CONTAMINANT COVE
Milich, John E.
CONTAMINANT Where polluters defile Mohawk land BY JOHN E. MUCH The St. Regis Mohawk Reservation meets industrial America at Ra-quette Point, a wedge of earth on the St. Lawrence River near...
...Public Interest Research Group in Washington, D.C., cites EPA's abysmal record—it has cleaned up only twenty-four of 1,177 Superfund sites in eight years...
...Because of that he runs head-on into policymakers at DEC...
...Lickers calls it "a travesty of justice...
...When the Federal EPA entered the picture at DEC's request in 1983, it assessed GM $507,000 for illegal use and disposal of PCBs...
...For two years, GM refused to meet with Mohawk representatives...
...Government documents, however, confirm that GM was adding PCBs to its systems until mid-1980...
...Akwesasne's involvement in the cleanup is "virtually unique," he says...
...Akwesasne officials believe EPA's timetable will result in a whitewashed Record of Decision, the determining Superfund judgment that outlines strategy for cleanup...
...PCB contamination at the nearby GM-Massena Central Foundry may prove to be the biggest PCB dump site yet uncovered...
...Mink are completely lacking from Akwesasne, and they're extremely sensitive to PCBs...
...The Akwesasne Freedom School, widely known for its efforts to preserve the Mohawk language and culture, moved from Raquette Point in 1982 because of its proximity to GM's industrial landfill...
...Cattle herds on Cornwall Island were decimated in the 1970s when Reynolds's fluoride emissions afflicted the animals with brittle bones and rotting teeth...
...industry where PCB use remains legal...
...The food chain is permeated with PCBs," says Stone...
...Regis Mohawk Health Services on the U.S...
...it has knowingly fouled the environment...
...When the EPA became involved in 1983, it added GM to its Superfund list...
...Frogs, mice, and shrews are loaded with PCBs...
...In 1975, he took two GM scientists on a boat ride to collect twenty-six samples at various depths in the St...
...The first crucial step following Superfund designation is a remedial investigation, which is meant to serve as the "eyes" of any cleanup, locating and measuring toxic deposits...
...We have a tremendous amount of PCB-contaminated material at this location," says Ken Jock as he conducts a boat tour of the inlet at Raquette Point known as "Contaminant Cove...
...Stone has since collected hundreds of laboratory samples from animals, fish, vegetation, and local waterways...
...DEC investigated me more than Reynolds initially...
...Reynolds denied it until April 1988 and really came after me...
...When the scientists returned the following year, Barnes says, they told him, "For about a thousand feet of shoreline, the marine life is dead...
...It's heinous," Lickers says...
...It also makes it harder to trace the source...
...The combinations are synergistic, increasing the overall toxic effect," Jock explains...
...New PCB emissions are below hazardous levels, but little progress has been made toward eliminating past accumulations or the ongoing chemical siege of Akwesasne...
...Regis Mohawk Tribe...
...Nonetheless, the company continues to utilize its PCB-tainted lagoons, including a ten-million-gallon basin within twenty feet of the river...
...We feel that the driving force behind their work is to meet bureaucratic deadlines and quotas of completed studies, rather than trying to insure that the proper cleanup is done here...
...Readings have been taken in this cove, though, that show up to 3,000 parts per million of PCBs in the sediment and vegetation attached to it...
...He says the Canadian government has long regarded Akwesasne as "the most polluted Indian land in the country...
...In 1985, EPA and GM agreed that the company could conduct its own investigation through a hired consultant...
...GM, which supplies bottled water to the school and nearby homes, denies that John E. Milich is a free-lance journalist in Ithaca, New York...
...GM collected approximately one soil sample per acre, and even less in river sediment bordering the site...
...The Mohawks questioned GM's ability to conduct an objective inquiry into its own pollution, and felt their concerns vindicated when a draft of the study was released in 1986...
...Five PCB-saturated lagoons and a larger number of sludge pits dot GM's 258-acre property...
...However, GM got a head start on the regulatory process in 1979 by employing a consulting firm to study sections behind the plant where PCB-laden sludge was dumped...
...There have been attempts to get him fired, but he has tremendous public and media support...
...He's really on the side of the citizens, protecting the environment at all costs...
...His investigation led him to coin such names as "Contaminant Cove," "Biphenyl Brook," and "Dead Clam Cove" for previously unidentified locations at GM and Reynolds...
