Ciudad Cristiana loses superfund notoriety
Published on Sunday, January 17th 1999 on The San Juan StarWhenever in the United States they catch cold, we catch pneumonia. The environmental bandwagon has attained such wuthering heights that nowadays everything has to have the word 'environment' or 'ecology' mixed in with it. In university curricula, what used to be home economics is now domestic ecology. What used to be sanitary engineering is now environmental engineering. What used to be garbage collection is now environmental maintenance. There was even an ad on TV for a product that would disinfect 'environmental surfaces', whatever that might be.
The most notorious environmental hoax in the U.S. was Love Canal, the brainchild of newsman Michael Brown, of the Niagara Gazzette, back in 1976. The outcome of this hoax was the enactment of the Superfund Act, better known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, CERCLA, which is also known as the Comprehensive Employment for Regulators, Consultants and Lawyers Act. Superfund has big bucks, and it even provides for relocating families who find themselves in severely polluted environments, covering the reimbursement for new homes and all.
Well, since at times it is permissible and convenient to accept and take advantage of gringo legislation here, CERCLA was invoked for Ciudad Cristiana, Humacao, Puerto Rico. I still marvel at the imaginative scheme that was concocted for trying to make political heyday with environmental concern. It is still going on, but not quite as cleverly.
You see, the original purchasers of homes in Ciudad Cristiana bought the houses with the assistance of a law, Law #10, which gave them a subsidy for paying the mortgages. However, Law #10 had a beginning, but it also had an end. The mortgage subsidy ended on December 31 of 1984. Eighty Four had been an election year, and there had been a change in government. A new administration would come in during January of '85 with the sad role of having to terminate a mortgage subsidy, or even with having to evict Ciudad Cristiana home owners for lack of payment. Then there was a stroke of environmental genius: CERCLA.
Everyone knew Quebrada Frontera, which ran alongside Ciudad Cristiana, was contaminated with mercury. Quebrada Frontera was a candidate for a Superfund Site. If only they could tie Ciudad Cristiana to Quebrada Frontera, they could raise the pollution specter, zap the Superfund for new homes, relocate rather than evict the families, and the new administration would be the hero instead of the villain.
Under a tent and with all the trappings of a circus, government officials declared Ciudad Cristiana severely polluted and announced to the four winds that the families would be relocated into new homes elsewhere. The new governor, the new president of the Senate, even the new head of the Environmental Quality Board were all under that circus tent. Then they had to go to court to prove their case. A number of residents even posed as victims of mercury poisoning. Environmental "scientists" wrote part of the script. The only problem was that, if the offending mercury was in the soil, the mercury-poisoned residents would have had to ingest tons of soil to become contaminated.
The Health Department took samples. The Environmental Quality Board took samples. The School of Medicine took samples. The Environmental Protection Agency took samples. During the trial, the new Secretary of Health was put on the witness stand and asked to review the medical records of the intoxicated patients, and state which had symptoms indicative of mercury poisoning. "None", was his statement after reviewing the records one by one. The Ciudad Cristiana hoax cost the Puerto Rican taxpayer no less than $23 million.
On August 10, 1996, El Nuevo Dia announced the success of Queen Developers in reselling the Ciudad Cristiana homes. Only twenty units were still available. One hundred and fifty families had already moved into the "Superfund Site" and were enjoying their new homes. The Federal Home Loan Bank was helping along with the financing.
On January 12, 1999, the San Juan Star headlined that EPA was dropping Ciudad Cristiana from the Superfund site list.
On the other hand, the Star carried a news item on January 14, 1999, indicating that the EPA had 100 more Superfund candidate sites for Puerto Rico, for a grand total of 269 sites for the island. This gives Puerto Rico the dubious honor of having one Superfund site for every 13 square miles of the Isle of Enchantment. Wow! And yet, we have still never approved a designated and certified hazardous waste facility for the island. Fourteen years ago I was crazy enough to propose such a project in Barrio Marueño, Ponce. At a Planning Board hearing on February 8, 1988, I was handed a threatening note by a member of the environmental opposition to the project. On February 15, 1988, exactly one week later, my house in Boquerón was torched. I lost my home, my office, my library, my laboratory, my Oldsmobile, my shop, my collections and all my equipment. Nice guys!
Small wonder that we have a Status preoccupation. Our most famous Superfund sites, really aren't. And our 269 sites that still aren't maybe are. One Superfund site for every 13 square miles comes to about three and a half Superfund sites per municipality. And still no hazardous waste facility here! Wow! Besides being the prime exporters of Viagra, we must also be the prime exporters of hazardous waste. If we can't handle our own waste here, it's got to be handled somewhere! Are we environmentally Superendowed or what?
Maybe we should have a circus tent over all of Puerto Rico.