The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Conn. has an environmental crisis, and it’s being ignored
The news crews are in East Palestine, Ohio, while residents a seek reassurance that the derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals won’t affect their health.
Closer to home, Connecticut doesn’t have black plumes of smoke or charred railroad cars, but we have an environmental disaster of our own. In a few weeks, our winterthat-wasn’t will be over, and Hartford’s North End — among other ignored parts of the state — will brace for a unique (and disgusting) rite of spring, the influx of sewage into their basements. Spring rains will come, ancient pipes will prove again they aren’t sufficient to drain the storm water, and residents will once again be forced to figure out how to rid their homes of raw sewage.
Residents and business owners have been complaining for years, and in return have received what amounts to a collective shoulder shrug from officialdom.
The North End is the home to generations of Black families, including Bridgitte Prince’s. Years ago, Prince lost some of her U.S. Army artifacts including commendations, uniform when her late father’s Hartford basement flooded with the foul mix.
When we last checked in with Prince, she was in a flurry, contacting her state and federal elected officials, the state DEEP, the federal EPA, and the Metropolitan District (MDC), the opaque nonprofit municipal corporation that since 1929 has been charged with providing the region’s water and sewage services.
Sadly, the official reaction to Prince’s efforts looks to be slower than the cleanup in Ohio. But there has been some movement, and Prince says she is not finished.
“We already know the problem,” Prince said. “The solution is identified, the funds are there.”
There’s no denying the drainage system that is supposed to move storm water and sewage away from homes is old, flawed and insufficient to the task. There’s also no denying that replacing that system with a newer, more efficient means of separating storm water from sewage isn’t cheap, but pretending this will simply go away — or the residents will stop asking for intervention — is as effective as lighting a fuse and then acting surprised when the bomb goes off.
That’s why human-created environmental disasters are so frustrating. These are not natural disasters. They are entirely human-made, which means they are entirely avoidable.
The Feb. 3 East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment, which spilled toxic, cancer-causing agents into the air, soil, and water, did not just happen. The damage and threats to the health was served up by an overheated wheel bearing, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board. The previous administration’s slavish devotion to the rail industry allowed the rollback of some 100 environmental protections, including Obama-era regulations that required faster breaks on trains carrying hazardous material, and more crew members on freight trains.
Ohio lawmakers across the political landscape — including U.S. Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and U.S. Republican Sen. J.D. Vance — have reached out to the federal government to suggest increased health aid — including providing Medicare coverage for everyone affected by the carnage.
Hartford could use that kind of attention.
“This is a man-made disaster,” Prince said. And it is could have been circumvented had all the agencies involved done their jobs in a timely fashion, she said.
You could choke a goat on all the documents that have tracked Connecticut’s sewage issues
That’s why human-created environmental disasters are so frustrating. These are not natural disasters. They are entirely human-made, which means they are entirely avoidable.
through the years, including a bevy of consent orders from the 1990s. At the same time, an army of environmental agencies have been keeping watch and pushing for action. The Greater Hartford branch of the NAACP has called on appropriate agencies to act, and in a statement pointed out that the neighborhood “has long been subjected to disinvestment, redlining, and inadequate infrastructure.” A Friday email from an EPA official assured Prince that the organization was “committed to enforcing the law,” and that since not all such issues can be solved with enforcement, “we’re also identifying other tools and resources.”
After news hit the stands of raw sewage in Hartford basements earlier this month, Connecticut legislators — Republicans and Democrats — introduced a bill that requires annual audits of the MDC. The bill also would establish a task force to oversee the commission, and require the commissioners to adopt and adhere to a code of ethics, among other changes.
In her testimony in support of the bill, Prince decried “perpetual acts of environmental racism and injustice” from an organization that appears “untouchable.”
But no organization should be untouchable, especially not one with access to billions.
The list of health hazards from being exposed to raw sewage is long and includes (but is not limited to) encephalitis, Hepatitis A, and typhoid. At worst, exposure is stridently unhealthy. At best, it’s a nuisance.
In her recent correspondences, Prince is invoking the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s Title VI. She said she’s heard from some lawyers who have expressed interest in taking the case as a class action lawsuit.
“Actually, this is very exciting because I see a solution to the problem, so I stay motivated,” said Prince. “There is money to solve this problem, so I’m very excited about it, motivated and energized.”