9 ms·

Citizen sleuths exposed pollution from a century-old Michigan factory (2019)

151 points by hammock 5y ago

mikeyouse 5y ago
I had an idea when I was younger to use this type of investigative activism as a way to short publicly traded companies and fund an ever-increasing amount of pollution investigation. Unfortunately massive pollution scandals barely dent share prices since enforcement is so lax and slow, and many of the worst offenders have closed shop after pillaging the land. A shame since it's not in the 'public' interest to bring this stuff to light since governments have to pay to clean it up.
- kingsloi 5y ago
  What an interesting idea! Seems like the only way to have any impact is to upset shareholders. I've been working on trying to highlight the issue in Gary/Northwest Indiana by trying to be a "citizen sleuth" by tracking air pollution and open sourcing the data. Still a WIP, but recently added gas tracking to the data too https://millerbeach.community https://millerbeach.community You're right about worst offenders closing shop after pillaging, or they just sell and move on to the next location. In 2019 ArcelorMittal spilled cyanide and ammonia into a Lake Michigan tributary, closing the National Park, local water intake, killing 3000 fish, etc. In December 2020, ArcelorMittal was bought by Cleveland-Cliffs for $1.4 billion. Cleveland-Cliffs made record $20 billion in revenue in 2021. https://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/cleveland-cliffs-made-record-20-4-billion-revenue-last-year/article_623d747a-e889-5f1c-ae38-f5f61c5c83b1.html https://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/cleveland-cliffs-mad... A local news article from today: https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/consent-decree-proposed-in-wake-of-2019-spill-that-killed-thousands-of-fish/article_b247ed92-cacb-5e27-b4ed-9c831a1aad0b.html https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/consen... > The proposed consent decree requires Cleveland-Cliffs to complete "comprehensive operational upgrades to the steel mill to prevent future cyanide and ammonia violations," the environmental groups said." > The steelmaker agreed to improve its notification procedures and pay $3 million in civil penalties, which are to be split between Indiana and the U.S. Treasury. $3 million, and to prevent future cyanide/ammonia violations... but still dump into Lake Michigan. Aren't we lucky!
  - hammock 5y ago
    That's a cool website. Thanks for putting it together. I plug my nose every time I drive through NWI. And I have seen oil slicks on the water as far away as New Buffalo, Union Pier, etc
    - kingsloi 5y ago
      Hey, thank you! Just doing my civic duty to better my lil community! NWI gets a bad rap, the smell/pollution is always mentioned, and is what drives a lot of people away. Who knows how much revenue is lost because of the smell. However, the natural beauty is outstanding, even in Gary, so many cool ecosystems, not to mention the best Great Lake! The more visitors, the more tax revenue, it’s a win/win!
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    EPA has a bunch of air quality stations in that area (they don't provide real time data though): https://www.epa.gov/outdoor-air-quality-data/interactive-map-air-quality-monitors https://www.epa.gov/outdoor-air-quality-data/interactive-map... (from there, click through to the map and then turn on layers of interest)
    - kingsloi 5y ago
      Yeah I'm aware they do, but it's outdated, inaccessible, and lacking, which is why I guess I want to do a better job at it, and ideally host many more sensors. Indiana is one of, if not the most toxic state https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-env-indiana-toxic-st-0328-20210326-3x4xhquoqjeglp7lqa7rim5dny-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-e... I live on the southern shoreline of Lake Michigan, the rest of Gary, Whiting, Hammond is directly south of the Gary Works, BP, etc. There should be way more hyper-localised air quality monitoring, 1-2 isn't enough, the air I breathe, isn't what school kids in Gary/Whiting breathe.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  If you found a Volkswagen type thing, then sure. The problem is that it needs to be an utterly massive discovery to move the price of a company that probably has 100 factories.
titzer 5y ago
I used to be a libertarian. I used to think that private ownership of property, coupled with a free market (and something vague about an informed citizenship and consumers voting with their dollars) was the solution to most of modern society's ills. It's articles like this that absolutely refute the idea that private ownership of property leads to good environmental outcomes (it doesn't; it leads to exploitative, destructive extraction of value from land, leaving behind carnage whose damage was estimated at below the bottom line, leaving a comfortable margin for profit) and that citizens would be proactive and well-informed (they aren't; they are constantly stonewalled, lied to, and officials stupid or paid off). Now, ironically, in this advanced state of tech today, we have finally got the tools that citizens can be informed about the environmental impacts...of decades dead corporations and gluttonous barons that have long since moved on from the smoking, toxic craters they knowingly created. What an exciting future we have now, mining the graveyard of a century of bad policy, dealing with the lies and denial of others, and a complete lack of accountability. Meanwhile, these toxins, here a trace, there a torrent, sit as mute reminder of the horrible cost we've exacted on this planet (so far).
- vkou 5y ago
  Fortunately, Snowcrash's libertarian utopia has a solution to this exact problem, in the form of a little placard. SACRIFICE ZONE WARNING The National Parks Service has declared this area to be a National Sacrifice Zone. The Sacrifice Zone Program was developed to manage parcels of land whose clean-up cost exceeds their total future economic value.
  - hammock 5y ago
    Sounds like all the Superfund sites across the country, for most of which remediation is on hold due to cost, etc. Except there are no placards. It's not altogether unlikely you have one in your backyard.
    - pirate787 5y ago
      There are superfund sites near me where some idiot had a home business making lead ammunition, and another something involving mercury.
woodruffw 5y ago
