NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9538

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From: New Liberation News Service <[e-mail]>
Subject: NLNS: East Liverpool Update
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Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 15:32:52 GMT
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Arrests Mount, Judge Punishes Ohio Anti-incinerator Protestors
Linda Greene, NLNS Environmental Editor

(NLNS)--"We are hungering for justice in East Liverpool, Ohio," East
Liverpool resident Alonzo Spencer told the press on July 21, the morning
after he and 11 others were arrested at U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) headquarters in Washington. "Whatever we suffer to stand
against this outrage is nothing compared to what our children will suffer
when WTI [Waste Technologies Industries, a subsidiary of the Swiss firm
Von Roll AG] is allowed to spew lead, mercury and dioxin into our valley."
    For over 12 years, area residents have struggled to halt WTI's East
Liverpool project. With construction completed in August, the incinerator is
the world's largest facility for burning hazardous waste. If people fail to
stop WTI, the company will annually incinerate 176,000 tons of liquid
hazardous waste--highly toxic, volatile, corrosive and explosive chemicals,
including methyl isocyanate, or "Bhopal gas," plus hydrochloric acid and
benzene. Its EPA permits also allow WTI to store 3,610,000 gallons of
such waste on site in drums and tanks. Each year 11,000 trucks and 1,000
train cars of hazardous chemicals will arrive in East Liverpool from DuPont,
BASF, ChemWaste (Waste Management, Inc.) and similar corporations.
    Some East Liverpool residents live in houses 300 feet from the
incinerator. Every year, 400 children attend the grade school on a bluff
1,100 feet above the incinerator, level with the top of its smokestack. Even
people living miles away in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania--
including the residents of Pittsburgh, 40 miles from East Liverpool--will
suffer if an accident occurs and the incinerator contaminates the Ohio River
right below it, thereby poisoning the drinking water for millions of people.
    On Thursday, November 12, Frederick Stamp, Jr., a U.S. district
court judge in Wheeling, WV, denied the state of West Virginia's petition
for a temporary injunction prohibiting WTI
from starting a trial burn in the incinerator. Several days later WTI began the
preliminary shakedown burn, a loosely defined procedure that involves
burning natural gas to check the incinerator's systems. Local activists report
that the shakedown burn will entail incinerating polyvinylchloride, thus
producing dioxin.

New Waves of Protests and Arrests
    Monday, November 16, was grandparents' day at the incinerator.
Nine Ohio Valley grandparents, aged 47 to 82, chained and handcuffed
themselves together at the gate to WTI's property. They wore their
grandchildren's names on placards around their necks. On the fence they
hung a banner that said, "Save our grandchildren--stop WTI." One
grandparent, retired steelworker and East Liverpool resident Virgil
Reynolds, remarked, "If our laws put profits before people, then our laws
need to be changed. [Judge Stamp's] decision basically sold the lives of our
grandchildren for the profits of Swiss bankers." All nine were arrested.
    The next day, eight parents chained themselves together at the WTI
gate while two others hung a banner saying, "Prevent child abuse--impeach
[Ohio governor] Voinovich." All were arrested. The same day a local
organization, Families Against Toxic Emissions, filed charges of child
endangerment, neglect, abuse and mental maltreatment against Voinovich,
Ohio EPA and William K. Reilley, administrator of US EPA.
    On Wednesday the 18th, three local physicians, a nurse and a
medical technologist bandaged WTI's gate shut and then locked themselves
to it. The banner-sized prescription slip they hung from the fence behind
them read, "From: MDs of the Ohio Valley. Diagnosis: Lead, Mercury and
Dioxin Threat. Rx: Shut Down WTI." "We need to practice preventive
medicine," commented Ted Hill, M.D., "and shut WTI down before it
starts." All five medical workers were arrested.
    At noon on Thursday, November 19, 10 Ohio Valley trade unionists
built a "wall of solidarity" in front of WTI's gate and hung a banner on it
saying, "Shut it down, Tear it down, Move it out, Stop WTI." A member of
the Independent Steelworkers Union and resident of nearby Weirton, WV,
participant Bill Bradley commented, "We want clean jobs, not profits at the
expense of poisoning ourselves or our families." The 10 union members
pointed out that the WTI workers aren't unionized. "EPA says that fugitive
emissions [escaped toxics] at incinerators can be equal to or greater than the
toxic emissions put out by the smokestack itself," pointed out Mike Walton,
a resident of East Liverpool and member of the Communications Workers
of America. "That means  that the workers at WTI will face tremendous
risks themselves." All 10 unionists were arrested. Locals of the UAW,
CWA, United Steelworkers and AFT are backing the fight against WTI.
    Five businesspeople and a steelworker were arrested for protesting
against the incinerator on November 20th.

