- 3 months ago
A look at the struggles of Calvert City, Kentucky, a town plagued by pollution and toxic waste generated by the chemical plants that drive its economy.
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00:00Funding for Frontline is provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide,
00:07and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
00:11Tonight on Frontline...
00:12It's going to be worse than Love Canal and worse than Times Beach,
00:15based upon what we know is going into the soil.
00:18Calvert City, Kentucky is at war with itself over the legacy of toxic waste generated by its only industry.
00:24I can smell it from in my house.
00:27Makes you dizzy sometimes.
00:29Burns your eyes.
00:30Burns your throat, but I don't know what it is.
00:32Clean it up.
00:34Close it down.
00:35It's killing us.
00:37People working in the chemical industry have morals just like they do.
00:42Tonight, Who's Killing Calvert City?
00:52From the network of public television stations,
00:55a presentation of KCTS Seattle,
00:57WNET New York,
00:59WPBT Miami,
01:01WTVS Detroit,
01:03and WGBH Boston.
01:05This is Frontline,
01:07with Judy Woodruff.
01:10Good evening.
01:14Records at the Environmental Protection Agency say there are 27,000 potentially hazardous waste sites in the United States.
01:231,100 of them have been designated Superfund sites,
01:27which means they are so threatening to public health that they warrant immediate cleanup.
01:32One of these sites is located in a small town in western Kentucky called Calvert City.
01:39Last fall, Frontline spent several months in Calvert City, traveling across the battle lines of its environmental struggle.
01:47On one side, activists and townspeople worried about cancer.
01:52On the other, politicians and business people who fear a pollution panic will ruin the town's economy.
02:00It is the story of one town's struggle to find the truth about itself.
02:06Tonight's program was produced and reported by Michael Meierendorf.
02:10It is called, Who's Killing Calvert City?
02:17When Greenpeace came to Calvert City, they brought with them supporters from around the country.
02:25They were here to protest what they believe is some of the worst toxic pollution in the United States.
02:31But for many of the people who live in this small Kentucky town, Greenpeace had come uninvited.
02:39People's will is law of land!
02:41Our question of their tactics and things like that, I think we have state agencies to monitor things like this.
02:48More than I'm concerned, they can take their goods and go home.
02:52But many of those carrying signs that day were local people.
02:56It was clear that environmental issues had deeply divided this community.
03:02We say, starting today, clean it up, close it down.
03:08It's killing us.
03:11I am not a liberal.
03:13I'm a conservative, extreme conservative.
03:16But I march with liberals.
03:18And I'm here with you, shoulder to shoulder, to we clean this mess up.
03:22Western Kentucky is conservative, socially and politically.
03:30For several months I had been here, watching the conflict that filled the streets that day.
03:35It had been building for years.
03:37I had arrived in Calvert City on the 4th of July.
03:53It was hot, but it looked like most of the town had turned out for the parade, including the mayor, Keane McKinney.
04:00We get excited that when somebody new joins the church, comes into our community.
04:06We get excited when a new home is built.
04:10We get excited when a new business comes to town.
04:13We strive to provide to our children the more opportunities than we had.
04:22That afternoon, Calvert City did look like Norman Rockwell's America.
04:28Except for one thing.
04:29The string of chemical company trucks that dominated the parade.
04:42Calvert City is an industry town.
04:44Its chemical and metal alloy plants employ about 3,000 people.
04:49Large multinational corporations like BF Goodrich, GAF, and Penwalt built plants here in the 1950s.
04:57These were some of the industries that fueled the post-war boom of American affluence.
05:02And one of the things that you probably did in your kitchen this morning is you walked on vinyl floor tile.
05:07That is a PVC product.
05:09Deciding on your house.
05:10Once a year, the Calvert City industry is put on a trade show.
05:15The chemicals they make are the raw materials for the products on display.
05:20Let's use a wire coating.
05:22We make the wetting agent.
05:24It allows a time-release nature.
05:26It needs various consumer over-the-counter pharmaceuticals.
05:30This dippity-doo bottle and all to keep the materials in suspension.
05:35Crest toothpaste also uses carbapoles.
05:40Before the plants came, Calvert City was a very small community.
05:45Probably 250 to 300 people.
05:47It was a farming community.
05:49It was a rather economically depressed area.
05:53Bobby Faust grew up in Calvert City.
05:55She and her generation all remember harder times.
05:58Even through the end of the war, it was a rather depressed area still.
06:03Many people had to leave the area in order to find work.
06:09After Bert Inman was discharged from the Navy in 1961, he went to work at the GAF plant.
06:15Today, he makes about $40,000 a year.
06:17It gives a lifestyle to people in a rural area that would have never had it before, I don't think.
06:29I live about like I want to live.
06:31I buy what I want, you know.
06:33Right now, I've got one, two, three, four cars right now.
06:37I got it in April.
06:41Yeah.
06:44What kind is it?
06:45Civil-A, Silverado.
06:47Four-wheel drive.
06:48It's got everything.
06:49Windows, door locks, tilt, cruise, AM, FM stereo, seat scan, graphic equalizer.
06:57350, four-barrel, aluminum wheel.
07:02It's got about everything you can get on a truck.
07:08Most people are in church.
07:10It's very quiet, very sedate.
07:12Lloyd Ford publishes a small newspaper in Calvert City.
07:15One Sunday, he offered to take me on a tour of his town.
07:19This house here, here again, they are, she works at BF Goodrich.
