Hello Minneapolis Issues Folks:
I was taken on a Toxic Tour of our city by
Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota EJAM last
night. As part of a larger discussion between EJAM and
the Sierra Club, which I serve as chair.
It was a very interesting tour that involved visiting
numerous sites across the city including Brownfields
and Superfund clean up sites on the north-side,
asbestos contamination at Gluek Park and the clean up
of the Riverside coal plant, north-eat, and the
Arsenic Triangle in Philips, south-side (large
neighborhood Superfund site).
Many of these problems are remnants of companies that
no longer provide jobs in Minneapolis. They made a
profit and left behind these problems, and in some
cases being completely aware they were leaving
communities contaminated. The Bush Adminstration has
made it even easier for these polluter to not be held
responsible, and are trying to make the taxpayer now
pay the bill for contaminating commmunities.
One of the most informative pieces of information
provided was a map of Minneapolis with Superfund
sites, leaking underground tanks, hazardous waste
investigation sites and dump sites produced by the
city of Minneapolis.
I counted all the Superfund clean up sites that are
still open (not cleaned up). I used 94 and 394 to
divided the city in half (south-side and north-side),
which is not a perfect system because the U of M area
is really consider south east, but it worked for me.
According to the map south Minneapolis had 5 Superfund
clean up sites and north-northeast Minneapolis had 17
superfund clean up sites.
About 3 times as many Superfund clean up sites in
north-northeast.
According to the map south Minneapolis had 34 open
leaking underground tanks and north-northeast had 69
with 51 of those in the northeast side of the map.
Nearly twice as many leaking underground tanks in
north-northeast and the far majority of the entire
city are located in northeast Minneapolis.
The entire tour was very interesting, and also
disturbing when you look at the obvious connection
between who is being impacted the most by companies
that pollute our city. Affluent people have always had
the ability to live in cleaner neighborhoods away from
factories and industry. The workers have often lived
close to those companies, and the remain housing in
the are is occupied by poorer people and immigrants.
It was a very educational experience and I hope others
in our city will have an opportunity to do the same
with EJAM in the future.
Ken Bradley Corcoran Neighborhood
Sierra Club North Star Chapter Chair
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