Guest blog: Hunting down dirty energy in Iowa

By Susan Temere, the 1Sky Regional Coordinator in Iowa. -- Luis

I began the Iowa Dirty Energy Hunt by looking on the map 1Sky provided, and was surprised to see a great number of them scattered throughout the state. Des Moines -- one of the largest cities in Iowa -- has one such source in the metropolitan area: an Archer Daniels Midland coal-fired soybean processing plant.

As I recruited for pictures to be shot in front of the ADM smokestack, many people from my call lists were also surprised to learn we had a global warming pollution source so close to home. Some were not aware of it at all. Others were vaguely aware of it. And some knew it well, saying it smelled. One man confessed he had yelled out his car window at the smokestack when driving by in anger because of the pollution and smell.

Twelve people turned out for our first photo petition. I purposely choose a Sunday to avoid the truck traffic at the site I had already staked out.

First, we met at Congressman Boswell's office. It was a good meeting place because of its central location, participants from the Storm knew it well and others (that I hoped to organize for future Boswell meetings) would become familiar with his Des Moines district office location.

We drove 7 minutes to the east Des Moines plant in car pools. I soon learned twelve individual photos was a lot to handle at one time. Since I wanted to include the ADM sign with the address in our photos, we took pictures along the plant's fence line.

Even though it was a dead Sunday and after 6 people were photographed, security paid us a visit. I was told management told security to inform us we were trespassing and had to leave. As I purposely spoke at length with the security officer, we were able to click a few more pictures with the ADM sign included.

Finally we moved our operation across the street. Some insisted on a picture taken at the side of the road along the border line to ADM property to push the envelope.

Overall we had a great time, and everyone seemed to enjoy their contribution to help pass bold climate and clean energy legislation.