No boot on your throat now. You have stood up and cleared your throat and given your opinion. In the format we were given, you fought back.
You fought back for your right to have a life worth living, breathing air that doesn’t add additional burden to your right to the quality of life you desire.
I have been in this community for decades and I have attended dance recitals and seen the Coleman and the NEO Fine Arts filled to capacity with parents and grandparents, friends, neighbors and former teachers all there to show their support for their loved one on the stage. I know there is a lot of heart in this community. I have been to the Civic Center for public meetings to stop the encroaching poultry industry. And the Flood forums held in the recent years have been well attended.
I have also attended the community meetings in Picher and saw people who all but fought to keep their town together, torn with new found knowledge of the danger to their lives both from the toxins in the chat piles surrounding them and the hollowed land they lived upon collapsing beneath them.
I traveled to Standing Rock to be part of the tribal and non-tribal people of the world who were standing together to protect water. They had camped at the historic site, the last place the united Sioux Nations had camped before Wounded Knee. There were hardships to face with the weather extremes, but they stood in a peaceful manner against an industry armed with force and power to protect their water source, the Missouri River. And they prevailed. Until they disbanded, dispersed and the power of the people scattered.
It is not always as easy as facing your computer screen and typing in a message and pushing send. Sometimes over and over, especially when their system failed to accept yours. But you prevailed, and we learned the email to send your comments.
The “winning” side won’t be known to us and neither will the company or their investors know until the DEQ makes their decision on the ARGO Air Permit.
But for myself, I was that parent sitting on the front row, proud of my kid on the stage and backed up by the pride of the multitude of people behind me applauding their own. As they say, “the crowd went wild.” Well, that is me applauding YOU.
You did this together.
Now, think, when you were looking at the DEQ website and you found Ottawa County, you might have, must have noticed that there were TWO PERMITS open for comments. We focused on ARGO because the deadline to comment was so close.
But the other air permit might have caught your attention. It got mine, actually first. The BF Goodrich Air Permit. I sent the draft permit to our scientific and policy expert and his first glance was positive. The process described was not only feasible but seemed safe.
I called DEQ and spoke with the regulator who has had BF Goodrich on his plate for YEARS and he agreed with me that it was time for a public meeting to report out about the process and the progress of it to the community. But it must come from the responsible party. Not BF Goodrich, but the company that bought it, Michelin.
Let’s use your new found skills and ask DEQ to demand a public meeting on the efforts to protect us from the toxins that have been lying beneath the plant and had spread beneath the neighborhood. In that permit there are many OTHER chemicals they have found and the process they are using, sparging can deal with them.
Michelin has the money to do the investigation and has committed to the cleanup of the chemicals beneath the surface, they have the scientists who have designed the process, and surely, they have the spokes persons with expertise to come and explain the process and report on the project that has been running during warm seasons for 2 years.
Let’s put that ask in your comment. Come tell us. Give us some good news. Take some of the burden of worry this community lives with every day.
Because we know how to stand up. We know how to communicate. We are clearing our throats and we will be speaking up from now on.
We have one life and we have the right to speak up not only for ourselves, but hey, we are speaking for the yet unborn and for the seven generations to come.
WADO, thank you in the Cherokee language, and as my son says, a THOUSAND WADOs from this little woman for this round who prefers to sit on the front row.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
Comments