Kettleman City is a Wonderful Place for PCBs

Kettleman City has a toxic PCB dump problem, or at least so says the U.S. Enivornmental Protection Agency. From the release:

SAN FRANCISCO – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today fined Chemical Waste Management, Inc. (CWM) more than $300,000 for failure to properly manage PCBs at its Kettleman Hills Hazardous Waste Landfill. In order to protect human health and the environment, EPA regulations and facility specific permit requirements require that PCBs are properly tracked, stored and disposed.

Locals are convinced that PCBs, and other chemicals, are the reason there are so many birth defects in the community, but the Cal EPA and CDPH is all like, "whatevs, we can't link those problems,"

In a draft report issued Monday, state investigators at the California Department of Public Health say they can't pinpoint the cause of the birth defects.

"While we wish there was an explanation for what caused the birth defects experienced by the children we studied in Kettleman City," CDPH Director Dr. Mark Horton said in a statement.

Bradley Angel is skeptical of the report's findings. Angel is with Green Action, and he says investigators come from the same agencies that issued the disposal permits.

"They clearly did not scrutinize their own activities impartially," says Angel. "It was a case of the fox guarding the hen house."

(cross posted at purple policy)