We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ EPA - But Who Would Pay?

It’s the silly season again, and we are pounded daily with the election memes: Corporations are people too, 47% of Americans are moochers, EPA job killing regulations, and on and on.  If you are a political junkie like me it’s easy to get totally consumed by it all and lose your sanity in the process.  So to protect my mental health I took an unplanned vacation and headed to southern Utah to refresh my spirit basking in the glories of our National Parks, namely Canyonlands and Arches. Nestled near the Colorado and Green Rivers and surrounding the town of Moab are some of the most spectacular red rocks, geological formations and canyons I’ve ever seen.

My mental health sojourn didn’t last long.  One cannot visit the town of Moab without driving by the “UMTRA” site and spotting the radioactive hazard symbol on signs dotting the fence along our route.

This of course lead me to find out just what this was all about.  Briefly, here’s what I found out.

The site opened in 1956 for uranium ore processing by Uranium Reduction Co., who sold it in 1962 to Atlas Corp.  Atlas operated the site until 1984.  The site is approximately 500 acres on the west bank of the Colorado River. 130 acres on this site are contaminated by uranium tailings and tailings contaminated soil stored in an unlined impoundment.  Atlas began remediation in 1988 continuing through 1995 but work ceased when Atlas’ plan to cap it in place was derailed when uranium was found leaking into the Colorado River at a rate of 530 times the federal radiation limit. To avoid legal consequences Atlas would have had to also restore groundwater health. After studying the potential cleanup cost that approached $1 billion they found it cheaper to declare bankruptcy in 1998.  Atlas relinquished their license and forfeited their reclamation bond of only $5.25 million and got out of town, leaving the Nuclear Regulatory Commission holding the bag.

The NRC cannot possess a site it is responsible for regulating, so PriceWaterhouseCoopers was appointed the trustee and they initiated reclamation with the forfeited bond money.  Eventually through an act of Congress responsibility for cleanup transferred to the Dept. of Energy in Oct, 2001. DOE studied the situation and determined removal and offsite storage of the contaminated soil and active ground water remediation were required.  The contaminants are now being moved to a storage site 30 miles north in Crescent Junction via rail, a special rail line that had to be built for this specific purpose.

The scope of the cleanup is mind boggling but equally so was the placement of the tailings site in the first place.  This pile of contamination was placed less than 750 feet from the banks of the Colorado, a river that supplies drinking water to the cities of Las Vegas, Tucson and San Diego.  Historical flood data shows that several times floods have scoured the surface and leveled the area to a depth of 25 feet, washing everything in that location eventually into the river.  And Atlas wanted to “cap in place”?  Cap in place - 16 million tons of contaminated radioactive soil, to a depth of 110 feet, the 5th largest tailings pile and the most dangerously polluting one in the country.  Go figure. (A good history of the project via Grand Canyon Trust can be found here, some of which has been used in this blog).

(Picture from Moab UMTRA Project Fact Sheet, link above)

Today the removal work is 1/3 finished with total completion expected in 2025 depending upon annual appropriations.  Currently the cleanup is proceeding at an annual cost of around $31 million/year with total cost likely to exceed $1 billion by 2019.  

My friends - this is just one project.  This is a DOE responsibility.  This is not related to any EPA Superfund site.  That’s a whole ‘nother story.

1 in 4 Americans live within 3 miles of an EPA designated super fund site.  The program began in 1980 and as of 2007 there were over 47,000 hazardous waste sites listed, with 1,569 designated as on the Super Fund National Priorities list.  From 1980 thru 1995 a tax placed on oil and chemical companies was collected for remediations, but that tax collection ended in 1995 at which point 68% of the trust fund came from the taxes collected. When the tax collection ceased, the makeup significantly flipped to the public sector.  17% of the super fund trust fund in 1995 came from “appropriations from the general funds” - meaning you and me taxpayer, while as of 2007 it was 59%.  Funds from recovery of money from the polluting company, if they could be found, was 6% through 1995 and rose to 19% as of 2007.  All of the costs and input of funds and how they are spent is well documented in a 2007 audit report from the GAO.  On average, $1.3 billion a year is appropriated from the trust fund by Congress for the EPA superfund work.

