Rhode Island Debate League
launches
2003-04 season
October 25, 2003-- Debate
squads from 7 schools converged on the Textron / Chamber
of Commerce Academy to begin the 2003-04 debate season
on Saturday. Dozens of new debaters took the plunge
into the ocean policy topic, debating such proposals
as increasing regulation of oil tankers, establishing
a nationwide network of "marine reserves,"
and cracking down on high-seas piracy in the Pacific.
Top speakers in the Novice
Division were newcomers Babatunde Oladokum (Central),
Caleb Jacobson (Woonsocket), and DJ Hall (MET). Top
speakers in the Varsity Division were Joyce Wise (PAIS),
Charles Grenier (Woonsocket), and Momin Malik (Classical).
Overall Sweepstakes trophies, acknowledging total team
performance, went to Woonsocket, PAIS, and the MET,
respectively.
For team results, check the
"Latest Tournament Results" below.
See you at PAIS on November
15th!!!
"You can call us the RIDL."
October 2, 2003--In July
of this year, the Rhode Island Debate League officially
changed its name to the Rhode Island Debate League to
reflect the participation and outstanding performance
of Woonsocket High School during the 2002-03 season.
Looking ahead, the Rhode Island Debate League seeks
to build capacity for after-school debate teams and
in-class debate in urban school districts throughout
the Ocean State. Keep an eye out for the effects of
the RIDL in your school!
Pollution, rain create
a toxic bathtub in Greenwich Bay, Rhode Island
"This fish kill
is symbolic. We've never seen anything
like it. We need to move now, quickly, on things we
know we can do. We need to communicate that the
clock is ticking."
NEIL SHEA and DANIEL
BARBARISI, staff writers, Providence Journal, August
24, 2003--
The trail of tiny bodies cut across Greenwich Bay like
a silver scar.
Up to a million menhaden, their bellies swelling in
the heat, floated on the surface, evidence of what may
be Rhode Island's largest fish kill ever. The kill came
during a summer of beach closures - already
the worst on record - and last week's sight of so many
dead fish clumped onshore and drifting in oily slicks
has prompted outrage, wonder and even fear.
Tomorrow, officials from the Department of Environmental
Management will meet with Governor Carcieri, who demanded
to know: why the fish died; what the kill says about
Greenwich Bay; and how such events can be prevented.
The answers that the DEM eventually gives the governor
will probably begin with the lush green lawns in Warwick
suburbs and may reach to coal-fired electricity plants
in the Midwest.
Greenwich Bay has been in trouble for years. There are
plenty of things Rhode Islanders can do to clean it
up. But there are no cheap solutions. And there's no
guarantee the fish kills or the beach closures will
end.
The fish kill brought a flood of investigators from
the DEM. The eco-detectives blamed the kill on heavy
rains that washed nutrients, such as lawn fertilizer,
dog feces and sewage from leaky septic tanks, into the
water. Algae and phytoplankton gorged on this burst
of food.
At first they produced plenty of oxygen. Then the food
ran out and the plants died. Oxygen was sucked away
as they decomposed; the fish suffocated as oxygen levels
crashed.
Adding to the problem was discharges from East Greenwich's
wastewater plant, plus the rain itself, which carries
chemicals belched into the sky by enormous coal-burning
electricity plants in the Midwest. Greenwich Bay became
a toxic bathtub. On Friday, oxygen levels throughout
Greenwich Bay still hovered near zero. "You can
clearly link what's going on in the bay with increased
development and pollution," Torgan said. "The
fish kill is a very galvanizing event. But the fish
kill itself is a symptom of a much greater problem."
GREENWICH BAY'S 5.5 square
miles are the richest shellfishing grounds in the state,
and, according to Rhode Island Shellfishermen's Association
President Michael McGiverney, one of the best spots
in the world for harvesting the state's staple shellfish,
the quahog.
Few knew how bad things were in Greenwich Bay until
a winter storm in 1992 filled it with pollution from
failed septic systems and storm drains.
The largest problem was Warwick itself: a city of 90,000,
largely unsewered, with a major interstate and airport.
Many of the shoreline homes had outdated septic systems,
or none at all, dumping sewage directly into the bay.
The city's storm drains were insufficient, and anytime
it rained, fertilizer and pesticides would be washed
directly into the bay.
The nearby sewage treatment plant in East Greenwich
deposits treated effluent into Greenwich Cove, an arm
of the bay. The bay's popularity as a recreational spot
also worked against it because many boaters dumped their
waste into the water, rather than depositing it, as
required, at pumping stations. Also, the shoreline beaches
and parks attracted wildlife, particularly waterfowl,
whose droppings added to the pollution.
Warwick set about solving
the biggest issue, the lack of sewers, first. In 1994,
voters passed a $130-million bond issue to sewer the
entire city over a period of 10 to 15 years.
But even though the city has slowly built its sewer
system, residents, wary of sewer assessment fees and
a hook-up cost averaging $1,200, have resisted linking
up.
