Today’s Good News story comes from the good news network. Here it is in its entirety.

Woman About to be Evicted Was Saved By Neighbors Who Bought the Home For Her

After being threatened with eviction, a retiree was able to buy the house she had rented for two decades after a quarter-million dollars was raised by the community on her behalf.

Known for having a heart of gold and a pair of green thumbs, Linda Taylor was a beloved neighbor in her Minneapolis community.

After arriving in the area 19 years ago as a volunteer to help the homeless and needy, she began renting a small house on 10th avenue and East 36th street in the Powderhorn Park district. There, the 70-year-old retiree became a “bright star” of the neighborhood.

It seemed though that bright star would be severely darkened, perhaps permanently, when her landlord decided to sell the property, and gave her until the end of January to evict.

Word gets around tight communities, and after she told one neighbor, the greater part of Powderhorn rallied around her, striking a deal with the landlord that if he would give “Miss Linda” until the end of June, they would raise the money to buy the house.

There was no one-size-fits-all approach to the fundraising efforts. Inflation is at a 40 year high driven by previous monetary inflation reaching broader sectors of the economy, while gas just crossed a national average of $5.00 a gallon, yet even in such difficult times, folks were able to open heart, mind, and wallet, to make the project a reality.

It involved an art show, bake sale, pro-bono work by a real estate agent, countless small donations, and other community-fund drives to come up with the dough—which they did, a full month ahead of the June 30th deadline.

“Yesterday I went and did the closing for the house,” Taylor said. “It makes me feel so good, everything that I have given, it’s coming back to me and I want to continue to give. I love this neighborhood.”

The good news here is the Golden Rules is very much in play. (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.) I hope you have a great weekend. Today’s JohnKu is about helping others.

Good works by John W. Howell © 2022

A simple concept,

Treat all those you meet daily . . .

Just like you are they.

When President Gerald Ford signed a bill creating the Cuyahoga National Recreation Area in Ohio in 1974, the site’s boundaries deliberately included a well-known local garbage dump, assuming it could be easily cleaned.

When the National Park Service (NPS) discovered a nearly-unmanageable chemical wasteland where even the water and soil were flammable, a decades-long cleanup effort converted it, at the polluters’ expense no less, into a vibrant marsh ecosystem with some of the highest biodiversity in the region.

“This was a toxic wasteland only a few decades ago. To find this diversity of species there today is remarkable,” said Ecologist for Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Chris Davis.

The story begins when the Krejci (krech-ee) family opened up a dump along a river between Akron and Cleveland in 1940. Before municipal waste management, people were responsible for their own waste disposal, and Krejci innocently offered them an out-of-the-way place to do it.

As the years went by, the 200-acre site, with 50 acres meant for landfilling, began accepting heavier and heavier waste until many of the Rust Belt’s biggest manufacturers began relying on Krejci for disposal of their most harmful chemicals.

Getting stuck with the bill

As the years passed, the Cuyahoga area became a National Recreation Area and eventually a national park—the only one in the Rust Belt states. However, visitors began getting sick, and when NPS members finally got wind of the severity of the situation at the dump, a 25-year cleanup process began.

NPS needed a lot of cash to lead the cleanup, so they nominated Shawn Mulligan, a former Assistant Attorney General for Colorado, as an attorney representing the NPS. Mulligan would pursue companies like Chevron, Ford, Federal Metal Co., and Chrysler for almost $50 million in damages to pay for the cleanup.

The case dragged on, and few of the EPA legal staff believed it would yield a positive result for them. Eventually, as the NPS reported in a 2016 magazine issue, Ford quietly took the NPS legal team aside and decided on a solution: let the Motor City mechanics pay for and organize the whole cleanup.

The cleanup begins

With offices and resources close at hand, Ford hired contractors to begin excavating the contaminated soils. Still, every inch further dug revealed more sludge—and even more dangerous carcinogens like polychlorinated biphenyls or polyaromatic hydrocarbons.

The rusted cars and barrels, the tires, and all the other waste and discarded machinery were cleared out from 2002 to 2012, along with 400,000 tons of contaminated dirt—equivalent to 20 feet of topsoil.

Once no more barrels were found sticking out of the ground, and soil samples were clear of containments, the ground was contoured to match the surrounding ecosystem, and several wetlands were built up on the 50-acre dumping site.

Krejci dump today

Today, indigenous plants have been restored, and natural wetlands and all the plant and animal species they support are thriving.

Park visitors who experience the full-summer landscape find themselves soaking up the vista of native wildflowers and grasses as they watch turtles sun themselves on floating logs and listen to the birds sing.

Ford has been involved the whole way, paying its debt to society to a tune of $29 million and ensuring that the grasses and vegetation grow undisturbed and that soil erosion is prevented.

“[The Krejci site] is now as clean as any natural area in the park,” Dickerson says. That’s something remarkable, considering what it was in 1985.”

“You can categorize wetlands, and these are right up there with a three and a four (the top rating for wetlands). They can sustain high levels of benthic communities and critters, and turtles. They can sustain life here. It’s a vibrant resource for them.”

The Good news here is when like-minded people tackle a problem, there can be a positive solution. Today’s JohnKu discusses dedication. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

The Impossible by John W. Howell. © 2022

Something worth doing,

Seems impossible at times. . .

Grit saves the day.