By John Rea —
Cottonwood AZ — Now that issues regarding the massive black slag pile in Cottonwood, AZ have risen to the surface, it behooves conscientious community members to objectively examine the relevant information available on the subject
Revelations are based on empirical scientific data including independent testing, testimonies of affected individuals and precedent setting case law pertaining to toxic contamination; all the aforementioned being willfully ignored or casually set aside to date.
On a personal note, I was a victim of environmental poisoning over 40 years ago. It was literally a cover up where a housing project was intentionally built over a toxic chemical dump from WWII. Inhabitants of all ages contracted cancers. They also developed asthma, glandular and organ dysfunction due to long-term exposure. Public officials offered neither physical remedies nor allowed legal recourse in spite of the obvious detriment to those innocent victims, some who died as a direct result of said exposure.
That historical experience being stated, I became curious about the local slag dust in Cottonwood, AZ and its effects after encountering a large accumulation at a storage facility in close proximity to the Minerals Research, Inc. mining waste processing site.
Shortly thereafter in the fall of 2022, I conversed with Rachael Collins, also a victim of contamination at the self-storage. She was a lone voice crying in the wilderness, diligently researching and single-handedly spearheading an investigation into the truth regarding the composition and detrimental health effects of slag dust.
Since I possessed first-hand knowledge from my own experience, my services were offered to compliment her investigation into improper permits, lax safety protocols and zero testing of toxicity in a reasonable radius around the refining operation site. Above all, she discovered there was no concern by city or state officials for the health and welfare of unwary community members who were breathing and ingesting the elements found within the slag dust particulates.
This dirty refining operation functioned without proper oversight every day for many years starting in 2014. Public officials passed the buck when questioned, burst into anger when confronted, denied responsibility when cornered by victims and individuals in power who ignored or intimidated anyone who questioned the already questionable narrative. There is something rotten in the WOOD of Cotton.
As a former radio host, I understand the privileges and responsibilities attached to the position of being a member of the media. The information I communicated was to expose corruption and empower the listening public with the truth to set them free from the otherwise pervasive and unchallenged lies.
The primary function of a real journalist is multifaceted; investigate, research the facts then reveal those facts to the community for the enlightenment and benefit of all. In recent articles on this subject, where are the right facts for the right reasons separating FACT from journalistic FICTION? Where is a comprehensive narrative reflecting, as opposed to rejecting the body of evidence at hand? And what about Rachael Collins who made her corroborating evidence of local contamination available in October of 2022, attempting to share it with the Verde Valley newspapers and media outlets for investigative review many times from the onset of her findings? Why hasn’t she been interviewed and quoted by the local media?
Now that the “Slag is Out of the Bag,” more people are aware of the situation but questioning what has really been happening here.
Rachael laid out thousands of dollars and invested roughly three thousand hours to bring the hazardous contamination issue into the light. Interestingly, her exhaustive research driven by her personal desire to prove the truth was ignored by the press, outright rejected by officials, then ultimately plagiarized and hijacked by two community members who wanted to be in the limelight. They are presently taking credit for exposing this environmental tragedy for their own self-serving reasons without the evidence to support their claims. They even stole evidence from Rachael Collins that precluded it being used as intended by victims needing restitution. This is a travesty of justice and damaging to the public.
The recent articles written on this subject are shallow at best, containing not one element of true human interest. Where are the personal interviews with long-term impacted victims who have been complaining for years? The general public is weary of information disseminated clinically while being divorced from the real people that have been affected physically, emotionally and financially from chronic hazardous exposure.
The “story” is never about tidbits of minutia but about human lives that are in danger from continued exposure and the people responsible for it. This is what piques interest and provokes intelligent discussion that can lead to safe and practical resolution and reparations.
Multiple council members and city employees have been resigning as did the head of Minerals Research, Inc. The new City Attorney and Manager also recently resigned after it was claimed that the City of Cottonwood was covertly accepting payments from MRI every quarter since the inception of the slag refining operation.
In addition, it was also revealed that citizen complaints of health and property damage were submitted and ignored for seven years. City Hall claimed publicly that there were no complaints.
Public officials, business executives and owners, journalists, fellow community members and environmentalists – the Slag is Out of the Bag and the DUST is flying in your direction. What are you going to do about it?
https://cottonwoodcontamination.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slag
Editor’s Note : John Rea will be covering Cottonwood news as staff reporter.
