The neutering of the Environmental Protection Agency by those who are now running it will not end the fight to clean the air we breathe and the water we drink, but collectively, the actions are a devastating blow that will impact us, our children and grandchildren. 

Protection of the environment is rarely, if ever, viewed as a profitable venture by business, and, given the opportunity, too many large businesses — especially those that can have the greatest negative impact on our lives — would rather look the other way than to acknowledge and correct damage they might be causing to the air above them and the waterways at their feet.

The announcements by the EPA this year include plans to end the declaration that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. The agency has already redefined its interpretation of “Waters of the United States” in order to sharply reduce the amount of wetlands that it will try to protect in the future. And, most recently, the agency announced that power plants will no longer have to report their greenhouse gas emissions.  

I was thinking about the EPA’s 180-degree turn as I was going through old Smithfield Times files to work on a column that ran a couple of weeks ago about George and Jane Webb.

At the heart of that research was the Kepone disaster that was discovered in 1975. It was a classic case of industry doing something it had to know was harmful, but highly profitable, and getting away with it so long as everyone looked the other way, including a local government.

Allied Chemical in Hopewell had concocted a chlorinated hydrocarbon that came to be known as Kepone. It was deadly effective in killing ants, cockroaches and most anything else you wanted to kill. Trouble was, it was also toxic to humans, so much so that Allied had a subsidiary, ironically named “Life Sciences,” set up a tiny plant in an abandoned service station in Hopewell to manufacture the stuff.

When a Life Sciences employee who lived in Hopewell developed uncontrollable shakes, the city started looking and found that its sewage treatment plant was malfunctioning because of slugs of Kepone entering it. From there, the stuff poured into the James River.

Events moved rapidly at that point. The State Water Control Board stepped in and, with assistance from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, took samples of river bottom to determine how much of the stuff had escaped. Many tons was the finding. Kepone had contaminated the James River bottom all the way to Hampton Roads.

WCB officials went to Gov. Mills E. Godwin Jr., who in December 1975 ordered the James River closed to all fishing for fear that people would ingest the poison.

Kepone levels were highest in resident fish, which were part of the James River food chain year-round, such as catfish, perch and crabs. Anadromous fish, which migrate into the bay and rivers each year and include striped bass, shad, croakers and spot, ingested lesser amounts.

However, the closure initially shut down the river to the taking of anything, and the effect was devastating. Watermen went bankrupt and commercial seafood companies suffered when people stopped buying Virginia seafood, no matter whether it came from the James River or elsewhere. Bait stores suffered, as did anyone else relying on sports or commercial fishing.

It took time and a lot of money to safely remove the Kepone sludge from the Hopewell wastewater plant and to demolish and clean up the hazardous waste site that had been Life Sciences. Meanwhile, nature slowly covered the Kepone in the bottom of the James with layers of silt. 

Today, few people even remember what Kepone was. It should be an effective reminder that industry cannot always be trusted to do the “right thing” when the more profitable route does harm. Harm is most certainly not the intention of profit-driven industry, but whether intended or coincidental, harm to humans is just that.

In our rush to return to the 1950s, we might want to reflect on Kepone and the devastation it caused along the historic river we call the James.

John Edwards is publisher emeritus of The Smithfield Times. His email address is j.branchedwards@gmail.com.

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