Environmental Memoir: SRS EPA cleanup stats

An Environmental Protection Agency-led cleanup "cooked" tons of toxic-waste tainted soil at the Solvent Recovery Service of New England Superfund site in Southington, Conn. The cooking treatment included vacuum-equipped machinery to collect carcinogens that were among the deadliest byproducts of the underground heating process. /Image via srsnesite.com

SRS Superfund site: By the numbers

• Address: 10 Lazy Lane, Southington, Conn.
• Proposed as Superfund site in December 1982. Listed as Superfund site in September 1983.
• "Cooking" and treating 56,670 cubic yards of toxic-waste tainted soil completed in February 2015. Lagoon area cooked: 1.7 acres
• From 1995 to 2013, a groundwater collection system at the Superfund site removed 16,000 pounds of hazardous materials
• May 2014 report: In Situ Thermal Remediation: Remedial Action Work Plan and Project Operations Plan, Gardner, Massachusetts-based TerraTherm, EPA and state regulated cleanup contractor
• Southington population growth, 2000 to 2010: 8.4 percent

Southington, Connecticut /Image via Google

Environmental Memoir: Southington deathly sorrow

It is hard for me to imagine that a nature trail will one day pass through the now rotted heart of the Solvent Recovery Service of New England Superfund site in Southington, Conn. /Image via Farmington Valley Trails Council

More than 30 years have passed, but memories of the first time I knocked on doors along Lazy Lane will always be as fresh as they are frightening.

Southington's environmental disaster, which I witnessed festering as a young and inexperienced man in the early 1980s soon after two locations in the Connecticut town were declared Environmental Protection Agency Superfund sites, began before I was born. The Herculean EPA-led cleanup remains a work in progress after the passing of more than three decades and the first generations of environmental casualties.

Southington is ground zero for two of my life's most twisted ironies. The birthplace of my awakening to the deadly consequences of environmental damage has a tiny sliver of my family's fingerprints on the killing machines. And 10 years after a cynical newspaper reporter unfairly cast CCAG's educationally oriented community organizing as monetarily motivated, I started a now two-decade-long journalism career.

The lagoon field, the most contaminated area of the SRS Superfund site, is prepped to be "cooked" in the fall 2013. /Image via srsnesite.com

A top source of toxic waste contamination in the town, which is home to more than 43,000 residents, is the EPA-erased Solvent Recovery Service of New England (SRS) facility at the foot of a hill below dozens of homes on gently twisting Lazy Lane. From 1957 to 1967, one of the prime sources of the toxic waste dumped in two unlined, Olympic-swimming-pool-sized lagoons at SRS was East Hartford-based Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, the company where my father worked for three decades and provided a living for his family.

The Quinnipiac River runs through the center of Southington. In the northern neighborhoods, the river flows south near SRS, then downstream to the center of the town, not far from the Old Southingon Landfill Superfund Site. Both sites are in the river's watershed, according to a December 2012 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department report.

In the summers of 1984 and 1985, when I stood on the front doorsteps of the modest middle-class houses on Lazy Lane as a fundraiser and community organizer for the Hartford-based Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG), the pain and sorrow of untimely death could be seen on every face that peered back at me through the screen-door windows and across the dark New England-red backyard picnic tables.

I will never forget the thin, outstretched arm of one longtime Lazy Lane homeowner as she pointed to each of the neighboring properties on either side of her lawn and across the street. "They have all lost someone to cancer," she told me of leukemia cases and other environmentally related maladies that had claimed many lives before her eyes.

Several Lazy Lane residents shared their memories of large dump trucks climbing up the hill and passing by their houses. Sheets of flapping canvas covered the deadly cargo of toxic-waste-tainted soil that had been scooped up at SRS as the lumbering vehicles rolled toward Southington's other Superfund site, an 11-acre municipal landfill in the center of town surrounded by residential neighborhoods and small businesses.

