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EPA HEADLINES

The following news story was reported in my hometown paper, The Herald-Dispatch, on February 28, 1999. I feel that more of these horror stories are going to "pop-up", due to the way these toxic substances were handled back then (and still to this day). If agencies, companies, etc. are not going to take "responsibility" for their ignorance and actions that affect the health and preservation of earth and her "tenants", then caring and intelligent beings, along the way, will "respond" and make them "responsible"! Unfortunately, lives may be at stake because of their development of cancerous tumors, leukemia, etc., because of exposures to hazardous wastes, unbeknownst to them! Doesn't FREEDOM in this country mean the right to information that might harm? Doesn't FREEDOM also mean a SAFE and HEALTHY environment, free of exposure to these harmful and sometimes deadly chemicals and the motives behind the dumping??? When I want to buy a new home, I expect to pay taxes on this home.......but do I have to pay taxes on land that is secretly a smoldering, toxic dump site? NO! I would not move there in the first place. I just hope, in the following situation, that my boys are not attending a school that is covering a toxic dump, nor do I want to live near one. Take ACTshun! Even if it is just paying attention to these articles.....don't look away as the mishandlers of these chemicals have.

Debbie Godfrey

OHIO EPA CREDIBILITY QUESTIONED
Environmentalists say agency mishandled cancer investigation near high school.
The Associated Press
MARION, Ohio - The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is denying charges by 15 environmental groups that it has mishandled an investigation into higher than normal rates of cancer in the area.
"We think the claims made by these groups are unfounded and without merit," spokeswoman Beth Gianforcaro said.
The groups, following up on a previous threat, sent a letter on Friday to David Ullrich, acting chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Chicago ofice. They asked him to examine the state agency's role in the 18-month-old investigation in Marion.
They said the OEPA cannot be trusted to track down hazardous waste at River Valley schools. They also said the state agency withheld information, didn't warn the public about dangers and is not protecting the public by refusing to evacuate the schools.
"The Ohio EPA's credibility is blown," said Glenn Landers of the Sierra Club. "It's customary to work your way up the food chain, and that's what we plan to do."
The U.S. EPA has been monitoring the investigation since October at the request of the Ohio EPA officials, said Shari Kolak, a federal agency project manager.
Kolak is participating in weekly two-hour conference calls with the agencies involved: Ohio EPA, Ohio Department of Health, Army Corps of Engineers, Army Reserve and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
U.S. EPA officials also are reviewing plans for future air and soil tests and earlier test results. "We are making sure they are following the normal....process," Kolak said. "As long as it appears work is continuing to proceed, we would not increase our participation."
Cancer-causing chemicals have been detected on and near the middle and high school campus, built beginning in 1963 on part of a former military depot 40 miles north of Columbus. The investigation began in August 1997, following reports of an unusually high number of leukemia cases among River Valley graduates.

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This site was created by Debbie Godfrey, March 2, 1999.