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Sweetheart Deal Allows Monsanto Off Hook for Cleanup
In fact, the community of west Anniston has "the highest levels of the banned industrial coolants in their blood ever registered in a residential community."(2) For decades, Monsanto hid the dangers of its PCB pollution from its neighbors. Now the Bush administration is giving Monsanto a sweetheart deal that leaves Anniston residents without the cleanup they deserve. Anniston is home to one of only two sites in the United States where PCBs were produced beginning in the mid-1930s.(3) The 70-acre Monsanto property is located in west Anniston, approximately one mile west of the downtown area.(4) Although it is not disputed that the property is "an area where hazardous substances, including PCBs ... have come to be located," the site is not listed on the Superfund priority cleanup list. Rather, it is considered a "Superfund-caliber" site.(5) Solutia, a spin-off company of Monsanto, currently owns the property. For approximately 40 years, Monsanto produced PCBs at the Anniston plant and released this toxic chemical into local waterways and landfills. There is evidence that shortly after its operations began in Anniston-and well before PCBs were banned in 1979-Monsanto knew about the dangers of producing PCBs.(6) The chemical is linked to cancer and a variety of health problems, including liver, stomach, thyroid, reproductive, and immune system ailments, and developmental problems in children born to mothers with PCB exposure.(7) Monsanto warned some of its customers of the dangers of PCBs but never informed its neighbors that their health might be in jeopardy. After decades of keeping the truth from Anniston residents, Solutia now will be allowed to do its own risk assessment of the contamination. Some scientists say the site is more contaminated than the Hudson River, which the EPA just ordered cleaned up by General Electric, Monsanto's top customer for PCBs(8), at an estimated cost of $460 million.(9) In the case of Anniston, however, the cleanup could potentially never happen. Earlier this year, information surfaced indicating that Monsanto hid the truth about the potential health risks associated with PCB exposure. A suit against Monsanto by 3,500 Anniston residents ended with the jury finding Monsanto liable for property damages. In fact, the jury, in Gadsden, Alabama, found that Monsanto engaged in "outrageous" behavior.(10) Following the jury findings, the judge in the case, Circuit Judge Joel Laird, severely reprimanded Solutia and threatened to require the company to implement a comprehensive cleanup.(11) But a few weeks after the jury found Monsanto liable, in March 2002, the Bush administration negotiated a settlement called a Partial Consent Decree.(12) Partial Consent Decrees are unusual, and some environmentalists believe the Bush administration chose this route because it was the quickest way to bail out Monsanto, since all it requires is a risk assessment and no cleanup.(13) Now that the Partial Consent Decree is signed, Solutia is claiming that the judge cannot force the company to implement any cleanup measures. The Partial Consent Decree is not as strong as Judge Laird's latent order to force the company to clean up its waste. Instead, the agreement only requires Solutia to complete a risk assessment. Instead of the EPA completing the risk assessment, Solutia is allowed to complete its own assessment with no controlling oversight by the EPA. The Partial Consent Decree also does not require that Solutia actually clean up any of the contamination. Basically, the company will spend approximately two years completing a risk assessment and may never begin the clean-up phase for the community of Anniston. Community activist David Baker, president of Community Against Pollution, asserts that "The consent decree with Monsanto does not reflect the community's concerns."(14) Baker says the community wants money for a health clinic, more strenuous relocation of families, more jobs created for all of the people impacted in the community, and more money for an education fund.(15) The State of Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) is also displeased with the Partial Consent Decree. It has been studying PCB contamination since 1993 and was close to proposing a cleanup plan for the site when the decree was handed down.(16) ADEM submitted information to Judge Laird indicating that the initial cost for cleanup would be $1.5 million for the first year and $1.19 million annually after that.(17) In addition to the questions raised by the community and ADEM, U.S. Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) blasted the EPA for the deal, noting numerous conflicts of interest. They also questioned why the EPA waited until this March to sign the Partial Consent Decree when the EPA knew since 1985 that the site was contaminated.18 With the Superfund Trust Fund virtually out of money, the Bush administration's solution is to leave the fate of Anniston residents in the hands of the company that deceived them for decades. Up to Top HOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use | © 2008 Sierra Club |
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