No one should ever have to wonder if their water is safe. Across NY state, drinking water contamination has been hurting communities. Read more. On a federal level there is a bill in the Senate that force all schools to test their drinking water and provides grants to replace pipes where necessary. Take action button is on the left side of our webpage. Please let your representative know you care.
Tag: EPA
It turns out that everyone who was worried about how the San Jacinto waste pits Superfund site, in Houston, TX, would hold up during Hurricane Harvey was right on the money.
A new round of EPA testing has revealed that the area is still recording higher-than-normal dioxin levels in the area.
Read More.
Residents told EPA about a long-standing lack of job training in New Bedford for racial minorities, including jobs doing EPA-run Superfund work. Other large Superfund sites around the country have job training for local residents, but New Bedford does not. Read more.
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NEW LIFE FOR TOXIC LAND
Pritchard Park, WA is just one illustration of efforts across the U.S. to put contaminated sites back to use for communities — as parks, playing fields, workplaces, homes, shopping centers, even renewable energy projects.
When Charles Schmid first moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington, in 1970, the Wyckoff Company was still stripping bark from timber and treating the logs with creosote, an oily liquid processed from coal tar. The waterfront factory had used similar wood-preservation methods dating back to the early 1900s, when it began producing materials for some of the world’s largest infrastructure projects, including the Panama Canal, Great Northern Railroad and San Francisco’s wharfs.
In fact, Schmid used to pick up free bark from Wyckoff. “Everything seemed fine,” he recalls. But by the 1980s, he began to learn about contamination at and around the site — pools of creosote, fish with lesions, shellfish too toxic to eat. The emerging news spurred him and other members of this island community, a short ferry ride from Seattle, to push for cleanup.
Innocent families live around the 327 Superfund sites at risk of storms and rising seas. Over 2 million moms, dads, children live close enough to one of these toxic sites that likely will be impacted by climate cha
nge and sea level rise. Most families are of modest or low income and don’t have the ability to move. They are the most vulnerable among us.
What is Scott Pruitt, Administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or Bill Brock, Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) doing about it? EPA and FEMA are denying climate change, as Trump demanded. Today, denying climate change is like denying your pregnant as your belly swells and the baby kicks. Denial does not negate the problem.
How many innocent people are going to die? How many children will end up getting sick because of exposure to toxic chemical or lack of water and health care. How in the riches country in the world can we as people know this fact and simply ignore the inevitable?
Pruitt said that Superfund sites are his and the agency’s priority. It therefore would make logical sense that these 327 sites be the first place that he takes action. He doesn’t need to say because of climate change he could say they are vulnerable to flooding. If a site is flooded than the toxins spread costing more to clean up and increasing the human health risks significantly.
Instead, Pruitt is prioritizing Superfund sites that either have redevelopment potential or an identified responsible corporation, still in business that can pay for the cleanups. Â So, what does that mean?
We saw through news reports what happened in Puerto after hurricane Maria. By some counts over 1,000 innocent people died. Not from drowning or flying debris but from the lack of infrastructure, water and power or critical medical treatments for people who need dialysis or respirators.
News sources published pictures and reported that families were lined up at toxic waste sites to fill containers with water for their infants who were dehydrating. Depending on what was in that toxic water more deaths are surely in the forecast.
Who is the responsible party for the devastation in Puerto, Houston, New York, New Jersey, Louisiana’s Super Storms? Mother Nature and she has no money.
Where do American families fit into decisions to cleanup sites or create programs that will adequately respond to a natural disaster and especially ones that include toxic chemical waste exposures? Countries and government leaders are measured by how well they protected their people. America is failing in so many ways.
The majority of American families living near these site two million people are working poor, low-income and communities of color. They are the most vulnerable among us. Most live on little surviving day to day but have exactly the same dreams for their children and families as wealthy people. Parents want their children to succeed, go to college and break out of the cycle of poverty and poisonous environments.
From the standpoint of prevention and preparedness, I think understanding the conditions behind the destruction and deaths that occur are extremely important if we are to adequately prepare for the next disaster.
However, instead of prioritizing and preparing for the next super-storm to protect the most vulnerable communities, EPA’s priority Superfund site list is preparing for new development that helps corporations succeed. Â They are ignoring Superfund sites in vulnerable areas, with fragile populations that do not lend themselves to redevelopment.
I have been working in the field of toxic chemicals and impacts on human health for 40 years under both republican and democratic leadership. In that time I have never seen such disregard for human health and American people as this administration. I cried when I saw a father filing his jug with water from a toxic waste site for his infant and when I heard about the eight year old boy who died, suffocated, because he couldn’t get medication for his asthma.
I’m angry. Instead of retiring which was my plan last year, I am working overtime to organize people to stand up, speak out, vote and bring back the America we can all be proud of.
