Q&A: James G. Jackson
Battling big guns on hazardous waste issues
WILSON— James G. Jackson tried to get away from the waste, all the while hoping to get rid of it.
Jackson, 63, helped found a community organization that fought hazardous waste in Lewiston and Porter starting in 1985.
The towns of Lewiston and Porter are now home to the Northeast’s only commercial toxic waste landfill, CWM Chemical Services.
CWM officials are proposing an expansion, a request now before state regulators.
The organization Jackson helped create is known as Residents Organized for Lewiston-Porter’s Environment, or ROLE.
He moved his family from Lewiston to Wilson, but couldn’t escape the perceived effects of the environment.
Jackson’s wife, Sandra, has multiple sclerosis, which the family believes she got from attending 99th Street School in the Love Canal section of Niagara Falls.
“She’s the only one in her family that went to that school, and the only one in her family that has MS,” Jackson said.
The Buffalo News recently sat down with Jackson to talk about his experiences and to discuss his perspective on the hazardous waste issues still present in Niagara County.
Let’s start from the beginning. You used to live in Lewiston. Why did you get involved, or what got you interested in environmental issues?
We had lived on the corner of Hillside Drive and Creek Road, and we, probably around 1980, started noticing a lot of trucks coming down the hill. And we inquired as to what was happening and found out that Modern Landfill had started at that time, and Chemical Waste Mangement had started roughly around
that time and started to truck in all the waste.
And we had five children and we had bedrooms upstairs and some of the trucks would park out front and they’d idle their engines for hours because they were waiting to go into the facility or they’re going to lunch in the Village of Lewiston. So we had to get central air because the diesel fumes were going up in the bedrooms upstairs. So that sort of led to us saying, ‘What the heck is going on here?’. . . They’re bringing all this toxic waste into our community and landfilling it. Plus the solid waste. This is not even dealing with the radioactive waste, because we didn’t know anything about that at the time it was there at the Niagara Falls Storage Site. So we just thought to ourselves, ‘Something has to be done . . .’
What was the purpose of that group?
The purpose of that group was to try to focus the community on what was going on there. To try and empower the community and get everybody, you might say, up in arms against what’s going on. And to be a voice in politics to stop this.
And we had gone on for a number of years. We went to Albany, we met the governor, which was [Mario] Cuomo at the time. Even [University at Buffalo] Prof. [R. Nils] Olsen [Jr.] was there. We had a lot of doctors involved with us because they knew the potential of the serious problems involved, and illnesses and stuff like that. And soccer moms and stuff like that. It was a pretty big group with a lot of financial backing behind it, and a lot of legal backing and professional backing behind it.
Because they just didn’t want to see incineration coming in, which was proposed by Chemical Waste Management. Because that was the logical next step, because people don’t like landfills . . . They felt, well, it’s a necessary evil. And also industry, when they started to think about landfilling, they’re still on the hook for it. But if you had hazardous waste incineration — it’s called the landfill in the sky. Your liability is gone once it gets up in the air. Nobody’s liable for it. It’s tough to prove that you’re being subjected to anything.
So it just sort of snowballed after that. Once we won no hazardous waste incineration there at the site, things sort of started dying down. We really had to give in. We had to allow them landfilling in order not to get the hazardous waste incineration. That’s the card game, OK? That’s the tradeoff. Which was a terrible thing to do, but what’s the lesser of the two evils? The incineration or the landfilling?
. . . I really have to blame Congress, because Congress at the time, like in the ’70s when you had Love Canal break out, they made hazardous waste a commodity. And now it’s controlled by the Interstate Commerce Clause.
You mentioned the name of Carol Crown.
She was one of the originators of ROLE along with my wife and I. She lived on Creek Road.
There used to be a thing called the Ecumenical Task Force, the ETF, and that was involved with Love Canal. Well, she knew a lot of the nuns there . . . it was a Catholic thing.
They had told her we should start an organization down here. They actually even suggested the name of ROLE. At the beginning it was Residents Organized for Lewiston’s Environment. Just plain simple that, but the more we thought about it, we said, well, the site’s in the Town of Porter. The waste comes through the Town of Lewiston. How far do you want to go with this? Because the waste comes through the County of Erie . . . And we thought at least we could try and protect the two communities that are directly involved in it. So then we changed [the name] from Residents Organized for Lewiston’s Environment to Residents Organized for Lewiston-Porter’s Environment . . .
What were some of the challenges that ROLE faced? Obviously you were successful in stopping the incinerators, but how hard was it?
Legal, technical, political. They were all massive, in my opinion, in being a plain layman, they were all massive things that had to be dealt with. And it’s continuing today, because you’re never playing on a level playing field when you’re doing this.
If it was just a matter of legal, the DEC it seems they throw roadblocks in front — here’s a state agency that’s supposed to be protecting us. They just throw roadblocks. I mean, I know they get their orders. They get their orders from the top. They get their orders from the executive chamber of New York state — which is the governor. He’s the one that appoints them, the heads of these things . . .
I realize the game. You have to realize the game. So you have to actually get in there and you have to play the game. And look at it as a giant chess game where you’re the general and you’re looking over and seeing what moves are being made, who’s doing this, who’s doing that. And sometimes it can be overwhelming. And sometimes, it’s fun. It really is fun.
I’ve been reading articles going back 15 years, and it seems like the arguments and the issues for the things that are being discussed today were the same things that were being discussed then. Like equitable distribution of waste. Why do you think that’s still around?
Because it’s such a tough nut. You have Congress telling New York state, ‘Hey, there’s nothing you can do about this. We’re going to send it to you.’ . . . And New York state really doesn’t want it. But there’s nothing they can do about it. That’s why the equitable distribution comes in. That’s why they’ve actually slowed things down. The DEC has, because 20 years ago by court order they were supposed to have this done. And that’s why I say they sort of disregard the rule of law. It doesn’t apply to them somehow. . .
How would you explain the state continuing to claim that equitable distribution already exists?
Politics once again. Because we are not politically strong in this area. All the politics is downstate, Albany area, the Long Island area. They don’t want [hazardous waste] there. So if they don’t want it there, they’re going to lobby their people to say ‘Keep it out of here.’ And I think the technology now is changing where we can say it doesn’t belong anywhere.
New York state doesn’t need it. They don’t need it to clean up the sites that they have left. [Waste is still] coming from other states, Puerto Rico. It’s coming from there because they do not have the political will to change. So New York state is going to continue to let them dictate what is going to happen in our state. And we’re sunk. It just does not need to be. And because of the political powers. It’s almost like the old shell game of the pea and the shell: Hide the waste wherever you can so it’s out of our area and it’s under a shell some place. And that’s what it’s become. And it really doesn’t need to be that. I think the waste industry still has a lot of pull and power and the money’s what dictating all of it. Because siting a new landfill here is worth billions, literally billions.
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