Mike Salamone drove the hour and a half to Ukiah on Tuesday, February 18th, to hear the Supervisor's take testimony from the SHN Engineering firm testing for contaminants around the Caspar landfill. He sat in the audience for half the morning and well into the afternoon before getting a precious minute (literally) to address his concerns to the Board and the Wonder Men of Science.
"You keep talking about all these chemicals coming in just below the 'action levels'", he began, "And the suggestion is that therefore we're all safe and our drinking water is O.K. But nobody seems to be addressing the net effect of many chemicals mixing together in unknown ratios. What is the risk to citizen's health under such circumstances?"
Embarrassed silence from the Rocket Scientists who weren't going to touch that one for anything.
Steve Rehn, his wife and month-old son live just off Doyle Creek in one of the most beautifully crafted owner-built homes in this hotbed of owner-builders. Doyle Creek runs right past Caspar landfill in more or less a straight shot under Highway One into the Pacific Ocean.
Rehn has been one of the leading figures in the revival of the Road 409 Resident's Association which is now positioning itself to sue the County - again. Fans with long memories may remember that the 409 Residents fought and lost - on a technicality - a bitterly contested class action suit against the County nearly a decade ago.
Rehn's take on the performance on the 18th was direct and to the point: "Bureaucrats are trying to make policy. They are manipulating the investigation and they are trying to manipulate the Supervisors."
Indeed, the view from Mount Caspar is that as the County positions itself to answer in court against the inevitable class action suit, we get deeper and deeper into political and bureaucratic fantasyland. The latest version of which seems to be a determined push to promote the "naturally occurring benzene" theory, on the grounds that naturally occurring benzene has happened twice before in the recorded history of the planet. Well, maybe. At least, according to the Rocket Scientists.
The Supervisors seemed to positively warm to the idea that since it is well known that the oil companies want to drill off our coast, ergo , there must be oil down there, ergo, it must be seeping into the groundwater, ergo, (pause for the drumroll) the County is "Off the Hook"!
"Didn't the Indians", Supervisor Butcher asked helpfully, "patch their canoes with tar seeping out of the ground from around there?"
So, presumably, the County goes to court defending the naturally occurring lead theory, the naturally occurring benzene theory, the canoe theory and the claim that living next to Caspar landfill is "as safe as eating a peanut butter sandwich."
A large chunk of the SHN presentation dug deep into the minutiae of the recent series of test results. The Rocket Scientists dazzled us with new techno-lingo such as the "confidence interval sample," a term which was laid on us in exquisite detail and which had something to do with an average of 3.5 parts per billion (and as high as 7 ppb) of "BTX." BTX is shorthand for a combination of chemicals (benzene, toluene and xylene) being discovered in the series of test wells known as "bat" tests. Readers may recall that these figures are seven to fourteen times higher than the amount of benzene which got millions of cases of Perrier water pulled from store shelves around the world a few years ago.
A brief digression may be warranted here. I am not a Rocket Scientist. That should be painfully obvious to even the most casual reader, and as so often happens in the liaison meetings and again at the Board meeting on the 11th, when the discussion turns to science I am at a sharp disadvantage. Science and math are not, shall we say, my absolute favorites. Usually I just shut up, listen, and try to learn something.
So, the Rocket Scientists are talking about "Bat" tests as if everyone in the room should know what a "Bat" test is. "Bat" test? I've been sitting in dozens of these meetings for the better part of two years and I've never heard this term before. What is a "Bat" test? Baseball bats? Batman?
My mind drifts. Visions of Michael Keaton swinging on a rope into the Supervisor's chambers and onto Joyce Beard's desk, Kim Basinger on his hip, to rescue the good citizens of Caspar from ... the Joker!
"Bat" tests, gentle reader, stands for "Best Available Technology." a trademarked, patented, proprietary testing technique employed by the firm SHN to test the groundwater around Caspar at 120 different locations at a cost to you, the taxpayer, of $1,500 a pop. Now you know.
So who gets to play the Joker in this piece? Supervisor Jim Eddie seemed eager to audition for the role. As the longest serving Supervisor on the Board, the latter days of Eddie's watch must be particularly painful for him as he has witnessed County finances spiral down the drain. He knows, presumably, where all the fiscal goodies are buried and he understands, perhaps better than most, the thin margins we are now living with. As the perennial swing vote on all matters pertaining to County finances, he exercises tremendous power over County affairs.
Losing a megabuck class-action lawsuit to the Road 409 residents is, presumably, not exactly number one on Mr. Eddie's list of high priorities. On the 18th, he seemed to lost interest in the SHN presentation. On other occasions he has been heard to mutter about how much public comment time costs the County.
Mr. Eddie was obligated to leave the chambers early on the 18th, well before the Rocket Scientists had completed their presentations but not before asking his one and only question of the day which was, indeed, dramatically to the point.
Bottom line, Mr. Eddie wanted to know, what is the danger from the chemical contamination? The claimed answer, coming with assurances that it represented the best thinking of that rarefied enclave of Rocketry known as "Risk Assessment Management" - "three additional deaths per one million people exposed at that level of contamination."
You could almost see Mr. Eddie's mind digest this. That's all? That's it? That's what this fuss is all about? That's what we're wasting all this money on? With a dismissive wave of the hand, Mr. Eddie, in his best Jack Nicholson reprise, exited for his pressing engagement.
Three additional deaths? Contamination in all directions? Combinations of powerfully bad chemicals showing up everywhere? Vinyl chloride up the wazoo? Canoe Theories? Well, excuse me, if all of Caspar doesn't rise as one, toss their hats in the air and cheer the wonderful news.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2004
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited