A public hearing for a proposed air quality permit for Quality Printed Circuits was held on Thursday, January 8, 1998 starting at 6:00 at the Maricopa Medical Center at 2601 East Roosevelt Street in Auditorium s 1&2. If you did not see the article in the January 7, 1998, Arizona Informant announcing the hearing, you probably did not know about it, especially because the county air permitting agency posted the meeting notice at the City of Tempe, the Mesquite Library at 4525 East Paradise Parkway (next to Paradise Valley Mall in NORTH Phoenix), the hospital, and at its headquarters at 1001 North Central. At the hearing, Harry Chi of the agency stated, "I believe we posted the notice in four public locations," but never told attendees where the postings were. There has never been a public hearing in Maricopa County for an air quality permit so far away from the location of the facility in question or the impacted community. Similarly, it was deliberate and calculated that meeting notices were only posted far away and NOT AT ALL in the concerned or affected community. The Quality Printed Circuits facility is located near 25th Street and Southern Avenue in South Phoenix. Despite the nearby county facility, South Mountain Community College, which has a large auditorium, being located less than a mile away, the public hearing was set about five miles away in order to be a maximum INconvenience to the affected community that had asked for the public hearing. To attend, people would have to leave their community, cross a riverbed and a freeway, and fight through rush hour traffic. Upon arriving, they would have to park behind the hospital complex, walk a long distance, and find their way through a large, unfamiliar facility to the obscure auditoriums. On top of all this, they would have to go to the hospital during a flu epidemic.
The Concerned Residents of South Phoenix and Don't Waste Arizona, Inc. had asked for the hearing because the evidence in the facility's file indicated citizen complaints about a "heavy chemical odor and acid taste" caused by the facility's discharges late at night and on weekends. The agency's inspector approached Curtis Daily, the facility staff person, who stated that this complaint was "probably valid." "Mr Daily stated that a white cloud develops over the scrubbers because of the combination of two gases being charged to one scrubber." One complaint notes that the complaintant's animals have been getting sick-cancer and hair falling out-and that the complaintant has "difficulty breathing and irritation of eyes, nose, and throat."
The Maricopa County Environmental Services Department does not have evening or weekend inspectors to respond to citizen's complaints, and complaints called in to 506-6616 during normal business hours usually result in just reaching a recording. If anyone actually calls back the complaintant at all, the "investigation" won't be for another day or so, allowing the pollution to blow away and dissipate. The Concerned Residents of South Phoenix and Don't Waste Arizona, Inc. asked that the facility be required to install CEM, Continuous Emissions Monitoring devices to show 24 hours per day whether the facility was in compliance with the air pollution requirements and not emitting this white cloud of chemical fumes. The facility is near residential housing. Jess Lotwalla of the Maricopa County Environmental Services Department, the air permitting agency, was asked by the Concerned Residents of South Phoenix and Don't Waste Arizona, Inc. to reschedule the hearing closer to the affected neighborhoods, but he refused. He called back and left a message that Al Brown, the head of the agency, didn't think the hearing was "too far" from the community. South Phoenix has more than its fair share of industrial facilities located in the community, but it cannot somehow get its fair share of public hearings in the same community.
Complaints about this Environmental Injustice were filed with Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Regional Administrator, Felicia Marcus, the EPA Region IX's Environmental Justice Coordinator, Willard Chin, and the EPA Region IX's Air Quality Department. Also, this information was included in a press release to the Arizona Informant. The issue was even raised at the hearing, and Courtney James of the agency tried to blame the selection of the hospital on Nancy Riveland-Har, our EPA QPC Project Manager, but Ms. Riveland-Har was never contacted by Ms. James until a couple of days before the actual hearing. The location for the hearing was chosen long before then.
Despite efforts by the county air agency to discourage attendance at the hearing, almost thirty people did attend.
Some were very upset to learn that QPC was still operating at another location, and thought when the facility burned down on 16th Street that it had closed. People did talk about the 16th Street QPC facility that burned down and the adverse health problems they believed the fire created. Harold Rushing of South Phoenix stated that he knew for a fact that his wife's dad who was living with them at the time of and after the fire "came down with some very mysterious ailments that the doctors couldn't diagnose." Later Rushing talked about how his father-in-law finally died, but that the doctors never knew what to do for him. Later, when the physical reactions to the chemicals from the fire were provided to the community, Rushing stated his father-in-law "had all the symptoms of it." Later he stated that he wondered why the agency could permit QPC "to put the same thing back a mile or so from where it was in the first place." The county's representatives blamed the City of Phoenix for allowing QPC to locate where it did.
Regarding the emissions limits from QPC's air permit, Rushing expressed concerns about the "tons and tons of whatever" and stated, "Going back to what they were making and what, they say as long as they kind of kill you slowly, it's okay." Marie Williams of South Phoenix questioned the nature of the air permit hearing, asking, "Why are we here?"
