growing up superfund by brandon r. schrand · 2011-10-27 · 94 brandon r. schrand | nonfiction...

I. An AdmissionI was an adult before I learned the term Superfund. A young adult,but an adult all the same. Or, I was an adult before that word reg-istered in my thoughts, stuck on my tongue, and stayed with melong enough for its definition to incandesce and say somethingabout me and my life. But here’s the thing: I don’t think my igno-rance on this matter was a result of my not paying attention. Evenas a young adult, I kept an ear to NPR, tracked the print news, didmy homework, and felt, well, engaged in that self-congratulatory wayyoung adults do when they’ve had too much coffee. I had heardcorollary terms, to be sure. Radioactive. Leaching. Tailings. Clean-up. Silos. Strip-mining. But not the other word. And so I have beenbothered, or embarrassed, or both, by this blank page in myCitizen’s Handbook to Living the Engaged Life. True, I must haveheard the word at some point. But for reasons that aren’t clear tome, it slipped by like so much wind through a sieve.Maybe I thought I heard super-fun, and blocked it out. Perhaps.

It’s easy enough to reconstruct how my mind might have batted

Growing Up Superfund by Brandon R. Schrand

GROWING UP SUPERFUND 89www.columbiajournal.org

90 BRANDON R. SCHRAND | non f i c t i on

the word aside. Perhaps what my brain did when I heard the word,say, while drinking coffee and listening to Morning Edition, wassomething like this:SUPERFUN SITE > [think: theme park] > THEME PARK

> [think: Disneyland] > DISNEYLAND > [think/deconstruct:corporate conglomerate, American mass-consumerism, generalweirdness, etc.] = ACTION > DELETE: “SUPERFUN.”Sure, it could be the result of just good old-fashioned igno-

rance on my part. But still, I wonder.

! ! !

II. A DefinitionWhat I finally learned—much too late, I might add—was this:There is nothing fun about a Superfund. Rather it is the short-hand term for a Reagan-era article of legislation called theComprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, andLiability Act (CERCLA). CERCLA mandates the clean-up of thecountry’s worst hazardous waste, pollutant and contaminantreleases, which are organized in the National Priorities List(NPL). Like so many governmental policies, CERCLA was reac-tionary, not preventative. Enacted in response to the Love Canaldisaster1 in New York, the Superfund program was—it seems inretrospect—fated for disaster even before it started. In February1980, Reagan appointed a director who was herself a co-owner ofa company that produced its own toxic goops and stews. Soonafter, Reagan’s appointee resigned, finding herself convicted onperjury charges that suggested she was more concerned about thewelfare of chemical companies and not the environment. It’s anold story, really—the fox in the henhouse. Nevertheless, the EPAhas administered and prosecuted all Superfund clean-up opera-tions in the United States since the shady days of Reagan. Of

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course, its success is often hamstrung by the sheer enormity andcomplexity of the operations, and by the political climate onPennsylvania Avenue: the number of foxes varying from admin-istration to administration.Although I grew up without any awareness of this definition,

this word and all its toxic baggage was put to work in no small wayin the three hometowns of my childhood: West Richland,Washington (read: Hanford), Soda Springs, Idaho (read:Monsanto & Kerr McGee), and Idaho Falls, Idaho (read: theIdaho National Laboratory). Hanford wasn’t in clean-up modewhile we lived in West Richland; my dad worked as an electricianon several of its reactors, pulling braids of wire through miles ofconduit. The government did not designate it a Superfund siteuntil the years just after my family departed.At Hanford, my dad, along with every other employee, had to

wear a dosimeter, a pocket-sized device used to measure hisminute-to-minute exposure to radiation—or RADS—as it wascalled. His work buddies used to joke about how “RAD” some-one was on any particular day. To wit: “Danny is so RAD he willhave kids with three arms.” Or, “T-Bone is so RAD his piss glowsin the dark.” But if one were truly that RAD, they were told, theirdosimeter would send off a decontamination alarm. In otherwords, it was acceptable to be somewhat RAD, just not too RAD.I remember briefly some of these discussions when we were liv-ing in that desert country of West Richland. I recall my dad say-ing “radiation” while I was lying on the floor of the living room,moving a small detachment of green plastic army men around onthe carpet. I looked up. My mother lit a cigarette and shook herhead. Dad put his black lunchbox on the small kitchen table anddraped his electrician’s belt over a chair. There was gravity to theword, but they quickly disarmed that gravity with a joke. It was the



way of things. You couldn’t stew on words like RAD or radiationor dosimeter.

