Statement by Maya Nye, Spokesperson, People Concerned About MIC -- FINAL
April 23, 2009
INTRODUCTION
Good evening folks. My name is Maya Nye, and I am the spokesperson for the community organization People Concerned About MIC (PCMIC). I am also a community activist and an accidental environmentalist.
EXPLANATION OF PEOPLE CONCERNED ABOUT MIC
People Concerned About MIC is a community organization in the Kanawha Valley dedicated to the protection of health and safety of all who reside, work, and study in the vicinity of local chemical plants producing highly toxic chemicals. The group formed because concerned community members learned that methyl isocyanate (or commonly referred to as M-I-C), the same chemical that killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people in Bhopal, India in 1984, was being produced in our backyard.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
I was a child when PCMIC was formed in the mid-1980s. I barely remember the Bhopal disaster, and I vaguely remember evacuating when the incident occurred 8 months later in Institute that sent more than 100 people to the hospital. But I clearly remember the 1993 explosion near the MIC tanks that killed 2 workers and sent many people to the hospital. Sitting in my living room about a crow’s mile away from the plant, I felt and heard a loud boom. I thought a tree limb must have fallen on our house until the fire truck went backwards down my one-way street announcing that a shelter-in-place was in effect and to close all doors, windows and turn off all air conditioners until further notice. Panicked, I called my father, a Union Carbide employee, to ask him if he knew what happened and what to do. With no information, he told me to hang tight. It wasn’t until after I hung up the phone that the smell invaded my house. I called my father again, only this time I couldn’t get through. The phone lines were jammed as too many people were looking for information at the same time. Frantically I grabbed some duct tape and started taping up the cracks around the door and the windows as they had taught us to do in school after the Bhopal disaster. It didn’t much work. Too many windows, too little time. The smell had already pervaded my house. So with a wet wash rag to my face, I sat with my dog, crying, hoping that my last phone call to my father wouldn’t really be the last.
I was 16 years old.
My story is only one of the thousands that exist in this room, in this community, and in communities across the world who live in harm’s way of a chemical plant. It is a story that has occurred again and again and unfortunately continues to occur.
I recently spoke with a friend who has been diagnosed with breast cancer. She attributes the cancer of both her and her recently deceased neighbor to living within spitting distance of the plant. I asked her if she would give an interview to a newspaper reporter. She responded, “what can I say that I haven’t already said?”
SAME OLE STORY
I sit before you today not because I am an ominous fanatical activist, but because 15 years ago, almost to the day, my life was forever changed when the Methomyl-Larvin unit exploded. Again, we felt the explosion, only this time 10 miles away in Charleston. Again, it killed two workers. Again, notification of the incident’s severity was not given in due time to the people who are immediately affected. Again, it caused damage to property which Bayer wasn’t entirely interested in addressing until under the watchful eye of Congress. Again, many side-effects have been caused to our community that we may not fully understand for years. While plant names and managers may have changed, the effects to our community remain the same. And they bio-accumulate across ownership.
THE CASE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
We did not form our community around this chemical plant. This chemical plant formed in our community. And it planted itself right next to a historically black university, in an unincorporated primarily African-American neighborhood, adjacent only to mountains, a river and low-income white communities. The history of discrimination is clear to us and to anyone who would look at our history without bias. The continued discrimination is clear when 25 years later, the same voices are saying the same things and little has been done to change the talking points.
WHAT THE EXPLOSION SIGNIFIES TO THE COMMUNITY
For 25 years, PCMIC has made great strides to ensure effective communications with the Institute facility, regardless of entity control. Our goals have been to establish access to information about the dangers existing in our community and to eliminate as many of the dangers as possible in the production of chemicals. Our efforts were modeled and orchestrated what ended up in national Community Right-to-Know laws and worse case scenarios modeling. In one fail swoop, in August 2008, Bayer CropScience slammed the door on 25 years worth of community efforts, visualized only by the chain that still locks the gate of our evacuation route.
WHAT WE WANT
Our group has been accused by some of trying to eliminate jobs. To this, I retort: the chemical industry put food on my table. Chemical industry dollars and scholarships sent me to college. We understand the need for industry. However, we deserve the kind of jobs and the kind of industry that does not cause the untimely death of our workers or the bioaccumulation of toxins in our children’s bodies. We deserve an economy that is not soley based on extractive and chemical industries that tell us we must choose between jobs and health. WE ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE RISK FACTORS.
We come before you today asking that you will finally hear our voices and make recommendations to our government and industry that stop the systematic exploitation of our community. We are tired of the smoke and mirrors and cagey non-answers. Our lives are in your hands, and we deserve to know the truth about the dangers that exist in our community. We hope the CSB recommends that the fox can no longer guard the hen house and that corporate arguments based on non-operational fence line monitors will no longer be acceptable.
CLOSING
I want to commend the Chemical Safety Board for requesting our presence on this panel, especially after Bayer public relation strategies to marginalize us. Thank you for your continued efforts to include community concern in the conversation regarding chemical safety. We request a thorough and comprehensive investigation and an even more thorough recommendation to industry and government that addresses the underlying issues at hand, and that looks across lines of ownership.
CLICK HERE TO READ BAYER'S COMMUNICATION STRATEGY FOR PCMIC