A diagram of a dry storage cask for nuclear waste.
(Photo courtesy of the US Energy Information Administration)
President Barack Obama is
proposing billions to build
new nuclear power plants in
the US. But Shawn Allee reports the President
is also trying to tackle a
problem facing the country’s
old nuclear reactors:
Transcript
President Barack Obama is
proposing billions to build
new nuclear power plants in
the US. But Shawn Allee reports the President
is also trying to tackle a
problem facing the country’s
old nuclear reactors:
President Obama mentioned the future of nuclear power in his State of the Union Address.
“But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.“
At the same time, Obama’s dealing with an old nuclear problem: what to do with the hazardous radioactive waste building up at reactors in thirty one states. Obama gave up on an old plan to bury spent fuel inside Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. That project dragged on for decades and cost nine billion dollars.
Recently, the President set up a panel that recommend what to do with all this waste. That panel’s supposed to report to the President in less than two years.
Meanwhile, spent nuclear fuel is stored at nuclear power plants.
A company is using waste from
coal-burning power plants to
make bricks. The firm hopes
to reduce the amount of coal
ash sent to landfills, and,
at the same time, cut the amount
of energy used to make bricks.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
A company is using waste from
coal-burning power plants to
make bricks. The firm hopes
to reduce the amount of coal
ash sent to landfills, and,
at the same time, cut the amount
of energy used to make bricks.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:
The company, Calstar, says it wants to open several U.S. plants which would use fly ash in making bricks for construction and paving. The California firm says its method uses far less energy that traditional clay bricks that have to be heated at high temperatures.
Luke Pustejovsky is a Calstar executive. He insists the quality of fly ash brick meets industry standards.
“We spent 18 months and millions of dollars on durability testing with our own labs, with outside third party labs, and this is a brick that’s built to last.”
But a trade group, the Brick Industry Association, is cool to fly ash brick. The group says the product has not yet met the test of time. The group is concerned any problems that come up could discourage customers from using brick.
Craig Lorch, co-owner of Total Reclaim in Seattle. His company is certified to recycle electronic waste under Washington's e-waste law.
(Photo by Liam Moriarty)
Workers at Total Reclaim in Seattle disassemble old electronics for recycling.
(Photo by Liam Moriarty)
The law started just a year ago, and already it’s collected more than 38 million pounds of e-junk, costing producers nearly 10 million dollars. Basically, it requires electronics companies to cover the end-of-life costs of the products they sell.
(Photo by Liam Moriarty)
It used to be that when a company
sold you a widget, they got your
money, you got the widget, and
that was the end of it. Now, that
way of doing business is changing.
Liam Moriarty reports that in Europe, and in the
US, businesses are being required
to take responsibility for their
products in new ways:
Transcript
It used to be that when a company
sold you a widget, they got your
money, you got the widget, and
that was the end of it. Now, that
way of doing business is changing.
Liam Moriarty reports that in Europe, and in the
US, businesses are being required
to take responsibility for their
products in new ways:
(sound of recycling machine)
In a huge industrial building in Seattle, forklift-loads of TVs and computer monitors are heaved onto conveyor belts. Workers go at them with screwguns and hammers.
“They’re pulling the plastic covers off of devices, they’re pulling the picture tubes out of them. They’re basically dismantling it to component parts.”
Craig Lorch is co-owner here at Total Reclaim. His company is certified to recycle electronic waste under Washington’s e-waste law.
The law requires that these old machines don’t end up being dumped, where their toxic chemicals can poison humans and the environment.
Recycling old electronics has been happening for years. John Friedrick explains what’s new about Washington’s e-waste law.
“It’s a producer responsibility law, which takes the burden of all of this off of the taxpayer.”
Friedrick runs the state-wide recycling program that’s fully paid for by electronics manufacturers. It started just a year ago, and already it’s collected more than 38 million pounds of e-junk, costing producers nearly 10 million dollars. Basically, it requires electronics companies to cover the end-of-life costs of the products they sell.
That concept – called extended producer responsibility – is new in the US. When Washington’s e-waste law was passed three years ago, it was the first to put full responsibility on manufacturers. But this isn’t a new idea in Europe.
Klaus Koegler is with the European Commission’s Directorate General for the Environment in Brussels. He tells me about a keystone of EU environmental policy – what’s called the “Polluter Pays” principle.
