Anyone who thinks that Olin will eventually do the right thing
and clean up the mess they made is probably betting on the wrong
side of history, and the odds are getting worse each day.
Anyone who thinks that Olin will eventually do the right thing and clean up the mess they made is probably betting on the wrong side of history, and the odds are getting worse each day.
With the administration in Washington dismantling pollution controls as fast as they possibly can, making the EPA into more of a figurehead than an actual protector of the environment, you can bet the trickle-down effect will be that our water will remain contaminated for years to come.
Olin will likely keep any cases filed against it tied up in the courts for years and walk away from the mess with little or no penalty, and we’ll be told by the government – at virtually every level – that nothing bad can come from the contaminants that Olin left behind them. Oh, and that any cleanup costs will have to be borne by the taxpayers.
Am I being pessimistic? Not so much pessimistic as realistic. My stomach was in knots reading the Dec. 5 Times article by Carol Holzgrafe in which it reported that Olin met with state Regional Watery Control Board members without allowing the Santa Clara Valley Water District into the discussions. Huh?
Olin poisoned the water, which is managed by the SCVWD and sold to us in the south valley. The SCV Water District not only monitors our water; they’re our representatives. Exactly how poisonous the water is or how much is polluted, nobody seems to agree. But discussions having to do with any aspect of this toxification of our local groundwater should include SCVWD representation.
The very idea of Olin and the regional water board meeting privately to discuss a plan for dealing with the groundwater at the Tenant Avenue site without SCVWD representation seems more than suspicious.
Like many other chemical companies, Olin is a company that deals routinely with all sorts of toxic products, from hydrochloric acid and bleach products to ammunition and metals. They’ve been doing it since the 1890s. There’s plenty of information on the Web showing that Olin has been involved in a lot of lawsuits stemming from one type of contamination or another, and you don’t get the impression that the Tennant Avenue perchlorate contamination is anywhere near an isolated incident. I’m willing to guess that an awful lot of lawyers stay very busy handling all of Olin’s many cases.
Our area shouldn’t feel singled out. Olin has been involved in groundwater contamination before.
One instance was their DDT pollution of the area near Huntsville, Ala., from 1947-70. As much as 4,000 tons of DDT escaped their facilities and accumulated in the sediment along the Huntsville Spring Branch. Two decades ago, the town of Triana, Alab., sued Olin and got an out-of-court settlement. It took another 13 years to clean the water to acceptable levels. (Our perchlorate problem isn’t nearly as acute, but we’ll see how long it takes to actually be remedied.)
Wilmington, Mass., has also “enjoyed” Olin’s groundwater contamination, as has Norwalk, Conn. Heck, the issue of “retroactive liability” for cleaning up contaminated sites has been a ping-pong ball in the courts for years, with a case against Olin as its centerpiece.
We worry about the effects of contaminated groundwater on our local farming, babies, property values and so forth.
Don’t expect anyone in the federal government to ever come to our aid, either. The sleazebags in Washington writing pork and protection for cronies into the so-called “energy bill” have been trying to get polluters excluded from prosecution, almost as earnestly as they are trying to get the EPA downsized.
In fact, the administration thinks the polluters can best take care of pollution by selling pollution credits, thereby letting a plant belching all sorts of crud do so with impunity just by buying the credits from a cleaner plant. Will this strategy make its way from the power industry to the chemical industries? Just wait.
We might wake up and find that the pollution in our groundwater is “okay,” because Olin was able to buy a “get out of jail free” card from some squeaky-clean, non-polluting chemical plant elsewhere in the country.
And who will pay for all of this? The Dec. 5 Times article ends with this chilling info: “The water district’s mounting costs received some attention when the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill sending $1.7 million to the SCVWD to help with the cleanup.” Which means, I guess, that the taxpayers are footing the bill, and it will be up to the local governments and citizens to try recovering the money from Olin. Yeah, that’ll happen.
A tech writer, editor, and web developer, Tom Mulhern is a longtime South Bay resident. He and his wife have been living in Gilroy for three years. You can reach him at tm************@ya***.com
