Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 72: Local Lawyer Mum (w/ special guest Mary Cromer)

Episode Date: October 4, 2018

This week we're joined by Mary Cromer, an environmental attorney with the Appalachian Citizens' Law Center, to discuss some of the environmental legacy issues surrounding the decline of extractive industries in rural areas. Just this week Mary's work and the work of the Martin County Concerned Citizens was featured on NPR, so definitely check that out: https://www.npr.org/2018/10/03/649850498/you-just-don-t-touch-that-tap-water-unless-absolutely-necessary You can learn more about the Appalachian Citizens' Law Center here: www.appalachianlawcenter.org And support us on Patreon here: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

We're rolling. I actually don't have any headphones. So basically you're going to be having a conversation with us just like you normally would. Except with a microphone. Just see if you like those better. I'm no pro. I can do it without headphones.

It's hard to do them sometimes because sometimes you get self-conscious and you're like, oh, I can hear my voice. But sometimes I like it personally. You'd like to hear the sound of your own voice? I'd like to hear the sound of my own voice. That's because I'm what you call a narcissist. I am what you call a narcissist.

And that's why I have a podcast. I see. We all come together now. I have the best opinions and you should take notice. And the best. The whole world deserves to know. Exactly. The most mellifluous sounding voice.

Okay. I'm just trying to get some levels here. So, and like closeness. Yeah. Try to keep, you know, as close to your face as possible. You're like right up. You're right up there. I have a bad problem with that.

He likes to rock the mic. I rock it really hard. Tom and Tanya, they hold it bad right here. I'm right here. Yeah, you? At all times. You're kissing it. I'm right up in it.

I take all my mic handling skills or whatever from early 90s rock musicians like Eddie Vedder. Eddie Vedder, yeah. Oh, yeah. I touched him once. Did you really? Yeah. Interesting. You touched the hem of his garment.

Exactly. He does look a lot like Jesus. He was, at one point in time, a Jesus-like figure for me in high school. Say more about that. Yeah, I think you're not, yeah. I loved Pearl Jam, man. I loved PJ. I was a huge Pearl Jam fan.

You remember Wes that we used to work with? Yeah. He told me a story one time that he and his buddies drove to Nebraska. Oh, yeah, dude. To watch Pearl Jam.

Pearl Jam fans are like that. They're like deadheads in a lot of ways. They'll drive long distances. I had two buddies from high school who drove all the way to Florida from New Mexico

to see them one time. Wow. That's pretty crazy. People love Pearl Jam. is I had two buddies from high school who drove all the way to Florida from New Mexico to see them one time. That's pretty crazy. People love Pearl Jam. So what about Eddie Vedder? Are you, you know? I don't know. I feel like now he's kind of more of a sort of rock the boat, sort of liberal type, you know, like, I mean, as a musician, I don't like him as much as I used to.

Hey, no. Just own it if you do, man. No, I really did. I stopped listening to them after Yield. That was the last album that I really remember enjoying. But I still had several of their DVDs. You remember back in the day, live music DVDs, live show DVDs were big. Oh, I bet they had seven of them.

They striped me as a band that had like a ton of those. They had a fuckload of bootleg albums. You remember, like, they did the kind of, I think Dave Matthews band did this as well. They would release like a hundred bootleg albums, you know. What does it mean for a band

to release their own bootlegs? Does that mean they have people like hanging out behind the sound area, like recording? Whats. Does that mean they have people hanging out behind the sound area recording? What does that mean? That's a good question. That's just scabby to me, in my opinion. Let's let the actual bootleggers have some.

This is a good hobby. People are really into bootlegging. That is a good point, Mary. It's not cool. We're going to just control our black market releases, too. That's a really good point. crowding out the the hard workers right in the bottom rungs right yeah no in all all obviously all those bootlegs sound the same like they're all the same concert

have i got a little story for you? When I was in college, and especially in this age, I hesitate to even acknowledge this deficiency in my character. But I was in a fraternity. And one thing that we did, which was a really dumb thing, and I'm blushing now that it's coming out of my mouth, but we would turn on Pearl Jamams live oh yeah and then and then everybody would like you'd take turns crowd surfing with all your bros are you kidding me and i had this very bad response because i was dropped on at least two or three occasions just like oh my god that So that's like a hazing ritual in some France.

Well, put on a live Pearl Jam. My first Pearl Jam live. Five times. In the basement. Sometimes it was like that. Sometimes it do be like that. That's good. That's really funny.

Wow. Well, so welcome to the show, everybody. Here we are. It's October 2nd. Did y'all see that, and this is kind of topical for today's discussion, but did y'all see that Donald Trump Jr. was in East Kentucky over the weekend? He was in Inez, or at least I saw a picture of him in some kind of raptor of some sort i don't know some bird of prey so he was like holding one yeah oh fascinating yeah that's that's all i know i heard he was elk hunting he was maybe having a raptor of some sort would be good if you're like hunting rabbits or something yeah but i'm not sure that works in elk hunting what What was that about? I don't know. Tonya said it's because he won the lottery.

I guess there's a lottery to get a license to hunt elk. It's huge. It's huge. Oh, okay. When I lived in Arkansas, this guy, Jimmy Turner, I'll never forget him. When he found out I was from Kentucky, he would be like, man, you got any inroads on that lottery? And I was like, lottery? He's like like elk lottery I've been dying for an elk tag for 15 years

and never got one out there so they're highly coveted I imagine there's so much corruption in that why is it so highly coveted I guess are their population numbers like pretty scarce is it like

is that why it's really hard to get oh they're everywhere they really they're invasive they released them i think maybe in like 2000 or 99 somewhere around that and they proliferate well there's a yeah you're right i think they started using them for like mine reclamation didn't they they started like repopulating it was just a pr stunt for like oh look we can take the top of this mountain off and oh you got elk it's worth it yeah that's right that's true well they would i guess they would like sort of try to create the perfect habitat for them because they would like spray fescue grass all over it and then put elk on it and i mean i can't imagine hitting one of those things in your car could Could you? Yeah, somebody hit one.

When I first started working about 10 years ago, there was a Hummer elk collision in Payne Gap, and it tore that Hummer up. And it cut the lady's leg off. Oh, did it? I was on the way to work that day. They love Payne Gap, and they love making. They love that area.

