Comments on: Need for EPA Inspector General Investigation of Region 4 Treatment of Black Communities

By: Jill McElheney

Jill McElheney — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:06:31 +0000

I began a Christian ministry in 2003 after discovering my 4 year old son’s leukemia could be attributed to groundwater, soil, and ambient air contamination from adjacent industrial operations with a long history of environmental abuse. I am a white middle class female in the Deep South. Many of the families and communities I serve with the greatest human rights violations from chemical stressors/hazardous waste are African American. I consider them my brothers and sisters in our collective struggle, and believe the United Church of Christ has been a leader in highlighting this problem of unequal protection deeply rooted in institutional racism. Here in Athens, GA our Dunlap Road community has been suffering for 33 years from an unlined hole in the ground where toxic household garbage and hazardous waste, including that of the University of Georgia, was dumped. Having contaminated their groundwater which was not discovered until chronic exposure at maximum unsafe levels, residents are now manifesting its harm through death and disease linked to chemical trespassing. These negative health outcomes can be multigenerational. In 1992, residents were promised in a written agreement with local government that no landfill expansion would take place. As I write this, a permit sits in Atlanta at the Georgia Environmental Protection Division’s Solid Waste Dept. to expand this landfill. EPA Region IV was asked to intervene. They responded they have no authority to do so. In another African American community on Pittard Road in Athens, GA, we petitioned GA State Public Health to investigate the high rates of cancer in this neighborhood that backs up to DuPont (now Invista). The agencies including EPA Region IV, GA Environmental Protection Division, GA Public Health & Northeast Health District, and the CDC Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR) all covered up the extensive environmental violations of DuPont for over 30 years which migrated onto Pittard Road including hazardous waste. EPA Region IV Environmental Justice was asked on several occasion to intervene for the residents. We were told the best solution would be to form a relationship with the industry. The United Church of Christ and those who believe Jesus gave the best directives for societal living have proven communities of color and impoverished neighborhoods have fallen between the cracks of a broken regulatory system. It is time we mend the regulatory system to mend these broken hearts.

By: Margaret L Jones

Margaret L Jones — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:49:47 +0000

I was born and raised in Oak Ridge, TN. “Scarboro community”. During the era of segregation, blacks in Oak Ridge, TN were forced to live in a secluded community known as “Scarboro.” Scarboro community residents believe they have been the victims of nuclear contaminate releases, which they were exposed to by the nuclear sites located literally in their back yard. The contaminats and releases from these sites span over a period of 40 years (40′s, 50′s, 60′s, 70”s and 80′s). The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has repeately stated that releases posed no threat to the Scarboro community residents and that “There is no distinctive difference between Scarboro and other comparable parts of Oak Ridge.” We disagree.

If you ask anyone today that lived or grew up in Scarboro most if not all of the residents from the community would say they have been affected by the contaminates released from these nuclear sites.

Margaret L Jones said on September 17, 2009 at 1:50 p.m.

By: Herman May

Herman May — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 04:26:46 +0000

Residents in this small Mississippi Town for years were exposed to PCB contamination from one company. That Company also contaminated the Drinking Water Source with chlorinated chemicals. The local regulatory agency, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality has taken a “lets watch the contamination” approach. One drinking water well has already been shut down. The remaining drinking water wells are pulling the contamination in their direction.
In contrast Wesson Mississippi, just 20 miles south of Crystal Springs EPA has a superfund PCB and chlorinated chemicals remediation ongoing. The drinking water wells in Wesson were closed and wells were drilled outside the path of the contamination.

By: Rev. Steve Jamison

Rev. Steve Jamison — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:19:39 +0000

In the Marantha Faith Center Case in Columbus, MS ; EPA, MDEQ and the Mississippi court system seems to have been working together to deny The church and it’s members justice. For the last 10 years the Judges have allowed Kerr MaGee/Tronox to avoid a trial, causing the church to file bankruptecy. At the time the church decovered the cresote, it had just began a 2,5 milllion dollar expantion, which has be on hold now for the last 10 years, with no end in site. All I can say is, “Mississippi is still burning.

