Smoke Signals
February 1991
page 13
Dumping Grounds:
Tribes contend with some of the worst of America's Pollution
Reservations now look good to Promoters of Facilities for Toxic Waste Disposal
By Robert Torasho reeled in bass and muskellunge with skin ulcers and
MASSENA, N.Y. - A covey of ducks scurries across the deformed spines.
St. Lawrence River as Ward Stone's boat drifts into the in 1078. studies bv scientists from Cornell and other
bay he calls Contaminant Cove. Mr. Stone, a state
wildlife pathologist, pulls an oar from the water and
sniffs it for chemicals. Then he peers across the inlet
that separates a General Motors Corp. Toxic waste site
from the St. Regis Indian Reservation. "You're looking
at the worst place in the world to be a duck," he says.
Indian Tribes across America are grappling with some
of the worst of its pollution: uranium tailings, chemical
lagoons and illegal dumps. Nowhere has it been more
troublesome than at this Mohawk reservation the
Indians call Akwesasne-"land where the partridge
drums."
The Mohawks have fought a long war with GM,
Reynolds Metals Co. and Aluminum Co. of America,
whose factories have fouled the river that the Tribe once
relied on for food, income and spiritual sustenance.
"When all else failed," a Mohawk says, "the river
provided for us." Mohawk leaders still offer prayers of
thanks to the St. Lawrence, but Akwesasne's 9,000
residents no longer can eat the perch and pike from its
waters. And fluoride poisoning has decimated cattle
herds.
Search for Alternatives
Devastation of the fishing, farming and hunting
economy has fostered a host of desperate and divisive
money-making ventures, ranging from casino gambling
to smuggling. Now, outside investors are asking the
Tribe to accommodate such facilities as incinerators and
medical waste dumps on reservations.
Businesses that create wastes and businesses that
dispose of them are attracted to reservations by their
isolation and relative freedom from state and federal
regulation and political pressures (the reservations are
semi-sovereign). Ventures that generate jobs have a
powerful appeal for Tribes mired in poverty, and the
waste handlers promise clean, modern facilities.
Thus, California's Campo Indians have contracted for a
600 acre landfill; Arizona's Kaibab-Paiutes are accepting
a huge hazardous-waste incinerator; and the Oklahoma
Kaws have tentatively agreed to a similar project.
But many Indians remain skeptical. And this is
especially so at Akwesasne, given that it has paid a steep
price for environmental recklessness of the past.
New Neighbors
The building of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s
gouged out the fishing grounds and changed a way of life
forever. The new channel and cheap hydroelectric
power induced GM, Reynolds and a slew of Canadian
companies to build shoreline factories. They joined
Alcoa, which had long had a plant on the Grass River, a
St. Lawrence tributary. .
With environmental law enforcement still primitive, the
Mohawks' corporate neighbors poured industrial wastes
into riverside lagoons and landfills and sometimes the
river itself. Aluminum smelters belched out fluoride
laced smoke.
In the 1960s, Mohawk ranchers started complaining
that cattle grazing up wind from the Reynolds stacks
were developing loose teeth, brittle bones and other
problems. Farmer Ernest Benedict's Herefords started
dying while giving birth. Mohawk hunters discovered
strange markings on the hides of small game. Others
universities indicated that the sickly cattle were suffering
from fluoride poisoning. They also found high levels of
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other toxins in the
flora and fauna.
Tribes had little legal access to federal sanctions
against polluters. Mohawk chiefs governing the Cana
dian side of the Akwesasne filed a $150 million suit
against Alcoa and Reynolds over fluoride, settling for
$650,000 after legal fees nearly bankrupted the Tribe.
In 1983, the Environmental Protection Agency added
the GM site to its superfund cleanup list, estimating that
the area contained 800,000 cubic yards of PCB-contami-nated
sediments. Akwesasne residents were warned to
avoid lettuce and tomatoes from their own gardens.
Women of childbearing age and children were advised
to stop eating the fish, their main source of protein. On
the morning that warning was issued in 1985, fishing
guide Tony Barnes threw his nets onto the muddy St.
Lawrence banks to rot. "We all got sick when we heard
it." says Mr. Barnes, who was forced to close his
popular fishing camp and eke out a living ferrying
environmental investigators on the river.