And Laura Muldrow of South Phoenix asked, "I want to know with coming out here tonight, making our comments, do we have any way of knowing if you are going to permit it or it's going to help any, are we just blowing smoke?" Sandra Mitchell of South Phoenix asked the agency, "Does the community have any say-so as to what the permit is going to have and what the criterion is going to be? Is anyone pulling anybody from the community, saying well, we want your input on this, what is the criterion going to be, or is this all city/county professionals related to the business and business world? We know this [facility] has been hazardous. Granted, it's been five years later, but we do want to try at least put a good showing forth that we are concerned. Is anyone pulling anybody from the community who actually has lived here and has actual concerns? Is that part of the criteria? The community doesn't have any say-so over the existing criterion that is going to allow this permit to be approved or not?" Mr. Peplau of the agency suggested that she talk with the legislators who write the rules for air permits.
Sandra Mitchell went on to say, "The community really doesn't have anything to say about [the criterion for issuing a permit]. So the permit is pretty much already approved. What is the point of having the meeting if this meeting is not going to have some effect on the permit? This hearing is just fulfilling a legal requirement. You're telling me it's about the permit of a business to operate, the standards are already in effect, we can't say anything about the criterion or the standards. So that's pretty much approved. What I'm trying to understand is what tangible effect is this meeting going to have on the operation of that plant. That's what the people are concerned about. Ask them. Take a general poll, find out. What does this mean? What can we say; what can we do regarding the operation of this plant?
There's no secret how the people of the community feel about this plant. They've lost loved ones, relatives, I mean, please! Don't insult them with adding salt to the injury!"
Raymond Ferguson, chairman of the Arizona Time for Truth Organization, Black United Fund stated, "We have sick people, sick children and sick everything. And they are alarmed that they had the nerve to build a larger -- another facility and operate right around there. And you can drive past the facility, about two blocks away on 24th Street, and you can smell the smell coming from it. Several people have complained about that here tonight. And indeed you can. And so I cannot honestly see how an one would consider those people having a permit to operate anything else in there."
Scott Meyer of South Phoenix stated, "I think this is a sham permit. It's in effect a carte blanche permit. Permits and laws are only as good as you enforce them. As we know, the county never enforces the law. It has a pattern of not enforcing the law. The permit that you have proposed here is unverifiable and unenforceable.
When you look at health effects, when you look at these permits through your health department, the chronic and acute effects are never taken into account. Your industry studies are done on 8 hour exposure limits. They're not done on continuous 24 hour, 7 days a week, 365 days a year exposure to the people that live around there. You have no evidence at all to say that this is safe for the people living in the vicinity, absolutely none."
Rochelle Trotter of South Phoenix stated, "I've been a nurse for over 18 years, and I know that doctors misdiagnose. And the symptoms that I see are real. When I see rashes that appear after the chemical burn, when I see people complaining of not being able to swallow, when I see people that is complaining that they vision has been blurred, loss of sense of smell, there's a reason for that. All of the symptoms are too closely related, and there's a problem there. Chemicals are dangerous. You have over 100 chemical plants in South Phoenix alone. And that is dangerous in itself. That should not even be allowed. Not so close to a community like this. You shouldn't even do anything like that. So from that, that right there is wrong in itself.
So we all know here, I mean you should already know that this is going to pass; this permit is going to pass. This is just a formality. That's all it is. And it takes us to get up and we have to fight for our rights. This is wrong. And they would not allow this any other places in Phoenix but this, Arizona, would not be allowed. I have gone to Scottsdale, I've gone to Paradise Valley, worked in those areas. I have not ever in my life seen anything like this, 100 chemical plants that close to a community. That's wrong. That's just simply wrong."
In 1951, my parents moved to South Phoenix, where I grew up and went to school. In 1962, I moved to the house where I live today with my husband and six children. In 1963, we decided to buy this house we were renting. We didn't go to Scottsdale or Paradise Valley where we knew we were not welcome there. We bought our home and raised our six children right here in South Phoenix. There were no chemical plants near us then. There were cotton fields and dirt streets, but we were happy and healthy.
I need to know who gave rich people living in other parts of the State and World permission to come to South Phoenix with their factories and chemical plants and poison our families and homes while they return home safe after work.
My father lived at 28th Street and Chipman where he was getting old but was in otherwise good health. But after the fire of 1992, his health failed. He lost weight so fast, he couldn't eat and broke out into sores and blisters over his arms and legs. He lost weight so fast he went from 250pounds to 129 pounds in less than a year. And no doctor knew what was wrong with him until he died. Someone owes us some answers. Please explain how can a chemical plant this large have such a small amount of insurance that it can pay a few of the affected people peanuts after injuring their families and contaminating their homes and all the other affected people get left out. All this, and the plant is still able to rebuild in the same neighborhood, with the same risk of killing more people. Someone is not doing their job to protect and serve this community. EPA has found that after five years of rain, wind, and sunshine, there is still contamination in our homes. And testing and retesting our homes, soil, air ducts, and everything is still not going to take this contamination out or pay for taking it out or the damage it has already done. If there is no more blood in the turnip, give us the turnip.
In late January 1998, the LDEQ (Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality), under pressure from the US EPA, held a second round of hearings on the Shintech corporation's (a U. S. subsidiary of the Shin-Etsu corporation of Japan) proposal to build the largest new PVC complex (chlorine/edc/vcm/pvc) in the world in Convent, a small, mostly African-American community in St. James Parish, Louisiana, in the heart of "Cancer Alley" along the Mississippi River. The two-day hearings focused on air permit issues - one day on technical issues, the other on environmental justice/environmental racism. EPA found 49 deficiencies in the state's granting of the permit, and left open (for now) the issue of environmental justice, asking the state to make sure they consider the issue before coming to any decision.
National Environmental Justice leaders and scholars, including Dr. Charles Lee (chair of EPA's Environmental Justice Advisory Council Subcommittee on Waste and Facility Siting, who called the Shintech case a "classic case" of environmental injustice), Robert Bullard (author of "Dumping on Dixie" and "Unequal Protection"), Richard Moore (Executive Director of the Southwest Network for Economic and Environmental Justice), Paul Mohai (University of Michigan), and Ron Daniels (Executive Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights) were all on hand to observe the hearings and tour the community. As the Baton Rouge Advocate wrote on the Sunday following the hearing, "had the Romeville Elementary School been a boat Saturday, it would have capsized. One side was filled with Shintech opponents, the other side a small group of Shintech supporters."
In other words, though EPA Region VI and LDEQ have tried to characterize the community as divided over the issue (and, in LDEQ's case, even hired people to organize the community in support of the project), the community is clearly opposed to Shintech. That is what a poll conducted by the New Orleans Times-Picayune (which came out the week before the hearings) also clearly indicates.
Eloquent testimony came from community leaders such as Imelda West and Pat Melancon, a few preachers, a local politician who authored a new law that gives local residents the right to speak first at the hearings (after the company, of course. This law was a result of the first air hearings, where Shintech bused in employees from Texas and filibustered the meeting until late at night after many local residents had to go home).
The decision on Shintech will be a national test case of the EPA's resolve on the issue of environmental justice. African-American communities in Louisiana have clearly been disproportionately impacted already by the vinyl industry. Two towns that sat by the river long before the chemical industry even came to the area --Reveilletown (next to Georgia Gulf) and Morrissonville (next to Dow) have both been wiped out. Debra Ramirez cameto the hearing to talk about her community -- Mossville (in Lake Charles, next to Vista), which has constant air emissions and groundwater contamination from Vista Chemical's vinyl chloride production, and now they want to permit Shintech to build on land leased by Entergy. A review of 1990 census data (using zip codes) shows that communities living near the nation's existing 15 EDC/VCM facilities have a 55% higher percentage of people of color than the national (the figure is much higher for Louisiana alone), and a 24% lower per capita income than the national average.
Richard Mason from Shintech explained the company line at the beginning of Saturday's hearing on environmental justice. The company chose the site based on business considerations - it is a large tract of land with readily available raw materials such as brine (for the chlorine), ethylene (from pipelines), access to an industrial-scale energy infrastructure and deep waterways and rail transportation.
The company's decision was based on these factors alone. As their fact sheet says, "At no point during this search for a new site did Shintech consider the racial composition or income-earning composition of the surrounding residents." (Briefing Paper, March 28, 1997; Washington, DC, Shintech) But that's exactly the point - the company gave no consideration to the people it would impact. The issue is not intent - but effect. It will have a disproportionate impact on a community of color which, as the hearing made clear, does not want it. The state's efforts to discredit Tulane and build what it could prop up as significant support for the facility is obviously not working. Louisiana's NAACP president Ernest Johnson, testified that the NAACP supports the facility. But it's clear that this was not an unsolicited endorsement. CAPFUND, a group headed by Mr. Johnson, received a $2.5 million unsecured "loan" from Governor Mike Foster's administration only hours before Johnson publicly endorsed the plant for the first time. The aid was increased by $500,000 by Foster's liaison on Shintech and given over objections by state agency staff who felt Johnson's group did not qualify for the taxpayer-financed aid. When CAPFUND was required to show other sources of financial aid to qualify for the state grant, it produced $100,000 courtesy of Entergy (the land owner who would lease it to Shintech, and their potential supplier of electricity). Shintech has also pledged $500,000 to fund a new "economic development corporation" if they get the permits. With all this money being thrown around, it's amazing that Shintech could not muster up more than a dozen people willing to testify that they wanted the plant. The comment period on the environmental justice considerations extend until the 23rd of February.
Send any written comments to: Administrator, Air Quality Division, LDEQ, PO Box 82135, Baton Rouge, LA 70884-2135.
Call Carol Browner's office at US EPA and tell her to stop the Shintech facility based on environmental justice and other concerns (202) 260-4700. "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. Explore. Dream. Discover."
-- Anonymous
The purpose and focus of the evening community strategy meeting is discuss and decide what ACTIONS the community affected by the QPC fire and its lingering contamination is going to take to resolve the issue. There are unresolved problems in the community of illnesses and a need for proper medical attention. Also, chemical contaminants were found by the latest EPA sampling at significantly higher levels in affected area homes than unaffected homes. The community believes that this chemical contamination that lingers in homes is from the QPC fire and is there cause of the lingering illnesses and health problems.
It is very important that you come to this meeting to participate and determine what our next steps and plan of action as a community will be. Come and state your ideas and opinions.