...Lawrence without a valid state permit...
...They collected my data and gave it to others in the department to review...
...It makes me sad," says Barnes...
...Anne Rabe, director of the Albany-based New York Environmental Institute, says that among grass-roots activists working on toxic-waste issues, "Ward is about the only person they feel they can trust at DEC...
...Stone is a legendary figure in New York, which is beset with more than a thousand state-superfund disasters...
...Proof of enormous toxicity levels comes as no surprise to many area residents...
...The Superfund process is complex, protracted, and often ineffective...
...Heavy shipping in the Seaway stirs up contaminated sediment, causing migration of poisons...
...Lawrence River near Massena, New York...
...DEC officials were embarrassed for having long neglected the Reynolds discharges...
...The corporation insisted that toxicity was minimal and that no damage had been done to Akwesasne...
...We look at this planet not as a mass of matter but as our mother the Earth, the nurturer of all life and our children," says Bear Clan Chief Tom Porter, who was until recently director of the Akwesasne Freedom School...
...General Motors, Reynolds Metal, and other corporate polluters have inundated Akwesasne with chemical garbage, defiling the Mohawks' sacred land...
...Stephen Penningroth, a biochemist, performed an exhaustive review of the remedial investigation while on sabbatical leave at Cornell University last year, and concluded that GM's report "abounds in contradictions, imprecisions, and unwarranted conclusions...
...GM used PCBs in its aluminum-casting process beginning with Massena's first production run in 1959...
...Walsh attributes this failure in part to roadblocks that EPA has placed in the way of community participation in remedial efforts...
...Jock is an environmental specialist with the St...
...The Mohawks settled for $650,000 in 1986 after legal expenses drained the tribal government's treasury...
...The following summer we started putting in our own monitoring wells...
...Four years later, the well water at the present location a mile away tested high in poly-chlorinated biphenyls (PCBs...
...We acted instantly," says James Ransom, director of the Environmental Health Program for the St...
...Penningroth contends that a statistically sound model needed for locating toxic "hot spots" requires construction of a three-dimensional sampling grid of about 1,300 borings per acre...
...I suspect that's an underestimate by as much as a factor of ten...
...Superfund is the popular name for the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, which gave EPA authority to recover costs from polluters...
...The kids developed constant colds...
...Subsequent phases of the investigation have not quieted Akwesasne charges that the report is inadequate in scope, methodology, and recommendations...
...Reynolds's landfill is heavily contaminated," Stone says, "and they've been polluting the St...
...A thorough probe may be cost-prohibitive, he acknowledges, but GM's investigation falls far short of meeting any reasonable standard...
...Almost half the reservation made its living from commercial fishing and guiding...
...Penningroth estimates that PCB-laced lagoons at GM-Massena contain some 200 times the total volume of PCBs spilled annually from capacitors and transformers, those areas of U.S...
...Before Reynolds or GM came to prominence, we knew there was a problem...
...Scientists and environmentalists, Indians and non-Indians alike, are waging an unprecedented campaign to assess the damage and demand a total cleanup...
...The toxicity is largely responsible for an enrollment decline from ninety students to about thirty, and will force the school to relocate again in 1989...
...Bill Walsh, staff attorney for the U.S...
...A lot of chemical waste comes from upstream, too, because this river is the sewer pipe of the Great Lakes...
...The day following DEC's announcement, we contacted the state health department and arranged for testing of residential wells...
...The story came from New York State's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which informed the media after rejecting GM's study and conducting a thorough investigation...
...The aquatic poisoning has since spread...
...It is correct...
...it's just been difficult pinning down the culprits," says Henry Lickers, a biologist who directs the Mohawk Council's Environmental Division on the reserve's Canadian side...
...It's rather incredible that they didn't know they had a problem...
...Reynolds is going to rival General Motors as a PCB source...
...As late as 1985, GM was operating its industrial landfill on the banks of the St...
...One major target is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is responsible for enforcing toxic-waste laws...
...Raquette Point's breeze, pungent with noxious odors, carries airborne toxins onto the reserve...
...However, DEC gave him a hard time for his breakthrough discovery of massive PCB levels at Reynolds, immediately upstream from GM...
...People here used to eat fish three times a week or more all year...