! ! !

III. Three RAD Newspaper Stories About Hanford Duringthe Time My Dad Worked There.“A chemical explosion at a nuclear waste plant in the Hanfordatomic reservation early Monday contaminated 8–10 workerswith a radioactive substance.”

—Oregon Journal, August 30, 1976.

“Four workers were exposed to radiation Friday while working atthe N reactor on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, said aspokesman for the company who operates it.”

—The Oregonian, July 8, 1977.

“RICHLAND- The manager of . . . Hanford’s nuclear waste sur-veillance program resigned yesterday, saying the company’s safetyprogram is lax and the federal Department of Energy has coveredup reports of leaks in waste storage tanks.”

— Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 7, 1978.

! ! !

IV. An InterviewBRS: Were you ever worried about getting contaminated atHanford?DAD: No, not really. You just did your job and tried not to thinkabout it.BRS: You were mad when you were laid off. Why—I mean, giventhe dangers of that place?DAD: The money was great. I’d never made money like that


before. This was the late seventies, early eighties, and I was mak-ing something like twenty bucks an hour.BRS: So you liked working there?DAD: Sure, I guess. But there was a lot to dislike. It was filled withgovernment contractors and the corruption was outrageous. Sothat always pissed me off.BRS: What was the strangest thing you saw there?DAD: One day one of the engineers’ assistants showed me apond. We stood at the edge of it, and it was deep, and at the verybottom you could see this strange blue glow. And I said to thisguy, I said, “Is that safe?” And he said to me, “Safe enough.” Andwe both kind of laughed. But I’ll never forget that blue glow. Thatwas probably the strangest thing.

! ! !

V. A DrillHere is a related memory from that same time period: I’m eitherin first or second grade at Vista Elementary when, on a white-hotafternoon, the bells ring through the empty hallways and we aretold to crouch beneath our desks. It’s a drill, we are told. Not fora fire, though, but for something else. In the event of a nuclear attack,we are told. It is the 1970s, not the 1950s. Hands over your heads, weare told. As if desks and our small hands are sufficient protectionagainst the worst possible thing. This is what you will do, we are told,as if the real thing could happen at any minute.

! ! !

VI. A Fairy TaleOnce upon a time there was a green world called Soda Springs,and Soda Creek coursed through its pastures. It was a bucolicworld, an Elysian romping ground, and I kicked wet sneakers



through its dewed and brightening grasses. I dove headlong intothat stream, into the waters so clear you could see the bottom—a wavering carpet of green moss, interrupted here and there withsmooth stones. I swam in the stream and kicked, splashed,lunged, flinging my young body from its tangled banks everychance I got. I plunged deep: head down, eyes open. I lived alongthat stream. Hunted muskrat along the meanders. Built bridgesover its waters. Climbed trees along its banks. Skipped flat stonesacross the gurgling surface. Soda Creek was my stream. It was tome what birches were to Frost, what the earth and every commonsight was to Wordsworth. It was my Mississippi, my BigBlackfoot, my Big Two-Hearted. I lived out endless summerhours at its edge, fingers trailing the coolness. Breathless and sun-lit, I felt something akin to a kind of boyhood dominion, and thatthe world was mine.

! ! !

VII. A Report“Water discharging from an on-site [Monsanto] pond to SodaCreek 2,000 feet away is contaminated with cadmium, accordingto EPA analyses conducted in 1985. Water withdrawn from SodaCanal 1.2 miles downstream is used to irrigate 4,040 acres.”

— “NPL Site Narrative for Monsanto Chemical Co. (SodaSprings),” the National Priorities List, May 5, 1989.

! ! !

VIII. A Glossary Entry“Cadmium is an extremely toxic metal commonly found inindustrial workplaces, particularly where any ore is beingprocessed or smelted. Due to its low permissible exposure limit(PEL), overexposures may occur even in situations where trace


quantities of cadmium are found in the parent ore or smelterdust.”[Health effects]: “Chronic—the most serious consequence ofchronic cadmium poisoning is cancer (lung and prostate). Thefirst observed chronic effect is generally kidney damage, mani-fested by excretion of excessive (low molecular weight) proteinin the urine.”

—U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Health & SafetyAdministration (OSHA).

