Post by IAMCAPER on Sept 9, 2004 22:52:40 GMT -4
The following was written by a then 12 year old girl for a public speaking competition:
The Monster Among Us
There is a monster among us that we don't see every day, think about every day, nor are we as frightened by it as we should be.
The monster I speak of comes in many shapes, sizes and forms. One of the forms this monster takes on is in the simple shape of an old leaky battery left in a garbage dump. Another form is leftover paint in a can in the same dump. Mix that with droplets of chlorine bleach and other household chemicals and you have a deadly soup.
The monster's name is TOXIC WASTE.
The monster I will speak about today is in our own backyard: The Sydney Tar Ponds, an industrial garbage dump, and the old coke oven site.
I am scared about what may happen to Cape Breton and my family if the tar ponds are buried.
The poison could go straight into the ground. It could poison plants, food, water and US.
I want to live to be 100 years old, but if we let the government do this, our lives could be at risk.
Some people are taking the earth for granted and don't know how good they've got it.
I've heard about the Love Canal in New York. Chemical waste was buried and homes were built on top of it. Many mothers lost their babies because they became sick and many of those children who were born in those houses had birth defects.
The Love Canal had 20,000 tons of contamination, and we have 700,000 tons of contamination. We have 35 times more than they had. In Cape Breton, we have the highest cancer rate in the whole country.
In a meeting I went to at the Sydney Tar Ponds Clean Up Incorporated, the man did not seem to concerned about what this stuff is doing to our earth and us.
He compared the risks of the tar ponds to smoking cigarettes and eating peanut butter.
Now, I am only 12 years old, but even I know that the effects of toxic waster are far more serious and affect more people. People CHOOSE to smoke cigarettes and eat peanut butter. Toxic waste is NOT our personal choice.
The Love Canal may have had SOME different chemicals than the tar ponds, but toxic waste is toxic waste. It is poison. Poison kills. You do not bury poison, you clean it up.
The people in charge haven't even started to think about cleaning up the soil around the coke ovens, which may extend a distance of 3 to 5 miles.
In my opinion, you cannot clean one mess up and leave the other behind.
We cannot let careless people do this to our home, Cape Breton. We cannot let them bury the tarponds.
We must get the mess cleaned up in the safest way possible!
Now we have the Joint Action Group for Environmental Cleanup which is made up of people from the community, Federal and Provincial Ministers and the Regional Mayor, who are working together to find a proper solution to Cape Breton's toxic nightmare.
The Monster Among Us
There is a monster among us that we don't see every day, think about every day, nor are we as frightened by it as we should be.
The monster I speak of comes in many shapes, sizes and forms. One of the forms this monster takes on is in the simple shape of an old leaky battery left in a garbage dump. Another form is leftover paint in a can in the same dump. Mix that with droplets of chlorine bleach and other household chemicals and you have a deadly soup.
The monster's name is TOXIC WASTE.
The monster I will speak about today is in our own backyard: The Sydney Tar Ponds, an industrial garbage dump, and the old coke oven site.
I am scared about what may happen to Cape Breton and my family if the tar ponds are buried.
The poison could go straight into the ground. It could poison plants, food, water and US.
I want to live to be 100 years old, but if we let the government do this, our lives could be at risk.
Some people are taking the earth for granted and don't know how good they've got it.
I've heard about the Love Canal in New York. Chemical waste was buried and homes were built on top of it. Many mothers lost their babies because they became sick and many of those children who were born in those houses had birth defects.
The Love Canal had 20,000 tons of contamination, and we have 700,000 tons of contamination. We have 35 times more than they had. In Cape Breton, we have the highest cancer rate in the whole country.
In a meeting I went to at the Sydney Tar Ponds Clean Up Incorporated, the man did not seem to concerned about what this stuff is doing to our earth and us.
He compared the risks of the tar ponds to smoking cigarettes and eating peanut butter.
Now, I am only 12 years old, but even I know that the effects of toxic waster are far more serious and affect more people. People CHOOSE to smoke cigarettes and eat peanut butter. Toxic waste is NOT our personal choice.
The Love Canal may have had SOME different chemicals than the tar ponds, but toxic waste is toxic waste. It is poison. Poison kills. You do not bury poison, you clean it up.
The people in charge haven't even started to think about cleaning up the soil around the coke ovens, which may extend a distance of 3 to 5 miles.
In my opinion, you cannot clean one mess up and leave the other behind.
We cannot let careless people do this to our home, Cape Breton. We cannot let them bury the tarponds.
We must get the mess cleaned up in the safest way possible!
Now we have the Joint Action Group for Environmental Cleanup which is made up of people from the community, Federal and Provincial Ministers and the Regional Mayor, who are working together to find a proper solution to Cape Breton's toxic nightmare.