[quote=DomoArigato] . . . I know that Ron Paul is in favor of massive deregulation, so I suspect if Ron Paul were able to enact his agenda we would see a lot more of this:
The link is to a story on a small community of 15 families who live downstream from a Koch Industries subsidiary (formaldehyde resin plant) that is dumping millions of gallons of wastewater into open ditches. Among the 15 families, there have been 11 deaths from cancer and many more people are ill.
How would deregulation address this or prevent it from happening in many more places all over the U.S.? . . . [/quote]
Thanks for posting this, DomoArigato. I’m highly familiar with this region of the country and the video in your link sickened me. For several months per year, it is hot and humid there, causing waterborne illness in stagnant water that has not been polluted. Mosquitos, chiggers, stinging jellyfish and snakes abound.
A viewer might ask, why don’t these people just move? It is likely most, if not all the residents of this street have lived there for several decades. Most of the houses appear to be large and well-built on large lots in a “bucolic” woodsy setting and most, if not all these properties are no doubt paid for and currently inhabited by owners over 55 years old. These owners who built their “dream homes” decades ago cannot now easily qualify to buy another property and likely cannot sell their properties without disclosing the grossly polluted stream behind their properties so they feel “trapped.”
Another difficult-to-solve environmental problem of rural AR and neighboring OK is that chemicals from the manufacture of crystal meth have leached into their soil and waterways, causing a variety of medical problems for residents who don’t even come into contact with the ingredients or drug itself. It also has impacted homeowners’ and landowners’ ability to farm. The “meth epidemic” there migrated from SoCal about 12-14 years ago, namely from the Lakeside/Flynn Sprs area of SD County and parts of Riverside and San Bernardino Counties where it was attacked with a vengeance with the cooperation of multiple law enforcement agencies and, for the most part, eradicated. The DEA has moved into OK/AR and “set up shop,” but these rural counties often have “vulnerable” and extremely limited sheriff’s services available to them (to cooperate with the DEA).
In a town of <7000, an upstream employer of thousands of locals is revered, not only by its employees but local politicians as well. It is clear that the Koch Bros have been able to pay their way through the "system" (fines, etc). It's cheaper to pay an affected family off (and then publicize they did so) than clean up the colossal environmental mess they made of their factory's downstream area.
I often wonder what kind of toxic industrial cesspools residents of emerging countries live in who live near factories who manufacture all of the goods we Americans love to buy and count on an endless supply that we can purchase cheaply.
There is a price to pay for everything in this life and sometimes, that price is too high.
