Everyday Erinyes #49

It's another week when I have so many items today which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them that I won't be able to share them all. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as "unceasing," "grudging," and "vengeful destruction."

A few months ago we got the news that the Department of Justice, after learning the results of an investigation (in which The Nation magazine played a large part), which showed "longstanding patterns of medical neglect in the facility, including operating for months on end without a medical doctor and failing to provide basic care and screening for infectious diseases," was terminating a contract with a CCA-owned private prison.  The contract had been in place for 16 years, and still had four years to run, but the DOJ (and specifically the Bureau of Prisons, which operates under the DOJ) evidently felt the prison's shortcoings were so profound as to justify canceling the contract early, and, on October 1, the last federal prisoner was removed from this prison – the Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, NM.  Yay!

Oh, wait – not so fast.  "Now a Cibola County official who says he has been briefed by CCA and members of Congress tells The Nation that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is moving forward with plans to sign an agreement with CCA to reopen the facility as an immigrantion detention center."  Because "we would support that because it’ll keep the jobs here."

You see, the Justice Department was speaking for the Justice Department.  Its ruling never applied to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), because that is an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS.)  Grrr!

After the DOJ ordered the BOP to start closing ALL of its private prisons, Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security, formed a commission to study whether "immigration detention operations conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should move in the same direction" as DOJ.  That study should be available by the end of November.  But ICE isn't waiting.  Just this month, ICE extended a CCA contract for five more years for the South Texas Family Residential Center.  Yes, "Family."  They lock up children.

As ICE "pursues a longstanding policy of detaining new arrivals, including migrants seeking asylum," the detainee population is expected to continue to grow.  And grow and grow.

One wonders on what basis ICE is so confident that the as yet uncomplete report will be in favor of their private prison expansion.  Alternatively, one wonders whether they even care.  What is the definition of a "rogue agency" again?  Alecto, check that out for us, will you?

Private use of public land was in the news again this week as the Bundy Crime Syndicate is celebrating their acquittal on all (or all but one which was not ruled on – I'm not sure which) charges.  Now, private use of public land is not automatically bad.  For instance, if I want to camp in a National Park, and will follow the rules and not block anyone else in the process, that in my opinion is perfectly fine – and what public property was designed to do.  The problem arises when someone wants to use public land in a way that cuts off others from enjoying it equally.  This is what the Bundys have been doing, both in Nevada with the cattle grazing, and in Oregon at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge.  One wonders what the jury can have been thinking.

But the Bundys are not the only people who think that public land ought to be allocated to them for their private use.  Case in point:  Barry Diller, who has for some time dreamed of building an island in the Hudson River, dedicated to himself.  "Diller Island," now under construction, is planned to comprise a long esplanade leading to a floating island resting on 300 piles resembling giant golf tees.  It will include greenery, walkways, and three performance spaces.  Up to 70 feet high and 2.4 acres in surface space, it is expected to just out from the shoreline seven blocks below the High Line – the High Line being an aerial greenway at 20th Street built on an elevated section of a disused railway.

The thing is, the "land where the island is to be built is public. It falls under the jurisdiction of the HRPT (Hudson River Park Trust), a partnership between New York State and City charged with the construction and design of the four-mile Hudson River Park. The Park belongs to millions of New York City residents whose taxes subsidize it."

New York State law requires an environmental impact assessment for construction like this, and this assessment has notbeen filed with the state.  The HRPT states that is has performed its own review:  "We take our role as stewards of the Hudson River Park sanctuary seriously, and that's exactly why we not only conducted a thorough environmental review in accordance with state law, but went beyond what was required by inviting public comment on that review."

The City Club of New York, a land-use policy organization, however, says the review was never filed with the state.  Neither has the Army Corps of Engineers filed a similar report at the federal level.  My, my.  The City CLub is suing the Trust in the Manhattan Supreme Court to hat the contruction, and is not having much success.  This is a long story with a lot of history, which is definitely worth a read, and I'm sure the information will be very helpful to Megaera as she looks into this example of grudging.

From private prisons to privatization of public land, we move to privatization of public utilities.  Always a bad idea.  Always leads to spending more and getting less in return.  Pittsburgh is no exception.

Pittsburgh has a long history of having clean water.  However, in 2012, the utility, Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, having made a series of poor financial decisions, was hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.  Residents were complaining of poor customer service and unfair fees. 

With public funding drying up (pun intended) and infrastructure more and more outdated (gee, do you think there might be a connection?), Pittsburgh is far from the only municipality to be running into trouble.  Pittsburgh is also not the only utility to turn to a private management company to help out.  Pittsburgh called in Veolia.

If you haven't heard of Veolia, it's time you did.  Based in Paris (France, not Texas), the company operates in 68 countries, and, in the USA, consults or manages in 530 cities (though that number is growing.) 

In Pittsburgh, while initially promising no layoffs, by 2015, the utility had laid off (or fired) 23 people, notably the safety and water quality managers.  The laboratory staff was cut in half.  And major changes were made to the water treatment system.  (Cue ominous music.)

For decades, the utility had been adding soda ash to its water to prevent the pipes from corroding and leaching into the water.  in 2014, soda ash was replaced by caustic soda, with no environmental review.  But this year, as the disaster in Flint came to the notice of the nation, they switched back to soda ash.  Because soda ash prevents lead from pipes getting into the water.  And caustic soda, apparently, doesn't.  Were they in time?  Well, not really.

This summer 81,000 homes in Pittsburgh received notice of elevated levels of lead "in some homes."  Seventeen per cent had levels comparable to those in Flint.  Prior to this testing, Pittsburgh lead levels had always been normal.

Had the lab staff not been drastically reduced, a formar water quality director says, "We would have been researching like crazy this lead corrosion problem to see how to correct it."

Another former employee, asked about Veolia, said, "They will come in, rape your water company, and leave with money bags."  Yup.  That's about the size of it.  Tisiphone, although this may have been more attributable to greed than to vengeance, please see what you can do.  Many thanks.

If anyone has the stomach to check into any more stories, here are some links:

North Carolina Republicans try to stop 100-year-old Grace Bell Hardison from voting
(New Mexico) AG says APS violated open records law. Now they’re still denying a mother the documents
Jailed 96 days on bogus charge: It is no one's fault?

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 at http://www.care2.com/news/member/101612212/4018423