You should see the headline at Huffington Post
Now go there and read their huge story on DuPont’s destruction of West Virginia. Here is a taste:
Then, in the early 1980s, DuPont, which ran a sprawling chemical plant called Washington Works in nearby Parkersburg, approached the family about buying some acreage for a landfill. The Tennants were wary of having a waste dump so close to the farm. But DuPont assured them it would only dispose of non-toxic material like ash and scrap metal, and so they agreed to sell.
Shortly after the deal closed, Jim and Della, whose home abutted the new landfill, say their two young daughters started wheezing and hacking. Worried about the girls’ health, they moved to a house in town. But most of their relatives stayed, and Jim and Della continued hunting game and eating beef grazed on the farm.
Della took her daughters’ Girl Scout troop there to catch tadpoles in the creek and make plaster molds of deer tracks. Then, at some point in the mid-1990s, the water in the creek turned black and foamy, and the family began finding dead deer tangled in the brambles. The cattle started going blind, sprouting tumors, vomiting blood.
“One time this cow was coming down the road and it was just bellowing, the awfulest bellow you ever heard,” Della told me. “And every time it would bellow, blood would gush from its mouth and its nose. It just bellowed and bellowed and blood just kept flying, and then it would fall down, and it would try to get up … We didn’t have anything to shoot it with, so we just had to watch it until finally the cow bled to death.”
Please sign the below petition demanding that Governor Markell force DuPont to clean up the hazard titanium dioxide waste pile at the Edge Moor site.
*****
At the DuPont/Chemours titanium dioxide plant in Edge-Moor, DE, on the banks of the Delaware River and Shellpot Creek, lies a giant “dioxin pile” of dangerous waste which DuPont claimed was in temporary storage and would be sold. When DuPont was unable to sell the waste, it got permission from Delaware officials, over strong public opposition, to leave the pile there forever. If not removed, this “dioxin pile” will inevitably leak dioxin and other poisons into the air (blowing dust), the groundwater, and into the Delaware River. It will be a perpetual threat to the health of residents, and an obstacle to safe reuse of the site. DuPont/Chemours must remove the dioxin pile. The recent sale of DuPont’s titanium dioxide (“TiO2”) manufacturing facility located at 104 Hay Road, Edge Moor, New Castle County, Delaware to the entity known as Chemours has cast a significant doubt that the hazardous waste storage site located in the area known as Cherry Island in Wilmington, Delaware will ever be removed, thereby posing an ongoing threat to the health and environment of all Delawareans. Chemours’ announcement that it was shutting down this facility shortly after its acquisition raises serious questions regarding who will be held responsible for clean-up and removal of this imminent threat. Governor Jack Markell and the Delaware Department of Natural Resources (DNREC) must mandate the total removal of the hazardous waste pile from the Edge Moor facility holding them fully liable (jointly and severally) for the costs incurred by taxpayers for clean-up.
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/demand-removal-of-the
Sign the petition: Demand Removal of the Delaware Dupont Hay Rd. Hazardous Waste Site
Protect the health of Delaware’s residents by mandating the total removal of the hazardous…
petitions.moveon.org
Mr Kowalko,
That pile was closed years ago and isn’t going anywhere.
Just closed, or cleaned up and closed?
Closed as in the DNREC/EPA prescribed remedy was completed.
Right, because DNREC has gotten it right so many times in the past.
My only point is that it’s a done deal– I’m not trying to comment on the technical details of the closure plan. However, there would be about as much success if you petitioned to reopen the terms of the Louisiana Purchase.
The Louisiana Purchase would have more success.
Delaware doesn’t give a shit about the environment.
Good luck, Kowalko
The intercept does quality work.
Yet another Delaware employer….
It was closed by edict and never re-mediated satisfactorily or safely. You can contact me for a meeting and I will bring all of the correspondence and record of potential and actual hazard. You seem to be a shill for DuPont (and/or others DNREC comes to mind) but I am trying not to accuse you of an obvious and apparent ignorance of the facts that would be required of a blinder wearing ignoramus lest I be accused of a disrespectful intolerance for your type of promoter. You have my cell number and my email address if you wish to meet with me otherwise do not feign knowledge or concern for the health of Delaware’s population and the environment.
Representative John Kowalko
Tilt away at this windmill if you wish.
Kowalko said, “…but I am trying not to accuse you of an obvious and apparent ignorance of the facts that would be required of a blinder wearing ignoramus lest I be accused of a disrespectful intolerance for your type of promoter.”
You’re sure trying hard.
John, I was wondering when you’d bring this up. I remember your work ten years ago.
