Trump Transition: Conservative Christmas

Energy secretary nominee Rick Perry, a former Texas governor and a longtime conservative government standard-bearer, visits Trump Tower in New York during the president-elect's Cabinet hiring spree in December. /Getty Images photo by Drew Angerer

Conservative Americans found an unexpected haul of presents under the Christmas tree this year: a bigly box bursting open with a business-tycoon president-elect and a Cabinet stuffed with billionaires and plutocratic ideologues.

Several of the executive-department nominees are more akin to a wolf pack guarding the whole farm than a fox guarding the hen house.

Trump's nominee for Housing and Urban Development secretary, Ben Carson, is a retired neurosurgeon and former Republican primary-season rival of the president-elect. He has no public housing experience and a self-help ideology that seems ill-suited to providing an essential safety-net service. /Getty Images photo by Andrew Burton


Trump's nominee for Education secretary, Michigan Republican Party bigwig billionaire Betsy DeVos, has no experience in public education, including with her own children. She favors private-school vouchers and charter schools as solutions--and likely poison pills--for struggling public schools.

Trump's nominee for Energy secretary, two-time GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry, has advocated dismantling the department. While calling for the agency's demise in an epic 2011 debate gaffe, he forgot the department's name.

Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia, favors a free-market approach to medicine that includes slashing HHS regulations and privatizing Medicare.

Trump's nominee for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, E. Scott Pruitt, has been a fierce critic of the EPA in his current role as Oklahoma attorney general. Pruitt is among the named petitioners in a 25-state lawsuit against the EPA over greenhouse gas regulations.

As the country embarks on Republican government in the White House, both houses of Congress, and a majority of statehouses, a host of hurdles that require united effort confronts the apparently partisan Trump administration: healthcare reform; national governments that threaten global security such as North Korea; external economic threats from powerful competitors and volatile global markets; internal economic challenges including a dilapidated infrastructure, an aging population, a skewed concentration of wealth, and disruptive waves of automation that upend the workforce; roiled race relations; immigration reform; and climate change.

Tackling these hurdles from the right, or any single-minded approach, is doomed to failure measured in blood and national treasure.

Dakota Access Pipeline: Photography from frontline

Editor's Note: There has been little in-depth coverage of the opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation in North Dakota. Recent images from Cannon Ball, N.D., where "water protector" demonstrators are camped near the pipeline's path, shine light on the struggle over completion of the 1,172-mile oil artery.

On Nov. 20, law enforcement officers fire a water cannon to douse Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) demonstrators at a state highway bridge in Cannon Ball. The temperature was about 26 degrees F and several protesters were injured, Youth Radio correspondent Avery White reported. /Avery White photo

In late November, musician, author and photographer D. Randall Blythe visited one of the "water protector" encampments in Cannon Ball. He wrote about what he witnessed for Rolling Stone. /David Rollingcloud photo

Blythe volunteered to participate in "direct action" demonstrations involving face-offs with law enforcement. The Lamb of God frontman witnessed a police line stand-off at Turtle Island near the Dakota Access Pipeline's proposed crossing of the Missouri River. The Sioux tribe relies on the river as a water resource. /D. Randall Blythe photo

"The ridge line at the top of the hill became crowded with heavily armed police officers and men in tactical gear staring down at us. I saw rifles, grenade launchers, safety-orange shotguns, large pepper-spray canisters resembling fire extinguishers and a few water hoses that were rolled out. Hooded men with binoculars and video cameras walked the hilltop, filming and scanning our faces constantly."
--Randy Blythe for Rolling Stone

During the clash with protesters on Nov. 20, law enforcement fired water cannons and non-lethal projectiles at protesters. A Native American security guard told Blythe that he collected these non-lethal rounds, which include a buckshot beanbag, from the scene of the confrontation. /D. Randall Blythe photo

Medics have treated several demonstrators for head wounds that are likely the result of law enforcement officers  firing non-lethal rounds at protesters. /August White image

Military veterans observe the police-barricaded bridge near the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation that has become a demonstration flash point. More than 2,000 veterans are vowing to serve as human shields to help block eviction of the demonstrators from their camps. /Associated Press photo via voaanews.com

