Datelines

...As for the disease and mortality trends spotlighted by the Atlanta reporters, a DOE official said, "I don't think these figures are a cause for concern...

...It all seemed in keeping with the efforts of Washington's own breed of deregulation zealots, EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch chief among them...

...Riding the crest of these successes, Ontario workers joined the California Coalition Against Plant Shutdowns (CAPS), a group formed last November from eight groups promoting state legislation to protect dislocated workers...

...They have resigned themselves to plant closure guidelines, but want to develop their own self-regulating legislation, according to CMA lobbyist Paul Gladfelty...

...Baker says he asked his deputy, Frank Hodsell, now chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, to buzz top EPA officials about the pending and eagerly awaited Super Tin emergency exemption...

...We've never had adequate resources," said Ann Lindsay, a Johnson aide...

...This summer the bill— drafted by CAPS—was introduced into the Assembly and approved by the Labor and Employment Committee...

...Across California, and especially in greater Los Angeles, plant after plant has closed with little or no warning, often throwing communities into crisis...

...Hope for the Homeless NEW YORK CITY It was an unusual Christmas dinner...

...Heart disease records show a similar pattern...

...Says Johnson: "There are some uncertainties involved, I won't deny that...

...But CAPS is not alone in planning for January...

...White House Chief of Staff James Baker was also enlisted in the campaign to permit the use of Super Tin, nudged by his brother-in-law Jacko Garrett, a farmer in Danbury, Texas, who wanted to save his 1,500 acres of rice from blight...

...In a speech he gave at the National Conference on Social Welfare in Boston last spring, he quoted the late Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, who said those who labor on behalf of the poor need not see results...

...Some thirty years later, the chilling answers are taking the form of body counts around America's nuclear bomb plants...

...CAPS activists are not buying it, however...

...Area residents organized a protest: Two thousand people marched through downtown Ontario calling on GE executives to change their minds or sell the plant to a firm that would keep it going with another product line...

...But six weeks later, the bill was, in effect, defeated when it was referred for hearings...

...In the past year and a half, 38,000 workers have lost their jobs in Los Angeles County, and 979 plants have closed statewide since January...

...This summer, Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution reporters Robert Lamb and Mark Bradley looked into the health effects of air- and water-borne pollutants issuing from SRP...

...Both cases are still pending...

...He would introduce himself and say he was trying to get the city and state to live up to their constitutional obligations, and the stories of crime and filth and despair would just pour out...

...But the uncertainties seem fairly minimal when you look at the exposures that might result...

...Fortunately, as these numbers increase, so does CAPS membership...

...Normally the EPA will do everything it can to accede...

...In June, the Assembly Ways and Means Committee became the battleground between the California Manufacturers Association (CMA) and the Chamber of Commerce on one side, and the AFL-CIO and CAPS on the other...

...Certainly there was no surprise at Griffin Chemical, which makes Super Tin: Jimmy Whatley, corporate director of research at Griffin, bragged that his firm had had a hand in "encouraging" the agency to grant exemptions from its own rules...

...Directly across the Savannah River from SRP, Georgia's Burke County experienced a five-fold increase in its cancer rate between 1950 and 1980, while the state's cancer average was appreciably short of doubling...

...We can trust our government to be willing to kill us, insidiously if not suddenly en masse, to enforce a vision of a thermonuclear Pax Americana...

...We made GE number one in the iron business and this is the thanks we get," said Dick Presto, chief steward of United Electrical Workers Local 1012...

...Stephen Barlas (Stephen Barlas is a Washington, D.C.-based free-lance journalist...

...But all was not lost in the Ontario fight...

...In September, a month after the Journal-Constitution's publication of county-by-county health figures, Dr...

...Norman Solomon and Ada Sanchez (Norman Solomon is co-author of "Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience With Atomic Radiation," recently published by Delacorte Press and Delta Books...

...But, notes an official from the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP), "during the Carter Administration, Mike Conlon [a Johnson assistant] sent around a letter saying we shouldn't talk with industry representatives...

...Moreover, Garrett is still contending with blight...

...Corporate Flight LOS ANGELES When General Electric workers in Ontario, California, learned earlier this year of the company's plans to shut down its profit-making household iron plant, they vowed not to go down without a fight...

...In 1982, the EPA granted the DuTer exemptions...

...Without SRP, operated under contract by the Du Pont Corporation, the United States would face "the certain disablement, in approximately a decade, of one-half of the nuclear weapons stockpile that uses tritium," according to an analysis published last year by the DOE's Los Alamos laboratory...

...Startling and grim as the Lamb-Bradley articles were, state and Federal authorities wasted little time in gearing up the disclaimer machinery...

...Wisconsin and Maine are the only states with plant-closure guidelines, although the legislation was passed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before plant shutdowns were an every-week event...

...Yet, even with the hearing room overflowing with CAPS supporters, the committee shuttled the bill to a subcommittee for further revisions—and thus averted a scheduled vote...

...They don't have any monitoring money," Hinkle says...

...Bryars, then president of Thompson-Hayward Agriculture and Nutrition Company, a DuTer producer since acquired by Uniroyal...

