Scroll to end: click web view. Mrs. Mcmurray 's obtained proof Asarco smelter poisoned El Paso TX through what the EPA & US DOJ said was illegal burning of illegal hazardous/radioactive wastes 1991-98. (see 73 page 1998 conf. for settlement purposes only DOJ EPA Asarco doc,10/06 nytimes) We have never been told what actinides, forever chemicals, dioxins etc are present from illegal Asarco actions see "Asarco secret document"
In mid 2000's a corpus Christi resident who lived near ENCYCLE told me a bright blue alligator was seen in water near/at plant.
Encycle was right on a channel for 7th largest port in the USA. They took in stuff to be recycled but railed a lot of unknown materials to worlds largest two contop furnaces in el paso tx to be illegally burned. The smelter burned this type stuff from at least 1992 thru 1998. Maybe longer.
Photographs of a stray pack of bright blue dogs on a snowy road in Russia have been circulating online.
The pictures were taken in the city of Dzerzhinsk, 230 miles east of Moscow and posted to the Russian social media site vk.com, according to The Moscow Times.
Dzerzhinsk (der- JZINSK), a once-secret city 300 miles east of Moscow once housed the Soviet Union's chemical industry. Today, it manufactures consumer goods -- including soaps, car parts and plastics in factories that are still dumping massive amounts of pollution into the air, land and water. Beth Knobel reports.
CURWOOD: Most Russians have probably never heard of Dzerzhinsk, a once-secret city 300 miles east of Moscow, that housed the Soviet Union's chemical industry. During the Soviet days, Dzerzhinsk produced chemical weapons. Today, it manufactures consumer goods, including soaps, car parts, and plastics. Seventy percent of the city's 300,000 residents still work in the chemical plants, and those factories are still dumping massive amounts of pollution into the air, land, and water. Outside scientists are getting into Dzerzhinsk for the first time. They say that decades of chemical production have left the city coated with toxic wastes. Beth Knobel has our report.
(High-speed machinery whining)
KNOBEL: Block Number 42 in the massive Orgsteklo plastics factory looks like it hasn't been painted in decades. Inside the rundown warehouse, little plastic beads are formed into sheets of plexiglass, which are cut and then sold around Russia. In the process, the factory creates a putrid, burning smell, spewing toxins into the atmosphere, blanketing the whole town with pollution. Plant managers of the 60-year-old factory know they're destroying the air and water in Dzerzhinsk, but their main concern is keeping the factory's 6,000 workers on the job. Konstantin Varov is the company's general director.
VAROV: (Speaks in Russian) TRANSLATOR: What can I say? The biggest problem is the age of our equipment. Economic times are so tough, we can't buy much modern equipment. That's the root of our problem.
KNOBEL: The Orgsteklo plastics plant illustrates the paradox of Dzerzhinsk. Industry keeps the city alive, but it's also slowly, quietly poisoning its inhabitants. Unregulated dumping of chemicals and waste water has littered the ground with toxic pollution, which has leaked into the ground water, and seeped into the crops. Researcher Alexei Kislov of the Russian office of Greenpeace estimates that the pollution, especially dioxins, is cutting the average lifespan of people in Dzerzhinsk by 15 years.
KISLOV: We've never seen in Russia such polluted soil, water, and air like in Dzerzhinsk.
(Walking on clinkers)
KNOBEL: Outside the plastics plant, my nostrils start to burn as I approach a chemical pond hidden in some reeds. The size of 2 city blocks, the pond's water is an eerie shade of orange, with thick slicks of oily black chemicals on top. The mix is so dense, that rocks I throw in--
(Fplop!)
KNOBEL:--linger on the surface before sliding into the murky ooze. Dozens of rusted metals barrels sit in and around the chemical lake. They're partially decomposed, and one disintegrates when I touch it lightly with my boot.
(Rattle of rust crumbling)
KNOBEL: What is, or was in them, nobody knows.