“That simply means whoever causes damage to the environment is responsible, also in financial terms, to repair it or to minimize it right from the beginning.”
Koegler says that gives regulators the muscle for a range of laws. One example: any car sold in the EU has to be 85% recyclable. Koegler says that creates an incentive.
“If you are responsible for the recycling, that means you will try to design a car to make your life as a recycler as easy as possible.”
And a product that’s easy and cheap to recycle is likely to be easier on the planet, too. Europeans also see making manufacturers take back and recycle their old products as a way to reclaim resources. For instance, nickel and other metals are becoming more scarce and expensive.
“So in keeping the waste here, recycling it here, and recovering these metals, we are protecting the environment. At the same time, we are helping to secure supply for our industries.”
So, the EU is moving toward setting even more ambitious goals for recycling. In the US, Wisconsin recently became the 20th state to pass a take-back law for electronics. States are also extending producer responsibility to other products – including batteries, fluorescent lamps and paint.
Now, the electronics industry is pushing back. Two major industry groups have filed a lawsuit against the e-waste law in New York City. They say it’s unconstitutional. Environmental activists see the suit as an attack on the whole concept of producer responsibility.
But Rick Goss with the Information Technology Industry Council insists it’s not.
“We support producer responsibility. We understand and recognize, that as manufacturers, we have a role to play in offering our consumers options and solutions for used products here. But we don’t have the only role to play.”
Still, the suit makes constitutional arguments that could be used to challenge the right of states to impose recycling requirements on manufacturers.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American uses two pounds of wrapping paper a year.
(Photo source: 5ko at Wikimedia Commons)
There may be nothing prettier than
beautifully wrapped gifts under the
Christmas tree. But some environmentalists
say the cost of that beauty is too
high – and they want people to stop
wasting so much paper on gift-wrapping.
Julie Grant has more:
Transcript
There may be nothing prettier than
beautifully wrapped gifts under the
Christmas tree. But some environmentalists
say the cost of that beauty is too
high – and they want people to stop
wasting so much paper on gift-wrapping.
Julie Grant has more:
Americans produce 6 million extra tons of waste between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.
All that trash is enough to make Bob Lilienfeld cringe. He runs what’s called The Use Less Stuff Report. Lilienfeld says, one way people can reduce all the holiday waste is to stop wrapping presents.
“When you think about, wrapping paper is one of the most disposable items we have. It doesn’t provide any real functional value. And it’s used for basically a minute. And then it’s torn off and thrown away. So, from the environmental perspective, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Based on the last available data by the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American uses two pounds of wrapping paper a year. Lilienfeld says about half of that is used during the holiday season.
“If you cut that in half, down to a pound, that would save, what are there, about 300-million people in the country? We’re talking 300 million pounds. That’s a lot of paper.”
But it’s so pretty. And some people say that paper does serve a good purpose. Besides being pretty, it also helps to hide the gift.
Lizzie Post is the great, great-granddaughter of Emily Post – famous for her etiquette advice. Post says a wrapped gift is part of holiday decorum.
“You don’t want to just plunk down a box, straight from the store, and say, ‘here you go.’ That sort of has a lackluster feel to it.”
And it’s a tradition. Gift wrapping has been around for a long time – maybe as far back as 105 A.D. and the invention of paper. They started selling mass produced wrapping paper in the U.S. somewhere around1920.
Post says it looks nice, it shows care, and it’s fun.
“I think we’ve gotten used to the idea of unwrapping something or unfolding it and having that element of surprise there. And I think we wouldn’t want to lose that. That’s a nice tradition that we’ve all gotten used to.”
But Post says there are lots of creative ways to wrap gifts that aren’t wasteful. She suggests using cloth, reusing wrapping paper, or buying gift wrap made from recycled paper.
And after talking with a few shoppers, you can see how tough it would be to get people to stop wrapping gifts altogether. Here’s what a few had to say.
Shopper 1: “It would be hard for me to imagine that we would get to a point that we would say, ‘gee it’s pretty wasteful, so we won’t wrap any presents this year.’ I doubt that that would cross our minds.”
Shopper 2: “Why are they telling me to ruin a Christmas tradition? I mean, as if I didn’t already feel guilty enough about the mass consumerism that is Christmas. Now I’m being told not to wrap gifts. No, I’m certain they’re right about the mass of waste it’s going to create.”
