Introduction...Synopsis...

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and its partner, Electro-Magnetic Hypersensitivity have both escalated themselves within the past two decades to near epidemic proportions as sources of disability and the sleeping causes behind many disorders identified with other names...such as fibromyalgia, Epstein Barr, chronic fatigue, ADD, psychological malfunctions and as the major cause of terminal or debilitating cancer itself (see the recent work of Dr. Theo Colborn in review of 36,000 international research reports searching for the causes of cancer).

Background

President George Bush (Sr.) initiated and signed into law in nearly the identical time frame what we now know as the Americans with Disabilities Act...assuring that those with known disabilities cannot be barred from any public facility on the basis of discrimination linked to their debilitation. This act in fact came from the President primarily because of a near family relative suffering from both disability and long-term discrimination.

The uses of herbicides, pesticides and other toxic solvents on public land and in private facilities open to the public pose identical barriers to E.I.'s (those with Environmental Illnesses,,,such as MCS and EMF hypersensitivity). They are effectively barred from the use of facilities their tax dollars create and administer because of the debilitating effects of those chemicals, which are documented in myriad research reports produced independent of the Chemical manufacturers and marketers themselves.

Disability Issues and Environmental Illness

Simultaneous with the rise of concern and medical recognition of the disabilities of MCS and EMF (now validated by the World Health Organization, the EPA, the Veteran's Administration, the Social Security Administration and the AMA...in fact now appearing on the screening questionnaire in most modern medical offices in America) ...has been a rapid relocation of the American population base to the Intermountain West...very notably South Western Colorado.

Trends on our Public Lands

The Increased move toward privatization and centralization of campground facilities to offset increasing levels of land abuse (trash accumulation, garish waste disposal, destruction of property and flora, fire-ring proliferation, and invasive species importation) have all conspired to place Legacy Lands Sites in peril, along with the historic precedent and now critical health support resource they provide.

Legacy Lands Sites ...Critical to Those With Toxic Disorders

It is the American Legacy, that for as long as homo sapiens have frequented this continent (arguably, the last 30,000 years...probably more like 60) camping and the use of the land has been done in solitude or small community at dispersed locations, nomadically attuned to seasonal and environmental change and purposely aligned with the spiritual and life-giving ingredients that foster healthy human growth and sanity...a deeper indeed definition of the word "Recreation".

The EI is singularly dependent on these dispersed "Legacy" sites...which are indeed historically designated facilities with eons of precedence behind them. The "Feedlot" approach to contemporary recreation (campsite) facilities ending in a privatized, paved, cubilcled, compacted and consequently toxified area (spewing pesticides, fire smoke, noise, auto exhaust, off road vehicle impacts and noxious weeds) will very often further sicken (rather than heal) the EI fleeing an already toxified urban or agricultural area seeking reprieve from poisoning. They will definately be made still sicker still staying in a commercialized, centralized paid privatized campground.

....And the Money Crunch

Ironically deepening the dilemma is a rapid de-escalation of the historic federal funding and mentality which have in the past provided adequate law enforcement, maintenance, roads and the like which for generations have supported these lands and their uses adequately.

Obviously, history and medical advances leave us now on the verge of a new era...and inevitably that necessitates new programs and policies.

The Smart Shelter E.I.. Land Steward Program

For the past 18 months, the Smart Shelter Land Steward Program has been funded, researched and developed on the basis of specific field trials by the Network's primary researcher and residency interns. The result is a comprehensive program complete with funding and personelle basis, experience-verified technologies and a scope of remediation and prevention not currently seen (but desperately in need of augmentation) in the forests and deserts of private and public lands of South Western Colorado...rapidly deteriorating as the result of an Urban Stressed and largely uneducated influx of increasingly motorized and consequentially destructive imported (and native) public.

Similar work initiatives in this vein, but in different venues have provided much of the procedural program utilized in developing the myriad field-tested technologies and viability prior to inclusion in the Land Steward Program. (More simply put...we've learned to make the mistakes quietly on your own and keep picking up the pieces and finding more bailing wire before we go shooting off your mouth about conjecture...which notably promulgates disaster). These are the lessons which, over the years, we used in bring into existence the Telluride Bluegrass Academy, the Bluegrass workshop series, The Telluride Writers Guild (now in its 25th year) and the research/development work in 250 regional case studies in Natural/Strawbale/Solar building, producing "The Signature Regional Hybrid Natural Building Formula" (published on the website reference here...along with about 1000 pages of Native Lifestyle/ Natural Building resources currently referenced through Smart Shelter worldwide). Our researcher's earliest work in the scientific mode includes heat of reentry with the Mariner Space Craft...a little outside the current focus of today's Network...but a great story anyway.

The EI Land Steward Program is, itself, an interesting continuation of the privatization invective. It taps as a viable restorative labor force the EI's themselves, who provide beneficial presences of various time durations consistently on imperiled lands and Legacy Sites providing the needed surveillance, invasive controls and remediation which will keep these lands in pristine condition, return them to viable natural states and help prevent their further deterioration.

