Tag 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.

-jsq

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: