Tag: factory

Soap Makers Revive History and Family Farms

  • Kim Brooks makes a batch of her Annie Goatley Hand-Milled Soap in her kitchen. (Photo by Tamar Charney)

For many of us, soap is just another mass-produced product we buy at the local supermarket. But in recent years, all-natural handmade soap has been showing up in galleries, gift boutiques, craft shows, and farmers’ markets. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney has more:

Transcript

For many of us soap is just another mass-produced product we buy at the local supermarket.
But in recent years, all-natural handmade soap has been showing up in galleries,
gift boutiques, craft shows, and farmers’ markets. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Tamar Charney has more:


Kim Brooks’ home smells clean – like lemon, rosemary, citronella and well,
soap. The smell’s so pervasive that it wafts onto the school bus with her
12-year-old son, prompting taunts. His response to the kids teasing is he smells
like profit. See, his mom is a soap maker.


“I think I need to make some goats and oats with a dab of honey. So we’ll take oatmeal…
then I also want to add a little fragrance to this…”


(bottles clinking)


She makes 30 different types of bars for her Annie Goatley line of homemade soap.


“My soap is hand-milled, so what that means is I take olive oil, palm oil and coconut oil
and then I melt it down and add the lye and it saponifies, and then I make a base that
comes out in big chunks of hard soap and then I take these big chunks…”


It takes about two months from the time she starts a batch of soap until she
has a finished bar.


Kim Brooks started her business last June. She says she’s one of those
people who’d buy handmade soap any time she saw it. She says it was an
inexpensive way to feel like she was pampering herself. Eventually she
learned how to make it.


“There is a group of people that whenever they go to a craft show they buy soap. It’s
odd to think of it, but there is actually a culture of people that seek it out.”


Enough that Brooks says she can make soap seven days a week and still have trouble keeping up
with demand.


“As long as people get dirty, there’s always a market isn’t there?”


Patty Pike is another soap maker. She lives near Rogers City in northern Michigan. And she runs
an e-mail list for soap makers all across the state. More than 170 people are on the list.


“There are many women who are at home, either by choice or otherwise, and they are looking for
something to do to keep busy or to have a home-based business.”


She says for some, soap making is a creative outlet or a craft. For others,
such as Patty Pike herself, soap is a way to beef up a family farm’s bottom
line.


She raises goats, cattle, and chickens for show and for meat. And
soap was a way to make some money off the extra goat milk.


If you drive around rural communities you’re likely to see hand-lettered signs for soap outside
family farms.


In recent years, there’s been a renewed interest in how things used to be back before soap became
a mass-produced product advertised on TV.


(sound of soap ad)


At The Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, crowds of people who
grew up humming the ads for Dial, Zest, and Irish Spring show up to watch soap making
demonstrations.


Jim Johnson is with the Henry Ford. He says in colonial times, soap was just something everyone
made at home.


“As we move towards the whole convenience thing… this starts really at the end of the 19th
century and takes off at that point. By the time you get to the other side of Depression, the other
side of World War II, homemade soap is something only of folklore at that point.”


He says with the back-to-land and natural foods movement in the 1960’s and 70’s there was a
return to handmade, homemade soap. Since then, it has bubbled up from being a counterculture
interest to a more mainstream one.


One that’s been encouraged by the slow food movement, interest in organic products, and even
the popularity of how-to shows on television.


“It may be just sort of a whim or a hobby trying to make a connection to the past, other times they
might attempt it for practical purposes, you know, where they want something that they’ve done
with their own hands and they know what’s in it.”


And for a lot of people that itself is rewarding.


Kim Brooks takes a break from stirring a big pot of soap and she goes out to feed her goats and
chickens.


(barnyard sounds)


Like many of her customers, she has discovered she gets a certain satisfaction making things
herself or from buying things from someone she knows or at least has met.


“You know, we have heard so many things about ‘well this has been put in our
foods or that has been put in our foods’… and ‘this is a cancer-causing agent’ and you know, ‘this
is safe’ but then later on we find out well it’s not really safe. And I think that just as a culture
we’re really trying to get back to more of the natural products. I think handmade soaps go right
along with that.”


And she thinks people may be realizing they value things more when they’re made by people, not
machines. Handmade soaps might be all the rage at craft shows, gift boutiques, and farmers’
markets, but even soap manufacturers have caught onto the trend. In the aisles of many
supermarkets and drug stores, more and more soaps are showing up that look handmade even
when they’re not.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.

