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September 13, 2005
EPA Official: Bush Administration is Covering up Environmental Impact
The Bush Administration is lying about the environmental impact of hurricane Katrina, according to Hugh Kaufman, senior policy analyst at Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response.
God bless him. The 35-year veteran of the EPA is apparently not intimidated by an administration with a record for destroying the careers of civil servants who dare expose its lies.
Expect Kaufman to be fired soon. Kaufman says the Bush Administration is employing a whitewash policy regarding the hazardous environmental impact caused by flooding in the "Cancer Alley" of the Gulf Coast (so named because of the numerous chemical plants, oil refineries, storage depots, and other industrial facilities in the New Orleans area -- you may have seen some of it on fire in the TV news recently).
Air America Radio's Mark Maron and Mark Riley, interviewed Kaufman Sept. 13, two days after he told The Independent, a British newspaper, that the EPA's current "inept political hacks" running the clean-up were not taking enough water samples and that it will take 10 years of cleanup before parts of Louisiana and Mississippi will be environmentally safe for human habitation:
Hugh Kaufman: First, before we start...my comments are based on my 35 years experience in the emergency response/hazardous waste area at EPA...but I'm not telling you the policy of the Bush Administration. I am not a spokesperson for them.
Mark Maron: Thank God! Is the government -- let's just get right to it, in saying is the government being honest with the American people about the safety of the air and water in New Orleans, right now?
Hugh Kaufman: No they're not.
Kaufman said the EPA had taken only samples of water in the New Orleans area, and declared them free of benzene, toluene, and xylene, which are found in processed petroleum products. "But if you watch your television set, and if you listen to the statements of everyone who's down there, there's an oily sheen on top of all the water down there, and in fact there's been the release of millions of gallons of oil down there. [So] there is benzene, xylene, and toluene in the water. It would be the same as saying 'there are no atoms of hydrogen or oxygen in water.' And if people go by this they will think that the only thing they have to worry about is the bacteria and viruses, and not the hazardous material that's in that water."
Lt. Col. Kent Ralston, the U.S. Marine Corps commander of the unit deployed to the industrial canal area of New Orleans, told The New York Times that "it's an environmental nightmare. It's just chaos, the worst damage I've seen."
In addition, Solid Waste & Recycling magazine, a Canadian trade journal, reports that the Agriculture Street Landfill, a registered Superfund site "on the National Priorities List of highly contaminated sites requiring cleanup and containment" now lies under the floodwaters. "A few years ago the site (or at least the parts not sitting under houses and a school that were built atop it after the landfill closed decades ago) was scraped two feet down and covered with clean soil," writes the magazine.
Guess where all that soil is now?
Kauman said contaminated waters in various sections of the Gulf Coast can cause cancer, birth defects, and other long term health problems down the road, and that TV news viewers will note that none of the officials or citizens involved in rescue, cleanup, and logistics operations at the mouth of the Mississippi are wearing protective gear. "We had the same problem after 9/11," he said. "Four years later, 75% of those responding heroes are sick as dogs and they're starting to die off, and I'm worried that that's gonna happen down [in New Orleans] -- where the heroes will be the first ones to get really sick."
Kaufman also said the policy of the Bush Administration is "the same as in 9/11" -- to cover up the environmental impact.
Complaining that, under Bush, the EPA has been tightlipped with its studies and reports, The Society of Environmental Journalists, and individual reporters have filed Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain detailed information from the EPA on environmental problems in the Gulf Coast, in New York City post-9/11, and other incidents.
The EPA has been delaying all such FOIA requests as a matter of policy, according to Kaufman.
Posted by MJuhre at September 13, 2005 03:28 PM