Community Conversations with the
Ohio Community Rights Network
4th Wednesdays of the month, 6:00 pm
Live and on Zoom
Dear Ohio Friends and Neighbors,
We, the Ohio Community Rights Network, are inviting you for a discussion on The Industrial Excess Landfill (IEL) - Ohio’s Regulatory Train Wreck, on Wednesday, April 24, at 6:00 pm, from around the state. This will be the third in a series of Community Conversations which OHCRN will facilitate on a monthly basis. We will hear from an activist who has been fighting this disaster for 40 years.
When you register using the link below, you will receive a confirmation email with the Zoom link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYuf-qprzMvG9cLdaGzFMKpL_ArBiRYagnn
In order to prepare for a rich discussion, we are asking you to view this short 6-minute video Uniontown, Ohio Landfill News Clip #24 and consider the following questions beforehand.
1. Is a former 30 acre sand and gravel pit, unlined, on a hill, near the center of town, with 3000 residents living within a 1 mile radius (mostly dependent upon well water) a proper location for an industrial landfill? Where is a good location for an industrial landfill?
2. How long do you let residents ingest contaminated groundwater before testing, then inform them that they MUST abandon their private wells (under the threat of civil penalties and fines) to hook up to a provided public water supply?
3. The remedy provided by the combined professional expertise and resources of the USEPA, Ohio EPA, Ohio Department of Health, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), multinational Potentially Responsible Parties, US Army, National Analytical Radiation Environmental Laboratory (NAREL) and others was to simply cover the IEL site with a 4” thick semi-permeable cap and surround it by a chain-link fence. How protected would you feel living next to that?
4. Do court settlements with imposed gag-orders supersede the public’s right to know when life, health, safety and welfare are at stake? Worded differently, does money supersede humanity?
We are looking forward to an informative and empowering discussion!
Please join us and pass this on to anyone else you think would be interested.
Thanks,
OHCRN Board
Our SECOND Community Conversation on The Regulatory Fallacy was Wednesday, March 27, with participants from around the state (on Zoom) and featuring the Youngstown community. It was a lively discussion! Click HERE or on the image to view video of the Conversation.
For this discussion, we viewed this short 4-minute video on the Regulatory Fallacy and discussed the following questions (shared beforehand).
1. Have you or your community had any experience with a regulatory agency (Not limited to environmental agencies)? What was the process and the result?
2. What do permits actually do?
3. What are some problems with regulations and regulatory agencies? Are regulatory agencies really designed to protect us?
4. What are some reasons that make it difficult/impossible for people to create the sustainable communities they envision?
A few pertinent links from the conversation.
Our Book: "Death by Democracy" https://www.ohiocrn.org/community-stories
SOBE Concerned Citizens of Youngstown. https://www.stop-sobe.com/
The Box of Allowable activism
https://celdf.org/2015/08/is-it-really-illegal-to-think-outside-the-box/
Explore EPA's environmental justice screening and mapping tool
https://www.epa.gov/ejscreen
Our FIRST Community Conversation on State Preemption was Wednesday, February 28, with participants from around the state (on Zoom) and an in-person panel and participants from the Athens community. It was an informative and empowering discussion!
Click HERE or on the image to view video of the Conversation.
We viewed this short (less than 5 minute) video on Preemption and discussed the following questions.
1. What are the two main types of preemption and what is the difference?
2. What are some of the most recent examples of state preemption in Ohio?
3. Which type of preemption is mostly being used by state legislatures these days and what are the arguments used to justify them? Whose interests are being served by enacting them?
4. Have you had direct experience with a state or federal preemption law in your community? Does the principle of democracy conflict with state preemption?