The environmentalists who want us to use less paper don’t want to ruin the holidays. Bob Lilienfeld just wants people to look around for new ways to make gifts surprising – without piling up the trash.
“Go down to your basement, open your closets, go up to your attic and look at the paper that you already have on hand. And odds are you already have enough wrapping paper to make it through.”
At least for this year. At his house, Lilienfeld says he’s buying concert tickets for his teenagers, so they don’t need wrapping. And he’s hiding the gifts for his 3-year old – a scavenger hunt can be so much fun!
Some people say wastewater treatment plants might not be doing a good job taking out pollutants like household chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
(Photo courtesy of the US EPA)
A new study is looking at just
how well wastewater treatment
plants remove household chemicals
and pharmaceuticals from water.
Samara Freemark reports
on why some researchers are worried
that the plants aren’t doing a good
enough job:
Transcript
A new study is looking at just
how well wastewater treatment
plants remove household chemicals
and pharmaceuticals from water.
Samara Freemark reports
on why some researchers are worried
that the plants aren’t doing a good
enough job:
Most wastewater treatment plants clean water with a mix of chemicals and bacteria. But that process is decades-old. And it was designed mostly to deal with industrial pollutants.
Some people say treatment plants might not be doing a good job taking out other pollutants like household chemicals and pharmaceuticals. In fact, the treatment process can actually cause many of these pollutants to mutate – for example, some detergents break down into compounds that cause reproductive problems.
Anthony Hay is studying the issue at Cornell University.
“Hopefully they’re degraded into something non-toxic, but in some cases microbial degradation of some pollutants can actually make things worse. We need to understand what those changed products do, how they behave, and what risks they might pose.”
That’s what Hay hopes his study will help clarify.
The ReStore sells everything from building supplies to power tools to toilets and sinks.
(Photo courtesy of the Habitat for Humanity of Huron County, Michigan)
88 cents of every dollar from this ReStore go back to Habitat for Humanity homes.
(Photo courtesy of the Habitat for Humanity of Huron County, Michigan)
Home improvement projects cost
a lot of money. Some environmentalists
have found a way to save some money,
conserve resources, and help other
people get into homes. Lester Graham
reports:
Transcript
Home improvement projects cost
a lot of money. Some environmentalists
have found a way to save some money,
conserve resources, and help other
people get into homes. Lester Graham
reports:
It seems like my friend Matt Grocoff with Greenovation TV is always working on a home improvement project. Not too long ago, he asked me to go with him to his favorite store. So we headed down the road where all the big box home improvement stores are in his hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, but that’s not where we ended up.
MG: “Just about anything I need, my first stop is always a re-use center. My favorite is, of course, the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. Today I’ve gotta find a– a, uh– what do you call them? A sander, a hand sander, a belt sander?”
Matt turned to Jackie Hermann who manages this ReStore. And she pulled a case from the shelf in back.
JH: “This absolutely beautiful Porter Cable professional random orbit sander with dust collection.”
MG: “This is gorgeous. This is exactly what I need. And how much is this?”
LG: “Looks like it’s never been used.”
MG: “Almost new condition. $35.00. And it’s used material that’s not going to a landfill or sitting in somebody’s basement not being used. And here I get to use it and save money. This is another one of the things where we can debunk the myth that going green costs more.”
Okay, so Matt got a good deal and it extends the useful life of a pretty good tool. But the idea is to raise money for Habitat for Humanity to help get people into homes, so I had to ask Jackie about that.
LG: “How much of that money actually goes to Habitat for Humanity and building houses for folks?”
JH: “We have a 12% administrative overhead, so 88-cents on every dollar into a habitat home.”
There are about 600 of these ReStores across the nation. The administrative overhead varies a bit from store to store, but the money raised at each store goes to homes in that store’s local area.
Jackie says, for her area, that’s meant a bit of a shift for Habitat for Humanity. You might have heard, in Michigan there are a lot of foreclosures.
JH: “We’re not building brand-new as much. We are buying foreclosed houses that are already existing in blighted neighborhoods, and we are rehabbing them and making it livable and improving the neighborhood.”
LG: “You’re recycling houses.”
JH: “We are! We’re recycling houses also. So, when Lowe’s, for instance, donated a large quantity of items, we kept a bunch aside for construction. They come and they look though and say what they can use, and then those items are set aside for them. And then as they need them, they use them.”
