New Community Project - Who are we?

The New Community Project is a faith-based nonprofit organization with the modest goal of changing the world! People are struggling, the earth is a mess, God's not amused, and we all know something's not right here. Our mission is to provide experiences that change us, resources that challenge us, and a community that gives us hope. Learn more about our programs and projects here and read about one specific area of our work below. Glad to have you along!

Every Picture Tells a Story - Oil and Water Don't Mix

One feature that brings interest in a photograph is juxtaposition—when two things in the same frame or successive frames play off each other in some way. Thinking of some of my own photos, there was the the one of a Reagan/Bush sticker on a car in Honduras in the mid-1980's; a homeless man walking across the Mall in D.C. in front of a huge semi parked there with “Christ is the Answer” plastered across its side (the Washington Monument in the background); the profile of a Sudanese preschooler, barefoot but wearing her little dress, silhouetted alone on a path seemingly leading nowhere.

The two images on this page provide sequential juxtaposition. And they are closer in geography and fate than they may appear. The first is of the pristine Reproductive Lakes in the Cuyabeno Ecological Reserve in the Ecuadorian Amazon. An amazing array of birds and amphibians use this enclave as their nesting/breeding ground. Even though our Learning Tour visited here in May, public access is tightly controlled. Our partners tell us petroleum pollution has yet to affect this area—rare even for the Amazon in this part of Ecuador .

The next photo is of an unlined holding pond for toxic effluents from the oil production process in the Amazonian region of Ecuador. (Here too entry is tightly controlled—by oil company security—but our friends got us well within camera range!) When it rains (as it tends to do in the Amazon) and this pond and many others like it overflow, the effluent goes into nearby streams that eventually empty into the Amazon River itself. Before that, however, these same waterways are used by fish and other marine life, and also by local people for washing their clothes—and themselves. Here and elsewhere over 4 million gallons of this oil waste goes into the Ecuadorian ecosystem every day. (Rate of flow of the Deepwater Horizon well into the waters of the Gulf: “only” 1.7 million gallons per day.)

And here's the kicker…

Click here for the rest of the story…