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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
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href="https://truthout.org/articles/corporations-are-poisoning-people-in-puerto-rico-with-coal-ash/">https://truthout.org/articles/corporations-are-poisoning-people-in-puerto-rico-with-coal-ash/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Corporations Are Poisoning People in
Puerto Rico With Coal Ash</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Jack Aponte - June 10, 2019<br>
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<p>Community organizers in Guayama, Puerto Rico, are
agitating for the closure of a coal plant operated by
the Virginia-based multinational corporation AES, citing
research showing that local rates of cancer and asthma
have increased substantially since the plant opened in
2002.</p>
<p>Now the fight has spread to the mainland United States:
in early May, media reported that AES coal ash is <a
href="http://www.aroundosceola.com/news/dumped-m-pounds-of-coal-ash-coming-to-osceola-landfill/article_2e2ed830-6da1-11e9-997f-5fd99adc8dce.html">now
being <span>shipped to a landfill in Osceola County,
Florid</span><span>a</span>.</a> Even as AES
continues to plague communities in Puerto Rico, it is
now threatening to spread its poison to this Florida
county with a large Puerto Rican community.</p>
<p>I first learned of the crisis of the <em>cenizas</em>,
or ashes, in January, when I traveled to Puerto Rico
with the <a
href="https://chinookfund.org/qt-sas-brigade/"><span>Queer
Trans Solidarity and Service Brigade</span></a>, a
group of U.S.-based activists on a mission to learn more
about the political and day-to-day struggles in the
archipelago and organize in solidarity with our comrades
based in Puerto Rico. We went to Guayama, in the
southeast of the main island, for a <a
href="http://www.elregionalpr.com/presentan-en-guayama-estudios-sobre-cenizas-de-carbon/"><span>town
forum organized by Comunidad Guayamesa Unidos por tu
Salud</span></a> on the community-wide health
effects of the coal ash generated by the AES power plant
in the town. Some of us from the U.S. had seen cable
news air footage after Hurricane Maria of black sludge,
rainwater mixed with thick coal ash from the plant,
pouring from drainage pipes into the sea in the nearby
town of Peñuelas, but we didn’t yet know the full extent
of the coal ash catastrophe.</p>
<h2>An Uncontained Mountain of Coal Ash</h2>
<p>At the town forum, Luis Bonilla, an environmental
researcher from the University of Puerto Rico, cited <a
href="https://www.primerahora.com/noticias/ciencia-ambiente/nota/aesaumentaprevalenciadeenfermedadescronicasenguayamasegunestudio-1317357/"><span>two
separate studies</span></a> that show the clear
negative effects on the health of the residents of
Guayama since AES, a Virginia-based multinational
corporation, opened the coal plant in 2002. The city has
seen <a
href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/residents-of-this-city-already-worried-about-the-coal-burning-plant-nearby-then-came-hurricane-maria"><span>notable
increases in rates of cancer, asthma, and other
diseases</span></a> that can be linked to the
effects of burning coal and the resultant ash filling
the air and <a
href="http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2019/03/damage-by-coal-ash-to-the-southern-aquifer-cannot-be-undone/"><span>contaminating
the groundwater</span></a><span>.</span></p>
<p>These findings are worrisomely similar to the effects
of the Guayama coal ash that was for a time exported to
the Dominican Republic for disposal, where it also <a
href="http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2018/12/arroyo-barril-coal-ash-and-death-remain-15-years-later/"><span>severely
poisoned communities there</span></a>. Gerson
Jiménez, medical director at a local hospital who has
practiced in Guayama since 1979, shared that in the
years since the plant opened, he saw incidences of
diseases linked to coal ash skyrocket as he’d never
before seen in his many decades of practice in the area.
Community organizers pleaded for people within and
outside of Guayama to speak out and demand that the
government force AES to stop its harm and make amends.
