Category Archives: Health Care

From Seven Out in Waycross to CSX to Pecan Row Landfill in Lowndes County

CSX was involved directly in the Seven Out contamination, storing hazardous water that leaked: and then that water was apparently shipped to the Pecan Row Landfill in Lowndes County. This is in addition to the the CSX trichloroethylene groundwater contamination dating back to 2000 and earlier.

According to a letter from Georgia Department of Natural Resources to BCX, Inc. of 20 July 2004, EPA Identification Number: GAR000030007,

Twenty-seven tanks of wastewater were stored at the facility. Four portable tanks were storing the excess capacity of wastewater next door on property owned by CSX Transportation. These portable 10,000-gallon tanks were not labeled to indicate their contents;
According to a BCX representative, one of the portable 10,000-gallon tanks had a gasket failure on the forward manhole which caused the release of an unknown substance onto the ground at the site owned by CSX Transportation;
Dead vegetation was observed in a 15 feet by 30 feet area downgradient of the tank that caused the release;
A yellowish-green substance was observed on the ground between the portable tank that had the release and another portable tank adjacent to it. There was also dead vegetation observed between these two tanks; and

And GA EPD tested the soil and found something the document doesn’t specify, but whatever it was was enough that: Continue reading →

CSX groundwater contamination in Waycross

The MCLG for
trichloroethylene
is zero.

Around the Seven Out and CSX contamination areas in Waycross more than 100 people have gotten sick or died, most since 2000, with groundwater contamination known since 1985, according to Joan Martin McNeal, So the CSX problem long predates the Seven Out problem. Here’s her map of the CSX property (in yellow) and contamination, sickness, and death:

brown stars: known contamination areas
red markers: confirmed deceased or confirmed cases of severe illness mostly cancer (bone, lung, prostate, blood, colon, breast), some severe neurological disorders, some heart failure, with ages ranging from 4 to 85 years.
green markers: likely early stage cases of such problems

According to this February 2000 tricholoroethylene isopleth map, there was already extensive contamination in the CSX railyard by 2000, extending across an internal drainage ditch that goes into the Waycross Canal that become Tebeau Creek, running through downtown Waycross into the Satilla River.

According to U.S. EPA, Trichloroethylene 79-01-6 Hazard Summary-Created in April 1992; Revised in January 2000, Continue reading →

Rep. Austin Scott (R GA-08) @ Valdosta Chamber Luncheon 2013-09-04

He’s against war in Syria, he wouldn’t give a straight answer about labelling GMOs, and he’s still chasing the windmill of abolishing ObamaCare. See for yourself. Many thanks to Chamber president Myrna Ballard for keeping videoing open.

Here’s a video playlist:

Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 September 2013.

VLCoC event notice.

Stuart Taylor wrote for the VDT today, Congressman Scott visits: U.S. representative outlines upcoming legislative session, offers opinion on Syria, immigration.

-jsq

Where is the Alapaha Water Treatment Plant?

Where is the Alapaha Water Treatment Plant that has had 20 violations in the past 10 years, for which the Lowndes County Commission had Lovell Engineering write a letter to GA EPD and then approved a no-bid contract to the same firm? April Huntley supplied this pictorial answer. -jsq

Take Highway 84 east from Valdosta GA:

After passing through Naylor GA look for this neighborhood on your right (Lake Alapaha Hidden Cove):

Continue reading →

Trust the radiation-lying document-forging nuclear industry to build new nukes?

TEPCO that lied about deadly levels of radiation at Fukushima is part of the industry Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning brags about as producing

“nuclear power as a clean, safe, affordable solution for this world’s energy future”.

SO and Georgia Power are building two new nukes at Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River, including parts by Korea’s document-forging Doosan. Forging as in lying, as in what the Korean press is now calling the Korean nuclear mafia of power companies, vendors, and testers. Stateside U.S. NRC is refusing to supply Congress with safety documents. And when I asked NRC if they were going to take account of Doosan in their webinar about foreign ownership of U.S. nuclear reactors NRC staff told me Vogtle was an unbuilt reactor and they were only dealing with existing power reactors. Which is very strange, considering their Commission Direction explicitly refers to unbuilt and not-even-permitted Calvert Cliffs 3 in its subject.

And considering Doosan’s online map of its customers includes not only six not built yet, Vogtle 3,4, Summer 2,3, Duke Energy’s Levy County 1,2 (since cancelled), but also nine operating nuclear power reactors, Entergy’s Waterford 3 (west of New Orleans; remember the dark Super Bowl?), TVA’s Sequoyah 1 and 2 near Chattanooga and Watts Bar 1 near Knoxville (all within 500 miles of here) plus Entergy’s Indian Point 2 and 3 near New York City and Arizona Public Service’s Palo Verde 1,2,3 near Phoenix, Arizona. With Vogtle 2 and 3, that’s fifteen reactors in the U.S. supplied by document-forging Doosan. OK, 13 now that Levy County 1 and 2 won’t be built.

How about we say the same soon about Vogtle 3 and 4? That they won’t be built? Probably Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers could say that. GA PSC, Georgia legislature, or SO CEO Tom Fanning could say that. We’re listening.

