Court decision expected soon on local sludge ban

From an article in yesterday's Allentown Morning Call:

Just weeks after receiving letters in 2006 from the state Department of Environmental Protection that a local tree farm would be spreading sludge on hundreds of acres, residents of East Brunswick Township in Schuylkill County responded by lobbying their supervisors to enact a no sludge ban, which they approved that December.

But the tree farm, J.C. Hills, complained to the state attorney general, who filed suit against the township claiming the ordinance violated a 2005 state law that prohibits municipalities from regulating sludge.

A decision on the suit, now before the Commonwealth Court, is expected within weeks if not days. But whatever the verdict, the question of who decides on the use of sludge -- commonly known as biosolids -- is an emerging controversy in Pennsylvania and one that is gaining traction with its municipalities.

Other Schuylkill County communities that have enacted similar bans or announced support of East Brunswick's ordinance include the borough of Tamaqua and the townships of Mahanoy, Packer and Rush, where Hometown is located. Elsewhere across the state, communities in Lancaster and York counties have also taken action against sludge dumping.

Teach-in targets depleted uranium weapons manufacturing in Scranton

On Tuesday, April 22, the same day as Pennsylvania's presidential primary, there will be a teach-in about the depleted uranium weapons and ammunitions produced by General Dynamics in Scranton, 50 miles northeast of Hometown. The event is organized by We the People, a New Hampshire-based organization that promotes campaign finance reform, and the New York-based No DU Coalition of the Hudson Valley. The event will take place at noon at General Dynamics' Scranton headquarters, located at 135 Cedar Ave.

Invitees include presidential candidates John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mike Gravel and Ralph Nader, along with senior executives from General Dynamics and the Pentagon. Confirmed speakers include Herbert Reed, an Iraq veteran contaminated by depleted uranium.

A byproduct of the uranium enrichment process, depleted uranium is a very high-density metal used to make anti-tank munitions and armor-plating for tanks. DU is chemically toxic as well as slightly radioactive, and its main exposure route is thought to be inhalation of dust formed when DU munitions hit targets. The British government has attributed health problems and birth defect claims from a 1991 Gulf War veteran to DU poisoning, and scientific studies have suggested a link between chronic DU exposure and leukemia as well as other genetic, reproductive and neurological problems.

To date, most of the opposition to DU weapons has focused on their impact on veterans and civilians in war zones. But what about DU's impact on the communities where the weapons are manufactured? Could the DU weapons facility in Scranton be a factor in the unusually high cancer rates in Northeastern Pennsylvania?

Listed in the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory as the "U.S. Army Scranton Army Ammunition Plant," the facility in 2006 reported releasing to the environment 13 pounds of toxic chemicals -- the metals chromium, copper, manganese and nickel. However, uranium and depleted uranium are not included among the chemicals covered by the TRI.


(Photo of Iraqi baby believed to be have been deformed by depleted uranium contamination by Dr. Jenan Hassan courtesy of Mindfully.org. For more photos of babies believed to have been impacted by DU, click here -- but please be warned that these images are quite graphic and disturbing. For more about Dr. Hassan's work, click here.)

Rendell does bidding of polluting paymasters in Schuylkill County

During a press conference earlier this month, Gov. Ed Rendell expressed his enthusiasm for a waste coal-to-oil facility planned for Schuylkill County. The project near Gilberton would dramatically increase toxic emissions in an area already experiencing unusually high cancer rates that researchers believe are linked to environmental factors.

And Rendell doesn't just support the idea of private investors undertaking the project: He wants the very people who would be hurt by the plant's pollution to subsidize its construction, the estimated cost of which has more than tripled since the proposal was first unveiled. The Pottsville Republican Herald reports:

... Rendell was asked about the proposed $1 billion coal-to-liquid fuels project in Mahanoy Township, proposed by John W. Rich Jr., president of Waste Management and Processors Inc.

Rendell said he would be open to providing more funds to help put the waste coal-to-oil plant "over the top."

"Yes, that's a project that we would be very interested in," Rendell said.

