Overview
It's
been five years since a group of Tiverton residents discovered
dangerous levels of cyanide, lead and other toxic hazards in their
soil, but the company responsible for the pollution still hasn't done
what the law requires-to make their community a safe place to live
again. What will happen to the next Rhode Island neighborhood that
discovers that its kids are playing in poisoned backyards?
Right
now, our state can't hold big polluters who refuse to clean up toxic
waste sites accountable because the daily fines that polluters must pay
for breaking the law are too low. This gives polluters an incentive to
drag litigation out as long as possible, exhausting taxpayers'
resources and leaving the original problem unsolved.
RIPIRG
is standing up to these powerful polluters. We're calling on the
General Assembly to pass legislation to hold polluters accountable for
the toxic pollution they create and make them pay to clean it up.
The General Assembly should put public health before the interests of
powerful polluters by passing legislation to increase the fines that
polluters must pay when they fail to clean up the toxic waste sites
they've left behind. If our legislators raise these fines from $1,000
to $50,000 a day, polluters will finally be forced to take
responsibility for their actions.
And in Congress, we need bold policies
that replace toxic chemicals with safer alternatives, compel polluters to pay
for cleaning up past pollution, and require companies to tell us whenever they
are storing or releasing toxic chemicals or putting them in the products we
purchase.