Frustrated by the cleanup effort's slow pace, some
Mohawks sought help from Mr. Stone, the' wildlife
pathologist, who is known for his tenacious pursuit of
polluters. Testing at sites he dubbed Biphenyl Brook
and Dead Clam Cove, Mr. Stone found PCBs near the
Reynolds plant and determined that the fat of a snap
ping turtle caught near the GM plant contained 15 times
the PCBs needed to qualify as hazardous waste. For the
Mohawks, whose legend holds that the earth was
created on the back of a turtle, it was like finding
poisoned apples in the Garden of Eden.
While acknowledging that their plants are the sources
of PCBs, Reynolds, GM and Alcoa contend the pollu
tion stems from disposal procedures dating from days
when PCBs were unregulated and not considered
hazardous. "We have a lot of additional work to do and
we are committed to completing site remediation as
soon as possible," says Ronald Thomas, a Reynolds
spokesman.
With the tribe's traditional economy in tatters and
unemployment near 30, some Mohawks began
smuggling drugs and duty-free cigarettes across the
river. Casinos, evolved from bingo halls opened by
Mohawk entrepreneurs and other investors in the early
1980s, became Akwesasne's biggest employer. The
gaming occasioned violence by Mohawks who saw it as
another assault on their way of life. A casino was
torched, and roadblocks were built last spring to keep
customers away. Pro-gambling forces counterattacked
with assault rifles and Molotov cocktails, resulting in two
deaths and the closing of the casinos.
A Mohawk leaders cast about for job-generating
projects, they were flooded with proposals to turn the
reservation into a depository for waste from the outside
world's hospitals, sewage plants and industrial incinera
tors. The Mohawks thus joined a long list of Tribes
being courted by suitors ranging from industry mam
moths like Browning-Ferris Industries and Waste Man
agement Inc. to smaller operators like PCB Inc., a now
defunct Kansas City concern that was among targets of a
1988 congressional investigation into crime in the PCB
disposal industry.
Chambers Development Inc., a Pittsburgh waste
disposal firm, acknowledged the benefits of reservation
sites in a 1989 letter to an Akwesasne chief. "The
regulatory environment has grown increasingly complex
and even when technically approved, public hysteria has
stopped construction of environmentally sound process
ing and disposal facilities," the company said. "Because
the American Indian has many aspects of self-government
over their reservation, they possess an opportunity
to bypass the barriers to state of the art waste disposal."
Although Chambers never made a formal proposal,
many other companies offered the Mohawks part
ownership in their facilities and hundreds of jobs. "Lots
of millions of dollars were talked about for all of them,"
recalls a member of Akwesasne's environmental task
force.
Tribal environmentalists who investigated the compa
nies and their complicated proposals uncovered few
instances of deception or past law-breaking. Still, they
remained troubled. "Why do you want to go to an
Indian community?" Chief Ron La-France recalls
asking a waste handler after a lavish restaurant meal.
"Is there a compassion from your company to save the
Indian?"
Among the most persistent suitors was Terry Peterson,
whose now defunct Nashua, N.H., firm, United Scientific
Associates, proposed in 1988 a complex that would
include a high tech gasification plant to burn municipal
solid waste, a medical waste incinerator and a huge
landfill. "They're sitting on a potential gold mine for
themselves up there," Peterson insists.
Tribal leaders were skeptical. They were dubious of
the technology and troubled by Mr. Peterson's involve
ment with a Cambridge, Mass., concern whose similar
venture in gasification had failed. They also rejected a
proposal for a waste recycling facility presented by
Omaha, Neb., businessman Kevin Kean and his partner,
a Tennessee waste management firm. Mr. Kean, a
former commodities broker, wrote Mohawk leaders that
one of his "lifelong dreams has been to help further
economic development on Indian reservations." He
recently announced that another Tribe, which he
wouldn't name, had agreed to permit the building of a
combination of a hazardous waste disposal facility, truck
stop and casino.
Despite stiffening resistance to landfills and incinera
tors, some Mohawk leaders still wanted to exploit the
outside world's growing environmental awareness.
Last January, the traditional council, made up of
representatives from Tribal clans, quietly gave one of its
own subchiefs, Edward Gray, permission to build a
recycling plant for construction and demolition debris.
With a New Hampshire "waste broker" as his consult
ant, the subchief hired a Massachusetts trucking com
pany to haul debris. The rumble of the first intrusive
trucks caused an uproar among Mohawks. Members of
the Warriors Society, a well armed Tribal faction, threw
up roadblocks to prevent further deliveries.
Testing found that debris already delivered contained
low levels of PCBs, the toxins that symbolized
Akwesasne problems. The debris caught fire before it
could be removed. The Tribe later learned that the
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