(Rumble of wind)
KNOBEL: A few miles away, I find another lake. The locals call it the "White Sea." Dust blown up by the strong winds quickly coats me as I approach it. About 100 acres in size, it's ringed with icebergs of dry chlorine. Most of the water is gone, leaving a 3-foot thick blanket of chemical waste. While the toxic layer looks hard as cement, it's soft to the touch, and blows off in a strong breeze. From sites like these, dioxins and other toxic chemicals contaminate the air, water, and local food supply. Over the decades, 3 generations of Dzerzhinsk residents have been exposed to the pollution, and doctors say the effects are starting to show.
(Infant cries amid concerned adult voices beyond)
KNOBEL: At Dzerzhinsk's second maternity hospital, about 2 dozen infants, swaddled tight in blankets, cry themselves to sleep. The staff here has noticed a increasing amount of what they say are dioxin-related problems in the city's children. They say the rate of birth defects here is 3 times the already high national average in Russia. Many are born with weak immune systems. The hospital's head doctor, Grachya Muradyan, has been delivering babies here for 30 years.
MURADYAN: (Speaks in Russian) TRANSLATOR: What we see here among women is gross hormonal imbalance, uterus disruption, problems in childbirth, and the outward signs of this include hair growth on the stomach and the breasts. It's showing up in the second or third generation of women born in Dzerzhinsk.
KNOBEL: Residents of the city know about the pollution-related health problems, but for most of them, like this pregnant woman, there's no emotional or economic incentive to leave.
WOMAN: (Speaks in Russian) TRANSLATOR: Our city it is horrible. The ecological situation is very bad, but I don't want to leave this city. It's my home.
KNOBEL: Nearby, a man carrying his infant son says he'd leave Dzerzhinsk if he could. But, trained to work in a plastics factory, he has nowhere else to go.
MAN: (Speaks in Russian) TRANSLATOR: We have an ocean of problems, and they're getting worse. I hope my little son won't grow up in Dzerzhinsk. It's my dream that he'll move somewhere else.
KNOBEL: City officials try to play down the pollution problem, repeating, like a mantra, that the problems of Dzerzhinsk parallel those of other cities with heavy industry in America and Europe. But when pressed, officials like Mayor Aleksander Romanov admit the dioxin problem is serious. Still, he says, unemployment is rising, and in the short term, his constituents must work, regardless of the environmental cost.
ROMANOV: (speaks in Russian) TRANSLATOR: The fact of the matter is that ecology and economics are different sides of the same coin. The problem of ecology can't be solved without addressing the economy, and vice versa. So these two problems must be addressed in tandem. A plan has already be worked out, so we here look at the future with optimism, and I'm sure we'll find a way to conquer both problems.
KNOBEL: There is one long-term solution. Mayor Romanov and his team have drafted plans to try to attract foreign investors to the area, with their new, cleaner methods of production. Part of the plan calls for federal tax breaks for clean businesses that move into Dzerzhinsk. To get those tax breaks, officials are trying to get the Dzerzhinsk declared an environmental disaster zone. But Dzerzhinsk has yet to submit its application for disaster status to the federal government. The city worker preparing it has been out ill for 2 months. For Living on Earth, I'm Beth Knobel in Dzerzhinsk, Russia.
List of 12,000 Nazis, Swiss bank accounts found in Argentina
By Don Jacobson
"March 5, 2020 at 2:33 PM
Investigators said the list includes accounts at the World War II-era institution Schweizerische Kreditanstalt, which later became Credit Suisse. File Photo by Ennio Leanza/EPA-EFE
March 5 (UPI) -- A list has been discovered in Argentina that includes names of thousands of former Nazis and their Swiss banking accounts that may have held stolen profits from German appropriations during World War II.
The records were found in a Buenos Aires building that was formerly a Nazi headquarters, officials said.
The U.S.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which has for years tracked down members of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party, said it has received the list -- which contains 12,000 names, and some are believed to have deposited ill-gotten monies into what's now Credit Suisse bank.
The Wiesenthal Center said Monday it asked for and was given the list by Argentine investigator Pedro Filipuzzi, who discovered the papers at the building in Buenos Aires.
