Soon after Erin Card moved to within two miles of the Radford Army Ammunition Plant in Virginia two years ago, she began to notice threads of smoke that occasionally rose above the heavily wooded site. She started asking about the source, and eventually was stunned by what she learned: Toxic explosives were being burned in the open air.
“It just seems crazy to me,” said Card, 36, who lives with her husband and their three young boys.
The open burning and open detonation of hazardous waste explosives is banned in many countries, including Canada, Germany and the Netherlands. Likewise, in this country, private industry long ago was forced to abandon the primitive disposal practice. Read more.
Category: News Archive
Ohio’s regulators have issued a $430,000 fine against a company building a natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to Michigan. Energy Transfer is the company building the $4.2 billion pipeline. It will carry gas from West Virginia, western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Energy Transfer also worked on the contentious Dakota Access pipeline. Read more.
Born and raised in a family of community activists, mark! Lopez persuaded the state of California to provide comprehensive lead testing and cleanup of East Los Angeles homes contaminated by a battery smelter that had polluted the community for over three decades.
Bordered by the Los Angeles River and crisscrossed by the area’s notoriously congested freeways, LA’s Eastside is home to the densest population of working-class Latino communities in the country. Residents bear the brunt of the region’s pollution, with heavy cargo traffic coming in and out of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and industrial plants operating well within breathing distance of homes, schools, and parks.
Among these facilities was an aging battery recycling plant, which had been in operation since 1922 with minimal updates and repairs. Georgia-based Exide took over the smelter in 2000 and ramped up the volume of batteries processed at the plant—and with it, emission levels of dangerous pollutants such as lead and arsenic.
A sampling of dust on rooftops of nearby buildings found lead levels of 52,000 parts per million—where 1,000 parts per million is considered hazardous waste. Lead is a powerful neurotoxin that accumulates in the body over time. It can cause learning disabilities even at very low levels, and as such, there is no safe lead level in children. Read more.
Doctors found the first tumors in Christen Commuso’s ovaries in 2012. Before long, more turned up in her gall bladder, thyroid and adrenal glands. Lesions appeared on her liver. While she was undergoing multiple surgeries, her stepdaughter, then 7, was learning that she could no longer climb stairs without stopping to catch her breath. Eventually, she was diagnosed with asthma. Read more.
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Just Moms St. Louis, MO Closer To Buyout
Missouri senators have passed a buyout program targeting homes near a St. Louis-area Superfund site. Senators voted 30-3 Wednesday to send the measure to the House. It would allow residents to apply for buyouts for homes found uninhabitable due to contamination or within 3 miles of sites with high levels of dissolved radium in groundwater. The measure is aimed at homes near Bridgeton Landfill and adjacent West Lake Landfill, where Cold War-era nuclear waste was buried in the 1970s and adjacent to a burning landfill. Read more.
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Maryland Bans Fracking
Senate passes bill with GOP governor’s support, following six years of grassroots resistance across the state of Maryland
With game-changing support from Republican Governor Larry Hogan, the Maryland state Senate Monday night gave final approval to a bill to forever ban the practice of fracking in Maryland. The move culminates years of protests against gas fracking from landowners, health leaders, and environmentalists in the state. It also sets a nationally significant precedent as other states grapple with the dangerous drilling method.
Maryland will now become the first state in America with proven gas reserves to ban fracking by legislative action. New York has banned the drilling process via executive order. Vermont has a statutory ban but the state has no frackable gas reserves at present.
The Maryland ban is sending political waves across the East Coast and the nation. From Virginia (where leaders have imposed or proposed local bans at the county and municipal level) to the state of Florida (which is looking to follow Maryland’s statewide ban), the “keep-it-in-the-ground” movement is gaining new bipartisan steam even as President Donald Trump recklessly works to approve disastrous pipelines like Keystone XL.
“Let the news go forth to Congress and the White House: fracking can never been done safely,” said Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “The Republican governor closest to DC – Larry Hogan of Maryland – has joined scientists and health leaders in agreeing that fracking must be banned. This is a win for Marylanders and for citizens nationwide as we move away from violent fossil fuels and toward sustainable wind and solar power.”