Dawn Chapman, Just Moms STL, had listened with surprise and skepticism as the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency vowed to clean up West Lake, the nuclear waste dump that has filled her days and nights with worry.
Read full article.
Climate scientists are fighting back. They had heard enough when EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt claimed in written Senate comments following his confirmation hearing as administrator of EPA that “over the past two decades satellite data indicates there has been a leveling off of warming.” They decided to respond, not with reactionary rhetoric, but with science, with facts.
A team of scientists led by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, CA and from MIT in Cambridge, MA examined temperature data from three satellite data sets going back to 1979 and calculated temperature trends for each 20-year period, and then determined whether the observed trends were significantly larger than the 20-year trends arising from natural processes internal to the climate system. The researchers concluded that the scientific data “do not support the recent claim of a ‘leveling off of warming’ over the past two decades.” The analysis was published in the scientific journal Nature. The conclusion directly refutes the statement on climate change made by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
The researchers led by Benjamin Santer, a world renown climate scientist, were clear that the reason they did the research was to refute the statement made by Pruitt. Santer told the Washington Post in an interview, “In my opinion, when incorrect science is elevated to the level of formal congressional testimony and makes its way into the official congressional record, climate scientists have some responsibility to test specific claims that were made, determine whether those claims are correct or not, and publish the results.”
The statement made by Pruitt has been echoed by other climate doubters. The main argument has been that temperature data collected at higher altitudes in the atmosphere show different trends than temperature data collected at the surface. Climate doubters argue that temperature data collected at higher altitudes (troposphere) show no global warming trend or that warming has slowed down in recent years in contrast to temperature trend data collected at the surface which show a clear warming trend.
While climate doubters will continue to cherry pick data to make their points, a growing number of scientists, whether in climate research or not, are standing up to the false statements and lies being perpetuated by this presidential administration. Scientists will continue to use hard data and a scientific approach to provide the best data and analysis available to draw conclusions.
What a nightmare.
EPA administrator Scott Pruitt promised to restore Superfund and the EPA’ s land and water cleanup efforts “to their rightful place at the center of the agency’s core mission.” He made this announcement in April while visiting a site in Indiana where hundreds of families must relocate because it is unsafe to live there. When I heard the announcement, I was excited. Unfortunately, soon afterwards his action spoke louder. Pruitt is not being honest. But judge for yourself.
On May 12th Susan Bodine was nominated to be assistant administrator for the EPA’s office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. Qualified? Well in a way, if she was fighting for the polluters. She represented polluting industries as a partner at Barnes & Thornburg, LLP a law firm. Bodine represented the American Forest and Paper Association (AFPA) from 2011 to 2014. Members of the AFPA have hundreds of EPA enforcement actions against them, including violations of the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. She defended these industries against EPA.
This is the classic revolving door appointment. Since the enforcement office handles negotiations between the companies responsible for the pollution and the EPA, Bodine would be able to decide how extensive some cleanups are — and how much polluters have to spend cleaning them. Some of those enforcement action will be against her former clients.
How does she feel about poisoned communities? In testimony before a Senate hearing on Superfund in 2014, Bodine said she didn’t think most problems with the program were due to a lack of funding. Instead she blamed some of the delays in cleanups on community members who block access to sites. “If the agency can’t get access to the site, they can’t do the cleanup,” she said, adding that she believed the agency was doing its best.
Superfund’s progress has slowed to a near standstill in recent years, not due to communities who want the best cleanup possible, after all they live there. No, the problem is due to a lack of funding. A tax on polluting industries originally paid into a fund for the cleanups expired in 1995, leaving regular taxpayers to pick up the tab when the government can’t identify a polluter — or when a polluter doesn’t have enough money to pay.
Since there are fewer clean up actions the number of people exposed to dangerous pollution has climbed. In 2010, there were 75 Superfund sites where the government had yet to bring toxic exposure to humans under control. By last year, that number was up to 121, according to the most recent EPA data.
This week there were two other significant announcements related to Superfund. The budget cuts and a new taskforce. Superfund budget was cut by a third, 330 million dollars. Enforcement efforts will be cut by 40%. How does Pruitt think he’s going to keep his promise to fulfill the program, move it front and center with less money and a lead attorney who has been on the other side of the table for years representing polluters.
Pruitt’s new Superfund Task Force is even more absurd. He chose Albert Kelly to chair the taskforce an Oklahoma banker who has no prior experience with the program or with environmental issues at all, according to his résumé. However, Kelly has donated twice to Pruitt’s campaigns in Oklahoma, has spent the past 33 years working at Spiritbank, served as its chairman, which is headquartered in Tulsa. The “core competencies” listed on his résumé, include motivational speaking, business development, and “political activity.”
Washington D.C. seems to get crazier every passing day. For all of you who care about our environment, public health and fairness, take the time to get involved. Together we need to talk with our representatives at the home offices and demand change. If you don’t think that representative is listening or supporting your core issues than find someone to replace them and work on that person’s campaign. We can’t whine our way through this insanity we must get out and take actions.