I don't know why. It's like the only elk I've seen in East Kentucky has been in making. It's been multiple times. I don't know about a 2, like the only elk I've seen in East Kentucky has been in making. It's been multiple times. I don't know. I don't know about a 2,000-pound animal hitting your vehicle. It's not. Yeah. No.

It's not getting a deer. It's destroying my little fit. 120-pound deer. Oh, yeah. Your car would absolutely destroy it. Wow. They come into Virginia, though. I will say that. We've had scat, too, on the farm.

Oh, yeah? I've never seen them, but. What's elk scat look like? Big pile. Big pile. Big pile. As you would have with a 2,000-pound animal. Right?

I've always found it interesting that some of the biggest animals just, like, eat grass and shit. Yeah. Like, just, like... Right. Bears just, like, occasionally eat salmon, but mostly just, like, berries and, like... just like right bears just like occasionally eat salmon but mostly just like berries and like or uh yeah you're right they just eat whatever they can scavenge out of a trash well i guess that makes sense but buffalo right i think buffalo only graze or cows are pretty massive right man they just eat like it's gotta take a lot yeah yeah

gotta have a lot it's funny that elk like this thing in Pineville they're doing about that elk viewing place. Yeah. Like, it's like they did this thing in the early 2000s. They're like, okay, we've got this invasive species that has no natural predators and we have all these mountains that don't really exist anymore and have been blown all to shit. Elk viewing. It's just like, it's just like when they're talking about like the grid economy and all that stuff that's what they're doing it's just like these all these old griffers like what do we

have to work with here and how can we just pair these things together because it's on a they built that or they did that with abandoned mine lands money it was specifically supposed to be a mine reclamation thing what does this mean do they have them pinned in an area with like a platform or what? They walk up on the platform. Look down in the pit. I have no idea. That's crazy. In my mind, they're always getting mixed up with moose.

So if you can introduce elk here, could you introduce a moose? I think moose are just snow elk. Oh, okay. I'm with Tom. I'm with Tom. I don't know, but that sounds good. I'll get caribou mixed up in that, too. I'm not good with my...

What do you call that species of the whole deer family? Oh, um... No, um... Damn, why am I blanking on it why i don't know venison venison no that's the kind of meat venison i think it's like deer steaks or something or deer jerky fuck all right you're right the sickest I've ever been in my life, and Tanya's not here, but Tanya made me some elk

chili one time. Uh-huh. And I almost had to go to the hospital. I have never been. I had the worst food. And I've eaten on many a salad bar that left me in dire straits, but Tanya's elk chili really almost sent me to my grave. You think it had a parasite or something?

Probably. I mean, I should have known better eating elk chili. I made my tongue fucking pinecreek. I'm like, oh shit. Shrah, shrah. Right. Yeah. Okay, so welcome to the show.

Today we're joined by Mary Cromer, who is an attorney with the Appalachian Citizens Law Center. Hi. Yeah, welcome to the show. Today, we're joined by Mary Kramer, who is an attorney with the Appalachian Citizens Law Center. Hi. Yeah. Welcome to the show, Mary. Happy to be here. Blasting an applause track. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Should we disclose that you also work? I mean, people know that, right? That we work together? Do they know that? We've been doxxed. We were doxxed last week, also also by the hair of later so it's really not not that big of a surprise oh that's true yeah yeah yeah so yeah you're my co-worker we'll say that okay this seems good to get that out right we've worked together on a number of

things over the years going back all the way to 2013 believe it or not oh yeah that's uh i wouldn't have known yeah half a decade we've got my goodness well next week is my 10 year anniversary at aclc really which is crazy that is crazy i i feel very adult when i say that i can't imagine i ever thought i would stay in a job for 10 years so still seems you don't seem like a person that would have 10 years in somewhere. Thank you, Tom. I meant that from a youthful perspective. Not like you're just like this shy, job-hopping, can't-hold-a-job-down person. You're a company man. No, I took it that way.

A company woman. Yeah, that's what I never expected. Right. company yeah that's what i never expected right so first team you started um probably right around the time obama was elected then right yeah wow so in the in the bush exactly exactly well october 20 2008 yeah yeah so um yeah right as a transition right before the market all went to hell right right when mountaintop removal was huge. Right. So you've seen a lot.

Very different time. Totally different time. A lot of things have changed. And that's kind of the reason why we're talking about this today. So, yeah, you are, what do you work on specifically at ACLC? Well, I am spending most of my time on a couple of matters, I will call them, representing a couple of community groups. One, the Concerned Citizens of Estill County, and then the Martin County Concerned Citizens. We really branch out with the names.

A lot of concern out there in Eastern Kentucky. A lot of concern, yeah. Right, right. But mostly your focus is on environmental issues. Right, right. But mostly your focus is on environmental issues. Right, right. And so, yeah, just sort of like setting it up, I think, you know, I've wanted to have you on for a while. Mostly because I think your work is so fascinating because it kind of provides you like a sort of window into what extractive capitalism looks like, not while it's happening, but, you know, while it's sort of gotten everything it can out of a region and and has left behind what we would call sort of legacy issues. Correct. Like a bunch of.

Yes. I mean, I would definitely say that's absolutely a great description for Martin County. Right. Right. So, yeah. So, yes. So setting that up, Martin County is a county like about an hour and a half north of here. It has about a 40% poverty rate. Is that correct? It's about there, yeah. It's like got an astronomical unemployment rate, really bad health factors there, health issues. It's the side of the, is it the Wolf Creek or Wolf Pin? Yeah.

Disaster of 2000? Right. Like the worst industrial spill. Slurry spill in American history. Right. On a sort of volume scale, it was bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill. Right. It was significantly bigger, like 25 million tons to 306 million tons.

I mean, yeah, so much, much bigger as far as the amount of material spilled than Exxon Valdez. And it was the largest environmental disaster in the southeast until the BP Horizon disaster. Is that the Gulf? Yeah. until the BP Horizon disaster. Is that the Gulf? Yeah. And so coal sludge, basically what spilled out is,

I guess they were holding it in a retention pond or something. What was it? This was the byproduct, essentially, that they washed off of coal and they were storing it? So when they mine the coal, they have to wash it to get it to a certain, I guess, purity level, for lack of a better description. And in that process, they put in some chemicals for the washing process, but in that process, you're, you end up with like a slurry that is just the refuse.

