Tulalip News

Federal TV project a $10M boondoggle

An ELKNet terminal. Photo from ELKNet Site Operator Training Manual.

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – When it comes to the annals of government waste, the Enhanced Learning and Knowledge Network ranks up there with the best – or worst – of them.

“Somebody dreamed this up and just went charging down the road and spending all this money,” said Sen. Tom Udall, D-NM. “In this case, a significant amount of money that could have helped very needy individuals has been wasted and that’s what’s very unfortunate here.”

Called “ELKNet” for short, the project was an educational television network that broadcast – albeit briefly – from studios in Albuquerque to about 200 Bureau of Indian Affairs-run schools across the country. The federal government spent an estimated $10 million on the project, operated it for just 21 months, then abruptly and unceremoniously pulled the plug about a year ago.

Today, the expensive equipment sits idle in Albuquerque and in remote school closets all across Indian Country in New Mexico and the United States. And, according to a Larry Barker investigation, students received zero benefit from those millions of taxpayer dollars.

“I hear about great ideas all day long, and they are all wonderful,” said Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-NM. “But not all of them are cost-effective and not all of them can be implemented.”

The basic goal of the project was to use digital technology to bring the latest in high-tech, interactive learning to some of the most remote schools in America. To that end, the Department of Interior – which spearheaded the program – spared no expense.

For example, the government bragged that its multi-million-dollar broadcast studio in Albuquerque “rivals any commercial TV network,” according to government materials promoting the project. That facility included robotic high-definition cameras, a control room, a production studio and editing suites.

The Department of Interior spent $2.4 million to install satellite receivers, 42-inch LCD monitors and DVD recorders at those 200 BIA schools. Programming was transmitted via a $650,000 satellite uplink, while the government spent another $500,000 a year on satellite transponder fees.

Finally, ELKNet’s payroll exceeded $1 million a year.

The network premiered in 2009, and featured programming like President Barack Obama’s back to school message in September of that year. In March 2010, ELKNet broadcast a program entitled “Why They Should Graduate,” while September 2010 featured a “Youth Listening Session.”

The network’s swan song was a discourse by professional golfer Notah Begay in April 2011 about healthy lifestyles.

Then, 21 months after it began transmitting, the Department of Interior pulled the plug on ELKNet. The announcement ending the program, made by email, said, “The government no longer has a need for the satellite … and will no longer have the funds for the system.”

And just like that, the government’s experiment in educational TV for Native Americans was over.

Morris Gaiter, distance learning coordinator for the network, said the project left him with the bitter taste of disappointment.

“I’m a taxpayer too,” he said. “That’s my money, too, that’s going, and I felt like it just wasn’t being utilized the way it should.”

According to News 13’s investigation, only a handful of students at the 47 BIA schools in New Mexico watched the ELKNet broadcasts. Some programs had no New Mexico participation.

“We’ve never had instructions on how to use the equipment,” said Dr. Tamarah Pfeiffer, superintendent of the Alamo Navajo School located north of Magdalena. “In three years, it’s just been equipment standing in a room.”

It was the same story at the BIA’s Wingate Elementary School outside Gallup.

“At Wingate, to be honest, there was no long distance education yet,” said Charlotte Begay, former principal. “We were just barely getting into that when it was shut down.”

The expensive ELKNet equipment at Borrego Pass School, another BIA institution, was used, said Rebecca Vesely, head of the school. However, it was used to help students keep up on current events by watching the news on CNN and other news channels.

News 13 attempted to find someone to take responsibility for the multi-million-dollar federal government boondoggle. And it was only after threatening to take the matter up with then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that the department trotted out BIA Director Mike Black for an interview.

At first, Black said ELKNet achieved its goal.

“My perspective would be, yes, the program was a success,” he said. “It was basically … it comes down to a budget and resource issue.”

However, when asked how spending $10 million on a program that achieved zero participation could be characterized a success, Black changed his tune and admitted he didn’t know about the participation rate, and was surprised by those facts, which his agency supplied to News 13.

