Access Utah

If the Colorado River stopped flowing, the water in its reservoirs might hold out for three or four years, but then it would be necessary to abandon most of southern California and Arizona, and much of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. For the entire American Southwest the Colorado is the river of life, which makes it all the more tragic and ironic that by the time it approaches its final destination, it has been reduced to a shadow upon the sand.

The Food Safety Modernization Act is the first major update of federal food safety laws since 1938. FSMA gives the FDA new abilities to prevent food safety problems, detect and respond to food safety issues, and improve the safety of imported foods. The act is geared to help prevent the outbreaks of food-borne illnesses that are on the rise-- though seldom traced back to small local producers.

Utah State University alumnus Lars Peter Hansen is one of three Americans recently named as a recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics. Professor Hansen, a Cache Valley native who now teaches at the University of Chicago, will share his feelings on winning the Nobel Prize and discuss his research. He will also discuss the recent housing bubble, and government regulation of markets.

Today we revisit our conversation with Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Guns, Germs and Steel,” “Collapse,” and other books, joins Tom Williams to discuss his latest: “The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?” which is now out in paperback.

A series of Tanner Talks continues at USU on Wednesday with a panel discussion called “Community and the Demise of Local Newspapers.” Media veterans will offer their insights, concerns, warnings and prognostications as local newspapers struggle and community news evolves. Organizer and Assistant Professor in the USU Department of Journalism and Communication Matthew LaPlante, quoted in USU Today, said “I love newspapers. That’s where I come from but we have to start opening up people to the idea that, yes, there are things that we are losing as local newspapers decline. But this also gives us an opportunity to redefine the ways we communicate in our communities.”

On Veterans Day we consider the problems of returning military veterans and how we can help.Joining us are Matthew LaPlante, USU Assistant Professor of Journalism, and U. S. Navy veteran, who covered veterans issues for the Salt Lake Tribune for 7 years; former Executive Director at the Utah Department of Veterans Affairs, and U. S. Army veteran, Terry Schow; Public Affairs Officer for the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and veteran, Jill Atwood; and former US Army Captain Stacy Bare, Director of Sierra Club Outdoors Mission, an initiative to reconnect Americans, veterans in particular, to the outdoors and to use nature to facilitate reintegration.

The Food and Drug Administration is accepting public comments for the proposed Food Safety Modernization Act, through November 15, 2013. In its current form the rule, if passed, could cost farmers thousands of dollars every week or month. Farmers will have to comply with new regulations such as mandatory weekly water testing and treatment, wildlife monitoring and rigorous manure and composting standards. It threatens the subsistence of small, local farms with small profits, at a time when they are on the rise across the U.S. In her continuing series called Farm Action, Sheri Quinn profiles a California sustainable farm in the Making. It is an agricultural recipe for growing your own farm from scratch.

During the period of October 1, 2000 to April 30, 2013 the remains of 2,541 migrants who had crossed the U.S./Mexico border illegally, were recovered from Cochise, Pima and Yuma counties in Arizona, according to the AZ Daily Star Recovered Human Remains Project. In order to store the bodies, Pima County installed a second morgue refrigerator. They call it the Second Cooler.

Nicholas Basbanes, author of a trilogy on all things book-related including “A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books,” is out with a new book: “On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand Year History,” in which he considers everything from paper’s invention in China two thousand years ago, which revolutionized human civilization, to its crucial role in the unfolding of historical events, political scandals, and sensational trials: from the American Revolution to the Pentagon Papers and Watergate.

In 1991, riots began in New York City after a white Hasidic Jew struck two black children while driving in Crown Heights, killing one of them. A rumor started that emergency responders rushed to help the Jewish men in the car, but not the children. When the news spread, anti-Semitic violence left one Jewish man dead — despite the fact that the he wasn’t involved in the crash. Jacob Dorman, Assistant Professor of History and American Studies at the University of Kansas, says that these events upset the narrative about the two communities as allies in the civil rights movement.

For millions of fans, the 1985 Chicago Bears were more than a football team. They were the greatest football team ever—a gang of colorful nuts dancing and pounding their way to victory. This was the first NFL team to really cross over, to become pop stars. Their ascent marks the beginning of the modern game.

Today on Access Utah, Jack Schmidt, professor in Utah State University’s Department of Watershed Sciences and head of the U.S. Geological Survey's Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center, has long studied the Colorado River. He's among the team of scientists that designed a series of controlled releases of water from Glen Canyon Dam, starting in 1996, in an effort to restore habitats altered by the use of dams.

Amazon.com says about Lisa Morton’s “Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween:” “Every year, children and adults alike take to the streets dressed as witches, demons, animals, celebrities, and more. They carve pumpkins and play pranks, and the braver ones watch scary movies and go on ghost tours. There are parades, fireworks displays, cornfield mazes, and haunted houses—and, most important, copious amounts of bite-sized candy.

Less than three years after he retired, legendary quarterback Brett Favre has become one of the most high profile players to acknowledge he has experienced health problems stemming from repeated concussions in the NFL. KUED and the Brain Injury Alliance of Utah are hosting a screening and panel discussion of the Frontline documentary “League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis.” The screening will take place at the Salt Lake City Library, 210 East 400 South, Wednesday, October 30 at 7:00 pm.

In 1998, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay college student in Wyoming was brutally beaten by two men and died from his injuries. His story became synonymous with anti-gay hate crimes. Stephen Jimenez went to Laramie to research the story of Matthew Shepard’s murder in 2000, after the two men convicted of killing him had gone to prison, and after the national media had moved on.

Ricardo Salvador is the senior scientist and director of the Food & Environment Program at Union of Concerned Scientists. Salvador works with citizens, scientists, economists, and politicians to transition our current food system into one that grows healthy foods while employing sustainable practices. His work is driven by the belief that the current food production system disproportionately benefits some large agribusiness firms and contributes to rises in preventable diseases like hypertension and type 2 diabetes. Salvador recently visited Utah State University to present his lecture titled “Democracy Interrupted: Constructing a food utopia on top of crumbling foundations.” He talks with Tom Williams about the responsibilities and the reality of America's food industry, declining cardiovascular health and how his family's history is significant of his health today.

Science Questions profiles India's largest public toilet system that has saved the "Untouchables" from a lifetime of cleaning up human waste. Later, we hear about the amazing ability of what are called Cemetery Trees.

On today's Access Utah Sheri Quinn discusses population growth and climate change eco-cities are on the rise across the world. Cities that are committed to producing renewable energy-renewable resources and removing carbon waste. Cache Valley resident and long-time sustainability living activist Jim Goodwin joins us to talk about the challenges Cache Valley faces as the valley grows and seeks cleaner energy alternatives.

The USU Religious Studies Program & USU History Department are sponsoring a symposium: Black Religious Experience in American History at USU on Oct 24-25. Speakers include Albert Raboteau, Emeritus Professor of Religion at Princeton, the foremost expert on the religion of the American slaves prior to Lincoln's emancipation.

Scott Hammond and his golden retriever, Dusty, are volunteer search and rescue workers with Rocky Mountain Rescue Dogs. In his new book, “Lessons of the Lost: Finding Hope and Resilience in Work, Life, and the Wilderness,” Hammond says that wilderness can be unforgiving and dangerous, yet fill our souls with awe and wonder and that the wilderness is a classroom where we learn to survive, thrive and sometimes die.