dioxin

HELLO, MY NAME IS …

BY. C.D. STELZER

first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis), Aug. 3, 1994

The anti-dioxin movement is made up of a coalition of
groups and individuals from anarchists to middle-aged
housewives. Here's a few samples of those who attended
the conference:

Billie Elmore is a North Carolina activist who stopped
a German corporation from building an incinerator in her
state despite its ties to the governor. She opposed 17
incineration sites from 1988 to 1993. The incinerator
builder, ThermalKEM, finally gave up, but not before
spending $4 million, said Elmore. "No incinerator was
built, and never will be (that's) guaranteed," she said.

Bob McCray, a Globe, Ariz. resident, was exposed to
dioxin in the `60s, when the U.S. Forest Service sprayed
the area where he lives with Silvex, Dow Chemical's
brand name for Agent Orange, the defoliant used in
Vietnam. "I lost my last neighbor to cancer about three
weeks ago," said McCRay, who has soft-tissue sarcoma
himself. Dow later settled out of court with Globe
residents.

Estaban Cabal, 35, is a councilman in the town of
Rivas near Madrid. Cabal and other members of the
Spanish Greens Party were instrumental in stopping a
proposed waste incinerator in their community. In 1992,
more than 6,000 people participated in a March against
the proposed facility.

Peter Montague, publisher of Rachel's Hazardous Waste
News, is being sued by W.R. Gaffey, a retired Monsanto
epidemiologist, for libel. The suit is over the 1990
report of an allegedly fraudulent dioxin study. The
trial in federal court here has been delayed because a
lawyer that once represented Montague now works for the
firm representing Monsanto. It is now set for January.
When asked why Gaffey only sued him, even though others
reported the same story, Montague said: I thought about
that four years. I really don't know. At the time, I
think I had 20 or 25 readers in Missouri. It's strange."

Liane Casten, a freelance journalist from the Chicago
area, told the conference: In 1965 Dow Chemical
conducted a series of experiments on prisoners in
Homesburg (Pa.) Prison. The EPA found out about this in
the `70s. When the prisoners came forward, the EPA found
massive reasons to destroy evidence."

Janette D. Sherman, a physician from Alexandria, Va.,
asserted the EPA aided Dow Chemical in withholding
information on Dursban, a commercial pesticide. The EPA
conferred with Dow on the matter twice, once in 1989 and
again in 1991, Sherman said. "I filed three Freedom of
Information Act requests to get this information. I just
want everybody to look at this because Dursban varies
very little from 2,4,5-T (a dioxin), with the exception
of the nitrogen on the central ring."


Charles Sitton of Fenton, a member of the Vietnam
Veterans of America, served in the war in 1965 and 1966.
During his Navy tour, he navigated a river in an area
sprayed with Agent Orange. The defoliant contained high
levels of dioxin.

Afterwards, the Navy discharged him for anemia and
kidney problems. In 1980, he contracted myeloma, a bone
cancer. Last year, the Department of Veterans Affairs,
recognized the disease as a service-related illness. "I
wasn't supposed to live past 1986," said the veteran.
"My wife didn't tell me until a few months ago."

Sitton is concerned about the effects his exposure
may have on his children and theirs. He also said he has
nerve damage. To demonstrate, he pulled out a pocket
knife and scratched and jabbed his forearms with the
blunt end of its screwdriver blade. Blood began
trickling down one arm. 
    
He didn't flinch.

