Category Archives: Safety

Waste from Superfund site in Waycross went to Lowndes County landfill

What was in that waste water that went into landfill in an aquifer recharge zone, with surface runoff into the Withlacoochee River? The 44 shipments from the toxic waste site in Waycross to the Pecan Row landfill in Lowndes County were “Non RCRA Regulated Liquids”, but “PCBs are not defined as hazardous wastes” and according to the U.S. Department of Energy, “To be a hazardous waste, a material must first be a solid waste.” So “Non RCRA Regulated Liquids” apparently says nothing about hazard or toxicity.

44 shipments went from the “7 Out Site” to “Pecan Row, Valdosta, GA” for $59,495.00 total of your federal tax dollars paid to Veolia, according to pages 12 and 13 of Final Report, Task Order # F-0032, Seven Out LLC Tank Site, Waycross, Georgia, Contract No. 68S4-02-06 for Emergency and Rapid Response Services, EPA Region 4, Prepared By WRS Infrastructure & Environment, Inc., 5555 Oakbrook Pkwy, Suite 175, Norcross, Georgia 30093, May 2, 2006.

Is this where those PCBs in the landfill came from? EPA itself says, Are polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) regulated under RCRA as a hazardous waste?

PCBs are not defined as hazardous wastes (Memo, Weddle to Verde; May 18, 1984 (RCRA Online #12235)). However, it is possible that PCBs may be incidental contaminants in listed hazardous waste (e.g., solvent used to remove PCBs from transformers) or may be present in wastes that are characteristically hazardous. In these cases, wastes that otherwise meet a listing criteria or are characteristically hazardous are still subject to RCRA regulation regardless of PCB content.
However, to avoid duplicative regulation with Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), certain PCB containing wastes that exhibit the toxicity characteristic are exempt from regulation under RCRA (Monthly Call Center Report Question; September 1996 (RCRA Online #14014)). Section 261.8 exempts from RCRA Subtitle C regulation PCB-containing dielectric fluid and the electric equipment which holds such fluid if they satisfy two criteria. First, these PCB wastes must be regulated under the TSCA standards of Part 761. Second, only the PCB wastes which exhibit the toxicity characteristic for an organic constituent (waste codes D018-43) may qualify for the exemption (§261.8).

Apparently any liquid wastes from a Superfund site would be “Non RCRA Regulated Liquids”, according to U.S. DoE EH-231-034/0593 (May 1993), Exclusions and Exemptions from RCRA Hazardous Waste Regulation,

any solid or dissolved material introduced by a source into a federally owned treatment work (FOTW) if certain conditions, described in Sect. 108 of the FFCA of 1992, are met;
industrial wastewater discharges that are point source discharges regulated under section 402 of the Clean Water Act [§261.4(a)(2)]

If a Superfund site is not a federally owned treatment work, what is? And if the Seven Out site was not an industrial wastewater point source, what is?

The Onyx Waste Manifests on pages 75-120 say the materials were “Non-Hazardous Non-Regulated Waste water”. (Onyx became Veolia Environmental Services in 2005, according to Veolia.) As we’ve seen, “Non-Regulated” apparently means little. We don’t know what was in that waste water that went into a landfill in a recharge zone for the Floridan Aquifer, the source of our drinking water, and with surface runoff into the Withlacoochee River.

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Flood control measures encourage settling too close and provoke severe flooding events

Flood control to keep water out of houses seems like a good idea, but it turns out that it causes the flood control measures to keep needing to be raised higher, and it encourages people to build too close to flooding areas, plus “rare and catastrophic events take place”. Like the 2009 “700 year flood” and the four or more floods this year that have overflowed the Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant. In our case, there are also the issues of widespread clearcutting and buildings and streets with impervious cover. The local runoff containment requirements in the various local government zoning codes may be like levees: “flood control structures might even increase flood risk as protection from frequent flooding reduces perceptions of risk”.

This encourages human settlements in floodplain areas, which are then vulnerable to high-consequence and low-probability events.

Much simpler just not to give out building permits for flood zones. Or we could put medical buildings right next to a creek, assuming because it’s never flooded it never will….

Socio-hydrology: conceptualising human-flood interactions, G. Di Baldassarre, A. Viglione, G. Carr, L. Kuil, J. L. Salinas, and G. Bloschl, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 17, 3295–3303, 2013 doi:10.5194/hess-17-3295-2013, © Author(s) 2013. CC Attribution 3.0 License.

Abstract. Over history, humankind has tended to settle near streams Continue reading →

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 →

Watkins family on other cases

It’s not so much what you know as what you can prove, says a concerned father, and the mother wants better representation for others whose children like her daughter have gotten caught in a felony with little if any evidence at school.

Mrs. Watkins said after her daughter was tackled at school be a deputy, she found “there are a lot of children in the judicial system that may not have good representation.” She and Mr. Watkins and George Boston Rhynes are starting an organization to at least show concern. George said in one visit to juvenile court he encountered two families with problems with probation and law enforcement knocking down doors and searching without search warrants.

Mr. Watkins wants to help people know their rights. Things we older folk may have done as children now there are laws against, and the children and their families need to know things like the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor, and the importance of writing things down. “Details is all that matters.” Later he noted that Continue reading →

Moody Family Housing is in aquifer recharge zone @ LCC 2013-08-27

The Moody Family Housing just rezoned is in a recharge zone for our drinking water supply, the Floridan Aquifer. What will keep runoff from this subdivision from feeding through the wetlands and sinkhole into the aquifer? Should we depend on county engineering, which never put in the traffic calming measures required for nearby Nelson Hill, or other county staff, who gave waivers for other required items there, or just didn’t require them to be implemented? What assurances can we get from our county government that Moody Family Housing won’t pollute our drinking water?

The above map is a detail from Lowndes County’s own Water Resource Protection Districts Ordinance (WRPDO) overlay Map. Here’s an even more detailed view courtesy VALOR GIS (turn on Streams and Waterbodies, NWI Wetlands, Muncipal Boundaries, and Groundwater Rechard Areas): 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 →

Mrs. Watkins says her 14-year-old daughter was charged with a felony at Pine Grove Middle School despite no evidence

Mrs. Watkins said a sheriff’s deputy used excessive force against her daughter and despite no evidence her daughter was charged with a felony. George Boston Rhynes asked:

If your child would have been been caught with what her child have experienced, wouldn’t you want somebody in Valdosta and Lowndes County and the state of Georgia and the state and the nation to know what had happened to your child?

According to Mrs. Watkins, between 11AM and noon on 14 May 2013 she Watkins was called by the principal of Pine Grove Middle School saying her daughter had assaulted her. When Mrs. Watkins got there Deputy Robert Adkins told her he was going to charge her daughter with several charges, even though he had no statement from anyone. When she got home, she found a facebook video of two children attacking her daughter, who wasn’t attacking anyone, and the teacher was never struck, which the deputy also confirmed he had not heard happened. Yet Mrs. Watkins said none of the other children were charged and her daughter was charged with a felony. See for yourself what she said, in a lot more detail:

Here’s the video: