Must-read recap: The New Lede's top stories
Beyond East Palestine, widespread toxic vinyl chloride pollution; battle lines being drawn as Farm Bill looms; a phantom lake rises again.
Beyond East Palestine, report finds widespread toxic vinyl chloride pollution
When a Norfolk Southern train transporting hazardous material derailed in East Palestine, Ohio on February 3, the subsequent release and explosion of chemicals fouled the air and exposed the community to a toxic cocktail of contaminants, including a substance known to cause cancer called vinyl chloride. More than two months later, air sampling data continues to show elevated levels of vinyl chloride in the area, and residents fear for their health.
A new report released last week shows that what happened in East Palestine was far from an isolated incident, and that people across the country are regularly exposed to vinyl chloride pollution, particularly those living in low-income areas and communities of color.
“It is outrageous that so many communities are being exposed day-in and day-out to the same dangerous chemical and plastic that burned in the Ohio train derailment,” Mike Schade, director of Mind the Store, a program of Toxic-Free Future, said in a statement accompanying the report.
Vinyl chloride is a colorless gas used to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics used for such things as pipes, vehicle upholstery, and plastic kitchen ware.
Vinyl chloride contamination is primarily emanating from petrochemical production and waste disposal facilities, according to the report issued April 13 by the nonprofit Toxic-Free Future.
The group said it analyzed data collected by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), finding that in 2021, US vinyl chloride and PVC plastic producers released more than 400,000 pounds of vinyl chloride into the air, and that just five companies account for more than 97% of the nation’s vinyl chloride air pollution.
Those five – Westlake Chemical, Formosa Plastics, Occidental Chemical, Shintech, and Orbia – collectively manufacture more than 10 billion pounds of vinyl chloride per year, according to Toxic-Free Future.
A spokesman for Westlake said the company “is committed to operating in a safe and environmentally responsible manner and works with state and federal regulatory authorities to minimize emissions.”
The other companies either did not respond to requests for comment or declined to comment. (Read the rest of the story.)
Battle lines being drawn as Farm Bill looms
With the upcoming expiration of the US Farm Bill in September, lawmakers are drawing battle lines over numerous issues that impact the lives of millions of people, from food assistance to farm subsidies and more.
As in past years, the debates are shaping up with a focus on programs aimed at helping provide nutrition to needy families, but some environmental and public health advocates say the bill also offers an opportunity to tackle concerns about harmful pesticides used in agriculture and farmworkers health issues — an opportunity they hope lawmakers won’t miss.
“There’s never been any attention on pesticides and farmworker health,” said Margaret Reeves, a senior scientist at the advocacy group Pesticide Action Network (PAN). “So if we get any, that’ll be progress.”
Much of the debate over the upcoming Farm Bill is expected to target questions about whether to expand, reform, or cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), an anti-hunger program that helps low-income families purchase food. SNAP makes up about 80% of funding in the current Farm Bill.
“In this current Congress, that’s going to get a lot of airtime,” Reeves said.
The debate heated up last month, when House Agriculture Committee member Dusty Johnson (R-SD), along with 23 other House Republicans, proposed legislation for the upcoming bill that would strengthen the eligibility requirements for SNAP. The measure, dubbed the America Works Act of 2023, would expand the number of people subject to SNAP’s work requirements, potentially jeopardizing food benefits for more than 10 million people, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The Republican Study Committee’s 2023 proposed budget seeks to remove SNAP benefits from the Farm Bill altogether. (Read the rest of the story.)
Postcard from California: A phantom lake rises again
At the start of the California Gold Rush in 1849, Tulare Lake was the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi River: In wet years, the shallow inland sea that is fed by four rivers covered 800 square miles or more of the lower San Joaquin Valley.
After white settlers displaced the indigenous Yokuts Indians, ferries and steamships plied Tulare Lake’s ports, and a thriving commercial fishery supplied salmon, sturgeon, and terrapins to the finest restaurants in San Francisco.
Fifty years later, Tulare Lake was dead.
By the turn of the century, farmers had tapped its tributaries for irrigation, cutting the rivers’ flow. In the 1920s, Georgia cotton king J.G. Boswell came west and drained the remaining wetlands to stake out what became the world’s biggest cotton plantation. After the Depression, huge taxpayer-subsidized irrigation projects transformed the valley, including the desiccated lakebed, into one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world.
In rainy years, low-lying parts of the Tulare Basin flooded, and old-timers recalled the prediction of a Yokuts elder named Yoimut. Before her death in 1936, Yoimut predicted to an ethnographer that Tulare Lake would return one day. “It will fill up full and everybody living down there will have to go away,“ she said.
This year, her words are again ringing true.
Since January, a wave of atmospheric rivers dumped torrents of rain and snow on California, dramatically ending the extreme drought that began in 2020. More than 10,000 acres in the Tulare Basin flooded, drowning fields and orchards and forcing thousands of residents to evacuate towns in and around the dry lakebed.
The worst is yet to come. (Read the rest of the opinion column.)