GARDEN STATE ENVIRONEWS 991002
Phil Reynolds
GARDEN STATE ENVIRONEWS
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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<*> HEARINGS ON DREDGE MATERIAL PLAN - NOV 16 & 17
<*> ARTICLE ON FWS SNOW GOOSE MEETING
<*> TUG-O WAR: CANCER KIDS VS WATER POLLUTION
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HEARINGS ON DREDGE MATERIAL PLAN - NOV 16 & 17
Date: 2 Oct 1999
From: Kerr...@aol.com
PUBLIC HEARING NOTICE
Environmental Impact Statement
Dredge Material Management Plan
Port of New York & New Jersey
All Meetings 7:00pm-10:00pm
Keansburg NJ - November 16, 1999
School District Headquarters
Newark NJ - November 17, 1999
Sheraton Hotel
The Army Corps of Engineers has released the dates for the Public
Hearings on the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Dredge
Material Management Plan for the Port of New York. There are four
Hearings Planned.
These Public Hearings are the most important hearings to take place
on the DMMP in the last year, it is important that you attend one of
these meetings, and that you let the Corps no that Ocean dumping of
this toxic material is NOT an option! This is the final step before
implementation of the plan.
Please visit the NRPA website by directing you browser to:
http://www.nrpa.com
There are other marine related meetings on the Events page of the
NRPA site.
Call 212-264-5798 for a free copy of the DMMP Environmental Impact
Statement
# # #
Natural Resources Protective Association
POB 50328
Staten Island NY 10305
Web: http://www.nrpa.com
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ARTICLE ON FWS SNOW GOOSE MEETING
Date: 2 Oct 1999
From: Stu Chaifetz {vega...@idt.net}
AREA FARMERS LEVEL BLAST AT CROP-EATING SNOW GEESE
One farmer estimates Cumberland County farmers are now suffering $4
million to $8 million in annual wheat-crop losses to snow geese.
In urging swift action, hunters, farmers and state officials tell the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that the rapidly expanding snow geese
populations are destroying local farms, coastal marshes and their own
habitat.
By Jack Kaskey, Staff Writer, (609) 272-7213
Press of Atlantic City, September 30, 1999
Galloway Township -- Kill the snow geese.
Shoot them, trick them, trap them, put a bounty on their downy heads.
Just do whatever it takes to stop their exploding population from
destroying anymore farmland and coastal marshes.
That was the message from hunters, farmers and state officials who
spoke Wednesday night during the first in a series of national
hearings aimed at helping federal officials decide how to control snow
geese populations.
"Something's got to be done now," said Michael Coomes, a salt-hay
farmer from Cedarville, Cumberland County. "Poison them. Do anything
you can. If the government doesn't act now, there won't be anything
left to save."
Half of his 5,000-acre farm on the Delaware Bay shore has been turned
into useless mud flats by overgrazing geese in the last five years,
Coomes said.
On inland farms, massive flocks of snow geese eat through hundreds of
acres of wheat, rye and barley in a matter of hours, said David
Sheppard Jr., a farmer representing the Cumberland County Board of
Agriculture.
He estimated county farmers are now suffering $4 million to $8
million in annual wheat-crop osses to snow geese.
"I had 1,000 acres grazed over twice this year," Sheppard told the
crowd of more than 60 people.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service convened Wednesday's hearing at
the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey here to gather input for
developing an environmental impact statement on white goose
management.
The hearings will form the basis for what likely will be expanded
options for killing white geese.
Populations of white geese -- a term that encompasses greater and
lesser snow geese and Ross' geese -- have exploded over the past 30
years.
Populations of lesser snow geese and Ross' geese have grown from
900,000 birds in 1969 to more than 3 million birds today, far
exceeding historical records, said James R. Kelley Jr., wildlife
biologist with the service's Office of Migratory Bird Management in
Arlington, Va.
Likewise, greater snow goose populations have expanded from fewer
than 50,000 birds in the late 1960s to about 800,000 today, Kelley
said.
As a result, the geese have destroyed and damaged vast areas of their
sensitive Arctic breeding grounds and local migration routes, and some
areas may never recover, he said.
Not only is that bad for the future of the geese, but for all the
other plants and animals they live with, Kelley added.
"We feel this situation must be halted before additional habitat is
destroyed," Kelley said.
The bird of primary concern among southern New Jersey residents is
greater snow geese. It visits here in ever-increasing numbers each
fall. Lesser snow geese and Ross' geese migrate through the Midwest
and West, seldom locally.
With a growth rate of about 9 percent per year, the greater snow
geese population is expected to reach 1 million by 2002 and 2 million
by 2010, Kelley said.
The wildlife service wants to stabilize greater snow goose
populations at 800,000 to 1 million, while cutting in half the rest of
the white goose population, he said.