Veteran Trek Kelly of Venice Beach, Calif., is among the veterans supporting DAPL demonstrators facing eviction. /Reuters photo 

With a Dec. 5 eviction deadline from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers looming, DAPL demonstrators also are facing brutal weather conditions as winter bears down on their camps in Cannon Ball. /Reuters image

Dakota Access Pipeline: Sacred Stone Camp stand

CNN reported today that there are thousands of Dakota Access Pipeline protesters hunkered down in frigid winter conditions at the Sacred Stone Camp in Cannon Ball, N.D. /CNN image

This weekend, more than 2,000 military veterans, including U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, are vowing to serve as human shields for Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protesters at the Sacred Stone Camp, Reuters reported today.

The protest camp is within a couple miles of the energy project's last unfinished segment. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has set a Dec. 5 deadline for protesters to leave Sacred Stone Camp or face arrest.

The Corps decided last month to delay the final unfinished leg of the pipeline project, which features tunneling under Lake Oahe, a drinking water reservoir for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. The Corps said the project pause is necessary because "additional discussion and analysis are warranted" on several grounds, including "the history of the Great Sioux Nation's dispossessions of lands" and the resource value of Lake Oahe to the Standing Rock Sioux.

Despite the delay, the Dec. 5 eviction deadline has set the stage for another confrontation over the 1,172 mile long pipeline, The project price tag is pegged at $3.7 billion.

In August, hundreds of DAPL protesters were based at the Sacred Stone Camp. /KFYR-TV image 

In spring 2016, a Google Maps image shows the barren and sparsely populated landscape at Sacred Stone Camp.

Dakota Access Pipeline another black mark

During a cold late-fall night in Standing Rock, N.D., police target a water cannon at protesters who have been trying to block completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Nov. 20, 2016, clash also included police firing tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters, Youth Radio correspondent Avery White reported. /Avery White photo

In the 21st century, there should be no more Native American treaty violations or disruption of natural resources on Reservation land. The Dakota Access Pipeline is an affront to both of these fundamental deal-breakers.

The pipeline cuts through land promised to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in an 1851 treaty. The petroleum project also poses an environmental threat to the tribe's primary water source--the Missouri River--which runs along one side of the tribe's Reservation.

The drumbeat of human rights abuses against Native Americans--muted for a generation since conflict rekindled during the 1970s at Wounded Knee in South Dakota--is back with a vengeance with the Dakota Access Pipeline.

In October 2016, armed soldiers and law enforcement officers move in formation during the eviction of protesters who had camped on private land in the path of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Associated Press reported at least 117 protesters were arrested and at least one was injured. /AP photo by Mike McCleary

American indigenous people have been on the receiving end of violence on a societal scale since the arrival of the first European colonists in the early 1600s. Accounts and accusations of germ warfare against Native Americans begin in the Colonial period, with war crimes including mass executions and concentration camps accelerating through the 1800s, then closing with The Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.

The U.S. government has been signing treaties with American indigenous people since the founding of the country, reaching a pact with the Delaware Nation in 1778. Many thousands of Native Americans were segregated into Reservations under hundreds of these treaties, which grant the right of self government to indigenous people, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.

Ever since the first treaties were negotiated, Native Americans have variously staved off or succumbed to incursions targeting treaty-protected territory. Greed is always the motive: land grabbing and resource robbing have driven the exploitation for centuries.

The Dakota Access Pipeline traverses more than 1,100 miles of environmentally sensitive terrain, including two dozen river crossings: full illustration. /New York Times graphic, above; Washington Post graphic, below

In September 2016, thousands of protesters march to a burial ground site that bulldozers disturbed during construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in Cannon Ball, N.D. /Robyn Beck photo via Getty Images

During the Nov. 20 clash, police fired tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets on protesters near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota. With the temperature around 26 degrees, hundreds of protesters were treated for hypothermia, tear-gas inhalation, and rubber-bullet injuries including head wounds, according to sacredstonecamp.org. One tribal elder went into cardiac arrest; but medics performed CPR and resusitated him, the website reported. /ABC News image

Black Lagoon: 'Sleeping giant' threatens reservoir

BULLWORK OF DEMOCRACY EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE: The Black Lagoon is a contaminated man-made pond near the corner of Maple and Walker streets in Marlborough, Mass. For more than a century, petroleum-product spills have plagued properties on a mile-long stretch of Maple Street. Toxins from those spills including lead now rest uneasily in The Black Lagoon, mingled in massive silt deposits that pose a threat to the nearby Sudbury Reservoir.

