a surge in attacks against Asian-Americans over the past year.

A torrent of hate and violence against Asian-Americans around the U.S. began last spring, in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Community leaders say the bigotry was spurred by the rhetoric of former President Trump, who referred to the coronavirus as the “China virus.”

In New York, a wave of xenophobia and violence has been compounded by the economic fallout of the pandemic, which has dealt a severe blow to New York’s Asian-American communities. Many community leaders say racist assaults are being overlooked by the authorities.

In January, an 84-year-old man from Thailand was violently slammed to the ground in San Francisco, resulting in his death at a hospital two days later. The attack, captured on video, has become a rallying cry.

And while the police said that Mr. Long claimed he was not racially motivated, some saw a connection between strict sexual beliefs and violence against Asian women in particular.

“Purity culture teaches young men to view young women who do not try to maintain modesty as sinister forces,” Dr. Onishi said. “It’s hard not to think about the fact that Asian women have been sexualized and set up to be viewed through the lens of an exotic other who is sexually desirable.”

Despite evangelicalism’s preoccupations with individual sexual morality, its leaders’ failures are so numerous as to have become cliché. In the most recent high-profile example, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries announced last month that its eponymous founder had a pattern of groping and exposing himself to massage therapists, among other sexual misconduct. Mr. Zacharias, who died in 2020, owned two day spas in the Atlanta area.

Mr. Long sought treatment for what he described to the police as a “sex addiction” at HopeQuest, an evangelical treatment center in Acworth, Ga., the city where one of the attacks took place. The center advertises its treatment of “sex addiction” and “pornography addiction” in addition to drugs, alcohol and gambling. The center lists indications for sex addiction including “‘crossing lines’ of personal beliefs or values in his/her behaviors, which results in extreme emotional distress and feelings of guilt and shame.”

The language of addiction is used often in evangelical circles to describe someone who uses pornography or engages in other sexual behaviors that violate their own values, but does not necessarily rise to the level of clinical addiction, Dr. Perry said.

“Sex addiction” is not an established psychiatric diagnosis, and there is a debate in the mental health community about how to define and treat compulsive sexual behavior.

“There’s no evidence-based treatment for sex addiction,” said Joshua Grubbs, an assistant professor of psychology at Bowling Green State University and a clinical psychologist. Evangelical sex addiction treatment tends to emphasize total abstinence from any sexual behavior outside heterosexual marriage. “They don’t take into account that humans are creatures with a drive for sex,” Dr. Grubbs said.

Mr. Long and his family were active members at Crabapple First Baptist Church in Milton, Ga., which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. In the church’s youth group for high school students, Mr. Long was “one of those core young men involved in everything we did,” said Brett Cottrell, a former youth and missions pastor at the church.

In November, an associate pastor at the church, Luke Folsom, preached a sermon on the “battle” against sin. He quoted a verse from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus tells his followers that it may be worth gouging out an eye if it causes them to sin.

He continued, addressing the use of pornography directly. “Cut it out by getting rid of your smartphone, getting rid of internet connection, anything and everything that would allow you to do it,” he said. “Your soul is at stake.”

Lust, he added, is “a heart problem, not just an eye problem.”

The church, which declined a request for an interview with its leaders, issued a statement on Friday that condemned the violence at the Atlanta-area spas, as well as the suspect’s “stated reasons for carrying out this wicked plan.”

The church also emphasized that the gunman alone was to blame for his actions. “The women that he solicited for sexual acts are not responsible for his perverse sexual desires nor do they bear any blame in these murders,” the church stated. “These actions are the result of a sinful heart and depraved mind.”





Ruth Graham is a national correspondent covering religion, faith and values. She previously reported on religion for Slate. @publicroad
A version of this article appears in print on March 21, 2021, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Shame of Lust Is Cross Known To Evangelicals.