West Virginia, The American Bhopal
Attending graduate school in West Virginia, there were two types of folks in the state.
To some it was "Almost Heaven" as in the John Denver's "Country Roads".
To others, Charleston WV was the country's armpit, Morgantown WV was a hole above ground and the coal companies were hell bent on blowing up mountain tops to make mining easier.
There were and still are lots of places in West Virginia where jobs are scarce, the coal mines have closed.
Lot's of my classmates wanted an education so that they could get out of the place. Others wanted an education and work in government because the checks were regular and sooner rather than later they would be big fish in a relatively small pond. We were all training to be department heads or lawyers.
I saw rural poverty doing field work that no amount of professional public administration was likely to change.
For folks living in the Charleston area the worry about the water supply and runoff from factories was about as constant as the worries generated by the potential for major fires at the large industrial plants owned by Union Carbide, Du Pont and other chemical companies.
The immediate disaster will pass but there will be thousands of folks wondering what the long term effects will be. And there will be long term effects.
To some it was "Almost Heaven" as in the John Denver's "Country Roads".
To others, Charleston WV was the country's armpit, Morgantown WV was a hole above ground and the coal companies were hell bent on blowing up mountain tops to make mining easier.
There were and still are lots of places in West Virginia where jobs are scarce, the coal mines have closed.
Lot's of my classmates wanted an education so that they could get out of the place. Others wanted an education and work in government because the checks were regular and sooner rather than later they would be big fish in a relatively small pond. We were all training to be department heads or lawyers.
I saw rural poverty doing field work that no amount of professional public administration was likely to change.
For folks living in the Charleston area the worry about the water supply and runoff from factories was about as constant as the worries generated by the potential for major fires at the large industrial plants owned by Union Carbide, Du Pont and other chemical companies.
The immediate disaster will pass but there will be thousands of folks wondering what the long term effects will be. And there will be long term effects.
You don't have to go to West Virginia. There is plenty of Bhopal right in Florida:
ReplyDeleteAl's Radiator Shop, Lake Wales
B&B Enterprises, Century, Escambia County
Barker Chemical Site, Inglis, Levy County
BCX Tank Site, Jacksonville
Broken Sound Anthrax, Boca Raton
Channelside Drive Spill, Tampa
Deland Leasing Drum Site, Deland
East 23rd Battery Avenue Site, Tampa
Ellman Battery Site, Orlando
Fairfax St Wood Treater, Jacksonville
Florida East Coast Railway HCI Spill, Palm Coast
Formost Fertilizer, Leesburg
Harner Mercury, Titusville
Jernigan Trucking Dump, Seffner, Hillsborough County
Lexington Ave Mercury, Pensacola
Margate Mercury Release, Margate
Moss Soap and Chemical Enforcement, Miami
Liquid Caustic Transfer Spill, St. Marks
Regency Artistic Metals, Holiday
Sitka St Mercury Spill, Tampa
Tampa Pipeline Company Ammonia Spill, Riferview, Hillsborough County
West Port High School Mercury, Ocala
Wooven Wood, Marianna, Jackson County
I'm positive there are lots of EPA superfund sites that need cleaning. Miami has had to close two parks that have been contaminated with heavy metals. One of the scarier part of this story is that the chemical used to "clean" coal isn't on any list of chemicals that needed to be monitored. A few blocks south of my house a dry cleaner that went out of business required a lot of money for a clean up. Who pays for the clean up is an interesting question. The folks that live in the area, the business, the state or the federal government are all stake holders. While working for the county I tried to get folks to work in "brownfield" areas. The expense of doing this dragged down the effort and it was abandoned.
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