-jsq

TEPCO lied about Fukushima radiation: it’s 18 times worse

Officer, I wasn’t speeding, I pegged my speedometer at 50, nevermind all those people I ran over! Like TEPCO using radiation detectors that maxed out much lower than the actual levels. Is this an industry we want building new nukes in Georgia?

Mike Adams wrote for NaturalNews.com 1 September 2013, TEPCO admits deliberately using radiation detectors that give deceptively low readings; radiation leaks far worse than reported,

We also know from news reports in 2011 that TEPCO ran around the Fukushima facility turning off the radiation detectors to prevent alarms from going off. Radiation? What radiation?

And now we find out the company has been deliberately using radiation detectors that max out at just 100 mSv.

That’s right, as BBC reported 1 September 2013, Continue reading →

Aquifer and well contamination miles from Waycross Seven Out Superfund Site

At the Waycross Seven Out Superfund Site meeting, caller Anthony Samsel said (42 minutes and 10 seconds into the video) of a site in Massachusetts:

I was the first person to track contamination of the ground to aquifers that travel several miles; plastics, formaldehyde, from a plastics manufacturing plant, and there was contamination of city wells with a lot of cancer clusters and a lot of sick, dead, and dying people.

He was talking about the Wells G & H Superfund Site in Woburn, MA, where, according to EPA,

The groundwater was contaminated with industrial solvents, called volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as trichloroethylene (TCE) and tetrachloroethylene (PCE). Soil on the five properties was contaminated with VOCs, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and pesticides. Sediments in the Aberjona River were contaminated with PAHs and heavy metals such as chromium, zinc, mercury and arsenic.

Thirty years later, that one is still toxic.

In a 29 September 2011 coment Samsel said Continue reading →

Seven Out Superfund site in Waycross –Joan McNeal for Channel 22

People are still getting sick and dying in Waycross after Chemical company Seven Out closed and left a toxic waste site. It’s now a Superfund site, which doesn’t mean anything has been cleaned up. 10 out of 30 City Hall employees have cancer and 8 have already died. Many living around the site are sick, and teachers and school children. What will Georgia Reps. Jason Spencer and Ellis Black who attended do after that 29 August 2013 meeting? Will action wait until more people die? And to which landfill were those precipitated solids taken?

State representative Jason Spencer District 180 said the state health report should be finished in October, and was quick to point to Rep. Ellis Black District 174 as representing the specific area. Rep. Black said they’d just heard about this and would be looking into it, and:

I’m a farmer from Clyattville…. I spent some time in the farm-supply business and I have messed with agricultural chemicals all my life and I’ve got a lot of experience there. And I can tell you that I know firsthand something about the danger and the challenges of dealing with these really sensitive products and how minute amount can cause problems. And it’s something that’s Continue reading →

Moody can’t get onto site for Moody Family Housing –Michael Noll @ LCC 2013-08-27

Dr. Michael G. Noll of VSU said representatives of Moody Air Force Base for the second time could not get permission to go on the site for the Moody Family Housing the Commission approved rezoning for two weeks before, at the 27 August 2013 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

He also handed the Commission and interested parties copies of a public comment he and VSU professors Don Thieme and Can Denizman had sent to USAF. Plus the developer still refused to provide a copy of the geotechnical report the Air Force’s Environmental Assessment says the developer is required to send to the Air Force.

If there is nothing to hide, if there are no problems with possible developments of the area, why not share the report?

Two different people report seeing Commissioner Richard Raines catch Dr. Noll on the way out of the building and ask him what would be involved in doing the geophysical survey Dr. Noll has repeatedly asked to do.

Japanese government forced to take over Fukushima nuclear crisis

This is not the type of “crisis” or “leak” that ends quickly even with the Japanese government now taking over from TEPCO: radioactive water has been seeping into groundwater and the Pacific Ocean for two years, many of those tanks holding radioactive water, built with rubber seams only meant to last five years, are leaking, and the containment wall next to the ocean is making groundwater rise behind it, spreading into the aquifer and spilling over it into the ocean, with every tuna caught off California bearing radioactive signatures from Fukushima. The radioactive uranium cores are somewhere in or under their containment buildings, with no known way to extract them, still requiring cooling water poured over them for some unknown number of years, and continuing to be radioactive for thousands of years. Remember, the Fukushima reactors are the same GE Mark I model as Plant Hatch on the Altamaha River. Why are we building more nuclear reactors in Georgia when ten U.S. nukes have been cancelled or will never be built in the past year? Google already installed on time and on budget almost as much solar and wind as both new Plant Vogtle nukes would produce and for less than what has already been spent on them, plus solar panels and wind farms don’t leak radioactivity.

Photograph by Kyodo/Reuters

Latest Radioactive Leak at Fukushima: How Is It Different? by Patrick J. Kiger for National Geographic 21 August 2013,

The water from the leaking tank is so heavily contaminated with strontium-90, cesium-137, and other radioactive substances that a person standing less than two feet away would receive, in an hour’s time, a radiation dose equivalent to five times the acceptable exposure for nuclear workers, Reuters reported. Within ten hours, the exposed person would develop radiation sickness, with symptoms such as nausea and a drop in white blood cells.

Mari Yamaguchi wrote for AP 28 August 2013, Fukushima Leak Upgraded To Level 3 Severity, Continue reading →

On the LAKE front

Citizen dialog for transparent process by the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange