April 28, 2009 – Rejected by The Transcript-Bulletin
On March 31, 2009 a container truck full of toxic waste left the EnergySolutions facility in Clive, Utah, on its way to an incinerator in Tennessee. A few hours later as it was weighing in at a station in Carbon County, Utah an employee noticed that the container was leaking. The source of the leak: a hose that had been “repaired” with duct tape.
Now, in all fairness to EnergySolutions, I’m going to quote their spokesman, Mark Walker who so eloquently stated, “It wasn’t our container.” Walker was correct, the container wasn’t owned by EnergySolutions, it was owned by an independent contractor of the Department of Energy. However, this situation only serves to illustrate the real depth of the problem we are facing in Tooele County. EnergySolutions filled a truck with toxic waste and sent it out onto the highway without any concern for human or environmental safety.
For those of you that want to play the “Taiwan Hormesis” card, we’re not talking about Class-A radioactive waste, nor are we even talking about the newly reclassified depleted uranium. We are talking about toxic waste that is “flammable, hazardous waste and toxic upon inhalation for up to 300 feet,” according to the Hazardous Materials Incident Report filed with the US Department of Transportation. This waste was placed into a container truck that was held together with duct tape.
Imagine driving down Highway 6 on the way into Price behind that particular container, had the weigh station employee not been as observant as he/she was. A nice glob of toxic waste hits the windshield of your car, exposing you and your family to these noxious and toxic chemical compounds. Say that same leak drains on the road for a few miles and someone pitches a cigarette butt out the window, that could make a nice pretty fireworks display.
EnergySolutions wants to tell us that it’s not their container, and that “No health or safety was compromised to residents of Carbon County or the environment.” That’s a really nice sentiment on their part, but it’s due in no way to any action or effort on the part of EnergySolutions. This was a toxic disaster waiting to happen, and averted only because one person was on the ball.
These pollutants are on the roads every day, running in and out of Tooele County, to and from the EnergySolutions facility in Clive. The fact that to date we haven’t had a large-scale leak or incident is due purely to luck at this point. It’s obvious that whatever transportation safety regulations are in place at this facility are either woefully inadequate or simply ignored in the pursuit of a few extra dollars. Don’t worry, this is material you can put in your grow box, right Mr. Creamer? We don’t need to be concerned about environmental health or human safety, just slap some duct tape on the hose and ship it out – it isn’t our container.