! ! !

IX. A Correlative StoryA couple of years ago, I was in Soda Springs to visit. I had justtaken up running and so I would wake early and hit a mineral-orange sanded trail that wandered from the northern edge oftown and continued to a small park near Monsanto, just a fewmiles out of town. The color of the sand reflected the geographyof Soda Springs: pockets of orange rock and sand, stained by theroiling mineral water bubbling beneath the surface—hence thetown’s name. It was a pleasant path, following a canal that joinedSoda Creek downstream. On this particular morning, I passedtwo city employees. Their truck sat in the tall grass near the canaland a jumbo plastic tank sat in the bed of the pick-up. It was thekind of tank my uncle filled with pesticide on the family ranch.Seeing such a tank in a mining and agricultural community wasanything but remarkable. But then I noticed that they were pump-ing a sweet-smelling milky chemical into the canal. Large skiffs offoam drifted downstream. At first I ran past and waved at the cityemployees. Then I stopped, puzzled by the sight. Then I turnedback. “Morning,” I said.“Morning,” they said.



“What’s this stuff?” I asked, motioning to the tank.“We’re checking the canal for leaks,” one said. The funny guy,

making a joke. They both laughed. “Nah,” he said, “actually, it’sxylene.”“Xylene?” I asked.“Yeah. It kills all the plants on the bottom of the canal to

ensure better flow.”I looked at him.“For the powerhouse,” he said, meaning the small hydropow-

er facility on Soda Creek.“Oh,” I said. I told them that it was strange to see chemicals

gushing into the very stream I used to swim in. And they said thatthe xylene helped keep everyone’s power on. I smiled and noddedand thanked them for their time, finished my run.Later that day, I went to the public library and started looking

into xylene. Turns out, it’s commonly used in waterways sur-rounding powerhouses, so what I saw wasn’t really out of theordinary. But xylene is also a neurotoxin. A few days later, I paida visit to my former boss, a limnologist and local expert onhydrology and ecology. He’s also an ardent hydropower develop-er. He confirmed my suspicions that xylene was—in his words—“some nasty shit,” but that it was effective in a creepy kind of way.“It kills everything,” he said.Is it a stretch to suggest that people who live in a Superfund

designated area, and who, on some level, have an awareness of itsdesignation, will allow for chemicals like xylene to run freely intotheir streams and rivers without protest? If, for instance, tailings(the chemical leftovers of the ore-extraction process) appear inyour view of a “normal” landscape, why quibble over a chemicalthat keeps your power on?


! ! !

X. Quite a SiteDuring the year we lived in Idaho Falls, Idaho, I was in the fifthgrade and we lived in a trailer house. I wore Off-the-Wall Vansand listened to Quiet Riot. Life was good. Idaho Falls is a biggishtown by Idaho standards and squats on the Snake River Plain, abrushy scabland turned green with irrigation. Crop fields abuttedour trailer park and I remember hiking along a maze of irrigationcanals, some full, some defunct and overgrown with cheatgrassand thistle. It’s a flat land with brown, desert mountain rangesbarely discernible in the hazy stretch of horizon. Enormous cot-tonwood trees broke up the flatness some, but when the temper-atures crashed below zero in the middle of winter, you could hearcottonwood branches break and explode like gunfire in that open-throated land. Those wintry reports amounted to a haunting songthat would stop you in your tracks, and demand you listen in thefrozen air.We moved to Idaho Falls because my dad found work at

INEL—the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. Now offi-cially called INL (The Idaho National Laboratory2) and locallyreferred to as “The Site,” it is on the National Priorities List. INLis a storied place, and its stories are troubling.

Wanting to learn more about The Site, I checked the NPL forinformation about INEL during or surrounding the time we livedin Idaho Falls. In part, this is what I found:

Recent testing has identified contamination in additionalareas of INEL.Tests conducted in 1987 [a few years after we movedfrom Idaho Falls] by INEL and USGS at the Radioactive



Waste Management Complex indicate that carbon tetra-chloride and trichloroethylene (TCE) have migratedfrom where they were buried to the Snake River PlainAquifer and that transuranic radionuclides have migratedto ground water. In December 1988, TCE was found indrinking water wells in Test Area North. Workers in thearea are now being supplied with bottled water. USDOEhas identified 300 areas that require additional investiga-tion at INEL.

