=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #233
—May 15, 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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TOXICS ACTIVIST’S HOME IS TORCHED; DESPITE SETBACK,
HER NEW REPORT ON HAZARDS OF INCINERATORS WILL APPEAR.
The home and office of long-time environmental activist Pat
Costner burned to the ground the night of March 2; last month an
arson investigator confirmed that the one-story building in
Eureka Springs, Arkansas, had been torched by an arsonist who
spread gasoline throughout the interior before setting it afire.
Costner was away from her home at the time and no one was
physically harmed by the blaze, but the home-and-office was
reduced entirely to ashes in less than two hours. A chemist and
environmentalist for nearly 30 years, Costner’s library of
technical books and reports, and her extensive computer files of
quotations from scientific documents, were destroyed in the
blaze, along with all her personal possessions. Costner, 50, and
her three children had built the home with their own hands over
the past 17 years. “I was left, literally, with the clothes on my
back,” she said, adding with a wry smile, “But at least I still
had those.” Her computer was insured but her home was not.
Costner is perhaps most widely known for her early book, We All
Live Downstream, which she wrote while co-director of the
National Water Center, which she founded with Barbara Harmony in
the mid-’70s in Eureka Springs. The book advocates what was at
that time a new approach to water and wastewater management,
emphasizing the benefits of dry composting toilets. For the past
five years, Costner has served as research director for the
toxics program of Greenpeace U.S.A., the U.S. affiliate of
Greenpeace International. Among toxics activists, Costner is
known for her dry humor, her strategic thinking on toxics use
reduction, and her kindness. She reserves her most biting wit,
bordering on contempt, for scientists who lie and for companies
who poison the poor.
“Pat has been an intellectual leader in the toxics movement
throughout the ’70s and ’80s,” says Bill Walsh, director of the
Greenpeace Toxics Program. “Pat was the first person I ever heard
say we needed zero discharge of toxic materials. She has helped
the grass-roots movement carry out its strategy of ‘stopping up
the toilet’ to make waste disposal scarce and therefore
expensive. The aim is to discourage waste production. Pat has an
awful lot of friends in the movement, but naturally she’s made
some enemies in industry over the years.”
A native of Arkansas who left after college, then worked as an
industrial chemist before returning home in the early ’70s,
Costner established an independent analytic laboratory in Eureka
Springs which she ran for about 10 years to support her
environmental work. Before that she was a research chemist for
Syntex in Colorado and for Shell Oil in Texas.
In recent months, Costner has been putting the finishing touches
on a new report she had spent nearly five years preparing;
ironically called Playing With Fire, it presents a technical
attack on hazardous waste incineration, offering evidence that it
is an exceptionally dirty technology that spreads a broad array
of dangerous chemicals into surrounding air and soil. Despite the
setback created by the arson attack, Playing With Fire will be
released by Greenpeace May 22.
Costner had recently testified, or had presented written
testimony, against various hazardous waste incinerator proposals,
many of which have since collapsed, costing their proponents
millions of dollars. She is an especially convincing critic of
the technology because of her technical expertise, and her
antiincineration work has taken its toll on the industry in
recent years. Specific projects that Costner has
Pat Costner in Eureka Springs, AR, last month. helped kill or
cripple include a massive proposal in Arizona by the incinerator
firm, Ensco, of El Dorado, Arkansas, which was canceled by
Arizona governor Fife Symington on May 3, and the MRK Company’s
proposal to burn dioxin-contaminated chemical-biological warfare
(CBW) agents in a residential section of Jacksonville, Arkansas.
The MRK incinerator had gone through its trial burn, an expensive
test intended to show the incinerator can operate within legally
establish pollution limits; Costner submitted written comments
and the trial burn data were thrown out and a new trial burn
scheduled. The multi-million-dollar project is now on hold. MRK
has headquarters 15 miles from Eureka Springs. In addition,
Costner had recently testified against a Waste-Tech incinerator
on Kaw Indian land in Oklahoma, and she had also recently opposed
a CTI incinerator in Ft. Morgan, CO. Both those projects are now
dead.
A report by Investigative Services Co. of Cordova, Tennessee, an
arson investigation firm, concluded the Costner home was
intentionally torched by someone using an accelerant, most likely
gasoline. The report cited data from the National Fire Protection
Association indicating that normal temperatures in a house fire
do not exceed 300o to 500o F near the floor and 1800o F near the
ceiling. In Costner’s home, steel bedsprings melted, indicating
temperatures of at least 2700o Fahrenheit, and the aluminum bases
of two office chairs melted “into a puddle,” indicating floor
temperatures of at least 1300o F. Furthermore, debris from the
ashes, sent to the AK Analytical Services Laboratory in
Hendersonville, TN, revealed traces of gasoline. An empty
gasoline can was found in the ashes of what had been the middle
of Costner’s living room floor. “They not only burned down my
home and office, they left me a message that they had done it,”
Costner said, referring to the gasoline can. In a written report
filed with the Eureka Springs sheriff March 4, Costner said that
on two occasions in recent months, neighbors had told her that
“tough looking men” had come to Eureka Springs asking where she
lived, “even though I am in the phone book. I was at home on both
occasions, but no one came to see me,” she said. Her home was
eight miles from Eureka Springs, 1.5 miles off a highway on a
dead-end gravel road. Local authorities say their investigation
has not yet turned up any suspects. The FBI has been asked to
join the investigation, at the suggestion of the Arkansas state
police.
Local businesses and individuals in Eureka Springs raised several
thousand dollars locally to help Costner rebuild (see photograph
above) and several grassroots groups, including Native Americans
for a Clean Environment (NACE) in Oklahoma, have held
fundraisers. Greenpeace has established a Pat Costner fund that
has so far received donations totaling over $10,000 from
Greenpeace staff; additional donations are welcome. Make checks
payable to the Pat Costner Fund, and mail to Greenpeace, 1436 U
Street, NW, Washington, DC 20009. All together, donations so far
have totaled more than $14,000. Costner’s home had an estimated
value of $25,000 and her collection of books, reports, and
manuscripts-the largest Greenpeace technical library in North
America–was essentially priceless.
Costner’s book, WE ALL LIVE DOWNSTREAM, is available for $9.00
from: The National Water Center, P.O. Box 264, Eureka Springs, AR
72632; (501) 2539431.
Costner’s new report, PLAYING WITH FIRE, will be released May 22.
Activists can reserve a copy by sending $10.00 to Playing With
Fire, c/o Greenpeace, 1436 U St., NW, Washington, DC 20009. Phone
(202) 462-1177. For companies, the price is $100.00
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: pat costner; arson; whistleblowers; violence;
greenpeace; bill walsh; studies; incineration; ar; lawsuits;
investigations;