INDICT THE POLLUTERS, STARTING WITH ST. AUGUSTINE CITY MANAGER WILLIAM B. HARRISS

WILLIAM B. HARRISS
St. Augustine City Manager
Photo credit: J.D. Pleasant


INDICT THE POLLUTERS, STARTING WITH ST. AUGUSTINE CITY MANAGER WILLIAM B. HARRISS

Excellent front-page article (below) in the February 24, 2009 St. Augustine Record about criminal levels of dioxin water pollution by KOCH INDUSTRIES' GEORGIA-PACIFIC unit in Palatka polluting our St. Johns River.

My father had an excellent idea: after the Bhopal plant in India killed and maimed thousands of residents of India in 1983, he said every polluting plant manager should be required to live (with his/her family) on the site of the plant that we're told is so safe.

The deceptive corporate prostitutes liars who claim that the illegal, dangerous levels of chemicals in our river are "safe" (for grown men, but not kids) should be invited to drink the water, just like Erin Brockovich invited Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) lawyers to drink the polluted water contaminated with hexavalent chromium which was making local residents sick.

Our new U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder needs to impanel federal grand juries to investigate local pollution and its effects on infant and child deaths, indicting corporate malefactors of great wealth and stealth along with government officials who empower them, including the City of St. Augustine, City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS and those Commissioners who voted to give him an award in the midst of a pending criminal investigation in March 2006, while insulting those who truthfully reported their pollution of the Old City Reservoir with 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste to the National Response Center, EPA Criminal Investigations Division (CID) and Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), or as my friend David Thundershield Queen calls it, "Don't Expect Protection."

Intentional pollution of Florida and our beautiful rivers, our land and our pure air is a sin, a crime and a tort. Desuetude of law enforcement is wrong. Government polluters must be charged, or else it would be hypocrisy to indict Georgia-Pacific officials while letting WILLIAM B. HARRISS go free.