Children's health focus of forum
with state lawmakers

By EVAN BRANDT
ebrandt@pottsmerc.com

POTTSTOWN - Area children are threatened by the very air they breathe, a group of state Senate Democrats were told Thursday morning.
The Senate Democratic Policy Committee came to Pottstown Middle School to meet with officials from Chester, Montgomery and Berks counties on the subject of children's health.
They got an earful.
"Access to medical care does not make people healthy. Access to clean air, clean food and clean water is what people need," Dr. Jean Flood told the panel, which was chaired by Sen. Richard Kasunic of Fayette County and included Sen. Michael O'Pake of Berks, Sen. Jay Costa of Allegheny and Sen. Gerald LaValle of Beaver County.
Contrary to what some officials have suggested is the case, Flood said "it's not just poor people who are being affected" by the impact the area's environmental problems have on health.
"Many of the children I treat have affluent parents. They're the cream of the crop," she said. "They eat organic food and drink bottled water. The problem is there's no place for them to run, no place to hide, from the air we breathe."
Considering the subject matter, it should be of little surprise to read that the Alliance for a Clean Environment was represented at the hearing in force.
In fact, ACE founders Donna and Lewis Cuthbert were among the presenters.
Lewis Cuthbert told the senators that the proximity of the Pottstown Landfill, Occidental Chemical's polyvinyl chloride plant and Exelon's Nuclear Limerick Generating Station, along with the permitted and undocumented emissions from those facilities, make the region "a toxic triangle."
"We're dealing with a community health crisis, a chemical plague," he said.
"Every child who draws a breath of air in this community is exposed. We have a lot of people who are dying too young, parents who are dying too young and leaving children from someone else to rear," he said.
All of this was news to Chester County Commissioner Andrew Dinniman.
"Our own health department in Chester County has not really brought this to the commissioners' attention," he said. "This is a whole new problem I was unaware of."
He was told that because of prevailing winds, it is the opinion of ACE activists that some of the areas most at risk are in Chester County.
Those areas include northern Chester County municipalities along the Schuylkill River like North and East Coventry, East Vincent and East Pikeland townships and Spring City and Phoenixville boroughs.
"Pollution knows no boundaries," said Donna Cuthbert.

"I would like you to come to a commissioners' meeting in Chester County and make sure our health department is actively involved in this issue," Dinniman said.
"I want to make sure this gets on the front burner for the commissioners' consideration," he said.
The Pennsylvania Department of Protection has been on ACE's front burner for a long time.
The group has clashed repeatedly with DEP over the issuance of permits in past years.
"In my opinion, the DEP exists to issue permits to pollute and is ignoring their mandate to protect the environment," said Lewis Cuthbert.
"They have yet to say no to a single polluter. They just want the paperwork to be filled out properly," Cuthbert said.
"That's a typical answer from them," said Kasunic. "If a permit meets the requirements, they always say they have no choice but to issue the permit."
O'Pake said the Legislature "must take a closer look at the rubber-stamping of permit expansions" by the DEP.
Getting information out of the DEP is no easy task either, said Linda Price King, director of the Environmental Health Network.
"They do everything they can to limit access to information," said King, who has dealt with these issues and comparable agencies throughout the world. "You need to make DEP open its doors to public information."
And the agency should also be made to respond to the public directly, said Evans Street resident Dan Weand.
"I am here to report to you that the system is not working," said Weand. Trained as an industrial engineer, Weand used as an example questions he put to the DEP during hearings on the proposed landfill gas pipeline between the Pottstown Landfill and Occidental Chemical.
"I asked them some pretty basic questions, the kind of thing I would want to know if I were designing a pipeline. What's in the gas? Would a glass lining be helpful? Because if there's hydrochloric acid in the gas, it wouldn't be. What kind of steel will it be made out of, because there might be some caustic chemicals in the gas which would make a leak possible. Where is the route? How close to hospitals and children?" Weand explained.
Despite the fact that DEP issued a permit approving the project, "I have yet to receive an answer, either in writing or by word of mouth. We need a process that serves us," said Weand.
"We don't want them making a movie about Pottstown and calling it 'Love Canal II.'"
Kasunic promised to look into DEP "and pressure where its necessary to solve the problem" and also promised the committee would return later in the summer or in the fall to hear more testimony.