Midwest interview questions

Aiming for:

-The below questions to be conversation starters rather than a formal interview

-Re-Engaging people on the issues

-Learning more about helpful next steps

______

TEMPLATE

What are one or two of the big challenges you're seeing in moving forward?

What are one or two smaller challenges you’ve had?

What legal questions or challenges have arisen? Is there anything that’s unclear or hard to

navigate?

If you could get one question answered that you think someone could help you figure out, what

would it be? What questions would you ask?

Why is that question important?

Have you reported any issues to the government related to frac sand concerns? what have you

reported? who do you report to and what has come of it?

What could Public Lab do to help support your work on this issue?

-recruit help through outreach (like a “looking at dust” or “mine watch” campaign or

developing outreach strategies like this)

-recruit help within Wisconsin through events (like microscope building,

trainings/workshops on timelapse, dust collection)

-help develop and document more stories/narratives to support cross-regional learning

-Like another CSF focused on microscopic dust photos, mine watching with

timelapse cams...

-recruit help from outside Wisconsin to provide remote support or troubleshooting

What challenges, progress, goals, stories would you like help amplifying, either within WI or

beyond?

_________

Call List::

-Dwight - Scheduled

-Glenn - Scheduled

-Heather - called no answer, emailed

-Cheryl - Scheduled

-Lee

-Mary - DONE

-Pat - DONE

-Jeff F.

-Forest - DONE

-Crispin - emailed

-Johnne

-Ken

-Shiela Danielson (from Pat)

Mary 8/3

Water quality program with UWx to monitor stream quality. The only living ting we could find in

the stream was a slug downstream. So i need to talk to dwight, cause im’ supposed to do a

habitat assessment. DO levels were low, turbidity wasn't too bad.

What are one or two of the big challenges you're seeing in moving forward?

I’ve begun to think water quality is the way to go with the FS issue. I drove past the places and

they’re just booming. Getting measurements - we can show ppl images of what’sin the air and

what’s going in their lunges. I started reading on noise, sress and how it affects longjevity. A lot

o fthe stuff you get, it that’s not a real health problem, but it is. Use what we hve and start

explorign issues of noice and light stress. Watr quatlity. Easier to measure. I dont know if

anyone spoke to you about the big bill out of hte sand mine in white hall.? Back in may, the high

crush mine, this guy was driving a bulldozer along a berm, he was trapped under water for a

couple hours. To get him out, they had to bulzose the berm and all the water went into termpalo

river. Thinking out loud about why i think water quality and noise issues might be the way to go,

because I think they might be easier to measure and visualize.

I got some footage of the blast that day.

SL- One idea, pat had, she’s been floating around a lot of different things, one we honed in on,

to put together materials people can use on reporting, reporting sheets, for different things,

nuisance ,noise uncovered trucks, and then also who to contact for them. MEA has a bunch on

reporting materials, and it seems like it might be an interesting project to compile those, and the

contact lists of who they might go to. And also running workshops on how to fill out these

reports, what do you think about that?

M- I think that’s a good idea. I was looking at stuff about measuring noise levels, if you have

data, and a means of measuring noise levels that people could do with their phones or

something.

WIth the noise monitoring apps, I got confused about which ones were measuring sound quality.

It would be hard to varify what the soirce of the noise was

SL- with what I was saying about Pat’s idea, there are tools that could help provide more

information in what you can report, but having the materials as to how to report these things in

one place, and these tools could buff up what you could write in that complaint.

M- That sounds really good. I like that. Besides complaining to authorities, we have elections

coming up, start sending complaints to legislatures.

SL- The other thing I was wondering, how can we visualize and capture the reporting data?

Compile when people file, and info if they heard back from someone, and what happened after?

Visualize the complaints and the responses

M- that’s a good idea. Having databases and easy access to info is really great

What are one or two smaller challenges you’ve had?

What legal questions or challenges have arisen? Is there anything that’s unclear or hard

to navigate?

If you could get one question answered that you think someone could help you figure

out, what would it be? What questions would you ask?

Why is that question important?

Have you reported any issues to the government related to frac sand concerns? what

have you reported? who do you report to and what has come of it?

What could Public Lab do to help support your work on this issue?

Water quality and as I said, i started thinking about noise. A lot of people around airports have

done about the impact of noise around wellbeing. Osha has limits around noise.

Continued visualization of the dust, I never tried the method 9.

What challenges, progress, goals, stories would you like help amplifying, either within WI

or beyond?

