Dear Governor & First Lady Perdue:
We met during your first term to discuss children's environmental health goals for the state of Georgia. See photo.
It was pouring down rain that day in Monroe with the Confederate Flag protesters not afraid to get wet.
I remember wondering: why are they so mad with the Governor? Surely he is a man of his word.
I came to find out those feelings of anger may have well been justified.
Requesting at our meeting that upcoming tobacco settlement money be rightfully designated to environmental health issues for children; shortly thereafter, you awarded CertainTeed Fiberglass Insulation that money for a warehouse road.
Traveling down the loop around Athens, you can visibly spot CertainTeed for they resemble a huge cigarette huffing and puffing tons of poisonous combustion into our deteriorating airshed.
CertainTeed is the largest air tox polluter in our area, who not long ago, had dollar signs in their eyes to increase their unfiltered dangerous emissions in spite of our high asthma and poverty rates.
Yet, recently they withdrew their controversial expansion plan permit not being spared by these economic hard times.
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/030709/new_406188738.shtml
Your irreverence after our meeting also hurt me because I had opened up and shared with you both the painful chemical trespassing of industry responsible for my 4 year old son's leukemia whom you met that day.
Maybe you recall that I framed and brought to you as a gift a recent wedding photo of your son Jim and his bride taken at their wedding by my brother, Jim. I had hoped to appeal to your heart.
Now five years later, I am not naive enough to believe anymore a heart appeal in politics is anything more than a waste of time.
So I will appeal now in a more familiar language----picked up from these years of investigating my son's case since our meeting in Monroe:
1. The former GA Hazardous Waste site in Athens (#10728) where we lived and he was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer was:
a. Wrongly delisted by GA EPD last week in a postdated letter sent to me by Mr. Mark Smith
b. Has been mistakenly approved for residential living
2. Dr. Carol Couch and EPD are being charged by me for:
a. Unsound science
b. Manipulation of data
c. Violation of hazardous waste disposal laws
d. Destroying evidence
e. Ignoring a requested moratorium on delisting #10728
3. This site can be proven that it remains:
a. A hazard to pregnant women, children, the elderly, and immune compromised
b. Increases the risk of genetic alterations associated with childhood leukemia
c. Contaminated with site related chemicals known to be genotoxic, carcinogenic, and
immune disabling
4. A Congressional hearing on Capitol Hill last week charged The Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR) with "jackleg science" recognizing this GA Hazardous Waste Site #10728 by ranking House member, Dr. Paul Broun:
a. As relevant in this ongoing Congressional broad investigation sparked by the FEMA/formaldehyde public health failure, and being potentially comparable given dangerous exposures of fugitive benzene emissions
b. Acknowledging the state of GA with ATSDR in a multi-agency culture generating slipshod science
c. "Deny, delay, minimize, trivialize or ignore legitimate health concerns" from hazardous waste that compromises public environmental health, safety and welfare
d. Refused to act on significantly known childhood leukemia risks withholding critical public health data from the exposed and medical personnel inquiry
e. http://science.house.gov/publications/hearings_markups_details.aspx?NewsID=2376
5. President Barack Obama issued an internal memo to EPA last week before the postdated
delisting of this site. The President stressed:
a. The agency is to give priority to scientific integrity
6. EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, has given an agency outline which includes:
a. priority of hazardous waste sites and residents living under chemical trespassing from these operations
7. EPA Region IV, in an external/internal review group with GA EPD, of which I was denied representation, made a list of egregious errors in an attempt to quash any legal entanglements similar to the FEMA/formaldehyde exposures
8. You are being asked to reverse the delisting of this site #10728 based upon these serious charges.
9. You are being asked to reflect from that Saturday with Sonny.
10. You are being asked to respond.
Politically yours,
Micah's Mom