Rich and other members of his family who do business together as part of the Rich Family Companies -- which include a local sewage sludge dumping operation, two waste-coal burning power plants, and a mining company -- are major political benefactors for Rendell, having contributed at least $68,000 to his political campaigns since 2001, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics' database. Those include contributions of:

* $8,000 on Nov. 14, 2001;
* $10,000 on Feb. 21, 2002;
* $10,000 on Aug. 6, 2002;
* $7,500 on Sept. 25, 2002;
* $10,000 on Oct. 30, 2002;
* $500 on Dec. 31, 2002;
* $1,000 on April 15, 2004;
* $1,000 on March 3, 2005;
* and a whopping $20,000 on Sept. 21, 2006.

If Schuylkill County residents suffering from cancer and other environmental illnesses want the governor to take action in their behalf, perhaps they'll have to come up with some campaign cash, too.

(Photo of John W. Rich Jr. by The News-Item via UltraCleanFuels.com)

Solidarietà!

The following is from the Web site of Dante Picciano:

ALL THE WORLD IS ONE COUNTRY
by Dante Picciano
November 16, 2007

The Internet is a wonderful tool. It allows us to freely communicate with all the world. We recently made contact with some Italian citizens. Dr. Raoul Mantini is a member of a group of concerned citizens fighting to protect the public health and environment. The name of the group is Comitato per la Salvaguardia dell'Ambiente e della Salute Pubblica di Gualdo Cattaneo e Giano dell'Umbria. This translates to Committee to Safeguard the Environment and the Public Health of Gualdo Cattaneo and Giano dell'Umbria. The group maintains a web site at: http://comitatoambientegualdocattaneo.blogspot.com.

Dr. Mantini informs us that people in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy are concerned about the health effects from the toxic emissions from trash-burning incinerators or plants. The region has nine of these incinerators. One incinerator was closed down by court action after local doctors and concerned citizens presented evidence of the adverse heath effects and environmental impacts of the toxic emissions from the plant.

Recently, a group of medical doctors in the region asked local officials in the region to oppose the construction of any additional trash-burning plants. In just the city of Forli, 200 doctors raised concerns about serious health problems resulting from the emissions from the incinerators.

Then, as here, the government stepped in and interfered with the inalienable rights of the people to protect their own health, safety and environment. The Minister of Economic Development asked the Minister of Health and the Minister of Justice to investigate the medicals doctors in the Emilia Romagna region because of their opposition to the trash-burning plants.

The Minister of Economic Development wants to see if more than disciplinary measures can be taken against the doctors for their actions. It seems that the Minister wants to bring some type of criminal action against the doctors for trying to protect the health of their patients! Some Italians refer to the Minister of Economic Development as the Minister of Dioxin. We wonder if he is related to Chemical Ali.

The similarities with our situation are obvious. We have the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Health and the Department of Agriculture siding with industry on all matters that concern the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of the commonwealth.

We can do something about our sorry mess. We can begin by voting out our state senators and representatives who passed the laws giving these agencies the authority to protect industry rather than the citizens of Pennsylvania. Hopefully, our friends and allies in Italy can do the same. Yes, all the world is one country.

More on the Gilberton coal-to-oil EIS

Yesterday I posted some thoughts about the Department of Energy's recently released environmental impact statement for WMPI's planned waste coal-to-oil refinery in Gilberton, Pa. Despite documenting numerous environmental problems associated with building the plant, the EIS recommends that the project go forward with taxpayer funding. I received a response about my post from Mike Ewall with the Philadelphia-based Energy Justice Network and wanted to share it with my readers:

The Final EIS doesn't mean any sort of environmental approval. An EIS document can say that the plant will kill half of the county within the first year of operation and there would still be no requirements for the Department of Energy to do anything but give WMPI the $100 million for it. That's just the nature of the EIS process. The document being finalized doesn't mean that the plant is safe or wise to build, or that the document is even accurate or credible, for that matter. Don't expect changes to be obvious from the bold italicized wording in the document either. For example, they admit that their Draft EIS was lying when they claimed that the prison is a "sealed facility" (section 4.1.7.7.). This is admitted only by the fact that they took this language OUT after being challenged over it (but you won't find any cross-outs for deleted language in the Final EIS).