“Not knowing the full facts and everything that’s there, yes it would surprise me,” Black said. “I didn’t know that, sir. Nobody’s made me aware of that, no.”

Today, ELKNet studios in Albuquerque is empty of people, though the pricey technology remains. At Tse’ll’Ahi Community School – also known as Standing Rock – near Crownpoint, the equipment is used to play DVDs. The Borrego Pass equipment is stored in a closet, while at Alamo, the LCD monitor acts as nothing more than an expensive message board.

Udall admitted that government isn’t supposed to work this way.

“Somebody got a great idea,” said Udall, who serves on the Senate’s Indian Affairs Committee. “They said, ‘Let’s take a couple million dollars and spend it on all this equipment and get everybody inter-linked.’ But then nobody wanted to come and look at it. That’s not a very good use of taxpayer money.”

Lujan Grisham, who serves on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said government agencies need to be more careful about spending taxpayer money on grandiose and unrealistic plans.

“The lesson to the Department of the Interior is they have to be better-prepared to manage these ideas,” she said.

Payment to American Indians inadequate

By Albert Bender, The Tennessean

At the most recent Native American conference of the Secretarial Commission on Indian Trust Administration and Reform, held in April in Nashville, among the many issues raised was that of the Cobell settlement of 100 years-plus of Indian trust assets.

This class-action settlement of the claims of tens of thousands of American Indians, many of whom are resident Tennesseans, is just another farce committed against the most economically disadvantaged people in the U.S.

This past December, $1,000 checks were sent to thousands of Native American accountholders for money of which they were defrauded for more than 100 years. This was a token payment to represent royalties — for oil, timber, grazing, etc. — that should have been paid by the Department of Interior since 1887. The settlement, forced on Indian plaintiffs, was for $3.4 billion.

Sound like a lot of money? But not when the true amount of loss, with interest, for a century and a quarter was $179 billion. The $1,000-per-person figure would not even buy a decent used car. This is what the U.S. government thinks of American Indians. This settlement was passed by Congress and signed by President Obama, because he thought it was fair. The settlement reeked of abominable villainy! The courts, the Congress and the president combined in this infamy.

But make no mistake: The verdict of history shall judge this “settlement” as a permanent blot on his presidential legacy and the U.S. as a whole. This $3.4 billion must also be seen in context with other issues. For example, in the Iraq war $12 billion was spent per month. In just one week, the U.S. government spent as much on the Iraq conflict as it did to settle an Indian lawsuit that it fought tooth and nail for 16 years. This is a grotesque injustice.

Some issues money can never address. Over that 122-year period, Native Americans lived, and continue to live, in a nightmare of hopelessness, deprivation and intergenerational trauma generated in part by abject poverty. Poverty stifles; abject poverty kills. Just think how the just payment of money due over this time span could have alleviated some of that misery. Think of how many countless lives — adults, children and the elderly — could have been altered and saved.

Currently, on many reservations the suicide rate among teenagers and young adults is the highest in the Western Hemisphere. This, again, is the result of generations of malevolent, intentional, genocidal poverty inflicted on Native Americans by an endless succession of U.S. administrations.

It will be to the everlasting ignominy of this government that there was no fair settlement reached, only more dishonor attached to a system covered with the gore of generations of victimized Native Americans.

This is the most scandalous forced settlement in American history. Never has so much been owed to so many, who have received so little.

Albert Bender, a Cherokee activist, historian and grant writer, lives in Antioch; albertbender07@yahoo.com.

How Stanwood landed a factory and 62 jobs

Kurt Batdorf / The Herald Business JournalProcess Solutions workers Bill Desmul (left) and Zach Barnes use a crane to lower a completed panel into an electrical service box at the company's Stanwood assembly plant. — Kurt Batdorf / The Herald Business Journal
Process Solutions workers Bill Desmul (left) and Zach Barnes use a crane to lower a completed panel into an electrical service box at the company’s Stanwood assembly plant.

By Kurt Batdorf, The Herald Business Journal

STANWOOD — When you think of electrical panel and control systems manufacturing, you probably wouldn’t put Stanwood very high on a list of likely contenders.