Pat Popple Notes 8.2

What are one or two of the big challenges you're seeing in moving forward?

Two air quality hearings, i wrote up and read comments, everything is cut and dried. Paranna

was the last one I attended. They had started their building already and they already had a

waver. These companies have the upperhand and citizens mean nothing. Thy cut off comments,

but if you came in person they would record them. They’re not worth anything. They will find

every reason for the company to not do anything.

In these last 2 meetings i’ve attended 1 issue, that i brought out fermly sand mining company

said they take care of our employees. I said that’s good. However, i turned to DNR and said,

who is going to protect the public, because you are public employers and you’re paid by the

public you should be protecting the public. What you need to do is go to every county and work

with public health nurses so they can begin to give clues to the public to protect themselves

against what crystalline sylica does. Nobody looks at sicilca dust. And thn the lady said you

know you’re right, we’ll have to look at that.

Second meeting, i delivered same message and someone said the same thing.

Health and safety is important, and i’m not sure what you can do to support this issue.

I’d be interested in hear what you think the value of the purple air would be?

Could the air monitoring be done in conjunction with the health department?

Crispin Pearce may be doing some purple air types of monitoring

What are one or two smaller challenges you’ve had?

What legal questions or challenges have arisen? Is there anything that’s unclear or hard

to navigate?

Judge is supposed to be ruling on the lacrosse lawsuit. We’ve been collecting affidavits. I gave

Ted him lists of names of people who he could visit and tape their stories.

These purple air tools could help to put pressure on the state legislature, if the legislative group

also changes.

The more that I think about it, if you coud have a small group. Around dwight swenson’s area,

and we were abel to get a system going where they could talk, do the monitoring and use it for

social pressure than I think it would be good. It would take someone with leadership skills to

gather people together with a common purpose. If it was done meaningfully i think it could work.

If you could get one question answered that you think someone could help you figure

out, what would it be? What questions would you ask?

Why is that question important?

Have you reported any issues to the government related to frac sand concerns? what

have you reported? who do you report to and what has come of it?

What could Public Lab do to help support your work on this issue?

When I left dwights that day of the workshop, you could smell that min. I told that sotry when I

was at barron county courthouse. You could see the particulates in the air. I told shiela later, we

should ahve all ganged up and called the numbers to complain about the mine that day. They

were not watering, the cows were out in that field breathing all that bad air. The people who

were around that area could smell it. We could have taken pictures, gotten home and reported it

all.But there are requirements. But what could be done, and I’ve wanted to do this before, but it

probably could be used, but it’s called a sand sential program. We would ahve a folder with all

the info in it on how to report stuff. Then when I was at black river falls, I told stores, and we

went to coffee, here, main street o f town, and I see all these sand trucks going up main street

uncovered. No body was stopping them, no body was saying anythign, no body was calling. The

guy from DRN was tehre, and he said “you know these should be reported.” We should make a

folder that says call this person when you see an uncovered truck, call this person when you

see sand blowing off a mine or if you see somthing happening call__.

I don’t have a folder to give them on how to do this, and then what happens after this? These

DRN people say oh yes I’ll take care of it. These thing are illigal, but who’s enforcing it? How do

we get people trained. The idea was to train people on how to do reporting. Then they could go

practice, and they could train other people how to do it. I never got to it, because if I were to do

the whole thing, it could cost money to do it.

SL- Do you think that -- I know MEA has reporting forms, and there’s info online, and if it’s

helpful to have funds to supprot these events, we can do it.

PP- I think it is too.. Have this folder and have the sand sentinal, and put it on the cover., have

carbon copies. Have the sentinel send it. Do you might need to include envelopes with stamps.

Coul dbe useful to try it in one location. Get people to use it. So people do the reports, file them

and send the carbon copy somewhere (with prepaid postage) so we know what has been

reported.

PP- the DNR, the one guy in barron county, when I was in the other part of barron county, john

stokes does hte work. People keep moving. So if you sent a note. Also people have retired, they

keep switching these guys and it’s confusing the public.

Would be good to get on the phone and brainstorm this with others. What might work, how etc.

Shila danielson is also a good person to talk to

Maybe handhelds could be useful here too .report things. Give them a handheld thing as a way

of knowing more and collecting more info to report

What challenges, progress, goals, stories would you like help amplifying, either within WI

or beyond?

SL will publish those two questions

What challenges, progress, goals, stories would you like help amplifying, either within WI

or beyond?

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