The Final EIS being out also doesn't mean that the plant will be able to get built with the $100 million that it enables them to get, since during the four years that we helped delay the EIS through our many comments, the price tag for the plant went up by $182 million -- more than they'd be getting because of the completion of the EIS. While it was $612 million, they had every penny covered by tax dollars in one way or another, but still didn't have the investors. Now that it's an $800 million plant (and probably more than that if they were to update their figures, since prices have continued to rise for many of their basic material needs), they have to go buying off some more politicians for the public handouts that the private sector won't put on the table.

Also, the EIS cover letter fails to mention the fact that citizens have the right to appeal the Final EIS. This can be done with or without a lawyer.

Environmental impact statement gives green light to Gilberton coal-to-oil project

Speaking of the horrors of coal, I recently received in the mail a big package from the U.S. Department of Energy, which I finally tore open the other night. Inside I found two fat spiral-bound documents -- together almost two inches thick -- that contained the final environmental impact statement for WMPI's planned coal-to-oil refinery in Gilberton, Pa.

After hearing numerous concerns about toxic emissions and greenhouse gas pollution that will be dumped from the plant into the local environment, the DOE is still proposing to go ahead and "provide cost-shared funding" for the project. In other words, to force you and me and all our fellow taxpayers to further enrich John W. Rich and further devastate the coal region's already fragile environmental health.

To add further insult to injury, the DOE's decision comes just as the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has confirmed the state's findings that residents of Schuylkill County and neighboring Luzerne County suffer from unusually high rates of polycythemia vera -- a rare blood cancer that's been linked to pollution from burning fossil fuels and petroleum refineries. Even more disturbing, several of the polycythemia vera clusters identified on an ATSDR map displayed at last Wednesday's public meeting appear to be very close to if not right on top of Gilberton (click on the maps below for larger images).

Though I'm still working my way through all the comments submitted about the coal-to-oil plant, I was struck by the remarkable story they tell about about the residents of the anthracite coal region, who in page after page of heartfelt testimony, e-mails and letters bear witness to their love of land and fellow man -- and to anger over the long history of the area's environmental abuse by corporate powers and the politicians they own.

This one is an excerpt from a handwritten letter submitted by Joan Chesonis of Shenandoah Heights, which I thought was particularly eloquent and to-the-point:

Northern Schuylkill County has been a dumping ground for decades with projects no others want in their area, i.e. landfills, prisons, and co-generation plants. Always using the You Need Jobs arguments, big business usually gets its way. The time to stop exploiting this area is long overdue.

And this is from from Geronimo Rafter, who attended one of the public meetings about the project and later send the DOE the following e-mail, which I have not edited because I thought it was powerful exactly as written:

HELLO I WAS AT THE SHENANDOAH MEETING AND EXPLAINED HOW RIGHT NOW THE WASTE FROM THE PLANTS ARE DUMPING RIGHT IN MY BACKYARD TEN TIMES THE AMOUNT ALLOWED IN THE AIR. SO BAD THAT IT EATS MY CLOTHES LINES UP AND EATS AT THE BRASS ON MY DOORS THE PROOF IS RIGHT IN MY BACK YARD AT THE LAST MEETING THEY SAID THEY WHERE GOING TO HAVE THE DOE GET IN TOUCH WITH ME AND SINCE THEN NO ONE HAS DONE ANYTHING. YOU PUT ONE OF THOSE MONITORS HERE AND YOU WILL GET A CORRECT READING. ALSO I READ THE DOE TOOK THE MONITOR OUT OF MAHANOY CITY WHY DO YOU NOT CHECK WHERE THE DUMPING IS GOING ON LIKE MY BACKYARD AND NOW YOUR GOING TO PUT FIVE MORE STACKS UP. MY WIFE LIVED HERE FOR A COUPLE YEARS AND GOT CANCER FROM THIS STUFF. DOES MILLIONS OF DOLLARS MEAN MORE THEN OUR LIFES AND WHY DO YOU ALWAYS DUMP ON THE POOR.