COMMONER CAUSE

BY. C.D. STELZER

first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis), August 3, 1994

White noise, faint piano notes and Nina Simone's voice
all bled through the audiotape, obscuring much of my
recording of Barry Commoner's speech and making a full
transcription of it impossible. But last Saturday, 
hundreds of environmentalists, unencumbered by jazz or
technical difficulties, heard the biologist's message
loud and clear.
     Commoner gave the keynote address at the Second
Citizens' Conference on Dioxin, which was held at
Tegeler hall on the St. Louis University campus.
     The Environmental Protection Agency's draft
reassessment on dioxin, due to be released this month,
reinforces what Commoner and other scientists at the
conference have warned for decades.
     "The report acknowledges that we have all now been
sufficiently exposed to dioxin to worry about the
various effects that have already occurred," said
Commoner, 77, a former Washington University professor
and presidential candidate.
     "Stated more simply: The general spread of dioxin
and dioxin-like chemicals in the United States today has
already exposed the entire population to levels that are
extremely toxic," Commoner said.
     Dioxin is a likely carcinogen, and is now suspected
of increasing susceptibility to disease and of damaging
the immune system and sexual and embryonic development,
according to a summary of the EPA report leaked earlier
this year.
     More alarming perhaps is scientific evidence that
these ill effects are passed to future generations.
"What this does is to raise a profound moral issue about
the toxicology of dioxin," said Commoner. "Any parent
raising a child is intimately concerned about their
ability to do it well. Dioxin is a threat to that
ability."
     Because of this, Commoner supports the move to ban
chlorine-based chemicals that create dioxin as a
byproduct. "Not a single chlorinated compound has been
found to be natural," Commoner said. "The chemical
industry has violated this biological taboo, and we are
all paying dearly for this transgression. ... The
chemical industry must drastically change its methods of
production and where necessary halt -- beginning with
the elimination of chlorine.
     "The (chemical) industry will use its enormous
wealth and political power to resist such change,"
cautioned Commoner. "Chlorine is essential to at least a
third and maybe half of the processes that the chemical
industry now carries on. ... It means an enormous
restructuring."
     But the scientist is optimistic that other
affiliated corporate sectors will pressure the chemical
industry because of their own potential financial
liability. Chlorine-based petro-chemical manufacturing,
which has developed since the 1940s, is tied to a wide
array of other industries, including pesticides,
herbicides, paints, solvents, plastics and waste
incineration.
     I think we are on the verge of beginning to win
this battle," said Commoner, gripping the lectern as he
has done so often in the past. He began teaching at
Washington University in 1947 and became involved with
the dioxin  issue in the 1970s. Commoner ran for
president in 1980 on the Citizens Party ticket. The
following year, he joined the faculty of Queens College.
The biology professor with the shock of white hair and
bushy eyebrows has been called the "Paul Revere of
ecology," but he doesn't claim credit for any future
victory.
     "What brought us to this point," said Commoner, "is
the environmental movement at its powerful grassroots:
the newest campaigns against trash-burning incinerators,
... the struggles at Times Beach and Love Canal, the
campaign for justice for the veterans exposed to Agent
Orange."
     
Steve Taylor, a local organizer of the dioxin
conference, may have been too busy to hear Commoner's
accolade last Saturday. His hectic week began Tuesday,
when he walked into the ST. Louis County government
center on Clarkson Road in West St. Louis County
carrying a briefcase and Exhibit A -- a Duraflame log.
     Taylor 30, had been issued an air-pollution
nuisance summons by the St. Louis County Police
Department on May 28 for burning a Duraflame log near
Eureka (Mo.). On that evening, members of the Times
Beach Action Group (TBAG) and the Gateway Greens had
assembled on a bluff overlooking I-44 to protest the
planned Times Beach dioxin incinerator. They unfurled a
banner that read, "Stop EPA Lies -- No Incinerator." The
Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the
EPA have refused to halt the project despite the passage
of a non-binding referendum against the incinerator and
opposition by both the district congressman and the St.
Louis County Council. the incinerator is being built
after a consent decree was signed by the EPA, DNR and
Syntex, the company held responsible for the cleanup.
     The irony of being cited with an air-pollution
violation while opposing a dioxin incinerator wasn't
lost on Taylor. "One of the things that they're burning
down at Times Beach is the idea of representative
government," he said. "When it comes to the redress of
grievances, everyone's been left out of the consent
decree other than the Missouri Department of Natural
Resources, the EPA and Syntex..
     When Taylor showed the fake log to the judge and
explained the situation, she wisely dropped the charges.
Others have been listening lately, too. Rep. James
Talent has recently proposed an amendment to the
Superfund reauthorization bill that would call for a
moratorium on the Times Beach incinerator until a
government study of health and environmental risks is
completed.
     The woman who wants Talent's job has also talked to
Taylor.  Margaret Gilleo, the leading Democrat in
Tuesday's primary, collared the activist last Saturday
on the plaza outside Tegeler Hall. Gilleo asked him
whether he was interested in working the polls. But
electoral politics are not the forte of the former Earth
First! activist.
     Taylor later caused a minor stir at the conference
when he helped hold up another banner that said, "Smash
the EPA." At the time of the incident, Dwain Winters,
the director of the EPA's Dioxin Policy Project was on
stage.
     On Sunday night, Gov. Mel Carnahan was burned in
effigy at the site of the previous TBAG and Gateway
Greens protests. The anonymous telephone caller who
reported the action to an RFT reporter identified
himself as "Deep Throat of the Second Citizens'
Conference."
     The voice sounded familiar.

FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE The torching of an environmentalist’s home

BY C.D. STELZER

first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis), July 22, 1994

There will be many questions asked this week, when the Second Citizens’ Conference on Dioxin convenes at Saint Louis University on Thursday.

The inquiring ranks at the four-day gathering will be comprised of more than 100 scientists, environmental activists, former Times Beach residents and Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Big names like Retired Adm. Elmo Zumwalt Jr. and Barry Commoner, the former Washington University ecologist, are among the scheduled speakers.

Fewer people outside of the environmental movement may have heard of Pat Costner, but the 54-year-old chemist will also address the conference. Costner is the research director of Greenpeace’s U.S. Toxics Campaign. For the past eight years, she has been providing the technical answers that have stoked the environmental group’s fiery opposition to dioxin-generating incinerators.

The point at which science, politics and business intersect can be a volatile one. Costner, who lives near Eureka Springs,Ark., knows as much. She also knows there is no pat answer or formula that will reveal who torched her house on March 2, 1991.

“The night my house burned down, I went to town to visit a friend,” recalls Costner. “I came home and it was gone. It was burned totally to the ground. I can’t tell you how you feel at a time like that. I sat out here by myself, for I don’t know how long.”

The Arkansas Gazette reported that Costner’s “house was valued at $25,000, but only her computer equipment and office materials were insured.” But that’s not all that turned to ash.

“I probably had one of the larger technical libraries in the environmental movement,” Costner says. The irreplaceable books and technical papers took 30 years to accumulate and minutes to destroy. Costner’s will to employ her expertise remains unsinged. Her knowledge is based on years of experience within the industry she now opposes. Earlier in her career, the scientist worked for both Shell Oil and Arapaho Chemicals, a subsidiary of Syntex.

At the time of the blaze, Costner planned to publish a book based on five years of research into toxic waste incineration. Ironically, she had entitled her work Playing with Fire.

“We had arson investigators who said that my office burned at temperatures that were five or six times hotter than a normal house fire. They sent samples of the ash off to have it analyzed and found traces of an accelerant,” says Costner.

The evidence strongly suggests that her office and library were the targets of the arsonists. “It was a professional hit. It was not just somebody who wandered by with matches, says Sheila O’Donnell, a private investigator hired by Greenpeace.

The alleged attack against Costner is one of many acts of violence that may have been perpetrated against environmentalists in recent years. “I know that some of these attacks have been very well orchestrated,” says O’Donnell. The Center for Investigative Reporting has counted 124 credible cases in 31 states since 1988. Among them is the 1989 car bombing of Earth First! activists Darryl Cherney and Judi Bari in Oakland, Calif.

Costner estimates her efforts were instrumental in shutting down at least six hazardous waste incinerators in the year or so before her house burned. In most, if not all, of these cases, the Greenpeace scientist says she engaged in debates with incinerator proponents and government officials. In 1989, for example,Costner’s testimony helped block a multi million-dollar incinerator slated for the Kaw Indian reservation in Oklahoma. WasteTech, the proposed builder of the project, is a subsidiary of Amoco Oil, according to the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Despite the personal set back, Costner has continued to fight the Vertac incinerator, an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund cleanup. The dioxin-contaminated waste at the Jacksonville, Ark. site was left over from the manufacture of Agent Orange, a defoliant used in the Vietnam War. The struggle by Costner and others to halt the burning of the waste has been supported by three decisions handed down by U.S. District Judge Stephen Reasoner. In each instance, however, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis has overturned his rulings.

Although the arson case remains unsolved, O’Donnell’s investigation uncovered some interesting leads. “We located witnesses who said there had been three different incidences of thugs coming to town looking for Pat,” says O’Donnell. About six weeks before the fire, Costner says a local woman had warned that a man had inquired about her whereabouts. Two weeks later, customers at a Eureka Springs restaurant reportedly overheard Costner’s name come up in a conversation between two men. One of the strangers allegedly bragged of being trained at Quantico,Va., which is both the headquarters of the Marine Corp Combat Development Command and the FBI training center.

