Comment in response to
https://blogs.sierraclub.org/scrapbook/2009/02/polluting-el-paso-smelter-to-close-for-good.html
I treasure the Thank you card from Ms Chew's mom for the years of research i did, uncovering the 73 page USDOJ EPA Asarco confidential for settlement purposes only document. A TCEQ manager referred to this document in an interview and it cost him his job. It became public domain with his comment and I was able to get it. That document was covered in a 2006 front page New York Times story, and a subsequent national press conference at base of the Asarco stack, on Paisano el paso texas. I wrote and paid $300 for the electronic prnewswire press release that caught attention of the nytimes, but only Ms Chew backed me at press conference, not local sierra club. In order to gain national news story I could not release the document locally to groups until that day. Only Bill Addington, Mariana Chew, the sunland park environmental group (taylor moore esq and kids from anapra) backed me with full confidence, along with community members and an Asarco ex-worker. Asarco was there, counter-releasing news of nerve quench water rocky mt arsenal for gov, and an activist whom i mistakenly trusted with the document (he printed and distributed many copies of it at event, without holding my address confidential (was on top page), potentially endangering me as that had not been public, and indeed I was removed from my teaching job and fully blacklisted, and never worked again). If you are an activist reading this, understand that many working on an issue will use it to advance their own standing with others, usually to gain money or work. By the time i found out, he had already distributed many copies. Mariana went on the help me fight the re-permitting of Asarco's wastewater permit, which I wrote &filed given how Mr. Moore esq had taught, and she worked to get binational signatures and personally fax for me. She would later receive a Sierra Club Nat. Award in CA for her work on Asarco. My research was over 8 yrs, Taylor Moore esq and others (see legal suit over installing new contops, @ 1990) also had gathered huge amounts. It culminated in a regional epa director being fired after he released over 5 dvds of searchable asarco related documents to me that Sen. Shapleigh (he was given one box) was never given because EPA had stored the nearly dozen boxes in a different region (which contained the encycle whistleblower report). The attorney for the ex workers was trying to negotiate for release of three boxes. For some reason in response to my foia, all were released. Currently, EPA has erased all my asarco foias and one remains, but is listed as "no response" when actually it had a response (a set of those over 5 dvds). Presently the Wa DC federal register foia attorney I talked with (who had appeared to be helpful) will not open my email with photograph showing the response letter, envelope and discs.
It is also nigh impossible to find this blog unless you go to it directly, now.
Had I not followed Sierra blanca nuclear waste activist, Bill Addington's advice after getting that 73 page document, it would not have gone national. He explained it was a national story, told me what to do. He said if I released it locally, Asarco would bury it. To this day, that news story can be found when so much other information is now lost. This region owed a lot to his mom Gloria and him for their fight, because it ended in 1998 and was the cause of asarco idling the el pado plant by 2/99. Had they not fought the good fight with a great team, many losing everything doing it, it is my belief that EPA and ASARCO would have overlooked EPA's 1998 finding that el paso had the highest beta radiation air and soil in the entire USA in 1998.
- mrs mcmurray ms biological sciences, dual certification biology science grades 8-12, 2023