If you'd like to read the EIS, it will be available at the public libraries in Frackville (56 N. Lehigh Ave.), Mahanoy City (17-19 W. Mahanoy Ave.) and Pottsville (215 W. Market St.). It will also be available on DOE's National Environmental Policy Act Web site and on the National Energy Technology Laboratory's Web site. To get your own copy, you can contact Janice Bell at Janice.Bell@netl.doe.gov or call 412-386-4512.

Coal ash watchdog responds to DEP charges of 'misinterpretation'

The following is from the Web site of Dante Picciano:

* * *

RESPONSE TO LETTER OF DEP SECRETARY
Posted - October 16, 2007

On September 18, 2007, the Clean Air Task Force and EarthJustice held a press conference and released a 2,009-page report showing that the dumping of coal ash into mines in Pennsylvania is contaminating groundwaters and surface waters in ten of fifteen mines studied.

On October 5, 2007, Kathleen A. McGinty, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, published her response to the coal ash report in the Pottsville Republican & Herald newspaper.

That same day, Jeff Stant, one of the co-authors of the coal ash report, submitted a letter to the editor in response to Secretary McGinty's letter. To date, the Pottsville Republican & Herald has failed to publish Jeff Stant's letter. It appears that the newspaper has a pro-dumping agenda and being fair and balanced is not part of that agenda.

Here is the letter of Jeff Stant that the Pottsville Republican & Herald refuses to publish:

CONTAMINATION DATA IS NOT MISINTERPRETED

To the Editor:

As a contributing author to the report about the minefilling of coal ash in Pennsylvania, I would like to respond to PADEP Secretary McGinty's October 5 letter to the Republican & Herald.

Contrary to McGinty's statement that this report was prepared by outsiders, one of its authors is Robert Gadinski, a retired PADEP hydrogeologist. Mr. Gadinski monitored minepools for 20 years and has never seen such high levels of lead as are now found in the minepools underneath the ash dump sites in the Ellengowan and BD Mines. Further, PADEP input was solicited on drafts of the report, and the report was written under the guidance of a distinguished Advisory Panel that included representatives from the Western Pennsylvania Watershed Program, Mountain Watershed Association, PennFuture, academic experts from Penn State, Washington and Jefferson College and West Virginia Water Research Institute, the Vice President of the Tamaqua Borough Council and a former Carbon County Commissioner.

Secretary McGinty's assertion of "numerous cases where the group incorrectly used a single anomalous reading to declare a reclaimed mine site polluted" is untrue. She cannot point to a single incidence of this claim in the report. Furthermore all of the data is from PADEP monitoring reports.

The report undertook an exhaustive, four year examination of PADEP's claim that coal ash does not pollute water in coal mines and found substantive evidence to the contrary. At ten of fifteen sites, monitoring data shows many more higher concentrations of lead, cadmium, arsenic, selenium, nickel, sulfate, manganese and other pollutants than occurred at these sites from mine drainage. While the evidence is strong, the report avoided stating that these data proved conclusively that ash is contaminating the water because the sites are not "carefully monitored" as McGinty claims. Large sites often have no upgradient monitoring. Some sites collect only a few baseline (before ash) water samples. Monitoring is too short, expiring long before the worst leaching of contaminants would be expected. When high ash contaminant levels are measured, increased monitoring does not occur, what landfills do to find sources of contamination.

The federal government is developing regulations for minefilling because the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science determined such regulations are needed. The state program studied in greatest detail to make this recommendation was that of the PADEP. Similar to the NRC's study, our report finds that without adequate mandatory safeguards in regulations, PADEP's ash minefilling is replacing a problem from the past with a larger problem in the future. The report is at: www.catf.us.