But the city is home to Washington’s largest such business, Process Solutions.

Why Stanwood? It doesn’t have a reputation for tech manufacturing as Arlington, Mukilteo and Bothell do. But it does have a mayor, city officials and local boosters who want attract and keep family-wage jobs.

When the Port of Bellingham lured away the building’s former occupant, Index Sensors & Controls, the city didn’t want to see it sit empty and wanted another occupant with an equally robust payroll.

Process Solutions designs and builds electrical control systems and the software that controls them for industries including food processing and packaging, biotech and pharmaceutical, water and wastewater, energy management, manufacturing and aerospace. It builds more than 2,000 control panels per year. North America accounts for 95 percent of the company’s business, Busby said. It did $13 million in sales in 2012 is on track do close to $15 million this year.

Process Solutions President Todd Busby said he was drawn to the Index Sensors building on the east end of town, across the parking lot from Stanwood Cinemas, because it was much more attractive than the three metal buildings his company occupied in Arlington.

Besides, Busby said, with a metal building, “there’s only so much you can do with it.”

However, he wasn’t sold yet on Stanwood. Busby liked Arlington and had been negotiating a ground lease with the city for a bigger facility. He said the deal fell apart after city officials wouldn’t accept liability for anything Busby uncovered during excavation and site preparation. That brought Busby back to the Index Sensors building.

Randy Heagle of Windermere Stanwood represented Busby on the building’s purchase.

The city’s responsiveness impressed Heagle and Busby.

Stanwood community development director Rebecca Lind said she crunched numbers with the city’s finance director and determined that the real-estate excise tax from the property sale would offset the cost of water and sewer, so the City Council agreed to a five-year utility waiver for Process Solutions.

The building’s vinyl floor tile presented another stumbling block for Busby. Lind said the city’s engineer and building official toured the building and wrote a report about how to correct the tile floor’s problems. Stanwood also waived fees for its review of tenant improvements and sign permits.

“That gave Todd the confidence to invest in the building,” Lind said.

“With the help of the city, we helped save the deal,” Heagle said.

Process Solutions closed on the sale in August 2011 and moved into the building April 15, 2012. Busby celebrated his first anniversary in Stanwood with a tour of the 28,000-square-foot engineering and manufacturing facility.

Busby led the city’s ad hoc economic development group — Heagle and a half-dozen local bankers and realtors — through the plant recently.

Process Solutions employs 62 people. About 40 engineers occupy cubicles in the front half of the building, but Busby noted that most of them spend a lot of time on the road with far-flung clients.

The manufacturing floor fills the back half of the building. The vinyl tiles that Busby so disliked are gone. He had the concrete slab ground smooth and polished, removing seven tons of material.

A crane helps workers place large, heavy electrical panels into service boxes instead of using a forklift like most of Busby’s smaller competitors do.

Each work station has overhead power and compressed air for tools and a rack Busby invented that holds 10 spools of wire. Workers can unroll just the wire they need, so copper waste fell from 7 percent to 1 percent, he said.

And then there are the batting cages. Busby, a Little League and soccer coach, said it’s a gift to his employees and their kids.

Busby wanted to have a building that appealed to prospective and current employees. There’s a spacious lounge where workers can make a cup of coffee and see what’s on the giant, flat-screen TV. Daylight filters into the building. Busby worked with designer Garrett Kuhlmann of H2K Design in Stanwood on the interior decor.

So far, Busby’s investment in employee comfort and aesthetics is paying off. He’s recruited eight new engineers since January and gained a $500,000 contract with a customer who saw the building after leaving a movie.

“We wanted to invest in our own building,” Busby said. “It reflects the quality of the work we do.”

April surge in snow has small impact: drought continues in much of the West

USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service

WASHINGTON, May 13, 2013 – May measurements confirm April forecasts: NRCS hydrologists predict reduced spring and summer water supply for much of the West.

April saw a surge in snow in many places but didn’t make up the shortfall during previous months.

