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Backyard Talk News Archive

Trump’s EPA Cuts: No One Will Protect Us

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

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Homepage News Archive

State Finally Makes Progress on East Chicago, IN

Residents living in more than 1,000 private properties in the middle and eastern parts of the Calumet neighborhood will not be moving as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency excavates contaminated soil from around their homes. While of the 332 families living at the complex when the city issued a relocation order, 106 remained. They are facing a March 31 deadline to move.
State officials have completed some of the tasks required as part of an emergency declaration for East Chicago’s USS Lead Superfund site in the more than two weeks since it was signed into effect by Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb. Water is being tested and excavation of contaminated soil has oved forward. Read more.

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Backyard Talk

An Open Letter to New EPA Chief Scott Pruitt: You’re Not in Oklahoma Anymore

02/17/2017 06:02 pm ET
Ken Cook Environmental Working Group
 Dear Mr. Pruitt:
On Friday, in a near-partisan vote, the Senate confirmed you as the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s sad to say, but this is the darkest moment in the history of an agency that for 46 years has worked to ensure that Americans drink clean water, breathe healthy air and are protected from dangerous toxic chemicals.
As Oklahoma attorney general, you filed or supported more than two dozen lawsuits against the very agency you now must lead. Most notoriously, you sought to block the EPA’s efforts to combat climate change. But you also opposed initiatives to protect children from mercury poisoning, and reduce air pollution that causes asthma and thousands of premature deaths, among other measures to protect public health. In your home state, you did little or nothing to curb water pollution from toxic manure discharged by big chicken and pig farms.
In your confirmation hearing you could not name a single EPA regulation you thought was a good idea – not even removing lead from gasoline.
The day before your confirmation, an Oklahoma judge ordered the release of 3,000 emails between your office and the fossil fuel industry next week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decided Americans did not have the right to know what was in those emails before the confirmation vote. For now, we can only speculate about their contents, but your record shows you have collaborated with polluters with the same coziness Gen. Michael Flynn displayed as he communicated with Russia’s ambassador about election tampering.
There has never been a nominee for EPA administrator opposed so strongly by environmental and public health advocates, scientists, and hundreds of current and former EPA officials. We are determined to fight back against what we expect will be an unprecedented assault on public health and the environment. But we also have a word for you:
You’re not in Oklahoma anymore.
It is shameful that someone with your anti-environment record and philosophy has been handed the most important environmental job in the world. But you will not get a free pass to trash America’s air and water as you did in Oklahoma, when you claimed that the interests of polluters were synonymous with the interests of the people of your state.
You will not get a free pass to ignore science or muzzle scientists. You will not slash the EPA budget as you slashed environmental enforcement in Oklahoma – not without a fight.
You will not degrade or subvert the rule of environmental law that represents one of America’s distinctive contributions to the welfare of our planet just to please your polluter cronies, their friends in Congress or their cheerleader in the White House.
Why? Because the American people will rise up and fight you every step of the way.
Our nation’s leadership in environmental protection is a prime example of what has made America great again and again and again – for decades. We have no intention of standing by while you dismantle that hard-won legacy at the behest of fossil fuels or elected fools.
We aren’t going anywhere, Mr. Pruitt. And you are not in Oklahoma anymore.

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Victory for Families Relocating In East Chicago, IN

Gov. Eric Holcomb signed an executive order declaring a disaster emergency for East Chicago’s USS Lead Superfund site.
The declaration provides for 30 days of enhanced state assistance for the estimated 100 residents who have yet to relocate from the lead contaminated West Calumet Housing Complex, as well as other lead-impacted citizens in the affected area.
Governor Holcomb did what Pence refused to do last year. Residents and community groups heavily criticized Pence last year for not meeting personally with those affected by the lead and arsenic contamination. Read more.
 

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Major Climate March in DC – April 29th

People’s Climate March” in D.C., AND across the country on April 29.  JOIN CHEJ and Allies.
The effort is being organized by the coalition formed out of 2014’s People’s Climate March, which brought more than 400,000 people to the streets of New York City and many more to cities around the world.
The march comes in response to widespread outrage against President Trump’s disastrous anti-climate agenda including his executive orders advancing the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines as well as his attacks on healthcare, immigrants, and programs and policies that improve the lives of all Americans. The event will cap 100 days of action to fight Trump’s proposals to reverse climate action, dismantle our government and hand power over to the one percent.
More than 145 protests in local communities took place across the country in the first 100 hours of the Trump presidency, demonstrating widespread opposition to the administration’s anti-environment and corporate agenda as part of an ongoing campaign organized by the People’s Climate Movement.

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Homepage News Archive

Love Canal Waste Buried Nearby – No Action To Cleanup

The landfill, which operated from 1964 to 1968, was the subject of constant neighborhood complaints of odors, unsafe conditions and the lack of a fence, according to Niagara County Health Department records.
County health officials allowed the state in 1968 to bury some 80 truck loads of Love Canal waste dug up during the construction of the LaSalle Expressway in Niagara Falls. Today there is no signs, no fence, no warnings as innocent children ride their dirt bikes, play and fish along this area.
Read more.