It, too, was—and continues to be—a Superfund site. But TheSite, which spans nearly 900 square miles in the Idaho desert, con-tains a much darker and more extensive background than thesefindings suggest. Few people realize that America’s first and onlyfatal nuclear accident did not occur at Three Mile Island, but nearIdaho Falls, Idaho. It’s an untold story, really, a skipped chapter infourth grade Idaho history classes.Just a few days before Christmas in 1960, the SL-1, or

Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One on the INEL com-plex grounds, was shut down for routine maintenance and facil-ity upgrades. After a hiatus of some eleven days, operators beganpreparations to put SL-1 back online on the night of January 3,1961. Temperatures dropped to seventeen below zero.Everything froze. Seen from above, at night, the SL-1 Reactor’slights would have emitted only a faint glow in that expanse ofink-black desert night. The INL compound is isolated by design,and SL-1 was remote even by INEL’s standards. Three men wereon shift that night. They were all under twenty-sex years old.Young, in other words, their eyes full of future. Part of the pro-cedures of that night’s detail involved pulling a central rodupward from the reactor core by a couple of inches. Instead,


someone jerked the rod up far beyond the prescribed measure-ments. What resulted was a highly volatile steam explosionbeneath the rod, and the steam eruption acted like fuel to a mis-sile. The rod shot upwards, pinning the reactor’s operator to theceiling of the reactor. It was a senseless death swallowed wholeby that shroud of desert darkness.

It is troubling to think that his body remained pinned to the reac-tor ceiling for nearly a week while the rescue team puzzled over asafe way to remove the body. And it is also troubling to think thatthe others died of radiation exposure. But it did; they did.Investigations were underway. The reports were mixed andrumors abounded that the accident was actually a murder-suicidethat stemmed from a love triangle involving two of the reactoroperators. It is a bizarre backstory and no one to date has fullyresolved the degree to which human drama led to the atomictragedy that occurred in the Idaho desert. Ever since, SL-1’s com-plicated legacy has cast a considerable shadow over another-worldly landscape of basalt and twisted brush.

! ! !

XI. Seven Things I Recall from My High SchoolGovernment Class

1. Something about the Teapot Dome Scandal.2. The three branches of the federal government.3. The life-size John Wayne poster on the classroom wall

right next to . . .4. . . . a sign that read: “Where in the hell did all the Indians come

from?”—George Custer.5. Liberals are “bleeding hearts.”3

6. Teddy Roosevelt was the best president in the history of



the country, next to Ronald Reagan.7. Environmentalists are kooks and wackos who wreck the

economy.

! ! !

XII. An AdvertisementRecently, a slew of pro-phosphate mining advertisements havebeen appearing in the Soda Springs paper, the Caribou County Sun.Here is one from Simplot, the agribusiness giant that runs thecontroversial Smoky Canyon mine near Soda Springs. The ad’steaser reads, “Sadie Found a Way to Feed Her Children and theWorld.” The ad is appealing, I must admit. It features an attractivewhite, blonde [read: all-American] mother—Sadie—and her twotow-headed boys, one sitting on his bicycle. Smiles all around.Three thumbnail photographs appear to the right of Sadie andher boys. The first depicts an enormous earth mover dumping itsload into an equally enormous Electrohaul dump truck. Belowthe thumbnail, we are treated to this text:

When Sadie . . . isn’t busy raising a family, she can befound working in the rugged mountains [along theWyoming/Idaho border, near Soda Springs]. The firstthing that appealed to Sadie about a job at Simplot’sSmoky Canyon was that it enabled her to provide herfamily with a good standard4 of living.

Cut to the next thumbnail, this one depicting a huge fertilizer-spraying machine. Beautiful skies, feathery clouds in the distantbackground. It’s near sunset. Gorgeous. The sun blazes throughthe mist of fertilizer alighting on the green crop-fields. The textbelow goes like this:


As she learned more about the process5 Sadie realized shewas actually helping to bring the earth’s resources to life6.Every load of ore goes to Simplot’s plant in Pocatello.There it is made into fertilizer and applied to farmers [sic]crops, helping to create the bounty of food we all enjoy.

Cut to third thumbnail, this one showing Sadie and her twoboys again on what appears to be their backyard deck.

The days are long and the work is challenging, but youwon’t hear any complaints from Sadie7. Her goal in life isto raise her family the best she can, contribute an honestdays [sic] work for an honest days [sic] wage, and helpmake the world a better place. At Smoky Canyon Sadie isable to achieve all three.

