As I travel around this
beautiful land of ours, I'm constantly reminded of great gifts we've
been given to use and enjoy, gifts like clean water, rich farmland
and blue skies. These are not things we can afford to abuse.
But environmental criminals are doing just that.
And in abusing our land, sky and water, they also jeopardize
the health and safety of all of us.
Along with the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI
investigates crimes like poisonous polluting and the disposal of
harmful substances, like asbestos, Freon, medical waste and
thousands of industrial chemicals.
Whether the crime
involves a single instance of dumping lead poison in a river or a
massive scheme for burying radioactive waste, the motive is always
greed. The more
hazardous the material, the more costly it becomes to handle, store
and dispose of legally. A
midnight dumper can save himself a bundle by not doing it right.
But
toxic chemicals don't just go away when you throw them off the
truck. Durex Industries
in Tampa, Florida learned that the hard way.
Durex disposes of hazardous materials for aluminum can
processing. They've
been warned about violations previously, but they still disposed of
waste through various sites, including commercial dumpsters.
In
the summer of `92, two nine-year-old boys were playing in one of
those dumpsters. They
were overcome by fumes and died there in the dumpster from toulene
poisoning. Durex paid a
$1.5 million fine, several Durex officials were convicted of
criminal wrongdoing, and two families lost something far more
valuable than money.
