In this seventh part of our series reviewing John and Teresa Kerry's "This Moment on Earth," we take a look at how environmental pollution can strike painfully close to our own homes. When the first Earth Day was held on April 22nd, 1970, there were 20 million people around the country calling for action to stop the dumping of pollutants into our water and air. They were the cumulation of a groundswell created by Rachel Carson when she wrote her book, "Silent Spring." Shortly afterwards, the EPA was formed, as was the League of Conservation Voters, who influence the political process with their "Dirty Dozen" awards. The LCV was one of the more successful operations, with 11 out of the 15 targeted losing their bids for reelection or resigning.
But now, as John Kerry points out, the problem is no longer direct sources of pollution, like waste water dumping directly into rivers. The problem is now non-point sources, or sources that indirectly pollute our waterways and streams such as pesticides, gas, and oil. And one of the primary sources for that is CAFO's, or Confined Animal Feeding Operations.
There are 18,800 of these operations throughout the country. They produce 500 million tons of fecial waste per year. By way of comparison, in eastern North Carolina alone, their CAFO's produce more fecial waste that the entire human populations of NC, California, NY, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and North Dakota. Consequently, they are required to store them in lagoons. But that is only the beginning of the problem, as the nitrogen, phosphorus, ammonia, and bacterial odors can escape, meaning that they can be smelled from as many as seven miles away. A 3-acre lagoon can produce as many as one million gallons of fecial waste per week.
CAFO's prey on small towns and communities which are dying off and which are some of the poorest places to live and work in the country. They promise to be their saviors, promising economic development and jobs, something which is a shot in the arms for small communities. But the reality is that when they move in, land values go down and the economic drawbacks outweigh the advantages. After all, why do I want to live near a place which produces such a stink, making me a prisoner in my own home? Far from being an economic development tool, CAFO's are more often than not a death sentence for these communities.
CAFO's, according to statistics given by John Kerry, pollute 129,000 river miles, 3.2 million acres of waste, 2,800 estuarine square miles, and contaminate 60,000 square miles of fisheries. Excessive exposure from humans can lead to gastroenteritis, fever, kidney failure, and even death. And on top of that, these animals are fed tons of antibiotics, meaning that they contribute directly to the problem rampant in hospitals today of drug and anti-biotic-resistant viruses.
Kerry tells the story of Rick Dove, a fisherman who wanted to spend the rest of his life in the country. However, he began to notice sores and bleeding first on the fish he was catching, and then on himself and other people. People who were fishing in the Neuse River, in NC, were experiencing loss of consciousness and amnesia. All this cumulated in a one billion fish kill in 1991. And given the mentality prevailant in government of government being the problem and not the solution, they did not figure out that it was a neurotoxin, Pfiesteria Piscicida, until 1995.
These CAFO's not only pollute our air and our skies, they have the gall to call themselves "farmers." They classify themselves as such in order to skirt around state laws against their operation. Kerry quotes Rick Dove as follows:
"It was really an awful thing," Rick said. We didn't expect this because, thanks a lot to the work of the local Riverkeeper, we had succeeded in removing 98% of point source pollutants, like industrial pipes. But in the 1980's, when the hog industry got going in North Carolina everything changed very quickly, in a matter of just a few years. It was as if they were building cities of hogs. In a typical city, of course, you have to put in water and sewer lines and treatment plants, but even with 10 million hogs, that is not how those operations work. The industry calls themselves farmers and hold on to so-called farming practices, but it doesn't work that way. A lot of that fecial matter, full of antibiotics and pathogens, was going directly into the Neuse. It changed a lot of people's lives.
But hog farms are not the CAFO's out there. Yakima County, Washington has to deal with CAFO dairy farms, which are just as bad. Between the 1970's and the 1990's, corporate developers moved from California, which has strict environmental laws, to Washington, where the laws and the enforcement were a lot more lenient. As a result, in Yakima County alone, they generated 4 million pounds of fecial waste per day during their peak.
Kerry tells the story of Don and Helen Reddout, who were, in their own words, "prisoners in their own houses." They discovered people getting asthma from pathogens carried several miles as well as rising incidences of asthma and diarreha in residents. They traced the source of the odor they were smelling from ammonia being sprayed three miles away. To show you how serious ammonia is as a problem, we had to detour one time because an ammonia truck had wrecked a miles ahead and a whole town was evacuated. Yet, the arrogance of these CAFO producers is such that they want to control what goes into people's bodies as well as cling to the ethic of "Nobody tells me what to do!"
This sort of mentality has more in common with criminals than it does with rational thought. To be sure, there are CAFO producers who are conscientious about following the rules and making sure that area residents are never exposed to the odors. But people like that are an exception. The rule is that many more of these people believe, similar to criminals, that the world only revolves around them, that the world owes them something, and that everything is theirs for the taking.
The Reddouts discovered that their own well was poisoned by nitrates, pollutants which can cause Blue Baby Syndrome in infants and which can also cause 8th-week miscarriages. They also found a smoking gun when they found that contaminated water was going into ditches that were feeding the Yakima River.
They took photoes and took them to agencies, but these agencies denied responsibility for this problem. This is typical Republican mentality at work here; since government is the problem for these people, they probably felt that they were doing the Reddouts a favor by not getting involved. After all, if they were to get involved under their twisted ideology, they were simply making the problem worse.
They tried to form a group of nine people named CARE; however, six of their people quit after blackmail from the CAFO producers. But the Reddouts and CARE persevered and filed a lawsuit under the Clean Water Act in conjunction with a few other small groups in the state. The CWA allows for citizens to file a suit if they think that a corporation is violating the provisions of the Clean Water Act.
What they found was that Henry Bosma, one of the biggest producers in the area, had been operating for over 20 years without a permit; the fecial coliform bacteria in the immediate waters was over 20 times the legally allowed levels. They won a court judgement against him of $171,000 plus $428,000 in legal damages. They also obtained court settlements against three other large producers.
This is what right-wingers and Republicans really mean when they talk about "frivilous lawsuits." What they really mean is that they want to defend the right of people like Bosma to pollute your air and your waters with impunity and with no consequences for his actions.
This successful lawsuit against Bosma had significant impact well beyond the dollar amounts. The courts have since held that the provisions of the Clean Water Act apply to irrigation ditches as well as waterways. In addition, it led to changes within the EPA, as they have now developed rules requiring CAFO producers to have a Nurtient Management Plan. CAFO producers must now have plans for waste storage, surface waters, the disposal of dead animals, and manure applications.
Despite her Environmental Hero Award from the Washington Environmental Council in 2001, she does not consider herself an environmentalist. Kerry quotes her as follows:
"I wouldn't say that's what I am," she said. "I would never strap myself to a tree, or go to extremes to save something. All I know is that we are lucky to live on this Earth and we have a responsibility to take care of it. If we don't, it is not going to support us. And after thirteen years of this work, I won't say that I don't feel some burnout. People sometimes ask me why I keep going, and I say that if I don't keep going, some individuals will believe that they have a free hand at polluting, and I don't want to see the state of our land, or our air, or our water, if that happens. Someone has got to try and stop that."
A couple of weeks ago, I spoke with someone on our local health board about these issues. He is a born-again Christian and a Republican, yet he says that environmentalism is no longer a left- or right-wing issue. He serves on the local health board, which makes strict rules requiring CAFO's to monitor the air and the water. He says that people all over the political spectrum united to stop a bill that would have taken away the authority of the local health boards to regulate CAFO's. He is the sort of person who would vote Democratic if the right candidate were to come along, if they were to stand up for the people against the powerful. Our ability to attract such crossover support will be what wins or loses elections for us next year.
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