A funny thing about my fifties...I starting caring about the environment in a way I never had before. My quest to learn about poisoned water bodies began with poor Mountain Creek Lake, which my parents warned me to stay away from, though I never knew why. When, on the Internet, I searched out the WHY, I was emotionally impacted almost like someone tricked or assaulted. The impact has stayed with me as I've found one place then another toxically plundered, trashed, and often abandoned for our kids and grandkids to breathe... or clean up; while earlier generations deal with cancer this pollution has caused.
So, I have learned much yet still have a host of questions about the way things went down with polluters, records, and remediation-if any.
Today I will share a few questions that come to mind at this stage of seeking.
*Why is reporting of toxic chemicals "voluntary" for companies?
How can EPA tell me an old industrial site in my neighborhood "just didn't report"?
*In a similar vein, how can the status of a site officially needing corrective action
be UNKNOWN? (The site I'm wondering about is only five miles from the downtown EPA office, for heavens sake.)
*Can EPA really get away with saying they don't have manpower to study every site?
*Do all industrial sites have the same threshold of release that necessitates reporting? Not all facilities are the same size. Some manufacture more product than others and have more equipment. Some are in residential areas, some located besides public water like creeks and lakes, others are not.
Seems many factors are involved in polluting communities besides just
"tons released."
For example, releasing a few gallons of benzene into Mt Creek Lake would be horrid, but to release it into a neighborhood creek that has a couple of inches of water and kids playing in the creek seems so much worse! Does EPA make distinctions in these cases?
Surely human exposure is or should be an important factor.
*Are the older facilities with a toxic history in Dallas just "water under the bridge"? These owners from the 50s, 60s, 70s did not have to report dioxins and have likely skipped town before the Superfund system could catch them. What happens to their poisoned land, often now in poor, crowded minority neighborhoods, and the sick people who lived next door to them? Can none of toxic crimes of these polluters now be proved? That's convenient for the wrongdoers.
These are pesky thoughts for today-perhaps future pertinent questions for EPA.
And every thought/question pretty much begins and ends with the citizens who bear or will bear in their bodies the remnant of our shared toxic history.
For me, it's a physical, intellectual, and spiritual battle to first care, then learn, then speak out..
If you know me, you will be quick to realize I have sometimes spoken before learning the right things...Keeps me very humble and heading back to my teachers and my trusty Internet classroom. Next, onward to the EPA record room...
Location: Dallas, Texas Topics: Dallas Naval Air Station, NWIRP, Mountain Creek Lake, oil and gas drilling, Oak Cliff industry and environment. WHY DOES OAK CLIFF HAVE TWICE THE BREAST CANCER RATE COMPARED TO THE REST OF TEXAS?
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FROM THE AIR!

Dallas Naval Air Station on MCL
B24 Bomber-1942- from DALLAS NAS


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Photos are from US Navy, Historical "Oak Cliff" web-site, Lake Cliff Park web-site, and Rose Mary Rumbley's lovely "Oak Cliff Tours" website, the Dallas Observer (Mt Creek Lake) and WFAA news. Thanks to all who promote and support Oak Cliff with such excellence, beauty, and affection.
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