The Brockovich Report

What is government's responsibility to its people?
When we have governmental organizations like the EPA,
we should follow where they lead, right?

The Environmental Protection agency sets licensing
guidelines to keep communities safe. What is a
community supposed to do when they find out that for
fifteen years, a large refinery has been non-compliant
regarding the conditions of their licensing? What if
they admit they won't even be compliant for the next
fifteen years? This is where the situation stands in
Australia, regarding the Shell Australia's Corio Bay
oil refinery. Not only that, Shell Australia's Corio
Bay oil refinery's flouting of the EPA authority has
gone on since the seventies.

But you can't completely blame Shell. It reminds me
of something I see all of the time, like I saw
recently at the grocery store.

There I was, waiting in line along with all the other
people, and here came this woman with a wild child.
He was running up and down the aisles, grabbing food,
whining and screaming at his mother who was
frantically trying to go about getting her shopping
done. Even when she managed to corral him, and put
him in the basket, he kept up the screaming, the
noise, the whining, the begging, the extended tantrum.
Finally she left, dragging her son with her.

The instant she was gone, all of the parents in the
store started chiming in with their advice-after she'd
left, remember.

"She should have popped him one. She should have taped
h is mouth shut. She never should have brought him to
the store; she should have left him at home. She
should have fed him meds, the kid is obviously
hyperkinetic."

No one really had anything helpful to say. Everyone
had an opinion that something should be done, but no
one agreed on how to do it. In the meantime, the
person who could have and should have handled the
situation just went on about her business as if
nothing at all was going on. It was just like
government.

So why does this remind me of the Corio Bay situation?

There we all were in the store, minding our business,
and something was wrong. Something was really wrong;
and no one did anything about it. Not the people who
were being subjected to the wild child's unruliness.
Not the people who ran the store. Not the child's
mother. In fact, everyone got out of the way and made
it extra easy for her to get her business done and get
out. We all got out of the way so she wouldn't have
to wait in line.

Someone needs to do something when there's something
running amuck.

The EPA was just like the mother in that grocery
store. She's the one who had the power in the
situation. She's the one who could have said "No" when
she put the child in the basket; she's the one who
could have--who should have said "No" made it stick.
It wasn't just her right. It was her
responsibility--to the people in the store, to the
store itself, even to the child. She knew she should
say no, but that would take time, and distract her
from her business. But she didn't.

And everyone suffered for it, including the child.

The EPA sets the guidelines, but who has been NOT
enforcing them?

The EPA.

Non-compliance since the seventies? That's carrying
EPA's "sympathetic culture to business" a bit too far.

In 2004, when Shell could not comply, they lucked out
with an amendment giving them six more years to
comply. Six more years for Shell's benzene emissions
to freely pollute the locals, and cause aplastic
anemia and who knows what else. Because benzene just
happens to be one of the toxins they test for. There
are more chemicals being released into the environment
that aren't being tested for.

The Australian government is relying on corporations
to do their own emissions testing--even when the
corporation itself admits it hasn't, won't and isn't
going to be able to comply. So activists are
collecting samples themselves, and having them
analyzed. And hopefully the analysis well help get
the EPA back in step with its directives to ensure the
health of not only the corporate community and the
environment, but also the little people who have to
live within breathing distance of industry legally
spouting toxic benzene--and who knows what else--into
the very air the people breathe.