The Michigan Daily-Wednesday, June 17, 1981-Page 11
Illegal dumping charged
From APand UPI
DETROIT - Two truck drivers for a waste
disposal firm were charged yesterday with illegally
dumping more than 100 drums of toxic chemicals,
some known cancer-causing agents, around the
metropolitan area.
The dumping forced a half-dozen persons who
came in contact with the drums to seek hospital
treatment, including two Detroit police officers, but
none were seriously hurt.
WAYNE COUNTY Chief Assistant Prosecutor
Dominick Carnovale identified the suspects as Boris
Perry, 26, and his cousin, Darnell Perry, 27, both of
Detroit and both employed by John Welsh and Sons, a
Detroit waste disposal firm.
The Perrys were charged with violating the state's
hazardous waste management act in "knowingly
transporting and disposing hazardous waste" for
dumping six drums on a lot in Detroit, Carnovale
said.
This incident may be typical of a widespread
problem government officials have been grappling
with in the upper midwest for some time.
UP TO EIGHT million pounds of PCBs were dum-
ped in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin
during the past 30 years, and no one knows exactly
where the poisonous chemicals are today, gover-
nment officials say.
Efforts to find the chemicals have uncovered PCBs
at a playground in this northern Illinois city of 65,000,
in the well water of one family, and in sufficient quan-
Chemical waste
dumping 'ticking
time.bomb'
tity to create "very high" contamination of a creek
that flows into Lake Michigan, the source of drinking
water for 10 million people.
The random dumping occurred before the gover-
nment banned manufacture of PCBs, polychlorinated
biphenyls, in 1977 asa suspected cause of cancer, bir-
th defects, and other health problems. It was widely
used as a lubricant and coolant in machinery and
electrical equipment.
FEDERAL OFFICIALS have known for years that
up to two million pounds of PCBs were dumped by
Outboard Marine Corp., which makes boat motors,
into Waukegan harbor 25 miles north of Chicago. The
company used the chemical to lubricate machines
used to make the motors.
But only within the last year have federal officials
joined local efforts to track down millions of pounds
of PCBs that were apparently dumped on land.
Officials of the Lake County Health Department
fear the chemicals will work their way into ground
water, Lake Michigan and the food chain: The dum-
ping in the harbor already has been linked to
dangerous levels of PCBs in fish.
"WE FEEL WE are sitting on a ticking time
bomb," Tom Nedved, director of the health depar-
tment's environmental health division, said last
week.
The missing PCBs were first described in a letter
from Outboard Marine to the Environmental Protec-
tion Agency, dated March 15, 1976, but officials have
concentrated on the harbor dumping because it
presented a more immediate threat.
Outboard Marine attorney Hugh Thomas estimates
between 5.9 million and 6.7 million pounds of PCBs
were dumped on land. EPA attorney Kay Jacobs puts
the figure at eight million pounds.
WHILE SOME PCB contamination has been
discovered, environmental officials say they don't
know the location of all the dumps.
Outboard Marine officials say they don't know
where the waste haulers took the chemicals because
20 years ago there were no disposal restrictions.
William Schulski, a retired waste hauler from Ken-
osha, Wis., has named five sites in the Waukegan
area and three in Kenosha where his workers dum-
ped Outboard Marine's refuse. "We just took it to the
city dumps. We never concerned ourselves with what
was in the load," he said. "If it was a barrel or a car-
dboard box, or even a body, who knew?"
_,.
Man says
r
sect made
daughter
'become
a robot
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) - A
man whose daughter is suing her
parenta for $1 million for allegedly ab-
ducting her testified yesterday that he
feared his daughter would "become a
robot" unless she was removed from a
religious sect she had joined.
Richard Parsons, a Hellertown, Pa.
engineer, described in federal court
how the family became increasingly
worried about the involvement of their
22-year-old daughter, Debra Lynn
Rausch, with The Way Ministry in 1977.
He said they eventually sought out
"deprogrammers" to get her to change
her beliefs.
THE WAY IS a fundamentalist group
based in Knoxville, Ohio.
Parsons, a member of the United
Church of Christ, said he was disturbed
p at the sect's rejection of the Christian
belief in the Trinity and its practice of
talking in tongues. But he said his main
fear was what he called "the concept of
mind control" practiced by followers of
the sect.
Parsons glanced frequently at his
wife, Betty, seated with their son and
son-in-law in the front row, as he
described how the family obtained a
court order declaring their daughter
mentally incompetent and took her to a
cabin in Peterboro, N.H. for
deprogramming. Later she spent eight
weeks in two "rehabilitation homes" in
Bradford, N:., and Minneapolis.
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