Passion for project

Elsa Johnson, a Navajo woman who lives in Scottsdale, is passionate about bringing solar power to the rural Navajo Reservation with her Plateau Solar Project.

Her non-profit, Iina Solutions, launched the project to take advantage of the money available from utilities and the federal government to help Navajo residents power their homes.

Johnson has spent countless hours bouncing along the rugged back roads of the reservation in search of people she could help.is the 'solar panel revolution' upon us?

She is partially driven by the irony that the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe are surrounded by coal-fired power plants that send their electricity to Phoenix, Tucson and other big cities but the people living on the reservations get little benefit beyond jobs at the coal mine and power plants.

"The Navajo and Hopi tribes supply all of the Southwest with cheap electricity, and yet my folks up here do not have electricity," she said. "That really eats at me. I am always amazed when a catastrophe happens elsewhere and everyone goes to that place and donates and everything. My heart goes out to those people because I know how hard that is. But you see right out here in our own backyard,We specialize in providing third party merchant account. a lot of these people will never have infrastructure."

To help the Curtis family, Iina Solutions tapped into money available from Salt River Project through a settlement with the Grand Canyon Trust environmental group connected to the expansion at the Springerville Generating Station coal-fired power plant. SRP agreed to pay $5 million for projects that reduce pollution and benefit the communities near the power plant.When the stone sits in the kidney stone,

The Grand Canyon Trust gets to help decide where the money is spent, and its officials want the money to compensate the people of the reservation who live with air pollution and transmission lines but don't benefit from the power.

The trust awarded Iina Solutions money to put solar on the Curtis home, hoping it would serve as a demonstration project for more homes to use the same style of power building.

Iina Solutions hopes to bring solar to at least 100 of the Navajo families living without power.How is TMJ pain treated?

Many of the people who have applied for solar through Johnson's project have had solar installed by other contractors and the systems have failed after a year or two, she said.

"In some places, we saw that they wired them with an extension cord that runs across the floor or ceiling," Johnson said. "Sometimes, they simply store the batteries in a box outside," where they fail because of the extreme cold and heat,We also offer customized chicken coop. she added.

What's Making These BC Miners Sick?

Graham Gardner says that in 44 years he has seldom missed a day of work due to illness, but at a recent job on the Endako Mines expansion near Fraser Lake he got ill several times,Customized imprinted and promotional usb flash drives. the last time severely. All his co-workers were sick also and one died unexpectedly in January, leaving colleagues wondering whether it was conditions at the work camp that led to his death.

That the camp is on First Nations land has complicated getting the problem investigated, and so has his union's reluctance to raise concerns, said Gardner.

"I've never, ever in my life missed work because of being sick," said the 63-year-old welder based in Kamloops. He'd had the occasional camp flu working in Fort McMurray, but never anything like he experienced on the Endako project, he said.

Workers are assigned to the project, which will expand processing at the molybdenum mine, on a rotation where they go into the camp just west of Fraser Lake for 21 days at a time, with seven days off in between.

By the end of his first stay at the camp, he had flu-like symptoms that made him weak and tired, Gardner said. It took him his whole week off to get back to normal. "I couldn't go downtown, I couldn't do nothing," he said.

During his second stay, he didn't get as sick, but had what seemed to be a cold, he said. But on his third stay at the camp, which ended in early May, he got so sick that paramedics were called and he left the job early in an ambulance.

"Scared the hell out of me," he said, recounting a night where he had so much trouble breathing that he was scared to go to sleep.

His doctor told him he was showing signs of heart failure, he said, but test results that came back on June 9 showed his heart was fine. With drugs and rest he got better, he said, adding that his doctor's still trying to figure out what caused the illness. "It feels wonderful to breathe normal again."

Coughing up blood, missed work

Illness at the camp was rampant, with many having similar symptoms, Gardner said. "All this time everyone's getting sick," he said, noting many of the guys were coughing up blood and missing lots of days of work.

Gardner and others working on the project are members of Ironworkers Local 97, out of Vancouver. At a meeting with union officials in the camp kitchen, a millwright asked how many of the 150 or so members in attendance had been sick during their stay at the camp, said Gardner.

