Word: adamkus
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Dates: during 1983-1983
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...disturbing revelation. In testimony last month before a House subcommittee investigating mismanagement at the Environmental Protection Agency, Midwest Regional Director Valdas Adamkus accused John Hernandez, EPA's acting administrator until he resigned last month, of allowing Dow Chemical Co. to censor the agency's 1981 draft report on dioxin contamination in Michigan, including two rivers and a bay near Dow's Midland plant. Particularly alarming to Adamkus was the deletion of one of the draft's conclusions that "Dow's discharge represented the major source, if not the only source, of [dioxin] contamination...
...seems, Adamkus may have the last word. The preliminary findings of a new EPA study of the site, released last week by the agency's Midwest office, indicate that more than 40 toxic chemicals, among them the most dangerous form of dioxin, are being released by Dow into the Tittabawassee River. The report estimates that there are up to 35 lbs. of toxic organic pollutants in the approximately 61.4 million gal. of waste water Dow discharges daily...
...fish in amounts twice as high as the level established by the Food and Drug Administration as a "level of concern." Environmental officials contend that the buildup of the poison in fish over time, a process known as bioaccumulation, poses a long-range, if not immediate, health hazard. Warned Adamkus: "This is going to be a ticking bomb for human beings if it is accumulated over the years." The sample fish in the study were bottom feeders, such as carp and catfish, which scavenge in slimy sediment, where dioxin tends to settle. Cautious environmental officials renewed warnings against eating fish...
Testifying before the House Public Works Oversight Subcommittee, Hernandez acknowledged that he urged Valdas Adamkus, head of the EPA's Midwest regional office, to hear Dow out on the report but denied ordering him to let company officials make changes. In a stunning public break with his bosses, however, Adamkus testified on Friday that his staffers had been "forced" by Washington headquarters to strike out the passages. Hernandez was angry that the Midwest office had prepared the report in the first place, Adamkus said, and was "denouncing our report and calling the work of our regional people 'trash...