I will never forget the weathered face of the 40-something owner of an automotive shop on the edge of the Old Southington Landfill. His anger was visible and audible as he explained that the air in every space inside his one-story structure was contaminated with a collection of carcinogenic chemicals that included alarming levels of methane and benzene. He told me about the EPA investigators who had been walking through the neighborhood in their baggy hazmat suits. The government scientists wanted him to abandon his property. He was grimly determined to never leave his nightmarish investment in The American Dream.

The Quinnipiac River watershed includes a small pond a short distance south from the former town dump, where I canvassed another neighborhood for CCAG.

I will never forget the shock that gripped the face of the well-groomed 40-something doctor as he peered at the topographical map clasped my clipboard, the scene illuminated by the wrought iron-style lamp that lit his field-stone and concrete doorsteps. "That little pond is where I have been taking my little girls to go swimming," he told me.

The Old Southington Landfill EPA Superfund site, at the center of this surveyor map featured in a 2006 health and nvironmental report, is surrounded by residential neighborhoods and commercial properties. /Kleinfelder image

Environmental Memoir: EPA is essential

In a case of horrific local and state government negligence, the decision to shift the primary source of drinking water in Flint, Mich., from the Detroit water supply to the highly acidic Flint River is spotlighting a nationwide water-infrastructure nightmare. /Image via www.dogonews.com

Environmental damage destroys life.

When I was a boy, every street and roadside in America was lined with garbage. The wild turkey, Revolutionary-era icon Ben Franklin's candidate for national bird, was nearly extinct in my home state and across the rest of New England.

Now, it is rare to see motorists toss bags of fast-food waste out their windows, and I see flocks of wild turkeys along the roadsides and highways of New Hampshire on nearly a daily basis.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the nation's top nature watchdog that was created nearly a half century ago with the support of a Republican president, and key safeguard laws such as the Clean Water Act are largely responsible for turning the tide in an epic American struggle that continues to this day.

The environmental-damage memoir that I will be writing and sharing in stages over the final handful of days leading to the 2016 N.H. Presidential Primary is inspired by the Republican candidates' misguided and self-serving attacks on essential protections that stand between The People and poisons.

In June 1952, toxic chemicals including oil burn in the Cuyahoga River in downtown Cleveland. The river caught fire several times, including a blaze in 1969 that stoked cries for environmental protection such as the founding of the U.S. Environmental Agency in 1970. /Image via perviouspro.net

Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump have all blasted the EPA. These turkeys would turn back the clock to the bad old days of deadly environmental damage in the 20th century.

Among the top contenders heading into Tuesday's first-in-the-nation primary, John Kasich is the closest candidate the Republican Party has to an environmentalist. The Ohio governor acknowledges the moral obligation to preserve the environment for future generations and accepts the existence of global warming. But he opposes the Obama administration's plan to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which would include limiting Ohio's noxious coal-fired electricity generation.

Even with the EPA, Clean Water Act and other environmental protections, atrocities against nature remain a daily occurrence in America.

From the lead-tainted water disaster in poverty stricken Flint, Mich., to the historic natural gas leak in the affluent Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles, no American is safe from the unfettered devils of environmental damage.

I have seen the damage done.

Infrared imagery shows a natural gas leak at Southern California Gas Company's runaway well in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles. The natural gas leak, which has been compared in intensity to a volcanic eruption, began in October 2015 and continued spewing toxic chemicals into February 2016. /Image via losangeles.cbslocal.com

Truth about troops, PTSD and responsibility

Spc. Christopher Journeau took his own life in 2010 about six months after leaving the U.S. Army. The Iraq War veteran, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) linked to his combat-zone service, was 23 when he died alone and broken in his New Hampshire apartment. /Family photo

The suffering of our country's combat veterans is not fodder for scoring political points or deceiving the public.

Recently, an American politician made comments directed to a national audience designed to deceive the public about who bears responsibility for her son's struggles with the psychological impact of his service in the U.S. military.

Here is the truth about troops who suffer the effects of PTSD: The commander-in-chief and the branches of the armed services guard the front lines in the battle against this treatable psychological condition, but every family member and friend of a veteran needs to be on guard, too.