And anything left over is sold in the ReStore. It’s donations that make ReStore work. It might be overstock from places like Lowe’s or from local contractors. It could be people who are moving or retiring or just don’t need an appliance any longer. They might have extra cabinets, or carpeting, or a perfectly good sink they don’t need.
JH: “The proverbial kitchen sink. Lots and lots and lots of toilets. Light fixtures, flooring, doors, windows, fasteners.”
MG: “Lester, let me show you some of the stuff they’ve got here. My wife and I spent months looking for a really high-quality, affordable, high-efficiency, front-loading washer. This is a front-loading washer and dryer. (taps on appliance) In fact, this is the same model that we bought. We paid $600 for ours. Here, at the ReStore, it’s $200. And Jackie, how do we know that this works?”
JH: “Everything’s been tested. And, it’s guaranteed for two to three months – I’m really not picky about that.”
Some things are used, some are new. It all works.
Matt Grocoff with Greenovation.TV says it keeps stuff out of the landfill, it means perfectly good building materials and appliances for home improvement projects, saves resources, and raises money to help people get into a home.
West Michigan Park lies along the Tittabawassee River.
Large swaths of its soil was removed and re-sodded due to dioxin contamination.
The removal was part of a US EPA effort to have Dow clean up several hot
spots in the rivershed.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Imerman Park sits on the flood plain of the Tittabawassee River.
Signs along the trail warn walkers about dioxin contamination in some of the park's soil.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Two rivers in central Michigan were
polluted with dioxin 30 years ago.
The dioxin came from a Dow chemical
plant. The toxin’s been found in fish,
animals, and dirt, but, of all those,
contaminated soil might be the touchiest
subject. A study done in the area suggests
dioxin in soil might not be getting into
people living there. In the final part
of a series on Dow Chemical and dioxin,
Shawn Allee looks at that study
and the government’s take on it:
Transcript
Two rivers in central Michigan were
polluted with dioxin 30 years ago.
The dioxin came from a Dow chemical
plant. The toxin’s been found in fish,
animals, and dirt, but, of all those,
contaminated soil might be the touchiest
subject. A study done in the area suggests
dioxin in soil might not be getting into
people living there. In the final part
of a series on Dow Chemical and dioxin,
Shawn Allee looks at that study
and the government’s take on it:
To understand what’s at stake over the science of dioxin and soil, I want to talk with Marcia Woodman.
So, Woodman and I talk in this big, three-season room with tons of windows. It’s like you’re outside in some woods.
“I love it, so it wasn’t hard to convince me to move here.”
From here, the trees look inviting, but Woodman says she only lets her kids enjoy them from a distance.
“They’re not allowed to play back in the woods anymore. They used to play and we used to take walks back there.”
You see, eight years ago, the state tested soil for dioxin. Her place was okay, but there were high levels in the neighborhood. So, Woodman worried dioxin might move from soil into her kids, and maybe they’d get cancer or some other disease. But, what if dioxin in soil is not getting into people nearby?
“We found virtually no relationship between soil contamination and blood dioxin levels. In other words, the amount of soil contamination on your property really didn’t relate to blood levels.”
This is Dr. David Garabrant. He researches public health at the University of Michigan. Now, we need to tell you, in the interest of full disclosure, The Environment Report is produced at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Garabrant looked at whether people in the contaminated region have higher dioxin levels in their blood. They do – but just slightly. And those higher dioxins levels? They’re probably from other factors, like living in that area when dioxin pollution was highest – decades ago. Again, for him, soil is less of an issue.
This conclusion bothers two groups of people that really matter. That would be the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the State of Michigan. The EPA would not provide an interview on this, but they have public documents about it. Michigan has the same reservations about the study. Here’s just one.
“He didn’t test children. And children, typically, have some of the highest exposures.”
This is Steve Chester. He heads Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality.
“It’s probably even more of a concern for children who get down into the dirt and get it on their hands and shoes and so forth.”
Chester says the state needs to create regulations that take risk to kids into account. That makes Dr. Garabrant’s study a bit beside the point. Dr. Garabrant says he wanted to get kids into his study, but you have to draw lots of blood.
“You can’t ethically take enough blood from a child to find the dioxins. And that’s a real dilemma.”
Garabrant says his study went as far as it could.
For some people, there’s a different problem with the research.