07:26He has his own business, or they have their own, also have their own business,
07:30which sells products to the plants.
07:32Folks in this house, school teachers, not bad.
07:38Lloyd Ford took me to the house where he lived as a child
07:41to show me what life was like before the plants came.
07:44The plants power this economy.
07:47They're the ones that give us the money.
07:49That's how we make our living, to do those things, to live here, live like we do now.
07:55Not in something like this.
07:58Lloyd Ford was proud of how his town had prospered,
08:01but he was worried, too, about its future.
08:05Interesting story about this particular house.
08:08If I, unless I'm mistaken, the fellow who built this home had it sold,
08:11or thought he had it sold.
08:13We had one of the, had one of the big stories on the environment break.
08:18One of the coalitions, the coalition had a meeting or something.
08:21And anyway, the folks who were going to buy the house decided,
08:25well, we just shouldn't buy a home here because, you know,
08:29we may make a big investment here and lose it.
08:33You know, not be able to sell it, not be able to get our money out of it.
08:37There is a fear in Calvert City that leaves houses unsold.
08:41A fear Lloyd Ford thinks might undo his town.
08:44A fear he traces back to one night.
08:46My mother-in-law called me up that night, called my wife, said,
08:50y'all have got to move out of that place.
08:53You have to leave.
08:55You can't stay there.
08:57What was she talking about?
08:59Well, she thought we were going to die of cancer, you know,
09:02that this threat to our health was so imminent that we needed to pack up
09:08and take the kids and get out of the house immediately.
09:11Leave.
09:12That was the night Dr. Paul Conant came to Calvert City.
09:16I have just been exposed for the second time to the joys of Calvert City.
09:23A savage juxtaposition of human suffering and chemical stupidity.
09:29Dr. Paul Conant is a chemist from New York and a champion of environmental causes.
09:34In November of 1987, local activists invited him to talk about their town.
09:39That night, Conant said Calvert City was dying.
09:44It's going to be worse than Love Canal and worse than Times Beach,
09:47based upon what we know is going into the soil, has gone into the soil.
09:51At the time, Conant had gathered little information to support his allegations,
09:55but his predictions touched a nerve.
09:57I will also predict that the cancer rate in Calvert City will blow our minds away.
10:04He created a great deal of excitement.
10:08Mr. Conant called Calvert City, Cancer City.
10:11And with that, I suppose that there was every conceivable emotion expressed in our community.
10:22Everything from anger and bitterness and hatred to rejoicing and jubilance and praise.
10:30I'm just fine. How are you doing, Howard?
10:34Lynn Jones is one of Calvert City's leading citizens.
10:38He can trace his roots here back three generations.
10:41There have been people who have been friends in this community for a long time, been neighbors.
10:45And this issue has strained to that friendship.
10:49Lynn Jones is president of the Calvert Bank, and so he worries about what a pollution panic might do to his town.
10:56And I had a concern when this started that, you know, this may be one of those things that is going to get out of hand very quickly,
11:03and irrational behavior is going to result.
11:07And one of the most devastating things to our community that could happen would be,
11:12not only that the industry leave, but that our local merchants began to suffer.
11:17These are great people, the Greenpeace people.
11:20I found some of the people Lynn Jones is worried about at a yard sale, sponsored by one of the environmental groups in the area.
11:28They had brought Dr. Paul Connett here, and were also responsible for the Greenpeace interest in Calvert City.
11:37On this day, the group was also asking people to sign a petition,
11:42urging the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up toxic waste from the chemical plants in Calvert City.
11:47When you explain to them that it's asking that EPA clean up these sites, they grab it inside.
11:58Corinne Whitehead was one of the first environmental activists in Calvert City.
12:03She has been effective in drawing attention to her cause, but many people see her as a radical and a troublemaker.
12:08The EPA, the state, they have to recognize that it's a situation that has to stop, and the companies, and the industries.
12:21What will you do?
12:23Whatever it takes.
12:24The extremists in these environmental groups, not all of the people in them, not all the people in these groups,
12:32but the extremists in these environmental groups have viewpoints that simply are not shared by the most of us in a society that we have.
12:43Most of us are not going to give up going to the fast food establishment to eat, because you have to look at it this way.
12:55Those places can't operate without all that star foam.
12:57But there's no doubt Calvert City has a lot of waste. Its industries produce 76% of the hazardous waste in a seven-state area.
13:08Within the industrial complex, dumping and spillage of chemicals has created hundreds of areas the government says may have to be cleaned up.
13:15For example, when the B.F. Goodrich plant began operating in 1953, much of its waste was disposed of by methods that today would be illegal.
13:27Poisonous substances went into the air, the land, and into the Tennessee River.
13:32As far as being in the chemical industry, it was at B.F. Goodrich.
13:36Ray Faust worked at B.F. Goodrich for 31 years.
13:38I think we had a total disregard for if we could flash it off, if we could burn it and take the smoke and get the prevailing winds to take it away, or flush it in the river, that's exactly what we did.
13:54There was no laws to keep us from it. Management didn't give a damn. The only thing they wanted to do was make production.
14:01As a result, this land next to B.F. Goodrich is one of over 1,100 Superfund sites designated by the EPA as dangerous toxic waste dumps.
14:16Goodrich has made efforts to clean up, but much of the groundwater under the site is contaminated.
14:21Roughly 30 toxic and cancer-causing chemicals are slowly moving underground toward the river.
