Dump environmental commissioner, not toxins
July 31, 2007
By JOE MILLER
Thomas Healy has a very important, informative and wide-ranging article in the online edition of the Bloomington Alternative this week. The article, "Dump Environmental Commissioner, Not Toxins" (1), describes the outrage regionally and nationally over the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's (IDEM) decision -- in violation of both federal Clean Water Act and Indiana law -- to give the BP oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana permission to discharge 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more sludge into the lake each day. IDEM did this so that BP could embark on a 3.8 billion dollar expansion to refine heavier Canadian crude oil, a process that will release even more global warming gases than current refining processes.
Following commentary describing governmental, organizational and citizen outrage over IDEM's decision to permit increased toxic discharges into Lake Michigan, Tom goes on to detail IDEM's increasingly pro-business, environment & public health be damned position under IDEM's Commissioner, Thomas Easterly, and his boss, Governor Mitch Daniels. From there, Healy goes on to outline some of IDEM's actions to promote new coal-fired power plants (including Tondu); double pork production and increase all types of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs); relax and/or suspend regulation of critical dimensions of CAFO operations; develop procedures for managing, controlling and marginalizing citizen input into environmental decisions; and other abuses and disastrous decisions. Tom closes by describing the growing demands that Commissioner Easterly either resign or be fired.
Tom's article is a must-read article. It also contains excellent commentary from John Blair, President of Valley Watch (2), an environmental organization which has been working to protect public health and the environment in the lower Ohio River Valley along the Indiana - Kentucky border since 1981. Valley Watch's successes include "stopping three heavily subsidized synthetic fuel plants, three hazardous waste incinerators, several coal fired power plants, a nuclear waste site and a nuclear plant" (3).
For more on the actions (or inaction) of IDEM and the effects of CAFOs on public health and the environment see Tom's article entitled "CAFOs Benefit The Few" (4) in the July 18 online edition of the Bloomington Alternative. In it you'll learn: how CAFOs are turning some areas of Indiana into "sacrifice zones;" about the issues citizens discover and responses they receive when they inform themselves about CAFOs and speak out; and about the new organization -- Indiana CAFO Watch (5).
Joseph MillerDepartment of Psychology
51 Madeleva
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
St. Joe Valley Greens, South Bend, IN