=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #135
—June 27, 1989—
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
==========
The Back issues and Index
are available
here.
The official RACHEL archive is here.
It’s updated constantly.
To subscribe, send E-mail to rachel-
weekly-
request@world.std.com
with the single word SUBSCRIBE in the message. It’s free.
===Previous Issue==========================================Next Issue===
EPA HANGS OUT DIRTY LAUNDRY OF 19,278 INDUSTRIAL POLLUTERS.
Citizens fighting toxics received a fabulous gift from Uncle Sam
last week–an amazing database of information about toxic
chemicals being dumped into the environment by 19,278
manufacturing companies. It’s real, it’s available, and it works.
It’s called the TRI (toxic release inventory) database, and it’s
an enormous arsenal of weapons and tools, just begging to be used
against your favorite polluter.
Citizens now have a huge reservoir of facts at their
command–facts reported by the companies themselves about the
toxic chemicals they are dumping into the air, the water, and the
soil, even including the names of the waste haulers they are
sending their wastes to.
Suddenly Uncle Sam has hung the dirty laundry of 19,278 companies
out where everyone can see it. The database contains information
on a list of 309 individual chemicals, each of them selected for
inclusion on the list because it is particularly nasty
(carcinogenic, mutagenic or teratogenic). Therefore, when a
company admits that they’re dumping even ONE of these chemicals
into the air or water in your community, you’re got them on the
defensive. Now it’s up to them to explain (if they can) why
dumping cancer-causing chemicals into human communities makes
sense, why you and your neighbors should continue to put up with
it.
“Anyone who has to dump cancer-causing chemicals into our town
just to make a living is mismanaging their resources,” you can
say. “We simply want you to stop.” Then you can mount a campaign
to force them to reduce their wastes. The goal is simple: zero
discharge before the end of this century. America, toxics-free by
2000!
For two centuries, industry has been in control because citizens
couldn’t get the goods on them. You knew by looking at those
smoke stacks and discharge pipes that something was very wrong,
but you didn’t know what. Now that dark veil of secrecy begins to
lift. Light begins to shine.
A new kind of community organizing is suddenly now possible.
Groups with common interests can find each other and begin to
work together–citizens fighting Waste Generator A in central
Ohio can now link up with citizens fighting Waste Processor B in
central Illinois because both towns are being polluted by Waste
Generator A. Citizens fighting a toxic waste dump or a hazardous
waste incinerator can get a list of major customers sending
wastes to their town, and can organize a campaign to discourage
customers from shipping toxics into their community. It could
ruin the local Waste Processor’s business, or, at the very least,
put heat on that Waste Processor from every corner of the nation,
roasting them slowly on a spit of publicity and shame.
What you can do
In your own town, you get the facts about toxic emissions from
the big plant across the river. Then you write up a short report
(which we call a Waste Audit Report), you print up a few hundred
copies, hold a press conference, and now your favorite polluter
REALLY on the defensive. He (or she) will have to explain why
it’s “smart management” to dump hundreds or thousands of pounds
of supremely nasty chemicals into a human community–why dumping
carcinogens into the air and water is good for business, good for
children, good for kittens and bunny rabbits. This is hard to
explain without looking silly or guilty or worse.
Now you’re in a position to knock on the Plant Manager’s door and
ask for a negotiating session. What you want is entirely
reasonable: you want a waste reduction plan with specific target
dates and measurable milestones along the way. You want regular
progress reports from the polluter, you want a firm commitment
that the goal is zero discharge by a particular date. You want no
BS.
You’ve told the press that they can expect to hear from you next
year because you’re going to be producing a Waste Audit Report on
your favorite polluter every spring, when the new federal data
becomes available.
Meanwhile, you’ve started rummaging around in the federal
database for other companies in the same business as your
favorite polluter. You find several, and you notice they are
reporting different chemicals and different amounts of similar
chemicals. You call the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous
Waste (CCHW) in Arlington, VA [703/276-7070], they put you in
touch with citizens active in the home communities of those other
polluters, you call them up and enlist their help. You learn what
pressure tactics they’re finding effective. You learn that
management in another plant across the state has initiated a new
process to make Widget X with far fewer toxic wastes. Now, armed
with your new knowledge, you ask for another meeting with your
favorite polluter and you ask why he or she can’t adopt this new
technology and spare your community the burden of toxic dumping.
Suddenly, you find that the role of local government (which so
often stands between the polluters and the victims of pollution,
protecting the polluters from our wrath) has diminished, that
you’ve started attacking the polluters DIRECTLY without local
government being able to run interference. You’re demanding the
right to inspect plants yourself, you’re working directly with
representatives of labor, helping them get their health and
safety demands met in return for inside information, and you’re
forcing management to make commitments to waste reduction, with
specific goals tied to specific dates. You have advanced beyond
the right to KNOW; you have asserted the right to ACT!
This is not fantasy. This is real. People are doing this today.
To learn how to get access to the TRI database (or how to get
paper copies of the right-to-know data through the mail) and how
to do a Waste Audit Report on your favorite polluter, get the
CITIZEN’S TOXIC WASTE AUDIT MANUAL (76 pgs.), produced by Ben
Gordon of Greenpeace in collaboration with us. It’s available
free from Greenpeace U.S.A. Toxics Campaign, 1017 W. Jackson
Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60607 (but they would really appreciate a
$5.00 donation). Without even blushing, we are prepared to say
that this is a crackerjack manual describing how to use federal
“right to know” information, step by step. To learn more about
getting through the front gate to inspect your local polluter’s
facility, get Richard Youngstrom’s CITIZENS’ TOXICS PREVENTION
MANUAL ON THE NEIGHBORHOOD INSPECTION (39 pgs.), available for
$5.50 from the National Toxics Campaign, 29 Temple Place, Boston,
MA 02111; phone (617) 482-1477. After you locate those other
polluters across the state or across the nation who are in the
same business as your local polluter, and you want to establish a
network of citizen groups so you can all work together toward
your common goal, you will of course want to contact network
headquarters in Arlington, VA: Lois Gibbs, Will Collette and
Brian Lipsett at CCHW, P.O. Box 926, Arlington, VA 22216; phone
(703) 276-7070; they publish a raft of their own useful
publications and they’re in touch with practically every group
fighting every polluter in the country. Lastly, get yourself
hooked into the computerized bulletin board for pollution
fighters, Environet, run by Greenpeace: (415) 861-6503, and then
send electronic mail to Ben Gordon, asking him to give you free
800 phone service into Environet. The times they are achangin.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: tri; computers; citizen action; rtk; rta;