=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #230
—April 24, 1991—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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THE ROLE OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE.
What is the role of civil disobedience in the grass-roots
movement to control toxics?
On April 4th in Freeland, Michigan, toxics activist Tom Adams,
29, chained himself beneath the wheels of a parked railroad
train, 25 gondola cars containing 2500 tons of contaminated soil,
cleanup residues from a train wreck and chemical fire at Freeland
July 22, 1989. The soil was headed for burial the next day at a
solid waste landfill in Michigan. When workers arrived to move
the train April 5th they found Tom wrapped in 20 feet of hardened
steel chain attached to the tracks with half a dozen padlocks.
Authorities broke two bolt cutters and a saw before they got Tom
loose. They let him off with a warning. The train’s owner, CSX
Transportation, realized this train was bound for trouble, and
they moved it out of state. The train has been traveling ever
since, looking for a home (see map, from USA TODAY April 22,
1991, pg. A5).
Tom’s group, the STORM Network–“a merry band of men and women
serious about protecting the Great Lakes”–tracked the train into
Ohio using high-tech methods they decline to describe. Four days
later, Sunday night, Tom chained himself to the train in
Walbridge, OH, this time using heavier chain. Authorities had to
cut him loose with a blow torch, and this time they charged him
with disrupting public transportation and vandalism–both
felonies. Tom faced 11 years in prison and $7,700 in fines.
The police incarcerated Tom in the Wood County Justice Center and
he immediately began a hunger strike to raise the ante.
The train is owned by CSX Transportation of Richmond, VA, which
operates a 19,700-mile railroad system in the East and Midwest.
It was their train, carrying chemicals to a Dow Chemical plant in
Freeland, that derailed July 22, 1989, spilling 11,500 gallons of
acrylic acid, 21,000 gallons of mixed chlorosilanes, and 23,000
gallons of petroleum naphtha, which ignited immediately and
burned for over a week. Three thousand people were evacuated from
their homes.
Local citizens immediately grew alarmed at the way CSX and local
officials pretended all was well. A group formed, called
TRACC–Tricounty Residents for Alternatives to Chemical
Contamination. TRACC began paying close attention to chemical
spills by trains in Michigan and they found an average of one
spill a month, more than half of them in their threecounty area.
“We began as citizens believing our government was there to
protect and serve us, and finally we came to see that officials
aren’t interested in saving lives. They’re just not,” says TRACC
leader Kim Maxwell, 36, who was evacuated from his home for 8
days. “I’ve got 2 little kids and the state health department
tried to pull the wool over our eyes from day one,” he says. “I
can show you a video, taken seven days after the fire began,
where a state health official says the fire is out, the wreckage
has been removed, and the contaminated soil has been cleaned up.”
He goes on, “I came to find out later the fire wasn’t even out,
the wreckage was still all over the tracks, still leaking, and it
was 18 months before they cleaned up the chemicals.” Maxwell
says, “I had four years in the military and they trained us to
recognize propaganda. What CSX put out from day one would have
made Joseph Stalin proud.”
What happened after that, as Maxwell tells it, was a lot of
foot-dragging by state agencies, a lot of fancy footwork by CSX
Transportation, and no satisfactory cleanup. “They could have
cleaned it up in two weeks back in ’89,” says Maxwell. “They kept
delaying a cleanup, meanwhile nature was washing the chemicals
away through rain and runoff. The longer they delayed, the less
chemicals there were to clean up. CSX was saving money every day
they delayed,” he says. “But I live here,” he says. “I’ve got my
family here.” He describes a holding pond created to contain the
chemicals. The dam broke several times, and it was sometimes many
weeks before it was repaired, he says. The pond wasn’t fenced, so
children played by its edge.
Petroleum naphtha is a combination of aliphatic hydrocarbons,
naphthenic hydrocarbons, benzene, and aromatic hydrocarbons. Many
of these compounds are highly toxic and are known human
carcinogens.
Chlorosilanes are a mixture of silicon, hydrogen, and chlorine.
“The silanes are reported to be highly toxic by inhalation,
ingestion, or skin contact,” according to the Handbook of Toxic
and Hazardous Chemicals (Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes, 1981).
Acrylic acid is a corrosive material that causes skin and eye
burns on contact.
However, by the time the contaminated soil was ready to be
shipped off-site, the concentrations in the soil were low. CSX
spokesperson Steve Buser, a chemist, describes the soil on the
train as “mildly contaminated.” State officials we interviewed
agree with that assessment.
Under Michigan law, the soil was automatically classified as a
legally hazardous waste that had to be buried in a hazardous
waste landfill. To spare themselves the expense of such burial,
CSX petitioned Michigan authorities to designate the wastes
“non-hazardous.”
Throughout the fall and winter of ’89-’90, TRACC and STORM
members opposed the “redesignation” of the waste from “hazardous”
to “non-hazardous.” Under Michigan law, a solid waste can go to a
Type II landfill and a Type II landfill can be unlined and built
in a sand and gravel pit, offering no protection to the
environment. Finally, the state Department of Natural Resources
decided on the basis of chemical analyses and a risk assessment
that the wastes should be redesignated non-hazardous. That’s when
Tom Adams decided civil disobedience was the only way to make the
point that “mildly contaminated” wastes shouldn’t be buried in
the ground for future generations to absorb. The rest is history.
Toxics activists have vowed to carry on Tom Adams’s fight. “We
are going to hound this train wherever it goes,” says John
Liebman, a seasoned Greenpeace toxics campaigner from New Orleans
who traveled to South Carolina this past weekend to make his
point.
Kim Maxwell of TRACC says, “We tried hard to work within the
system, to use the system for what it’s made for.” And how did
that work out? “Frankly, we couldn’t get the attention of the
governor, or any national attention, ’til Tom chained himself to
the tracks,” he says. Last Thursday–13 days into Tom’s hunger
strike–a judge threw out the felony charges and Tom now faces 90
days in jail and a $700 fine. He has started to eat but he won’t
pay a $300 bond, so he remains jailed, awaiting trial.
Brian Hunt, a burly Greenpeace toxics campaigner from Ft.
Lauderdale, Florida, takes the long view. “You think about
American history,” he says. “Nothing worth accomplishing has ever
been accomplished without civil disobedience. An end to slavery.
An end to segregation. Stopping atmospheric nuclear testing.
Stopping nuclear power. People have had to break the law to make
a point about the bigger issues of right and wrong. That’s the
way it is. If we think we’re going to win this fight to control
toxics without civil disobedience, we’re kidding ourselves,” he
says.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: citizens activism; freeland, mi; tom adams;
toxic train; hazardous materials; csx transportation; interstate
waste trade; storm network; walbridge, oh; protests; dow
chemical; accidents; evacuations; citizen groups; tracc; kim
maxwell; petroleum naptha; carcinogens; chlorosilanes; toxic
substances; acrylic acid; steve buser; landfilling; brian hunt;