I thought this part was worth highlighting: > The group, which ultimately named itself Concerned Citizens for Responsible Remediation (CCRR), collected maps, dug into newspaper archives, and filed requests for public records. Members spoke with scientists knowledgeable about tannery chemicals and hired an environmental attorney with a background in geology to help them strategize. This is a great example of civic action leading to results. But it's an even better reminder that you need nontrivial resources, in the form of time and money, to get companies to admit wrongdoing and to nudge the government (at any level) to do anything about it. For every ex-company town that succeeds in this kind of recognition, there are ten others (usually, but not always, poorer and not as white) that are quietly suffering from externalized pollution.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  People don't really care about 100yo pollution that makes them and their neighbors marginally more cancerous when $3+ gas actually hurts them today and the wastewater plant is a museum of obsolete equipment. There's a fine (yet blurry) line between suffering an externalized problem and having other bigger problems that are more deserving of resources. They're poor. Not stupid. They have different situational constraints and therefore chart a different course.
  - mikeyouse 5y ago
    Which is a perfect role for a strong regulator -- towns shouldn't have to weigh the tradeoffs of being poisoned. FWIW, Rockford isn't a poor town in any case, median income is like $70k/year which is very comfortable in the Midwest.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - munk-a 5y ago
    We can do both. And we shouldn't ignore the 100yo polluters because they can make people more aware that the exact same irresponsible waste disposal that happened 100yo is still happening today under the guise of "clean industry". Also - I'd challenge the fact that people don't care about 100yo pollution if you've ever talked to someone living in the neighborhood of a superfund site.
mturk 5y ago
I grew up here. You could smell the tannery from miles away. In sixth grade, we had a visit from a community member. I forget the nominal purpose, but it was in the sixth grade building which at the time was just down the street from WWW. I remember him saying to us, "Lots of people say the tannery smells terrible. I think it smells like money."
mark-r 5y ago
There's one thing I don't understand. These chemicals are ubiquitous in the environment because they're non-reactive - nothing breaks them down. But if they're non-reactive, how do they affect our health?
- zejn 5y ago
  If the chemicals are hard to break down, that does not mean they do not have effects on other chemicals surrounding them. A good example is platinum: it is one of the least reactive metals, but can serve as catalyst for some reactions.
- nosianu 5y ago
  Chemicals don't need to chemically react. Especially for biology, merely existing is enough. Lots of biological regulation is done by influencing three-dimensional shapes of the huge highly complex structures called proteins. Organic chemistry especially is a science of complex three dimensional structures and its dynamic changes, at least as important as actually altering the chemical structure. Often they are not static but have moving parts, because not all bonds restrict movement of the atoms connected through that bond in relation to the other part. Many have what's call binding sites - other molecules fitting to those sites won't be altered or alter the chemical structure of the protein. They alter the shape. Proteins are machines, pretty much literally. For example, there are channel proteins, and a molecule docking on a binding site of such a protein might open or close that channel for certain molecules. The variety of those molecular machinery (really, literally) is huge. You can influence machines not just by breaking them down, you can just throw a spanner between their gears. Things that matter are not just shape and size, but also polarity of the parts. Polar components of a molecule influence polar components of proteins if they can get close enough, which influence the shape. Binding sites, as only one example: Description: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Structural_Biochemistry/Protein_function/Binding_Sites https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Structural_Biochemistry/Protei... Images: https://www.google.com/search?q=binding+site+protein&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=binding+site+protein&source=... Example - 22 second movie - for a protein-machine whose function it is to move stuff around: https://youtu.be/y-uuk4Pr2i8 https://youtu.be/y-uuk4Pr2i8 Example for ion channels that open and close: https://youtu.be/ZKE8qK9UCrU https://youtu.be/ZKE8qK9UCrU Last, a movie showing one of the most important and most famous proteins in any eukaryotic organism in action, the protein that generates ATP: https://youtu.be/kXpzp4RDGJI https://youtu.be/kXpzp4RDGJI (Part of a free course: https://pll.harvard.edu/course/cell-biology-mitochondria https://pll.harvard.edu/course/cell-biology-mitochondria)
aaron695 5y ago
dukeofdoom 5y ago
I made an offer on a building lot once. It was besides a peaceful meandering river, with nice nature. It didn't even occur to me that the site might be polluted. Eventually it was revealed to me that around a hundred years ago, it was a mechanical shop and the ground was contaminated with heavy metals.
hilbert42 5y ago
It is interesting that this article refers to a tannery and doesn't mention the word 'chromium' in the process. In the 19th Century chromium was intoduced into the tanning process as an alterative or adjunct to using tannin/tannic acid for converting skins and hides into leather. It turned out that chromium was particularly effective in tanning leather albeit a toxic one. (It has been since abandoned for this purpose.) I'm therefore surprised not to see mention of large-scale chromium pollution on the site - given the age of the plant it'd be very surprising if chromium wasn't present. Given the toxicity of chromium salts I'm also surprised it isn't a big deal in and of itself (and that chromium isn't mentioned by name as the principal polluting agent). BTW, it's a shame that chromium is toxic because it's an excellent agent for preserving leather. This fact was brought home to me a few years back when I saw a documentary that showed part of a WWI battlefield in Belgium that was being made way for a factory. As part of the preparation, battlefield archeologists were scouring and documenting the area before the factory was built and in the process they came across the bodies of soldiers from that conflict. Essentially, nothing remained of these soldiers other than their skeletons and their boots - and the boots were in near perfect condition in that the chromium used in their tanning process had preserved them that way under the moist ground for nearly a century. Apparently, the chromium salts in the leather had stopped any bacterial action taking hold, thus keeping the leather well preserved.

