By Janice Kaspersen

During last November’s midterm elections in the US, several issues seemed to be high on voters’ priority lists: the economy, Iraq, health care costs, and fuel prices. Quite a few media observers and those conducting exit polls with voters noted that the environment surprisingly appeared to be a lower priority for many.

It may be true that these large environmental issues weren’t foremost in most people’s minds in November, or that they got scattered amid other urgent voter concerns. The problem might be one of semantics, too, though: “The environment” is a huge topic to get one’s mind around, encompassing everything from global warming to alternative energy sources and from air pollution to the quality of our lakes and rivers. Many people with strong ideals about protecting and preserving the environment don’t have a very detailed knowledge of how, exactly, to go about it. Others simply find environmentalism a depressing concept; the problems can seem overwhelming and the solutions too hard to carry out.

It’s much easier to visualize solutions on a local scale, however, and people who might not feel they can make a significant difference in the climate of the Earth or the condition of the oceans can turn out to be passionate about the local creek or the open spaces in their neighborhoods.

By its nature, erosion and sediment control work is local and specific, whether you’re controlling runoff from the site of a new development, restoring a stream, or replacing or refurbishing existing infrastructure in and around roads and bridges and pipelines. Certainly, federal and state laws affect what you do and how you do it; NPDES and other aspects of the Clean Water Act have driven much of the growth in the industry. Products and techniques can be researched and tested on a national or global scale. But finally it’s what happens on the ground—on a very particular patch of ground, with soil and climate and slopes and surroundings unlike any other—that matters.

This is the part where—this being the first 2007 issue of Erosion Control, after all—we get to the inevitable New Year’s resolutions. If you’re inclined to make them, resolve this year to use your expertise to explain to someone—or better yet, show someone—outside the EC arena what it is you’re doing and how it fits into the larger picture. Help a person or two understand the intricacies of the work you’re carrying out in their own backyard, and why you’re doing it. Talk to your child’s class, maybe, or volunteer to teach a weekend extension class, or lead a tour of a local restoration project. Helping someone superimpose the general, perhaps lofty ideal of protecting the environment onto actual techniques and places they see every day might just have as lasting an effect on the local environment as the ESC work you do the rest of the year.

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EC - January/February 2007