After the fire, Costner immediately pulled in a house trailer and set about having her home rebuilt. She makes no secret of where she lives. From St. Louis, head down I-44 to Springfield and veer onto U.S. 65. Keep driving past Branson. Past Andy William’s Pepsodent smile, past the other giant billboard images of Tony Orlando, Bobby Vinton, Wayne Newton and Mel Till-ill-is. Then head southwest across the Arkansas line,where straightaways are memories and the oak and hickory roots run deep under the roadbed. Outside of Eureka Springs, turn off Route 23, the faint gray line on the road map, and go down a dirt road a piece.

“I have 135 acres and I live plunk out in the middle of it.

“This is my home,” says Costner, as a rooster crows in the background. “I’ve lived here for 20 years. My children grew up here.”

She ain’t leavin’.

–C.D. Stelzer (stlreporter@gmail.com)

DANGEROUS NITRO: Gaffey vs. Monatgue and the Agent Orange coverup

May 18, 1994

Gerson Smoger, the dioxin lawyer who has represented former residents of Times Beach and Vietnam veterans, has yet another suit pending in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court in St. Louis. In this case, however, he is acting as a defense attorney.

Peter Montague, director of the Annapolis-based Environmental Research Foundation, which publishes Rachel’s Hazardous Waste News, is being sued in a $1 million libel case by William Gaffey, a former Monsanto epidemiologist. At issue is a 1990 report by Montague that refers to an allegedly fraudulent dioxin study conducted by Monsanto. The allegation is based on court filings by Metro East attorney Rex Carr in an earlier unrelated dioxin case.

“They (Monsanto) had a (dioxin) explosion in a Nitro, W. Va. facility in 1949,” says Smoger. “They rushed through some studies that they started in 1979. (The studies) were part of Monsanto’s defense in the Agent Orange lawsuit,” he says. “These studies purported to exonerate dioxin as a cause of illness, particularly cancer.”
But according to Carr’s appellate brief, the two Monsanto researchers changed the number of exposed and unexposed workers to show fewer cancer deaths. The alleged fraud was subsequently investigated by the EPA, because it had based some of its early dioxin risk assessments on the Nitro studies. The EPA’s internal memos were the main source for Montague’s story. Adm. Elmo Zumwalt cited the same court evidence in his testimony before a HOuse subcommittee in 1990. His congressional testimony names another high-ranking Monsanto official as the source of the fraud allegation. Smoger says that many newspapers published the same information, but only Montague was sued.
“We call it a SLAP suit, which is something to shut people up, intimidate them, says Pat Costner of Greenpeace.

The previously mentioned Agent Orange case absolved all private industries from any further liability to Vietnam veterans who were exposed to the herbicide. The 1984 class-action settlement totaled $180 million. “(It) gives servicemen who either died or were totally disabled $3,200,” says Smoger. If you never went to court, never had an injury, your case was settled,” says Smoger, who unsuccessfully fought the ruling all the way to the Supreme Court. Last year, a panel of experts belatedly linked three cancers and two skin disorders to Agent Orange exposure.

“The settlement clearly left out veterans who became victims after the 1984 settlement. In that respect it is outrageous says George Claxton, the national chairman of the Agent Orange task force of the Vietnam Veterans of America.”

First published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis)

–C.D. Stelzer (stlreporter@gmail.com)

SHOT IN THE DARK: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch Uses a Corporate Photo to Promote the Safety of the Controversial Times Beach Dioxin Incinerator

April 20, 1994

A picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say. But photographs don’t always tell the whole story. Take one that appeared in Saturday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for example.
 
The aerial shot is prominently displayed at the tip of page 1 of section B. It shows the levee constructed around the proposed dioxin incinerator at Times Beach surrounded by water. The cutline states that “the water did not top the levee.,” which is the gist of the accompanying story. There is no credit line — no indication of who snapped the shutter or for whom.
 
When Steve Taylor called the Post photo desk Saturday morning to inquire about the photo, he was told that it was taken by freelance photographer Bill Stover. Taylor is a member of the Times Beach Action Group (TBAG), and as such was recently arrested for trespassing at the cleanup site during a demonstration against the planned incinerator.

