Show me the data and I can support your claim that nothing is being done "to stop contamination from seeping into the groundwater, and leaves backyards, playgrounds and Lake DePue without real remediation.” Show me what you have and I will be on your side. I promise. I want to protect human health and the environment but I have to have something to protect it against.
Right now - and as you are reading this you know as much as I do - all I know about this situation is that there is "a pile of contaminated slag weighing at least 570,000 tons that looms over the main road into town, left behind by a zinc smelter." (1)
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"It's not like we're just a bunch of hicks out here crying about our town being contaminated," Bryant said. "All the complaining we've done, we've learned that there's good reason for us to be worried about the type of cleanup we get here."What have you learned and what are those good reasons to be worried? Whatcha got? Show me the data!
Mr. Bryant claims that his town is being contaminated. The "Cleanup DePue" website has issued a Press Release detailing what their issues are. Here is what it says:
The residents of DePue waited 17 years for the companies responsible for the toxic waste in their village to produce a clean-up plan under a court order they signed. Recently, ExxonMobil and CBS (formerly Viacom) finally divulged their plan -- and their “solution” would turn the central Illinois River town into a permanent toxic waste dump.Okay, so now a picture is starting to appear. Some folks in the town of DePue do not like the proposed clean-up plan. No surprise there. But will that plan "turn the central Illinois River town into a permanent toxic waste dump?"
And here is where the problem begins. Remember, I just learned about this on Tuesday, December 18th, 2002. I have no connection to this site or the parties involved. How do I "know" what that problem is? I can read it in their Press Release. I "know" because it is the same basic problem that crops up over and over in these situations.
Item A contains contaminant B. Contaminant B may lead to severe health hazards including neurological disorders and a wide incidence of cancer. Item A therefore presents a risk and must be removed.
Can't argue with that logic now can you? That's the problem for DePue. They know there is toxic contaminants in that "pile of contaminated slag weighing at least 570,000 tons that looms over the main road into town, left behind by a zinc smelter." And they know that the pile of slag was put there by a company owned by ExxonMobil and CBS. Therefore, and you can see the logic here, ExxonMobil and CBS need to clean up their dang mess!
Simple.
Well not really, because you now have to look at the risk if that 570,000 tons is excavated and moved.
That's where guys like me come in to the equation. I do not care what is in the pile. I only care about what comes out of the pile. And then, I only care about what the people living in and around that pile uptake into their bodies. I also care about that pile causing environmental damage to the ecosystem, but I want to stick to just looking at public health here, since that's the concern of the press release.
Let me say it one more time: I do not care what is in that pile - and neither should the citizens of DePue.
So what's the beef they have with the plan?
According to the Illinois EPA Fact Sheet:
In August 2006, the Village posted Notices to Abate Nuisance at the site. The notices ordered Exxon to remove the materials and clean the site of all contaminants to the satisfaction of the Village within ten days. If Exxon failed to comply within ten days, the notices required Exxon to pay a nuisance fine of $ 750 per day until the site cleanup was complete and the site was removed from the NPL. The notices did not define the terms "materials" or "contaminant". In 2007, the Village of DePue filed a complaint against Exxon in Illinois state court, asserting that Exxon had violated and continued to be in violation of the Village's nuisance ordinance. It sought three forms of relief: a judgment declaring that Exxon had violated the ordinance, daily fines of up to $ 750 for that alleged violation and injunctive relief requiring Exxon immediately to clean the site and have it removed from the NPL. Exxon moved the case to U.S. District Court and filed a motion to dismiss the complaint because the causes of action stated in the complaint were preempted by federal and state law. The district court agreed. In 2008, the Village of DePue appealed the District Court's decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit and the District Court's verdict was affirmed because the Village's claims are preempted by Illinois law.The U.S. Court of Appeals found that the DePue's claims are preempted by Illinois law. Well heck, that sucks. So they make a move to get around that:
On September 8, 2008, the Village of DePue enacted a new ordinance against hazardous waste, and on November 4, 2008, the Village became a home-rule municipality under the Illinois constitution. The Village filed a new suit in Illinois circuit court, making claims against the PRPs based on the new ordinance. The PRPs moved the case to U.S. District Court, which dismissed the Village's claims because the new ordinance was an invalid exercise of home-rule authority under the Illinois constitution. The Court also dismissed the Village's common law trespass and nuisance claims. The Village filed an amended complaint on July 27, 2009, re-alleging its trespass and nuisance claims under Illinois law. The District Court dismissed this complaint on May 12, 2010. The Village is currently pursuing an appeal.You can see why they might be a little upset about this. That's why in the article the paper writes:
The village's leaders and residents say they've felt abandoned for years, locked in a three-way struggle with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the two companies responsible for the industrial sites as they seek to have the contamination cleaned up.On one side you have laws that give you no standing or ability for redress. On the other side you have guys like me telling them the best thing to do is leave it there. You can see, or at least I can, how DePue might fell as if they are getting the short end of the stick on all of this. They are not getting what the want.
