Steel mill polluted town as Romney firm profited

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By JACK GILLUM

GEORGETOWN, S.C. (AP) - The rusty stains on Shirley Carter's home are a permanent reminder of her fight with the local steel mill, just down U.S. Highway 17 near the boat docks. No matter how many cans of industrial-strength acid she went through, the red tint on her property never seemed to go away.

In 1998, Carter and her neighbors sued Georgetown Steel, then owned by the company Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney co-founded, Bain Capital. They sought millions in cleanup costs and accused the mill's owners of leaving their historic Southern neighborhood looking like it had been hit by a "chemical bomb."

State officials determined the mill was largely to blame for the pollution. As the lawsuit dragged on for years, the steel mill filed for bankruptcy and the plant ultimately settled with the residents.

In the end, Bain walked away with more than $30 million in profits. Carter got $800.

FULL story at link.



Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20120811/DA0J1M380.html

---

Online:

Links to documents at http://apne.ws/NRjdLb

---

Contact the Washington investigative team at DCInvestigations(at)ap.org


Paul Skoko stands outside his rust-stained house in Georgetown, S.C., in this photograph taken on Friday, Aug. 10, 2012. He was one of a group of local residents who brought a pollution suit against GS Industries, operator of a nearby steel mill, back in 1998 when the company was owned by the company Mitt Romney co-founded, Bain Capital. (AP Photo/Bruce Smith).

[JDPriestly]

1. K&R

Environmental regulation -- that's what the Republicans want to destroy.

And they outsource in order to avoid environmental regulation and worker safety standards -- the EPA and OSHA.

The real Republican beef is not our unions and our wages but our environmental and worker safety standards.

Not such a big problem in India, China, Bangla Desh, Haiti, Nigeria, Mexico, etc.

But remember, with their cheap manufactured goods, those countries also export their environmental hazards, their bad air, their polluted agricultural lands.

Free trade bears a huge price tag.

[tclambert]

2. Hey, in a capitalist society, a business should be free to kill a few workers and bystanders

who happen to live near their plants. Don't you understand that health and safety standards to save those peoples' lives places a cost burden on the business, and cuts into profits? Lives versus profits? That's a no-brainer.

[aquart]

3. A corporation that declares a profit while debiting the nation is a parasite.

Parasites need to be removed and destroyed.

[glowing]

4. I studied Marine Science and environmental science in Myrtle Beach... Georgetown was

a particular interesting town that was polluted on by georgetown steel and the paper mill (stinks all around the town).

We used to go down to do studies here and there. Our boat captain for our research vessel would take the boat down, set it for a day downstream of Georgetown steel and it would kill all the barnacles and crap off his boat. Fish didn't live at all in that part of the river. They dumped at night... and were allowed to dump a lot of crap.

Anyway, everything in Georgetown was covered in rust, cars, home, streets. Between the smell from the paper mill and the rust of the homes, the only reason for living there was a job at one of the two places. Also little known fun fact, that area in SC is home to a huge % of babies being born as hermaphrodites.... It's the place most people on 17, roll up their windows, crank the AC and hit the gas as fast as the speed traps will allow.

Then again, when I moved to Charleston after college, and came back to visit my now husband, it always woke me up at 1 or 2 in the morning, and I knew I was almost back "home" to my "baby" because it wasn't much further.

Anyway, the water ways around the Georgetown area were one of the biggest real life, in my face, pollution sources that I had ever born witness to... I guess in a way I was "lucky" to study that environment. Long term effects of polluting where you eat, sleep, and you know the rest... and the effects in had on the water ways (there's a lot of marsh, inlet.. anyone who has been to the south carolina coast knows what I'm talking about.)

[roseBudd]

5. DUers go forth and spread this on Facebook eom

[wordpix]

8. good idea, done

[Dustlawyer]

6. BP killed our Gulf of Mexico, continues to buy off all media on Gulf Coast as they are by far the

biggest advertiser on the Gulf Coast (no negative stories will be written), sponsors the U.S. Olympic team, and lies to the world about what is going on (they have yet to settle with 80% of the victims). Talk about polluting! All Governors on the Gulf Coast are Republican, do you hear their cry for their constituents? They would kill the world for a buck!

[BanTheGOP]

7. Eric Holder and the Department of Justice needs to fasttrack this investigation

We are talking SERIOUS criminal charges here. There should be ample evidence to hang RMoney by October, when he can add it to the enormous list of criminal charges to indict RMoney to invalidate his inclusion on the ballot in the general election.

[wordpix]

9. Bain gets $30 million on bankruptcy deal, town gets $870K - Midas Mitt does it again

What a fricking 3rd world morass we live in. This is a justice system? The "investors," aka "plutocrats who engage in risky business" get paid million$ first in a bankruptcy proceeding while the peasants who are breathing this toxic material get almost nothing.