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Homepage News Archive

Chemicals Reduce Childrens IQs

If you are interested in how many small amounts of chemicals can directly impact children’s IQ you need to spend a few minutes watching this video. CHEJ’s members have been frustrated by the regulatory agencies and their lack of willingness to address multiple chemical exposures. Most recently the Just Moms group in St. Louis, MO were told that a leader’s family has levels of radiation in their kitchen 200 times above background. How in the world do  you make Thanksgiving dinner in a kitchen full of radiation? Moreover, how can you have a family dinner when no one wants to come to your house? Along with the radiation are toxic chemicals that come from the burning landfill daily. EPA says they need to do more testing. How much evidence does the agency need before they move the people?
Karen Nickel with Just Moms STL says, “Allowing people to live inside of homes that are contaminated with the world’s oldest nuclear weapons waste is unacceptable and extremely irresponsible. For over five years, the community has endured breathing in toxic fumes from the underground fire at the landfill and there’s no clear end in sight. The Missouri Attorney General indicates a Chernobyl-like event could occur if/when the underground fire collides with the Manhattan Project waste. The schools in the area are on alert for a shelter-in-place event and have asked parents to stock-pile their children’s medication at school in the event they cannot be released. There is a higher than normal incidence of brain cancer in children under 17 in areas around the West Lake Landfill. Families are sick with bloody noses, asthma, and other respiratory illness and often keep children indoors because the toxic odors are so bad.”

Just Moms STL is calling on EPA Federal Administrator Gina McCarthy to use her power under CERCLA and Governor Jay Nixon to relocate families today.

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Backyard Talk

Halloween Nightmare

By Teresa Millshalloween
I dreamed that just as I entered a Halloween haunted house the first monster I ran into was Frackenstine.  Just like the book Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley about a creature produced by an unorthodox scientific experiment, I noticed that the Frackenstine that stood before me was also made up by combining many parts.  Frackenstines legs turned out to be the Ohio legislature that gave the monster his legs to make his way around Ohio, his torso was made of the Ohio oil and gas industry, his arms were the different state agencies that gave the monster the strength to strong-arm Ohio communities by not allowing citizens or local government to have any say into whether or not they wanted this massive industrial process to destroy their community.  The Frackenstine monster was so big I was having a hard time seeing who or what made up the head but as I moved farther away from the monster I could see that the monsters head was Ohio’s own governor, Governor John Kasich who has become the mouthpiece and cheerleader for the industry.
Down a long dark hallway, I came to a closed door, as I opened the door I saw a room full of bubbling cauldrons.  As I looked around the room, I saw thousands of Material Safety Data Sheets with all of the toxic chemicals blacked out.  There was also a flashing sign that warned of radiation.  While trying to read all of the Material Safety Data Sheets suddenly, I was approached by someone dressing in a hazardous materials moon suit telling me that the bubbling brew was safe and not to worry.  Even though he was dressed in protective garb, he informed me that I was not allowed to know what was in the bubbling toxic brew and the door was quickly closed in my face.  As the door closed, I could hear the sinister laugh of a crazy person who had spent too much time inhaling the toxic vapors from the bubbling cauldrons full of fracking fluid.
As I continued down the dark hallway, I turned a corner and was face to face with a Vampire with blood dripping from his fangs. NO, wait, it wasn’t blood dripping, I realized his fangs are drilling rigs that were dripping oil, and he is hungry for more and more.  He can’t get enough; he is sinking his rigs into hundreds of thousands of acres of Mother Earth just to see if he can find more oil or gas to feed his needs.  I thought if I can just hold out until dawn the sun will destroy this vampire, but I was so wrong.
As I was about to exit the haunted house I heard the screams of the banshee foretelling the death of life as we know it.  No longer will we have local communities where we can cross the street without worrying about being hit by one of the thousands of trucks or being harassed by out of state workers that have no sense of pride for the community.  We face industrial facilities in places where they have no business being.
But wait, I suddenly realized I was not asleep; I was not having a nightmare.  What I had thought was a horrible dream was indeed a reality for many communities in Ohio and across the nation that are faced with the nightmare known as fracking.
After leaving the haunted house I went home and tried to sleep, but sleep would not come.  Every time I closed my eye I could see the blacked out Material Safety Data Sheets and the flashing sign warning of radiation.  Just as I was about to drop off to sleep, I would hear the screaming banshee and would be wide awake once again.
The following day I decided that I just had to go back to the haunted house to make sure I saw what I thought I had seen.  As I went in, I saw the same hideous things I had seen the day before.  The same bubbling cauldrons, the same flashing signs, the same vampire with oil dripping from its rigs.  But wait more rooms have been added to the house.  The first room I entered housed hundreds and hundreds of brain dead zombies who in real life were the poor folks who had been promised many riches, riches that never came.  But now these people have lost control of their land.
The next room is full of pipes running every which way.  So many pipes, where could they all go.  This does not make sense to me. Why did they put all these pipes so close to each other?  I hear the pipes begin to shake and rattle, I must get out of here, I run, but I can still hear what I take to be one or more pipes exploding.  I get out of the room just in time.  I pray other escaped as well, but I fear not.
On the door of the last room I enter, it says enter at your own risk.  As soon as I entered, I understood why this haunted house is so scary.  It is a room with desks but no chairs for someone to sit and look at all the documents on the tables.  I see that the documents are something called regulations, but wait all of these documents are incomplete.  It appears that someone has taken a dagger and cut holes in all the so call rules.  On many of the pages, you can see the oily fingerprints of the industry, and as I look around the room, I become dizzy because the names of all the legislators that have abandoned the citizens of their communities’ swirl around the room.  I must leave this room before I lose control.
As I exit the haunted house, I realize that it will not be easy to stop this madness, but I must try, I must do it for the future of humanity.
 