I learned this truth in a way that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

I learned this truth sitting face-to-face with a stranger in her home for two hours as she shared in agonizing detail the story of her soldier son's PTSD-fueled spiral into desperation and suicide. After his death, this mom did everything she could to investigate the Army's response to her son's mental health problems, and she has been working with military and government officials in New Hampshire to try to spare other families from enduring her family's torment.

This mom, who I deeply admire for her courage in the face of adversity, does not hold anyone in the Army chain of command solely responsible for her son's death. This mom is incapable of looking for any individual  to blame for the loss of her son because her share of the responsibility for Christopher Journeau's death will haunt her for the rest of her life.

This mom could not see that Chris was fighting a life-and-death struggle with PTSD in his final months. She did not know enough about the symptoms of PTSD to see the warning signs that Chris exhibited in her home after his honorable discharge from the Army. She was not prepared to help her son fight the most daunting battle of his all-too-short life.

This mom, who was transformed from a stranger to an unforgettable figure in my life after sharing Chris' story with me, will never forgive herself and never look for someone else to blame for what happened to her son.

Journalist death toll rises in 2015

Last year, 69 journalists were killed with the motive linked to the performance of their professional duties. Another 25 journalists lost their lives in killings with unconfirmed motives. /Committee to Protect Journalists

The number of journalists killed in the line of duty ticked upward last year, rising from 61 dead in 2014 to 69 lost.

In 2015, the bravery required to work as a journalist in countries engulfed in war or riddled with corruption is evident in the statistics:

• In the 47 journalist murders last year, no one has been brought to justice in 83% of the cases
• In the murder cases, 60% of journalists were threatened prior to their killings, 21% were taken captive before they were killed, and 15% were tortured
• Politics was by far the most dangerous beat to cover in 2015, accounting for part or all of the motivation behind 68% of journalist killings
• Political groups (52%), military officials (16%) and government officials (12%) were the leading suspects in orchestrating journalist killings

A free press is a bulwark of democracy, and journalists continue to man the front lines in the struggles against tyranny around the world.

Terrorists exploit US gun culture in San Bernardino

On Dec. 2, 2015, a husband-and-wife duo killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif. The couple was armed with semi-automatic assault rifles and semi-automatic handguns. /San Bernardino Police Department image

You had to see this coming.

In America, easy access to firearms provides terrorists with an easy pathway to unleashing murderous hails of gunfire in the U.S. homeland.

Wednesday's apparently ISIS-inspired mass shooting in San Bernardino shines light on a glaring terrorism vulnerability in the United States: easy access to semi-automatic firearms.

ISIS, or any other terrorist foe, does not have to invade the U.S. homeland to inflict deadly damage. Whether they are lone wolves, cells or duos, as in the case of the San Bernardino shooters, easy access to semi-automatic firearms makes mass shootings easy for terrorists to execute.

You have to see more of this coming.

America ignoring gun violence wake-up calls

Television reporter Alison Parker, 24, is gunned down while conducting an interview on Aug. 26, 2015. /Image via washingtontimes.com

Maybe this time will be different.

I doubt it.

In December 2012, the slaughter of 26 school children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School barely moved the needle on common sense restrictions for the possession of firearms.

Last week's slaughter of two television journalists in Virginia, which was captured on video from both the perspective of the killed and the killer, is about as close as we can get to rubbing America's collective nose in the country's gun violence problem.

Before most Americans return to sticking their collective heads in the sand, I hope at least some of them see the eye-popping U.S. gun violence statistics compiled by German Lopez for Vox:

• There have been at least 885 mass shootings since Sandy Hook.
• So far in 2015, there has been an average of nearly one mass shooting every day.
• States with more guns have more police officers who are killed in the line of duty. Every 10 percent increase in gun ownership correlates to 10 more police officers dying in homicides.
• Firearms suicides outpace firearms homicides by a wide margin. In 2013, there were 21,175 firearms suicides and 11,208 firearms suicides.
• Based on homicides by firearms per 1 million people, America is a colossal outlier among developed nations. In 2012, the American rate of homicides by firearms per 1 million people was 29.7. Switzerland posted the next-highest rate at 7.7. Australia posted the lowest rate at 1.4.