Jeff Stant, Director
PA Minefill Research Project
Clean Air Task Force

* * *

Here's what Stant et al.'s report has to say (and that DEP's McGinty disputes) about the Big Gorilla coal combustion waste dump next to the Northeastern Power Co. waste coal power plant. The dump is adjacent to the Ben Titus Road community where high rates of polycythemia vera were first observed by local residents. Those rates are now the subject of a federal study, the findings of which are expected to be announced publicly next week.

Information in the permit files for the Silverbrook Refuse Site and the Big Gorilla Demonstration Project is very scattered and disorganized and essential data and information are absent. Details describing when, where, and how much ash was disposed on the site are either missing or inadequate. Descriptions of monitoring wells are also missing and their locations (latitude/longitude) are in some instances incorrectly depicted or not even shown on the permit maps.

For such a large and important project, the paucity of data and absence of essential information is disconcerting. The predominant pathways for groundwater movement from the Big Gorilla Pit have yet to be delineated. Other than at the Silverbrook Outfall, the permit files give little indication that there is any surface water monitoring either on the premises of the permit area beyond the Silverbrook Outfall or in the surrounding lotic environments such as Quakake Creek, Still Cree, or the Little Schuylkill River. There are no loading data being collected at the Silverbrook Outfall.

Nonetheless the data show that concentrations of several constituents (calcium, chloride, magnesium, sodium, aluminum, manganese, iron, total dissolved solids, sulfates, chromium, arsenic, selenium, and zinc) became substantively higher in pit water and/or at downgradient monitoring points after ash placement started in the Big Gorilla project. The increases of these constituents are above background concentration fluctuations that might have been caused by the culm disturbances, remining, and ash placement that began in the 1989. Increases in these constituents after 1997 at the lowest downgradient monitoring point for the entire area, the Silverbrook Outfall, include rises in pH and ash-specific constituents such as calcium, chloride, magnesium, potassium, and sodium. Rises in these constituents implicate ash as a source of rises in more troublesome trace elements such as selenium, arsenic, lead and chromium at this outfall or at other downgradient points.

Genetically engineered trees can clean groundwater contamination...

...including the solvent trichloroethylene, a plume of which runs beneath the Eastern Diversified Metals Superfund site in Hometown and drains into the Little Schuylkill River. The discovery was made by researchers at the University of Washington. For more details, click here.

Pa. OKs toxic fly ash with a twist -- from burning tires

I'd like to draw your attention to a report from Tamaqua-based environmental watchdog Dante Picciano about a new environmental hazard facing the people of Pennsylvania. Owned by Charlotte, N.C.-based Cogentrix, the Northampton Generating plant is a 110-megawatt cogeneration facility that burns anthracite waste coal ("culm") to produce electricity that it then sells to Reading-based Metropolitan Edison Co., which in turn is owned by Akron, Ohio-based First Energy Corp.

NEW INDUSTRIAL-STRENGTH FLY ASH
by Dante Picciano
www.dante7.com

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has done it again. This time they have approved the generation of a new industrial-strength fly ash that is guaranteed to contaminate your water and to give you cancer in less time than conventional fly ash.

The DEP has issued a permit to pollute to Northampton Generating Company, located in the Borough of Northampton, Pennsylvania, which allows the burning of up to 23 tons of used tires per hour at this facility. That is right -- the burning of up to 23 tons of used tires per hour! This facility is a plant that burns waste coal (culm) that is transported from the Wilkes-Barre area. The coal combustion waste or fly ash generated at the facility is subsequently transported back to the anthracite coal region for disposal of this toxic waste in abandoned coal mines under the guise of mine reclamation.

It must be emphasized that burning tires release pyrolitic oils. These oils contain a variety of organic compounds and heavy metals. These typically include volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes, and styrene; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) like anthracene, naphthalene, and benzo(a) pyrene; and heavy metals including manganese, lead, and zinc. These toxic and carcinogenic chemicals, especially VOCs and PAHs, have been detected at high levels in the surface water at many tire fire sites across the nation. These chemicals have also been detected at lower levels in creek sediments after the oils entered into streams. Groundwater has also been adversely impacted at many tire fire sites.

