After much effort and few results, the Roanoke Times reported[1]
Friday that the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a branch of
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will investigate whether
the Radford Army Ammunition Plant has contaminated local drinking water.
The agency also announced that it will hear from residents
of the New River Valley at a public meeting on January 24.
For a number of years now, some residents of the New River
Valley have argued that their drinking water has been contaminated by the
Radford Army Ammunition Plant, whose function is to produce “propellants and
explosives in support of field artillery, air defense, tank, missile, aircraft
and Navy weapons systems.”[2]
The environmental group that ultimately forced the attention
of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is the Environmental Patriots
of the New River Valley,[3]
a community organization that claims that the Radford Army Ammunition Plant has
eroded the health of community members, primarily through open burning grounds.[4]
Although tests in the past have proved inconclusive, it is
difficult to believe that burning 8,000 pounds of Munitions Constituents per
day would not have some adverse effect on surrounding population centers,
regardless of the emission control technology being used.[5]
Indeed, the New River valleys and Roanoke have the highest
rates of breast cancer in Virginia.[6]
This fact alone and others like them do not prove that the Radford Army
Ammunition Plant is a, or THE, culprit behind these higher than average rates
of cancer.
It does however warrant the kind of attention that the
federal government is only now giving. Perhaps it was arrogance; perhaps it was
apathy; perhaps it was merely a political calculation of costs to benefits. Whatever
the reason may be for taking so long to comprehensively address this issue, it
should be restated that our government is here to serve the people, not the
other way around.
After much time and energy, concerned residents of the New
River Valley may now get some of the answers they’re looking for.
[1] http://bit.ly/11nlXvd
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radford_Army_Ammunition_Plant
[3] https://www.facebook.com/DevawnObe
[4] http://nrvsierraclub.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/obg5.pdf
[5] http://nrvsierraclub.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/obg5.pdf
[6] http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/community/wb/274675
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