Community Advisory Panel Meeting #1

I've been writing off and on between laundry loads all day today, but waited until I could read the professional writers' articles about yesterday's meeting at the Freeland Elementary School cafeteria. No need to reinvent the wheel, eh? The Saginaw News version headlines, "We are not Dow, U-M says," by JOE SNAPPER. The Midland Daily News leads off with "Scientists explain how dioxin health study will work," by Kelly Jerome.

I became aware of this meeting Thursday on WNEM Channel 5's evening news... only three days notice. We changed our weekend plans to accomodate the 6:30 meeting on Sunday evening. There were somewhere between 46 and 75 residents attending, depending on which newspaper you read. I'm convinced more people would have attended if they had known about it sooner.

I've deleted the stuff I was writing today... thank me for that!... and here is how I felt about the actual presentation... gut feel!

• The meeting was very informative, worth changing our plans.
The study will be fair (more about this later).
• Participants will be random.
• Litigants and non-litigants all have more in common than we might want to admit. I'm concerned that, since participants are chosen randomly, our household might not be chosen for the sampling. I also want to know if living with dioxin in my backyard has affected my health, or for that matter the health of my family.
• I'm overall convinced the Community Advisory Panel was well-chosen, but believe at least one member should be somebody who actually lives on the floodplain.

The next meeting is planned for Thursday, December 9 at 6:00 pm in the Freeland Elementary School Auditorium. Mark your calendars now. These advisory meetings are important. Unfortunately, the Saginaw Valley Computer Association meets that same evening. As President I really should attend that meeting. We shall see how things go.