Among the wildlife service's tentative proposals are allowing hunters
to lure snow geese with electronic calls, allowing them to shoot more
than three rounds in succession, expanding hunting hours, and
extending the 107-day snow geese season.
The service also is considering direct population controls, such as
trapping and market hunting, plus options that could only be
implemented by Canada, such as culling and destroying eggs and nests.
Hunters said they could bag many more geese if the proposals are
implemented. Sheppard, of Cumberland County, said snow geese don't
taste very good, so one way of increasing the goose harvest is placing
a bounty on their heads.
"You want to get the job done, you got to make an incentive to get
the job done," the farmer said.
Paul Castelli, a wildlife biologist with the New Jersey Department of
Fish Game and Wildlife, said federal action is needed now, before
there is more damage to farms, salt marshes and sections of Edwin B.
Forsythe Wildlife Refuge.
Years of overgrazing causes salt marshes to erode to the point where
they can't ever recover, Castelli said.
Stuart Chaifetz, of Honor and Nonviolence for Animals, was one of
only two people to speak against expanded goose hunting.
"I ask you to think about the legacy you'll leave for future
generations," the Brick Township resident said. "True strength and
honor comes not with killing millions of beings because they are a
problem, but with finding creative solutions."
Copyright (c) 1999 South Jersey Publishing Co.
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TUG-O WAR: CANCER KIDS VS WATER POLLUTION
Date: 990930
From: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/
By Donald Sutherland
Toms River, New Jersey, September 27, 1999 - Linda Gillick lives in
the village of Toms River, New Jersey with her twenty year old son
Michael. Since age three Michael has suffered from a brain cancer
called neuroblastoma. Michael is one of 103 children from the township
who are part of the nation's largest child cancer cluster.
"In our situation drinking groundwater contamination from industrial
toxic waste is definitely a potential cause," says Gillick, executive
director of the not-for-profit group Ocean of Love.
Toms River, a part of Dover Township, is located about 65 miles south
of New York City. Toms River, with beaches on the Barnegat Bay and the
Atlantic Ocean, has been a tourist attraction for years.
In an ongoing investigation, state environmental officials have
discovered over 4,500 drums of toxic liquid from Union Carbide
Corporation were dumped in the Dover Township municipal landfill and a
local farm one mile north of the wellfield used for drinking water in
Toms River.
A closed chemical plant owned by Ciba Specialty Chemicals which was
declared a Superfund toxic waste site is also part of the
investigation. The 5.2 acre disposal area containing about 100,000
drums of chemical waste was capped in 1978, but an EPA document in
1989 says, "Groundwater contamination is migrating from these inactive
disposal sites easterly towards the Toms River."
"The government thought the drinking water could be cleaned up by
filtering it with air filters but what people don't realize is you
have thousands of chemicals being produced without toxicological
testing and drinking water regulators are only required to check for
80 substances," says Gillick. "Our standards for safeguarding drinking
water aren't keeping up with the chemicals being produced," she says.
After accidents, cancer is the largest killer of children in the
United States according to the National Cancer Institute and the
National Childhood Cancer Foundation, and cancer in children is on the
rise. Childhood cancer occurs in one in every 330 children by the age
of 19, says the Pediatric Oncology Resource Center.
Brain, nervous system cancers, and acute lymphocytic leukemia
represent the majority of cancers attacking children. Clusters of
these cases are occurring in regions where drinking water has been
contaminated by carcinogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
discharged by industry and municipalities into underground sources of
drinking water (USDW).
VOCs identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as potential
cancer causing agents are associated with the child cancer clusters in
Toms River, New Jersey, Winona, Texas, Port St. Lucie, Florida, and
Woburn, Massachusetts.
In the Woburn cluster made famous by the book and the 1998 film "A
Civil Action" starring John Travolta, 21 children contracted leukemia
in a town where drinking groundwater was contaminated from a shallow
industrial injection well and dump.
Jamesia was born 1.7 miles downwind of a hazardous waste facility
that had hundreds of documented releases of toxic chemicals and many
hundreds of complaints and/or reported health effects by residents and
passersby from adjacent communities. (Photo by ©Tammy Cromer-Campbell
courtesy of Mothers Organized to Stop Environmental Sins)
State epidemiologists in Winona, Texas are investigating 14 cases of
child cancer in a township of 500 people where a deep injection well
accepting hazardous substances (Class 1 UIC well) was contaminating
the groundwater and air with VOCs and radioactive waste.
In Port St. Lucie, Florida, 29 children have contracted brain tumors
and nervous system cancers in a region where industrial and municipal
underground injection wells are illegally discharging into underground
sources of drinking water.
Child cancer clusters are also being investigated in Rochester, New
York, Christian County, Illinois, and McFarland, California.