The very existence of this ad (and others like it), with itsmom-and-apple-pie assurances, suggests that there is somethingwrong with the picture, that something is askew. Otherwise, whypay for the ad? Well, for one thing, the ad fills the negative spacethat would exist in its absence. It’s a message-control campaign,in other words, or propaganda, if you like. And in that negativespace, one could reasonably find, for instance, a lot of talk aboutSimplot being named Public Enemy Number One on a list ofthe ten worst corporate polluters. Simplot made Conde NastPortfolio’s “Toxic Ten” list in March 2008. Moreover, Conde NastPortfolio further reports that during the previous summer, “theE.P.A. determined that a Simplot factory was the main source ofa potentially deadly amount of phosphorus dumped into thePortneuf River.”



Ah, the Portneuf River. I know its waters well. It’s one ofmany streams in the greater valley drainage system near SodaSprings. It cuts through the neighboring mountain town of LavaHot Springs—a swim-park resort town that truly is super-fun—where gas stations rent inner tubes to tourists and locals for float-ing down the Portneuf. I remember renting the yellow float tubesand life vests. I remember floating through town waving to gawk-ers from the shore, the road, or bridges. I remember the sun-burns. The horseflies. The good times. Summer after roaringsummer, my friends and I would float that river.

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XIII. Four Things I Never Learned in Government Class1. That I lived inside a CERCLA-designated Superfund

site, that the places I called home weren’t what theyseemed.

2. That Monsanto, Kerr McGee, Agrium, FMC, andSimplot were the culprits. Indeed, that some of theworld’s most egregious industrial and chemical pollutershad all landed in my backyard.

3. That the molten slag8 that Monsanto dumps around theclock, twenty-four hours a day—a by-product of theirphosphate mining—was radioactive. Moreover, I neverlearned that they used the slag in the roads, sidewalks,building foundations, basements, you name it, all overSoda Springs.

4. That Monsanto, the single largest employer in SodaSprings, had developed Agent Orange.


! ! !

XIV. DisconnectThere once was a swimming hole in Richland, Washington thatwe frequented in those years my dad worked at Hanford. It was apublic place and had a lifeguard, but it wasn’t like other swimmingpools. It was in the middle of a field and had a gravelly shore andpebbly bottom. There was no chlorine. And it had a slight sul-furous odor to it. But we would spend many days there thrashingin the water. My mother and her friends would sunbathe in thatpatch of desert light, drinking Tab and listening to Elton John ona small portable radio. Seagulls squawking and fluttering above.Tumbleweeds rolling through the fields toward the horizon. AndI remember standing waist deep in those gray waters having thetime of my life. Then one day we idled into the parking lot at theedge of the swimming hole and the pool had been abandoned.Signs were posted all around the perimeter. White signs with redlettering that said something about CONTAMINATION andDO NOT ENTER and HEALTH DEPARTMENT. At least wewere informed. Too late, perhaps, but we were told.I wish the same could be said for Soda Springs. There are no

signs, no warnings, no mention of the two Superfund sites locat-ed in that town. It is the thing of which people do not speak.But of course it’s complicated. When your livelihood depends

on companies like Simplot, and you happen to live in a rough-and-tumble town like Soda Springs or West Richland or IdahoFalls, what—outside of mining or Superfund clean-up—are youroptions? When outsiders come in and say what you and yourcompany are doing is reprehensible, you naturally take offense.How could it be any other way? Many of these people surely seestrip-mining or waste storage for what it is: destructive, violent,ruinous. But they can no more dwell on those thoughts than my



dad could dwell on how RAD he was on any given day atHanford. So there exists a kind of disconnect between what theysee, and what they have come to believe. Like Sadie, they won’tcomplain. And when they see the slag pour, or a blue glow in abody of water, or hear about a man pinned to a reactor ceiling, orwhen they hear about children crouching beneath their deskswhile sirens wail, they will chuckle, or cluck their tongues, whistle,and turn their attentions elsewhere. I understand. This disconnectinsulates us from troubling thoughts and even our worst fears.Still, I believe there is value in calling something by its name,

in seeing things for what they are. If you live in a Superfund site,say it. Instead of calling strip-mining a “process,” call it what it is.There’s really no other way around it: The term for strip-miningis strip-mining. Radiation is radiation. Cadmium is cadmium.Xylene is xylene. Slag is slag. And Superfund is Superfund.I’m not sure if it would have made much difference in my life

had I been told in my high school government class (or in anyother class, for that matter) that I had grown up in a designatedSuperfund site. But at least I would have been given the correctterms and not an illusion, the old recapitulated mythology of theAmerican West where John Wayne looms large and the only thingthat glows is an eternal sunset. ! ! !