Meanwhile, the other problems have persisted, and development
in Warwick and East Greenwich make every rainstorm a
threat to the bay's health.
The effects have been more evident this summer than
any other. In May, the DEM permanently closed 235 acres
of Greenwich Bay's richest grounds to shellfishermen.
"We basically lost a large portion of the Greenwich
Bay area due to pollution," said McGiverney, the
shellfishermen association president, who has seen the
ranks of full-time shellfishermen decline from roughly
2,000 in the heyday of the late 1980s to about 500 today.
Since mid-June, Warwick's beaches have been closed to
swimming nearly every day because of high bacteria counts.
And the spring's heavy rains and resulting runoff provided
plentiful nitrates and phosphates to algae, leading
to events like Wednesday's fish kill.
In 2001, Warwick and East Greenwich petitioned the Coastal
Resources Management Council to create a Special Area
Management (SAM) plan to review the threatened area
and help set environmental standards.
Traditionally, SAM plans
have been powerful tools guiding policy on issues like
sewer tie-ins and marina expansions. Both Avedisian
and Coastal Resources Management Council Executive Director
Grover Fugate said they believe the plan's recommendations
will be followed closely.
The Coastal Resources Center at the University of Rhode
Island is overseeing the SAM plan - which is due in
about a year - with $250,000 in federal grant money.
Spalding also said he would suggest remedies to pollution
problems on the bays and in surrounding rivers. He described
sewer tie-in programs for homes on septic tanks; catch
basins for storm-water runoff; plans for a nutrient
reduction program for Greenwich Bay that would stop
or cap the amount of fertilizers seeping into the ocean;
and stringent guidelines for the state's wastewater
treatment plants to drastically cut the clouds of nitrogen
they release into the bays. Spalding admitted that sewer
tie-ins might not be popular, and that overhauling storm
drainage systems could be expensive. Fish kills also
occur naturally, and it's likely that algal blooms followed
by slicks of corpses will occasionally appear even if
the state adopts every solution Spalding recommends.
Still, his plans are surprisingly ambitious. Spalding
said short-term pollution controls could be in place
within one or two years - far faster than many environmental
projects, which are often debated for months and languish
in red tape.
But Spalding said Rhode Island must be aggressive on
pollution. These problems have "been talked about
and talked about for a number of years," he said.
"This fish kill is symbolic. We've never seen anything
like it. We need to move now, quickly, on things we
know we can do. We need to communicate that the clock
is ticking."
PUDL
Celebrates End of the 2002-2003 Season, Looks Toward Ocean Topic
(Providence, RI)-- In what may analysts
are calling the most amazing flurry of debate activity
in Rhode Island historical memory, the PUDL capped the
2002-03 debate season with a string of events up and
down the Eastern Seaboard.
"It's a wonder that we made it out alive,"
said League director Lisa Heller, "we were running
on pure adrenaline for about 2 weeks there."
She continued, "If it weren't for the amounts of
readily available refined sugar and high-quality proteins
in this country, I don't know if we would have made
it. Talk about Shock and Awe."
Atlanta, GA, Newark, NJ, and even the quaint campus
of Brown University were all sites of PUDL activity,
both covert and high-profile, in the past 2 weeks.
On the final weekend of April, during the new moon,
over 30 RI debaters, coaches, and community supporters
were deployed to Atlanta--for the JB Fuqua National
Novice Tournament-- and Newark-- for the Eastern Regional
UDL Tournament Celebration.
"Rhode Island? Where's Rhode Island,"
one New York debater was overheard saying after falling
to PAIS debaters Liz Forbes and Joyce Wise, who took
home the 2nd Place Novice Trophy at Newark. "How
could such a little state produce such large argumentation?!"
Similar exasperation was felt in debate
circles in Atlanta, where Woonsocket debaters Meaghan
Colerick and Stefanie LaSalle cashed in on the unique
advantage of speaking in a Rhode Island accent. "How
could a city so close to Boston still retain such a
beautiful and refined manner of speaking!?," one
observer was overheard during a round in which Colerick
and LaSalle were eloquently refuting arguments pertaining
to circus animals.
And on May 3rd, the high-schoolers converged from every
angle on the Main Green of Brown University to wrap
up their season of debate at the 4th Annual League Championships.
At the banquet that followed, school officials and parents
came together to discuss the increasingly disconcerting
knowledge-base about Federal Policy that the youngsters
have been stockpiling. A spokeperson for the ad-hoc
group said, "We are considering our full range
of options, but we believe that a peaceful transition
from one generation to the next can be crafted. We are
looking for that road map."
"We won't let our voices be silenced
by simplistic rhetoric or misguided policies any longer,"
responded an anonymous debater representative.
|
on
hand to see dozens of teams from 6 schools taking home trophies.
The Novice Division saw newcomers from the MET school taking
third place, while Woonsocket High took the rest of the
top 5 spots!! Classical High closed out the top three spots
in the Open Division.