14:26Grish, you're going to take that to the wastewater treatment plant.
14:33Goodrich monitors the underground pollution by drilling test wells.
14:37The contamination threat from this well is so great, the water can't be allowed to spill onto the ground.
14:44It must be disposed of as hazardous waste.
14:49Calvert City's water still tests safe, but people worry because the wells are so close to the industrial complex.
14:57And years of dumping in and around the Tennessee River have threatened the water supply for the town of Paducah downstream,
15:04where the water must be filtered to remove cancer-causing chemicals.
15:11This permit is a license to pollute the Tennessee River.
15:15While I was in Calvert City, the state of Kentucky held hearings on its new rules to regulate the chemicals the plants could discharge into the river.
15:24The new rules were much more restrictive, but for the local environmentalists, not strict enough.
15:29I mean, you know, these are some pretty big words in here.
15:34I mean, you know, just as a dumb hillbilly, you know, I look at this nitrobenzene, whatever that is, 35 pounds a day daily maximum.
15:43You know, I just wonder about, there's some awfully big amounts.
15:49Now what happens if all of these daily maximums are all on the same day?
15:53Industry argued the new rules were too cautious and too expensive.
16:01Today, industry must compete in a global economy, and the cost of excessive environmental regulation infringes upon the firm's ability to compete in the marketplace.
16:10A prehistoric...
16:13As I listened, it was clear the two sides had little common ground.
16:17And in one moment, I saw how far apart they really were.
16:21It's not a matter of being obnoxious, or contrary, or ornery, and stop laughing.
16:34Because people's lives are at stake.
16:37You know, I stood and watched my friend die with cancer, and I dare you to lie.
16:45I did smile and lean over and whisper to him, where do they get these wild numbers?
16:50Because each number just kept getting wilder and wilder.
16:53The man Corrine Whitehead confronted was Ralph Hawk, a widely respected chemical engineer and the manager of the GAF plant in Calvert City.
17:02Unlike other industrialists here, he was willing to talk openly about his plant and the opposition of the environmentalists.
17:10Hawk feels the testimony he heard at the water hearings was an example of the unfounded hysteria, which comes from the fearful imagination of people who don't understand chemistry.
17:20And I have children and grandchildren that live here, in this area.
17:27And I wouldn't risk myself or my family or my descendants if I didn't think it was safe.
17:34And I know chemistry.
17:38Hawk's operation is enormously complex.
17:41He manufactures more than a hundred different chemicals, half of which are made nowhere else in America.
17:47Many are used in pharmaceuticals, and others for the national defense.
17:51Frankly, if the activists knew how much chemicals were involved in their life, they would, without them, they would be thrown back into the dark ages.
18:03They may as well be cave people.
18:07Hawk says he's working hard on better pollution controls, but he wouldn't tell me how much of his profits are being spent on the improvements.
18:14He did say the new rules on wastewater pollution were unjustified and go beyond what GAF can reasonably control.
18:23It'll cut it by a factor of three, which means that this plant cannot do it as it currently sets.
18:31Let's not talk about how bad it was. If it was all that bad, let's talk about how it is now.
18:37Another industry representative I met was Pennwalt engineer Bob Foster.
18:41As president of the local industry organization, he often talks with journalists.
18:46One day, Foster invited me to see another view of Calvert City.
18:51It's important for you folks to see the Tennessee River, where we discharge our waste effluent, our water.
18:57It's important for you to see that it looks like everybody else's river.
19:01There's green grass, there's fish, there's ducks, there's hunting, there's camping.
19:08It's probably not a whole lot better, certainly no worse than any place else.
19:15But industrial discharges from Calvert City don't only flow into the Tennessee River.
19:20When the plants began operating, vast quantities of air pollution were carried by prevailing winds across the river into Livingston County.
19:27I'd been told people there felt they were being hurt.
19:32I want to say probably...
19:34I met a school teacher named Jack Cawthorn, who for many years has owned a farm on the edge of the river across from the plants.
19:41The pollution, Mike, to me is just as real as real can be.
19:46I think I see too for many of my friends that are suffering the effects of it around here not to be real to me.
19:53Mike, I think it's kind of like smelling a skunk.
19:55The man that's smelling the skunk realizes there's a problem.
20:00The man that hears about the skunk, he doesn't have to smell him.
20:05And now I think my good friends in Marshall County, they're aware of this problem.
20:09But they're not having to smell the skunk is the illustration I'm using here.
20:12As I talked to more people in Livingston County, I became convinced that many of them thought something was wrong.
20:19But I figured it'll just give me enough edge, just enough, to get out of the area or something, because someday it's going to go.
20:26I know this.
20:30Some people in Livingston County told me they no longer trusted the water from their wells.
20:35A crop insurance salesman told me agricultural yields had declined drastically in an area directly across from the plants.
20:52A veterinarian who owns cattle in several counties told me his herds across from Calvert City have gained less weight than his cattle raised in other places.
21:01This bull right here ought to weigh about 1,200 pounds and he'll weigh about 450 right now.
21:07He is running tests to find out if there are traces of chemicals from the Calvert Industries in the animal's blood.
21:14He's on his way.
21:18Almost everyone I met in Livingston County told me I should talk to Jim Champion.
21:23Champion was a colonel in the Marine Corps.
21:26When he retired in 1981, he moved back here and now lives with his wife, five miles across the river from Calvert City.
21:34There's been times that you could not stand out here like we are today.