“For much of the West, April was wetter than January, February and March combined,” said NRCS Meteorologist Jan Curtis. “But it was too little, too late.”

NRCS hydrologists use May streamflow forecasts to confirm and refine the April forecasts. Though recent snow made small improvements in some areas, most changes are insignificant.

“California, southern and eastern Oregon, Nevada, southern Utah, southern Colorado and especially New Mexico will experience major water shortages due to sustained drought conditions and low reservoir storage,” says NRCS Hydrologist Tom Perkins.

“I haven’t seen it this bad in New Mexico since I started forecasting for the Snow Survey Program in 1983,” he added.

As of May 1, USDA’s Secretary Tom Vilsack designated many counties in Western states as eligible for USDA drought assistance.

Water resource managers face difficult decisions because of this shortage. Western states should prepare for potentially increased vulnerability to forest and rangeland fires and mandatory water restrictions. In addition, wildlife that depends on surface water is going to suffer.

There are a few exceptions to the dry forecasts. The North Cascades and the headwaters of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers are near normal.

“For the rest of the West, there is no silver lining,” Perkins said. “I think it’s going to be a long, hot, dry summer.”

According to Curtis, much of the snowmelt won’t reach the streams.

“The soil in the southern half of the West is like a dry sponge that will absorb and hold water as it melts from the snowpacks. Only when the soil is sufficiently saturated will it allow water to flow to the streams,” he said.

NRCS’ National Water and Climate Center monitors soil moisture with its SNOw TELemetry (SNOTEL) and Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN) networks. These sensors gather soil data that helps NRCS better monitor drought development.

“Although NRCS’ streamflow forecasts do not predict drought, they provide valuable information about future water supply in states where snowmelt accounts for the majority of seasonal runoff,” said Perkins.

In addition to precipitation, streamflow in the West consists largely of accumulated mountain snow that melts and flows into streams as temperatures warm into spring and summer.

The May forecast is the fifth of six monthly forecasts. The forecast compares the current level of water content in snowpack in the 13 Western states with historical data to help the region’s farmers, ranchers, water managers, communities and other stakeholders make informed decisions about water use and future availability.

NRCS scientists analyze the snowfall, air temperature, soil moisture and other measurements taken from remote climate sites to develop the water supply forecasts.

“USDA streamflow forecasts play a vital role in the livelihood of many Americans,” said Jason Weller, NRCS acting chief. “With much of this region greatly affected by drought, our experts will continue to monitor snowpack data and ensure that NRCS is ready to help landowners plan and prepare for water supply conditions.”

Since 1935, NRCS has conducted snow surveys and issued regular water supply forecasts. NRCS installs, operates and maintains its extensive, automated SNOTEL system to collect snowpack and related climatic data in the Western United States and Alaska.

View May’s Snow Survey Water Supply Forecasts map or view information by state.

Other resources on drought include the U.S. Drought Monitor and U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook map, which forecast drought conditions through March 31. For information on USDA’s drought efforts, visit www.usda.gov/drought. And to learn more about how NRCS is helping private landowners deal with drought, visit the NRCS site.
USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service helps America’s farmers and ranchers conserve the Nation’s soil, water, air and other natural resources. All programs are voluntary and offer science-based solutions that benefit both the landowner and the environment.
Follow NRCS on Twitter. Check out other conservation-related stories on USDA Blog. Watch videos on NRCS’ YouTube channel.

USDA has made a concerted effort to deliver results for the American people, even as USDA implements sequestration – the across-the-board budget reductions mandated under terms of the Budget Control Act. USDA has already undertaken historic efforts since 2009 to save more than $828 million in taxpayer funds through targeted, common-sense budget reductions. These reductions have put USDA in a better position to carry out its mission, while implementing sequester budget reductions in a fair manner that causes as little disruption as possible.

Salish Sea Native American Culture Celebration

OLYMPIA – May 13, 2013 – The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission invites the public to attend the Eighth Annual Salish Sea Native American Culture Celebration with the Samish and Swinomish tribes.