By: Tennie White

Tennie White — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:05:32 +0000

Columbus, Mississipppi

In August of 1999 Creosote was discovered in a drainage ditch on Maranantha Church Property in a low income minority neighborhood in Columbus, MS. Kerr McGee/Tronox a company responsible for the contamination began a 10 year campaign to deny the residents and property owners affected by this contamination their civil rights.
Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality responded with a letter which stated that the clean up of the original site could take years. There was no real investigation of how Creosote came to be on Maranantha Church Property or in the ditch which ran through the community.
10 years later EPA Region 4 officials came and collected samples from this same ditch and found Creosote constituents orders of magnitudes over the clean up levels. The residents have been living and playing and working in this contamination for 10 years.

Whom do we trust? No One. What agencies have failed in their missions: MDEQ and EPA Region 4.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:52:04 +0000

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.” -Cicero, 42 B.C.-

By: Barbara Evans

Barbara Evans — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:43:59 +0000

I live in one of the targeted areas, Lowndes County, Alabama, and over the last 20 years we have had 3 brutal landfill battles, which we won. We won because we were not afraid to say, loud and clear, that we were being targeted because of race. We won because we organized a permanent bi-racial organization that would not quit. We won because we held our elected officials accountable, often at great personal cost. We won because we ORGANIZED. Our biggest problem here, and I have also been involved in the Perry County landfill which is now home to the TVA toxic coal ash waste, is that we have elected people who will sell us out for their own personal gain. We have accepted our plight here in Region 4, and we don’t have the resources to organize and go to the top. Grants for organizing against the corporate dumpers are impossible to find. And we have to accept the fact that the changes in our country mean that sometimes the enemy who is selling us out looks just like us. I get tired of people saying that because Perry County officials are black, and because they invited in the dump and the waste that it couldn’t be racism. Bull. Abuse of power by ANYONE against communities of color and low income communities amounts to the worst form of racism.

By: b99

b99 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:03:37 +0000

It has always been blacks who have had their communities destroyed in the name of urban redevelopment – interstates dividing up neighborhoods and condos and townhouses built on what was left. So it is not surprising that there is a major race element to the siting of toxic dumping grounds. There is also the class element as well – these communities are generally too poor to mount first-class legal resistance. It’s ultimately an academic question I suppose, but it seems that environmental racism is also environmental classism as well.

By: Sherri Jones

Sherri Jones — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:44:34 +0000

FORREST COUNTY ENVIRONMENTAL SUPPORT TEAM
TIME LINE-Hattiesburg, Ms

Exhibit A – This document contains the original Agreed Order, dates January 16, 1979, which did not identify any contamination on the east side of the railroad track. The property of concern in this matter is referenced in all documents, as Exhibit B this document which was used in the settlement agreement to obtain $17 million dollars was also used to reduce the taxes only on the west side of the railroad track.

The Court was notified prior to the 1999 settlement agreement that Kerr-McGee’s testing program was flawed and did not reflect the affected property. Based on that information the Court refused the initial clean up plan and instructed MDEQ to determine the parameters of the impacted property. This is reflected in Exhibit C which is exerts from a Court document of statements by Atty. J. B. Van Slyke, see page 32 line 19 and page 33 lines 1 – 6.

It should be clear to all involved that the original agreed order was flawed as it did not address all of the affected property…

Exhibit A we believe will reveal cause for concern with respect to paragraph 8, and it is our opinion that this is the Agreed Order and work plan which was submitted to the Court in order to obtain the $17 million dollar settlement and the question that needs to be answered is what map was submitted? Did they use the map referred to as exhibit B or did they used the second map that revealed the contamination on the east side of the track. We believe Atty. Chaney with the Secretary of State have answered that question for us, please see Exhibit E, which is a letter from Atty. Chaney in which he explains this case very well. In a letter dated January 13, 2004, he explains that it is imperative that the clean up of the creosote contamination is complete as soon as possible…

Therefore it is our opinion that new information in recent testing will reflect that parties involved have committed several violations and possibly fraud upon the Court and the minority citizens without a doubt have been denied their right to due process by information being concealed for more than two decades. We believe this is reflected in MDEQ’S, June 28, 2001 meeting when they agreed with Kerr-McGee to separate the Northeast Drainage Ditch Project and allow it to be presented in a stand alone document…

Conclusion: Minority Lease Holders as reflected by the maps were included in all phases of this case. Human Health Assessment, Remediation, but excluded from receiving compensation or equal protection under the law and their rights.
Section 1 Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

By: GB in TN

GB in TN — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:41:27 +0000

TVA and the State of TN have selected a huge swath of rural agricultural land in West Tennessee to bring large industries into an area not ready for such development. They picked an area with small communities and whites and blacks and have done nothing at all for the communities. The environmental injustice for the predominately black community of Fredonia is clear as land is being prepared to be purchased all around them and the right of ways of the roads they live on are also being prepared to be bought.

