CHEMICAL SAFETY AND FISHING COMMUNITIES

CHEMICAL SAFETY IN FISHING COMMUNITIES
by Boyce Thorne Miller

NAMA's Science Coordinator

A few weeks ago I represented NAMA and joined a group of individuals and organizations who are part of a coalition for chemical safety at a meeting with White House staff (primarily from the office of the Council on Environmental Quality or CEQ) to promote the need for safer alternatives to toxic chemicals. We delivered an electronic petition with 60,000 signatures supporting safer chemical alternatives, and a copy of a petition signed by 100+ organizations (including NAMA) asking EPA to “exercise its authority under…the clean air act to prevent chemical facility disasters through the use of safer chemical processes.”   Greenpeace was the lead on the petitions and organization of this meeting. Representatives of a number of community organizations, labor unions, and health facilities were present to offer the perspectives of vulnerable workers, neighborhoods and first responders (EMTs, ER doctors and nurses, and field nurses).

 All rights reserved by Greenpeace USA 2012

The environmental message was human health and safety for communities, but the main purpose of this meeting was to stress the national security relevance, which legally trumps all others. I was the only voice for fishermen and fishing communities, and it was a way of demonstrating our support for all efforts to slow and stop the flow of toxic substances into the marine environment that nurtures wild fish populations. Furthermore, many fishing communities have chemical plants or storage facilities, and are close to ports and rail yards that may be the port of call for dangerous chemical cargo and may offer storage for such cargo. My participation served as an introduction to the importance of this issue to fishing communities. The organizer had this take on the threat to fishermen:  big chemical businesses hurting small fishing businesses. How, for instance, would the presidential candidates protect those small businesses from being damaged or wiped out, by a toxic chemical accident caused by big industry?

OIL STORAGE TANKS DAMAGED BY KATRINA
David Helvarg, Blue Frontier Campaign

I learned a lot from these community representatives who have been working on this issue for some time. Some are focused on environmental justice in poor communities with citizens and plant workers vulnerable to frequent accidents (the average person outside these plants would be shocked, as I was, to find out how frequently fires and small accidents may occur – statistics are given in numbers of occurrences per week!). Others working in health care institutions expected to take care of victims of chemical accidents made it clear they could never adequately respond to a major accident. 

Storage tanks at factories, water treatment plants, and ports and rail cars pose threats of leaks, spills, and explosions. If they’re close to the shore or even to fresh water flowing into the ocean, they threaten fisheries, fishing boats, and fishing communities. And most of the port located chemical facilities are exempt from the federal chemical security rules and only deal with Coast Guard rules relating to their port entrance and perimeter rather than hazardous chemicals on site.

  

The vulnerability of fishermen to toxic accidents has been clearly illustrated in living color TV images from the BP blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico. Fishermen and fishing communities are vulnerable to volatile toxins and fish are vulnerable to toxins in the water. Coastal communities with ports and railroads are vulnerable when toxic chemicals are transported in and out or are stored, sometimes in very large volumes. And like any community, coastal communities with industrial facilities and water treatment plants that use volatile toxic chemicals are susceptible to accidental releases and serious accidents.

 All rights reserved by Greenpeace USA 2012

Fishermen may be out on their boats in large numbers in near-shore waters—often a single fisherman to a boat—and well within the range of a volatile chemical plume which may extend some 15 miles or so. And imagine such chemicals mixing with fog; and ultimately they will dissolve into surface waters carrying the threat to the fish as well as the fishermen. Or at the marinas and piers where fishermen are working on their boats or landing catch, and at shoreline seafood markets and boat supply or repair facilities, all are vulnerable to a chemical accident occurring at a nearby port. The Coast Guard gets added to the emergency response list in those circumstances, and hopefully they are duly concerned, as they could be called upon to rescue many boats and fishermen in a short time.

There are some ironies in these scenarios:

1) Responsible fishermen are intensely attentive to safety details when it comes to their boats going out to sea, yet here they are needlessly threatened by careless policies that make them vulnerable to toxic releases and accidents.

2) Not only are fishermen in harm's way, but so are the fish stocks that the government, fisheries managers, and fishermen are trying so diligently to rebuild. What good is a rebuilding program tainted by toxic substances in the waters where young fish are trying to survive? It’s time that sources of toxic pollution are considered and addressed in fisheries management and stock rebuilding plans.

3) Many of the goals of the National Ocean Policy, which is being championed by CEQ, are jeopardized by the existence of significant volumes of toxic chemicals being transported, stored and sometimes manufactured in ports and other waterfront areas and transported by sea.

We know that our friends who are fishermen or live in fishing communities in the Gulf of Mexico region are severely threatened by toxic chemical leaks and accidents at multitudes of chemical production and storage sites (see Greenpeace’s map of high risk chemical plants). We should all keep that in mind when oil and gas exploration and transport is proposed for our coastal waters.  But there are also hot spots along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In the Northwest Atlantic region between the Canadian border and Cape Hatteras, where NAMA’s work is primarily focused, the Greenpeace map shows less intense concentration of major dangerous chemical plants, except in New Jersey. In New England there are few identified, such as GAC Chemical Corporation in Searsport, ME; JCI Jones Chemicals, Inc. in Merrimack, NH;  Univar USA, Inc. and Tanner Industries, Inc. in Providence. But in this region the port storage facilities may be a more common threat, and numerous sources of chemical pollution have been identified in a comprehensive study in the New York Times. If you want to explore facilities around your area with EPA emissions violations and you have access to the NY Times, click here to view Massachusetts or to find your state.

There are a number of opportunities to join with other organizations fighting toxic pollution – which invariably ends up in the ocean. This chemical security coalition is but one approach, but it seems to have direct relevance to coastal fishing communities and their health.