While the EPA’s decision not to place the North Birmingham Alabama 35th Avenue Alternatives Superfund site on the NPL was disappointing to many in the community, it was perhaps understandable given the strong vocal opposition with the state. It is now abundantly clear, as evidenced by the July 19, 2018 convictions of a former state legislator, a business executive and attorney on a number of federal charges including conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery, that the EPA’s initial public review process was undermined by an illegal misinformation scheme to prevent the North Birmingham site from being added to the NPL. Being listed provides more opportunities for citizen participation, grants and hard deadlines for action.
Jimmy Smith has lived in Collegeville all of his life. At 85 years old he’s seen the community during it highs and lows. He’s lived side by side with contamination from what was the life blood of the community: the steel industry. He suspected something wasn’t right when three members of his family, himself included, were diagnosed with various cancers. Smith said, “It just so happened out of my four daughters, two of them had cancer. My oldest daughter, the preacher of the family, the good Lord called her home as a result of the cancer.” Read more.
Tag: cancer
Ten months after Maria hit water quality still seems inconsistent, and local residents aren’t taking any chances. “The water comes out of the tap white, and sometimes dark and dirty, with particles in it,” Marta Rivera said. “Before the hurricane, the water wasn’t like that. My house was full of water; it smelled really bad. Me, my son, my aunt and even the doctor here have got sick in some way. It’s made me a little paranoid. Traumatized.”
Read more.
“Even before Hassan Amjad’s family buried him on a West Virginia hillside, phone calls flooded his daughter’s office.
The callers remembered him as a kind man, boundless in his curiosity, fiery in his convictions, who had long maintained a medical clinic in nearby Oak Hill, in an old whitewashed house with a squeaky screen door and creaking wood floors.
Her father had made it his mission to get justice — or at least answers — for the people of this once-thriving coal town an hour south of the state capital. He told anyone willing to listen that industrial chemicals dumped decades ago by the now-defunct Shaffer Equipment Co. had long been poisoning residents.” Read More
“Anytime you operate near any Superfund site, it’s very noteworthy …The fire’s probably the most simple thing that you have to worry about.”
Asbestos still lingers in Operable Unit 3’s trees and soil. Research shows that when this material burns, the majority of asbestos fibers stay in the ash rather than go airborne. But the fibers’ direction and impact can be difficult to predict, especially in a large fire. Read more.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said there will be no relocation camps established in Concord or anywhere in California, at this time.
Concord’s Mayor sent a letter explaining that the acreage within the site is still undergoing assessment and cleanup of Navy contamination and is not suitable for transfer nor for human occupation. The city and the Navy have been working over the last 12 years through the BRAC [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”][base realignment and closure] process.
The area currently has no useful infrastructure to provide water, sewer, or electricity. These concerns make it unsuitable for consideration. Read More.
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Is Radium Being Spread on Your Roads?
Radium has been widely spread on Pennsylvania roadways without regulation: Study
Wastewater from the oil and gas industry that’s being spread on roadways to control dust and ice in at least 13 states, including Pennsylvania, poses a threat to the environment and to human health, according to a study released this week. Read more.
In North Carolina, Duke Energy is storing 130 million tons of coal ash at 32 sites at 14 power plants. The state law requires Duke to safely move all of it by 2029, and from four leaking ash ponds by 2019. Where is Duke planning to put the toxic ash? Not surprisingly, in a low-income community of color in Lee County, NC.
Local resident Donna Bray said, “Duke is hitting the poorest rural neighborhoods, where they think people won’t be able to fight back against a big corporation. I’m worried about contamination of the vegetable garden that provides half the family’s food.
Duke might think they can dump in Lee County because it’s not seen as wealthy or powerful, but residents are getting organized. “This community is not willing to stand by and be dumped on — it’s a toxic mess, and we don’t want it,” said Therese Vick of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, which has organized hundreds of residents opposed to Duke’s plan.
The United States uses coal to generate 30 percent of its electricity. A typical power plant produces more than 125,000 tons of coal ash—the byproduct of burning coal—every year. Earthjustice estimates there are more than 1,400 coal ash sites in the United States and at least 200 of them are “known to have contaminated water sources.”
For decades, power companies dumped this toxic waste, which can contain toxic metals such as arsenic and mercury, into unlined ponds that had the potential to leak and contaminate the drinking water of nearby communities.
Unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency recently announced it will scrap Obama-era rules governing coal ash disposal. The Obama administration finalized regulations in 2015 that imposed new standards on coal-ash disposal sites, in part by increasing inspections and monitoring and requiring measures such as liners in new waste pits to prevent leaks that might threaten nearby drinking water supplies.
The changes Pruitt is making would provide companies with annual compliance cost savings of up to $100 million, but environmentalists warn that doing away with the regulations risks poisoning clean drinking water for millions of Americans and pollute already-endangered ecosystems.
The changes would extend how long the over 400 coal-fired power plants across the country can maintain unlined coal ash ponds and allow states to determine how frequently they would test disposal sites for groundwater contamination.
Bottom line, energy corporations save $100 million and it place over 1.5 million children who live near coal ash disposal sites across the country, an increase risk of developing learning disabilities, asthma, cancer or born with birth defects.
If you are interested in making comments to Trump’s plan to scrap the coal ash rules click this link.
The story of Minden, WV is yet another example of how toxic pollution harms the poorest and vulnerable communities the most. Read about the horrifying story here.
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.
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.