In reference to a letter I received from James Giattina, director of the EPA’s Region 4 in Atlanta, in June concerning Martin Marietta Materials, Inc., I sent a response to Giattina’s recommendation, Ben Ghosh, who is a metallurgical, mining and environmental engineer in the permitting section of Region 4.

The following is a summary of my letter. I will provide an update when I hear from EPA again.

I thanked Ghosh for listening to the comments of an old man and referred to prior correspondence with Mark Nuhfer, the head of Region 4’s Municipal and Industrial NPDES section, and, more recently, Giattina, both of whom have written to me, “We continue to believe that citizen participation is integral to the success of the CWA in protecting and restoring the nation’s waters …”

It’s a great and meaningful concept. However, I wrote, the illustrious state of North Carolina plans on making this even more difficult to accomplish by introducing House Bill 765, fourth edition. While the bill is a jumble of non-related topics, I asked Ghosh to read a few pages of the 58-page document, aiming him toward page three, lines 32-50 and page four, lines 1-7. There it is written, “Prevailing Party Is The State – In any civil action or other proceeding, the court must allow the State to recover attorneys’ fees and costs if the State is the prevailing party and the claim or issue involves one or both of the following (1) … (2) Contesting the States’ issuance of a permit authorizing activity on real property based on environmental impact.”

This will almost certainly curtail all individual and small non-profit challenges — we just will not be able to gamble on losing and being slapped with frivolous charges levied by the State! That will be the end of the great concept listed above.

The current Memorandum of Agreement the EPA, Region 4, has with the state of North Carolina to me appears to be pretty much useless. Region 4 makes comments and recommendations concerning permits that the state does not have to implement. North Carolina is several cycles out of compliance with their Triennial Report, because they state that they do not have enough money/resources to become current or just choose to prolong the exercise by additional discussions with the EPA. And as I’ve previously stated, “dilution is the solution to pollution.” What person in their right mind would take into account the entire Blounts Creek watershed when the issue is a very significant discharge into a swamp that will be destroyed almost instantly? If you dilute anything enough, the problem is no longer a problem!

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in Washington, DC, chose not to answer the letter I sent her, but instead had Giattina respond to my comments. Let’s assume that the 12,000,000 gallons per day that MMM will discharge to Blounts Creek were to be dumped into the Tidal Basin in front of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC. Extracting “rough” dimensions and average depths from NOAA Chart 12285 and completing the mathematical calculations the water flowing under the small bridge discharging to the Potomac River would change approximately 12 times per minute (similar to what will happen near the quarry discharge on Blounts Creek).  If we use the entire 96 miles of the Potomac River downstream to the Chesapeake Bay and the remaining upstream portion of the river and tributaries as NCDENR did with the entire Blounts Creek watershed, then there would be no pollution in the Tidal Basin. This is not true and I feel certain that Administrator McCarthy would not accept statements such as “we do not expect” and “it would be beneficial” (extracted from reports MMM provided NCDENR) to issues pertaining to the Basin.

I’ve asked and will continue to ask EPA to help resolve the issues that will destroy an important creek in Eastern North Carolina. I am hopeful that EPA’s statement that “We continue to believe that citizen participation is integral to the success of the CWA in protecting and restoring the nation’s waters …” is not just political rhetoric.

Capt. Bob Boulden is a Blounts Creek resident and owner/operator of Miss Bea’s charters.