The celebration runs from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 8, at the Bowman Bay picnic area on the Fidalgo Island side of Deception Pass State Park, 41020 State Route 20, Oak Harbor. The event celebrates the maritime heritage of the two participating Coast Salish tribes. This year’s event also commemorates the 100th birthday of the Washington state park system, which was created by the Legislature in 1913.

The June 8 event will feature canoe rides and native singers, drummers and storytellers. Artists from the two tribes will demonstrate traditional weaving, cedar work and woodcarving. A salmon and frybread lunch also will be available for purchase. The Discover Pass is not required to attend the event. In recognition of National Get Outdoors Day, Saturday, June 8 is a State Parks “free day,” when visitors to state parks are not required to display a Discover Pass.

Cultural event activities are presented by the Samish Indian Nation, the Samish Canoe Family, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and the Swinomish Canoe Family. Proceeds from food sales at the Salish Sea Native American Culture Celebration support the Samish and Swinomish canoe families’ participation in the annual intertribal canoe journey; each year, tribes and nations from the Pacific Northwest travel by canoe to different host communities along the Salish Sea. This year, the Quinault Tribe plays host to the intertribal canoe journey, which lands in Taholah on August 1. For more information about this year’s canoe journey, visit www.paddletoquinault.org.

The event is accessible to persons with disabilities. If special accommodations are required in order to attend the event, please call (360) 902-8626 or (360) 675-3767 or the Washington Telecommunications Relay Service at (800) 833-6388. Requests must be made in advance.

The Salish Sea Native American Culture Celebration is part of a broader series of events celebrating Washington’s diverse cultures and presented by the Folk and Traditional Arts in the Parks Program. The program is a partnership between the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, the Washington State Arts Commission and Northwest Heritage Resources with funding provided by National Endowment for the Arts and the Washington State Parks Foundation.

Deception Pass State Park is a 4,134-acre marine and camping park with 77,000 feet of saltwater of shoreline, and 33,900 feet of freshwater shoreline on three lakes. The park is best known for views of Deception Pass and Bowman Bay, old-growth forests, abundant wildlife and the historic Deception Pass Bridge.

Stay connected to your state parks by following Washington State Parks at www.facebook.com/WashingtonStateParks, www.twitter.com/WaStatePks_NEWS and www.youtube.com/WashingtonStateParks. Share your favorite state park adventure on the new State Parks’ blog site at www.AdventureAwaits.com.

4Culture + Red Bull Skateable Artwork Opportunity

Red Bull, in cooperation with the Seattle Department of Parks & Recreation is looking for an artist to work in collaboration with a world‐class team of experts to design public artwork that is skateable. This is not a skate park – it is first and foremost a work of art. But this is art that invites interaction and participation.

Red Bull is investing in the Seattle community by creating a truly unique public art experience that explores the creative nexus of public space, athletic skill and individual imagination. Red Bull and the Seattle Department of Parks & Recreation have selected a site for the Red Bull SkateSpace in Myrtle Edwards Park, just north of the Olympic Sculpture Park on an elevated knoll with spectacular views to Elliott Bay and the Olympic mountain range. Red Bull SkateSpace will blend art and skateboarding to create unique terrain where the innovation of skateboarders can truly flourish.

ORGANIZATION: 4Culture

DEADLINE TO APPLY: Monday, June 3, 2013

MORE INFO: Willow Fox, 206.205.8024

Budget: $76,000
Visit www.4culture.org/apply/index.aspx and follow the application specific links.

Maximize Your Harvest This Season Despite Limited Time, Space and Energy

by gardening expert Melinda Myers

Increase your garden’s productivity even when space, time and energy are limited. Just follow these six simple planting, maintenance and harvesting techniques for a more bountiful harvest.

Maximize your planting space with wide rows. Leave just enough room for plants to reach their maximum size. Make wide rows, 4 to 5 feet wide, so you can reach all plants for maintenance and harvest. Minimizing walkways means more planting space.

