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On Sunday April 21 at 2 p.m, actor Kaiulani Lee presented her one woman play about environmental writer Rachel Carson titled “A Sense of Wonder” at the Botelle School in Norfolk.
Lee has been performing “A Sense of Wonder” for the past twenty-six years at universities, high schools, the Smithsonian Institute, the Albert Schweitzer Conference at the United Nations, and at the Department of Interior’s 150th anniversary. It has been used as the focal point in conferences on conservation, education, journalism, and the environment.
Also a highly regarded stage, television, and film actress, Lee has appeared in The World According to Garp, Cujo, Before and After, A Bird of the Air, The Waltons, Law & Order and others. She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a play for Kennedy’s Children and received an Obie Award for Best Performance by an actress for Safe House.
“A Sense of Wonder” was introduced by Pastor Erick Olsen of the Church of Christ Congregational (UCC). Olsen spoke of the play’s importance as a featured event in The Norfolk Earth Forum and Norfolk’s Earth Day weekend, which celebrates Carson’s legacy. Additional programming included discussion of “Crossings” by Ben Goldfarb; a lecture on Carson’s continuing influence in the modern environmental movement, and a children’s pollinator program. Sponsorship was provided by Botelle School, Aton Forest, Great Mountain Forest, Norfolk Conservation Commission, Norfolk Land Trust and the Church of Christ Congregational (UCC).
Lee then took to the stage and explained to the audience how the play occurs in two acts, the first part set at Carson’s summer cottage on the coast of Maine and the second part from Carson’s home in Maryland. Lee “removed the third wall,” which refers to when a character addresses the medium in which they are situated, by describing the layout of Carson’s cottage.
Act one opens with Carson writing a letter to a friend and shows her reluctance to leave the coast of Maine. Sick with cancer, she worries this may be her last visit. But she also describes her joy at seeing son Roger play on the rocks by the ocean and reflects on her lifelong desire to be a writer and how her love of the natural world and science ultimately became her muse. Carson expresses how her deep love of nature inspired her activism to write about the US government’s use of the pesticide DDT and its devastation of the environment.
In act two, Carson is visibly weakened by cancer and arthritis, but urgently brings her message to Congress and the American people. She recounts the backlash she received from the petro-chemical industry, efforts to discredit and label her as “alarmist” but is steadfast in her beliefs which are founded in her love of nature.
After finishing her performance, Lee invited the audience to ask questions. She provided additional historical context, namely how the success of Silent Spring inspired President John F. Kennedy to order the Science Advisory Committee to examine the issues raised in the book, which vindicated both the book and Carson. As a result, DDT came under much closer government supervision and was eventually banned.
Carson died from breast cancer in 1964, but shortly before her death remarked, “Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself. We are challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.”
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Telecom Reg’s Best Kept On the Books
When Connecticut land-use commissions update their regulations, it seems like a no-brainer to jettison old telecommunications regulations adopted decades ago during a short-lived period when municipalities had authority to regulate second generation (2G) transmissions prior to the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) being ordered by a state court in 2000 to regulate all cell tower infrastructure as “functionally equivalent” services.
It is far better to update those regs instead, especially for macro-towers given new technologies like small cells. Even though only ‘advisory’ to the CSC, the preferences of towns by law must be taken into consideration in CSC decision making. Detailed telecom regs – not just a general wish list -- are evidence that a town has put considerable thought into where they prefer such infrastructure be sited without prohibiting service that many – though not all – citizens want and that first responders rely on for public safety.
Such regs come in handy when egregious tower sites are proposed in sensitive areas, typically on private land. The regs are a town’s first line of defense, especially when cross referenced to plans of conservation and development, P&Z regulations, and wetlands setbacks. They identify how/where the town plans to intersect with the CSC process. They are also a roadmap for service providers regarding preferred sites and sometimes less neighborhood contention. In fact, to have no telecom regs can weaken a town’s rights to protect environmental, scenic, and historic assets, and serve up whole neighborhoods to unnecessary overlapping coverage and corporate overreach. Such regs are unique to every town and should not follow anyone else’s boiler plate, especially industry’s.
Connecticut is the only state that has a centralized siting entity for cell towers. The good news is that applicants must prove need for new tower sites in an evidentiary proceeding and any decisions have the weight of the state behind them. The bad news is that the CSC used to be far less industry-friendly and rote in their reviews, which now resemble a check list. There is an operative assumption at CSC that if an applicant wants a tower, they must need it, otherwise why spend significant money to run the approval gauntlet? This reflects a subtle shift over the years at CSC from sincere willingness to protect the environment toward minimal tweaking of bad applications with minor changes. The bottom line is that towns really cannot rely on the CSC to do all the work for them.
What CSC issues telecom providers is a “certificate of environmental compatibility” after an evidentiary proceeding (not unlike a court case) with intervenors, parties, expert witnesses, and the service provider’s technical pro’s sworn in and subject to cross examination. Service providers get to do the same with any opposition from intervenor/party participants – like towns and citizens -- and their experts. It’s an impressive process whose ultimate goal is the fine balancing between allowing adequate/reliable public services and protecting state ecology with minimal damage to scenic, historic, and recreational values. They unfortunately often fall short of their mandate – like approving cell towers with diesel generators over town aquifers -- evidenced by CSC only rejecting about five cell towers in the past 15-20 years.
The CSC was founded in 1972 and clarified its mission in the 1980’s to prevent the state from being carved up willy-nilly by gas pipelines, high tension corridors, and broadcast towers. With the sudden proliferation of cell towers beginning in late 1990’s, it became the most sued agency in Connecticut by both an arrogant upstart industry if applications were denied and by towns/citizens when bad sites were forced on them. CSC gradually formed a defensive posture that drives their decisions toward industry with deeper pockets and attorneys on retainer.
For citizens, nothing can wreck one’s day like the CSC. It behooves towns to protect what little toolkit they have, and understand the legal parameters of the CSC’s playing field. The CSC is not a “normal” government agency where municipal/citizen redress is based on logic and local support. Their process is largely immune to everything but specific kinds of evidence – like town regs with setbacks/fall zones, radio frequency transmission signal strengths, sensitive areas identified, and detailed wildlife inventory, among others.
There is a current cell tower fight involving two intervening towns -- Washington and Warren; both with good cell tower regs – over a tower site within 1200’ of a Montessori School, near Steep Rock’s nature preserves with comprehensive geology/wildlife databases that include endangered, threatened and special concern flora and fauna, on established federal/state migratory bird flyways, within throwing distance to a historic site capable of being listed on the Underground Railroad, and with an access road on a blind curve entering a state highway that will permanently damage wetlands, vernal pools, and core forests. There are well credentialed environmental experts, including Dr. Michael Klemens, former chair of Salisbury’s P&Z, as well as the former director of migratory bird management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and an RF engineer testifying to alternative approaches, plus three attorneys representing intervenors. It is the most professional challenge I have seen at CSC since Falls Village successfully mounted one that protected Robbins Swamps several years ago.
The hearing is ongoing, with uncertain results. To see what it takes today to stop an inappropriate tower siting, see Docket #543 under “Pending Matters” at https://portal.ct.gov/csc before removing local cell tower regs – the lowest hanging fruit that any town can possess in case it’s needed.
B, Blake Levitt is the Communications Director at The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council. She writes about how technology affects biology.