Friday, May 30, 2014

What YOU Can DO to HELP RIGHT NOW!

 Time was, when the odds were stacked against us, Americans rose to the occasion and stood up in defense of the everyday, ordinary person who makes this country tick from the inside. That time has come now and the people who need YOU are the children who live around the Radford Army Ammunition Plant in the Appalachian mountains of southwestern Virginia ~ the New River Valley.
This is YOU, JANE Q. CITIZEN 
speaking up 
for people who need 
the power of your voice. 

Please, take a minute now to send an email directly to the Virginia DEQ

Here's what to do: Environmental Patriots of the New River Valley was notified by the Virginia DEQ late on May 30th that they have decided NOT to take action on our request to extend the public comment deadline for HWMU 5 & 16 by sixty days, through August 22, 2014 because 

they are awaiting 
MORE PUBLIC INPUT!!! 

So, please send an email TODAY to the DEQ simply stating:

"Please extend the public comment period for the proposed closure action on Hazardous Waste Management Units - HWMU 5 & 16 at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant (RAAP) through August 22, 2014 to give stakeholders a time for a full and fair opportunity to understand this major permit change." 

That's it -all you need to say! Use Radford HWMU 5 & 16 as the subject. This is an EPA Federal Facility which straddles the 
American Heritage designated New River, a national treasure.

This is the business of all Americans who are owners of the Federal Land on which this privately operated, British manufacturer - BAE Systems operates. So, send an email today as matter of civic duty!

Please include your name and complete address and EMAIL TODAY (don't' wait for Monday or a few minutes from now, please do it now!) 

 Veterans are especially encouraged 
to participate and self identify! 

Please send YOUR email to:

russell.mcavoy@deq.virginia.gov   

AND 

ann.regn@deq.virginia.gov

they are the permit writer and Director of Public Information and Outreach for the Virginia DEQ, respectively. 


People often say they feel powerless in the face of so much bad ______ news. Insert your horror story of the day, be it a mass shooting, flooding, fire, water shortage, mudslide - someone being swallowed up by a sinkhole, even - it's not hard to see why giving up and giving in is the choice of first, rather than last resort for so many citizens.  What's more unsettling is when that sort of glassy-eyed fear and retreat paralyzes people who find nothing "worth" fighting for anymore. Join this good fight for justice, clean air & water for someone else's children because one day, they may be your own.

THANK YOU FOR TAKING THIS SIMPLE, 
 VERY POWERFUL ACTION!


Monday, May 26, 2014

Watch That Hand Behind Their Back

It never ceases to be amaze me -  but the lengths that the "powers that be" will go to in their work to obfuscate and distort the truth about the Radford Army Ammunition Plant and the toxic load they dump on us daily, is simply stunning at times.

The public hearing being held June 4th is a perfect example. The Virginia DEQ's notification of this hearing reaches a new low in their dirty work, which is truly saying something. There are laws dictating how the public is to be informed about and included in public hearings on permit actions that effect their community. These are laws that public employees are breaking at their own peril in addition to implicating the private contractors employed at RAAP. The people who are supposed to be notified about PUBLIC HEARINGS are called STAKEHOLDERS because they hold the stake that the Virginia DEQ is about to drive into the bodies of every child, person and animal living here around the plant. Stakeholders are US -WE THE PEOPLE who will have to live with the decisions being made about about the hazardous (as in toxic, poisonous, disease causing deadly excrement) waste created at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant (RAAP).

Recall that RAAP was constructed with considerable haste atop Karst, which provides a sort of stealth septic system for contaminants to disappear into drinking water wells near and far, as well as into the New River. The EPA has long advised pubic and private entities against locating hazardous waste production or disposal atop Karst, but one might imagine the implications of this practice were not entirely clear in 1940, when the private lands straddling the New River as it divides Pulaski from Montgomery Counties in southwestern Virginia, were bought up by the Federal government. The implications of contaminating a precious Karst aquifer are certainly documented now and have been for a long time, as noted in this scientifically rigorous article on reliable contaminant monitoring in Karst that was published in 1986. One can hope that the caves and sinkholes known to exist on this land were not a factor that either resulted in a lower buying price for farmers to sell their land to the Feds, nor a "bonus" for the private company, Hercules Chemical who hired the contractor to construct the plant with an eye towards future profits. This government-private contractor relationship, originally forged to construct and operate ammunition plants in a hurry to "ramp up"production for WWII,  is known as as GO/CO or government owned/corporately operated Federal Facility. (see previous posts)

