Pahrump Town Board members dove head-first into the issue of providing year-round swimming for local residents this week.

On Tuesday, board members heard a presentation from local resident Rachael Roberts.

As of late, there has been expressed community interest in having a year-round swim facility.

Last year Roberts began her campaign by assisting the town in obtaining research and possible cost projections for the board to review and consider.

She told the board that her efforts have revealed many benefits if the consideration is adopted.

With upgrading our town pool to a year-round aquatics center, we will foster the development of new programs and help facilitate greater access to the existing facility by promoting and developing program methodologies for maximum utilization of the pool facility. We could also expand our aquatic industry resources, relationships and affinity partnerships, she noted.

Roberts also said she believes that the population of Pahrump is more than enough to justify her proposal.

Pahrump is pushing 40,000 and I think Nye County is pushing about 43,000 or so. That leaves us roughly with 20 percent under the age of 18 which is about 8,000. Twenty-five percent of our population is over the age of 65. We definitely have a very large and happy population spanning all of our age groups, Roberts said.

Though board members listened patiently to Roberts presentation, the costs associated with the project seemed to be pricier than what board and staff anticipated.

At 42 feet wide and 81 feet long, the pool holds roughly 210,000 gallons of water.

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Board hears year-round swimming proposal

Guardian photo by Emma Childs

North Rustico Mayor Anne Kirk has plans to repaint the local shanties with bright colours in an effort to attract more tourists to the fishing town.

NORTH RUSTICO The small town of North Rustico has some big ideas in store as the summer season approaches.

To boost its tourist appeal, the town will see some refurbishing of its services and landscape over the next year.

We want everything to be spruced up, all around, Mayor Anne Kirk said in an interview from her office. So that when you come in over the hill from Cavendish, or over the hill from Charlottetown, then you come into a livened community.

Redesigning Centennial Park, repainting worn-down shanties and creating more walkways are just a few of the motions to be put forth in this effort.

Kirk also said shed like to see the introduction of walking tours in the summer months and new boutiques to sell Island-made goods.

The town has applied for provincial grants to support its efforts, but has yet to hear of the application status.

With the money we get, well do as much as we can, she said. Were keeping optimistic.

In any case, Kirk hopes to see the painting of shanties underway this summer, whether fueled by grants or by volunteer efforts.

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North Rustico has big plans to attract visitors

update on the land clearing down the road from my house.
update on the land clearing down the road from my house.

By: MIKE MAYERAN

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Many of Southeast Asias cities are being blanketed in an acrid, smoggy mix of smoke and ash from forest fires, industrial emissions, and vehicular exhaust. Land-clearing agricultural fires in Indonesia, mostly in the province of North Sumatra, are producing much of the smoke and causing many to point the finger at the Indonesian government and the countrys pulp, paper, lumber and palm oil corporations. NASA satellite imaging has recorded some 3,000 fires in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia so far this year, though Burma, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines are not entirely blameless.

Though last years Hazepocalypse embarrassed Indonesia and prompted promises of action against further fires by its government, it seems little has been done so far. Drought conditions are not helping.

Smoke and haze over Sumatra on March 12. Pic: NASA/GSFC/Jeff Schmaltz/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team

From the Guardian:

From Palangkarya in Borneo to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, the air has been thick, the sun a dull glow and face masks obligatory. Schools, airports and roads have been closed and visibility at times has been down to just a few yards. Communities have had to be evacuated and people advised to remain indoors, transport has been disrupted and more than 50,000 people have had to be treated for asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses in Sumatra alone. Last week more than 200 Malaysian schools were forced to close, and pollution twice reached officially hazardous levels.

Around half the fires are burning on industrial logging land and palm oil plantations. By not controlling the fires on their land (whether theyve started them or not), these mega-corporations are not only poisoning Southeast Asia, theyre also shooting themselves in the foot. The president of Indonesias Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL), which is Asias second-largest pulp and paper firm,recently announced that the company is itself a victim of the fires, which have cost it $5-6 million US.

Indonesias environment minister recently announced that legal action is being taken against 45 companies involved in slash-and-burn land clearing and deforestation in the country.

Airpollution, and were talking about both indoors and outdoors, is now the biggest environmental health problem, and its affecting everyone, both developed and developing countries.

The risks fromairpollutionare now far greater than previously thought or understood, particularly for heart disease and strokes. Few risks have a greater impact on global health today thanairpollution. The evidence signals the need for concerted action to clean up theairwe all breathe.