Right. And they put that up in a big dam up on the mountaintop. They do, they're, these dams are all over Appalachia. There are a lot of them. I was, yeah. I was getting my hair cut the other day and this guy was, the guy who cuts hair down here,

Kevin, he was like, he was like, yeah, dude, there's a big pond up on Sand Lake off of Sand Lake Holler up here. Is this the one that says it's armed guards 24 hours on the clock? Well, he was telling me he was like, this might be a different one.

He was telling me like this one is bigger than Fish Pond Lake over here. And I'd never even heard of it. And so I was like, okay, he might just be bullshitting me. You know, this is just whatever. I got on Google Earth and looked it up. This is a massive retention pond. Just right over the community right there in Sand Lake. If it was ever to break, an entire community would just be washed away. And is it slurry?

Yeah, it's slurry. Yeah. Yeah. So the point is, though, is that those sites are all over the place. They are. Just tucked up into the hills and you just don't see them. And some of those strip sites, too. Like, I didn't realize this.

Some of those strip sites are, like, the sizes of major cities. Yeah. But there are mountain top removal sites that could fit washington dc inside them yeah right and that's that's weird to think about it is very incredible to think about right um well and in martin county so what happened was it wasn't like the because they're usually earthen dams so there is a concern about that but in the it was built up on top of a mountain and there were underground mine voids below it right and they hadn't left enough of a buffer between the slurry retention pond and those mine voids and so eventually the weight just got to be too much

and it just broke through that's so crazy yeah and it well and it went it went out into two creeks right and they say they i've heard that like if it all came out one place that the force would have been so great that it would have caused loss of life but they came out to in two creeks and it totally devastated those creeks and did a lot of property damage but right no one died well and so those there's those sort of immediate impacts. But what you're dealing with now, you could say, is kind of an indirect cause of the slurry spill. Well, I mean, I guess not. The reason I say indirect is because it sort of incapacitated the water system at the time or something, and it was never fixed after that.

at the time or something and it was never fixed after that well it did incapacitate the water system and it more importantly or well for long term more importantly brought a lot of scrutiny on the water system so once they had to because it it all of that slurry went into the tug river and there was an intake there so they had to close down that intake and then come up with a you know someplace immediate to run a line to get fresh water right um and so they just went farther upstream to do that but for some reason at that point the division of water started paying attention to what was going on with the water system and realized that oh the pumps are about to go down the you know it's leaking really badly. It's just a dilapidated state of the water system was discovered at that point. Right, right.

In Letcher County, even when we had the Childers diesel spills, it put so much stress on our old system. So I couldn't imagine. Oh, yeah. But that would have done to Martin County, who I'm sure is probably in worse shape than even we were in. Absolutely. Probably so.

I'm sure it's probably in worse shape than even we were in. Absolutely. Probably so. Well, and so maybe it's easiest to just jump. We're lucky that we have a sort of news hook that something really crazy happened in Martin County last week. It kind of got buried in all of the insanity of last week. But there was a state of emergency declared, right? Was that last week or two weeks ago two weeks ago the water board declared a state of emergency so that they could hopefully free up some federal grant funding that was supposed to

be coming down the pipe pretty soon anyway so that they could go ahead and buy some new pumps because they had not been able to pump water from the river consistently the water the the system is fed by a pump at the tug fork right river and so that's the intake so they hadn't been able to draw consistently from that intake for pretty much most of the summer and then it had totally gone out and so um the it goes from the intake to the reservoir and that's sort of a supposed to be like a holding pond where the water settles and then it goes from there into the water treatment plant and so the reservoir was just down lower than anyone had ever seen it in memory and so that was the um the herald leader published pictures of how low the reservoir was and that kind of got things moving right yeah so like

basically so just to sort of um dial it out uh just a little bit, what is going on in Martin County? So basically, you know, people don't have clean water there. Yeah, and I guess to get to your, I didn't really completely answer your question about the slurry spill because there is a relationship to them. Basically, what's gone on in Martin County is it is a poor county in eastern Kentucky. In the late 70s and early 80s, in some of those years between the late 70s and early 80s, it was the highest coal producer in Kentucky. It just got, they mined the hell out of that county, mainly in the early 80s. So a lot of money was taken from the county, some coal severance money came in. The people who were in charge decided that, well, another thing happened, which was as they were mining, and we know this

anecdotally, but as they were mining, people, all these communities have been relying on wells and groundwater. And then all of a sudden, all of the groundwater is ruined. And so the politicians decide, oh, we're going to use what little money, you know, we can, we'll scrape off and use, we'll build lines out. And so they went from serving 600 people to serving 3,500. But it's actually, it's actually more than that because of problems with the metering. Right. But so they just expanded the system out, but they did it just on the cheap.

And, you know, they've never maintained it. And so over the years, it has gotten worse and worse and worse to the point that now it loses 73.8% of the water that gets produced, gets lost, breaks in the line. So it's just and they've never put money. gets produced, gets lost, breaks in the line. So it's just, and they've never put money, I mean, it's just years of neglect and politicians putting money into other things, never putting any money into maintaining the system, and it's just reached this sort of threshold point.

Right. So when you say 73.8% water loss rate, what you're saying is that water comes into the intake, water loss rate, what you're saying is that water comes into the intake, only 27% of the water that goes into that intake actually makes it out to the people. And so they're paying to treat that water. They're paying to pump that water. It's costing the system money to produce all of that water.

And then, yeah. Right. of money to produce all of that water and then yeah right and that 27 is incredibly burdened down by a lot of really bad chemicals correct well what they have um historically had a problem with disinfection byproducts which is a reaction that occurs when water with a lot of organic matter in it is treated with chlorine yes yeah um which are can be acquired through your skin right in the shower it can yeah aren't they activated when the water is actually heated up yes yes so showering is a problem drinking of course is also a problem but showering is another method of exposure. And so those are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and they've been primarily noncompliant for those since 2000, since the slurry spill.

