Celebrating a sad Earth Day at a rail yard

As we got ready to celebrate Earth Week and Earth Day, our neighborhood, and users of the nature corridor, were left to celebrate the construction and operation of a 200-car Cargill private rail yard adjacent to the Prairie Park Fishery. The land the rail yard was constructed on was a prairie pollinator site funded by a REAP grant and the Monarch Research Project.

We mourn the loss of our open space, the pollinator plants and habitat that supported Monarch butterflies, bumble bees and other invertebrates (and possibly the federally endangered Rusty Patched bumble bee).

We are experiencing solastalgia, described by the National Institutes of Health, as distress that is produced from environmental change impacting people while they are directly connected to the home environment. In other words, a feeling of distress associated with environmental change.

We are incredulous when we read about the City's Greenway plan. This plan on the west side of the river is to transform the neighborhoods hardest hit by the flood of 2008 and to provide an economic benefit — which sounds like a great plan. Unfortunately, the Rompot neighborhood, one of the neighborhoods hardest hit by the flood, has been transformed by the loss of the green space/pollinator site, and an economic benefit has been provided to the largest private company in the United States.

While we are still impacted by what has been lost, we have not given up on our quest for justice as litigation still is ongoing.

Barbara Stary

Cedar Rapids