=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #188
—July 4, 1990—
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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NIAGARA RIVER–PART 3: A CIVICS LESSON.
When America’s leading chemical company buries millions of pounds
of poisonous chemicals in the ground right next to a major
drinking water supply, then explains that it thought the
chemicals would “disappear” in the ground, what are we to think?
DuPont is the tenth largest U.S. corporation with assets in
excess of $30 billion and several thousand chemists on the
payroll, every one of whom knows that chemicals cannot
“disappear” when you bury them in the ground. The first law of
thermodynamics–which is taught to all freshmen chemists, and has
been for at least a hundred years–makes it impossible for anyone
educated in physics or chemistry to believe that chemicals can
“disappear.” Yet in 1988 a representative of the DuPont company
(Richard Knowles) looked straight into an educational TV camera
and said with a steady voice, “As industry developed here [along
the Niagara River in northern New York state], practices that
were similar to those used around the world were used here with
respect to disposal. Just as we did in our homes, we sometimes
threw the trash in our back yards…. It was done at a time when
people were just unaware of what the impact of these things would
be. There was the expectation that somehow they would disappear
and not become a problem.”
Since it cannot be true that DuPont believed the chemicals would
disappear, what did they think would happen? It is evident: they
believed they wouldn’t get caught and, if they did, they could
put enough lawyers into the field to fend off serious trouble
like major fines or jail sentences for executives. (At that time,
the death sentence for polluters wasn’t even being considered.)
The video TESTING THE WATERS confirms that this strategy was a
pretty good one. The video tells the story of what has happened
since 1979 when DuPont, Olin Corp. and Occidental Chemical got
caught dumping hundreds of thousands of tons of toxics into a
drinking water supply used by 5 million Canadians and
Americans–the Niagara River, which feeds into Lake Ontario. The
video is instructive because it makes clear how America’s
“hazardous waste management” system actually works. It shows
corporations, government and citizens in action. This is what
“civics” is about.
The video focuses on Occidental Chemical (known locally as Oxy),
probably because Oxy created so many huge dumps along the river,
including the dump at Love Canal. In 1979 when the discovery of
Love Canal forced Uncle Sam to search for other dumps, Oxy’s Hyde
Park site came to light almost immediately. Hyde Park contains
80,000 tons of toxic chemicals, including one ton of
2,3,7,8-TCDD, the deadliest of the dioxins.
Hyde Park sits less than a mile from the Niagara River. The
geologic formation between the dump and the river consists of
fractured rock. The fractures in the rock act like small pipes,
through which the chemicals flow constantly toward the river.
TESTING THE WATERS shows chemicals dripping out of the rock face
of the Niagara gorge, with the river flowing below.
In 1979, Uncle Sam approached Oxy and demanded that the site be
cleaned up. Oxy simply refused. “Sue us,” they said. Uncle Sam
did. Then Oxy fielded a team of lawyers and technicians who
outgunned the government at every turn.
For five years, Oxy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) negotiated behind closed doors. Then the EPA emerged to the
blare of trumpets and held a press conference. Chris Daggett,
then EPA chief for the New York region, announced a
“far-reaching” agreement between Uncle Sam and the company.
Daggett said that the plan would “curb and reclaim the chemicals
that have migrated from this landfill.” He then went on to say
that the “standards of protection for the public, for the river,
and for the environment” are “equal to or greater than any the
EPA or New York state has established anywhere.”
Next Robert Abrams, the attorney general of New York state, faced
the cameras and said that, “Today’s agreement is a vindication of
the entire process” of negotiation behind closed doors.
A reporter asks the obvious question: how do you intend to
retrieve the wastes that are already loose in the ground and
flowing toward the river?
An EPA lawyer answers by pointing to a map showing a “ring of
wells” to be placed in the ground around the site. The wells will
be pumped. The reporter does not ask any followup questions, so
the EPA’s plan goes unchallenged. No one asks how the EPA will
know where to place the wells so that they intersect the “pipes”
(fractures) that are carrying the toxics toward the river. Now
one asks what happens if the toxics are flowing through fractures
in the rock which aren’t tapped by the wells. No one asks how
long it will take to pump the 80,000 tons of toxics to the
surface using the ring of wells. No one asks what happens if the
ground shifts, as has happened in the past, and a huge slug of
toxics pours into the River all at once.