“The study is funded by the Dow Chemical company through an unrestricted grant to the University of Michigan.”
That would be Dow Chemical – the company that polluted the Tittabawassee River and floodplain decades ago. Soon, Dow might have to spend tens or maybe hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up contaminated river silt and soil. Still, Garabrant insists Dow has no influence.
“The only thing we give Dow is when they sit in meetings like the rest of the public and they hear what we have to say.”
Garabrant’s study on dioxin exposure is getting attention right when the US EPA is taking another look at the risk dioxin poses to people. Critics of his study worry it will stir up a whole new debate that could delay dioxin clean ups in Michigan and other toxic waste sites across the country.
The EPA insists it won’t let that happen – and it’ll soon have more science to back up its position.
Fish advisories dot the banks of the Tittabawassee and
Saginaw Rivers. Various forms or pollution, including historical dioxin
pollution from Dow Chemical, have led to warnings to avoid certain species
of fish and limit consumption for them. Pregnant woment and young children
are given more stringent warnings. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
It’s deer season in Michigan, and
hunters are trekking through the woods,
trying to bag dinner or something
special for the holidays. Hunting’s
gotten a little complicated in some
areas recently. Just because you catch
something doesn’t mean you should eat
it. That’s because a stretch of river
in Michigan was polluted with dioxin –
decades ago. In the fourth part of a
series on Dow Chemical and dioxin, Shawn
Allee found the state thinks
old dioxin pollution from a Dow chemical
plant poses a health risk today:
Transcript
It’s deer season in Michigan, and
hunters are trekking through the woods,
trying to bag dinner or something
special for the holidays. Hunting’s
gotten a little complicated in some
areas recently. Just because you catch
something doesn’t mean you should eat
it. That’s because a stretch of river
in Michigan was polluted with dioxin –
decades ago. In the fourth part of a
series on Dow Chemical and dioxin, Shawn
Allee found the state thinks
old dioxin pollution from a Dow chemical
plant poses a health risk today:
It was hard for me to understand why wild game like deer or turkey might be contaminated from river pollution, so I hit up Daniel O’Brien for some answers. O’Brien’s a toxicologist with Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources. He says the problem starts with dioxin in the river.
“It’s in the sediments in these contaminated parts of the Tittabawassee River, and after flood events in the spring when, say, mud in the river gets deposited onto bushes or whatever and deer browse those, then they pick up soil that way.”
Part of O’Brien’s job is to spread the news about the contamination. He says when you buy a hunting license in Michigan you get this brochure.
“It’s a booklet that has all the regulations for hunting and trapping in it.”
These wildlife consumption advisories are voluntary but they kinda read like owners manuals. They lay out where the dioxin-contaminated animals are. They tell you what animals you can eat, and what parts. For example, no one’s supposed to eat deer liver from the areas – that’s got the most dioxin in it. And, of cuts you can eat, the advisory says how much, and how often. Plus, they tell who should eat less or maybe none at all.
“Kids might be more sensitive. They might have a more stringent advisory than somebody like me who’s kinda your middle-aged man and we might not be as susceptible to toxic effects.”
The idea’s to protect people from dioxin, and the risk it poses for cancer and diseases of the immune, reproductive, and developmental systems. It’s an important job, given how big hunting is in Michigan.
“We have three quarters of a million hunters every year that go afield and harvest half a million white-tailed deer.”
Michigan scientists take the issue seriously, but I’m kinda curious whether hunters do. So, I visit the Saginaw Field and Stream Club. Inside, there’s this paneled wall with faded pictures of club presidents. It stretches from the club’s founding in 1916 – all the way to this guy, current President Tom Heritier.
“We’re still here today.”
Heritier says his club’s smack-dab in the contaminated area and everyone knows about the advisories, but, well …
“With the game advisories, I have not heard one person who has any problem with the deer or the birds around the watershed.”
This goes for him, too.
“Nobody is sick from it. I don’t know of anybody that has died of exposure. That’s never been proven. It’s nothing to take lightly, but then again, it might be a little bit on the overblown side, too.”
The State of Michigan tried to survey hunters like Heritier. Officials wanted to know if hunters were feeding tainted game to young children. That survey never made the budget.
Before I leave the hunting club, Heritier wants to clear something up. He’s actually mad about dioxin. It’s in the environment – he wants it gone.
Heritier: “There’s absolutely no reason for industry to be polluting our natural resources, whether it be air, soil, or water.”
