"Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, recently said: 'Civil rights have to include, fundamentally, the right to breathe your air, plant tomatoes in your soil. Civil rights is the right to drink your water.
'If your children don’t have access to clean air and water, all the ideals we preach in this country are a lie. Environmental justice must be at the center of our activism in our fight to make real the promise of America.”
The land adjoining Coatesville's Riverwalk, a former steel company site that’s called the “Flats” is still zoned “Heavy Industrial”. The City of Coatesville has a Residential Commercial Zoning Overlay of the "Flats"
The "Flats" is owned by the City of Coatesville's Redevelopment Authority. The City of Coatesville does not own the "Flats."
Coatesville is almost unknown to nationwide retail & commercial developers. It is well known internationally as a town for heavy polluting industries.
"Bullard said instead of Nimby politics, there was what he called Pibby (Place in blacks’ back yard)."
The only thing keeping a steam to trash, gas power plant or fracking chemical plant out of Coatesville is the Coatesville Redevelopment Authority. If the RDA is dissolved heavy industry will make the City of Coatesville an offer they have no legal ability to refuse.
Arthur Morton an associate broker with Ambassador Realty of Coatesville gave a brief presentation about a business venture called Blue Sky International or BlueSky International (I haven’t found it on the web yet) seeking the need for about 8 to 10 acres to develop what’s called a proppant plant.
Proppants are part of the toxic mix of chemicals pumped into the ground to frack natural gas out of stone.
The proppants are created from slag that would come from the steel mill.
Coatesville, PA October 2010:
...But I think Coatesville deserves something better on the flats than an environment that I just heard described there. I can’t believe, I think even the fact it’s called ‘Blue Skies’ makes me suspicious of what it might be or end up being.
I led the march against the crazy idea of putting in a gas fired electrical plant down there. I cannot believe anybody would seriously consider putting anything down there (like that). Coatesville is not that hard up for a couple of jobs. I don’t think so. And I can’t speak totally against it because I don’t know that much about it. I don’t what to be presumptuous; I’m only commenting on what I think I heard. That area down there has become prime area now that always wasn’t.
But now people want to come in and kind of kill a dream. That’s what it is. When the RDA bought that property it was with the idea of putting in something good down there, something nice.
G.O. Carlson could have stayed there and had this stuff right in their building they wouldn’t have to tear them down. What’s the point?”
Mr. Morton,
"I brought to the city several weeks ago, perhaps three or four weeks, a business venture by a company called Blue Sky International seeking the need for about ten acres to develop what’s called proppant plant. Proppants are metallic balls that are created from slag material. And all this obviously comes together because of the steel mill and the slag that is ultimately produced from making steel. It’s then reprocessed by Stine, which is, I guess the old Brown Company…
Essentially, the company that the office represents is a company called Blue Sky International. Material has been given to Rob Barry and Ted Reed. A business plan and executive summary also the request for information has been received by your office."
Mr. Barry, “Right, and all those documents, reports have been recorded accepted and we have received."
Mr. Morton, “Additional reports by the company, labiality.”
Mr. Morton, “The initial meeting that I had was with Mr. Gary Smith from the Chester County Economic Development Council bringing the project to his attention for its violability for financing. I think we see a vital positive response. Our investors in this project are financially very capable….
But what we have is a thirty million dollar plant to be erected that will produce about a thousand tons of proppants a year. Which is essentially the amount of slag produced from the mill; or a thousand tons a day, I should say…
The concept is; ArcelorMittal makes the steel, there is slag produced, Stine… takes that slag reprocesses it. They take out all the remaining metals and what have you and then sell it back to the steel mill. The remaining is to a large degree used…for roads et cetera. That material…we would make the units called proppants which are used in the oil and gas industries to force down into the well to open up the fissures that allow low producing wells release their gas and oil actually making Marcellus Shale a lot --- We have a relationship with Halliburton…
We use 100 percent of the slag material that comes into the facility; it’s not a noisy facility. It’s clean; we have scrubber and everything, its waste water going in and scrubbers, recycling systems all in play. The company in the long run will probably be a one hundred million dollar producer plus. It will employ directly somewhere around eighty people, twenty four-seven….
As a result of coming to the City and speaking with Rob and Ted we identified the flats the north side of the flats, although it did stress the velodrome’s position et cetera… That’s where we are today… So we’ve got one hundred thousand dollars for the corner of Lincoln and Church and a million dollars for the eight acres or less on the north side of the flats. We think we have the financial wherewithal to meet the requirements for the Economic Development Council….
The principals are meeting with Stine on Monday…. A letter of interest has already been submitted to negotiate a contract to sell to Blue Sky all the slag they need to do this project."
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Thursday, October 7, 2010
"Black, Latino and disadvantaged people have long been disproportionately afflicted by toxins from industrial plants, cars, hazardous housing conditions and other sources.
But political leaders, academics and activists spoke of a growing urgency around the struggle for environmental justice as the Trump administration peels away rules designed to protect clean air and water.
'What we are seeing is the institutionalization of discrimination again, the thing we’ve fought for 40 years,' said Robert Bullard, an academic widely considered the father of the environmental justice movement.
'There are people in fence line communities who are now very worried. If the federal government doesn’t monitor and regulate, and gives the states a green light to do what they want, we are going to get more pollution, more people will get sick. There will be more deaths.'
Activists and some in Congress now view the blight of pollution as a vast, largely overlooked civil rights issue that places an unbearable burden on people of color and low-income communities.
Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, recently said: “Civil rights have to include, fundamentally, the right to breathe your air, plant tomatoes in your soil. Civil rights is the right to drink your water.
'If your children don’t have access to clean air and water, all the ideals we preach in this country are a lie. Environmental justice must be at the center of our activism in our fight to make real the promise of America.”
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