21:38It would take your breath if you walked out of that house.
21:41Both myself and my wife in the spring and fall when the windows are open, the air conditioner is not on, have been awakened at 2, 3 o'clock in the morning by horrible odors.
21:54So we don't raise a garden, we don't set out on our patio.
22:01Champion began complaining to the state whenever fumes from Calvert City blew his way.
22:07His efforts caused one industry, GAF, to be fined and eventually the plant shut down the odor producing process.
22:13It just never entered my mind that those people would be, you know, violating the environment like they were, the air.
22:23As Champion began talking to his neighbors, he found he was not alone in his concern about Calvert industry.
22:30You have to ask yourself the question, is it doing something to your body?
22:35Fred Laurence is pastor at Friendship Baptist Church, which gets some of the heaviest pollution from the plants.
22:42About two years ago, he was diagnosed with colon cancer and he soon realized he wasn't alone.
22:48But by all of us having almost the same time, this is when the question popped into the mind.
22:55Is there a common cause?
22:57How you doing?
22:58Pretty good.
22:59Good.
23:00Have a seat.
23:01People knew Champion was fighting the plants and turned to him to find out why there seemed to be so much cancer.
23:07Several gave him lists of people who were sick or who had died.
23:12National Carbide is right over there.
23:18Air Products is right in through here.
23:21Champion took the list of cancer victims and began visiting their homes.
23:25I went along, taping the conversations as he talked to them for the first time.
23:29And Walt is about right in there.
23:35You can see what it's done to this.
23:41That's what you get off of a car every day that you wash.
23:46That right there.
23:48You can wash a car tonight and the next morning you get up and you've got to take a soap pad or something.
23:53He just lets the truck go because he did use it for his fishing truck.
23:56But you can just feel the rough.
23:59The Walkers have lived across the river from the plants for many years.
24:03Despite the corrosion of their property, they always tolerated the pollution.
24:07But the Walkers see things differently now.
24:10Not a healthy place to live, is it?
24:12No, and like I said, if I'd have known it 20 years ago, I'd have been gone.
24:15W.T. Walker worked in the plants for 16 years, but he was laid off many times and today has no pension and only union health insurance.
24:25Now he's dying of cancer.
24:27Mr. Walker, how long have you had your cancer?
24:30Through a year.
24:32It would be through a year in January.
24:34Do you think your employment had something to do with the cancer, or do you think living over here had something to do with it, or both?
24:43Right.
24:44I mean, both!
24:47Let go!
24:50You did that!
24:52Don't!
24:54Get down!
24:55Get down!
24:56Right.
24:58Get down!
25:00When he worked over there, when he would come home, he would have blisters on him.
25:04If he, you know, perspired or anything, if that hit there, it would blister.
25:09And they had to wrap up, like this real hot weather, they had to wrap up the head, ears, and all.
25:15And anywhere it touched, it blistered.
25:18And, uh, but it's just too much cancer.
25:20I fought it, and we've talked about it, just too much cancer right here in this area.
25:25And, oh, it was, well, it's the worst thing that ever happened to me.
25:29It's just, it's really undescribable.
25:32And, and to see how she really suffered, and, uh, at the last, well, I mean, it just kept getting worse and worse.
25:42Don Englund's wife had died just one month before Champion came to see him.
25:46Like others in the area, Englund said he's always gotten heavy pollution here at his home.
25:51This picnic table he built six months ago became pitted and discolored, even with many coats of varnish.
25:58Don's wife thought it was the same pollution that was killing her.
26:02What was she?
26:03She was 33 years old.
26:05Oh.
26:06And the doctor said that it was chemical cancer.
26:11Of course, my wife smoked.
26:12And, of course, if one smokes, the first thing they have when they have cancer, everybody else start hollering that it's caused from smoking.
26:24And he says her cancer, it was not caused from her smoking.
26:28He said it was a rapid-spreading chemical cancer.
26:33Hmm.
26:35And he did not, he never told me what, I mean, I don't know that they could, that they could tell.
26:41Tell, right.
26:42Just to be truthful about it, but he did say it was a chemical cancer.
26:45Did she ever work at the plants or around?
26:48No.
26:49Uh-uh.
26:51As Champion did more interviews, he noticed there seemed to be a pattern in their location.
26:56I used his information to create my own map.
26:59Most of the cancer victims Champion had interviewed lived in an area about two and one-half miles downwind from the industrial complex.
27:06And in one low-lying area, along a mile-and-a-half stretch of road, roughly half the homes had been affected by colon cancer.
27:15Now, here's the plants right here.
27:17This is your...
27:18Champion didn't believe the state's cancer statistics would show the local cancer rates were normal.
27:23So he asked the federal government to do a study.
27:26Use your words.
27:27Tell me what you think the problem is right now.
27:30I think it comes from across the river, because we, that's, we get a west wind here.
27:36An agency under the Center for Disease Control came to Livingston County for a day last fall to decide whether to begin a full health study.
27:44Champion showed them around, explaining his findings about the cancer cluster, and introduced them to some victims.
27:51But months later, the agency would base their preliminary conclusions not on Champion's information, but on the official cancer statistics.
27:58And in a speech to the Calvert City Industry Organization, the agency said there seemed to be no cause for concern.
28:06Rich people don't have to live down here.
28:10Rich people can live anywhere they want, and so they can live in a place that's not polluted.
28:16Poor people accept the pollution because most times it means there's a job on the other end of the smoke.
