Congress

Another Big Day for Polluters/Another Bad Day for America

May 26, 2011 | The Collins Law Firm, P.C.

On nearly the one year anniversary of the Gulf Oil Spill, last week the President and Congress shook hands on a deal that stripped more than $1.5 billion – 16% – from the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, specifically gutting funds for reducing pollution from coal mining and power plants. Why? Too much clean air in power plant neighborhoods? Or maybe this 16% cut is simply EPA’s fair share toward trimming the nation’s deficit? Hardly. EPA got one of the biggest percentage cuts of all – compare with the Department of Defense, which actually got a $5 billion increase. Put it another way: if every federal program had gotten a cut as large as 16% last week, our deficit problem would be solved. So, the big cut for EPA was obviously more than “fiscal responsibility” at work. Plain and simple, the need for a budget deal last week served as an excuse for an attack on EPA by big polluters and those elected representatives who serve them in Washington. Their logic was breathtakingly simple. If we take EPA’s money away, EPA can’t make us stop polluting the air and water. So that’s what really happened last week. But the truly bad thing about this deal is not so much what it did to EPA’s current budget, but that it sent the signal – from the Obama White House, no less – that protecting families and their homes against pollution is just not a priority these days. That when someone is searching for funding to sustain tax cuts for millionaires, or to add to the Defense Department budget for war, or for just about any other reason at all, we will sacrifice our health and safety. Bad idea. Really bad idea. Here’s what we’ve learned over the last 10 years fighting polluters in court: The polluters have EPA on the run…right now. Even before last week’s massive EPA budget cut takes hold. In every case, we saw polluters employ armies of lawyers and consultants to browbeat an under-staffed EPA into thinking that the polluter really isn’t responsible for the pollution in the first place, or that the pollution really isn’t that dangerous after all. Or both. Their goal is to spend as little money as possible. And they accomplish it by slowing down – to a 50-year crawl, in some cases – the timeline for cleaning up toxic dump sites that are the source of contamination in neighborhoods all over the country and minimizing the scope of any clean-up that EPA ultimately decides is necessary. And now, after last week, EPA is even less able to do battle with them on these critical issues. Last week was just the latest in a series of acts of governmental irresponsibility when it comes to our environment. Another demonstration that we simply refuse to learn from our mistakes….that our memory is shockingly short. It was a big day for polluters. And bad news for everybody else. A hell of a lot more than the budget got cut. Regrettably, there’s more to come.

The Gulf Oil Spill, Fukushima, the Budget Bill: Why The Government Doesn’t Protect Us

May 12, 2011 | The Collins Law Firm, P.C.

We’ve been representing families in lawsuits against polluters for filling their homes with toxic chemicals for the better part of the last decade. We’ve obtained safe water supplies and clean air in homes for thousands of families, and recovered millions of dollars in lost property value for them. During jury selection we’ve asked prospective jurors to raise their hands if they believe that the government adequately protects them from environmental harm. The next person who raises her hand will be the first. Almost a year ago to the day, we and the rest of the world watched in horror as a single deepwater well in the gulf exploded and began spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. For weeks on end we listened to lies from industry, and from government, about everything from how this could happen, to the severity of the problem, to how and when they would clean it up. Now we hear lies about the damage done, including the destruction of industries, families, wildlife, and the ecosystem. The recently issued government report on this disaster lays the blame at the doorstep of BP and, to no one’s surprise, does not emphasize the responsibility of the government for allowing this to happen. Truth be known, this was one well among thousands. The whole approach to permitting and regulation of drilling in the Gulf has been folly from the word go. It has been dictated by industry and the politicians who depend on them for their jobs through our coin-operated political system. More recently, we and the rest of the world have watched in horror as the nuclear plants in Fukushima imploded and have begun to wreak havoc by spreading dangerous levels of radiation throughout Japan. Again, we’ve listened to lies from industry and the government, this time Japan, about everything from how this could happen, to the severity of the problem, to how and when they will stop it. The spin about how little harm has been caused is just beginning, but make no mistake, we will not hear the truth. The truth is they don’t even know how much damage this will cause and may not for generations. The problem remains out of control. And now, the budget deal. Last week, on the one year anniversary of the “spill” in the Gulf, our President and representatives in Congress cut a deal on the budget that takes $1.5 billion away from EPA’s budget. 16% of its total budget! Its recent efforts to regulate the atmosphere destroying emissions have been shelved. The prospect of meaningful enforcement has been crushed. And this, as part of a deal that increases our war budget by $5 billion dollars. Industry and its henchman worked hard for this. Its no wonder that no one believes the government protects them from environmental harm. It doesn’t. It can’t. And it won’t until we take our leaders out of the pockets of industry.

