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Undermining the Rule of Law at the E.P.A.

“Last week brought more bad news: Mr. Pruitt is proposing to end a decades-long agreement with the Justice Department that funds the E.P.A.’s lawsuits against polluters responsible for creating hazardous waste sites. Neither Congress nor the courts will have the final say. The decision rests with the Trump administration.

Since the Reagan administration, the E.P.A. has reimbursed the Justice Department for the cost of suing companies as part of the Superfund hazardous waste site cleanup program. In communities like the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and Times Beach, Mo., the Justice Department sued polluters to force them to pay the cost of relocating residents. More recently, the E.P.A. covered the upfront costs of suing the W. R. Grace chemical conglomerate in the small town of Libby, Mont., where hundreds have died from asbestos poisoning, and compelling General Electric to clean up decades of PCB pollution that ravaged the Hudson River.

But in its budget proposal, the E.P.A. said it no longer intended to reimburse the Justice Department for Superfund litigation costs.”

Read More Here

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Backyard Talk News Archive

What is the road ahead for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria?

On Wednesday, September 20, Hurricane Maria made a direct hit to Puerto Rico– virtually destroying most of its infrastructure and plunging Puerto Ricans into a humanitarian crisis. About 97% of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million population is without power, and about half without running water. Let’s not forget that these are American citizens we are talking about.
The Trump Administration’s response has been significantly slower and less effective than the response to Hurricane Harvey and Irma. President Trump tweeted about the situation on Monday, stating that,“Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with.”
His lack of empathy towards a U.S. territory struggling to survive following a disaster is alarming, even for him. Focusing on the massive debt held by Puerto Rico, whose economy is now even more ravaged than it was before, is just cruel but unacceptable.
Gov. Ricardo Rossell of Puerto Rico urged Congress to approve a commensurate aid package. A week after the hurricane, FEMA put out a statement that they have airplanes and ships loaded with meals, water and generators headed to the island.
In addition to the ongoing crisis, the Guajataca Dam in the island’s northwest corner has suffered a “critical infrastructure failure,” which poses immediate flooding threats to about 70,000 people. While the majority of residents in the potential flood zone have evacuated, efforts are being made to evacuate periphery areas.
The path for Puerto Rico ahead is uncertain. Its power grid is almost entirely wiped out, and has proven to lack resilience. Many experts on disaster response urge for the opportunity to be taken to rebuild Puerto Rico’s power grid from the ground up– a project that would require billions of dollars.
Not to mention, there are 23 Superfund sites on the island that likely have contaminated soil and groundwater. Unexploded bombs, bullets, and projectiles are among the toxic contents of these Superfund sites, specifically on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques which was used by the military as a bomb-test site.
In the southern coastal town of Guayama, a five-story pile of coal ash has been sitting next to a low-income, minority community of 45,000 people. This ash contains heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury, and chromium. The company responsible is Applied Energy Systems (AES), which was ordered to remove the pile prior to the hurricane but whether this was done is unclear. It is highly likely that this toxic ash has contaminated the surrounding land water sources.
At this point, we must continue to urge the U.S. government to provide ongoing aid to our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico. Be sure to check back with CHEJ on the front of environmental justice for Puerto Ricans following this humanitarian disaster.
Click on the below link to see how you can help the victims of Hurricane Maria:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/can-help-hurricane-victims-puerto-rico/

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What happens when a hurricane hits a toxic waste site?

After Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, the EPA confirmed 13 of Houston’s Superfund sites were flooded or completely underwater. Gibbs says thousands more sites are vulnerable to violent storms, and politics make it unlikely that many of them will be ever be remediated.

“We’ve seen it time and time again, going back to Katrina or Superstorm Sandy. They’re just not being taken care of. The reason is because the responsible parties — the companies that are responsible for these sites — don’t want to pay the money to clean them up.
“And the EPA, our environmental protection agency at the federal level, doesn’t want to push those big corporations around because that’s how people get elected to office here in the U.S.”
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Homepage News Archive

Mr. Pruitt Solar Panels are a Redevelopment Option

A Superfund site in Vermont will be redeveloped with solar panels. This is a redevelopment idea we can live with. While the land is being reused we can reduce our dependency on fossil fuels.
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The Looming Superfund Nightmare