EPA Region IV has ignored all requests to have TVA to the proper PRE-planning environmental work and there have been NO public hearings at all.

We have regulations, we have millions of dollars of taxpayer funded salaries but we have nothing being done for the people here according to the law. It’s especially ironic because Fredonia was at the epicenter of breaking Jim Crow’s grip on preventing blacks from voting in the counties of Fayette and Haywood but now this community is being moved aside again.

Clean that gang out of Atlanta and give us someone who will do their job for the people not the bureaucrats, cronies and industrial clients.

By: Jimmie M. GArland

Jimmie M. GArland — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:17:00 +0000

This article tell the true story. For decades the minotirty and poor communities across the nation have been the dumping grounds for toxic waste. It is time that real change come to America in eliminating the fradulant practices of discarding undesired elements of society in the vicinity of black/poor residential areas.

In voting for change during last election, we voted to make corrections in total not selective regulations. In appointing individual to perpetuate the changes needed in the EPA sphere, we call upon President Obama to be cautious and select only individuals of high integrity who are willing to enforce the laws in place as they relate to the transportation,storage, distribution, and erradication of toxic waste. If not now, when, if not this administration, who.

By: Rita Harris

Rita Harris — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:36:00 +0000

The “Toxic Waste & Race at Twenty Years” report clearly states why there is serious concern about who is appointed to lead EPA Regions across the country, but particularly here in Region IV.
Compounding the facts is the article above by Robert Bullard, “Need for EPA Inspector General Investigation of Region 4 Treatment of Black Communities”. It must also be pointed out that some people cannot seem to understand the need to speak about environmental problems and attribute many of these problems to ‘race.’ Facts are facts, and after over twenty years of research it is disturbing to have to continue to explain why race is the predominate factor in siting hazardous waste facilities, siting landfills, slow/weak or no enforcement of environmental regulations. The list goes on and race is usually involved. Last year when the whole country voted for “change” in the way the country does business on many levels, it is critical that we take this opportunity to push for change within the EPA. For the past twenty years and in some places more than that, we have been begging for environmental cleanups, stricter standards, and decisions that don’t continue this cycle of turning a blind eye to people-of-color communities. There is a definite pattern of injustice, and that pattern needs to stop; give relief to the families and neighborhoods that have been burdened with these problems year after year. The time for stonewalling is over. If we don’t speak about how discriminatory the decisions have been, they will continue. The time for effective action is here and we won’t get “change” unless there is a demand for it. As for race, ALL people of conscience and justice need to speak up and speak out about the injustice that is shamelessly going on. Instead of debating what words to use, it would serve us well to be aware of the details of the situations, study the cases, and call it like you see it. The state by state statistics argue the case better than I can. If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, doggone it, it must in fact be a duck! So now that the situation is clear — what are we going to do about it? Let’s demand change, fair representation, and a seat at the table.

By: Leslie Scales

Leslie Scales — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:13:58 +0000

While these statistics may be true, what is the point of diverting discussion to race? We are suing Whit(e)man Corporation for the death of our son, in a small town owned by Harrahs, Persicos, Jacksons, and they dump on their own land, too. They dump on Beverly Hills, LaSelva Beach in Santa Cruz. So rich white people get dumped on, too. They may have more clout in covering up the EPA actions, but these corporate zombies don’t care what color you are. They will experiment on and poison anyone of any color. They hired Chinese to build the railroads, they continue slavery from Haiti to the Slavik countries, and of course Native Americans have mostly been marginalized or exterminated. I don’t understand the purpose of talking about environmental racism. How does it help to solve the situation?