The Nuclear Waste Conundrum 50,000 Tons Without a Home
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CLEAN WATER • STRONG COMMUNITIES • CITIZEN AcTION WATERKEEPER WATERKEEPER® Volume 3, Number Volume 2 President RFK, Jr. The Waterkeeper Movement Erin Brockovich Fall Fall 2006 Fall 2006 $5.95 Out Of Environmental Adolescence Harvey Wasserman Solartopia Paul Mitchell salon hair care products proudly supports Waterkeeper. cruelty free environmentally friendly Only in salons and Paul Mitchell schools. www.paulmitchell.com $)'').')4/.4(%"!.+3/&4(%#/,/2!$/ 4EVAMEANS.ATUREANDOURHANDSYMBOLIZES&RIENDSHIPWITH7ATER 4EVAISAPROUDSUPPORTEROF7ATERKEEPER!LLIANCE &RIENDSHIPWITH7ATERKEEPERS 4(%/2)').!,30/243!.$!,4(%&5452%/&/54$//2&//47%!2 0)#452%$!7.+)3( 490%'!29(/534/. ¹4%6!7774%6!#/- WATERKEEPER Volume 3 Number 2, Fall 2006 14 6 Letter from the President: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 10 Splashback 12 Ripples 20 Saving Puerto Rico’s Northeast Ecological Corridor 22 Turning the Tide on the Blackwater and Nottoway 25 25 Out of Environmental Adolescence: Erin Brochovich 26 Atomic Power’s Achilles Heel - Nuclear Energy From The Watershed Perspective 28 Invisible Poisons 37 Uranium Mining on Navajo Land 38 Wasting Utah 33 41 Nuclear Canada’s Great Lake Legacy 44 Downwinders 48 Nuclear Legacy, Nuclear Future on the Savannah 50 Nuclear Waste Connundrum 51 The Way Forward 52 Reenergizing the 21st Century 54 Solartopia - Our Green-Powered Earth: Circa A.D. 2030 46 56 8th Annual Waterkeeper Alliance Conference 58 Ganymede: Sacred Origine 60 Stormwater Takes Center Stage At StormCon 2006 62 Waterkeeper’s Wake: Chapter Four, Out On His Own 52 63 Farr on Film: Films Alfoat, Off International Shores 64 On the Water, Gary Crandall 66 Beating Around the Bush 56 Waterkeeper Magazine Fall 2006 www.waterkeeper.org Letter from the President Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The Waterkeeper Movement From the creation of our movement in 1966, Waterkeepers have known that there’s no more important human or civil right than the right to a clean environment. nvironmental injury is an offense clude oceans, lakes, flowing rivers, aqui- cause we understand that nature is the against a basic human right and the fers, fisheries, wandering animals, parks infrastructure of our communities. If we Einjury always lands hardest on the and public spaces. All are held in trust by want to meet our obligation as a genera- backs of the poor. Four out of every five the government for the people. They help tion, a nation and a civilization to provide toxic waste dump sites in America are in define us as a community, they under- our children with the same opportunities a black neighborhood. The nation’s larg- pin our economy and culture and are the for dignity and enrichment as our parents est toxic waste dump is in Emelle, Ala- source of economic vitality. The first sign gave us, we must start by protecting our bama where 90 percent of the residents of tyranny is government’s complicity in infrastructure: the air we breathe, the wa- are black. The highest concentrations of privatizing the commons for private gain. ter we drink, the wildlife, the public lands toxic waste dumps in America are on the Since the public trust is our community’s that enrich us and connect us to our past South Side of Chicago. The most con- life support system, its theft is arguably and to our history, provide context to our taminated zip code in California is East the gravest threat to human rights. communities and are the source ultimate- Los Angeles, and so on and so on. Why? The fundamental responsibility of gov- ly of our values, our virtues and our char- Because polluting industries go where ernment is to protect the commons on be- acter as a people. they can most easily dominate the local half of all the people. The best measure of For those of you who are not familiar political landscape. how a democracy functions is how it dis- with the Waterkeeper movement, let me Public trust assets—or commons—are tributes the goods of the land. Does it keep tell you a little bit of history. Hudson River- those resources that are not readily re- the public trust assets, the commons, in keeper was established in 1966 by blue-col- duced to private property and by their the hands of all the people, rich and poor lar commercial and recreational fisherman nature belong to the community. They in- alike, or does it allow them to be privatized who mobilized to reclaim the Hudson and concentrated in the hands of a few River from polluters. The Hudson is home wealthy or influential individuals? to a 350 year old commercial fishery, one This struggle for control of the com- of the oldest in North America. Many of Pollution is theft. The mons defines the Waterkeeper