Does that make them "just a bunch of hicks out here crying about our town being contaminated?" Nope.
Are they being forced to accept a remediation plan that "does nothing to stop contamination from seeping into the groundwater, and leaves backyards, playgrounds and Lake DePue without real remediation.” Not from what I can see - so far.
I am writing this blog in "real time." That is, I am looking at what is being said and I am looking at the available data to see if it supports either sides contention. One side says it is "safe" and the other side says it is "unsafe."
It is somewhat easy to support "unsafe." It is much harder to support the assertion of "safe."
So...show me the data that supports the claim that DePue is currently being affected by the materials that will be left in place? Show me the data to support this statement in the press release:
The slag and waste left behind continue to leach heavy metals and carcinogens into ground water that runs off into Lake DePue, which flows directly into the Illinois River. Contaminated debris blows onto public and private property throughout the village and surrounding natural areas, exposing residents -- more than a quarter of whom are children under the age of 16 -- and local wildlife to arsenic and heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium.Show me the data...
Visit www.CleanUpDePue.org to see an interactive map that details the way-above-normal concentrations of pollutants at hundreds of contaminated sites.Really...you got data? Cool! I can now see the "way-above-normal" concentrations that support your contention of harm and risk. Data good...data will help me make up my mind. So...whatcha got?
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That's it? For each of the five stops where data was collected by Mr Garcia’s environmental science class no one explained what those values mean in terms of risk? I have five sets of data from five locations presented with a quantity and a blurb about the health effects of each parameter, but there is nothing describing how that quantity relates to potential risk. C'mon people, you need more than showing a mg/kg value when assigning risk Am I missing something here? According to the Press Release:
“We want everyone to know what ExxonMobil and CBS are doing,” said Adeline Gavina, a DePue High School student. Together with chemistry students from Northwestern University and Groundswell Educational Films, DePue students built a website with a virtual tour of their town and the interactive map. The map shows the location for 1,976 samples taken by the companies over the past several years, exactly which contaminants were found in each sample, and the health risks of residents’ prolonged exposure to these contaminants. The website and map were built under grants from the Initiative for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN) and the Environmental Chemical Sciences Program of the National Science Foundation's Division of Chemistry, Northwestern University Chemistry student interns worked over six month to analyze, interpret, and enter the data that you see on the map."Maybe that map shows data that I can use to support the DePue claim that thy are at risk. Okay, so I randomly picked a number on the interactive map. I chose "6" because it was outside of town. Well sample location "6" just so happens to be the baseball field when the map zooms in.
According to the Press Release:
...and they delivered a superficial plan that barely touches many of the contaminated areas, leaves the slag pile and other waste in place, does nothing to stop contamination from seeping into the groundwater, and leaves backyards, playgrounds and Lake DePue without real remediation.”So I got lucky in choosing the baseball field. I now have data from sampling performed by the Potentially Responsible Party (PRP) as well as data from Mr Garcia’s environmental science class, "Virtual Stop Number 3." With that data I can support the finding of potential harm for DePue residence who play at the baseball field.
I can then do the same thing for all the areas outside of the fenced-in contaminated areas. Remember, I do not care what is in the fence line. I only care about what is coming out and the amount of contaminants that the DePue townsfolk are exposed to. With that I can assign risk and support the claim that:
“In determining whether a person is exposed to potentially harmful levels of toxic pollutants, CBS and ExxonMobil are counting each exposure as if it were an isolated incident, and pretending that residents are exposed only to a single contaminant and only in one area of the town. The reality is that children are growing up here, eating from home gardens, playing in parks and ball fields, boating in the lake, and later working and living as adults in DePue. Any realistic assessment of health risks has to take these multiple, constant and long-term exposures into account.”That's a valid point they are making. I wonder if I can do that from the data that is available I am doing this research real-time at this moment. I have no idea if the data is there or if I can make a valid risk statement. What I do think I can come up with is a bit of context that is missing from this website.
Just because Chemical A can cause Health Affect B does not mean it will. It is all about dose. So my next post will look at the dose anticipated from someone playing all day, everyday, at the baseball field.
We got data baby!
Next post: The Village of DePue: Batter up! - Part 3
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