As we begin our national conversation about tax reform, why don’t we start with low-hanging fruit – the things we can all agree are right? Why not reinstate the Superfund tax, which used to make polluters pay to clean up their own mess?
By reinstating this “Polluter Pays” tax, American citizens will save literally billions of dollars. There is no need for a new law, big debates or much else. All Congress needs to do is simply reinstate this law, which lapsed at the end of 1995. Everything is already in place, and it’s proven to be an effective way to clean up toxic wastes as well as protect public health and the environment.
I am sometimes called the “Mother of Superfund,” as I led the successful effort to relocate over 800 families, including my own, away from the Love Canal toxic waste dump where we lived in Niagara Falls, NY. We all celebrated in 1980 when President Carter signed the bill to create the Superfund, which forced polluters to take responsibility for their actions.
Then in 1981, President Reagan named Anne Gorsuch to head the Environmental Protection Agency. She quickly moved to dismantle the Superfund law, leaving behind a crippled program. Now the Trump administration is looking to finish the job that the mother of our newest Supreme Court Justice failed to do decades ago.
When the “Polluter Pays” tax expired in 1995, American taxpayers were forced to take on the burden of cleaning up the worst toxic waste sites in the country. These costs have risen to more than $18 billion since then.
During the first thirteen years of Superfund, before the tax sunset, American taxpayers only contributed about $2.8 billion. These fees have been used to clean up the worst toxic waste sites that are abandoned, were created by a company that went out of business, or where the responsible corporation refuses to take responsibility and legal action is needed.
The balance of these funds have come out of the government’s general revenue, or in other words, directly from taxpayers’ pockets. That’s a lot of money that by all rights the corporations that create and use toxic chemicals should be paying, not us.
Clearly, American taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot this bill. The tax is simple: if a corporation makes two million dollars in taxable income, then all profits after that are taxed at the rate of 0.12 percent.
Now I’m sure Exxon-Mobil or Dow Chemical can afford this tax. If they make $10,000 beyond the $2 million threshold, their tax will be equivalent to the cost of a cheese pizza. If their profits are less than two million, they aren’t required to pay a penny. It’s that simple.
Corporations in the manufacturing industrial sector (e.g. chemical and allied products, petroleum and coal products, electrical and electronic equipment) and mining sectors historically paid about 41 percent of this tax. These sectors are responsible for about 43 percent of all Superfund sites.
Taxpayers now pay for all Superfund-led toxic cleanups, spending well over $1 billion annually to protect public health from the irresponsible business practices of polluting industries. As valuable public dollars are spent on these cleanups, polluting industries are enjoying a $4 million per day tax break courtesy of the American taxpayer.
More than 53 million Americans still live within four miles of a Superfund toxic waste site. 18 percent are children and 15 percent live below the poverty level. These toxic sites expose innocent families to dangerous toxic chemicals every day.
The cost to families living around these sites is much more than the price of a pizza. Health costs, the loss of a loved one, missed days at work, devalued property, and loss of the ability to enjoy their homes and communities.
The Crude Oil Tax portion of the program originally put a 9.7 cent-per-barrel tax on the purchase of crude oil by refineries and other industries. But Congress later eliminated most Superfund liability for oil spills. This means Exxon-Mobil is only expected to support the “pizza” level tax. The oil industry is one of the most polluting industries on the planet. Each year, at least 14,000 oil spills occur in America.
Lastly, there is the Chemical Feedstock Tax on the most dangerous chemicals. Corporations could avoid this tax entirely by using safer chemicals in their products. This assessed a fee on the purchase of any of 42 toxic chemicals associated with dangerous substances at Superfund sites.
The amount of this tax ranged from $0.22 to $4.87 per ton, except on xylene, which was taxed at $10.13 per ton. The tax also exempted certain chemicals when used for certain purposes (e.g. methane and butane when used for fuel) or when produced in certain ways (e.g. any listed chemicals derived from coal).
Superfund sites are created when a state is unable to handle the cleanup of a dangerous site due to lack of staff, expertise or resources, and asks for help from the federal government. For this reason, Superfund sites cannot be sent back to the states. Even so, states don’t get a free ride, as they have a responsibility to pay a percentage of the costs.
State and cities across America want these toxic sites cleaned up so they can be redeveloped and no longer have a Superfund site blighting their community.
The Trump Administration, which says it wants to develop our nation’s resources, should be all for the ability to redevelop these sites, which is generally done through the Brownfields program.
However, without the “Polluter Pays” tax, even Trump can’t develop these properties, because too few of them are being cleaned up. The number of completed cleanups decreased from 80 sites annually in 1999 and 2000 to 13 by 2013.
Reinstating the “Polluter Pays” Tax should be the first step in any tax reform. It’s the right thing to do.
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.