move- our members come from families that polluter is stealing ment. We recognize that we’re not pro- have been fishing the Hudson continuously tecting these waterways for nature, the since Dutch colonial times. They use the property from the public. fishes or the birds. We protect them be- same traditional methods taught by Algon- Waterkeeper Magazine Fall 2006 www.waterkeeper.org quin Indians to the original Dutch settlers the Army Corps of Engineers Colonel in Waterkeeper Magazine of New Amsterdam and then passed down Manhattan begging him to do his job and through the generations. shut down that Penn Central pipe. Final- tells the stories of our 156 One of the enclaves of the Hudson’s ly, the Colonel told them in exasperation, local Waterkeepers on six commercial fishing is Crotonville, New “these [the Penn Central board of direc- York, a little village 30 miles north of tors] are important people, we can’t treat continents fighting for New York City on the east bank of the them this way.” In other words, ‘we can’t clean water and strong river. Crotonville’s residents were not force them to obey the law.’ prototypical affluent environmentalists; By March 18, 1966 virtually everybody communities. they were factory workers, carpenters, in Crotonville had come to the conclusion laborers and electricians. Many made that government was in cahoots with the their living, or at least some part of it, polluters. The only way they were going under the 19th century statute. They shut fishing or crabbing the Hudson. Most to reclaim the river was to confront the down the Penn Central Pipe. They used had little expectation that they would polluters directly. Somebody suggested the money that was left over to go after ever see Yellowstone, or Yosemite or that they put a match to the oil slick com- Ciba-Geigy, Standard Brands and Ameri- the Everglades. For them, the environ- ing out of the Penn Central pipe. Some- can Cyanide, many of the biggest corpo- ment was their backyard—the bathing body said they should jam a mattress up rations in America. One after the other beaches, swimming and fishing holes of the pipe and flood the rail yard with its they shut those polluters down. In 1973, the Hudson River. Richie Garrett, the own waste. Someone else suggested float- they collected the highest penalty in Unit- first president of Riverkeeper, used to say ing a raft of dynamite into the intake of ed States history against a corporate pol- about the Hudson, “It’s our Riviera, it’s the Indian Point Power Plant, which was luter; $200,000 from Anaconda Wire and our Monte Carlo.” Richie Garrett was a sucking in and killing close to a million Cable for dumping toxics into the river gravedigger from Ossining, NY. He often fish each day and taking food off their in Hastings, N.Y. They used the bounty told his followers, “I’ll be the last to let family’s tables. money to build a boat and hire a commer- you down.” Then another marine took the micro- cial fisherman, John Cronin, as the first In 1966, Penn Central railroad began phone. Bob Boyle was the outdoor editor full-time paid Riverkeeper. In 1984 John vomiting oil from a four-and-a-half foot of Sports Illustrated magazine. He was Cronin hired me using bounty money to pipe in a Croton-Harmon rail yard. The a world famous angler and the author be Riverkeeper’s prosecuting attorney. oil blackened the beaches and made the of several books on recreational fishing. Since then we’ve brought 400 success- shad taste of diesel, leaving them unsale- Two years earlier he had written an article ful lawsuits against environmental pol- able at New York City’s fish market. In for Sports Illustrated about angling in the luters on the Hudson and we’ve forced response, the people of Crotonville gath- Hudson. His research had brought him polluters to spend almost $4 billon on ered in the only public building in the across a federal Navigation Statue called remediation. The Hudson today is an in- town, the Parker-Bale American Legion the Rivers and Harbors Act, a law from ternational model for ecosystem protec- Hall. This was a very patriotic commu- 1888 which made it illegal to pollute any tion. This river, a national joke in 1966 is nity; Crotonville had the highest mortal- waterway in the United States and pro- today the richest water body in the North ity rate of any community in America vided for high penalties. Surprisingly, the Atlantic. It produces more pounds of fish in World War II. Like Richie Garrett, a law included a bounty provision allow- per acre, more biomass per gallon, than Korean War vet, almost all the original ing anybody who turned in a polluter to any other waterway in the Atlantic Ocean founders, board members and officers of keep half the fine. Boyle had sent a copy north of the equator.