LAND OF THE DAMMED: A large meadow dominates the terrain immediately downstream from The Black Lagoon. If the man-made pond's dam fails during a storm, the floodgate spillway drainage ditch in the foreground of this photo and the field in the background would be covered with contaminated silt. The Sudbury Reservoir, which is a backup water supply for 2.2 million people in Greater Boston, is about a quarter-mile downstream. /Christopher Cheney photo

The dam holding back tons of contaminated silt at The Black Lagoon is structurally compromised and could fail catastrophically, according to a pair of engineers.

The dam has been poorly maintained over the past two decades, and the elements have taken their toll, says Joseph Landry, principal at San Francisco Bay Area-based Joseph Landry Architecture and Design. "It is easy to see that the structural integrity has been compromised from years of natural forces and maintenance neglect. The cracks in the concrete and the misalignment of the top stones will only further degrade at a more rapid speed because the foundation support is obviously deteriorated. Even by just viewing photos, one can see the severity of the situation."

A washout on the back side of The Black Lagoon's dam is at least 5-feet-wide and 10-feet long. The washout runs along the concrete portion of the structure's western abutment, which is constructed with carved stone and mortar. Poor maintenance over the past 20 years also has weakened the earthen portion of the the dam, below, which has trees growing along its entire surface. Tree roots compromise the structural integrity of packed-earth dams. /Christopher Cheney photos and bullworkofdemocracy illustrations

The damaged eastern abutment and tree growth on the earthen portion of the dam are serious structural problems that could lead to a collapse, says an engineer at the Connecticut Department of Transportation who also reviewed photographs of the site. "It is possible," he says of a dam failure at The Black Lagoon. "Like anything, it's not going to last forever. It has to be maintained."

The Black Lagoon, which is on state land managed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), is filled with tons of contaminated silt from several properties upstream along Maple Street. Over the past three decades, at least 16 Maple Street properties have undergone state-supervised environmental cleanups, according to Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) records.

In an April 1996 story published in the Middlesex News, a state official called The Black Lagoon a major source of contamination for the Sudbury Reservoir, which is a key element of the backup water supply for 2.2 million Greater Boston residents and 5,500 businesses. In the time since I wrote that newspaper story, the environmental threat has mushroomed, with alarming growth of the contaminated silt deposits in The Black Lagoon and the man-made pond's dam in disrepair.

This week, an official at the city of Marlborough told Bullwork of Democracy that all of the known contamination along Maple Street has been removed or contained. "It's been cleaned up piece by piece," said Priscilla Ryder, the agent for the Marlborough Conservation Commission who has been monitoring Maple Street toxic waste sites for a quarter century. Some of the cleanup efforts have taken as long as 15 years to complete, she said.

There still could be contamination under the surface along Maple Street, in part because DEP denied requests from the city to conduct a comprehensive cleanup of the entire commercial strip. "They've cleaned up what we found," she said.

DCR bears responsibility for cleaning up The Black Lagoon, Ryder said. "I remember talking with DCR at the beginning [of the Maple Street cleanups in the late 1980s], and they said they were not going to clean up the pond until everything was cleaned up upstream."

DCR officials did not respond to email and phone requests for comment.

Most of The Black Lagoon is filled with contaminated silt. /Google Earth image and bullworkofdemocracy illustration

For more than a century, a mile-long stretch of Maple Street has been the scene of repeated oil and gasoline spills, according to DEP records. The Marlborough Fire Department headquarters, a $2.4 million facility completed in 1995, is located on one of the most notoriously polluted properties: 215 Maple St.

A 1986 subsurface exploration study of 215 Maple St. focuses on the environmental impact of a coal gasification plant that operated on the property from about 1900 to 1940. The Black Lagoon, which is about a half-mile south, is fed by the Sudbury Reservoir tributary that flows through the 215 Maple St. parcel. "Flow in the Metropolitan District Commission ditch which bisects the site is ... in a southerly direction, towards Sudbury Reservoir," the 1986 study says.