Related Links

Report Says Small Industry Pollution on Rise

A recent study on pollution in North America shows a drop in environmental pollution between 1995 and 2000. The study was conducted by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, which was set up under the North American Free Trade Agreement. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports, one trend being noted is that smaller industries across the continent are becoming the big polluters:

Transcript

A recent study on pollution in North America shows a drop in environmental pollution between
1995 and 2000. The study was conducted by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation,
which was set up under the North American Free Trade Agreement. But as the Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports, one trend being noted is that smaller industries
across the continent are becoming the big polluters:


Officials for the Commission say it’s a good news-bad news picture of what’s going on across the
continent. The environmental watchdog says the biggest polluters such as electrical generating
plants and steel factories are releasing fewer hazardous chemicals. But smaller industries, who
have tended to pollute less are showing a significant increase in their emissions.


Victor Shantora is with the Commission.


“The smaller polluters, probably about 15,000 such facilities across North America, are actually
tracking upwards. And we think that that’s problematic.”


The study shows a seven-percent decline in the amount of toxins released by big industries from
1998 to 2000, while the smaller polluters showed a 32-percent increase over the same period.


Environmental groups like the Sierra Club say negative publicity has shamed the big polluters
into cutting down on emissions. They say that hasn’t worked against the small polluters. So it’s
up to governments to force them to make the reductions.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Dan Karpenchuk.

Region Tops List for Toxic Chemcials

Two Great Lakes states and one Canadian province are near the top of the list when it comes to the production of toxic chemicals. That’s the finding of the latest study from an international agency set up under NAFTA. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:

Transcript

Two Great Lakes States and one Canadian province are near the top of the list when it comes to
the production of toxic chemicals. That’s the finding of the latest study from an international
agency set up under NAFTA. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:


If you want to find the largest producers of dangerous chemicals in all of North America, look no
further than the Great Lakes Region. Officials from the Commission for Environmental
Cooperation say coal-fired power plants, steel mills, and waste treatment facilities put the region
high on the list.


Victor Shantora is director of the agency:


“The ranking is Texas number 1, Ohio number 2, the province of Ontario is number 3, and
Pennsylvania is number 4. They represent over about 25% of total releases in North America.”


Among the toxic chemicals cited are hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, and mercury. But the report
isn’t all bad news. It indicates while some of the toxic chemicals wind up as pollution in the air,
water, and soil, a growing amount of it is simply being transported for proper disposal in
landfills or for recycling.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Cohen in Columbus.

Environmental Cloak and Dagger

Keeping track of polluters in a country as large as Canada poses a serious challenge. Truckloads of hazardous waste cross the border with the U.S. every day, logging companies work near protected wildlife, and smoke from factories fills the air; but the Canadian government has a new weapon in the fight against polluters. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports on Canada’s growing team of environmental spies:

Transcript

Keeping track of polluters in a country as large as Canada poses a serious challenge. Truckloads
of hazardous waste cross the border with the U.S. every day. Logging companies work near
protected wildlife. And smoke from factories fills the air. But the Canadian government has a
new weapon in the fight against polluters. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly
reports on Canada’s growing team of environmental spies:


“We’re just coming up to this facility on the right-hand side here now.”


Brad May slows down and scans the area surrounding a squat concrete building. It’s owned by a

company that was once under suspicion for illegal dumping. We’ve come here so that May can give

a sense of what happens when he places a company under
surveillance.


“As you can see, its a fairly old factory in a fairly industrial area in the north of Toronto

that’s
involved in the recycling and reconditioning of containers used for paints and coatings and
lubricants and that sort of thing.”


May pulls into a nearby driveway obscured by weeds. As he sips a cup of coffee, he looks like a
typical investigator – right down to the khaki uniform. The guy in the back seat, however,

probably wouldn’t get a second look. He’s wearing jeans and
a plaid shirt. And he lets May do most of the talking. His name is Mark Pomeroy. And, not
surprisingly, he’s the spy. Out on surveillance, he doesn’t have much to say. But he does point

out an 18-wheeler that’s
parked a shipping container in front of the building.