This may or may not become a campaign issue; we’ll have to look at everything on the table later as we approach campaign season.. but…
Someone will have to clean it up. And as Chemours disappears, Dupont fades., it should become an issue of money and nothing else, whether it is not cheaper to take on Dupont/Chemours since we’re now divorced, or… let them go out of magnanimity for all the good they did do, and pay for it out of pocket…
it is now. all about money. And with money, anytime someone else pays instead of you, it is usually good… Just sayin’.
That said, if this is to be rectified, someone needs to take it on other than John, he is needed not-tied-down for far more important things upcoming. … Just sayin’.
JK’s abrasive approach aside, Tax makes a very ridiculous point. Let’s harp on that.
The idea that the issue should not be discussed because it has been “closed” based on a legal “agreement” is hilarious to me. Like racism is over because the Voting Rights Act has passed. So now we have to stand mute while a huge pile of nasty pollution sits there because it’s already been “agreed to.”
Perhaps nothing will be done in the end, but the notion that somebody shouldn’t try to address it because of some deal made years ago is dumb. Just too difficult? I do wish it was someone other than Kowalko pushing this though. I’m a supporter of his and we’ve agreed on so many issues , but his fucking attitude is wearing threadbare even on me!
How was the pile “capped?” Was it “capped” with an impenetrable barrier that will forever prevent toxic gasses or dust from becoming airborne? Or are they sending someone out every day with a hose to wet the pile down so the dust doesn’t become airborne (ridiculous, yes, but sadly a method DNREC uses at other toxic piles of ash around the state).
Does the pile sit directly on the ground, like the ash piles around the Indian River Power Plant, leaching into the river, or does the pile sit on an impenetrable barrier to protect the toxins in the pile from seeping into the ground, the ground water, and into the river?
Is anyone else tired of DNREC giving the biggest polluters in Delaware continual passes on cleaning up their toxic waste, or will we continue to remain ignorant and complacent as we wonder why so many of our friends and neighbors have cancer?
Isn’t this Deb Heffernan’s District? Where does she stand on the dioxin pile clean up?
Just a few questions I have, maybe Rep. Kowalko or the shill for DuPont/Chemours/DNREC can answer them.
I think that there is a crime here. But, of course, it’s crime that has been made legal by the Feds with the able assistance of the high-powered corporate lobbyists.
That’s the crime that enables DuPont to spin off its ‘problem facilities’ into another company, and escape liability for cleanups at what now are Chemours facilities.
And, when Chemours declares bankruptcy, what then…?
Don’t forget DNREC. You know, that wing of the gov’t that is supposed to protect the environment yet never does?
DNREC’s motto should be “Please excuse the mess while we continue to contribute to the problem.”
Environmentalism is not in Delaware’s DNA. It’s citizens, DNREC, and elected leaders do not place a value on the environment.
Yep, DNREC enforcement is an oxymoron. When you’ve got a ‘jobsjobsjobs’ governor, there’s lots of looking the other way, whether it’s an oil refinery or a huge chicken processing facility.
Same holds true for the oxymoronically named ‘Division of Labor Law Enforcement, headed up by the oxymoronic Tiny Tony DeLuca.
Do ya think that when Markell and Alan Levin throw millions of dollars of incentives to Amazon and Harim, just to name two, that anybody from Labor Law Enforcement will investigate working conditions? Even though those working conditions cry out for investigations?:
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_sick_brutality_and_secret_history_of_ruthlessly_intimidating_workers/
Does the pile sit directly on the ground, like the ash piles around the Indian River Power Plant, leaching into the river, —————YES!
Does the pile sit on an impenetrable barrier to protect the toxins in the pile from seeping into the ground, the ground water, and into the river? ———–NO
Representative Kowalko
Please sign the petition
Thank you,
John Kowalko
We should be grateful that someone is willing to take up the fight. Some of our elected officials sit back and are not willing to go out on the edge. Their too worried if their going to get re-elected. Thank you, Representative Kowalko for taking up the fight!
Please, sign the petition.
And the people who profited from the pile, live high above it, enjoying beautiful views of “open space” provided by state taxes.
DNREC
Delaware
Never
Responds to
Environmental
Concerns
Did anyone go through the interactive map at the end of the article? I spent almost an hour going through all of the counties (in the whole US) that had the chemicals detected. New castle county had the highest in the country that I found. Our chemical happy culture needs to stop. Bpa has been shown to cause genetic damage to reproductive organs that is passed down through later generations. And just like in the article, they moved to another variant. Any plastic that says BPA free is a lie. They use BPB which has the same hormone like traits that BPA does. Nothing like killing ourselves for water bottles.