Under-served Communities Get Some Environmental Relief. No, not in Delaware. That would require the Polluters’ Patron Deb Heffernan to turn her back on her campaign financiers. But, at least in Missouri and Louisiana, some progress:
The Environmental Protection Agency will start monitoring the air in Verona, Missouri, where a manufacturing plant named BCP Ingredients emits a potent carcinogen called ethylene oxide. The mayor of Verona, Joseph Heck, has fought for air monitoring for nearly a year, since ProPublica’s analysis showed the company’s emissions substantially raised the local cancer risk. In some parts of the small city, the industrial cancer risk was an estimated 27 times what the EPA considers acceptable.
Also this month, residents of St. James, a Louisiana parish on a stretch of the Mississippi River known as “Cancer Alley,” won a yearslong battle to block the building of a $9.4 billion petrochemical complex that would have been one of the largest industrial projects in state history. As reported by Lylla Younes for Grist, a state district judge withdrew the air permits, finding that state officials did not adhere to the Clean Air Act when issuing them.
“The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality’s decision to authorize these potential public health violations, without offering evidence to show it had avoided the risk to the maximum extent possible, was arbitrary and capricious and against the preponderance of evidence under the agency’s public trust duty,” Judge Trudy M. White wrote in her ruling.
ProPublica found in 2019 that the air around the complex proposed by Formosa, a Taiwanese chemical giant, already contained more cancer-causing pollution than 99.6% of industrialized areas in the country. The proposed facility could have caused toxic air levels in some parts of St. James to triple.
“Formosa was wrong to even want to come in here and poison us because we’re already being poisoned,” Sharon Lavigne, a lifelong parish resident, told Grist’s Younes, who previously led ProPublica’s investigation. After Formosa announced its plans for the complex, Lavigne founded the grassroots group Rise St. James, which teamed up with the environmental watchdog Earthjustice to sue the state over its decision to grant the permits.
Deb Heffernan could have helped stop this sort of environmental racism in Delaware. Instead, she buried bills that would have done so in her committee. WE WILL BE WATCHING AND REPORTING, DEB.
How States–Including Delaware–‘Help The World’s Wealthy Hide Their Fortunes’. Yes, Delaware is a Billionaire Enabler State. This looks like a job for the Rev. and the Highlands Bunker Podcast. The modus operandi should be familiar to those who follow the machinations of the Delaware Way.
Artificial Turf And Forever Chemicals. Isn’t that soccer mecca in Kent County full of turf fields?:
Boston’s mayor, Michelle Wu, has ordered no new artificial turf to be installed in city parks, making Boston the largest municipality in a small but growing number around the nation to limit use of the product because it contains dangerous chemicals.
All artificial turf is made with toxic PFAS compounds and some is still produced with ground-up tires that can contain heavy metals, benzene, VOCs and other carcinogens that can present a health threat. The material also emits high levels of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and sheds microplastics and other chemicals into waterways.
“We already know there are toxic chemicals in the products, so why would we continue to utilize them and have children roll around on them when we have a safe alternative, which is natural grass?” asked Sarah Evans, an environmental health professor for the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Why, indeed?
Oh, that Kent County Sports Complex? All synthetic turf. They brag about it, call themselves, wait for it, ‘The Largest All-Synthetic Turf Sports Complex In The Mid-Atlantic’.
“Hey, parents, come to the Kent County Sports Complex and have your kids roll around in PFA’s. Don’t worry, the State of Delaware has no doubt immunized the operators from any liability due to health problems your kids might incur.”
What do you want to talk about?