28:23Now folks, to volunteer for anything we need, do you have some aid to some folks that we need to contact with the American Cancer Society?
28:33Lynn Jones is the president of Calvert City's chapter of the American Cancer Society.
28:39Jones feels the risk from pollution is nothing compared to smoking and other causes of cancer.
28:46I think that our opportunity in the American Cancer Society to educate folks that in many of these instances, cancer is something that should never happen.
28:59If we eat right, and I'd say live right, then cancer in many cases is not going to develop.
29:08I have a basic trust of government.
29:12I don't think the government blatantly lies to everybody.
29:19I have complete confidence that the monitoring is being done and that the tolerance range is acceptable.
29:30One morning at 2 a.m., a man named Jim Owen called me to say that a giant flare was pouring black smoke at BF Goodrich.
29:37I met Jim in the industrial complex, where he showed me what was happening.
29:42People around here worry about that kind of stuff?
29:45Well, some do and some don't.
29:48Some people don't even know there's such things as that around here.
29:52They don't even know them flares are going, probably.
29:55Never seen them. A lot of people in Calvert City, I don't think, have ever seen them flares.
29:58They think it's just something normal going on.
30:04But on this big flare here, I've seen it smoke for miles.
30:10And if it does come my way, I can smell it from in my house.
30:15Makes you dizzy sometimes, burns your eyes, burns your throat.
30:20But I don't know what it is.
30:23Did you call the air pollution authorities?
30:26There's no use calling them this time of day.
30:30If they'd answer the telephone, you'd have to call them at home and they'd say,
30:34we're not on duty now, we can't do anything about it until in the morning.
30:38A BF Goodrich spokesman told me later that the black smoke was not dangerous.
30:44It was caused, he said, by equipment failure.
30:49In 1987, about 10 million pounds of airborne pollution was released from the Calvert Industries.
30:54And the state of Kentucky, because it lacks the personnel and technology, is limited in its ability to inspect and analyze these emissions.
31:02You breathe the air first through the two carbon beds to get a zero level.
31:12And then you open ports in the back of the centometer.
31:15Linda Byerly runs the Calvert City air inspection program.
31:20I went with her one day to find out how she enforces the state law regulating 734 air toxins.
31:27You hold the device to your nose, breathe in through the device.
31:33The centometer detects pollution violations based on whether the inspector can smell an odor with the dilution of filtered air.
31:41This is the regulatory basis for any enforcement action we might take.
31:48Sometimes you look at a problem and go, well, I wish I knew what the answer was, and you don't.
31:52Stan Cook is another state air inspector. He's been working around Calvert Industries 10 years.
31:56He told me he feels caught in the middle between defensive industry and fearful citizens.
32:03They think we have something like on Star Trek, a tricorder, on the old Star Trek things.
32:07They expect us to walk out here with a box, flip it on, and immediately give us an answer.
32:10Oh yes, 14 parts per million of carbon tettochloride and 13 parts of vinyl chloride.
32:17Yep, this is above the limit. Let's go get somebody.
32:20It just doesn't exist.
32:22Why do you do this? Why do you do this job?
32:31Some days I wonder. I really do.
32:36We don't know what's being discharged from the plants.
32:43We don't know what's being discharged into the air or into the water.
32:48What's seeping into the ground, into the groundwater.
32:52We don't know.
32:54I mean, I would defy anybody to dispute that.
32:58When I met Don Harker, he had just taken over the waste division of the Kentucky Environmental Protection Agency because of its poor performance.
33:08People were fired when Harker discovered they had let citizens in one county drink water that was dangerously contaminated.
33:14There are a lot of people in government that I think have a contempt for the public almost.
33:28Not even almost. There's some people that have a contempt for the public.
33:31You know, the interaction with the public is just something that bugs them.
33:38Y'all ready?
33:40We're going to open the floor and I'll take anybody who's got an issue.
33:48Harker was the driving force behind a series of public meetings his agency held around the state to solicit views on the adequacy of environmental laws and their enforcement.
33:59When they start dumping their stuff, regardless of where it goes, in the river, on the land or wherever it be or in the air, they should be fined.
34:09In Calvert City, people told Harker the state was not doing enough to protect them.
34:14But I damn sure don't think it's reasonable to expect me to live downwind or downstream of a toxic waste or hazardous waste generator and not do something about it.
34:26Okay, so the level of risk that you're willing to take from the involuntary exposure is apparently zero.
34:37That's your bottom line.
34:39We're in a real battle right now as to who's going to be in control and who's going to call the shots.
34:48And right now the people, I think, are losing in that dogfight for democracy.
34:54And you just can't let the doors of government swing freely open for industry and big business and multinational corporations and leave the people out of it.
35:13We have got some photographs here that were taken during the St. Louis, their visit to St. Louis.
35:22Our plant has a large expanse of river, Tennessee river frontage here.
35:29By fall, the Calvert Industries had a new concern.
35:33The environmental group Greenpeace had announced it was coming to Calvert City.
35:36News reports like these convinced the plants they should prepare for confrontation.
35:42The Greenpeace activists came ashore in a sneak attack.
35:45Since the late summer, Greenpeace had been moving down the Mississippi River, staging demonstrations against industrial polluters.
35:53They were due in Kentucky by early October.
35:55Troops! What are you guys doing?
35:59Since I'd been in Calvert City, a Greenpeace advance team had been organizing in the area.