We are willing to bet that the DEP will not find it necessary to monitor emissions from the plant or the resulting fly ash for any of the toxic and carcinogenic compounds released or created by the high-temperature combustion of used tires with waste coal. The DEP will say that they haven't seen any problems with the process. Of course, if you don't look, you won't find anything.

Millions of tons of the new industrial-strength fly ash will eventually be disposed of in unlined, unmonitored surface mining operations in the anthracite coal region and be referred to as mine reclamation where in reality it is disguised unregulated hazardous waste disposal. This practice, without the inclusion of burned tires, has already been shown to cause significant damage to the public health and the environment.

DEP officials said burning up to 23 tons of tires per hour will not cause unsafe pollution. We guess DEP is saying that burning 23 tons of tires per hour will only cause safe pollution, whatever that is.

This creation of a new industrial-strength fly ash is strong evidence that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection doesn't give a damn about the health and safety of the residents of Pennsylvania and is only concerned about protecting polluting industries that contribute heavily to the campaigns coffers of our elected representatives.

'Pointing the ATSDR in the Right Direction'

The following article originally appeared on the Web site of Dante Picciano, a Tamaqua, Pa.-based attorney, scientist and environmental health advocate:

August 24, 2007

Polycythemia vera is a rare bone marrow cancer occurring with a frequency of between one in 100,000 and one in 200,000 people per year. In 2004, the Carbon County Groundwater Guardians reported an unusual cluster of polycythemia vera cases in people living on Ben Titus Road, along the Still Creek Reservoir in Rush Township. Since then, there have been three studies in this area of cancer rates and polycythemia vera by government agencies. The Pennsylvania Department of Health (PA DOH) conducted two of the studies and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), part of the federal Department of Health and Human Resources, conducted the other study.

The two cancer studies by the Pennsylvania Department of Health (PA DOH) left the affected residents with little information of significance about the rates of cancer in the area or the cause of the polycythemia vera.

A recent newspaper article reported that the ATSDR is completing its study on the incidence of polycythemia vera in Carbon, Luzerne and Schuylkill counties and that the agency has found an almost quadrupling of the incidence of this cancer in the area. The ATSDR is expected to present its results to the public at the end of September.

Assuming that the recent newspaper article is correct, and we see no reason why it should not be correct, we would expect the ATSDR to announce that there is a dramatic increase in the incidence of polycythemia vera in this area. The next step will be to discover what is causing this unusually high incidence of this rare cancer in our communities. Before the ATSDR attempts to address the causes or causes, we would like to help point the agency in the right direction.

First, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory, the top polluters in Schuylkill County in 2005 (the most recent year for which data are available) were five coal-burning plants. Together, these five plants released 2,219,827 pounds of pollutants into the environment or 85.7 percent of all reported releases in Schuylkill County for 2005. The releases included arsenic, barium, chromium, dioxins, hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, lead, mercury and other chemicals that may cause cancer or linger in human tissues or the environment.

Second, the State of Delaware has confirmed a link between a coal-burning plant and an increase in cancer among exposed residents. The Delaware News Journal reported that years after citizen activists first asked the state to investigate the problem, the Delaware Division of Public Health has finally confirmed what the activists suspected: There’s a cluster of cancer cases near a coal-burning plant, the state’s worst polluter. The study confirmed that the rate of cancer cases in the area around the plant is 17 percent higher than the national average (see Delaware confirms coal plant – cancer cluster link).

Third, a reporter, Sue Sturgis, from North Carolina has reviewed the PA DOH’s data of reported cases of polycythemia vera by county for the years 2001 through 2003 and suggests a possible association between polycythemia vera and power plants that burn waste coal (see Cancer researcher confirms possible link between polycythemia, waste-fuel-burning power plants).

In a mystery novel, Sherlock Holmes once said, “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” We are hoping that this letter will prevent obvious facts from being deceptive for the ATSDR.

Cancer cluster confirmed near coal-burning power plant in Delaware

(The following article is from Dr. Dante Picciano's Web site. To read more about my analysis suggesting a link between waste-coal-burning power plants and polycythemia vera in Pennsylvania, click here.)

