About 100 citizens attended a meeting Tuesday night at Erie’s East Middle School to learn about the efforts of a citizens group to make Erie Coke obey pollution laws.  Erie Coke is currently appealing a long list of pollution violations filed against it by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.(DEP)  Violations are nothing new at Erie Coke.   In 2010 the company paid a $4 million fine and agreed to make upgrades to the plant.

 

 

The public meeting began with Dr. Mike Campbell, of the citizen’s group Hold Erie Coke Accountable, explaining the history of pollution problems at Erie Coke.  Campbell says no testing of the groundwater has ever been conducted at Erie Coke.  But, he believes the number of dead birds and fish found on the shores of Lake Erie near the plant indicates something is wrong.

 

"Of course fish die all the time for various reasons. Birds die too.  But you don't find them concentrated in the same location.  That to me is like a canary in a coal mine,” Campbell said.
    

Rachel Filippini is the Executive Director of the citizens group called GASP. That group has been a watchdog for environmental issues in the Pittsburgh area for the past 50 years.  She explained the air quality problems a coke plant can create.  She says the most important thing to make a coke plant comply by the rules is to have citizens speak out to the DEP to show that they care.

 

"The regulators and the facility need to hear from the community that the community cares about the issue, that the community is seeing and smelling things of concern and that they demand improvement,” Filippini said.
    

Citizens will have the chance to speak to the DEP when the agency holds its own public meeting about Erie Coke.  That hearing is part of Erie Coke's request to renew its government operating permit.  A date for the hearing has not been set.
   

Long time Erie activist Dick Kubiak will attend that meeting too.

 

"Now we've got this dinosaur still sitting there doing what it does best...that is to poison the community.  This has got to stop. We have to get a lot more aggressive with these people and they have to be gotten rid of or they have to comply,” Kubiak said.