SECRET MEMO: Dioxin report details deception - EPA found state failed to stand up to chemical giant

Source: Detroit Free Press

SECRET MEMO
Dioxin report details deception
EPA found state failed to stand up to chemical giant
December 7, 2007

BY TINA LAM
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

With the state's complicity, Dow Chemical Co. has delayed cleanup and misled the public about the dangers of dioxin it dumped decades ago into rivers downstream of its Midland plant, Environmental Protection Agency officials charged in a confidential August internal report. The memo, obtained by the Free Press, also said Dow impeded state efforts to force a cleanup, concealed data and studies, tried to keep documents confidential that should have been made public and insisted on negotiating cleanup details with Gov. Jennifer Granholm's office, rather than staff of the state Department of Environmental Quality.

EPA officials said they could not discuss the memo because it is confidential.

"It's absolutely off-base," said Steve Chester, director of the DEQ, who said the state has pushed Dow hard, especially in the past four years.

But residents and environmental activists have criticized the lack of progress and secretiveness of the talks between Dow and Granholm's administration and during her predecessor Gov. John Engler's administration before he left office in 2002.

Read more: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071207/NEWS05/712070316/1001/NEWS

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This is today's headline article in the Freep.

A revealing memo

The EPA memo accidentally was released within recent weeks to the Lone Tree Council, an environmental group, under a Freedom of Information Act request.

It comes as the EPA, Dow and DEQ are talking privately about whether the EPA will take over the cleanup efforts from the state. It's the third time in five years that Dow and various regulators have held confidential negotiations over what will be cleaned up when.

The memo said that Dow, unlike most companies, has insisted on direct negotiations with the governor and with Chester of the DEQ.

For the Midland-based multinational company, much is at stake. An eventual cleanup is expected to cost tens of millions of dollars and perhaps much more. Dow employees 43,000 worldwide, including 6,000 at four Michigan plants.

The EPA memo also said:

?

The EPA who is campaigning to close down its testing offices and cut its staff. The EPA who is headed by a GOPer who hates EPA regs. That is the EPA Dow Chemical doesn't want to talk to?

looks like Norquist got his wish.

We have no government and what is left is rogue.

The EPA has a secret internal memo that Dow Chemical was scared to talk to it and would rather talk to a tree hugging Democrat?

Rogue is too nice a word.

It just doesn't pass the smell test.

Humans are not hurting Mother Earth.