After 120 Cancer Deaths In Minden, WV Since 2015, EPA "Thinking About" Superfund Designation

[hatrack]

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Agents from various state and federal government bodies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, held court at the New Beginning Apostolic Church in Minden Friday and Saturday, attempting to impress upon those gathered of a new effort afoot to study the presence of a probable carcinogen lingering in soil, sediment and waters in and around the tiny and all-but-forgotten Fayette County town.

Like Minden residents who have been living with PCBs – Polychlorinated Biphenyls – for the past 34 years and watching one neighbor after another contract a mixed menu of cancers and die, we remain highly skeptical of the government’s intent. This isn’t the first time Minden residents have called for action. And yet the government’s response seems to follow a script: Order up another round of testing – and do nothing else. The answer, we think, needs to be far more robust, far more actionable, than what Minden has seen to date.

EPA officials, with a request from Gov. Jim Justice, are now thinking about adding the former Shaffer Equipment Co. property – the source of PCBs since the mid-1980s – to the National Priorities List of Superfund sites. That would be an important designation for Minden, essentially putting it on a short list of sites scheduled for cleanup.

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Go ahead, tell them how concerned the government is now – after 34 years of benign neglect. Tell them how focused the effort is now, citing December test results that topped EPA’s “actionable” standard in two samples while conveniently ignoring previous testing that showed greater concentrations of PCB in multiple locations. Go ahead and try to convince Minden residents that there is no correlation between the PCBs and cancer. “I can stand on my porch, and there are 35 people on one side of the road, and they’re dead,” said resident Annetta Coffman at the Friday meeting. “They’re dead, of cancer, every single one of them. I have no neighbors left.”

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http://www.register-herald.com/opinion/editorials/minden---where-government-says-it-does-not-care/article_546c8c86-ce23-53c0-bf61-0b37a6df25d4.html

[Botany]

1. The State of WV is owned by coal, chemical, energy, the NRA, and dumb ass right wing christians

It is a beautiful state but the corruption and ignorance is massive. No doubt that
some of the same people who have or will die of cancer in Minden, WV believed
up to their very end is that the real problem is liberal environmentalists.

I was just over close to that area last week in western MD and talked to a kind hearted
local who talked about "those good paying coal are going to come back."