EPA mismanages lead

Thank you, Pope Francis, for calling attention to Mother Earth, the environment that unites us and we have been entrusted to care for. Amid environmental devastation, such a relationship is overlooked. Those living in the epicenter of the Bunker Hill site do not.

The pope’s encyclical, “Care for our Common Home,” calls attention to the suffering of the poor. Why are generations in the Silver Valley living with chronic lead-related health conditions treated disproportionately as “throwaway” people, intimidated and polarized by the U.S.?

The EPA has given $54 million of settlement funds for road repairs while those asking for help with lead health get nothing. Why does the EPA listen and respond with respect to outside interests and not ours? Unacceptable conduct by the EPA, whose mission is “to protect the environment and human health.”

Does it make sense to dig up contamination and move it to a National Historic Landmark where annual flooding since the Ice Age spreads to the pollution? Citizens have provided expertise to the EPA over the years; even a community lead health clinic blueprint. It will restore quality of life. The EPA controller of $700 million settlement funds refuses to acknowledge this.

Things must change.

Donna O’Neill

Kellogg