The researchers and organizers concluded their forum
with a final, urgent recommendation: to close the AES
plant immediately.</p>
<p>Christy Morales and Aldwin Colón, two of the event’s
organizers, live in the Miramar neighborhood of Guayama,
about a mile away from the plant. Raising their two
children there and seeing the effects on their health
motivated them to join the efforts against AES. Colón
was also diagnosed with kidney cancer in his mid-30s — a
diagnosis that he thinks might not have happened if the
coal plant had not moved to town — with his doctors
telling him they were used to seeing the disease in
people in their 60s and 70s. Colón and Morales were
angry, and they channeled their anger and pain into
their activism, getting people to pay attention to what
was happening and take action to stop it.</p>
<p>The organizers offered to take us to see the plant up
close. We followed as they expertly navigated their car
down the neglected public road just outside the coal
plant’s fence. Now we could see the mountains of coal
ash towering stories high in the middle of the plant,
shockingly uncontained. Each gust of wind blew a cloud
of ash westward toward the road where we stood and past
us into the residential neighborhoods of Guayama. Soon
our eyes were watering, noses and sinuses reacting to
the ash-filled air, an especially disturbing sensation
given what we’d just learned about how this ash had been
poisoning the people here for the past 17 years.</p>
<p>As Hurricane Maria approached in 2017, AES was supposed
to cover up the ash with tarps to try to contain it.
This strategy was flimsy at best: imagine how little
plastic tarps can actually do to contain 120-foot
mountains of ash during a Category 5 hurricane. But AES
didn’t even use tarps. Maria struck with the mounds
uncovered, further polluting the air and the waters
around Guayama and sending ash from the dumps in
Peñuelas pouring out of drainage pipes into the
Caribbean Sea.</p>
<h2>The Toxic Coal Ash Heads to Florida</h2>
<p>Organizers in Osceola County, Florida, are now also
organizing against AES, working to halt shipments of the
plant’s coal ash from Puerto Rico to a local landfill.
The approval of the plan to ship the coal ash to Florida
was tacked onto an Osceola County Commissioners’ meeting
as a last-minute addendum item, making it impossible for
residents to register their objections before the deal
was finalized. Fred Hawkins, commissioner of the
district where the J.E.D. landfill is located, <a
href="http://www.aroundosceola.com/news/company-officials-kept-osceola-county-coal-ash-deal-quiet-until/article_52c9cc92-771d-11e9-91b0-3f04fa6c95e8.html"><span>has
financial and donor connections to Waste Connections</span></a>,
the owners of the landfill.</p>
<p>Community members in Osceola County are now organizing
to halt the shipments of coal ash; <a
href="https://grist.org/article/puerto-rico-got-rid-of-its-coal-ash-pits-now-the-company-responsible-is-moving-them-to-florida/"><span>nearly
44,000 tons have already arrived in Osceola</span></a>
with another 200,000 planned before the end of 2019.
After the public outcry, the county government sent a
letter to Waste Connections asking them to stop
shipments immediately. The company responded that it
would <a
href="http://www.aroundosceola.com/news/landfill-company-says-it-will-halt-coal-ash-shipments-to/article_3679c774-7cf7-11e9-bfd4-dbfe474d35b3.html"><span>continue
accepting the AES coal ash until October 1, 2019</span></a>,
ending three months earlier than originally planned —
but ultimately bringing the same amount of toxic waste
into the area.</p>
<p>In both Guayama and Osceola County, a fair amount of
the organizing around the coal ash issue is happening
via Facebook. A group created for the community response
in Osceola County includes information about the
companies involved; news of the most recent
developments; information on how to obtain signs,
buttons and stickers; and encouragement to attend county
commission meetings, protests and marches against the
coal ash.</p>
<p>Some comments posted to the Osceloa County group’s page
complain that “they” or “you,” meaning Puerto Ricans,
should “clean up your own garbage” from the coal power
consumed on the archipelago, with arguments that Florida
shouldn’t be taking in “foreign” waste. Others
repeatedly respond that AES is a U.S. company; that
Puerto Rico is not currently a foreign nation; that the
people of Puerto Rico have been protesting the coal
plant for years and demanding renewable, clean energy
sources; and that AES and other fossil-fuel profiteers
spend massive amounts of money ensuring that their
business continues unchecked.</p>
<p>These tensions between local residents are striking,
though unfortunately not completely surprising, given
the shifting demographics in central Florida. The Latinx
population in Florida is rapidly growing. Puerto Ricans
make up a large percentage of that Latinx population,
especially after Hurricane Maria, when <a
href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/over-200-000-puerto-ricans-have-arrived-florida-hurricane-maria-n825111"><span>more
than 200,000 Puerto Ricans moved to Florida</span></a>
after their homes, livelihoods and communities were
destroyed by the storm.</p>
<p>When I first saw the Osceola news in the Guayama
Facebook group, I commented about how many Puerto Ricans
live in the area, including members of my own family.
