Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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  • A woman, who leads a zero waste lifestyle, only has enough landfill waste to fill a quart jar after two years.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702855-1.JPG
  • Aerial view of Dow Chemical’s giant plant in Freeport, Texas, that produces 1.65 million tons a year of ethylene, the building block of polyethylene, one of the most widely used plastics.<br />
The first two products manufactured at Dow Texas Operations were magnesium and chlorine from seawater to aid the World War II effort. Seventy- five years later, Texas Operations’ 65+ production units are making thousands of products – most of them ending up in products that we use every day. In 2012 – Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris announced Dow’s Freeport site had been chosen as the home for a new world-scale ethylene cracker. From Dow PR: Dow facilities in Texas produce BILLIONS of pounds of products each year that enhance the quality of life for people around the globe. Dow products serve virtually every consumer market ranging from food to building and construction and from health and medicine to transportation. These products are used in a variety of end-use products – office supplies, mouthwash, pharmaceuticals, computers, furniture, paints, carpet, garbage bags, cosmetics, chewing gum, lozenges, cleaning products and food.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2696239-4.JPG
  • Aerial view of Dow Chemical’s giant plant in Freeport, Texas, that produces 1.65 million tons a year of ethylene, the building block of polyethylene, one of the most widely used plastics.<br />
The first two products manufactured at Dow Texas Operations were magnesium and chlorine from seawater to aid the World War II effort. Seventy- five years later, Texas Operations’ 65+ production units are making thousands of products – most of them ending up in products that we use every day. In 2012 – Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris announced Dow’s Freeport site had been chosen as the home for a new world-scale ethylene cracker. From Dow PR: Dow facilities in Texas produce BILLIONS of pounds of products each year that enhance the quality of life for people around the globe. Dow products serve virtually every consumer market ranging from food to building and construction and from health and medicine to transportation. These products are used in a variety of end-use products – office supplies, mouthwash, pharmaceuticals, computers, furniture, paints, carpet, garbage bags, cosmetics, chewing gum, lozenges, cleaning products and food.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2696239-1.JPG
  • Empty containers fill the back of a pick up truck as a  family with a dry well carries water for their home use in five-gallon buckets. They  and 30 other families rely on this water for cooking and bathing since they no longer have running water in their home in Clovis, New Mexico.<br />
A $160 million pipeline project from the Ute reservoir may help relieve the situation although communities are still finding ways to curb consumption.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481070-10.TIF
  • A ranch hand works into the night as steers are coaxed into a pen at a feedlot near Garden City, Kansas.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481070-8.TIF
  • Sand Hill Cranes are the grassland birds of the great plains that migrate from Siberia to northern Mexico. But their main migratory path converges over the high plains Ogallala aquifer. Sand Hill Cranes roost here because the Crane Trust has re-engineered this part of the river back to the Pleistocene. This is one of the few places left where they can all co-mingle. The migration fans out across the north and then hits this area near Kearney Nebraska on the Platte River and then the migration fans out again to the south when they leave.
    MM8429_20160314_33391.tif
  • Three Mennonite kids are the last to get off the bus in Lazbuddie, Texas.<br />
<br />
Superintendent Joanna also has to drive the school bus for Lazbuddie schools but primarily is trying to figure out how to keep the school and community alive as they run out of water. When she started they had about 100 students now they have over 200 primarily from luring other communities children by offering an excellent robotics program and offering daycare. She had 90 days of water left for 16 families (teachers are housed at the school complex). The well got down to 15 feet of standing water. She got federal funds for a $360K well but who knows how long that will last. There are 88,000 wells around her in the TX panhandle that are poorly regulated and the water mining is affecting neighboring communities.
    MM8429_20151027_22560.tif
  • You can see the building thunderhead in the background at this Imperial NE feedlot where workers are in the middle of a corn rodeo as many huge machines try to put up feed and corn and get it covered before the storm. Imperial has around 53,000 head of cows and the mountain in this photo is all CORN... about 24 million USD of corn in 2015 prices. 5.25 million bushels (around $3.80 a bushel in 2015).
    MM8429_20151020_21196.tif
  • Cattle are coaxed into pens at a feedlot in Kansas.
