Start with this: The essence of big government is its inertia. With so many chains of command, rapid response to emergencies is difficult at best. That seems to be the case with the E. Palestine, Ohio, train wreck. Only now, February 18, two weeks after the wreck will the Biden Administration send CDC and HHS to the town. And only a day or two ago did it send the head of the US EPA to address residents’ concerns and get an in situ assessment.
Apparently, the best advice given by government “authorities,” including by the Ohio governor, for the residents of E. Palestine, Ohio, is “to go about your lives as usual, but monitor yourselves.” The Ohio EPA declared that the town’s water supply, drawn from five wells and not from surface water, is safe to drink; yet, today it is drawing on water reserves. Yeah. Nice to know. Might very well be true that the city water is safe because it is derived from groundwater and not surface water. But let’s personalize the circumstances: Would you, yes you, want to prepare the baby’s formula with E. Palestine’s tap water? Let’s say I take the officials at their word. Do I automatically alleviate my anxiety over drinking water, especially after the Governor said he recommended drinking bottled water? And what about that burning sensation in your throat and on your skin? Would you, yes you, ignore that because the government says the air is also good?
Sarcasm? Skepticism? Anyone who remembers the Three Mile Island accident in neighboring Pennsylvania, has some motive for harboring both. E. Palestine is now a town of anxious people as parents worry that their children will be exposed to carcinogens that will manifest themselves in sickness months or years hence. The government and train officials can’t quash anxiety with dubious assurances, especially not in the context of a few thousand dead fish in local waters, dust from the burned vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate, and ethylene glycol mono butyl ether, and local pets either dead or showing distress.
The dust of the explosion has settled, and it is rather ubiquitous across the community, covering houses, cars, and soils. The chemicals it carries will eventually infiltrate the ground and will be difficult to remove, coming back in dust devils over the local little league infield and off the farmland. Neighboring Pennsylvanians will be the unlucky recipients.
In E. Palestine the city’s five wells run from 50 to 100 feet deep; the water lies in alluvium laid down during two most the recent glacial advances, that is, in silts, sands, and gravels not capped, as they would be if they were much older deposits, by impervious shales and indurated sandstones.
It doesn’t take an education in geochemistry to recognize that hazardous chemicals, once in place, might be difficult to remove. Through repeated cycles of rain and snow melt, they might resurface in playgrounds through capillary action, returning as persistently as dust bunnies return under the bed. Inevitable chemical degradation to harmless compounds is the only longterm solution, but who among the residents wants to wait? Would you? Would you even with caution not be concerned that in the purposeful burning of the vinyl chloride two other dangerous compounds, hydrogen chloride and phosgene (the poison gas of WWI) would form?
It’s difficult for any outsider to offer solutions that don’t place the people under duress. Live elsewhere? Work elsewhere? Go to school elsewhere? Drink bottled water, but bathe in the public water? Those with sensations of burning throats and skin problems might find themselves financially incapable of moving for varieties of reasons. Do they sell homes that few people might want? If they sell, do they get the value those homes had before the train derailment?
And in all this, as of this writing, the Biden Administration was as slow to respond as it was during the continental passage of a Chinese spy balloon, and the major networks have ignored the incident as an ongoing story. That visit by the head of the US EPA was blanketed by the excuse that he had to remain in Washington to summon the resources. Doesn’t he have a phone? In truth, many procurement and logistics managers have been able to move staff and materials around by phone, email, Zoom calls, and faxes. They don’t have to be “in the office” to order nuts and bolts.
And then there’s the political side of the issue that rumbles around in the minds of those residents affected by the incident. E. Palestine is “Trumpian.” There’s a suspicion that politics are at play. It might be an unwarranted suspicion, but those desperate 5,000 residents are doing what so many under stress do, run through every possibility and ascribe blame to this, that, and the next process, person, and entity, private and public.
Would you respond differently? Would you put your trust in industry and government in light of history and politics? We’ve seen, as I mentioned above, what happened during the Three Mile Island event; we’ve seen what happened in similar train wrecks.
We’re all caught up in the dilemma related to the subject I broached recently and one addressed by Albert Einstein (2/12/23 “The Crisis of Our Time”): How does the individual fare under a centralized government that can control by force or by indifference? To the residents of E. Palestine, at least in the early days after the wreck, latter, indifference, appears to apply. One can only imagine their frustration unless he or she is also a victim of industrial-governmental disinterest and incompetence.
