We would like to warmly invite you to join us at this year’s annual Calumet Project Jobs and Justice Awards Banquet celebrating twenty years of working for economic and social justice in Northwest Indiana. Every year more than 200 union and community activists from all walks of life and from across the Region come together to celebrate grassroots activism. Each year we honor Northwest Indiana’s best. We honor those who work tirelessly, often behind the scenes, to educate and organize people to fight for the betterment of all our lives.

The 2004 award recipients are:
•Calumet Community Hero Award (labor): Rosa Vega, Service Employee International Union Local 73 Division 208, for her dedication and unyielding commitment to the labor movement and the community;
•Calumet Community Hero Award (community): Valeta Brannon & John Bakota, community activists, for their dedication and unyielding commitment to opposing the siting of a toxic waste dump in East Chicago;
•Lifetime Achievement Award: Leonard Tomaszewski, for his lifelong commitment and dedication to the labor movement and the community;
•Unity Award: Daniel Lowery, Quality of Life Council, for his work on racism and segregation in the region.

The banquet will be held on Friday, November 19th at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, 7128 Arizona Avenue in Hammond.

The food is great, the people are friendly, you’ll catch up with old friends and make new ones, and the cause is worthy. Tickets are just $35, which includes the banquet and an open bar. All proceeds go to further the work of the Calumet Project.

Call Bessie Dent at (219) 845-5008 ext 224 to reserve your tickets today!

The Calumet Project continues to oppose the confined disposal facility (CDF) being planned for East Chicago, as the Army Corps of Engineers continues their preparations for its construction. The Corps is putting the finishing touches on the slurry wall at this time. However, there are still a number of obstacles in the Corp’s path. Local citizens have constructed some of these obstacles in their fight to ensure the health of our community. Our resolve must increase.

On June 2nd, the Technical Outreach Services for Communities (TOSC) Program at Michigan State University presented their review of the project, entitled TOSC Review of Indiana Harbor and Canal Dredging and Disposal Alternatives Analysis (this review is available through the TOSC office at Michigan State by emailing rileyki@egr.msu.edu or calling 800-490-3890). TOSC is an EPA funded organization that has been assigned to bridge the gap between the community opposition and the plans of the Army Corps of Engineers.

The first part of the presentation focused on what kind of dredging would be most effective, clamshell (mechanical) or hydraulic. Dr. Danny Reible, a professor in the Chemical Engineering department at Louisiana State University, stated that the kind of dredging implemented did not matter as much as how the dredging was implemented. They both have their advantages and disadvantages.

According to a TOSC environmental brief provided at the review, hydraulic dredging offers a number of advantages, including a faster rate of removal, minimized volatilization during the dredging, more complete removal of contaminants, and lower levels of resuspension. The major drawback is the amount of water drawn into the pumps, which may contribute to a higher rate of volatilization while in the CDF and will have to be treated before returning to the waterways.

In fact, it is TOSC’s assessment that the cost of treating a large amount of water would offset the benefits of a slightly lower resuspension rate or more complete removal of contaminants. TOSC agrees with the Army Corps in their use of mechanical dredging, if an experienced dredging firm/operators are hired.

Regarding volatilization, the TOSC environmental brief states that hydraulic dredging results in a minimal volatilization rate. On the other hand, the TOSC IHC Analysis provides a lengthy analysis why hydraulic dredging would end up resulting in higher volatilization rates, related to the amount of water taken in through this process. The public deserves an explicit clarification on the critical question of volatilization, one that gives the reasons for this apparent contradiction.

Ultimately, the review states that the public should be concerned about exposure to contaminated particulates, but that if the Army Corps does its job correctly, both particulate and volatile emissions should be minimized. It is clear that cost and CDF size are the driving factors in the dredging method of choice, and that the project is for navigational as opposed to environmental purposes.

What weighs heavy on everyone’s mind are the anticipated results from the new risk assessment being done by the EPA, and a more complete characterization of sediments. The TOSC review does not believe adequate work has been done in these areas, to the point that they have yet to see the results of modeling work on volatiles and particulate emissions done in 2003-2004 by the Army Corps.

Risk assessments predict what effects projects can have on the health and well being of a community. The first CDF risk assessment used a healthy 25 year old male as its subject base. Community activists as well as the Calumet Project objected to this subject base since it hardly represents the local population and would do little to predict effects on children and seniors. The new risk assessment will take a more realistic approach to the potential fall out from this project.

Additionally, Dr. Peter Orris, a physician and professor with the Department of Environmental and Occpational Health Sciences at the University of Illinois-Chicago, has been brought on by TOSC to review the potential risks associated with the dredging and CDF construction. We eagerly await the findings and comments of Dr. Orris.