With Senate passage late Monday night, the Maryland bill will now be sent to Gov. Hogan’s desk in the next few days for signing.
The push to ban fracking in Maryland began six years ago as gas companies swarmed into western Maryland to tap the Marcellus Shale basin. This is the same pool of gas that has been widely fracked in Pennsylvania and West Virginia with negative consequences. But then-Governor Martin O’Malley (D) imposed a temporary moratorium before any drilling occurred. Over the years, the movement for a permanent ban came to include farmers, doctors, students, faith leaders, environmental groups, and others – constituting the largest statewide grassroots movement ever seen in Maryland on an energy issue. Former member of the House of Delegates Heather Mizeur was a leading figure in sparking the statewide ban effort. With time, multiple counties and cities in the state banned fracking locally and public polling consistently showed growing support for a statewide ban. Finally, earlier this month, with overwhelming support among Democratic lawmakers, even the previously pro-fracking Republican governor saw the wisdom of a ban.
The Chesapeake Climate Action Network has been honored to play a leading role in this campaign along with our friends in the Don’t Frack Maryland Coalition, including Food and Water Watch, Citizen Shale, Engage Mountain Maryland, the Sierra Club, the Maryland League of Conservation Voters, Physicians for Social Responsibility and many others.
President Donald Trump’s deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency terrify me. They will gut the agency, removing protections for American families and our children. As I travel from one polluted community to the next, women weep as they hold their children, and explain how chemicals in their air, water or land have made their families sick. Local leaders describe how their city or town won’t help them, because it’s a company town, and no one will hold the polluter responsible. They go on to say their state agency isn’t much better. Their only recourse is the federal EPA.
The EPA was designed to provide a safety net for these communities. But it has been hard enough for EPA to answer demand for their services across the nation, and to stretch their existing budgets. Clearly, Trump’s administration intends to take away this safety net, and a means for checks and balances. I can tell you from first-hand experience that living in a toxic environment, with little hope of getting out, is a family’s worst nightmare. In 1978, I lived with my two small children at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, NY, where 20,000 tons of toxic chemical wastes were buried.
My daughter had a rare blood disease, and my son suffered from many medical problems including with his liver, asthma and epilepsy. Our house was worthless, and our American dream taken away through no fault of our own. Fifty-six percent of our neighborhood children were born with birth defects.
Niagara Falls was a city with 47 different chemical facilities. The city didn’t want to upset the industry, nor did the county. Moreover, the state was concerned about setting a precedent, estimating there were thousands of similar sites in the region just like Love Canal. The federal EPA came in to investigate the site, after pleas from the community that the city and state were not acting. Eight hundred families were later relocated, and the Superfund Program was established to address threats to human health by the most dangerous chemical waste sites.
Superfund provides the opportunity for the EPA to come in to a town or city and clean up contamination to protect families from exposure. The program also identifies the corporations that created the site, and holds them responsible for the costs. If there is no responsible corporation, the EPA has the authority and funds to clean up the site.
There is no gentle way to state the obvious. Trump prioritizes corporations over people, children and the planet. These cuts will gut the agency, removing protections for American families. I am old enough to remember the black smoke of the steel mills, the rivers catching fire and sickness and death in communities that surround the factories. The magnitude of the cuts proposed by this administration will take America back decades.
Cuts in the EPA budget mean no one will be watching the polluters. No one will be there to ensure industrial facilities don’t dump wastes into the sewer, air or rivers. No one would hold polluters accountable to pay for cleaning up toxics or for the costs of sick children with asthma, cancer, with birth defects and so much more.
Superfund was designed to provide technical, financial and legal assistance to states and local governments by creating a pool of funds to be used in the most toxic waste sites in the country.
States nominate sites for the Superfund program because they want help; they can’t afford to clean up abandoned sites on their own. As was the case in Niagara Falls, many states and local governments have neither the resources to investigate, nor the backbone to take on corporate polluters. Instead, they look the other way.