The scale of toxins entering drinking groundwater supplies through
the Environmental Protection Agency's underground injection control
program is huge.
Over 60 percent of the land-disposed liquid hazardous waste in the
United States is injected underground via 600 government permitted
Class 1 UIC wells according to the not-for-profit Ground Water
Protection Council. The EPA says that nationwide there are over one
million shallow Class V UIC wells used by industry, farms, and
businesses to discharge toxins into underground sources of drinking
water.
Toxins are also entering groundwater in increasing amounts from
hazardous waste dumps. A 1997 report from the federal Agency for Toxic
Substances and Disease Registry, "The Toxicological Hazard of
Superfund Hazardous Waste Sites," analyzed over 1,300 Superfund sites
listed by the EPA as Superfund sites. The report found over 41 million
Americans live within four miles of these toxic land dumps where an
increase in toxic waste exposure pathways is at a level threatening
public drinking groundwater. The report also cites Office of
Technology Assessment estimates of 436,000 hazardous waste sites
nationwide.
Historically cluster investigations have been used by scientists to
identify environmental factors causing a disease such as the outbreak
of Legionnaire's disease in the 1970s from contaminated water in air
conditioning ducts.
But state and federal epidemiologists investigating contamination of
drinking water by carcinogenic VOCs from underground injection wells
and hazardous waste dumps claim they could not find any evidence the
contaminating carcinogens were a factor in any child cancer cluster.
They claim a true child cancer cluster has never been proven in the
United States.
"A cluster investigation is designed to answer [the question] is
there too much cancer and not why it happened," says Barry Wilson, an
epidemiologist with the Texas Cancer Registry who investigated the
Winona, Texas child cancer cluster.
"The true term for a child cancer cluster is, is it meaningful," says
Wilson," and meaningful is defined if there is an excess in a
geographic area in a particular time period, if it is statistically
significant by sex, age, race, if all groups were equally exposed, is
there an exposure pathway, and then if there is biologically
plausibility to cause that cancer."
"I've done over 500 of these cluster investigations, and we have
nothing in Texas that meets the criteria of a meaningful child cancer
cluster," he says.
State and federal government cancer registries refuse to list child
cancer clusters under investigation even though epidemiologists have
cited large statistical numbers of specific cancer outbreaks in the
towns Toms River, Port St. Lucie and Winona.
"Most scientists don't see value in studying child cancer clusters,"
says Dr. Holly Howe, executive director of the North American
Association of Central Cancer Registries.
"Usually child cancer clusters involve small numbers of cases and
most studies funded require several hundred cases for proper
statistical inquiry to calculate level of risk," she says. "We don't
know what causes child cancer clusters, but the environment and
exposure to carcinogens is not a strong contributor," says Dr. Howe.
Environmentalists and concerned doctors disagree.
"I have no doubt certain VOCs in drinking water can cause cancer in
children," says Dr. Philip Landrigan, chair of the Department of
Community and Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine,
in New York City, and a former special adviser to the Office of
Children's Health Protection of the EPA.
"I think there is a strong potential for VOCs in drinking water to
have caused the cancer in the child cancer clusters in Toms River,
Winona, Woburn, and Port St. Lucie," says Dr. Landrigan.
"The concern we have is that drinking water standards are not
protective of the public's health particularly children," says Carolyn
Poppell, program coordinator on safe drinking water for Physicians for
Social Responsibility.
The Environmental Protection Agency has designated a list of
chemicals, metals, and known carcinogenic volatile organic compounds
to be monitored in drinking water for established maximum contaminant
levels (MCLs) by utilities.
Critics of the EPA's monitoring list for maximum contaminant levels
of toxins in drinking water say the agency only monitors for 80
substances while there are over 75,000 chemical produced in the United
States. Critics point out that data on human health effects exists for
only seven percent of the 2,700 most widely used chemicals.
"The EPA's MCLs in drinking water are not designed to protect
children because they are extrapolated from animal studies and based
on an adult male's body weight and water consumption," says Poppell.
"Infants and children are very vulnerable to exposure to known
carcinogenic VOCs in drinking water, yet there are no environmental
regulations based on studies to specifically protect them," she says.
According to child cancer activists, chemical corporations are
financially and politically pressuring health organizations and the
EPA to keep it that way. "There currently isn't enough scientific data
to connect child cancer to chemical exposure," says Lois Gibbs,
executive director of the not-for-profit Center for Health,
Environment and Justice. Gibbs spearheaded the citizens' action
campaign against the toxic chemicals at Love Canal in New York.
"The Fortune 500 petrochemical industries would have the most to lose
if the link is made between chemicals and child cancer, and they
design studies with their funding so there will not be conclusive
evidence to make that link," Gibbs says.