But they have more recently in the last four quarters, they have switched around their chloration system a little bit and have gotten into compliance primarily. But that's not the biggest concern as far as water quality goes, because what's happening is where you have so many breaks in the lines all over the county, groundwater is infiltrating into the lines. And so stuff is coming out of taps just completely untreated. Right. And we don't know what it is. Sometimes it's brown. Sometimes it's black. Right. into the lines and so stuff is coming out of taps just completely untreated right and you know we don't know what it is sometimes it's brown sometimes it's black right so it's it's unclear right what exactly that is but i'd first heard about this it was working in at voices at the time it was like 2015 and somebody just sent me a video on facebook it's like have you seen anything

about this it was someone in martin County turning on their water faucet. And yeah, just straight up like black water was coming out of it or brown water or whatever. Right. And that's reality for most of the citizens here. It is. And then you have, you know, you have the sort of people in charge, the county judge, the people, some of the, well,

one person in particular on the water board saying, oh, it's completely overblown. Our water is fine. Look, the division of water has given us, you know, a plus check for the last three quarters. So there's nothing to worry about. What are you people complaining about? And so you've got that, too. You've got that problem with just not being willing to listen to the concerns of the citizens.

Right. So, you know, even sort of pulling back a little bit further, like how does this sort of compare? It might be useful to sort of think about it in these terms because I think the biggest sort of frame of reference people have for something like this is Flint, right? Right. And so, like, how does this compare to that? You know, structurally, what is different

and what's similar about it? Well, I think one thing that's different is Flint was more directly, as I understand it, the problems were more directly caused by particular decision-making that was made at one time. So there's like one to five, you know, there's a handful of people who were involved in making these decisions about withdrawing from the Flint River and not using corrosivity treatment, not doing corrosivity treatments. If I'm if I understand the situation correctly that, you know, you can sort of pin it on a couple of people. And this is a more systemic problem, in a way. And it, so it has to do with, you know, I mean, we were talking about with a slurry spill

and people losing their wells, you know, this is the problem of the actual cost of 100 years of coal production sort of being shifted off onto the people. It's a problem that has to do with kind of local corruption and, you know, poor choices that politicians have made over and over and over again for the past 100 years. You know, it's sort of a it's a slower build problem, I think, is the main distinction. And if I understand Flint correctly, and I don't claim to be an expert in. Yeah, I think I guess what I wanted to get at was basically what you said. It is a systemic issue. And really, it just provides a sort of very illustrative sort of example of what happens after an industry has totally ravaged an area for as much resources as it can.

It leaves behind no kind of infrastructure or nothing to actually serve the people. I mean, its only purpose is to maximize profit and get as much out of it as it can. On this show, we've covered Black Lung a lot and some other things, and I think this is just another sort of link in that chain. We've also talked about prisons a lot and how that kind of relates to it. I don't know. Again, like your work just kind of provides a sort of snapshot into like what it looks like when an industry comes in and just totally ravages an area for everything, you know, as much capital as it can squeeze out of it. Which kind of makes sense with the Flint and Detroit tie-ins tooins too yeah with the auto industry oh that's true and everything right

and even when i was in detroit a couple of weeks ago i think they had to shut down all the public schools because of lead and and the i think it's wayne county yeah i heard about that so i guess probably my i have sort of misperception because it is a long-running problem of an infrastructure problem that didn't just happen overnight. Yeah, there's probably some race dynamics and different things in there where we're dealing with class dynamics

more so down here. I think it's probably a lot of times why these things get neglected. But yeah, very similar. Well, and I think that you know as we sort of move into the 20th century as the sort of like logic of what we would consult consider like neoliberal capitalism sort of continues and reaches its sort of logical endpoint i think we're going to see a lot more of this i mean we're already seeing a lot of it obviously everywhere

but i mean i think you can pretty much set your clock by it that this is going to be something that becomes more and more sort of widespread. Right. I mean, even just on the water issue, you were talking about Whitesburg. I mean, we definitely have poor infrastructure here in Whitesburg. Well, what's interesting, you're talking about Martin County's loss rate, Whitesburg's loss rate. And it just kind of speaks to what you were talking about division of water given the check marks out in the a plus plus ratings and all this stuff white's first loss rate is about 50 and it's looked at as one of the more successful

water systems in eastern kentucky the standard is 15 i'll just put that out there yes yeah statewide or nationally uh statewide statewide that's incredible yeah so that's where you got about half the water that's that's being treated making it martin county by a quarter of the water yeah yeah so and then you know we're you know we still don't know what the long-term effects of you know showering and drinking benzene waste is gonna be you know what i'm saying like that's why i get so angry about the whole like children's debate here even locally it's like we actually probably won't know but like my nephew could die from some weird... I mean, I don't want that to happen.

Right, right, right. Could die from some weird cancer related to... We just don't know. Benzene in the water or something. You know what I'm saying? Right, right, right. And are you speaking of the two acute incidents of oil waste getting in the water, or they're also a long term because

he's got a lot of stuff on yeah the banks of the river what's interesting is this and and remember one time we interviewed my aunt brenda my uncle larry was kind of like an anti-mtr kind of activist guy but i think he kind of got everybody loved him it wasn't like people were antagonistic toward him like even like business people and stuff but like i think his like concerns just kind of got brushed off but i remember he would take us out every summer we'd do this river sweep thing with the letcher county action group which i guess kind of dissolved into the local kftc chapter uh-huh and every time we would find these oil drums and he would bring that to people's attention.

He was like, listen, over time, these are going to rust out. And these are probably not outliers. They're probably buried all along these riverbanks and stuff. And then what's going to happen is all that stuff that's in there is just going to leach out, which it's already probably leaching out a little bit, but like massive spills. Well, I don't know if you remember this.

A few years ago, we were doing a stream cleanup or whatever and just back here behind the first baptist church uh me and regina donner and a few other people found one of the nets that they had put in after the last oil spill they never took it out of the river they just left it in there soaked up that oil and yeah it's just we don't want to handle that that's yucky but here here is the crazy part because i used to work at the water plant when i first my first job out of college i spent nine months gutting it out in the water plant but pulling that lever you know just i learned a lot though i learned a lot but what's interesting is the state's response to that to their monitoring efforts amounted to some limp dick like me taking a bucket on a string.

I'm serious. This is what we're legally required to do after that. Throw it in the river once every hour. Pull the water up and check it for sheen, like oil sheen. Right, right, right. And odor. So you weren't actually sampling for anything? No, nothing scientific. Looked bad.