One poster responded that “this environmentally criminal
corporation seems to have something personal against
Puerto Ricans.”</p>
<p>The connection isn’t lost on others. One Puerto Rican
now living in Osceola <a
href="https://grist.org/article/puerto-rico-got-rid-of-its-coal-ash-pits-now-the-company-responsible-is-moving-them-to-florida/"><span>called
the development a “double whammy.”</span></a> And in
a <a
href="https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2019/05/infamous-coal-ash-pile-puerto-rico-be-moved-florida"><span>Sierra
Club statement</span></a>, organizer Adriana
Gonzales says, “The people of Puerto Rico didn’t fight
for years to get this toxic pollution removed from our
communities just so AES could turn around and force
their poison on Puerto Ricans in Florida. Now AES wants
to dump their pollution in the very place that people
fled to for safety.”</p>
<h2>We Need Renewable Energy to End This Mess</h2>
<p>No community that learns about the toxicity of coal ash
wants it anywhere nearby. Promises about safe
containment and disposal are broken again and again. And
ash aside, there are, of course, the terrible,
climate-changing effects of the <a
href="https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=environment_where_ghg_come_from"><span>greenhouse
gases generated by burning coal</span></a>. Given
all of this, coal and other fossil fuels are simply not
viable options for powering any place, especially not a
place like Puerto Rico, where the fuels and the waste
produced by burning them need to be shipped both in and
out, yielding <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/03/20/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-recovery/"><span>electricity
prices nearly twice the U.S. average</span></a>.</p>
<p>The answer, in Puerto Rico and everywhere, is renewable
energy. <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/03/20/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-recovery/"><span>Community-owned-and-operated
solar power</span></a> made a tremendous difference
in post-Maria Puerto Rico, with the potential for
building microgrids to provide sustainable power that
doesn’t depend on a fragile, centralized system. But
this opportunity for far more affordable and
environmentally friendly energy is being targeted by
government policies, including a proposed tax to <a
href="http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2018/03/rossello-considera-poner-un-impuesto-al-sol/"><span>penalize
those who disconnect from the centralized grid</span></a>
and rely on their own solar power instead. These
policies are influenced by corporate lobbyists invested
in everyone believing that Puerto Rico has no choice but
to rely on imported, expensive, toxic and
environment-destroying fossil fuels like coal.</p>
<p>Things are starting to shift, but not nearly quickly
enough. In 2017, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló signed a law <span><a
href="https://www.colorlines.com/articles/puerto-rico-ends-toxic-dumping-coal-ash-increases-its-commercial-use">banning
the dumping of coal ash</a> in Puerto Rican
landfills, but making exceptions for supposedly safe
construction materials made from the ash. This May,
after previous failed lawsuits challenging the
practice, the Puerto Rican Senate </span><a
href="https://www.periodicolaperla.com/virazon-legislativo-senado-pide-se-prohiba-el-agremax/"><span>endorsed
an amendment to the law</span></a> to disallow those
uses of coal ash as well.<span> </span>Earlier this
year Rosselló signed another law to require that Puerto
Rico be <a
href="https://www.utilitydive.com/news/puerto-rico-governor-signs-100-renewable-energy-mandate/552614/"><span>powered
solely by renewable energy by 2050</span></a>, with
coal power eliminated by 2028.</p>
<p>Nine years might seem like a short amount of time to
AES and others profiting from their coal plant, but nine
more years is an intolerably long time for the residents
of Guayama who are being sickened by breathing and
drinking the ash. And the 31 years until the promised
full conversion to renewable energy is far too long for
a people who suffered so greatly when their centralized,
fossil-fuel-based power grid was decimated by Hurricane
Maria, leaving only the few solar-powered locations
across the archipelago as beacons of light and
life-saving electricity.</p>
<p>The AES Puerto Rico plant must be forced to stop
burning coal <em>now</em>. AES must be forced to
dispose of the toxic coal ash in the most responsible,
least harmful ways available, at its own expense. The
centralized Puerto Rican power grid must shift toward
renewable energy immediately. But perhaps most
importantly, the citizens of Puerto Rico should be
assisted, not impeded, in developing their own solar
microgrids and other locally controlled sources of
renewable electricity that can endure in the face of
hurricanes like Maria, which we know will come again.</p>
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