 
Taylor then called Stover and politely asked him who commissioned the photograph. Taylor says Stover told him he was not at liberty to divulge his clients. When the RFT called the photographer on Sunday afternoon he had a lapse of memory. He couldn’t remember the specific photograph even though it was taken only a few days before. “I don’t know what photograph you’re talking about,” said Stover. “What I do for my business is my business,” he added.

 
Monday, the Post-Dispatch staff was a little more cooperative. The photo, it seems, was paid for and provided to the newspaper by Agribusiness Technologies Inc., according to Post photographer Gary Bohn. Agribusiness is a subsidiary of Syntex Inc., a giant pharmaceutical and chemical conglomerate that has been held liable by the EPA for the $116 million cleanup at Times Beach.

 
Gary Pendergrass, a spokesman for Agribusiness, says Agribusiness “took the pictures for our own documentation. … We just want to get the facts out.” But Agribusiness has more than a casual interest in the Times Beach dioxin incinerator. The preparations for the levee have been going on for years, as have the image problems associated with the cleanup. although federal and state agencies have given the green light, environmentalists and local elected officials are still objecting to the incinerator. Citizens of St. Louis County also voted against the construction of the incinerator in a non-binding election in 1990.
Besides all these public-relations problems, the planned incinerator would be located in a floodplain, one inundated previously. That’s why last week’s deluge offered Agribusiness such a positive media opportunity. What better way to prove the strength of their levee than trough providing photographs of it withstanding an Act of God? And who better to bear the Good News than the Post-Dispatch.

 
Bohn, the Post photographer, attributed the missing credit line to simple deadline pressure. Tom Uhlenbrock, the Pst environmental reporter who wrote the accompanying story, says the story was justified because of concerns over whether the levee could hold against such a big flood.

 
In a phone interview Monday, Uhlenbrock said that he inspected the levee early last week, and that he was told at that time that the company picture had been taken the day before. When reminded that his story didn’t run until Saturday, he corrected himself and said that he went to the site on Friday. The crest of the flood peaked on Thursday, which is when the photograph was allegedly taken, according to Uhlenbrock and Pendergrass. A for the helicopter service chartered by Agribusiness verified that the photograph was taken on Thursday.

 
But the cutline states that it was taken on Friday. The date is cortical to the accuracy of the photo because of the fluctuating river levels during the flood. The Meramec crested at 38.4 feet at Eureka on thursday, according to the National Weather Service. By Friday, it had dropped to 34.1. Earlier in the week the river was significantly lower.

 
Besides timing and attribution, the subject of ethics apparently never entered the picture, either. Uhlenbrock says printing company photographs “is not an unusual practice. We do that quite often..”

 
Bohn, the photographer, is in limited agreement. Using corporate photos is “not a common practice, but when it does help tell the story we accept photographs like that, says Bohn. “Our intent is not to make judgments on whether something’s ethical or not. Our intent is to tell the story in an objective way.”

 
Taylor doesn’t believe the Post’s actions were objective. “Pictures don’t lie,” says Taylor. “But you can lie about pictures. I want to emphasize that the floodplain is no the major issue. The major issue is corporate accountability and the whole question about the safety of incinerators in the first place.”

 
Taylor does see something else in the picture., however, something more subtle than a missing credit line. He sees the photo as a representation of the coverage the Post-Dispatch has chosen to provide on the dioxin issue. “I think it’s highly unethical that they would run a corporate photo with a credit line.”

First published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis)

–C.D. Stelzer (stlreporter@gmail.com)

BEACH BRAWL: The Times Beach Action Group Begins its Protests in Earnest

April 6, 1994

Press critics may find it comforting to know that a
newspaper is ultimately responsible for the imbroglio
called Times Beach.

The town in southwest St. Louis County began as a river
resort back in the mid-1920s, when the now-defunct St.
Louis Star Times sold property along the Meramec to
increase circulation. A six-month subscription qualified
a reader to purchase a lot for $67.50.

Of course, this was in the halcyon days before anyone
ever heard of dioxin, television or guerrilla theater.
Last Friday, those three modern inventions collided at
the Lewis Road exit to Interstate 44 in front of the
barricaded Route 66 bridge that once served the
now-defunct town.

About 30 members of the Times Beach Action Group (TBAG)
began arriving around 11 a.m. dressed in white "moon"
suits. They came to protest the planned Times Beach
dioxin incinerator, which they believe will be unsafe if
built.