Yeah, look at it and smell it. Pollution, you have to be able to see it, otherwise it's not really bad. It doesn't exist, yeah. So that was, you know, that's right, tells you a lot about our leadership. Oh yeah. Well, and it's like, I laugh and the only reason I laugh is because there's a macabre sort of

absurdity to it and, you know, Martin County is an example. I mean, another example is what we were talking about earlier, is the sort of retention ponds that just dot the landscape that you don't even see, that could just bust at any time. I mean, it's just like the long-term planning involved here is it's it's if it was you know it's it's like it's because it's so incredibly inhumane it's the only thing you do about it is just kind of laughing you know darkly about it just like yeah i know what you mean but and it sort of goes with what i mean the thing with

martin county and and people at the water district will say this sometimes, and I don't know exactly what the strategy is behind saying this, but they're just like, yep, we're just going to close up. The whole thing is just about to dissolve. We're just going to close up. I'm like, what does that mean? You have 3,500 customers in a county. This is the only way they can get, what does the failure mean? Close shop.

Out of business, sorry. Run government like a business, you say. Yeah, exactly. Profits just weren't quite enough. Yeah. That's interesting. It's totally macabre, and there's seemingly no sort

of solutions that have been presented that um that you know i mean like like we were saying i mean what were you saying right before we started recording that y'all were talking about like there's been proposals for people to like buy it out but like who would buy it out like who would buy out the water district it's one of the things i'm really interested in this question that's one of the things that the k interested in this question. It's one of the things that the Kentucky Public Service Commission has recommended that they would. Well, one of the things they've said is they would force a merger with like, I guess, neighboring water districts. It would have to be. But so even that, like, why?

Why would a water district agree to take this on? Well, there's just there there it costs more to run that district than they can charge their customers and there's no other place that they get money to operate it so and on top of that you've got who knows how many millions of dollars in capital improvements that aren't just like oh we need to maintain it's like no we need to replace lines because we're losing 70 75% of the water. And you're just going to pass that on to another failing county. Yeah, right.

It's probably not much better shape than Martin County. And you're going to make them do it? And just the notion that you could have an infrastructure bill that revolves on the idea of privatizing infrastructure. No, that's insane. No company's going to buy this. There's no money to be made in it. There's absolutely no money to be made in it.

Yeah, it kind of seems like the whole idea of, you know, marshalling all of society's productive resources towards the pursuit of profit was not a good idea. We made some mistakes. we made some mistakes but uh yeah it's it's funny because at whitesburg uh got into a similar situation back when i was a kid with a french company called viola oh yeah yeah yeah yeah and and from water yeah and i see their name all over the place yeah they they they are um they have done what they did here in Whitesburg. They've done it in all kinds.

Maybe like Pittsburgh. I'm just throwing out a name. I know I've seen their name in relation to other municipalities. Yeah, they're all over the place here. What they basically did was saw Whitesburg's water system not in the best shape. They came in and were making all these promises about what they could provide.

Before the city knew it, they were in debt to this company. It's kind of like the predatory lenders of water service almost. In Kentucky, America, you see a lot of these different companies that will sometimes swoop in. But again, like what Mary says, it's like sometimes the situation is so bad it doesn't even make any sense at all. There has to be enough raw

material there to work with for them to turn a profit right you know and so what do you do in those cases where things look too far gone there's no you know outside investment yeah yeah yeah well um on a similar so on a sort of similar note i want to pivot now to talk about something else. This one is a little more I hesitate to use the word comical. It's a little more sort of macabre and ridiculous. But what I'm talking about is Estill

County. Estill County is a county about an hour and a half west of here, or about two hours west of here. In central Kentucky. It's like right in the foothills of where, you know, the sort of mountains start. It's where the bluegrass kisses the mountains. Yeah, that's their motto. That's their tag.

I love that. It's so beautiful. And it is a beautiful county. I mean, the one time that I went with you, it was amazing. What's the city in Estill County? Irvine. Irvine. Okay, so it's like Harry Dean Stanton country.

Yeah, he was actually born there right? Yes I think we found that out And one of the Backstreet Boys I think a couple of the Backstreet Boys Are from there actually A couple of them They're just cranking out Backstreet Boys How many are they up to by now?

I don't know Yeah they have a Backstreet Boys foundry there That's where they... The biggest producer of boy band talent per capita in the world. Yeah, you go in, you pour the mold into the whatever. But it wasn't enough to keep the waste out. Yeah, what you did was you poured hair bleach into a big mold, a human mold, and that's what...

And you got Backstreet Boys. You got a Backstreet Boys. Yeah. Exactly. I went to high school with one you got Backstreet Boys. You got a Backstreet Boys. Yeah. Exactly. I went to high school with one of the Backstreet Boys' cousins, Megan Littrell, and her big claim to fame was that she got an invitation to his wedding. I guess Brian was his name, one of the Backstreet Boys. Oh, yeah, Brian.

And she came to school waving this big fancy invitation around to this wedding and all this stuff. Yo, I would do that. I would, yeah. For sure. That's a good claim to fame. There was a guy from, isn't Nick Lachey

from East Kentucky? Harlan, yeah. Damn. 98 Degrees. Oh, okay. Married to Jessica Simpson. They had this show. It was a little after your,

you know. Yeah, it was not really. It was right when I was, you know, hitting puberty. So I was like, really into it. I was like oldberty. I was like really intense. I was like old.

Probably 20 something by then. Probably 19 by that point. So Estill County. The reason I wanted to talk about Estill County is because over the past few months really since we started digging into the situation in Estill County, every time I try to recount it to somebody who has never heard of it,

has no frame of reference for anything for it, what I wind up recounting sounds like the plot of a Coen Brothers film. It is so absolutely absurd. It is just like every character involved is a total dumbass. You know what I mean? Well, pretty much. I don't want to like every character involved is a total dumbass. You know what I mean? Like, well, pretty much. And I don't want to say every character, but pretty much every character involved is a just a sort of, you know, cartoonishly dumb. Cartoonishly dumb.

Right, right, right. And so the situation in Nestle County, you know, just summed up in a few sentences. Can you give that to us well see my my perception is very different because i forget all of the crazy that you're probably focused on you're in the midst of it i'm yeah well and so that so some bad stuff was brought into the local landfill and bad stuff being radioactive waste from hydraulic fracking operations in west virginia ohio and, and Pennsylvania was brought into the local landfill. told as part of the enforcement the landfill had to pay not a lot like a hundred thousand dollars to put it into a fund um for local school uh radioactive health stuff um and then they had

to do a corrective action plan and so the landfill hired a company to design a corrective action plan that decided that determined that the most protective thing to do would be to leave the material in place um and put a better cap on it when they're done, which is going to be in about 20 to 30 years, and then monitor the groundwater for 30 more years. And that's the part I focus on. So we're challenging that corrective action plan at this point. But there is a lot more to the story than that presentation I just gave.

