Minutes for Heavy Metal Remediation Committee
August 2, 2002
In attendance were May Gerstle, Steve Macdonald, Rita Schenck and Ruth Fugate from the community and Nancy Berdard from Public Health-Seattle King County (PHSKC)
Minutes were approved with modification
May, Shaheeda Pierce and Rita went to the ASARCO site and toured there. The meeting was cordial and we got a great deal of information about the site and the remediation plans. Unfortunately, most of the site itself is still unremediated, and ASARCO is stopping work due to financial difficulties brought on by the low price of copper. The local site manager expressed his belief that there was little risk form the site.
May went to the Area-wide Soil Contamination meeting in Tacoma recently, and reported that the dynamics there are pretty much what we have experienced to date: i.e. that the regulators continue to understate the risks and seek to do nothing.
There is a coalition forming of parties interested in the Tacoma Smelter Plume pollution. May and Rita are on the distribution list and they along with Shaheeda went to the first meeting of the group. That group is focusing strongly on issues of the third runway and moving soil, and the desire to get ASARCO to play for cleanup.
IRPPC has given out their contracts, one to Kleinfelter in Bellevue and one to IERE. Kleinfelter will be working on an independent review of Ecology's documents and IERE will be supporting the website and reviewing labs. It is getting to be time to apply again for these funds.
IRPPC would like HMRC to support symposia on the island, with the first to focus on child-related issues: exposures, symptoms and prevention. Sharon Morris, UW Public Health was mentioned as a person that could help with the symposium.
Rita and Mellissa are scheduled to visit PHSKC to discuss the medical symptoms document that has been drafted. Perhaps they can help distribute it.
Our next meeting is planned for September 6th.
Respectfully submitted Rita Schenck