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[Back to index of October 2007 articles] Earthfest 2007 By Lucy Chumbley St. John's, Broad Creek decided to shake up its Country Fair this year. Because after 100 years, give or take, the format for the annual fair was getting tired, said vestry member Peter Ulrich.
"We have a comfort zone," he said. "We just do the bake sale, pony rides. We kept casting about for ideas to make it a vehicle for outreach into the community." Under Ulrich's leadership, the Sept. 22 event was reborn as Earthfest – a festival featuring environmental exhibits, hybrid cars, tree planting, a nature walk and appearances by elected officials anxious to show their support of a cleaner planet. "I thought it was a good idea," said the Rev. Marc Britt, rector of St. John's, who returned from sabbatical to find plans enthusiastically under way. "It's obviously a hot topic at the moment. … The question was, would it work? It was very ambitious." Surveying the people milling around the balloon-decked booths and the display of give-away trees, he answered his own question: "It looks like it's working. I've seen people that I have not seen – that's good – and it's early yet." In recent years, St. John's has become more familiar than it would like to be with the environmental impact of urban development. Until the 1960s, the church was surrounded by farmland, Britt said, explaining that suburbs and strip malls have gradually been taking the place of cultivated fields. This increase in development has brought with it a persistent problem with storm water runoff, as water from the north of the church tries to make its way back to Broad Creek. "In the old days, it was farmland and farmers knew how to irrigate and take care of the land," said Robert Tomlinson, the diocese's property and benefits manager. "But once McDonalds and Taco Bell come in and parking lots – there's nowhere for the water to go. "It seems like any hard rains – a couple times a year – the church property has an issue with flooding. They've had 18-plus inches of water just standing. The roads get flooded. Once the roads get flooded, there's almost no way to even get there. It's man destroying the land – it's the classic story – and they receive the brunt of it." St. John's has spent close to $150,000 over the past five years on storm water related problems, according to Junior Warden Alfonso Narvaez. Funds have been spent on back-up generators, repairing water damage to the building, replacing furnishings and equipment and replacing the storm wall. The church expects to spend that amount again, Narvaez said, before its flooding problems are resolved. "It's incredible what they've gone through," Tomlinson said. After years of lobbying, a plan to re-channel Broad Creek was recently approved by the Broad Creek Historic District Advisory Committee, Narvaez said. Now Prince George's County has authorized $100,000 for the project, and work is expected to begin in the spring. "For us it's huge," Narvaez said. "There's movement where there had just been a vacuum." When this work is completed, it will go a long way toward correcting the flooding problem, he said, but there are even larger environmental problems. Church leaders and parishioners continue to tackle these issues with determination – the same determination they have shown in planning their first Earthfest. "We thought that this whole idea was beginning to get through to people," Ulrich said. "That there's something wrong in the way we're living, building and polluting." Munching popcorn and sporting a T-shirt emblazoned with the Earthfest logo he designed, Ulrich offers a tour of the Parish Hall, where Al Gore's movie about the climate crisis, "An Inconvenient Truth," is playing in a continuous loop. Here, visitors can view a proposal for a project to place turbines under the Potomac in order to generate electricity, an exhibit put together by a parishioner who has installed a geo-thermal system in his home and other displays about environmental issues. While these exhibits show what is possible, Ulrich says, Earthfest is really trying to show people "things we can do in our own home to help save the environment."
From installing energy-efficient lightbulbs to recycling, becoming environmentally responsible is a process made up of many small steps that everyone can take, he said. Behind the Parish Hall, youngsters are having some fun with recycling at a carnival-style booth, standing behind a rope and throwing items of recyclable trash into tubs set up on the slope leading to the church. A good throwing arm is only part of the skill required – participants also have to aim for the correct bin. Meanwhile, Nature Walk participants are being shuttled across the street to stroll through woods where old-growth trees are facing eradication by developers "to get a feel for what's at stake." And employees from nearby Denison Landscaping and Nursery Inc. are dispensing instructions for the care of the 250 seedlings they have donated (American sycamore, Norway spruce, Serviceberry and Pin oak). Ulrich is pleased that with a relatively short lead-time – planning began in May – the 35-member committee has been able to pull off such a successful festival. And he is glad that the fair's new focus on environmental stewardship and renewable energy has been so energizing for parishioners and visitors alike. "I think we'll probably give it another try and do it bigger and better next year," he said. [Back to index of October 2007 articles]
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