151 points by hammock 5y ago

I had an idea when I was younger to use this type of investigative activism as a way to short publicly traded companies and fund an ever-increasing amount of pollution investigation. Unfortunately massive pollution scandals barely dent share prices since enforcement is so lax and slow, and many of the worst offenders have closed shop after pillaging the land. A shame since it's not in the 'public' interest to bring this stuff to light since governments have to pay to clean it up.

kingsloi 5y ago
What an interesting idea! Seems like the only way to have any impact is to upset shareholders. I've been working on trying to highlight the issue in Gary/Northwest Indiana by trying to be a "citizen sleuth" by tracking air pollution and open sourcing the data. Still a WIP, but recently added gas tracking to the data too https://millerbeach.community https://millerbeach.community You're right about worst offenders closing shop after pillaging, or they just sell and move on to the next location. In 2019 ArcelorMittal spilled cyanide and ammonia into a Lake Michigan tributary, closing the National Park, local water intake, killing 3000 fish, etc. In December 2020, ArcelorMittal was bought by Cleveland-Cliffs for $1.4 billion. Cleveland-Cliffs made record $20 billion in revenue in 2021. https://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/cleveland-cliffs-made-record-20-4-billion-revenue-last-year/article_623d747a-e889-5f1c-ae38-f5f61c5c83b1.html https://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/cleveland-cliffs-mad... A local news article from today: https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/consent-decree-proposed-in-wake-of-2019-spill-that-killed-thousands-of-fish/article_b247ed92-cacb-5e27-b4ed-9c831a1aad0b.html https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/consen... > The proposed consent decree requires Cleveland-Cliffs to complete "comprehensive operational upgrades to the steel mill to prevent future cyanide and ammonia violations," the environmental groups said." > The steelmaker agreed to improve its notification procedures and pay $3 million in civil penalties, which are to be split between Indiana and the U.S. Treasury. $3 million, and to prevent future cyanide/ammonia violations... but still dump into Lake Michigan. Aren't we lucky!
- hammock 5y ago
  That's a cool website. Thanks for putting it together. I plug my nose every time I drive through NWI. And I have seen oil slicks on the water as far away as New Buffalo, Union Pier, etc
  - kingsloi 5y ago
    Hey, thank you! Just doing my civic duty to better my lil community! NWI gets a bad rap, the smell/pollution is always mentioned, and is what drives a lot of people away. Who knows how much revenue is lost because of the smell. However, the natural beauty is outstanding, even in Gary, so many cool ecosystems, not to mention the best Great Lake! The more visitors, the more tax revenue, it’s a win/win!
- maxerickson 5y ago
  EPA has a bunch of air quality stations in that area (they don't provide real time data though): https://www.epa.gov/outdoor-air-quality-data/interactive-map-air-quality-monitors https://www.epa.gov/outdoor-air-quality-data/interactive-map... (from there, click through to the map and then turn on layers of interest)
  - kingsloi 5y ago
    Yeah I'm aware they do, but it's outdated, inaccessible, and lacking, which is why I guess I want to do a better job at it, and ideally host many more sensors. Indiana is one of, if not the most toxic state https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-env-indiana-toxic-st-0328-20210326-3x4xhquoqjeglp7lqa7rim5dny-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-e... I live on the southern shoreline of Lake Michigan, the rest of Gary, Whiting, Hammond is directly south of the Gary Works, BP, etc. There should be way more hyper-localised air quality monitoring, 1-2 isn't enough, the air I breathe, isn't what school kids in Gary/Whiting breathe.
MattGaiser 5y ago
If you found a Volkswagen type thing, then sure. The problem is that it needs to be an utterly massive discovery to move the price of a company that probably has 100 factories.