Allee: “Even if it’s not a slam-dunk, for sure, killing people off sort of thing?”
Heritier: “Number one, God didn’t put it there, it don’t belong there. That’s the way it is.”
Well, Heritier wants the environment protected from dioxin, but not necessarily himself.
State scientists say, if Heritier changes his mind and wants to reduce his health risk – they’ll keep printing those game advisories for him.
Mitch Larson lives in Saginaw's Riverside neighborhood,
which saw a large dioxin removal project last year. His home is on the
banks of Tittabawassee River. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
The plaque recognizes Dow Chemical's generosity in contributing
toward improvements at Imerman Park, which lies along the Tittabawassee
River. The plague does not mention that Dow was required to perform several
improvements as part of dioxin remdediation activity. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Several communities in central Michigan
are polluted by dioxins from a Dow Chemical
plant. People there have known about
it for thirty years. But, residents
are divided over whether the government
should force Dow to pay for a cleanup
that could cost tens, or even hundreds,
of millions of dollars. In the third
part of a series on Dow and dioxin,
Shawn Allee traveled to the
area and talked with some of them:
Transcript
Several communities in central Michigan
are polluted by dioxins from a Dow Chemical
plant. People there have known about
it for thirty years. But, residents
are divided over whether the government
should force Dow to pay for a cleanup
that could cost tens, or even hundreds,
of millions of dollars. In the third
part of a series on Dow and dioxin,
Shawn Allee traveled to the
area and talked with some of them:
Dow Chemical is not just some company in Midland, Michigan. It’s part of life there.
Dow employs thousands of people. It pays for libraries and civic gardens. A high school football team is even named “The Chemix.”
I talked with plenty of people who’ve sided with Dow over the dioxin pollution issue. One works right across the street from the chemical plant.
“We’re in my law office and my house is two blocks south of us here.”
Bob McKellar says Dow’s been good for Midland, and, as far as he’s concerned, the federal government’s been trashing the town.
McKellar: “Dow, rightfully so, takes the position that, you know, ‘why are you always picking on us? We agree we’ve done some of this and we agree we’ll help clean it up.’ But then the EPA comes back and says, ‘well, you’re not doing enough.'”
Allee: “But the EPA says they’ve been dealing with the issue for 30 years.”
McKellar: “It’s because the EPA’s had the fist out – they haven’t come with a little bouquet of flowers and say, ‘okay folks, let’s sit down and talk about this and let’s get this thing done right.’”
McKellar says, getting things done right means the government should pay for a big hunk of any dioxin cleanup. It’s only fair – because he thinks pollution in the river and soil is overblown, and the EPA’s the one overblowing it.
Downstream, fewer people work at the Dow plant. They see less benefit, but they live with more dioxin pollution.
“Well, This is the Tittabawassee River. This is my homestead.”
I’m with Mitch Larson. He lives 20 miles downstream from Midland. His home’s in a woodsy part of Saginaw.
“When I bought this place, I was thinking that this would be a great place for kids to grow up. As they grew up, it was a right of passage to swim across the river. You know, I’d swim alongside them, you’d swim across to the other bank, and you’d have them sign their name in the sand, you know, you did it.”
The Tittabawassee River floods, and it left silt and traces of dioxin on Larson’s yard, but he didn’t know that until the state government tested his soil and found the dioxin.
They even tested his pet chickens and the eggs he fed his kids.
Larson: “They tested those also.”
Allee: “What did they tell you?”
Larson: “Don’t eat them. Chickens eat the dirt. The dirt was where the dioxin was, and eggs were full of dioxin. So, for the past couple years, every egg we ate was like a little shot of dioxin.”
He got rid of the chickens, of course, but he had to have a talk with his teenage girls. A report said the dioxin put them at risk for having kids with birth defects.
“You know, when they were all tested for the dioxin, I told them they were all high in dioxin and I had information about, you know, about the child-bearing thing. It put them at risk for having kids. You know, it’s not a good feeling.”
Larson and one hundred seventy two other plaintiffs sued Dow to pay for follow-up medical monitoring.
The courts said no.
Six years after dioxin was first found on the property, Dow chemical paid to clean and re-sod Larson’s lawn. He says it looks great, but he worries another flood’s gonna leave behind dioxin.
Right now, Dow and the EPA are negotiating an agreement that might make Dow clean up river sediment.
