Guest Column: Alcoa should lose control of Yadkin waters

By Dean Naujoks, The High Point Enterprise
An Alcoa front group, The Water Front Sportsman Environmental Investigation Coalition, which has no website, board of directors, active membership or legitimate 501(c)3 nonprofit status, is misleading the public about the Yadkin River relicensing while spreading Alcoa propaganda to mask the company’s toxic legacy.

Alcoa bullied UNC-TV into removing an Alcoa/Yadkin relicensing documentary from its website.

UNC-TV refuses to show the video on its website and on local public television requesting to show it. Why is Alcoa preventing the public from watching this video? Because it reveals cyanide plumes, detected in Alcoa groundwater monitoring wells, leaching into the Badin Lake swimming areas as well as contamination from arsenic, PCBs and PAHs which has poisoned the water, fish and people near Alcoa’s defunct aluminum smelter which was located on Badin Lake in Stanly County. Thankfully, the “rough cut” documentary, shown to the N.C. Senate Judiciary Committee, can be seen at http://vimeo.com/14110879.

Other recent media coverage has finally exposed that people have died from the toxic operations of this company. Alcoa Vice President of Environmental Health and Safety William O’Rourke, who recently testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, acknowledged “fatalities” had occurred but denied Alcoa had investigated employee-linked illness and deaths. Special Deputy Attorney General for the N.C. Department of Justice Faison Hicks filed a complaint to the Senate Judiciary claiming that Alcoa official’s answer to the legislative committee about Alcoa’s internal epidemiological study was “not factual.”

Based on Hicks’ letter and internal Alcoa documentation Yadkin Riverkeeper recently received (posted on Yadkin Riverkeeper’s website), it is clear O’Rourke lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he denied Alcoa had known about or conducted epidemiological studies for Alcoa employees, many of whom died working for Alcoa from their exposure to coal tar pitch and other toxic substances. High cancer rates in the Badin area is very real problem, requiring further investigation.

Helen Hammonds is a mother of three, former Marine and a nurse from Lexington. Her husband William, whom people called Houston, was a healthy outdoorsman who regularly fished on Badin Lake for decades. Unbeknownst to Houston and his family, the fish he was bringing home to eat were poisoned with PCBs.

According to Helen Hammonds, Houston suddenly died in 2008 at age 51 “from a slow insidious buildup of toxins in the fatty tissue that attacked his immune system.” His bloodwork was reviewed by LabCorp and also sent to Harvard. They reviewed 56 (out 209 known) PCBs and found four different kinds of highly elevated PCBs in his blood, the same PCBs found in Badin Lake. Coincidence?

Alcoa spokesperson, Gene Ellis, recently revealed he misled relicensing stakeholders when he failed to tell them about Alcoa’s extensive contamination. Alcoa’s 2008 NPDES discharge permit clearly identifies persistent groundwater contamination as well as the “presence of cyanide in the discharge and proximity of swimming area” and that “results indicate that the seep (1) contains significant contamination of cyanide and fluoride and (2) causes measurable increases in the in-stream concentrations of both pollutants.”

Unfortunately, most media coverage has ignored Alcoa’s lies and its legacy as a corporate polluter. If the media (or the public) simply requested public documents from the N.C. Senate Judiciary Committee, they would conclude Alcoa has lost its privilege to control our public waters.

Dean Naujoks of Winston-Salem is the Yadkin Riverkeeper.
© hpe.com 2010