Back to the injustice at hand….Why is there a public hearing set for June 4th, 2014at the ever-so-odd starting time of 7:45 pmwhich will follow the informational part of the hearing from 7 - 7:30?  This is supposedly an action relevant and important to those people in the Central Office Region as the second link shows, rather than the Blue Ridge Region where the polluter is located and actually doing the polluting. Why is information about this meeting so invisible and unreported by any media outlet here? If you know you are in VADEQ's Blue Ridge Region or use their "region filters" as suggested, you will not find out that there is an important upcoming public hearing to discuss the Virginia DEQ's plan to allow RAAP to "close out" two sites where toxic waste has stewed underground for decades. Now, why would the website where VADEQ Public hearings by are announced to the public categorize this meeting taking place under the wrong region and fail to even mention that people can come learn about the permit action from 7 - 7:30, as is duly noted on a separate web site for public meetings in Virignia? (the first link) Just another one of those peas under a shell that keeps STAKEHOLDERS from having the facts they need in order to discover the ugly, toxic truth. Well, we're onto you, VADEQ!


PLEASE COME TO THE MEETING TO LEARN ABOUT WHAT'S IN THE GROUNDWATER (GW) that MAY BE MIGRATING into a water source supplying YOUR HOME! Many of the toxins in the GW at RAAP are not tested for under the 
Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)
 including perchlorate (rocket fuel)

 EQUALLY, if not more IMPORTANT, 
if you have a well or drink water that may just be contaminated by the toxic wastes at RAAP, SUBMITTING WRITTEN COMMENTS to the VADEQ on this permit action GIVES YOU LEGAL STANDING IN ANY POTENTIAL  LAW SUIT for damages resulting from these permits which allow for
 "imminent and substantial endangerment to 
human health and the environment." 
RCRA statues 7002 & 7003


The poisons are not gone from the groundwater at these sites they are proposing to "close," no, far from it actually, but that's one of the "bugaboos" of EPA Region 3 having handed off some of the most contaminated sites for remediation under RAAP's Unique RCRA permit to the Commonwealth of Virginia, who has demonstrated what some would call a criminal  lack of due diligence in permit writing and enforcement since the VADEQ took over. 

This opinion is born out in the VADEG permit written by employee Russell McAvoy for the
Open Burning Ground on the banks of the New River  which violates the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and the conditions of their RCRA permit (as is clear from the four-day-long Multi-Media Inspection that EPA conducted at the facility from May 16 - 20, 2011.
{{{Thanks to the work of conscientious citizens, this inspection report and all the photos therein will be available for us to easily share per the FOIA fee waiver extended to our group very soon!}}}  Yes, even the open burning of "too much" chromium to our air on two separate occasions at the OBG in the last couple of years has not phased the VADEQ employees with power over our air quality. The letter of April 25, 2012 [reference RFAAP letter # 11-815-115 dated August 22, 2011 and # 12-815-27 February 17, 2012] sent to Elizabeth A. Lohman of the Virginia DEQ from Paige Holt, PhD, Environmental Manager of Alliant Techsystems (ATK), Inc. (ATK is the corporation profiting from running RAAP from 1995 until July 1st of 2012) states that "Both exceedances were caused by human error." Is that justification for their decision that there would be no public notification of this toxic assault and it never became an actual violation with associated fines or required notification to the EPA, but instead resulted in a mere warning letter from VADEQ. More background on the FUBAR situation at the OBG is in my blog post of September 9, 2013 "Little Things Mean A Lot."

So, word to the wise, watch that hand behind their backs because it ain't flowers they're bringing to your door!

Monday, May 12, 2014

Fourth Estate Steps In at Radford Army Ammunition Plant

The latest BAE Systems/U.S. Army meeting on May 8th, 2014 was another example of the hubris and callous disregard afforded to our Appalachian community in Southwestern Virginia - the New River Valley. Representatives of the U.S. Army's Joint Munitions Command had the gall to tell assembled concerned citizens that ambient air quality monitoring in the "fall out zone" for the Open Air Burning Ground was not an accurate way to gage our exposure. Rob Davie's exact words were, "It's the lease accurate way to determine what is happening…Ambient air quality monitoring is suspect." Really? What's suspect here is how this EPA designated Federal Facility is being allowed to poison the surrounding community without any oversight. Perhaps this story in the Washington Post has something to do with their ability to "cloak" the truth…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/05/07/hearing-inspector-general-to-accuse-epa-of-blocking-investigations/

At long last, a local NEWS station has taken the time to research - yes, do investigative journalism - about what the heck is going on at the Radford Arsenal. PLEASE MAKE TIME TO WATCH WDBJ7 at 6PM on Monday MAY 12th for a peak under the curtain. Congressman Morgan Griffith, who sits on House Committees with responsibility for oversight of EPA RCRA facilities will explain his inaction….