As one critical of the Administration that abandoned Afghanis, border communities, and even union workers on the Keystone Pipeline, I am skeptical that the President, Vice President, and cabinet members can act with compassion and wisdom or that they can exhibit leadership. It’s rolled sleeves on the site that the residents would like to see in E. Palestine; they wanted from the get-go to see compassion and prudent remedies. Can anyone blame them for their impatience? Just trying to allay fears through statements doesn’t work on people with burning throats, dead pets, and enveloping odor of chlorine. But just as the President and his minions have failed to go to the border where the border patrol has encountered a couple of million illegal entrants, so they will fail to go to E. Palestine, a little, mostly Republican community.
The United States is a big country. So, it is easy to excuse its top officials from on site analyses at every disaster. But it is also easy to blame those officials for simply offering advice like “drink bottled water” or for simply saying through intermediaries “we feel your pain.” The affected people want to see a Patton or an Alexander the Great, generals who lead the fight on the ground in the face of the enemy. They want generals among them.
All right, let’s say that the President, Vice President, Secretary of HHS, Secretary of the EPA, and the head of the CDC had a busy schedule. That’s possible. Even understandable. But not to residents immersed in a disaster that they know affects them in the moment and in the uncertain future. Surely, it would mean only a few hours to make the short trip from D.C. Both Pittsburgh and Cleveland have airports, and Marine One is a fully functional helicopter capable of making the trip right to the spot.
It took President Biden two years to go to the border where he did not tour a crowded camp of illegal migrants nor witness car chases of smugglers. He did not greet migrants crossing the Rio Grande. His VP also made a clean visit, failing to go where the problem is large and uncontrolled. This is big government in inaction. To be fair, we should acknowledge that other presidents have been slow to show up at a disaster: Bush over New Orleans after Katrina, Obama over the same are during the oil spill, and Trump over Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. It isn’t that they could have personally rolled up shirt sleeves to help, but rather that the people gain by their presence and show of concern. And as we all know, gathering evidence from afar isn’t the same as smelling phosgene on the ground.
To be fair, also, we should acknowledge that any President should be able to trust in the competence of those who serve him and the people. Is Biden a geochemist, hydrologist, or air quality expert? No, of course not (though given his penchant for mouthing false autobiographical details—that he drove a big rig, for example—I can imagine his pretending he was all three). In the minds of the E. Palestine residents, the government came late to the party and didn’t even bring a bottle of wine. Compassionate leadership starts at the top in a democratic republic, but the residents of E. Palestine, suspect they have just a Democrat indifferent to their Republican community.
Apparently, the best advice given by government “authorities,” including by the Ohio governor, for the residents of E. Palestine, Ohio, is “to go about your lives as usual, but monitor yourselves.” The Ohio EPA declared that the town’s water supply, drawn from five wells and not from surface water, is safe to drink; yet, today it is drawing on water reserves. Yeah. Nice to know. Might very well be true that the city water is safe because it is derived from groundwater and not surface water. But let’s personalize the circumstances: Would you, yes you, want to prepare the baby’s formula with E. Palestine’s tap water? Let’s say I take the officials at their word. Do I automatically alleviate my anxiety over drinking water, especially after the Governor said he recommended drinking bottled water? And what about that burning sensation in your throat and on your skin? Would you, yes you, ignore that because the government says the air is also good?
Sarcasm? Skepticism? Anyone who remembers the Three Mile Island accident in neighboring Pennsylvania, has some motive for harboring both. E. Palestine is now a town of anxious people as parents worry that their children will be exposed to carcinogens that will manifest themselves in sickness months or years hence. The government and train officials can’t quash anxiety with dubious assurances, especially not in the context of a few thousand dead fish in local waters, dust from the burned vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate, and ethylene glycol mono butyl ether, and local pets either dead or showing distress.
The dust of the explosion has settled, and it is rather ubiquitous across the community, covering houses, cars, and soils. The chemicals it carries will eventually infiltrate the ground and will be difficult to remove, coming back in dust devils over the local little league infield and off the farmland. Neighboring Pennsylvanians will be the unlucky recipients.
In E. Palestine the city’s five wells run from 50 to 100 feet deep; the water lies in alluvium laid down during two most the recent glacial advances, that is, in silts, sands, and gravels not capped, as they would be if they were much older deposits, by impervious shales and indurated sandstones.
It doesn’t take an education in geochemistry to recognize that hazardous chemicals, once in place, might be difficult to remove. Through repeated cycles of rain and snow melt, they might resurface in playgrounds through capillary action, returning as persistently as dust bunnies return under the bed. Inevitable chemical degradation to harmless compounds is the only longterm solution, but who among the residents wants to wait? Would you? Would you even with caution not be concerned that in the purposeful burning of the vinyl chloride two other dangerous compounds, hydrogen chloride and phosgene (the poison gas of WWI) would form?
