Look at the EPA’s record:
Since passage of CERCLA in 1980, more than 1,700 sites around the U.S. have been listed on the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL). Since then, only 23% of sites on the Superfund list have been fully cleaned up.
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When Charles Schmid first moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington, in 1970, the Wyckoff Company was still stripping bark from timber and treating the logs with creosote, an oily liquid processed from coal tar.
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This is happening as the Trump Administration is drastically slashing the EPA’s enforcement and compliance staff:
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This article appears in the Winter 2019 issue of The American Prospect.Subscribe here.. This fall, the Midwest regional division of the Environmental Protection Agency posted soil-test results from homes located across from metal and mineral storage facilities along the Calumet River in southeast Chicago.
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This is also in a context where the Trump Administration just shut down public access to its ToxMap. For many years, ToxMap allowed users to pull up detailed EPA data for each toxic release site, and to overlay other information, such as mortality statistics, onto those maps. And it’s precisely those capabilities that earned Toxmap a devoted following among researchers, students, activists, and other people keen to identify sources of pollution in their communities.
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Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. We won’t BS you: We’re running well behind our $600,000 goal, and we can’t afford to come up short heading into 2020, not with so much on the …
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In the 7 long years that Mr. Eaton has been on the Council, the Gelman contamination could have already been cleaned up. But, the contamination has only grown during his tenure.
It is outrageous that in such a grim atmosphere, the best Jack Eaton can do is to offer us, the people of Ann Arbor, a useless resolution (DC-1 19-1887).
That resolution is no more than a mirage, a wishful proposal that means waiting decades longer for a potential cleanup of our environment by Trump’s EPA.
It is time, long past time, for this City Council to care for its people. That means City shovels in the ground now, cleaning up the Gelman contamination now.
I am announcing, right here tonight, that when I replace Eaton in that chair, I will demand an immediate, aggressive City cleanup of the Gelman contamination, and a millage vote by the people to pay for it. If we get the polluter and the state and the feds to pay us back, great.
But you cannot sit on your hands for another 30 years holding endless meetings, and making wishes for a dying EPA to save the day. When elected, I will see to it that this City Council meets its obligation to CLEAN UP THAT CONTAMINATION OF OUR WATER.
Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, PhD,