Try interplanting. Grow short season crops like lettuce and radishes between long season crops like cabbage, tomatoes and peppers. The short season crops will be ready to harvest when the long season crops are reaching mature size. You’ll double your harvest and grow more vegetables, not weeds between your longer season plants.

Grow more plants per row with succession planting. Start the season with cool season vegetables like lettuce and spinach. Once these are harvested and temperatures warm replace with beans and onions. Harvest these and plant a fall crop of radishes or lettuce.

When you use these intensive planting techniques, be sure to incorporate a low nitrogen slow release fertilizer, like Milorganite, at the start of the season. Then add a mid-season nutrient boost if needed. The slow release nitrogen won’t burn even during the hot dry weather of summer. Plus, it won’t interfere with flowering or fruiting.

Go vertical. Train vine crops up decorative or functional trellises and supports. You’ll not only save space, but you will also reduce disease problems and increase the harvest. Growing cucumbers and melons increase light penetration and air flow, reducing the risk of fungal diseases. Pole beans are much easier to harvest and produce an additional picking. Secure large fruited vegetables like melons to the trellis with a cloth sling.

Be sure to plant vegetables in containers if in-ground space is limited. A 5-gallon bucket or comparable size container is perfect for a tomato. Peppers and eggplants will thrive in a bit smaller pot. Grow vine crops in containers and allow them to crawl over the deck or patio instead of valuable gardening space. Mix flowers and herbs in with your vegetables. You’ll increase the beauty while adding additional fragrance to the pot.

Harvest often and at the proper time. Zucchini and other summer squash should be picked when 6 to 8 inches long or in the case of patty pan squash it reaches 3 inches in diameter. The flavor is better than those baseball bat size zucchini and you’ll have plenty to eat and share. Harvest your head of cabbage when firm and full size. Leave the bottom leaves and roots intact. Soon you will have 4 or 5 smaller heads to harvest and enjoy.

With a bit of planning and creativity you can find ways to increase the enjoyment and harvest in any size garden.

Gardening expert, TV/radio host, author & columnist Melinda Myers has more than 30 years of horticulture experience and has written over 20 gardening books, including Can’t Miss Small Space Gardening. She hosts the nationally syndicated Melinda’s Garden Moment TV and radio segments and is a columnist and contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine. Myers web site is www.melindamyers.com

Wayne Harold Craig

Wayne Harold Craig of Tulalip, WA passed away on May 5, 2013. He graduated from Marysville High School in 1967.
Wayne is survived by his partner of 30 years, Clarice Moses; brother, Terry Craig; sister, Sally Gibbons; daughter, Rachel; and numerous nieces and nephews.
He was preceded in death byhis parents, Clarence and Norah Craig; and brothers, Tom and Tim.
Funeral service will be held May 10, 2013 10:00 a.m. at Schaefer-Shipman Funeral Home 804 State Ave. Marysville, WA. 98270. Burial will follow at Mission Beach Cemetery.

Website funds UW Bothell researcher’s coal-train dust study

A UW-Bothell researcher turned to a crowd-sourcing website to fund his study of trains’ emissions and dust.

By Sharon Salyer, The Herald

BOTHELL — Ask just about any scientist. They have far more ideas for things they want to investigate than they can ever get the funding to explore.

That’s the conundrum that Dan Jaffe, a researcher at the University of Washington’s Bothell campus, found himself in last month.

Jaffe is a professor of chemistry and atmospheric sciences. He wanted to study just how much emissions and tiny particles called particulate matter are being produced by passenger and freight train exhaust as well as coal dust from trains in Western Washington.

Little currently is known about the environmental effects caused by the passing trains.

His interest was triggered by a proposal to build a $650 million terminal north of Bellingham to export coal, grain and other material to Asia.

The proposal eventually would create up to 450 jobs, backers say. The trade-off: It also would bring more trains through Western Washington — up to 18 each day through Snohomish County, opponents say.

Jaffe thought there was a fairly simple way to conduct his experiment: Install an air-quality monitor that could measure which particles were caused by diesel exhaust and which from the larger coal dust particles over a four- to six-week period this summer.