    MM8249_20150609_08637.tif
  • Aerial view of Dow Chemical’s giant plant in Freeport, Texas, that produces 1.65 million tons a year of ethylene, the building block of polyethylene, one of the most widely used plastics.<br />
The first two products manufactured at Dow Texas Operations were magnesium and chlorine from seawater to aid the World War II effort. Seventy- five years later, Texas Operations’ 65+ production units are making thousands of products – most of them ending up in products that we use every day. In 2012 – Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris announced Dow’s Freeport site had been chosen as the home for a new world-scale ethylene cracker. From Dow PR: Dow facilities in Texas produce BILLIONS of pounds of products each year that enhance the quality of life for people around the globe. Dow products serve virtually every consumer market ranging from food to building and construction and from health and medicine to transportation. These products are used in a variety of end-use products – office supplies, mouthwash, pharmaceuticals, computers, furniture, paints, carpet, garbage bags, cosmetics, chewing gum, lozenges, cleaning products and food.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2696239-3.JPG
  • Aerial view of Dow Chemical’s giant plant in Freeport, Texas, that produces 1.65 million tons a year of ethylene, the building block of polyethylene, one of the most widely used plastics.<br />
The first two products manufactured at Dow Texas Operations were magnesium and chlorine from seawater to aid the World War II effort. Seventy- five years later, Texas Operations’ 65+ production units are making thousands of products – most of them ending up in products that we use every day. In 2012 – Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris announced Dow’s Freeport site had been chosen as the home for a new world-scale ethylene cracker. From Dow PR: Dow facilities in Texas produce BILLIONS of pounds of products each year that enhance the quality of life for people around the globe. Dow products serve virtually every consumer market ranging from food to building and construction and from health and medicine to transportation. These products are used in a variety of end-use products – office supplies, mouthwash, pharmaceuticals, computers, furniture, paints, carpet, garbage bags, cosmetics, chewing gum, lozenges, cleaning products and food.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2696239-2.JPG
  • It's party time on a hot summer day. River tanking in plastic livestock-watering containers is a popular tourist draw along the shallow Calamus River in central Nebraska. With two-thirds of the Ogallala’s water underlying it, the state’s wealth of groundwater feeds countless springs, streams, and rivers.<br />
<br />
There is so much fossil water available in NE that a couple of cowboys figured out how to float the river in cow tanks. Now ranchers use tourism to supplement ranch income in hard times and as many as 350 tourists float the river on one day. The Calamus is spring fed from the Ogallala aquifer.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481070-9.TIF
  • Beef Empire Days ranch riding competition in Garden City, Ks., which is at the heart of the American breadbasket where farmers grow corn, wheat and sorghum and raise cattle. Over the last sixty years, two technologies have transformed production from rain fed-oriented agriculture to high-intensity irrigated agriculture, a change that transformed the local economy. Instead of relying on rain, Garden City farmers now use low-cost groundwater pumps and a technique called "center-pivot irrigation" to essentially mine for water locked deep underground. Garden City's current bounty is possible because beneath these farmer's fields is a vast reservoir of water, called the Ogallala Aquifer. This vast stretch of groundwater touches eight states, from South Dakota and Wyoming to New Mexico and Texas and so, because the semi-arid climate of the High Plains doesn't receive enough rainfall to support intensive agriculture, farmers pump this trapped water above ground to irrigate their fields.
    MM8249_20150606_00723.tif
  • Dirt flies up as horses gallop down the track in front of the twin spires of Churchill Downs. Horses are competing for a million dollar purse and a place in history.  First held in 1875, the Kentucky Derby is one of THE most famous two minutes in thoroughbred racing.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7017_720960.TIF
  • Muleshoe, Texas is only one of the small towns that struggle in rural Texas where the water has been mined out by irrigation. All you have to do is look at Google Earth and you see the swath of brown earth where Muleshoe is on the map.
    MM8429_20151025_23547.tif
  • A man eating ice cream on the front porch of an old general store in Lorman Mississippi.
    HC_ManFlag..tif
  • As an evening storm lights up the sky, about 413,000 sandhill cranes arrive to roost in the shallows of the Platte River.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_CRANES.tif
  • Chained-up hounds, anxious to be part of the fun, watch their owner wave at a passing truck.
    RANDY OLSON_501378.tif
  • A conveyor belt carries mixed plastic to an optical sorter.<br />
Recology recovers 600 million pounds of recyclables each year and is the most advanced recycling plant on the planet. They invested 12 million USD last year for IR scanners and blowers that use puffs of air to separate different materials that are identified by the IR scanners. The USA has a recycling rate of 30 percent and with Recology's outreach and other programs they are at a 70 percent (of overall waste) being recycled. Robert Reed is main contact for Recology and he is a proponent of Zero Waste, which is being done more in Europe than USA. "Recycling," he says, "should be the last ditch effort."
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692110.JPG
  • Power lines and roads are not friends to trees... this one has been hacked into a cartoonish profile. This is the corner of Schneiter and Southgate in Louisville Kentucky.
    TNC17017_20170830_1245.TIF
  • Are you going to heaven?
