CNHI
Sunday, April 25, 2010 —
Now that Alcoa has announced the permanent closure of its Badin Works smelting plant, the company must allow for the proper and necessary environmental investigation of the site before it runs away with profits from our water and leaves us with a toxic mess.
In the decades that Alcoa operated that smelter, it discharged pollutants into the air, lands and waterways. Known contaminants in-cluded cyanide, fluoride, PCBs, solvents, metals, hydrocarbons, benzene, naphthalene and methane, all of which are hazardous to humans and aquatic life.
This resulted in environmental degradation at Badin Lake, including a Fish Consumption Advi-sory about the health risk of eating its fish. Yet Alcoa refuses to discuss the matter, much less address it.
There are no provisions to clean up contamination leftover from decades of its smelter operations in Alcoa’s Relicensing Settle-ment Agreement it offers as part of its relicensing application for the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project.
As no one except Alcoa knows exactly where the smelter’s industrial hazardous waste is buried, there is no indication to what extent the contamination has affected Badin Lake and the people who have used this lake for generations.
I challenge Alcoa to allow for full investigation of the site so that the extent of its contamination can be determined and the firm will take responsibility for its pollution and take appropriate financial actions to remedy it, as they have done in other similar cases. Our health and our future will pay a devastating long-term cost if this does not occur.
Dean Naujoks,
The Yadkin Riverkeeper
