Waste Management(WM), the Houston-based company that owns the Monarch Hill Landfill in Coconut Creek, Florida has applied for a permit to build a deep-water injection well in which to dispose of the runoff or “leachate” from its own facility as well as unidentified waste products it intends to “import” from unspecified parties elsewhere.

DEP is holding a public meeting on the draft permit for the WM well this Thursday, September 1^stat 10:00 am at the Hampton Inn Boca Raton-Deerfield Beach, 660 West Hillsboro Boulevard, Deerfield Beach, Florida 33441.  We need to show up in opposition to this egregious scheme.  Please sign up to attend this event over to the right.

Prepare a 2-3 minute statement. Comments for DEP should focus on environmental pollution and public health.

Important!!!  Anyone wanting to comment on the proposal who’s unable to attend the meeting should email Neil Campbell at DEP by 10:00 am this Thursday morning, whose email address is Neil.I.Campbell@dep.state.fl.us and whose phone number is 850.245.8612.

Waste disposal and its delivery is big business, and Florida has become an easy-target for dumping, fracking, and fracked gas pipelines since Rick Scott and his friends in the state legislature have become hell-bent on delivering to their shadow-donors despite the risk to their constituents' health or our tourist industry.

WM claims the waste it intends to inject into the well is “non-hazardous,” but the details of its application reveal that this is a lie.

Its own runoff contains arsenic (a known carcinogen), toluene (which can affect the central nervous system, cause liver and kidney damage, and is associated with birth defects), Dieldrin (an insecticide that can affect the central nervous system), strontium-90 (a radioactive isotope that can cause cancer and anemia and impair bone growth in children), radium (another radioactive element associated with cancer, anemia, cataracts, fractured teeth, and death), and barium (which can cause breathing difficulties, kidney and heart damage, and in large amounts, paralysis and death).

Waste Management wants to import 480,000 gallons of the unnamed stuff in 80 tanker trucks per day—big, filthy, slow-moving vehicles loaded with toxic chemicals that will tie up traffic, be an eyesore, and have the potential to cause horrific accidents.

With 20,800 of these vehicles coming in and out every year, sooner or later accidents will happen.

Not to mention that WM would inject the toxic mess into our Floridan Aquifer. They claim the 2,500 feet into the “Boulder Zone” is safe, But Matt Schwartz, the Executive Director of South Florida Wildlands, explained that it’s not that simple.

The boulder zone is highly transmissive. It’s not like you can just inject some liquid and it will sit there. Where the water that moves through it ends up, no one really knows. We do know that it spreads throughout South Florida.

DEP is holding a public meeting on the draft permit for the WM well this Thursday, September 1^stat 10:00 am at the Hampton Inn Boca Raton-Deerfield Beach, 660 West Hillsboro Boulevard, Deerfield Beach, Florida 33441.

The hearing will be an hour or two long. WM will give a presentation first. Then anyone who has submitted a card indicating that they want to speak will have an opportunity to do so.

Prepare a 2-3 minute statement. Comments for DEP should focus on environmental pollution and public health.

DEP needs to hear what parents have to say about their children, what business people have to say about their bottom line, what homeowners have to say about their property values, what doctors have to say about public health, and so on.

We need a groundswell of opposition, so please come out in opposition to this attempted assault on our public health and threat to the environment.

Background for your statement:  

The reason I’ve given you such short notice is that DEP limited its advertising to one little ad in The Sun Sentinel that someone who works for Coconut Creek happened to pick up on. I was told about this a few days ago and have been scrambling around trying to flesh out the picture.

So here are the bullet points:

·  The idea that you can inject something—a liquid, no less—into one area of the Floridan Aquifer and count on its staying put is a fantasy. The deadly concoction that WM would inject would migrate—into our children’s and grandchildren’s drinking water, if not our own.

·Assuming that if there’s no migration of a substance injected into the boulder zonein two years’ time, migration will never occur is unrealistic. We have to concern ourselves with the well-being of our species and those we’d impact in perpetuity.

·In terms of local impacts, our government should not be risking Floridians being exposed to carcinogenic and radioactive waste, regardless of where it’s generated. Much is made in medical offices of disposing of used syringes safely. If you want to mail a package, you have to attest to the fact that its contents aren’t hazardous. But in Florida, deadly waste products are trucked into and processed in the middle of a densely populated urban area? The Monarch Hill Landfill is already a major public nuisance, and should not under any circumstances be expanded.

·The fact that the proposed well would have “blowout preventers” means there’s a potential for blowouts (geysers of toxic waste), because gadgets fail all the time.

Broward County currently gets its drinking water from the Biscayne Aquifer, which we’re eventually going to exhaust, unless we pollute it to the point of undrinkability first. Then we’ll have to start getting our water from the Floridan Aquifer.

Martin County obtains its drinking water from the upper Floridan Aquifer now. In fact, the Floridan Aquifer is the source of most of Florida’s water. Perhaps it’s not all that great an idea to lace it with arsenic and strontium-90. Please come out and do your part to protect our precious water.

Thanks,

Dr. Michelle Gale

Details:

This Thursday, September 1st,

DEP Hearing / 10:00 am (Arrive 20 minutes early to get cards)

Hampton Inn Boca Raton, Deerfield Beach

660 West Hillsboro Blvd

Deerfield Beach, FL., 33441