Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 26, 1992 TAG: 9202260340
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LARRY A. NIELSEN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
OF MAN, MANURE AND NATURE IN THE ROANOKE RIVER
A TRAGIC series of events unraveled this past September when Walter Winkle, a Montgomery County dairy farmer, accidently emptied his liquid-manure tank into a branch of the Roanoke River. The spill killed tens of thousands of fish along 15 miles of stream.The fish kill itself is a tragedy, but it pales in significance to the larger story - one as worthy of our attention as any by Shakespeare. In his classical tragedies, Shakespeare exposed a main character whose fatal flaw drove events inevitably to a disastrous end. This tale fits his formula precisely, and it even adds a bit of Agatha Christie for mystery buffs: To understand the tragedy, we must first discover who the main character is.
It could be Winkle, whose hand opened the pipe that loosed the evil juices. By his own description, Winkle is a simple dairy farmer, trying to earn an honest living and unaware that he was doing wrong. The intensity and technological capabilities of modern life, however, equipped him with such powerful tools that his individual decisions became a societal problem. But Winkle is not the main character in this drama.
The fatal figure could be the State Water Control Board. That agency is charged with protecting the chastity of our waters against all forms of evil. But a little chastity goes a long way, because people need to use water and to discharge wastes. So the board issues permits - like the one for Winkle's manure-storage tank.
If ever an agency was born with a fatal flaw, this is it. Each time the agency denies or restricts a permit, someone is sure to raise the cry of regulatory excess and governmental taking of private rights. Each time it approves a permit, the agency raises the likelihood of an accident - an accident for which it will be held responsible. Because water flows everywhere, touching everything and everyone, this agency is the ultimate holder of society's environmental IOUs. But the State Water Control Board isn't the main character either.
Who's left?
To paraphrase Pogo, "We have met the tragic figure, and it is us." As the collective citizenry of our region, state and nation, we are responsible for both creating and solving our environmental problems. Our tragic flaw is that while we understand this in theory, we can't quite get it right in practice. Our flaw lets us stand tall and united in condemnation of distant environmental insults - the Exxon Valdez oil spill or Amazonian rain-forest destruction - but makes us stumble in our own backyards.
In this particular case, we don't know what to do. A significant financial penalty is pending against Winkle, but the State Water Control Board is delaying action - for good political reason. We were all upset when the fish kill occurred, especially because it involved endangered species. If a major corporation or another government agency had been to blame, we'd be eager for a harsh penalty. But the fine might cause Winkle to lose his farm - and what is the value of one man's livelihood compared to the value of those dead fish?
If the accident had killed even one human, the legal system would have moved swiftly to assign guilt and levy punishment. But only fish died this time. So we would rationalize that Winkle shouldn't be singled out, because he didn't know any better and because the agency should have checked up on him more often. I'm confident that a public-opinion survey would strongly favor waiving the penalty.
This is familiar contemporary reasoning - and it paraphrases our fatal flaw. We continue to believe that environmental problems are caused by other people, not by us, and that solving them shouldn't be inconvenient or costly to us as individuals or local communities.
The reality, though, is that no individual actions are environmentally neutral anymore. Any little decision - to not watch the manure tank, to drive a chemical tanker a bit too fast on a wet road, to toss a lighted cigarette out a car window - can explode into a large-scale ecological problem. And there isn't anyone to repair the damage except us.
Shakespeare would bring down the curtain here, I suspect, with the players declaring their remorse and innocence, and the environment bracing for the next inevitable insult. But we have the opportunity to rewrite the ending - to erase our fatal flaw. Just as we have developed standards for the ethical treatment of individuals and their cultures, we can develop sound ecological standards for the ethical treatment of the Earth, our common home.
Many changes are needed, but the fundamental need is a commitment to environmental education. Accurate beliefs and responsible behaviors depend first on knowledge. If we don't know the script, we can't act the play; if we don't understand the complex and subtle relationships among people, land and water, we can't manage the Earth.
Environmental education isn't cheap, though, and it won't be effective unless we do it well. At every school level, students must learn about conservation of natural resources, about sustainability of the earth, and about the connections of our individual environmental actions to people in other places and at future times.
Adults need environmental education just as much as children. White-collar and blue-collar workers must know the effects of their vocations. Just as workers are required to attend classes about human safety and co-workers' rights, they should also learn about environmental safety and the ecological needs of the animals and plants around them. Householders must see how their personal decisions - how they shop, play, vote - link up with those of their neighbors to become major ecological forces. With the resources like Virginia Tech close at hand, environmental education can be on the agenda of every professional, civic and social organization in our communities.
Only if we make this investment will we come to realize that the whole world is in our hands. With education, Winkle would know that his storage tank determines life or death for a river. We all would know that yearly inspection of manure-storage tanks is just as important as yearly inspection of car tires, and we might just create a system to make it happen. We all would know that our backyards are as valuable, beautiful and fragile as distant forests, and we might just lend our hands and dollars to keep them green.
Without education, the manure will just keep spreading.
Larry Nielsen is professor and head of the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences at Virginia Tech.