36:05One day, the team's leader, Ben Gordon, asked Jim Champion for a tour of Livingston County.
36:10Right up here is our fifth pole.
36:16It seemed an unlikely meeting.
36:19The Greenpeace team was young and idealistic and had a reputation for law-breaking.
36:24Lieutenant Colonel Jim Champion was a seasoned pragmatist who had commanded combat troops in Vietnam.
36:30Champion told me he saw Greenpeace as another asset in his battle against pollution.
36:35I can remember I had troops in Vietnam with a big band of bomb thing hanging on their neck and make love, not war, things written on their clothes, and they were some of the best killers I had.
36:48Like I say, I'm a guerrilla fighter. I use any tool that's available, you know.
36:54The trick is knowing when to play which tool.
36:57We have a lot of tools. We have a lab. We have direct action.
37:00We have money. We have people.
37:01We don't have a lab.
37:02Ben Gordon's job was to plan strategy for the Greenpeace campaign against the Calvert Industries.
37:08So Champion took him to survey the plants from across the river.
37:12I'm going to make some proposals to you.
37:14Gordon asked Champion to support the Greenpeace campaign and explained what Greenpeace was demanding from industry.
37:21We want steady reductions. We want a timetable.
37:24That's right.
37:25We want you to publicly say that the ultimate goal is zero discharge, even if you don't think you can get there in a hundred years.
37:31Yeah.
37:32We want you to say it.
37:33That's right. We agree. I mean, I don't have any heartburn with any of that.
37:36You agree with that?
37:37Sure.
37:39Carcinogenic material released by B.F. Goodrich is approaching half a million pounds per year.
37:46The big emitter of cancer causing chemicals is GAF.
37:54Ben Gordon set up Greenpeace headquarters on a farm owned by local activists.
37:59One of his main jobs before the campaign arrived was to compile a report of the industrial wastes in Calvert City based on newly released public information.
38:07How does the management for GAF legitimize this kind of burden on the community for a few jobs, for a paycheck?
38:19And those ringers are almost always the last question that a reporter asks.
38:24Another Greenpeace goal was to make local activists more effective.
38:28At lunch one afternoon, Gordon gave a lesson about TV news.
38:31And that's an example of giving a snappy answer to the question that doesn't end with a period but is the introduction to a longer sentence which restates your basic points.
38:43And it takes only a few sessions with a video camera to get it down so that you're just hot, red hot.
38:49Well, the Greenpeace deal, I think most people in the area, they felt it was kind of a threat because they'd heard, oh, you know, they've heard the reputation of Greenpeace.
39:00You know, they fabricate a lot of stuff, you know, just like the stuff they told on us down here was all untrue.
39:09I went with Bert Inman one morning to the break shack at GAF where there was a lot of talk about Greenpeace.
39:15Nearly all have health problems or are related to someone who does.
39:20Someone had a copy of an article about Calvert City Greenpeace had published in its national magazine.
39:26Everyone was angry because the piece contained factual errors.
39:30The region also shows the nation's highest rate of lupus, a deadly immune deficiency disorder.
39:37Conning calls Kimberly induced AIDS.
39:39But behind the workers' ridicule, there was a disquieting fear the controversy might drive the plants away.
39:50Just think what we'd have if this plant was to leave.
39:54Nothing. We all need to.
39:56Would we be in a world of hurt?
39:58I don't think we've got a lot of problems, but I don't think it's due to all this.
40:01But the opposition to Greenpeace was not unanimous.
40:05Because I'm sure these plants are not going to sit down and tell everybody, say, hey, this, you know, everybody, there's nothing coming out in the river and just leave it at that.
40:12I'm glad there's people to check it.
40:14There may be a little radical, but still I'm glad there's people to check it.
40:16It's been very obvious in talking with Ben Gordon. He didn't know soup from nuts about chemicals.
40:25And yet he's out here ranting and raving and causing trouble.
40:31Not far away, plant manager Ralph Hawk was holding a meeting to discuss the Greenpeace problem.
40:37Hawk saw Greenpeace as a genuine security threat and assigned his staff to take extra precautions.
40:42That's where I met Joe Martusi.
40:45We're looking at the outfall and...
40:50Martusi told me he'd grown up in the 60s, concerned with civil rights in the Vietnam War.
40:55At one time he'd studied in the seminary.
40:58He seemed an unlikely person to be making security preparations for a Greenpeace demonstration.
41:03People working in the chemical industry have morals just like they do.
41:10I mean, when you make an accusation of an organization, be it a GAF or an air products,
41:18you're not attacking some impersonal organization, you're attacking the people that do that work.
41:26And essentially they accused us of being immoral with respect to the environment.
41:30Early in October, industry was on full alert as the Greenpeace ship, the Beluga, led their campaign to western Kentucky.
41:39Here in Calvert City, we've got a very large influx of chemical companies that are discharging on a minute-by-minute basis.
41:46Millions of pounds of toxic waste that are feeding into the Ohio and then eventually end up in the Mississippi in a Gulf.
41:51Ladies and gentlemen, let the games begin.
41:58On a cool, clear morning, the Greenpeace toxic commanders began moving downriver, towing a mysterious raft toward the industrial complex.
42:06I don't know if you can receive me. We are passing by D.F. Goodrich, which has now gone into a red alert, and we're still proceeding towards intended target, honor.
42:18I listened in on Greenpeace and industry radio communications.
42:23Angie, come in.
42:25Go ahead.