The remainder of the video adds details that the EPA omitted from
their press conference. For example, in 1981, Oxy and EPA both
took the official position that toxics were not flowing from Hyde
Park into the river. A coalition of citizen groups gathered
evidence that forced EPA and Oxy to admit toxics were reaching
the river.
What civics lessons can we derive from this video?
1) Once you make toxic chemicals, there’s almost nothing that can
be done about them because even if technologies are available to
remedy the situation, government doesn’t have what it takes to
force a company like Oxy to spend the necessary money. Citizens
must force companies to reduce their use of toxics.
2) The government negotiates behind closed doors and this gives
industry the upper hand. In working out “consent decrees” and
other agreements with polluters, the government needs to open up
the process so citizens can see what’s going on. Industry wins
behind closed doors because government just doesn’t have what it
takes. Open scrutiny of the process by citizens could give
government officials the necessary backbone.
Furthermore, government is easily fooled by polluters. For
example, no technically competent professionals believe the “ring
of wells” around Hyde Park can capture the pollution that is
seeping through the fractured rock into the Niagara River. Oxy
has pulled a fast one on the government and has literally gotten
away with murder. Since we offer few real benefits and
protections for government (civil service) workers, industry will
always be able to field a better team than government. With few
exceptions, our government workers only remain on the job until
the polluters offer them more money.
Open scrutiny of the negotiating process would be a way of
augmenting the government’s capabilities, allowing interested
citizens, including those with technical training, to critique
the work being done.
3) The courts are a losing arena for achieving cleanup. EPA would
be better off taking their case directly to the people and
whipping up public sentiment against the polluters, rather than
taking them to court. Government could urge citizens to boycott
polluters’ products, government could open its files to citizen
action groups and urge citizens to hold their own public
hearings. Public outrage is a more effective lever against
polluters than the law can ever be. Government should rethink its
strategy and avoid the courts.
4) Government officials never ask the key question: Is this plan
adequate to protect public health and safety? Instead, they ask,
“Is this better than what we had last year?” Twice on this video,
we see this reaction from government. Once when Daggett announces
the Hyde Park agreement–he doesn’t say it will do the job, he
says it’s more far-reaching than any agreement the government has
ever signed before. Then when a reporter asks EPA attorney Bill
Walsh why they didn’t allow more public participation in the
process, he says he allowed more than EPA had allowed in any
other process–avoiding the main issue, which is that huge
segments of the public were excluded and complained bitterly
about it. Mr. Walsh’s process may have been better than last
year’s, but it wasn’t adequate to meet the public’s needs.
5) Lastly, it is now clear that the government is committed to
avoiding real solutions to Superfund problems. The only real
solution to Hyde Park is to excavate the chemicals and detoxify
them by chemical processing (which may involve heat, or may not).
The government has a silent rule that guides all Superfund
negotiations: we will not excavate wastes, we will leave them in
the ground, no matter what the cost to future generations. As
this video makes clear, if there ever was a case to be made for
excavating a dump, Hyde Park is it. Sooner or later, if the
chemicals are left in the ground at Hyde Park, they will end up
in Lake Ontario. It is inevitable. The lake today contains an
estimated 8 ounces of dioxin and that is already sufficient to
cause health officials to issue warnings about consumption of
fish in many parts of the lake. If a ton of dioxin moves into the
lake (or even 10% of a ton), the Lake as we know it today will be
destroyed. To risk that possibility just to save Oxy some money
is nearly unthinkable. But that is what our EPA has done. An open
process, involving the public at every step, might well have
reached a different conclusion. That’s what the 4th of July is
really about.
Get: TESTING THE WATERS from Bullfrog Films, Oley, PA 19547;
phone (800) 543-3764; $350 purchase or $75 rental for schools.
For citizen action groups, $75 purchase or $25 rental. You won’t
be disappointed.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: niagara river; dupont; occidental chemical;
olin corp; remedial action; landfilling; hazardous waste; hyde
park dump; great lakes; chemical industry; love canal; epa;
groundwater; superfund; ny;