“If it takes them thirty years to clean this river up so it’s clean for the next 200 years, it’d be worth it. People are fishing, kids are swimming across the river to show, you know, they’re a bad-ass.”
Larson says he’d welcome that future – even if it cost Dow a lot of money.
The southeast corner of the Dow Chemical plant, from the vantage
of Midland's Whiting Overlook Park, which features an homage to and
history of the company and its founder.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
The State of Michigan, the US
Environmental Protection Agency
and Dow Chemical are negotiating
an agreement to clean up dioxin
pollution in towns, two rivers,
and Lake Huron. The pollution
is largely from a Dow chemical
plant in Midland, Michigan. The
government worries the pollution
poses a risk of cancer and other
health problems, and it’s been
found in fish, on property, and
in the blood of some people there.
Residents are asking why it’s taken
so long to get cleaned up. In the
second part of a series on Dow and
dioxin, Shawn Allee went
looking for an answer:
Transcript
The State of Michigan, the US
Environmental Protection Agency
and Dow Chemical are negotiating
an agreement to clean up dioxin
pollution in towns, two rivers,
and Lake Huron. The pollution
is largely from a Dow chemical
plant in Midland, Michigan. The
government worries the pollution
poses a risk of cancer and other
health problems, and it’s been
found in fish, on property, and
in the blood of some people there.
Residents are asking why it’s taken
so long to get cleaned up. In the
second part of a series on Dow and
dioxin, Shawn Allee went
looking for an answer:
If you want to see an environmentalist kinda lose his cool – talk to James Clift of the Michigan Environmental Council.
And bring up dioxin pollution.
Clift: “Um, it’s … people are think, frustrated. It is my entire career of working environmental protection in Michigan, this has been an issue. I’ve been doing this for over twenty years, and from day one I’ve been sitting on meetings about this site.”
Allee: “You’d rather work on something else? Birds or something?”
Clift: “I’d rather work on something else.”
Clift is frustrated with people who could have wrapped this up.
“I believe that each administration at both the state and federal level is culpable in failing to move this forward.”
When I talked to federal and state officials about this, they did some serious finger-pointing.
Let’s start with Steve Chester. He heads Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality. Chester says when people first learned about the dioxin problem at Dow’s chemical plant, the federal government was the lead regulator.
That changed.
“The federal government wanted to transition and hand the project off to the state of Michigan and we were in fact given this corrective action authority in the mid-nineties, and so there was a period of time quite frankly, the agencies didn’t take advantage of moving a little bit quicker.”
Actually, it took Michigan almost ten years to re-license the Dow chemical plant. That meant the state was slow to find out exactly where old dioxin pollution was in the river system, so some people didn’t know there was dioxin in their yards until the past few years. That’s decades after dioxins got into local rivers.
But what about the US Environmental Protection Agency?
Several former officials said the polluter, Dow, slowed things down.
One of these who would go on the record is Mary Gade. She led the EPA office that regulated Dow. Now, in the past we’ve reported Gade said she was fired by the Bush Administration because she got tough with Dow.
The EPA wouldn’t comment on that.
But even today, Gade says Dow slowed down the clean-up.
“I think this corporation is hugely adept at playing the system and understanding how to build in delays and use the bureaucracy to their advantage and to use the political system to their advantage.”
A confidential memo leaked from the EPA says when Dow didn’t like what Michigan’s technical staff had to say, they’d go higher up and try to get rules changed.
For a month, I requested comment from Dow. A spokeswoman said the company is interested in talking about the future, not the past.
People who’ve watched this say, there’s been plenty of foot-dragging.
But why should this dioxin cleanup even matter to people who don’t live there? It’s Michigan’s problem, right?
Well, James Clift, that environmentalist, says, no, there’s a long list of toxic waste sites across the country. And Clift worries the government gets bogged down with big, slow cleanups.
“If they’re not even getting to the big ones which are known to everyone as known as causing widespread problems, that means they’re not getting to the medium sized ones and they’re not getting to the small ones.”
But there seems to be some progress. Recently, the EPA, the State of Michigan, and Dow came to a tentative agreement about cleaning up the dioxin pollution.
That means there’s at least one more delay, that would be public comment until mid-December.
A diagram of a dry storage cask for nuclear waste. (Photo courtesy of the US Energy Information Administration)