These two stories, representing BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF TAXPAYER MONEY, are only the tip of the iceberg.  But it leads me to ask this question: If Corporations are people too why does the government own this problem?  Granted, many of these sites are from military activities and the government should rightly own those cleanups, but what about all the corporate polluters?

Today’s Libertarian and GOP followers decry big government.  Many in those ranks proclaim they would eliminate both the EPA and the DOE if they could.  EPA is repeatedly blamed for “job killing regulations”.  (I won’t ponder how many jobs EPA has actually created in subcontract work to companies doing the cleanups).  Conservatives consistently espouse ideals of “personal responsibility”, a worthy ideal.  Where is the responsibility of corporations to prevent polluting in the first place and should it occur, cleaning up after themselves? Or is it that corporations really aren’t people so personal responsibility doesn’t apply? Where is their responsibility to the rights of the public to have safe drinking water and clean air?  Why do corporations spend billions on lobbyists to try and kill any regulation that would force them to be responsible citizens given their egregious history of flouting that responsibility, yet run when forced to pay for their own mess?  They have not earned the right to be trusted with good stewardship of the earth.  If they had we would not need an EPA in the first place.  You reap what you sow.

So we don’t need no stinkin’ EPA?  Imagine our country without one.

As we left Canyonlands National Park after a wondrous day of marveling at the incredible geology overlooking the Colorado River, the road out of the park was lined with oil derricks.  The drill, baby, drill, mine, baby, mine mentality is knocking on the doors of our national treasures.  I thanked Tim DeChristopher every day for helping bring attention to the possibility of more drilling on the edge of the parks.  Ironically, the very week we were in Moab it was announced that the leases he bid on in an effort to protect the parks through civil disobedience were formally dead because the companies involved missed a 90 day deadline to file a lawsuit.  The decision of the US 10th District Circuit Court of Appeals ended years of haggling and discord over an oil and gas auction held during the Bush Administration.  Unfortunately it didn’t end Tim DeChristopher’s jail term where he is still today serving a two year sentence for trying to protect our National Parks.

How many corporate polluters, oil spillers, methane spewers, coal ash and noxious gas polluters, water and soil polluters, fracking fluid polluters are currently serving time for their lack of “personal responsibility”?  I haven’t researched the answer, but I am betting that it equates to roughly the same number of those serving time from Wall Street and banking manipulations of our financial markets.  A big fat fingered ZERO!

What's Labor Day Beyond an End of Summer Celebration?

With so much rant fodder flying around in the last few weeks it’s been difficult to settle on one given such a rich landscape of possibilities.

Originally I was going to rant on my passionate feelings about the plank in the Republican platform disallowing any exceptions for abortion - basically taking away all possibility of choice for women who have been rape victims.  I was steaming on that one, but Andrew Solomon did a very eloquent job in elucidating my arguments (thanks Andrew!) so you can read it for yourself.  

Then after nearly a week of  the “Ayn Randian Rugged Individualistic Mine, Mine, Mine” monologues of the RNC I decided I’d blog about taking back my country from the “It’s Mine I Worked For It-You Didn’t” crowd but I found a much more eloquent plea  from Jennifer Granholm so here you go, it’s better and more widely read than anything I would write. 

Letting the thoughts of the week sink in then, and luxuriating in the idea of having a three day weekend with absolutely nothing on the agenda, I realized that the best topic of all was staring me right in the face: exactly why I have a 3 day weekend.

According to the US Dept of Labor, “Labor Day...is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country. (emphasis is mine).

Labor Day was born from the sweat and broken backs of laborers who were the lifeblood of the Industrial Revolution.  From the days of the Pullman riots to the final creation of the official Labor Day holiday in 1894, workers made it clear that their contributions to making the US a vibrant economic engine would not go unrecognized. In 1898 AFL President Samuel Gompers called it "the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed...that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it."  

