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| By Jack Nichols
I didn't know until only a few minutes ago that there are cylinders which, if they were to explode, would spill killer toxic wastes into my peaceful neighborhood. My only comfort in this incompetent world of would-be Burger King employees is that there's reputed to be round-the-clock surveillance of these cylinders, namely some government watchpersons who patrol the poisonous site.
Now, knowing how raw truth makes it into the movies long before it dawns on city hall, I reflected, oddly, on yet another reason—in the wake of her HBO concert-- to praise Cher. She'd starred in Silkwood, after all, a film about toxic poisons ravaging the locale where she worked. We do read—with disturbing regularity—about toxic spills in other neighborhoods. But the spills—because they've happened elsewhere—seem—in mini-minds-- hardly worth worrying about. It is precisely this mindset—"It isn't happening to me and so it isn't happening"—that impels me to publish the web address of a site that may just bring some disturbing tidings to your door. You too may live next to a poisonous explosion just waiting to happen. It could be chemicals. It could be nuclear radiation. It could be even bombs.
Mom provides her son with the yardstick by which she measures what's really going on. She replies: "E.T. was fiction. This is real. This is on our coffee table." Thus, perhaps you'll wake to what is real and be moved to self-preservation upon finding those toxic hazards that hover over your own coffee table. A right-to-know group has published state-by-state executive summaries of the accident scenarios near you—scenarios that in some cases will make your cherished home seem less like a castle and more like a hazardous—what did Bette Davis call it?— dump. The Environmental Protection Agency had wisely intended to make citizens aware—coast to coast-- of the dangers that threaten U.S. neighborhoods. EPA stalwarts figured that a society boasting democratic safeguards has a right to know where—in its midst—safety is in short supply so that voters living near factories can prepare for toxic catastrophes. But the Congress of the United States—famed for its puerile investigations into citizens' sex lives—objects to letting those same citizens know where actual threats to their habitats exist. Rather than annoying the polluters--those rich corporations that line politicians' pockets with undue cash—rather than asking those companies to cease and desist—or to get out of Dodge, so to speak—our greedy "representatives" have chosen silence as a proper response to national dangers. The EPA compiled documents delineating local dangers for public consumption. But Congress—aided and abetted by the President--suspended the release of these scary documents for at least a year. They justified this suspension on the grounds that such knowledge could prove lethal in the hands of terrorists. In the meantime, one wonders, will the companies whose facilities pose dangers to our lives and limbs clean up their toxic mess threats? Our government regulators, after all, have detectors in airports to prevent unknown terrorists from importing chemical weapons and the like. But the fact that America sits atop a toxic waste dump courtesy of Big Business seems not to bother these government regulators one iota. But it bothers me. This threat, I've just discovered, is on my coffee table. Granted, the aforementioned site so opposed by Congress might actually provide terrorists with a ready-made map of sensitive U.S. targets. But such is less likely to happen if your county commission or your city regulators—embarrassed by the political ramifications of letting profiteering polluters run wild—are first forced by local voters to rid your area of these threatening targets altogether. Examine the threat to your neighborhood: www.rtk.net |
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