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EPA Gets Approval to Move Residents From Polluted Town
Residents of Treece moved a step closer to being moved out of their lead-polluted town Thursday when the U.S. Senate approved an amendment to allow the Environmental Protection Agency to buy out and shut down the community.
The amendment was attached to the Interior and Environment Appropriations Act by Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback, both R-Kan., and James Inhofe, R-Okla.
The bill passed the Senate on Thursday evening.
The Treece amendment "represents one of the rare instances of true bipartisan support," Roberts said.
It calls on the EPA to "consider all appropriate criteria, including cost-effectiveness" relating to the buyout and relocation of Treece residents because of health risks posed by chat.
Chat is lead- and zinc-contaminated mining waste, millions of tons of which are piled up on hundreds of acres in and around Treece.
Read the rest of the article here.
7 Comments so far
Show AllWe'll have to keep Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback, both R-Kan., and James Inhofe, R-Okla. in mind when impending nuclear plant and radwaste disasters happen and we have to evacuate entire cities.
Oh my God....how long have the people in Treece been living in that toxic and dangerouse & life-threatening situarion BEFORE this legislative decision was made the other day?
Long enough to grow tumors, develop cancers, have their bodies carved up by surgeons, get kicked off their insurance because of their health problems, lose their loved ones, house, community?
This is what I call TERRORISM!! Corporations terrorized and murdered a community for profit!! What happened to those responsible for this terrorism??? NOTHING! Corporate executives are protected....this is the American way!
God Bless America
We are doomed!!!
The REAL crime here is that the agency that "approved" the dumping of the toxic material TO the corporations is now puffing out it's chest to assume the HERO role in coming to the rescue of the town. The EPA is just bailing out the corporations that it helped in the past.
But, but, but what about the people of Libby, MT and Bhopal, India?
First we had Bhopal, Chernobyl and Love Canal.
Now the new wave of Environmental Refugees, right here in Kansas. In Treece it was the soil. People can move away, as sad as that is.
But water will be even more dangerous because it is not containable. With all the polluted water from mountaintop removal, with all the prescription drugs turning up in the water, all the PCBs, coliform bacteria and phosphates from factory farm runoff, industrial wastes, with all the pollutants that affect development of male genitalia, where will people go?
There is not much time left to change our ways. A few decades ago, we cleaned up the disgustingly polluted Hudson River. Nobody thought it could be done. (I recommend the book "The Riverkeepers".) But there could be a point after which nature is so damaged it cannot renew. It is up to us to find these conditions and force the EPA and officials to do their jobs.
Joe
In the book "Small is Beautiful," the point is made that one aspect of consumption and pollution is the effect on "tolerance levels," by which the author refers to the time scales associated with decomposition by natural processes of man-made pollutants. The more extreme the pollution, the longer the stuff stays around, because it takes time for bacteria to develop that can metabolize the stuff.
So we render large areas uninhabitable because some expert (probably working for the industry involved) said it is safe to dump the stuff anywhere.
In a postumously published collection, Douglas Adams (of Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy fame) wrote about how experts' language differs from ours. The humor is dry but delightful.
this should be made a resort for rightwingers and pols.
build the resort right on top of it and lightly filter
the water to get the brown out of it. after all's said and done
inform them were they were and what they just ingested and
take pictures of their faces as the truth sets in. then
tell them about all the toxins they just drank and how
they like it!