As unprecedented hurricanes assault coastal U.S. communities, residents and experts fear the storms could unleash contamination the EPA has tried to keep at bay.
“The problem is that you could see a lot of waste that was supposedly ‘under control’ getting mobilized into waterways and spreading throughout the community,” Olson said. Working with the NRDC and other environmental groups, local residents did their own water testing and “found widespread contamination around Superfund and RCRA sites.” Read more

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Toxic Wastes Are Everywhere – From Harvey

Bobby Griffin found the clusters of shiny silver mercury globules scattered across his San Jacinto riverfront property on Tuesday, a few hundred yards from the San Jacinto Waste Pits, a Superfund site that was inundated during last week’s storm.
Public health officials are investigating a case of dangerous liquid mercury that appears to have washed or blown ashore here, east of Houston, in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. Read more.

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Backyard Talk News Archive

Where is America’s Humanity and Compassion?

Innocent Families in wake of hurricanes Irma and Harvey were given choices: Stay and risk your families lives with the wrath of the hurricanes or face interrogation, detention and deportation.
How inhumane can our government be? I’m shocked and saddened by the uncaring, cruel and downright dangerous behavior of our country’s police. A category five hurricane will hit Florida and people need to find a safe shelter for their families. But the police publicly announced that will be checking people as they arrive to shelters for outstanding warrents.
They need help not threats and more fear of harm.  In Texas, last week it was border patrols checking vehicles leaving via evacuation routes.
Over 50 inches of rain and rushing water flooded Houston and surrounding areas. Innocent people; women, children, and men are homeless, without food, water, health care.  Isn’t a natural disaster, which is predicted to take away everything the families owns and values, enough pain and suffering? Do we also have to harass those trying to escape to higher ground because of the color of their skin or harass those seeking shelter by forcing them to stand in line to prove they are legal or don’t have a warrant out against them.
What ever happened to America’s humanity, compassion and kindness?
Five years ago, when tropical Storm Sandy hit New York City, immigration enforcement announced that the highest priority was promoting “life saving and life promoting activities, the safe evacuation of people who are leaving the impacted area, and the maintenance of public order, not checking immigration status. Neither the New York or New Jersey police were stopping people at shelters to be sure they don’t have an outstanding warrant.
As Hurricane Irma approaches Florida, a sheriff in Poke County, announced on Wednesday that law enforcement authorities would check the identities of people who turn up at shelters and take to jail anyone found to have an active arrest warrant. “If you go to a shelter for Irma and you have a warrant, we’ll gladly escort you to the safe and secure shelter called the Polk County Jail,” announced sheriff Grady Judd, of Polk County.
When Hurricane Harvey was approaching Corpus Christi, TX the Border Patrol kept their check points open: causing extreme traffic, endangering drivers, and potentially making people who need to evacuate decide to stay behind in the storm out of fear of interaction and interrogation.
I’ve worked with communities across Texas, Louisiana and Florida. Families living in Corpus Christi are at the fence line of Refinery Row, miles of petroleum refineries. Every day they live in fear not of deportation or going to jail for a bad deed they did, but fear of cancer, asthma and disease from exposures to air pollution. Where are the police then? The pollution police, at the federal or state levels do almost no enforcement after receiving calls after calls for help because young children and the elderly can’t breathe. Families live there are mostly Latino and African Americans who settled there decades ago because the city would not allow them to live in other neighborhoods.
Corporations get away with the poisoning of innocent families every single day. It’s about time that our racist enforcement agencies start going after the real criminals, corporate polluters. Instead of border patrols for evacuation routes there should be border patrols for air pollution beyond the corporate fence line.
Instead of looking for those individuals at shelters that have an outstanding warrant against them, police should start issuing warrants for CEOs of corporate polluters responsible for harming innocent children’s lungs, neurological systems and their abilities to learn and succeed.
It’s time our country’s police went after the real corporate criminals, they come dressed in suits, carry briefcases and use their private planes to escape danger like we’ve seen in Harvey and Irma.