Trump’s cuts mean there will be no one to police the environment, and no enforcement. Think about that. What if there were no police in your neighborhood? People would speed down neighborhood streets where children walk to and from school. Someone could just walk into a bank and demand money, or someone could assault you or your loved ones with no fear of consequences.
What polluters take from us is more than any bank robber can ever take, and much more devastating. The air you breathe, the water you drink and land you play on could be toxic poison. Regulations mean little when there are no police, no investigators or consequences for doing harm.
The entire planet is at risk if the Trump Administration cuts the EPA’s budget by 30 percent. Everyone but the very wealthy will suffer the consequences. Families of low income and of color will suffer the most, as they often live closest to industry.
Rather than weakening the EPA and environmental protections, we should work to strengthen rules to protect communities from the impacts of waste dumps, factory farms, fossil fuels, and other pollution sources. We should work to ensure all people have access to clean water, safe food, and a livable climate.
Everyone will be harmed by these cuts, and everyone must speak out. Our very existence, public health and America’s future depend on it, as does our ability to control industrial pollution and hold corporations accountable. Please sign my petition: Don’t let Trump’s budget destroy the Superfund Program or the EPA. Reprinted from: People’s Action Progressive Breakfast 3-20-17
Victory, almost for Maryland No Fracking
Marylanders should give Mike Tidwell, all members of CCAN and all of the allies from surrounding states a huge round of applause. Although not yet a done deal since the bill to ban fracking still needs one more round of votes, it’s a pretty much over. This comes on the heels of a protest held earlier this week where 13 activists were arrested on the steps of the State House.
Mike Tidwell said yesterday, “Governor Hogan’s decision to support a permanent fracking ban in Maryland has created a day of historic importance for the entire nation. Hogan has joined a statewide bipartisan effort to prevent this dangerous drilling technology from ever polluting Maryland’s water, air, climate, and childhood health. In short, he has done the right thing. Most importantly, on climate change, Maryland is now poised to keep a dangerous pool of fossil fuels in the ground forever. Scientists say this is what states across America and countries around the world need to do to solve global warming. Instead of fracking, we need more solar energy. Instead of coal, we need wind power. Instead of oil, we need electric cars. Larry Hogan just took a big step for Maryland and the nation in moving us toward that goal.”
Yes, people had to step out of their comfort zone and some chose to be arrested but that’s how change happens. This fight has been going on for years. Activists didn’t give up because there is just too much at stake. Like Standing Rock leaders kept up the pressure and created opportunities to speak out. For all those who don’t think you can make a difference, think again.
Indigenous people from around the world gathered to promote sovereignty, resistance, respect, justice and love at the Native Nations Rise March 10th. I was honored to walk along side of Indigenous women, children and men. The weather was freezing with rain, sleet and snow. The wind howled as if joining the marches with a powerful message of protecting the earth and halting the harms.
The march began at the United States Army Corps of Engineers building and then moved past the Trump International Hotel. In front of the Trump Hotel a short demonstration was held to let guests and Trump hear the voices of the people. Now completely frozen, I continued to march to the White House. Throughout the march there was a unified message aimed at President Donald Trump and his administration: Mni Wiconi, “Water is Life!” The chant has become a shorthand for tribes’ struggle to reassert tribal sovereignty and self-determination over their physical and spiritual spheres. The phrase was joined by many other expressions aimed at attracting the attention of the federal government: “We stand with Standing Rock!” – “Keep the oil in the soil, you can’t drink oil!” – “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Donald Trump has got to go!” – And, “Shame, shame, shame!”
A rally with extraordinary speakers joined at the end of the March at a park, in front of the White House. Powerful words were voiced by Native leaders. It was a march that I will always hold close to my heart. Although I was frozen to the bone – I felt fire in the belly and ready to take on the fight for justice.
Read more here.
THIS FRIDAY in WASHINGTON D.C. from 10am-12pm EST as we march to the White House with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other Indigenous grassroots leaders. #NativeNationsRise will highlight the necessity to respect Indigenous Nations and their right to protect their homelands, environment, and future generations.
Check out the facebook event (Native Nations Rise: Rise With Standing Rock) & http://