CEJ at SEJ: Scripps Fellows and CEJ Staff Participate in Field Trips and Panels at Society of Environmental Journalists Conference

When one thinks "wildlife refuge," one doesn't usually picture a Superfund site. Yet the Aberdeen Proving Ground is both. This former military installation in Maryland, where the Army once trained for chemical warfare, harbors a toxic stockpile of World War II-era mustard gas, threatening local neighborhoods through contaminated soil and tainted groundwater.

As the military continues efforts to clean it up, wildlife, including bald eagles, have made the site their home. It's an incongruous connection - yet military lands here and elsewhere have become some of the nation's most important havens for threatened plants and animals.

CEJ Director Len Ackland learned more about Aberdeen and similar sites on a field trip during the 12th annual Society of Environmental Journalists conference, held in Baltimore Oct. 9-13. Ackland's tour was one of several up-close excursions organized for journalists, in addition to an array of panels on key environmental issues. The Aberdeen visit, entitled "Hold the Mustard: Greening of the Military," was co-hosted by former Ted Scripps Fellow Dave Mayfield ('00-'01) of the Norfolk Virginian Pilot, where he covered military issues before his fellowship.

This year's Ted Scripps Fellows joined Ackland, CEJ staff members Tom Yulsman and Wendy Redal, and two CU environmental journalism master's students for five intensive days in and around Baltimore. While Redal studied the near-demise of the Chesapeake Bay oyster fishery on a journey to the EasternShore, Fellow John Flesher and MA student Josh Blumenfeld learned more about another body of water in peril: Washington, D.C.'s polluted Anacostia River, which they explored from canoes.

Flesher, an AP correspondent based in Traverse City, Mich., said the Anacostia offered "a cautionary tale for those who fail to protect rivers from storm sewer and agricultural runoff - a matter of concern in my stomping ground of northern Michigan."

Other field trips visited British Petroleum Solar's manufacturing facility, redeveloped industrial "brownfields" sites and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where scientists are working to reduce the U.S. food supply's "environmental footprint" through such developments as technologies to treat dairy manure and keep hormones in livestock waste from entering streams.

At conference headquarters in the Wyndham Hotel, journalists examined a broad range of environmental subjects. Panels and roundtable meals allowed for lively, sometimes heated, conversation between participants and presenters.

Fellow Elizabeth Bluemink, who covers environmental health issues for the Anniston (Ala.) Star, said the conference sessions she attended "were packed with vigorous debates about topics such as particulate pollution, cancer clusters and global trade. It was stimulating to sit and talk with other journalists who deal with similar issues."

A keynote event at the conference was a spirited exchange between two key members of Congress and President George W. Bush's top environmental advisor about politics and policy, especially with regard to energy, in the post-9/11 era.

Other sessions focused on the craft of environmental reporting, including "blind spots" on the beat, better ways to pitch stories to editors and ways to make complex science accessible and intriguing.

Yet the conference wasn't all serious study: CEJ staff, Scripps Fellows and former fellows met for beer and crab cakes at a couple of local watering holes, indulged in cannoli and cappuccino in Baltimore's Little Italy and discovered the impressively rejuvenated Inner Harbor by water taxi. An evening reception hosted by SEJ at the Baltimore Aquarium was also a highlight, as conference participants listened to a live jazz combo and marveled at seahorses, sharks and myriad creatures of the deep in spectacular aquatic settings.