There's more interesting parts. Whatever I think about Esther, Kenny, I just think of like some sort of Simpsons montage where like holy shit. Oh my gosh. Oh, fire. Fire. Stop drop and roll. I should have thought that was gonna happen.

I was watching it out of the corner of my eye. I was like, oh, it's really flaming over there. So, yeah. Glass candle holder just shattered on the table with lit candle in it. Oh, there's still flames. Well, embers on your table.

A very cheap table that Tom and I got from Craigslist a long time ago. Sorry, guys. A very cheap table that Tom and I got from Craigslist a long time ago. Sorry, guys. A little bit of drama for you. Well, leading up to Corey Hoskins. I assume that's where we're going.

So where we're going with this is the first thing I guess I want to say about it is you were talking about how they have to monitor it for the next 20 or 30 years. We're talking about radioactive waste. years after the yeah 30 years after the landfill closed closes stops accepting waste stops being an active landfill they have to do 30 years more monitoring for radionuclides so we're talking decades in the future yeah and um and when i was talking to you the other day i mean you said something to me that was like stuck with me it was really crazy it's like we're talking about radioactive

waste that has like a half-life of 1600 years no big deal right right and so it's like you you were like I think you said to me you're like there's something just really surreal and bizarre about litigating something that is relevant in 2000 years from now. It's true. It's true. And the risk analysis has, you know, these curves that show like the highest point of exposure being like 2300 years from now. It's very surreal. I don't know what you do with that.

Well, as a legal issue. Right. Right. Our system's not even prepared to tackle that. Seven generations is crazy. Well, I know what they would do with it. If y'all want to hear.

Yeah, let's hear it. Peter Morgan, who Mary works pretty closely with, a colleague of mine, told us one time about the radioactive cats. Do you remember that? I do remember this vaguely.

Like in a doomsday scenario, the federal government has these radioactive cats that are like i guess no way this is a real thing we thought we thought like okay that's a little yeah pretty straight up dude yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and i guess the we'd have to get peter on here to talk about radioactive cats, if he would. But it's got something to do with teaching the future about Earth as it once stood here. Yeah. But anyway, these cats are breeding these radioactive cats. So you need some stuff to make them radioactive with.

Yeah, just take them to Esselstow County. Well, in the same way people are taking elk mountaintop removal sites we've already got what you've got yeah exactly we've got tons of cats let's just kind of dip them in there and put them in a time capsule and you know they live forever anyway right so right and they procreate all the time yeah um so we're dealing with radioactive waste um and there's a few weeks in november of 2016 i think or is october it was right around the time of the election i remember me and you spent a lot of time going over these documents that we

got from the state about when they found out that this waste came to estill county the process for how it was brought over etc etc right and um and so the story that sort of emerged over time was that someone brought this particular waste into west virginia um the guy that brought it over into west virginia i guess was a guy named cory hoskins um he brought it to kentucky oh yeah you're right from west virginia right someone paid him to bring it over to kentucky because this this waste originated from fracking operations like you said in pennsylvania west virginia ohio those states have pretty strict restrictions on the fracking waste that they'll accept i just think it's so funny when I read that damn story about that. Just like,

again, like the Simpsons thing. I just imagine this guy driving this truck and this green shit just sloshing all over the road. They use coal trucks for some of it.

They use uncovered coal trucks. They use uncovered coal trucks to truck it into Kentucky. It is blowing over it on all the side of the road. Do you ever get like coal pieces that like fly off and like hit your windshield

and like pisses you off? Imagine just like getting coated in like just cancer juice. Yeah. Yeah, I know. No, it's literally what happened.

Yeah, don't you think, Cora? So Kentucky's restrictions on this stuff was a lot more lax. Well, in particular, it's a felony to bring radioactive

waste into kentucky from any other state than illinois which is a sort of weird little footnote so you're a plutonium trafficker in illinois you're good you won't get charged right right right but no not from west virginia right and so so yeah they tried to bring it to west virginia couldn't accept it because of the laws this guy played paid this guy, Corey Hoskins, to truck it over to Kentucky. Can I correct you? Oh, yeah, go for it. So there was a facility in West Virginia that existed to basically process this waste. Uh-huh, right.

And so they would try it because I guess when it comes out of the well, it's mostly water. It has a lot of water. So they went through, they did a processing operation that allowed the water to get clean enough to be reused in more fracking. Right. And I say water. I mean, it's water with a lot of junk, but not the thick, the thick, sludgy radio. So it concentrated the radioactivity. And so there's this company in west virginia that

that's all they did was sort of concentrate this stuff and they didn't they had to have a place to put this sludge and the only other company that they got waste management which is a big company right to give them a quote and they were like yeah it's gonna i forget the amount but it was quite a bit per ton and they were gonna have to ship it to utah because it needs to be in a low-level radioactive waste facility right right right they waste management was going to charge them a i mean like let's just throw out a number let's just say like a hundred thousand dollars to basically truck it to because i don't remember the exact number but then they want but then basically this dude they just found a guy this dude i'll do it for half that i'll do it for half that i'll take it over to k do it for half that. I'll do it for half that.

I'll do it for half. I'll take it over to Kentucky for half that and put it into a landfill that is right on the banks of the Kentucky River. Pretty much. I mean, it's very, very close. Right, it's close. Right. Which is.

And right across from the high school and middle school. Oh, directly across from the high school. Wait, so hold on a second. Question. So this was waste management like the company WM that yeah contracted this guy well they said no no they said we'll take it to utah for you oh okay so they were like they were like doing it i mean however legit you can be yes yeah right and so they were just like yeah we'll just go with the guy around the way yeah he's got a good looking truck yeah yeah it's like he knows what

he's doing so the guy around the way can't confirm just before we go any further down this rabbit hole is a guy that just he got a huge hole in the ceiling from a air conditioner mishap best not to go with the guy around the way as a general rule just go with the pros right it cost you less in the long run yes look for a well-painted sign that's right don't look for what this guy's actual offices were which were i forgot about that which was an office in the library of uh god morgan county or wherever um i think it was Morgan County. Morgan County Public Library. Wherever Moorhead is.