Simply put, America's love affair with guns is a cruel joke. On this issue, we are the laughingstock of the world.

Iranian nukes tip of the mushroom cloud

Image via AFP

The mega-problem with Iran's nuclear weapons program has little to do with the Iranian government and mostly to do with the astronomical risks associated with nuclear weapons technology.

Seventy years ago, humankind's greatest war unlocked the unparalleled destructive power of atomic energy. U.S. nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped end that great war in an eye-blinding flash, closing a conflict that had slaughtered and maimed tens of millions. But the invention of nuclear weapons has been like the opening of Pandora's Box, unleashing a great, uncontrollable evil on the world, with only hope standing between humanity and annihilation.

The subatomic science essential to building nuclear weapons is more complicated than rocket science. But the atom bomb theory perfected during the Manhattan Project and the practice of nuclear warfare perfected in the skies over Japan in 1945 are relatively easy to replicate in countries determined to possess The Bomb.

Iran is far from the first nation to storm the barred gates of The Nuclear Club and threaten to upset the international pecking order.

In addition to the five WWII victors -- America, China, France, Great Britain and Russia -- there are at least a half-dozen other countries that possess nuclear weapons. The relative newcomers to The Nuclear Club include arch enemies India and Pakistan, as well as North Korea, the longest-standing Stalinist state in history.

Unless the international community bans nuclear weapons, Iran will be far from the last country to develop The Bomb.

In addition to India and Pakistan in South Asia, atomic arms races are budding around the world. Iranian leaders have pointed to Israel's top-secret nuclear weapons program as justification for Tehran's atomic weapon ambitions. In response to the North Korean leadership's drive to become nuclear-armed, even atom-bomb-adverse Japan is considering whether to build and deploy nuclear weapons.

It will take a Herculean effort to close Pandora's Nuclear Box. But only a ban on the possession of nuclear weapons can save humanity from an otherwise inevitable atomic warfare nightmare.

Sandy Hook report: Preventing school shootings

On Dec. 14, 2012, Adam Lanza of Newtown, Conn., used this Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle in the mass killing of 26 children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The weapon, which is a civilian version of the M-16 military assault rifle, was equipped with a pair of 30-round ammunition magazines. /Law enforcement image

In the United States, few issues are more polarizing than guns. Even the fatal shootings of 20 young children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut two years ago has failed to generate a consensus on ways to curb gun violence.

This week, the commission formed to advise Connecticut authorities about preventing school shootings issued its final report. The premise of the report is indisputable:

"There is at least one place, other than a home, in which every person, whether a child or an adult, should feel absolutely safe and secure from harm: school. Short of transforming our schools into gated communities or prison-like environments, however, no school can be freed entirely from the risk of violence. Nevertheless, through safe school design and operation strategies, and through closer coordination with our educators, local law enforcement, fire departments, EMS, public safety personnel, security experts and mental health professionals, our schools can become much safer environments."

The recommendations in the commission's report fall into three categories: safe school design and operation; law enforcement, public safety and emergency response; and mental and behavioral health.

While the shooter in this mass killing had been diagnosed with severe mental illness, the commission's report makes a key point about the role of mental illness in gun violence: "People with mental health challenges are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators." In my opinion, improving the quality and availability of mental health services in the United States would decrease the risk of mass shootings; but the primary benefit would be boosting the productivity and quality of life for those suffering from mental illness and their loved ones. 

After reviewing the commission's 277-page report, I hope widespread support can be established for these recommendations, which have been edited to remove jargon and verbose prose:

• Requiring classroom and other safe-haven areas to have doors that can be locked from the inside. 
• All exterior doors in K-12 schools should be equipped with hardware capable of implementing a full perimeter lockdown.
• School custodians should be included as members of school security and safety committees. Custodians have a wealth of knowledge and experience to share about the physical school building and grounds.
• Mandatory background checks on the sale or transfer of any firearm, including long guns, at private and gun show sales.
• A ban on the possession or sale of all armor-piercing and incendiary bullets.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of federal law in limiting the purchase of firearms via the Internet to only those individuals who have passed background screening.
• Prohibit the possession, sale or transfer of any firearm capable of firing more than 10 rounds without reloading. This prohibition would extend to military-style firearms as well as handguns. Law enforcement and military would be exempt from this ban.
• To allow, at a judge's discretion, the opportunity to temporarily remove any firearms, ammunition, and carry permits from a person who is the subject of a restraining order, civil protection order or family violence protective order, at the time of the issuance of that order.
• Recognizing that mental health is more than the absence of mental illness, build systems of care that go beyond treating mental illness to foster healthy individuals, families and communities.
• Build a mental health system that targets detection and treatment while building stronger communities of care.
• Addressing a fragmented and underfunded behavioral health system tainted by stigma requires building a comprehensive and integrated approach to care. This approach should stress family involvement and community resilience. Care should be holistic and involve pediatric and adult medical facilities from birth to adulthood, with efforts to ensure continuity of care.
• Many students and their families live under persistent and pervasive stress that interferes with learning. There are many potential resources such as school-based health centers that should provide access to preventive care.
• Schools should form multidisciplinary teams to assess and support children who may pose a risk to others or themselves due to toxic stress, trauma, social isolation or other factors.
• For many children, schools offer the only access to health assessment services. Schools should increase the availability of guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists, and other health professionals during and after school.
• Increase the behavioral health workforce.
• Funding decisions about behavioral health must look beyond the model that has prevailed over the past several decades to embrace psycho-social interventions, services directed toward the achievement of functional skills, and other efforts to engage the whole person, which frequently offer the best prognosis for recovery.
• Commercial health insurance should cover the full range of services available through the public behavioral health system, including programs that provide housing and occupational support for individuals struggling with severe mental illness. 
• A diagnosis of mental illness does not have to mean an end to achieving one‘s life goals. Systems of care that promote wellness generally and recovery for those who struggle with behavioral health challenges and the effects of traumatic stress can help to diminish stigma and its effects.
• For adolescents and adults facing mental health diagnoses, effective psycho-education of both individuals and families can decrease stigma. Psycho-education involves teaching individuals and families about mental illness and its treatment, as well as strategies for handling typical challenges that might arise with a particular condition. The goal of such programs is to recognize that someone considered "different" or "odd" may need professional help.

Obamacare Curse: Healthcare politics tide turning

Kevin Counihan, CEO of the federal health insurance exchange operated in 37 states, ran the Romneycare exchange in Massachusetts and launched the successful state-operated exchange in Connecticut. /NPR image

There is a reason why the last major healthcare reform initiative, Medicare, was adopted 50 years ago: Revolutionizing healthcare is difficult in a country as large and diverse as the United States.

As the blush cools on the Republican triumphs in the fall's mid-term election, a huge healthcare storm is gathering over the Grand Old Party. With power comes responsibility, and who in their right mind would want responsibility for the fate of the U.S. healthcare industry?

No matter who is pulling the levers of power in Washington for the foreseeable future, the healthcare industry is going to be a tumultuous and expensive sector of the U.S. economy. The transformations envisioned under Obamacare such as expanded access to care through the new public insurance exchanges are propelling into full swing, fueling hope and trepidation among healthcare stakeholders.

My wife loves a folksy conundrum: "better the devil you know than the devil you don't know,"

Obamacare is the devil we know: a patchwork and ironically market-based approach to boosting access to healthcare while maintaining quality and constraining costs.

A Republican repeal-and-replace deal for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the devil we don't know: Scuttling Obamacare midstream would be disruptive, and the Republican cure for PPACA ills could be far worse than actual PPACA diseases,

It was easy for Republicans to snipe at Obamacare over the past five years: They did not have any ownership over the pressing need to reform the healthcare industry, which is spending about $1 out of every $5 generated in the U.S. economy. In an ominous political portent, one of the first GOP alternatives to the PPACA proposed in Congress this yearnhas gained no momentum, despite the sponsorship of three veteran Republican senators: Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Orrin Hatch of Utah and Richard Burr of North Carolina.

