We had originally planned to release Scorecard’s Pollution Report Card as additional information to the last blog post, but a lot of their findings are staggering enough to stand on their own.
For instance:
“In 2002, [Humboldt] county ranked among the dirtiest/worst 10% of all counties in the U.S. in terms of total environmental releases.” Humboldt County is also Nevada’s leader in toxic chemical releases annually – with over 351 million pounds of chemicals released into the environment in 2002.
Here’s Scorecard’s list of chemicals released into Humboldt County, including over 293 million pounds of arsenic and over 38 million pounds of lead released in 2002.
Humboldt County’s Top Polluters? Newmont Mining Corporations in both Galconda and Valmy, Nevada. The other five groups? Mining operations as well.
Perhaps–from an environmental standpoint–trash is the least of Humboldt County’s worries. Perhaps it’s not. Will more trash just contribute to Humboldt’s shoddy environmental score?
After reading up on these findings, members of N.A.G. might consider contacting these top environmental polluters to tell them to stop.