...In Detroit, Hayes says, a forty-five-bed shelter was opened recently with the cooperation of the Salvation Army, two church groups, and the city, which pays the shelter's utility bills...

...Our work is to sow," she wrote...

...The EPA's exemption-granting track record seems to promise victory for those seeking use of partially tested pesticides...

...When the United States was embarking on mass production of ever more deadly nuclear weapons in 1950, physics pioneer Leo Szilard posed a key question: "I believe there is a general uneasiness among the scientists," Szilard told a national radio audience...

...Again, hardly anyone was surprised by the surge in exemptions...

...Yet nagging questions about their safety sometimes remain, even though the same exemptions are renewed annually...

...Its goal this winter is to create enough awareness of the plight of the homeless so that they will be saved from freezing to death...

...downstream county closest to SRP, Allendale, had a 1980 infant death rate of 39.8 per thousand live births—two-and-a-half times the same year's statewide ratio of 15.6...

...The guests were three homeless and raggedy men from New York City's Bowery...

...CAPS's major goal was the passage of the Economic Stabilization Act of 1982, a bill calling for three months' notice of plant closure, severance pay if a plant shuts down, and a fair offer of sale of the plant to an employee group...

...Hayes remembers he had little trouble finding out how bad things were...

...When CAPS argues the need for legislation to protect displaced workers, it points to Wisconsin, Maine, and the city of Philadelphia...

...Last winter, almost half a dozen new public shelters were opened in New York City, adding almost 1,000 beds, and conditions at the existing shelters were improved to some extent...

...Hayes left Sullivan and Cromwell early this year to devote himself full-time to the homeless...

...Along the way, Hayes met two researchers for a local social service agency, who had spent two years interviewing hundreds of men and women fending for themselves on the streets...

...Parker, whose degree is in veterinary medicine, formerly worked at CDC for twenty years...

...Another generation will be reaping the harvest...

...Once the exemptions are issued, the EPA lacks the field strength to make sure that farmers and ranchers are abiding by the exemption limitations, and that states are adequately policing the use of unregistered pesticides...

...The lawyer, Robert Hayes, had sued the city and state to force them to provide decent and adequate shelter for the homeless, and these derelicts were his clients...

...Henry Unger (Henry Unger is a free-lance journalist in Los Angeles...

...The host was a young Wall Street lawyer...

...Mary Ellen Schoonmaker (Mary Ellen Schoonmaker is a reporter for The Record ih Bergen County, New Jersey...

...It is necessary to trust the states...

...Last spring, Hayes helped found the National Coalition for the Homeless, which has members in about forty cities...

...The Philadelphia bill had a rocky path through municipal government...

...He believes continued abuse of the exemption system could lead to its demise...

...Hayes has received calls from dozens of cities where advocates are trying to help the homeless in the face of hostility from local officials...

...Wrote Rominger: "My scientific advisers indicate that after considering the data which are available on DuTer, as to its inadequacies and its high level of toxicity, it will be difficult to maintain a posture of continued registration for any use...

...Presto had worked at the plant for twenty years when GE decided to close it and shift its iron manufacturing to Mexico, Brazil, and Singapore...

...Now CAPS is planning its next moves, focusing on the January session of the California legislature and considering a statewide initiative campaign...

...Lamb and Bradley, however, were concerned, writing that "higher than normal rates of disease and death exist in all counties southeast of the plant...

...Farther southeast along the Savannah River, Hampton and Jasper counties had infant death rates of 32.0 and 29.2, respectively, in 1980, double the state average...

...EPA personnel admit their "emergency use" criteria are easily bent...

...The agency is under extreme pressure from Congress and state governments to grant these exemptions," says a former EPA official...

...Trust isn't enough, however, for Maureen Hinkle, policy analyst for the National Audubon Society...

...Hayes used their testimony in court, and in August 1981 he won his case...

...Bryars admitted previous studies showed DuTer had harmful effects on the human reproductive and immunological systems...

...More than 500 workers from around California traveled to Sacramento to voice their support for the bill...

...The Federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Georgia state agencies deferred to the South Carolina government's announced intention to oversee an investigation headed by Dr...

...The entire state's infant death rate fell by more than 50 per cent between 1950 and 1980...

...Meanwhile, the Federal Government seems intent on preserving its tritium factory...

...Many of those patients were promised therapeutic services in the community...

...Jacko Garrett says the latest yields from two of his fields—one treated with Super Tin and the other left alone—were almost identical...

...In June, however, Council members overruled Green by a 15-to-l vote, prompting the mayor to condemn the council as "one of the worst in the free world...

...Abuses in the emergency exemption process also have the American Farm Bureau Federation worried...

...We are just trying to save lives," he explains, "trying to get people out of the cold...

...It's ridiculous to talk about seeing a psychiatrist when you are living in a cardboard box," Hayes says...

...Such exemptions, granted by the EPA in response to pressure from farmers, corporate interests, state politicians, and members of Congress, have come to be routine...

...instead, they have not even been provided with a roof over their heads...