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‘Dreamers’ Marched Near CHEJ’s Offices

‘Dreamers’ who marched down the street from our offices in Falls Church, Virginia.  Dreamers are undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. Since the Obama administration began DACA in 2012, 787,580 people have been approved for the program, according to the latest government figures. To be eligible, applicants had to have arrived in the US before age 16 and have lived there since June 15, 2007.
What does DACA do for them?
DACA recipients have been able to come out of the shadows and obtain valid driver’s licenses, enroll in college and legally secure jobs. They also pay income taxes. The program didn’t give them a path to become US citizens or even legal permanent residents — something immigrant rights advocates have criticized.

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CHEJ Responds to Pruitt’s Plans for Superfund

The Trump Administration and newly-appointed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt claim to desire to return Superfund cleanups “to their rightful place at the center of the EPA’s core mission”1, however their actions speak differently: their proposed budget includes a 30% cut in funding to the Superfund. In April, Pruitt assembled a Task Force to provide recommendations for the future of Superfund, chaired by Albert Kelly, a prior bank chairman with no environmental experience. On June 22nd, the report was released and the recommendations it contains raise major concerns decreasing cleanup oversight, privileging corporate interests over public health, and a lack of community involvement.
In response, CHEJ has prepared a point-by-point rebuttal of the key recommendations of Pruitt’s report. We intend to share this document with members of our coalition to serve as a guide in the on-going process of organizing together in the pursuit of Superfund reform and Environmental Justice.
Read our response to Pruitt’s plan for Superfund here:
Response to the EPA Superfund Task Force Report (1)
 

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Backyard Talk News Archive

Wilmington Demands Clean Water, Clean EPA

Don’t drink the water. That’s something you’d expect to hear when you travel to a developing country. But that’s what people are saying in Wilmington, a historic beach, tourist and retiree destination and the eighth-largest city in this state. It also happens to be one of my favorite places to go when I need a reprieve from the heat and humidity of central North Carolina. With its charming historic riverfront, shops, delicious restaurants, parks, water sports and beautiful beaches, it’s a great place to relax and unwind. The last thing one should have to worry about is the safety of the local drinking water.
Over the past couple of months, Wilmington residents have learned that DuPont and its spinoff company Chemours have been dumping unregulated chemicals into the Cape Fear River for decades and only recently stopped at the request of the governor. The result: Disturbing levels of chemicals like 1,4-dioxane, GenX and PFOA have been found in the drinking water of residents in Wilmington, Brunswick and the surrounding area.
These types of of chemicals, called fluorinated compounds, have been linked to cancer, thyroid disease and obesity. GenX and other fluorinated compounds are used in the making of Teflon, Scotchgard and other stain-resistant and water-repellant products. They are designed so that they are water- and oil-repellant, which means that they are extremely difficult to treat in water-treatment plants before they hit our taps.
While GenX has received a lot of the attention, the chemical 1,4-dioxane – which is much more well-studied – has been found in some places to be in excess of 35 parts per billion, a level at which, when consumed regularly over the course of a lifetime, cancer risk becomes two orders of magnitude higher than that at generally acceptable levels. Many Wilmington residents have been drinking this water their whole lives. Now they must worry about the risks to their and their children’s health.
Wilmington has asked the EPA to start looking into GenX and investigating the safety of its water. But with asbestos denier Scott Pruitt and chemical industry representative Nancy Beck overseeing EPA’s program in charge of regulating these chemicals, I don’t have much faith in their investigation. Now, the Trump Administration has nominated Michael Dourson to lead the entire toxics program at the EPA. Will Mr. Dourson provide hope for Wilmington?
A look at his background also leaves me skeptical. In 2002, DuPont hand-picked Dourson’s firm Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA) to advise West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality on setting health levels for PFOA, one of the same chemicals now found in Wilmington’s water. His firm came up with a level that was thousands of times less protective than a later EPA assessment. 1,4-dioxane is currently under review by the very office that Mr. Dourson has been nominated to lead. Yet he also published research on that chemical paid for entirely by PPG, a company responsible for discharging this chemical and contaminating Ohio’s waterways.
Saturday, I went to a Rally for Clean Water in Wilmington to talk with residents about their concerns. They want what we all want – to know that when they open up the tap, they can drink the water without worrying about toxic chemicals. And they deserve better: corporate polluters that are held accountable for egregious pollution and government officials who will protect their health and safety at the local and the national level.
By Ansje Miller resides in Hillsborough and is the director of policy and partnerships for the Center for Environmental Health.