Comment: Virginia is for lovers and friendly to huge, greedy, evil corporations who ruin people's lives all over the world! Virginia blows up her Mountains for coal to be shipped to China and plans to blow up our hills for uranium by greedy Canadian uranium corporations. Remember, uranium mining has the same poison as coal but a million times worst waste products! Are the babies above, our babies in the future if uranium mining is allowed in our state?
By Sue Sturgis
on November 10, 2009 12:28 PM
A civil lawsuit filed last week in state court in Delaware charges Arlington, Va-based AES Corp. -- one of the world's largest power companies -- with illegally dumping 160 million pounds of toxic coal ash waste onto beaches in the Caribbean nation of the Dominican Republic, leading to serious health problems for nearby residents.
Filed by a team of attorneys from law firms in New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware, the suit alleges that between 2003 and 2004 AES Corp. and its subsidiaries dumped 100 million pounds of coal ash on the beach near the small village of Arroyo Barril and another 60 million pounds in the Port of Manzanillo near Montecristi -- and that serious health problems resulted:
Since the dumping, babies have been born with severe birth defects including missing limbs, missing organs, cranial malformations and gastrointestinal deformities. Some of these children have died as a result of their injuries. A failed Siamese twin with two heads died shortly after birth.
Many women have suffered miscarriages at various stages of their pregnancies. Today, in addition to the severe birth defects, men, women and children of this proud and struggling community continue to suffer with respiratory illnesses and skin rashes.
The child pictured above is believed to be one of those affected. The attorneys say half of the 42 nearby residents it tested had unsafe blood levels of arsenic, a major contaminant of concern in coal ash. There is evidence that inhaled or ingested arsenic can injure the fetus.
A byproduct of burning coal to generate electricity, coal ash contains dangerous levels of known poisons that also include beryllium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and vanadium. Workers who handle coal ash at power plants typically wear respirators and other protective equipment.
According to the complaint, authorities there allowed AES to build the plant in 2002 only under the condition that most of the ash generated at the plant was deposited somewhere other than Puerto Rico. The company allegedly chose dumping the waste onto beaches in the Dominican Republic -- where some 30% of citizens live in poverty -- as the cheapest alternative.
The lawsuit also claims that AES and its partners misrepresented to the Dominican government the toxicity of the coal ash and how it would be handled. In 2004, that government found the AES dumping to be in violation of Dominican law as well as the international Basel Convention on hazardous wastes and pursued criminal and civil actions against AES and other responsible parties.
The Miami Herald reports that it was a contractor from Delray Beach, Fla. -- Roger C. Fina -- who hauled the coal ash to the Dominican Republic and dumped it on the beaches:
The lawsuit filed last week on behalf of the injured Dominicans seeks damages from AES and its companies for the human toll caused by the illegal dumping. It also seeks to compel AES to provide a comprehensive medical monitoring program for the plaintiffs during their lifetimes.
(Photos of the deformed Dominican child is from a photo gallery related to the lawsuit.)
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