In some ways, the original organizer of the protest was
Russell Bliss, the waste oil-hauler who unwittingly
sprayed the streets of Times Beach and other sites with
dioxin-tainted oil in the early 1970s. At the time, he
was just trying to keep the dust down. Bliss didn't know
his actions would make him the founder of an
environmental-protest movement and the provider of job
security for countless state and federal bureaucrats.
Those bureaucrats with the representatives of Syntex
Inc., the company liable for the cleanup, have been
creeping ahead since their 1990 consent decree to build
the Times Beach incinerator, despite opposition by the
St. Louis County Council and the disapproval of voters
in St. Louis County, who rejected the proposal in a
non-binding referendum.

Last year, a federal judge halted a similar dioxin
incinerator in Jacksonville, Ark., because the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could not be sued
until after the completion of a cleanup. 

TBAG would prefer that the toxic waste be stored until a
proven technology is developed to destroy the dioxin.
State and federal studies recommended exactly the same
thing a decade ago, but the soil was never collected.
Since then, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources
(DNR) and the EPA have decided to burn the tainted soil
at Times Beach. If built, the facility would also torch
the dioxin from 26 other locations in eastern Missouri. 
TBAG has demanded that the DNR reopen the consent decree
on the incinerator on the incinerator so the public can
voice opposition to its construction. The press release
distributed in advance of the demonstration warned of
acts of civil disobedience. In response, a handful of
St. Louis County police and a highway patrolman invited
themselves to the occasion. 

For some, it was definitely an event worth recording.
The TBAG members didn't even have to wait for the TV
stations to arrive before the video cameras started
rolling. One camera was aimed at the protesters from the
security shack. later, a second cameraman who refused to
identify himself, began shooting footage from a doorway
of the rehabbed project offices across the road.
The protesters milled around the parking lot of that
building, talking to reporters and chanting
anti-incinerator sound bites. Most of those in "moon"
suits were college-aged, so it was easy enough to
identify the locals. The latter was Paulette Taykowski,
43, a lifetime resident of nearby Crescent, Mo. She and
her husband, Joseph, criticized the way the Times Beach
dioxin site has already disrupted their lives and both
questioned the efficacy of incinerating the waste.

The leaders of the demonstration used a bullhorn to get
their points across.

"We want a congressional investigation into the coverup
that's been perpetrated by the EPA and industry to
mislead the public about the dangers of dioxin," said
Tammy Shea. She was referring to industry sponsored
reports that diminish the dangers that dioxin poses to
humans. "We are also asking for an investigation into
the unethical relationship between the EPA and the
chemical waste industry. They are working on behalf of
profit not people."

When activist Don Fitz got his turn at the bullhorn he
said the preliminary finding of the EPA's long-delayed
dioxin reassessment reaffirmed that dioxin causes
cancer. The latest evidence also shows that dioxin may
enhance other carcinogens already in the body. "If this
incinerator goes up, the effect it will have will be to
increase the level of dioxin that an already-exposed
population has," said Fitz.

As part of the well-coordinated protest, activists set
up two mock smokestacks made of plywood. They then lit
smoke bombs attached to the cutouts and un furled a
banner across the road that read: "No dioxin
incinerator."

For the grand finale, three protesters walked behind the
gate on the bridge and were summarily busted for
trespassing. One slumped to the ground, while another
held a smoke bomb aloft like the Statue of Liberty.
Meanwhile, their comrades shouted slogans and lobbed
more smoke bombs in the direction of the arresting
officers. A reporter began gasping for air and waving
her arms. The police lieutenant checked the shoulder of
his starched white uniform for smoke damage. A small
plane buzzed over the gathering bearing yet another
motto of opposition.

It all seemed like a movie set, and, to a degree, it was
just that. But with the TV cameras trained on the smoke
and the air show, a moment of reckoning almost went
unnoticed. It came as 19-year-old Lydia Roberts of
Eureka waited to be placed in the backseat of the squad
car. Her hands were handcuffed. Her face and the
arresting officer's were inches apart. "I'm doing this
for family," she said. "What about your children? What
about the land?"

The cop didn't answer.

(first published in the Riverfront Times – St. Louis)

–C.D. Stelzer (stlreporter@gmail.com)