ADEM: Alabama’s pollution watchdog won’t bark. It just likes to watch
The Alabama Department of Environmental Management ain’t much of a pollution watchdog. It won’t bark. It won’t growl. It probably won’t even chase a squirrel. The ADEM is pretty content to sit back, eat popcorn and watch the Moody landfill fire burn.
Meanwhile, Gov. Kay Ivey, always ready to trash-talk the feds, has called for the EPA to rescue Alabama from this toxic environmental mess.
Related: Moody landfill fire: Time to dress for dystopian stress, Alabama – al.com
Related: Emergency declared: Ivey calls on EPA to fight landfill fire raging in Alabama – al.com
Related: Alabama landfill fire causing headaches, fear and ‘smell follows me wherever I go’ – al.com
Excerpts from John Archibald’s column: ADEM knew years ago Moody landfill was a threat
The Alabama Department of Environmental Management said in a statement this month – almost a month after the fire began – that Alabamians can protect themselves in the following ways:
- Limit outdoor activities.
- Install high-efficiency filters in heating and air conditioning systems.
- Seal areas where outside air may enter the home with caulking or other material (this will also pay dividends after the fire is extinguished).
- Consider obtaining a personal air quality monitor.
- Because the smoke may continue for an extended period, those with breathing-related health conditions may consider temporarily relocating.
In other words, it’s on you, Alabama. As it pretty much always is when ADEM is involved. Seal yourself in your house if you have trouble breathing (you’ll be glad you did!). Or move.
The fire, and the reaction to it, is just the latest example of how Alabama’s pollution watchdog is not that at all. ADEM is like a sign from a security company stuck in our yard long after the contract lapsed. It’s no actual help, but it feigns to the world the house is protected. It’s nothing but a toy soldier, standing at attention at our gates. But put its feet to the fire and it melts, like plastic. Like lead into our soil.
ADEM knew this landfill was a threat, and failed to solve the problem.
Related: Moody landfill fire: Watch the stunning drone footage – al.com
Four years ago, in response to a complaint, ADEM inspected the Moody landfill, and found both “fire hazard potential” and “suspected presence of special waste” such as medical or infectious waste, industrial wastes or hazardous wastes.
Yet it did nothing, and now rests on the excuse that it does not regulate landfills that take only “green waste,” like leaves and limbs and plant matter. But ADEM knew in 2018 there was more than green waste in this landfill. And according to reporting by my colleague Dennis Pillion, tires and other non-green materials – “unauthorized solid waste,” as ADEM puts it – have been found in the current blaze. ADEM told Pillion it will figure out later if “appropriate enforcement action” is merited.
Michael Hansen, executive director of the environmental group GASP, has argued that green landfills are unregulated only because ADEM chooses not to regulate them. More importantly, as Hansen points out, ADEM knew for years this very landfill took more than brush and leaves, and that it posed the risk of fire. Only now, under intense pressure, does ADEM contemplate action.
The problem is not that ADEM didn’t know. Because it did. The problem is what ADEM doesn’t want to know.
Read all of Archibald’s column here
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JD Crowe is the cartoonist for Alabama Media Group and AL.com. He won the RFK Human Rights Award for Editorial Cartoons in 2020. In 2018, he was awarded the Rex Babin Memorial Award for local and state cartoons by the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Follow JD on Facebook, Twitter @Crowejam and Instagram @JDCrowepix.
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