Oh, Rowan County. Rowan County. I thought it was in Moorhead. Yeah, no, I thought it was near, you know, I don't know. Well, they're side by side. Okay, then I think it was Morgan County Public Library. Regardless, me and Mary have all these pics of them finding this guy's office and it's just like

it's basically like this it's just like he's got beakers laying around on top of it's just a room in the library with some beakers wow and he had a website that had these you know like aerial photos with some kind of round retaining pond here and some catchment basins and a bunch of trucks. It looked so legit on the website. That's his website. Basically, he had a truck, some beakers, and a closet in the public library. Yes. And they called, and it was the public library that answered the phone.

The number on his website was the public library. Holy shit. And they trusted this guy with almost 2 000 tons of radioactive material amazing that truly amazing i mean this it just goes to show you that like i'm guessing because oh this is something we never did find out you may know now we never did find out what exactly what exact fracking operations is originated from right like i never i don't remember seeing i probably know more about that now but i don't yeah right well let's just say for example that maybe it was like halliburton or like slumber jay or something like this massive corporation like and and um know, and even like with like BP, they do this too.

They'll just contract people out lower and lower on the sort of rung of dealing with the waste stuff. So that by the time it actually gets down to like disposing. Plausible deniability. Yes, exactly. Well, and that has worked because there was another enforcement act action by the cabinet for health cabinet for health and family services which is the depart the agency in kentucky that controls radioactive waste and usually it's like hospital waste and stuff like that that's most of what they deal with but they did an enforcement action but it doesn't go up to the producers it goes to like this company that was processing waste um And then I think some of the company,

maybe actually for the filter socks that actually came off of the wellheads, that was some of the waste. I think maybe that gets to the producers. Right, but the vast majority of it is... Yeah, but most of the waste, yeah, the liability goes to that company that was processing the waste,

not to where the fracking material came from. Or whatever massive corporation, actually, only produced production sites. Right. And I think that company is still alive, but it didn't do well after this. It was teetering a couple of times as far as being able to pay those fines to Kentucky.

And then Corey Hoskins' company went bankrupt, of course. Right. He personally went bankrupt. Right. He's the guy that brought the stuff home. Yeah, Homer Simpson. No criminal charges. Homer Simpson.

No criminal charges or anything. I mean, again, so it's just like, you know, after you lay all this out, it's just like, again, I found myself telling people this story over the over the years and just every time i tell it i'm like that is i mean it's just it's a complete breakdown yeah that can't happen right and you have to assume that like that probably goes on on a pretty regular scale we just don't know about it for the most part you know or we just don't hear about it or whatever you know what i mean like i i guess like for example me and tom

were talking the other day about how a few months ago back in the spring there was this um massive truck that um was carrying 20 tons of raw chicken and oh yeah oh on pine mountain yeah just the waste that gets lost in the cracks of the system. You know what I mean? That you don't even hear about. Just the normal everyday shit. The stuff that isn't a BP, you know, groundwater horizon explosion or whatever. Right.

Right. This is incredible. Absolutely incredible. There was something else. And I sort of hesitate to say this because I don't have my facts immediately at hand but there was something else in the record to indicate when i think it was when the attorney general was talking to different people this was like it started in july and like april he went to a conference and was like asking people like so how do you how do you manage this waste what do you do it like you know learning the biz it's kind of like it took let's fit like

three good months learning the biz right right well it's it is an interesting deal like that it is that waste disposal is actually a business just like anything else that you make profit well it used to not but used to just be a front if you were in the mafia well you could argue that it's sanitation, that's the weird thing about 2018 now, is that organized crime or anything just doesn't... Just went legit. Yeah, yeah, just went legit. And then there are just a few people like this,

just the sort of crazy fringe element. But no, we're up front business here. Exactly. We're on the up and up. Yeah. Exactly. Well, anyways, I don't have a whole lot else to say about about um either of those yeah i mean i for estill county i um i don't know we are our as far as like

how do you deal with the just sort of complexity and but then also just surrealness of trying to think about something that the greatest harm is like 2,500 years in the future. It's like that's sort of hard to get past. But our position is that, A, they don't know how hot this stuff was. That's the other thing. It was like by the time anybody started paying attention, it was below like nine to 15 feet of municipal garbage. Right. And so no.

And guess what? The records on what they brought in aren't that great. Shocking. They're just a bunch of invoices, right? I mean, I remember us looking at the invoices. Yeah. Manifests. Yeah.

It's just. Jesus. So, you know, so precautionary principle says, get it out of there. Like, take it to a facility that's designed to handle this. Right. But they're worried that disturbing it,

removing it might actually cause more damage. But they, you know, they've handled, there are people who know how to do that. Right, right. Well, they've made a wise gamble here with the whole pushing it 1,600 years in the future because we'll probably be dead, I mean, as a planet well before that. I know, I know.

As a species, we'll be long gone. Well, if the Trump administration, by their own conservative estimate, thinks that the Earth's going to get seven degrees hotter by 2100. 2100, right. Did you see that? I saw that. Yeah, what? Which we'll probably have been in the ground like 30 years by that point.

But still, that's not that far removed from where we're at. It's bad. Well, and so the other thing, just while I'm talking, the other thing that is frustrating as hell about this is that the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet has refused to let the citizens have any of the records of their communication with the landfill. They at one point even claimed attorney-client privilege and we're like, that's not your client. That is a landfill. What are you talking about? And so you've tried,

we have tried multiple times to get those communications. That's a classic conservative game, but that was kind of like the Kavanaugh on trial thing. Right. You know, like from the past couple weeks where they justramed the terms of everything just to kind of suit their shit. That is very true. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, that's, you know, we're working hard to figure out a way to address it. But I guess, you know, before we sort of move on to anything else or talk about anything else, is there any way to support your work, Mary? I'm setting up a question that I could easily answer. Well, ACLC is a 501c3 nonprofit, and we do great work. So, yeah, if people want to donate to ACLC, that would be wonderful. Yeah, if people want to donate to ACLC, that would be wonderful. Also, for the Martin County work, we are working with Food and Water Watch, and there's an action alert that's going to be going out probably in the next couple of weeks that will be Kentucky-focused as far as who it's going to, and it will be about Martin County.

So folks should sign up for Food and water watch too cool okay so um yeah so the aclc's website is appalachianlawcenter.org we should put something up on the website about that food and water watch thing yeah and um you know if you are interested in supporting the work search for that wait and then this episode was uh fairly uh you know by our standard anyway um pg so we could probably put it up on the just suggest some shit y'all could do oh yeah yeah yeah you're right we did we only said a few i don't think there's any fireable offenses the tom sexton standard has been that don't go to the back catalog. Stay full. That's true. That is true.

Well, anyways, that's all I got. When we first started, I wanted to introduce you as our local lawyer. Because a really funny story, and I don't know if you remember this, Tom, or if you even heard about it. But a few years ago when John Grisham was writing that book, Grey Mountain, he came to Whitesburg to study the work that we were doing and everything. And the mountain eagle here caught wind of it. And so they contacted Mary. They were like,

what can you tell us about it? What are you telling about his visiting? And Mary was like, I don't want to talk about it. I want to value his privacy or uphold his privacy or whatever. And so the story that they wound up running was just, the headline said, local lawyer mom on author's visit here. The story was that there was no story. No story.

Yeah. That's so good. Just really dying for some content on that day. Right. I felt bad, but, you know. Right. I mean, she's what, Sally? Is that her name? Sally. Right. Oh, God. I felt bad, but, you know. Right. I mean. She's what?

Sally? Is that her name? Sally. Sally. Yeah, she's nice. She is very nice. I didn't want to dish. It was funny, though.

Hey, I know the content. I know the game of scavenging for content. That's what we do. I know what it looks like. Here I am. Oh, yeah. Thanks. To bribe our friends into hearing. Oh am i getting paid yeah we'll pay you

we pay all of our we do we do pay all yeah um as a matter of principle unless they don't want to be paid um but anyways um so speaking of getting paid um so we can continue to pay our guests. Go to our Patreon, please. P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trillbilly Workers Party. There, $5 a month will get you all access. All access you want. All access. To every episode we put up there. We put up one episode a week there every Sunday. We just put up an episode on Sunday about the Kavanaugh situation

which is why we're not talking about it right now although we probably could talk but I just made that episode public actually I just made that episode free for everybody mostly because Patreon is a piece of shit and I'm scared that they're so bad

they just moved their whole operation overseas to avoid taxes they're so bad they really are they just moved their whole operation uh overseas to avoid taxes they're so bad if they were if they were a normal company whatever they we would have like a case manager for our you know what i mean for our specific podcast and they but like they i'm just scared that they were a normal good company oh yeah they're totally craven and awful but i'm scared people weren't going to be able to hear that episode, so I put it up for free on our iTunes or whatever. We pretty much said everything we can about Kavanaugh.

So if you'd like to hear it. Yeah, I want to hear that. Who were you talking with? Just me and Tom. Just me and Tom ranting at each other. No female voices needed. Two white men talk about women's issues. Right, right, yes. Perfect, can't wait to listen. Well, actually, we didn't really talk about him so issues right right yes perfect perfect can't wait to listen right well actually

we didn't really talk about him so much as the sort of systemic structural issues around him but i mean like this well we could get into it a little bit here i mean we have we have a we have a lawyer jurisprudence we have a local lawyer yeah well okay i don't know that i know any of the legal questions yeah well i mean i don't know just to me you know we're recording this on tuesday and what started to come out obviously which is what we all knew when we were watching the hearing was that he was lying about everything he said right which is phenomenal i mean like i guess again this is the thing that was so sort of mind-bending about it was that the guy was just obviously lying under oath.

He was just such a petulant little shit. It was just like, you're about to say no to me. Oh, my God, what do I need to say so you don't say no to me? I'm like, come on. He was like a two-year-old. Yeah. Yeah. Not my two, three-year-old.

Not your two-year-old. Who wouldn't do that? I wouldn't put up with that. Anyway, yeah. No, it was incredible. But do you think that this whole, what they've been talking about again over the past few days, the fact that he lied so obviously,

I mean, one of the big things that they were talking about. There's subjective truth and there's objective truth. And he lied about subjective matters maybe and that doesn't count is that what they're saying is that the new line yeah it's like you know that is a straight up bush era talking point that is that is um that is like the known unknowns thing that donald rumtville said right right that is wordplay to the right people think like the alternative facts and fake news stuff started with trump it yeah oh yeah right right yeah no but i don't know do you think that that will have some kind of impact on on this the fact that he okay so me for me and i think for

a lot of people the most glaring lie that he told was the fact that he obviously knew for a long time that these allegations were going to be brought up uh with regards to ramirez this other woman but he said in the hearing that he didn't know about him until he read about them in the new yorker well that seems you know a provable objective fact so maybe right but like i never drink too much or whatever that's subjective that's not true what's too much yeah so I don't know I mean I guess that there might be I don't know

I don't know where Flake and Rakowski and what you know that's the who knows that was one of the weirdest their line is that was one of the weirdest lies though that he had never drank to black out it's just like it's not that hard I've drank to blackout. It's just like, it's not that hard. It's like, dude, I've drank to blackout. Everybody.

Well, not everybody. That was his defense, right? Well, have you? That's what he, yeah, he immediately got defensive. Man, she handled that well. I would have just been so pissed. Like, I, you do not ask the questions here, but, you know. Right, right, right. Well,

anyways, we covered a lot of that um like i said in the last episode so go check that out go check out our patreon i will check it out um and if you you have any do we have any i got a couple shout outs here i think we got some shout outs me and tom got this new segment uh shout out to Tom Cannell. Yeah, Mary's rock. Mary's throwing you the rock on side. Tom. Shout out to Bill Amon.

Thanks, Bill. Thank you, William. Shout out to Michael Park. Shout out to Mike. Steve Price. Big Mike. Money Mike. Matt Shepard.

That's the Tom noise. Sorry, I'm stalling. Let's scroll through my emails here. Chris Vranek. Thank you. And Christopher. And we're Chris. And yeah. And that brings Chris. And yeah.

And that brings us back to Video Game Idiot. Where we kicked off our last shout out. So thanks everybody. Check out our Patreon. P-A-T-R-U-O-N dot com slash Triple Z Working Party. We'll see you all in a few days. Thanks.