On Friday, millions of individuals stopped work in schools and offices to take to the streets to participate in the worldwide Youth Climate Strike. Youths across the world voiced their concerns of rising global temperatures and increased health effects in an effort to demand action from global political leaders. Today these leaders have gathered in New York at the Climate Action Summit to discuss what steps need to be taken to lower global greenhouse emissions and stall further climate change destruction. Read More.
Author: CHEJ Intern
The state of Michigan has approved a $1.4 million budget for the collection of PFAS containing substances in fire departments and airports across the state. A survey conducted in 2018 found that 326 out of 762 fire departments in the state use PFAS Class B AFFF (aqueous film forming form). The PFAS liquid will be collected and solidified for safe storage in a hazardous waste landfill in Belleville, MI. Read More.
By Liz Goodiel, CHEJ Science and Tech Fellow
Take a moment and imagine your dream home. Maybe your dream home is set on a beautiful ocean front with large windows that overlook the rolling waves and the pink summer sunsets. Perhaps your dream home is located in the mountains, surrounded on all sides with towering trees where you can step outside and instantly breathe in the fresh pine. Or maybe your dream home is right where it is now, filled with family, laughter and memories. Wherever your dream home is, you worked hard for it. You managed the home repairs, paid the bills, supported the family, and you made a house a home.
Now take a moment to imagine that an uninvited visitor came and damaged that home. The house that you worked so hard for is now broken, the windows are shattered, the front lawn is destroyed, and your house now has a gaping hole that you didn’t ask for. What is even more unfair is now that outsider isn’t even going to pay to repair your home. He is going to drive away, with the rubble in his rearview mirror, and leave you to clean it up. This visitor damaged your property, so why isn’t he going to be the one to pay for the repairs? Why has he left you standing there to figure out how to fix what is broken? You’re left with your checkbook in one hand and a hammer in the other, forced to undertake the repairs that will take a lot of time, money and hard work.
Across the United States, nearly 53 million Americans are overwhelmed by contamination and health concerning pollution in their own communities created by corporations and facilities. To combat this problem, the Superfund program was created in 1980 to manage the cleanup of the most toxic waste sites where the responsible party was not identified or went out of business. Throughout the course of the program’s history, Superfund has received its funding in two different ways. The first is through budget appropriations the Environmental Protection Agency receives yearly based on the federal budget sourced by American tax dollars. The second source of funding was through polluter taxes, also known as the Polluter Pays Fees. Polluter Pays Fees were taxes enforced on companies that produced chemicals, oil, or other hazardous waste. These fees were designed to make polluters monetarily responsible for the cleanup of any damage they created in the process of production.
The Superfund tax fees ended in 1995, relieving polluters of the responsibility to pay for the cleanup of contaminated sites. The sole success of the Superfund program currently relies on the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget which is currently at its smallest in two decades. Polluters are not required to pay for the damage they have created and, in effect, American’s have been forced to compensate for this loss in the form of tax dollars. In the last two decades, American tax dollars have paid for more than $21 billion in Superfund site cleanup. Polluters have torn down the “dream home” and walked away, leaving the residents behind to pay for the mess they didn’t ask for nor create.
In July of 2019, Representative Earl Blumunaer of Oregon proposed the Superfund Reinvestment Act (H.R. 4088) to bring the cleanup burden back to polluters. Sponsors of the bill include Representatives Gerry Connolly (VA), Jerry McNerney (CA), Terri Sewell (AL), Raul Grijalva (AZ), Matt Cartwright (PA) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.). The proposed bill will require polluting companies to pay an excise tax of 0.12 percent on the amount of a company’s modified environmental tax taxable income that exceeds $3,735,000. In other words, for a company that makes over $3,735 million in net income, each additional profit will be taxed at a rate of 0.12 percent. For example, if a company that makes an additional $10,000 over the $3,735 million threshold, its taxable amount will be equivalent to the cost of one cheese pizza ($12.00). If a company does not meet the threshold of $3,735 million, it is not required to pay any additional tax.
Currently, polluters escape billions of dollars in cleanup costs for damages they created. With Representative Blumenaur’s proposed legislation, the cleanup burden will be transferred from American taxpayers back to the parties responsible for pollution. Polluters are the ones responsible for creating unhealthy hazardous sites, why are they not the ones responsible for cleaning it up?
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Sacrifice Zones Training Call
Thank you for registering for CHEJ’s Free Training Call about Sacrifice Zones. Materials for the call can be found below.
Training Call Sacrifice Zones Presentation_9.17.2019
EJSCREEN Report (Marathon Petroleum Company)
The Trump administration has proposed legislation that will make any act “inhibiting the operation” of a gas or oil pipeline punishable for up to 20 years in prison. Current federal law already makes any attempt or action of damaging or destroying a pipeline punishable by prison. The administration now wants to expand on current legislation to any pipeline opposition that prohibits the productivity in construction of a pipeline. Some states have already been enforcing such strict laws on protesters; however, environmental activists question if the law is an encroachment on First Amendment rights. Read More.