A web camera also would be installed to document which trains were passing as the emissions occurred.

With the help of some UW students, he figured the experiment could be conducted for a little more than $18,000.

Compared to multi-million dollar research projects, that’s chump change. Nevertheless, Jaffe was getting little more than a swing-and-a-miss trying to drum up financial interest in the project.

Government agencies weren’t too encouraging, he said. “I was getting a little bit discouraged. I was pretty close to giving up.”

That’s when someone suggested he take a look at an online site, microryza.com, where researchers make public pitches for donations to fund their projects. Musicians, artists and others have used similar “crowd-sourcing” websites, such as Kickstarter, to support their projects.

“I was kind of skeptical at first,” Jaffe said.

His pitch outlining the project, with a promise that donors would be credited in the research, was posted on April 29.

Much to his surprise, on Thursday evening, just 11 days after his project was posted, he was notified that the goal had been met, with 236 people pledging a total of $18,055.

Publicity over his project and the way he raised money to do it have generated a lot of interest, he said.

“I’ve had emails from people telling me how to do it better,” Jaffe said. Their suggestions included adding additional monitoring sites or doing an analysis of the chemistry of coal dust.

He said he’s also had some interest from an environmental agency in a coal-producing state.

With the pledge goal reached far earlier than the July 1 online deadline, Jaffe said on Friday that he’s moving up the start of his research.

Assisted by two or three students at the University of Washington’s Bothell campus, he said he hopes to begin collecting information in July.

Measurements may be taken at two different sites. By moving the equipment, information can be collected on whether there are more diesel particulates when trains are moving slowly or if there is any coal dust left behind when the trains are going fast, he said.

Results are expected nine months after the project begins.

“I’ll be pretty mum on releasing it much earlier than that,” Jaffe said. “When the data come in, we have to think about what it means. That’s how science is.

“We need the first shot at it to figure out what it means and to do it in the quiet of the labs.”

Although the fundraising goal has been reached, donors can still make contributions. If enough do, Jaffe said he’s considering adding an additional monitoring site near the Columbia River Gorge.

“There have been reports of coal dust there,” he said. “I think scientific measurements would be very useful.”

New campaign to help parents talk to younger children about the dangers of underage drinking

“Talk. They Hear You.” a new national public service announcement (PSA) campaign that empowers parents to talk to children as young as nine years old about the dangers of underage drinking was launched today by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The kickoff occurred in conjunction with SAMHSA’s 2013 National Prevention Week—an annual health observance dedicated to increasing awareness of, and action around, substance abuse and mental health issues.

SAMHSA’s latest report on underage drinking shows that more than a quarter of American youth engage in underage drinking. Although there has been progress in reducing the extent of underage drinking in recent years, particularly among those aged 17 and younger, the rates of underage drinking are still unacceptably high.

“Talk. They Hear You.” raises parents’ awareness about these issues and arms them with information they need to help them start a conversation about alcohol with their children before their children become teenagers.

“These young people are our future leaders—our future teachers, mayors, doctors, parents, and entertainers,” said SAMHSA Administrator Pamela S. Hyde. “As our youth and young adults face challenges, we as a community, need to effectively communicate with them in every way possible about the risks of underage drinking so that they have the necessary tools to make healthy and informed choices.

“Talk. They Hear You.” features a series of TV, radio, and print PSAs in English and Spanish launching today. The PSAs show parents “seizing the moment” to talk with their children about alcohol such as while preparing dinner or doing chores together. By modeling behaviors through these PSAs, parents can see the many “natural” opportunities for initiating the conversation about alcohol with their children.

The strength of “Talk. They Hear You.” is in its diverse network of campaign partners that will help implement the campaign in local communities across the country.

Visit www.underagedrinking.samhsa.gov for more tips and information.

For more information about SAMHSA visit: http://www.samhsa.gov/

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is the agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that leads public health efforts to advance the behavioral health of the nation. SAMHSA’s mission is to reduce the impact of substance abuse and mental illness on America’s communities.