titzer 5y ago

I used to be a libertarian. I used to think that private ownership of property, coupled with a free market (and something vague about an informed citizenship and consumers voting with their dollars) was the solution to most of modern society's ills. It's articles like this that absolutely refute the idea that private ownership of property leads to good environmental outcomes (it doesn't; it leads to exploitative, destructive extraction of value from land, leaving behind carnage whose damage was estimated at below the bottom line, leaving a comfortable margin for profit) and that citizens would be proactive and well-informed (they aren't; they are constantly stonewalled, lied to, and officials stupid or paid off). Now, ironically, in this advanced state of tech today, we have finally got the tools that citizens can be informed about the environmental impacts...of decades dead corporations and gluttonous barons that have long since moved on from the smoking, toxic craters they knowingly created. What an exciting future we have now, mining the graveyard of a century of bad policy, dealing with the lies and denial of others, and a complete lack of accountability. Meanwhile, these toxins, here a trace, there a torrent, sit as mute reminder of the horrible cost we've exacted on this planet (so far).

vkou 5y ago
Fortunately, Snowcrash's libertarian utopia has a solution to this exact problem, in the form of a little placard. SACRIFICE ZONE WARNING The National Parks Service has declared this area to be a National Sacrifice Zone. The Sacrifice Zone Program was developed to manage parcels of land whose clean-up cost exceeds their total future economic value.
- hammock 5y ago
  Sounds like all the Superfund sites across the country, for most of which remediation is on hold due to cost, etc. Except there are no placards. It's not altogether unlikely you have one in your backyard.
  - pirate787 5y ago
    There are superfund sites near me where some idiot had a home business making lead ammunition, and another something involving mercury.

woodruffw 5y ago

I thought this part was worth highlighting: > The group, which ultimately named itself Concerned Citizens for Responsible Remediation (CCRR), collected maps, dug into newspaper archives, and filed requests for public records. Members spoke with scientists knowledgeable about tannery chemicals and hired an environmental attorney with a background in geology to help them strategize. This is a great example of civic action leading to results. But it's an even better reminder that you need nontrivial resources, in the form of time and money, to get companies to admit wrongdoing and to nudge the government (at any level) to do anything about it. For every ex-company town that succeeds in this kind of recognition, there are ten others (usually, but not always, poorer and not as white) that are quietly suffering from externalized pollution.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
People don't really care about 100yo pollution that makes them and their neighbors marginally more cancerous when $3+ gas actually hurts them today and the wastewater plant is a museum of obsolete equipment. There's a fine (yet blurry) line between suffering an externalized problem and having other bigger problems that are more deserving of resources. They're poor. Not stupid. They have different situational constraints and therefore chart a different course.
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  Which is a perfect role for a strong regulator -- towns shouldn't have to weigh the tradeoffs of being poisoned. FWIW, Rockford isn't a poor town in any case, median income is like $70k/year which is very comfortable in the Midwest.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- munk-a 5y ago
  We can do both. And we shouldn't ignore the 100yo polluters because they can make people more aware that the exact same irresponsible waste disposal that happened 100yo is still happening today under the guise of "clean industry". Also - I'd challenge the fact that people don't care about 100yo pollution if you've ever talked to someone living in the neighborhood of a superfund site.

