Often a license to pollute or a permit to re-assign liability as is the
case with the permits DEQ issued to Saginaw County and the Army Corp of
Engineers to construct a pit for dioxin laden sediments from the Saginaw River.
This publicly financed project/site is owned by the taxpayers of Saginaw
County who must insure it in perpetuity. Just as Lafarge wants the taxpayers to
pave their roads, the state expects the taxpayers to bond the dredge
site against any environmental damage as a result of Dow Chemical's
contaminants being placed in this pit. It's outrageous. Taxpayers/citizens are
expected to assume the cost of corporate bad practices.
Michelle Hurd Riddick
Lone Tree Council
In a message dated 3/30/2007 11:33:01 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
bfreese@verizon.net writes:
Folks
The simplest way to describe a permit is
a license to pollute. The permit is supposed to set the amount that
a facility canl pollute. We here in Alpena have watched every permit
exceed its limits. We have videos and photographs to prove so. Overwork
and understaffing and a permitting process that does not have teeth to it
is our main concern. Past penalties for violations have just been a tap on the
fingers. We have a document where proposed penalties that could
have been near 22 million were knocked down to $700,000,00 when finished.
It was around 1.2 million but a storage dome for the Canadian fly ash, our
main source of our mercury emissions, qualified as an environmental
improvements for Lafarge. Kind of like us paving their roads to keep the
dust down as they have asked for in a class action settlement now
pending.
Permits to pollute cost the polluter little or
nothing. We even told the MDEQ that we would take up a collection out of
our own pockets to have them deny a permit once in awhile. It would be
healthier for us and they would make a couple of
bucks.