Rallying for Justice
    On November 22, some 500 people turned out for a rally at the
incinerator site to protest Judge Stamp's go-ahead for the trial burn,
scheduled to begin next month. People were prepared: they had brought
ladders for scaling the fence and carpet remnants to cover the barbed wire at
the top.
    Chuck Smith, of East Liverpool, was the first to climb over the
fence. Twenty-one more people from the long waiting line joined him
before the police intervened. Then people crawled under the fence until a
total of 42 assembled on the property and were arrested. Police arrested 33
more at the gate outside the fence. When people tried to stop the police from
driving off with the arrested protestors in school buses, the police sprayed
Mace into the air; it hit a 10-year-old in the eyes. All those detained were
booked for criminal trespass and photographed.

The Struggle Continues
    Monday, November 23: seven educators and two other protestors
were arrested after covering themselves with plastic sheeting and attaching
themselves to WTI's gate with duct tape to protest the official emergency
response plan in case of an accident at the incinerator. Reminiscent of the
federal government's 1950s "Duck and Cover" emergency plan for a
nuclear attack, the East Liverpool chemical emergency plan, dubbed
"Shelter in Place," calls for students to go to their homerooms, where
teachers will place a bucket of water and seal the windows with plastic
sheeting and duct tape.
    The arrests of the educators were the first in which police wore riot
helmets and nightsticks. The judge threw all nine people in jail for two
days, ordered each one to pay $150 plus court costs, placed them all on one
year of unsupervised probation and required each one to perform eight
hours of community service.
    Two days before Thanksgiving, Scott Sederstrom, an East
Liverpool activist, reported that people were in good spirits. From bitter
experience they've learned, he says, that they're living in a "complete sham
democracy," with corporations calling the shots and government helping
them to the full. Since an October 13, 1991, rally when 33 people
(including actor Martin Sheen) were arrested for scaling WTI's fence,
people have been doing, Sederstom says, what they felt that needed to do to
stop the incinerator.

Back in the Halls of Justice
    On November 30 Douglas C. Jenkins, judge of the Court of
Common Pleas, Columbiana County, OH, held the first two of seven
scheduled contempt hearings stemming from the recent protests. The
hearing covered the grandparents' and parents' groups and supportive
bystanders from the 16th and 17th, all accused of criminal trespass and
contempt of court for violating the injunction against blocking the site.
    Judge Jenkins sentenced the grandparents and seven bystanders to
two days in jail and a fine of $250 plus court costs regardless of whether
they had been arrested or had blocked
the site during the protest. The parents and bystanders from November 17
received sentences of up to two days in jail and a $250 fine, again with no
consideration for whether they had actually been arrested or had blocked the
site that day. (Those who hadn't been arrested had received notices to
appear in court on contempt charges.)
    Thus, Judge Jenkins targeted the best-known activists for especially
harsh penalties. For instance, Terri Swearingen, of the Tri-State
Environmental Council, and Alonzo Spencer, of Save Our County, both
bystanders and not arrested on grandparents' day, received the same
sentence the arrested grandparents did. Swearingen and Spencer, both
bystanders and not arrested on parents' day, received sentences,
respectively, of two days in jail and a fine of $250 and one day in jail and a
fine of $150.

Pushing on Through
     Another rally is planned for December 11. Meanwhile, area
residents are urging supporters to increase the pressure on President-Elect
Bill Clinton (202-973-2600), Vice-President-Elect Al Gore (202-224-
4944), Governor Voinovich, Ohio's attorney general and other politicians.
Early in the presidential campaign Clinton said he supported a moratorium
on the construction of new garbage and hazardous waste incinerators. When
he and Gore stopped in Weirton on July 19 on the first bus tour of the
campaign, Gore called for a "full-scale investigation" into the WTI
incinerator and stated, "If you had seen a Clinton-Gore administration in the
last four years, you would not have seen this."

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