EPA Can No Longer Ignore Toxic Vapor Intrusion When Choosing The Sites Most In Need Of Cleanup

May 10, 2011 | The Collins Law Firm, P.C.

After Congress passed the Superfund law in 1980, ostensibly to set up a system to clean up the most dangerous hazardous waste sites in the country, EPA created a system to evaluate the sites most deserving of attention in the form of government money for cleanup. That system, called the Hazard Ranking System (HRS), establishes a formula for evaluating how dangerous sites are to people and the environment. It looks at many things, like the chemicals involved, exposed populations, and others, and puts a mathematical value on them. If the site scores above a certain number it can be entitled to real attention in the form of immediate cleanup activity funded with government money. If the score is below that number, well………good luck. As we all know, quick action on the part of government is anything but that. But, if a site does not make the grade for what the government calls quick, the attention it will get from regulators is beyond slow. Sites can and do wallow around in the typical regulatory world for decades upon decades. Those affected are left in the cold; often, unknowingly exposed to high levels of toxic chemicals for years. One of the most direct and dangerous ways people are exposed to toxic chemicals is by breathing them in their homes. Ingestion in this way can be much more dangerous than drinking tainted water; and this is true for a number of reasons. On the one hand, exposure takes place non-stop. If the air in our home is filled with toxic chemicals, we and our children are taking them in 24/7, or at least whenever we’re home. Even while we’re sleeping. This is not true of exposure through tainted water. So, when toxicologists calculate the dose, or the amount of the toxic chemicals we take in, the doses can be very high. In addition, when we breathe toxic chemicals we immediately expose lung tissue which distributes the chemicals throughout our bodies. How do these chemicals get into the air in our homes is an obvious question. The answer quite often is through a process called vapor intrusion. Many of the most common and dangerous industrial chemicals contain volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. Simply put, this means that they like to mix with air. Anyone who has filled their car with gas knows that gas contains VOCs because they smell them, and unfortunately ingest them, every time they fill up at the pump. All over the country companies have polluted the groundwater with VOCs, which are common industrial cleaning agents. When the polluted water runs beneath our homes it off-gases those chemicals into the air, they collect beneath and move into our homes. And unlike the gas station experience, they are odorless. We don’t even know its happening. Oddly enough, when EPA established the HRS it did not include vapor intrusion among the threats to be evaluated when determining the scoring system and prioritizing sites. That remains true today even though there are hundreds of sites all over the country where we know people have been and are breathing large amounts of toxic chemicals in their homes. Case in point. We are just finishing a lawsuit filed on behalf of hundreds of people in a small town in Indiana. These folks live in homes in the neighborhood of a factory. EPA had been looking at the site under its normal “slow boat to China” process for decades, going back to the mid-’80s. It never prioritized it. The company involved was allowed to drag its feet and do little or nothing for years on end. Even when the company tested the home of its plant manager and discovered cancer-causing chemicals, it concealed that information from others in the neighborhood for years. Finally, in 2008, testing was done in some of the homes in the neighborhood, widespread infiltration of the air in the homes with cancer-causing chemicals from the factory was discovered, and we and EPA have been working to require remedies in the homes and compensation for the families. But, the sad truth is that these folks were living with and breathing these chemicals for decades. They were raising their children in these homes and had no idea they were exposing them. Parents feel like they let their kids down. They feel that their government let them down. If there is any good news, it is that we can do something about this. EPA is currently considering including vapor intrusion in the HRS analysis. To say that it’s about time is to state the obvious. But, we must make sure that it does. Such an obvious and dangerous threat can no longer be ignored. We owe it to the folks in that small town in Indiana, to their children, and to ours.