“You’ll notice here you have a container and the container has various bunch of
numbers on it. That’s very good information. What shipping line did it arrive from, who’s hauling
it as far as the carrier is concerned and you can find out if the items they’re receiving would
indeed be something we’d be interested in looking at as far as a potential violation is

concerned.”


Pomeroy searches for trends in industries where there’s an incentive to pollute.

For instance, if the price of pork drops, he’ll watch for hog farmers looking for a cheap way to
dump their manure, or mechanics might be offering great deals on freon, a highly regulated

chemical that’s used in
old air conditioners. That could prompt a visit to some local garages in search of illegal

imports. A lot of times, Pomeroy teams up with customs officers, the police and

Environment Canada investigators.
He says his job is different than that of a typical officer. He tries to anticipate the next

wave of environmental crime.


“Whereas they might focus on one specific case, intelligence would look at that and say, you’re
dealing with this type of a problem, is that prevalent with these types of companies…which in turn would say, okay inspections, don’t just
focus on this particular company. Look at A,B,C,D companies also.”


Here in his office, Pomeroy locks the door before he settles into a comfortable chair.

There’s a bit of a James Bond feeling here.

Secrecy is highly valued.

There’s even white noise piped throughout the building, to reduce the chance of being overheard.

As he talks about whistleblowers and anonymous tips, it’s clear that Pomeroy loves his job.


“I like law enforcement. I find it kind of a stimulating challenge to see somebody who thinks
they’re so smart that they’re doing this and they’re getting away with it, and it’s very gratifying to
actually go after that type of a person, exposing them and if it’s a violation, prosecuting

them.”


Pomeroy is one of six environmental spies in Canada and part of the only environmental
intelligence unit in the world.

The unit was created in 1998 to improve enforcement of the new laws enacted under the
Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

It’s a big job, but for Pomeroy, the best part is when he’s working in the field.
He cultivates informants – looking for internal whistle blowers and unhappy competitors. And
he’ll trail suspicious cars and conduct drive-bys on companies to gather information. Pomeroy
says his main goal is to find the big fish operating in the shadows of an industry.


“The big thing for an intelligence officer is to look at the unknown community. Are there people out there
who have never come forward and gone through the process of registering with us or gone
through the licensing or noticing permits? It’s up to me to see if they are actually out there

and
are they circumventing our regulations.”


But Pomeroy has been hampered by the fact that he’s the only environmental spy in the province
of Ontario.

That’s soon to change. He’ll be joined by a second spy as Environment Canada doubles the size
of its intelligence unit.

That’s welcome news for environmentalists like Jerry DeMarco. He’s the managing lawyer with
the Sierra Legal Defense Fund. And his group argues that the Canadian government is not
enforcing its own environmental laws.

The group filed a complaint under the North American Free Trade Agreement. And an internal
government report backed up their claims.

DeMarco says the new officers are arriving at a crucial time.


“They need more resources for two distinct reasons. One is they haven’t had enough to enforce
the laws that do exist and also there’s been the passage of several new laws and regulations in

the
past few years that also require enforcement staff.”


For instance, Canada is adding new chemicals to its list of toxic substances. That’ll mean more
work for the investigators who track them.


Mark Pomeroy acknowledges it’s still a fledgling operation. And he’s spending much of his time
building trust – with industry sources, law enforcement, and even environmental groups,
but he’s confident that trust will translate into valuable information – which will make it

tougher
for companies that continue to break the law.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.

‘ODOR PATROL’ SNIFFS OUT POLLUTION

The world’s largest automaker is doing something it’s never done before. General Motors is recruiting people who live near its assembly plants to help the company find ways to pollute less. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports, some environmentalists say GM’s efforts are missing the point:

Transcript

The world’s largest automaker is doing something it’s never done before. General Motors is
recruiting people who live near its assembly plants to help the company find ways to pollute less.
But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports, some environmentalists say GM’s
efforts are missing the point.


The city of Lansing, Michigan is the car Capital of North America, producing nearly a
half-a-million Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, Chevrolets and Cadillacs every year. Later this year,
General Motors adds another car to its Lansing lineup – a brand-new Chevy roadster. But it
almost didn’t happen.


Environmentalists threatened legal action to block production because they weren’t satisfied with
the factory’s air pollution controls.


Steve Tomaszewski is General Motors’ Lansing environmental manager.


“People were concerned, everyone was concerned. There was a breakdown of communications,
on all parties.”