"Micro" Habitats and the Land Steward

Many of these disabled choose (are forced) into habitation of increasingly high states of chemical cleanliness...that is freedom from the formaldehyde, solvents, adhesives, pesticides and herbicides along with fragrances that collapsed their immune systems originally. At the extreme of these evolving domiciles is the Micro-Habitat...approxamatedly 1-3,000 EI's nationally have developed and are now dependent upon their protection as the only means by which they can live without toxic reactions ( in fact to breathe at all...making the Micro an exact corollary to the EI as the Iron Lung is to a polio vicitm...a piece of necessary equipment allowing the disabled a chance at life).

Noting that the cleansed disability housing of the characteristic Micro is often also mobile (they usually are based on a 20-30 year old travel trailer which is already out-gassed and is consequently completely stripped of remnant toxins and rebuilt to afford livability)...Smart Shelter has structured the EI Land Steward Program system of core providers to be mobile, self-sufficient and effective by developing the off-grid, bio-restorative

New Technology Now Well on its Feet

Micro technology supporting the EI as a service provider simultaneous to the technological application developments now prescidented and field developed to a level sufficient to warrant official pilot project demonstrations on a few selected sites...including:

...road restoration and reinforcement utilizing native or remedial materials and done in a way avoiding detection and supporting revegitation and return to the native condition with disuse.

....non-chemical based control of noxious and invasive species based on the most progressed applications of Permaculture(easily the most advance biologically based land restoration and use technology we have today).

...fueling of the control works by research and development for value-added products from the invasives, changing the resource base from native and impacted species (such as spruce, pine, aspen) to the ones which need impacting such as the Russian Olive and tamarisk.

...a law enforcement support system which places the EI Land Steward in a position of being a "responsible, observant and reporting" presence on the land...not to become involved in direct enforcement actions, but to train, support and provide viable documentation of incursions as a service to the existent professional law enforcement entities.

...(other techniques are prolific and as in the cases above, are not conjecture, but have been developed with actual field experience in the past 18 months to a point making them immediately demonstrable...these are examined more closely on the EI Land Steward discussion found on the Smart Shelter Network Web site at www.smartshelter.com.

Pilot Projects...The Time Has Come

The time has come in the solution to the demands of these new and glaringly pressing policy development challenges to bring them out of the development and research laboratory and begin the legislative, public relation, judicial testing and interface development with entities such as the US Forest Service the Bureau of Land Management, the Colorado and Utah Divisions of Wildlife, the Utah School Lands Trust, the Colorado and Utah State Parks Systems, the Nature Conservancy and an equivalent number of private land owners.

Work with specific site and project Pilot Study initiatives is currently underway with each of those entities and characteristically involves several different regions, facilities or districts with each of them, in recognition of the varying levels of awareness, concern, capabilities and support of each of their managers.

Simultaneous with the launching of specific Pilot Projects, negotiations are well underway with County, State and Federal legislators to formulate the instructions, requirements, funding, and enablements of these concepts. (Note here that all work to date has been provided by Smart Shelters supportive independent funding sources and the Pilot Study series is also designed to bring its own financial support independent of any allocations from the property owners or governmental managers and their budgets and offices).

The Multi-Pronged Approach to Effective Implementation

Basis for the litigative and instructional aspects of this project are obviously already in place (and pathetically under-enacted) with the now nearly 20-year old Americans with Disabilites Act. We note currently that quite probably what may be evolving here is indeed a forth functional and empowered use of the Public Lands Legacy. It adds to the industrial uses (livestock grazing, mining and timber), the conservation uses(species reintroduction, water rights for nature, reforestation, etc.) and the recreational (hunting, vacation camping, hiking, etc.)....the emerging forth function....Restoration...which has as aspects the restoration of medical health as well as the restoration of the land quality, environment, spiritual integrity and perpetuity of the land itself.

Focus of the Smart Shelter Pilot Study Initiative is identification and cooperation with supportive entities simultaneous with the characteristically necessary legislative, internal policy and judicially mandated actions which have historically proven necessary in gaining rights entitlements mandated under the ADA in other applications....for instance, the years of court battles finally ending in the inclusion of sidewalk curb cuts in every city planning departments procedures in America (that one only took two decades).

The initiative of cooperative, open and field-productive Pilot Study procedures as the singularly most recommendable method of bringing what we now know is the complete skeleton structure for a new Land Steward Program into being within the jurisdictions of motivated and productive managers seems the Networks most recommendable dedication of resources in man/woman power, funding, effort and time.

We solicit your effective cooperation with development of this policy demonstration initiative as a promising chance to make all our futures richer, fairer, brighter and healthier.

Smart Shelter Network

Gary L. Duncan- Research Director