1:30pm est: Jordan Chariton interviews David Benac, a Kalamazoo resident, about the toxic gases sickening poor Black, and now white, residents due to multi-billion dollar company Graphic Packaging
Because the Dems have the governor, the lt governor, the secretary of state, the attorney general, the state house and state senate, and both U.S. senators and most of the U.S. reps. That's how they can get away without changing a single person in the DEQ/DEGLE even after the Flint disaster that is ongoing. Michigan has always been an industrial state, having 2 world renowned pharmaceutical companies at one time, the big 4 auto companies and associated industries, Whirlpool,, Thomas Edison's electric company, and agriculture (which is really an industry anymore). It was until the latter part of the 90's the vacation playground of the industrial royalty. The race riots in the 60's gutted Detroit because the wealthy industrialists left for the burbs and never looked back. There are three large universities and many smaller ones, where the communities are quite liberal and wealthy. They would not put up for this type of thing, but because of their affluence, they are able to simply move away from the issue and so it barely comes to mind. There is very little sense of community in the university communities - grad students move on, medical residents move up and out, as do professors. So there is no long-term community memory or even awareness of community environmental disasters. Michigan used to have some worthy print newspapers around the state that kept us together and informed, but now we just have online mLive throughout most of the state, so we hear about car accidents, fires, a few murders, divorce stories, pancake suppers and 5k runs for charity. Nobody has any awareness any more, so no community action can gather around an issue. Ann Arbor has since the 80's had a dioxane disaster that was discovered by a grad student doing his biology research on the university wetlands. Dioxane had been injected into the groundwater by a specialty filters company on the outskirts of town near the biology wetlands, and was poisoning residential wells. The company denied they were responsible for years in court. They sold themselves to a Long Island company after many years, when it was discovered that the dioxane plume had entered the aquifer and was seeping to the Huron River, the source of water for many communities in SE Michigan. They made test wells throughout the city, to measure the rate of seepage. They also advised that in addition to closing one of the city wells, they adivsed parents not to let children play in the one park were there was a well, or walk their dogs - apparently the aquifer was very close to the surface in that area. They then sold themselves to the large multi-national chemical company, the king kong of the state. Who has an endless supply of lawyers and deep pockets, and despite the continued seepage, have tied the situation up in court, put everybody on gag orders so nobody knows about it anymore. In the late 90's early 2000;s the Ann Arbor News had a wonderful series of articles on the situation, that was nominated for a Pulitzer. Two years later the Ann Arbor News shut down, having been in business for over 100 years, and that was when the mLive thing came into the picture. The Kalamazoo River had one of the largest in-land oil pipeline leaks/ spills in history of the country by Enron pipeline breaking. Resulting in community iheadaches, nausea, respiratory, huge die-off of animal life. https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2020/12/10-years-after-oil-spill-kalamazoo-river-michigan/ has a good synopsis. The problem being that pipeline companies are allowed to do their own inspections. Enron is the star of another Michigan environmental disaster, and is currently - for the past nearly 10 years - ignoring stubborn litigants over their "Line 5" pipeline protests. Line 5 comes from Canada under the dicey currents where the upper peninsula and lower peninsula of Michigan and the upper Great Lakes. Enron's 70-year old pipeline, which has already leaked many times, iolates tribal treaty rights and poses catastrophic risks to the drinking water for 40 million people and one-fifth of the world's surface freshwater. Yard signs and Sierra Club and Oil and Water Don't Mix demonstrations around the state, yet Governor Whitner has not been able to bring that one to heel. They're still doing business as usual. Of course the Flint water situation, which you already mentioned. Most recently, Ann Arbor is the scene of another poisoning of water, caused by an automotive supplier company dumping hexavalent chromium into a tributary of the Huron River for the second time in four years (in 2022) massive release of industrial contamination into the Huron River, according to Michigan environmental regulators. They received a warning.
At least as far as I can see, the dems of this state anyway seem to view their role as a bit of a boondoggle. I can think of no other reason why they would have such a majority of legislative and executive power and still be unable to make things happen. Either that, or the industrial complex of this country have become so wealthy and powerful that they no long need to care what happens to others, and certainly not legislators or EPA-type little people of the world.
