The Gulf area may have to live with oil long after the beaches have been cleaned. Some residents are outraged that BP has been dumping oily waste in landfills in their areas.
After BP crews scoop up the oil off Gulf beaches, the waste is transported to Mississippi's Pecan Grove landfill. Even workers' protective suits, gloves, shovels, rakes and anything else that touches oil is buried there.
The Board of Supervisors in Harrison, Mississippi passed a resolution saying they don't want any BP waste in their community but there is little they can do. BP has cut deals with Waste Management, the owners of the landfill. They answer to the state instead of local county government.
"We don't want it," President of the Board of Supervisors Connie Rocko told CNN's Randi Kaye. "It is valuable landfill space and hazardous to our citizens. Take your waste somewhere else or please find an alternative."
Rocko is concerned that oil could find its way into the water table and be harmful to the residents.
But Waste Management's Ken Haldin says there's nothing to be worried about. "It is an understandable concern because there is a lack of awareness," he told CNN.
Haldin explained that Pecan Grove landfill is designated a nonhazardous site which means no liquid waste can be dumped there. There is a liner underneath the landfill that is designed to prevent waste from seeping into the water table.
In the past 24 hours alone, 150 tons of BP waste has been dumped there, said Haldin.
The EPA has ordered that BP waste disposal efforts must be transparent. The company must post details of all collected waste at their website.
Haldin explained that Pecan Grove landfill is designated a nonhazardous site which means no liquid waste can be dumped there. There is a liner underneath the landfill that is designed to prevent waste from seeping into the water table.
In addition to bid rigging and price fixing, the Mafia gets its way by buying the allegiance of officials it needs to control. The waste hauling industry does the same.
Margate City (Florida) Commissioner Rick Schwartz testified in court (in exchange for immunity from prosecution) that he sold his vote on a 1979 city contract to Waste Management for $3,000.
John Horak, former manager of a Waste Management subsidiary was fined $25,000 and jailed for six months for bribing municipal officials in Fox Lake, a Chicago suburb. Under oath, Mr. Horak said the bribe was approved by James deBoer, president of Waste Management of Illinois, who is now himself under investigation.
Raymond Akers, a former Waste Management official bribed Chicago Alderman Clifford Kelley with $10,000 in 1986 to gain a site for a trash transfer station; Mr. Kelley and Mr. Akers are both in jail now.
Lewis Goodman, manager of United Sanitation Services, a Miami (Fla.) subsidiary of Waste Management bribed a city sanitation inspector to steer business to his company; Mr. Goodman was also convicted of price-fixing in 1986.
Much more subtle, and more legal, than cash bribes of local officials are two other common practices in the waste hauling industry: helping elected officials stay elected by fundraising on their behalf; and hiring local officials after a few years of loyal public service.
Florida newspapers report that Waste Management regularly holds fund-raising parties for local officials seeking reelection; in fact they say Waste Management lobbyist Bill Moffatt has held so many fundraisers he can't remember them all. Waste Management puts out about $1000 for food and drink and invites its corporate friends to attend. The corporate friends open their wallets on behalf of a candidate for local or state office; in the time it takes the guests to have a drink and write a check, the candidate collects $7,000 to $12,000 (thus providing 5 to 15% of their campaign chest) and Waste Management has strengthened its connections to the local political structure. No laws have been broken.
WM's boss might be here undercover...like an UNDERCOVER BOSS!
The promise of a future job can go a long way to convince a local official to take a "sensible" view of the world. And the promise need never appear in writing, so there's no evidence of any deal.
Front line troops are necessary in a system that cranks out billions of pounds of poisons every year, year after year. "If we weren't here, you'd have to invent us," says James Range, head of Waste Management's Washington, DC, office. But the troops are generally unwelcome and they concentrate their efforts in places that tend to be Southern and rural and poor. Chem Waste is the Waste Management subsidiary that operates hazardous waste dumps like the largest one in America, at Emelle, AL, which provides about $2 million a year in local taxes. Local people believe their water supplies are being contaminated by the huge chemical dump. But they also desperately need the income. The Reverend Emmitt Summerville led a prayer at the dedication of the new city hall in Gainesville, Alabama earlier this year by thanking the entity that made it possible: "God bless Chem Waste," he exhorted.
Editor Note: This article was written before the Clinch River ecocide by the TVA's Coal Sludge Dam disintegrating.
Guess where all the 'sludege' is being hauled off to.