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3 Comments
Great read. Chemical and Toxin exposures are not unique to military veterans. They affect numerous US communities (predominantly minority, indigenous and poor) that the US and States Governments thought lowly enough of that they knowingly abandoned them after getting what they wanted from their lands. Fracking, Oil Drilling, Uranium mining, precious metal mining and coal mining have devastated hundreds if not thousands of communities around the country. Then there are Coal and Nuclear Power Plants that provide extremely toxic bi products into the air, water and soil around them which get carried downstream and downwind of them over hundreds of miles. Look at NM and the devastating effects Uranium mining has caused communities around the state as a result of mining uranium for military and industrial purposes. And to top that off many of those very same communities have been radioactively contaminated by the nuclear weapons testing of the US Army at Trinity site where our government also killed a Battalion of it’s Military Policemen and Field Artillery soldiers that were placed in bunkers and trenches surrounding ground zero of the testing of the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs used upon the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima Japan in hopes of stopping the Japanese war machine. Oppenheimer and the other scientists (military and civilian) had absolutely no idea what their new secret weapon was capable of to include fears of devastating the entire planet in a single blast. But they had no hesitation in placing our troops around it as it was set off. The governments of our country continue to take the same risks with people’s lives on a daily basis. Just this past year every single inland chain lake I grew up in and around in SE Michigan we’re declared irreparably contaminated by PFAS’s or forever chemicals discharged by the Ford Wixom Plant in Novi Michigan. Those same lakes were also contaminated by the State Highway Department 2 decades prior after they left mounds of road salt in an area that leaked salt into the water table and surrounding lakes and communities. Salt water still run from their taps. And that Ford factory and dozens of not hundreds of other auto factories have been in operation since the days of Henry Ford and many were and are producers of military vehicles and weapons systems. Who knows what toxic waste was produced, leaked, buried, burned, or dumped into our communities by them?
Donald Dump wants drilling, fracking, mining etc. and wants to expand it to protected lands set aside by legitimate Presidents past who had the foresight of the need to control the rate at which we destroyed our own environmental ecosystems.
Unfortunately, many wealthy, ignorant and uninformed Americans support his insane desire to return our Nation to the 1800’s where industry was permitted to do as they pleased without oversight or regulation. This is SADD like he is! I’m crossing my fingers that he fails miserably and ends up in a cell wearing one of Joe Arapio’s pink jumpsuits and eating green bologna sandwiches for breakfast lunch and dinner while working on a chain gang in 115• temperatures! That’s what the Orange Insurrectionist and all our other environmental terrorists like Monsanto truly deserve!
Thanks John for the great article and references! I lived in Jerome for 20 years and hiked all around it. I always thought the black glassy slag was fairly stable and inert, therefore non-polluting. It was the orange tailings I became somewhat wary of.
There are large fields of dried powdery orange tailings in the hills around Jerome. It’s picked up by the wind and washed down the mountain by rain. At the bottom of the old Hopewell Tunnel, just southwest of the cement plant, there was a wet tailings pond which constantly overflowed and ran toward the cement plant road. It was there, in around 2000, that a dog fell into it and lost mobility in the hind end that fell in.
It’s my opinion, due to that and the smelter built in 1915 nearby, that Clarkdale and the Yavapai Apache Reservation must be even more affected than Cottonwood. It literally takes decades of one life to begin to learn what the careless practices of the past still cost us today. And some (like a certain candidate for the presidency) want to return to those days. It’s just sad. Please carry on with your investigation!
Excellent journalism! At one time it was the press that kept the elected officials in check! Thank you for continuing the tradition. I have attended many meetings with the company tasked with cleaning up Clarkdale. Each time they bring in young people from the EPA that are completely unaware or willfully blind to the atrocities committed by the mining company, the pile of slag only one them.
Many towns have their slag piles behind chain link fences, in Clarkdale the free access to the river is right next to the slag pile (which is obviously contaminating the river). It is said that this pile is ” inert”, a solid chunk of metal, but just by looking you can see that that is not the case. Many people do not question the offical narrative, wanting to believe if it was really that bad, someone would do something. Unfortunately that just is not true.
Thank you for the writing and publishing of this article!