42:27I think we've got a possibility of some of them coming down now.
42:30All right.
42:32Greenpeace towed the raft to a spot directly above GAF's submerged discharge pipe.
42:38Industry made no move against them, but their hostility was plain.
42:42Hey, Carter, help a maker of that thing. Throw some of that rip-rap out there on it.
42:46Don't miss and hit the guy in the head, though.
42:50What's wrong with hitting him in the head?
42:53What's its purpose?
42:55It's got a pump on it and some hoses, and we can use that to bring effluent to the surface.
42:59As the beluga maneuvered reporters closer to the demonstration, industry officials and police watched from shore.
43:06Go ahead and charge them with disorderly conduct unless there's some damage, and then it'll be criminal mischief.
43:13Happy birthday, GAF!
43:16Greenpeace did not plug GAF's discharge pipe as everyone thought they would.
43:21They told me that in conservative Kentucky, any illegal act would obscure their goal of publicizing the discharge.
43:26And the theatrical pump, which they called their toxic fountain, did just that, spraying GAF's hidden discharge in the air for people to see.
43:36It's essentially a battle over turf. It's a social status. It's not a battle over truth.
43:43It makes the issue very difficult to cover for, as a reporter.
43:48Michael Harwood, a reporter for the New York Times, was on the beluga, and I listened as he talked with local journalists.
43:55Industry, on the one hand, says there's no proof, so we'll do it.
43:59We don't know if it's doing any harm, so we'll continue to do it, and environmentalists on the other side, we don't know if it does any harm, so let's stop.
44:07And they can all adduce little bits and pieces of information that support their side, but nothing really concrete.
44:16But as I was saying before, part of the problem is that there's not enough money available to do the science that would really reveal what the facts are.
44:28And in an issue, situation like this, where you've got hundreds or maybe thousands of different kinds of compounds coming into the river at one time, how do you do deliberate science that demonstrates clearly a connection between A, B, and C?
44:49Fan the bird! Fan the bird!
44:52As the climax of their visit to Calvert City, Greenpeace organized a protest march.
44:57Hundreds of people from as far away as Atlanta came to join local activists in the demonstration.
45:03It's all, you know, the same planet. I mean, just because we're not experiencing, you know, the particular problems that are happening in Calvert City doesn't mean that we don't have, you know, experiences in our own backyard.
45:13Fan the bird!
45:15The target of the march was a company called LWD.
45:17Like the other companies, LWD seemed prepared for an assault.
45:22Before the march, I'd seen workers installing electronic security devices.
45:26And now, several men were perched on cranes and catwalks, videotaping the crowd.
45:31We say, start today, clean it up, close it down. It's killing us.
45:38There's only one firm around here that we feel has to lead, and that's this one.
45:49My political feelings are to the right of Attila the Hun.
45:54I am not a liberal.
45:56I'm a conservative, extreme conservative, but I march with liberals.
46:02And I'm here with you, shoulder to shoulder, till we clean this mess up.
46:09The rhetoric at the march was the most intense I'd heard during my stay.
46:14In Calvert City, the fear about LWD runs deep.
46:17LWD stands for Liquid Waste Disposal.
46:24The company operates incinerators that burn the hazardous waste from the Calvert chemical plants.
46:29In recent years, as regulations on disposal of hazardous waste have tightened,
46:34companies like LWD have become indispensable to the chemical industry.
46:37But when LWD began importing hazardous waste from around the country,
46:42people on both sides of the environmental issue here began to worry.
46:47The only thing that concerns me, really, about the plants down here, or all this area, is the LWD deal.
46:56I'm not sure I like the idea of them bringing stuff in here from everywhere and burning it.
47:02That kind of upsets me to a point.
47:04The rest of those plants, I believe, in my own mind, if they would,
47:08and they, you know, apply themselves a little bit, could clean up their act,
47:12and they'd be good neighbors, and I'd be proud to have them over there.
47:16I don't see, I don't see a set of circumstances where LWD could exist,
47:21co-exist with me in this environment.
47:25Much of the fear about LWD seemed to come from the secrecy that surrounded the plant's operations.
47:30Citizens could not find out what was being shipped, burned, or buried there.
47:35Claiming trade secrets, LWD had been able to keep virtually all information about its business
47:41locked away in government files.
47:43So I took my questions to LWD's general manager, who was also the mayor of Calvert City.
47:48What would you say to them to put their mind more at ease about what's happening at LWD, about the incineration of hazardous waste?
47:58I'm not going to respond to just LWD.
48:04The mayor evaded my questions, and told me to talk to LWD's owner.
48:09But at the plant, the answer was, no interview, and no comment.
48:13During my months in Calvert City, I heard a lot of stories about LWD.
48:20Stories which made its mysteries even greater.
48:23If it wasn't being completely incinerated, it would fall on our area over there.
48:28Hardy Williams works at another plant near LWD.
48:31He told me about one night several years ago, when smoke from the incinerator blew in his direction.
48:36One time, the windshield on my truck, the glass was etched.
48:42I also heard stories about what might have been buried near the incinerator, even before LWD existed.
48:49What landfill? I don't know.
48:50That's right under LWD's buildings. That's where all this stuff is.
48:54There's oodles of it. If our fellow had to drill down there, you'd find it.
48:58Don Harker of the state's Environmental Protection Agency was hearing the same stories I was,
49:03and he began to investigate for himself.
