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In 1995, utility workers were digging in the AMCO Chemical site across the street from a children’s playground in the Oakland, CA neighborhood. Trails of vinyl chloride and other toxic chemicals were discovered in the soil at the AMCO property and in shallow groundwater across the street.
In February 1997, the EPA installed an incinerator to burn the vinyl chloride and falsely claimed the incinerator was only emitting salt and steam. Community scientists documented that the incinerator was actually emitting dioxin and vinyl chloride into the air. The Chester Street Block Club Association and Greenaction sued the EPA in July 1998 under Title VI, forcing the agency to shut down the incinerator.
In 1999, the EPA found vinyl chloride in the air and in soil gas at nearby homes and apologized to community residents. At this time, the EPA began collecting data on vinyl chloride contamination, and on September 29, 2003, the AMCO site was officially placed on the National Priority List, designating it a federal Superfund site.
Although a victory for the community, the 2006 Bush budget proposes to cut EPA funding for water quality programs in California by $45 million, and a major victim of the cuts to environmental programs is the EPA’s Superfund program. The Superfund program will suffer an $82 million cut below last year’s appropriation, and the pace of the Superfund cleanup has already slowed significantly in the past year because the Bush administration has disarmed the ability of the Superfund program to collect polluter pay fees.
For neighborhoods like West Oakland, cuts to the environmental programs will be especially affecting. West Oakland has an alarming incidence of both childhood and adult asthma, which has been contributed to by the large numbers of diesel truck that back up in the West Oakland neighborhood on the way to the Port of Oakland. Diesel reduction has been identified by research to be the number one community health issue. The West Oakland residents face dangerous amounts of diesel soot in the air, with studies showing the average diesel soot emitted per square mile in West Oakland is almost 15 tons per year compared to 0.8 tons per square mile per year in San Francisco.
In a prepared statement, Congresswoman Barbara Lee identified environmental issues as deeply intertwined with questions of human health and basic justice. Just like vinyl chloride, exposure to the chemicals in diesel can cause cancer, as well as harm the reproductive organs and aggravate or provoke asthma. Children in West Oakland are seven times more likely to be hospitalized for asthma than the average child in California. Lee said can toxic waste be cleaned up and environmental injustices reduced “only with the proper funding and a steady commitment from governments and individuals at the local, state and federal levels”.
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