Be Informed.
The following letter is self-explanatory. We see that Chemours runs a very loose and sloppy ship.
Remember, they are messing with our drinking water and our life-sustaining planet and they are careless. What they care about is money.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
-A river is like a life: once taken, it cannot be brought back-
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The point being is that these violations existed in the first place. Then one can ask, “Would these violations been fixed if Chemours had not been cited for said violations?”
This letter is from March 2018 and is over a year and a half old. In all fairness a response to the letter should also have been offered. It’s possible that many of the noncompliance issues may have been already addressed. Consequently this appears as a one sided and possibly outdated smear. The minerals extracted at this mine are extremely important and used by virtually everyone. That doesn’t mean that they or anyone else cannot abide by applicable permits, rules and regulations but it does require that honest and unbiased information be disseminated.
This goes to the character of the organization that is the applicant here. The unusual volume of transgressions, coupled with the serious nature of many of them, depicts a company that is sloppy in execution, not especially conscious of the damage that must be done to complete their mission, and maintains a “better to ask forgiveness than to ask for permission and be denied” philosophy. Why would we expand on the permissions we already granted them?
Sure, it would be good to see all the correspondence and history of Chemours in Starke and elsewhere. That could get quite lengthy, becoming a study and report rather than an article. Posting an article like this is very helpful as it is, though. For me, it draws my attention to the Chemours site, which I am aware of because of previous articles about it like this. As a private citizen, I can go to the FDEP Oculus site and look for other documents about Chemours (Starke), should I decide to do that. I can call FDEP and get any permit numbers or instructions to find documents or even do my own FOIA, should I choose to do so. This post as it stands is fine. I learn about one set of inspections that were done by FDEP and EPA, when it occurred, what they found, what the next step would be in compliance, etc. It serves as an example of part of the process, showing corporate practices and regulatory follow-up at that time. It is quite a list of problem areas, which is disturbing by itself. If someone did pull the entire record, or at least the past few years of history of inspections and compliance/non-compliance, that would be interesting to see, but I am appreciative of the article as it stands. Articles like this inspire me to do further research on my own.