Everyone put up their hand, he said.

When the question was how many had been sick more than once, all the hands stayed up. "You're looking at the whole camp," Gardner said. The superintendant has been sick at least twice, he added. "It hasn't left anybody out."

Around 400 people live at the camp at any given time.

An unexpected death

"There's something definitely going on there," said another person who got sick during each of three stays at the camp but asked not to be publicly identified. His symptoms included a dry throat, a thick-feeling head and frequent urination, he said.

"There's definitely something wrong with that camp. Everyone knows about it, but nobody's doing anything about it," he said.

He and Gardner both mentioned Lonnie Popoff, who died in January after a stay at the camp.Use bluray burner to burn video to BD DVD on blu ray burner disc. There's a memorial for him on the Ironworkers website that notes, "Lonnie has many freinds who will miss listening to him talk like only he did."

An obituary on the Grand Forks Gazette's website said the 58-year-old "passed away peacefully with his family by his side at the Trail Regional Hospital."

Word among ironworkers was that Popoff got pneumonia, and for some reason was too unhealthy to get better. But Gardner said he remembers working with Popoff two years ago and didn't think he seemed in any way unwell or unfit. He wonders, he said, whether conditions at the camp made Popoff sick

Despite workers raising concerns about the camp, nothing seems to be happening, said Gardner. "The company itself wasn't doing anything about it," he said. "The union doesn't seem to want to do nothing."

Unions have been shut out of mine work in the north for the last 15 years, he added. Now that they're back in with this project, they don't want to be seen as troublesome, he said.Free DIY Wholesale pet supplies Resource! "They want to get the work and they don't care what happens."

Outside provincial jurisdiction

There's some $28 billion worth of work on mines expected in northern B.C. over the next decade, and unions want to be a part of that, a couple sources said.

The Endako operation mines molybdenum oxide, and its production is expected to rise from 10 million pounds to 16 million pounds annually.

Reached by phone, Ironworkers Local 97 business manager James Leland said he would not comment on the situation at the Endako expansion camp.This page list rubber hose products with details & specifications.

A call Friday to the Vancouver office of Lockerbie and Hole Contracting Ltd., the company doing the work,This is interesting cube puzzle and logical game. was automatically forwarded to a Toronto area office where the person who answered the phone said everyone in the office who could answer questions had stopped work at 9:15 to start the weekend early. Try back Monday morning, she said.

Nor was a call to Hatch, the company managing the Endako expansion project, returned by posting time.

Is Astroturf Eco After All?

Who would have thought that artificial turf would be good for the environment? I know I have always thought of it as a blight, a replacement for natural grass that didn't make environmental sense. Turns out I was short-sighted in my judgement of turf. It saves natural resources and provides another use for a potentially caustic waste product.

According to the Synthetic Turf Council, replacing natural grass fields with artificial turf can save substantial amounts of water, three billion gallons in North America. Also, the turf doesn't require fertilizers or pesticides to keep it looking green, saving over a billion pounds in chemicals. Mowing is not required, saving energy and reducing smog emissions. This lack of maintenance is one reason it is the perfect surface for indoor arenas.

Artificial turf is made of recycled tires, called crumb rubber, keeping them from inhabiting landfills or being burned. According to Liberty Tire Recycling, over 105 million used tires have been recycled to make turf in North America. Liberty is the number one provider of recycled tires in the U.S.

The crumb rubber provides cushioning and springiness to the turf, protecting athletes from injury. It also helps the turf dry quickly, drain excess water, reduce mud and dust, and minimize freezing. Crumb rubber is also used to make welcome mats, antifatigue mats, portable speedbumps, and weightlifting plates.

"Synthetic turf is an excellent investment for the environment," said Jeffrey Kendall, CEO of Liberty Tire Recycling. "It provides an outlet for millions of scrap tires and helps to keep these tires out of the waste stream. We hope that the work and research the Synthetic Turf Council performs will help to increase awareness about the numerous benefits synthetic turf can provide for our environment and our communities."

While it may not single-handedly save the planet, artificial turf can lower the environmental impact of sports arenas and fields, as well as saving on maintenance expenses.

Reprinted with permission from Green Building Elements