 

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Backyard Talk

New Research: The Hidden Costs of Air Pollution

Exposure to air pollution is linked to a variety of physical health issues, including short-term infections and irritation, and long-term issues like bronchitis and asthma. New research at Columbia University suggests that there may be even more insidious effects of air pollution on unborn children, particularly on their ability to regulate emotions and behavior.

The new study, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, was the first to look at early-life exposure to PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and study its impacts on childhood behavior. PAHs are widespread air pollutants, and are commonly emitted by vehicles, coal plants, industrial manufacturing facilities, and waste incinerators. Due to disparate siting of such facilities in low-income and minority communities, children from these communities are more vulnerable to the impacts of PAHs, which range from cancer to a variety of behavioral issues.

The recent study measured the levels of particular ‘biomarkers’ – compounds that are produced in the body as a result of PAH exposure – in the blood of mothers from New York City. They found that children of mothers with high exposure to PAHs had significantly worse scores on a test that measures behavior and emotional regulation in children. Essentially, PAH exposure may be a predictor of a variety of mental health problems in children and young adults. One study author was quoted in the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health press release:

“This study indicates that prenatal exposure to air pollution…may underlie the development of [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][childhood psychiatric problems] such as ADHD, OCD, substance use disorders, and eating disorders.”

The study particularly focused on women from low-income and minority communities, who are at greater risk of exposure to PAHs. Based on the study, increased exposure to PAHs faced by environmental justice communities may leave the next generation susceptible to not only physical health risks, but also behavioral and emotional issues.

To read more about research at the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health, visit their webpage.

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Backyard Talk

Holding Polluters Accountable

CHEJ founder Lois Gibbs, considered the mother of the federal Superfund program, said it was “about time polluters were held accountable” when she heard that the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to stop letting polluters off the financial hook for the contamination they cause. At the end of January, the court directed EPA to finalize its “financial assurance” regulations that have been more than 30 years in the making. The Superfund law has teeth to hold corporate polluters accountable and this is an important step towards making that happen.

The financial assurance provision of the Superfund law – officially known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) – ensures that responsible parties, and not the public, bear the financial burden of completing Superfund cleanups. This provision requires corporate polluters to demonstrate that adequate financial resources are available to complete required cleanup work. One of the main tenets of this law is to prevent companies who created toxic sites from declaring bankruptcy and walking away, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for cleanup, often causing long delays before these dangerous sites are cleaned up.

The court recognized that “Although CERCLA requires operators to pay to clean up hazardous releases, many avoid payment by restructuring their operations so they never have to pay. It is a common practice for operators to avoid paying environmental liabilities by declaring bankruptcy or otherwise sheltering assets.”

For 35 years since the law was passed in 1980, EPA has failed to issue regulations that describe how it would implement and enforce this provision of the Superfund law. As a result, company after company found ways to pass the cost of environmental disasters on to taxpayers. With this new ruling EPA has no choice but to finally issue these financial assurance regulations which will require polluting companies to pay up front, or place funds aside to cover the costs of cleaning up contaminated sites. It will also provide an incentive for polluters to reduce their pollution and thus reduce their liability.

As the nation’s leading source of toxic pollution (nearly 2 billion pounds per year), the mining industry was targeted to be the first in line for the new regulations. The court has ordered the EPA to complete the draft regulations by December 1, 2016, and finalize the regulations by Dec. 1, 2017. EPA must also establish regulations for three other industries, including coal ash ponds, chemical manufacturing facilities and petroleum and oil refineries by Dec. 1, 2016.

The lawsuit was filed Earth Justice on behalf of Earthworks and several coalition partners. For more information, see https://www.earthworksaction.org/media/detail/court_orders_environmental_protection_agency_to_finalize_rules_so_polluters/04270#.Vs4bj-btiwZ