    RANDY OLSON_06414_3280_17.TIF
  • This is part of a "trunk or treat" event in Muleshoe Texas. Rural children come to a parking lot in downtown Muleshoe to get candy that is given out of the backs of farmer's trucks. One farmer got inventive and cut a number of 50 gallon drums into "cattle cars" and pulled the children around this town that is semi-deserted because the water has been mined out below them for agriculture. There are six great aquifers in the world… ours in North America is the Ogallala aquifer and it provides 40 percent of our beef and 20 percent of our food in USA. The fear in the northern part of the aquifer is that the water will be taken away by thirsty southern states. The problem in the southern end of the aquifer is that Texas has 88,000 (basically unregulated) wells that are taking so much of the aquifer that it has become a tragedy of the commons that creates issues beyond Muleshoe. Subdivisions in New Mexico are tapped out of water from Texas agriculture because the aquifer doesn’t adhere to state boundaries.
    MM8429_20151029_24115.jpg
  • Larry Visnosky plays with his pet bear, Coco in the Little Buffalo River in Arkansas, USA.
    ngs0_4040.tif
  • Women sing out 'Stop in the Name of Love' in the spot where Diana Ross recorded the song.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MT6613_1457231.jpg
  • Przewalski horses descend from 13 that were captured around 1900.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737069.jpg
  • A Kiger mustang stallion with one ear stands guard protecting the herd.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737068.jpg
  • A curious Kiger mustang band of wild horses noted for their intelligence and stamina.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737066.jpg
  • Kiger mustangs graze peacefully on public land in southeast Oregon.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737064.jpg
  • Sand Wash Basin wild horses drink water on parched high desert public lands where they roam.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737062.jpg
  • A small herd of wild horses approaches with curiosity in the high desert West on public lands.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737059.jpg
  • A horse stares curious and watching humans who he has never experienced in the wild.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737057.jpg
  • Hundreds of cars line up to pay a toll on the New Jersey Turnpike.
    MELISSA FARLOW_06460_668288.jpg
  • A young trainer works with a wild horse training him with a gentle calm voice asking him to lie down.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737138.jpg
  • A young trainer works with a wild horse in a gentle manner.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737136.jpg
  • A young trainer calms one of the 50 unwanted wild mustangs she and her mother adopted.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737133.jpg
  • A young horse approaches a trainer looking for attention. The teen and her mother have adopted 50 unwanted wild horses and train many of them for riding and competitions.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737132.jpg
  • A young girl and her adopted wild horse stand by the water that flows from Cold Creek into a water hole.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737117.jpg
  • A horse trainer faces a wild mustang and speaks softly approaching the wary horse.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737115.jpg
  • Training for competition, a rider steadies her wild horse on a steep slope into a lake.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737114.jpg
  • A horse rescuer carries hay to feed her the animals at her sanctuary.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737104.jpg
  • A wild horse scans the horizon on public lands watching for threats to the herd.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737100.jpg
  • A ranch hand opens a chute to load wild horses into a truck transporting them to a holding facility after a round up.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737089.jpg
  • Ranch hands and workers share an early breakfast in a local diner, a ritual before working with wild horses.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737088.jpg
  • Cowboys roll out jute setting up fences for a helicopter round up to remove wild horses from public land.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737080.jpg
  • Contractors and BLM horse specialists plan a wild horse roundup because of a lawsuit by The Rock Springs Grazing Association.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737079.jpg
  • Contractors prepare to load trucks with wild horses they capture following a round up.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737078.jpg
  • Rounded up wild horses pace in holding facility corrals before they are transported where some are adopted.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737077.jpg
  • A pair of Mongolian wild horses, also known as Przewalski horses, are a breed that has never been domesticated.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737070.jpg
  • A Kiger mustang stallion watches guard of the herd. Kiger mustangs possess a demeanor and coloration of the original Spanish mustang.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737067.jpg
  • Cattle share land grazing with wild horses throughout the West.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737065.jpg
  • Wild horses graze while ducks swim by in a waterhole they share with other wildlife.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737063.jpg
  • Wild horses graze in a remote area of  high desert on western public lands.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737061.jpg
  • A small band of wild horses trots to join a herd as they graze in the high desert of western public lands.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737060.jpg
  • A wily horse separated from his band trots to freedom during a helicopter wild horse round up.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737058.jpg
  • High desert where Ice Age Columbian mammoths, camels, lions, sloths and ancient horse herds roamed lush wetlands.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737056.jpg
  • A band of wild horses drink from a Cold Creek pond in the parched desert.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737055.jpg
  • A yearling mustang watching the wild herd move down a ridge top to a watering hole.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_2737054.jpg
  • People run on the Great Lawn under the canopy framework of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MT5887_1564381.jpg
