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Actions and cautions when heating your home

31.12.69

In past years Marshall Municipal Utilities has presented seminars which included discussions about the importance of current knowledge concerning our usage and consumption of energy in our lives. Methods to accomplish decreased energy usage with an increase in conservation of our energy sources were emphasized in addition to the availability of financial incentives for the use of energy-efficient devices. Interestingly, several aspects of the presented information and the audience's questions had medical implications for those of us preparing for the upcoming winter and related energy (heating) considerations.

The ever accumulating leaves and the falling temperatures in our area give us a warning of the imminent winter season. Although we all enjoy the autumn weather and related activities, it's but a short time until cold temperatures, snow, ice, and the need for heating our homes. In spite of the fact that electric heating is becoming more common in this area, most of us still use fossil fuels (natural gas, oil, wood) to heat our homes. These relatively efficient sources of heat may also produce dangerous, severe, and harmful effects to our bodies, and they can stimulate the development of an unhealthy personal environment. Recent home energy conservation methods and augmented insulation procedures have resulted in "tighter" and less ventilated buildings.

Source: Marshall Independent

COACHELLA VALLEY: Near desert paradise, farmworkers live in poverty

31.12.69

THERMAL — At one end of Avenue 54, a road slicing through some of the most fertile land in the United States, resides the California of the popular imagination: a place of Bermuda shorts, putting greens and picture-window champagne dinners overlooking the infinity pool.

But there is another Avenue 54 concealed behind tumbleweeds and dust. It is the 54 of arsenic-tainted water, frequent blackouts and raw sewage that backs up into the shower. It is a place of grim housekeeping, where the residents of the Eastern Coachella Valley’s roughly 125 illegal mobile home parks struggle to make 720 square feet of deteriorating metal and plywood a safe and habitable home.

Even the names of unincorporated communities here — Mecca, Oasis — evoke biblical lands, befitting the man-made plagues that beset the region. This desert valley is one of the country’s richest agricultural areas, an irrigation-fed bounty of table grapes, bell peppers, seedless watermelons and most of the country’s dates. Island-paradise palms spring mirage-like from the hot, arid soil.

Source: Press-Enterprise