CHICAGO — The scenes of devastation resulting from the Midwest floods have horrified the United States for weeks, but a recently completed survey by Greenpeace indicates that other invisible dangers will remain long after the waters have subsided.
On August 9, Greenpeace released a survey of sites along the flood plain which handle, use or manufacture toxic materials which are now being carried downstream with fast moving flood waters. The survey, titled When It Rains, It Poisons lists the location of 35 facilities, from Iowa to Mississippi, and a description of the toxics they use or produce.
The information is a compilation of data from the US and regional Environment Protection Authority offices, the latest Right To Know data, and information gathered by Greenpeace during its tour of the Mississippi River in 1988.
"This survey just scratches the surface. The Mississippi has become a deadly flow of toxic chemicals, pesticides, fertilisers, and misplaced nutrients", said Sarah Jane Knoy, Greenpeace's Midwest regional director. "We know from our past work in the area that over the past few decades the Mississippi has become North America's largest waste conduit. Unfortunately, the intense flooding has spread the problem across a much greater area."
The survey highlights facilities, which have or could have been impacted by the flood, which produce or handle pesticides, industrial organic and inorganic chemicals, heavy metals, plastics, paints, and solvents. Some of these facilities store or use substances including sulfuric acid, methanol, ammonia, chlorine, xylene, lead and lead compounds, benzene, and phenol. The survey is just a sampling of the more than 150 facilities along the Mississippi River. Not listed in the survey are Department of Defense sites along the flood plain which were storing radioactive and hazardous wastes, and superfund sites, at least four of which are listed on the National Priority List for clean up.
"Citizens should be aware of the hazards of exposure to any of these materials, and their ability to contaminate our soil and water," said Kathy Grandfield, a resident of Sedalia, Missouri, who helped gather the data for the Greenpeace report. "This catastrophe should spur our regulatory agencies to re-evaluate where they put facilities that handle or use toxins."
The Greenpeace survey is a response to calls for assistance from residents of the floodplain region who claim the federal and state EPA offices have stonewalled their attempts to get accurate information about the flood's toxic dangers. Although it acknowledges that there are sites underwater, the EPA has attempted to trivialise the toxic threat presented by the flood, claiming that "there has been no offsite migration" of hazardous substances. Some regional and state agencies have simply parroted this response, while others claim that any offsite migration of toxics will be rendered harmless by dilution.
As the flood waters continue their southward surge, they carry toxic substances toward an already devastated marine area, the Gulf of Mexico. There, decades of hazardous waste pollution from chemical producing and using industries along the Mississippi River have destroyed the marine ecosystem to the point of creating a "Dead Zone" nearly 2.5 million acres wide. Unable to support aquatic life, the Dead Zone is dumped with millions of pounds of toxic chemicals which are swept into the Gulf by the river each year.
According to Greenpeace, the toxic danger presented by the flood points to the urgent need for industry to move away from using and producing hazardous chemicals, and instead embrace technologies and products which use only environmentally safe substances.
"This disaster is sobering proof that there is simply no safe way to dispose of hazardous materials," said Charley Cray, Greenpeace Toxics Campaigner in the Midwest. "Only by reducing and eventually eliminating the use of toxic chemicals can we prevent the health and environmental threats they pose."
[From Greenpeace, via Pegasus.]