The question remains, how can a risk assessment be done when the sediments have yet to be fully characterized? The TOSC review itself asks this question. Without adequate sediment characterization and with incomplete/unavailable baseline data, how can an assessment be done on potential effects to the community? Furthermore, is it possible that contaminants in the sediment will pose such a threat, that the project will have to be reconsidered? The TOSC review stresses that the Army Corps needs to have contingency plans in place during the dredging, in case something goes wrong. But why play with fire? If there is a possibility of danger, should the citizens of East Chicago and Northwest Indiana have to risk exposure?

When it comes to public health matters, confidence in government officials to maintain the public’s health is a must. On the federal level, we rely on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set the standards of pollution control. The Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) does the same on a state level. When projects are proposed that may affect the public’s health, these agencies conduct studies to determine at what level the project will be harmful.

With the Confined Disposal Facility (CDF), the EPA has done a risk assessment. Much criticism has already been made of this risk assessment. The main concern is that the assessment used a 25 year old male as it’s model of how the chemicals emitted from the CDF may harm the community. Needless to say, the EPA is working on another risk assessment to take into account different populations (i.e. children and seniors). We are still waiting for the release of this assessment and implore upon the agencies involved to hold off on any CDF planning, pending the release of this second risk assessment.

Still, there are problems with the use of the risk assessment as a model of predicting the effects that a project will have on a community, in this case the CDF. In the article “Replacing Risk Assessment: New Approaches for Decision Making”, Stephen Lester points out that by it’s very nature, the risk assessment is a guessing game. Questions of long term chemical effect, non-cancer risks, or combined effects of two or more chemicals, are not usually discussed in risk assessments. Lester writes, “The available information is always incomplete, forcing risk assessors to make many assumptions.”

One such assumption is that there is an acceptable level of risk up to a certain point before people are affected by toxic emissions. The scenario is that when this level has been met, any further exposure will be stopped. It’s like saying, “I will hit you in the head with a bat and when I am about to do irreversible harm, I will stop.” Is this how we want our public health protected?

Of course there are alternatives to the risk assessment, alternatives that the Calumet Project believes the Army Corps, EPA, and IDEM need to take into consideration. Once such alternative is the Precautionary Principle. On April 17th, 2004, the Northwest Indiana Environmental Justice Partnership, Calumet Project, IUN Department of Minority Studies, ALMA, and the Black Student Union hosted the 6th annual Environmental Justice and Human Rights Conference. The focus of the conference was on the use of the Precautionary Principle.

The Precautionary Principle is a way to even out the playing field between the government/corporations proposing questionable projects, and the public in opposition to the project. The government/corporations have many scientific and economic resources available to them while the public has to use volunteers, sustained opposition, and sympathetic scientists who will give of their time. If legal maneuvers are involved, that is another burden on an already stretched thin opposition.

What the Principle does is shift the burden to the government/corporations to prove that the proposed activity is the least harmful alternative. The question isn’t, to what extent can the public’s health accept additional toxins into their ecosystem, but rather, how can we avoid putting additional toxins into that ecosystem? This would present a significant shift in the way projects are approached.

Think of it in terms of two questions, taken from the Stephen Lester article. One, is the project is necessary, and two, are there less damaging ways to accomplish the same thing? In fact the Indiana and Harbor Ship Canal dredging (the catalyst for the CDF) is needed from an environmental point of view, due to the sediments going into Lake Michigan and doing damage to the lake. Because the Army Corps has determined this to be a navigational dredge, the primary goal of the project is to facilitate industrial ships entering and exiting the canal with full loads. Would the project be approached differently if the dredging was classified as an environmental dredge? Would less harmful ways then be considered to accomplish the same thing? These are questions that need to be addressed.

The Precautionary Principle would demand these types of questions be asked in determining the environmental soundness of the CDF project. In fact, the use of the Precautionary Principle is legally necessary based on the Rio Declaration from the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, which the United States accepted and ratified. It’s not a question of whether or not the United States is going to use the Precautionary Principle, but how. It is the duty of the community to demand that this happens.

For more information on the Precautionary Principle see:
Replacing Risk Assessment: New Approaches for Decision Making, by Stephen Lester, in the Winter 2000-2001 issue of Everyone’s Backyard from the Center for Health, Environment and Justice

The Precautionary Principle in Action: A Handbook, First Edition, by Joel Tickner, Carolyn Raffensperger, and Nancy Myers, for the Science and Environmental Health Network