DELAWARE CONFIRMS COAL PLANT – CANCER CLUSTER LINK

August 10, 2007

The State of Delaware has confirmed a link between a coal-burning plant and an increase in cancer among exposed residents. The Delaware News Journal reports that years after citizen activists first asked the state to investigate the problem, the Delaware Division of Public Health has finally confirmed what the activists suspected: There's a cluster of cancer cases near a coal-burning plant, the state's worst polluter.

The coal-burning plant is NRG Energy Inc.'s Indian River complex and is located in Millsboro, Delaware. The study was conducted by examining the cancer cases in a six ZIP code area around the plant. The areas examined were Dagsboro, Frankford, Georgetown, Millsboro, Ocean View and Selbyville.

The Division of Public Health study showed an incidence of 553.9 cancer cases per 100,000 residents of this area between 2000 and 2004 compared with the Delaware state rate of 501.3 and the U.S. rate of 473.6 cancer cases per 100,000 residents. Thus, this study confirmed that the rate of cancer cases in this area is 17 percent higher than the national average.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory, coal-burning power plants in Delaware release large amounts of toxic hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, ammonia and hydrogen fluoride, along with lead, nickel and mercury compounds and other chemicals that may cause cancer or linger in human tissues or the environment.

No government study would be complete without a qualification blaming the exposed people. The Delaware study is no exception. In the study, the highest incidence of cancer among the exposed residents was lung cancer, which accounted for 19.5 percent of the cases. The Division of Public Health said that it is not sure whether the higher incidence of lung cancer could have been caused by tobacco or by people having moved into the area from a different environment.

The report also said that new state rules intended to reduce emissions "are a major step forward in providing a clean environment." With this, we agree.

Does any of this sound familiar? As you may know, citizen activists first uncovered an unusual cluster of polycythemia vera cases along the Ben Titus Road in the Still Creek area of Rush Township. Polycythemia vera is a rare bone marrow cancer.

Two cancer studies by the Pennsylvania Department of Health (PA DOH) left the affected residents with little information of significance about the rates of cancer in the area or the cause of the polycythemia vera. The PA DOH attributed any increases in the incidences of cancer that did appear in its two studies to life style, specifically smoking and diet. The PA DOH was partially correct. The increases can be attributed to life style but in these studies the life style relates to living in an area contaminated with imported hazardous wastes and to being exposed to a toxic chemical soup.

A reporter, Sue Sturgis, from North Carolina has reviewed the PA DOH's data of reported cases of polycythemia vera by county for the years 2001 through 2003 and suggests a possible association between polycythemia vera and power plants that burn waste coal www.hometownhazards.com. It is amazing to us that a reporter from North Carolina has done more investigating into the basis of our problems than the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

Finally, a recent article reported that the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), part of the federal Department of Health and Human Resources, is completing a study on the incidence of polycythemia vera in Carbon, Luzerne and Schuylkill counties. The article reported that the ATSDR has found an almost quadrupling of the incidence of polycythemia vera in the area.

The primary purpose of all government is to protect the health, safety and welfare of its citizens. When will our government begin to protect our health, safety and welfare from the toxic emissions of coal-fired power plants? We are not asking that these plants be shut down but we are asking that our legislators stop giving these toxin-emitting plants licenses to pollute. We are demanding that they be operated in a manner that reduces the risks of toxic emissions for the people living near these plants.

*We thank Jill McElheney of the Ministry to Improve Child and Adolescent Health (MICAH's Mission: Micahmission@aol.com), P.O. Box 275, Winterville, GA 30683, for calling our attention to the study by the Delaware Division of Public Health.

Investigation documents dangers at Hometown Superfund sites

The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based nonprofit that produces investigative journalism on issues of public concern, recently published a story documenting at least 114 Superfund sites where the threat from dangerous and sometimes carcinogenic substances is not under control, and 224 sites where the migration of contaminated groundwater is not under control -- and Eastern Diversified Metals in Hometown and McAdoo Associates just north of the village are among the sites on the latter list.

