And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Akwesasne Environments, 1999 http://nativeamericas.aip.cornell.edu/spr99features/martinspr99.html Relicensing a Seaway After a Legacy of Destruction Kallen M. Martin In the year 2003, the New York Power Authority's 50-year license to operate the St. Lawrence-FDR Power Project along the St. Lawrence River will expire. The project includes a power dam and generating station, and facilities that control water levels and divert water. The project also traverses the ancestral waterways of the Mohawks of Akwesasne. Of interest to the Mohawks are the issues of liability and damage restoration to its properties since the construction of the dam and the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1953, issues which NYPA has not had to address until now. "Since the mid-50's, NYPA has never had to deal with us. All of a sudden it has to," said Mary Fadden Arquette, DVM, PhD, of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe's Environmental Division. Based on changes to federal regulations, tribes are considered the equal to states in setting environmental standards. Power authorities are now required to consult with communities that lay within their operational area in the relicensing application process. As a result, the Tribe is one of many stakeholders in the current process. As positive as this is, the relationship between governments has to be reinforced. "It took a long time for NYPA to understand we're not just another local group," said Mary Arquette. The Tribe, operating from the basis of the Two-Row Wampum, wherein two governments work side by side on a nation-to-nation basis without interfering with the other, has seen some setbacks. "They're still not sold on the process, even though we've described the parallel process and provided cultural sensitivity training to them," added Mary Arquette. Most, if not all, of the local communities in NYPA's operations area are committed to keeping utility rates low. Consequently, their support of NYPA's relicensing application is almost a given. In some cases, that support is contingent on improvements made to waterfronts and recreational areas, or on financial commitments to economic development projects by NYPA as compensation for damage when water levels are raised or lowered. "All the communities upriver have benefited from the hydroelectric project," said Jim Ransom, executive director of the Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force and former director of the Tribe's environmental division, "but we've born the brunt of the damage." During the mid-1950's development of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Robert Moses Power Dam, which NYPA operates, the longstanding fishing industry at Akwesasne was dramatically altered. As fish and other aquacultures changed, so did fishing at Akwesasne. With the cheap hydropower came the insurgence of new corporate neighbors like Alcoa, Reynolds Metals and General Motors (GM), and the dumping of toxic-laden waste into the river, devastating a once thriving economy and healthy environment. Reynolds Metals recently settled out of court a decades-long case documenting fluoride damage to community livestock. The $10 million settlement compensated the farmers, many of whom were driven out of business by the contamination. General Motors recently spent $500 million cleaning up the site where they dumped tons of waste containing PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls, toxic compounds formed by industrial processes) into the river. A nearby lagoon, which borders on Akwesasne territory, referred to locally as "Contaminant Cove," has yet to be dredged. Despite the expenditure of millions of dollars for cleanup, the environment at Akwesasne remains unhealthy. Fish from the St. Lawrence river cannot be eaten, wells which once provided drinking water to families living near the GM facilities have been replaced with bottled water, and asthma cases continue to rise among families that live near the Reynolds plant. "When the wind is blowing north, I don't let any of my children outside," said Peggy Thompson, a wetlands specialist with the Tribe. Although there is little documentation supporting a direct connection between the industrial smoke billowing out of Reynolds' smokestacks and asthma, Thompson noted first hand how much worse her children's asthma is when the wind carries the smoke over her house. What has been documented is the linkage between PCBs and breastmilk. Numerous scientific studies undertaken by the First Environment Research Project, have shown that nursing mothers exposed to PCBs were more than likely to be passing the PCBs on to their newborns when they breastfed. The effect of PCBs on human health is the subject of two current studies at Akwesasne, one on adults and the other on youth and children. A third study is attempting to estimate the amount of PCBs residents have been exposed to. PCBs are known to affect brain waves, sex hormone systems and their development, thyroid functions and immune systems. In children, the most severe effect is brain damage. Initiated by Mohawk midwife, Katsi Cook, and the Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment, the First Environment Research Project is a community based organization, working with the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany with funding from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) Superfund. The community was first alerted to PCB contamination in the mid-80's when Mary Arquette, then working as an intern with Ward Stone, a pathologist with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, tested a snapping turtle found near "Contaminant Cove" PCBs. It contained 2000 parts per million (ppm) of PCBs. In comparison, the EPA standard for edible fish is 2 ppm. That initial finding led to more testing and subsequently the breastmilk, health and human studies in order to document the routes PCBs take in the food chain and then the effect on human health. In addition, GM was placed on the Superfund list by the state. It was fined $507,000 for 21 counts of illegally dumping and storing PCB-laden waste onsite and in the river. In the early 90's, GM dredged an area of the river adjacent to their outflow pipe and stored the waste onsite covered by a plastic tarp. While the men in white protective body suits who were involved in the dredging were cautious about their work, the sludge containing various amounts of PCBs were, until recently, left open to the elements. The EPA announced in 1997 that the best course of action for GM to take regarding the sludge was to have it carted away and stored by a company licensed to store toxic chemicals. But, the company's onsite disposal areas still contain PCB-laden waste, which reservation environmentalists say is unacceptable. All of the industrial plants near Akwesasne used PCB-based oil as a fire retardant until the practice and substance was banned by the EPA in 1978. In some cases, inadequate storage of the PCBs on an industrial site found its way into groundwater systems or leaked into nearby rivers. In other cases, actual dumping of PCB-laden waste into those waterways took place. The issues of compliance and regulation have both the EPA and the community working together. In most cases, it is the community that struggles to find personnel to monitor GM and work with NYPA and bring to light Alcoa's role in polluting the river. The Tribe's 18-member Environmental Division is charged with monitoring air and water quality, wetlands use, energy conservation, hazardous material response, solid waste, regulation of gas stations and database development. The importance of the environment to the community is evident not only in the number of staff in the environmental division, but in the host of programs sponsored by other community-based environmental organizations, like the First Environment Research Projects. The concern of the First Environment project was the womb, considered by its founder to be a baby's first set of surroundings, or environment, and impacts upon that environment. The breastmilk study was the first of many community studies that looked at the relationship between PCBs and human health. The Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment (ATFE) provides a coordinated approach to tackling environmental problems and offers additional educational, advocacy and hands-on projects. These include the black ash and sweet grass projects, examining the materials used in Akwesasne's sweet grass basket-making economy, as well as aquaculture projects to reintroduce edible fish. "The environment here has a different significance than in mainstream society," said Ken Jock, director of the Environmental Division, "The people here feel the environment is their mother and depend on it to be healthy." All of the programs and services the division offers have not only been in response to the needs of the community, but also to maintain environmental standards established by the community. "The respect for the natural world, that's the core of the community and that's what's being threatened," Ransom said. Fishing, for example, has a host of Mohawk words and traditions attached to it. With fishing all but nonexistent, the use and practice of those words and traditions has disappeared as well. "How do you replace the tradition and the language associated with fishing? It's a living language, it has to be used in context," said Mary Arquette about the declining use of the Mohawk language. Mary Arquette heads up a project that will assess the damage to the culture of the Mohawk community inflicted by the nearby industries. The relationship between the industries and NYPA was to strengthen the economy of the region. But, that relationship has permitted "New York State to subsidize the pollution of the river," said Mary Arquette. As part of its relicensing application, NYPA is funding two grants to the Mohawk community to document the Mohawks' ties to the river and a cultural resources plan to establish a restoration process. As these developments progress, the First Environment Research Projects is awaiting results of its men's study. This investigation looked at the lifestyles and fish consumption of men married to or fathers of children whose mothers breastfed. Those mothers and breastfed children were the subject of the breastmilk study. Yet another study will be addressing the grandparents of the children in the breastmilk study to determine the presence of transgenerational PCB contamination. The human health study on youth and children currently underway is conducted jointly by the Environmental Health Branch of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne in Canada, SUNY Albany, the Tribe's Health Services (under which the Environmental Division is housed), and the NYS Department of Health. The First Environment Research Projects and SUNY Albany sponsor the adult study, while SUNY Albany and the ATFE sponsor the third study on the amount of PCB exposure. Funding has come from a number of different sources, depending on the project, but in the case of the three current studies, funding is typically through the EPA Superfund. The environmental organization's association with SUNY Albany was initially developed to help secure both funding and scientific reliability in its attempts to document PCB contamination. While most of the funding has remained in Albany, recent developments may see that relationship change so that the community benefits more than it has in the past. The past will soon be catching up to Alcoa, a major aluminum producing plant located a few miles upriver from Akwesasne near the village of Massena, NY. It has been a mainstay in the region since 1908 and has dumped PCB-containing waste into the Grasse River during that time. The Grasse River flows into the St. Lawrence River, which in turn flows through Mohawk territory. "In 1995, Alcoa did a hot-spot study and found levels of PCBs up 11,000 ppm," said Dave Arquette, an environmental specialist with the Tribe. "Those areas have been removed from the river and stored in a secured landfill," he added. But a six to eight mile stretch of the Grasse River still contains contaminated sediment. Eventually, that stretch of river will require cleanup. "Alcoa is doing the same thing that General Electric has done on the Hudson," said Ken Jock. "It's hired the same consultants. They hope by studying the problem it'll just go away," Jock added. Alcoa is Akwesasne's oldest corporate neighbor and has been dumping since 1908. "It took them almost 100 years to pollute the river, it may take another 100 years to repair the damage," said Jock. The challenge is daunting, but Jock andothers agree on one thing - the people will not give up their fight for a healthier environment. "After we're long gone, there'll be others picking up where we've left off," he added. ________________________________________________________________ Photo Captions/Credits: #1--Industies sprawled along the St. Larence Seaway have contaminated the community of Akwesasne over the decades. Courtesy of St. Regis Mohawk Environment Division #2--A contaminated turtle makes its way onshore. Courtesy of St. Regis Mohawk Environment Division #3--Dredging along the St. Lawrence River has been one attempt to correct a wrong. Kallen M. Martin Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
