The following is a 2023 letter urging the EPA to adopt more tough standards than the 2024 Copper Rule ended up with, due to the emissions impacts on neighboring communities. It talks about OUR communities in Gila and Pinal counties....
As you can see, while the San Carlos tribe was on top of this, it's not just the Indigenous land that's been poisoned with irresponsible, exploitative resource extraction techniques, folks - for those who only care about their own hood. It's everywhere, from Puget Sound in Washington State to Hayden, Arizona, generations of miners, smelter workers, and the neighbors who support them have been exposed to carcinogenic levels of arsenic, and toxic levels of lead in particular due to a century of unregulated industry.
If you are an immediate neighbor of Freeport's Miami smelter, there is actually a lot you can do to reduce the impact of their operations on your family and community, In fact, citizens have more power than anyone else to change how business is being done in our town - unless we choose to give that power away by not exercising it,
1. If you qualify to have your soil tested and it is toxic, your property may be eligible for total soil replacement/ remediation, which reduces the levels of toxic dust in the air - the biggest source of ingestible lead and other contamination for our area. The place to find out your eligibility for that is the PinalValleySoilProgram.com This work can do a lot of good for the community.
2. Whether or not they have symptoms, all 12 and 24 month old children in high risk zip codes need to be tested for lead. Grownups can get poisoned as well, but the impact on children is devastating and irreversible, and will occur before you see signs of attention deficit disorder, depression, or developmental delays that are common among children with lead poisoning.
No amount of lead in the blood of a child is safe - NONE.
3. Contact Eli Crane, the Congressman representing the Miami-Globe and San Carlos communities. He's apparently already in Copper's pocket, so send me copies of your emails to him or other legislators - lets document our expectations well and share them. Sometimes people in power wont listen or act when you talk directly to them, but they will if you are speaking about them to others whose opinions they care about. Tell him we want congress to override the presidential order waiving Freeport's obligation to abide by the 2024 Copper Rule, to protect workers and their communities. Cut and paste your message (if you use the online form) and email it to me with any reply you get - I will publish them.
Crane doesn't live out here and doesn't seem to care about the residents, given how he failed to support us with FEMA. I think he just got the job by putting an R next to his name. Make him earn his pay, now, and give him grief for neglecting us and letting this happen. This should be a very pressing issue for the next election; he needs to answer to us.
4. Educate yourself, neighbors and co-workers, especially if you work for Freeport. Assert that the community has the right to have Freeport abide by the highest environmental standards, and that is not okay for ANYONE's family to be poisoned when it can be prevented. Host or attend community meetings, talk to public officials, engage your family's medical provider in addressing the impacts of mining byproducts in our community. Mitigating harm to Arizona's children means refusing to settle for less.
And contact me. Lets work together.
That's Peggy Plews at resilientseedsrising@gmail.com or PO Box 112 Claypool, AZ 85532
We aren't talking about shutting down the mine or smelter - we are talking about pressuring Freeport to invest in employee and community health where it is being harmed by their business model. That's a pretty American demand to make.
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Great piece, brought to light by a very wise writer.. Bad actors would do well not to fool around with people like her, and this writer is honored to have her as a dear personal friend. Anyone or entity willing to poison the earth is already on their way to hell. Some people just don't get it, and no, I am not a Judeo-Christian. But sin remains sin, and that's what I mean herein.
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