mturk 5y ago

I grew up here. You could smell the tannery from miles away. In sixth grade, we had a visit from a community member. I forget the nominal purpose, but it was in the sixth grade building which at the time was just down the street from WWW. I remember him saying to us, "Lots of people say the tannery smells terrible. I think it smells like money."

mark-r 5y ago

There's one thing I don't understand. These chemicals are ubiquitous in the environment because they're non-reactive - nothing breaks them down. But if they're non-reactive, how do they affect our health?

zejn 5y ago
If the chemicals are hard to break down, that does not mean they do not have effects on other chemicals surrounding them. A good example is platinum: it is one of the least reactive metals, but can serve as catalyst for some reactions.
nosianu 5y ago
Chemicals don't need to chemically react. Especially for biology, merely existing is enough. Lots of biological regulation is done by influencing three-dimensional shapes of the huge highly complex structures called proteins. Organic chemistry especially is a science of complex three dimensional structures and its dynamic changes, at least as important as actually altering the chemical structure. Often they are not static but have moving parts, because not all bonds restrict movement of the atoms connected through that bond in relation to the other part. Many have what's call binding sites - other molecules fitting to those sites won't be altered or alter the chemical structure of the protein. They alter the shape. Proteins are machines, pretty much literally. For example, there are channel proteins, and a molecule docking on a binding site of such a protein might open or close that channel for certain molecules. The variety of those molecular machinery (really, literally) is huge. You can influence machines not just by breaking them down, you can just throw a spanner between their gears. Things that matter are not just shape and size, but also polarity of the parts. Polar components of a molecule influence polar components of proteins if they can get close enough, which influence the shape. Binding sites, as only one example: Description: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Structural_Biochemistry/Protein_function/Binding_Sites https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Structural_Biochemistry/Protei... Images: https://www.google.com/search?q=binding+site+protein&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=binding+site+protein&source=... Example - 22 second movie - for a protein-machine whose function it is to move stuff around: https://youtu.be/y-uuk4Pr2i8 https://youtu.be/y-uuk4Pr2i8 Example for ion channels that open and close: https://youtu.be/ZKE8qK9UCrU https://youtu.be/ZKE8qK9UCrU Last, a movie showing one of the most important and most famous proteins in any eukaryotic organism in action, the protein that generates ATP: https://youtu.be/kXpzp4RDGJI https://youtu.be/kXpzp4RDGJI (Part of a free course: https://pll.harvard.edu/course/cell-biology-mitochondria https://pll.harvard.edu/course/cell-biology-mitochondria)

aaron695 5y ago

dukeofdoom 5y ago

I made an offer on a building lot once. It was besides a peaceful meandering river, with nice nature. It didn't even occur to me that the site might be polluted. Eventually it was revealed to me that around a hundred years ago, it was a mechanical shop and the ground was contaminated with heavy metals.

hilbert42 5y ago

It is interesting that this article refers to a tannery and doesn't mention the word 'chromium' in the process. In the 19th Century chromium was intoduced into the tanning process as an alterative or adjunct to using tannin/tannic acid for converting skins and hides into leather. It turned out that chromium was particularly effective in tanning leather albeit a toxic one. (It has been since abandoned for this purpose.) I'm therefore surprised not to see mention of large-scale chromium pollution on the site - given the age of the plant it'd be very surprising if chromium wasn't present. Given the toxicity of chromium salts I'm also surprised it isn't a big deal in and of itself (and that chromium isn't mentioned by name as the principal polluting agent). BTW, it's a shame that chromium is toxic because it's an excellent agent for preserving leather. This fact was brought home to me a few years back when I saw a documentary that showed part of a WWI battlefield in Belgium that was being made way for a factory. As part of the preparation, battlefield archeologists were scouring and documenting the area before the factory was built and in the process they came across the bodies of soldiers from that conflict. Essentially, nothing remained of these soldiers other than their skeletons and their boots - and the boots were in near perfect condition in that the chromium used in their tanning process had preserved them that way under the moist ground for nearly a century. Apparently, the chromium salts in the leather had stopped any bacterial action taking hold, thus keeping the leather well preserved.