In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops.
~Paul Brooks, The Pursuit of Wilderness, 1971
Current Comments | mhr August 21, 2010 | 
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At the July 19th EPA public meeting, EPA was asked about the ongoing failure to place sediments traps in the river system to mitigate the migration of contaminated sediments to Saginaw Bay. EPA stated the delay is because the agency does not want to do it wrong. There is no doubt the sentiment is true even if it is a red herring.
EPA Superfund division took over on this site early this year but it is a disservice to many people to ignore the facts, issues and efforts of the past several years to make the traps a reality. EPA Superfund does not have a clean slate on which a new narrative can be written. The past several years matter. Significant time, taxpayer’s money, resources and effort have been expended on these traps. Had this issue been pursued on its merit, absent the politics, we would not be having this conversation today. Read more »
What if EPA held a public meeting and nobody came? It was close. The July 19th public meeting on SVSU was unprecedented. Not counting the Dow representatives, agency folks and the CAG, there were five members from the public in the audience. Not even the media showed up.
Granted there is a level dioxin fatigue on the part of the public: Years of starts and stops, progress then delays, too much information then a dearth, an alphabet soup of acronyms learned then replaced, regulatory relays—what’s the public to do? Read more »