49:07We'd be, I think, kidding the public and kidding ourselves if we really believed that we know what has been going on with that incinerator. We don't.
49:19As I was nearing the end of my stay in Calvert City, I finally got inside LWD's gates when its owner, Amos Shelton, agreed to talk with me.
49:28There's no way to operate in this business without being right.
49:32You have to comply to the laws.
49:35Amos Shelton told me he'd grown up poor in rural Kentucky, but he'd done well in the past ten years since he started LWD.
49:43Now, he says, he's the largest local investor in the county, employing 200 people.
49:49As he guided me on a tour of LWD, his operation appeared neat and efficient.
49:54Men in white suits, well-kept grounds and buildings, and a landfill covered with green grass on which he'd built a golf course.
50:01What's up to the landfill, a country club?
50:05Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
50:08Just, uh, oh, just one of the sales tools or way to leave a neat, nice impression.
50:18But Sheldon let me see only limited parts of the incinerator, and as I began to ask more questions about the operation, his answers were often vague.
50:29The secrecy, he said, was because he'd developed a lot of new technology that could be stolen by competitors.
50:35So you, you, you go through this preparing thing, and then you start running your stuff.
50:40But he did show me LWD's lab, where I asked him how he knew for sure what he was burning.
50:46We don't accept, do, or handle nothing unless we know what we're handling, a hundred percent.
50:52So it ain't no fuck you buddy come through the goddamn front door, remember that.
50:58He didn't like my question, and my tour that day ended there in the lab.
51:02Hard information about LWD was difficult to find.
51:07But I was able to talk privately to several former LWD employees.
51:12This man would only speak anonymously, saying he feared retribution.
51:16Like the others, he questioned the practices of LWD.
51:20I really didn't know, you know, what it was.
51:23You know, when I first come in there, and after, say I'd been there six months,
51:27I found out by talking and stuff like that, that it was wrong.
51:29But this man says he did what he was ordered to do, dumping hazardous residues from the incinerator on the land nearby.
51:37Kentucky law says that kind of dumping is a felony.
51:40I was dumping ash, and he told me, anybody catch you doing that, I don't know nothing about it.
51:46Lots of times I think, you know, I shouldn't be doing this, you know.
51:49I also note if I went up and, you know, told the foreman, hey, we shouldn't be doing this, it's illegal.
51:56I wouldn't be there the next day.
51:57LWD denies that they illegally dumped any hazardous waste.
52:02I was also able to obtain this confidential report of a federal audit of LWD's 1985 records.
52:09The audit concluded that LWD could not account for almost six million pounds of hazardous waste it took in that year.
52:17And LWD's record showed it had burned waste too quickly, which could release toxins into the air.
52:22The report also questioned the authenticity of LWD's records, noting, for example, that the company said it had burned waste on non-existent days of the year, like February 31st and November 31st.
52:37How are you kept accountable?
52:40How does state and federal government keep you and LWD accountable?
52:44There are reporting our records and our inspections and across their site inspections.
53:05They can see that we are accountable.
53:07They do not have to keep us accountable.
53:10We are accountable because by choice, not by force.
53:16If the dollar was the only thing that motivated me, I could do real well, cut and leave, leave the community with a tremendous problem.
53:27Well, I live here. My family lives here.
53:31We're very responsible.
53:34My family works in there.
53:35My children work when I turn that plant.
53:38And I haven't killed anybody yet.
53:41And I haven't got up and bragged to meetings about how many people I have killed.
53:44I try not to kill anyone.
53:47I try not to kill anyone.
53:50The reality is it would be nice to trust Amos Shelton.
53:55It would be nice to trust anybody who's going to operate a hazardous waste incinerator.
54:02But I think the reality is we have to build permits and monitoring systems so that we don't have to take anybody's word for anything.
54:10In the last year, Don Harker fined LWD $100,000 for failing to adequately answer the state's questions about its operation.
54:21And the Kentucky Attorney General began a criminal investigation into the practices at LWD.
54:27Almost all the people I met during my five months in Calvert City told me they wanted to know the truth about their town.
54:34But in Calvert City, the truth is that no one, not the industrialists, the environmentalists, the regulators or the scientists, has enough knowledge to be certain what will happen to Calvert City.
54:46And so for the people here, the truth they are left with is the truth they choose to believe.
54:52What is the truth about Calvert City?
54:55The truth is that Calvert City is a small community with residents who express traditional values, who love their neighbors, who have a great love for their town and want the very best for it.
55:19The truth is that Calvert City pollutes a hell of a lot and that they don't have to and that local industry is not taking steps to solve this problem with any great gusto.
55:32In fact, they're hardly taking any steps at all.
55:34Our society, I believe, has said by its own actions, you know, we're going to have certain things and we're going to do certain things.
55:44And since we do that and we have those, we're going to have a problem with pollution.
55:50It's not something that got invented in Calvert City.
55:52Next month, federal and state environmental agencies in Kentucky are expected to begin a comprehensive environmental audit of the water, soil and air around Calvert City.
56:09This unprecedented study of an industrial complex will take three years to complete.
56:16Thank you for joining us. I'm Judy Woodruff. Good night.
56:20Good night.
56:50Frontline is produced for the documentary consortium by WGBH Boston, which is solely responsible for its content.
57:18Funding for Frontline is provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
57:32For videocassette information about this program, please write to this address.
57:37For a transcript of this program, please send $5 to Frontline, Box 322, Boston, Massachusetts, 02134.
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