...Back then Hayes worked by day for Sullivan and Cromwell, a top corporate law firm, but by night he roamed Manhattan's flophouses, learning how bad conditions were on the streets and in the few public shelters run by the city...

...He added pointedly, "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution doesn't wag South Carolina's tail...

...For CAPS, the crucial issue is advance notice of plant closure...

...In the next Georgia county downriver, Screven, heart disease jumped from 225 per 100,000 population in 1950 to 776 in 1980—a rate of increase almost five times the statewide figure...

...Two weeks later, Westinghouse agreed to the same provisions for 40,000 of its hourly workers...

...In the face of a task that seems endless, Hayes is optimistic...

...In reaction to GE's plans, Ontario's Republican mayor forged an otherwise unlikely alliance with union workers and religious leaders to keep Ontario the "Iron Capital of the World" and to keep the plant's $13 million annual payroll in town...

...California-based multinational corporations, through the CMA, are gearing up in their own way...

...He sued the city and state last spring, seeking adequate shelter for homeless women, and he sued the state this summer, demanding shelter for thousands of patients released from state mental hospitals in the massive "de-institutionalization" of the past twenty years...

...And the Blight Goes On WASHINGTON, D.C...

...Although it passed the city council, Mayor William Green said no with a veto...

...On the other hand, Philadelphia recently passed similar legislation obliging firms that plan to reduce their work load or close down to give sixty days' notice...

...In Washington, D.C., officials tried successfully to close a shelter while thousands of homeless people were sleeping over outdoor heating grates...

...The exemptions generally restrict use of unregistered pesticides in a number of ways...

...Hayes believes long-term solutions— permanent housing, more jobs, and adequate social services—will be a long time coming...

...Farm Bureau assistant director of national affairs Bruce Hawley fears farmers are coming to rely too heavily on easily obtained exemptions...

...Maybe so, but what seems a bit clearer and of more importance to the cause of life is that the incidences of cancer, heart disease, and infant death in South Carolina and Georgia communities downriver from SRP have skyrocketed...

...Another letter to Brown from Richard Rominger, director of California's Department of Food and Agriculture, was also sent to Edwin Johnson, director of the EPA's office of pesticide programs...

...Not unexpectedly, their findings were either ignored or downplayed by the South Carolina and Georgia state governments, Federal health agencies, and the national media...

...But I realize it's something like pulling victims out of the water down river while more bodies are being thrown in upstream...

...Hardly anyone was surprised when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told Texas rice farmers this summer that they could resort to "emergency use" of the unregistered pesticide Super Tin...

...The Reagan Administration plans to spend $100 million on a renovation of SRP's reactors that will lead to increased plutonium production...

...This year, Texas and other states asked the EPA for the green light on DuTer, another Super Tin brand...

...Now it has swung the other way...

...There is no negative health effect of plant operations on the surrounding communities," said an SRP publicist, citing a study funded by the DOE through the University of Missouri...

...Since SRP began wholesale production of plutonium and tritium three decades ago, infant morality trends in the three downriver South Carolina counties have been in grim contrast to statewide rates...

...Largely as a result of the activities there, 100,000 unionized GE workers nationwide gained new contract guarantees last summer requiring GE to give six months' notice of any plant closures or product line movement, and two months' notice of intent to introduce automated machinery or robots...

...The number of statewide exemptions granted by the EPA jumped from 199 in fiscal 1978 to 489 for the first three quarters of 1982...

...Parker contended, "We have not found them worthy of further investigation...

...The EPA turned down only sixteen state requests in 1982, and on appeal reversed a number of these rejections...

...There were just over 3,000 beds for the estimated 30,000 homeless men in New York, in buildings so riddled with dirt, crime, and violence that many men preferred gutters and doorways as resting places...

...Back in the Texas rice fields, the industry-claimed emergency need for Super Tin never proved out...

...But the LANNA SWINDLER/THE ATLANTA JOURNAL The Savannah River Plant: Wholesaling tritium, plutonium, and carcinogens...

...Richard Parker, the state's chief epidemiologist, who swiftly termed the controversy "a media-created event...

...In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a member of the city council proposed spraying trash cans with rat poison to keep the homeless from picking through the garbage for food...

...Agency officials had in hand a letter to Representative George Brown, California Democrat, from G.C...

...Despite these efforts, GE quit Ontario last February, adding 1,000 unemployed to California's increasing number of displaced workers...

...In the short term, coalition members hope to persuade municipal officials, church organizations, and private groups to pool their resources and open shelters...

...Ada Sanchez is a writer and lecturer on military issues...

...The prospect of additional economic well-being for these communities," says Los Alamos analyst A. T. Peaslee Jr., "can be expected to more than offset any qualms about radiation exposure risk or other fears...

...Mistakes will be made at the expense of people and the environment...

...But Hayes has already seen some results that have made an important difference in the lives of the homeless, and he is not finished yet...

...It is easy for them to agree that we cannot trust Russia, but they also ask themselves: To what extent can we trust ourselves...

...In 1981, the agency intervened against only ten of the 1,324 state-granted local emergency declarations...

...The workers marched out of the Capitol chanting, "We'll remember in November...