PROTECT OUR AQUIFER, CROSSTOWN CONCOURSE, LANDMARK TRADING DEVELOPMENT COMPANY

Today, we started with a long tour, led by Protect Our Aquifer, about the Memphis water systems and how aquafers work throughout the city. We went over the importance of maintaining chemicals and how the use of chemicals can affect the cleanliness of a city’s water for centuries. The morning was cold and some of us didn’t eat breakfast (we might have ignored our wake up call until we only had 5 minutes to get ready), but it was good to learn more about the importance of clean water in a city and visit multiple sites. Our next destination was this building in which the inside replaced a Sear’s. It’s longer than the Empire State Building is tall -and has about fifteen floors. It was beautifully remodeled into a place for shops, restaurants and seating areas, and reminded me of Stanley Marketplace in Denver. We had a nice lunch at Farm Burger, and overall, connected with each other a lot throughout the day in conversations and learning more about this city.

Today we started off not knowing what to expect, when we woke up, we quickly got ready and went out the door (at least, the girls did.) When outside we meet with our first immersion experience of the day Protect our Aquifer. This experience was led by Mercedes and Scott, they started by introducing importance of Memphis’ aquifer and how it has been affected by many things in the community like chemicals, landfills, and lack of environmental education to know the effects of these things. We went to different dump sites in the city and explored how these dumpsites affect each aquifer. We learned that when a city uses an aquifer, there is clay layers then sand layer then clay layer and so on until you reach the bottom known as the aquifer which we drink and pull water from. We also learned that when there are holes in the clay surface and when hazardous materials from the surface leak into the soil it also has the ability to impact our drinking and available water. Learning from these effects, Scott & Mercedes take initiative to advocate for communities to keep them safe as well as all the people who consume this water. The water from this aquifer helps supply up to 8 surroundings states with water showing the importance to keep it clean. After this we went to an old Sears warehouse and distribution center which we learned spanned a total of 1.5 million square feet. However, this big building was refurbished and turned into a place for collaboration and connection. This place houses restaurants, library, a high school, coffee shops, cleaners, etc. Jeff, our organizer of this whole trip, gave us a whole tour and we were able to go all the way to go up to the 10^th floor and look all the way down the atrium, they cut into the concrete. They also provided housing in this massive structure that would’ve otherwise sat abandoned. This place reminded me how important it is to take things we already have and use them as something more then just setting them aside. This also reminded me of the Stanley Market Place at home. The last thing we did today was we met a nice man named Mike Minnis who moved to his current neighborhood to help bring change. He saw and wanted to add to this change through a community garden. Before we started physically working in garden, he told us a lot about the neighborhood and why he felt it was right to move in for change. He told us that initiating change in a community requires us to step in and be a part of that community to add to that change. We must immerse ourselves in the issues to help fix the issues around us. When he was talking, I felt like he had so much knowledge and not just the kind you get from books but the kind from action. When he talked, he made all of us feel so alive, he connected things from school like microeconomics, environmental justice, biology, chemistry, and theology but all made them synonymous he used them in ways that only brought us closer and more aware of the injustices around us. He also made the point that “WE” are the change, and we must be the people who lead our country as we are the next generation. After we finished talking, we helped him with some chores to take down some pipes and a gardening shed. In the end today was had a lot of learning and meaningful involvement in helping to provided change. I learned a lot today and saw how a lot of people can be impacted by things that get blown off. I also really enjoyed a good burger for lunch. I think its important that we used today to talk about environmental justice because it can be brushed off and seen as a little problem when, in reality, its everywhere and such a mundane issue that it does not allow us to give it the proper funding or attention it needs. If it wasn’t for today, I would not have learned about these issues or how these challenges affect not just the environment of the people here in Memphis but also places like Denver as well.