...DEC ordered the landfill closed, and it has since been temporarily capped...
...A few years ago, we began to notice that our children would get rashes on their bodies and runny eyes, almost like a pink eye," Porter says...
...Depletion of beef and fish sources has forced dietary changes on the Mohawks and may be linked to a high incidence of diabetes among the community's 8,000 residents...
...When Stone went public with his findings early in 1988, DEC Commissioner Thomas Jorling tried to silence him...
...Lawrence and Raquette rivers for many years...
...Akwesasne is downstream, downwind, and downgradient in an industrial corridor that extends 100 miles west to Lake Ontario...
...The toxic assault from America's wealthiest corporations has devastated the Akwesasne nation...
...Lawrence River and situated in both the United States and Canada...
...it was the largest fine that had ever been levied for violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act...
...It was like their immune systems had stopped working...
...The Mohawks are challenging EPA's rush to close its books, supported by persuasive evidence that GM's own investigation lacks credibility...
...Stone's work at Akwesasne gained him EPA's 1988 regional achievement award...
...There was nothing wrong...
...This is a crime against the whole community, a crime against humanity...
...The reservation is within a few miles of six major industrial complexes discharging PCBs and a variety of phenols, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, fluoride, mirex, and mercury...
...We're beginning to question EPA's motives in pushing this whole study too fast," says James Ransom...
...The Mohawk demand for a role in the Superfund process has also been bolstered by the field work of a dedicated public official: Ward Stone, DEC's chief wildlife pathologist...
...At the time we were adding new PCB hydraulic fluid to our system, we certainly didn't consider it a hazard," says a company official...
...The Mohawks have mobilized to meet the crisis...
...This kind of critical review of an RI [remedial investigation] is what the EPA should have done," Penningroth says...
...Now, after five years of interminable Superfund procedures, the EPA's pace has suddenly quickened...
...On December 8, 1981, the Mohawks learned from newspaper reports that GM's water was polluted with PCBs that might be trickling onto Akwesasne...
...Fifty parts per million is considered hazardous waste...
...side of Akwesasne, thirty-seven square miles of rolling hills carved by the St...
...In preparing his report, "GM-Akwesasne: The Probable Poisoning of an American Indian Nation at a Superfund Toxic Waste Site," he accepted GM's laboratory data at face value but found that "the recommendations in the RI are not supported by a reasonable analysis or interpretation of the data...
...They knew about it," counters Tony Barnes, a veteran Mohawk guide...
...No way you can eat the fish any more...
...We had no idea what was going on...
...Lickers's investigation of fluoride's effect on Akwesasne cattle and agriculture led to a 1980 suit against Reynolds in which the Mohawks demanded up to $400 million in damages...
...Our problems became compounded," Ken Jock says, "when we found so many nearby factories polluting the St...
...It made quite a splash in the papers, which I figured would happen," Stone recalls...
...His review also disputes GM's human-health risk assessment, exclusion of the company's lagoons from the recommended cleanup, and the report's failure to address such chemicals as di-benzofurans and dioxin detected at the site...
...As of Phase 2 of the RI in May 1988, we were up to 500,000 cubic yards of PCB-contaminated soil and sediment," Penningroth asserts...
...Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959, booming commerce began to ravage the river's ecosystem...
...Only one sampling was taken from river sediment downstream near Akwesasne...
...You have a people whose philosophy is intrinsically linked to nature and they can't use the environment...
...Mohawk Indians, who have lived here for a thousand years, call it Akwe-sasne, "the land where the partridge drums...
...This time it will have to move off the reservation entirely...
...Today, pollution is pervasive throughout Akwesasne...
...Akwesasne first came to Stone's attention in 1985, when Katsi Cook, a midwife on the reserve, told him about her concern that wildlife contamination might be contributing to a high incidence of birth defects in the community...
...The PCB levels in snapping turtles and water fowl make them unsuitable for human consumption or consumption by other wildlife...
...We've done a lot of sampling inside...
...The company says it stopped using PCBs in 1974, five years before the chemical was widely banned from production...
...This was once a paradise, teeming with fish and wildlife, but when the St...
...The insidious chemical is known to cause brain, nerve, liver, and skin disorders in humans, and cancer and reproductive disorders in laboratory animals...
Vol. 53 • January 1989 • No. 1