1 In the closing years of the nineteenth century, William T. Love conjured up the idea of the perfectneighborhood in Niagara Falls. According to Eckardt C. Beck of the EPA, Love sought to connect theupper and lower Niagara Falls with a canal as a way of ensuring ample power generation for his idealcommunity. But the community was destined for a darker fate. When the canal project petered out,Love’s community site was designated a waste dump. In 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company — theowners and managers of the land — packed topsoil over their toxic mess and sold the site back to thecity for three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel. Even for a dollar, Beck notes, the transaction was a “baddeal.” Within ten years, several homes and a school started sprouting up on the site, and for the nexttwenty years growth continued as the toxic gunk oozed through the topsoil. In the end, it was discoveredthat 21,000 tons of toxic waste lay buried beneath an unwitting community. To get your head around21,000 tons, recall the “Fat Man” nuclear bomb unleashed on Nagasaki that resulted in an explosionequivalent to 21,000 tons of TNT. Because of the enormity of the waste and the manner in which it washandled (or not handled), the Love Canal Disaster remains an important object lesson in Superfund..


GROWING UP SUPERFUND 105

2 For a brief period, The Site was called INEEL — the Idaho National Engineering & EnvironmentalLaboratory. The inclusion of the word “Environmental” in their name spoke, on one hand, to theirclean-up efforts, and on the other, to a kind of public relations package that had a certain cachet. Since2005, however, The Site has farmed out its clean-up operations to a second-party contractor who callthemselves “CH2M-WG Idaho, LLC” — a name that looks more like a quadratic equation than a compa-ny title. CH2M-WG Idaho, LLC is a corporate spin-off of CH2M-Hill, a company that is overseeingclean-up operations at Hanford.3 I am not making this up. Our government teacher made no apologies about his right-wing political bentand how it shaped our class curriculum. Every time he started talking about the “damn bleeding-heartliberals,” the class would just chuckle. This was a public school in Soda Springs, Idaho, where many ofthe students were on track to work at Monsanto, Agrium, Kerr McGee, Simplot, FMC, or a number ofsmaller contractors who worked in tandem with these corporations. It goes without saying, then, that thepolitical landscape of Soda Springs is deeply conservative and allows for this kind of rhetoric in its edu-cational curricula.4 The words “good standard” not only impart an economic message — that her job will pay the bills anda little extra — but also intones a moral message: By working at Simplot, Sadie and her family have good(moral) standards. One can guess that Sadie and her family do, in fact, have good (moral) standards in theways they define them, but what I am interested in is how Simplot exacts an air of moral rectitude in itscampaign.5 Process? Which process? Strip-mining, of course. But that term isn’t used. It is absented from the text,from the message. The word “process” is less cumbersome, less baggage-burdened than strip-mining.6 Simplot’s corporate slogan is “Bringing Earth’s Resources to Life,” and I find it fascinating, if troubling.It presupposes that the earth’s resources are dead prior to Simplot’s strip-mining or resurrecting“process,” and thereby casting Simplot in the role of savior/mother — a role, in fact, that harmonizeswith Sadie, the matron of the mine. Seen this way, the ad — despite its grammatical trespasses, despite itsobvious agenda — is fairly smart.7 No, I bet we won’t hear any complaints from Sadie — not if she wants to keep her job, anyway. Evenwhile the line is angling for a down-home, honest-to-goodness, folksy appeal so common in advertising,the subtext suggests that Sadie (or anyone in Simplot’s employ for that matter, and particularly women),ought to keep quiet. It’s also the kind of rhetoric that hints at a kind of preemptive subterfuge againstorganized labor.8 I’ve written elsewhere about Monsanto’s slag pours, and how they look like a lava flow, and how theyturn the sky orange, and how, as a kid, I would stand at the edge of Soda Creek and watch that hypnoticglow and think it was the coolest thing on the planet.


growing up superfund by brandon r. schrand · 2011-10-27 · 94 brandon r. schrand | nonfiction...

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