The disagreement was over air pollution from one of GM’s plants. Those emissions were due to
nearly double under a new state air quality permit.


Some Lansing residents and two state environmental groups threatened to appeal that new permit
if GM didn’t agree to use better pollution controls. The two sides made their cases in the local
papers and eventually struck a deal.


Again, GM’s Steve Tomaszewski.


“We’ve come a long way, a long way, from where we started in the process. You know, we sit
down and we know more about people’s families other than just concentrating, on you know, the
industrial odor issues, which is great.”


General Motors agreed to join a new Air Quality Task Force. It’s made up of GM engineers,
environmental officials and people who live near the plants. GM also brought in an odor expert to
train the group to sniff out emissions from the plants’ paint shops. This “odor patrol” then files
reports to a new Web site.


Marci Alling is part of the group.


“They kind of calibrated our noses, that’s about the best way to describe it to kind of get us all
where we are more or less reporting the same levels of odor.”


Alling and her husband have lived near GM factories for 10 years. Often, whether they spend
time in their backyard depends on which way the wind blows. In certain weather conditions,
typically on hot, sticky days, a paint-like smell from the plants drifts through their neighborhood.
They’ve wondered whether the odors are making them sick.


State officials say the odors might be annoying, but recent studies found people who live near the
plants are not at a greater risk of cancer or other illnesses.


GM’s Steve Tomaszewski says the odor patrol will help the automaker better monitor emissions.


“We know we can’t be completely odor free. We strive to do our best. But this information, what
we’ll do is be able to go back and it’s more real time. You’re able to link it to the day and the time,
and we’re able to go back into the process to see what’s happening.”


But environmental groups say General Motors should be doing more to reduce pollution in the
first place, instead of tracking emissions after they become a problem.


James Clift of the Michigan Environmental Council says technology is available to make the
painting process cleaner. But he claims GM isn’t using it.


“If what you need is pollution control equipment and it’s not there, the odors may continue. We
might know better what they are, but if the permit doesn’t require them, it doesn’t matter. Now,
the department always has the ability to bring what they call an odor violation against General
Motors. In my mind, they’ve received lots of complaints over the years, but the DEQ has never
acted and actually issued a violation on odors.”


But the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality says it has issued odor violations against
General Motors. GM was ordered to raise its smokestacks in Lansing a couple of years ago
because of a violation. And GM says it recently spent 4-million-dollars on new painting
technology that greatly cuts down on pollution.


Now, General Motors is counting on its neighbors and their noses to help the company improve
air quality near its factories. GM says the project could lead to better pollution controls at plants
throughout the country, including more than 40 in the Great Lakes region.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.

Unique Industrial Land Seen in New Light

  • Marian Byrnes has been called the "environmental conscience of the Calumet." She has been a key leader in getting the city of Chicago, and the state of Illinois, to see the value of Calumet's natural areas. Photo by Mark Brush.

In an area in south Chicago you can see the remnants of a steel industry that has had better days – silent smokestacks looming on the horizon, empty parking lots, and for sale signs in front yards. The Calumet region was once a haven for big industry… and because of that it is also home to a list of seemingly endless environmental problems. Many people thought the problems were too great to overcome, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports… that attitude is changing:

Transcript

In an area in south Chicago you can see the remnants of a steel industry that has had better days – silent smokestacks looming on the horizon, empty parking lots, and for sale signs in front yards. The Calumet region was once a haven for big industry… and because of that it is also home to a list of seemingly endless environmental problems. Many people thought the problems were too great to overcome, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports…that attitude is changing:

If you’ve ever driven by Chicago’s south side, you’ve likely seen the smokestacks and factories that dot this old industrial area.

But when you get off the main highway and drive down the back roads of Calumet, you see something you wouldn’t expect – remnants of unique wetlands and prairies. It’s an area where thousands of migrating birds come each spring. Herons, egrets, and cranes carefully pluck their food from these marshes – marshes that are right next to chemical factories and toxic city dumps.

(Bring up sound of sparrows and outdoors)

The sun is setting in this part of the Calumet – some sparrows nearby are settling down for the night – and Marian Byrnes is showing me around the places she’s come to know from living and working here for more than 20 years.

“This land is mostly slag on the banks of Indian Creek, but it’s not considered hazardous.”

“How would the slag get here?”

“Oh, it was waste from Steel Mills – mostly Republic Steel which was north of here.”

