[CPEO-BIF] DePue, Illinois

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Why Are Companies Allowed to Delay Cleanup of Toxic Superfund Sites?

By Nancy Loeb
Truthout 
November 28, 2015 


Gabrielle Garcia is a 15-year-old who has lived her entire life in DePue, Illinois. She is one of 500 children in her community who face health risks, including cancers and impaired intellectual abilities, due to the fact that the companies responsible for massive contamination in her village - Exxon Mobil and CBS/Viacom - have delayed the cleanup of their toxic waste.

Visitors to DePue are greeted by a slag pile weighing about 750,000 tons that the residents refer to as the "pile of black death." A zinc smelter began operations in DePue in 1903, burning raw zinc for conversion to rolled zinc for use in automobiles. When it ceased operations in the 1980s, the smelter left behind a blanket of heavy metals, including zinc, arsenic, lead, mercury and cadmium throughout the village, affecting DePue's 1,900 residents.

The heavy metals contamination covers the yards of residents' homes, the gardens where they grow vegetables, the ball fields and parks where children play, and even the grounds of the village schools. The smelter also released contaminated water through a ditch directly into Lake DePue, and layers of soil mixed with heavy metals render the lake unusable for swimming and largely devoid of fish.

I

…

For the entire column, see
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/33784-why-are-companies-allowed-to-delay-cleanup-of-toxic-superfund-sites

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650-961-8918 or 650-969-1545
Fax: 650-961-8918
LSiegel@cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org

_______________________________________________
Brownfields mailing list
Brownfields@lists.cpeo.org
http://lists.cpeo.org/listinfo.cgi/brownfields-cpeo.org