Review of Reading 16: Ill Winds: The Chemical Plant Next Door

A Review of Ill Winds: The Chemical Plant Next Door
by Becky Bradway
Published in E: The Environmental Magazine, September/October 2002

The Town:
Becky Bradway writes about her life from the time she was 8 years old until the time she was 10 years old and moving back to the small town of Buffalo, Illinois, with her mother and father. Buffalo, was right down the road from Borden Chemical. She writes about how she loved that town nearly as much as her mother hated it. Her mother hated it so much that she never went outside except to get in her car and drive away. Looking at a town through a childs eye is different than an adults eye as Ms. Bradway explains how she didn’t know or care about unemployment and pollution and the other negative things that get people down. Was a very depressed area.

Chemicals Industry:
Becky Bradway did a bunch of research about the chemical industry and came up with the fact that Pesticides, herbicides, industrial chemicals, even cow shit: She learned it all. Factories, coal tar, farms, sewage: put them all together, and things die. She keeps referring to the floating fish, which were dying in the river. All these elements were present in central Illinois.

Borden:
Statistics:
Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
Incorporated: 1899 as Borden Condensed Milk Company
Employees: 20,000
Sales: $5.77 billion (1996)
SICs: 2034 Dried & Dehydrated Fruits, Vegetables & Soup Mixes; 2096 Potato Chips, Corn Chips & Similar Snacks; 2098 Macaroni, Spaghetti, Vermicelli & Noodles; 2099 Food Preparations, Not Elsewhere Classified; 2821 Plastics Materials, Nonvulcanizable Elastomers & Synthetic Resins; 2891 Adhesives & Sealants; 3089 Plastic Products, Not Elsewhere Classified

Borden, Inc. built this plant in 1962, in Illiopolis, Ill and produced Elmer’s Glue, and a competitor to Saran Wrap called Resinite and in 1987 it began making polyvinyl chloride (PVC) when it came under new ownership as Borden Chemicals and Plastics Limited Partnership (BCP). Later on, the company filed chapter 11 bankruptcy and was purchased by Formosa Plastics Corporation from Taiwan, in 2002.

Borden's specialties were initially resins, formaldehyde, then later polyvinyl chloride (PVC). These chemicals can cause high rates of cancer amongst workers along with the workers these chemicals, through various channels, make their way into the surrounding environment. In this particular area the nearby Sangamon River, drinking water, and landfills are getting polluted. The sad thing is these companies are able to obtain waivers and exemptions that allow them to bypass Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) laws. But in this area with so many fams and other companies it it hard to just blame Borden. Here are some scary numbers that don't reflect very well for Borden.

* They were caught shipping 2,500 drums of highly toxic mercury waste to South Africa. The stockpiled drums leaked contaminants -- a disaster that led to both criminal and civil investigations in South Africa.

* The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit accusing the company of illegal hazardous waste storage, contaminating groundwater, burning waste without a permit and neglecting to report chemical releases into the air.

* The plant can legally dump 800,000 gallons of wastewater into the stream every day. Just two miles down, this water reaches the Sangamon River. Because the area around the stream is wooded, locals hunt and fish there.

* Not counting accidents, the plant routinely releases 65,000 pounds of vinyl chloride and 40,000 pounds of vinyl acetate into the Central Illinois air every year.

* Not only do the pollutants cause cancer, vinyl chloride is suspected of disrupting female hormones, which makes, women and girls especially -- vulnerable to all kinds of illnesses.

I wish I could live there!!!

Blue-Collar Risks:
This whole area of Ill. is not really too safe.

* Becky Bradway's family had thought their choices made them safe. We lived in the country by the river, away from the city and its violence. We never traveled, never took a plane or train or bus, never drove farther than “town.” Yet her parents killer was right there in the air an in the water.

* She tells a story of her uncle Wade who had talked about men who worked in a nearby factory. Each had died or was dying from a rare cancer. They’d been forced to climb into tanks to clean out mystery chemical crap. Anyone who said no was fired. “They swelled up big as blimps before they kicked off,” Wade said. “Pathetic bastards.”

* She also tells of a construction worker who thinks that since he's not working in the mill that he won't get sick. Only thing is that these workers are still breathing the air and drinking the water. On top of that there body's are all physically worn out from manual labor by the time they are 40 years old.

What's the plant doing today? Check out the following link.
Illiopolis: Center of disaster and environmental hazard

My Thoughts,
I feel bad for anybody that has lived in a city like this and didn't or couldn't do anything about it. I come from a city that had three big mills in town and without those mills the town would be dead. I hope that, because I don't know, our city wasn't contaminated like this. Most of the time people in cities like this think that they are safe until it is to late.