(Fade her under + continue outdoor sound)

Marian Byrnes is a retired public school teacher. And at age 76, she volunteers her time as the executive director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force. She repeatedly meets with businesses, community groups, and city and state advisory boards – patiently delivering her message that the Calumet region is worth protecting.

And over the years Marian, and others like her, have steadily worked against a city that didn’t seem to care about the natural areas in Calumet. For many of them, it began more than twenty years ago, when they got a note from the Chicago Transit Authority in their mailbox. The note outlined the Transit Authority’s plan to build a bus barn on their neighborhood’s prairie:

“It was like having our own little forest preserve right behind our houses. You can walk out there, and when you get out – maybe a block or so – you’re not aware that you’re in the city at all. I mean you can’t even see the houses, so it’s just a wonderful place to be in touch with nature.”

They convinced the transit authority to build the bus-barn elsewhere. And in the years that followed they fought off other proposals such as plans to build a toxic waste incinerator, and plans to re-open old city dumps.

But despite those successes, big environmental problems still persist. And the list of contamination is intimidating – heavy metals, PCBs, and leaking landfills. The problems are so overwhelming that when planners in Chicago were thinking about spreading miles and miles of concrete for a new airport, Calumet was thought of as an ideal location.

Kathy Dickhut works in the planning department for the city of Chicago:

“The area does have a lot of environmental problems. Ten years ago the thinking was it was all dirty, environmentally dirty, and that was sort of across the board, …so one way to deal with that is, you know to cover the whole thing up.”

But local environmental and community groups became united in their opposition to the plan. And instead of an airport, the local groups asked the National Park Service to designate the area as an ecological park.

And slowly but surely, the city began to look at the area in a new light:

“I think people didn’t realize just how much opposition there would be to paving over this area. I mean the airport proposal was quite dramatic, and because it was quite dramatic, there was quite dramatic outcry about it – so once that played out – we had to look at it again in a different way. And what we’ve done is really look at the resources that we do have here, which are substantial, and how we can improve those.”

Today, the city appears to have a completely different attitude about the Calumet area. Chicago lawmakers recently passed a land use plan that calls for the best of both worlds. They want to protect and clean up the natural prairies and wetlands – while at the same time – attract new businesses to build on old industrial sites.

City planners hope to balance what may be seen as competing goals (attracting new industries AND cleaning up the environment) by prioritizing where to build and where to preserve. And when they do build – planners are encouraging green building practices. Practices that complement the surrounding natural areas rather than cover them.

Those involved with the project paint a pretty nice picture of what’s to come.

Lynn Westphal is a researcher for the U.S. Forest Service, and works closely with the city of Chicago on the Calumet project: “Imagine an industrial area with the buildings roofs are green. Where instead of turf around – you have native grasses and because of that you have more birds and butterflies… you’ve got bicycle access, people fishing on their lunch breaks…. And it’s not far from becoming a reality. This is all very doable. So it’s not totally hypothetical.”

And in fact, movement toward that new vision is already underway. The Ford Motor Company is building a new industrial park for its suppliers. And many of the green building practices Westphal describes will be used. And the Corps of Engineers is spending more than 6 million dollars to clean up an area known as Indian Ridge Marsh.

But those involved with the transition of this area say that leadership from the community will be the key to its eventual success.

Meanwhile, the Southeast Environmental Task Force will have a new executive director by this summer…

“…and that’ll be someone who’ll learn to do what I’ve been doing for past 20 years, cause I can’t keep on doing it indefinitely.”

“Do you have any advice for them?”

“Have a lot of patience…”

The same patience Marian Byrnes has used when riding a city bus to meeting after meeting, listening to the community, and working with city officials – all in an effort to create what she believes will be a better future for the people in Calumet.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.

Cleanup on Mohawk Tribal Land

  • St. Regis Mohawks used to fish and swim in this cove of the St. Lawrence River. Today, it's contaminated with PCBs from General Motors' landfill, which rises in the background. Photo by David Sommerstein.

The federal government has identified almost 50 toxic landfills that continue to contaminate the Great Lakes and their major tributaries. Thousands more may pollute smaller creeks and rivers upstream. Almost all of them have affected the way people live. In northern New York, General Motors and a native tribe have spent two decades fighting over how to clean up one of those sites. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports… the lack of progress is caused by differing approaches to a permanent solution:

Transcript

The federal government has identified almost 50 toxic landfills that continue to contaminate the Great Lakes and their major tributaries. Thousands more may pollute smaller creeks and rivers upstream. Almost all of them have affected the way people live. In northern New York, General Motors and a native tribe have spent two decades fighting over how to clean up one of those sites. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports… the lack of progress is caused by differing approaches to a permanent solution:

Dana Lee Thompson and her sister, Marilyn, walk along the St. Lawrence River. They teeter as they step over driftwood and tufts of grass. This part of the shoreline belongs to the St. Regis Mohawk tribe.

When the sisters were kids, they used to splash and play in the river. Their father landed walleye and bass for dinner. And when the sisters had children of their own, this is where they taught them to swim…

“…it’s all flat rocks and stuff like that…”

“…And just down there, there used to be a tiny little falls and it was all sand and we used to swim.”

Thompson brushes her long black hair out of her eyes. The smile fades from her face…

“Never knew that what we were swimming in was one of the most toxic things, y’know, toxic pools.”

Just on the other side of a chain link fence that marks the end of tribal land, a hill rises above their heads. Its grass is cut short like the tenth green on a golf course.

It’s General Motors’ old landfill. Drums of used factory oil are buried just under the manicured lawn. The oil contains PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls. PCBs were used as a coolant in many factories until scientists found they cause cancer.

The federal government banned PCBs in 1977. A couple years later, workers covered the landfill with a temporary cap. But the PCBs had already seeped into the water where the sisters’ kids were swimming…

“I get emotionally disturbed. Mental anguish. Anger. My children have a lot of health problems, which gets me upset.”

The sisters aren’t alone. Tribal members who have grown up near the dump have high rates of thyroid disease, diabetes, and respiratory disorders – all suspected to be linked to PCBs. The Thompsons – and the tribal government – want General Motors to dig up the chemicals. And they want GM to truck them away…

“We’re just looking out over the cove. These are some homes and businesses of the Mohawks and to our right is the industrial landfill.”

Jim Hartnett stands on the GM side of the chain link fence. He’s managing the clean up for the company. He says the Environmental Protection Agency ordered GM to do three things: put a permanent cap on the landfill, monitor it for PCBs indefinitely, and dredge the PCBs from the river.

Hartnett says GM has wanted to move ahead with that plan for a decade. He says that would make the water clean again…

“My hope is that as we complete this clean-up, that people will come and use the cove and that it will be accessible and that people will be comfortable using it.”

David: “Do you think it’s realistic that within our lifetimes that the cove could be used for swimming?”

“I’m hoping that in the next two years we can have it ready to go. I’m not talking within our lifetime, I’m talking about as soon as we get access to that cove, we want to go in and remedy it.”

But the tribe won’t give them access. The St. Regis Mohawks say cleaning the cove isn’t the right answer. Ken Jock, the tribe’s environment director, has technical concerns with the plan.

But in the end, Jock says, the disagreement is more than technical. The tribe sees environmental cleanups differently. The EPA plans 30 to 50 years ahead. But the Mohawk tradition is to plan seven generations ahead…

“And so when you make a decision to clean up or to cover up at a site, you have to think is this area, are the PCBs going to be contained for the next 250 years. We have to think that way because this is the only land that we have left.”

The EPA wants everyone to stand behind the same solution. Anne Kelly is the EPA project manager of the site. She has commissioned more technical studies to try to prove the containment plan won’t poison the river in the future. She’s reassured the tribe the dump will be monitored in perpetuity.

“But that’s where we get into a sort of difficulty between our interpretation of time and the tribes. They don’t trust that we’re always going to be here, you know, that the EPA as it stands will not be what it is now. But they know they’re going to be there. So we say, ‘we’re going to monitor that forever’. They say, ‘you may not be here forever. Where are our guarantees?’ ”

Meanwhile, traces of PCBs are still leeching into the river. But the St. Regis Mohawks’ Ken Jock says he’ll wait on a clean up if it will ensure clean water and healthy fish for his grandchildren’s grandchildren.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.