The study documents a thin layer of coal-gasification sludge "found at a depth of about 16 to 18 feet in one area of the site." The study also says the discovery of "an abandoned underground gasoline storage tank on the site constitutes a violation of the State Fire Marshals Regulations." Despite these toxic hazard discoveries, the study fatefully concludes "The volume of hazardous material (coal tar) buried on the site appears to be small."

While preparing the property for the new fire department headquarters on Nov. 15, 1993, excavation workers hit an abandoned pipe from the coal gasification plant, releasing more than 100 gallons of thick black coal tar into the soil, DEP documents say. "While performing construction activities at the new fire station, a pipe that was part of a former coal plant was ruptured, resulting in a release of 100-150 gallons of a tar-like substance," a DEP report on the spill says.

The day after the coal tar spill, a cleanup contractor estimated that 50 cubic yards of contaminated soil would have to be removed from the property and "approx 3000 gallons of coal sludge/water will be pumped out of the excavation," a DEP document says.

The Black Lagoon -- and the legacy of petroleum-product spills that it harbors in tons of contaminated silt -- is an environmental threat that has grown silently over time with no end in sight, Ryder says. "It's been a sleeping giant. Nobody's rattling the cage."

A recent photo of The Black Lagoon shows the largest contaminated silt deposits, which are located on the commercially zoned side of the man-made pond. A neighborhood with dozens of homes is on the eastern side of Marlborough's toxic waste "sleeping giant." /Christopher Cheney photo and bullworkofdemocracy illustration

DEP documents on Maple Street environmental cleanups:

Cleanup plan for former Texaco gas station, March 11, 1997

Cleanup report for 417 Maple St., April 1998

Cleanup report for 415 Maple St., June 1998

Cleanup report for gasoline spill, 146 Maple St., June 1999

Cleanup report for 146 Maple Street, July 2010

Waste oil cleanup report for 417 Maple St., August 2013

Environmental Nightmare: Monster of Black Lagoon

Contaminated soil covers more than half of the surface area and fills most of the total volume of The Black Lagoon in Marlborough, Mass. An aging and poorly maintained dam is containing the silt deposits from reaching the Sudbury Reservoir, which is a half-mile downstream. /Google Earth image and bullworkofdemocracy illustration

For at least three decades, The Black Lagoon has fed a steady diet of toxic waste to a tributary stream of the Sudbury Reservoir. The stream that feeds the lagoon drains storm water from Maple Street, the scene of a century's worth of petroleum-product spills, according to Massachusetts officials. /Google Earth image and bullworkofdemocracy illustration

The Black Lagoon off Maple Street in Marlborough (photo below) has spread contaminated silt to the Sudbury Reservoir (photo above). A tributary stream a half-mile long links The Black Lagoon to the reservoir./Google Earth image and bullworkofdemocracy illustration

The concrete-and-earth dam at The Black Lagoon, which is state land, has been poorly maintained for at least two decades. /Christopher Cheney photo

The Black Lagoon is located in a mixed commercial and residential neighborhood. To the west and south, several small businesses line Maple Street, including at least 10 properties that are former or active toxic waste sites. To the north and east, houses dot the landscape. /Google Earth image

The largest silt deposit areas of The Black Lagoon are on the commercial-development side of the man-made pond, which is a resting place for tons of contaminated soil, according to state officials.

The Black Lagoon is in the rotted heart of this April 1996 map. /Middlesex News image

In 1996, the first Page 1 Sunday-edition newspaper story of my journalism career featured the Sudbury Reservoir and The Black Lagoon. /Ken McGagh photo for Middlesex News

Excerpt from 'Sudbury Reservoir: Unfit to Drink,' Sunday Middlesex News, April 21, 1996, by Christopher Cheney

Gretchen Roorbach, a scientist at the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, said a pond off Walker Street is functioning as a catch basin for the contamination flowing down from the Maple Street sites. "That is a serious source of contamination," she said.
Roorbach said testing of the Walker Street pond had revealed the presence of not only petrochemicals from oil and gasoline spills but also heavy metals such as lead. "That is a real settling pond for contaminants and heavy metals," she said.