Represnetative Brian Baldridge proposed a bill that will prohibit Dayton, Ohio fire departments from training with PFAS infused foam. The dangerous chemical has been found to have contaminated an aquifer underneath the fire training center that sources the city’s drinking water. The bill still allows for the use of the foam in necessary fire fighting circumstances; however, departments must find an alternative training source by January 1, 2020. Read More.
The Portland City Council approved an ordinance on Wednesday, September 11 to appropriate $2 million towards a cleanup plan for the Willamette Cove Superfund Site. Established as a Superfund site in 2000, the contaminated river has experienced slow cleanup, despite having a total of 150 known potentially responsible parties. City officials have predicted that the plan will take three to four years to complete and a total of $8.1 million that will be divided evenly among at least four of the responsible parties. The city hopes this plan will create greater collaboration with the EPA and encourage other responsible parties to get involved in the cleanup. Read More.
By Sharon Franklin
Elizabeth Gribkoff of the Vermont Digger recently reported in her article Years after discovery, PFOA looms over Bennington residents, that individuals such as Sandy Sumner and his wife who live in North Bennington, Vermont have their lives permanently altered by contamination from the former ChemFab plant, a Teflon coating plant. The Sumners use to have a large vegetable patch in front of their house, but they are now afraid to eat anything grown on their property because the soil and groundwater is contaminated with chemicals that are very harmful. When the plant was operational, Sumner and neighbors complained to the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the factory management about the acrid emissions from the smokestacks. Sumner states “My wife and I, we were constantly sick,” “We couldn’t keep our windows and doors open. We got headaches, migraines, sore throats, nosebleeds.” When the plant closed in 2002, the Sumners found out from the state that their drinking water well was contaminated with 580 parts per trillion of Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA — more than 29 times higher than the Vermont drinking water standard.
In April, 2019 the state of Vermont reached a final agreement with Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, the current owner of the ChemFab factory. As stated in the agreement “Under this final settlement, … Saint-Gobain will directly fund a significant portion of the waterline extensions and be responsible for long-term monitoring, the drilling of replacement wells, and the long-term operation and maintenance of in-home treatment systems. Waterline work in the East Side of the Town of Bennington is estimated at $20 to $25 million. Pending final budget approval, the State has agreed to commit $4.7 million to extend waterlines to the maximum extent feasible.”
In the Fall of 2018, Water-line extensions were completed at roughly 200 houses on the western side of the contaminated area, including the Sumners’ home. Construction on the second phase of water line extensions in Bennington has begun, but many homes won’t be connected until 2020. However, the Bennington residents like the Sumners impacted by perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) contamination are still dealing with potential long-term health impacts, costs of water bills and resignation that their properties will be indefinitely contaminated.
Some good news for the Sumners came on August 27, 2019. The lawsuit he and his wife with eight other residents filed against Saint-Gobain, seeking to make the company pay for property damages and long-term medical monitoring for PFOA-related illnesses, took a step forward, when a federal judge allowed the case to advance as a class action.
Sandy Sumner says “We’re not happy to be involved in the class action.”. “It’s stressful. But I wouldn’t shy away from it — it’s too important.” He hopes the lawsuit will help pressure chemical companies to prevent contamination like this from occurring. “Because they’re not going to do it on their own,”.
Jim Sullivan, one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against St. Gobain Performance Plastics, says “The airborne PFOA contamination in Bennington differs from, say, an industrial spill, where the focus is on cleaning up a particular site, “But in this case, the contaminated site is right here, we’re living on it,” he said. “And everybody who’s had their property contaminated is living on the contaminated site.”
Sitting in the living room of his home, Sumner said the impact of the PFOA contamination on the property value remains a “question mark.” As the house is his family’s nest egg, he hopes they can get a good price for it when they eventually go to sell it. “At the same time, anyone who wants to buy this house, I would make damn sure that they knew that even though those flower beds are beautiful, that the soil and groundwater is contaminated”. “And, it will be while you’re living here.”
Photos by: Mike Dougherty/VTDigger
The Environmental Protection Agency announced the completion of the Superfund Task Force and issued the Task Force’s report on Superfund work within the last two years. The announcement was made on Monday at a sight visit to Superfund site, American Cyanamid, of Bridgewater, New Jersey. Present at the site was EPA Assistant Administrator, Peter Wright, and Regional Administrator, Pete Lopez, who presented the Task Force’s targets for continued site cleanups. Read More.
A number of houses surrounding the Consumer Energy J.H. Campbell Coal Plant in West Olive, Michigan found high levels of radium, arsenic, and lead in the local water supply. It is currently unclear if the contamination is a result of groundwater leakage from the plant’s coal ash pond. Further testing is needed to determine the exact source of contamination and how it entered into the groundwater supply. Read More.