OK I admit, I had to look up the word “phalanx” to be sure I understood the full comport of this quote so I’ll share that definition with you: “a number of individuals, especially persons united for a common purpose.”

So why was this uniting “for a common purpose” necessary? In the late 1800‘s, American laborers, adults and sometimes children alike, worked 12-hour days and seven days a week, frequently in extremely unsafe or unsanitary conditions for barely a basic living, in our mines, factories, mills and railroads.  They made America what it is today in spite of such conditions. 

Throughout its long and stormy history, the rise of the Labor movement and its subsequent formation into unions has been the topic of much study, discussion, turmoil and at times violence.  Through all the push and pull of workplace dynamics and in spite of political and financial variables stressing the tenuous relationships with labor, the success of the movement cannot be denied.  All workers today, regardless of union or non-union status, benefitted from the success of collective bargaining.  Thanks to the Labor movement most workers today enjoy minimum wages, non-discriminatory hiring and firing practices, safe workplaces, and critical benefits such as sick time, vacation time, health insurance and severance pay.  Indirectly pressure from the Labor movement and the country’s struggles to emerge from the Great Depression also resulted in the creation of our current social “safety net” of Social Security and Unemployment Insurance.

In the last few years the Labor movement has come under assault from political forces that wish to harken back to the pre-movement days when employers called all the shots and saw workers as their minions to order about as they please. Yes, unions and in particular, the public sector, have often negotiated and won contracts that seem at odds with today’s economic times.  Those issues do need to be resolved.  But not all unions and union terms are bad just as not all employers and management are bad.  That the movement has now become a political football to be kicked around as a symbol of all that is wrong with America is an egregious abandonment of the very blood that coursed through early America’s veins and grew us into the great country that we claim to be.  That we cannot come together as one to resolve our issues in a fair, civil and even handed way only spells America’s demise.

That is why I find it incomprehensible that President Obama’s comments have been so taken out of context, vilified, then made a central theme of this week’s RNC “We Built It” show.  

We should be celebrating the success of a country that has come through so many hard times, many examples of which were given in the various RNC speeches.  Every one of those “we struggled” speeches talked about the hard labor of grandfathers and fathers, and the sacrifices of grandmothers, mothers and children to support the family.  They all contributed to and participated in the Labor movement.  Yes, many of them were entrepreneurs who to their credit took risks with the what little advantage they may have had.  But none of them, I repeat NONE OF THEM did it totally alone.  If they had we would not be where we are today.  Someone taught them to read, write and cipher.  Someone built the ships upon which immigrants arrived on our shores. Someone nursed them to health when they were sick and provided surgeries and medicines to make them healthy and able to work. Someone forged the steel and provided the lumber that made their wagons roll over the roads and trains roll over the rails that someone else laid down.  Someone else produced the raw materials that another business made into a product that another store sold who delivered it to the customer in an airplane that someone else built.  That’s why it’s called a SUPPLY CHAIN - not a SUPPLY LINK or a SUPPLY THREAD or a PIECE of a CHAIN or - oh you get it, don’t you?  

As Jon Stewart described, it was “a convention theme at a political campaign cynically based around something the president never actually said” and “a party-wide persecution complex, where any reference to the collective good is somehow taken as a denigration of an individual’s achievement.”  But isn’t individual achievement for the collective good how America got here in the first place?  Why can’t we celebrate the marriage of those ideals instead of using it as a wedge to split the populace into us and them camps?  

So as we celebrate this Labor Day weekend, enjoying our holiday pay for Monday while we golf, or barbecue or hang out at the pool or beach saying goodbye to summer, let’s remember how we got here, and who’s sweat built this country - the common sweat of every generation of American worker that melded together the fabric making our way of life possible.  

Again, the US Dept. of Labor web site says it all:

“The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.”