Sierra Club Profiles Corinna at Risk
WASHINGTON, Sept. 19, 2002–The Sierra Club released a report Thursday stating that Corinna is one of 25 communities across the country left at environmental risk by
Bush administration policies.
The soil in Corinna’s Eastland Woolen Mill remains heavily contaminated from
wool-dyeing chemicals, according to an Environmental Protection Agency
analysis.At a press conference in Boston, the environmental group released
its report, “Leaving Our Communities At Risk,” which profiles communities
where, according to the report, the Bush administration is jeopardizing
family health and safety by not continuing funding for environmental cleanup.
“America’s clean air, clean water and toxic cleanup protections have led to
three decades of environmental progress,” Sierra Club legislative director
Debbie Sease said in a press release. “Now the Bush Administration is making
policy changes that are putting the health and safety of Massachusetts and
all New England families and communities at risk.”
“Corinna was on track to be clean by 2004,” said Heather Cameron of the Maine
Sierra Club chapter. “Now that’s no longer the case if they don’t get the
funding they need.”
Introduced in 1980, the Superfund program has been financed by a corporate
environmental income tax and by a tax on oil and chemical companies, known as
the “polluter pays” tax. These taxes, signed into law in 1986 by President
Ronald Reagan, prevent shifting the cleanup burden to taxpayers. But
according to the Sierra Club, although Congress hasn’t reinstated the
“polluter pays” tax since it lapsed in 1995, President Bush is the first
president to oppose the tax.
Since the EPA added Corinna to the list of hazardous sites in July 1999, $36
million in federal funds has been spent on cleanup actions there. An
estimated $7 million more is needed to complete the job. In the current
fiscal year, Corinna received only $5 million, less than half of the $12
million lawmakers had requested.
Judith Doore, Corinna town manager, said she hasn’t seen anything to indicate
that more funding is on the way.
“It would be devastating if the town isn’t cleaned up,” she said. “We have no
community, no village, because it’s gone. All that contamination just sits
on the area waiting to be rebuilt.”
Even with less funding, Alice Kaufman, spokeswoman for the New England region
of the EPA, says the EPA is still continuing to make progress in Corinna.
“Maybe we’re not moving as quickly as we’d like, but we’re not stopping,”
Kaufman said in regard to the Corinna project. The national EPA was not
available for comment.
In a letter written in April to EPA administrator Christie Whitman,
Republican U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine asked for full funding to
complete the Superfund cleanup effort in Corinna.
Snowe remains committed to getting full funding, spokesman Dave Lackey said
on Thursday. He said she thinks it’s crucial that Corinna be cleaned up soon,
adding that a delay is unacceptable because current conditions are hazardous
to surrounding populations.
The Sierra Club’s press conference in Boston Thursday was designed to raise
public awareness and push lawmakers into appropriating more funding for the
EPA’s Superfund efforts. Several appropriations bills are currently being
considered by Congress, which is expected to adjourn in mid-October to allow
many lawmakers to go back home to campaign for re-election. Whether those
bills get voted on before lawmakers leave is uncertain.
Jessica Frohman, national conservation organizer for the Sierra Club’s
Environmental Quality Program, hopes Thursday’s report serves as an
educational message for all congressional members about what’s going on in
their own communities.
“Corinna doesn’t have several million dollars to clean it up on their own,”
she said. “They need Superfund and the EPA. Otherwise they’ll be living in a
toxic waste yard.”
Published in The Bangor Daily News, in Maine.
