The CTS scare in Buncombe County annoys me. Believe it or not, I am not anxious to see anybody die unnecessarily, but the whole scene causes me to flashback to my college days. I was a member of Lyman Briggs College at Michigan State University. It was an innovator in the field that has now come to be known as Science and Technology Studies (STS). I was enrolled in a seminar on recombinant DNA. The prof wanted us to role play a city council meeting. We were dumbfounded. None of the twenty or so students could believe that any real person could be as taken in by hype as the exercise demanded, so we continued to sit in our stupor, and the prof walked out on us.
Now, none of the Buncombe County Commissioners want any harm to befall any of their constituents on their watch. At least a couple of them boasted their desire not to get technical. Tate MacQueen, speaking on behalf of a dozen concerned citizens decked out in black, for all his good intentions, only went down a list of crimes against logic against which I’d been warned.
Churches get the short end of the stick for letting members of the congregation share testimonials. Anecdotes do not provide the level of scientific evidence reproducible results do. Yet, anecdotes get a lot of traction at public hearings.
Scientists with the EPA explained that they were trying to maximize test readings in order to score the 28.5 points required to get federal superfunds. They’ve been trying for years, and they keep falling short. They tested where they knew chemical drums had been stored, and they tried to test as the winds blew favorably. They are even considering gerrymandering the site to maximize densities for readings.
A number of persons in the area have contracted cancer and/or died. No benchmarks were provided to the public to define normal death rates and normal incidences of cancer for other areas. The scientists said, rightly, that correlation did not constitute causation, but they would need to determine the types of cancers the residue chemicals and their byproducts produced.
MacQueen offered to produce petition signatures, reminiscent of sarcastic barbs about polls replacing fact. It was as if a couple more signatures could raise the ppm readings over the threshold. In a democracy, if one expert detects a fatal flaw overlooked by seven novices, he’s simply outvoted.
My crime against logic was my bias against Harold-Hill sales pitches like the one delivered by Barry Durand introducing me to the issue.
In conclusion, I want it to be clear that I am not writing this to advocate for senseless deaths of several citizens. I regret that I have to clarify this. I am not saying that there is no contamination. What I am saying, is I agree with the scientists in that if there are unsafe levels of toxins in the groundwater, they would do well to identify the source and extent of the contamination. And that, I believe, is what they are trying to do.
