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The Indiana Department of Transportation will conduct a public hearing today regarding the recently released Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Section 4 of the I-69 corridor. I-69 Section 4 begins at U.S. 231 near the Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center and runs northeast to State Road 37 just south of Bloomington. Among all the reasons given to fight I-69, its environmental impact is perhaps the most serious. We sit down with two staunch opponents of the superhighway: Tom Tokarski, founder of Citizens for Appropriate Rural Roads, and city council member Andy Ruff.

One person’s trash is another’s treasure –that’s the idea behind the Hoosier to Hoosier sale taking place Saturday at the Indiana University Memorial Stadium. Departing EcoReport host John Patishnock is the creator of the Hoosier To Hoosier re-use program, finding new homes for stuff tossed out by IU students and supporting local non-profits at the same time. The goal is to reduce waste and minimize landfill use, but the program also benefits community organizations by donating 100 percent of proceeds to local chapters of United Way and Habitat for Humanity.

The annual Forecastle Festival in Louisville draws huge crowds for its big-name bands, but it’s not just a concert. Forecastle is equal parts music, arts, and activism, connecting the progressive Midwest with a focus on environmental responsibility.

As our county planner specializing in environmental issues, Heidi Russell Wagner is our local watchdog for development threats to our natural resources. Wagner is a consultant on the county’s land use plan, and recently made headlines with her efforts to green the Monroe County Courthouse. Today Wagner talks water, from the danger of runoff crippling the already-polluted Clear Creek to the benefits of water conservation through things like rainbarrels.

Widening of the State Road 45/46 bypass has begun…but not without opposition. The local group Bloomington Transportation Options for People has released a report entitled “Bypassing Good Judgment: INDOT and the Overexpansion of the SR 45/46 Bypass”.

Indiana University Professor Chris Craft says coastal Louisiana wetlands may be on the brink of survival, pushed over the edge by the failed British Petroleum oil well that until recently was spewing 30,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico. Craft says that gulf wetlands have been under siege for more than a century as a result of natural and human-caused activities.

Jacqui Bauer is Bloomington's first Sustainability Coordinator, hired on Earth Day to plan, lead, and coordinate sustainability initiatives for Bloomington. Bauer currently serves as co-chair of the IU Resource Use and Recycling Workgroup and is a member of the city’s Environmental Commission. We brought Bauer to WFHB for her first studio interview since becoming Bloomington’s first city administrator focused solely on sustainability.

Nearly 100,000 online votes have won Bloomington 20 organic fruit trees from the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation, a California-based non-profit that is giving away 100 trees every month to communities who organize an orchard. The Bloomington Community Orchard Project will plant the trees in a city park near the Monroe County YMCA. Correspondent John Patishnock sat down with orchard organizers Amy Countryman and Shaun Ziegler in this WFHB exclusive.

Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics and the first political scientist to win in economics. Ostrom’s research focuses on “the commons,” the concept of public resources that are owned by EVERYone and not by SOMEone…like our public lands, or even the Internet. Ostrom received the Nobel Prize for her work debunking the notion that a lack of central ownership spoils common resources.

Steve Bonney is a local organic farmer who once ran for governor after getting fed up with state environmental policies serving special interests instead of the people. Bonney is coordinating this weekend’s Sustainable Living Fair in Indianapolis, featuring a variety of workshops and seminars for people AND the planet.