Government health and environmental officials insist current drinking
water standards do protect children. They do say there have not been
studies conducted on short term effects of the exposure of children to
chemical carcinogens or on child cancer clusters. "Most VOCs zip out
of the body and don't accumulate," says Jeanette Wiltse, director of
the Health & Ecological Criteria Division of the Office of Science &
Technology at the EPA's Office of Water. Wiltse acknowledges that the
banned pesticide DDT is an exception and does accumulate in human
tissues.
"Some MCLs in drinking water are tailored for children, lead and
nitrate, but we look at the effect of carcinogens through an
epidemiological approach which is total dose over an adult's life
time," says Wiltse.
According to Janet Wiltse if a child cancer cluster was proven to be
caused by exposure to chemical carcinogens then the government would
conduct an epidemiological study for a new risk assessment similar to
those for lead and nitrate.
"I don't know where they have nailed a chemical contaminant in
drinking water to a child cancer cluster, but if we had information on
a suspected compound we would do a short term exposure study," says
Wiltse. Most studies cited by government organizations show cancer in
children is due to genetic problems, but funding is lacking for
studies of environmental chemical exposure to children.
"There haven't been a lot of studies on child cancer clusters, and
you need many cases and funding, and they don't exist," says Dr. Howe.
"Our investigations have been criticized as being flawed because our
methods haven't once proven an environmental connection with cancer,
but maybe we are just not smart enough yet," says Wilson.
President Bill Clinton on April 21, 1997 released Executive Order
13045: Protection of Children from Environmental Health Risks and
Safety Risks which takes account of "a growing body of scientific
knowledge demonstrating children may suffer disproportionately from
environmental health risks and safety risk." These risks are due to
children's developing biological state and consumption of more food,
fluids, and air in proportion to their body weight than adults,
according to the executive order.
Drawing by J.V. age 10, a child being treated for cancer at the
National Cancer Institute features President Bill Clinton's cat Socks
(Drawing courtesy National Cancer Institute)
"Each federal agency shall make it a high priority to identify and
access environmental health risks and safety risks that may
disproportionately effect children and shall ensure that its policies,
programs, activities, and standards address disproportionate risks to
children that result from environmental health risks or safety risks,"
Clinton ordered.
In 1997 the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) released a report
claiming there was a lack of publicly available data on the health
effect of 2,700 US high production volume (HPV) chemicals. On October
9, 1998 Vice President Gore announced an agreement between the
Chemical Manufactures Association (CMA), the Environmental Protection
Agency, and EDF for companies to voluntarily test the human health and
environmental effects of HPV chemicals they produce and complete
testing by the year 2004.
The 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act amendments requires the EPA to
release a list of contaminants not subject to the current national
primary drinking water regulations. On March 2, 1999 the EPA published
a list of new contaminants, the Drinking Water Contaminant Candidate
List, or CCL.
"The final EPA CCL of 50 chemicals and 10 microbiological
contaminants is not a regulation but an agenda of priorities for
development of new regulations for contaminants in drinking water over
the next five years," says Evelyn Washington, assistant branch chief
in the Targeting & Analysis Branch of the EPA's Office of Ground Water
and Drinking Water. This year the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
National Water Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA) has initiated a new
project in cooperation with the American Water Works Association to
address VOC's in drinking water aquifers in greater detail.
"VOC's in USDW are a concern for NAWQA because VOCs, such as
solvents, fuels, fuel additives, and disinfection by products are
frequently detected in ground water and many VOCs have been identified
as having carcinogenic or other adverse health effects," says Glenn
Patterson, a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) hydrologist with the
National Water Quality Assessment Program.
"Generally, anything that can cause cancer in adults can cause cancer
in children, and children are considered more susceptible to cancer
because their cells are multiplying more rapidly than those of
adults," says Patterson.
In January 1999, the EPA National Center for Environmental
Assessment's Science Advisory Board recommended the guidelines for
carcinogen risk assessment specifically address children's health.
"We haven't investigated child cancer clusters, and MCLs are still
determined over an adults life time not a child's," says Jackie Moya,
spokeswoman for the EPA's National Center for Environmental
Assessment. The gap between government's actions to respond to child
exposure to environmental carcinogens and policy making to protect
their health has Dr. Philip Landrigan concerned.
"The question is where our society's priorities are," he says. "Do
you act on the presumption some chemicals in drinking water cause
child cancer based on tests on animals or wait for an outbreak of
cases."
Links to childhood cancer information websites:
http://www.acor.org/diseases/ped-onc/WebInfo/choicelinks.html
(C) Environment News Service (ENS) 1999. All Rights Reserved
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Back issues of the Garden State EnviroNews are available at
http://www.gsenet.org/library/11gsn/11gsn.htm
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