Maria Neira, WHO public and environmental health chief (via AFP)

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Brown cloud of death: Indonesias industry is killing SE Asia

Papua is Indonesias poorest region

Indigenous peoples rely on their land for their survival and therefore any incursion onto their land creates serious problems for any community, Sophie Grig, a senior campaigner for Survival International, a UK-based indigenous rights advocacy organization, told IRIN. These incursions in West Papua generally also involve the presence of the military to protect the project [which] leads to human rights violations.

Over the past four years, at least 74 people have died in the village of Baad alone - one of more than 160 across Merauke- due to infighting between communities created by disagreements over the sale of land to agribusinesses, and police brutality, according to Leonardus Maklew, a Baad resident who has been representing nine Malind villages in negotiations to defend their land from an Indonesian sugar cane plantation since 2010.

The most serious consequences have been human deaths. Up until now, the police, companies, and military never tried to understand our needs and our struggle, said the 35-year-old ethnic Malind man.

Police and military personnel routinely accompany companies when they come to ask the Malind to sell their land. It is a form of intimidation, said Sophie Chao, a project officer with the Forest People's Programme (FPP), a non-profit organization registered in the Netherlands that campaigns for the rights of indigenous peoples of the tropical forest facing environmental destruction and human rights violations.

Since 2009, when the local government initiated planning for the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), a mega development project aiming to convert more than a million hectares of forest to agribusinesses in Papua, at least 12 corporations have moved into areas inhabited by an estimated 116,500 indigenous peoples generally known as the Malind, who are struggling to survive in increasingly degraded, deforested environments. Tribal leaders co-opted?

While police and military brutality against indigenous Papuans is nothing new in this resource-rich, former Dutch colony, violence between communities on this scale is unprecedented, residents say.

The government says we are just a hot-headed people, always fighting, but it is worse now. Tools that used to be used for hunting are now used against one another, said Maklew, explaining that bows and arrows, and knives, are all commonly drawn during fights, which have occurred at least once a month since corporations started (in 2009) trying to convince villagers individually to sell their land, bypassing customary collective decision-making processes.

Company spokespeople of PT Anugerah Rejeki Nusantara (ARN), a sugar cane plantation owned by the Wilmar International Group (WIG) headquartered in Singapore, often co-opt tribal leaders, paying them a salary to convince the other villagers to sell their land, according to the FPP, and without giving full information to communities that they will not see their land again, according to Rainforest Foundation Norway, an NGO that campaigns for the protection of rainforests and their inhabitants. WIG strongly denies the charge.

Wilmar pledges to respect and recognize the long-term customary and individual rights of indigenous and local communities,stated WIG in a public statement on 5 December 2013.

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Conflict in Indonesias Papua Region

One of the biggest pieces of legislation under consideration in City Council right now a land bank bill has turned into a debate over competing ideas for amendments, some of which significantly alter Council's authority over the land bank.

City Councilor Deb Gross, who introduced the legislation Jan. 14, and has acknowledged her original bill needed improvement, has released some ideas for amendments along with City Councilor Corey O'Connor (though not the exact language) on the city's website.

Gross' original proposal would create a quasi-government authority that would be responsible for centralizing the city's blighted/vacant/tax delinquent land and work with homeowners, community groups and developers to turn those properties around. The land bank, authorized under state law, can exercise a 'trump bid' at treasurer's sale (meaning the land bank can acquire property without being the highest bidder) and can expedite the title-clearing process (meaning it can resolve potential ownership conflicts more quickly).

Not surprisingly, the bill has generated lots of debate: Who should serve on the land bank's board of directors? Should City Council have a vote on the final use of individual properties? How should community groups or individual neighbors be included in the process?

And those are some of the issues that prompted city councilors Daniel Lavelle and Ricky Burgess to release their own set of amendments earlier this month that, among other things, would expand the board of directors to include "community-based organizations" and would require unanimous council approval anytime the land bank wants to turn over a property it has acquired.

Gross and O'Connor have responded with their own ideas for amendments that would also expand the board to include community members, but would not give council authority over the disposition of its land.

City Paper invited city councilors Gross, O'Connor, Burgess and Lavelle for a roundtable discussion last Friday to chat about these issues and that will appear on our website and on newsstands tomorrow.

For now, though, here are some of the highlights of Gross/O'Connor's ideas for amendments (after the jump).

*Community members can force the land bank to hold public hearings on disposition of land. If 15 "nearby residents" petition the land bank within 30 days of the notice of sale, the land bank would be required to hold a "pre-disposition Public Hearing in the neighborhood."

*The land bank board must vote on the disposition of all property from the land bank. The original bill gave the land bank's staff authority to made decisions on property worth less than $50,000, a provision that angered Burgess who argued there are plenty of properties in his district below this threshold and staffers shouldn't be allowed to decide what happens to them.

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Land Banking: It's a battle of amendments

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