It’s difficult for any outsider to offer solutions that don’t place the people under duress. Live elsewhere? Work elsewhere? Go to school elsewhere? Drink bottled water, but bathe in the public water? Those with sensations of burning throats and skin problems might find themselves financially incapable of moving for varieties of reasons. Do they sell homes that few people might want? If they sell, do they get the value those homes had before the train derailment?
And in all this, as of this writing, the Biden Administration was as slow to respond as it was during the continental passage of a Chinese spy balloon, and the major networks have ignored the incident as an ongoing story. That visit by the head of the US EPA was blanketed by the excuse that he had to remain in Washington to summon the resources. Doesn’t he have a phone? In truth, many procurement and logistics managers have been able to move staff and materials around by phone, email, Zoom calls, and faxes. They don’t have to be “in the office” to order nuts and bolts.
And then there’s the political side of the issue that rumbles around in the minds of those residents affected by the incident. E. Palestine is “Trumpian.” There’s a suspicion that politics are at play. It might be an unwarranted suspicion, but those desperate 5,000 residents are doing what so many under stress do, run through every possibility and ascribe blame to this, that, and the next process, person, and entity, private and public.
Would you respond differently? Would you put your trust in industry and government in light of history and politics? We’ve seen, as I mentioned above, what happened during the Three Mile Island event; we’ve seen what happened in similar train wrecks.
We’re all caught up in the dilemma related to the subject I broached recently and one addressed by Albert Einstein (2/12/23 “The Crisis of Our Time”): How does the individual fare under a centralized government that can control by force or by indifference? To the residents of E. Palestine, at least in the early days after the wreck, latter, indifference, appears to apply. One can only imagine their frustration unless he or she is also a victim of industrial-governmental disinterest and incompetence.
As one critical of the Administration that abandoned Afghanis, border communities, and even union workers on the Keystone Pipeline, I am skeptical that the President, Vice President, and cabinet members can act with compassion and wisdom or that they can exhibit leadership. It’s rolled sleeves on the site that the residents would like to see in E. Palestine; they wanted from the get-go to see compassion and prudent remedies. Can anyone blame them for their impatience? Just trying to allay fears through statements doesn’t work on people with burning throats, dead pets, and enveloping odor of chlorine. But just as the President and his minions have failed to go to the border where the border patrol has encountered a couple of million illegal entrants, so they will fail to go to E. Palestine, a little, mostly Republican community.
The United States is a big country. So, it is easy to excuse its top officials from on site analyses at every disaster. But it is also easy to blame those officials for simply offering advice like “drink bottled water” or for simply saying through intermediaries “we feel your pain.” The affected people want to see a Patton or an Alexander the Great, generals who lead the fight on the ground in the face of the enemy. They want generals among them.
All right, let’s say that the President, Vice President, Secretary of HHS, Secretary of the EPA, and the head of the CDC had a busy schedule. That’s possible. Even understandable. But not to residents immersed in a disaster that they know affects them in the moment and in the uncertain future. Surely, it would mean only a few hours to make the short trip from D.C. Both Pittsburgh and Cleveland have airports, and Marine One is a fully functional helicopter capable of making the trip right to the spot.
It took President Biden two years to go to the border where he did not tour a crowded camp of illegal migrants nor witness car chases of smugglers. He did not greet migrants crossing the Rio Grande. His VP also made a clean visit, failing to go where the problem is large and uncontrolled. This is big government in inaction. To be fair, we should acknowledge that other presidents have been slow to show up at a disaster: Bush over New Orleans after Katrina, Obama over the same are during the oil spill, and Trump over Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. It isn’t that they could have personally rolled up shirt sleeves to help, but rather that the people gain by their presence and show of concern. And as we all know, gathering evidence from afar isn’t the same as smelling phosgene on the ground.
To be fair, also, we should acknowledge that any President should be able to trust in the competence of those who serve him and the people. Is Biden a geochemist, hydrologist, or air quality expert? No, of course not (though given his penchant for mouthing false autobiographical details—that he drove a big rig, for example—I can imagine his pretending he was all three). In the minds of the E. Palestine residents, the government came late to the party and didn’t even bring a bottle of wine. Compassionate leadership starts at the top in a democratic republic, but the residents of E. Palestine, suspect they have just a Democrat indifferent to their Republican community.
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