by Tom Kruzen, Mining Subcommittee Chair
On the great rotunda of Missouri’s capitol building is written, “Salus populi suprema lex esto”…Let the Welfare of the People Be the Supreme Law. I recited our state motto to Dora Santana and Esther Hinestrosa in my broken Spanish. The nurses had come 5,000 miles from Doe Run’s Peruvian smelter in the Andes Mountain town of La Oroya. Our eyes met and I knew they understood. On a sunny Sunday in Crystal City at the Presbyterian Church, these brave women had come to meet and share experiences with residents from Doe Run’s other smelter town in Herculaneum, Missouri. Our common bond was a company that has poisoned people and laid waste to the natural world in two vastly different, yet chillingly similar communities.
The Giddings-Lovejoy Presbytery, Herculaneum Environmental Lead Pollution Patrol, People At Risk, and the Ozark Chapter of the Sierra Club helped sponsor the trip and the afternoon in Missouri. While helping to release the Sierra Club’s report on Superfund failings, “Leaving Our Communities at Risk” in September, 2002, I had met the Reverend Elinor Stock, a St Louisan minister who helps coordinate Joining Hands Against Hunger (JHAH). At the Arch with news cameras rolling, Elinor described how at that very moment, there were 450 activists marching against the Doe Run Company in La Oroya, Peru. My hair stood on end. Elinor Stock and those of us at the Arch had struck a resonant chord.
Everything the La Oroyan’s were experiencing at the hand of Doe Run had been experienced by people in Herculaneum and eastern Missouri. Herculaneum is smaller, with 2,800 people to La Oroya’s 50,000 – howeverthe tale of misery and woe is the same. Aching bones and joints, Diminished IQs, failing kidneys, tumors and other cancers…and people die. The physical effects of lead, and the carcinogens cadmium and arsenic, along with other toxins such as sulfur dioxide are the same for Peruvians as for Missourians.
In the US, with our cleaner air, cleaner water and other environmental laws, some improvement has begrudgingly been made in lead remediation. Doe Run has a history of seldom doing the right thing and less seldom voluntarily. Only after Doe Run shenanigans were aired in the press by citizen activists in Herculaneum, did the company begin to clean up their toxic messes. Full agreement was realized in the Crystal City church this Sunday afternoon (despite language differences) that Doe Run should not mine or smelt ore at the expense of children’s health. In Peru, Doe Run has made a sweetheart deal with the government to delay desperately-needed anti-pollution gear until 2007.
Dora and Esther described thousands of La Oroyan children who suffer from abnormally high levels of blood lead and attending symptoms. Children in La Oroya are born with 15 micrograms/deciliter of lead. Many have an average of 32-40 ug/dl. The US limit for children is 10 ug/dl. Many of these children need immediate medical help, but in the poor Andean town, little help is available.
The nurses eyes met and their hands joined with the citizens from Herculaneum and around Missouri who came together that winter day. All who know the effects of lead instantly understood the Peruvians’ pain, of their government’s shortcomings, and of the deceptions played by a company only interested in its bottom line.
In February, the Sierra Club, along with other environmental and labor groups released a report: “The International Right to Know: Empowering Communities Through Corporate Transparency”. Doe Run and its failings in La Oroya are highlighted in the report. The Peruvian nurses and the citizens of Herculaneum know that to make Missouri’s motto a reality for both communities, they will work together…against apathy, corporate greed, government collusion and corruption and the heavy history of lead. Supreme resonance had been achieved. Neither community will suffer isolated and alone. There was a great joining of hands!