I blame it all on the loss of community newspapers with real reporters. To illustrate. I close with a bit of humor https://youtu.be/ZggCipbiHwE
Because the Dems have the governor, the lt governor, the secretary of state, the attorney general, the state house and state senate, and both U.S. senators and most of the U.S. reps. That's how they can get away without changing a single person in the DEQ/DEGLE even after the Flint disaster that is ongoing. Michigan has always been an industrial state, having 2 world renowned pharmaceutical companies at one time, the big 4 auto companies and associated industries, Whirlpool,, Thomas Edison's electric company, and agriculture (which is really an industry anymore). It was until the latter part of the 90's the vacation playground of the industrial royalty. The race riots in the 60's gutted Detroit because the wealthy industrialists left for the burbs and never looked back. There are three large universities and many smaller ones, where the communities are quite liberal and wealthy. They would not put up for this type of thing, but because of their affluence, they are able to simply move away from the issue and so it barely comes to mind. There is very little sense of community in the university communities - grad students move on, medical residents move up and out, as do professors. So there is no long-term community memory or even awareness of community environmental disasters. Michigan used to have some worthy print newspapers around the state that kept us together and informed, but now we just have online mLive throughout most of the state, so we hear about car accidents, fires, a few murders, divorce stories, pancake suppers and 5k runs for charity. Nobody has any awareness any more, so no community action can gather around an issue. Ann Arbor has since the 80's had a dioxane disaster that was discovered by a grad student doing his biology research on the university wetlands. Dioxane had been injected into the groundwater by a specialty filters company on the outskirts of town near the biology wetlands, and was poisoning residential wells. The company denied they were responsible for years in court. They sold themselves to a Long Island company after many years, when it was discovered that the dioxane plume had entered the aquifer and was seeping to the Huron River, the source of water for many communities in SE Michigan. They made test wells throughout the city, to measure the rate of seepage. They also advised that in addition to closing one of the city wells, they adivsed parents not to let children play in the one park were there was a well, or walk their dogs - apparently the aquifer was very close to the surface in that area. They then sold themselves to the large multi-national chemical company, the king kong of the state. Who has an endless supply of lawyers and deep pockets, and despite the continued seepage, have tied the situation up in court, put everybody on gag orders so nobody knows about it anymore. In the late 90's early 2000;s the Ann Arbor News had a wonderful series of articles on the situation, that was nominated for a Pulitzer. Two years later the Ann Arbor News shut down, having been in business for over 100 years, and that was when the mLive thing came into the picture. The Kalamazoo River had one of the largest in-land oil pipeline leaks/ spills in history of the country by Enron pipeline breaking. Resulting in community iheadaches, nausea, respiratory, huge die-off of animal life. https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2020/12/10-years-after-oil-spill-kalamazoo-river-michigan/ has a good synopsis. The problem being that pipeline companies are allowed to do their own inspections. Enron is the star of another Michigan environmental disaster, and is currently - for the past nearly 10 years - ignoring stubborn litigants over their "Line 5" pipeline protests. Line 5 comes from Canada under the dicey currents where the upper peninsula and lower peninsula of Michigan and the upper Great Lakes. Enron's 70-year old pipeline, which has already leaked many times, iolates tribal treaty rights and poses catastrophic risks to the drinking water for 40 million people and one-fifth of the world's surface freshwater. Yard signs and Sierra Club and Oil and Water Don't Mix demonstrations around the state, yet Governor Whitner has not been able to bring that one to heel. They're still doing business as usual. Of course the Flint water situation, which you already mentioned. Most recently, Ann Arbor is the scene of another poisoning of water, caused by an automotive supplier company dumping hexavalent chromium into a tributary of the Huron River for the second time in four years (in 2022) massive release of industrial contamination into the Huron River, according to Michigan environmental regulators. They received a warning.
At least as far as I can see, the dems of this state anyway seem to view their role as a bit of a boondoggle. I can think of no other reason why they would have such a majority of legislative and executive power and still be unable to make things happen. Either that, or the industrial complex of this country have become so wealthy and powerful that they no long need to care what happens to others, and certainly not legislators or EPA-type little people of the world.
I blame it all on the loss of community newspapers with real reporters. To illustrate. I close with a bit of humor https://youtu.be/ZggCipbiHwE