Put yourself in the shoes of the 2016 GOP presidential candidates as the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire loom large a year away. Would you want any of this healthcare action:

• Obamacare has garnered health insurance coverage for about 20 million Americans, but at least another 20 million citizens remain uninsured or underinsured.
• The U.S. healthcare industry has the best technology and pharmacology in the world, but there are vast disparities in the distribution of these assets and medications, particularly in rural and economically disadvantaged communities.
• Marrying provider service and payment models: The "fee-for-service" payment model is widely viewed as a source of quality-blind cost pressure in healthcare. Traditional Medicare is based on a fee-for-service payment model -- beneficiaries get sick, they go to their doctors for healthcare services, then Medicare pays for those services. Under traditional Medicare, doctors have no monetary incentive to help keep their patients healthy. They have the opposite incentive: the sicker their patients get, the more services they can bill and the more money they can make. The key to healthcare reform is marrying value-based redesign of provider services with value-based payment models, such as physicians providing more preventive care for seniors and Medicare finding new ways to pay for preventive care. Marrying provider service and payment models that are geared to generate health value rather patient volume requires change on a grand scale. The healthcare industry's mindset needs to focus on health, not healthcare services. By the way No. 1: The marriage of value-based healthcare service models with value-based payment models cuts to the heart of every healthcare industry organization's business model, and wedding-day jitters are rattling boardrooms across the country. By the way No. 2: Healthcare providers and payers have had bitterly adversarial relationships for decades.
• Detroit native Otis Brawley, MD, of the American Cancer Society is a top healthcare disparity researcher. He believes every human being has a fundamental right to basic healthcare services. Millions of American -- mostly in rural and socio-economically disadvantaged communities -- do not have access to basic healthcare.
• The status of American health poses an elephantine challenge. More than one-third of Americans are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Obesity is directly linked to three of the deadliest diseases in the United States: diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Without changes in the American diet and level of physical activity, no amount of reform contortion in the healthcare industry will improve care at a sustainable cost.
• In the real world of healthcare reform, acceptable performance would not be considered tolerable in nearly any other industry. The open enrollment period that just concluded on the Obamacare exchanges is a case in point. The federal exchange website, HealthCare.gov, crashed less often than the glitch-plagued first open enrollment a year ago, but an income verification feature failure on Valentine's Day prevented about 500,000 people from enrolling; the HealthCare.gov call center was overwhelmed with would-be beneficiaries over the entire Valentine's Day weekend; and the income verification glitch and long call center wait times prompted federal officials to extend the open enrollment period for one week. The open enrollment extension is a blow to health insurance carriers, which are struggling to make the "back end" of the exchanges work, including cumbersome enrollment verification and data sharing processes. Despite these fumbles, health plan enrollment has nearly doubled on the exchanges to more than 11.4 million people. This is what success looks like in the realm of healthcare reform, but it's not the kind of clear-cut success on which political empires are built.  

Looking ahead, many Republicans are rubbing their hands together gleefully at the prospect of a Supreme Court blow to the Obamacare exchanges. But a nervous few in the GOP ranks are sitting on their hands hoping they will not have to clean up a healthcare train wreck.

Next month, the high court is set to hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, which could strip federal healthcare coverage subsidies from Obamacare insurance exchanges in 37 states. This year, those federally operated exchanges are on track to help provide about 8 million Americans healthcare coverage. The vast majority of the people who purchase health insurance on the exchanges receive subsidies, which are a key affordability leg in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

If the Supreme Court rules against the Obama administration in King v. Burwell, how will Republican lawmakers fix the damage associated with millions of Americans no longer being able to afford their health insurance? How much will it cost to fix the damage?

The first blood-letting in Republican efforts to unravel Obamacare passed relatively quietly this winter: the bankruptcy of the Iowa-based PPACA insurance cooperative, CoOportunity. The GOP put a fatal financial squeeze on CoOportunity in December. U.S. taxpayers are now on the hook for as much as $145 million in federal loans to the failed insurance cooperative, and 96,000 people in Iowa and Nebraska have been forced to purchase new health coverage from other carriers.

In the 2016 election cycle, playing politics with healthcare is not going to be fun for anyone.