  • Sunlight highlights aspen trees, Populus tremuloides, as their colors turn golden in the autumn. "Quaking aspen" is Colorado's signature tree in the high altitude of the San Juan mountains near Silverton. Aspens grow in large clonal colonies, derived from a single seedling. They spread by root suckers and new starts may pop up 100–130 ft from the parent tree. Each tree may live for 40–150 years, but the root system of the colony can be thousands of years old sending up new trunks as the older trees die off above ground.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705744.jpg
  • Sunlight highlights grasses and sand dunes on the shore of Lake Michigan at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
    MELISSA FARLOW_06103_495811.jpg
  • A young trainer works with a wild horse training him to calmly walk through a pool filled with plastic bottles for the first time.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737139.jpg
  • A young trainer works with a horse training in a gentle manner rewarding him with a scratch on the neck.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737137.jpg
  • A trainer works with a wild horse, one of 50 she and her teenage daughter have adopted.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737135.jpg
  • A young horse trainer gets a surprise buss from one of the 50 wild horses that she and her mother have adopted and train.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737131.jpg
  • A young trainer is patient but determined with her headstrong wild horse colt.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737130.jpg
  • A young rider trains her newly adopted wild horse mustang so he can be ridden.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737129.jpg
  • A young girl is fearless working with a feisty colt. She adopted the wild horse that was rounded up when he was one month old.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737128.jpg
  • A friendly horse reaches out to pull one of the twin sisters braid. The girls are passionate to save wild horses.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737127.jpg
  • A young man patiently works with a rescued young wild horse foal.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737126.jpg
  • A young man patiently works with a rescued young wild horse foal.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737125.jpg
  • Young volunteers at Return to Freedom Wild Horse Sanctuary love the animals.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737124.jpg
  • A rescued, premature orphan foal was abandoned by his wild mother and now playfully leaps in a horse nursery in a home.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737123.jpg
  • A rescued ten-day old orphaned foal, born premature and near death, was abandoned by his mother in a wild horse herd.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737122.jpg
  • A young horse trainer hangs out with rescued horses on the family ranch.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737121.jpg
  • A young horse trainer relaxes with rescued horses on the family ranch.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737120.jpg
  • Young horse-loving advocates meet to inspire others to speak up for humane treatment of wild horses.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737119.jpg
  • A young girl gives big hugs to a beloved, recently adopted mustang.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737118.jpg
  • Woman horse trainer reaches out slowly to let a wild horse smell her hand attempting to win the mustang's trust.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737116.jpg
  • Training for competition, a cowgirl steadies her wild horse on a steep slope into a lake.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737113.jpg
  • Two women horse trainers ride near their ranch where they adopted 50 unwanted, wild horses.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737112.jpg
  • A horse trainer rides bareback on the ranch where she and her mother adopted 50 unwanted wild horses.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737111.jpg
  • A horse trainer chooses a wild horse to ride on the ranch where she and her mother adopted 50 unwanted mustangs.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737110.jpg
  • Mother helps her daughter onto a horse to ride bareback. They adopted 50 wild horses and train them.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737109.jpg
  • A wild horse trainer coaxes her horse to walk through a curtain made of plastic that could spook a horse.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737108.jpg
  • A young wild horse advocate stopped a US Representative in the wall way to lobby against horse slaughter bills.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737107.jpg
  • A young wild horse advocate waits in a congressional office in Washington, DC to lobby against horse slaughter bills and support humane treatment of horses.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737106.jpg
  • A young wild horse advocate and his mother sat in a congressional office in Washington, DC to lobby against horse slaughter bills.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737105.jpg
  • A rescued orphan foal leaves little time for sleep, so a bed is moved into the makeshift horse nursery in the house.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737103.jpg
  • A horse trainer encourages a reluctant young mustang to come into the water.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737102.jpg
  • A playful bachelor band of young studs hang out in the Sand Wash Basin, 157,730 acres of public land.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737101.jpg
  • A startled stallion senses danger for the wild horse herd in the Sand Wash Basin.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737099.jpg
  • A playful bachelor band of young studs mock battle building up their fighting moves.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737098.jpg
  • A playful bachelor band of young stallions are buddies.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737097.jpg
  • Bachelor band of young stallions watch the protected herd in the Sand Wash Basin.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737096.jpg
  • A wild stallion lowers his head and "snakes" to move his band through the high desert.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737095.jpg
  • A stallion chases a colt away from his band when a young male reaches sexual maturity.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737094.jpg
  • Horses line the ridge at dusk at Return to Freedom Wild Horse Sanctuary.  Most of the 400 horses arrived in rescue efforts.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737093.jpg
  • Horses graze on green hills at Return to Freedom Wild Horse Sanctuary.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737092.jpg
  • Horses graze on steep slopes at a non-profit Return to Freedom Wild Horse Sanctuary.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737091.jpg
  • Matriarch of a western family has a ride along canine companion.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737090.jpg
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