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April 18, 2000
by Ted Mooney
At a recent AESF meeting, a board member passed around photocopies
of the cover story of the Feb. 7 issue of Time magazine. The same
Time story is the subject of this month's editorial in Finishers'
Management magazine.
To summarize the story, America's scrap metal dealers got
themselves exempted from Superfund liability by donating $300,000 to
political candidates. And to summarize our industry's reaction, on
the one hand we are wailing about how "terrible" this "political
prostitution" is, while on the other hand seeming to lament the fact
that we haven't put our legislative/lobbying representatives to work
making us the focus of a front page scandal too.
Allow me to suggest that if it's terrible, and political
prostitution, that what we should be doing is putting our
legislative/lobbying representatives to work all right . . .
screaming bloody murder from the galleries. If, as an aggrieved
industry sector, we would band together with the public to fight
things that "make us sick" we might achieve the goal of rolling back
this exemption which we claim will cost us so much, while gaining the
good kind of publicity, and doing the right thing as well.
Let's wake up and smell the chromate:
1). Chromic acid and chromates are toxic and carcinogenic. These
are not "perceptions", they are facts, widely known for more than
half a century. Our wastes are not going to be exempted.
2). The chemicals we use will leach into water supplies if not
managed, and are expensive to get out. One Superfund site is a
minuscule chrome plating shop which operated out of a two-bay garage.
The cleanup is still underway years later, while millions upon
millions of dollars have been spent repairing the damage to the
aquifer. Our wastes are not going to be exempted.
3). America's sweetheart, Julia Roberts, will surely win a
nomination, and possibly even the Oscar, for her starring role in one
of today's most popular movies, Erin Brockovich [affil link to Amazon] -- a
film centered around the toxic effects of hexavalent chromium. Our
chromium wastes are not going to be exempted.
Let's make sure that Ms. Roberts/Brockovich isn't referring to us
with her famous line: "They're called boobs, Ed" 
.
reply by Jim Treglio
<ismtech@ixpres.com>
ISM Technologies, Poway, California
If a non-plater's opinion is worth anything, I would like to add
to Ted's comments. If the waste issue is one of business survival,
then perhaps the platers should consider alternatives. I'm from the
vacuum processing industry, and have seen absolutely dramatic
advances in the past few years. The equipment has improved markedly,
and the costs have fallen as well. A number of coatings applied by
PVD can compete economically with hexavalent chrome, and processes
such as ion implantation can improve the wear resistance of trivalent
chrome to match or exceed hexavalent chrome.
Now may be the best time to start looking closely at a changeover.
First, interest rates are not too high, a key point since vacuum
processing capital costs are high. Second, the bad political
environment for platers created by Ms. Roberts is not going to
improve. In fact, based on the experiences of the tobacco and nuclear
industries, it is only going to get worse. Third, the movie has made
the political environment for supporting industry transition to
non-polluting surface treatments strong.
by Matthew Stiltner
<stiltner@buckeye-express.com>
J & J Plating Company, Toledo, Ohio
On the topic of political contributions and their potential
paybacks in the end.
No matter what association it is you're contributing to that has
people lobbying the capitol, they all get a back scratch. I'm not
pointing fingers, frankly because I don't have enough fingers to do
all that pointing. We (J & J Plating that is) are large
supporters of the NFIB, behind the AARP and NRA probably one of the
heaviest-hitting lobbying groups around, with many hundreds of
thousands of members from small businesses. They are constantly
keeping a finger on the members of congress who support small
business and those that don't, its sick to see that some people have
voted for 0% of bills and laws that would assist small businesses,
and then there are the 100% guys, guess who gets the funds when it
comes to re-run?
I myself was asked to run for a local office that was vacant. I
was honored that someone considered me a candidate for office (even
if it was small in the large scope of life) but I turned down the
offer for many reasons. Things like those noted in the Time article
would be one of them. I couldn't stand there and watch people taking
pay-offs and basically sucking up taxpayer dollars faster than a
Vaccuum in a wood shop sucks up wood shavings. Its sad to realize how
much the government truly wastes than turns to the taxpayers and
says...HELP! Ah well, I'm ranting like I tend to do so often.
Keep your heads up guys, the EPA ruling was a wonderful one and we
all owe it to the AESF and all the other supporting foundations that
made this law passage possible, it was and will forever remain, the
heaviest weight we as metal finishers of any type have to face.
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