The find is considered significant, as the pro-Nazi Argentine government that took power during World War II destroyed evidence of the party's activities that had been compiled in the 1930s by the anti-Fascist government of Argentina President Roberto Ortiz. The bank papers were part of the evidence collected by Ortiz before his administration was overthrown in 1943.
At that time, at least 1,400 members of the German National Socialist Party were living in Argentina, along with thousands of supporters and members of front organizations.
Investigators said the list includes accounts at the former institution Schweizerische Kreditanstalt, which later became Credit Suisse. The Wiesenthal Center said it suspects at least some of the money in the accounts was looted from Jewish victims in Germany and is still held in dormant accounts.
The Wiesenthal Center said it contacted Credit Suisse Vice President Christian Kung about accessing bank archives "to settle this matter on behalf of the diminishing number of Holocaust survivors."
Bank officials pointed to an investigation in the late 1990s that concluded it and other Swiss banks compiled "as complete and exhaustive a picture as possible" of the accounts of the victims of Nazi persecution, but said it would examine them again."
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2020/03/05/List-of-12000-Nazis-Swiss-bank-accounts-found-in-Argentina/4191583431003/
https://www.krwg.org/post/fronteras-911-copper-stain-asarcos-legacy-el-paso-elaine-hampton
Comment: by mcmurray
"Google "asarco secret document
The authors were kind and gave me a copy of the book, and mentioned me as getting a document from US EPA.
Actually, after tedious unpaid months of work in 2006, the TX OAG contacted the US DOJ who then speedily got me a copy of the secret 73 page EPA ASARCO US DOJ 1998 "confidential for settlement purposes only" document. TO THIS DAY the government has not released the invoices listed in it to me, the local cleanup trustee or anyone
I fought years later to get all the USEPA documents that had remained hidden in CO. The US EPA REGIONAL DIRECTOR gave the over 20 boxes of documents to me after 2008. (Anyone can file a foia request for copy of those searchable disks!!!!). Hidden in the middle of a 500 page file of many documents was the ****1994 encycle whistleblower report.*** We had never seen it before. You can search for the link to it in my blog -as a reporter was kind enought to write about it.
It is great to see good information and stories documented in this book "copper stain"; but, frustrating that neither author had training in science research so some of the facts got lost, or changed by no fault of theirs
Only one worker spoke up in 2005 at the air permit hearing. One. The workers now regret it as they see how Asarco abandoned them: many to slow agonizing unusual deaths normally associated with toxic waste exposure.
As a former asarco supervisor of the steam electric plant said, he regretted it all when he watched children play in the dirt. All his staff was dead. He had illness. The water that ran thru that plant had been run hard thru a water distillation purification unit that failed to keep up. So when that water steamed it caused some toxins to turn into vapor. The supervisor said not to touch the pond that held that water--- or any of the ponds.
Later that uit caught on fire. Afterwards neithe EPA, tceq, the cleanup trustee--- no one would allow me to bend down 3 ft and double bag an official sample of that tiny scintillating piece of slag from the fire. That piece of slag contained the necessary link to economically protect our region from what happened/protect the workers. NO ONE BACKED ME UP. And more interesting, none of the government or clean up guys wanted to walk on that dirt--- they stayed way back on the pavement
I feel for the parents of the children born at county hospital with major organs missing, who had livd along the river in the 1990's downwind and downriver from the contop furnaces altered to run more stuff thru by asarco.
Parents mourn deaths of their babies from causes like that, forever and might blame themselves trying to wonder if baby would have survived had they done something differently.
I hope that any parent who experienced that back then will not punish themselves because such birth defects can be stringly associated with industrial chemical exposures."
God bless those babies in heaven, the nursing staff who remembered them and the families who lost the babies to lack of a brain, a liver, a spleen or worse, dying an agonizing slow death.
It has been 20 years. On this coming mothers day if just one mother realized she could not have done differently/not her fault, that would be a blessing.