Community Wins Suit Against Egg Farm

An Ohio jury has awarded neighbors of a large factory farm $19.7 million in damages. People living near Buckeye Egg Farm in central Ohio have complained for years of fly infestations and odors. The outcome is seen as a victory by those living next to large-scale farm operations throughout the region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston has the story:

Transcript

An Ohio jury has awarded neighbors of a large factory farm 19.7 million dollars in damages. People living near Buckeye Egg Farm in Central Ohio have complained for years of fly infestations and odors. The outcome of the lawsuit may or may not affect similar cases in other states. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports.


(Natural sound of locusts, wind, dog barking in the distance)

Freda Douthitt’s house sits at the end of a gravel lane. The driveway is surrounded by trees and wild flowers. She’s always liked it here because it’s secluded … she’s a couple miles from a rural road. She likes to sit on the multi-tiered back patio that overlooks a small pond. That’s where she grades composition papers from her Freshman English class at Ohio University.

(sound of flies)


But she has also had to swat at flies for the past ten years. Douthitt collects flies in a container that is nearly the size of a gallon milk jug. She estimates this one has about 2-3 inches worth of decomposing flies and maggots collected since August 22.


“It smells out here. That’s the flytrap. That keeps some of them from getting in the house. Today there’s a few flies out here. There are days when that wall would be just polka dotted with them.


Douthitt has frozen the containers of flies and collected them over the years. She took them to court with her to prove the problems she deals with living near a factory farm.
That’s what helped her win a 1.2 million dollar share of a settlement with Buckeye Egg Farm. It’s one of the world’s largest egg-laying producers. Douthitt’s house is three-quarters of a mile from one of the company’s egg-laying plants. The flies come from the vast amounts of manure produced by millions of chickens housed at the company’s barns. The manure gets spread on farm fields that surround Douthitt’s house after harvest season in the fall. Since then … she has watched as run-off from Buckeye Egg properties killed tens-of-thousands of fish in a nearby creek. She has even seen the creek water turn purple.


She says she never expected to win in court against the company when she began the legal battle 9 years ago.


“I never thought about suing. Until one of the neighbors I’d been working hard with trying to get the EPA to do something … trying to get the county health department interested … um, we were both frustrated at that point. She called up one evening and said we’re ready to call a lawyer, are you? And I said, yeah, I’ll meet with you.
As the years went by I became pretty frustrated, and wondered what would make a difference.”


Douthitt and 20 of her neighbors won a 19.7 million dollar lawsuit against Buckeye Egg.
This win has other people in Great Lakes states hopeful they too can win in court against large factory farms.


Julie Janson of Olivia, Minnesota knows Douthitt’s story all too well. Janson has been fighting hog factory farm owner Valadco for 6 years. Her house sits sandwiched between two of the company’s hog barns. Janson and her husband filed a lawsuit this spring against the company. They are asking for close to 200-thousand dollars because Janson says her family of eight gets sick from manure odors.


Janson says she took her 11-year-old daughter to a specialist in California to prove she has brain damage from smelling hydrogen sulfide.


Decomposing manure creates hydrogen sulfide gas and ammonia that smells like rotten eggs.


“Sometimes it’s enough to gag a maggot. The stink is putrid. And, it penetrates through your house, through the windows and doors. Every little crack in your home.”


Janson says her family has spent one hundred thousand dollars to fight Valadco.
She had to close her daycare center, which she ran from her home, partly because of the stench. Her husband is supporting the family with his truck-driving job that brings in nearly 38-thousand dollars a year.


She says a win over Buckeye Egg farm in Ohio is a victory that can help her cause.


“There’s finally been some justice served. Some of these people have been fighting for over ten years. And … to me … it just says no matter how long and painful it is, you need to fight for justice because if us citizens don’t fight it’s never gonna happen.”


Both Janson and Douthitt say it’s not the money that will make them happy.
Douthitt says she will probably never see the money that she is owed.
But … she says the county judge may force the company to clean up its farms and the surrounding communities.


“How can they have that many animals and that much manure and let it just pour out and not treat it? They let it just pour out onto the land.”


Buckeye egg farm officials have said they may appeal the verdict. The company says it has already spent millions of dollars to try and clean up its facilities. Earlier this year, Buckeye Egg settled a multi-million dollar lawsuit with Ohio’s attorney general’s office. The state sued the company for dumping dead chickens in a field and polluting creeks by spilling contaminated water. The state has since filed seven sets of contempt charges against Buckeye Egg for not correcting the problems. It’s still undecided whether Buckeye Egg will file for bankruptcy following the verdict.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Natalie Walston.