The investigation documents complaints that will strike a familiar chord with many Hometown-area residents:

People living near some of the most contaminated areas complain that the EPA favors private interests over their own and that their health suffers the consequences of government neglect.

Indeed, the EPA has continuously ignored the demands of Hometown-area residents for a thorough clean-up at the sites, instead kowtowing to the responsible polluters by favoring cheaper options at every step of the so-called "remediation" process.

CPI also raises concerns about EPA's choice to "cap" sites -- that is, to cover them with a plastic liner and dirt without addressing below-ground contamination. That's the remedy the agency chose for the EDM site despite vociferous objections from local residents, who among other things point out that capping does nothing to address the plume of the cancer-causing solvent trichloroethylene that runs beneath the site, which drains into a tributary of the Little Schuylkill River. CPI reports:

At another Superfund site in Pensacola, Fla., the EPA plans to place a giant tarp covered with soil and clay over "Mt. Dioxin," a nearly 600,000-cubic-yard mound of dirt contaminated with arsenic, dioxin, PCBs and other highly toxic material harmful to human health and whose exposure to humans is "not under control," according to the EPA.

The Pensacola site was created by another wood-treating facility, operated by Escambia Wood Treating Co. The EPA has determined that migration of groundwater off the site is also not under control.

In deciding among proposed cleanup plans, the EPA acknowledged that the one it settled on, which emphasizes containment, would not be as effective as alternatives that focus on treatment. But the agency maintained that its approach would "result in a substantially equivalent degree of protectiveness" at one-fifth the cost.

Several scientists and activists disagree.

"It's a high-tech engineered version of burying the stuff in a plastic bag," said Frances Dunham, a leading member of Citizens Against Toxic Exposure, an environmental watchdog group in Pensacola, Fla.

Among the contaminants being buried at EDM, where metals were reclaimed from phone cables, are dioxin, PCBs and lead -- all carcinogens.

I was interested to see McAdoo Associates on CPI's list of sites with uncontrolled migration of contaminated groundwater. The issue of contaminants running off the site -- a former coal mine that in the 1970s was turned into an illegal industrial waste dump used by some of America's biggest corporations -- has repeatedly come up in public discussions of the high rate of polycythemia vera among residents of Ben Titus Road, a community located downhill from the site.

The EPA has repeatedly assured local residents that any contaminants escaping from the site could not affect the private wells and municipal reservoir that lie along Ben Titus Road. However, the fact that the agency's own records acknowledge that the migration of contaminated groundwater from the site is in fact "uncontrolled" would seem to call any official assurances about its eventual destination into question.

Hometown plant increases use of hazardous chemical

Air Products recently announced that its Hometown facility will expand production of tungsten hexafluoride -- a hazardous chemical used in the manufacture of computer memory chips -- by 60 percent.

That likely means local residents will be exposed to increased air emissions of hydrogen fluoride, a highly toxic chemical formed when tungsten hexafluoride comes into contact with water.

In 2004, Air Products' Hometown plant reported emitting to the air 5,382 pounds of hydrogen fluoride, according to EPA's Toxic Release Inventory database. In 1988, the first year for which TRI data is available, it released 11,026 pounds of the chemical to the air. Emissions then dropped dramatically, averaging about 150 pounds a year from 1989 to 1996; climbed to 500 pounds a year from 1997 through 1999; and then increased sharply to 1,577 pounds in 2000, 4,126 in 2001 and 5,352 in both 2002 and 2003. It released a total of 16,408 pounds of hydrogen fluoride over the 15-year period.

Hydrogen fluoride inhalation poses a number of serious health risks, according to the EPA's air toxics Web site:

# Chronic inhalation exposure of humans to hydrogen fluoride has resulted in irritation and congestion of the nose, throat, and bronchi at low levels.

# Increased bone density has been reported among workers chronically exposed to fluorides (including hydrogen fluoride) via inhalation.

# Damage to the liver, kidneys, and lungs has been observed in animals chronically exposed to hydrogen fluoride by inhalation.