PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Union Carbide pays up for more Environmental Damage in West Virginia
by Matt T, rustbelt radio Wednesday, Jun. 01, 2005 at 6:57 AM
mtoups@indymedia.org (email address validated) http://radio.indypgh.org

On May 26 Union Carbide Corporation entered into a consent agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency to settle violations of federal and state laws. The violations happened at the company's specialty chemical manufacturing plant in Institute, West Virginia. The town of Institute is an unincorporated suburb of Charleston and is the location of West Virginia State University, a historically black college. The company was charged with violations of laws regarding hazardous waste storage and annual reporting of toxic chemicals.

Chemical manufacturer Union Carbide is based in South Charleston, West Virginia and is now a subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company. In negoatiations with the EPA last week, the company agreed to pay a $16,600 dollar penalty and will also provide $19,800 worth of emergency equipment to the town of Institute's Volunteer Fire Department. But this is not the first time Union Carbide has substituted meager cash payments in place of responsibility for environmental damage.

The company is most famous for the Bhopal Disaster of 1984, in which the company's leak of the highly toxic gas methyl isocyanate killed thousands in Bhopal, India. The Union Carbide chairman, Warren Anderson, was charged with culpable homicide in India for this tragedy, though he now lives freely in the US. He is now a declared absconder and a fugitive in Indian courts, against whom India is seeking an extradition ruling from the United States.

Though it reached an out of court settlement with the Indian Government, Union Carbide refused to accept responsibility for the disaster. Over 20 years later, the Bhopal area is still highly contaminated according to a BBC report last year. And before Bhopal, the corporation caused the largest industrial disaster in the US. In the construction of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel in West Virginia in 1934 nearly 2000 company workers, most of them black, died of silicosis – an occupational disease caused by hazardous working conditions.

For more info on the latest EPA settlement, see this release from the EPA.

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