Camden NJ: Unhealthy air: Neighbors in uphill battles

[Guest guest]

Note the first link herein. The EPA is determined to limit the amount of

toxic pollution data available to the public. The EPA's intent parallels

(a) Frist's efforts to protect vaccine makers from liability arising

from adverse reactions, and ( the IOM's and CDC's deliberate

obfuscation of thimerosal findings which delineate the link between ASDs

and thimerosal injections.

We are at war with those who profit from pollution and from iatrogenic

injuries. The enemy in this war are individuals and their businesses who

place profit above community health and who have the financial clout to

purchase kowtowing bureaucrats within the EPA, USDA, FDA, and IOM. The

toxins induce neurologic and other injuries that are costly for families

who must attempt to heal the injured family member. As a next major

battle, we must do what we can to stop the EPA from creating rules that

allow the further covering up of toxic releases in communities.

• EPA seeks to ease emissions reports <http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10463996/>

Part I: Minorities suffer most from factory pollution

<http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10452037/>

Part II: Weighing the risk to children <http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10467845/>

Part III: Unhealthy air: Neighbors in uphill battles

*Camden, N.J., shows poor, minorities usually the ones fighting*

*By Pace*

The Associated Press

Updated: 2:33 p.m. ET Dec. 15, 2005

/Editor's Note: The Associated Press obtained a federal environmental

health database under the Freedom of Information Act and, with the help

of government scientists, mapped the risk scores to every neighborhood

used during the 2000 Census. This is the last of a three-part series

providing an unprecedented snapshot of that pollution legacy./

CAMDEN, N.J. - Lula doesn’t take a whiff of fresh air for

granted. Not after living for nearly a quarter-century in front of a

sewage treatment plant, around the corner from a factory and down the

street from three scrap metal recyclers.

And that doesn’t include the trash incinerator, the power plant and the

cement-grinding factory that have moved into her neighborhood since the

early 1990s.

Living in one of America’s most factory-polluted areas has turned the

74-year-old woman and her neighbors into activists. But after five years

of community protests and citizen lawsuits, the biggest improvement

can claim is a few millions dollars in equipment to lessen the

stench from the sewage plant.

There are still many days when she opens the front door of her row house

in Camden’s Waterfront South neighborhood and proclaims, “Lord have

mercy, you just can’t breathe.”

’ plight, like that of many trapped in dirty factory air,

illustrates how difficult it is to free neighborhoods from the legacy of

industrial pollution, an Associated Press review found.

“This is a poor, black neighborhood, Hispanic and white,” said.

“No other city or state that you go to would you find all this in it

where residents live.”

is now president of South Camden Citizens in Action, a group

that has waged a five-year legal battle against the New Jersey

Department of Environmental Protection for allowing the giant

cement-grinding plant into their neighborhood.

*Battles nationwide*

The uphill battle mirrors others in the country, among them:

# In Ponca City, Okla., the Ponca Indian Tribe earlier this year sued

Continental Carbon Co., alleging that air pollution from its plant is

endangering children and the elderly. The company denies the

allegations. The city also has sued Continental, contending that

emissions have left the town covered with black soot.

# In suburban Detroit, the cities of Ecorse and River Rouge have filed

lawsuits against U.S. Steel Corp., alleging pollution from the company’s

plants is harming the health of residents and eroding real estate

values. A U.S. Steel spokesman says the company has spent millions to

correct environmental problems it inherited when it took over the

bankrupt plant in 2003.

# In Madison, Wis., an environmental group has been fighting for more than

a year to overturn a state decision permitting a foundry to increase by

fivefold the particle emissions from its metal fabricating processes. An

administrative law judge ruled this fall the increase didn’t violate

state air quality standards, but ordered additional monitoring.

Waterfront South is the most polluted neighborhood in Camden, a former

industrial center that’s home to more than 100 contaminated sites.

Abandoned and operating smokestacks dot the city’s landscape, spewing

out pollutants that force residents to breathe some of the unhealthiest

air in the country.

AP’s analysis of government data found that seven Camden neighborhoods

rank among the top 1 percent in the nation in the long-term health risk

posed by industrial air pollution. All seven are majority black and

Hispanic.

*Windows closed*

Melvin R. “Randy” Primas, a former mayor who is now the city’s chief

operating officer, says Camden residents can’t open their windows in the

summer because of the odors. “That is why we offered free indoor air

filters to all the residents,” he said.

Primas, who was mayor when the county’s trash-to-steam generator was

built in Waterfront South, said local officials are doing all they can

to protect residents’ health and to revitalize the area without bringing

in new pollution.

But he said that Waterfront South residents must understand that “the

neighborhood that they are living in is the industrial corridor for

Camden. If you look at what has been there for 100 years, it’s major

industry.”

In the past five years, the state Department of Environmental Protection

has issued more than 700 permits for air emissions in the city of

Camden, ranging from school boilers to a metal alloy manufacturer that

annually emits hundreds of pounds of chromium, a cancer-causing metal.

“The DEP has had no qualms about continuing to issue air permits for

every facility in Waterfront South, without ever considering whether

there is already such a high concentration of industry that it’s not

safe to put more in,” said Olga Pomar, the legal services attorney who

filed the lawsuit over the cement plant.

*No new permits since 2002*

DEP Commissioner Bradley said his agency hasn’t issued any

emission permits for major new facilities in Waterfront South since

2002. “We’ve recognized the long-standing environmental neglect of

Camden, particularly the Waterfront South area,” he said.

said the agency also has stepped up environmental enforcement

and is developing a plan to mitigate the impact of pollution.

In the legal battle over the cement plant, residents won a victory in

2001 when a federal judge ruled they had been victims of racial

discrimination. But legal setbacks followed and they now must prove— if

the case goes to trial — that the state intentionally discriminated

against them. “It’s a very hard standard,” Pomar said.

Still, their lawsuit over the sewage treatment plant produced a

settlement in 1998 and $5 million in odor controls. And their protests

helped persuade the city to reroute many diesel trucks that once clogged

their neighborhood.

“You’re fighting along, you never stop, but you don’t see a huge

blinding light at the end of your tunnel,” said the Rev. Doyle,

a priest for the past 30 years at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in

Waterfront South. “You see little candles.”

Part I: Minorities suffer most from factory pollution

<http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10452037/>

Part II: Weighing the risk to children <http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10467845/>

//© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

//

© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10482451/

*

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