EPA testimony 5.24.12 Hello, I want to thank you for this opportunityto speak today about setting limitsfor carbon pollution. My name is Judy Skog and I am from Madison, Wisconsin. I drove down this morningwith myfriend, Don, because limiting carbon pollution is such an importanttopic. I would like to address two reasons for limiting carbon emissions: extreme weather events and their effects on farmers, and pollution effects on health. I have been a member ofthe HarmonyValley Farm CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for 15 or 20 years. HarmonyValley Farm is a large organic farm in western Wisconsin which delivers hundreds of boxes to the Twin Cities and to Madison every week. In August of2010there was a 3 inch downpour in 2 hours. This caused severe flooding, washing away crops, fences and other equipment, and most horrifying of all, top-soil. I believe that Richard deWilde (my farmer) was as devastated by the loss of top soil as he was by the loss ofcrop. He has been carefully building up this top soil for 20 or 30years. It is part ofwhat makes his vegetables and fruittaste so amazing. Besides the crops that actually washed away, there were many morethat Richard was unable to sell because of possible contamination from whateverwas in the water from upstream. All in all, the farm suffered somewhere around a million dollar loss. Crop insurance, such as it is, covered only a tiny fraction ofthis, and that required many hours of Richard's time doingthe paperwork. A more minorthing happened this spring. Ramps are spring ephemeraIs and do not store well. We usually getthem in the first box or 2 ofthe season. Because of having temperatures in the 80s in March this year, the ramp season came very early. What that meant forthe CSA was that the ramp season was done 2 weeks beforethe first veggie box was delivered on May 5. Sadly, the 80 degree temperatures were followed by afreeze. Richard says the strawberry harvestwill be down maybe 30%. The strawberriesflowered duringthe warm days in March and then were especially vulnerable to the freeze that followed. Our irresponsible dumping of carbon into the atmosphere has made it much harderforfarmers to conduct their business. This is especiallytrue forvegetable farmers who planta diversity ofcrops. How can they possibly know when to plant what, when the weather has such wild and unpredictable swings from hotto cold, including severe rain events or hail? On a personal note, I have mild asthma. Every day I check the air quality on the Weather Underground. I can tell you when we have yellow air quality days because my chest hurts. A few years ago we had 4 days of orange air quality and one red day in the middle-right before Christmas. I could barely move, I had such low energy from the effects ofthe bad air quality. Coal fired power plants are a big part of my problems because ofthe particulatesthey release and their contribution to ozone. Oh, yes, we have fish advisories on all the lakes inthe Madison area because of mercury pollution.Limiting carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants will help me breathe better. And carbon pollution limits will have a beneficial effect on the climate, which will help ourfarmers. Please adopt the carbon pollution limits. Thank you Judy Skog 626 Orchard Dr. Madison, WI

### Sorry to leave you hanging for so long! Thewaters did recede- doa compare and contrastto the last post's raging waters to the pictures I took today

. It didn'ttake a whole month to go down - the waters went down almostasquickly as they rose, Ijustdidn't get around to showing you the proof

. That's the good news. It's not all bad news, butwe did have quite a bit of crop & 

### plantings damage

. Read all about it in the post-rain event newsletter here

. Sad but true, no leeks this year: Sad buttrue, no leeks this year: Too much rain has continued to fall, but recent plantings have notwashed out, so thattoo is good news.